Toast

Dinner Party Chicken

When I went away to college, and lived in my first apartment, I was just dying to start cooking. My mother, a fantastic, creative cook, had set a high standard. She was a total control freak in the kitchen, and could not bear "help" of any kind, but she did permit spectators, and I was generally there, hovering, and carrying her delicious food to the table. I think this may be the best method ever for the psychological conditioning of future generations of enthusiastic home cooks. I learned a lot from watching, and as I was not allowed to participate, cooking seemed a privilege, rather than a duty.

It still does. And, after all, it is a privilege, to have the wherewithal to bring home baskets of lovely local produce, to afford some meat and poultry, to buy the nicest imported coffees, and to never run out of King Arthur's unbleached all purpose flour, when there are many, many people going hungry, and many more with no stove to cook on.

In any case, a couple of the many things I learned watching my mothers fine hand at work, were the importance of timing, and the benefits of keeping a hot summer kitchen from roasting the cook. The latter was especially important pre-air conditioning, but is still relevant for those of us who like to feel cool enough to be hungry for supper.

Quite a few of my more impressive early kitchen tricks were copied directly from my mother. The cacciatore /fricasee of chicken was a cornerstone of her dinner party cooking repetoire, embodying both principles, and allowing for all sorts of great variations. I got a lot of mileage out of these concoctions, which could be both homey and fancy. You browned the chicken in butter or olive oil, removed it briefly, sauteed some good combination of vegetables in a bit of the exuded fat combo, and deglazed the pan with wine, broth, tomato sauce or some combination thereof. The chicken and some herbs went back in the pan, to be covered and braised. These dishes could be done in the morning, without lighting the oven and reheated, with no last minute flurry- except perhaps the adding of a bit of cream sometimes, and sauce reduction.

There were all sorts of classic variants, or you could make up your own. I was especially fond of one done with mushrooms, artichoke hearts, tarragon, garlic and white wine. A friend used to make a recipe from a supermarket women's magazine, where the braising liquid was canned cream of mushroom soup with a little white wine, and there was grated gruyere in at the end. It was, frankly, delicious, and in those days, we were far less suspicious of and /or embarrassed by prepared foods with mysterious chemical additives.

If there were no potatoes in the veg mix, you could make some plain noodles or rice, and put some pan juices on top. A green salad, crusty bread for moping up, and you were good to go. Pretty much everyone liked this sort of food- so what happened? Why did I stop making this sort of chicken? It was really a perfect solution for jazzing up fairly tasteless supermarket chicken, was it not?

I am not entirely sure, but I think that supermarket chicken has deteriorated in quality, even since the 1980s. They were already less tasty than the best free-range hens our ancestors presumably had, if they were lucky enough to afford chicken, but there was still some decent texture. It may be my imagination, but I think mass produced chickens are getting mushier and flaccid? Is this craziness on my part? In any event, that's what it seemed like to me. So, I sort of began making only the sort of chicken dishes that firmed up- roasted, grilled, sauteed, and abandoned the tenderizing cacciatore type dishes.

I've noticed that the 2 free range chickens which I get each month from the neighbor of my CSA farmer, delivered one week each month with my vegs, have, in addition to excellent flavor, a welcome toothsomeness. So I thought I try a scratch version of the gruyere topped stuff, and I'm here to tell you, it was great. And it is also very easy, as long as you have a proper organically raised free range chicken. You will definitely want some crusty bread for mopping up the pan juices here. I won't pretend it's diet food- but it is special occasion worthy, IMHO.

Cut up your chicken and dredge it with flour which you have seasoned with salt, sweet paprika and pepper. Brown it very thoroughly in butter in a heavy skillet or saute pan which has a cover and can go, coverless, into the oven. Make sure it is quite thoroughly browned, as the longer, damp cooking will make it pale, otherwise. Remove the chicken from the pan, and deglaze with 3/4 of a cup of dry white wine.

Reduce the wine by half. Put the chicken back in the pan with chunks of carrots and a fair number of peeled shallots, a branch each of fresh tarragon, thyme and parsley. Add 1/2 cup of broth. Partly cover, and cook very slowly until quite tender, adding a bit of broth or water if the liquid gets too low. I cannot tell you how long this will take, it really depends on your chicken. It is easy to overcook supermarket chicken; my farm chicken takes longer. so you will need to poke at it a bit to be sure.

You can stop now, and cool and refrigerate until just before serving. If you do that, bring it to a simmer before you go on. Stir in 2/3 cup of heavy cream, blending with the pan juices, and sprinkle the top with a generous handful of coarsely grated gruyere, or other swiss type good cheese. Run under the broiler until the top is brown and bubbly, and serve, with the aforementioned crusty bread and some salad.

Sorry about the terrible photo.

Devil May Care

I was surprised, after some rummaging among past posts, to find that I have never before written about deviled eggs, as there is very nearly nothing I like more. I was even more surprised to find that I had a bit to learn on the subject, since I thought the case was, for me, closed.

I knew that there were various French variations on stuffed eggs, which included asparagus, or shrimp, and the like. That was fine with me, and these were mostly very nice, but could not hold a candle to the classic: Hard-boiled egg white halves, stuffed with a mixture of mashed yolk, English mustard, mayo, salt and pepper, and, finally, sprinkled with some paprika, smoked Spanish or regular, or maybe, if I was feeling a little extra was called for, ground chipotle. No pickle juice here. End of story.

