Site Title

Reader, I Married Him

June 29, 2011

In the end, it was the most beautiful day of my life. I didn't expect it to be, had nothing but foolish nerves about all those people! looking at me! can't I just sneak past them and surprise them at the altar, er, fig tree? But when my father and I walked down the aisle and all around us, our family and friends starting humming "Here Comes the Bride" because I hadn't planned for any music – much to my father's chagrin – and when I saw my friend Dave with his new Buddy Holly-inspired glasses waiting for us up at the fig tree, sermon in hand, and when Max and I were told to turn around and say hello to all the people who had come, by planes, trains and automobiles, from Seattle and Jakarta, from New York and Paris, from Rome and Berlin, from Salzburg and Brussels, to assemble in my mother's garden and see us be married next to the house that my grandfather bought and rebuilt 30 years ago, I realized with a full heart and a clenched throat that sometimes clichés exist for a reason.

I'm still in the happy, misty fog that enveloped us that day, even though the beautiful greenhouse-like tent is being dismantled as we speak and the seating chart that I nailed to the shack my grandfather built is gone and the wildflowers my stepmother and friends picked by the side of the road the morning of the wedding to decorate the tables with are now finally wilting. One by one, everyone has said goodbye and gone back home, leaving behind only a footprint in the dusty earth here and a bent bottle cap and a stray sequin there. Tomorrow I leave this house and these gorgeous hills that are forever changed in my mind. Now it is the place where I married the love of my life while our dearest dears looked on and cheered for us in the setting sun.

I am the luckiest girl alive, I thought on Saturday and every day since then. To have had this day, these days, to love this person, to know these hills. And to be a part of so many lives that came together that afternoon. If I close my eyes, I can see them still: my 10-year old cousin Max helping me with my makeup, my girlfriends in the bathroom with me, pinning chiffon flowers in my hair, my husband's eyes filled with tears, my father's speech, funny and true.

May I never forget any of it nor the feeling of happiness within me still. I am a lucky girl.
Melissa Roberts’ Quick Radish Pickles

June 8, 2011

It's been confusing, to say the least, to be a vegetable-loving individual in Germany this past month. For a while, to be on the safe side, all I did was eat stewed vegetables, which I didn't mind in the least. Braised zucchini and slow-cooked Romano beans are very fine indeed. But then the summer sun and the lack of answers from the scientists and government agencies involved in solving this E. coli epidemic started to get to me. That and the fact that weeks were going by in which I was not allowed a single raw tomato.

(I ask of you: how can one live through the month of June without eating raw tomatoes? I say one cannot.)

At the greenmarket yesterday, then, I bought a sackful of everything I'd missed so much over the past few weeks, from a favorite local farm: a kilo of gleaming tomatoes, a long, dark cucumber, the most beautiful, moody head of oak-leaf lettuce and a perky bunch of radishes. I had to restrain myself from nibbling on the greens on my walk home, Peter Rabbit-style.

(Several people have asked how I'm dealing with the vegetable situation at present in Berlin: I try to buy fresh produce only from local vendors at green markets who are either growing the produce themselves or eating it themselves. If I have to buy any fresh produce from the grocery store, I cook it. I'm steering clear of ground meat and I only buy organic, local milk and eggs anyway. And now I'm making my own yogurt, too. But not because of the E. coli, just because. Homemade yogurt!)

Despite a few intermittent bursts of rain now and then, it's tough not be spending every waking minute outdoors these days. Berlin in summer is something so impossibly lovely and fleeting that it must be enjoyed and soaked up, as much as humanly possible. The best way to do this (besides taking a boat ride around the city) is to go out to one of Berlin's many parks and have a picnic. Just the other day, I was at my friend's annual picnic a stone's throw from the bridge to Potsdam, and we had ourselves a feast: cold meatballs and herb jam on flatbread, long-cooked beans and carrot-harissa salad, strawberry cake and Bienenstich.

I've been thinking a lot about picnics lately, and celebrations, too. As much as I can't wait for our wedding celebration at the end of June and the rustic Italian menu we'll be serving our guests, there are some days I wish we'd just decided to have a party in the middle of a big, empty park in Berlin – empty save for the massive trees keeping quiet watch over us – and spread out blankets covered with big trays of deviled eggs, homemade pickles and pavlova (in this ideal world, mayonnaise-spiked egg yolks and fresh whipped cream consumed on a hot summer's day outdoors makes perfect sense and is not dangerous in the least).

Maybe that's how we'll celebrate our anniversary instead. One thing I know for sure, the next picnic I go to, I'll be bringing a jar of radish pickles – rosy-pink and crunchy.

The recipe comes from the archives of Gourmet.com and is a cinch. You salt a bunch of quartered radishes, which give off a surprising amount of liquid half an hour later, and dissolve sugar in rice wine vinegar. Then you put the salted, drained radishes into the vinegar solution along with spoonful of slivered ginger. A few hours in the refrigerator (they can stay there up to a day) and you've got yourself a bowlful of crisp, sour, pickly radishes that are lovely popped into your mouth straight from the fridge or served, more adult-like, alongside a plate of salumi, for example. The addition of the ginger gives the pickles the faintest soupçon of sushi ginger. It's lovely.

