Down South!

Just a quick note, since it's 1AM and I'm wiped out--but I'm in the South, for the very first time, at the Southern Foodways Alliance symposium, all about sugar and sweet things. Driving from Memphis to Greenwood, seeing fields of cotton for the first time, listening to pop country and then in the surprise of the chic Alluvian Hotel, eating pig candy (sugar-rubbed bacon with pecans) and getting a taste of that sweet southern hospitality. More on brandy milk punch, Julia Reed, and Doe's Eat Place later....now to bed.

Come on in, the water's fine

"These people have a lot of parties," Teddy said sleepily.
"These people have a lot of money," Jane Louise said. "Maybe we should give a lot of parties. It feels just like family life, but everyone goes home afterwards."

-Laurie Colwin, A Big Storm Knocked It Over

Well, there's no getting around it. My birthday is making its annual appearance this weekend. Apart of the whole getting-older thing (note to self: hair dye), I'm actually fond of birthdays. Cards, cake, funny presents (goofy socks! fridge magnets!)--what's not to like? Given that there's only one day of the year when you can get total strangers to be nice to you for no reason, I don't understand those sour don't-make-a-fuss types hating on their birthdays every year.

But then again, Libras love a party. And we especially love a party together, preferably one with lots of little tea sandwiches and an endless assortment of nibbles at which to pick. No decisions, lots of little sweet and salty things, champagne: that's paradise, when you're born in October. And that's what my tiny birthday party is going to be: not dinner, but just nibbles, and chocolate (especially since K. mailed me a whole stack of Gianduja bars, sweet thing that she is), and of course, cake. Since it's autumn, finally, I'm going to skip the usual layer-cake-n'-icing thing and make the awesome gingerbread-apple-upside-down cake. The recipe's on here already somewhere; I'll link to it if I can find it.

Until then, the fire-escape garden has produced its last handful of tomatoes, ripening on a pie plate in the kitchen. The morning glories have been replaced with yellow-and-bronze chrysanthemums, and ivy is twining up where the petunias once flowered and fretted. The heavy seed heads on the sunflowers are slowly being emptied by the birds, and there's a bagful of crab apples and quinces sitting in my hallway, waiting to be turned into paradise jelly, using the lovelyBakerina's recipe, which is the same as the one in my 1940s edition of the Joy of Cooking, back when the Joy still had a full chapter of preserving and canning recipes. (The recent, much-vaunted redo of the book left jams and jellies out completely, thanks to a bunch of snitty NYC editors who live on soy lattes and Thai takeout and DO NOT CAN.)

So happy birthday to all you Libras and Scorpios out there, and now, go make a wish.

Songs for a Birthday

1. Beautiful Child (Rufus Wainwright)
2. I Was Born (Natalie Merchant)
3. You've Got What It Takes (Brooke Benton and Dinah Washington)
4. That Was Your Mother (Paul Simon)
5. Really Rosie (Carole King)

Pudding in Paradise

A bunch of years ago, when I was writing a dessert-and-pastry column called Queen of Tarts for the San Francisco Bay Guardian (yes, this Pie Queen concept has been going on for quite a while), I got an invitation to go down to a warehouse in South San Francisco. South San Francisco is what you first see from the airport, its claim to fame laid out in huge white Hollywood-sign letters: "South San Francisco: The Industrial City," framed by identical rows of boxy pastel houses, And the garage-like space I'd come to find was identical to every other locked box in a long row of corrugated metal and concrete.

Except for the smell. It was like all the brownies on earth baking together, tantalizing and warm and unbearably seductive. "I don't even smell it anymore," confessed Robert Steinberg, one of the founders of the then-nascent Scharffen Berger Chocolate company. A doctor turned self-taught chocolate maven, Steinberg was overseeing the company's tiny chocolate-making operation in tandem with co-owner John Scharffenberger, who'd recently left his family's successful sparkling-wine business in the Anderson Valley. Together, they were doing what no one else in America was doing on such a small scale: making bean-to-bar chocolate. (As far as I know, Jacques Torres's new Hudson Street operation is the only other small-scale chocolate-making operation in the States.)

In the land of home-grown behemoths like Hershey's, they had to import their fire engine red, Willie-Wonka-ish machinery from Germany, where family-run chocolate companies still had old, small machines to sell. The beans came in rough burlap sacks, stamped with their country of origin--Venezuela, Cote d'Ivoire, Ecuador. We toured the room, pausing at each machine as the beans went from roaster to concher to tempering vat. The chocolate itself was startling: intensely flavored, with a vivid smokiness balanced by fruitiness.

Professional pastry chefs were Scharffen Berger's target market, and soon, in San Francisco, menus were touting Scharffen Berger chocolate the same way they bragged of Frog Hollow peaches and Acme bread. But Steinberg and Scharffenberger were caught off guard by the public's clamour for their chunky slabs of baking chocolate.

Now, Scharffen Berger has a sleek new home in a rehabbed brick warehouse in south Berkeley (where you can take a fragrant tour of the whole chocolate-dusted works, then taste their wares in the adjoining Cafe Cacao). The product line includes both the original big baking blocks and a whole wide range for straight-up chocolate eaters: smooth, slender 3-oz bars of various cocoa-bean percentages (the higher the percent, the darker and stronger the chocolate), cute chunky two-bite bars, cocoa powder, cocoa nibs (tiny bitter tidbits of the roasted bean itself), even milk chocolate (something Steinberg swore, in the beginning, that he’d never do). And the company has a corporate parent: the original rubber-candy-bar company itself, Hershey's.

But so far, Scharffen Berger's still doing what it does best. And their brand new Gianduja bar--ahhh, my sweet, I insist! Dark chocolate mixed with pure hazelnut paste into a silky toffee-colored bar, it's like Nutella for grownups, not too sweet, with that special smoky edge roughing up the smooth suaveness of the hazelnut. Melt this onto a baguette, or some toasted brioche, and you will have died and gone to breakfast in heaven’s youth hostel.

On the Scharffen Berger website is a recipe for a chocolate pudding made with this. Fair warning: anyone making this for me better show up with a ring.

*****
And elsewhere in the news, Cafe du Monde is back! They're up and frying down by the French Market, bringing the sweet smell of sugar-dusted beignets and chicory coffee back to the French Quarter. When times are tough, the tough start frying.

Rained out, but apple pie prevails

Good morning from rainy, rainy NYC. I had high hopes of showing K. the glories of an East Coast autumn over this long weekend--all the tasty treats they don't have in warm states, like hot apple cider, pumpkin patches, and apple-cider doughnuts made in goofy Rube Goldberg machines right before your eyes. Every orchard in the Hudson River Valley was having a hayride-and-apple-picking extravaganza for the weekend, it seemed. There would be cider-pressing and performances by the Magical Puppet Theater at the nifty biodynamic Hawthorne Valley Farm, even a Civil War re-enactment in Montgomery, just in case K. needed a little taste of home, albeit with a Union slant. She packed up her tent--how cold could it be?--I made a reservation at the sweet-sounding Milk & Honey b&b for the first night, and we synchronized our watches to meet in Albany.