I was therefore disconcerted to discover, in the Sunday NYTimes Men's Fashion Supplement*, a recipe for stuffed eggs Caeser salad style, which is a worthy alternate. I was also surprised to learn, courtesy of Jacques Pepin, that a few minutes upside down in a frying pan can have an amazing, and praise-worthy effect on a deviled egg . A caveat: the new egg recipe is not for anchovy haters- nor is the Caeser salad itself, for that matter. And, a happy happenstance: the Caeser eggs are particularly suited to the Pepin effect.

Even if you are as stuck on the classic as I have been, you may want to try these both ways. Nearly as simple as the original, and that is a plus, in my book. The cold ones are great with whiskey or gin drinks, and the warm ones make a nice sit-down first course, or a lunch.

This is how you make the basic Caeser egg, as amended by me (I don't like the idea of coming upon a bit of chopped raw garlic while nibbling my egg.):

12 hard-boiled eggs
2 Tbsps Olive oil
2 tsps lemon juice
1 tsp anchovy paste
dash Worchestershire
salt and pepper
paprika
garlic clove, split

Rub the garlic clove over the interior of a small to medium bowl. Cut eggs in half, and add the yolks and all the other ingredients, except paprika, into the bowl. Mash thoroughly, and stuff halved whites. Sprinkle with paprika and display cunningly on your depression glass dish or in Tupperware...they will all be eaten, either way.

Now, with your regular deviled eggs, or your Caeser eggs, you can make a sort of deconstructed Caeser salad. Dress some romaine with a little bit of garlicy vinagrette and set it on a serving dish, or several smaller plates, with a few homemade croutons, if you are so inclined. Film the bottom of a heavy frying pan with olive oil, and heat it up. Set the eggs in the pan in a single layer, carefully, yolk side down. Cook them at a medium-low heat until the yolk is nicely caramelized and brown. Mine took 5 minutes.

Set them atop your salad, arranged prettily, and consume. They are nice without the lettuce, too, but you should still have them with a knife and fork, on a plate...unlike the cold version, which are perfect for eating out of hand , at picnics. Also, if you put two cold ones yolk to yolk, and wrap them up, they are the best ever little treat in a packed lunch.

*A strange item, no? I always read the Times style items with interest, and they are so often a source of amusement. I fear my amusement may be a symptom of my own depravity, though. How can I chuckle over a spread featuring chic modern models portraying starving depression era hobos, in mock-rags of cashmere with thousand dollar price tags? This display appeared not too long ago in a similar NYTimes style magazine.

Who was this for, and why? Has Marie Antoinette been playing milkmaid games again? Maybe someone there should take a moment to remember how she ended up.

In any event, apparently deviled eggs have become fashionable, much in the manner of upscale mac and cheese. Oh well.

A Little Lesson Relearned

Well, here was a wonderful idea, which, in the execution, was not so slick. I thought about doing it over, so you could see what it is supposed to look like- but hey, you could read the book for that, no? Next time, it will look much better, and taste the same. In the meantime, it is an illustration of a principle I try to stick to, and abandoned here to ill effect. It wasn't fatal, but I wished I hadn't done it.

And this is the (sadly disregarded) motto: The first time I make something I've never made or eaten before, I should follow the recipe as written.That way I will know what it is meant to taste and look like in the original, and can vary it later with some idea of what I'm doing. I thought I was being clever, as one does. This is a tasty and handy idea for a make ahead buffet thing, and would have looked lovely too, had I done what I was supposed to.

It is a savory kugelhopf, made into a pile of really nice sandwiches, and it can look exactly like a bundt cake for serving, if, instead of slicing up the whole thing willy nilly, you cut a tidy thin slice right off the top and one off the bottom, to keep it all together when you reassemble it.

As you can see, I didn't do that; hence the leaning tower effect. Also, I should have tried for more, and thinner, horizontal slices. It was all very tasty anyway, and we pretty much ate it up for father's day brunch, along with some scones, strawberries and cherries.

I am going to give you the recipe for the "kugelhopf au lard". You bake it, slice it horizontally, spread it with delicious, thinnish sandwich fillings, stack it (but for the top and bottom slices) and then cut through vertically, to make individual sandwiches. When you put it back together, top and bottom on again to maintain order, you can wrap it up snugly, and refrigerate it for 24 hours. This make-ahead factor is very good for parties. The traditional filling for this bacon and onion egg bread is thin slices of proscuitto and an herby creamy cheese. Very tasty, and goes down well with coffee and/or tea.

Here's what you need:

A Kugelhopf pan, or similarly styled bundt pan, well buttered or sprayed with a neutral cooking oil. Be sure to cover all nooks and crannies.

