Butter. Flour. Eggs.

Irish Brown Soda Bread with smoked salmon

When I was a kid my Mother wouldn’t let me eat Lucky Charms breakfast cereal. She said they were too sugary, and while I suspect she was correct, I still yearn for those hard little marshmallows. There was something so wrong about them that they were oh so right. I only mention all of this because I am trying to highlight how un-Irish I am. Yes, my name is Michael, a name not uncommon to the Irish, but even if you dressed me in a green suit, stuck a pot of gold in my hand, stood me at the end of a rainbow, and made me shower with Irish Spring for a month, I still wouldn’t be Irish. Not unless my forefathers traveled here from Minsk by way of Dublin.

Hey, what are you gonna do?

I’ll tell you what I’m gonna do: I’m gonna bake Irish Soda Bread. And I’m gonna bake the most authentic Irish Soda Bread you ever tasted, even if it takes hours of research and travel.

Conveniently, Bon Appétit magazine just published an article about actor / writer Andrew McCarthy’s drive through Ireland looking for what he thought of as the perfect, true Irish Soda bread, saving me countless hours, and thousands of dollars in travel expenses.

(You may remember McCarthy as one of the “Brat Pack” stars of ‘80’s films like St. Elmo’s Fire and Pretty In Pink.)

Irish Soda Bread is really a lesson in the chemistry of leavening. As its name implies, it relies on baking soda for its rise as opposed to the yeast that is used in other breads. Baking soda requires an acid to work, so a generous dose of buttermilk (a heavy duty source of lactic acid), along with a bit of butter are the sources of moisture in most soda bread recipes. The buttermilk plus a generous ration of sugar give it the familiar gluey sweetness everyone expects.

The recipe printed in Bon Appétit magazine, Mrs. O’Callaghan’s Soda Bread, appealed to me because it uses a mix of regular flour and whole wheat flour, promising a truly rustic brown bread. I was hoping for the sweetness and richness you expect from soda bread, along with the ascetic, rough hewn character that whole wheat flour brings to the mix. (Reminds me of John Wayne and Maureen O’Hara, but in bread instead of in The Quiet Man.)

I hasten to add that I do not have a great deal of experience baking Irish Soda Bread. It was not something I saw with much frequency as a kid. As an adult I have noticed that much of the Irish Soda Bread that hits the shelves in anticipation of St. Patty’s Day tastes more like a big buttermilk scone studded with raisins and, sometimes, caraway seeds. What I liked about Mrs. O’Callaghan’s recipe was that none of that silly stuff is invited to the party. I also liked the fact that the Mrs. O’Callaghan quoted in the article (she bakes the bread for the Ballinalacken Castle Country House and Restaurant in Doolin) recommends a slice of her bread with a bit of butter and a slice of salmon.

I am making the dangerous assumption that she meant smoked salmon. True to any food-porn magazine’s mission, I could practically taste the smoked salmon as I read her recommendation. If I am going to be truthful here, I need to admit that pairing the sweet, wheaten bread with some oily, smoked salmon was my real motivation for trying the recipe.

On a lark I decided to also check out the recipe as posted at Bon Appétit’s website – and it’s a good thing I did. It seems that folks had some trouble with the recipe as printed in the magazine, so the editors went back to the drawing board, or in this case, the Test Kitchen, to make a few changes. For my money I think the 425˚F baking temperature is still a bit high. I may recommend dropping this to 400˚F, or even 375˚F and letting the loaf have a longer, slower bake. I was seriously worried that mine was going to burn. In any case, use the recipe on their website (linked below), not the one in the magazine, and keep your eye on the loaf towards the end of the baking time.

(By the way, I totally sympathize with the folks at the magazine. While baking is an exacting scientific endeavor, it can also be curiously inexact, captive to the vagaries of how my oven differs from yours, and whether you measured your flour by the dip and level method or by the scoop, fill, and level method.)

In spite of whatever problems there may have been translating the recipe from Mrs. O’Callaghan’s “little bit of this, little bit of that” measurements, the basic method for making soda bread can only be classified as easy. Very easy. Especially using a Kitchen-Aid stand mixer.

The bread itself was exactly as I had hoped. In the bargain, I have discovered a brown bread that is very easy to bake and that pairs well with smoked salmon. This will prove useful in my repertoire. A smear of butter, a slice of smoked salmon, a restrained rain shower of lemon, and I was a happy man. Granted, the bread was baked by me in New York, the butter was from Vermont, and the smoked salmon was Scottish. If not authentically Irish, then authentic in spirit, yes?

And on St. Patrick’s Day aren’t we all Irish?

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Click here for Mrs. O’Callaghan’s Soda Bread Recipe from Bon Appétit Magazine.

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Meyer Lemon Rosemary Biscotti

Remember Rosemary Focaccia? No, she wasn’t that friend of your Mom’s with the big hair. I baked it last week and wrote about it here. Well, I‘ve barely used any of the big hunk of rosemary (the herb, not the woman with the scary baby.) The rest has been sitting on my kitchen shelf, waiting for its next assignment. Every day as I walked by it I thought, “Don’t want to waste that, gotta use it in something.” I swear the rosemary kept eyeing me anxiously, like a Little Leaguer waiting on the bench for the coach to send her in to play shortstop.

Finally, I stopped and looked at the rosemary, and smelled its turpentine-soaked perfume for inspiration. Dubiously I thought, “Chicken?” Even the rosemary rolled its proverbial eyes at that one. I guess the world doesn’t need yet another take on Rosemary Chicken (the entrée, not your Dad’s prom date.)

Okay, I need to explain why I’ve been indulging myself here in cheap, vulgar word play which you tired of after the first instance. I have a friend who over the years has gotten me hooked on something we call “The Name Game.” I think you’ve gotten the unfortunate drift of how it works. I believe it started one day when he and a family member were assembling a piece of Ikea furniture. Stopping to decipher the instructions, they realized that the little tool that you use to assemble Ikea furniture had gone missing. Returning to the store they asked for a little replacement tool and the clerk answered, “Oh you mean an Allen wrench?”

I wasn’t there, but I’d love to have been a fly on the wall to see the clerk’s reaction when my friend replied, “Allen Wrench? I went to high school with him.” I imagine the clerk’s reaction was exactly the same as yours.

In the years since, my world has become populated by the likes of Chuck Steak, Bob Forapples, and the distinguished Count Yourchange.

