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Archive for the ‘Food on screen’ Category

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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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

In glorious Technicolor, and Stereophonic Sound

Every time I watch a holiday movie, an angel gets its wings. I can’t help it. During the holiday season my fascination with food as it is portrayed on screen dovetails with an obsession I’ve long had with holiday-themed movies. Yes, I know everyone loves “It’s A Wonderful Life”—me too. But there are other movies I watch that are perennial favorites which also tickle my foodie-bone.

“Holiday Inn” is a veritable buffet. Most folks would be content with Fred Astaire dancing and Bing Crosby singing “White Christmas” beside a glowing hearth in an empty inn. Not me. I look for the scenes where Bing is in the kitchen plating New Year’s dinner to music, and later, lovesick over losing the girl (you know the formula: boy gets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl back), he refuses to eat “Mr. Jones”, the Thanksgiving turkey, claiming he knew “Jonesey” too well. The Thanksgiving dinner he refuses always makes my mouth water – startling when you consider that the movie is in black and white.

Crosby is perhaps better known for singing “White Christmas” in a later movie named for the song itself. As much as I enjoy that movie, and in spite of the fact that it is also set at an inn, it doesn’t have the same culinary appeal as “Holiday Inn.” The most we get to see is a glass of Coke and the remains of a sandwich. But that’s okay, the movie has other charms.

This year though, my attention has been drawn to a lesser-known holiday movie, “Christmas in Connecticut.” I have been writing this blog for several months and writing about the charms and limitations of cooking in my small New York apartment is, I think, part of what makes the engine run. “Christmas in Connecticut” shares a similar theme, albeit with the conceit that in addition to working from a tiny New York City apartment, the protagonist, Elizabeth Lane, “America’s Best Cook” (played by Barbara Stanwyck), actually can’t cook. (I can!) But here’s a taste of what I mean, and why, this year, I am so tickled by this film:

The camera pans from a close up of a woman’s hands typing on a portable typewriter to a grimy window from which we can see the backs of several New York City buildings. In the foreground, waving in the wind, laundry is drying on the clothesline of a neighboring apartment.

Elizabeth: “From my living room window as I write, I can look out across the broad front lawns of our farm like a lovely picture postcard of wintery New England.”

The camera tilts down to a radiator, which is hissing loudly as steam escapes from a valve.

Elizabeth: “In my fireplace the good cedar logs are burning and crackling.”

The camera pans back to the desk to reveal Elizabeth Lane as she takes a bite of her breakfast: a plate of sardines.

Elizabeth: “I’m just about to go into my gleaming kitchen to test the crumbly brown goodness of the Toasted Veal Cutlets á la Connecticut in my oven. Cook these slowly…”

I’ll spare you the plot synopsis—rent the DVD from Netflix—but suffice it to say that Stanwyck finds herself in a bind and ends up having to go to great lengths to live up to the farm housewife image she has created. It’s a charming film, perhaps a bit old fashioned, but if you’re looking for lessons about life to reflect on during the holiday season, this is not the movie to screen. Stick to “It’s A Wonderful Life” for sermonizing; this flick is purely a romantic comedy.

But it’s that small patch of real estate that Elizabeth Lane and I share that makes me reflect on some of the hoops through which I must leap in my own cracker box-sized urban kitchen. The flip side is, of course, that I think I could teach a thing or two about project planning, including risks, milestones, and scope creep. Cooking or baking is the supreme exercise in organization. Start with a concept, make a list, end with a birthday cake; it’s not magic, it’s organization. (That thumping noise you hear is yours truly patting himself on the back.)

I always joke that if, someday, I am blessed to have a huge, fully tricked out kitchen, due to my experience in my itty-bitty kitchen, I will still use only a few square inches of space, and continue to balance all the bowls on the edge of the sink (uh, the huge, deep, white porcelain farmhouse-style sink.)

Ha ha ha.

The truth – hopefully—will likely find me luxuriously spread out around a marble-topped island while in the background, the oven of my six burner restaurant-grade stove is preheating. “Where did I leave those eggs? Uh-oh, they’re all the way over there.”And ‘round and ‘round that island I will trot, lap after lap, burning off the calories of the goodies I am preparing.