3 1/3 cups AP flour
2 tsps instant type yeast
1 tsp sea salt
10 Tbsps nice unsalted butter, softened
3 eggs
scant cup of milk
1/4 lb bacon, cooked crisp and finely chopped
either 1 small onion, chopped and cooked until soft in the bacon fat, or 2 Tbsps freeze-dried onion bits- the nice toasted ones from Penzey's, or the like
12 walnut halves

This is what you do:

Place a walnut half in each of the runnels at the bottom of the pan, top down. Chop any leftover nuts, and mic with the onion and bacon. Set aside. In the bowl of your electric mixer combine flour, yeast and salt. With the paddle going slowly, add the butter, bit by bit. Add the eggs, one at a time. when well combined, add enough of the milk to form a soft dough. If it gets too soft, you can add a bit of extra flour. When the dough starts to come away from the sides, switch to the dough hook. Knead with the hook for 10 minutes. Cover, and let it rise until about doubled...this should take about 1 1/2 hours.

Lift the dough out of the bowl, and push your thumbs through the middle of the mass, as you set the dough into the prepared pan, with the hole over the center tube. Using the side of your hand, make a channel in the center of the dough all around. Push the bacon onion combo into the little tunnel, distributing it evenly around. Now, pinch the edges of the dough firmly together, covering the mixture, and sealing it inside. Let it rise for another hour, while preheating your oven to 400F

Bake for 40-45 minutes, until golden and hollow sounding if tapped. Set a rack over the top, upending the kugelhopf. Cool it thoroughly on the rack.

As is, this is a really nice companion for cheese and/or soup. To make the party dish properly, slice a thin horizontal slice, walnuts intact from the top, and set it aside. Slice the rest thinly, and horizontally, into an even number of slices. Make big round sandwiches, two rounds each. spread the insides with soft herby goat cheese and thinly sliced proscuitto, or the filling of your choice. Stack them to reform the kugelhopf, without the top, and cut through the lot, top to bottom, making a stack of wedge shaped sandwiches all round. Set on your serving dish, set the reserved top on it, and wrap it tightly. chill in the fridge for at least an hour, or up to 24.

This recipe is adapted from A Taste of Alsace by Sue Style. I am endlessly attracted to the cuisine of Alsace, and am amazed at how few cookbooks are available on the topic. I have a small ,old pamphlet, which was intended for tourists, and one other cookbook. That's about it. Anyone have any suggestions for other sources?

Hooray, my banner suddenly reappeared.

A Spin or Two on a Seasonal Favorite

If you do not live in California or some such all-season growing area, chances are you are still waiting for your local produce to show up. One of the very earliest local goodies to appear around here is spinach. Like that salt-of-the-earth old salt , Popeye, I just loves my spinach.* And the tender baby leaves are so delicious uncooked, that a spinach salad is the first thing that comes to mind when it arrives. I have an old favorite, but I decided to try a couple of new things this year.

One is a spinach and pear salad using the rest of my duck confit. (I haven't forgotten about the duck breasts and the duck soup I promised. Consider this post a semi-related interlude.) The other is an idea I got from reading Karin Welzel's article in the Tribune Review**, about Cafe Zao, a local restaurant I have yet to visit-despite the fact that it is located only a couple of blocks from my workplace, and next door to the Public Theater. As you might guess, this has been mostly a cost issue.

After reading about the place, I've concluded that I need to save up for dinner at Cafe Zao. In the interim, though, I thought would try Chef Toni Pais' recipe for Cold Spinach Soup and Shellfish Salad, which you can find with Karin's article. I was so very not disappointed. Wow. As she points out, the soup can also be used, hot or cold, as a sauce for fish or poultry. Surprisingly, large quantities of pine nuts are involved, and the effect is brilliant. It's so intense, and fresh tasting- really amazing stuff. The seafood salad is also pretty special, and I found that it was well worth looking for the ponzu- a citrus-y vinegar.
It did take me some time to find it- the Lotus Market here is enormous- and not all the sauces have English labels. The ponzu didn't have one, but there was an ingredients list on the back, and it said "Ponzu" on top.

I made the soup according to instructions, but my seafood salad was a shrimp-only affair. Also, I did not do the fancy business with the PVC pipe rings, but put the shrimp salad in a little dish centered in the soup bowl instead. Another serving option might be an ice-cream scoop of the salad in the center of your dish, and the cold soup poured carefully around it. That's how I plate up rice with an estoufee or gumbo, and it works pretty well.

Here is the recipe for the spinach salad. I used toasted walnuts, as well as substituting the confit for the bacon. It was yummy.

I have an attraction to dark green vegetables that is so intense that I suspect it is based in some nutritional deficiency. I made a special bus trip to Whole Foods for dinosaur kale on a snowy day this winter, only to discover they were out of it. I nearly cried. Surely this is not normal? I can tell you that the produce guy looked at me with something between pity and fear when I, uh, ...expressed my dismay.

BTW, if you use the google search function in the left hand column, and search the blog for "spinach", there are few other nice things you might want to try.

____________________

*I was surprised to discover, reading up on the original Popeye comics, that in the days before animation, our man Popeye did not have a spinach habit at all. He was just, well, cranky and violent and not-so-brilliant- in the nicest possible way, of course. He had a generous heart and was always, naturally, devoted to the lovely Ms. Oyl. I highly recommend these early cartoons, they are fascinatin', as he might put it. If he, say, had a blog. Or could read and write. Or was, you know, real. But, as always, I digress.