I find picnics require pickles almost as much as they require a steady supply of cold drinks. You need the occasional bright pop of acidity and crunch to wake up your palate and keep you from fading away on the blanket, ants nipping at your ankles.

How about you, dear readers: what are your picnic must-haves?

Quick Radish Pickles
Makes about a cup

6 oz radishes (about 7), quartered
3 tablespoons rice vinegar (not seasoned)
2 tablespoons sugar
1 (1-inch) piece peeled ginger, cut into thin matchsticks (1 tablespoon)

1. Toss radishes with 1 tsp salt in a bowl and let stand 30 minutes. Drain in a sieve but do not rinse.

2. Heat vinegar with sugar in a small saucepan over medium-low heat, stirring, until sugar has dissolved. Remove from heat and add radishes, then stir in ginger. Transfer to a small bowl and marinate, chilled, at least 2 hours. Radishes can be marinated up to 1 day.
Mindy Fox’s Roasted Parsnips with Za’atar and Aleppo Pepper

May 31, 2011

When I first roasted parsnips a few months back, coated in olive oil and sprinkled with salt, I did a double take when I started eating them. A double and then triple take and then, mouth still full of sweet, nutty, roasty parsnip, I narrowed my eyes.

Who exactly, I wanted to know, was responsible for the fact that I had never before realized just how delicious roast parsnips could be? Who had been holding out on me? Was it you? Or you? Or you? I needed to give whoever it was a stern talking-to.

Since then I've decided to look into that small thing called personal responsibility and blame no one but myself for the long-held notion that parsnips are to be ignored, at best, and at worst, maligned for being…too earthy and too sweet at the same time? Sort of funny-looking? A pallid version of a brilliant carrot? Who knows, people.

I'm a woman changed.

Now, I know it is a little obscene to be telling you about roasting parsnips on the day after Memorial Day.

(Sidenote: It's climbing to 85 degrees in Berlin today, which, if you listen to the radio here, is practically reason to fall over in a heat-related dead faint. And you know what I think is just fantastic? After 15 years on the East Coast of the United States, surviving the various heat waves that afflicted New York over the years, the 2003 blackout and the mind-bending experience of standing on a Manhattan subway platform in August for more than 23 seconds, I don't actually think 85 degrees is that hot anymore! It's spring-like. Practically reason for a light cardigan. I actually have cold feet right now! Goosebumps, slight ones, at the breeze coming through the balcony door! And, Berliners, if this is what you call humidity, then I am a lucky girl to get to live here. But I already knew that.)

Back to roasting parsnips in summertime. Yes, I know it's a little perverse. But just think of it this way: it's going to be a lot worse in a month! While you can still find parsnips at the green market and while the evenings are still cool-ish, get yourself a couple of pounds, plus some Aleppo pepper and a bit of za'atar.

My friend Suzy brought me back a stash of incredibly fragrant za'atar from her recent trip to Jordan (so fragrant that even in a Ziploc bag, it perfumes my kitchen cupboards – magical), but you can easily find it online (Kalustyan's, Zamouri Spices or Penzeys). Its composition varies slightly from one Middle Eastern country to the next, but in essence za'atar is a mixture of sesame seeds and dried thyme or marjoram and sumac. It's brilliant stuff. You can sprinkle it on flatbreads and bruschetta, on plates of hummus or sliced tomatoes. You can season summer salads with it. Boiled potatoes. Grilled meat. Plop some in a puddle of olive oil and drag fresh pita through it. Dust it on cubes of feta layered with sliced tomatoes. And roast parsnips with it.

The recipe comes from this gem of a book by Mindy Fox that I borrowed from a friend a few weeks ago and am desperately considering not giving back. All you do is cut the peeled parsnips in half or in quarters, dredge them with olive oil, Aleppo pepper, salt and za'atar and roast them in the oven until they're caramelized and crispy and sugary and salty and peppery and herbal, all at the same time.

Was that too much of a laundry list? Okay, fine, how's this: I dare you to make a full batch and not eat most of it – by yourself – standing at the kitchen counter. Serves 4, my foot. Or this: If you already thought regular roast parsnips were candy from the gods, these roasted parsnips will blow your mind. Or if you, like me, are new to the world of parsnips, don't even waste your time with any "basic" recipe. Just go straight to the motherlode. You don't even have to thank me! I'll hear your collective, contented chewing from across the world, I just know it.

