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Archive for the ‘Technique’ Category

Hot Cross Buns

The last stop before Grand Central Station on the Metro-North commuter train is 125th Street. Once passed, there is a sense of relief and anticipation that you’re almost “there” (that’s the relief)—but that “there” is our jumping, jiving city (that’s the anticipation).

In the case of the Easter and Good Friday holidays, the relief and anticipation are all about spring and summer and nice weather – an all too important consideration after the rough winter we’ve had this year.

Of course, at this time of year it is easy to get over confident about the weather, but Mother Nature tends to be a tricky, moody, old biddy, so we really don’t know what she has in store, but the days are just that much longer, and even the coldest mornings are just that much warmer.

Alongside seasonal weather changes are seasonal supermarket changes, for the spring heralds the arrival of the Passover food on your grocer’s doily-lined shelves, and Hot Cross Buns in the bakery section. The latter were always a curiosity to me. I had tried them and found that their spiced- icky, sticky bun-candied fruit allures held no sway over me. They always struck me as sticky buns gone wrong; bread that wanted to be fruitcake, but realized it had arrived four or five months too late and missed Christmas; dough that took the wrong path. (Has this gotten a bit film noir? Sorry.)

Purely out of a sense of duty then, I felt compelled to make Hot Cross Buns for this blog. My conscience was bothering me: can one write a baking-centric blog and ignore Hot Cross Buns? I think not.

So with that great burden weighing on me (heavy sigh), I started researching them. The great thing about the internet is that if you think it, someone, somewhere, has, at some point in time, written about it. I had an art professor in college – a tough cookie—who liked to say, “There truly is nothing new under the sun.” Surely he was talking about the internet too.

What the internet revealed to me filled me with a great deal of relief. I had expected the basic flavors and ingredients of Hot Cross Buns to be as tightly proscribed as the placement of medals on a military uniform. Turns out I was wrong. The only constants I found amongst all the variations were 1.) duh: there’s always a cross on the top (although not always sweet) and 2.) Hot Cross Buns are sweet.

While Hot Cross Buns may traditionally have been a Good Friday treat, in recent years they have broken off from their niche purpose and become a year-round bakery staple. If I ever needed an excuse to make the long trip down under to Australia (I didn’t), the revelation that the Aussies add chocolate chips to their Hot Cross Buns could certainly have been one. Bravo, Aussies, for that was the inspiration I needed to bring some enthusiasm to the project.

While the Aussies add more than just chocolate chips to their Hot Cross Buns, the allure of chocolate cannot be overstated. After reading this blog each week, my sister-in-law will often write me a short email consisting solely of the words, “Can I put chocolate on that?” I could write about sauerkraut and she would likely ask the same question, for, like me, chocolate is her cure-all. (I even crave it when I have, uh…digestive distress.) This week, the answer is a happy, “Yes, but there’s already chocolate there.”

The internet also revealed a bit of discussion about the texture of the buns. Should they be hearty and dense, or light and puffy? I have come down clearly on the side of light and puffy, and this dictated a lot of technical issues about the recipe. Light and puffy means two rises, and, because we want something just slightly sweet, a little richness in the ingredients is called for. While some bread doughs get by with only water and oil or butter, a whole egg plus a little milk and butter will give our Hot Cross Buns a supple richness that will support the sugar without making the gentle sweetness seem “thin.”

The result reminds me of the wonderful Parisian-inspired subtly sweet rolls they sell at the extraordinary Silver Moon Bakery on New York’s Upper West Side.

The process of baking bread seems intimidating to some, but the truth is, if you can plug in a Kitchen-Aid stand mixer you can bake bread. (Sounds like a sales pitch, no?) Measure a few ingredients, turn on the mixer, then leave the dough to rise. Yes, it can be three or four hours from plugging in the mixer to taking the Hot Cross Buns out of the oven. But you only work for about a half an hour. The rest of the time the yeast and your oven are doing the work. (Sorry, I shout this every time I bake any form of bread.)

I love a recipe that serves more than one purpose. It is a perverse form of recycling, but next week’s Hot Cross Buns could show up at a special holiday weekend breakfast next fall. (Well, not the same actual rolls. I’ll make a fresh batch.) All I have to do is make a squiggle with the icing instead of a cross.

But even that amount of change isn’t needed.

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Click here for my recipe for Hot Cross Buns.

…and don’t miss these great Passover recipes (they’re great any time of the year):

Coconut Macaroons

Passover Honey Cake

Torta di Mandorla per la Pasqua. (A very light Passover chocolate – almond torte)

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

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Passover Honey Cake

Growing up in a Jewish home I was always made acutely aware of how important good food was—is—at any occasion. Even the post-funeral gatherings we call “sitting shiva” are excuses to pull out the good napkins. That’s why I am always mystified by my people’s willingness to put up with bad food on Passover. The excuse is always that you cannot cook with “chametz”, the umbrella word describing ingredients that are not allowed on Passover. This usually refers to anything bread or flour related, and any kind of leavening, but the actual rule bans things made from wheat, barley, oats, rye, or spelt. The only wheat product allowed is matzo and what I lovingly refer to as its derivatives: matzo that has been ground, crumbled, or otherwise processed so that it can be used in other recipes.

There is such a thing as Passover Baking Soda, which confuses me because I thought the purpose of the Passover holiday was to commemorate bread not being allowed to rise. Passover Baking Soda’s loophole? No cornstarch.

From a baker’s point of view it’s kind of like being told that you must substitute breadcrumbs for flour.

Generations of commercial kosher bakers have been putting their kids through Harvard and Yale just by selling Passover desserts to even the most unobservant Jews (hello) who have always been willing to pay for Passover-compliant cakes and cookies. Here’s the problem: a lot of it just isn’t very good, especially the supermarket brands. A lot of it is also…shall we say, “premium-priced.”