**I don't subscribe to, the Tribune Review, one of our two local papers. Thus, I was unaware of its really nice food section, which, fortunately for me, can be read on the internet. I met Karin Welzel when she emailed me to talk about peas, and I've been catching up on past articles ever since.

A Gratuitous Advertisement and Some Vegetarian Party Food

I have probably mentioned this before, but Trader Joe's all-butter frozen puff pastry is the answer to a prayer. Sure, anyone can make their own delicious puff pastry, as a certain anapestic frequently reminds us. But a person is not always motivated sufficiently to cover herself and her kitchen in flour. If I only had puff pastry as often as I made it myself, I would be a thinner, but perhaps not so happy woman. And the thing is- I really can't stand the standard Pepperidge Farm frozen stuff from the freezer case at the Iggle.

I actually used to think it was fine. It was the first approximation of puff pastry I'd ever had. And puff pastry is an amazing, brilliant invention, which naturally knocks one's socks off, even in its least lovely form. After a several experiences of the good stuff, from pastry shops and restaurants, that particular ready-made kind of frozen stuff began to taste of oil and chemicals to me. Wishful thinking kept me going with it for a while. But either it's gotten worse, or I'm just pickier. And until the Trader Joe's thing, the only all butter stuff on offer in my part of the USA was incredibly expensive- out of my league- at Williams-Sonoma.

So if you live near a good bakery willing to sell you some of theirs, more power to you. I don't, and I'm therefore especially grateful to the Trader Joe group for bringing this buttery goodness my way. End of uncompensated commercial message.

With this stuff in the freezer, you can make all kinds of yummy special stuff at a moments notice, including one of my very favorite snacks- Shammi's egg puffs. What you see above is a rough approximation of a recipe I saw in an English cooking magazine called "Delicious". With a salad, it would make a nice vegetarian dinner party menu, I think. I actually just made one for me, and have been taking leftovers for lunch, cold. Very french picnic-y, I feel.

To make it you need:

one package (about 450 grams if you are making your own, and shaming me) of all butter puff pastry
a package of prepared hummous (or, you could shame me thoroughly, and make your own)
various cut up veggies for roasting- your choice (I used some very dense cremini mushrooms, eggplant, zucchini, red peppers, shallots, fennel, parboiled, peeled fingerling potatoes, and whole garlic cloves. Sliced onions are a bad idea- they made it hard to cut the pie-too bad, as the red ones taste great roasted)
an egg yolk, beaten with a little milk
chopped fresh cilantro
cumin seed or rosemary
olive oil spray or olive oil

Preheat oven to 425F. Cut the veggies into bit sized pieces- neither too tiny nor too large. You want them fairly chunky, but you also want to be able to cut the pie. Set them on a foil lined baking sheet. Coat thinly with olive oil, and sprinkle with salt, pepper, and the cumin or rosemary. Meanwhile, if using frozen pastry, take it out to defrost. It should be in two equal sized parts.

Bake the veg until browned and a little crusty, and remove from the oven. (This will take varying amounts of time, depending on the vegs you chose, and your oven. You have to check. I did my whole thing in the convection toaster oven, which is very fast. It is a good idea, when using vegs of varying cooking times, to make the longer cooking kind into smaller pieces- the quicker cooking, chunkier.)

Remove foil and veg, and line the baking sheet with parchment. Set one piece of the pastry down on the parchment, and brush about 1" of the outside edge with the egg mixture. Spread the remainder of the surface with a layer of hummous. If you have some left, mix it in with the roasted vegs. Pile the roasted veg over the hummous, leaving the eggy border bare. Sprinkle chopped cilantro over the veg.

With a rolling pin, roll out the second sheet of pastry so that it is just a little bigger and thinner than the covered piece. Carefully set it on top of the veg, and press to seal the pastry edges together. Use your fingers to mold it over the veg, so there are no air pockets. If the top pastry edge overlaps the bottom one , trim the borders to make the top and bottom even. Press all around with a fork, to further seal, and cut 3 diagonal slits on top, using a very sharp knife. Brush top with remainder of egg mixture. This takes about 35 minutes to bake, but watch it. Mine (above) got a little too brown.

You can actually freeze this before baking, defrost and bake when needed. Not bad, but it's better all fresh.

Fennel Times Four, and Shrimp

So, if this was an Oscar speech, instead of a blog post, it would begin, "First, I want to thank the redfox." I usually wind up checking out the new and exotic pretty late in the game. For all I know, fennel pollen has been in general use for a decade. But when I read her comments on the topic, I was a goner. She's my daughter, she's fussier than I am, and knows where of she speaks. And let me tell you, she was so right. I've got more experimenting to do, but this stuff is pretty much magic dust. A small pinch of fennel pollen seems to enliven the flavor of all sorts of things-without necessarily announcing its fennel-ness. It's a good thing it meets expectations, because it is really expensive. Fortunately, only a small amount is does the trick- but still.

In this particular dish, though, the fennel-ness of the pollen is a plus. I have gone on at some length before about the three way goodness of fennel- the bulb, the seeds and the frothy, herby top bits. This dish used them all, plus the fennel pollen-I think to good advantage, without any objectionable licorice-y sort of business. I made it for my brother's birthday, and thought it up to meet my primary requirement for company food. I favor dishes where most of the work can be done in advance..so you can enjoy your guests and not worry about the few last minute things to do. This one is based on the Al Forno-style baked pasta, with lots of crusty top, and brightly flavored innards. I think it would be a good vegetarian dish without the shrimp, with some extra feta to compensate.

