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.

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.

National Indian Pudding Day

Lest it pass you by, I come briefly out of blog hiatus to give a shout out to Indian Pudding.  I knew it had its own day, being from the land of its provenance, but I suspect that you were shamefully unaware. So now you know. Today is National Indian Pudding Day, and if you have never had it, do try. It is one of the many items that uses our wonderful jonnycake cornmeal, and there is a recipe right here on this very blog—omg, posted five years ago—that you can use. If you're not sure which cornmeal to choose, I refer you to this completely scientific comparison.

There is even a story on NPR about it. It says that interest in New England cooking is on the upswing. As usual, I seem to have been ahead of my time (always have problems with timing); guess I should get back to this….but when??

Miraculous Mint: Always in Style

It is hard to believe that, not so long ago, just about every recipe called for dried herbs. It was unheard of to see fresh versions of even the most commonly used herbs—basil, oregano, sage, thyme—in the stores. “Exotics” like tarragon were unheard of period until the late 70s or, in many locales, the 80s.

But mint, fresh and fragrant, was somehow always there.  In the lemonade and the iced tea. Fresh.

I am guessing that this rare example of herbal freshness is because mint was practically a weed: it was just there. It grew everywhere, and “took over”:  most people pretty much considered it a pest, and would dig it out save for a tiny bit for, you know, the lemonade.  I could not understand this. I loved its looks, its feel between the fingers, its scent of course, the amazing fact that you could just pick and chew on the leaves, and they were minty great. I loved the way it took over.

In a paradoxical reversal, mint is actually now hard to find. Yup, it’s been dug up.  If you do see it in the store—rarely—it is a sad flattened little bunch stifled and browning in a plastic tray. Why is it that we can now have big bunches of cilantro, basil, Italian parsley, and bushy gatherings of rosemary on a regular basis, but not mint?  I am guessing that it is something that doesn’t really take to greenhouse cultivation. It wants to be wild—run rampant. Most farming doesn't work like that these days.

So if you want it, you need to have your own taking over the backyard, or live by a local farmer.  Sometimes you see it in international markets. But I know you know what I mean when I say that making tabbouleh or anything else that calls for a good load of mint can be a challenge.

Coll grows it, and is generous with it, as he is with his other bunches of herbs (many herb prices in stores are, in a word, ridiculous). The beetles have, apparently, been at it these past days, so when I arrived at the stand there was none out for sale. I really wanted some, so one of the farm stand girls kindly went out and cut me some, picking through and harvesting the best un-eaten stems. I got enough, and paid a dollar for it.

Thinking about the ahead-of-its time abundance and present-time scarcity of mint quite naturally brought on a little food nostalgia.  This salad is a reminder of the virtues of an untidy summer lawn, shot through with marauding mint. Was there ever a more effortless and neglected gift to the suburban table?

Jellied Mint, Tomato, and Cucumber Salad

The mint “jello” is superb: try it. It would also make, on its own, a wonderful palate cleanser between courses or a light summer dessert with some ripe berries and cream. Serves 3-4.

The jelly

1 big bunch of freshly picked mint, enough to for 1 cup loosely packed chopped mint; reserve some nice leaves for garnish

2 packages plain gelatin (and a little cold water to soften it)

2 cups boiling water

2 T sugar

½ T maple syrup

1 tea freshly squeezed lemon juice

½ tea salt

¼ cup mild vinegar (cider, white, or white wine)

¼ cup white wine (or use a ½ cup vinegar)

In a 1-qt saucepan, put the gelatin and add just enough cold water to soften it; let it sit about 5 minutes. Meanwhile, stem the mint, stack the leaves, and roughly slice/chop it. You will need about 1 cup, loosely packed.

Add the boiling water, sugar, maple syrup, salt, lemon juice, vinegar, and wine (if using) to the pan; keep it warm over medium-low heat. Add the fresh mint, stir, and let it sit on the heat for 20 minutes or so, stirring and tasting it occasionally. Add a little more sugar if needed. It will taste a little acid at the beginning, but will mellow as it steeps.

