Oh my! We are fancy, aren't we?

The other day I was walking down my street when I spied a woman sitting on her stoop, a dog parked patiently and loyally by her side. This was a scene clipped out of a Ralph Lauren magazine ad: the woman, whippet-thin, prototypically WASP-y in bearing, and her dog, a spotted Springer Spaniel-style elegant creature whose own bone structure gave his mistresses’ a run for its money.

Aside from the fact that this slice of Connecticut Hepburn-style Americana seemed so out of place in my heavily Dominican-influenced neighborhood, what drew my eye was that the woman was sitting eating a peach. Yes, a wise choice of refreshment on a stinky-hot New York City Summer afternoon, but my internal dialogue tut-tutted, “Hmph. She would be eating a peach!”

Why so judgmental? Jealousy. I have never been able to eat a peach out of hand. I find them too mealy — and that’s after I remove the fuzzy skin. I love the flavor, hate the journey. Every summer rolls around finding me determined to “find the Zen” of eating a peach out of hand, and every summer rolls away having found me unable to do so. Could it be that I have never actually had a good peach? That hardly seems likely.

I have tried grilling peaches with a bit of brown sugar, albeit with mixed results: they taste good, but they’re still mealy. (Throw enough caramelized sugar on a baseball glove and it’ll taste good too.)

I do love peach ice cream, but the peaches have been chopped into small pieces, and the mealiness is frozen, so that’s cheating. Ditto Peach Crisp: “Yum-o” to borrow a Rachael Ray-ism.

So, like two other summer activities — sun tanning and riding roller coasters — where lack of success has forced me to redirect my ambitions (a/k/a “Quit”), I think I’ll just have to shelve my peachy ambition too. (The last time I rode a roller coaster I wasn’t “right” for days. Pale, queasy — and now peach-less, that’s me.)

So what does one do when life presents you with mealy peaches? One eats blueberries. (At least that’s what I do.)

What I like about blueberries is that they are so easy going; they will happily follow you down any path. When I was a kid we used to eat them straight off the bush — talk about a fresh and easy snack — but truly, there’s not much that is easier, faster, and more satisfying than cold blueberries in a bowl with a bit of milk and a few grains of sugar.

If, however, you are looking for something with a bit more ceremony, blueberries are just the ticket, no matter what the ticket happens to be. Think of them as the culinary equivalent of the fine worsted wool fabric a bespoke tailor uses to build a suit. (Wha??)

When I was a kid, my Mom always used to find tiny Wild Maine Blueberries. Unfortunately, here in New York I can only find those bagged and frozen. She always cooked them a bit, which only magnified their natural sweetness, making them pair beautifully with the aforementioned milk.

Even better, — for me — would be to drizzle the cooked berries and their juices over a small biscuit with a touch of very softly whipped cream for an instant shortbread.

Big fat New Jersey Blueberries are currently the easiest to find in New York, so I played with those over the weekend. You can see my comic “riff” on fine dining in the picture above. Laugh with me not at me: I painted the plate with a swoop of Blueberry Coulis, carefully placed a couple of quenelles of honey-sweetened Mascarpone cheese over a ladyfinger, arranged the berries so they’d look as if they didn’t care, and then finished the whole thing with a sprinkle of pearl sugar. A ridiculous exercise. The only reason to present food like this at home is to get a laugh, even if it is your own. But it does illustrate blueberries’ innate elegance and that they are versatile enough to stand up to anything. Evidently, they’re up for a laugh every now and then too.

You wouldn’t have laughed if you had tasted my silly, deconstructed, decaffeinated Tiramisu. The gently sweetened Mascarpone didn’t mask the blueberries; rather it added a creamy underscoring that plain whipped cream doesn’t have the chops to play. The coulis added sweetness and a bit of liquid to relax the cheese. Even the pearl sugar played a subtle role by adding a light crunch. I’ll be trying this again, although in a slightly more casual form.

I haven’t forgotten Blueberry Pie, but for me that’s just a happy excuse for ice cream.

I know that Blueberries have become the “vitamin-pill food of the moment” due to their high levels of anti-oxidants, but it seems a shame to obliterate them (as many do) by throwing them into a blender to make a breakfast smoothie. Okay, if that’s what works for you, go for it.

Mentioning blueberries and breakfast together makes me think lovingly of the gigantic, sugar-crusted Blueberry Muffins that used to be sold at the in-store bakeries of the old Jordan Marsh department store chain in Massachusetts. More cake than muffin, you could frost those behemoths, stick a plastic bride and groom on top, and be ready for a wedding.