Apologies to the folks who produce the supermarket Passover stuff (and to their well-educated progeny), but a cake that has been sitting in a box for an unknown amount of time has a few strikes against it.

Is it heresy for me to complain? All I want is a good piece of cake, for goodness sake.

Luckily, I’m handy in the kitchen and have figured out a few tricks that result in desserts that aren’t just good for Passover, they’re good anytime of the year. Last year I made a Northern Italian-style Torta di Mandorla per la Pasqua, a chocolate, almond, egg white torte. I actually served it before Passover to a group of non-Jewish friends who loved it, and remains one of my favorite recipes. (It is very light so perfect for summer.)

This year I decided to re-visit the Grandmother of all Jewish Holiday desserts: Honey Cake. When I was a kid with (I’m guessing) a much less discerning palate, my presence at any event could be secured with the promise of honey cake. The typical honey cake comes in a loaf, usually encased in (don’t get me started) a disposable aluminum pan. To my adult palette though, honey cake always tastes a bit syrupy, and manages to be both too dry and too sodden. Not sure how that’s possible.

Blame science. In baking, the type of flour, its grind, the kind of wheat used, and how the milled flour has been treated are some of the things that rule how a cake gelatinizes (mixes with liquid then bakes into a solid). Passover Cake meal is basically powdered Matzo and has its own rule book, but it is easy to predict that this ingredient will lend density to a cake. The usual trick has always been to lighten the cake meal in a way that imitates traditional cake flour. This is usually accomplished by adding potato starch. The results vary according to the other ingredients in the cake. In the case of honey you end up with a wet, damp cake because honey is hygroscopic: it actually pulls moisture in even when baked.

Okay, I promise: no more science. But the takeaway here is: use too much honey and you’ll have a damp, heavy cake. Too little, your cake is dry. Just the right amount and you’ll have a cake that works at staying fresh. The question is: what can you add that will give the cake a true “crumb”, texture that makes a cake feel like a cake when you take a bite?

For the answer you can thank the current popularity of macarons, the colorful French-style almond macaroons. I have been trying to learn to make them (they’re tricky) and have a bag of almond flour sitting in my refrigerator. Almond flour is just the man for the job: it will mix well with the Passover Cake Meal to make a nice crumb and is Passover-friendly on its own.

Using almond flour in cake is certainly nothing new. Europeans have been baking with it for generations. So taking a cue from a French Galette, the simple round torte, I called my Springform pan into service.

The beauty of my concept was that with the honey and almond flour I already had two very flavorful ingredients. A couple of more layers of flavor would be ideal, so I used a delicate sprinkle of orange zest, and a not so delicate dash of frozen concentrated orange juice whose character would slightly overlap the honey while adding a sunny note of its own. A little cocoa powder and vanilla extract would bring some perfumed but earthy notes to the cake.

The result has the slight chewy crumb of a galette and a delicate honeyed sweetness that some may find reminiscent of the desserts the Spanish Sephardic Jews favor.

No disposable aluminum loaf pans required…or allowed.

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Click here for the recipe for Passover Honey Cake.

Click here for the recipe for Torta di Mandorla per la Pasqua.

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Write to me at the email address below with any questions or 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

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The can is purely ceremonial...

I’m beginning to feel self conscious: I’ve been boiling so much sugar lately that I’m afraid my neighbors must be thinking I’ve started a rum factory in my kitchen. The true explanation is quite innocent: I just happen to be baking things that require boiled sugar as part of their magic.

Let me tell you a little story. (Have a seat.) Many years ago I worked with a talented sleight-of-hand artist. While that sounds like the opening salvo of a very old-fashioned dirty joke, it is the truth. Sleight-of-hand artists differ from regular magicians in that everything they do is designed to be witnessed from very close range. While you watch an illusionist pull a rabbit out of a hat, part of your mind is usually doing the work to reverse engineer how the illusionist may have made this happen. At the very least you  know there’s bound to be something special about that hat—some way of hiding the rabbit.

With a sleight-of-hand artist all you see is a few coins, and a couple of pairs of hands, one pair of which likely belongs to you. My usual startled reaction to my co-worker’s tricks (and I use that word with a great deal of guilt) was, “How did you do that?” The answer was always, “It’s magic.” I could never figure out a better explanation.

I get the same zing when I boil sugar to 238 degrees: It never fails to amaze me that a saucepan of clear, dangerously hot, boiling syrup can magically transform into so many different things. Magic.

Sugar boiled to 238 degrees is commonly referred to as being at “soft ball stage.” It is called that because if you put a drop or two of the sugar syrup into a glass of cold water it should form a soft or malleable ball shape. This is cooking chemistry at its simplest. Boil the sugar to a hotter temperature and you get “hard ball stage.” You guessed it: a few drops in a glass of cold water would be hard to the touch.

If you’ve ever had Salt Water Taffy then you’ve had something that didn’t stray that far from soft ball stage sugar syrup. They cool the hot syrup on a marble slab, add a few drops of flavoring and coloring, then stretch and pull the mixture (usually by machine) until enough air has been incorporated that it has the soft milky quality that has pulled us in from the Boardwalk for so many years.

Remember the Scooter Pies I made a few weeks ago? The marshmallow I made to fill them is simply soft ball syrup whipped into gelatin. The frozen soufflé I made for Valentine’s Day had an Italian Meringue base made with egg whites and the very same soft ball syrup. The silky but rich buttercream on your cousin Debbie’s wedding cake likely started life boiling in a sauce pan (cousin Debbie may have her own dark secrets.)

Naturally if I didn’t have a Kitchen Aid-type stand mixer these things would not be in my repertoire. So it is only natural that I should find myself in front of the bubbling sauce pan again, this time so that I can resolve some unfinished business from last year.

