Bread and Butter Press

2011-03-24T12:09:00.006-04:00

COME CHECK IT OUT

Issue No. 16 WHAT UP

2010-11-10T16:12:00.004-05:00

Check out the whole video on the Diner Journal website!
Issue 16 out tomorrow!

This time 2 yrs ago

2010-09-29T00:26:00.007-04:00

Hamburger roll-up at 2:18

2010-09-09T23:48:00.004-04:00

NEW ISSUE SUPER DOPE

2010-04-22T17:20:00.000-04:00

Near bid

2009-08-11T23:55:00.002-04:00

Now I have the word "hamburger" stuck in my head.

1988 McDonald's trio, large

A big hamburger

2009-08-10T22:29:00.001-04:00

Parsley

2009-03-06T20:41:00.002-05:00

Okay, after the weird messianism of the last post I sense I should deliver something more than the promise of summer. Snow still on the ground, I'm feeling a little less bold about calling the seasons. Still, things are changing. I can feel it. Home alone, the campus emptying itself out for spring break, and sheets of ice clattering off the roof in-between the tactile silences of our old house. Tonight the wood floors seem warm, and the ceilings, lower. Am I growing taller?

I've decided to chop all the parsley. Usually I use it once or twice, and then, a week later, I find it in the back of the fridge, dying in its own wet womb of a plastic bag. This time, no. If I chop all the parsley, I can pat it dry in a paper towel and then put it away to use all week. I'm pleased. Then I look down. The stems are there, naked on the counter. So I make a broth of them. Then I rattle through the fridge and find five old, softened carrots and half a yellow onion. In they go. Then a bigger pot. I'm feeling heady from the way this is going. The smell has filled the kitchen. I dream of asparagus soup.

I think I used to hate parsley. The only time I was really aware that I was eating it was at the Passover seder, a springtime holiday, when you dip it salt water to recall the tears of the slaves as they left Egypt, eating the simplest of foods. This moment in the seder prompts the youngest at the table to ask the traditional question: "Why is this night different from all other nights?" Here we are again. Why is this night different? I can't say. It's still cold. I'm still here. This thesis is still not writing itself. But here is vegetable stock-- the beginning of something. The base, the start. I'll stay up with it until about two. Then it will go into the fridge, and I, to bed.

It may be snowing

2009-03-01T23:52:00.004-05:00

but remember this (I say to myself) ! Someday tomatoes from the farmer's market will look and taste again as this one did. And we will wear sun dresses. All of us. It's coming.

Hold on, priorities

2009-01-20T09:03:00.004-05:00

Some people have them so right. Congratulations, America. This letter, care of The New York Times, here.

New England

2009-01-17T17:27:00.020-05:00

My grandma is giving me her Gourmet collection in two year increments; I'm currently jamming on 1994-95. The most curious thing about these issues is the art department stuff. The photographs have such a different quality. I guess they weren't digital? And what's really conspicuous is actually the lack of photography. There are so many articles accompanied only by illustrations -- spare line drawings by Merle Nacht that are often just in black and white. I really like them, even though they confuse me because I feel like I'm reading The New Yorker. A totally different time in food journalism. Can I be nostalgic for something I never really had?

This recipe for chowder looked interesting. When I was little my mom used to take me to Swanson's Fish when she did her errands there, and I would go nuts over the clam chowder samples and crackers. The chowder was all the color of cream (and maybe all cream), potatoes and clams floating undiscovered until you could taste them and feel their startlingly different textures. I remember ordering chowder once only to receive the Manhattan variety. What an utter disappointment. Where was the mystery there?

This recipe is actually what I think chowder should taste like. The addition of smoked fish is pretty great, too. The recipe calls for a full pound of it and only 3 slices of bacon, but I had half that amount of the trout, so I added more bacon. Also, for more 90s grooves, please please rent or take out from the library the Two Fat Ladies collection and watch season two, episode five. They go to a small Scottish town's smoke house to get kippers and smoked haddock, and then they cook breakfast for a lot of handsome men who work at a small brewery. And they're so obviously tickled by the whole thing.

Since we're living in the 21st century, nothing's real until it's been documented, and I can't draw, here's Swanson's. The picture is from their website.

Smoked Fish Chowder

adapted from Gourmet // March 1994

8 slices bacon, chopped

2 medium onions, chopped

1 1/2 pounds russet potatoes

2 celery ribs, chopped

1 1/2 cups chicken broth

1 1/2 cups water

10 oz frozen corn

10 oz frozen lima beans

2 teaspoons cornstarch

1 1/2 cups half-and-half

1 to 2 teaspoons Worcestershire sauce

1/2 pound smoked trout

2 tablespoons minced fresh parsley

1 tablespoon minced fresh dill

In a heavy kettle, cook bacon over moderate heat until crisp. Add onions, just soften. Peel potatoes and cut into 3/4 inch cubes. Add the potatoes, celery broth, and water and simmer, covered, for 10 minutes. Add lima beans and corn and simmer for five.

In a small bowl dissolve cornstarch and half-and-half, then stir into soup with Worcestershire. Bring soup to boil, stirring, and add fish. Stir in parsley and dill. (Reserve some for serving if you're feeling it.) So easy. Makes about 12 cups.

A taste of my own medicine

2009-01-11T11:00:00.010-05:00

This is one I started in September but never posted. One last gust from the winds of 2008.

Missing the people at Diner Journal, thinking of turning to drinking, I tried my hand at making bitters. I had written a post for the blog there on their house-made bitters, and it was one of the best things about my summer. Josh and Peter sharing so generously what they knew, their obvious relish in the experiments behind the counter. The process involved infusing distilled spirits with something - bark, herbs, seeds, fruits - and then waiting while the ingredients took their own time and course. I loved the idea of this. Learning about bitters, like the mixtures themselves, left me hot under the tongue.

Their mystery seemed destined from their origins. Today bitters are considered the backbone of the cocktail, but they were long used as "patent" medicines, which verged on the miraculous. The issue of Harper's Weekly from June 6, 1863 hailed Hostetter's Celebrated Stomach Bitters as, "at once the best of correctives, the gentlest and most genial of aperients, an infallible regulator and a powerful restorative." Morally upright, no doubt, but kind of boring. Yet, elsewhere, in The New York Times just two months before, an ad had claimed that the very same brew, "fortifie[d] the system against miasmas and the evil effects of unwholesome water." Well good. There was something I could use.

Anyway, the little amber bottles that Josh sold in the store really did look like they had fallen off the wagon of some traveling doctor in the 19th century. Or else they were straight out The Phantom Tollbooth, the hubbub tonic of "Kakophonous A. Dischord, DOCTOR OF DISSONANCE." Do you remember the amazing drawing on that page? And Milo and company ask, what does the A. stand for? And the doctor replies, "AS LOUD AS POSSIBLE." Yes, yes, and yes. Somewhere in-between the hard facts of science and the mirages of con-men, there was a medicine of crossed lines and clattering voids. I, too, was "suffering from a severe lack of noise," I thought. Bitters would cure me. I wanted to make my own.

I did. I have a hard time explaining what they taste like. Unlike the fine bitters I sampled this summer, the batch I've made falls sort of flat on the palate. I can't tell if it needs something as a base in the mix, or is the base for something else I haven't thought of yet. I think it could have infused for longer. Honestly, I'm totally perplexed by what I've made. It is, however, very smooth, nicely spicy and just a little sweet. I don't think it would do very much in a cocktail where one would have used, say, Angostura. But whatever, I like a little of it with ginger ale, or club soda. This is how I did it.

I bought very strong vodka from the Polish liquor store around the corner from where I lived in Greenpoint this summer. (I have not seen vodka like that in Middletown, but I'm looking.) I peeled and cut up the horseradish root that I had used to make ketchup, and which had spent an entire summer in the back of the fridge looking like a hairy archaeology project gone wrong, like it might send shoots out at any moment, knocking away innocent radishes and the Ronnybrook milk bottle, sucking up life so it could burst through the refrigerator and eat the entire apartment building. Anyway, then I did the same with fresh ginger - rough chop. I added some peppercorns of different colors that I got at Marlow & Sons, lemon peel, fennel seeds, one star anise and some other things I can't remember. Into a large mason jar they all went, with the vodka, to rest.

I was away from the tincture for almost a month. Ideally, over the course of this time, you watch it, pass it while making this or that in the kitchen and look longingly at its quiet progress -- periodically, of course, allowing yourself to shake it or, even more rarely, to open the crusting lid and dip a fingertip into its suspect operation, only then to shake your head, no, not yet, and screw the top back on. When it is time, whenever that is, you strain and finish with a little caramelized sugar. Then I found my own glass dropper bottles, just for fun. And for a minute there, I felt it: I was totally a medicine woman. A righteous specialist in noise, an enemy of illnesses that don't exist.

New year

2009-01-10T22:12:00.002-05:00

The new Diner Journal is out. Chef makes ribollita, surveys the philosophy of recipes, teaches you more about the kitchen than you thought possible and pays homage to Elizabeth David -- all in one piece. I think you should order one.

Old friends

2008-12-19T15:39:00.004-05:00

It's messy, so messy

2008-10-09T14:06:00.029-04:00

Baking in the afternoon. Today is Yom Kippur, and I'm with a chocolate cake, wet wrists, licking from the bowl. Atonement, it's a nice idea.

It was an accident!

2008-10-08T23:41:00.010-04:00

Did you know leaves can be corks? If you click on the picture, you'll see.

Human biology 103

2008-09-24T18:14:00.009-04:00

Hello, again!

2008-08-29T00:07:00.007-04:00

I'm back. After a summer writing and working for Diner Journal, I'm back. Below is the last of the blog entries I wrote. This is what I've been up to. It's been just great.

photo by Anna Dunn

Butch 8.21.08

So, uh, since I've spent three posts and an entire summer doomsdaying my way through the history of meat eating – and, since, the whole point of that tirade was to tell you something else, something wonderful, and not just make you depressed about your love of pork belly, I figured, well, I should probably tell you about that something else:

Tom Mylan is the in-house butcher for these restaurants.