Well, you already know how this goes, right? The b&b was homey and laid-back and fun. We learned that Chatham, NY is not on big-city time, which means the Blue Plate restaurant closes its doors at 8:45pm (and meaning, of course, that we didn't get to try it, since we didn't actually get it together to leave our room seeking dinner until 9pm). And that the Greig Farm orchard, on a cloudy Friday, was virtually empty, save for us and a whole bunch of little trees laden with dozens of kinds of apples and acres of pumpkins scattered in the most unlikely of places.

But then the rain started to fall. And fall, and fall, and fall. Unlike the few other hardy campers in the park, we didn't have tarps and canopies rigged up over our tiny tent. At 2:30am, one of the tent poles collapsed. By 6:30am, the nylon walls were running with water, the roof of the tent was bowed down to within 2 inches of our heads and we were caught like a couple of almost-drowned cats in a sack. We spent the morning thawing out over coffee and sausage at the diner in Red Hook (a very classic 1920s Silk Cut model, for you vintage-diner fans), then another hour reading the New Republic at the laundromat as our muddy socks and sodden sleeping bags churned around in the industrial-sized washers. And by the afternoon, we were on the thruway, heading back to the one warm place we knew--my apartment in Brooklyn.

Which was, by contrast, a blissful oasis of hot showers & clean flowery sheets. With the car parked, we stayed in the neighborhood, walking to Prospect Park (trees! waterfalls! squirrels! who needs the country?), eating curried salmon with pineapple at Blue Star, catching a movie at the Cobble Hill cinema (Tim Burton's Corpse Bride--ehhh. Not original, not funny, in fact lame all around. Skip it. The preview for the Johnny Cash movie, however, looked hot), shooting free pool at b61, and drinking hot mulled cider all day long.

And since we did come home with two big bags of hand-picked apples, I scooted out of bed early on Monday morning and whipped up a homemade apple pie. It looks squashed in this picture, but actually it was very pretty (and tasty!), with squirrel and leaf cutouts on top. And while the pie baked, K. made apple-orchard scrambled eggs, with sauteed onions, apples, and chunks of pork sausage. You could throw in a little thyme, too, and maybe some sharp cheddar cheese. Serve with some hot cider, toast and apple butter, and be happy for flannel pajamas and a roof over your head.

Apple Pie to Save the Day

Crust
2 1/2 cups flour
1/2 tsp salt
1 TB sugar
1 1/2 to 2 sticks butter (3/4 - 1 cup), depending on how buttery you want your crust
6 TB ice water

Mix dry ingredients, cut in butter (leave it chunkier than you think!), and toss in ice water. Flatten into two rounds, wrap in plastic or stick in a zip-loc bag, and chill. After at least an hour or so of chilling, roll out the crusts between sheets of wax paper.

Meanwhile, peel, core, and cut up a bunch of apples. Since I already had way more apples on hand than I knew I'd need, I just kept peeling and slicing until I had enough to fill my pie pan in a nice heap. But buy at least three or four pounds of apples; having too many apples is always a good thing. Toss apples with about 3/4 cup of sugar (more or less, depending on your taste), 1 tsp cinnamon, a handful of raisins (optional), a scant tablespoon of flour, and a pinch of salt. You can throw in a little nutmeg, cloves, allspice, or ginger, too, but be gentle--you want the mellow apple taste to prevail.

Line the pie pan with the bottom crust, heap in your apples, and top with top crust. Press edges together and crimp the crust edge. If you want, you can brush the top with an egg wash (1 egg yolk beaten with 1-2 tb water), and top it with little cutouts of leaves or apples or squirrels, if you're like me and collect goofy cookie cutters for just this purpose.

Bake at 375 degrees for 1 hour. You may need to cover the edges with foil for the last 20 minutes or so to prevent them from burning. Crust should be well browned and filling bubbling. Let cool to warm, then serve with vanilla ice cream or sharp cheddar cheese. After all, as the New Englanders say, Apple pie without the cheese/Is like a hug without the squeeze.

A Sweet Year

Come sundown on Monday, it will be Rosh Hashanah, the start of the two-day celebration of the Jewish New Year, and of the two-week-long stretch known as the High Holy Days, which ends with Yom Kippur. Me, I'm mostly a baking Jew. I do challah for Friday nights, hamentaschen for Purim, latkes for Chanukkah, flourless chocolate cake and matzoh-meal muffins for Passover. But Rosh Hashanah is a lovely holiday, and it even gets me back to temple, sometimes. Determined by the lunar calendar, Rosh Hashanah floats around, cropping up anytime from early September to early October. In 2001, it fell just a few days after Sept. 11, and I was definitely not the only sloppily observant Jew who suddenly needed to hear the familiar liturgy. What I realized at the end, though, was that I was really there for the headliner: the blowing of the shofar, the long ram's horn that drones like a wild, Biblical bagpipe at the close of the day's services.

The sound of the shofar is a wake-up call, blowing all the past year's dust out of your head. At the same time, you don't get off scot-free. The two weeks of the High Holy Days are a time to clear debts, to make amends, to call anyone you've been behaving badly to and rub the slate clean. No Hail Marys, no priestly intercession; you have to go out and do it yourself.

But back to the baking side of things: every culture has its symbolic New Year's foods--lentils with a stuffed pig's foot in Bologna; noodles in China; hoppin' john (black-eyed or field peas with rice) down South. And where most traditions take long life and prosperity as their metaphors, the dishes of Rosh Hashanah are all about sweetness. Nothing sour, nothing bitter: New Year's foods are honey-sweet, full of fruit and warm spice. This is the year still perfect, a full glass of health and happiness. It's a rare moment of bubbly hope for a religion and culture more used to looking over its shoulder for the Cossacks coming round the corner.

New fruits--something freshly harvested in the fall, something still yet new for the season--get pride of place on the table. Here on the East Coast this means apples, just coming into season now. But I like to add pomegranates, Concord grapes, and fresh figs, a mix of autumn bounty both local and Biblical. Slices of apples are dipped in honey and eaten to ensure a sweet year, followed by chunks of round, raisin-studded challah, spread with yet more honey. I love to make a huge challah at this time of year, studded with golden raisins, with extra honey and extra eggs. The next morning, it makes the best French toast ever, French toast that will spoil you from making it with any other bread.

Last year, on a freakishly hot night in mid-September, a dozen friends sweltered in my living room, rubbing ice cubes over their necks and arms, drinking everything cold in the house and tearing a challah the size of a Thanksgiving turkey apart with their hands. Sugarkill's Moroccan chicken tagine, a bowl of couscous, a salad with roasted figs, a gingerbread-apple cake--they all got eaten. But a year later, what everyone remembers is the bread.

Honey-Glazed Challah for Rosh Hashanah

2 tsp yeast
1 1/2 cups lukewarm water
2 eggs plus 2 egg yolks
1/4 cup vegetable oil or melted butter
1/2 cup honey
1 TB salt
7-8 cups flour
1 cup golden raisins
1/2 cup honey, for glaze

Sprinkle yeast over water and let dissolve for a few minutes. Beat in eggs, yolks, honey, oil, and salt. Stir in several cups of flour and beat to a thick batter. Add more flour, a cup at a time, to make a medium-soft but not sticky dough.