The game is addictive, but I’ll stop and address the question at hand: what should I do with rosemary? (Now I’m restraining myself at great pain.)

I got to thinking that after January (my month of virtuous eating) I have been avoiding my best mate, the cookie. I’ve missed him so. That was all the inspiration I needed. My challenge was to make a cookie using rosemary, a somewhat grassy herb with a raucous perfume that is usually more at home as a savory note. An even better challenge, I thought, was to access my inner Alice Waters, and use whatever was fresh today at the market.

Since it is winter, the market wasn’t offering me any inspiration. So I wondered what would happen if I stole a page out of the chicken cookbook and made a Lemon Rosemary Cookie. I was intrigued but unconvinced. Just then, I spotted Meyer Lemons. (Okay, I’ll restrain myself, but c’mon, doesn’t that sound like a character Woody Allen would have played in one of his early movies?)

Rosemary; Meyer Lemon

I rarely see Meyer Lemons here in New York as they are not really the stuff of mainstream supermarkets. Meyer Lemons are delightfully odd in that they are a cross between lemons and oranges. They look like an orange, taste like a lemon, have strong undertones of lime, but lack a lot of the sourness of lemons.

Meyer Lemon Rosemary Biscotti would just hit the spot. I thought biscotti would be better than cookies because you can dip them in wine, taking advantage of the savory notes being sung by the rosemary.

I think a lot of folks who like to bake don’t realize that biscotti are really easy to make, and the flavor combinations are limited only by your imagination. And yes, even some of the sweet varieties are wonderful dipped in wine. A simple, light dessert? Biscotti dipped in a sweet dessert wine. Granted, not great for kids.

As biscotti doughs tend to be rich in eggs I knew that the aggressiveness of the Meyer Lemon and rosemary would be muted, resulting in a cookie that is just mildly sweet. My target was not to make the cookie equivalent of a Starburst candy.

Of course, if Starbursts are your cup of tea, you can drizzle the biscotti with a Meyer Lemon glaze that gives the cookies an almost drippy citrus zing. Meyer Lemon glaze has two ingredients. Does it get any easier? (No.)

The resulting biscotti were exactly as I imagined. They have a challenging crunch, and a vanilla heartiness that is merely “influenced” by the Meyer Lemon and Rosemary. The resident Butter Flour Eggs Oenologist (a/k/a my friend Marnee) recommends dipping them in the nectary sweetness of Mezzacorona Moscato – a more restrained Moscato than the “raisin-y” varieties that may be familiar to you.

If you prefer your fruit of the vine to be much less sweet, she also recommends the flowery Trader Joe Honeymoon Viognier or even the oaky darkness of Columbia Crest Grand Estates Merlot. I think the latter is where the Meyer Lemon Rosemary biscotti will shine.

All that’s left now is to set out a plate of the biscotti, uncork the wine, and enjoy a few relaxing moments with my friends Eileen Dover and her brother Ben.

Sorry. Couldn’t resist.

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Click here for the Meyer Lemon Rosemary Biscotti recipe.

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Olive Rosemary Focaccia

Okay, I’ll grant you that my headline is, perhaps, a bit overly dramatic. But for folks who like to cook, it can be fun to find a new product that promises to shake up the game a bit. I imagine fly-fishermen feel this way about new lures (you laugh, but a new lure can make a big difference when you’re standing mid-stream in your waders.)

(What is this: Field and Stream?)

A few months ago I wrote about how much comfort I get from having a stock of pizza dough waiting in my freezer. Go ahead, make fun of me. Chalk it up to some odd food-related neurosis.

A few days ago I went to the freezer and realized that not only was the pizza crust cupboard bare, but I had also run out of yeast. Later, at the supermarket I blindly reached for the yeast in its usual spot and my hand landed on a packet that just didn’t feel right. Upon closer inspection I realized that I had picked up a packet of Fleischmann’s Pizza Crust Yeast – a new product.

I use the term “new product” very loosely to describe any yeast. Even the freshest package of yeast purchased from any supermarket contains the progeny of yeast strains that could be hundreds of years old. (Fleischmann’s dates back to the mid-19^th century.) It’s not tough to propagate yeast. It is a very robust single-celled organism.

A few years back a chum bequeathed to me a baggie full of goo. (“Michael, my cherished friend, I present you with this baggie full of goo.” Ahhh, friends!) The bag of goo was actually the “starter” of a yeast coffee cake that was going around like the baking equivalent of a chain letter. I remember that it came with very detailed instructions which required me to feed the starter every day by opening the bag of goo, throwing in some flour, sugar, and water, closing the bag, and then squeezing the bag of goo to mix in the flour, sugar, and water. I had to do this every day for at least a week – I’ve forgotten the actual length of time – and it used to make me think of throwing meat to the lions the Romans kept under the Coliseum that chased slaves for sport. I’m not sure why my mind went there.

Finally after following this exercise for the prescribed length of time I was allowed to bake the cake from the recipe that was also supplied. The cake was very good, but I’m afraid I broke the chain by not putting a small sample of the goo in a fresh baggie and passing it along to someone. By that point everyone I knew had been “yeasted.”

But what I was doing with the baggie was propagating the yeast. Commercial yeast is grown using basically the same technique. The difference is that when you buy the little packets of yeast in the supermarket they have cleaned away everything but the yeast.

Okay, back to me standing in the baking aisle of the supermarket, holding the Pizza Crust Yeast. “Hmmm,” thought I, “Does it make the pizza taste different?” Reading the package, I learned that taste isn’t the focus of this new product, rather, convenience – time – is the focus. The concept is that you can now make pizza dough from scratch without having to wait for the dough to rise. By adding some dough relaxers and conditioners to the yeast packet, Fleischmann’s promises that you will immediately be able to roll out a 12” pizza crust without fighting the “snap-back” which happens when the gluten in the crust doesn’t allow you to shape the crust without it snapping back.

I think this warrants a session in the Butter Flour Eggs Food Laboratory, don’t you?

As much as I love pizza, I thought for the purposes of testing that I needed to make the crust without sauce and cheese so that I could really compare the crusts – taste and texture – unadorned. But that sounded kind of dull, so as a compromise I decided to make a simple Olive and Rosemary Focaccia.

I started with the Pizza Crust Yeast. The recipe and instructions on the Pizza Crust Yeast are geared towards a strictly manual process, i.e., a wooden spoon and a bowl or two. My first experiment was to see how well it would do in a Kitchen Aid stand mixer. The answer? Fine, although using their recipe yields a sticky dough which makes cleaning the bowl of the mixer a bit of a task, but not bad enough to raise any flags. Yes, the dough was extremely compliant when being shaped into the pan, happily settling itself into the corners.