Strain the mixture into a big measuring cup and discard the leaves. Rinse a 9” or 10” pie plate with cold water.  Pour the liquid into the pie plate and refrigerate until set.

Dressing

Use any sweetish dressing you like. I used:

1 T finely minced sweet onion

¼ c olive oil (would have used vegetable oil, but had none)

2 T cider vinegar

3 tea maple syrup

¼ tea salt

1/8 tea black pepper

1 ½ T thick local heavy cream

Whisk all together until thick.

To assemble the salad

The mint jello

1 medium nice local tomato

1 medium cucumber

The dressing

Mint leaves

Core and seed the tomato and the cucumber and chop them into large dice. Turn the jelly out onto a board and dice it; if you have trouble turning it out, cut the jelly into squares with a sharp knife in the pan, and remove them with a spoon. Arrange the jello and vegetables on a plate. Nap with a little whipped cream dressing and garnish with mint before serving; if you can, set the salad in the refrigerator for about 15 minutes to chill.

August Corn III: Corn Fritters

One of the benefits of the early growing season is that we’ve had corn since the first of July, so August corn this year doesn’t have quite the same meaning as in years when corn is really just coming into its own. For me, though, it has a different meaning: the last time I will really eat it until next year.

Yes, I am back in Tucson. You may have suspected, since I missed posting last week--the first sign, at the end of the summer, of impending blog hibernation. I was traveling back to Tucson last weekend, and there is nothing like a change in schedule to throw you off your blogging game. School starts tomorrow, and you know what that means. The game of weekly posts is up.

But back to corn and why I will be on corn, as well as blog, hiatus until next summer. There is corn at the farmers market here, but I can scarcely bear to look at the poor things, let alone buy and eat them. (I know there is an agreement issue with that sentence, but I couldn't make it come out right in singular. Feel compelled to explain.) So I limit my corn eating to New England summer. Ditto with fish.  Fortunately, the Hatch chiles are in to distract me. Maybe this year I will figure out what all the fuss is about.

I love corn fritters of all shapes and varieties, and so decided to make some on one of my last evenings in LC.  These below are yet another type than others on the blog, very much like a clam cake, for those of you from Rhode Island who know from whence I speak.  For those who don’t: they are like little puffs of slightly eggy, fried, studded (with corn, or clams, or…) bread.  I was in the process of cleaning out refrigerator inventory, and made a little dipping sauce with sour cream, buttermilk, scallions, lemon, salt, and pepper.  I had them for my dinner with a glass of wine. A very nice last supper.

RI Corn Fritters

6 ears corn

3 eggs, separated

scant c sifted a-p

1 tea sugar

1 tea salt

2 tea bp

Cayenne and black pepper to taste

Oil for frying

Into a small bowl, cut the kernels from the cobs and and scrape the milk from the cobs. Stir in the egg yolks.  Sift the dry ingredients together and mix into the eggs and corn.. Beat the egg whites stiff and fold them in gently.

Heat about 4” of oil to 375F; drop the batter by the tablespoon into the fat, without crowding.  Cook them, turning them over with a slotted utensil, until they are golden brown. Remove to paper towels and salt while hot. Make sure  your fat is hot enough or these will be too soft; you want them a bit crisp on the outside.  Eat plain or dip into a sauce of your choice.

Past Prime: Versatile Syrups

When all the fruit is coming in like runners in the Olympic torch-bearing relay, it is hard to keep up with the hand-offs.  No matter how much time you spend in your too-hot, too-humid summer kitchen (not, as we know, the ideal weather for jam and jelly making), you are bound to be left with miscellaneous bits of fruit that is no longer—perhaps never was—quite perfect.  In my waste-not, want-not world, which I believe is the world of all true and natural cooks, it’s not possible to throw it out. It is not merely frugality that leads us to resist, although that is part of it. It is challenge:  what can I do with this? If cooking is transformation, what can I make of this? What can I turn it into? The humblest transformations are, in the end, a combination of austerity and creativity.