A year ago in preparation for Passover, I decided to make Coconut Macaroons. I have an aversion to the kind they sell in the little cans. When I eat those I taste nothing but sugar and the can. I used a recipe I found that employed a generous dollop of coconut milk, a couple of egg whites, and some confectioner’s sugar. On paper it all sounded delicious. On the cookie sheet it was a loose, runny mess. I kept adding things to firm up the mixture: more confectioner’s sugar, a bit of Passover potato starch, even a touch of almond flour. Nevertheless the liquid from the cookies ran, dripped and burned onto the bottom of the oven. Have I ever told you about my fool-proof trick for ridding your kitchen of smoke? That’s because I don’t have one.

I tried that recipe a couple of times. While the resulting macaroons tasted okay they were also a bit greasy from the coconut milk. They were moist, but had no texture because the coconut was so wet it never got a chance to toast while the cookies baked. They were also far too rich for Passover dessert.

Back to the drawing board. This year it occurred to me to follow the k.i.s.s. rule: keep it simple, stupid (the latter referring to yours truly.) One package of sweetened coconut. One small batch of Italian meringue. Done. The result is a cross between a classical French Coconut Meringue (the crunchy kind) and the inside of a Mounds bar. The bonus is that they are relatively very light (as light as anything with coconut can be), and they are painless to make in quantity (you can easily double my recipe.)

Yes, by all means feel free to dip these in chocolate.

If you miss the can, you can supply your own as I did in the picture above.

It is part of the ceremony, right?

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Click here for the recipe for Coconut Macaroons.

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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

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Technique!

The actress Melissa Leo dropped “the “F” bomb” in her Oscar acceptance speech the other night. Personally I find this endearing and ironic. Endearing because it was a “real” moment—I place “real” in quotation marks because, let’s face it, it was an Academy Awards acceptance speech; how real could it be? It’s not like they pulled someone in off the street, stuck a statue in her hands and told her to give a speech. Nevertheless there was something genuine about the moment.

I find it ironic because she won the award for playing a rather foul-mouthed character. Or am I simply projecting a self-created veneer on this character? The movie for which she won, “The Fighter”, is a true story set in Lowell, Massachusetts, not all that far from where I grew up. I knew dozens of women like her. To be honest, I was more struck by the hair and makeup in the movie. They nailed it—that’s what those women really looked like.

Like another recent movie, “The Town”, I may have had moments where the accents let me down—the Boston accent is deceivingly difficult to do, and on film is more often done wrong than right. Pahkin ya cahr in Hahvid Yahd (trans: Parking your car in Harvard Yard) is not as easy as it seems. For that matter, I’d be willing to bet that Harvard Yard has a strict no parking policy.

While we’re on the subject of my heavily Irish-influenced home town, I’m reminded that St. Patrick’s Day isn’t far off. Pity the poor foodie on this day. Would it be terribly snarky to suggest that, food-wise, St. Patrick’s Day lacks subtlety? St. Patty’s day is usually celebrated with all things green, including beer and bagels. (I shouldn’t complain: in Chicago they tint the entire Chicago River green.) Irish Soda Bread? I did that last year. Corned Beef and Cabbage? It’s not calling my name.

Ah, but what about dessert? Some of us need a dessert that isn’t mugged and foamy after the Corned Beef and Cabbage. Don’t worry, I practice a strict “No Green Cake” policy.

First, pupils, here is this week’s history lesson. During the years I was growing up in Boston, the Ritz-Carlton was considered the city’s most luxurious hotel. That may or may not still be true, but it was the dowdier Parker House Hotel that was the backdrop against which quite a bit of history was played. The Parker House Hotel has been around in one form or another since 1847, the current building dating back to 1927. Aside from being the first Boston hotel to have hot and cold running water and an elevator, it is also where JFK announced he was running for the Senate, where he proposed to Jackie, and where he held his bachelor party. (We’ll let that last item slide.)

Authors like Edith Wharton and Stephen King wove portions of their stories through the Parker House (although in King’s short story “1408” he names the hotel “The Dolphin.”) Even more interesting is the parade of world-changers like Ho Chi Minh and Malcolm X who walked its halls—as employees. (According to Wikipedia, Ho Chi Minh was a baker. Who knew?)

Naturally the most interesting part of the hotel’s history—to me—is that it is the birthplace of the Boston Cream Pie, and, of course, the Parker House roll.

Boston Cream Pie is one of those old-fashioned diner desserts that we take for granted. For the uninitiated, it is not a pie, it is a cake. It is easy to take it for granted because by modern standards it is—like the Parker House was for many years—dowdy, or plain. Keep in mind that it wasn’t created to be dowdy or plain. It was created to be cutting edge; it is only the passage of time that has dulled that edge.

To make a Boston Cream Pie is to appreciate the tradition and the art that went into its creation. Let me explain it this way: making a Boston Cream Pie is like dancing an old but well choreographed ballet: it’s all about classic technique and basic steps.

In this case the basic steps are chiffon cake, pastry cream, and ganache. Don’t be fooled. While it is only three steps, you must dance each of them perfectly.

The chiffon cake may actually be the easiest. The original recipe likely used genoise, but I like the fragrant, sugary, yolkiness of a chiffon cake better. The vanilla pastry cream just requires a bit of patience and a good whisking arm, but learn to do this step well and you’ve conquered Éclair filling, and perfect, silky, pudding. Ganache requires a good eye for texture: your eyes tell you when it is ready, although there is a bit of leeway here in the definition of “ready.”

The result is like a step back into a scene from “The Age of Innocence.” Or in the case of me and my friends, an Oscar party where it earned very positive notices. The fragrant, eggy chiffon cake blends with the intense vanilla of the pastry cream (which I blended with whipped cream) to make an almost lemony sweetness. I used a whipped ganache on top, although to tell the truth, next time I’ll skip that step and drizzle warm ganache over the top. That will result in a lighter touch with a more intense chocolate hit.

