Given my position as cookie-baking USO girlfriend, I'm just a tad miffed that I didn't get to chip in to Kim Severson's NYT article about soldiers' care packages, just to disprove the image that only grandmas from the Midwest bake cookies for the troops. Foxy 38-year-olds in Brooklyn do, too!
The article does contain some howlers, though, like this quote from the admirable Crystal White, a Starbucks employee who, to her credit, sent 100 lbs of coffee beans and a grinder to Bagram, the main American air base in Afghanistan. "I wanted them to have something they're used to, something from back home," said Ms. White, whose siblings have served in the military. "I wanted them to know that there's something they are fighting for." Making the world safe for Frappuccinos, one slush at a time!
Severson goes on to note that future MREs will contain chocolate-covered espresso beans. Wheee! But she also mentions that "Other new field rations include an expanded line of vegetarian dishes, including lasagna and chicken pesto pasta." Bawk! I'm going out to weed the chickens now.
It's true, though, that Girl Scout cookies are as good as money for getting favors done. According to K., there's actually no shortage of junk food out there, from Cheetos to Kit Kats, all sent by well-meaning pals, church members, and relatives.
But homemade cookies--well, there's nothing like a double chocolate mint chip to get you through a dust-ridden 120-degree day.
Wednesday, May 31, 2006
Monday, May 29, 2006
Arkansas awaits!
Countdown to where I'm going to be, come this Thursday...that is, if I can get these editing projects finished, clean up the apt for the subletters, pack for a month and do all the jillion accompanying tasks. Regardless, though, I've got a ticket to Eureka Springs, and when that plane takes off for Fayetteville, well dang it, I'm going to be on it! Dishwasher, double oven, back porch, and strawberry shortcake for 30 (which I'll be making for a special dinner there just a few days after arriving, eeek), here I come!
In the meantime, though, I got to pick a whole lot of lettuce from the the garden,
where it became the base of a very swell salad inspired by the salmon-and-baby-beet salad in Suzanne Goin's lovely (if relentlessly hyped) book Sunday Suppers at Lucques.
I made the salad more of a late-spring fiesta, with blanched asparagus and fava beans, arugula, feathery bits of dill, parsley, and sliced garden radishes in all shades of pink, white, and purple, the whole thing tossed in a vinaigrette of wine vinegar, lemon juice, a big spoonful of Dijon mustard, and olive oil. Since the first-run Copper River salmon at Fish Tales was $30 a pound (yikes! no Jet Blue for this fish, obviously), I topped it instead with chunks of artic char cooked by Goin's salmon method.
The long single filet was plastered on both sides with a paste of minced shallots, dill, tarragon, parsley, the grated rind of 1 lemon, salt and pepper, and a few hearty glugs of olive oil. Then it was laid in a long glass baking pan and tucked into a 250-degree (F) oven with an additional pan half-filled with water placed on the lower shelf. It cooked very slowly in the damp heat for about 20-25 minutes, coming out gently cooked and very moist. Peeled off the skin and chunked the herby fish over the salad mound.
Had I had some edible flowers to throw in, it would have been even prettier. But it was a lovely lunch for the three ladies of PQ Castle (PQ, the PQ Mother, and Aunt PQ) on a summery Sunday, accompanied by fresh croissants from Almondine (actually, the croissants got devoured first, with the night-before's strawberry-rhubarb jam, while the PQ herself was frantically washing and re-washing the garden lettuce) and followed by the fabulous, chewy (not rock-hard) almond biscotti from Court St Pastry and little bowls of fresh cantaloupe with lime.
In the meantime, though, I got to pick a whole lot of lettuce from the the garden,
where it became the base of a very swell salad inspired by the salmon-and-baby-beet salad in Suzanne Goin's lovely (if relentlessly hyped) book Sunday Suppers at Lucques.
I made the salad more of a late-spring fiesta, with blanched asparagus and fava beans, arugula, feathery bits of dill, parsley, and sliced garden radishes in all shades of pink, white, and purple, the whole thing tossed in a vinaigrette of wine vinegar, lemon juice, a big spoonful of Dijon mustard, and olive oil. Since the first-run Copper River salmon at Fish Tales was $30 a pound (yikes! no Jet Blue for this fish, obviously), I topped it instead with chunks of artic char cooked by Goin's salmon method.
The long single filet was plastered on both sides with a paste of minced shallots, dill, tarragon, parsley, the grated rind of 1 lemon, salt and pepper, and a few hearty glugs of olive oil. Then it was laid in a long glass baking pan and tucked into a 250-degree (F) oven with an additional pan half-filled with water placed on the lower shelf. It cooked very slowly in the damp heat for about 20-25 minutes, coming out gently cooked and very moist. Peeled off the skin and chunked the herby fish over the salad mound.
Had I had some edible flowers to throw in, it would have been even prettier. But it was a lovely lunch for the three ladies of PQ Castle (PQ, the PQ Mother, and Aunt PQ) on a summery Sunday, accompanied by fresh croissants from Almondine (actually, the croissants got devoured first, with the night-before's strawberry-rhubarb jam, while the PQ herself was frantically washing and re-washing the garden lettuce) and followed by the fabulous, chewy (not rock-hard) almond biscotti from Court St Pastry and little bowls of fresh cantaloupe with lime.
Memorial Day
Another beautiful day in the neighborhood, and I sure wish K. was here to spend it with me, grilling hot dogs and putting suntan lotion on my back. But I'm thinking of her, and all the men and women with her overseas, because this is Memorial Day, after all, not just opening day for grilling season.
It's very easy to think of the military as a monolithic other--something other people enlist, serve in, and run. Before I met K., I didn't know a single soul in uniform. My dad was in the Pacific with the Navy in WWII; the brother of an old girlfriend did some time in the Gulf War, and came back with a bunch of those persistent but nameless aliments now lumped under Gulf War Syndrome. What little familiarity I have now (mostly being able to recognize a handful of acronyms, which the service seems to love even more than microwaved boots* is due to the past year of hanging out with K. and meeting some of her fellow servicepeople, however briefly. They are very young, mostly, and beyond that it's impossible to generalize, because it's hard to imagine a group of people more diverse, in everything from race to their reason for being there.
I don't want anyone to be at war. But if we are, as a country, going to be in conflict around the world, it's worth taking the time to step back and just listen to what the people fighting have to say about their experiences.
* In units still wearing the standard shiny black boots--rather than the softer suede-y desert boots--the guys in particular get really obsessive about boot-shining. When you don't have a car on hand to detail, presumably you work on your boots. One trick is to zap them briefly in the microwave, which somehow helps set the polish so it can be rubbed to a mirrorlike shine. This is not something the women bother with, but the guys trade boot-shining techniques like NBA scores.
It's very easy to think of the military as a monolithic other--something other people enlist, serve in, and run. Before I met K., I didn't know a single soul in uniform. My dad was in the Pacific with the Navy in WWII; the brother of an old girlfriend did some time in the Gulf War, and came back with a bunch of those persistent but nameless aliments now lumped under Gulf War Syndrome. What little familiarity I have now (mostly being able to recognize a handful of acronyms, which the service seems to love even more than microwaved boots* is due to the past year of hanging out with K. and meeting some of her fellow servicepeople, however briefly. They are very young, mostly, and beyond that it's impossible to generalize, because it's hard to imagine a group of people more diverse, in everything from race to their reason for being there.
I don't want anyone to be at war. But if we are, as a country, going to be in conflict around the world, it's worth taking the time to step back and just listen to what the people fighting have to say about their experiences.
* In units still wearing the standard shiny black boots--rather than the softer suede-y desert boots--the guys in particular get really obsessive about boot-shining. When you don't have a car on hand to detail, presumably you work on your boots. One trick is to zap them briefly in the microwave, which somehow helps set the polish so it can be rubbed to a mirrorlike shine. This is not something the women bother with, but the guys trade boot-shining techniques like NBA scores.
