Farinata

The diary would start something like this: “Summer, day 2 / 102 days to go.” My summer travelogue diary would record my grand tour of the world’s “must-see” places, and all the amazing sights seen, sounds heard, and foods eaten along the way.

But the big reveal here is that I have neither the wanderlust nor the time that such a grand tour would require. Oh, there’s also a small detail — money — that I forgot to mention. Ho hum.

Well, that’s okay: I need neither time nor money to paint the globe red. In fact, I can pack a whirlwind summer tour into one hot, sticky, (and air conditioned) summer night. All I need is the right food, and a DVD or two. Full disclosure: none of these movies was made after 1960; Europe may have changed a touch since then.

We’ll start in the hot desert, Marrakech to be specific. Marrakech? “Mmmm, sounds like a drink,” to steal a quote from our first film. James Stewart and Doris Day are travelling with their young son in “The Man Who Knew Too Much.” The desert heat wafting up from the North African sand in this Alfred Hitchcock-directed thriller will make you parched and thirsty, so be sure to have a tall, cool drink nearby – this may be a good chance to crack open an icy bottle of Rosé for those so inclined. If, like me, you find your thirst is quenched by something a bit tamer, then join me for a pitcher of iced Red Zinger tea. Red Zinger is slightly sweet, so use a light hand with the sugar, and a heavy hand with the ice. By the way, Doris Day sings “Que Sera” in this flick, and watch for the scene where Day and Stewart try to eat Tagine with their hands.

Next we’re off to historic Rome for a “Roman Holiday” with Audrey Hepburn and Gregory Peck. What I have always loved about this film is that it is a lot like a travelogue featuring two movie stars, and – oh yeah—there’s a sweet love story too. If you’ve ever wondered what the big deal was about Audrey Hepburn, this movie will show you. Watch for the scene where she dances with her barber, and he pauses to adjust her bangs: a moment that does nothing to advance the plot, but does everything to advance the charm of the characters. All of this running around sunny Rome will make you hungry for a bit of pasta. I’m craving Orecchiette with Roasted Red Pepper Pesto.

Be careful of too many carbs though, because we’re hitting the beach next; You’ll want to look good in your bathing suit, right? We’re hanging on the French Riviera with Grace Kelly and Cary Grant in “To Catch A Thief.” Possibly the most glamorous movie ever made (c’mon, Cary Grant + Grace Kelly + the French Riviera=glamour) this may also be the most humorous of Hitchcock’s films. I don’t know why, but the aforementioned carb warning aside, this movie always makes me crave ice cream. A dab of gelato anyone? While you are eating the gelato, be sure to watch for the scene where Kelly plants a big kiss on Grant – and listen for the wobbly muted trumpet that underscores the kiss. It’s a hint of the frothy romance to follow, and is Hitchcock’s way of saying, “Don’t take this too seriously, folks.”

All of this makes me think of a conversation I had recently with an associate who just returned from the Southern Italian region of Cinque Terre. A busy executive, she spent an afternoon at her favorite area restaurant making pasta with an elderly Italian woman. The elderly Italian woman has been making the pasta there for countless years, and was laughing, having fun, and full of life. All of this reminded my associate that there’s a whole lot more out there than just the world of business. Cooking a good meal will do that for you.

I have never been to Cinque Terre, but I know the rich, green Ligurian Olive Oil that is pressed there. What I have never had is a local favorite snack called Farinata. Farinata is a flatbread made from chickpea flour, and baked in a well seasoned cast iron skillet in a roaring hot oven. It’s easy to make, casual to serve, and –I think—one of the great undiscovered bar foods. Mixed nuts with your cocktail? No thanks. A wedge or two of this savory, deceptively rich flatbread will make that extra dry martini go down cold and clean on a hot summer night. This is one of those great amalgamations of textures, a toasty crust, a crunchy edge, and a soft interior that will draw comparisons to potato pancakes. Very satisfying.

I don’t have a cast iron skillet, and my apartment-sized oven doesn’t get as hot as a real wood-fired brick oven, but my Farinata came out just fine. Keep this easy treat in mind this summer if you want to serve “a little somethin’” with pre-Barbecue drinks.

Cary Grant would approve.

Happy Summer!

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Click here for the recipe for Farinata.

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Chocolate Raspberry Babka

This past Friday I asked a trusted friend and advisor what I should make and write about in my blog this week.