Roasted Parsnips with Za'atar and Aleppo Pepper
Serves 4

2 teaspoons za'atar
1/4 teaspooon Aleppo pepper
1/2 teaspoon coarse salt
2 pounds parsnips
2 tablespoons olive oil

1. Preheat the oven to 425 F wiith the rack in the middle of the oven.

2. In a small bowl, mix together the za'atar, Aleppo pepper and salt.

3. Peel the parsnips, cut them in half lengthwise (if they're very fat, cut them into quarters) and, in a bowl, toss them with the oil and spice mixture to coat. Arrange the parsnips in a single layer on a rimmed baking sheet or baking dish. Roast for 20 minutes, then, using tongs or a spatula, turn and stir the parsnips. Continue roasting until golden, blistered and tender, 10 to 15 minutes more. The za'atar will blacken.

4. Remove from the oven and taste – if needed, you can sprinkle more of the salt and spices on the parsnips. Serve warm or at room temperature.
Berlin, My Heart, My Home

May 16, 2011

Berlin has cast a spell on me these days. Ruby-like strawberries barely last two days on the kitchen counter. White asparagus burst with juice under the blackened thumb of a farmer at the market. The days are full of soft breezes and sunshine, big puffy clouds dancing like cotton wool across the sky. Yesterday, while the heavens broke open and rain showered down, the sky remained a stubborn blue and the sun shone brightly in the sky: Magic, indeed.

We took a walk around a lake near our house the other day. The banks of the lake were heavy with lilacs and weeping willows and people splayed out on the grass. Berlin can be so hard and gray in winter, but when spring blooms, the city comes alive, leaving you breathless on every corner. There is nothing like it. If I could, I'd bottle Berlin Spring for all of you, to dab behind your earlobes and transport you to our cobblestoned streets.

I've been so overwhelmed with the details of what lies ahead in the coming weeks that I found myself, on Friday, practically unable to breathe. That evening, I went for a walk in Neukölln with my dad and focused on the little things: a black-legginged girl standing in the window of her ground-floor apartment, sanding the frame; rhubarb growing out of a two-by-four square of bare earth on a sidewalk; a little kid zipping past us on a scooter, scrawny leg pumping.

Then I thought about what it will feel like to see all the people I love gathered in the garden of my mother's house when I bind my life to this other person who I met and fell in love with almost 12 years ago. And I got all quiet inside.

This is Berlin: all graffitied and shadowy and a little scruffy around the edges.

This is Berlin, too: fuzzy and charming with trees and grass and glassy lakes and orderly red-roofed houses spotted as you fly in over the city.

And this is my Berlin: hand-painted Easter eggs hanging in a beloved living room with sunlight falling through the window just so.

Tomorrow I fly to New York one last time before I get married and before I finish the book. I will see my editor and buy place cards for the wedding and celebrate with my friends and bounce down Seventh Avenue in a yellow cab. I will get a haircut from my tattooed hair dresser (yes, still) and eat Malaysian food for lunch and walk my beloved streets and soak up all that wonderful New York pixie dust that I desperately miss sometimes when I'm in my little treehouse, at my desk.

But then I'll get impatient to come home again, to my lovely, leafy city with its goofy art vending machines and its elderflowers, heavy with pollen, waiting to be turned into syrup. There will be sleepy afternoons in my friend's backyard and berry-picking excursions in the overgrown fields just past where the Wall once stood. There will be lunches on our balcony in the summer heat and wasps will buzz at the kitchen window. There will be bike rides at dusk, soft, fragrant air rushing past my ears, and there will be languid picnics on sloping hills.

And like a ripple of raspberry purée running through a scoop of melty ice cream, there will be this low, happy hum in the undercurrent of every day, telling me that I made the right choice, that this is my home and where I belong.
Andrea Reusing’s Cooking in the Moment

May 10, 2011

I have disliked mayonnaise for as long as I can remember. It's even possible I was born hating it. My whole life I've recoiled from its wobbly texture, its eggy aroma, its mysterious ability to turn the simplest sandwich into a mess of goo. Oooh, just thinking about it is making the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.

Yuck, people. Yuck. I literally just shivered.

As I grew older and got over a lot of the dislikes of my childhood (Brussels sprouts, mustard, parsley and oysters, all of which I adore fiercely now), mayonnaise remained the lone cowboy on the deserted plain of my food phobias. I even found a way to like cilantro, which for so long had reminded me of soap, at best, and rat poison, at worst. But mayonnaise would not budge.

The frustrating thing was that so many people whose taste in food I adore and revere seemed to love the stuff. Layered in tomato sandwiches, dolloped on top of a hard-boiled egg, set out for dragging a piece of cold cooked crab through; why, mayonnaise, when written about like that, did seem like it could be manna from heaven. Why, then, did it repulse me so?

A few years ago, when I was still editing cookbooks at the publishing house I used to work at, we got a proposal in from a woman named Andrea Reusing, the chef and owner of a restaurant called Lantern in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. The restaurant specialized in a fusion of Asian cooking with local ingredients and there was a substantial amount of buzz surrounding the project. We were very interested in buying the book, but ultimately lost out to a publisher who bid more money than we did. It's frustrating when it happens, but it's part of the publishing life. I put the book out of my mind and got back to work.