Saturday, May 27, 2006
It's All Rhubarb to Moi
It's a balmy Saturday morning that finally feels like true early summer instead of endless chilly spring. The roses are spilling over everywhere all of a sudden--lemony yellow, sunset peach, dusty maroon, lipgloss pink, mysterious greenish-white, smoky lavender, and ruffly ball-gown ivory.
The breezes are blowing the curtains around and the house is redolent with the fragrance of warm strawberries.
Big baskets of the first Jersey strawberries were on offer at the Borough Hall farmers' market on Thursday, along with the season's first garden peas and yes, more rhubarb! Since the Pie Queen Mother--a dedicated jam fancier--is coming to brunch tomorrow, it behooved PQ to pick up a couple boxes, plus a big pink bag of rhubarb, and set about making some strawberry-rhubarb jam. This seemed like a good opportunity to see what French jam star Christine Ferber had to say about the subject, in her fabulously outre book, Mes Confitures.
First, the expected: cut up all the rhubarb into little pieces, mix it with sugar and lemon juice, and let it sit overnight. Same with the strawberries.
In this fashion, you're letting the sugar do the work. Rather than having to boil the fruit for a long time to evaporate the extra water and get the mixture concentrated enough to thicken, you let the hydroscopic action of the sugar do it for you. The sugar itself draws out the excess water from the fruit, leaving you with a bunch of shrunk-down berries and a whole lot of sweetened juice. The juice gets boiled down alone, while the fruit chills out in a colander, listening to the Met opera broadcast and reading the New Republic. When the juice has reduced to a thickish syrup, you throw in the fruit and cook it for a few minutes, just until it's softened and translucent. That way, the fruit keeps its flavor, and the jam tastes like fresh-picked fruit, not cooked to death mush. You can also use less sugar this way, since you get thickness from evaporation, not sugar-concentration. The slow maceration also helps avoid that raw-sugar taste that some homemade jams can have.
So far, so good. Then the next part: dump the strawberries and their liquid into a pan, bring to a boil, then pour back into a bowl and let sit overnight again.
But now...Bring the mixture to a boil five times. Repeat this four times at 8 hour intervals. Oh, Mlle. Ferber, je suis desolee, but I am not hanging around for the next 32 hours boiling my strawberries twenty times. That's just wack. So we're going back to standard strawberry-preserve method, extended slightly for rhubarb: Let the once-boiled strawbs sit around for a while to contemplate their approaching destiny. Then, drain, set the fruit aside, and boil the syrup in one pan. Do the same to the rhubarb in a separate pan. Add the rhubarb, cook until soft, then dump in the strawberry syrup and reserved strawberries. Cook the whole thing for another few minutes until, tut, tut, it looks like jam.
That's the plan, anyway, and maybe I'll even do like Bakerina does and take step-by-step pictures. Stay tuned!
Wednesday, May 17, 2006
banana birthday pie
It's K.'s birthday today, and because she is truly the girl for me, she has requested a birthday pie instead of the usual cake. First choice was key lime, but alas, my previous source of key limes, the overpriced Garden of Eden grocery store on Montague St, has feijodas and papayas and six kinds of grapes but no key limes. Instead, I'll be whipping up her second choice, banana cream. My old pal the Red Meat Ranger was also a serious banana cream pie fancier, so I have a well-stained Joy of Cooking (1953 edition) to work with. It's so easy it barely needs a recipe--just a stovetop custard of egg yolks, sugar, cornstarch, milk, and vanilla. The only trick is judging when it's cooked enough not to be soup, but not so much that it's started to curdle. Longer than you think you can stand, but don't wander off, not for a minute, is the way I've found. Will post the recipe--and pictures!--once I've made it. And to all the other Taureans and almost Geminis out there, happy birthday!
OK, post-birthday post-mortem. The pie, well, the pie tasted great. But for some reason--i.e., it didn't occur to me to grease the pie pan--the graham cracker crust cemented itself to the pan. And then the custard, which seemed nice and thick when I first made it, transformed itself into runny soup during its stint in the fridge. So I dolloped the thing with fresh whipped cream, sprinkled it with chocolate powder, and then had to serve it with a ladle and a chisel. Oh, well. it did taste good, especially the next morning when we had the leftovers for breakfast. But I'm not posting the recipe til I get the kinks out.
OK, post-birthday post-mortem. The pie, well, the pie tasted great. But for some reason--i.e., it didn't occur to me to grease the pie pan--the graham cracker crust cemented itself to the pan. And then the custard, which seemed nice and thick when I first made it, transformed itself into runny soup during its stint in the fridge. So I dolloped the thing with fresh whipped cream, sprinkled it with chocolate powder, and then had to serve it with a ladle and a chisel. Oh, well. it did taste good, especially the next morning when we had the leftovers for breakfast. But I'm not posting the recipe til I get the kinks out.
Sunday, May 14, 2006
because my mother loves scones
Ginger Scones for Mother's Day
3 cups flour (I used 2 cups all-purpose and 1 cup whole-wheat pastry flour)
2 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 cup sugar
3/4 cup (1 1/2 sticks or 6 oz) butter, cold and cut into cubes
1 cup golden raisins, chopped dried apricots or currants
1 tsp grated lemon rind
2 TB chopped candied (crystallized) ginger
1/2 to 3/4 cup buttermilk
Glaze: 1 egg yolk beaten with 1 TB water
Preheat oven to 400. Sift dry ingredients together. Cut in butter as if making pastry, until mixture looks like pebbly cornmeal. Toss in raisins, rind, and ginger. Drip in buttermilk, stirring and tossing with a fork until mixture is moist and will hold together without being too wet. On a lightly floured board, pat into a round about 3/4 inch thick. Cut into wedges or cut out using a sharp-edged biscuit cutter (of course, a small glass will work fine, too). Glaze with a pastry brush or your fingertips. Place on a cookie sheet and bake until golden brown, 15-20 minutes.
Serve warm with a pot of tea. Drop a slice of candied ginger into your teacup before pouring in the tea.
3 cups flour (I used 2 cups all-purpose and 1 cup whole-wheat pastry flour)
2 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 cup sugar
3/4 cup (1 1/2 sticks or 6 oz) butter, cold and cut into cubes
1 cup golden raisins, chopped dried apricots or currants
1 tsp grated lemon rind
2 TB chopped candied (crystallized) ginger
1/2 to 3/4 cup buttermilk
Glaze: 1 egg yolk beaten with 1 TB water
Preheat oven to 400. Sift dry ingredients together. Cut in butter as if making pastry, until mixture looks like pebbly cornmeal. Toss in raisins, rind, and ginger. Drip in buttermilk, stirring and tossing with a fork until mixture is moist and will hold together without being too wet. On a lightly floured board, pat into a round about 3/4 inch thick. Cut into wedges or cut out using a sharp-edged biscuit cutter (of course, a small glass will work fine, too). Glaze with a pastry brush or your fingertips. Place on a cookie sheet and bake until golden brown, 15-20 minutes.
Serve warm with a pot of tea. Drop a slice of candied ginger into your teacup before pouring in the tea.
tuesday afternoon surprises
Have you ever seen a sight as beautiful as the face in a crowd of people that lights up just for you...
Well, I've known all these things, and the joys that they can bring
Now every morning there's a cup of coffee and I wear your ring
And I wear your ring.
-Cowboy Junkies, "Anniversary Song"
July,
and the rich apples
once again falling.
You put them to your lips,
as you were meant to,
Enter a sweetness
the earth wants to give.
Everything loves this way,
in gold honey,
in gold mountain grass,
that carries lightly the shadow of hawks,
the shadow of clouds passing by.