Turn out onto a lightly floured surface and let rest 10 minutes. Knead for 8-10 minutes, until dough is smooth and stretchy. It should feel warm and pliable, like a soft stomach or a relaxed inner thigh. Turn dough back into mixing bowl, cover with a damp towel or plastic bag, and let rise for 1 1/2 hours, or until doubled in bulk. Punch down and knead again for another couple minutes. At this point, depending on your schedule, you can let it rise again or go straight to shaping the loaves.

Divide dough into two lumps (or you can, if so inclined, use all the dough in one massive loaf). Stretch the lumps into flattish rectangles, and sprinkle with golden raisins. Roll up into a log, and generally push and pull the dough around so the raisins get distributed. You can, of course, add the raisins back when you're putting in the flour, but kneading dough with raisins in it is a pain, as the raisins are continually popping out and needing to be shoved back in. It's like raisin whack-a-mole.

Anyway, pull the lumps or logs or whatever into two long ropes of dough. The best directions for making a round loaf that doesn't list and collapse in the oven comes from Marcy Goldman's excellent cookbook, A Treasury of Jewish Holiday Baking. "Form a rope of 18 to 24 inches, thicker at one end, tapered at the other. Take the rope of dough and with one hand, lift the narrowed end and wind the entire length around the thicker end of the strand so that the thick part becomes the middle of the challah. Tuck the tip under the coil and press it down to seal it closed." You can also cheat and form your loaf in a big round cake pan, which will help keep the shape.

Otherwise, place the loaf/loaves on a parchment-lined or greased baking sheet. Drizzle with honey. Let rise again for 30 minutes. then bake in a preheated 350 oven until well-browned and hollow-sounding when you thump it. Let cool on a rack.

*****
And you know, if you want this recipe and more for your very own, you can search out my lovely little book all about honey, available on Amazon and, if you're very lucky, in the occasional nifty gift shop or bookstore. It's called Honey: From Flower to Table, and it's full of weird bee facts and beautiful flower-and-honeybee pinup photos, not to mention the ultimate non-sucky bran muffin recipe and a cool DIY beeswax-honey lip balm.

*****
And speaking of Jewish food, NOSH is finally open. It's run by Marc Elliot, of seafood hangout Blue Star, and promises all things deli, from pastrami and brisket to matzoh ball soup and blintzes. 214 Atlantic Ave, between Court and Smith Sts., Cobble Hill, Brooklyn.

Breakfast with the Pie Queen

I'm a sucker for sassy writing, wherever it crops up--like in the Fatted Calf newsletter, a snappy bit of meaty goodness that pops up in my inbox every week. Not being within shopping distance of the Berkeley Farmers Market anymore, I live deprived of such treats as their fig-stuffed quails and lamb crepinettes, but their newsletter almost makes up for this. Today, it was all about breakfast--along with teatime, my favorite meal of the day:

Lemon and Herb Links caught our eye right away-picture those babies alongside some buttery scrambled eggs-mmm. And then, my friend, there is Chorizo-which loves to roll around with potatoes and eggs in a burrito as much as you love eating it. And, finally, what is an ode to breakfast without mentioning that queen of the breakfast meats, her highness Bacon? We know that you know that our bacon has been lauded in the most exclusive and the most down-home of meat-loving circles, so, see for yourself. Waking up never sounded so good.

Having grown up in a pork-less household, I didn't taste bacon until I got to slip the leash and go to Canada one summer. Such were my tiny, tame teenage rebellions--piercing my ears (which earned me a 3-hour lecture about "mutilating my body"--on my birthday, no less), putting drugstore hydrogen peroxide on my hair to turn it red, and ordering bacon for breakfast when I was safely out of the country. Alas, bacon, like Coca Cola, is one of those foods on which you have to be imprinted early in life. Forbidden, yes, but was this the big deal, the holy grail of verboten pork products? Sure, I'll snag a piece if it's in front of me, but overall, give me sausage any day. In fact, give me some sausage right now, so I can swab it around in maple syrup and eat it with these fluffy squash-cornmeal pancakes I'm having for breakfast. A little bit of mashed, roasted butternut squash was languishing in my fridge this morning, longing to be turned into squash pancakes. Chopped apples and pecans would have been a nice addition, or maybe some sauteed apple slices. But just maple syrup and a pot of hot tea was enough to cheer up this cool and windy day.

And speaking of breakfast, if I weren't on deadline this week, I'd be back every morning to EGG, the little Southern breakfast kitchen that's moved into Sparky's from 7am-noon, replacing Sparky's organic hotdogs with country ham and scrambled eggs. And stoneground Anson Mills grits, sorghum granola, and biscuits and gravy. Coffee comes in French press pots, there are crayons and paper on the table so you can draw pictures of your breakfast, and the country ham biscuit--a big lofty toasted biscuit smeared with homemade fig jam, salty real country ham, and a glob of melted Grafton cheddar--is waiting to be your new best breakfast friend.

Egg, 135 N. 5th at Bedford, Williamsburg, Brooklyn, 718-302-5151. 7am-noon, M-F; 8am-noon S-S.

Pumpkin (or Squash) Pancakes, Chez PQ

Note: I like a healthy, sturdy morning flapjack. By all means, add melted butter and/or sugar if you want.

1/2 cup whole wheat flour
1/2 cup cornmeal
1 tsp baking powder
1/8 tsp salt (opt)
a few hefty shakes of cinnamon or mixed pumpkin/apple pie spice
1 TB maple syrup or honey
1 egg
3/4 - 1 cup milk
1/4 cup cooked, mashed pumpkin or squash
(a couple TB of melted butter or oil, if you want)
Chopped apples or pecans

Very lightly grease a griddle or frying pan. Mix dry ingredients in one bowl; beat egg, milk, pumpkin, maple syrup and butter in another. Mix together until just combined, and add more milk or water if batter seems too thick. Add apples and/or nuts. Pour onto griddle and cook until browned on both sides.

Down on the Apple Farm

It's Fall!! Finally, the 80-degree days of this past September are easing into crisp mornings and brisk blue skies. Concord grapes and shiny gourds are at the farmers' market, and peaches are giving way to mountains of apples and pears. Had the first hot cider of the season last week, and next week, I'll be heading up to the Hudson Valley for a weekend of cider-doughnut munching and apple-picking. So lots of apple posts this week, starting with a memory of autumn in California--an elusive season, since October is much more Indian summer than sweater weather, but with its own charms nonetheless.

One of my best Bay Area autumn memories revolves around apples, or more specifically, the Apple Farm, up in the Anderson Valley. Located down a skinny little side road off Highway 128 in Philo, near the beautiful Hendy Woods redwood grove, this organic apple orchard is a meandering bucolic dream. Ducks and bunnies wander through the herb garden. Tall sheds, open to the still, sweet-scented afternoon air, are filled with heavy wooden boxes packed with gleaming Golden Delicious fruit (which, when freshly picked, is miles away from the usual bland, rubbery corner-store fruit). At the self-service table near the tiny gravel parking lot, crates of juicy, deeply flavored heirloom apples perched next to heavy glass bottles of hard cider and quarts of sweet, cloudy amber apple juice.