You may already know this. Or you may not know this. But undoubtedly, if you've tasted this meat, you will want to know more about this.

I go back into the walk-in. Tom is slicing through a dark, shiny orb that turns out to be beef liver. It's Wednesday, so he's working through the two pigs and steer that arrived from Fleischer's yesterday. They arrived hanging weight meat, huge hulks of muscle and tissue and bone and skin. By now he's gotten the pigs into primal thirds: shoulder, loin, belly, sirloin and ham. He gestures to an invisible stack of pigs on the block, saying, "All this is done."

The radio is on and it's hot. Mark's coming to take meat to Bonita and we have to get those bags of it into a cooler for him. I jump in and once we've loaded the meat in half way, Tom warns, "Watch out, they're a little bloody on the outside."

Then we're back to talking beef. Tom tells me about smoking, brining, braising. I ask about the burgers. He grinds the beef twice so it sticks together, but it's still coarser than most ground beef because the holes on the grind plate are larger. That's what gives the burgers their meaty quality – there's more whole muscle in them.

Tom talks with such ease about cutting up meat that it's hard to believe he hasn't been doing it forever. Just a few years ago, Tom was in charge of the grocery at Marlow and editing the journal with Anna when he walked passed Cheffie and Andrew outside of Diner one day. They told him they were considering getting an in-house butcher so they could get hanging weight meat from Fleischer's. And he said something like, "That sounds really, really cool." And they said, "Wanna do it?"

He moved in with Josh and Jessica of Fleischer's, lived on their futon with their mastiff Booboo and a giant tortoise. Every morning it was "beef leg, beef leg, beef leg." He began to collect books on the subject like a Navy meat manual from 1945 and watched educational clips on You Tube.

And it has paid off. According to Tom, getting hanging weight (100-180 pound sections) meat is the only way for a restaurant to be able to afford getting grass-fed, local, properly raised meat. There's a lot of flexibility. Tom gets together with Juventino, Sean and Dave, and they can cut any way they want, make stylistic choices that wouldn't be possible if their meat came out of Cryovac. And it's a lot more exciting to cook here. Curing lardo, rendering it, whipping it. Dealing with odds and ends. Says Tom, "Limitations, not infinite possibilities, are what make great, classic cuisine." Agreed.

Sauced (BBQ)

2008-06-27T11:24:00.000-04:00

Bananas do the darndest things

2008-06-23T11:03:00.007-04:00

I'm making banana bread with some ripe bananas that I had put in the freezer last week. Look how they defrost! So weird and beautiful. So weird!

It was too hot for tarts

2008-06-16T21:25:00.004-04:00

And the oven here is more than fickle. But ice cream - ice cream, I thought - that would go so nicely with a rhubarb compote.

And it did.

Rhubarb, Strawberry and Fennel Compote
this is sort of a recipe and sort of a fend-for-yourself-it's-worth-it

rhubarb, chopped
strawberries, chopped
fennel, chopped
sugar, to taste
dash of vanilla extract
dash of bourbon
butter

Heat about 1 tablespoon of butter in a saucepan over medium heat. When it's good and melted add everything. Let it all sit for for a minute or two, then stir occasionally while it becomes compote over the course of about 15 minutes or so. There should still be some soft bits of fruit.

Eternally yours,

2008-06-11T10:50:00.010-04:00

These are busy times for Bread and Butter. Only quiet tables and stoop picnics cut the city heat. But I've got a little something for you. Diner Journal. Check it out. I'll be writing for their website about the meat program at their awesome restaurants. And the quarterly journal is really a treat for the intellect and the eyes. I know you'll like it. Interviews, features on oysters, a saucy centerfold, recipes - it's enough to make a over-heated, sluggish city girl jump for joy.

It even comes in handy on date night. Last weekend, Andrew and I made a small move-in feast. Hand-rolled cous cous with chile powder, raisins, and fried onions. A salad of tomato, basil and fennel. And an indoors adaption of Diner Journal's Grilled Squid with Eggplant, a toothsome mix, especially when generously accompanied by garlic and rosemary. Get your copy of the newly arrived summer issue, and you too can eat like Diner.

If you weren't convinced

2008-06-02T10:49:00.001-04:00

that Wesleyan's own MGMT is everywhere, they are. Hellooo, stewed rhubarb. Hello, Brooklyn.

Classic and cheap: hunks of fresh sourdough with butter, some sliced radish (1 dollar for a bunch) and chives, because - as the man at the market told us - the hotter it is outside, the hotter the radish, and these babies were still oh so mild.

Can't say I miss Teresa Heinz

2008-05-26T11:28:00.018-04:00

I've been thinking about this ketchup recipe since December. Without warning and with varied intensity, it would flicker across my field of vision. Sometimes I was on my imaginary island, smoking a cigar, sipping cognac, and spreading it over grilled steak. Sometimes, I was in the middle of America, spinning through a county fair, high off my recent win for best ketchup. Sometimes, I was alone, standing over a stove, dipping caramelized onions into it and eating them with my hands. It was my ketchup fantasy carousel of those long, cold, winter months. It was mine.

I couldn't wait until the tomatoes were riper. It's memorial day weekend, and at least metaphorically, that's summer. And I have to say, making this ketchup was no less filled with fantasy than fantasizing about making it. The moment I lifted the cover off the pot, five minutes into the process, I was once again in The Holiday Snack Bar in Beach Haven, Long Beach Island - my little corner of Jersey. My mom's family had a beach house there since 1958, ten years after the Snack Bar opened its doors. For a long time, the sleepy town's summer renaissance meant little more than sand in the Belopolsky girls' bathing suits, kid productions of South Pacific, Jersey corn, blueberries, and the occasional breakup of the neighborhood mobster cartel. Hey, it was Jersey.

A lot had changed when I got to know my mother's Beach Haven, but the Holiday Snack Bar remained. The horseshoe bar. The finished, shellacked puzzles of Coca-cola pastorals hung on the walls. Unbelievably vertical lemon meringue pie in the center of the bar. Incredible burgers. And, at intervals along the wrapped, thick wood counter, little brown bowls of chopped fresh onions and their relish waiting for you along with, what else, ketchup. It was a place for a believers - of what, I don't know. But the smell of this ketchup was so much like the inside of that bar, I just may believe in time travel.

Spicy Tomato & Horseradish Ketchup
from The Cook's Book, makes about 3 cups

4.5 lb ripe plum tomatoes, cut into large pieces
1 tbsp tomato paste
1 cup finely chopped onion
2 cups peeled, cored and chopped tart apples
6 whole cloves
1 tsp mustard seeds
1 cinnamon stick, broken in pieces
1/2 tsp celery seeds
1 cup distilled white vinegar
3 tbsp coarse sea salt
1 cup packed light brown sugar
3 in piece of fresh horseradish root, peeled and grated

Put the tomatoes, tomato paste, onion, and apple in a nonreactive pot with the cloves, mustard seeds, cinnamon stick, and salt. Slowly bring to a boil, then reduce the heat to a simmer.

Simmer, stirring occasionally, until the tomatoes are soft and pulpy and the mixture has reduced by one third, about 1 and 1/2 hours. Using the back of a ladle, press the mixture through a fine sieve and into a clean pan.

Add the remaining vinegar, the sugar, and horseradish. Cook over low heat until the sugar dissolves, then simmer until the ketchup is thick (it's going to be a little watery compared to what you're used to, folks), 40 minutes or so. Pour it into a sterilized mason jar and seal, then let cool before using. It can keep for up to six months in a cool, dry place. Once you open it, you have to refrigerate it. That's just the way it goes.

(Bomb)olone

2008-05-18T13:01:00.011-04:00

So this one Thanksgiving it was our family's job to make the pies, and my small duty was to get the cloves. I went to the food store, I grabbed the first thing I saw with the word "cloves" on it, and I hurried home thinking my work was done.

Well, sort of. I had bought whole cloves, instead of ground. Whole cloves may be dried flower buds, but their name comes from the Latin word clavus, for nail. It’s indicative. They’re small, rock-hard, spiky little creatures that are good for piercing the skins of oranges and bringing spicy back to your mulled cider. But you really can't make our pumpkin pie until you've ground the suckers.

Thwarted from returning to the store by horizontal rain, it became clear that we would have to make do. We had no mortar and pestle. We had no coffee grinder. I've never forgotten the fury of grinding a handful of cloves one at a time in an American Girl doll mortar and pestle I had unearthed from the back of my closet. That day I labored with "colonial" kitchen gear made for a 24-inch doll named Felicity. Pumpkin pie kind of lost its magic.

Now, this weekend I wanted so badly to make bombolone, the Italian donut I learned at culinary school. (The day we failed at panettone we were consoled by fluffy donuts piped with jam and pastry cream. Not bad.) The thing is, all my recipes from culinary school are in grams, and I don't have a scale. Can you see where I’m going with this?

My dad has a grain scale for measuring arrowheads (oh yeah). It’s, uh, hand held and decidedly not digital. I clipped a plastic bag to it and measured and converted… oh, it’s not even worth explaining the tedious details. It was the clove incident of 2002 all over again. Anyway, it came out all wrong, because after I let the batter proof and cut it into little discs, it fried without poofing up into a flaky doughnut. More like a dough-puck, I’d say.

Still, they tasted fried and with a dusting of confectioner's sugar, a little jam and pastry cream -- well, who wouldn't be happy with even a donut-like thing on Sunday morning? What I've got of the recipe is pretty much what you can see in the photograph. Fry the disks in a mild vegetable oil for just a short while until they rise to the surface, puff up (hopefully) and turn a nice golden color. Better luck than I, my scale-toting friends.