A few months ago, that publisher sent me a copy of the book. As I flipped through the pages, I felt a small stab of disappointment. Despite the stunning photography (by a master, John Kernick) and what looked like good food, the design felt a little soulless to me. All those lower-case chapter and recipe titles and color blocks. (This is the curse of the cookbook editor; it's like being a film editor, you can never again look at another movie without thinking of what's happening just outside the frame.) I thought of all the ways "our" designers would have made the book sing and then I put the book on my coffee table and forgot about it.

But last week, I picked it up again for bedtime reading. I live alone for five days a week now, and the only time someone's around to get me to turn the light off so he can go to bed already is on the weekend. I slid into bed with the book in my hands, turned to the first page and started to read. And before I knew it, an hour had passed.

I read the book from cover to cover that night, falling in love with the world that Andrea writes about. She may be the chef of a high-end restaurant, but this book feels deeply, deeply personal. There are no complicated, cheffy dishes between the covers here. The recipes are easy and approachable, but the flavors that Andrea combines feel wonderfully fresh and new. I know you think you've heard this before, but, here, let me give you a few examples and you'll see what I mean.

She puts soy sauce on asparagus, cardamom on spinach and sorghum on sweet potatoes. She blends dried elderflowers into freshly squeezed grapefruit juice, coats fried chicken in rye breadcrumbs and banishes the tired old carrot-ginger soup once and for all with her carrot soup made with toasted curry and pistachios. There are pickled sour cherries and hot tomato relishes and salt-marinated cucumbers alongside pot roast and grilled mackerel and rice grits. I stopped marking which pages I wanted to cook from because, frankly, there were too many.

But aside from the recipes, the book is a beautifully written ode to the bounty, diversity and history of North Carolina small-scale farmers and Southern foodways. Essays about her favorite fish market in Carrboro, for example, or the man who supplies her restaurant with a wide array of mushrooms from his home garden or the couple who run the Chapel Hill Creamery, making a mozzarella so delicate it "barely holds together until dinner", enrich the book immeasurably and cast a spell on the reader, making you long for a life in a region that is rediscovering its agrarian roots so thoroughly that it's become second-nature for greenmarkets to offer not just heirloom tomatoes (Pruden's Purple, Hillbilly Flame, Arkansas Traveler!) and apples (Dula Beauty, Striped July, Bald Mountain!) but squash (Jumbo Pink Banana, Jarrahdale, Old Timey Pie Pumpkin!), melons (Emerald Gem, Pride of Wisconsin, Sugar Baby!) and sweet potates, too (O'Henry, Beauregard, Covington!).

Reading Cooking in the Moment made me want to start planting my own vegetables, made me mourn how far behind Germany is in all ways to the American local food movement and made me want to get into the kitchen all at once.

And (did you wonder if I was ever going to get back to the mayo?) it made me fall hook, line and sinker for homemade garlic-anchovy mayonnaise, which I whipped up in two minutes and have proceeded to eat every day since.

Every.

Day.

Since.

Me.

Mayonnaise.

Case closed.

All you need, says Andrea, is a jar and an immersion blender. Which charms me, lazy bones that I am. You just buzz egg yolks with salt, an anchovy fillet, some minced garlic and a squeeze of lemon juice in the jar with the immersion blender before slowly drizzling in neutral-flavored oil and a bit of olive oil for flavor until you've got a few inches of creamy, palest yellow mayonnaise and your five-year-old self's mind is blown at the prospect that you are about to put this stuff in your mouth and eagerly at that.

Creamy, savory, garlic-anchovy mayonnaise, it turns out, tastes fabulous with cold roast chicken. So fabulous I ate it for lunch two days in a row. Then, when the chicken was gone, I made myself – finally! at 33! – the iconic tomato sandwich with white bread, sliced tomatoes, a healthy sprinkling of salt and more of that mayo. It was, indeed, as delicious as everyone says. The anchovy, in case you're wondering, disappears entirely into the mayo, leaving behind not a trace of fishiness. I promise. Cross my heart.

Now I'm almost down to the bottom of the bowl and I'm frantically trying to come up with reasons why I shouldn't make another batch. So far, they're all terrible.

Cooking in the Moment is incredibly inspiring, not just in terms of cooking but also in terms of its spirit. Andrea's reverence for the people growing the food she serves to her customers and to her family is infectious. It will make you want to mail-order chickens from a Kansas chicken farmer, gather your children around to help churn fresh ice cream out of fresh strawberries, buttermilk and cream (and then watch them eat it directly out of the churn) and then book a flight to Chapel Hill so you, too, can be fed by the woman who makes Indian lime pickle with citrus from Plaquemines Parish and serves it with a chickpea purée.

Andrea is that rare breed of chef whose talent for lyrical writing is as developed as her pitch-perfect taste for food and her ability to seize everyday moments and find the divine within them. Her soulful, richly textured book is a gift, for readers, for cooks and for everyone in between.