Hmmmm…Blueberry cake with white frosting…that sounds mighty tasty. I think I owe you a recipe.

Why wait for a wedding?

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Succotash with Cheddar Cracker Crust

One of the truly iconic images of late summer is fields of corn, to quote a song lyric, “…as high as an elephant’s eye.” True, it is not late summer yet, but, while shopping this past weekend I had a choice of fresh peaches or early fresh corn, and almost compulsively chose the corn.

(Peaches or corn? Why not both? Hmmmm. I’m not sure.)

Anyway, why my “almost compulsive” choice of corn? I think it has something to do with happy memories of summers gone by. It should come as no surprise to anyone that someone who writes a blog measures nostalgia in meals partaken.

Granted us urban folk don’t glimpse fields of corn from the windows of the subway, but I grew up in suburbia, and in an era before every available square inch had been developed, so there were frequent views of open fields as we drove by in the station wagon.

I also have a Mom who is a daughter of the depression. Like many folks who grew up in the depression she celebrates her removal from that era by practicing a certain kind of food snobbery. When I was a kid she flat out refused to serve anything from a can. Chef Boyardee? Horror. This extended to other food as well: Supermarket bread? Are you kidding? (Except of course for Pepperidge Farm, back in the day when it was a little regional bakery.) (Not that she baked her own, but that’s what the neighborhood bakery was for.) Then there were also certain table manners: the ketchup bottle was never allowed on the table. You poured a bit of ketchup into a dish and that’s what was placed on the table.

The only canned vegetables that were allowed in our house were Le Seur Baby Peas – which were so fancy that Sex And The City fans may remember the Samantha character trying to seduce a Monk by donating a can of the peas to his food drive.

My Mother was a regular at what used to be known as a “greengrocer” which was the storefront version of a farm stand. Later on when my parents moved to a slightly deeper slice of suburbia she found and frequently haunted a real farm stand.

I’d hate to think that this all sounds as though I grew up in a stuffy home with a frilly Mother who tinkled a little bell when dinner was served. That was not the case.

On occasions when she would return from the farm stand with a big bag filled with ears of corn, we would all dig in and help shuck the ears. As I was shucking corn this past weekend in my own kitchen I was struck by how easy the task is, the surprise stemming from memories of childhood when – for little seven or eight year old me – shucking corn was hard work. I also remembered all the different ways there are to cook corn on the cob. My favorite was actually learned in adulthood: shucked, smeared lightly with butter, wrapped in foil, and roasted directly on the barbecue coals.

This brings up an important point: corn is hard to ruin, its dirty little secret being that it is actually perfectly edible uncooked. True, you can over-boil it. But in the sauté pan or roasting in the barbecue coals even if you overcook it slightly it is still good, if perhaps a bit toasty.

Now, you don’t need me to tell you how to make corn on the cob. Besides that, I eat my corn “de-cobbed.” (Long story: let’s just say this is due to adventures in orthodontia that would fill a whole other blog.) Anyway, fresh corn off the cob is my ticket to a bit of culinary play time.

Succotash isn’t necessarily as summer dish, but its key player is our summery buddy, corn. Besides, if you cook Succotash, you get to tell people that you cooked Succotash. Say it. Out loud. See what I mean? And if you bring a big casserole of Succotash to a barbecue announcing, “Hey everyone! I brought Succotash!” you may garner a laugh or two. (Past performance is no guarantee of future results.)

The definition of Succotash is really wide open, the only constants being corn and lima beans. I scoured the web and found as many variations as there are kitchens. My favorite finds indicated that a cracker crumb topping was a particularly popular finishing touch. Fresh corn topped with buttered cracker crumbs? I’m at a loss for a worthy adjective. Use a really sturdy unsalted cracker like oyster crackers or Neva Betta crackers for best results. (In a pinch unsalted Saltines will do, although the results may be slightly soggy.)

You’ll see from my “recipe” that there really isn’t a recipe, more like a “how-to” guide, so feel free to adjust this to your own tastes.

Actually I added a little “zetz” to this by changing the buttered cracker crumbs to a Cheddar Cracker Streusel crust by adding a healthy handful of the sharpest English cheddar I could find. This transformed a side dish that is almost an afterthought into a really great summer meal.  Be warned: this cracker crumb crust may find its way—cheddar cheese included – this coming fall on top of apples for a really amazing Apple Brown Betty.

Stay tuned!

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Click here for the recipe for Succotash.