Tack attack, brandish your angel keychains

2008-05-17T18:14:00.011-04:00

It's sentimental. It's Sandra Lee. It's like a good cry to Boyz II Men. Generally, I think food should look like what it is and avoid gimmick. But, lord, I've discovered that prosciutto and pea shoots kind of look like a rose if you wrap them together right. And I like it. Over to the dark side go I.

I'm writing my finals,

2008-05-12T13:19:00.007-04:00

and I already miss Mamoun's.

Running from lawnmowers

2008-05-06T07:49:00.020-04:00

Everything green makes me sneeze, itch and feel perturbed. Oak pollen covers the screens. A lawnmower circles our little house like it's riding out the dawn of a new, sheared age, careening and sending clouds of allergens into the air. I'm allergic to the earth.

In an effort to remember that I like living with other living things, I've been searching for redeeming green. For example, Silvie brought home limes from the co-op in profusion, and I like putting brown sugar on them and just suckling. What's more green than limes? And mâche, oh mâche, pictured above, which I just learned is also called lamb’s lettuce, is incredible. And green tea – I've been drinking Arogya's Organic Dragon’s Well tea made from Chinese Long Jing leaves. I even took a cup of it and sat outside! In the grass!

So, generally, I think green tea is an overplayed and overrated ingredient right now (case in point: the soured green tea frozen yogurt I tasted in an sterile New York shop yesterday), but I had some old (really old) matcha in the pantry and saw a recipe from Marc at No Recipes for matcha green tea frosting, and I wanted to adapt it.

But then, of course, frosting needed something to frost, so I found an old recipe from Gourmet magazine, the first recipe I ever really made by myself – chocolate chip cookies. This time I left out the chocolate chip cookies and about ½ of the butter, from which the simplest cookie resulted. Then Anna, Andrew and I proceeded to take some artistic liberties with the matcha frosting.

Never before have such grotesque scenes alighted the faces of cookies. The greenish slop was so unappetizing that Anna pushed two cookies together so as not to see the celadon drops – and a sandwich was born. They actually didn't look that bad. After a fine dusting of confectioner’s sugar and powdered matcha tea, they even looked purposefully, uh, cute.

So we ate them and watched Planet Earth, and that made me feel both better and worse about being allergic to our planet. Caves are so cool. Sugar solves most everything.

Simple Butter-Sugar Cookies

1/t tsp baking soda
¾ teaspoon salt
1 cup all-p flour
2/3 cup white sugar
½ stick butter
1 large egg
1/2 tsp vanilla
½ tsp hazelnut extract (it’s your call on this)

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Mix the wet ingredients, then add the dry ones. I don’t remember how long I cooked them – maybe 10 minutes.

Matcha Green tea frosting
Stir together:

1 tsp. matcha
1 tbsp. water
1 tbsp. cream
1/3 cup confectioner’s sugar

It's critical that you let the cookies cool before adding the frosting otherwise it will get runny and even more ghastly unappetizing.

Sweet reading

2008-04-29T20:00:00.005-04:00

Wesleyan's library offers a small section on food tucked away on the second floor of the science center. Not even the perspecuity of science could help you find your way there. But I've hansel and greteled my route and return during study breaks when I need a fix. Recently, I found this small book there -- it's entirely in French, and I can't read a word of it. But I love it already. La cuisine de marguerite. Maybe I'll try to make some transliterative concoctions by guessing what the short recipes detail.

Bittersweet

2008-04-26T11:07:00.021-04:00

The thing about cake is, it's bittersweet. This is the centripetal cake of birthdays, of homecomings and goings. Layered. Frosted. Cut and laid on its side. It’s full of meaning, but saccharine sweet. That is to say, something is always lost in the utter joy of cake, its insufferable celebration swallows disparity.

This blog is a little like cake. Who's to say that this is truth? It's certainly not all of the truth. Life hits the internet and is sweet, whole and designed.

My family’s joke is that my aunt gets cake from a bakery in Boston’s Chinatown where they don’t speak very much English, so no matter what frosting-inscribed message you ask for, you always get, simply, “Happy.” Imagine, a cake that asks so little of the moment and yet, so much – just happy.

Never have I had a cake that quite delivered on that word, happy. It makes me wonder. What is it that we want to give others when we make food for them? Is it happiness? Or nourishment? Or pleasure? Moreover, what are we asking for when we make and give food? Food in return? Control? Praise? Recognition of enacted womanhood?

Can I ever just bake a cake? Even if I’m the only one who eats it, is it already for someone else? When I chronicle some of the food I make and eat, is it like giving it to you? Are we responsible to each other?

Do I owe an explanation when I choose to write in the denigrated gendered genre of confessional food writing? Do you owe me the understanding that I am something more than woman - baker, feeder, caretaker of man?

It's with these questions that I give you cake.

Chocolate Layer Cake with Raspberries
for slow meditation on the nature of gender

The génoise cake is adapted from Dorie Greenspan's Baking With Julia.

3 tablespoons hot clarified unsalted butter
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/3 cup plus 1 tablespoon all-purpose flour
1/3 cup plus 1 tablespoon unsweetened cocoa powder
4 large eggs
2/3 cup sugar

Place a rack in the lower third of the oven and preheat to 350 degrees. Fit the bottom of two 4-inch cake pans with parchment paper and set aside. Pour the hot clarified butter into a bowl with the vanilla and also set that aside. Also, sift the flour and cocoa powder when you measure them, and then sift them together a few times, too.

In the bowl of a heavy duty mixer, whisk the eggs and sugar together. (You could also do this all by hand in a heatproof bowl.) Set the bowl over another bowl of simmering water on the stove. Whisk constantly until the eggs are warm to the touch. Remove the bowl from the heat and, working with the mixer's whisk attachment, beat the eggs on high speed until they're cool, have tripled in volume, and hold a ribbon when you lift the whisk.

Sift one third of the dry ingredients over the eggs and gently fold it in with a rubber spatula. Then add the rest of the dry ingredients and do the same. Spoon one cup of this into the hot butter and vanilla mixture. Stir this around, then add it back to the bowl of batter. Gently fold this all together.

Pour the batter into the two prepared cake tins and bake them for about 20 minutes. While they cool, whip 2 parts heavy cream and 1 part sugar together to make whipped cream. Then, make this chocolate ganache frosting recipe from Smitten Kitchen.

½ pound semisweet chocolate chips
½ cup heavy cream
1 tablespoon sugar 
1 tablespoon light corn syrup 
1/4 stick unsalted butter

In a small saucepan bring cream, sugar, and corn syrup to a boil over low heat, whisking until sugar is dissolved. Remove the pan from the heat and add the chocolate, whisking until melted. Cut the butter into pieces and add it to the frosting, whisking until smooth. Transfer frosting to a bowl resting in an ice water bath and cool, stirring occasionally, until spreadable.

Take the cake layers out of their tins when they have completely cooled. Put one cake on a plate. Spread chestnut puree (you can get this at It's Only Natural - so good on toast) over the top, then follow with the whipped cream. Place the second cake on top. Now spread the ganache frosting over the top and sides of the cake with a spatula. Arrange raspberries around the top, and dust with confectioners' sugar.

Silvie teaches us how to make sushi

2008-04-24T23:42:00.003-04:00

It's summer in my backyard

2008-04-23T15:51:00.007-04:00

Smoothies make me think of buying saccharine drinks from the town mall's Orange Julius when I was too young to buy anything more than cheap lip gloss with sparkles and frosted eyeshadows. I suppose I thought the Orange Julius was an accessory itself. The drinks had their faddish moment, and we sipped them slowly, so we could be sure to be seen walking with them. I drank them because my friends drank them, or rather, we heard that people were drinking them.

A smoothie as we know it is a relatively new thing, but it's always been cool. The Oxford English Dictionary dates the word's most recent use to 1977. Before that the word was used to denote someone suave, cultured and debonair. As the Princeton Weekly Review of May 24, 1929 says, "Smoothie..indicates savoir faire, a certain je ne sais quoi... Clothes do much to make the smoothie."

How intuitive was I at thirteen! And the smoothie that I made today is all that - a vivacious combination of frozen cherries, blueberries and raspberries. Now, I like my smoothies like my milkshakes - really thick, so thick I always consider using a spoon to eat it and then ultimately decide it's less fun that way. That being said, you could add some orange juice (à la my eighth-grade self) and that would make it a perfect slurping consistency. You could also add flax meal if you're feeling saucy.

Smoothie

1/2 cup frozen berries
1 ripe banana
1/2 cup plain yogurt
smashed ice

Smash your desired amount of ice (maybe 3, 4 ice cubes) in the food processor. Then add the rest of the ingredients and blend until the mixture is still a little bit chunky.

Another lunch for one

2008-04-18T17:08:00.007-04:00

Sundried tomato pesto and sprouts on homemade honey wheat bread (a take on the loaf I just wrote about). The pesto recipe is from a great, recent New York Times article by Eric Asimov on wine bars in the city.

Sundried Tomato and Walnut Pesto
adapted from Jody Williams

1 cup shelled walnuts
1/4 cup grated Parmesan
1 garlic clove, peeled and crushed
3 sprigs of thyme
a pinch of salt
splash of sherry vinegar
1/3 cup extra virgin olive oil
2 tablespoons minced sundried tomatoes

It's a simple as blending this in a food processor to your desired consistency, and I do mean desired. It's delicious.

The first time I cooked an artichoke,

2008-04-16T19:34:00.002-04:00

I liked it.

On bread and wonder

2008-04-16T17:52:00.006-04:00

Have you been wondering? This blog's title isn't just a name, I actually do make bread. And this loaf - well, this one has butter in it. Two things have happened recently: I've decided to try Dorie Greenspan's book, Baking with Julia, one recipe at a time. And I’ve stolen Jesse’s Kitchen Aid Stand Mixer! Which means it’s time to experiment. I thought I would start as simply as I could – with white bread.