Garlic-Anchovy Mayonnaise
Makes about 1/2 cup

1 egg yolk
Salt
1 garlic clove, minced
1 anchovy fillet
1/4 lemon
1/3 to 1/2 cup of neutral vegetable oil
2 to 3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil

1. Put the yolk in a wide-mouth jar and pulse for about 30 seconds with an immersion blender. Add a good pinch of salt, as much minced garlic as you'd like (I used about half a clove, which made for a pretty mild mayo), the anchovy and a big squeeze of lemon juice. Pulse again. While pulsing, slowly drizzle in the oil until the mixture is emulsified and creamy. Taste for salt and thin with a little water if necessary.
On Writing

April 28, 2011

This is my kitchen cupboard, my secret shame. Or not so secret, if you came over for dinner some time. I get a little bit of agita every time I open the cupboard and a bag of dried beans or a bottle of vanilla extract almost comes flying down. Don't get me started on the teetering stack of sardine cans or the saffron packet half askew or the seven spaghetti left in one box that keep sliding out each time I pull out the tea tin (every morning, hey-oh!). My mother will take one look at this photo and will have to sit down and fan herself, I guarantee you.

This is also a little what my head feels like these days. It's bursting at the seams with a million to-do lists, a thousand little worries, a hundred sleepless moments. Our wedding is less than two months away and my manuscript is due in just three months and three days. Impeccable timing, no? My editor keeps telling me that I'm doing it, I'm actually doing it, and doing it well even, but you know what? It's the weirdest thing, I swear, but I don't believe her.

Writing a book, it's something I've wanted my whole life. But it's also something I've been terrified of doing ever since I realized I wanted to do it. (Gah, the eloquence.) Now that I find myself sitting in front of my computer every day, attempting to make my own dream come true, well, it's the hardest work I've ever done. I'm filled with doubt and worry and a lot of other unattractive emotions.

Who ever thought I could write?

People will hate this book.

No, actually, no one will even read it.

And the grand-daddy of them all, the Hooded Fang, my own night terror: I can't do this.

Ah, yes. One is always one's own worst enemy, isn't one?

***

I had plans this week to tell you about a soup from Gwyneth Paltrow's new cookbook, my attempt to recreate City Bakery's dark chocolate cookies with white chocolate chunks and my tentative venture into the wild and crazy world of rye sourdough, but then everything went a little haywire. The soup wasn't what I was hoping for, the cookies weren't very good and the sourdough, well, it got gnarly. I made a wonderful pan of roasted potatoes and fennel and chicken last night for dinner, but who needs a recipe for that?

(In case you do: Peel and chunk a bunch of potatoes, slice a bulb of fennel into wedges. Combine together in a roasting pan with olive oil, rosemary and flaky salt. Roast in a 400 degree oven for 40 minutes, until browned and fragrant and blistery. In the meantime, put two skin-on, deboned chicken breasts in a bowl and drizzle with olive oil and the juice of a quarter lemon. Sprinkle with salt, pepper and some chopped rosemary and sage. Let marinate while the potatoes roast. When the potatoes are done, remove pan from the oven and cover with aluminum foil. Put the chicken breasts and their marinade in a small roasting pan and put in the oven, at the same temperature, for 20 minutes. Remove, plate, eat.)

Then, while my kitchen was turning on me and churning out food that made me want to go eat French fries for dinner, this little blog here, my little engine that could, was nominated in the Best Cooking Blog category of Saveur's Food Blog Awards, alongside such beauties and kindred spirits as 101 Cookbooks, Smitten Kitchen, Lottie & Doof, Sprouted Kitchen and I Made That!

So that was very, very nice. Heidi suggested that the winner cook dinner for everyone else, which I think is a splendid idea, because I'd very much like a reason to sit around a dinner table with these folks soon. If you'd like to vote for any of us, head on over to Saveur and sign up. (If you're not a resident of the US or Canada, don't worry: Just select either country as the one you live in and your vote will be recorded all the same. Saveur's working on updating the system to include international votes, but it might take some time.) Thank you!

***

I'm heading out of town tomorrow on a couple of different assignments and will be back late next week, hopefully laden down with lots of good things for you and a slightly clearer head.

But before I go, I have to tell you something. I've said this before but I'll say it again and again and again: Thank you for reading and for being my audience. For a self-doubting writer, I count myself among the luckiest. Because I have all of you here with me and your presence alone is one of the biggest motivators I have, if not the biggest. When the book writing threatens to overwhelm me with fear and loathing, do you know what I do? I take a deep breath and I visualize you, my friends, my silent readers, my loyal commenters. I imagine you reading this book and holding it in your hands and then, funnily enough, my worries slink away and I know I can do it.

In other words, you make me feel brave. Thank you.
Friday Link Love

April 22, 2011

It's a very long weekend here, what with Good Friday and Easter Monday, and the weather is promising to be duly wonderful. Max moves to a small town in western Germany next week for a new job, so this is my last week of waking up next to him every morning and going to sleep next to him every night, of having my constant companion to eat lunch with every day. To distract ourselves, we're going to this tulip show tomorrow to snap photos of all the crazy blooms and we're going to sit outside at a biergarten near our apartment in the evenings and toast to new beginnings.