The resulting Focaccia was a bit sweet, had a very cakey texture, and the crust was missing the tooth-shattering crunch I like. This actually wasn’t a bad thing. The Focaccia reminded me a bit of King’s Hawaiian Bread. While it didn’t make a great Focaccia, it did get my imagination going on other things I could make using the same technique. A fast yeast coffee ring came to mind first, but then my mind went to other combinations, including Honey-Whole Wheat bread sticks, and Breakfast Pizza (bake the crust first, then top with eggs and sweet sausage, and return to the oven to bake.)

I’ll experiment further, and publish the results when I come up with something good. In the meantime, some folks may like the sweet, cakey Focaccia, so you’ll find that recipe here. It was certainly fast and easy, and I’ll be curious to see how the yeast performs in my pizza recipe which uses much less sugar and a bit more flour. By the way, bread is out of the question. Fleischmann’s advises that the product is not suited to bread baking.

The other Focaccia, based on my usual pizza crust recipe was, by nature, a lengthier project. I think I’ll stick with it for now. The aforementioned crunch of the crust, plus the slightly fermented, yeastier flavor that are the results of the longer rise are what I like about Pizza and Focaccia.

But I like this “new” yeast. Anything that gets folks into the kitchen baking with and for their family gets my vote.

Sorry. Life as we know it is still very much the same. But the thought of making a quick yeast coffee cake will keep me going.

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Click here for my recipes for Olive and Rosemary Focaccia.

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Write to me at the email address below with any thoughts you may have. Thanks!

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Oh yeah: I made soup too. (Recipes follow...)

A few days ago I sat down on my big fat sofa to watch the opening ceremonies of the Olympic Winter Games and realized that I was – predictably – hungry. I’d had a busy day and hadn’t had the time to plan something special as a tribute to the Olympics, so I had a great big Olympic Omelet, which sounds like something you’d eat at a Diner in New Jersey. Mine was just an omelet.

Bobby Orr (This poster hung on our bedroom wall.)

Do you mind if pause here to relate an observation about the opening ceremonies? Don’t worry; I’ll swing it back to food post haste. At one point in the program a small group of distinguished Canadian athletes carried the Olympic flag across the stadium. Among them was Bobby Orr, the legendary hockey defenseman of the Boston Bruins. I think of him as a hometown hero, so it was an odd but happy feeling to see this kind of tribute paid to him by another country – namely, his own.

Those of us who grew up in Northern New England in that era are closer to Canadians than we realize. Could it be the cold weather? Boston winters are generally much icier than the wimpy New York winters. When I was growing up everyone’s car had a toolbox of well-worn items needed to deice the windshield: scrapers, brushes, and my favorite, a spray that melted the ice so you could then continue to scrape it away. Forget your morning workout: no one got out of their driveway without scrape aerobics. I am generally the nostalgic type, but I don’t miss that.

And hockey was very much a hometown game – perhaps not to the extent that it is for your average Canadian kid – but it seems like everyone, including yours truly, had a hockey stick in their hands at some point. We skated indoors and out, at places with wholesome names like Crystal Lake and Bulloughs’ Pond.

My brother was a hockey player – I mean, for real. He spent part of his high school years playing Junior Hockey in Canada, and went to college on a hockey scholarship. Even now at the age of __ he plays a few nights a week in an adult league, and he still has all of his teeth.

So now you understand that for me, seeing Bobby Orr, long since retired, carrying the Olympic flag was, well…heck he’s “Numbah Faw, Bobby Aw.”

ANYWAY, I WAS HUNGRY.

I wanted to make something hearty, healthy, and warm to eat while I watched the skiing, skating, and curling. Since the goal was to sit and watch the Olympics, the hope was that I could make something that would last for several meals. I’m all about investing in time up front. Soup, anyone? Let’s face it, this isn’t brain surgery. Making soup, even from scratch, is almost as easy as opening a few cans and emptying them into a big pot.

Chili seemed like an obvious choice, but, with Super Bowl Weekend having just passed, I’m all “chilied out.” Compromise seemed to be the order of the day, and that came in the form of White Chicken Chili, but cooked “con carne” style, meaning with chunks of chicken instead of ground chicken.

Perhaps I was influenced by all the snow I was watching people glide over on my TV, but white seemed to become the “theme” of this meal, if indeed there was a theme at all. I chose traditional white chili condiments and white ingredients, except the one everyone may have expected: instead of white beans I used black eyed peas. But there was enough white stuff already. The translucent crunch of turnip instead of celery, and the starchy chew of hominy needed a little counterpoint to keep the chili from being too monochromatic.

The end result was indeed satisfying: warming, hearty, but minus the richness of regular chili. The heat and slight vinegary bite of tomatillos and green chilies gave the soup (stew?) a familiar “chilliness.” Texans and other purists may not like the result, although I am the first to admit that it is definitely Northern White-Boy Chili. Have I mentioned that I’m from New England?

It was with this defiant-slash-defeatist attitude that I decided to find a substitute for the expected tortilla chips that may have given some salty, crunchy consort to the chili. In my mind’s eye I pictured tortilla chips sneering at what I’d cooked, as if to say, “Sorry hombre, but that aint Chili!” Oyster crackers seemed to be a bit off the mark too, although their heavy, almost thudding crunch seemed tempting.

Cornmeal "Saltines"

Again, compromise: Cornmeal “Saltines” are like the secret love child of corn tortillas and oyster crackers. They are a cinch to make and their salty, dusty crunch and cornmeal graininess are like an oar you can use to row through the richness of the cheese and sour cream you’ll want to dollop on top. Baked, not fried! They are what used to be referred to as “homely”, that is, simple and very plain, but I think therein lays their appeal. I’ll be reserving a few as a solo snack while I watch the moguls.

But just now I’m off to watch the Curling. Sweeping a broom on the ice to make big rocks go farther? That looks like something I could actually do!

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Click here for my recipes for Chili Con Pollo and Cornmeal “Saltines”.

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Write to me at the email address below with any thoughts you may have. Thanks!