As Anthony Bourdain pointed out in his Les Halles Cookbook, the French were masters of turning questionable ingredients and odds and ends into good things to eat. From cutting meat creatively to cooking tough pieces for a very long time with flavorful aromatics, they not only made do with what they had, they made things that have become soul-satisfying classics.  One thing you might notice about this, though, is that there was, at the same time, a recognition that you don’t slave and fuss over these less-than-stellar ingredients, or try to make something of them that no amount of attention is going to produce.  If nothing else, a good cook is pragmatic, and knows you cannot make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear. But you can make a very good braised sow’s ear.

It’s the same with fruit past its prime. No pies, no plump preserves or clear jellies, no decorating cakes and tortes, certainly no eating out of hand. But they do make very good syrups and sauces, flavored iced teas and shrubs—anything where the flavor is extracted (usually through heat) and the less-than-perfect fruit strained out, and where you don’t need much if any pectin, which is lost as fruit becomes old or overripe.

I really like to have syrups on hand (two of my favorites are rosehip and rosemary) —and not just for cocktails, although of course they are great for that.  Syrups have many endearing qualities. They last forever. They can be used as an ingredient—in drinks, salad dressings, sauces, frostings and glazes—or as an embellishment—drizzled over cheese, fresh fruit, grilled meats. You can utilize other marginal items in making them—shriveling herbs, fading whole spices, a single slice of lemon or squeezed peels.  They make you feel virtuous because, of course, you did not throw anything out.

Fruit Syrups

You can use any combination that you have, or fancy. For one of these, I used about half blueberries and half sour cherries (for this purpose, you needn’t bother to pit your fruit); I had some leftover, drying mint. This made a deeply flavorful and refreshing syrup. For another, I used Karla’s imperfect peaches—half the price of her perfect ones—slightly bruised and overripe, but still juicy and flavorful and not too far gone. My friend Trina loves bellinis, so I made the peach syrup with her in mind, and with the inspiration of Katie Loeb. A Bellini made with this is much better than, well, a Bellini.

Measure your fruit. Put it in an aluminum or other nonreactive pan with an equal amount of sugar and an equal amount of water.  If you have a small wedge of lemon or orange, squeeze it and then drop it in. Bring to a boil and cook at a moderate bubble for 5 minutes or so, until your fruit has softened, popped, or otherwise begun to break down and release their color and juice. It is not necessary to skim. Remove from the heat. Toss in your herbs and/or spices, stir, and cover. Let steep until cool, or until it is as intense as you like (taste it from time to time). Strain through a fine strainer or cheesecloth into jars; you have my permission to press gently, enough to encourage the fruit to drain, not so much that you force it through as a puree. Cool completely and store in the refrigerator or freezer. Reboil briefly before using after three months or so if you keep it refrigerated rather than frozen.

Dairy: Disappearing Delights

To the extent that they have not disappeared altogether—and many have, as a drive through New England or New York State’s back roads will attest—dairy farms that survive today are likely to be part of a cooperative into which they sell their milk, whether to be bottled or made into cheese. And like most food products today, milk has increasingly been produced in a manner to make it highly shelf-stable and hardy under a range of transportation conditions. It is ultrapasteurized and ultrahomogenized, as is the cream that has been separated from it at the time of milking.

So the existence of an independent dairy whose cows are pastured and feed on good stuff is a treasure to be thankful for—and to patronize.  If you find one, they may even let you buy raw milk direct from the farm (it is illegal to bottle and sell it in most states, but you may be able to get some informally). But even if not, a really good dairy will have superior milk, buttermilk, and heavy cream that has a higher percentage of fat than that from a large producer and, if you are lucky, that has been pasteurized to the legal requirement only, and not homogenized at all.