Here is what I did. Nothing was exactly measured, so it is not a proper recipe, I'm afraid. Proportion wise-keep in mind that you want your end result moist and juicy, but not in anyway liquid. (Unless you don't, of course.)

1. Made ahead some tomato sauce with red onion, chopped fennel blub, garlic, shredded fresh basil, fennel fronds, fennel seeds, fresh chopped tomatoes of several kinds, bit of chopped carrot, and a can of Muir glen fire-roasted tomatoes. Cooked it down for about half an hour. Refrigerated.

2. Early day of serving: Defrosted a box of frozen spinach and squeezed it dry.(The fresh spinach around is not so nice at the moment). Mixed in a large-ish gratin dish (shallow baking dish) with crumbled feta, crumbled goat cheese, a large spoonful of ricotta, some cream, a major pinch of fennel pollen, and the tomato sauce. Refrigerated.

3. Later: Brought to boil large pasta pot with strainer full of salted water. Added equal quantities (weight-wise) of chunky short pasta and shelled and deveined raw shrimp. Boiled 7 minutes, strained, and dumped hot onto the mixture in the gratin dish. Mixed thoroughly with a large spoon, so that the hot shrimp and pasta melted up the cheese. This was a bit messy to do, what with the shallow dish, and all. Smoothed top- sprayed with olive oil spray, grated fresh parm over the top, tossed on a handful of Panko breadcrumbs, and re-sprayed, and set aside.

I like to use spray oil for gratins, because it gets all the nooks and crannies, which can be missed with drizzled oil. It is not an unpleasantly uniform looking effect, because the ups and downs of the surface make some areas darker than others- but there's more overall crunch. IMHO.

4. Just before serving baked in a hot-as-it-would-go oven, until bubbling up, and adorned with crusty brown bits over the top. This is very hard to time- it can take anywhere from 12 minutes to 40 minutes, depending on the oven, the amount of liquid, type of pasta, etc. Gotta watch it like a hawk. If it is done way too early, a couple of minutes in a microwave will reheat the innards without oversoftening the top. The crusty top part is a highly desirable feature.

Perhaps I will eventually do this up as a measured recipe, but I'll have to make it again to do that. Meanwhile-I wanted to share it-because I liked it so much. And I think this is probably enough information for most cooks who'd like to try it. If it isn't enough for you, please forgive me for the sloppiness, let me know, and I will email you in a few weeks, when I've done the math.

Further fennel fun: I'm trying out a fennel ratafia. No seeds (too assertive for this I thought?) : Finely chopped fennel, fennel pollen, vodka, and most of a leftover bottle of chablis. We'll see how it is after it's strained, in a month. I may mix some with tomato juice, for a fennelly bloody mary- if that doesn't sound too weird?

Street Food for Homebodies

I am always pleased, but a tad conflicted, when I'm sent a new book or product. I say that I can't promise to write about something I haven't seen yet, but I don't like to disappoint. If I wrote a book, and sent it off, and the recipient was silent, or expressed boredom, or worse, with the product of my hard work, I might well be brokenhearted. But probably, in order to become a published writer of any sort, you have to be made of stronger stuff than yours truly. I hope, before retirement age, to reach a level of self confidence where I am not deeply grieved to discover I am disliked, even when the rejecting party is someone I have no actual interest in whatsoever. I do know this queasiness to be a character flaw- so that's a start.

Fortunately, I am pleased as punch (or is it "Punch" as in "and Judy"?) with Street Food, the second book by Tom Kime, a gifted fellow who I had not heard of before. Once a chef at the famed River Cafe, he has apparently been, inter alia, a TV Host, an award winning author, and the caterer of Jamie Oliver's wedding feast. Who knew? He has traveled four continents, sampling the street food of India, southeast Asia, north Africa, the Middle East and southern Europe, snagging recipes for the kind of goodies that make you feel you are on holiday from all culinary drudgery.

Street food, the best of it anyway, is like that. But the recipes which appear from time to time in newspapers and magazines frequently lack the on-site magic. Part of that, no doubt, is the absence of the charm of travel. I had an inkling, though, from first looking over this collection, that it was the work of an original cook. I thought he might well be one of those few with a special gift for putting simple things together in ways which enhance them, creating food which is more than the sum of its parts.(The world may be full of such wizards- professional and non-but if so, most of them don't write books.) Perhaps it is a special gift for recognizing, rather than, or in addition to creating, since these are meant to be very authentic recreations? In any event you can certainly see originality at work in the combination suggested meals put together from this widely diverse group of treats.

I think my first impression was very not wrong. I've made three things from this book, and all three were wonderful.(These are my photos, of my food, BTW; the ones in the book are far classier, but I thought you'd like to see that these things are doable at home.)They were shourba corbasi- a chard soup with rice and tumeric, shlada al falfla hamra al khizzou-a carrot and orange salad with paprika dressing, and cucur udang-Singapore prawn fritters with sweet chili sauce. The last, involving hot oil, was the only one that was the least bit of trouble. And I'm here to tell you that all three were really, truly delicious and different and easy to love.