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Profiteroles

“One nice thing eez, the game of love eez never called on account of darkness.” – Pepe Le Pew

Pepe Le Pew: now there’s a true romantic. He never gives up on love. He approaches it with a single-mindedness that could almost be enviable. And yes, you may have noticed that he is as French as une baguette. The last bit makes sense, given that Parisians, indeed all French, have had a reputation for romance grafted onto their identities like a tattoo. (That Pepe Le Pew happens to be a cartoon skunk is irrelevant to my thesis.)

I have been trying to find out why Paris is considered the most romantic city in the world. No matter who I ask or where I look on the internet, the closest answer I can get is that “it just is.” Songs have been written about it, movies have been made, and books have been published. So who am I to argue?

Perhaps you are familiar with the famous “French Paradox.” This is the observation that the French suffer a relatively low incidence of heart disease, despite having a diet relatively rich in saturated fats.

Pepe Le Pew

But herein lies my French paradox: how can it be that a place and a people so famous for being romantic can also be famous for rudeness? (Not like New Yorkers, who are sooooo nice.) It reminds me somehow of what Socrates said about love, “The hottest love has the coldest end.” So perhaps my paradox is explained by twisting Socratic reason: French passion burns white hot, but is icy cold when you ask for your vin ordinaire to be refilled. They may be rude, but they’re rude with style.

(Quoting Pepe Le Pew and Socrates in the same story must be some kind of journalistic breakthrough.)

The following bit of news is unlikely to come as a surprise: for me all roads lead to food, and any place where your visit isn’t considered complete unless you’ve partaken of an éclair or two (or three) gets a gold star on my map. So if the people are rude, I figure I can always drown my sorrows at les patisseries, non?

Valentine’s Day is this weekend. Last week I described baking Valentine Heart cookies. They are a sweet and wonderful thing to make for your special someone, but if something more transcendent is called for then may I suggest a really cheap trip to romantic Paris?

No, I am not saying that you should fly to Paris for a day in the middle of winter (although if you want to that’s good too.) But the Butter Flour Eggs Travel Bureau would like you to know that Paris can be as close as your kitchen, and just as romantic as the real thing. All that is needed is a touch of atmosphere, and, yes, some butter, flour, and a few eggs. Oh, and a big hunk of chocolate. Okay, two big hunks of chocolate.

Here’s the bottom line: if Paris is the most romantic city in the world, then why not toss out the flowers and the candy, and instead serve something typically Parisian? Life may be a box of chocolates, but for me, Valentine’s Day is all about Profiteroles.

Profiteroles are a staple of Parisian patisseries. In simplest terms, they are small cream puffs filled with ice cream and drizzled with chocolate sauce. Such an underwhelming description, yes, but like Paris, it’s more about the experience and the sum of the parts than about the mere bricks and mortar.

I don’t remember the first time I had Profiteroles, but it wasn’t in Paris. I’ve had them through the years here in New York at the venerable Café Un Deux Trois. While I was preparing to write this article I Googled, “Who serves the best Profiteroles in Paris?” Number one on someone’s list was a patisserie named Carette. (Warning to office dwellers, their website site plays music.) If you’ve been to Paris it is likely you are familiar with Carette as it is hardly an undiscovered secret. For several days I have been fixated on their website, specifically the pictures. Looks like a place I could spend an afternoon, eating.

You may be thinking, “Are you crazy? You want me to make cream puffs?” I’m not crazy (at least not measurably), the effort is all in the name of romance, and cream puffs – Pâte à Choux – are ridiculously easy to make. Really. Meatloaf is harder, I swear.

There’s also a dirty little secret about Profiteroles: they can be made a day or two ahead and stashed in the freezer until you need them. Just thaw them for a fleeting twenty minutes or so – long enough to unwrap jewelry (hint hint) – glaze with the intense, oozing gloss of a special chocolate sauce and l’amour is alive in your kitchen. Feel free to eat them with a spoon, but they’re small, so why not pull a “Mickey Rourke” and feed each other with your hands? Messy? Ah, you’ll figure it out.

If your kitchen isn’t especially atmospheric, light a few candles and fire up some classic French love songs on your iPod; anything by Charles Aznavour, Edit Piaf, or Yves Montand will do the job, and they’re all available on iTunes.

As one of those songs says, “C’est si bon / Lovers say that in France / To the tune of romance / It means it’s oh so good.” I think that is as true for romance as it is for Profiteroles.

Of course on Valentine’s Day, I know a few folks who may prefer a little ditty sung by Beyoncé that beseeches the listener to, “put a ring on it.”

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Click here for my recipe for Profiteroles.

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Write to me at the email address below with any thoughts you may have. Thanks!

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Valentine's Day Cookies

A couple of classmates from elementary school “friended” me recently on Facebook. To protect the innocent I won’t say how many years have gone by since I’ve seen them. As happy as I was to hear from them after all these years, I also found that it raised some strange emotions for me. I think the passage of time has always had an ineffable quality for me; I can count the time passed in numbers but I can’t quite wrap my head around what it means.

One of these long lost school mates reminded me that when we were kids I always gave everyone in our classroom a Valentine’s Day card. I admit I found this a bit disconcerting:  you mean everyone DIDN’T give everyone in class a Valentine’s Day card?? What was going on there? Were they raised by wolves?

I remember vividly that every year there was the ceremonial carving of the shoe box: everyone decorated a shoe box with a slot cut in the top. Everyone placed them on their desks to serve as a Valentine’s Day mailbox. I remember a flurry of activity as everyone ran around the classroom delivering their cards. I do not remember why I was so generous with my little paper hearts and cupids. Was I sentimental or romantic? Was my Mom teaching me some early lesson about etiquette and letter writing? Maybe it was the simple math of me observing that there were twenty-something cards in the pack, and assuming that I was supposed to use them all?

Whatever the reason, it is a relief to know that for once, I had it covered. Phew.

Living here in New York, I am a witness every year to the adult version of this ritual. I always get a laugh out of seeing the long line of quietly panicked men at the florist and at the Godiva store much too late on Valentine’s Day. I never see women in those lines. I’m not sure why, but I got a hint the other day when my Baby Niece (or “B.N.”) called me – more than two weeks before Valentine’s Day – and asked if I would help her make a special treat for her boyfriend (lower case.) I think she’s trying to make him her Boyfriend (upper case.)

She wants to surprise him with cookies (he doesn’t read this blog so this won’t ruin the surprise.) I think this is a great idea. Anyone can go out and buy chocolate, but the extra step of making something or planning something is what makes a gift romantic on Valentine’s Day. It says, “I was thinking of you, and you mean enough to me that I took the time and planned something special.” I am not advocating stalking, rather, I am merely suggesting consensual obsession.