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Tomato Tart

Attention infomercial marketers: I am your perfect audience. Well, kind of. Let me explain.

It is frighteningly easy to get me to sit and watch an infomercial. Just the other day I tarried in front of the TV for a screening of Joan Rivers’ latest epic “Great Hair Day”, which consists of a little comb and make up set that allows those stricken with thinning hair to “camouflage” the thin spots. I couldn’t tear myself away.

Cathy Mitchell and the Xpress Redi-Set-Go cooker? Who wouldn’t love to live in a house where the kitchen has a series of what are basically little round waffle irons that will cook you a restaurant-quality steak in minutes, a freshly baked chocolate cake, and a breakfast tortilla – all without ever having to turn on your stove?

The one that truly rings my bell though is the Topsy-Turvy tomato growing “system” (“system” being one of the infomercial marketer’s key buzz words.) This wise invention will allow you to grow tomatoes anywhere, upside down, basically turning a tomato plant into a hanging plant. You water the top of the plant which is now the roots: the fruit are now at the bottom. If I recall correctly, the infomercial even shows the plant hanging on a typically urban fire escape like we have here in the Big Apple.

I just can’t believe that whoever wrote that ever lived in New York City. Even if you are lucky enough to have a building Super or landlord who will look the other way while your tomato plant trots them out of compliance with fire laws, the squirrels will nab your tomatoes before you can say, “vinaigrette.” (New York City squirrels are notoriously smart. It’s just a matter of time before one of them runs for Mayor. Buh-dum-dum.)

Sadly, here’s where I go lacking as an infomercial audience member: I never order anything from these shows. Call me cheap, or discerning, as long as you spell my name correctly. I did once order a set of environmentally-friendly cookware from Home Shopping Network, opened the box, immediately closed the box and sent them back. (Money back guarantee. Need I say more?)

Anyway, living in New York you really don’t need to grow tomatoes on your fire escape, as we have several excellent farmers’ markets. Buying tomatoes at a farmer’s market is my version of the Topsy Turvy, and – to quote many an infomercial – that’s not all: I also get to support folks who are trying to make a living as farmers.

This past weekend I was able to find an ample supply of heirloom tomatoes. Heirloom tomatoes are grown from older seed stocks than those that produce the usual perfect round red fruit to which we’ve become accustomed. My purchases included a variety that looked like a variegated red oblong balloon that had been slightly overinflated and a big plump variety whose sunny yellow practically screamed, “Summer!”

I’m usually pretty good at buying only what I think I will eat within a day or two, but enthusiasm – and hunger – must have gotten the better of me. I can only eat so many salads and slices of tomato with mozzarella. I needed to use up my excess.

I decided a Tomato Tart was perfect for this exercise. While Tomato Tart shares DNA with pizza, it is actually closer in temperament to quiche, but really it is just a gratin in a tart crust. Kind of simple and the type of thing you can eat hot from the oven or cool with a salad for a refreshing dinner on a stinky hot summer night.

Because I can’t resist fiddling with what is likely already good enough I decided to channel a collaboration between my (imaginary) ex-hippie Italian Grandmother, and Alice Waters. (Imaginary) Grandma created a semolina pastry crust (the semolina again adding a bit of sunny color to the proceedings) and Alice Waters added a bit of locally-produced Goat Cheese to the white sauce that serves as a glue holding the tomatoes in the crust.

Because the heat has made me a little lazy (or unmotivated?) I made a crust that didn’t need to be rolled. The semolina crust is by nature sandier than a normal crust, so I just dumped it from the mixing bowl into the tart tin and pressed it evenly around with my fingers and the flat bottom of a measuring cup.

If calling it a Tomato Tart seems too “frou-frou” for your tastes, feel free to call it a Tomato Pie. I baked mine in a French tart tin, but you can use a rectangular baker or Pyrex lasagna dish and get the same result.

Don’t be afraid of salt with the tart: tomatoes and salt are well known for collaborating happily. Use a softer salt like sea salt: mine has a liberal sprinkle of flaky sea salt, and a snowy drift of good grated Parmesan on top before baking (or reheating) will add a bit of brine too.

Now, will someone explain to me how “HD Sunglasses” work? (Just saw them on TV.)

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Click here for the recipe for Tomato Tart.

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Blackberry Tart - deconstructed

A trainer at my gym related an experience he had a few nights ago. Just to set the scene, this guy is in tip-top condition; not an ounce of body fat. A seemingly virtuous paragon of discipline and self control.

Until the cookies called his name.