“Babka,” came the answer, “Chocolate Babka. CHOCOLATE RASPBERRY BABKA,” the tone of voice making it clear that this was resolutely not a suggestion, but an assignment to be fulfilled in return for a favor recently delivered.

Now, aside from the fact that I have never actually baked a babka, I found this a really good – uh, suggestion. It’s been a while since I baked something that relied totally on my taste memories of years gone by. For most people I assume taste memory has nothing to do with it; for them, Chocolate Babka invokes the well-known “Seinfeld” episode where Jerry and Elaine get to the bakery too late and have to settle for a Cinnamon Babka – clearly (to their thinking) a lesser babka. To make matters worse, their babka has a hair in it. (This is also the episode where Jerry explains the profundity of the Black and White Cookie.)

In the past I have written about my obsession with food as it is portrayed on screen, but as you never actually see a babka in the “Seinfeld” episode, there is nothing for me to emulate. Anyway, I am not setting out to make a lesser babka, and certainly not a hairy one.

Here’s a game: in three words or less, describe babka for the uninitiated. I’m going to say “coffee cake on steroids.” I know: that was four words. A more complete description is a dense, sweet, filled, yeast cake. The traditional Jewish New York babka is made by filling and twisting or braiding the yeast dough. I see them all around the city in the shape of a loaf, but the babka of my youth was tall and round, notable for its hard, toasty, crunchy crust, its gooey filling, and its ample hat of crackling streusel. The tall, round cakes I remember must owe their shape to the traditional Russian – Polish version. The name Babka may come from “Baba” which translates as “Grandmother.” The theory is that the twisted, braided dough creates a design on the outside of the cake that looks like the pleats of a Grandma’s skirt. A version of this was made in the run up to Easter, so my timing is apt.

History lesson completed, I stepped out of the “Way-Back Machine” on a mission to build a better babka. In this case, I’m defining “better” as faster and maybe easier, because the traditional babka recipe I found is a bit of a lengthy project. As it turns out, no matter how you slice it (pardon the pun) making a babka is project baking, something best done when time is not an issue. The good news is that I have organized it into some easy steps. It still takes a little while, but none of the tasks are particularly difficult.

A babka recipe is really three recipes: the first, for the yeast dough, has the requisite rising time. The second and third recipes, for the filling and the streusel topping, are quick and simple, but contain a lot of moving parts.

This begs the question, “Why bother?” I have a couple of answers based specifically on my experiences baking babka this past weekend. The first answer is: because last Saturday night we New Yorkers experienced a howling, window-shaking rainstorm. In short, the perfect night for project baking, as I’m a terrible Scrabble player, so I stay stashed safely in the kitchen. The second answer is: I defy you to top the taste of babka straight from the oven, still marginally too hot to eat. My third answer (extra-credit) is: the aroma of baking babka will make you wish for more house-bound weather. Chocolate plus raspberry plus yeast. You do the math.

I’m not much of a coffee drinker, but I’ll pause in the coffee aisle of the supermarket just to smell the beans. Baking is the same experience; sometimes the aromas coming from the oven are worth the price of admission.

It would be fun to tell you that I got the recipe from my sainted great-grandmother, a legendary baker. But the truth is that the yeast dough recipe came from the back of a box of pearl sugar that has been sitting on my shelf longer than I can remember. It’s one of those recipes that gets a frequent look with the thought, “Someday…” The streusel is from my Butter Flour Eggs Crumb Cake recipe. The filling? I winged it. Oddly enough, I think the filling came out the best of the three.

I also added a small touch. Literally. Instead of baking one big babka, I baked two baby babkas. One for the previously mentioned friend and advisor, and one for me. A happy arrangement.

While I prefer the babka fresh from the oven, there is something gratifying about carefully toasted slices of day (or two) old babka with a dab of butter or cream cheese. (Don’t heat slices of babka in a toaster. The filling will drizzle out and make a mess. Use your oven and a cookie sheet.) The bonus here is that even reheated babka fills the kitchen with the same great baking smells.

Hair is optional.

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Click here for my recipe for Chocolate Raspberry Babka.

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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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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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These are a few of my favorite things...

I’m ending the year with a moment of revelation. I had sidled up to the dessert table at a holiday party, and was licking my chops, surveying the goods. Suddenly I became aware of two women working at the same task and leaned in to hear the whispers between them:

Woman 1: “Everything looks so good!”