Nor am I advocating that you should forego including jewelry as part of your Valentine’s Day gift. If I did that I would likely be disinherited by my Mother and have to endure the scorn of the other women in my family, as well as countless others. Jewelers everywhere can now breathe a sigh of relief.

I was more than willing to bake the cookies for her and let boyfriend (lower case) operate under the delusion that she baked them – the sugary equivalent of Cyrano de Bergerac. (How’s that for romantic?)

But no, B.N., an intrepid young woman, insisted that she needed to do it herself under my supervision. My only concern was that my kitchen is a bit snug for two adults to comfortably work. Also, we were planning on dipping the cookies in chocolate; to bake them, wait for them to cool, and then dip ‘n decorate (can I trademark that term?) would mean perhaps a longer day than either of us was willing to give to the project.

In the past I have described my usual division of labor for projects of this type. To be brief, I prefer to break the work into pieces. For these Valentine cookies I decided that the pieces should be: A) I’ll make the cookie dough B) I’ll bake the cookie dough C) B.N. will decorate the cookies.

That weighty decision done, I unearthed a very simple, not too sweet, shortbread recipe I had cobbled together. This is one of those “double duty” recipes I always like. You can use it for cookies, but if you omit the egg it makes a great crust for lemon bars, or pecan bars. As B.N.’s boyfriend (lower case) prefers milk chocolate (I approve!), I thought this humble cookie would be the best delivery system for the milk chocolate.

We had a bit of time between “cookie day” and Valentine’s Day, so I knew I needed to be extra careful with the chocolate. During that time the chocolate could become streaky or discolored – especially if refrigerated. Tempering chocolate is a process that allows you to melt it and let it set again without streaking or discoloring. Tempering chocolate requires raising it to a particular temperature, then cooling it slowly by folding it over on itself on a cool marble slab. It requires a bit of skill, patience, and space. I’m one for three. Barely.

Instead, I found a shortcut technique in a really beautiful book titled, “Baking At Home with The Culinary Institute of America.” Their shortcut involves simply melting two thirds of the chocolate on top of a double boiler, then adding the remaining un-melted chocolate and allowing it to melt while stirring until the chocolate reaches 84˚F to 87˚F. Sounds convoluted? The fault is in my description, it is really very simple.

B.N. and I had a blast. This is a really low stress project. One of the reasons for the lower stress is the sheer scale of the project: at Christmas you feel compelled to bake enough cookies to feed a small country. On Valentine’s Day you can get away with as few as three or four and as many as a dozen. Unless you’re baking enough for the whole class.

You can see samples of our collaboration in the picture above. The question remains: will boyfriend (lower case) be promoted to Boyfriend (uppercase)?

We’ll see. But for now I’ve got another Valentine’s Day covered. Phew.

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Click here for my recipe for chocolate dipped shortbread cookies.

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Write to me at the email address below with any thoughts you may have. Thanks!

Let me email you when the blog has been updated! Opt in by clicking the biscotti at right or by sending your email address to michael@butterfloureggs.com

Miso hungry

Wow. That was fast. January – the “Monday Morning of the year” – ends this weekend. Can it be just a few short weeks ago that I was gorging myself on holiday cookies? Eating chocolate like a condemned man? Seems like a distant memory. Ah well, that’s okay because you may recall that I designated January as my month of virtuous eating. The idea was to deblobify while not letting myself feel as though I was on a diet.

This week I had planned to make a cleansing, healthy, but substantial soup. The type of thing that makes you feel like you’re treating your body like the temple that it is, while also feeling like you’re indulging in one of life’s great pleasures – which to me is what cooking well and eating well is all about.

Then I caught a doozy of a winter cold, and that changed the dynamic. Out went my plans for a carefully tended, delicate but hearty chicken soup. “La grippe” rendered me too lazy to chop the onions, carrots, celery, and garlic that serve as the aromatic base for really good chicken soup. No, all I wanted to do was sit on my big fat…uh…sofa.

So I changed tactics a bit. I suppose I could have opened a can of soup. I have no objections to that. But what kind of a blog would that make? “Dear Readers: Tonight I opened a can of soup. The End.” I think I can be a little more creative than that, even with a stuffy nose.

Here’s how this came to be: I may have mentioned in the past that I am a bit of a lightweight when it comes to alcoholic beverages. You can add Ny-Quill to that list: one dose and the room starts to spin. The other night as I was holding on to the bed to make sure I didn’t fall out, I thought of Shirataki noodles.

Non-sequitur? Yes indeed, and don’t you envy my ability to get completely ripped from one tiny dose of Ny-Quill? I have no idea why I thought of Shirataki noodles, but once the thought came to mind there it stayed until I drifted off.

Japanese Shirataki noodles are kind of amazing – in theory. They are not made of flour; instead they are made of powdered Konnyaku root (a yam), with certain brands throwing in some tofu for good measure. More important: they are gluten free, and extremely low in carbs, and calories.

Here’s the problem: I tried them a year or two ago and hated them. The easiest to find Shirataki noodles come packed in a bag of water and have a somewhat gelatinous texture. In other words, they have the mouth feel of overcooked noodles. That’s a major flaw for me; I’ve been known to fatally undercook pasta. I’m talking al Dente with a capital D. (Or should that be a capital A?) As I was riding the Ny-Quill roller coaster I decided that I should give Shirataki noodles another chance, but this time I’d make sure to keep them within a milieu where they can feel at home: miso soup.

Miso soup is a staple of Japanese cuisine, so much so that many Japanese even drink it for breakfast. Miso is a paste made of fermented soy and usually another grain like rice or barley. The paste is simply mixed with water or broth to make soup. Easy and fast, right? The best part is that anything else in the soup is your choice.

Cut to the next day, and me, stone cold sober, trawling the aisles at Whole Foods. In my shopping cart: miso paste, and Shirataki noodles. As I walked up and down the aisles I kept an eye out for things that would complement the mild saltiness of the soup while adding color (miso soup tends to be a bit muddy), and add a bit of texture. I also hoped for something vaguely medicinal to attack my cold. Garlic was a given. Supposedly it has antiseptic properties that would wash away my cold.