Meanwhile, I wonder what Ho Chi Minh’s Boston Cream Pie was like?

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Drop me a note if you want the recipes for Boston Cream Pie.

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Write to me at the email address below with any questions or 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

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How many hearts are too many?

As if I needed an excuse. February is here and that means Valentine’s Day is barreling down the road towards us; while many folks associate that with roses, for me it’s all about the chocolate.

I love tradition, and if the old fashioned heart-shaped box of chocolates is your preference, then I won’t quarrel with that.

Me? I think I straddle the fence between easygoing and annoyingly precise. My favorite chocolate (at the moment) is a simple, humble, chocolate bar. Tie two or three blocks of my beloved (and cheap) Damak chocolate together with a ribbon and I’m perfectly happy. Easy? Well, yes, except that Damak is imported from Turkey, is only available in a handful stores here in New York, and can be hard to find because it flies off the shelves. Weeks go by, and (poor me) there’s no Damak Chocolate to be found. (Hear me Nestlè?)

For those who want to shake things up a bit, there are other paths to follow. Last year my Baby Niece hand decorated chocolate-dipped shortbread cookies for her young gentleman. (Okay, yes, I helped.) For others, Valentine’s Day can be symbolized by a special meal. I know one rather zesty young woman whose husband has been well trained: for her the hearts and flowers of Valentine’s Day are perfectly embodied in the guise of sliced filet mignon at Ben Benson’s Steakhouse. Rare please.

My Baby Niece, for one, is indifferent to flowers. Yeah, she likes chocolate—kinda, sorta, I guess. But if you really want to make her happy, something twinkly in a light blue box from the store where Holly Golightly ate breakfast is your best bet. I hate to be crass, but the price of roses on Valentine’s Day makes her preference a good deal. And it won’t wilt after a week.

If there is ever an occasion when it is the thought that counts, when you need to show someone that you’ve been listening, it is Valentine’s Day. The really important ingredient is to know your audience.

Sometimes just a little bit of fuss is all you need.

And if it’s fuss you want, my little Tulipe Paste hearts in the picture above are for you. These will dress up anything—even a Tofutti Cutie— on Valentine’s Day and make it something special. (Apologies to you if think Tofutti Cuties are already something special.)

Unfamiliar with Tulipe Paste? I understand. But if you’ve ever been given a can of those little rolled “cigarette” cookies (usually filled with chocolate cream), you’ve had Tulipe Paste. Pepperidge Farm sells them under the name “Pirouette.” Some pastry chefs refer to these as Tuile cookies.

Are they easy to make at home? Let me put it this way: if you can spackle a wall, you can make Tulipe Paste cookies. (That’s a “yes.”) The good news? The batter has only six ingredients. The bad news? You’ll need couple of items of easily obtained special equipment—some of which you can easily make yourself. (I did.) Hint: it’s worth the trouble.

Tuile Cookies are one of those things like blackened redfish: about fifteen or twenty years ago they were everywhere. Then they were heaped on the junk pile of culinary trendiness; the shag haircut of the pastry kitchen. Okay, maybe not that bad. They still show up swirling around a pile of mousse every now and then. You get my point though.

I like them, and they’re fun, so I’m putting on my rubber gloves and fishing them out of the junk pile. Conniving blogger that I am, I have an ulterior motive: they’re crunchy. But before they are crunchy, they are soft and mold-able—and I think this makes them an invaluable tool in the home baker’s…uh…tool belt. (I myself do not wear a tool belt when baking.)

The most common way 1990’s chefs used the latter phenomenon was to drape the hot-from-the-oven cookies over a bowl. As the cookies cooled they hardened into the shape of the bowl and were served filled with fresh berries and whipped cream—actually, not a bad idea for Valentine’s Day. Make a couple of Tuile Bowls, fill them with a few chocolate-dipped strawberries (make ‘em or buy ‘em at the Godiva store) and you’ve got something special.

Tulipe hearts and Chocolate Gelato

I mentioned that you’ll need a couple of pieces of special equipment to make these cookies. The first is a little offset spatula to spread the batter. The second is a stencil because the basic technique is that the Tulipe Paste is spread into a stencil secured firmly to a baking sheet. To make the bowls you’ll need a round stencil measuring approximately six to eight inches, or you can try making free hand rectangles without a stencil. This is actually a really great technique to get the feel of working with the paste. For my little heart shaped cookies, I made a heart-shaped stencil from the plastic top of a tub of almonds. Take that, Martha Stewart. (The hearts in the picture above are approximately actual size.)

The little heart cookies have approximately the same crunch as potato chips, so add these to some melting dark chocolate gelato or mousse and you get the happy play of sweet, chocolately, and crunchy.

Now, that’s something I can fall in love with.

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Click here for the recipe for Tulipe Heart Cookies and some tips on working with Tulipe Paste .

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A little summer...now

Hey, how’re you doing? How’s your year going? Me? Fine, fine…although I could use a cookie right about now, thanks. At the moment though, no cookies; I am concentrating on losing the ample holiday joy that is making my pants just a little tight. I wouldn’t be surprised if the buttons and zipper in my pants sued me for hazard pay.

The bad news about the holidays ending in the dead of winter is that we are all at the peak of our “fatten-up-for winter-and-then hibernate” instinct. So, to then turn around and start trying to lose weight seems like Mother Nature is taunting us. Bears have the best technique: they sleep through several weeks’ worth of meals then emerge svelte but ravenous. I don’t recommend this for humans. Okay, maybe runway models—if they can fit the hibernation into their schedules.

I look at it this way: during the holidays I eat a lot of the stuff I make myself. Simply by changing what I make (no cookies) I have a head start on dropping my holiday heft.

As I continue my sentence at hard labor for sins of over indulgence committed at holiday time, I am looking around every proverbial corner for meals that will amuse me. Having been a waiter for a long time, I am able to adapt ideas I saw over the years in restaurants to this cause.