Around the time I found this recipe, a short trip to the Oxford English Dictionary online turned up this gem for the meaning of “bread and butter,” our titular phrase:

4. a. attrib.; spec. Of or pertaining to the age when bread-and-butter is extensively consumed; boyish, girlish; esp. (cf. quot. 1817 in 1) school-girlish.

It’s perfect. This recipe is for exactly the kind of bread I imagine packing up in a little kid’s lunch, Cheddar cheese and ham in-between its easy crumb. Or, rather, this is precisely the kind of bread I wished my sandwiches were on when I was a little schoolgirl myself (aside from my penchant for Portuguese rolls, whose flour coating would so satisfyingly scatter over you when you bit into them).

Now, I learned to make French bread from my Dad. Then I got a little schooling in yeasts and seeds and patience from a boy, Corey, I went hiking with the summer I turned fifteen. And finally, I met Claudia. She taught a class on bread-making that I took last summer in Florence. Claudia is someone I think of often. She was… like the perfect loaf of bread, hard and crusty on the outside (I mean, she hit people) and yet all soft and crumb on the inside. She was caring and sensitive and yet she pulled baked loaves out of the oven with her bare, callused hands. Meet Claudia.

Claudia also made obscene faces at the bread machine in the corner of the room. Her accent was such that every time she told us to use the sheeter to flatten a dough, it sounded like she was commanding us to the “shitter.” Machines just weren’t the point of the class. We were there to use our hands, to feel the dough – “our babies,” she called them. And if you were bad to your baby, well you knew what was coming and you were afraid.

So it was with this in mind that I approached the Kitchen Aid mixer last week. It was metal. It was leaking oil. And it was mine to play with. Real ambivalence took hold. I broke, and made this recipe by hand. It was good – it was great! - but the curiosity was getting to me. So a week later I made the recipe again, this time with the machine. Mary Claire came downstairs at the height of my anxiety. I hovered over the bowl. I couldn’t feel the dough, I couldn’t tell what was happening. Still, somewhere around the seventh minute it started to look like bread dough. And sure enough, when I felt it, it was.

I couldn’t say whether either method produced a better loaf. I liked kneading the first time; I liked how fast it all was the second. Suffice it to say, there are some breads that are meant for hands, and arms, and the whole torso working into the dough. And then there are some for the thrill of electric convenience. I think I'll take both.

White Loaves
from Dorie Greenspan's Baking with Julia

2.5 cups warm water
1 tablespoon active dry yeast
1 tablespoon sugar
7 cups (aprox.) unbleached all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon salt
1/2 stick unsalted butter, at room temperature

Pour 1/2 cup of the water into the bowl of a heavy-duty mixer, sprinkle in the yeast and sugar, and whisk to blend. Allow the mixture the rest until the yeast is creamy, maybe 5 minutes.

Working in the mixer with the dough hook in place, add the remaining 2 cups water and 3.5 cups flour to the yeast. Mixing on low speed, add another 3.5 cups flour. Increase the mixer speed to medium and beat, stopping to scrape down the bowl and hook as needed, until the dough comes together. Add the salt and continue to beat at medium speed for about 10 minutes, until the dough is smooth and elastic. Then add the butter one tablespoon at a time, and beat until incorporated. Don't worry if the dough comes apart when you add butter, beating will bring it back together. If you're doing all this by hand, it's going to take you about 25 minutes. Be patient.

Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured work surface and shape it into a ball. Place it in a buttered bowl that can hold twice the amount of dough. Turn the dough around to cover it in the butter, then cover the bowl with plastic wrap, and let the dough rest at room temperature until it doubles in size, maybe 45 minutes to an hour.

Butter two 8.5 by 4.5 inch loaf pans and set them aside. Turn the risen dough out onto a lightly floured work surface, and deflate it (gently! no punching!).

Divide the dough in half and work with one piece at a time. Using the palms of your hands or a rolling pin, pat the dough into a large rectangle about 9 inches wide and 12 inches long, with the short side facing you. Starting at the top, fold the dough about two thirds of the way down the rectangle and then fold it again, so that the top edge meets the bottom edge. Seal the seam by pinching it. Turn the roll so that the seam is in the center of the roll, facing up, and turn the ends of the roll in just enough so that it will fit in the loaf pan. Pinch the seams to seal, turn the loaf over so that the seals are on the bottom, and plump the loaf in your hands to get a sort of even shape. Drop the loaf into its pan, seam side down, and repeat with the other piece of dough.

For the second rise, cover the loaves with oiled plastic wrap, and allow them to rise in a warm place (about 80 degrees) until they double in size again, growing over the tops of the pans, maybe 45 minutes. While they’re rising, center a rack in the middle of the oven and preheat to 375 degrees.

When the loaves have risen (you should be able to poke the dough, and the impression will remain) bake them for 35 to 45 minutes, or until they’re honey brown. Remove the loaves from their pans as soon as they come out of the oven, and let them cool almost completely before cutting them.

In-between class Ikea fantasy

2008-04-15T12:09:00.006-04:00

Edit: And then there were these handmade spoons from LiveWire Farm.

The camino and the cake

2008-04-13T17:31:00.037-04:00

I've been making this cake for years since I found it on the internet somewhere. In a plethora of questionable online recipes, this one is golden. The cake is small, it's a whole lot of nut, and there's nothing saccharine about it. Yet even with spelt flour it's light because of the beaten egg whites. I also add hazelnut extract and rosewater, but you don't have to. In the summer, I top the cake with fresh whipped cream and berries or small slices of plum. But Friday's version was inspired by Mary Claire's stories of walking the Camino in Spain, where the local people would feed her cheese and honey in-between long stretches of hiking. It was her idea to put the ricotta cheese on the cake, and oh, was she right.

Almond Cake
for Dad's birthday and dinner with new friendsMake sure the rack is in the middle of the oven, preheat to 400 degrees.

Pulse the almonds with 1/3 cup sugar in a food processor. In a large bowl, add the almond sugar mixture, yolks, flour, salt, milk, vanilla, hazelnut extract, and rosewater. Whisk together.

Now, beat the egg whites with a pinch of salt to get soft peaks. Slowly add the other 1/3 cup sugar with the beaters on medium speed until you get stiffer peaks. Then add the egg whites to the batter in thirds, by gently folding in to the center of the bowl.

Pour this into a buttered and dusted 9x2” pan – whatever you have. Bake the cake for 18 to 20 minutes, depending on your oven. Cool it for five minutes, invert it onto rack and wait for it to cool fully. Then spread the top with ricotta cheese and pour drips of honey all over it. If you want, caramelize some walnuts by frying them in a pan with sugar and butter, and put them on top.

To table, college-aged and hungry

2008-04-11T17:52:00.019-04:00

The New York Times has discovered the alluring and the alarming of campus gastronomy, all detailed in an article from Wednesday that announces “Latest College Reading Lists: Menus with Pho and Lobster.” Oh my! As if the ivory tower needed a little more ivory. Left, the glittering chandeliers over a dining hall at Virginia Tech, where students can order a grilled rib-eye plated to perfection. And right, mussels in steaming green curry from Bowdoin, not without spring onion garnish.

The article reads: “as palates grow more sophisticated and admissions become more competitive, many top colleges are paying attention to dining rooms as well as classrooms.” In many ways, this a blog about being a college student and eating. So, first, let’s be clear. The main concern for most coeds is not whether the campus plates match their sophisticated palates, but that the food at school is simply palatable at all.

However much we love to gripe (about trifling issues and matters of real concern about expense and not being able to get off the meal plan), Wesleyan does have its culinary moments - and the Times article recognizes this. In the article, the University promises not haute cuisine, but political positions that motivate food choices:

“Jenna, an 18-year-old vegetarian from St. Louis, Mo., was particularly impressed by Wesleyan University. ‘I heard a lot about organic food co-ops and the little organic store where you can use your dining card, and those things are important to me,’ she said of its offerings.”

Calling Weshop a "little organic store" is a bit of a stretch, but I'll grant that they do sell a fair amount of organic products. And I had dinner with the people who run that co-op the other night, Tressa and Ellie, who also set up the farmers’ market last week. There are a lot of people here who care about eating really delicious food, and still more who are deeply committed to organic and local farming and food-making. I think the campus and the community benefit from the critical thought and work they put into food.

Case in point: even at this time of year, last week's market was lovely. Fabulously speckled Araconda eggs, hydroponic greens, jams from that sweet and informative couple, Dick and Dot Wingate of Studio Farm Products in Voluntown, whose relish I once told you about, lunch prepared by the River Tavern of Chester, and the always impressive Bloomsday cheese from Cato Corner in Colchester. The father-daughter pair of Meriano’s Bake Shoppe of Guilford gave me a fresh cannoli with the ricotta filling piped in right in front of me. Whoa.

And last weekend's Shasha Seminar for Human Concerns, "Food: Power and Identity," led by Government professor John Finn, was wonderful. Over the course of a few days over 100 attendees enjoyed lectures, discussion panels and meals together, asking questions like: What kind of food are we eating, and what kind should we be eating? What should we teach about food? And also, what can food teach us? This blog wants to continue to ask some of those questions. And! As a contributing reporter for the Argus, I got to interview some people in the food world that I've read and respected for years. You can read my article on the seminar from Monday’s Argus here.

Lunch for one

2008-04-07T14:20:00.006-04:00

I'm behind on posts that I've been meaning to put up - bear with me while I get my footing after this glorious past weekend, which I'll write about soon enough! Left-over frozen peas, kalamata olives, thyme and lemon juice make an impromptu tapenade, and pea shoots and tomato accompany a fried egg over lightly on freshly baked bread.