I thought scallions might be a nice addition too; they were usually floating in the bowls of miso soup I have been served in restaurants. But that day Whole Foods was pushing big fat Vidalia Salad Onions which looked like scallions that had gorged themselves at an all you can eat buffet. They looked too good to pass up. A few shiitake mushrooms found their way into the basket – one of the familiar faces I thought would keep the Shirataki noodles company.

Finally, I realized that I craved a bit of protein and bought a palmful of 41-50 shrimp from the fish counter.

Back home in my kitchen, making the soup was literally as easy as boiling water. I cut the garlic into not-too-thin slices. I figured I could steep its medicinal qualities into the soup by not chopping it too finely. I sliced the mushrooms, and added the Shirataki noodles early so they’d have enough time to heat up with the soup.

(Shirataki noodles usually need to be boiled very briefly before using, because straight from the package they may have a bit of a funky smell. I did as directed, but I probably could have skipped this step: mine didn’t smell bad coming out of the package.)

I added the shrimp last and let them cook in the soup. This takes a whopping two to three minutes. After pouring the soup into the bowl, I added thin rings of the Vidalia Salad Onion as a garnish. Their spiky / sweet crunch would be a nice counterpoint to all the other mellow ingredients.

My instinct about the Shirataki noodles was right on target. In a soup I didn’t find their softness objectionable; here they fit in beautifully and added a bit of guilt-free chew. The soup itself was light and refreshing with a reassuring sting of garlic that I chose to assume were its medicinal qualities announcing their report for duty.

No, the soup didn’t rid me of my cold. But it did get me back on the sofa quickly, well nourished, and with happily amused taste buds. What’s the old saw about colds? Three days coming, three days here, and three days going. If that schedule holds, my cold should exit with the month of January.

And will January leave me deblobified? I’m down ten pounds. Not bad, eh?

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The kind folks at Saveur Magazine found my August 31^st, 2009 posting about Ines Rosales Sweet Olive Oil Tortas and asked me to distill it for inclusion in their readers’ 2010 Top 100 list. You’ll find it in the Jan / Feb 2010 issue of the magazine, now on newsstands everywhere. Take a look and let me know what you think!

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Write to me at the email address below with any thoughts you may have. Thanks!

Let me email you when the blog has been updated! Opt in by clicking the biscotti at right or by sending your email address to michael@butterfloureggs.com

Are you looking at me?

In a previous century I worked as a waiter for one of New York’s well known chefs. I will not mention any names here – not because I have any juicy gossip on the guy – but because the anonymity will give me freedom from the fear that if any of this ever got back to him his reaction would be, “Michael who??”

To say that I never bonded with the guy would be a tremendous understatement, although I think it is a safe assumption that chefs, as a rule, don’t bond with the wait staff. More accurate would be to say that in the better establishments they view the wait staff as the only socially accepted conduit to get the food to the table. A necessary evil. I’m not evil, I’m just clumsy.

Unconfirmed legend around the restaurant had it that Chef enjoyed Cuban cigars – strictly illegal mind you – so he only smoked them in the privacy of his office. One day when I had been asked to deliver a phone message to Chef in his office, I opened the door and was greeted by a fog of cigar smoke. I thought, “I will not cough, I will not cough, I will not cough…” and stumbled my way through the windpipe-constricting mist to where he was sitting. Delivering the folded paper containing the message, I politely queried, “Is someone burning old tires?”

Understand: I had, indeed still have, no idea where that came from, except of course that his Coroña Grande did indeed smell like burning tires.

He glowered at me, but in his eyes I recognized one resolute thought: “I will not laugh, I will not laugh, I will not laugh…”

And that, ladies and gentlemen, was the extent of our bonding.

You’ll be relieved to know that in the intervening years I have sharpened my self-censoring skills. To his credit, I think Chef appreciated the fact that I trusted him enough to make an attempt at joking banter, lame as it was.

When I think back on my career as a waiter I think of two things: sore feet, and tableside service. I have no idea how many hundreds of Caesar salads I made tableside, but here’s where I have poor Martha Stewart beat. Some years ago on her show I watched her teach an actress how to make a Caesar salad – incorrectly. Drove me nuts.

For a waiter the fun thing about tableside service is that you and the folks at the table have a few minutes to bond. If you are able to bring a little obvious skill to the task – a bit of show biz – it is an opportunity to earn a little respect as more than just an order-taking drone. There’s also the remaining fork-full or two of salad that somehow didn’t make it onto the plate.

Whole Dover sole, filleted tableside, was a staple item on Chef’s menu. Filleting, or “de-boning” as some folks called it, was one task I actually enjoyed. It looked like it required a bit of skill, but the truth is that a chimp could do it with two sticks. The only snag was when large groups ordered the sole. On those occasions the business of the restaurant would pause as most of the staff stood quietly de-boning the fish.

I love to follow fashions in food the way some follow hemlines in the rag trade. Last year Short Ribs were everywhere. Every time I turned on the TV some chef was extolling their virtues and how tender and meaty they are when cooked “just so.” But I knew they were really thinking, “Short Ribs are dirt cheap and I can still charge $18.95.”

Lately it seems as though these chefs’ attentions have migrated to roasting whole Branzino. Branzino are delicate little Sea Bass that are rapidly becoming every menu’s “must have” item. While not as friendly to the chefs’ bottom line as other fish, they have a European cachet. They abound in the Mediterranean, and have been on the menu over there for years. I would guess that individual whole fish require less Sous Chef attention too.

I realized that nature was offering some help to me for January, my month of virtuous eating. Small whole fish are perfect portions; just enough, very healthy, and a good dose of protein. While I have filleted hundreds of Dover soles, I have never roasted a whole fish at home. My month of virtue seemed like the perfect time to try.

I ran to my fish market and, voila: no Branzino! My choice that day was Porgy, but Porgies have a mouth that appears permanently fixed in a frown. There’s something about my potential dinner frowning at me that I found unsettling. I’d be frowning too if I were on his plate.

I could preach to you now about not being squeamish about food that looks back at you. Most of the folks who ordered Whole Dover Sole asked me to remove the head. Yet, I’m just as guilty as the next guy; this is something I wrestle with constantly. A few years ago I roasted a chicken. Delicious. That night as my head hit the pillow a thought flashed in my mind: “There’s a dead bird in my refrigerator.” (I still slept just fine.) Some months later I had no problem plopping a live lobster into a steaming pot. No thoughts haunted me that night. I think this is a symptom of being a bit disconnected from the true source of my food. We all try to operate under the illusion that our food was born wrapped in plastic.