Elsewhere,

Jeana's new blog on Korean cooking has me inspired. My favorite quote so far: "Don't use cayenne or western chilli powder. It will taste confusing."

"It was delicious while it lasted." Jay McInerney on Ferran Adrià.

Oh, to be a Californian with easy access to fresh backyard kumquats. Oh, then to make Kumquat Earl Grey marmalade.

Adam yells at his friend Patty, but it's all in the service of his readers. I, for one, am grateful, because now I know how to make a French 75.

Easy shrimp tostadas, be still my beating heart.

Molly likens tofu to foie gras, then follows up by posting her favorite way of eating it, braised with ground pork. It is on her Must-Eat Top Ten list and now it's at the top of my Must-Try, Like, Right Now list.

Have you ever heard of putting bread crumbs on ice cream? (Via home*economics.)

And finally, I guarantee that this reel of Martha Stewart bloopers will make you laugh out loud (via Kim Severson).

Have a lovely weekend, friends.
Jane Lear’s Apple Crisp

April 21, 2011

We're in that weird in-between phase where the weather's warming up and the markets are starting to glow with mounds of ghostly white asparagus, tender baby onions and the first shoots of rhubarb, but old habits die hard and I still find myself reaching for the last butternut squashes and apples from the fall. I keep wanting to smack my own hands for doing it, but I usually don't realize it until I've already paid and am turning away from the stand, heavy bags in hand.

I guess spring fever really does addle the mind.

So we had roast butternut squash purée this week, the same week we went out for our first ice cream cones and starting sleeping with our legs stuck out from under the covers in search of cooler air. And to rid myself of the last wrinkly little apples gathering dust in the bowl that I like to pile them in during the colder months, I made an apple crisp.

Let's just pause for a moment and give thanks for the mighty fruit crisp. How I do love it. May I count the ways?

1. It allows you to use up fruit you wouldn't eat under any other circumstances due to spots, wrinkles and other blemishes of old age.

2. It can be made in the time it takes you to eat dinner.

3. It requires no special ingredients at all.

4. It can be eaten both for dessert and breakfast.

5. It makes your house smell amazing. Move over, Diptyque.

I got the recipe for this particular crisp from Jane Lear's blog, where she tucked it into a post about her favorite pan. Since then, I've made it about four different times, usually with apples, but once with rhubarb, which I brought to a dinner party hosted by some German friends who could have been summarily knocked over with a feather once they starting eating it. "But it's so good!", and, "How did you do it?"

I'm still chuckling about that.

You barely need a recipe, as you probably already know. Just some key elements: a bit of fruit, in this case about five apples, some oats, in this case a mixed grain müsli we had lying around the kitchen, some brown sugar, some pecans, a bit of cinnamon, and butter. That's it. That's it!

After my American grandfather had a stroke several years ago and went to live in an old-age home, my stepmother and father went down to Philadelphia to deal with the apartment he'd left behind. Almost everything was sold or given away, the impeccable Danish modern furniture, the tchotchkes, the art. My uncle kept a few paintings, my dad his favorite little table. And my stepmother, lovely woman that she is, poked her head into the kitchen and made sure a few pots and pans were put aside for me.

Which is why I think of her and my grandmother now everytime I pull out this old yellow baking dish. It's sort of the perfect size for one or two people. Just big enough for roasting a few shallots in vinegar, or for making baked tomato sauce, or for an apple crisp that'll last long enough for a few desserts and breakfasts. It's worn but not too worn, the yellow is sunny and yolk-like and it makes a satisfying clang when plonked down on the kitchen counter.

What I think is important to remember about a crisp is that it shouldn't be too sweet and there should definitely be pecans involved, because there is something about the alchemy between toasting pecans, brown sugar and butter that makes the world stop turning. Combine that with tart-sweet apples that have gone all limp and soft in the oven and you've got yourself a pretty wonderful weeknight dessert. I don't ever put ice cream or cream on it because I figure it's decadent enough to be eating a baked dessert on a weeknight rather than just a plain apple sliced into quarters, but if you wanted to gussy things up for a weekend or a party, gild away with dairy!

There's little that can beat, however, a bowl of this cooled to room temperature in the morning and spooned up with a dollop of cold plain yogurt for breakfast. Who needs fried eggs or pancakes when there's yesterday's apple crisp?

This was the last crisp of the season, since I really can't bear to buy any more apples, not when there are little berries winking at me in the market and stalks of rhubarb waving away right next to them. Soon we'll be picking berries out in the countryside around Berlin and then there will be elderflowers and plums and cherries galore and I'll forget entirely about apples until the first cold weekends again in the fall when all I'll want to do is turn the oven on and start baking again. But there's something so sweet and simple about this dessert that it makes me a little melancholy to leave it behind.

So if it's still cool where you are, if you're still grateful to turn the oven on for a little while at dinnertime, if you still want the scent of cinnamon and baking apples and toasting pecans to waft through your home before they're supplanted with warm breezes and the smell of cut tomatoes on the kitchen counter, then make this crisp, snuggle into your couch after dinner and spoon up the last flavors of winter.