Woman 2: (Gasping) “Look at those cookies!”

Woman 1: “Will you share one with me?”

“Will you share one with me?” That’s what caused my moment of revelation—enough that my attention was momentarily diverted from the sugar wafting into my nostrils like a soothing opiate. I realized that this was not the first time I had heard that question while standing before a mountain of sweets. I’ve heard it waiting in line for cupcakes at Magnolia Bakery. I’ve heard it while surveying 31 flavors of ice cream, and then again at the party a few days ago.

This reminds me of a friend who is a playwright. He gets a lot of comments about his work. Comments from the people who help him actually get his plays on stage. Comments from the directors who help him shape the story and bring it alive.  Comments from the actors who speak with a supposed inside knowledge of what their character may or may not really do. Comments from friends like me who make suggestions veiled as silly questions.

I assume though, that his most valuable feedback comes from eavesdropping on audience members in the lobby during intermission. There, he hears truths that people can’t or won’t speak to his face.

That’s what I was doing when I was listening to the two women next to me at the dessert table: eavesdropping, and what I took away was that people want smaller, less intimidating goodies.

Hmmmm. Is this my resolution for 2010? Have I started the “tiny foods” movement? Hardly. But out of respect for a world where people live in a seemingly never ending state of “on-a-diet” I am here to declare that you can have your tiny cake and eat it too.

Here’s my theory: Make everything smaller in size and larger in flavor. Each bite should be a punch in the mouth. A chocolate jab to the right? An upper cut of cheese? Okay, okay, I’m painfully straining the boxing metaphor. Mind you, I’m not counting calories here; this is merely an exercise in taking the intimidation out of the stuff you’ve been told not to eat. I think you get my drift: small bite / big flavor = sated with less.

With New Year’s Eve only minutes away, I propose to use the last night of the aughts and the first morning of the teens as a laboratory to prove my theory.

Ines Rosales and Serrano Ham

My first choice? Easy. A few months ago I wrote about pairing Ines Rosales Sweet Olive Oil Tortas with Serrano Ham. I’ll be breaking the tortas into bite sized shards and wrapping them with paper thin slices of the ham. The tortas are a touch sweeter and a great deal crunchier than the usual melon that accompanies Serrano ham or Prosciutto, and less slippery too. To remove anything intimidating from the mix I’ll carefully peel the fat from the ham. Heresy to purists, I know, but still delicious.

Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens? Forget those. Gougères are one of my favorite things. For the uninitiated, Gougères are classic French cheese puffs. I’ve decreased the bass and increased the treble: mine are button sized, and instead of the usual sweet, nutty gruyere cheese I found a Double Gloucester cheddar that is almost unbearably sharp—and bearably inexpensive. The sharpness of the cheese will be muted by the rich, eggy pastry; they’re small but they have big, big mouth feel.

Gougeres

Gougères are made from pate á choux—cream puff pastry. Intimidated? Don’t be. Using a Kitchen Aid stand mixer these are so easy to make it’s silly. The added bonus is that if you don’t add the cheese you can use the same recipe to make your own éclairs, cream puffs, and profiteroles. (Ahhh, profiteroles! Another favorite. Watch for an entire blog posting about those soon.)

Don’t forget dessert! Feel free to make those micro cupcakes, but those won’t tempt me. I need chocolate, and will be filling a large bowl with button sized chocolate chip cookies. I’ll be using the plain old Toll House cookie recipe but to give these minis some added punch, I’ll be adding half again as many chocolate chips as the recipe calls for, and adding a jolt by sprinkling an ever so light dusting of instant espresso powder over the teaspoon-sized cookies just before putting them in the oven.

Asiago Cocktail Bread and Eggs

If you’re the type who will be staying up to greet the first dawn of the new decade allow me to recommend Asiago Cocktail Bread. Adding this to your repertoire gives you a yeast-less recipe that can work triple-duty tasks. Toast skinny slices of this cheese infused bread, and you end up with biscotti that can be dipped into glasses of red wine. A smear of onion dip (or just caramelized onions) on the biscotti and you have a no stress hors d’oeuvre that can be piled on a tray. Best of all, skip the toasting step and give folks greeting the dawn a little breakfast nibble by topping thin slices of the bread with a bit of scrambled egg. The untoasted slices give the gratifying starchiness of biscuits, minus the heaviness. (These are really good for those who the sunrise may find a bit “over-bubbly-ed.”)