Anyway, I was about to leave the fish counter empty handed when I spied some happy little Sardines sitting in the chopped ice. I remembered Chef serving fresh Sardines as an appetizer. Up ‘till then I thought Sardines were something you got from a can, but he served them delicately roasted, and topped with something I couldn’t entirely remember –I just remember it was unobtrusive and tomato.

While I was convinced that I could come close to replicating my Sardine memory, I also wanted to experiment a bit. So I filleted one of the Sardines before cooking, and the other two I roasted whole with just a few sprigs of dill in the cavity where the fish had been “cleaned.”

I filled the bottom of my roasting pan with a layer of salt. Salt allows a gentler, more even heating of the fish. I placed the fish on the salt and roasted them at 350˚F for twelve minutes. Larger fish require closer to twenty minutes.

If I hadn’t filleted one of the fish, dinner would have been ready in less than twenty minutes. Rachael Ray would be proud.

The result was simple, clean, and so totally unlike the denizens of the tin cans that you may think they are different animals. I enjoyed the one I filleted before cooking the best, but the preference was one of convenience. I was starving and could eat it sooner.

On top of the fish I tried two simple toppings. The first was a simple Tomato Oil I made by lightly sautéing a couple of chopped cloves of garlic in some olive oil then adding diced tomato and warming just until the tomato was warmed through and the oil was stained by the tomato.

The other was a Mango, Jicama, and Pineapple salad that I bought at the market. Which one did I enjoy more? The answer, admittedly a dodge, was that I enjoyed most whichever was in my mouth at the time.

While roasting whole fish is an appealing addition to my month of virtuous eating, the process of shopping for the fish and preparing them is so much fun, and the final result so gratifying, that they have officially been added to my year ‘round repertoire.

Except Porgy. I can’t deal with that frown.

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The kind folks at Saveur Magazine found my August 31^st, 2009 posting about Ines Rosales Sweet Olive Oil Tortas and asked me to distill it for inclusion in their readers’ 2010 Top 100 list. You’ll find it in the Jan / Feb 2010 issue of the magazine, now on newsstands everywhere. Take a look and let me know what you think!

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Write to me at the email address below with any thoughts you may have. Thanks!

Let me email you when the blog has been updated! Opt in by clicking the biscotti at right or by sending your email address to michael@butterfloureggs.com

Virtuous

When I was a kid, we always joked that you could tell the best Chinese restaurant in town by how many of “us” ate there.

Indeed, there were nights at Dave Wong’s China Sails that there were enough of “us” munching on Moo Goo Gai Pan to exceed the number needed for a temple quorum ten times over.

Am I teetering on the brink of the politically incorrect?

Yes, “we” love our own food too – although for the most part we save it for special occasions like Jewish holidays.  But truth be told, much of it originated as peasant food, was usually made with fairly unhealthy ingredients, and lacked…shall we say, complexity of flavors. I think that is why “we” became such rabid fans of other folks’ food.

This discussion will likely bring some stern words of disagreement my way, but to paraphrase an old borscht-belt joke, look around: Do you see one Jewish restaurant?

Yes, there are millions of delis, but nowadays those are only nominally Jewish, and as much as I love Hot Pastrami you’ll have a hard time convincing me of its merits as healthy food.

My Grandmother had a very old, very grand looking brass samovar which used to fascinate me because it was engraved with Russian words and images of the Czar. She never served anything from the samovar, but she did show me how they used to keep the borscht hot by loading a tube inside with hot coals. In her house the samovar was the only thing – besides her – that came from the “old country.” She didn’t speak with an accent, but the samovar did.

Like most immigrants of her era, she embraced all things American – she and my grandfather even spent their honeymoon in Washington, D.C.

As time brings “us” further and further away from our Eastern European roots, the definition of Jewish food becomes more watered-down than my Grandmother’s chicken soup. Pure Jewish food, when you can find it, doesn’t resemble the stuff served to me as a kid. I can’t remember the last time I had a Knish of the type they used to serve when I was a kid: tiny, crusty, and filled with mystery. (Unfortunately the mystery was about the filling, as in, “What the heck is this stuff?” That didn’t stop me from inhaling them.)

I’ve had a few requests for a Noodle Pudding recipe, but I have found that cooking Noodle Pudding (a/k/a Kugel) generally entails choices that are no more troublesome than asking, “Raisins? No raisins? Raisins in half the pan?”

Again, not very complex, and probably shouldn’t be. It is home cooking – comfort food – and needs to hew closely to an ideal well formed in peoples’ minds. When Passover rolls around I’ll probably fiddle around with Noodle Kugel, but if I stray too far afield from people’s expectations I’ll have to name it something else. Our assimilated tastes cause us to change these recipes to fit our surroundings, not unlike the way a little girl born in a rural Russian village was changed and became my city-dwelling-American-as-apple-pie Grandmother.

It’s January. It’s cold. As I wrote recently, this is my time of year to detox and deblobify. I am determined to do this as painlessly as possible, and that’s why healthy food, well cooked, is essential. I have been snooping around for healthy things to eat that will give me the fuel to stay warm during this cold winter. Hopefully it will also take my mind off the cookies and the bars of chocolate that are screaming for me to rescue them from the evil clutches of the grocery store.

So it was that I cracked open a box of kasha – cracked buckwheat– that has been sitting on my shelf so long that I forgot how it got there. This is what made me think about my Grandmother and Jewish food in general, but it was actually my Mom who used to serve Kasha Varnishkes, or cracked buckwheat mixed with bow tie noodles. The Kasha Varnishkes of my youth was that magically delicious blend of salty and greasy, hallmarks of really good soul food.

But the basic ingredient, buckwheat, is so healthy that I figured it was worth a try to see if I could recreate the flavor I remember while keeping it on my list of virtuous foods for my January cleanse. Happily, kasha is relatively obscure, so I am free to do whatever I want to it without going against anyone’s preconceived notions.

I used the Kasha Pilaf recipe on the box and added a dose of sautéed garlic then merely substituted olive oil for butter and low sodium chicken stock for water. Making Kasha Varnishkes was as simple as throwing cooked bow ties into the kasha. Because I am trying to be “good” just a few bowties were all I needed.