 

Here in Rhode Island, we are lucky to have such cream. It’s from Arruda’s Dairy in Tiverton, and I have written about its virtues before. Heavy cream like this is highly perishable: it is a fresh product, for immediate consumption. Be forewarned, the expiration date means what it says. You may be able to blithely keep commercial heavy cream for months beyond expiration, but if Arruda’s says “June 24^th” it means June 24^th; the next day it will be sour. Don’t push your luck.

This makes the product all the more special than its inherent thick richness already makes it. Somehow, its ephemeral nature—it’s fragile perfection at its peak—and its erratic availability lend a little carpe diem excitement, as well as a little reverence for the simple, to its use and consumption. It whips phenomenally, but even that can feel disrespectful or ungrateful. Pour it on. 

Jonnycake Cake

This is still plain, but more of a cake than a cornbread, suitable for a simple dessert. It is very good. Serves 6-8.

2 eggs

1 ½ c whole milk

¼ cup thick heavy cream

1 T vanilla

5 T unsalted butter, softened

2 RI white jonnycake cornmeal

½ c flour

6 T, generous, sugar

2 T bp

Heavy cream

Berries, apples, peaches, or other fruit

Preheat the oven to 350F. Butter and sugar a 9” square pan.

 

In the bowl of an electric mixer, beat the eggs with the milk, cream, and vanilla. Beat in the butter. Add the dry ingredients and mix well. Pour into the prepared pan and bake 20-25 minutes, until lightly colored and just-firm to the touch in the center; it will be starting to pull away from the sides. Do not either over- or under-bake so cake will be moist but cooked. Serve warm or cooled with fruit—sautéed, cooked with sugar into a simple sauce, fresh—with plain or whipped heavy cream, or both.

 

Bounteous Blueberries

In contrast to the small and stingy raspberries, the blueberries this year are particularly good. They are big, spicy as I like them, bounteous, and, of course, true blue. That’s worth pointing out, because some years they are not quite the right shade. Weather, it seems, affects everything.

I have already eaten lots of blueberries—with Karla’s peaches and a little brown sugar; in the standby, addictive fruit buckle; in pancakes; and in pies. It’s great to see so many of them lined up at the farm stand, some safely snuggled in their little snoods, some brazenly risking a spill on the way home, day after glorious day.  Enough to freeze for inventory; don’t forget!

As with sour cherries, I usually make a blueberry lattice pie, but had a craving for crumbs. Having grown up in an area, and in a household, heavily influenced by all things Pennsylvania German, I am a major fan of crumbs. There is, first and foremost, the quintessential crumb bun of my youth, the standard to which all things crumbed are held, and a ridiculously difficult thing (considering a crumb bun is simplicity itself) to replicate in all its soft, sunken-crumb perfection. I’ve been trying for years. I will make these for the blog some time. Then there are various streusel coffeecakes, such as the popular sour cream coffee cake you see lots of places, and the wide range of possible crumb pies, apple and blueberry being among the finest.

Last week, when my son was here, we had a dinner at my friend Anne’s house. Wonderful Mediterranean meal of grilled shrimp, little grilled lamb chops, hummus, tzatziki, tomatoes, pita, corn to start (how could we not? It’s July, and the corn was early and good), etc. Anne made a plain white sheet cake (it had been my son’s birthday the previous week, and there were candles), and I made a blueberry crumb pie. Anne’s father took and produced the final pie photo.  

Blueberry Crumb Pie

Lard/butter crust for a 9” pie

4 cups blueberries (1 qt)

¾ c sugar

½ tea cinnamon

¼ tea nutmeg

2 T melted butter

3 T flour

1 tea lemon juice (squeeze a ¼ of a lemon

Roll out the crust, fit it into the pie plate, and chill. Combine all filling ingredients gently and place into the shell. Make the crumbs as below and distribute over pie.