As it happens, my memory was jogged a few days ago during a trip through the plastic wrap and foil aisle of the supermarket. (Yes, yes I know: I hit some exciting spots, don’t I? A colleague just returned from Buenos Aires. It’s summer there. I just returned from Gristede’s. It’s winter there.)

Ah, yes, the supermarket: my eye caught a box of parchment baking bags. Long ago I had a chef teach me (or try to teach me) the elaborate crimping technique they use to create the beautiful parchment bags in which they steam and serve food. Pre-made parchment bags seemed like a convenient idea for me. Lazy? Yes. Sorry, it’s the hibernation instinct coming out. (I’m milking that excuse for all it’s worth.)

Don’t worry: I’m the first one to snore at steamed food. I’ll even throw in a “yech.” The real trick I learned from those chefs is what goes in the bag along with the beautiful fish and perfectly manicured vegetables.

Any chef worth his salt (pardon the pun) will tell you that it all starts with the best ingredients. Yeah, sure: that’s like saying that great literature is just a bunch of words. Chefs know how to “goose” the flavor in everything they cook: a little extra grilling here, a little touch of pepper there.

When it comes to parchment-bag steamed meals—which enjoyed a vogue about fifteen years ago—the magic ingredient was compound butter. Compound butter goes back – at least—to Escoffier. The concept is trés simple: soften butter, mix in colorful, flavorful ingredients, and freeze into a log. Slices of the frozen butter are then added to cooking food, or in the case of beef, melted on top as the beef is plated for service.

The gorgonzola you often see in photos relaxing alluringly on a filet mignon was likely a bit of compound butter. In the case of the about to be steamed fish in the picture above, I made a citrus compound butter. Right about now you’re asking, “Hey buddy! I thought you were on a diet. What’s up with the butter?”

My answer is that I don’t use real butter. Even on a good day I can’t eat butter. You may notice that many of my recipes mention that I use a butter substitute. To be polite, real butter is delicious, but gives my stomach…um…grief. Purists: I agree, nothing tastes like real butter. But nothing is better than a happy tummy tum tum. Aside from that, using real butter in this recipe is relatively harmless. At most you’d be using two tablespoons. I say go for it.

I use Earth Balance because its mix of oils mimics the healthy profile of olive oil. (There are several excellent products like this.) This makes it perfect for the Butter Flour Eggs spa menu. Besides: it’s the flavors in the compound butter that do the heavy lifting. The butter is mostly there for moral support.

The citrus compound butter recipe is simple: allow a quarter pound of butter to soften. With a fork, mash in the grated rind of three oranges, and one lime. Feeling ambitious? Throw the butter in a blender with the grated citrus rinds, a half teaspoon of salt, and a tablespoon of orange juice. (I find the blender version delicious but hate cleaning the blender.)

Roll the butter into a parchment-wrapped log and freeze. When it is time for dinner, cut the log into silver dollar-sized slices, place in the parchment bag with the other ingredients, salt and pepper, and bake.

To be honest, the flounder shown in the photo above is not ideal for this technique. Use a slightly thicker fish like halibut, salmon, or the ubiquitous sea bass. I added julienne strips of carrot, red pepper, and fingerling potato. Yes, potato on a diet. One. Sue me.

Again, it’s about the technique. Anything you add to the bag should be cut to approximately the same size so that everything cooks evenly. Green beans? Perfect too.

Keep this technique in your back pocket for summertime. A little gorgonzola butter on your burgers anyone? How about melting some of the citrus butter on your corn on the cob?

As I write this it is 27˚ outside and the weatherman is predicting snow. Mmmmm. Summer. I’ll be thin by then.

Won’t I?

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

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It isn't soup yet...

The thing I always forget about the New Year is that so many people are relieved that the holidays are over. Those would be the folks who ask, “So, did you survive the holidays?” No judgment here. My mom spent the bulk of her working years in retail. Although she has long since retired, she still greets the holiday season with the attitude of a soldier gearing up for a rough patrol.

For others the end of the holiday season is a huge letdown. Understandable: all the goodies have been put away. Here in Manhattan, not long after Halloween we begin to get accustomed to a twinkly, idealized version of our city which disappears seemingly overnight after New Year’s Eve. The first Monday after New Year’s Eve can be a bit of a letdown in that respect. Last week we had a big snowstorm, and just a few days on, to roughly quote Stephen Sondheim, “…even the snow looks used.”

The third group rolls up its (collective) sleeves and gets down to work. “Happy Holidays. Let’s GO!” Healthy, well-balanced folk, that group.

Me? This year finds me in all three groups depending on the day / the hour / the minute. The little kid in me loves Christmastime. The food blogger in me knows that I can’t write about holiday food every week so is happy to move on.

I’ll miss the music though.

As is the habit every January I (and millions of others) vow (but not resolve) to lose weight: “Hack the Holiday Heft” is my program for 2011. My track record isn’t bad—some years I do better than other years—but I find the constant is to keep myself entertained with the cooking process. If I can keep playing in the kitchen I somehow feel less deprived. My game plan is to find meals that I can fuss over in the kitchen thereby distracting myself from the absence of cookies in my life. The tough part is chocolate; there simply is no substitute. Ah well, what is life without a little sacrifice, right?

Now, not to get all “Forrest Gump” on you, but I find that making chicken soup is a lot like planning the year ahead. (Stay with me on this…) The basic recipe is constant. It’s what you put into it that makes it yours and makes it special. Okay, I’ll grant you that this is not world-changing philosophy, but I’m standing by my statement, and I promise to not belabor it.

Making Chicken Soup is literally as easy as boiling water yet the end result is so soothing, and, depending on the “extras” you add, also a hearty, healthy meal ideal for hacking the holiday heft.