And the dry grasses,
the live oaks and bays,
taste the apples' deep sweetness
because you taste it, as you were meant to,
tasting the life that is yours,
While below, the foghorns bend to
their work,
Bringing home what is coming home,
Blessing what goes.
-Jane Hirshfield, "For a Wedding on Mt. Tamalpais"
(with thanks to Shifra and Stephen)
Well, I've known all these things, and the joys that they can bring
Now every morning there's a cup of coffee and I wear your ring
And I wear your ring.
-Cowboy Junkies, "Anniversary Song"
July,
and the rich apples
once again falling.
You put them to your lips,
as you were meant to,
Enter a sweetness
the earth wants to give.
Everything loves this way,
in gold honey,
in gold mountain grass,
that carries lightly the shadow of hawks,
the shadow of clouds passing by.
And the dry grasses,
the live oaks and bays,
taste the apples' deep sweetness
because you taste it, as you were meant to,
tasting the life that is yours,
While below, the foghorns bend to
their work,
Bringing home what is coming home,
Blessing what goes.
-Jane Hirshfield, "For a Wedding on Mt. Tamalpais"
(with thanks to Shifra and Stephen)
Saturday, May 06, 2006
B-town
Brooklyn's in the house, in the shape of: a box of Jacques Torres chocolates. A bunch of lilacs and a box of laid-yesterday eggs (ah, would that we could all claim the same!) from the Borough Hall farmer's market. A pound of fresh-roasted coffee from D'Amico's. Tomorrow, bread from Mazzola's.
Because I love to stay local, but best of all, because K. should be back here in Brooklyn in time for Sunday brunch!
As the man said,
Thus though we cannot make our sun
Stand still, yet we will make him run.
Because I love to stay local, but best of all, because K. should be back here in Brooklyn in time for Sunday brunch!
As the man said,
Thus though we cannot make our sun
Stand still, yet we will make him run.
Friday, May 05, 2006
Coffee Cake, the replay
Well, the coffee cake was a hit, especially with the toddlers, and it was worth nearly burning my thighs as I rode the number 2 train with the hot-from-the-oven pan on my lap. I told the ladies I'd brought the cake to make friends, since it was a little early to walk in with a six-pack, to which they replied, in unison, "We're stay-at-home moms! It's NEVER too early!"
Well, then. Back from Real Housewives: Park Slope, I finally got a call from K., now in Kuwait, where (no surprise) it's very hot. ETA for Brooklyn: sometime Sunday, probably late afternoon or evening. Wheeeee!
Well, then. Back from Real Housewives: Park Slope, I finally got a call from K., now in Kuwait, where (no surprise) it's very hot. ETA for Brooklyn: sometime Sunday, probably late afternoon or evening. Wheeeee!
Cake for Coffee
It's a warm, damp coffeecake morning out there. Going over to a friend's knitting circle this morning, to get expert advice on my toddler poncho, and since I don't know any of these nice knitting ladies, I'm going to bring some baked goods. Always the easiest way to make friends--arrive bearing something all buttery-sugary, hot from the oven. Apple streusel coffee cake, I think. In my dreams, this would be rhubarb, but until the pink stuff comes in, the spongy storage apples will have to do.
Streusel Coffee Cake
2 1/2 cups flour (I used whole-wheat pastry flour, with surprisingly delicious results)
1 TB baking powder
pinch salt
2/3 cup sugar
1 stick (4 oz or 1/2 cup) cold butter, cut in chunks
2 eggs
2/3 cup milk
1 tsp vanila
Fruit for topping (optional): 2 or 3 peeled and sliced apples, peaches or pears, plus juice of 1 lemon
Streusel:
1/2 cup flour
2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 cup sugar
1/4 cup chopped walnuts
2 TB melted butter
Grease an 8 or 9" square pan or something similar. Preheat oven to 375 F.
To make streusel: Mix flour, cinnamon, sugar, and walnuts together. Drizzle in butter and toss with a fork until clumpy and well mixed. Add more butter if it looks too sandy-dry or not clumpy enough. Set aside.
Peel and slice fruit. Toss with lemon juice.
Sift dry ingredients. Cut in butter as if you're making pastry. Beat eggs,milk, and vanilla together in a small bowl or pitcher, then pour into flour mix. Stir gently until just mixed--batter should be very thick and clumpy, like muffin batter. Add a little more milk if you still have any dry patches.
Spread half the dough in pan. Sprinkle lightly with some of the streusel crumbs. Add rest of dough. Top with sliced apples, peaches, or pears, pressing fruit down slightly into dough. Top with rest of streusel. Bake 45 minutes, until golden brown and well puffed. Make sure to poke the center with a toothpick or cake tester to check if it's completely baked. Serve warm.
Streusel Coffee Cake
2 1/2 cups flour (I used whole-wheat pastry flour, with surprisingly delicious results)
1 TB baking powder
pinch salt
2/3 cup sugar
1 stick (4 oz or 1/2 cup) cold butter, cut in chunks
2 eggs
2/3 cup milk
1 tsp vanila
Fruit for topping (optional): 2 or 3 peeled and sliced apples, peaches or pears, plus juice of 1 lemon
Streusel:
1/2 cup flour
2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 cup sugar
1/4 cup chopped walnuts
2 TB melted butter
Grease an 8 or 9" square pan or something similar. Preheat oven to 375 F.
To make streusel: Mix flour, cinnamon, sugar, and walnuts together. Drizzle in butter and toss with a fork until clumpy and well mixed. Add more butter if it looks too sandy-dry or not clumpy enough. Set aside.
Peel and slice fruit. Toss with lemon juice.
Sift dry ingredients. Cut in butter as if you're making pastry. Beat eggs,milk, and vanilla together in a small bowl or pitcher, then pour into flour mix. Stir gently until just mixed--batter should be very thick and clumpy, like muffin batter. Add a little more milk if you still have any dry patches.
Spread half the dough in pan. Sprinkle lightly with some of the streusel crumbs. Add rest of dough. Top with sliced apples, peaches, or pears, pressing fruit down slightly into dough. Top with rest of streusel. Bake 45 minutes, until golden brown and well puffed. Make sure to poke the center with a toothpick or cake tester to check if it's completely baked. Serve warm.
Thursday, May 04, 2006
Spring is Icumen In
Really, other people's love affairs are deeply uninteresting to read about, when they're happy. Misery and breakups, sure. But not the cheerful stuff. So I'll try to spare you the tap-dancing anticipation that I'm going through right now as K. heads down to the airfield to start her very, very long journey back to Brooklyn for her 2-week leave. Suffice it to say that I'm extremely chuffed at the thought of having an actual full-time girlfriend again, rather than just someone I write to alot, and talk to at midnight when I'm mostly asleep face down in the pillow. Someone to go eat at Chestnut with! Someone to make morning coffee for, and actually kiss! This is very exciting.
And speaking of Chestnut, well, I heart Chestnut, and their extremely yummy chicken-mole enchilada, and their peachy Riesling by the glass. I want to go back there with K. to try the halibut with pea vines and black trumpet mushrooms and fava-bean puree, not to mention the chocolate budino. (That's pudding in Italian, in case you were wondering).
Other happy days--the apt is(hopefully) sublet to a couple of nice high school teachers; the lettuce is slowly but surely growing in the garden plot, and I figured out a way to keep the goddamn pigeons from nesting in my fire-escape windowboxes. Bamboo skewers! Sure, it looks a little like some kind of Viet-Cong booby trap, but it works.
And speaking of Chestnut, well, I heart Chestnut, and their extremely yummy chicken-mole enchilada, and their peachy Riesling by the glass. I want to go back there with K. to try the halibut with pea vines and black trumpet mushrooms and fava-bean puree, not to mention the chocolate budino. (That's pudding in Italian, in case you were wondering).