Ah, one can dream. Are you listening, Santa?

Many years ago I waited tables in a distinguished Manhattan restaurant run by an equally distinguished chef. The dirty little secret was that the kitchen was smaller (and hotter!) than most home kitchens, including some New York apartments. Yet, they turned out four-star cuisine (still do.)

I always consider eating to be one of life’s great pleasures. There’s a reason food tastes good. There’s a reason why food in every culture is an expression of love. Consider the word “feed.” We feed our stomachs. We feed our souls. Sometimes if we’re lucky we accomplish both in the same exercise. Food maintains us, helps us thrive and grow—sometimes to excess, yes, but you get the point.

So, it isn’t the size of the kitchen, is it? It’s the size of the heart.

(I’ll just keep repeating that over and over the next time I feel hemmed in by my kitchen.)

Okay, my holiday sermon is done. I’m hungry! Let’s eat!

You’re wondering: what is that big, fat, chocolaty concoction in the picture above? That’s the Buche de Noël I made for a friend’s Christmas party. Also known as a Yule Log Cake, it is not exactly subtle or delicate. Calling it sweet would be an understatement. While transporting it to the party I kept referring to it (in my mind) as “The Beast”—understandable, as it was large enough to serve at least fifteen people. What makes me laugh is that folks at the party were a bit intimidated by it. Someone had to drag me out of the kitchen (where all good parties end up) with the exhortation that, “Everyone wants to eat the Yule Log, but they’re afraid to touch it unless you make the first cut.”

Really? That wouldn’t have stopped me: I would have asked, “Hey, where’s the knife?”

Of course I also made cookies for the party, but I wanted some kind of special focal point on the dessert table, something epic. If I were in the movie business this would be my big holiday release. Consider it my “White Christmas in Connecticut at Holiday Inn.” It stars two flavors of buttercream (chocolate and coffee), with cocoa biscuit á roulade (jellyroll cake) in a supporting role. A chorus of beautiful meringue mushrooms rounds out the cast.

I hope you are duly entertained.

Happy Holidays to you and the ones you love! Don’t forget to leave cookies for Santa and the reindeer.

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A few days ago I had the great pleasure of spending time with a wonderful woman named Helen Stafford of the Ronald McDonald House of New York. Helen gave me a tour of this amazing facility which provides a temporary “home-away-from-home” for pediatric cancer patients and their families. The Ronald McDonald House is supported entirely by private donations. Please read about this amazing place, and keep them in mind when considering your year-end charity donation.

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Want to make your own Buche de Noël? Write to me at the email address below if you want the recipes and process for the Buche de Noël—or any other 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

Old Auntie

I learned to cook from a book. When I was fourteen or fifteen I picked up my mother’s copy of The New York Times Cookbook by Craig Claiborne and just started cooking. I think the first thing I made was Choux pastry so that I could make éclairs.

Yes, I know: fifteen years old and making éclairs. Hey, it kept me off the streets, alright?

Chefs may sneer at my learning from a book, but I never had any pretense about being a chef; that’s not my thing. I’m more from the school of cook well so you can eat well. 

After my years as a child prodigy, my interest in cooking would then lay dormant. One day, like Rumplestiltskin waking up from his extended snooze, I found myself, wooden spoon in hand, stirring something in a pan. Poof: I was cooking again. 

This has had some strange repercussions, the most notable being that unlike many New Yorkers, I rarely eat out. I think that has as much to do with my enjoyment of cooking as the fact that I was a waiter for many years and couldn’t bear to set foot in a restaurant for a long time. No busman’s holidays for me.

My naissance as a cook aside, I noticed recently on Mad Men that Don Draper was eating a dinner of cold chicken salad, Ritz crackers and a can of Bud which the director made a point of showing Don’s wife open with a church key.

 (A church key is the little metal tool we used to open cans and bottles before the advent of the pop top and screw top.)

 (OK, I will now pause while you insert the joke of your choice about how old I am.)

 (No, I do NOT remember the strip mall they tore down to build Stonehenge.)