All are pictured, I will leave you to figure out which is which. I had a bit of trouble deciding which recipe to pass along. I went with the soup in the end, as it is so seasonally on target (it was all there in my CSA farmbox, and so quick and easy.) This is how I made it, adapted from Street Food:

1 pound of swiss chard, stalks and leaves separated, very well washed
1 qt good quality chicken or veg stock
2 tbsps olive oil
2 onions, finely chopped
2 leeks, trimmed, rinsed halved and sliced
1/2 cup long grain white rice (I used basmati)
2 tbsps white wine or rice vinegar
2 cloves garlic, chopped finely
1 1/2 cups plain greek style yogurt- or drained ordinary yogurt
pinch ground tumeric
juice of a lemon
chopped fresh mint leaves
salt and pepper

Finely dice the chard stalks, and finely shred the leaves. Bring the stock to a boil in a small saucepan. Heat the oil in a soup pot with a heavy bottom, and cook the onion, leeks , and chard stems for 4-5 minutes, until just beginning to brown. Add the rice, and stir to coat thoroughly. Pour in the hot stock and vinegar. Bring to a boil, and simmer until the rice is tender- about 15 minutes. Meanwhile, chop the garlic and add to the yogurt with half of the lemon juice, the tumeric, and a bit of salt. add the chard leaves to the soup, and simmer a few minutes, until they are tender. Remove from the heat, and whisk in the yougurt combo. Taste for seasoning, and add salt, pepper, and a bit more lemon juice as needed. Top with mint leaves, and serve lukewarm or hot- but lukewarm tastes especially nice to me.

Street food at home is a luxury. This stuff is really good, I kid you not.

K. Zuckerman's Magic Rugelach

Apparantly rugelach, made with a cream cheese pastry, is primarily an American phenomenon. Sometime ago I posted about a savory rugelach recipe I made for a boxing day party, and I learned some things about rugelach from comments: In Israel, a croissant-like dough is most widely used. There are variants made with schmalz, rather than butter and/ or cream cheese. Some cream cheese style rugelach also use sour cream. Claudia Roden, Joan Nathan, and Mimi Sheraton have all noted multiple variations. The Second Avenue Deli Cookbook contains a non dairy rugelach made with (ack) tofutti. It seems that a yeast dough makes a more "authentic" Eastern European-style rugelach, and that it is mostly in the US that the cream cheese version is widely available in bakeries, and otherwise popular.

I have tried various recipes in an attempt to approach the very special, crescent shaped cream cheese based rugelach made by my Aunt Yetta. Always delicious, and frequently especially timely, these rugelach arrived in a tin, by mail, to cheer me during several of the most difficult times in my life. I believe they have certain ameliorating powers, in the face of unavoidable disaster, or, for that matter, petty annoyance.

The differently shaped rugelach you see here are the closest I've found so far to Yetta's, as I remember them. Kate Zuckerman, pastry chef at Chanterelle, shares the recipe in her recent book, The Sweet Life. She "isn't really sure" why the recipe works as it does, but there is definitely a multi-layered, puff-pastryish effect , without any of the turning and other complications of that preparation. I think she is justified in calling it "magic." A little fussier than an ordinary cookie dough, it repays you well. If you follow closely, handling the dough is not so tricky, and the reward is well worth it.

Here's the recipe, as adapted by me. I've added some waxed paper to the rolling processes, because the dough is thin, and a little trickier to handle than, say, pie dough. The magical Ms. Zuckerman, with her professional pastry chef hands, wouldn't need to do this, but I do. As with any pastry, if things get too soft and sticky, refrigerate the whole works for a bit, before going on. There, I've made it sound hard, and it's not really. You see, this is what you do:

First, make the dough ahead of time, preferably the night before baking.

8 tbsps (a stick) of butter, softened
4 oz. cream cheese, room temperature
1 cup flour
1/4 tsp salt
1 tsp sugar

In a stand mixer, with the paddle, beat the butter and cheese until combined and fluffy- about 8 minutes on medium. Add the dry ingredients, and beat until the dough is combined, and then about 15 seconds more. scrape the dough onto some waxed paper and wrap it, flattening it out into a rectangle about 1/2 thick, using the wax paper to shape the rectangle as you wrap. Chill.

You can make the filling ahead, or right before you bake.

4 oz. walnuts, chop fine
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 cup golden raisins (I used them instead of currants, because I find currants don't soften much in baking)
1/4 cup sugar

Mix well in a small bowl and refrigerate until ready.

You also need:
1/4 cup more sugar
a beaten egg in a cup

Preheat oven to 350 and line 3 cookie sheets with parchment or silpats. Cut 2 sheets of waxed paper 12"X16" Put the dough between them, and roll it out to the size of the waxed paper. I did this on the pastry marble-I find the coolness helps a lot. With scissors, trim any excess dough, so that the dough is, as much as possible, a neat rectangle the size of the waxed paper. Cut the dough in half lengthwise with the scissors, waxed paper still in place. You will do each half separately.