Other happy days--the apt is(hopefully) sublet to a couple of nice high school teachers; the lettuce is slowly but surely growing in the garden plot, and I figured out a way to keep the goddamn pigeons from nesting in my fire-escape windowboxes. Bamboo skewers! Sure, it looks a little like some kind of Viet-Cong booby trap, but it works.
Monday, May 01, 2006
Cookie Queen
Well, it was such a beautiful blue spring day yesterday, all I wanted to do was bake a strawberry-rhubarb pie. But the thing about pie is, it's something you've got to share. And not just the pie itself, but the sweet buttery-fruity smell while it's baking, and then the piece cold out of the fridge the next morning with a cup of coffee. So I stood there in the kitchen, realizing that I was out of white flour, and thought that rather than trying to round up B. and other neighborhood pals to eat this pie, I'd just wait til K. got here and we'd make that pie together. In less than a week now, depending on how long it takes before she can get a seat on the next flight out of Central Asia. It will be a long, multi-stopped trip for her, but at the end of it, she'll be here in Brooklyn with me again, and already I'm doing happy little tap dances of anticipation.
Plus, the rhubarb at the store was limp and kind of shriveled--not what you want at something like $6 a pound. Patience, patience is all. So instead I made my favorite chocolate chip cookies, the ones we used to call everything cookies when we were kids, because we used to put just about everything in the cabinet in them--raisins, chocolate chips, nuts, oatmeal, and yes, Rice Krispies.
I particularly like these cookies when they come out well-browned, thin and very crunchy--you'll get little brown crumbs all over your sheets but that browned-butter flavor is worth it. The way to make this happen is to use less flour than the usual back-of-the-Nestle-bag recipe, so the dough is very soft and spreads thin in the oven. I often worry that the dough's too soft and add more flour at the last minute, and then I get these hard little rocks. Have faith. Also, I almost never measure the add-ins--I just dump in as much as I have lying around, or what looks right. Don't be stingy--the whole point of these is to have just enough interstitial cookie to hold together all the goodies.
Everything Cookies Instead of Pie
1 stick (4 oz or 1/2 cup) butter, softened
2/3 cup raw granulated (demerara) sugar (or plain old white sugar, or, even better, 1/3 cup brown sugar and 1/3 cup white sugar)
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 egg
3/4 cup whole-wheat pastry flour
1/4 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
2/3 cup rolled oats (more or less)
1 cup chocolate chips or chunks
1/2 cup chopped nuts (or more, if you want)
1/2 cup raisins (ditto)
some Rice Krispies, if you want
Preheat oven to 350F. Cream butter and sugar(s) together. Beat in egg and vanilla. Mix dry ingredients together in a separate bowl. Stir dry into butter mix, stirring gently until just combined. Add oats, chips, nuts and raisins, stirring until mixed. Drop by spoonfuls onto lightly greased cookie sheet. Flatten each cookie and bake until golden brown, 10-15 minutes. Let cool on rack.
Plus, the rhubarb at the store was limp and kind of shriveled--not what you want at something like $6 a pound. Patience, patience is all. So instead I made my favorite chocolate chip cookies, the ones we used to call everything cookies when we were kids, because we used to put just about everything in the cabinet in them--raisins, chocolate chips, nuts, oatmeal, and yes, Rice Krispies.
I particularly like these cookies when they come out well-browned, thin and very crunchy--you'll get little brown crumbs all over your sheets but that browned-butter flavor is worth it. The way to make this happen is to use less flour than the usual back-of-the-Nestle-bag recipe, so the dough is very soft and spreads thin in the oven. I often worry that the dough's too soft and add more flour at the last minute, and then I get these hard little rocks. Have faith. Also, I almost never measure the add-ins--I just dump in as much as I have lying around, or what looks right. Don't be stingy--the whole point of these is to have just enough interstitial cookie to hold together all the goodies.
Everything Cookies Instead of Pie
1 stick (4 oz or 1/2 cup) butter, softened
2/3 cup raw granulated (demerara) sugar (or plain old white sugar, or, even better, 1/3 cup brown sugar and 1/3 cup white sugar)
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 egg
3/4 cup whole-wheat pastry flour
1/4 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
2/3 cup rolled oats (more or less)
1 cup chocolate chips or chunks
1/2 cup chopped nuts (or more, if you want)
1/2 cup raisins (ditto)
some Rice Krispies, if you want
Preheat oven to 350F. Cream butter and sugar(s) together. Beat in egg and vanilla. Mix dry ingredients together in a separate bowl. Stir dry into butter mix, stirring gently until just combined. Add oats, chips, nuts and raisins, stirring until mixed. Drop by spoonfuls onto lightly greased cookie sheet. Flatten each cookie and bake until golden brown, 10-15 minutes. Let cool on rack.
Sunday, April 30, 2006
Cherries and Kitchens
So, the cherry trees were total rock stars this weekend at the Brooklyn Botanic Gardens.
(This is the view from where I was sitting on the grass, sipping tea from the green-tea-and-blackout-cake stall and talking on my cell to K., who had just rung up for a chat from Afghanistan. Modern technology never ceases to amaze me.)
The number 2 train over there was jammed--I was crammed in next to a teenage girl wearing a kimono and obi over jeans and flip-flops.
Inside the park, it was Woodstock for cherry blossoms.
There were lolling picknickers everywhere, with hotdogs and $8 bento boxes of teriyaki chicken and saifun noodles. And the trees were in full, exploding pink blossom, surrounded by every color of lilac. It was fun and then it was just too insanely crowded and I had to leave. But go soon; it's $5 to get into the garden, or free all day on Tuesday.
*****
Want to cook in the Pie Queen's kitchen? Lots of cookbooks and all the tart pans you could want! My perfect Australian subletters just bailed on me, and now I've got a real nice 1 BR in Brooklyn available for the month of June. Email me for more info and pix if you're interested.
(This is the view from where I was sitting on the grass, sipping tea from the green-tea-and-blackout-cake stall and talking on my cell to K., who had just rung up for a chat from Afghanistan. Modern technology never ceases to amaze me.)The number 2 train over there was jammed--I was crammed in next to a teenage girl wearing a kimono and obi over jeans and flip-flops.
Inside the park, it was Woodstock for cherry blossoms. 
There were lolling picknickers everywhere, with hotdogs and $8 bento boxes of teriyaki chicken and saifun noodles. And the trees were in full, exploding pink blossom, surrounded by every color of lilac. It was fun and then it was just too insanely crowded and I had to leave. But go soon; it's $5 to get into the garden, or free all day on Tuesday.
*****
Want to cook in the Pie Queen's kitchen? Lots of cookbooks and all the tart pans you could want! My perfect Australian subletters just bailed on me, and now I've got a real nice 1 BR in Brooklyn available for the month of June. Email me for more info and pix if you're interested.
Wednesday, April 26, 2006
on the road and back again
Oh, where has the Pie Queen been?
Out in Bucks County in knee-high wellies, busting sod and digging up bleeding hearts by the roadside. (The plants, that is, tiny wild plants that thrive in damp shady spots surrounded by moss and ferns and water trickling down the rocks).
Up in Warwick, NY with the Pie Queen Mother, making mint sauce for the lamb chops and having Almondine's croissants for Easter breakfast. (Yes, I know it was Passover. I'm a BAD Jew. But my religious family history is a little, well, complicated, and more truthfully, I just hate to pass up any holiday, especially one that involves brunch and marshmallow chicks).