You wouldn’t think that something as basic and ages-old as Chicken Soup would be a subject for debate, but lately there seems to be a divergence of opinion about the chicken itself: after cooking the soup do you save the chicken or not? As debates go this is right up there with whether the toilet tissue should hang over or under—a debate I will not go near: soup isn’t the only thing chicken here.

Some folks insist that the chicken has been boiled away and should be discarded, some folks insist that it is still perfectly good. To resolve this weighty problem I consulted two experts: my Mother, a certified Grandmother, and the original New York Times Cookbook (circa 1960) which serves as my de facto ol’ Auntie when it comes to food.

Both assured me that I can happily retain the chicken meat. I want it shredded into chunks and returned to the soup, but my Mom insisted, “We always made Chicken Salad with it.” (When I explained that I wanted to use it in the soup, in true Jewish mother fashion she replied, “You don’t like Chicken Salad???” Emphasis: hers.)

Yes Mom, I love Chicken Salad, but I want Chicken Soup. And perfectly good protein goes where it belongs: back into the soup.

My aromatics – the other ingredients I add to the soup as it cooks– are fairly traditional except that I have a big bunch of Parsley and some left-over Rosemary which I’ll be using instead of celery. (Mom: “No celery???”) I’ll tie them into a bouquet with some butcher’s twine. A few parsnips, and carrots, a head of garlic (thank you Ina Garten), and a dusting of Bells Seasoning (left over from Thanksgiving) and I should have a richly flavored broth. (I’ll strain the finished soup through a mesh strainer, lest you think my finished product will look like some freaky, cloudy tea.)

As I am an impatient skimmer (skimming the fat from hot soup is like herding cats), I‘ll refrigerate the soup just after I strain it. The fat will congeal, float to the top, and be easily peeled away like pulling lily pads from a lake. Anyway, the soup tastes better after it has been allowed to sit for a while.

I’ll add salt just before I eat, and only to the portion of the soup I am heating. (Another debatable point. Some insist you must season as you go.) When dinner time rolls around I’ll break up a few sheets of No-Boil Lasagna noodles into the re-heating broth. These will approximate papardelle, and are lighter than the egg noodles my Grandmother would have added. I like to sprinkle in some diced red bell pepper, but that’s more for looks than anything else. A little fresh chopped parsley looks good too.

Crackers? Only if I’m in the mood to make my Cornmeal Saltines, and even then, just a few. My cookie mascot “Mikey the Pig” (on the blog’s masthead) isn’t the only one saying, “Oink” right now: I have holiday heft to hack!

“Happy Holidays. Let’s GO!”

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Write to me at the email address below with any questions or 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

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Sweet Charity

Many years ago my parents took me to see a play during the holiday season. This sticks in my mind because I remember that at the end of the play the actors stepped forward and asked for donations to the Actor’s Fund—the same way they do now for Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS. As the actors were speaking, several people in the audience stood up to leave, one of them grumbling to no one in particular, “Someone always has their hand out!”

(Obviously a certain grumbling someone must have gotten some bad egg nog that day.)

Now, I apologize, but whenever I think about this I chuckle because, 1.) in some absurd way it strikes me as funny, and because 2.) I can always think of better endings to the story. Perhaps he was visited by three ghosts that night, one for Christmas past, one for…oh, sorry, I think that’s been done.

No matter, for the “takeaway” (as they like to say in corporate America) was obviously not gleaned by little me from the stage that night. I don’t have any recollection of what play we were seeing, but the memory of Ebenezer Scrooge, live and in concert has never left me.

Thankfully the reality is that most folks are not like that, although at times we may need just a little reminder to be charitable. Charitable giving seems to get a bit more attention during the holiday season. While much of the attention gets focused on money, there are also the gifts of time and expertise.

A colleague recently drafted me to help with a holiday event she is coordinating on behalf of a children’s hospital that is headquartered at New York Presbyterian Hospital. She is getting a group of Wall Street-types together to sit down and make holiday cards for the kids. She is familiar with my cookie proclivities therefore volunteered my services to feed the volunteers. (I’m not sure if the hospital wants cookies for the kids. I’ll have to find out, but I suspect they are careful about the source of the food they feed the kids.)

The assignment was very specific: “I volunteered you to bake cookies for the people who will be making the cards. I told them you’d make Snickerdoodles. I love those, don’t you?”

Uh-oh. I’m embarrassed to admit this, but I can only remember having a Snickerdoodle once in my life and being severely underwhelmed. They were just a touch too, um, “white bread” for my taste. Or are Snickerdoodles like liver: if you haven’t had it properly prepared you shouldn’t judge? (Yes, I just compared a cookie to liver. I like liver. Sorry.)

It gets worse. I can’t step out of the shadow of feeling that the name, “Snickerdoodle” is a touch too precious. The cookie I remember was almost catatonic in its softness, and undistinguished in flavor; a mushy sugar cookie. Who knows, maybe it came from a mix? (Can you imagine?)

I may be stuck with the name, but a dull cookie? From me? Never! How could I “goose” things a bit and make this cookie a bit more interesting? Mind you, I feel a responsibility to not stray too far from the Snickerdoodle’s known identity, but want to make the “best in class.”

Here’s the goal: this cookie is supposed to be a bit crispy on the outside, but a little soft on the inside (a chemical reaction that results from the unusual use of cream of tartar as the leavener). In addition, there should be an even coating of cinnamon and sugar. What is obviously in play here is the amount of cinnamon, and what kind of sugar to use.

Let’s start with the sugar. The basic recipe calls for plain white granulated sugar inside and out. Why not introduce a gentle note of crunch by using a large crystal sugar inside and out? Demerara sugar will give a slightly honey-ed note to the mild-mannered Snickerdoodle, and its large crystals will crackle with each bite. In addition, substituting it for some of the sugar in the batter with keep the cookie’s soft middle from being too mushy.