Now carefully peel the waxed paper from the top of the first half, and set it out on a counter, long side facing you. Brush entire surface with egg wash. Spread with half the filling, covering the entire surface, except for a 1" border on the long side furthest from you. Using the bottom waxed paper to help you, roll the pastry into a long rope, tucking the filling in as you go, and sliding the waxed paper off as you roll it. Roll as tightly as you can, without tearing the dough. Go carefully. Press the last bits together, and with the help of the remaining waxed paper, and roll it gently onto one of the lined sheets, seam down.

Repeat with the other half of the dough and filling, rolling the 2nd half onto the same sheet. Brush both with the egg wash all over, and sprinkle with the 1/2 cup remaining sugar. I used demerara sugar for the crunch and color here. Stick in the freezer for half an hour.

Remove from freezer, and cut each long rope into 1" cookies. Lay on the 2 other lined sheets, about an inch apart, spiral side up. Bake 15 to 18 minutes, or until golden brown and puffed, rotating pans halfway through. You can also freeze one log, well wrapped to make some rugelah fast-another time. It would be nice to know you had rugelach at the ready all the time. I made them all this time. Greedy.

Ragu Redux and Christmas in Red

I grew up, like most Americans, eating a tomato meat sauce on my spaghetti which had no real Italian source, except in the imagination. In my neighborhood, it was sometimes called "Jewish spaghetti". I later learned that the same dish, more or less, was called "Irish spaghetti" in my husband's family.This is a dish which has been so assimilated that it is hard to believe it was ever seen as foreign, even exotic. But it truly was. My English grandmother actually refused to try it, and viewed it with deep suspicion, as recently as the 1950's.

Over the years, I have sometimes followed what I remember of the spaghetti rules of my friend's Italian mother (no oregano, just basil and garlic and bay, and a little sugar if the tomatoes are not so great, canned whole tomatoes, no canned sauce), and have also made numerous variants from Italian cookbooks. A favorite among these was a Neopolitan "kitchen sink" Sunday extravaganza, which contained pork bones, rolled stuffed beef and meatballs. It simmered all day, and made the richest sauce ever.

It is safe to say that on an ordinary day, when I want to make a tomato-based meat sauce for pasta or gnocchi, I generally follow a pattern, but not a recipe. So the sauces are never really exactly the same, and change with season and my mood. I expect you do this too, and at any given moment, you will be making this sort of sauce simultaneously with a gazillion other cooks, most of whom don't have a cookbook open either. I think this is a pleasant thing to contemplate, and somehow calming in the midst of frenzies of one sort or another.

In the summer, I use part fresh ripe tomatoes, and part canned, and I like the complexity of flavor this imparts. Also, fresh basil, because it is there, and a sin to ignore. In the beginning of winter, when I still have some (they go fast), I like to use my home canned organic San Marzanos, from an extra bushel of tomatoes I buy from my CSA farmer. I have also taken to adding a few finely chopped chicken livers, along with the ground beef, as I feel it adds some depth and silkiness to the sauce. It's not my own idea-I got it from an Italian cookbook, I'm fairly sure. Most recently, I tasted a sauce with something extra about it, and got my answer- a teensy scraping of fresh nutmeg. I'm putting it in my winter sauce these days.

Here are a couple of ways I have cheated, without too much damage, when I was missing something, and too lazy to run out shopping:

1. This one sounds the worst: Substitued a glop of ketchup for tomato paste. (True Confessions stuff here)
2. Thick sliced peppered bacon for pancetta
3. No wine...extra chicken broth and a dollop of red wine vinegar
4. chopped fennel for celery (I now prefer this option)
5. low on meat- minced portabellas and/or a handfull of chopped dried shitakes

The one thing (besides tomatoes and meat) that is completely indispensible as far as I am concerned, is garlic. Ain't no substitute.It would be my guess that no one who is motivated enough to bother reading a food blog needs to be told how to make a tomato meat sauce for pasta, and that is a nice thought, as far as I'm concerned. And everyone's is just a little different. Tasting the sauce, you can tell when you are home.

In case there is anyone who doesn't know the fundamentals, these are: In a big pot, heat some oil and cook a little bit of pancetta if you like, then add some chopped onion and any other little chopped veg you like, and cook until soft. Crumble in the ground meat of your choice, and brown it. Add the seasonings you like, especially garlic, salt and pepper,a bit of red pepper, but also basil, and parsley and some nutmeg or marjoram and a bay leaf.

Add a whole bunch of very good fresh or canned chopped peeled tomatoes and their juices, mooshed up a bit and some red wine and tomato paste, and cook the whole thing at a low burble for a long time, but at least until it turns a noticeably different sort of color, which seems to happen more or less all at once, after awhile. Add more liquid if it gets too thick in the meantime. You will know the turning color business the first time you see it happen, right ? It's quite obvious- not subtle or difficult to detect. If you were making a summery, fresh tomato sauce, you'd stop well before it happened; it's a depth and richness thing, and the brightness of fresh tomatoes doesn't survive it.