We fed Beach House

2008-04-02T15:37:00.016-04:00

When you’re cooking for musicians, remember: an empty stomach does not a good show make. At the same time, it’s not about a long and elaborate meal. You want the food to be ready just before sound check is done, so they can come in, eat a warm meal, and then go get ready. Eating well is always nice, but - though I may be thinking about this stuff all the time - it’s really not what the night’s about. Simplicity is paramount.

My pell-mell career as an occasional caterer for rock stars big and small has taught me that much. Usually Anna, who's the one making the concerts happen, and I dish up pasta with homemade sauce and a salad. But what to cook for a band like the Baltimore phenomenon of Alex Scally and Victoria Legrand, Beach House?

To me their music is tinged with nostalgia, lush and uncanny, and it made me want to make them an exciting meal. A few nights ago, I was reading an old copy of Gourmet, and it had a glorious spread of Middle Eastern food. The colors were at once saturated and muted, all burnt pistachios and rosewater. It seemed so right for the concert. (This may or may not be because of the now indelible falafel cart outside Eclectic.) I wanted to make an assortment of dishes that they could sample, and pitas to hold everything together so that we could eat with our hands. Spices and sweets together. Textures and temperatures playing off one another. I had 50 dollars to cover dinner for eleven.

I made a list. The day of the show, Mary Claire and I woke up early in the morning to go to the Super A&P, which always makes me think of Updike, in search of the sweet spot between dirt cheap and delicious.

I would start with an eggplant dish. That would be the linchpin of the meal – substantial and hearty. I would cut a few eggplants up and roast them with tomatoes and onions, cumin, turmeric and nutmeg, pouring olive oil over it all generously. Then I wanted something cool, a response. I would make a kind of tzatziki – as easy as some chopped cucumber, minced dill, Greek yogurt and salt. What next? Hummus. Bon Appetit’s latest issue has a recipe for pea tendril hummus. And I thought, “Well, I’m on a budget here, so I’ll just buy some frozen peas and some hummus tahini, and one fancy hummus with lemon zest.” And I threw it all in the food processor and showered it with paprika and scallions. Mary Claire made a savory couscous with raisins and cinnamon. Some marinated olives, lettuce, and pitas held it all together. And for dessert, I halved dates and quartered oranges, drizzled them with balsamic and honey, and baked them, adding some mint leaves on top.

I ate with Beach House and the band they tour with, Papercuts. They were lovely and appreciative and cracked some very dirty jokes. We talked about the aphrodisiac powers of dates, the perils of diner breakfasts, and the long and sassy history of the glove slap. May they always come hungry and make such sweet music.

Recipe index: find what you're looking for

2008-04-01T14:44:00.013-04:00

Spreads and Dips

Sundried Tomato Walnut Pesto
Guacamole

Drinks
Berry Smoothie

Breads
White loaves
Sue's Banana Bread
Dad's French Bread

Breakfast
Walnut, Honey and Flax Granola
Polly's scones

Appetizers
Deviled Eggs

Main Dishes
Diuccio's Spaghetti alla Carbonara

Smoked Fish Chowder

Desserts
Almond Cake with Ricotta and Honey
Ina's Mixed Berry Pavlova
Whole-wheat Poppy Seed Cookies
A-track Truffles
Chocolate Layer Cake with Raspberries
Green Tea and Butter Cookie Sandwiches
Bombolone (Italian donuts)

Bread and Wine

2008-03-30T20:03:00.001-04:00

There are some restaurants you want to return to like a good book. You pretty much know what will happen, how you’ll feel, what you’ll do after (roll around on the sofa wishing there were more/you had stopped sooner), and yet each time there’s also something devilishly charming and nuanced and satisfying that you’ve never found before. This is Pane Vino.

The name may suggest humble fare, and that’s right, it is simple - simple and devastating. When Marty Levine bought the place called Pane Vino 13 years ago, the previous owner had just re-opened the restaurant under its new name in order to up the selling price. And that’s when Levine swooped in. Ever since, he’s been serving food in the tiny, low-ceilinged, warmly-lit dining room on the side of the Post Road. When you arrive, Levine greets you by the door, and you are ushered into the room that apparently holds 45, but feels even smaller. The tables are tight, and sometimes, if you’re sitting in the back, you start to think you can feel someone else’s breath. But it’s like being in Italy; space is precious and bodies are meant to be close to one another. Bread and Wine. The way eating should be.

A few Fridays ago we sidled up to the restaurant at six. It was decidedly early for us, so that we would have the rest of the night to hang out (and, uh, watch City Slickers) before I went back to school the next day. I entered the restaurant with some trepidation - would we be the first ones there? Would the waiters shower us with undue attention only to leave us hanging, begging, please for another napkin, as soon as the first seating arrived?

But, no. We weren’t the first ones there. A couple sat easily reading the newspaper over a bottle of wine. We ordered and the food came at a slow and steady pace. Highlights of the menu included charred grilled calamari with a pesto-like drizzle and sherry vinaigrette, steamed mussels in white wine with Pernod, basil and a little cream, a mesclun salad with chevre-smeared toasts that impressed everyone (the leaves were unusually thick and full of flavor), the classic combination of butternut squash ravioli with a brown butter and sage sauce, lamb in a red wine reduction, sole with pecan crust and chive butter, and pork chops with caramelized apple, pureed fig and calvados demi-glace.

And then the tiramisu. This incarnation used rum as an accent, instead of drowning the dessert to mask the usual staleness of the lady fingers. The freshness of the dessert meant that the textural integrity of all its parts remained, even as it fell under our eager spoons.

Pane Vino Restaurant
1431 Post Road E
Westport, CT 06880
(203) 255-1153

It's better homemade

2008-03-29T18:45:00.018-04:00

Mary Claire's dad came to visit today, and we all ended up spending a lot of time in the kitchen tuning guitar strings, baking cookies, making granola and talking about Anne of Green Gables. The granola was a mix of what I had on hand, because I've been trying to use up what's in the pantry before the year ends and I'm left with a pound of flax seeds that are too old to save through another summer. Flax seeds are usually hard for me. I used to have to drink flax seed oil before bed, and I just don't like the taste, but in this granola they're a dutifully healthy and mellow addition.

I made the granola without measuring anything, but if I had to guess, it went something like this:

Granola, revamp of June 2006 recipe

2 cups of rolled oats
1/8 cup flax seeds
1/8 cup chopped walnuts
long drop of honey
similar drop of canola oil
1/2 teaspoon salt

Mix all this up (with your hands! no spoon!), spread it out on a cookie sheet with parchment paper and bake it for 20 minutes at 350 degrees. You should check on it, though, because I'm not even sure how long I baked it - I was trying to remember the name of Anne's best friend (Diana). The granola won't be crunchy when you take it out of the oven, but just let it rest for 15 minutes, and it'll be perfect. Then you can add dried cranberries, dates, apricots, and anything else you like.

Grapes in the sun

2008-03-26T17:32:00.004-04:00

To market, to market

2008-03-26T10:12:00.014-04:00

The ever-entertaining Mark Bittman of The New York Times has done some photojournalism in Rome, and his slideshow of the Campo de' Fiori market includes the vegetable man we saw years ago on a family trip. Bittman calls him, "A man so enamored of his fancy peeling device, he couldn’t be bothered to talk to customers." But certainly, Bittman must not have been trying hard enough. Did he even approach the man?

Because I remember this vegetable man - he made me "earrings" out of the shavings of carrots and we took many toothy pictures together. He shook our hands, patted our backs, gesticulated to our stomachs, eyes, hands and incessantly muttered in Italian, sometimes to us and mostly to himself. We bought an arsenal of plastic devices in an effort to repay the man for the experience, and we still use the mandolin. Ever after, when I hear the Jesus and Mary Chain song, "Vegetable Man," he comes to mind. "Vegetable man, vegetable man, He's the kind of person, you just gonna see him if you can, Vegetable man." I mean, Bittman must have caught the guy on an off day.

I really love farmer's markets, and there's one coming up next week here at school. I buy relish for my mom from this one couple every year. It has a little bit of red pepper in it - so good. And when Mackensie worked at the Westport Market, I loved getting gooseberries and sampling goat soaps with her. But my heart belongs to daddy - the markets of all markets (I've seen) are in Europe. Here's a collection of photographs I took a few years ago in France. The market was on the side of a highway, D-90 or something like that. It wasn't the most picturesque of the markets I've seen, but every one of its vendors was a character. For all the buzz these days about gloriously fresh produce and the benefits of a locavore conscience, I have to admit, I'm also in it for the people you meet. If you click on the pictures, they get larger so you can see them better.

So not kosher

2008-03-23T19:52:00.027-04:00

You heard it here first. They're selling smoked bacon without nitrites and antibiotics at Weshop. That meant that on my first day back I had bacon and eggs for breakfast and spaghetti carbonara for dinner. Except, I don't have spaghetti, so it had to be farfalle. It tastes just as good, but it's not the same as slurping up long noodles.

The recipe is from a man named Diuccio, one of my chefs at culinary school in Italy. He loves dogs and markets, and I love him.

Diuccio's Spaghetti Alla Carbonara
Serves 4

350 g spaghetti
4 egg yolks
3 tbs. milk
3 tbs. freshly grated parmigiano
100 g bacon, cut in cubes
3 tbs. extra virgin olive oil
salt & pepper

Bring pasta water to a boil. When it boils add salt and cook pasta (10 to 12 minutes). Put the egg yolks in a large bowl that can contain the spaghetti once cooked. Beat the yolks and add cheese, a pinch of salt, pepper, and milk. Mix well and let it rest.

Put the olive oil in a small saucepan. Add the bacon cubes and some pepper. Turn heat to low and let it cook until the meat changes color. The bacon should be ready by the time the pasta is ready to drain. Add the bacon and olive oil (hot) to the egg mixture and mix it well (fast so you don't get scrambled eggs!). Drain the pasta very quickly and mix it well with the egg sauce. Serve immediately.