On that October weekend a few years ago, Apple Farm co-owner Sally Schmitt taught a group of us just what to do with her apples. (These cooking weekends are really enjoyable, and well worth signing up way in advance for, since they book up very quickly. Check out their website, above, for details). Sausages braised in cider, curried duck breast with apple salsa, and best of all, an upside-down gingerbread cake topped with apples drenched in a buttery brown-sugar caramel. Over time, I've tinkered with the original recipe, substituting different gingerbread recipes for the cake and pears or poached quinces for the apples. A friend from New Orleans always adds a slug of rum to the butter-sugar topping, making it into a kind of apples Foster, while a long, leisurely quest through the world of gingerbread commentary led to this triple slam of powdered ginger, fresh ginger root, and candied ginger in the cake. (Also called crystallized ginger, it's readily available in Asian markets and specialty food shops.) The fresh and candied ginger aren't crucial, but they add an irresistible depth of flavor not found in powdered ginger alone. The apples cook down quite a bit, so squeeze in as many slices as possible, even layering them two deep in places if you can.

Another trick for this cake is to try baking it in a cast-iron skillet instead of a cake pan. Cheap, endlessly useful and nearly indestructible, a cast-iron skillet is equally perfect for roasting a chicken, making a batch of corn bread, and baking a deep-dish blueberry pie and a lovely gingerbread cake.

If you have a favorite gingerbread recipe, by all means use it here, although this version has a particularly alluring balance between springy, delicate texture and forthright spicy flavor. One thing about the recipe: out of habit, you may find yourself reaching to beat in the eggs directly after creaming the butter and brown sugar. Makes sense, doesn't it? Well, not here. You MUST mix everything else into the batter before you add the eggs. The eggs go in LAST, weird as it seems. Trust me, I've done the other way, and I've ended up with a dry, lumpy, weird mess instead of a nice thick batter. And don't use ancient spices--if you have a dusty jar of ginger that's been sitting over the stove for the past 3 years, it's going to have as much flavor as lint. Chuck it and replace, or better yet, dump out all your old spices but rinse out and save the jars. Go to a health-food, Middle Eastern or Indian shop that sells spices in bulk, and stock up on small batches of spices you use a lot, then decant them into the jars when you get home. They will cost mere pennies per bag and will be loads fresher than supermarket spices. And don't store your spices over the stove--the heat dries all the flavor out of them. They really do need the requisite cool dry place.

If you've been to the Apple Farm (or to their stand at the Ferry Plaza Farmers Market) and bought a jug of their lovely apple-cider syrup, it makes a great substitute for the molasses. Or try a mix of half cider syrup and half dark (grade B) maple syrup. This has become my standard Rosh Hashanah dessert, much better than the usual heavy honey cake. And baking it will make your house smell like autumn in heaven.

Gingerbread Apple Upside-down Cake

Topping
1/2 stick (4 tb/2 oz) butter
2/3 cup brown sugar, packed
3 or 4 apples, peeled, cored, and sliced

Cake

1 cup boiling water
2 tsp baking soda

2 1/2 cups flour
2 tsp ground ginger
1 1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp ground cloves
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1/2 tsp salt
2 tsp baking powder

1 stick (8 TB/4 oz) butter
2/3 cup brown sugar, packed
2/3 cup molasses or apple-cider syrup
1 Tbs grated fresh ginger
1 Tbs chopped candied ginger
2 eggs, beaten

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Melt 1/2 stick of butter in a large, deep cast-iron skillet. Swirl butter around to coat sides, then sprinkle 2/3 cup of brown sugar over bottom of pan. Cook over low heat for a few minutes, until sugar no longer looks grainy. Remove from heat and arrange apple slices in a decorative pattern. (Or, grease a deep cake pan. Melt the 1/2 stick butter and pour into pan. Sprinkle the sugar over the butter, and mix together. Top with apple slices.) Set aside.

Mix boiling water and baking soda, and set aside. Sift together dry ingredients. Cream whole stick of butter and 2/3 cup brown sugar, then beat in molasses, fresh ginger, and baking soda-water mixture. Add dry ingredients and candied ginger, stirring gently until batter is smooth. Stir in eggs. Pour batter over apple slices – batter should fill the pan no more than halfway, to allow for rising. If you have extra batter, bake in a separate pan. Bake 30 to 40 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Let cool, then carefully invert on a plate large enough to catch any stray drips of caramel topping. Serve with whipped cream or vanilla ice cream.

Say You Ate It at the Antic (and gay penguins!)

Unlike most NYC street fairs, which are dispiriting, interchangeable body-jams of tube-sock sellers and mozzarepa stands, Brooklyn's late-September Atlantic Antic is an actual neighborhood celebration, stretching from Hicks nearly all the way down to Flatbush in a cross-cultural mix buoyant with bouncy castles and canine massage, shea butter and henna tatttoos, blintzes from the Belorussian church and pasteles from the Spanish-speaking one, jerk chicken and rice and peas and falafel and jambalaya and paella and beef brisket with horseradish on a challah bun (this last from Nosh, a new Jewish deli opening this week on the south side of Atlantic near Court St, run by Mark of Blue Star).

Nearly every restaurant, food shop, and church along Atlantic Avenue was dishing out something tasty last Sunday. West of Clinton St, tapas joint La Mancha sent up an irresistable smoke from its curbside grills, where fresh whole sardines were turning golden over the coals , along with huge pots of shellfish-topped paella and chubby lengths of paprika-red chorizo sausage. If your only experience with sardines had been the shiny headless critters revealed as you peel back the flat top of a sardine can--or merely as a metaphor for the 6 train at rush hour--these fat, crispy-skinned fish were a sublime revelation. These were big guys, about the span of your hand, fat and meaty, dark and oil-rich like bluefish or mackerel, spritzed with lemon and scattered with crunchy sea salt.

Next door, Floyd had set up shop on the street, reproducing their bar--complete with a fake fireplace and mantle, comfy couches, rugs, and mismatched coffee tables, and of course, beer taps--out on the curb. (You did have to go inside for bocce, though). Last Exit had its usual hay bales and country swingers; over at Magnetic Fields, thrash-and-burn boy bands. Outside the Atlantic Chip Shop, pans of shepherd's pie languished in favor of misshapen golden lumps of deep-fried Twinkies--Anglo-American cooperation at its queasy best. Not to be outdone, one of the many Italian-sausage trucks (obviously enjoying being MIA from the insanity of the San Gennaro fest across the river) was pitching deep-fried Oreos. Steve and his key-lime pie truck were selling, naturally, key-lime pies, which gave me a pang of missing K., of course, and our key-lime adventures at last Saturday's social.