But what struck me was the texture and flavor of the kasha itself. Due to the mix of the kasha’s toasty graininess and my use of chicken stock, it had a gratifyingly meaty flavor. I immediately imagined it mixed with a liberal quantity of lightly toasted pine nuts and a sprinkling of currants as a really delicious filling for Stuffed Peppers. How about a cold salad of farro and kasha? I may even try to make those little Knishes of my youth with a kasha stuffing. Too bad I’ll have to save the knishes for later in the year when I’m not being as virtuous.

The bonus is that buckwheat is being touted in nutrition circles for bringing more than just a pretty face to the party. It is high in protein and fiber, it is gluten-free, and there are theories out there that it may even lower cholesterol and reinforce capillary walls.

Now I really feel virtuous!

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Click here for the recipe for Kasha.

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The kind folks at Saveur Magazine found my August 31^st, 2009 posting about Ines Rosales Sweet Olive Oil Tortas and asked me to distill it for inclusion in their readers’ 2010 Top 100 list. You’ll find it in the Jan / Feb 2010 issue of the magazine, now on newsstands everywhere. Take a look and let me know what you think!

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Write to me at the email address below with any thoughts you may have. Thanks!

Let me email you when the blog has been updated! Opt in by clicking the biscotti at right or by sending your email address to michael@butterfloureggs.com

uh oh...

Hey, month of January: I’m just not that into you.

When January starts I always feel as though I’ve been kicked out of a great party because the hosts want to go to sleep. Out into the hall I am booted, my coat and scarf tossed out the door after me. Every shred of holiday glitz has been stripped away or ripped down faster than you can say, “Jingle Bells.” The Rockettes have gone home to soak their poor, tired, feet, and discarded Christmas trees line Manhattan’s sidewalks, lying on their sides as if they are sleeping off a long bender.

Worst of all, the kitchen has been shuttered: I can no longer use the holidays as an excuse for one more cookie.

It’s really a matter of outlook. I need to stop concentrating on January as the end of something, and start concentrating on January as the start of something; the frosty mug into which a happy, exciting, foamy, root beer will soon flow.

(Poetic? Hardly. You’ll notice there’s still something sugary on my mind.)

I should really be grateful to January for being the “tough love Mom” of the year. “Time to get back to the gym. Time to start eating properly again. You’ll look and feel better.” Yes, Mom. Okay, Mom. I will, Mom.

Oh, I was full of good intentions, one of which was to start the New Year writing about food that was less “sugar-centric.” With practically everyone now on a diet I confess that it wasn’t altruism that drove this editorial direction; I was afraid I might drive folks away if I kept up a steady stream of cakes, pies, cookies, and milk chocolate.

My personal belief is that cooking well for yourself is the keystone of a great diet. However, the trick for me is to get the ball rolling, which I have been gradually psyching myself up to do (I’m moving a little slowly these days due to all that holiday bloat.)

Then I got an invitation to a New Year’s Weekend Brunch. My mother trained me that you should never go to someone’s house empty-handed, so what was I going to bring: a bunch of celery? Heck, as I write this it’s still the holidays, so I’m having one last blast of sugar. Wheee!

(As you read this, I will have gone on the wagon. I swear.)

Breakfast is my favorite meal, so I am naturally drawn to the breakfast-y aspect rather than the lunch-y aspect of brunch. My hostess is well known as a skilled and discerning cook, so I really needed to be on my game. (She was certainly on hers!)

I don’t know why my head went directly to crumb cake. If this was the food equivalent of psychologists’ ink blots what would this say about my psyche? I wanted to make one of those old fashioned coffee cakes where the cake part merely serves as support to masses of cinnamon-infused crunchy crumbs. I’ve made things like this once or twice in the past, but noted that the recipes floating around out there always seemed to shortchange the streusel or crumb topping. Why be chintzy with the part that is always everyone’s favorite? So right out of the gate I knew that I would double the usual amount of crumbs usually called for.

The cake portion of our program was fairly straightforward: a touch of vanilla here, a hint of cinnamon there (to echo the streusel). My only twist was to replace half of the sugar with brown sugar, which would give the cake a mild glint of caramel. The thought of bringing a big tube pan-shaped cake seemed a little heavy duty for a small home brunch, so I pulled out the trusty loaf pan.

I would rate the cake a true first draft effort. The first problem was that there was too much batter for the pan. In a wink toward impending New Year diets, the recipe was designed to not be as rich, so I replaced the butter with oil. I also used regular plain non fat yogurt which left the batter a touch too runny to support the hefty middle layer of streusel crumbs. Next time I’ll experiment with either sour cream or Greek yogurt; both are thicker and should help produce a batter more up to the task of supporting the crumbs. I may even dial back on the brown sugar to restore a stark contrast between the toasted spicy crumbs and the downy cake. We’ll see.

Really though, what’s the point of all this fuss? Most folks will just eat the crumbs and push the cake aside. Well, I like the cake, so this is a personal errand.

Worst of all was that the top layer of crumbs over browned a bit in my oven. Using less batter or a different pan will reduce the baking time and reduce the chance that the crumbs may over-brown. I’m posting the recipe, so feel free to take a look and send me your suggestions. It’ll be our little collaborative project for the year.

Meanwhile a more earthbound question would be what to do with the big bunch of celery I bought to photograph. When I was a little kid my mother used to fill the hollow with peanut butter. I’m not averse to a dab of peanut butter every now and then—even on a diet—but I really thought I could be a little more imaginative. Yes, I could chop it and use it as part of the aromatic base for some hearty winter soup, and likely will use some of it for that. But I need a snack to replace the cookies which have been rotated off the menu.

If you’ve never heard of Bagna Càuda, it’s not an academic achievement, it’s a dip served hot, fondue style – Bagna Càuda translates as “warm bath.” The best part (right now) is that unlike fondue it is very light and its few ingredients shoehorn it comfortably into the Mediterranean diet. While this simple Piedmontese recipe usually starts with just olive oil, anchovy, and garlic, you can play around with the ingredients to suit your whim. I’ll be using it to dip that big bunch of celery and other veggies, but you can also drizzle it over cooked meat, or even use it as a side for antipasti.

All right! Now I’m hungry. Luckily there’s something good waiting!

Happy New Year!

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The kind folks at Saveur Magazine found my August 31^st, 2009 posting about Ines Rosales Sweet Olive Oil Tortas and asked me to distill it for inclusion in their readers’ 2010 Top 100 list. You’ll find it in the Jan / Feb 2010 issue of the magazine, now on newsstands everywhere. Take a look and let me know what you think!

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Click here for the recipe for Crumb Cake and click here for the recipe for Bagna Càuda.

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