He reported that he woke up in the middle of the night and could not get back to sleep because a package of chocolate cookies was calling his name. He ate the entire package before returning to sleep.

Some of you reading this may think, “Well, if he has such discipline, one slip like that isn’t going to kill him.”

My reaction veers more toward relief: Relief that my struggle with will power is not as abnormal as I think. Relief that even those among us who seem to be paragons of self-control have their own “moments.”

And, relief that I am not the only one on a first name basis with his cookies.

Of course, it is my own darn fault. Nobody puts a gun to my head and orders me to bake cookies.

With that swirling in my mind, a friend called and invited me to a barbecue this weekend. Would I mind bringing dessert? (Is the Pope…?)

Fasten your seatbelts and get ready for the usual onslaught of news stories about how this is the “unofficial first weekend of summer.” For some folks this may mean that it is time to head over to Kmart for a new inflatable pool, but for me it means (and yes, I can tell you’re way ahead of me here) the official first weekend of summer eating.

Everyone loves the warm weather (except for pale, sweaty me.) But, I think there’s an unacknowledged caveat here: in the warm weather we have less material with which we can camouflage our various bodily flaws. So yes, everyone loves the summer, but everyone is self-conscious about this bump or that bulge (or both, in my case.)

Under the circumstances, I feel guilty foisting my usual parade of sweets upon a sun-baked, half naked, will power-compromised audience.  I sympathize: if I eat enough of my own desserts, it’ll be hard to distinguish me from the pool float, so light and easy does it.

A trip to the market answered all doubts about my ability to provide something summery, sweet, and light (ish), but still hit the proverbial “dessert spot.” (I can’t stand getting home from a party and feeling like I need to root through my fridge for a little something, so I want to make sure the other barbecuees will be equally sweet tooth sated. I take the request, “Will you bring dessert?” as a job description, not a social nicety.)

This week, California blackberries and strawberries are in abundance and cheap at the market. There’s the backbone of my Memorial Day dessert right there, yes, but the question remains: what to do with them?

The berries are very sweet and juicy, so it would be a shame to bake them into a pie or crisp. Nevertheless, dumping them in a bowl, even with whipped cream seems anticlimactic. What if I made a pie – deconstructed? Perhaps I’ve been watching too much of the last half hour of “Iron Chef” (the only part of the show I like; that’s when they eat) but here’s an example of what I mean: You and I both know what an Ice Cream Sandwich is, right? But as seen through the lens of a pastry chef, an Ice Cream Sandwich is really just ice cream and cookies. You could serve them in any order and still call it an ice cream sandwich, granted, at times what a pastry chef serves may be stretching the name of the item to the limit.

(Some years back we had a happy family meal with our 90-plus year old aunt at one of “superstar” chef Bradley Ogden’s restaurants. Auntie reveled in the whole thing, giggling like a schoolgirl as the waiter described the ranch from which her Veal Chop was sourced. Dessert time rolled around and the chef presented us with an extra dessert, Fresh Citrus Agar. As we dug in, we all had the same reaction: “Oh! Lemon Jello!” Yes, we are a sophisticated bunch.)

But I digress from my digression. The point is that I can do whatever I darn well please with my berries and crust, and still call it a pie or tart.

I checked my freezer and found some Pâte Sucré waiting for an assignment. (Doesn’t everyone?)

(Pâte Sucré is the slightly sweeter version of pie crust.)

When I was a waiter, I used to see the old cliché berry tarts all the time: fluted crust, frangipane filling, and berries glazed to within an inch of their lives. Delicious, yes. Berries in their natural state? No. For Memorial Day I’m stripping away some of the varnish.

I started by rolling the thawed Pâte Sucré to ¼” thick, and cutting 3” diameter round disks. Before baking I washed them with egg and sanded them with granulated sugar. As they baked briefly in the hot oven, they puffed slightly. The result is like a dryer version of puff pastry, the dryness being desirable because I’m not a fan of puff pastry, which always seems tasteless and greasy to me.

I dabbed a bit of Crème Fraiche on the cooled rounds, and plopped a few chilled blackberries on top. Other rounds got Chambord-spiked whipped cream and sliced strawberries, the latter being too plump whole to fit on the pastry. An ample sprinkling of Demerara sugar added sweetness, a bit of amber twinkle, and a soft crackle in the mouth. Three or four of these little pastries on a plate swiped with very, very soft chocolate ganache should keep everyone happy.

Now the important question: do I really have to wait an hour after eating before jumping into the inflatable pool?

