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  • Geraldine’s Date Cake

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    After sitting glumly on my butcher block for the past three weeks, my dryish Israeli dates – cast aside in favor of their juicy, more voluptuous sisters -  were finally used this weekend and, like an 80's movie wallflower in a pink dress at a long-awaited prom, they bloomed and shone.

    You all offered up some great suggestions for my dates, but Heather's comment stood out:

    "Luisa – I have an amazing date cake recipe from my Granny that is perfect for dates that are a little mangled or tough. The dates soak in hot coffee or chicory so they kind of fall slightly apart, giving the cake this awesome texture. It's got a little bit of chocolate in it for good measure. Let me know if you want the recipe!"

    Key words: mangled, tough, a little bit of chocolate.

    Um, yes, please?

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    Heather's grandmother, Geraldine, sure knows her way around a dried date. Her chocolate-chip dappled cake combines coffee-soaked, pureed dates with an easy cocoa batter to velvety-soft effect. This is the kind of unassuming cake that you make once or twice and then commit to memory, enshrining yourself in family lore as the originator of a truly great snacking cake. You can't really taste the dates and coffee, but there are revelatory grace notes of fruit that give the cake an unexpected complexity. The elusive flavor of coffee deepens the chocolate flavor.

    I made this cake for dessert on Saturday night and my friend Pat said, between mouthfuls as he ate, that it was the best cake he'd ever eaten. I know this just happened with the squash pie, but I swear to you that I do not put my friends up to this kind of hyperbole. I swear it! They come up with it all on their own.

    I loved the fact that the cake required no fussy frosting or gilding-the-lily icing. Sliced into thick wedges, we topped them with a melting scoop of vanilla ice cream. But you don't even really need to do that. It can be nibbled on at the counter in the kitchen or refrigerated and cut into squares for a plain afternoon office snack. I baked it in a 10-inch pan, but you could do a 9 x 13-inch rectangular pan or even a 9-inch round pan for a thicker cake (just adjust the baking time somewhat). The cake is delicate, yet sturdy and has a crumb so soft and moist that it almost melts in your mouth.

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    I made this cake to get rid of the dates sitting on my counter making me feel guilty, but we've both fallen so hard for it that I've now been instructed to keep our pantry stocked with dry-ish, sub-par dates. It turns out we need this cake on a regular basis. Sigh. Oh, okay. Twist my arm, why don't you.

    Thank you, Heather and Geraldine!

    Geraldine's Date Cake
    Makes one 10-inch cake

    2 cups of pitted dates, halved
    1 1/4 cups hot coffee
    2/3 cup butter
    1/2 cup sugar
    1/4 cup brown sugar, lightly packed
    1 teaspoon vanilla extract
    2 large eggs
    1 cup unbleached white flour
    1/2 cup cocoa powder
    1 teaspoon baking soda
    1/2 teaspoon salt
    1/2 cup good-quality chocolate chips

    1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Butter a 10-inch round cake pan, line the bottom with a round of parchment paper and butter the paper as well. Set aside. Loosely fill a 2-cup measure with the pitted, halved dates and cover with the hot coffee. Let sit for 5 minutes while you prepare the other ingredients.

    2. Cream together the butter and sugars until fluffy. Beat in the eggs, one at a time, and the vanilla extract. Sift the flour, cocoa powder, salt, and baking soda into the butter-egg mixture. Mix gently to combine.

    3. Pour the dates and coffee into a blender or use an immersion blender to puree the mixture completely. Add the pureed dates to the batter and blend to combine.

    4. Pour the batter into the prepared pan and sprinkle the top evenly with the chocolate chips.Bake for 40 to 45 minutes or until the edges begin to pull away from the side of the pan. Cool the pan on a rack until cool enough to handle, then gently turn the cake out onto a cake plate. Serve at room temperature.

  • New Orleans

    In a few weeks, I’ll be flying to New Orleans for IACP. I don’t have much time while there to explore, but something tells me that a few of you might have strong opinions about where to go and what to do while in New Orleans, even with limited time. Hmm?

    Go on, tell me. Hole-in-the-wall places are my favorite, but I’ll take whatever advice you throw at me.

  • Lucy Young’s Fish Tapenade

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    It all looks a little slapdash, I know. A smeared knife, a half-empty ramekin. You can't see the grainy crackers in the background that would give this some context and now you're probably wondering what exactly we're looking at here, anyway. We plowed through that thing so quickly that by the time it registered that I should probably be documenting it for your sakes, it was half-eaten. Would you believe me if I told you that it was the best part of an already delicious Easter lunch?