Dinner at our house

2008-03-21T10:54:00.015-04:00

And on the table? Wild salmon, not farm-raised. I knew when I was getting dinner not to buy the farmed stuff, but when I thought about it, I couldn't remember why. After consulting a short piece in Saveur, a longer one in Eating Well, an article from Cornell University, and my mother, I feel ready to tell you what I've learned.

The debate is this: which is better (or if you're feeling cynical, worse) for your health - farm-raised or wild salmon? Amongst a lot of white water, it seems to me that farm-raised is worse. Salmon, when wild, has good muscle tone and fat so that it can travel back up the river it was born in. I have to admit I like the idea of this, especially when I'm home again. Anyway, because of these migratory patterns, wild salmon are only available at certain times of the year. Now is not one of them, so our Whole Foods salmon from last night had been frozen. Not frozen like when you see bags of frozen scallops in the A&P, way better than that. It was actually delicious. I mean, it wasn't the best of my life - in fact, I think that was a fresh, wild king (Chinook) salmon fillet at The Blue Water Grill in the city when I was 15. Luscious.

So, besides having the potential to be luscious, salmon is a great fish for nutrients. Enter the fish farm. Farming allows us to control the availability (now fresh year-round) of the salmon and what they eat, making sure they digest the kinds of things that result in Omega-3 fatty acids, good for us in all kinds of ways, especially the prevention of arterial plaque build-up. But these farmed fish are apparently also ingesting, in massive quantities, some pretty nasty carcinogens from unclean waters. And the bottom line? Chemical contamination risks outweigh the benefits of more Omega-3 fatty acids.

This is the kind of information that often animated dinner conversation and determined what was on our plates at home when I was younger, and I'm now endowed with a similar curiousity. I mean, what exactly was that broccolini with the snappy packaging?

A little research turned up the fact that Broccolini - a hybrid of the broccoli we know and Chinese kale - has only been available in the U.S. since the late 1990's. It's a little sweeter than the usual broccoli and tender when boiled, as we did last night. Isn't it incredible to think that the leafy green crucifer you're eating, which has an Italian sounding name, was actually created by scientists in Japan and then trademarked as Broccolini when it entered the States?

I handle these moments by making a vinaigrette and tossing it all together with chopped garlic and raisins. Then I made a kind of rogue marinade for the salmon out of Dijon mustard, curry powder, garlic, maple syrup, the juice of a lemon and olive oil, and seared all the flavors in by grilling it.

1 a.m. pipe dream

2008-03-20T01:15:00.002-04:00

Turn, turn, turn

2008-03-17T17:05:00.058-04:00

To everything, there is a season. Spring is coming, and yesterday I went to visit my grandma, who, like clockwork but better, told us that the days were getting longer. While we bemoaned the slow departure of this Connecticut winter, we also talked about how much more enticing it makes the escape into that other world – the one of books. This is a world my grandma is well-acquainted with; she reads more than anyone I know.

For her the reading non-fiction and biographies is only made better with further research. As she says, “a book’s just flat” without all the rich contextual details that surround its text. And, vice versa, sometimes books themselves are great indicators of their contexts. Cookbooks are this way. In fact, two cookbooks I’ve inherited from my grandma's collection are great examples of how reading about the food of an era (trendy ingredients, methods, dishes, who cooks, for what kinds of occasions) can tell you a lot about the era itself.

Case in point: my aunt's oh-so-fifties Better Homes and Gardens Junior Cook Book claims to prepare young girls (let's be honest, brides-to-be) for success in the kitchen. You'll notice the graphic at the top of this post warns Junior cooks to make sure they have a "pretty apron" and "hair looking mighty smooth" before they begin cooking. I mean, the food just tastes better that way. However dated (can you say jello mold?) and sexist this little book may be, it's a heck of a lot of fun to read.

Gee whiz, just look at that boy salivate over Betty's ability to put a hot dog in its bun! But wait, was that double entendre intended?

Perhaps a little more useful is The Modern Family Cook Book, or as we know it in my family, The Meta Given Cookbook. Our 1953 copy was given to me by my dad when I went to college, because his mom gave it to him when he went off to school. According to him, the meatloaf in here is "righteous," and I consider him an expert. But there are also some recipes in this one that just don't quite cut it in the new millennium. Date, cream cheese and iceberg lettuce salad? Uh, yikes. Then there's a whole section on Preserving and Canning, sadly things most people do so very rarely now, except for at country fairs and competitions.

Usually, I read these cookbooks just for the fun of reading them, but because they're just so retro, I decided try the deviled eggs recipe in here. I thought, these will be simple. These will be quick. Oh, was I wrong. The devil really is in these eggs! I had a success of rate of 20%. One in five eggs made it out looking alright. They were good, but way way way too salty. I would cut the salt in half. I also think next time I’ll put a little something green in there, scallions or parsley. But of course, they would probably taste even better if you dressed up like Donna Reed.

House-sitting in the Haven

2008-03-15T19:22:00.041-04:00

This week Andrew and I had the good fortune to house-sit for a few days in New Haven. More even than looking at people's bookshelves, do I love looking in their pantries. And this pantry was so simple --and yet resplendent with ramekins, and glass coffee cups and the like-- that I think I had pantry-envy. Really, it's a beautiful home. (Thank you, D. and S.!) And in-between all the toil and trouble of watering plants and, ah, making sure the couch was in fine condition, we ate pretty well, too. Though we went out for most of it (ogling the goods at a Japanese fish market, eating paninis at Nica's, oddly disappointing crumble-less Lithuanian coffee cake at Claire's Cornercopia, touted slices at Modern Apizza), one home-made meal was particularly good.

Just as the sun was setting yesterday we made, by the grace of Andrew's genius, something kind of like Egg Foo Yung. Brussel sprouts and onion, garlic and shrimp, eggs and honey, oyster sauce and dijon mustard - all collided in this dish. The exotic meal, the dinners out, and perhaps staying in someone else's house, using someone else's pots, reminded me that I definitely have a comfort zone I like to stay within when cooking.

It's just that, well, I like it my way.

Especially after culinary school in Florence, I have an Italian stomach. I like the flavors, the method. The truth is it's been that way forever. At a very young age, I remember being asked where my ancestors were from. Really I have a range of countries to choose from, but my little mind drew a blank and so I thought, "What do I know about countries? Well, I know some food. I know spaghetti! And I like spaghetti, so I must be Italian." And then I answered quite comfortably that my Scottish, Croatian, and Lithuanian roots were, well, Italiano, no doubt.

And I've happily eaten my way through the cucina since then. But, I'm thinking, I'd like to branch out, try making new cuisines. Because, as it turns out, living in someone else's home, in someone else's comfort zone, can get to feel... if not comfortable, then satisfyingly different. I want more umami in my life, and I'd love it if you had some ideas. Any recommendations? Great cookbooks? Emblematic ingredients I can try? I promise to try to resist adding basil and parmesan.

Fresh orange juice

2008-03-13T11:01:00.005-04:00

From my mom-mom's 1950's juicer (that would be the fanged thing on the left). Oh, so sweet and tangy! Would that we were in Jersey.

Ina's Berry Pavlova

2008-03-11T22:43:00.016-04:00

I love raspberries. When Weshop inexplicably stocked them last week I scooped up a half-pint of them. I thought I would try out my new 4-inch tart pans with them, but then I saw this recipe on Barefoot Contessa, Ina Garten's Food Network show, today.

A Pavlova is a meringue with whipped cream and fruit on top. It's named after the famous Russian ballet dancer, Anna Pavlova - probably after she visited the Southern Hemisphere on her world tour in the 1930's. Both New Zealand and Australia take credit for the dessert. Ina Garten says it was inspired by her tutu. All I know is it's deadly. The meringue is baked slowly at a low temperature so that the inside is perfectly light and fluffy - not as hard as most meringues. In fact, it's very light while you're eating it, but then you realize you've just downed a lot of eggs, sugar and heavy cream. Ha! Here it is before I baked it:

And then you add fresh whipped cream and berries you have made a sauce of, and it looks something like this, a deflated blimp:

Especially if you put it back in the oven after it's cooled and you don't have time to cool it again and the whipped cream melts and the berries look lurid and red, but it's all okay because it's just you and your parents and they love nearly everything you make and it's been that way since you smeared paint on paper (or the carpet, the kitchen table, etc.) for the first time. A far cry from these French beauties I once spotted in Provence.

Sigh. If you're interested in making the Pavlova, however, I'll refer you to the Food Network site itself for the real deal. You'll note their picture is also pretty messy. Phew. Click here.

Turkish delight

2008-03-09T22:36:00.035-04:00

A windy day in the city. Two people sit in the window on the corner of Second Avenue and 74th Street, the sunlight reflecting off a neighboring tower and onto the table in front of them. The restaurant is A La Turka, and the table is covered in an easy sprawl of what has become finger food. Hands are dripping the oils of eggplant and olives, weaving in-between tall glasses of ice water and occasionally smearing each other with yogurt dip, at which laughter, as hazy as the afternoon light, wells over onto the plates below.

That's right! This girl finally got off campus and planed, trained, and automobiled down to the city for the weekend with her boy. We ate very well. Breakfast at the Whitney before the biennial. A two buck slice of pizza. A Spanish meal with the family in the Village. And then, then we ducked into an alluring red restaurant, called A La Turka, for lunch on Sunday afternoon. We paid 18 dollars for a mixed appetizer plate and 8 for grilled calamari. Each tiny Turkish coffee was 4 dollars. Thank God we weren't paying in euros, although something tells me this would be cheaper in Turkey than on the Upper East Side. That said, it was totally delicious.

We got the appetizer plate so we could try a little of everything. Humus, char-grilled eggplant salad, spinach tarator, cacik, tarama salatasi, eggplant with tomato sauce - all swept up with a tortilla-like flatbread. The only thing I wasn't crazy about was the tarama salatasi, a spread with red caviar, lemon and olive oil. It was too fishy a flavor for me, and by comparison the grilled calamari were fleshy and buttery, with so delicate a flavor of lemon.