If you’re wondering which bubbly to buy without breaking the bank, don’t overlook Prosecco, the Italian sparkling wine. Sweeter than most champagnes but much less expensive, Prosecco is very approachable—more so, I think, than the equally inexpensive but much drier Spanish Cava. That’s just my preference. I’m a lightweight and will spend most of the night drinking a non-alcoholic bubbly so you are allowed to take my opinion with a (very small) grain of salt.

Hey: see you next year!

Santè!

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Click here for the recipe for Gougères and click here for the recipe for Asiago Cocktail Bread.

In case you missed it, read my original posting about Ines Rosales Sweet Olive Oil Tortas. More about this next week…

Write to me at the email address below with any thoughts you may have. I’ll be happy to hear from you.

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Anadama Bread

My version of the legend goes something like this: a Gloucester fisherman comes home hungry after a long day of working on his boat. Bone tired, dead hungry, his mouth watering in anticipation of a good meal, he heads straight to the kitchen to see what his wife has waiting for dinner. Instead of his wife, he finds a note: “Out with the girls. Dinner in the ‘fridge – Anna.” Opening the refrigerator, he finds Anna’s culinary masterpiece, a bowl of cooked cornmeal and molasses. “Again!” he fumes, his anger boiling before he explodes with the plaintive wail, “Anna! Damn her!”

The happier version has it that the fisherman came home to the yeasty smell of freshly baked bread and a smiling, doting Anna. After sampling her newly created cornmeal-molasses bread, the fisherman shakes his head, and coos gratefully, “Anna. Damn her, she did it again.”

On reflection, the lazy wife in my first version sounds like one of those trashy attention hogs from a reality TV show they might have named, “I Married a Fisherman.” Apologies. My Baby Niece may have corralled me into watching one too many episodes of “Keeping up with the Kardashians.”

Anna and her malnourished hubby are actually the featured players in a food legend that is as old as it is apocryphal. The fisherman’s expletive, “Anna, damn her!” became “Anadama” as the cornmeal-molasses bread is now more commonly known. This bread has been a standby in New England for many years. When Pepperidge Farm was still a little regional bakery, their version was a staple in supermarkets all around the Northeast.

Suddenly its day had passed, the bread seemingly relegated to the category of Thanksgiving specialty.

Growing up, the bread basket at Thanksgiving dinner was something I anticipated long before the call to the table. In those days, its contents could have passed for dessert: sticky buns, corn muffins, and the obligatory sweet-something-studded-with-cranberries. For this kid those goodies were like Pooh’s honey pot.

Also huddled in the bread basket—and likely overlooked (pushed side would be more accurate) by my grubby little fingers—was Anadama bread. As a kid Anadama bread didn’t hold the same appeal as its icky-sticky basket mates, but as an adult, it has my apologies for years of snubs. It’s good stuff.

Our Thanksgiving tables are reflections of our ethnic and regional backgrounds, so if you grew up outside of New England you were unlikely to have had Anadama bread. But now that you’ve been indoctrinated in the lore, let’s eat, shall we?

Anadama bread is a case of promises fulfilled. It tastes exactly as it looks. The dark, chewy crust quickly gives way, making you pause only long enough to get a gratifying whiff of toast, while the caramel-tinted center is only delicately sweetened: first, with the earthiness of the cornmeal, then with the snap of the molasses that follows a few steps behind. It is full of Yankee self confidence and doesn’t need to show off like those flashy sticky buns. How did I miss this as a kid?

Maybe it was because some of the Anadama bread of my youth was supercharged with generous portions of whole wheat flour and a dash or three of uncooked cornmeal. These unnecessary additions made the loaf heavy on colonial ambiance, but light on appeal. If I want a lesson about early Americans I’ll visit Plymouth Plantation. In the meantime, keep your gritty mitts off my Anadama; mine is made with white bread flour to mellow the cooked cornmeal.

Baking Anadama bread is slightly different from baking other breads because you must first boil the cornmeal. Boiling the cornmeal softens it so that its natural grittiness melts away as it is kneaded with the other flours. Some older recipes require cooking the cornmeal for five hours, then letting it soak further overnight. That is unnecessary. A quick boil followed by a gentle cool down achieves the same end. You then add the molasses and yeast to the cooked cornmeal creating a sort of abbreviated version of a “biga”, the sponge used as a starter in denser Italian breads.