What else? Belly dancing and Arabic music; cheery zydeco, gumbo and jambalaya outside Stan's New Orleans restaurant; the very serious, all-chick horn section of the funk band outside Downtown Atlantic's bbq-and-beer garden (women who spent their teen years at band camp, no question about it); Brooklyn pride T shirts of all kinds, from 718 thongs to B'klyn Baby onesies and Gowanus Yacht Club baseball tees. Sweet potato pie from the sugar-seeking crush around the Baptist church ladies. And finally, far from the madding crowd, a cool lady's half-pint of Brooklyn lager in the pleasant late-afternoon gloom of the Brooklyn Inn.

******

Now, as promised, pie-social recipes!

Key Lime Pie (adapted from MIAMI SPICE by Stephen Raichlen)

Graham cracker crust

If you're really pining to make extra work for yourself, you can make your own graham crackers from Nancy Silverton's recipe, here. I didn't love these crackers on their own, but they did make a nice crust, although not monumentally different than one made from a box of teddy grahams from the corner store. Whatever you do, put a whole bunch of crackers into a big zip-lock bag and roll them into crumbs, or break them up and spin them in the food processor until buzzed to fine crumbs. Mix 1 1/4 cups crumbs with 4 TB melted butter and press into a pie pan. Bake at 350 F for 5-6 minutes, until lightly browned and firm.

Filling

1 lb key limes*
1 can (14 oz) sweetened condensed milk
3 egg yolks

Zest off enough rind to make 1 teaspoon. Set aside. Juice the rest of the limes, give or take a few, to make 1/2 cup juice. Using a hand-held or stand-up mixer, beat eggs and milk for at least 5 minutes, until light-colored and thick. Add juice and rind and continue beating. The mixture should be creamy and very thick. Pour into pie shell and bake for 6-8 minutes, until set but not browned. Let cool to room temp, then refrigerate for several hours. Top each slice with a key-lime twist (a thin slice of lime cut down the middle and twisted in opposite directions) and whipped cream, if desired.

*Key limes are very small, yellowish-green limes, often called Mexican limes. They are small enough that you can juice them by twiddling each half between your thumb and forefinger. You can find them, with some searching, in Latin produce markets or specialty produce stores. If you can't find them, Raichlen suggests a mixture of 5 TB lemon juice and 5 TB regular lime juice.

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Enough with the pies and sardines, already: we want to know about the GAY PENGUINS!!!!

Well, since the issue of penguin anthropomorphism has been a big topic in the news lately (thanks to March of the Penguins and its tales of heroic ice-bound monogamy--hey, it was a long, hot summer), the Times devoted a detailed update to the trials and tribulations of the Gay Penguins of Central Park today. On the happy rainbow side: Tango, the girl penguin the penguin dads raised from an egg, now has a girlfriend. Go Tango!! Wanna come camping? On the sad rainbow side, her dads Silo and Roy got pushed out of their nest by two" aggressive penguins" (bastards!), and in despair over the NY real estate market, pressured by the demands of celebrity gay couplehood, Silo jumped the fence and started macking on a tattooed lady-penguin barmaid named Scrappy--an import from, of course, that polyamorous paradise, Sea World. All this, reported in page-six detail. First Gay Weddings, now Gay Penguin Gossip.
(And now I'm going over to Sitemeter to see how many people ended up on this blog because they googled "gay penguins." Just as a change from "dirt cake," which is, hands down, the top search that sends random strangers here.)

Red Beans and Ricely Yours

From Wednesday's New York Times:

Monday isn't Monday in New Orleans without red beans and rice. That's because back when laundry was done by hand, Monday was the day for doing it. A dish that could simmer all day was called for. People throw their laundry into washing machines any day of the week now, but red beans and rice is still the dish you eat on Monday in New Orleans.

On this Monday, two big pots were cooking on propane stoves on the sidewalk in front of the restaurant Alex Patout's, just across the narrow street from Antoine's.

The building's owner, Finis Shelnutt, was manning the pots, despite the neighborhood's stench, the approaching darkness and the near-barren streets.

Why?

"It's Monday, darlin'," he said.

Pie PIx

Well, the Pie Social was a big hit. The only problem was a good one--almost more pie bakers than pie eaters! there were dozens and dozens of pies laid out in the midday sun, from the freaky caramel-pecan cricket (yep, real insects) pie to the wild-apple pies (from 7 wild apple trees in upstate NY) and the goofy worm and fish pies (cream pies decorated with gummy fish and worms). Recipes for my key-lime and plum tart to follow....but here I am, wearing my blue ribbon. Everyone got one, reading "I baked a pie for the Brooklyn Pie Social." Bake, and you're a winner.

Pie Time

Butter. I need butter. A lot of butter. And a five-pound bag of flour, and another big bag of sugar. Yep, it's almost time for the fabulous Brooklyn Pie Social (Sat., 9/17, 12-4pm) and soupy heat wave or no, it will soon be necessary to brave my AC-less kitchen and get baking. That is, if the nice folks from Keyspan ever show up to reconnect the gas on my stove, which was cut off yesterday for reasons unbeknownst to me.

This weather, though. Are you a tad anxious about the fate of your pies? Showers are predicted for Saturday, which is a bummer, given how utterly autumn-y and gorgeous the day was last year. Granted, we're not having hurricanes, and there is a raindate--Sunday Sept. 18th, instead of Sat. But be that as it may, I'm still pressing the gingham and rolling the dough.

It being the moment for Italian prune plums--those narrow, oblong purple fruits with sticky yellow flesh, on the boring side to eat raw but deliciously tangy-sweet when baked--I'm planning a plum tart redux. I don't really have a recipe for this one; plums and sugar are really all you need, although I might get a little fancy and put down a thin sandy layer of pulverized pistachios, lemon rind, nutmeg and cinnamon--a strange but alluring blend that B. bequeathed to me in a large bag, after having invented it and eaten himself silly on it mixed with honey and spread over toasted pita breads. There's also the "fairy dust" mix from an old Chez Panisse apricot galette recipe, which mixed ground almonds, amaretti, flour and sugar--always a good thing. I usually swear by the pie-crust and tart-shell recipes in David Lebovitz's Room for Dessert, but after a trip to the library yesterday, I've got Maury Rubin's uber-chic Book of Tarts from City Bakery, with what the ever-dogmatic Jeffrey Steingarten insists is the perfect tart crust recipe. Rich, though--damn. 13 TB butter to a mere 1 1/2 cups flour, plus powdered sugar and an egg yolk. This sounds like a seriously short (and thus crumbly) dough, and may not work in a big tart (this may be the reason all Rubin's recipes are for making individual small-sized tarts). Hmmm.

Once I was in the pie section, of course, I had to come home with Tamasin Day-Lewis's sexy Art of the Tart, which pours a couple of eggs and a cup and a quarter of cream into almost every recipe. The way she writes, though, you can imagine all her tasty Irish-brogued friends (including, of course, her bro Daniel) coming up behind you and licking the crumbs--and the cream--right off your fingers as you whisk.