And the Turkish coffee? It reminded me of drinking an espresso in Florence before morning classes at culinary school. I don't drink coffee, so I can't really say more about it than this: I liked it, and I don't drink coffee. I highly recommend the place.

A La Turka
1417 2nd Avenue
New York, NY 10021
(212) 744-2424

Fear not the poppy seed

2008-03-04T22:21:00.039-05:00

Knee-deep in mid-term exam week, I've just written a short paper on Schleiermacher, gone to three meetings in three hours, and now it's time to get heady about logical behaviorism. So, naturally, it's just about the perfect time for baking.

Think of a lemon poppy seed muffin. Now imagine this muffin as a cookie. It has a crust so that it makes a sound if you tap it against the table. But inside your mouth it's soft and crumbly, just so delicate, and the levity of the lemon rind and weight of the poppy seeds are doing something you like very much on your tongue. Let me be clear. These are not knock-out cookies. These are not wham-bam-thank-you-mam cookies. These are cookies for tea. They are cookies for small bites and soft palate contemplation. They are... something out of My Fair Lady. Maybe they slowly win over Audrey Hepburn, maybe she'll always be smiling at high tea with seeds in her teeth. And maybe we like her better that way.

But really, these are worth getting a few poppy seeds in your teeth. Indeed, if you're like me, and about to become nocturnal for a few days, now is a perfect time to look disheveled and seedy (ha!) - and happily so.

So, this is my adapation of Molly Katzen's Whole Wheat Poppy Seed Cookies. I think you'll like them. My only changes to the recipe are that I used about 1/8 cup poppy seeds and not 1/3, and I added 1/2 teaspoon of hazelnut extract (because I'm a nut fiend). Here is the recipe, a page from the delightfully illustrated The New Enchanted Broccoli Forest. I cooked a whole lot from this book last year, and everything I've ever encountered in it tastes just lovely.

And, please do note my dear friend Anna’s website on the right side of this page under Wesleyan Music Scene. It’s a totally useful index of the shows happening on campus and what they’re like, so you can be a satisfied (and frequent!) concert-goer. I suppose if hers is auralwes, then mine is something more like oralwes – but we don’t need to go there.

Happy birthday, mom!

2008-03-02T16:07:00.016-05:00

Yes, without her, I wouldn't be here, but neither, in a sense, would this blog. (Thank you, mom, for believing in both good food and me.)

She's also an incredibly talented photographer; this piece of hers hangs above our kitchen table at home. We were walking through the market in Las Ramblas, Barcelona when this agile hand darted out, lifting eggs, so rapid and so gentle.

O, The meal was divine

2008-03-01T22:51:00.038-05:00

We have just returned from my mom’s birthday dinner, and my fingers still smell of lamb. Earthy – lighter than dirt but deeper than the plants that spring from it. The smell is cavernous and tender, buttery and bloody. It was a wonderful meal, both for the food we ate, and for the company we kept. The courses came and went and we crooned about each one. We just couldn’t help but talk about it!

And it reminded me of something I’ve been thinking about: How exactly to talk about food? And why is it that food writing is so rife with hyperbole? Take, for example, Wednesday’s article “A Stew With a Past and a Future” by Alex Witchel in The New York Times:

"It is hard for me to cook for people I don’t like. I don’t have to do it often, but when I do, I find it a torment because cooking is so personal, so revealing. Even more than sex, I think. You can have a perfectly good one-night stand, be greatly entertained, and still not know the other person when it’s done. But once someone cooks for you, it’s almost impossible not to discover who that person is. Which may be why most of the dinner parties I go to in New York are prepared by a cook or a caterer."

Wait a minute. Really? Sex is less intimate than a meal? We, of course, cannot know about the sex that Witchel is having, so we have to assume that these have been some pretty incredible (and revealing) meals. And, indeed, the article goes on to tell us about a meal with Louis Begley, who, it seems, does deliver earnestly heavy, autobiographical and Polish stories and stews.

But why is it that we so often make these grandiose offerings at the royal court of food writing? Is it that food belongs to the realm of the senses, where emotion may excite and incite to the point where we feverishly channel our inner Italian man, kissing the tips of our fingers and releasing them like firecrackers (all the while cooing, “Bene, bene, bene”)? Perhaps it’s because food defies language, which is not its original mistress. If only our tastebuds could speak! It’s as if we try to translate from flavor to adjective and fail utterly, then turn to hyperbole in a last attempt to do justice to the meal’s essence: The lamb was soft. No, it was rough and real against the backs of one’s teeth! It was earthy. By God, it was as light as if it had been roasted on the lining of clouds!

Now, I’m not saying I’m never a part of this camp. Clearly, I am. In fact, I felt a deep chord of connection was strummed within me when I heard André Aciman speak of just such a food epiphany at Russell House last Monday. He was once on assignment in Barcelona, finding the city detestable and un-inspiring. He couldn’t think of a word to write about the place until he went for tapas. He looked at the small slice of toast, layered with a kind of tomato paste, maybe a vegetable or two on top of that, and an olive on top of that – and he was stunned. “Who could invent this thing with so many layers? I want to talk about the layers ‘cause I’m obsessed with this piece of food,” he admitted to a rapt audience. Yet, he had earlier wondered if just by thinking about it (putting it into words) he was interfering with the plenitude of the Tuscan countryside, brimming with wine of Chianti. There we were again – caught between feeling compelled to speak and unable to do right by our subject.

I think of one the most famous of food moments in print, Proust’s madeleine. To write about food is, indeed, somehow a “remembrance of things past.” Taste is fleeting. No sooner have we suckled the flavors than we have lost them, stubborn though our scented fingers may be and enduring, the memory of them. Remembering Witchel’s lines on the intimacy of breaking bread together, I consulted with the master of food writing, M.F.K Fisher. And she agrees (without all the bombast) that “sharing food with another human being is an intimate act that should not be indulged lightly” [“A is for dining Alone,” in An Alphabet for Gourmets, 1949]. Ultimately, I think food’s very sensuality bespeaks its unspeakable nature and its intimacy – the two are part and parcel of our experience of eating. How hard to capture those moments. How the wonderful the attempt.

Scoozzi Trattoria & Wine Bar
1104 Chapel Street
New Haven, CT 06510
(203) 776-8268

It really is 2008

2008-02-26T00:41:00.001-05:00

But I still miss my Wayne Thiebaud 2007 calendar, hanging - as it had the habit of doing - so quiet and cheeky on our kitchen's corkboard.

Call me an orange-woman

2008-02-25T00:15:00.018-05:00

I'm overwhelmed. Last week I came down with the usual campus-wide cold. I sneezed. I sniffed. I craved oranges like never before. I was miserably sipping my best Earl Grey and eating sections of oranges, sucking the juice from the ladles in-between my fingers, when I realized that the only two things I could taste – the only two things I wanted to taste! – were both of the beloved citrus. For what would the Earl have been without his dear bergamot? (Never mind that Earl probably stole the recipe from some Chinese he met, and slapped his name on it.) It was my nepenthe.

I went nuts. I scanned my memory for the first time I could remember any inkling of such an “orange crush” – please, oh please, pardon the pun. I couldn’t help myself! It was the orange! It does strange things! Even now, I’m under its spell, just remembering the scent of orange blossoms in a courtyard in Tucson. There I was, thirteen, geeky, and alive – lit with the smell of those flowers.

Since then I’ve had an unforgettable lemonade with orange blossom water at Hampton Chutney in Soho. I’ve toasted to girlfriends with Campari and orange blossom water sodas with slices of orange. I’ve searched for neroli, the oil from orange flowers. I've made candied orange peels with Silvie from her copy of "Fannie at Chez Panisse." And here I am, an orange-woman of the 21st Century.

And happily not one of the 18th. Apparently - thank you, OED.com - orange-women/wenches were particularly fiery, troublesome, and perplexing women to men of their times. The name refers to women who sold oranges on the street and sometimes themselves as well. So wrote, in 1711, one Mr. Addison in Spectator No. 65 ¶4, “He calls the Orange Woman, who…is inclined to grow Fat, An Over-grown Jade.” There’s something interesting here – women, their bodies, gluttony and ripe, nearly rotten, fruit. Like Eve reaching for the apple, there's an enduring, tempting and debilitating mythical affinity between the flesh of women and of fruit.

I think also of Louise Glück's poem, "Mock Orange." The phrase that makes its title refers to a shrub that resembles the citrus plant with mimicked cream-colored, fragrant blossoms. To me, the poem is about the illusion of union - between two lovers, between our myths and the lives we live. There is a bitter recognition as the speaker asks, incorporating the reader, “Do you see? / We were made fools of.”

“It is not the moon, I tell you. / It is these flowers / lighting the yard.”

Thank goodness my babies never do me wrong like that. No, thanks to Jeffrey Steingarten, I scratch and sniff (I know, gasp) at the market and they always turn out ripe and juicy, just like I had hoped.

More about the orange! I learned – thank you, Wikipedia – that the seeds of oranges are called pips. Also, the color orange is named after the orange fruit. Before the (Old) English-speaking world knew the orange, they approximated its respective color’s name as geoluhread or sort of yellow-red. How wonderful we’ve moved beyond that, because the table Anna and I painted for our living room two weeks ago would otherwise be a delightful shade of “Chinatown Geoluhread.” A better name for something you come down with after dim sum.

More and more, I've been able to find a favorite related citrus of mine, the Minneola tangelo. Half grapefruit, half tangerine. They're the ones with the incredible nipple, so tangy and sweet! (Note my woman-fruit conflation.) See here, I even held myself back long enough to catch a picture of one. I'd type more, but my fingers are too sticky.