In the downstairs cave at Vintage New York, eating chunklets of cheese, drinking Long Island Syrah (and very good it was too, much to my admittedly California-shaped surprise), and swapping cheesemaker stories with Sasha & Michael, two lovely people who are about to go on a cross-country odessey (Alaska included) to talk to small-scale American cheesemakers. They're calling their project Cheese By Hand and they have just about the cutest website and t-shirts around, so check 'em out, and tune in while they're on the road to hear what's going on in the pastures of this country, and how small artisans--and their fine cud-chewing friends--are surviving in the face of mega-agribusiness. Restaurants Mas and Blue Hill provided some tiny, tasty little spring snacks, including what looked like spinach dip but turned out to be fresh ricotta blended with chopped dandelion greens and ramps with a splash of buttermilk, and my goodness it was tasty.
And speaking of ramps, just why did the NYT give Kim Severson a whole spread to bitch and moan about her distaste for spring greens? OK, lady, you think fiddleheads and ramps are overrated. Fine; don't eat 'em. But don't whine and rant and try to convince everyone else that they blow, just because you'd rather go eat another storage potato or Israeli tomato. (Although I was amused by the snark of describing fiddleheads, etc. as "promising dates that end up making your ex look terrific.") Anyone that thinks nettles can only be boiled "to a soggy mess" has not had the sublime, astroturf-green nettle pasta and nettle soup at San Francisco's Delfina, and since Kim S. did a number of years writing for the SF Chronicle, she's got no excuse. I'm starting to think that she's just a sucky cook. But this does mean more fiddleheads and ramps for the rest of us, yippee, although I do yearn, gently, for the un-weedy California harbingers of spring: asparagus, favas, and baby artichokes. Sigh.
And, of course, I've been in the garden,
aka the square foot of planter space that I have in the new Transit Garden, at 2nd Place and Smith St. I go here daily to pray over the lemon balm and the still stubbornly micro-mini lettuce spriglets. (The radishes, however, are looking quite robust). Back in March, I promised K. a homegrown salad when she came back for leave in May, and now, with the start of her leave just 2 weeks away (yippee!), I'm wondering just how baby a baby-greens salad I can serve.
Out in Bucks County in knee-high wellies, busting sod and digging up bleeding hearts by the roadside. (The plants, that is, tiny wild plants that thrive in damp shady spots surrounded by moss and ferns and water trickling down the rocks).
Up in Warwick, NY with the Pie Queen Mother, making mint sauce for the lamb chops and having Almondine's croissants for Easter breakfast. (Yes, I know it was Passover. I'm a BAD Jew. But my religious family history is a little, well, complicated, and more truthfully, I just hate to pass up any holiday, especially one that involves brunch and marshmallow chicks).
In the downstairs cave at Vintage New York, eating chunklets of cheese, drinking Long Island Syrah (and very good it was too, much to my admittedly California-shaped surprise), and swapping cheesemaker stories with Sasha & Michael, two lovely people who are about to go on a cross-country odessey (Alaska included) to talk to small-scale American cheesemakers. They're calling their project Cheese By Hand and they have just about the cutest website and t-shirts around, so check 'em out, and tune in while they're on the road to hear what's going on in the pastures of this country, and how small artisans--and their fine cud-chewing friends--are surviving in the face of mega-agribusiness. Restaurants Mas and Blue Hill provided some tiny, tasty little spring snacks, including what looked like spinach dip but turned out to be fresh ricotta blended with chopped dandelion greens and ramps with a splash of buttermilk, and my goodness it was tasty.
And speaking of ramps, just why did the NYT give Kim Severson a whole spread to bitch and moan about her distaste for spring greens? OK, lady, you think fiddleheads and ramps are overrated. Fine; don't eat 'em. But don't whine and rant and try to convince everyone else that they blow, just because you'd rather go eat another storage potato or Israeli tomato. (Although I was amused by the snark of describing fiddleheads, etc. as "promising dates that end up making your ex look terrific.") Anyone that thinks nettles can only be boiled "to a soggy mess" has not had the sublime, astroturf-green nettle pasta and nettle soup at San Francisco's Delfina, and since Kim S. did a number of years writing for the SF Chronicle, she's got no excuse. I'm starting to think that she's just a sucky cook. But this does mean more fiddleheads and ramps for the rest of us, yippee, although I do yearn, gently, for the un-weedy California harbingers of spring: asparagus, favas, and baby artichokes. Sigh.
And, of course, I've been in the garden,
aka the square foot of planter space that I have in the new Transit Garden, at 2nd Place and Smith St. I go here daily to pray over the lemon balm and the still stubbornly micro-mini lettuce spriglets. (The radishes, however, are looking quite robust). Back in March, I promised K. a homegrown salad when she came back for leave in May, and now, with the start of her leave just 2 weeks away (yippee!), I'm wondering just how baby a baby-greens salad I can serve. 
Tuesday, April 11, 2006
Matzoh Meal
Not having a Seder to go to this year, I'm throwing my own again, for the first time since I left San Francisco. So today I'm frantically trying to unearth my Seder plate and handwritten Hagaddah (both mysteriously AWOL) as well as hitting the Streit's factory on the Lower East Side for matzoh fresh off the conveyor belt. Recipes to follow, but for now, a reprint of an old Bay Guardian column about Passover. Enjoy!
Ride a bike instead of going to Hebrew school, eat bacon, have a Christmas tree: when I was younger, being Jewish was all about restriction, rule after rule about what you couldn't do. Most difficult of all was Passover: first, the two Seders, during which my sisters and I covertly thumbed ahead in our Hagaddahs to see how many more pages of Hebrew had to elapse before the "festive meal" could be served; then, the week-long prohibition on bread, cookies, pasta -- anything made with grain or even corn syrup—which meant a week of messy sandwiches, chunks of tuna salad falling out from between two crumbling, uneven slabs of matzoh, along with weird candy like Bartons' Almond Kisses (wads of chocolate taffy studded with nuts) and chocolate-covered matzoh (good) and chocolate-covered jelly rings and coconut-covered marshmallows (revolting). By the third day of Passover, all the Jewish kids were veering away from the matzoh boxes stacked up in a corner of the cafeteria, while the non-Jewish kids piled up their trays with them as if they were some kind of exotic saltine.
And just to complicate things, the family on my mother's side wasn't Jewish, so we always got to celebrate a secular Easter up at my grandmother's, dyeing eggs and hunting for chocolate bunnies all around her house. But while there may be kosher-for-passover Pepsi, there will never be kosher-for-Passover Easter candy. If Easter fell during Passover, as it usually did, our jelly beans and Cadbury's creme eggs were off limits. So we'd take them home, watching the yellow marshmallow Peeps slowly hardening until the eight days were up. Oddly enough, after all that anticipation, I don't remember now what it was like to finally peel back those shimmering bits of foil. Instead, when the sun went down on the last day and Passover was over, I remember how the plainest slice of crusty white Italian bread tasted just like heaven.
Now, some twenty years later, much to my own surprise, certain rituals have seeped back into my life. "Why do you call it rigidity?" writes poet Louise Gluck in one of the last poems in her book The Meadowlands. "Can't you call it a taste for ceremony?" The flip side of restriction is tradition, a sense of continuity that pushes the future up from the deep roots of the past. These days, for me, the holidays on the Jewish calendar inspire both a reaching out and a gathering in, collecting scattered friends into a chosen family grouped around a table, sharing a heritage, a history, and a meal.
Although most traditional Seders have some kind of meat at the center--braised lamb, stuffed breast of veal, brisket, roast chicken--it seems particularly appropriate to celebrate this spring festival with a vegetarian meal. Plus, vegetarian food is every anxious host's best friend, because it's a rare guest who'll take a strong moral stance against asparagus. And anyone with a tiny speck of cooking ability can steam some asparagus and bring it along to save you the trouble. Always, there's a tumbled salad full of herbs and small leaves, the karpas or spring greens that fulfill the promise of the earth's rebirth, the weird but inevitable hard-boiled eggs in salt water (basically horrible, but extremely evocative, since they're never eaten at any other time), followed by matzoh balls bobbing in a dill-and-garlic perfumed vegetable broth. Add enough salt, onion, and garlic to the broth as it cooks, and any deprivation felt by the chicken-soup-inclined will be outweighed by the gratitude of the vegetarians finally allowed to enjoy a matzoh ball in a reasonable facsimile of its true habitat.