 (The latter was for those of you who could not think of an “old”  joke.)

ANYWAY, watching Mad Men has made me think about the food of the sixties. I mentioned some weeks ago in this blog that I am always fascinated and distracted by food used as a prop in plays, movies, and TV shows. Don Draper’s chicken salad dinner is no exception, but it also made me wonder about the various fashions that come and go in food.

One of the current fashions is cupcakes. Cupcakes are everywhere, and frankly, without mentioning any names, some of them just aren’t that great. The point is though, that at some point cupcakes will get tired, and people will be waiting a half hour in line for something else. Lest you think I’m wrong, think back on the Chipwich and the Dovebar. Yes, you can still get them, but like Madonna’s punk wardrobe in Desperately Seeking Susan, you just kind of laugh and think, “Wow, I forgot all about those.”

My New York Times Cookbook was published in 1961, coincidentally the same year in which the first season of Mad Men is set. I always use this book like a dictionary, usually on a very specific mission, consulting the index first. But I have never read it like a novel, starting from the beginning. Reading the book that way gives you an almost Edith Wharton-esque view of mid-twentieth century food fashions.

You need only go a few pages in to find a world awash in aspic. The best way to describe aspic is that it is basically an amber-colored savory Jello used as a garnish. This lost world is landscaped in chopped aspic, aspic cut into neat geometric patterns, and aspic used as a coating on food, kind of like the shellac on a culinary decoupage. An appetizer of Galantine of Turkey wears its aspic coating like the tuxedo on the Maitre D’s who used to man the doors of fancy hotel restaurants. 

The Galantine is the first recipe in the book, and like the opening number of a floor show at the old Copacabana, it is big and ornate. Bring on the dancing girls! Picture a fifteen pound turkey completely boned, flattened, and stuffed with fat back, veal, tongue, duck, raisins, and nuts. It is then rolled in cheese cloth, simmered in broth, chilled, and coated with aspic like a big fat bug trapped in amber. Wheee!

I don’t know how folks in 1961 reacted, but my 2009 mouth is agape.  I honestly can’t decide whether I should be revolted, or struck dumb with admiration. Everyone has an old aunt with a living room like this.  On the rare occasion that Auntie sweeps the plastic dust covers off the furniture and lamps, you’re blinded by the flash and brocade and realize you’re standing ankle deep in a plush-carpeted time capsule.

Admittedly, in 2009 we are perhaps a bit too aware of making sure we can see our feet in the carpet at all times, so I got to thinking, “Don’t be so damn judgmental.” After all, Thanksgiving is just eight weeks away. How many people across America are already thinking, “Yum! Time to order the Turducken!” And isn’t Turducken (and Turporken) just the hillbilly cousin of the Galantine? 

Plus ca la change, plus ca la…plush carpeting.

But if you walk back into Auntie’s kitchen, pull up a chair around old Auntie’s dinette, and have your first adult conversation with her, you’ll find her well read, well travelled, with some good stories to tell, and still a great cook. Old Auntie didn’t have a food processor or Kitchen Aid stand mixer. A recipe direction to use a mortar and pestle to grind some spices is not unlike being admonished that we young folks have it so easy.

Yes, there is plenty of “goo-gaw” in the book, but if you wade carefully past the eight different kinds of pate, the monosodium glutamate called for in more than one recipe, and a tempting lesson on how to make your own Danish pastry, “…fit for a Royal Dane,” you end up with an aesthetic that is at once wise, worldly, and reliable.  That, along with Claiborne’s sprinkling of pithy advice, such as reminding the reader to, “…add garlic according to conscience and social engagements” remind me why this book remains a relevant touchstone in my kitchen—especially when I am trying to expand my repertoire.

Now before I go any further, I need to mention another appetizer recipe just a few pages further in. For this recipe, Claiborne wrote a short annotation:

“This appetizer has become almost as popular as pizza pie in metropolitan America but it is still worth repeating.”

Hint: You need to be a certain age to remember this appetizer. I only vaguely remember eating it as a kid—maybe it was at someone’s wedding, I’m not sure.

I speak of Rumaki.