    It's hard to get better than rosemary-scented roasted lamb, with all its crusty pockets and yieldingly tender meat. It's even harder to best tiny boiled potatoes in their delicate jackets, glistening ever so slightly with a thin coating of freshly melting butter and the grassy flavor of minced parsley. It's practically impossible to top the first asparagus of the season, blistered in spots from a quick run in the oven. Should I mention that we even ended things with a billowing, marshmallowy cheesecake? (More on that next time.)

    And yet it was all we could do to keep from making this fish tapenade our lunch.

    Now, excuse me, but I have to have a word with some of my readers who are giving that first line of ingredients the hairy eyeball, their fingers hovering over their mouse pad, just itching to click away in a flash when the thought of those tiny little fillets gets to be a bit too much for them. I know I've said this before, but I really, really promise you that if you can get over your issues with handling the little suckers, this tapenade doesn't taste fishy in that unpleasant way that I know you're thinking it might. It's smooth and airy and has pleasant depth of flavor. It's subtle, if you can believe it, and creamy and has just the right amount of acidity and balance. Ooh, it's so so good. I would hate for you to miss out on it just because you think you hate anchovies.

    (Now, that might be the most condescending thing I've ever written. Apologies, all. It's not really meant that way. It's just that I've seen, with my very own eyes, anchovy-haters eat things with anchovies in them and freak out with the deliciousness of what they're eating, and so I'd like to help, that's all.)

    I know, if you want, why don't you use this as a gateway to the world of anchovies? Add just one or two to start. Blitz it up and have a quick taste. It needs a little something more, doesn't it? So add a few more. Now you're up to four. Squeeze some more lemon in there, blitz, and taste it again. If you think you've had enough, stop there. If you're surprising yourself by thinking that the tapenade could use a little more oomph, then throw a few more anchovies into the food processor and let down your hair, you wild one.

    Would I lead you astray? You know I wouldn't.

    Fish Tapenade
    Serves 8-10 as an hors d'oeuvre
    Note: Gemma, my friend and upstairs neighbor, is the source of this recipe. She's a nutritionist and thinks the tapenade might be worth attempting without the butter, if anyone is into that kind of experimentation.

    8 oil-packed anchovies, drained
    1 can (6 ounces) chunk light tuna
    7 ounces cream cheese
    4 ounces unsalted butter, cubed
    Juice of 1 lemon
    12 pitted black olives, halved
    1 tablespoon snipped chives, plus more for garnish
    Black pepper to taste

    1. Place all the ingredients in the bowl of a food processor and process until smooth. Spoon into a serving dish and cover with plastic wrap.

    2. Chill the tapenade in the refrigerator for at least one hour. Serve, garnished with snipped chives.

  • Cathal Armstrong’s Irish Brown Bread

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    Did you all run out to buy buttermilk for those griddle cakes from Edna Lewis? Do you now have a carton of it slouching about in your fridge, wondering if it will be used up before you have to toss it?

    Well, if you're not going to drink a big cold glass of it with your breakfast toast, and frankly that's really more of a hot summer morning thing, here's what you should do with it: make bread. Yes, really. Okay, not really really, but sort of really.

    Instead of spending the next 18 hours waiting for your (admittedly delicious) no-knead dough to proof, just mix that buttermilk with some whole-wheat flour, regular flour, salt, baking soda, and an egg, and – hey presto! – an hour later you'll have a loaf of warm bread. There's no proofing, no rising. Just a simple batter that rises quickly in the oven.

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    Those savvy bakers among you might recognize that the texture and flavor of the bread will be akin to biscuits, albeit more wholesome, nourishing ones, I suppose. So that's what I meant by not really really. This isn't yeast bread, it's soda bread, but it'll do quite nicely if you're in one of those moods where you need something warm and craggy to put a waxy slab of butter on and nothing but fresh bread will do.

    As delicious as it is straight from the oven, you'd better have a few people to help you with the loaf, because it doesn't last for more than a day or two. But while it's fresh and hot, eat the bread with wedges of sharp Cheddar or spread it with good unsalted butter (or good unsalted butter and cherry jam).

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    And in other news, you can now find this site at www.thewednesdaychef.com, so if you feel like updating your bookmarks or links, go for it. The old Typepad address will still continue to work, however, so don't worry about broken links or anything like that. I have to thank the kind and patient Laura at Typepad for helping me with this. Thanks, Laura!