Banana bread

2008-02-24T09:38:00.012-05:00

It snowed all day Friday, and I had three very ripe and willing bananas. It was clear; the time had come to make banana bread. Banana bread is incredible to me – it’s so very much like cake, and yet we call it bread. That means the stuff is as acceptable a breakfast as it is a dessert. Cake in the morning? Ingenious.

This recipe is one of the first I ever tried. It yields a moist inside flecked with bananas and a crisp crust. Just don’t cover it with tin foil while it’s still hot and run off to class for three hours like I did, or the crust will lose its crunch. You can use less butter if you want to, but oh, it is so tasty like this. And Hunter likes it, so you know it must be good.

You’ll see the recipe is in that first picture. If you click on any of the pictures, they get larger. Note that I would add 1/2 teaspoon of salt to this, and 3/4 cup sugar is plenty. One loaf, however, may not be enough.

Happy Birthday, Dear, Sweet Silvie!

2008-02-22T10:49:00.000-05:00

On tea and scones

2008-02-20T14:16:00.013-05:00

I was reading about the rise of small dairy farms that make artisanal treats "like crème fraîche, butter, buttermilk, ice cream, puddings, custards, yogurt, yogurt-based sauces and yogurt drinks" ("The Dairies Are Half-Pint, but the Flavor Isn’t") in The New York Times this morning. My grandpa was a dairy farmer in upstate New York, and so I feel some kind of affinity to them. The article reminded me that I had some leftover cream in the fridge - just Guidas, but hey. Actually, there are some people here at school that organize fresh milk purchases from a local dairy. Maybe I'll try it soon. Anyway, I only had 1/3 cup of cream so I had to cut the recipe down to 1/4 its size. That made two scones, just enough for breakfast.

When I worked at the tea shop two summers ago, Polly gave me this recipe for scones. I would make them in the morning and go to work trying not to eat them all in the car. I loved putting them out with the cakes and tarts, savoring the secret that those plump, little scones - uneven, toppling, creamy scones - were actually my work. I probably ate at least one from every batch I made.

These are not the steroidal, sugar-coated monster scones that abound in megaplex bookstores, but they taste so much better. They're pretty unassuming, and I like it that way. I think of them like that French term for women who aren't classically beautiful, but have an interesting face, une jolie-laide. That's kind of an awful way of putting it. But, there's hope for us all in these scones. Funny looking on the outside; pure joy on the inside. I like to eat them with strawberry jelly and Earl Grey tea.

Polly's Scones:

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. I'm so bad at doing this! Do it!

2 cups all purpose flour
2 tablespoons sugar
1 tablespoon baking powder
3/4 teaspoon salt
1 and 1/3 cup heavy cream

Sift together the dry ingredients. Then add the cream and mix it in. Knead the dough on a hard surface for a short while, and then spread it out so it's about 1 and 1/2 inches high. Cut scones with a 2 inch round pastry cutter. Put them on a baking sheet and bake for about 20 minutes or until they're golden on top.

Polly's recipe also recommends that you enjoy them in bed with clotted cream, jam and the Sunday Times.

Kitchen scenes

2008-02-20T10:21:00.013-05:00

This post was prompted by Emily's comment. You can check out John Huck's breakfast portraits at http://jonhuck.com/breakfast/. Food photography - not, in this case, of food itself, but with the people who eat it, relate to it, obsess over it, are disgusted by it, are content to read the paper with anything in front of them as long as by anything you mean coffee - this sort of photography, is endlessly interesting to me.

The photographs here are the ones that first made me think about food in high school. They are part of a collection published as Elsa's Housebook by Elsa Dorfman, who photographed the people around her while she went to Radcliffe College in the early 70s. My favorites are the ones in kitchen, of which there are quite a few. (Allen Ginsberg and Gregory Corso at the kitchen table!) You can look at other photographs from her book here.

Laudate dominum

2008-02-17T17:21:00.019-05:00

I laughed. I cried. Guacamole. Here's my recipe:

2 ripe hass avacados
10 cherry tomatoes, seeded and diced
1/2 small red onion, finely diced
1/4 chipotle pepper, finely diced
1 tbsp finely chopped cilantro
1 clove garlic, crushed
2 scallions, diced
juice from 1/2 lime
smoked salt
pepper

Coriandrum sativum

2008-02-17T11:41:00.031-05:00

I bought a bunch of cilantro last Friday thinking, mistakenly, that it was flat-leaf parsley looking unusually fresh at Weshop.

I was not happy. This would not go well on top of my pasta with portobello mushrooms and parmigiano reggiano! This was not the sweet rarity about which I was so elated, fresh - actually fresh! - parsley. No.

I really have not liked cilantro. I'm not alone; there's even a website for sore cilantro eaters. It began with some cilantro-jacked Annie’s salad dressing that left me feeling like Paul Newman egg-beaten à la Cool Hand Luke. Too much of a good thing is a bad thing, and cilantro was not a friend of mine. But I chopped it all up dutifully that day and saved the stems to make a broth, and minced the leaves for garnish. And cilantro has proved me wrong. Its incarnations have all been lovely. Last night, Silvie and I made meal of mochi that we stuffed with an aduki bean, mint, cilantro stem and arugula salad and broiled salmon in a lime and cilantro crust. Anna used some to garnish her soup, and soon I'm going to make guacamole.

It was enough to make me wonder, just what was this miracle herb I had so long neglected? I consulted The Herbal Kitchen by Jerry Traunfeld. Apparently, it’s an annual umbel, like dill and chervil. Cilantro is the leaf of the young coriander plant, Coriandrum sativum, an herb in the parsley family. My parsley gaff in perspective (at least they’re in the same family), at least I've buried the cilantro hatchet.

While I'm here

2008-02-16T23:57:00.003-05:00

Let me tell you about some foodwriting I really love. Julia Langbein. She's incredible. Google her, and you'll find her work on Gourmet.com. Her self-description: "Writer, performer, eater, and graduate student, she's that girl you saw conspicuously washing down a ham hock with a bottle of Port in the quietest reading room of the Chicago Public Library."

Love thy truffle

2008-02-14T00:02:00.022-05:00

It’s Valentine’s Day, and that means we all feel bitter and assaulted by advertising – even those of us who are in that maudlin state, love. This is, of course, no reason not to eat chocolate today. Don’t let anybody tell you otherwise. There’s plenty of upsetting literature* on how women supplant human love with sweets. Don’t let that stop you either. In fact, here’s a recipe I recently made for Jesse’s twenty-first birthday – truffles that are sensous no matter how many people are at the table, in bed, or in the kitchen at midnight. I also think they make great gifts. I used to make mix tapes as my go-to gift; you’ll see the influence in the name. There used to be a B-track truffle too, but, as always, it just wasn’t as good.

A-track Truffles: Make an almond praline by heating one cup sugar, one half cup water and a drop of vanilla extract in a sauce pan until the mixture is a golden, caramel color and strings.

Pour this over blanched, sliced almonds and spread them out on a baking sheet covered with parchment paper. Cook in the oven at 400 degrees for about 10 minutes or until they’re toasted. Then grind them to a fine consistency in a food processor with sugar, blood orange rind, cocoa powder and a little bit of instant coffee. Set aside.

In a double boiler (note that mine is make-shift), add small amounts of heavy cream, fresh blood orange juice, vanilla extract, very good quality balsamic vinegar, instant coffee, honey, pinch chili powder, sugar and 12oz. semi-sweet Ghirardelli chocolate chips. I know this sounds like a lot of ingredients, but they really are so lovely all together. Stir until smooth. Then add a few thin pats of butter, and stir until they melt.

Cool in the freezer until you can mold them into little balls in the palms of your hands. Don’t worry about uniformity, because it’s overrated. Put the ground praline you made in a bowl, and then roll the truffles in it until they have a thin crust. Delicious.

*Susan Bordo. “Hunger as Ideology.” Reprinted in Eating Culture. Eds. Ron Scapp and Brian Seitz. Albany: University of New York, 1998.

Crust lust

2008-02-13T10:23:00.025-05:00

With remarkable consistency, I seem only to make bread when I find myself with an assignment that I just don't want to do. I'd like to say I make bread every Sunday come winter and its old-fashioned charms/chills. But it's just not the truth. Nothing gets me in the mood more than an analysis of Functionalism. Philosophy of Mind? Dad’s French bread. Reading response? Rye with caraway seed. Unreadable Lacan excerpt? Tough and hearty wheat bran and polenta. I only make bread in these, the most ploddingly obtuse moments at school. What kind of self-respecting baker am I?

I’ve read plenty of odes to bread. My favorite (sorry, Neruda) is Peter Reinhart’s Brother Juniper’s Bread Book: Slow Rise as Method and Metaphor. I even have this charm of a book, a Soviet reader for children on the peasant joys of bread. Or my mom’s recent gift: A Young People’s Physiology from 1889, “To eat or drink what we know is unhealthful, because it tastes good, is not only foolish but wicked. A cook who understands the laws of health, will not feed the family on hot bread, because it makes in the stomach a pasty mass, which cannot be easily digested.” Wicked, indeed.

But my favorite words on bread are recipes rather than rhetoric. Especially in the wake of Atkins, I find that eating warm, homemade bread is pretty much always incredible (and who doesn't love to be a little wicked?). My dad’s recipe is my favorite. Even in the miserable weather we’re entertaining here in Middletown, its crust and crumb are impeccable. Not so with every loaf. Baking bread often takes problem-solving. I think this is why I love to make bread when I feel stuck at school. It feels so good to figure it out. And even when it fails, and I make something more like rockbread than French bread, I tried. Inspiration enough to get back to work. Lacan beckons.

Still, sometimes it's good to stick with the comfortable and familiar. Here, then, is my dad’s time and again bread recipe in his own words. The only thing I change is that I add the salt after I’ve already incorporated the yeast and flour to make sure the yeast survives.