Last year's sleeper was a wine-dark, blood-red beet salad. Inspired by a pile of vigorous, beautiful beets at that morning's farmers' market, I bought two bunches, boiled them until they were tender and ready to slip shining out of their dull magenta skins. Then, they were hurriedly pushed them aside until I spied a long-ignored bottle of Lebanese pomegranate molasses in the fridge. Made into a quick dressing with olive oil, salt, pepper, and a fast grating of orange rind and a squeeze of orange juice, the intensely tart syryp (made from boiled-down fresh pomegranate juice) turned out to be the perfect foil for the beets' earthy sweetness. (Mediterranean food expert Joyce Goldstein prefers the Cortas brand, which is imported from Lebanon; I found mine at Haig's, on Clement Street in SF; you can find it in Brooklyn at Sahadi's or any of the other Middle Eastern grocery stores along Atlantic Avenue).
Beside the beets goes a huge bowl of charoseth, the sweet, chunky mix of apples, walnuts, cinnamon, and sweet kosher wine. This is the first dish that every kid learns to make in her grandmother's kitchen. By the way, you must use that digusting Concord-grape kosher wine. Nothing else will do, not grape juice, not Baron Herzog cabaret. Two years ago, I went to a Seder where the charoseth--two kinds, both the familar apple-and-walnut mix and a sticky Sephardic one made with dates-- was made by the family's Swedish au pair, and it was still great. (Actually, all the food was made by the au pair, proving that kugel-makers are made, not born).
Last year, a friend called mid-afternoon, just as my pre-dinner jitters--and the stack of dirty bowls in the sink--were rising. I'm having doubts about my kugel, she admitted. I'm sitting shiva for my spongecake, I replied, eyeing the gummy hunks that had hit the table the minute I'd flipped the pan over to cool. It wasn't a conversation I'd ever imagined having, so far from the worn pink Formica of my grandmother's brisket-scented kitchen. But just for a moment, I was back home.
Ride a bike instead of going to Hebrew school, eat bacon, have a Christmas tree: when I was younger, being Jewish was all about restriction, rule after rule about what you couldn't do. Most difficult of all was Passover: first, the two Seders, during which my sisters and I covertly thumbed ahead in our Hagaddahs to see how many more pages of Hebrew had to elapse before the "festive meal" could be served; then, the week-long prohibition on bread, cookies, pasta -- anything made with grain or even corn syrup—which meant a week of messy sandwiches, chunks of tuna salad falling out from between two crumbling, uneven slabs of matzoh, along with weird candy like Bartons' Almond Kisses (wads of chocolate taffy studded with nuts) and chocolate-covered matzoh (good) and chocolate-covered jelly rings and coconut-covered marshmallows (revolting). By the third day of Passover, all the Jewish kids were veering away from the matzoh boxes stacked up in a corner of the cafeteria, while the non-Jewish kids piled up their trays with them as if they were some kind of exotic saltine.
And just to complicate things, the family on my mother's side wasn't Jewish, so we always got to celebrate a secular Easter up at my grandmother's, dyeing eggs and hunting for chocolate bunnies all around her house. But while there may be kosher-for-passover Pepsi, there will never be kosher-for-Passover Easter candy. If Easter fell during Passover, as it usually did, our jelly beans and Cadbury's creme eggs were off limits. So we'd take them home, watching the yellow marshmallow Peeps slowly hardening until the eight days were up. Oddly enough, after all that anticipation, I don't remember now what it was like to finally peel back those shimmering bits of foil. Instead, when the sun went down on the last day and Passover was over, I remember how the plainest slice of crusty white Italian bread tasted just like heaven.
Now, some twenty years later, much to my own surprise, certain rituals have seeped back into my life. "Why do you call it rigidity?" writes poet Louise Gluck in one of the last poems in her book The Meadowlands. "Can't you call it a taste for ceremony?" The flip side of restriction is tradition, a sense of continuity that pushes the future up from the deep roots of the past. These days, for me, the holidays on the Jewish calendar inspire both a reaching out and a gathering in, collecting scattered friends into a chosen family grouped around a table, sharing a heritage, a history, and a meal.
Although most traditional Seders have some kind of meat at the center--braised lamb, stuffed breast of veal, brisket, roast chicken--it seems particularly appropriate to celebrate this spring festival with a vegetarian meal. Plus, vegetarian food is every anxious host's best friend, because it's a rare guest who'll take a strong moral stance against asparagus. And anyone with a tiny speck of cooking ability can steam some asparagus and bring it along to save you the trouble. Always, there's a tumbled salad full of herbs and small leaves, the karpas or spring greens that fulfill the promise of the earth's rebirth, the weird but inevitable hard-boiled eggs in salt water (basically horrible, but extremely evocative, since they're never eaten at any other time), followed by matzoh balls bobbing in a dill-and-garlic perfumed vegetable broth. Add enough salt, onion, and garlic to the broth as it cooks, and any deprivation felt by the chicken-soup-inclined will be outweighed by the gratitude of the vegetarians finally allowed to enjoy a matzoh ball in a reasonable facsimile of its true habitat.
Last year's sleeper was a wine-dark, blood-red beet salad. Inspired by a pile of vigorous, beautiful beets at that morning's farmers' market, I bought two bunches, boiled them until they were tender and ready to slip shining out of their dull magenta skins. Then, they were hurriedly pushed them aside until I spied a long-ignored bottle of Lebanese pomegranate molasses in the fridge. Made into a quick dressing with olive oil, salt, pepper, and a fast grating of orange rind and a squeeze of orange juice, the intensely tart syryp (made from boiled-down fresh pomegranate juice) turned out to be the perfect foil for the beets' earthy sweetness. (Mediterranean food expert Joyce Goldstein prefers the Cortas brand, which is imported from Lebanon; I found mine at Haig's, on Clement Street in SF; you can find it in Brooklyn at Sahadi's or any of the other Middle Eastern grocery stores along Atlantic Avenue).
Beside the beets goes a huge bowl of charoseth, the sweet, chunky mix of apples, walnuts, cinnamon, and sweet kosher wine. This is the first dish that every kid learns to make in her grandmother's kitchen. By the way, you must use that digusting Concord-grape kosher wine. Nothing else will do, not grape juice, not Baron Herzog cabaret. Two years ago, I went to a Seder where the charoseth--two kinds, both the familar apple-and-walnut mix and a sticky Sephardic one made with dates-- was made by the family's Swedish au pair, and it was still great. (Actually, all the food was made by the au pair, proving that kugel-makers are made, not born).
Last year, a friend called mid-afternoon, just as my pre-dinner jitters--and the stack of dirty bowls in the sink--were rising. I'm having doubts about my kugel, she admitted. I'm sitting shiva for my spongecake, I replied, eyeing the gummy hunks that had hit the table the minute I'd flipped the pan over to cool. It wasn't a conversation I'd ever imagined having, so far from the worn pink Formica of my grandmother's brisket-scented kitchen. But just for a moment, I was back home.
Wednesday, April 05, 2006
April Snow
It's SNOWING. Right here, right now, puffy fat cottontail-sized flakes, coming down on the daffodils and the Easter bunny displays, floating down past the magnolia blossoms and the frothy, bridal-veil archways of the blooming Bradford pear trees.
Freaky.
But, of course, this means one more snowtime hot chocolate at Cafe Nova. Mmmm. And an excuse to hole up inside with yesterday's leftover chocolate chip-walnut cookies instead of going down to the garden to plant more radish seeds.