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Ramp Goat Cheese Crostini

When I was a kid my Dad frequently travelled to New York City on business. It was not unusual to see him climb down the stairs from the Eastern Air Shuttle lugging all manner of things that he either couldn’t find in Massachusetts, or thought he could get at a better price in New York. Occasionally my Mom or I will still invoke his promise, “I’ll get it in New York.”

(Yes, he flew the Eastern Air Shuttle, and yes, he climbed down the stairs. I have vague memories of propellers. The whole scene is very “Mad Men.”)

(A shoe textile engineer, it was also not unknown for my Dad to climb down the shuttle stairs lugging a shoe that had been sawed in half lengthwise. Ah, glamorous New York.)

I’ve made New York my home for many years, but I wonder if my Dad’s idea of New York as a great source for any and all things may have become musty with time. Or is it that the rest of the world has caught up?

I should perhaps cut New York a break here as I have been searching for something that is generally considered hard to find under any circumstances: squash blossoms. (C’mon, sooner or later you knew I would bring the conversation back to food.) The problem is that squash blossoms are as rare in New York as garden space. Squash blossoms are exactly what they sound like: the flower that grows on top of the growing squash. Considered a delicacy, they are slightly sweet and “squashy”, and they have a very brief shelf life. You literally need to eat them the day they are picked or “pffft” they’re gone.

Squash blossoms are usually stuffed with cheese and fried, although recently on TV I spied Frontera Grill Chef Rick Bayless chopping them (from his own garden) and mixing them with Queso Blanco, then using the mixture as a loose quesadilla filling. Later, as summer settles in I’ll have to try haunting the local greenmarkets in search of my elusive prize.

This past weekend I found myself in rapt conversation with the mother of a friend of mine. The subject? Gardening, something that to this urban dweller seemed as distant and far away as mining for rocks on the moon. I’m the first to admit that I don’t know if I have the right stuff to be a gardener. I hate bugs flying around my head (cows handle this better me: they swat them with their tail.) I prefer air conditioning (mine has three settings: “cold”, “colder”, and “meat locker.”)

The flip side to this spoiled city boy rant is that folks with gardens eat enviably well, my definition of eating well, in this case confined to flavor. Everyone and their mother know that veggies fresh from the garden taste better. Tomatoes are the prime example of this. I am very happy when friends with gardens shove paper bags full of tomatoes fresh off their vine into my hands. I’ve never found anything comparable at the supermarket, although every now and then the Greenmarket delivers the goods. But how many tomato “frogs” must be kissed before one finds the Prince?

Amongst her other bounty, my friend’s Mom also grows her own Watermelon. Imagine that drippy, chilly seed spitting fest on a hot July Sunday afternoon. If that doesn’t cool you down you’re beyond saving.

She informed me that they are just now coming into lettuce season. Speaking of seasonal items, I gently prodded her about those squash blossoms, my ulterior motive droolingly obvious. (No luck.) Taking a different tack, I asked her if she also grows Ramps.

Ramps are this year’s arugula. That’s not my quote. You can read it in Time Magazine. While it seems that I’m edging into true “foodie” territory here, my interest in Ramps is more due to their seasonality – my inner Alice Waters at work. Ramps are also known as Wild Leeks and have as short a season as squash blossoms – albeit with a longer shelf life. Calling them Wild Leeks is perhaps a bit misleading as their raw flavor favors their close cousin garlic in pungency. Their perfume straddles the fence between onion and garlic.

I’m not a huge raw garlic fan, but sauté it with a light touch so that its sugar caramelizes and its spiky “pepperiness” mellows out and I’m in love. Ditto Ramps. The good news is that due to Ramps’ new found fashion they are easier to find. I happily scored some over the weekend at Whole Foods.

Ramps

I wanted to do something quick and simple with the Ramps so that I could eat them in the aforementioned mellow state, but not drift too far from their natural state. This is just like when you find really good berries: you don’t want to bake them into a pie. A quick, cool rinse and a dab of loosely whipped cream is all you need.

So I sliced the Ramps into rings, and sautéed them very briefly in good Extra Virgin Olive Oil. They have a lot of natural sugar, so the intense heat of the pan gave the smaller pieces a sweet crunch. Store-bought Crostini served as a stage for the sweet, mellow rings, and I used a drip or two of goat cheese thinned with Greek yogurt to glue the Ramps to the Crostini. The goat cheese / yogurt mixture was totally unnecessary, although it added a creamy counterpoint to the sautéed Ramps. A quarter pound of the pricey Ramps (mine were $9.99 per pound) will make enough of these little forshpeisen to keep four cocktail revelers happy.

