Farinata

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Cary Grant would approve.

Happy Summer!

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Click here for the recipe for Farinata.

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Cornmeal Waffles

My Junk Mail Box has been inundated of late by offers of roses for Mom on Mother’s Day. Yes, I read the stuff that lands in my Junk Mail box. Even worse, I like some of the junk mail I get, although I admit that I’ve never consciously purchased anything from one of those offers. I think it appeals to the same “hunter / gatherer” instinct that causes me to spend way too much time trawling the aisles of the supermarket hunting new things. Don’t come with me to Zabar’s unless you have a bit of free time on your hands.

Anyway: the roses. My Mother likes roses, but whenever she has been given daisies she always claims those as her favorite. I distinctly remember her buying bunches of daisies for herself every now and then.

She’s not the only Mom who has expressed this preference: I have a friend (a Mom of an eight month old and a three and a half year old (!)) who agrees with my Mom.

So why all the fuss about roses? Note to 1-800-Flowers: some of these women want daisies.

The other classic gift for Mom is breakfast in bed. I’m afraid my Mom has never gone in for this either, but don’t let that throw you: breakfast is her favorite meal. She would just prefer to have it served on a beachfront terrace in some pampering resort. My kitchen is small. I can do breakfast. I can’t do beachfront resorts.

That’s okay.  As the man says on TV, “Make it work.” The breakfast foods my Mom likes are corn muffins and waffles. Why not combine the two? Cornmeal waffles anyone?

As I saw it, there were two roads I could take to get to my goal: Muffin Avenue or Waffle Boulevard. I thought that the ideal would be to serve Mom the waffle equivalent of a crunchy muffin top. Sounds like a good idea, yes?  I mixed a very basic corn muffin recipe and fired up my trusty waffle iron. The result was best described as pointless. I ended up with a waffle that just wasn’t the right consistency, and a muffin top that had some crunch but lacked the springy mattress of crumbs that always lies under the crunch of a muffin top. Most disappointing was that the direct heat of the waffle iron was too intense for the cornmeal, lending it a flavor that wasn’t burnt, just sort of over-toasted.

Better to let a waffle be a waffle. My dream waffle (dream waffle???) has a happy blend of flavors and textures: a little sweet, a little grainy, with its fluffy insides held in check by a lightly crisp jacket. Good waffles pair expertly with more than just scrambled eggs and bacon. Throw a couple of waffles on a plate and place a few slices of turkey with a touch of gravy and you’ll never look at an open face Turkey Sandwich the same way again. (Chicken and Waffles? Molto bene!)

I’m getting ahead of myself: first I have to make the waffles. I didn’t want to go through the fuss of yeast waffles; this was definitely a make and bake exercise. The burning question (well, hopefully NOT burning) was: how much cornmeal should I add to my waffle recipe to give it a lingering hint of corn muffin while still remaining a waffle? Too much cornmeal would prevent the waffles from puffing up in the iron, too little and why bother?

My favorite plain waffle recipe (from The Baker’s Manual by Jospeh Amendola and Nicole Rees) seemed like a good starting point. It makes a thin, eggy batter that I assumed would hold up to my addition of cornmeal like a good soldier. The recipe calls for ¾ cup of cake flour. I swapped that out for ½ cup of yellow cornmeal. This, along with the addition of a bit of extra sugar and stingy amounts of cinnamon and nutmeg was ideal.

The result was a moist waffle with an almost malty sweetness. The next time I’ll feel free to add perhaps another tablespoon or two of cornmeal, but it really isn’t necessary. These are waffles that are definitely waffles, but there is that faint undercurrent of muffin, and that’s all I need. A dusting of confectioner’s sugar, and a sliced strawberry or two were all I needed to be happy, and I’m sure Mom will be too. (If your Mom likes Maple Syrup, serve her the real thing. It’s a special day, right?)

In the meantime, Happy Mother’s Day to Dori, Alexandra, Leslie, Betsy, Cindy, Rosemarie, Sylvie, Barbara, Nancy, and all the other moms who have made our lives so happy.  (And oh yeah: my Mom too!)

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Click here for the recipe for Cornmeal Waffles.

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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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Virtuous

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

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

Am I teetering on the brink of the politically incorrect?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Now I really feel virtuous!

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Click here for the recipe for Kasha.

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

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

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