Freaky.
But, of course, this means one more snowtime hot chocolate at Cafe Nova. Mmmm. And an excuse to hole up inside with yesterday's leftover chocolate chip-walnut cookies instead of going down to the garden to plant more radish seeds.
Saturday, April 01, 2006
BrookLime Pie
From Friday's Escapes section, in the NYTimes:
"TRAVELERS come to the Florida Keys for the sun, the sand and the scenery of America gone Caribbean. They come for bone-fishing in the morning, margaritas at midday and sunset celebrations at dusk. And before it's time to depart, everybody wants a piece of Key lime pie.
Never mind that most Key limes — golf-ball-size and yellowish, in contrast to the larger, greener Persian lime — are grown these days in Mexico. Or that first-rate Key lime pie can now be had in places like Brooklyn."
Clearly, journalist Charles Passy must have been one of the many lining up at the Pie Queen's table during last year's 2nd Annual Brooklyn PIe Social.
Dumbo's no Key West, but the pies are sure tasty:
Notice the little green fruit next to the pie, smaller than golf balls but bigger than marbles--those are real key (aka Mexican) limes. No bottled juice here!
(Not that I'm trying to make K., a true Florida girl, homesick; I'm just counting down the days til she comes back to Brooklyn for her 2-week leave, in less than 6 weeks now. I miss my girl.)
****
And for you locals this evening, it's a 3 dog night at the Brooklyn Museum's free First Saturday program, in honor of the museum's new William Wegman exhibit Funney/Strange.
****
Don't forget, American readers: daylight savings time starts tonight. Set your clocks forward 1 hour before you go to bed. It's your ready-made excuse to skip whatever early-morning activity you'd rather avoid!
"TRAVELERS come to the Florida Keys for the sun, the sand and the scenery of America gone Caribbean. They come for bone-fishing in the morning, margaritas at midday and sunset celebrations at dusk. And before it's time to depart, everybody wants a piece of Key lime pie.
Never mind that most Key limes — golf-ball-size and yellowish, in contrast to the larger, greener Persian lime — are grown these days in Mexico. Or that first-rate Key lime pie can now be had in places like Brooklyn."
Clearly, journalist Charles Passy must have been one of the many lining up at the Pie Queen's table during last year's 2nd Annual Brooklyn PIe Social.
Dumbo's no Key West, but the pies are sure tasty:
Notice the little green fruit next to the pie, smaller than golf balls but bigger than marbles--those are real key (aka Mexican) limes. No bottled juice here!
(Not that I'm trying to make K., a true Florida girl, homesick; I'm just counting down the days til she comes back to Brooklyn for her 2-week leave, in less than 6 weeks now. I miss my girl.)
****
And for you locals this evening, it's a 3 dog night at the Brooklyn Museum's free First Saturday program, in honor of the museum's new William Wegman exhibit Funney/Strange.
****
Don't forget, American readers: daylight savings time starts tonight. Set your clocks forward 1 hour before you go to bed. It's your ready-made excuse to skip whatever early-morning activity you'd rather avoid!
Monday, March 27, 2006
I am curious yellow
Finally, finally, the daffodils and crocuses are opening their bright blossoms to the suddenly springlike air, their purple and yellow so clear and crayon-bright they look almost like plastic flowers stuck in the dirt. Jacques Torres's chocolate shop in Dumbo is filled with row after row of chicks and bunnies, along with a few other barnyard animals (my favorite? "Funny Pig Dancin' a Jig!") along with many little bags of the inexplicably popular chocolate-covered cheerios. (I once tried to make rice krispie treats using cheerios instead of the usual RKs. What a disaster that was. Nothing makes oat-flavored compressed sawdust taste better, not even butter and marshmallows.) And it's suddenly time to think about the marzipan treats at Elk Candy on the Upper East Side and the baby Peeps (yes, little tiny baby Peeps! Or so my mother tells me) and Cadbury creme eggs in every Duane Reed.
Meanwhile, I've been holding out with the recipe for that lemon-ginger cake, as lauded by the so-kind Bakerina, and nibbled by me for days and days with countless cups of tea. Popped in a sealed plastic bag, it lasts extremely well, staying moist and lemony-gingery whenever you want it. As mentioned before, this is nothing like gingerbread; rather, it's a moist, rather dense and buttery lemon cake with a hint of ginger.
Drenched Ginger and Lemon Cake
Adapted from Good-Tempered Food, by Tamasin Day-Lewis
3/4 cup (6 oz or 1 1/2 sticks) unsalted butter
3/4 cup light brown (muscovado) sugar, packed
2 eggs
grated zest of 2 lemons
2 tsp baking powder
1 1/2 cups flour (I used a mix of all-purpose and whole wheat pastry flour)
1/4 tsp salt
4-5 TB milk
5 knobs of preserved ginger in syrup, drained and finely chopped
Syrup
juice of 2 lemons
2 TB sugar (raw or demerara, if you have it)
1 TB honey
2 TB ginger syrup
Grease a 7 or 8 inch cake pan (I used a deep 7 inch springform pan). Preheat oven to 350F. Cream butter and sugar. Beat in eggs one at a time, followed by zest.Whisk baking powder, flour, and salt together, then stir into butter mix. Add enough milk to make a thick mixture that will drop off a spoon in large gloppy clumps. Stir in ginger. Plop into pan and bake 40-50 minutes.
Let cool for 15 minutes, then turn out onto a rack (right side up) to cool. While cake is still warm, boil up syrup ingredients, letting it boil together for a minute or two. Using a toothpick or skewer, poke holes all over cake. Slowly pour hot syrup all over cake, let it soak in.
I think this is nicest while still warm, or reheated briefly.
Meanwhile, I've been holding out with the recipe for that lemon-ginger cake, as lauded by the so-kind Bakerina, and nibbled by me for days and days with countless cups of tea. Popped in a sealed plastic bag, it lasts extremely well, staying moist and lemony-gingery whenever you want it. As mentioned before, this is nothing like gingerbread; rather, it's a moist, rather dense and buttery lemon cake with a hint of ginger.
Drenched Ginger and Lemon Cake
Adapted from Good-Tempered Food, by Tamasin Day-Lewis
3/4 cup (6 oz or 1 1/2 sticks) unsalted butter
3/4 cup light brown (muscovado) sugar, packed
2 eggs
grated zest of 2 lemons
2 tsp baking powder
1 1/2 cups flour (I used a mix of all-purpose and whole wheat pastry flour)
1/4 tsp salt
4-5 TB milk
5 knobs of preserved ginger in syrup, drained and finely chopped
Syrup
juice of 2 lemons
2 TB sugar (raw or demerara, if you have it)
1 TB honey
2 TB ginger syrup
Grease a 7 or 8 inch cake pan (I used a deep 7 inch springform pan). Preheat oven to 350F. Cream butter and sugar. Beat in eggs one at a time, followed by zest.Whisk baking powder, flour, and salt together, then stir into butter mix. Add enough milk to make a thick mixture that will drop off a spoon in large gloppy clumps. Stir in ginger. Plop into pan and bake 40-50 minutes.
Let cool for 15 minutes, then turn out onto a rack (right side up) to cool. While cake is still warm, boil up syrup ingredients, letting it boil together for a minute or two. Using a toothpick or skewer, poke holes all over cake. Slowly pour hot syrup all over cake, let it soak in.
I think this is nicest while still warm, or reheated briefly.