Anyone got Squash Blossoms?

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uh oh...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Happy New Year!

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

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

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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

Still life with onions...

Yeah, yeah, I know: I don’t eat enough vegetables.

I recently read an article in a food magazine I respect and enjoy, written by a highly esteemed author/blogger/restaurateur. In the article the writer professed her love of kale, so much so that even writing about it made her hungry.

Kale.

To be clear: I am hardly a “Falstaff-ian” figure. I try to eat correctly, and usually succeed. But kale? No, the mere thought of kale doesn’t make me hungry.

Chocolate, yes. Kale, no.

It’s not that I hate vegetables; it’s just that I like all the other stuff on the plate more. Yet, I freely acknowledge that when vegetables are cooked properly (or uncooked properly, if that applies) they are wonderful.

So it follows that when the winter root vegetables start to show up in the markets every fall, I begin to feel confident that my veggie intake will increase for a few months, because I like them as much as or more than the other stuff on my plate. Heck, sometimes I don’t need anything else on the plate, and for vegetables, that’s saying a lot.

The great thing about winter vegetables is that they seem so easy to prepare that in my mind they qualify as fast food. The reality is that there is a bit of simple labor involved, yes, but knowing what awaits you when the timer rings (or beeps) is the spoonful of sugar that makes the medicine go down. (This is not to imply in any way that the prep for these vegetables is in any way medicinal.)

Being a city dweller, the closest I get to handling earth is when I water the small juniper bush that sits on the ledge of one of my kitchen windows. So the fact that some of the winter vegetables arrive in my home with traces of the farm still clinging to them only increases the self satisfaction I get from the minor handling they require before they hit the heat.

It all starts with a few turnips, and a sweet potato or two.

Have you met parsnips? (Say hello, parsnips.) They look like carrots that slavishly wore sunscreen (and I thought I was pale!) Cooked, they taste like the progeny of a carrot and a potato. Sweet potato (I’m told) is a bit of a misnomer: the sweet potatoes we get are actually yams, and I like to mix the mellow white yams with the more effusively sweet orange yams.

When I was at the market this past weekend I found golden beets which, in addition to being mellower than their violet brothers, have the added benefit of not staining your hands when you peel and chop them. They’re good.

I also found some little cippollini onions. You don’t even need to peel cippolinis; when roasted they shed their skins so fast it’s almost like they’re stripping because they can’t take the heat.

The preparation / recipe is simple: first I rinse the vegetables to remove the dirt. No need to scrub, just a cool shower and a rub with your fingers is all that’s required (I mean for the vegetables–get your mind out of the gutter.) Then I peel the veggies using a vegetable peeler, but if you prefer, go ahead and use a paring knife. (As I said, you don’t need to peel the onions.)

Then the chopping. Don’t be put off by this. While fancy-shmancy knife skills are not a prerequisite, if there is any part of this routine that qualifies as the “tricky part” this is it. I recommend that you use a sharp knife. Chop everything to approximately the same size, so they will all be finished cooking at the same time. “Chop” is a misleading word. Cube may be more accurate. Cut the veggies into cubes approximately one-half inch wide and high. No need to measure.

Throw the cubes into a large bowl; drizzle generously with extra virgin olive oil, and less generously with salt. Toss everything around to make sure all have been coated. Roast them on a sheet pan or cookie sheet in a hot oven (450˚F) for about 40 minutes.

If you want to magically convert this into a dinner, toss in your choice of protein. Some sliced turkey sausage is an easy choice. This past weekend, I threw the veggies in a roasting pan, and plunked a whole chicken breast (the bone-in, skin-on variety) on top. Fifty minutes later I had two meals.

Please don’t think that you need to adhere to my variety of veggies. If you like sweet potatoes just use those. (They are especially good when, just out of the oven, you drizzle them with a bit of maple syrup and then return them to the oven for a few fleeting moments.) If you can’t find cippollini onions, just chop a big, zesty, red onion into appropriately sized cubes and roast.

There’s also a great time saver that you can usually only find during November and December: many markets sell butternut squash already peeled and seeded.

But keep in mind that this is a great way to gamble at low stakes with a vegetable you’ve never tried before. Roasted using this method almost any hearty vegetable will have a toasty sweetness that won’t disappoint. And preparing vegetables as a Thanksgiving side could not be easier than this.

Isn’t nature wonderful?

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