But what about the other pie? Well, much as I like to be all seasonal and local, I also love a challenge, and so when the Florida-born K. (who's still a little stunned at being hauled up above the Mason-Dixon line among all these strange Yankees) expressed a wistful fondness for her native key-lime pie, I started scouting around for real key limes. Half the size of the usual Persian lime golfballs, with thin, spotty yellowish-green skins and lots of seeds, these used to be readily available in SF, 12 for a dollar, at the Latino produce markets on Mission Street, where they were labeled Mexican limes. Out East though, it's trickier. I sent a pleading email to Steve of Steve's Key Lime Pies in Red Hook, asking for sources--no dice. Rather than head all the way uptown to the Dominician markets of Washington Heights, I hit Whole Foods (no), Citarella (no), and finally, the Garden of Eden in downtown Brooklyn (yes). I've now got two little one-pound net bags, imported from Mexico, sitting on my table, waiting to be zested, juiced, and whipped up with eggs and sweetened condensed milk, using the excellently easy recipe from Steve Raichlan's very entertaining Miami Spice cookbook, worth buying for the "mangozpacho" (mango gazpacho) recipe alone. And because I am also an insane person, I have grand plans to make my own graham crackers for the crust, using the Nancy Silverton recipe so kindly posted on 101 Cookbooks. I had restaurant-made grahams once, as part of do-it-yourself s'mores at SF's Luna Park (which has recently expanded, under the name Kitchen and Cocktails, to the East Village), and they were huge leaps above your average teddy graham. Weirdly enough, though, Silverton's recipe calls for white flour, not graham flour, which is the whole raison d'etre for these cookies, so I'm going to slip a little whole-wheat in, just for my own conscience.

Hope to see you at the Social--come find me and say hello! All the info (and a picture of me at last year's Social) at Brooklyn Bridge Park Conservancy.

Dark as the night, blue as the day

The days have been blue as heaven this week, the sky clear and high domed with an unmistakable shift into autumn in the air. The sun has dropped in its orbit, crossing the sky just a little lower than it did a few weeks ago, just enough to prove that summer has said its farewells. Apples--the small, tart early varieties, Tydeman Reds and Gingergolds--are showing up at the farmers market, next to the piles of peaches and corn, melons and tomatoes. These are the last few weeks to sit in the back gardens of restaurants all around the city, drink rose and wave off the wasps and pigeons. At Sweet Melissa's this afternoon, my mother and I got hustled by a couple of very aggressive birds acting like they owned the joint, ready to shake us down for chilled beet-raspberry soup, a slice of baguette or a stray bit of goat cheese and apple salad.

Sitting at Bellavitae (on Minetta Lane, in the Village) on Saturday night, after listening to open-air bluegrass at the Damrosch Park bandshell, K. and I got a plate of figs and proscuitto--which was just that and nothing more, little slices of fig and a few sheets of sheer proscuitto. Pleasant enough, although the figs weren't yet bursting-sweet enough to make such simple treatment perfect. Unless you know one of the lucky people in Carroll Gardens who still have a fig tree growing in their backyard (planted decades ago by the neighborhood's Southern Italian immigrants), most figs in the market need a little help along. So Sunday night, feeling peckish, the figs in my fridge got run under the broiler until they were jammy within and slightly caramelized without, stuffed with a nubble of goat cheese and a few leaves of fresh thyme from the windowbox, then swaddled in strips of proscuitto. Then they were drizzled with a quickly boiled-down syrup of balsamic vinegar and pomegranate molasses. Voila, Figs and Pigs, Chez PQ. We ate the whole plateful, swiping the plate with our fingers for every streak of thick, fruit-tart syrup, and then wandered off to read the Walt Whitman poetry inscribed around the floating deck down the base of the Brooklyn Promenade and eat basil-leafed, fresh-mozzarella'd pizza at Grimaldi's.

This is the month of the corn moon, of harvest time and reaping what you've sown. B., busy doing manly nautical things to his new boat (mostly involving paint and taking the skin off his thumbs with various toxic chemicals), has been letting his fire escape garden run rampant. So after a lazy lunch at Frankie's (and that's the time to go, late on a weekday afternoon when no one's there)--tomato-and-mozzarella sandwiches on Sullivan St Bakery's irresistably oil-sopped pizza bianca; crunchy skinny green beans with roasted garlic, buttery polenta, thick slices of inexplicably good cold roasted sweet potato--I headed out with three plastic bags and a big pair of scissors. Singing Bill Monroe songs to the plants, I snipped and snipped, cutting foot-long swaths off the basil and mint, stuffing velvety, triangular leaves of catnip into my bag, nipping off spikes of rosemary and rumpled stalks of lemon balm, picking cherry tomatoes and 6 long red peppers off the now-huge plants I'd planted back in June. Then I went to pick up golden peppers, red-leaf lettuce, yellow and red tomatoes, lilac-streaked eggplants and green beans at the Cobble Hill CSA dropoff, to go with even more tomatoes that my mom had picked herself at a farm near her house upstate, the corn I'd bought on Saturday thinking to make corn pudding, the bowl of peaches and plums in the fridge.

So it's been salads with everything, peach cornmeal pancakes topped with poached peach slices, panfuls of habanero-green chile turkey sausage sauteed with red peppers and onions. Tomorrow, I'm going to go get even more tomatoes and make Susie Bright's Best Spaghetti Sauce Ever. I love reading Susie on food, because she makes every recipe she passes along sound like the best thing you'll put in your mouth, ever. Check out her cherry pie recipe in Mommy's Little Girl and see if you don't drop everything to start rolling pie crust and pitting cherries, the book still in one hand. So read her recipe, and then read the rest of her blog, for the well-directed outrage and grief at what's going on down South in Louisiana these days, and many, many links to alternative news sources and insightful commentary.

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This Saturday, Lillie's in Red Hook is doing a Katrina fundraiser and donation collection--they'll be barbecuing, playing music, and collecting all kinds of stuff--toiletries, clothing, food, bottled water, baby items, and more. Starts at 10pm. Before you go down to Lillie's, stop in at Freebird, the little second-hand bookstore that's hanging on by a thread over on Columbia Street. 4 - 10pm, readings by Jonathan Ames and others, free food, lotsa cool books to buy.

Music for Figs & Tomatoes

1. Dark as the Night, Blue as the Day (Bill Monroe)
2. Pure (Lightening Seeds)
3. I Hope There's Someone (Antony and the Johnsons, channeling Nina Simone)
4. Acadian One-Step (Joseph Falcon, from Harry Smith's Anthology of American Music)
5. This Little LIght of Mine (Louvin Bros)

Down South

Here's hoping that all your loved ones in New Orleans and Mississippi are safe and sound. If you've ever wanted to make a donation to the Red Cross, or donate blood, now might be a very good time to do it. I've only been lucky enough to go to New Orleans once, on a much-too-brief business trip, but it's a place that lives in the imaginations of writers, dreamers and cooks everywhere. Here, a reprint and a recipe, originally written when a sudden spate of warm spring weather got everyone thinking sultry thoughts of Spanish moss and wrought-iron balconies, tarot card readings in Jackson Square and beignets and coffee at 3 am.