    Irish Brown Bread
    Makes 1 loaf

    3 cups whole wheat flour
    1 cup all-purpose flour
    1 teaspoon baking soda
    1 teaspoon salt
    1 1/4 cups buttermilk
    1 large egg, lightly beaten

    1. Preheat the oven to 375°. Butter an  8-by-5-inch metal loaf pan.

    2. In a large bowl, whisk both flours with the baking soda and salt. In a small bowl, whisk the buttermilk with the egg; stir into the dry ingredients with a wooden spoon until a rough dough forms.

    3. Transfer the dough to a lightly floured work surface and knead until smooth. Form the dough into a loaf and put it in the prepared pan. Bake for about 50 minutes, until the bread has risen about 1/2 inch above the rim of the pan. Once unmolded, the loaf should sound hollow when tapped on the bottom. Let cool to warm or room temperature, then slice and serve.

  • What Shall I Do With My Dates?

    At the Mahane Yehuda market in Jerusalem, I was transfixed by the mountainous piles of dates I saw, lustrous, dark, and sticky. To be sure, we’d seen dates wherever we went in Israel, but the ones at that market seemed particularly glossy and fragrant, just itching to be bought. They bewitched me in the end.

    I bought two sacks of dates. One was filled with the darkest, fattest, juiciest dates I’d ever seen. They promptly got squashed in my luggage and are now a fudgy lump that I have to gingerly pry apart, but when I do, I’m rewarded with soft, yielding fruit that melts in my mouth. The second bag was filled with caramel-colored dates, slightly wrinkled, and hardier than their brethren. They are not the sensuous joy to eat than the other ones are, but they have great flavor, so I think I might cook with them instead.

    Shall I make a Sticky Toffee Pudding? Or this Date-Nut Loaf? Am I missing out on your favorite date recipe? Do you have to tell me about it, quick, before I go wasting those dates on something not worthy enough? Hurry, tell me what to do!

  • Can You Guess What This Is?

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    No clues from me… Leave your guess in the comments!

  • Things To Eat/Drink/Learn/Plant/Pick Before I Go

    On our flight back from Israel, I started thinking about keeping a list of life goals. You know, drive the Ring Road, take a tango class in Buenos Aires, learn Arabic, that kind of thing. Then I saw Maggie’s lists and thought it might be nice to share mine with you. So I narrowed my list to just the food-related (loosely, at least) things.

    1. Make cheese from scratch.
    2. Get a little more educated about wine.
    3. Drive up the Pacific Coast Highway to find taco stands like this woman.
    4. Eat plum dumplings in Vienna.
    5. Make my own sourdough.
    6. Take a week-long cooking class in Vietnam.
    7. Master boning and carving a chicken.
    8. Taste raw milk.
    9. Have dinner at Chez Panisse.
    10. Shop at the Santa Monica Farmer’s Market every week for a year.
    11. Plant, tend, and eat from a garden.
    12. Pick wild blueberries.
    13. Cook every recipe in Sunday Suppers at Lucques.
    14. Eat a home-cooked meal in Morocco.
    15. Go to Darjeeling during the tea harvest.
    16. Learn to gather honey with beekeepers.
    17. Harvest the olives on my family’s land in Italy.
    18. Run a lunch catering operation out of my kitchen.
    19. Write a cookbook.
    20. Volunteer in a soup kitchen.
    21. Give my children, when I have them, taste memories that will remind them of me when I’m gone.
    22. Eat the roast chicken bread salad at Zuni Cafe.
    23. Work on a farm for a summer.
    24. Host a holiday meal for my family.
    25. Take a jam class with June Taylor.

    It’s neat to read over them and think about which ones will be easy to
    cross off and which ones won’t. Maybe
    I’ll do an update on this a year from now and see how far I got.

    Now it’s your turn. Share a goal or two in the comments, won’t you?

  • Edna Lewis’s Sour-Milk Griddle Cakes

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    I'm sorry I left so abruptly, without warning. I wanted to tell you about these pancakes before we left, I really did, but you know how it goes with these mid-season vacations: they creep up out of nowhere and smack you out of your tired routine with unexpected strength. Before I knew it, I was as far east as I've ever been, in Israel for a week with Ben and some of his family, and you spent two more weekends (two!) without knowing about these pancakes.