If you’ve never made bread before, don’t let all this techni-trivia throw you; you’ll find baking this bread is a fairly easy process. Just be prepared: this is a project that takes about five hours from start to taking the first bite. But the good news is that the labor is all front-loaded. The five hours includes two rises and the baking. Your participation in those steps is minimal at most; you are really only needed for the first 45 minutes or so.

If you’re new to bread baking and you’re also the Field Marshall of an entire Thanksgiving feast, you may want to do a dress rehearsal, or at the very least bake this bread a day or two in advance (store the tightly-wrapped loaves in the freezer, and gently reheat in the oven before dinner.) If you’re availing yourself of others’ hospitality, this is a perfect “bring-along.” Let someone else bring pie.

As with most Thanksgiving dinners, there are likely to be a lot of leftovers, although I doubt your Anadama bread will be among them. But if you’re lucky enough to have a few slices in reserve the next day, you’ll say, “Merci” for Anadama French toast.  

While we’re on the subject of leftovers: how about the “Plymouth Rock”? Turkey and stuffing, dab of cranberry sauce on Anadama. Thankful, indeed!

(By the way, I made up the name “Plymouth Rock.”  Feel free to name the sandwich anything you like.)

I’ll be munching on Anadama bread next week, but I’m not too proud to admit that I still hope there’ll be a sticky bun with my name on it…

Click here for my Anadama Bread recipe.

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An onion sandwich?

One night many years ago I found myself in the center of the rink in Rockefeller Center. No ice:  it was a hot summer night. Uncomfortable. Humid. Crowded. I looked around, blinking, trying to make sense of the crowd moving me around like a rip tide at the beach. Through circumstances lost to the mists of time, I had found myself at “Taste of the Nation,” the annual event that benefits Share Our Strength, an amazing organization that has been working to eradicate childhood hunger for over 25 years.

I don’t remember the year, but it was definitely BFN (Before Food Network). In the swirl of people, the center of the vortex was Paul Prudhomme, the ample king (in pre-Emeril days) of New Orleans food. He brought blackened food to the fore, a modest idea that unfortunately became a vogue as outsized as Prudhomme himself. The whole thing got a bit out of hand: if it swam or walked, chefs everywhere were suffocating it in too much spice and burning it in a cast iron skillet. 

Can you tell that I never connected to blackened food? I always felt like I was fighting hard to like it —and losing. That’s just my humble opinion, and is certainly not a slam against Prudhomme. He’s forgotten more about food than I will ever know, and he is certainly about more than just blackened redfish.

But on that humid night, in the middle of an ice-less skating rink, Paul Prudhomme may as well have been Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie. People just had to be near him, touch him, and eat his purposely-burnt food. 

I am not built for summer. I am bald, pale, and chilly Eastern Europe lurks vaguely in my background. When the mercury goes over 55 degrees I start to sweat. So that night one of my main missions was to find enough water to drink to replace the water that was rapidly sweating out of me and onto my clothes. (Bald, pale, and sweaty: Attractive, no?)

It was in my quest for yet another bottle of water that I found, tucked away in a corner and under the stairs, a kindly-looking, tidy little woman, making tidy little sandwiches with the crusts cut off. She was not attracting a crowd. The only way to explain how bad the location was that she’d been given is to say that if the event had been inside on a cold night, people would have tried to check their coats with her.

My heart went out to this poor ignored woman, so I approached her and asked what she was serving. 

“These are onion sandwiches. Have one!”

Oh, this poor misguided woman. Everyone around her was cooking up a storm, and here she was making these quaint little sandwiches that looked like something Norma Shearer would eat in an old MGM movie. Is that all she knew how to do? Mostly out of pity, I took one and ate it.

How do you best describe in words those moments in life when your perceptions of the world have been changed in a flash? If I were filming the moment, there would be a choir singing “AHHHH” on the soundtrack, and the camera would circle around me while streaks of sunlight would break though misty clouds and hit me like pin spots.

The sandwich was as sweet as sugar. The “onion-ness” we all expect from an onion was only an accent to the sweetness—more like the reassuring presence of a parent at a child’s recital. Understand that this was a sandwich about the size of two fingers, a slice of onion on buttered hearty farmhouse white bread, and as I said, no crusts.