This is one of the best ways I know to eat shrimp, marinated and smothered in a fiery, sweet-spicy sauce that begs to be sopped up with a big loaf of hot French bread. My mother, who got this recipe from a little spiral-bound cookbook bought in New Orleans, used to make it with unpeeled shrimp, thinking (rightly) that the shells added additional flavor to the sauce. However, this meant each person had to peel his or her boiling-hot, immersed-in-sauce shrimp one by one at the table, which was a wildly sloppy (and finger-burning) business. Thus I would recommend peeling your shrimp at the beginning, unless you really want to end up with sauce up to your elbows. Even with the shrimp already peeled, this is a dish that will get you good and messy, what with tearing off hunks of bread to swipe through the sauce and the inevitable orange spatters on the tablecloth.

Now, I know this isn't what a real New Orleans resident would know as barbecued shrimp. I've had locals make me real bbq shrimp, and it's nothing like this. Instead, it's shrimp cooked in a whole lot of incredibly delicious, garlicky-spicy butter, and eating it, like eating snails, is a reason to kiss the ground and thank god for butter. This is different--not authentic, but good.

For dessert, peach pie, figs roasted until just plump and bursting, or a last box of tiny Tristar strawberries. Nip the hulls off, then toss the fruit with a little sugar and an almond-fragrant splash of amaretto, and let them stand for a few minutes while you clear the dinner plates. The sugar will dissolve into the berry juice, surrounding the berries with a puddle of brilliant red liquid that tastes like the essence of strawberry jam. Plain heavy cream, whipped cream, or vanilla ice cream would be good on top, or you can just enjoy them straight up, flush with the flavor of warmer seasons to come. Or you can save a final box of berries until all the guests save one have packed up their mandolins and harmonicas and gone home. Run a bath, light some candles, sprinkle in rose petals and eucalyptus bath salts, and serve that lucky person a bowl of chocolate pudding for two sprinkled with almonds and topped with strawberries. Sit on the edge of the tub, sink your feet in the scented water, and eat your chocolatey strawberries. Seek, kiss, eat, breathe.

Barbecued shrimp, New Orleans style

1 12-ounce bottle chili sauce, such as Heinz's
2 lemons, sliced
4 cloves garlic, chopped
1/4 cup olive oil
4 Tbs butter
2 tsp each oregano, paprika, and cayenne pepper
3 Tbs lemon juice
3 Tbs Worcestershire sauce
1 tsp hot sauce, or to taste
2 lb raw shrimp, peeled but tails left on
2 Tbs chopped parsley
Sweet baguettes, warmed

Mix all sauce ingredients in a deep saucepan. Over low heat, warm until the butter is melted and the mixture is just beginning to simmer. Let cool, then pour over peeled shrimp in a deep bowl. Cover and refrigerate for several hours. Pour back in a wide saucepan and bring to a gentle simmer, stirring, until shrimp are just pink and opaque. Remove from heat and sprinkle with parsley. Serve in wide bowls with bread on the side.

tomato wonderland

Today it was all about the tomatoes. Went over to J.'s house down the street for an impromptu dinner...when I arrived, A. was dusting three big butterflied trout with flour mixed with a little tarragon and some of Eatwell Farms' excellent lavender salt. I brought out my bag of squishy-ripe tomatoes from all over--two from last weekend's trip to the farmstands of Rt. 14, red as a happy heart, a rainbow of golden-red marvel striped from the CSA box, brandywines, black prince, and green zebra from the Tuesday farmers market at Borough Hall. And, of course, a dainty handful of grape tomatoes from my very own fire-escape plant. Too ripe to slice, they all got chunked up in a big yellow bowl and sprinkled with lavender salt, olive oil, white balsamic vinegar, and lots and lots of purple basil (from the new garden plot!) and green basil from the CSA. It was summer on a plate, and I was humble and full of gratitude every time I came across one of my resilent but sweet little home-grown babies.

Summer Sweet

Coming home with the aforementioned local cantaloupe, I had a sudden craving for this salad as I walked down the hot pavement of Court Street on my way to water the garden (and pluck a little harvest of purple basil and lemon balm). I have to admit, I've never made it at home--yet!--but here is the recipe, begged from the chef, plus some other late-August musings.


Late summer, bountiful time, and I'm been dreaming about ravishingly multihued tomatoes, swinging from suave to acid and back again. Intensely perfumed melons, deep orange and yellow, begging for lime. The swift crunch of a knife going through the green skin of the coldest, ruby-hearted watermelon. A watermelon (sandia) agua fresca at La Taqueria at 25th and Mission (in San Francisco), pulling the sandy bits of melon up through a straw in between bites of a veggie taco with extra tomatillo sauce and a hefty slather of avocado. Melons are the true beauties of late summer, holding all the season's musky heat in their sunset-colored, dripping flesh.

Everyone goes on and on about the beauty of figs (even me--see below to "Figs Are Sexy"), their sexy plumpness, their sticky, seed-crunched pulp. And yes, they're nice. But there's no tang to a fig, no snap of acid to pique your appetite. It's the same with white peaches: delectable, but not piquant. And in summer, piquant is what you need, something that rolls like a breeze over your tongue. Ceviche, gazpacho, lemonade, the tangy brine of seafood. I'm still charmed by a salad I had at the now-closed Chickenbone Cafe, on a hot July night during one of my first weeks in Williamsburg. The chef, Zak Pelaccio, who'd trained at the French Laundry (and now runs the kitchen at 5 Ninth), built a crisscross stack of watermelon batons topped with whorls of grilled squid. Interspersed were frilled shreds of mint and cilantro, salty bits of feta, and down at the bottom, tiny, tiny sweet-sour cubes of pickled watermelon rind. It was delicious, and also witty: watermelon two ways, both of them unexpected.

Melon – watermelon especially – goes better with salt and savory than you might expect. With something salty, and something hot, and something savory (what the flavor experts call umami, the Japanese term for the sort of savoriness you find in soy sauce or Parmesan cheese), you can fill out almost the whole flavor pantheon in one dish. And the heat doesn't have to come from pepper: the bite of a red onion will work, in a Greek-style salad of watermelon, onion, and feta drizzled with olive oil and showered with mint. Or the classic, unbeatable combination of ripe cantaloupe and sheer slices of prosciutto. Grilled or boiled shrimp on skewers with cubes of pale green honeydew, dunked in lime juice and sprinkled with red pepper.

But my favorite melon salad ever comes from a dish I've had – and had again, whenever I could – at Ponzu in SF. Asian fusion is a tricky genre; go too authentic and you'll leave your clientele wondering why they didn't just keep walking up Eddy Street for the same thing at a Formica table for half the price; go too Western and you miss the point. At Ponzu, though, the Bangkok melon salad (originated by former executive chef John Beardsley, now at Le Colonial) is something I'd eat all summer long. At a dinner with a friend a couple of years ago, we ordered one as an appetizer, and then, at the end of the meal, another one as dessert: full circle, as round as a melon, and both times we ate the whole thing.