Happy Easter, everyone. Happy Passover. And happy spring!

Apple Crisp
Serves 4

5 to 6 apples, I used Pinova, peeled, cored and sliced
1/3 cup plus 1 tablespoon rolled oats or a müsli mix with rolled oats, whole-grain flakes and seeds
1/3 cup brown sugar
1 tablespoon flour
1/8 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 cup pecans, roughly chopped
3 tablespoons butter, softened, plus more for the pan.

1. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F. Lightly butter the bottom and sides of a baking dish. Pile in the apple slices.

2. Combine the oats, sugar, flour, salt, cinnamon and pecans in a bowl. Work the butter into the oat mixture with your fingers until it forms small, moist clumps.

3. Sprinkle the topping over the apples (it won’t completely cover the fruit) and slide the dish into the oven for about half an hour. The crisp should be fragrant and bubbling around the edges and the apples should be cooked through.
Friday Link Love

April 15, 2011

Hoo! Are you all done with your taxes or is it going to be down to the wire until Monday for you? What joy! I'll be drowning my sorrows in the first picnic of 2011 tomorrow. That should help. I'm also going to be on the hunt for unstamped eggs to blow out for Easter egg dying. Don't these look beautiful?

Elsewhere,

I am a sucker for banana cake. It makes me weak in the knees every time. This one with Nutella frosting looks pretty irresistible.

Hee. A little bun moment (via the blue hour).

I never met a pickle I didn't love. Cathy's deviled eggs with pickled Swiss chard stems sound delicious.

Ever wonder what the ladies at the Canal House eat for lunch every day? Wonder no more.

You could have knocked me over with a feather if you'd told me as a child that I'd one day miss eating lima beans. But the truth is, I do. Especially when I see something like Delaware creamed succotash.

I wish I could hang this edible poster in my kitchen and in my office (via Clotilde).

And finally, this new piece by Gabrielle Hamilton about her mother-in-law (it's not in the book!) just about broke my heart.

Have a good weekend, lovelies.
Karen DeMasco’s Devil’s Food Cupcakes

April 13, 2011

I still remember the first time I ate a Karen DeMasco cupcake. It was back in the days when I worked in a lofty office on the 11th floor of a building near Union Square. I had a corner office with hardwood floors and beautiful views of all the water towers of the area (and a very sweet boss who for some reason worked in the smaller office). I'd ordered lunch that day from 'Wichcraft, a soup and a half sandwich, but when the bag arrived – to this day, I'm not sure why – they'd also included a little plastic container holding one almost-black cupcake, thinly glossed with chocolate icing.

I was and am not a cupcake person. I have never liked buttercream and the aching sweetness of most cupcakes just sent me soaring into shaky-hands territory every time I ate one at an office birthday or baby shower. Nah, I prefered the inside-out cookies from City Bakery (now sadly defunct, the cookies, not the Bakery) or a little pot of Kozy Shack rice pudding for an afternoon sweet snack. Then suddenly, unexpected and alluring, nothing other than a cupcake sat before me. But it wasn't covered in an inch of frosting and it didn't look saccharine at all. I put it aside and ate my lunch, glancing over at the cupcake every once in a while, as if making sure it was still there, hadn't evaporated like a tiny little leprechaun.

Eating it was sort of mind-altering. It was tender as can be, the softest, most delicate crumb I'd eaten in a cupcake, or cake, for that matter, but with the gutsiest, deepest, darkest chocolate flavor ever. I sort of couldn't square the two away in my head together for a while. The thin chocolate icing cap was a textural pleasure and then, poof, suddenly in the middle of the cupcake, I alighted upon a bubble of whipped cream that I wasn't expecting at all. It was, hands down, the best cupcake of my life. Nothing even came close. After that, nothing really deserved to be called cupcake either.

It was for that recipe alone that I couldn't wait for Karen to publish her book. And a few years later, namely, a few weeks ago, I went into the kitchen to bake the first batch of "my" cupcakes.

(Now, let's just all take a moment here and acknowledge that this home baker would never be able to exactly replicate something that a trained pastry chef made on a daily basis. Plus, the exalted memory of a single cupcake eaten over four years ago was going to be tough to live up to. Lastly, I was an idiot and didn't buy a pastry bag with a metal piping tip like I should have. Don't be an idiot.)

The batter for the devil's food cake is relatively easy. You make a cocoa paste, a mixture of the dry ingredients and then a wet mix with creamed butter and sugar, buttermilk and eggs. All three are folded and blended and mixed together until you have a gorgeously creamy, shiny batter. I wanted to spackle my kitchen with this batter, wanted to use it as a face mask, wanted to sculpt a statue out of it. It was so tactile and whippy and glossy.

The batter baked up nicely into dark, domed cakelets. A warning: Whatever you do, don't let these overbake, even for a minute. Err on the side of underbaking rather than overbaking. It'll make the difference between a moist, tender cupcake and a rather hohum-ish one. The tester shouldn't be entirely clean, but don't let it come out covered in raw batter either.