The cinnamon – sugar coating took a little work to get exactly the balance I wanted, but gave me yet another opportunity to add a little more personality. I started with just the demerara sugar and cinnamon, but the cinnamon took over. I found the right balance with half vanilla sugar, half demerara sugar, and the cinnamon. The result had a touch of cinnamon doughnut—a nice surprise.

Size matters here. I weighed half ounce portions of dough which baked into a cookie slightly larger than two inches in diameter. Any larger and I fear that the cookies may have had the dreaded mushy middles. Instead they have a springy, cakey quality—another happy “doughnutty” note.

A nice, gentle cookie, but the “doughnutty” notes jogged my memory. It is Hanukkah, and last year I was yearning for some kind of baked-not-fried Sufganyot, the little jelly doughnuts that have become such a popular festival of lights treat. A little jelly between two Snickerdoodles and I held in my hand, (ring the bell, please) a Sufganyot cookie. It was like a gift from above.

I mentioned briefly above that I weighed the portions of the dough. It is not a prerequisite. You can accomplish the same thing using a tablespoon, but a good digital scale can be a real time saver for folks who bake a lot. Convert recipes you use a lot to ounces instead of cups. Then you can pour ingredients right from the package into a bowl set on the scale. You’ll save time and get more consistent results. Digital scales make a great holiday gift for bakers too.

(Hint, hint.)

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Click here for the recipe for Snickerdoodles.

If you’re feeling ambitious but need a bit of cookie baking technique and guidance, read the Butter Flour Eggs Cookie Primer 101 for some basic cookie-baking tips.

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The Ronald McDonald House of New York is an 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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Write to me at the email address below with any questions or 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

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Roasted Corn Soufflé

I just went through the box of Thanksgiving props we store here in the Butter Flour Eggs prop warehouse. As I was unfolding the big cardboard turkey with the waffle-cut tissue paper tail, I thought back a few years to a conversation with friend who was living in London at the time.

She informed me—with a great deal of panicked surprise—that they don’t celebrate Thanksgiving over there. (Hmmm…what was it about the whole pilgrim “thing” that eluded her?) Worse, I think, was that the panic in her voice was actually centered on the fact that she couldn’t find the Durkee French Fried Onions she needed for her green bean casserole. (She had them shipped from home, a/k/a “The Year That DHL Saved Thanksgiving.”)

You can’t pick up a newspaper (or pick up an iPad to read a newspaper) without reading about the twenty-first century global economy. Yet, it seems that nothing has remained as truly American as our Thanksgiving holiday. When it comes to food “truly American” means “anything goes” – the culinary equivalent of a global economy.

Last year I wrote about the pleasure my family (of Eastern European descent) takes in eating our turkey at an old Yankee country Inn on Thanksgiving. But I know a woman, an American citizen born in China, who cannot fathom why Turkey is the anointed bird-of-the-day. “Too stringy!” says she, and truly, depending upon who does the cooking, she may have a point. Her family Thanksgiving meal is a big juicy duck. Another woman I know whose childhood was split between the Caribbean and the UK cannot imagine anything but ham on Thanksgiving, for without ham there would be no ham-on-homemade-biscuit sandwiches the next day. (Funny: throw in the homemade biscuits and her logic seems perfectly sound to me. I’m easily swayed by a good biscuit.)

I have no doubt that the real reflection of our global diversity is in the food we serve alongside our Thanksgiving main course. I am referring to the sub-group of food we lovingly call the “sides.” As iconic images go, the big roast Turkey is straight out of Norman Rockwell, but for me Thanksgiving is all about the sides. And the good news is that you’d be hard pressed to find sides I don’t like.

A couple of days after Thanksgiving we sometimes have a very informal family dinner—you could call it “Thanksgiving, the Sequel.” This is a small, very low pressure affair. Sometimes there’s a turkey, or sometimes there’s a chicken. It is more an excuse for yours truly to road test his favorite sides, and whatever turkey or chicken is there is due to my being self conscious about making a dinner comprised solely of sides –which I could very easily do if it were just me eating.

So, in the tradition of “anything goes” being typically American, I proudly present my favorite side (this year): Roasted Corn Soufflé. On paper a soufflé seems typically French, and mysteriously difficult to prepare. In practice? Not so much.

I’ll tackle its supposed French identity first. Yes it’s French, but really not so far afield from our American Spoon Bread, which is also a supple pudding and is often served as a Thanksgiving side.

More important is the reputation soufflés have for requiring advanced technique, pinpoint timing, and / or that they must be rushed from oven to table. It’s just not true. Yes, they deflate a bit if allowed to sit, but frankly soufflés sweet or savory taste better when not eaten burning hot straight from the oven. You can even reheat leftovers (if there are any) the next day. My only prerequisite for making soufflé is a Kitchen Aid (or similar) stand mixer—and that’s only because I am too lazy to whip egg whites any other way. (Go ahead, call this “lazy man’s soufflé”; I don’t care, I’ll be too busy eating the soufflé.)

By the way, just because soufflés are easy doesn’t make them seem any less magical to the folks waiting at your table. The best magicians know that magic takes a little technique, a little planning, and a whole lot of show biz. I once worked with a sleight-of-hand artist. He was so amazing that my reaction was always, “How’d you do that?” to which he would always answer, “It’s magic.” So it’s your choice whether you want to tell folks the technique behind the soufflé magic.

Roasted corn lends itself beautifully to soufflé: the roasting makes the kernels a little chewy, breaking up the flabby airiness of the soufflé.  What represents the harvest and the Indians helping the pilgrims better than roasted corn on Thanksgiving? While most sides fall into the categories of vegetable or starch, soufflé is really neither or both. It’s an egg dish with a little bit of flour added.

Soufflé ingredients are cheap kitchen basics: butter, flour, eggs, milk. For this recipe you should make sure to buy the best parmesan cheese you can find, which admittedly may bump up the price a bit.