Wednesday, March 22, 2006
Everything that rises must converge
Oh, I heart Fran Gage and her foolproof souffle recipe. After the chermoula disaster, I needed something to restore my kitchen faith, and a lovely little dinner of cheddar-cheese souffle, green beans with lemon, and tiny roasted potatoes with rosemary did just that. For once, I didn't undercook the souffle, so I didn't have to scoop apologetically around a still-wet middle. It was puffy and brown and just savory enough from the cheddar and some minced scallions, very nice with the blanched beans turned around in a hot pan with butter and lemon zest and a spritz of juice. Alongside went some marble-sized potatoes lightly parboiled and then roasted with olive oil, fleur de sel and a crumble of rosemary. Afterwards, a salad of red-leaf lettuce with jelly-tender roasted beets, toasted walnuts, and slivered crunchy raw fennel, dressed with a thick drizzle of pomegranate molasses, balsamic vinegar, and olive oil.
And for dessert, the Drenched Ginger and Lemon Cake, warmed up and served with tea and chips of June Taylor's candied Meyer Lemons, leftover from making Shifra and Stephen's wedding cake in January. The cake was buttery-moist ("wodgy" as Bakerina called it) in the center and crunchy-brown around the edges. Despite the four knobs of preserved ginger in the batter and the ginger syrup used in the drenching, it tasted mostly like lemon cake, which is still a pretty excellent thing. You could up the ginger ante with some grated fresh ginger or a spoonful of dried, but it's quite lovely as it is.
And Bakerina told me all about the joys of Eureka Springs, and how to manage gloopy bread doughs, and much more. Tea was sipped, prosecco was drunk, and now, even sending her home to Queens with enough cake for her husband to have both a late-night snack and breakfast the next morning, I've still got a coffee-sized chunk left for my own morning repast.
Foolproof Cheese Souffle
2 TB butter
2 1/2 TB flour
1 cup milk
4 extra-large eggs, separated
4 oz cheese --soft goat cheese or grated hard cheese, like cheddar or Gruyere
1 TB or so of minced chives or scallions
salt and pepper
Butter an 8-inch souffle dish (aka a straight-sided, deep ceramic baking dish). Preheat oven to 375F. In a smallish, heavy pot, melt the butter. Add the flour and whisk like crazy, letting it cook until it looks smooth and thick and smells slightly biscuity but doesn't color, about 2 minutes. Dump in the milk and whisk madly as it bubbles up and thickens, 2-3 minutes. Take off the heat and let it cool for a few minutes. Whisk in the egg yolks one at a time. Stir in the grated cheese and chives. Add salt and pepper to taste. Set aside.
Now, either wash and dry your whisk very well and then whisk (or use an electric hand-held or standup mixer) until your egg whites form soft, droopy peaks when the beater is lifted. Fold a scoop of whites into the cheese mixture, then fold the rest in quickly and lightly. It doesn't have to be uniform; you should be able to mix it in just a few strokes. The egg whites are what will give you the fluff, so don't deflate them by over-mixing. Pour into dish and pop into the oven.
NO PEEKING! Let it cook for at least 30 minutes. Then check; it should be well-golden-browned and beautifully puffy. Shake it a bit; center should be a bit jiggly without being soupy. Serve immediately, as it begin to collapse shortly after being removed from the oven.
This souffle won't form a huge brown mushroom-head, but it does puff up nicely and has a lovely spongy-fluffy texture.
And for dessert, the Drenched Ginger and Lemon Cake, warmed up and served with tea and chips of June Taylor's candied Meyer Lemons, leftover from making Shifra and Stephen's wedding cake in January. The cake was buttery-moist ("wodgy" as Bakerina called it) in the center and crunchy-brown around the edges. Despite the four knobs of preserved ginger in the batter and the ginger syrup used in the drenching, it tasted mostly like lemon cake, which is still a pretty excellent thing. You could up the ginger ante with some grated fresh ginger or a spoonful of dried, but it's quite lovely as it is.
And Bakerina told me all about the joys of Eureka Springs, and how to manage gloopy bread doughs, and much more. Tea was sipped, prosecco was drunk, and now, even sending her home to Queens with enough cake for her husband to have both a late-night snack and breakfast the next morning, I've still got a coffee-sized chunk left for my own morning repast.
Foolproof Cheese Souffle
2 TB butter
2 1/2 TB flour
1 cup milk
4 extra-large eggs, separated
4 oz cheese --soft goat cheese or grated hard cheese, like cheddar or Gruyere
1 TB or so of minced chives or scallions
salt and pepper
Butter an 8-inch souffle dish (aka a straight-sided, deep ceramic baking dish). Preheat oven to 375F. In a smallish, heavy pot, melt the butter. Add the flour and whisk like crazy, letting it cook until it looks smooth and thick and smells slightly biscuity but doesn't color, about 2 minutes. Dump in the milk and whisk madly as it bubbles up and thickens, 2-3 minutes. Take off the heat and let it cool for a few minutes. Whisk in the egg yolks one at a time. Stir in the grated cheese and chives. Add salt and pepper to taste. Set aside.
Now, either wash and dry your whisk very well and then whisk (or use an electric hand-held or standup mixer) until your egg whites form soft, droopy peaks when the beater is lifted. Fold a scoop of whites into the cheese mixture, then fold the rest in quickly and lightly. It doesn't have to be uniform; you should be able to mix it in just a few strokes. The egg whites are what will give you the fluff, so don't deflate them by over-mixing. Pour into dish and pop into the oven.
NO PEEKING! Let it cook for at least 30 minutes. Then check; it should be well-golden-browned and beautifully puffy. Shake it a bit; center should be a bit jiggly without being soupy. Serve immediately, as it begin to collapse shortly after being removed from the oven.
This souffle won't form a huge brown mushroom-head, but it does puff up nicely and has a lovely spongy-fluffy texture.
Chermoula, part two
Well, it turns out, not surprisingly, that Middle-Eastern food expert Claudia Roden knows more about green olives, preserved lemons, and chermoula than I. Chermoula, it seems, is usually used for fish, and preserved lemons for chicken, which is probably why Tamasin Day-Lewis put the two together in her chicken chermoula recipe. Roden's fish chermoula formula is similar to Day-Lewis's--with a couple of crucial differences. It's great to bake the fish with olives, she says--use the green ones, but boil them first, for 10 or 15 minutes in a lot of water, to take the bitterness out. Oh.
And the good folks at Chowhound swear that preserved lemons, made properly, have an intensely lemony, floral fragrance and flavor, not the nasty bleach-compound that I tasted. They were quite smug in their insistance that the lemons be made at home--which I'm all for, since given space, time, and enough kitty litter, I'd not only bake my own bread and make my own jam but pick the fruit and build my own bread oven, just because why not make life slower and harder?-- except that it takes a good month in a jar for a lemon to get itself preserved, and I only had a day.
Last night, I was tempted to get another bunch of cilantro and parsley and start over, olive- and lemon-less, but this morning, well, the cheese souffle idea is looking pretty good, if only because I know my souffle recipe (from Fran Gage's Bread and Chocolate) is foolproof. I have made it everywhere and it always works, even in an Italian oven the size of a radio.
And out in California, it's snowing! And L.E. (formerly Dan) Leone is busy making chicken soup for his chickens.
And the good folks at Chowhound swear that preserved lemons, made properly, have an intensely lemony, floral fragrance and flavor, not the nasty bleach-compound that I tasted. They were quite smug in their insistance that the lemons be made at home--which I'm all for, since given space, time, and enough kitty litter, I'd not only bake my own bread and make my own jam but pick the fruit and build my own bread oven, just because why not make life slower and harder?-- except that it takes a good month in a jar for a lemon to get itself preserved, and I only had a day.
Last night, I was tempted to get another bunch of cilantro and parsley and start over, olive- and lemon-less, but this morning, well, the cheese souffle idea is looking pretty good, if only because I know my souffle recipe (from Fran Gage's Bread and Chocolate) is foolproof. I have made it everywhere and it always works, even in an Italian oven the size of a radio.
And out in California, it's snowing! And L.E. (formerly Dan) Leone is busy making chicken soup for his chickens.
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