The rest of the preparation can be pretty fun, granted you have a proper pastry bag with a metal tip. Remember? I didn't, so the rest of my afternoon was spent with a Ziploc bag, a plastic spatula, a paring knife, a bowl of whipped cream, and lots of sweaty, angry cursing. I'll leave it at that. If properly armed, your metal pastry tip gets inserted into the bottom of the cupcake and you squirt cream filling into the cupcake until pressure on the top of the cupcake lets you know you've filled it to capacity. Easy!

The best part, as far as I'm concerned, is dipping the cupcakes into their shiny cap of chocolate ganache. If I was Queen of the World, I'd make a decree banning buttercream frosting for eternity and make the thin, elegant, shiny slip of icing (chocolate, lemon, what-have-you) de rigueur for cupcakes. The original recipe has you use corn syrup in the ganache for stability, but seeing as corn syrup costs something like 10 bucks a bottle here, I left it out with fine results.

Oh, and how did they taste, you're wondering? It's pretty hard to go wrong with a dark chocolate cupcake, tender with buttermilk, fragrant with vanilla and chocolate, a creamy white filling, and that dark bitter top. They're wonderful as far as cupcakes go and were eaten with wide-eyes and professions of love and astonishment.

Did they measure up to that one cupcake consumed at my desk in New York all those years ago? They didn't, of course. But how could they, really? That cupcake was an unexpected gift, a memory frozen in time, a reminder of my old life that will always be suffused with golden light. I will never, ever forget it.

Devil's Food Cupcakes with Cream Filling
Makes 14-16 cupcakes
Note: The recipe makes for more filling than you'll need and more batter, too (hence the adjusted yield noted in the line above, as opposed to the original recipe). You can bake the cupcakes in batches if you have only one muffin tin, or use small ramekins lined with paper liners. As for the leftover whipped cream filling, eat it for dessert? The ganache topping is meant to be generous, so that you can easily drag your cupcakes through it once or twice for a good, shiny cap.

For the cupcakes:
3/4 cup plus 1 1/2 teaspoons unsweetened cocoa powder
3/4 cup cake flour
2/3 cup unbleached all-purpose flour
3/4 teaspoon baking powder
3/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon kosher salt
1 1/4 cups plus 2 tablespoons packed dark brown sugar
5 tablespoons unsalted butter at room temperature
1 large egg
1 large egg yolk
1/2 cup plus 2 tablespoons buttermilk
3/4 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

1. Preheat the oven to 350F. Line standard muffin tins with paper liners, if you have more than one 12-cup muffin tin. Otherwise line a standard 12-cup muffin with liners and then line small ramekins (if you have them) for the remaining batter.

2. In a medium mixing bowl, whisk the cocoa powder and 1/2 cup plus 2 tablespoons warm water to form a paste; set aside.

3. In another bowl, sift together the cake flour, all-purpose flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt.

4. In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, mix the brown sugar with the butter on medium speed until they are well combined with no pieces of butter visible. Add the cocoa paste, making sure to use a spatula to get all the cocoa paste into the mixer bowl. Once this is well combines, add the egg and egg yolk. Scrape down the sides of the bowl with a rubber spatula. In three additions each, add the buttermilk and vanilla extract, alternating with the flour mixture.

5. Divide the batter evenly among the muffin cups, filling them 3/4 full. Bake, rotating the tins halfway through, until the cupcakes spring back to the touch and a tester inserted in the center of a cupcake comes out mostly clean, 20-25 minutes. Invert the cupcakes onto a wire rack, turn them top side up, and let them cool completely.

For the cream filling:
1 cup heavy cream
2 tablespoons confectioners' sugar
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

1. To make the filling, combine the cream, confectioners' sugar, and vanilla extract in the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with a whisk attachment. Beat on medium speed to soft peaks, about 4 minutes. Put the cream into a pastry bag fitted with a small piping tip. Using a paring knife, make a small cut in the bottom of each cupcake, through the paper, to insert the tip of the pastry bag. Insert the tip of the pastry bag about 1 1/2 inches into a cupcake. Gently squeeze the bag while holding the fingers of your other hand over the top of the cupcake. When you feel a slight pressure on the top of the cupcake, stop filling. Repeat with each cupcake.

For the ganache:
4 ounces semisweet chocolate, chopped
1/2 cup heavy cream
2 tablespoons light corn syrup (optional; I didn't use this)

1. To make the ganache, put the chocolate in a small mixing bowl. Combine the cream and the corn syrup, if using, in a small saucepan and bring to a boil. Pour over the chocolate right away, and stir slowly until all of the chocolate melts and the ganache is silky and shiny.

2. Carefully dip the top of each cupcake in the ganache, tapping gently to remove the excess. Return the cupcakes to the wire rack to let the glaze set up, at least 30 minutes.

3. The cupcakes can be kept in an airtight container in the refrigerator for up to 3 days.

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