Bangkok Melon Salad

1/4 cup water

1/2 cup sugar

2 tsp grated fresh ginger

1 stalk lemongrass, finely chopped

2 kaffir lime leaves, thinly sliced (or grated zest of 1 lime)

1/2 cup each lemon juice, lime juice, and Vietnamese fish sauce

1 fresh red chile, minced

1 lb each cantaloupe and honeydew, peeled and cubed

1/2 a small watermelon, peeled and diced

1/2 bunch Thai basil leaves

grated zest of 1 lemon

1/2 cup toasted, chopped peanuts

Combine water, sugar, ginger, lemongrass, and lime leaves or zest in a medium pot and bring to a simmer. Turn off heat and let steep for 10 minutes. Strain, discarding solids. Add juices, fish sauce, and chile and chill. Toss cubed melons with basil leaves and lemon zest. Add dressing to taste*. Sprinkle with chopped peanuts just before serving. You could also add mint and cilantro just before serving, too.

*This recipe sounds like it will make a whole lot of dressing. Not that this should be a problem--it sounds like something you could pour over anything--cold noodles, salad, your bare hands--and be thrilled with.

under the waterfalls

Far from Brooklyn, in lovely Watkins Glen, NY. Waterfalls galore...and farm stands everywhere along the shores of Seneca Lake, with little slots for the money and coffee cans full of DIY change. Came home with a quart of fat ripe tomatoes and a canteloupe whose insistent sweetness perfumed the whole bus. Walking along the water in Sacketts Harbor on a wind-whipped morning, I kept pointing out all the fruit growing in tangles alongside the old battlefields--tiny gnarled apples, shiny bitter crabapples, wild Concord grapes.

And speaking of harvests, Thanksgiving may be months away, but the birds are fattening up at Stone Barns. Put your order in now for one of their farm-raised, heritage-breed turkeys, who will have had a short but happy life scratching around in the dirt eating bugs and enjoying nature the Rockefeller way up in the Hudson River valley. They're also having a big Harvest Festival, with the requisite bluegrass band and hayrides, on Sat., Oct. 1st. Best of all, there's a pie baking contest! Sweet or savory, local fruit & veggies only, please.

Brooklyn Pie Socialists, Unite!

If you've hung around my kitchen for any length of time, you've probably heard about the mad fun that was last year's Brooklyn Pie Social. Well, now you too can be a Pie Socialist, feeding the multitudes, garnering kudos, and baking for a good cause! Last year's social raised four grand for the lovely Brooklyn Bridge Park (home of mulberry trees, double-bridge views, and outdoor movies) and the nice folks at Bubby's and the B-B Park Conservancy have high hopes of hauling in even more dough this time around.

Personally, I love the chance to check out how other people bake pies. My pies will always look like me; they're as easy for me to pick out in a crowd as my own shoes. But how do you make your pies? It's like finding out how a stranger kisses.

And little did I know until today that I am, indeed, the BROOKLYN PIE SOCIAL POSTER GIRL! Must have been the gingham apron....you can check out what I did for the Pie Effort here.

Here's how it works: You bake a pie (or two). You put on a cute outfit and a big smile and bring your pies down to the cobblestone streets in front of the park (Main and Plymouth Sts). Then you stand there for a couple of hours and hand out slices of your pie to the hungry hordes. In return, you get a handful of tickets enabling you to wander round and taste the pies of your friends and neighbors. No restaurant or bakery pies--this is strictly a home-kitchen operation, which makes it really sweet and bizarrely down-home for the big city. There will be live music, balloons and face-painting for the kiddies, coffee and lemonade, gorgeous views, and LOTS OF PIE!!!

Just want to EAT PIE? Then come on down that afternoon (earlier is better, before the good pies all get eaten) and buy your pie-eating tickets--one ticket, one slice.

Here's all the info, courtesy of Bubby's:

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Date: September 17, 2005
Time:12-4pm

Your entry fee and homemade pie entitle you to 5 free tasting tickets (you can share them) and a big blue ribbon.

Entry fees: One pie, $10; two pies, $5 (if you register by 9/10--after that, the fees go up)

Bakers report at 10:30 for check-in and free coffee. We recommend bringing pies that do not need refrigeration (no cream, ice cream, or custard pies, since they're likely to melt and/or spoil sitting out in the sun for several hours).

We are encouraging savory pies as a good counterpoint to all of the dessert pies. We are also encouraging a strong turnout from our youngest bakers.

To get an application for the 2005 pie social stop by Bubby's in dumbo or tribeca, or go to bubby's website or the brooklyn bridge park conservancy's website.
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Of course, as the Pie Queen, I will be there, tiara, big blue ribbon and gingham apron at the ready (and, of course, last year's nifty "Pie Socialists" red T-shirt...) Learning from last year, I'm going to make something bright and shiny with visible (and summery) fruit, like an open-faced tart. (Faced with much competition, people do not want a beige dessert. I had to hustle hard to sell off my apple pie last year. Here in NYC, people want glamour, baby. If you could eat glitter, it would sell.) And then perhaps something NOT sweet, since people get a little sugar crazy and start licking their own arms for salt about an hour into the deal. Suggestions? Bring the kids and hope to see you there! Bake pies!

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And while we're talking about baking, a big shout-out to Chestnut on Smith St again, this time for their so-fab chocolate-chunk scones and plump popovers. We were the first ones in the door at 11am for Sunday brunch, so we won the pastry prize--a free plate of Matt's hot-from-the-oven goodies, including those scones, those popovers, and two bite-sized little biscuits. And the heirloom-tomato frittata was big as a plate and enough for brunch and lunch the next day. They'll be closed for a couple of weeks of vacation starting soon, so be sure to call before you go, or just wait til Sept.

Best things, Sunday night:
Getting caught--twice!--in the warm rain without an umbrella, listening to the thunder and taking cover under the awnings of all the Italian restaurants on Bleeker Street after a 6pm showing of Junebug at the Angelika, swiping a chocolate-chip cookie from the thank-you plate by the door of Home restaurant on Cornelia St, waiting for a bubbling-hot slice from Joe's Pizza, and getting caught in a torrential downpour yet again, just outside my house.

Figs are sexy

...and here's the photo to prove it. Click on the pic to get the really juicy up-close-and-personal view...Thanks to James Ormsby, chef at Plumpjack Cafe in SF, for this lickworthy picture.

Where You Want to Be

Can't see the meteor shower but the tomatoes look good

Last night....

Tiny spatters of rain on my shoulders...not enough to cool off, but better than air-conditioner drips from above...

Sitting at the bar at Chestnut, drinking French rose and eating their fab "BLT" tomato salad--a steak-sized slab of lime-colored evergreen tomato, surrounded by cubes of heirloom tomatoes and smoky-chewy slab bacon, all drizzled with buttermilk dressing and a tumble of lettuces.

The Philomel Project, a stunning opener to downtown's Fringe Festival. Miss it at your peril.

Holding up the broken strap of my dress all the way home, to avoid having a Tara Reid moment on the midnight F train.

And back home, lying naked in front of both fans with a glass of ice water on my stomach...