I simply had never eaten anything like it, and quickly asked if I could have another. 

I am blushing as I admit that my next question was, “Is there sugar on the onion?” 

(Picture it: a bald, pale, sweaty, man asking if this woman had sprinkled the onions with sugar. And quite a picture it is, yes?)

The kindly-looking, tidy woman tilted her head to one side, a gesture not unlike a teacher addressing a first grade student, and explained patiently, “No. That’s the onion.”

“But it’s so sweet!”

With almost heartbreaking empathy she replied, “Yes, well, they’re Sweet Onions.” Clearly the kindly-looking, tidy woman was on an educational mission.

I’m sure I ate a lot of food that night, but I only remember the onion sandwich. At the time I had no idea that the kindly-looking, tidy woman–Alice Waters–is considered the pioneering mother of cooking that uses only fresh, local, seasonal ingredients. The influence she has had on American chefs is profound to say the least.

Such a simple philosophy. So easily demonstrated by an onion sandwich. 

I have never tried to recreate this simple, beautiful sandwich. Why? Alice Waters didn’t, after all, invent the onion sandwich. (I think hers was actually modeled after James Beard’s, and I doubt that he invented it either.)

Am I intimidated by being able to find the perfect onion? I am. I think the onion sandwich demonstrates that shopping with an open mind for just the right ingredients is just as important as refined cooking technique–perhaps more so. And to me, that’s a bit daunting.

It is likely that when she woke up that morning, Alice Waters had no idea what she was going to cook that night. She probably decided after she had poked around a greenmarket and found the wonderful Sweet Onions she used in the sandwiches.

My shopping is so passive. I go to the supermarket. I buy whatever is there. I don’t ask questions like, “Is this in season locally?” or “Where did this come from?” I experience frequent disappointment with apples and tomatoes.

I have the exercise backwards! I shop with a recipe in mind, instead of seeing what potential ingredients are at their peak, and then figuring out what to do with them.

I should know better. When I was a kid we lived a short foliage-viewing drive from an apple farm, wonderfully named Honey Pot Hill Orchards, a place where the smell of apples was intoxicating.

My favorites were the small, crunchy, sweet Macouns. I have, at times, tried buying Macouns at various supermarkets here in New York. My ritual is always the same: as the apple approaches my mouth, a rush of memories floods my consciousness. Then the first mealy, dull, bite jolts me back to the present, not unlike being jostled awake because of a mildly disturbing dream.

My parents would never have gone to the orchard at any other time of year. Everyone knows that fall is apple season. I need to apply this same logic to the other things I eat.

Is it time for me to recreate that onion sandwich? The answer would be found at the market.

The bread and butter part is easy. But for the Sweet Onion, as an experiment I decided to try four sources: my neighborhood market, a fancy gourmet market, Whole Foods, and the greenmarket in Union Square. No agenda here: I really like all four markets for different reasons.

I have learned that there are onions, and then there are Sweet Onions: higher sugar and water content, lower sulfur content. Sulfur is what makes your eyes water when you slice onions.

My neighborhood market had navel orange-size faux Vidalias labeled as being from the “Western United States.” But slicing this onion made my eyes water: not a promising sign. Indeed, the onion was very harsh raw; overpowering in a sandwich, but delicious cooked.

The fancy gourmet market had smaller Sweet Onions from Peru whose thin skins held out great promise. These made a decent sandwich, but one not nearly as sweet as Alice’s. And it violates the fresh, local rules: I had at the very least hoped to stick with an onion from the USA.

Whole Foods and the greenmarket were not selling any Sweet Onions the day I went foraging.  Lesson learned. Sweet Onions are advertised as being available all year round. But the prime season is late spring through mid-summer, so I’ll wait to make the sandwiches then.

For now I’ll stick to apples, which are also advertised as being available year round, but are truly coming into their season now. It is still a bit early, but I found some outstanding, crisp, sweet, Courtland apples from Massachusetts, and some better than OK Macintosh apples from Upstate New York.

So now that I have the apples I have to figure out what to do with them.

An apple sandwich? Oh! Even better: Pie, anyone?

Yes. I ate the prop. Someone had to...

There’s a quote that gets repeated a lot lately: “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting a different result each time.”