    Excuse me, griddle cakes. There. Doesn't that sound even better?

    The batter sturdy and thick, impossibly so, and tangy with buttermilk, the cakes cook up into fluffy, flavorful rounds. A mixture of whole wheat and regular flour gives them added heft. But what really makes them is a gentle dousing in warm berry sauce and cool-from-the-fridge maple syrup.

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    They're our new favorite breakfast. I should tell you that I particularly like them if I've gone to bed reading The Taste of Country Cooking (thanks to Molly for the recommendation) and imagining that I can hear little Virginia birds waking me and my growling tummy in the morning for breakfast. It's somewhat alarming to admit this, but we – the two of us – ate almost all the pancakes, save two, when we made them. So much for freezing leftovers. And for restraint and modesty. Ahem.

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    Sour-Milk Griddle Cakes
    Serves 6

    1 1/2 cups sifted flour
    1/2 cup whole-wheat flour
    1/2 teaspoon salt
    1/2 teaspoon baking soda
    2 teaspoons Royal Baking Powder (see below)
    1 egg, beaten
    1 tablespoon melted butter
    2 cups sour milk or buttermilk

    1. Sift flours, salt, soda, and baking powder into a mixing bowl. Add beaten egg and melted butter. Mix well by stirring. Add milk and stir well. Do not over-mix or the cakes will be tough. The batter will be quite thick.

    2. Pour on sizzling-hot greased griddle in largish spoonfuls. When the cakes become quite puffed and show tiny bubbles, turn and cook a few minutes more. Serve with stewed berries and maple syrup.

    Stewed Berries

    2 cups berries, fresh or frozen (blueberries are what Edna Lewis recommends; I used black raspberries, because they're what I had in the freezer)
    1/3 cup sugar
    1/3 cup water

    1. Place the berries, sugar, and water into a quart saucepan. Set the pan over a medium flame and bring to a boil. Turn the flame down, leaving the berries at a quiet, rather gentle boil for 3 to 4 minutes.

    2. Turn the heat off until the pancakes are ready to serve. Then reheat the berries so they will be hot (do not let them boil) and spoon them onto the cakes. Leftover berry sauce keeps in the fridge and can be used to stir into yogurt or drizzle on ice cream.

    Royal Baking Powder

    Mix 2 parts cream of tartar with 1 part baking soda (for example, 4 teaspoons cream of tartar with 2 teaspoons baking soda). Use quantity as directed in the recipe above. Store the remaining mixture in an airtight container indefinitely.

  • Nigel Slater’s Peas with Olive Oil and Mint

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    Okay, brace yourselves. This one's going to be short and sweet and to the point. Because we all have something else we should be doing – making these peas. You could be wondering why, and I'll tell you. They're likely the only way I will ever cook frozen peas again.

    Woah. That's a bold statement, I know. It's even making me a little nervous, to bandy about with superlative threats like that. I mean, I like a regular old boiled frozen pea, lacquered with the barest hint of unsalted butter, just fine and all. Who doesn't? In fact, up until last week, that was the only way I ever ate frozen peas. (Well, except for the time when I threw half a bag into a fake chicken tikka masala. Details, details.)

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    But these peas, sweetened and mellowed by a barely-stewed onion and trailing the mystical scent of mint and grassy olive oil, are enough to make me put the butter away and declare myself the president and first official member of the Peas-with-Olive-Oil-and-Mint club. Do you think I should start a themed group on Facebook? Or take out an announcement in the paper? Maybe even hire a plane to write a tribute in the sky?

    I mean, seriously, where have these peas been all my life?

    Not to be a total boss, but I think you should make them for dinner tonight.

    Peas with Olive Oil and Mint
    Serves 2 as a side dish

    4 tablespoons olive oil
    1 1/2 cups frozen green peas
    1 small onion or shallot, sliced into paper-thin rings
    2 sprigs fresh mint
    Salt

    1. Pour the oil into a medium saucepan and add the peas, onion slices, and mint. Add the salt and one tablespoon of water, and cover with a lid. Bring to a boil, then turn down the heat and simmer over low heat for 6 to 7 minutes. Shake the pan occasionally. Serve hot.