Anyhow, I made some tomato sauce because I've got a friend coming for our annual celebratory pre-Christmas dinner , and we are having spaghetti and presents. I saw a fancy all red holiday dinner in Gourmet Magazine. This is not it. But I liked the idea, and when I saw Julie's cranberry upside down cake at Kitchenography, I had to have it. If you look there you will find not only the recipe, but a picture of what the cake actually looks like. (Mine has a hole in the center, though..I had to use the ring shaped springform, because I haven't picked my other one up yet. Last I saw it, there was still some banana cake in it, so I didn't take it home). This is such a pretty cake. I roasted my last remaining farmbox beets, and made a salad with beets, roasted walnuts, and feta. It's a red Christmas here, complete with some red Christmas crackers.

I'm off to Cleveland for Christmas with the offspring. Be back soon.

Not So Light Feast of Lights

It cannot be denied that my culinary heritage inclines to the, well, leaden. It comes most directly from Eastern European Jews on the one side, and the East End of London on the other, but most of all it comes from poor people and hard times. All of my grandparents were genuinely, seriously hungry pretty regularly, and my parents, later reasonably prosperous, did not have all they wanted to eat as children.

People who are not certain where their next meal is coming from are happy to be replete when they have finished their meal. Of course, they usually eat a lot of carbohydrates and fats, because they are cheap, satiating and carry other flavors well. Later, when they can, the previously poor sometimes reject these traditional dishes, which remind them of hard times, and prefer a lighter (and more costly) diet, except for bouts of nostalgia, which may center around holidays. Holidays involve feasting, extra food, and often, memories of closeness and youth...so they are a bit different.

In my melting pot of a family, we go for all holidays to which we can claim any connection, and which can be construed as primarily about food. We are religiously unaffiliated (for generations unconnected with any official religious institutions, pretty much on all sides-with the occasional Unitarian here and there.) Food is more or less the secular sacrament around here. All of the above is by way of excusing my need to assemble a Channukah dinner which can be eaten or applied directly to the arteries without discernably different results. You don't have to eat it, but I'm going to...telling myself that it is but once a year* (albeit for eight days-but I'm only doing one belly-bomb fest), and all that. And Channukah is all about a seemingly endless supply of oil, right?

So here's the menu, should you wish to join me, in whole or part. I was interested in a recent article in the Food Section of the New York Times by Joan Nathan, concerning traditional Hungarian recipes as prepared by Hasidic jews of Hungarian descent in the US today. My turkey is a variant of her "Chicken Stuffed Under the Skin", which sounded awfully good to me. The original is made with chicken quarters. Mine is made with turkey thighs, which I love, and which are very easy to stuff under the skin. Brushing the turkey with paprika-laced oil makes the skin a beautiful mahogany color, as well as crispy.

I'll pass along that recipe as adapted here, link to those I've posted before, and follow up with further posts on my hybrid kugel/latke and the Times/Nathan recipe for the Hungarian pastries, which also I was also moved to try. I have cheated by posting the old photos from prior posts- I couldn't get excited about taking another egg salad picture, and I'm kind of busy here, anyway.

Channukah Dinner

Starters: Raw Vegetables "Relish Platter"-radishes, carrots, fennel sticks, olives, etc, with half sour pickles. (Make lots, and leave them on the table throughout, you need this to crunch and balance the stodgier aspects of the meal.)
The Other Egg Salad and Suzy's crackers

Main Thing: Turkey stuffed Under the Skin, With Roasted Vegs (see below)

Sides: Aforementioned Roasted Veg : Carrots, Green Beans and Onions
Kugel/Latke hybrid (coming soon to a blog near you)
Pletzlach
Keep on eating those carrot sticks, and whatnot.

Dessert:Cute little Hungarian Cheese Pastries (also coming soon), coffee

Turkey Stuffed Under the Skin with Roasted Veg (serves 4)

6 thinnish slices good bread, not too dried out (I used whole grain bread)
1 cup thinly sliced mushrooms (I used oyster mushrooms)
1 large clove garlic, minced
2 onions, one chopped, one quartered
one egg, lightly beaten
minced parsley-several tablespoons
fresh whole green beans
peeled carrots, sliced in chunks or sticks
4 tbsps of vegetable oil
hot hungarian paprika
salt
pepper
2 turkey thighs. If you bone them now, they are easier to slice later

Preheat the oven to 400F. Saute the mushrooms, garlic and chopped onion in 1-2 tbsps of the oil, until browning. In a bowl, crumble the bread, and moisten all over with water. Squeeze and drain all the water out, so you have a pasty ball of dough. Mix that up well with the egg, parsley, and the mushroom mix, and some salt and pepper.

Oil a baking pan just the size to hold the turkey and veg. Scatter the veg over the bottom of the pan. With your fingers, wiggle the skin away from the meat of the turkey thighs, leaving the outer edges attached as much as possible, to form a little pocket. Stuff half of the bread/mushroom mix into each, and set them on the veg, In a little cup, mix the remaining oil with plenty of paprika, and brush the top of each thigh.

You can brush them occasionally while baking, when you think of it. Bake for about an hour and a half, turning the oven down to 350F after an hour. If it gets too, too, brown, cover it loosely with foil, but make sure to end it uncovered, for crispness.

I'll be back soon for the potato thing and the pastries, always assuming I can move again after this dinner. And, by the way, I posted that special egg salad a long time ago...check it out, it is really, really good.Really good.

*In a week or so, I will be noting that Christmas comes but once a year , too. As do a number of other dinner-worthy occasions.