This has been attributed variously, but inconclusively, to Albert Einstein, Benjamin Franklin, or (my favorite) a fictionalized version of Albert Einstein in a mystery novel.

But what is it if you expect the same result each time? Persistence? Practice? The triumph of hope over experience? (Oscar Wilde said that about second marriages…or was it Samuel Johnson? Or was it Oscar Wilde quoting Samuel Johnson?)

Issues of repetition are on my mind because every Sunday night I bake pizza. I’ve been doing this for so many years that I’ve lost track. No big surprise here:  growing up, Sunday was pizza night in our house. But ours came from Tony’s Italian Villa. In those days the normal answer to the question, “Do you bake your own pizza?” would have been, “What’s the matter? Is Tony’s closed today?”

Tony’s Italian Villa is indeed closed today and forevermore. This will not be one of those stories harkening back to childhood to reminisce about the best pizza I ever had. I suspect that the truth is that Tony’s pie was probably nothing better than run-of-the-mill Boston-style thin crust pizza.

If there is any insanity in my tale, it is that I live in New York. It is an understatement that there are a lot of places to find pizza in New York. But many of them are the “slice-o-pie” places that reheat already baked pizza.  That’s not for me.

I’ll take the pies that are being hand-crafted to order in coal or wood fired ovens that are so hot the pizza bakes in one or two minutes. The good news is that those places do exist here in New York.

I suppose you could call me a pizza snob, and I’ll cop to that label–but with reservations. The reservations are: 1) I don’t insist on brick oven pizza, and 2) I have a very open mind about what goes on top of a pizza.

By baking my own pizza am I harboring illusions of recreating the best that New York or Naples has to offer in my itty-bitty apartment kitchen? No. I’m home Sunday night baking pizza because it is fun, and the pizza tastes good.

That’s the “Reader’s Digest” answer.

The long answer is much more complicated. There’s something about working with the pizza dough that I find intensely gratifying. If you’ve never worked with yeast dough you’ve missed out on one of the great basic, accessible, pleasures of cooking. You communicate with the dough, and the dough lets you know in very specific terms what’s on its mind. I’ll never be a dog or horse whisperer, but I am a dough whisperer.

In spite of the fact that we’ve all seen pizza bakers punch, slap, and spin dough into shape, yeast dough actually requires a bit more respect. Dough can be somewhat stubborn, yes, but when that happens, just walk away, not unlike how you’d treat an obstreperous child. Return in five to ten minutes, the dough will have gotten a good cry out of its system and will be bright, springy, and willing to yield to your wishes. Treat it with respect, and above all, listen to it patiently.

(Yes, I’m talking about pizza dough like it’s a living thing. Who says it’s not? Yeast is, after all, a living, breathing organism.)

Let’s talk ingredients. I like to use Italian type “00” flour. “00” refers to its powdery grind, not its protein content or gluten level, and I find that it produces a crust with enough crunch and chew to make me do the happy food dance. But any good quality bread flour will also give the gift of great crust; use that happily if you can’t find type “00.”

There’s no need to learn how to spin the dough; you’ll have better control over its shape and thickness if you work the dough on your countertop, pouncing on it with your fingertips. Not to mention the fact that spinning the dough in a tiny apartment kitchen like mine will leave a snowy dusting of flour over your entire apartment. (Trust me on that one.)

Skip the pizza stones and bricks, unless you enjoy setting off your smoke alarm. Ditto the big wooden pizza peels. Messy.

I use a pizza pan. You may have seen these: they are a 16-inch round metal pan with several hundred holes punched in the bottom. I think the holes deliver the dry heat of your oven to the crust better than a pizza stone, and will give your crust a crunch that will have you running to the mirror to make sure all the teeth are still in your mouth.

Sauce? No need to grow your own tomatoes. A simple sauce with a little texture, the merest touch of sweetness, and just a breath of tomato tartness is all you need. I use a canned sauce by a small company named Don Pepino which I like as much for what’s in the can as I do for what’s on the can: a retro cartoon of a chef who looks like he could be Chef Boyardee’s slightly demented brother (In its defense, the sauce only has five ingredients, and sugar is not one of them.)

Feel free to use a simple smear of San Marzano crushed tomatoes instead. Just add a bit of salt and pepper.