Bake at 375F for 35-40 min, or until crumbs are brown and juices are bubbling through. Check midway through and protect the crumbs and crust with foil if needed so that they do not burn. Cool completely before cutting.

Crumb Topping

1 ½ c a-p flour

1/3 c white sugar

¾ c lt brown sugar

¼ tea cinnamon

Big pinch salt

6 oz unsalted butter, cool room temperature

6 oz unsalted butter, melted

Blend dry ingredients and combine with cool better, crumbling with your hands. Add melted butter and blend, squeezing to form clumps. Finish the pie as directed above.

Photo by Frank Parker

Desert Strawberries

I was surprised to see true local strawberries, the kind we get for a brief few weeks in June in Little Compton, at the farmer’s market a few weeks ago. Since commercial strawberries have gone the way of tomatoes in recent years—giant mutants, red outside and all white and fibrous within, tasteless, mealy—I really don’t eat them except when they are local and just-picked. This is another way of saying I only eat the real deal. No fake fruit for me.

The berries were from Yuma, of western movie fame. You may remember from seeing either the old or the new version of 3:10 to Yuma (both very good) that the sun is pretty steady there, to say the least: Yuma describes itself, apparently with accuracy, as having “more sunshine than any city on earth.” Strawberries like that. These were fragrant and juicy, and red right through, as a strawberry should be. I’ve always thought that strawberries needed a little cool moisture to set right, so maybe the fact that Yuma is on the Colorado River—yes, rivers do run through deserts—provides just enough to do the trick. Or the farmers irrigate. Whatever, these berries were delicious.

And they were cheap: a nostalgic, like the berries themselves, $2.50 a pint. Had I not been on my way out of town, I would have bought tons and made jam and shortcake . I bought only two pints, promptly ate one out of hand, dipping a few in heavy cream and demerara sugar, and, after briefly considering marinating them for one of my favorite quick desserts, pureed and froze the other. It is all relative, but even here in AZ, we have a kind of winter. There are few more hopeful reminders that spring will come again than taking something berryish from the freezer on a cold winter night. The taste of summer is always something to look forward to.

Rio II: Feijoada and Friends

I just returned from my second trip to Brazil this year, again to speak at a conference on research integrity, an area in which the growing Brazilian research community is making an admirable commitment.  To be able to spend several days with like-minded people is treat enough, but to do so in a beautiful and friendly city like Rio is doubly satisfying.

 

My colleague Sonia, the energetic powerhouse behind the organization of this multi-city, multi-venue conference, invited all of us presenters into her home for a welcome lunch of traditional Brazilian food. It was a family affair. Her mother (pictured) made the food; her daughter helped serve; and her husband, god bless him, took photos and washed all the dishes by hand in their small kitchen.  

We began with what Sonia described as her “famous ginger caipirinha,” made with honey instead of sugar, and it was both very good and had less cachaça  than the ones I had last year in bars—that’s a good thing, as a caipirinha is a potentially dangerous drink.  After some raw veggies and dips we were served the national Brazilian dish, feijoada.  Feijoada is a complete meal; here, ours consisted of white rice; farofa (manioc flour toasted with bacon); fresh pork shoulder; smoked sausage; finely shredded, lightly cooked collard greens; black beans; and pimiento, a hot sauce of onion, parsley, and green chile. For dessert we had a fresh fruit salad and ice cream. All very good, eaten in the open air on Sonia’s balcony.

Here are some photos. We were fed—quite well—at the conference, so I didn’t get out much this time, although did shoot a few photos on the street: the ubiquitous suco stands—Brazil is famous for their fresh juices of papya, coconut, guava, pineapple, mango, and other tropical fruits--; the churro stands with their ingenious needle-like pumps for injecting your fresh-fried churro with dulce de leite or chocolate; a family enjoying a seafood stew served in a roasted pumpkin at Dark Blue (Azul Marine), a favorite Copacabana spot to watch the surfers at sunset. Obrigada, Brazil, for another great visit.