  • Irene Wong’s Panthay Noodles

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    I find it unendingly ironic that, even though we live in the most diverse borough of New York City where 44% of our neighbors are foreign-born, our choice of good ethnic food for takeout is severely limited. We love Forest Hills, we really do. We love our apartment and our view, our neighborhood grocery stores, and the quiet streets. We love the crusty pizza at Nick’s and the pierogies at Just Like Mother’s. If we’re up for a little journey, we can hop in the car and be the only white people in a stuffed-to-the-gills Korean restaurant or a Chinese dim sum hall or an Indian buffet in just a few minutes.

    But this isn’t really enough.

    What I mean is, we’re New Yorkers. We expect good ethnic food to be brought to us, still hot, in under half an hour. It seems like it should be one of the small benefits of living in New York. Yes, we’ll put up with noise and filth and cramped quarters and expense in return for  old black-and-white movies at Film Forum, the incomparable experience of walking from the West Village to the Lower East Side on a warm spring morning, and authentic immigrant cuisine at a moment’s notice.

    But since we left the aforementioned filth and noise and cramped quarters for the comparative expanse of Queens, does that mean we also forfeited our right to good takeout? Because, surprise or no surprise, Forest Hills has been downright disappointing in that area. We’ve ordered mediocre Thai from the same little place so often that Ben finally told me this weekend that he is officially putting it on the No-Order list, along with the sub-par, yet expensive, Indian down the road, and the creepy Chinese that definitely resembles no other Chinese food I’ve ever come into contact with. And that’s it. That’s all we’ve got. So we’re in a bit of a pickle, I’d say.

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    One that requires taking matters into our own hands. When I read about Irene Wong’s Burmese noodles (can we talk for a minute about how much I am liking this new New York Times column, One Pot?) last week, though, I realized, suddenly gripped by a burning urge to make them, that I could just stop whining and simply make my own takeout.

    And truthfully, in the time it would have taken to make the phone call and then wait for food to be delivered, the dish came together one, two, three. It was delicious: earthy and slick at the same time. At first I thought it odd that the highly seasoned, turmeric-stained chicken (well, er, tofu, actually – I took one liberty there) mixture didn’t get incorporated into the noodles, which were relatively bland upon first tasting them. But then, as we ate, the tastes all started to mix together pleasantly in our bowls and it turned out to be just the right amount of flavors and spice.

    Paired with an ice-cold beer or two you might even start to think that life without takeout is livable, indeed.

    ***

    We’re planning a trip to Israel quite soon and I’m wondering, dear readers, if you have any tips for interesting markets or bakeries or other food-related visits? If so, please leave them in the comments. Thank you!

    Panthay Noodles
    Serves 2

    6 tablespoons canola or other vegetable oil
    Salt and freshly ground black pepper
    7 ounces fresh Asian noodles or dried egg noodles
    5 ounces skinless, boneless chicken thighs or extra-firm tofu, cut into slices 1 1/2 inches long by 1 inch wide by 1/2-inch thick
    1 medium onion, diced
    1 1/2 teaspoons (about 2 cloves) minced garlic
    1 1/2 teaspoons minced fresh ginger
    1 teaspoon curry powder
    1 teaspoon paprika
    2 teaspoons fish sauce
    8 ounces baby bok choy, cut lengthwise into pieces 1 1/2 to 2 inches wide
    1/4 cup peeled, finely slivered carrot
    1/2 cup chopped cilantro leaves
    2 to 4 lemon wedges, for serving 

    1. Bring a large pot of water to a boil
    and add 1 tablespoon oil and a sprinkle of salt. Boil noodles until
    barely tender, 2 to 4 minutes. Drain, rinse thoroughly under cold water
    and drain again. Set aside.

    2. Season
    chicken pieces with 1/4 teaspoon salt and 1/4 teaspoon pepper; set
    aside. Place a medium skillet over medium heat and add 2 tablespoons
    oil. Add onion, garlic and ginger, and sauté until lightly browned,
    about 2 minutes. Add chicken, curry powder, paprika, fish sauce and 2
    tablespoons water. Cover, reduce heat to low and simmer until chicken
    is cooked, about 5 minutes. Turn off heat and keep warm.

    3.
    Place a large skillet over medium heat and add remaining 3 tablespoons
    oil. Add bok choy and sauté until wilted, 3 to 5 minutes. Season with a
    pinch of salt and pepper. Add carrots and noodles and sauté until well
    heated, 2 to 3 minutes. Adjust salt and pepper to taste.

    4.
    To serve, divide noodle mixture between two warm plates. Top each
    portion with half the chicken mixture. Garnish with cilantro and lemon
    wedges.