Cheese? What kind of mood are you in? My standby is Asiago that I grate with an old fashioned box grater. It is zingier but less stringy than the usual mozzarella.  I know that you’re not supposed to use cheddar on pizza, but skip the tomato sauce, caress the crust with some very thin slices of Pear peppered with a complex cheddar and you’re in another world.

In the summer Pissaladière is an easy treat that will earn you some new friends. Just top the crust with some lovingly caramelized onions, cross hatch with really good anchovies (soaked to leach out their overpowering saltiness,) stud with briny black olives, and you’ll be welcome at any Provencal table.

How about clam pie? This New Haven native is simply the crust dusted with parmesan, some freshly shucked clams, and enough garlic to give the clams some mellow companionship.

Is it persistence? Is it practice? Every Sunday night I pull the pizza out of the oven and look at it for a moment, thinking, “Wow! I made that!”

Try it. Click here for my recipe.

Ines Rosales Seville Orange Sweet Olive Oil Tortas

She was sitting off in the corner, but the minute I walked in the joint, well, there she was. There was no mistaking: she wasn’t from here. Then she started calling my name, daring me to take her home.  So I did.

Apologies to fans of James M. Cain and film noir. Obviously in a blog called “Butter. Flour. Eggs.” I’m writing about food and should conduct myself as such. But I am trying to illustrate what happens to me when I trawl the aisles of the grocery store and see something new: it’s like an itch and I never seem to get by without scratching it.

So it was when I recently discovered Ines Rosales Sweet Olive Oil Tortas. I fought the itch for a while but then broke down and tried them.

On paper, we are an unlikely match, but here’s the lesson: sometimes food teaches you something about yourself.

You can see what they look like in the picture. They look like a tortilla or flatbread, but they’re not. They are toasty, hard, and crunchy like a cracker, but they’re not a cracker. They’re sweet, but not like a cookie.

They’re tortas, and I will just have to expand my food vocabulary to include this new (to me) category.

Why are we an unlikely match? Well the tortas have a pronounced anise flavor, and frankly, I sometimes find anise to be a bit cloying. Happily I discovered this is not anise flavor that runs around your mouth shouting, “LICORICE!” with every bite; this is anise used as an aromatic note, more like a perfume than a flavor.

The sweetness is in the form of a sprinkling of large-crystal sugar, some of which has relaxed into a glaze. All in all, an assortment of subtle flavors and textures that conspire to pull up a chair and enjoy a coffee with me.

Something that I never thought I’d like has become a new obsession, and while I enjoy munching on the tortas straight from their evocative wax paper (they are made and wrapped by hand,) part of the fun has been figuring out some simple but compelling pairings for my delicious new friends.

I started by finding out that they are from Andalusia, a part of Spain influenced by Muslim and Sephardic Jewish traditions. I would call that culturally diverse.

But in an attempt to stay with the Spanish theme, I thought I’d like to try them with some shavings of Iberian ham. Good luck finding it, and when you do, be prepared to pay anywhere from $50 to $95 per pound. (Let’s just say Iberian ham has a long back story which I will perhaps try to delve into in a future posting.)

Unable to find my second choice, Serrano Ham, I used a good prosciutto, going on the assumption that the torta could assume the role usually played by melon. While the torta is not as subtle as melon, the sweetness and anise perfume provide a pronounced counterpoint to the mellow saltiness of the prosciutto, while adding something to the mix that the melon can never bring: a hearty crunch.

A shaving of a sharp cheese would be a welcome, if somewhat conflicting, companion, and the tortas would be a welcome addition to any antipasto.

Recently I discovered two new varieties of the tortas, Seville orange, and Savory Rosemary and Thyme.

The Savory Rosemary and Thyme tortas are more familiar to all of us: no sugar, slightly salty, with the herbs adding an almost tart aftershock to the crunch. Perfect with a broth-based soup (mmmm…the cooler weather is on its way.)

The Seville orange tortas may be the best of all. They are not overtly orange flavored. Like the anise flavored torta, the flavor is more whispered than spoken. You’ll think these were made to be combined with a scoop of good vanilla ice cream. Let the ice cream warm to the point where it begins to slobber in self pity, but fear not: the torta will more than make up for the ice cream’s lack of backbone with a disciplined crackle. You’ll never look at one of those Coldstone Creamery sugar cone bowls the same way again. Eat this, and you’ve graduated to the grown-up’s table.

I’ve learned that’s where I belong now.