The Butter Flour Eggs technique is that you don’t have to make a soufflé all at once, or even the same day you plan to serve it. First, you make the (lightly) labor-intense part of the recipe, then turn out the lights, go to sleep, wake up Thanksgiving morning, fire up the Kitchen Aid to whip a few egg whites and you’ve got soufflé…and yes, it’s real soufflé, not a shortcut version. (PS: this technique will serve you well next Valentine’s Day when you present your sweetheart with Chocolate Soufflé hot from the oven.)

If you decide to make the soufflé a couple of suggestions will serve you well. First, read the entire recipe all the way through beforehand, twice. Second, have all ingredients measured and all equipment ready before you start. This will help you with suggestion number three: have confidence. Soufflés smell fear. (You’ll smell cheese and corn.)

And if folks “”Oooo!” and “Ahhh!” over your big, puffy Roasted Corn Soufflé, shrug your shoulders and say, “You think this is cool? Wait until I saw my mother-in-law in half…”

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Click here for the recipe for Roasted Corn Soufflé.

Need some Thanksgiving inspiration? Read my previous Thanksgiving recipe ideas:

Alfred Lunt’s Famous Pumpkin Pie

Anadama Bread

Apple Pan Dowdy with “Baked Indian Pudding” Crust

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Write to me at the email address below with any questions or 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

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thuuuurrrpp!

I have a theory: if you’ve lived in your home for more than five years, chances are your kitchen and closets have become the house wares equivalent of an archeological dig. The other day I decided that I needed to sort through a few things in my kitchen. That’s my euphemism for “it was a mess and I needed to get rid of stuff.”

I should preface this by explaining that–ice cream maker aside–I never think of myself as a gadget person. I don’t even have a microwave oven, although that has as much to do with being unwilling to surrender counter space as it has to do with function. I know me: I would never cook with the thing and would likely use it for storage. (Like my regular oven, which my sheet pans call home.)

I have a Kitchen Aid mixer–universally accepted as indispensible for bakers–two good sauté pans, two cheap but sturdy saucepans, a rolling pin that could double as a self defense tool, and a huge number of cookie cutters. (Cookie cutters don’t count.) I don’t even have an electric coffee maker or toaster.

Therefore, it was eye opening to “sort through a few things” and find gadgets that I must at one time have considered vital, but that now seem — and this is me being polite — extraneous. Case in point: I have an immersion blender. Please tell me why. I cannot remember the last time I used it or what I made with it. On the other hand the box says it is ideal for making creamy soups right in the pot. Hmmm. I think I’ll hold onto it. For now. Just in case I decide to make creamy soups.

I tossed a coffee grinder. It worked fine, but reeked of some flavored coffee that I can’t seem to stomach. Word of caution about coffee grinders: one mistake and they’re toast. Yeah, I know “they” say you can use them to grind spices, but once you’ve done so they wear their musk like a scarlet letter and their coffee days are history.

I have a rice cooker which I actually do use…once a year. But I have an excuse: I inherited it from a friend who was moving. It’s a keeper. Hey, I may want to make sushi. It could happen.

I have two vegetable peelers. One is made by OXO and I use it frequently for everything from cheese to chocolate, and yes, vegetables. The other peeler I bought from Joseph Ades, New York’s best known street peddler (he was profiled in Vanity Fair ),who was selling them on the street one day. You could say I got caught up in the glamour of that peeler. I use the OXO because it is more comfortable.

Then I came across my old whipped cream dispenser — the kind that you charge with little cylinders of gas. I’m sure I bought this during a long ago foray into the land of the Atkins diet. And not unlike rummaging through an old garage and finding a classic MG roadster hiding under a tarp, I couldn’t resist taking the old girl out for a spin.

She still foamed beautifully, and the roar of her nozzle as she spat out whipped cream was still impressive, so I couldn’t help but wonder if the old gal had some life — and relevance– left in her yet. Is there life after whipped cream? If you follow the intense world of molecular gastronomy, and talented guys like José Andrés and Ferran Adrià then the answer is yes. If you are a home cook like me then the answer is maybe.

As much as I would like to publish a recipe for Asparagus Espuma, I’m afraid my work was much more prosaic: I made Chocolate Mousse. Sounds good, yes? What a dumb idea.

I followed a recipe that I found on line that was created by isi, the manufacturer of the whipped cream canister. The ingredients are fairly straightforward, heavy cream, instant coffee granules, cocoa powder, sugar, and vanilla or your preferred alcoholic addition. Here’s my first complaint: this isn’t Chocolate Mousse, this is chocolate flavored whipped cream.

Here’s my second complaint: it didn’t work. Lots of gas rushed out, but not much mousse. Clearly the mousse was too heavy for the gas. I’m happy to report that the mousse that did come out was good. It had a nice chocolate / coffee bite, and quite a bit of the little bubbles that are usually featured in mousse courtesy of whipped egg whites. But after the mousse stopped the rush of the gas sounded more like the canister was giving me “the raspberry.” While I avoided taking its comment personally, I’ll admit I prefer it when my utensils keep their opinions of me to themselves.

If at first you don’t succeed, use the rest of the heavy cream to try again. My second attempt was better, and yielded more mousse, but featured the same unfortunate comment coda by the canister, which, as a bonus, spat some mousse at me when I opened it for cleaning. Clearly this canister missed its calling and would have been much more at home on the set of “I Love Lucy.”

Alas, the true problem lies with the operator of the canister, not the canister itself (surprise!). I was using heavy cream, which (in the Northeast) weighs in with an average of 40+% butterfat. I should have used Whipping Cream (duh!) which weighs in with an average 36% to 40% butterfat. This would have produced a lighter cream which the gas would likely have been able to push with greater success.

In the meantime, I think I’ll stick to making Chocolate Mousse the old fashioned way: with my MousseMaster 5000!

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Write to me at the email address below with any questions or 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

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