How’s that for a name out of the past? Pizza, thankfully, is still with us. As much as I’d like to say, “Hey, let’s revive this old treasure and make it the new cupcake!” I’ll now print the list of ingredients to illustrate why Rumaki, like the hoop skirt, is not likely to have a comeback, er, return:

• 6 chicken livers
• 18 canned water chestnuts
• 9 bacon slices cut in half
• 9 scallions, sliced thin lengthwise
• ½ cup soy sauce
• ¼ tsp ground ginger
• ½ tsp curry powder

Intrepid souls or folks into giving Mad Men-theme parties can click here for the full recipe. For the rest, suffice it to say that you make toothpick kabobs of the liver and chestnuts, and wrap them with the bacon and scallions, marinade in the soy sauce and spices, broil and serve.

We could, however, update this recipe by replacing the chicken livers with, say, thinly sliced chicken or beef tenderloin, couldn’t we?

Ah, now I’ve got your attention! All of the sudden my mouth is watering. See what I mean about this book? I’ll start experimenting…

Just by coincidence, my other “go-to” book is How to Cook Everything by Mark Bittman. Bittman is Claiborne’s direct descendant at the New York Times.

Finally, there is an irony here that is not lost on me. I am writing a blog, singing the praises of a cookbook anthology of fifty-year old recipes from one of the great metropolitan newspapers. In 1961, nobody could have known the price technology—like blogging—would extract on our newspapers. But I’m hoping that by changing their recipe a bit, as they seem to be planning to do, the great metropolitan newspapers will stick around. Like pizza pie.

Do I have a food fetish? I am fascinated by food as it is portrayed on screen or on stage. The subject has been on my mind due to all of the publicity for the movie, “Julie and Julia.” I was glad to see that Susan Spungen, the Martha Stewart veteran who styled the food for the movie, was the focus of some of the attention.  After all, in a movie about food, the food itself is one of the characters.

When I see people eating on TV or in the movies my mind goes right to: “Who really cooked the food?” “Is is hot or has it been sitting around for a while?” and on and on.

I’m a little vague on the origins of my fascination though. At least twenty years ago I read that the “roast beef” that the actors ate onstage nightly in a Broadway play was actually pumpernickel bread. Twenty-plus years I have carried this around with me.  Why?

A shrink would ask me, “What does this make you think of?” Ah. Easy: Veal Prince Orloff, guest star of an episode of the “Mary Tyler Moore Show” where Sue Ann Nivens, a/k/a “The Happy Homemaker” catered a dinner party for poor, party-challenged Mary.

I use the term “guest star” loosely, because Veal Prince Orloff was, of course, not a person but an entrée. Wikipedia reports that Veal Prince Orloff is a braised loin of veal, thinly sliced, filled with a thin layer of pureed mushrooms and onions between each slice, and stacked back. It is then topped with béchamel sauce and cheese and browned in the oven. (This is based on the recipe in “Mastering the Art of French Cooking” by Julia Child, Louisette Bertholle and Simone Beck.)

(Yes, there was a real Prince Orloff, a Russian ambassador to France during the 19^th century.)

(Yes, I just googled Veal Prince Orloff to write this posting, and yes, it has its own Wikipedia entry.)

Which brings me to a startling revelation: the Veal Prince Orloff portrayed in the Mary Tyler Moore Show was not Veal Prince Orloff at all. A recent screening of the episode (ah, the sacrifices one makes to become a blogger) revealed that the item masquerading as Veal Prince Orloff was actually Beef Wellington. I can only speculate why this happened. Perhaps the prop-man thought Beef Wellington would “read” better on the small screen. Hey, that’s show biz, right? I should not be surprised that they cast the role based on looks.

Sue Ann’s dessert that night was “Baked Pears Alicia.” My research on “Baked Pears Alicia” was a bit more difficult as its screen time was much less than the Veal Prince Orloff. You get only the most fleeting glimpse of the pears as Mary passes them on a tray.

Now, I love crisps, cobblers, and pies, especially with a dab of ice cream melting on top, but let’s face it: sometimes fruit desserts can be such a let-down.