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Regina Schrambling’s Collard Squares

October 11, 2007

I don't know if it's the midweek blues or the threat of rain or just a cyclical thing that happens every now and again, but I've come down with a small case of blogger's block and while I know that there is nothing so uninteresting as listening to someone complain about the fact that they have nothing to write about, I figure we're all friends here and you won't really hold it against me. Will you?

Because, yeah, unless you want to hear me waffle about whether or not I'm contributing as much to my Roth IRA as I am to my winter shoe collection, or moan about how much it is irritating me that we seem to have some kind of mold situation in our bathroom (why, oh, why do domestic irritants have to exist?), or complain that I have been trying for a month to get a pedicure but cannot, for the life of me, seem to find the time to let someone else paint my toenails while I read a trashy magazine and just. let. go. for one blessed hour, well, then I'm not sure I've got much to offer today.

So before I bore us all to tears, I'll just quickly tell you about the one thing of interest I have to contribute today: the humble collard square. This agreeably chunky little thing really is worth mentioning, even amidst all the bellyaching, because it's just so unassuming and yet so delicious, too. There's not much to the preparation, but what you end up with is sort of a lightened, modern, crustless quiche, heavy on the vegetables and big on taste. I used a little less cheese than Regina calls for, and lessened the oven time a bit for a somewhat more tender and moist result. We ate our collard squares with a few roasted tomatoes alongside, which really was an inspired match (something about greens with tomatoes just makes my heart sing), and found it difficult to leave any leftovers.

The original recipe (for 12!) can be found here, the one below is amended for a smaller crowd. And with that I'm off to contemplate my navel. (To think that a day ago I was actually considering NaBloPoMo again. Ha!)

Collard Squares
Serves 3-4

1 large bunch collard greens
1/4 teaspoon hot pepper flakes
Salt
1 tablespoons butter plus extra for the baking dish
1 small onion, finely diced
1 clove garlic, minced
1/4 pound shiitakes, stems removed, caps finely diced
1/2 teaspoon tamari or soy sauce
4 large eggs
2 ounces Comté or Gruyère cheese, grated
1/4 cup fine dry bread crumbs

1. Remove the tough stems from the greens and wash the leaves well in several changes of cold water. Place them in a large pot and add the hot pepper flakes and 1/2 teaspoon salt. Add water to cover by several inches and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat to a simmer and cook, uncovered, until the greens are very tender, about 1 hour. Drain well and cool slightly, then squeeze dry and finely chop.

2. While the collards are cooking, melt the butter in a small or medium sauté pan over medium heat. Add the onion and garlic, sprinkle lightly with one-fourth teaspoon salt and cook, stirring, for 5 minutes. Add the shiitakes and the tamari and sauté until they are tender, about 5-7 minutes. Remove from the heat and cool slightly.

3. Heat the oven to 350 degrees. Butter a 9-by-9-inch baking dish.

4. Combine the collards and shiitakes in a bowl. Add the eggs, cheese and bread crumbs and mix well. Spread into the prepared pan. Bake 20 minutes. Cut into squares to serve hot or at room temperature.
Deborah Schneider’s Rajas con Crema

October 9, 2007

Some switch seems to have been flipped since I spent a few days in Mexico. Previously, I merely tolerated heat and hot peppers, craved them rarely – perhaps in the odd hot & sour soup or the bimonthly curry over on Lexington and 28th. I've never owned a bottle of hot sauce or spent time dreaming about making my own harissa. My father's the heat nut in the family, eating spicy food until he starts to sweat, shaking Korean pepper over his dinner plate every night. I've always preferred a milder meal.

But now? I seem to have been bitten by the same bug. It's all I can think about: how to make my dinner as hot as I can possibly take it. My pantry isn't up to snuff, though, with cayenne and a few dried chiles de arbol being the only sources of true heat in our home. That hasn't stopped me – I've been spicing up everything from pureed squash to collard greens like I'm making up for lost time. Which, I suppose, I am. Tingling lips, a runny nose, the flush of heat that starts around your jawline and works its way upward (or is it the other way around?), I love it all and I want more.

On the advice of the Internets and a commenter, we went to Taqueria Coatzingo in Jackson Heights for lunch on Saturday and I was actually pretty disappointed. Perhaps we didn't order well, but my two carne asada tacos were sort of limp and flabby and overfilled. Ben's enchiladas verdes looked just like they have in every other New York Mexican restaurant we've been to: pallid and oily and absolutely nothing special. But that's okay – I'm now even more motivated to just figure out Mexican food for myself at home.

Luckily, last week my CSA obliged, providing me with my first four poblano chiles. At home, I put them under the broiler and watched carefully as the dark green skin raised and blistered, turning black and wrinkly and fragrant. Working quickly, I deseeded the peppers (I didn't think I'd need gloves, after all, poblanos are really quite mild, but there was still some stinging, so I rubbed my hands with a cut lemon and that seemed to take care of things, even later when I had to remove my contacts) and cut them into strips.

The peppers weren't slick and oily like the roasted bell peppers that I've grown up making. They were drier and firmer, had more structure. Following a recipe in this charming cookbook, I cooked the poblano strips with onions until they were fragrant, then doused the pan with a bit of milk and turned the heat down low. The vegetables mellowed and softened even more and started picking up a deliciously brown coating from the evaporating milk.

A spoonful or two of creme fraiche swirled in at the end barely coated the peppers and onions with a thin, creamy film. The recipe says that you can eat these with scrambled eggs or in a taco, along with some other suggestions, but I found them so irresistible that I simply plopped a tangle of them on my plate along with a dollop of pureed squash (a Kabocha, roasted until dry and soft, then pureed with salt and more creme fraiche. I let the oven get a little too hot, so it burned in places and actually tasted sweet and caramelly next to the peppers).

Eaten in the office, with my feet propped up on the desk, looking out the window at the black and starry Queens night, I felt like I literally tasted my world expanding. And not to get too serious on you here, but this is really one of the reasons why I love food and cooking so much: a whole other world, a whole new culture opens up to you once you start exploring its culinary traditions. I don't know much about Mexico and I'm so impatient to get back there and learn more, but in the meantime, I'm going to get acquainted the easiest way I know how, through the recipes and stories I'll find in my kitchen. I can scarcely contain my excitement when I start thinking about the discoveries.

Oh, and I should let you know, since I started this post out on such a hot and spicy kick, this dish really is pretty mild, almost even soothing. Every now and again, you'll get a bite that warms the inside of your mouth, but on the whole this is a pretty easygoing dish. Just so you know. I'm sure I'll try to make this again and eat it with eggs or tortillas, but I'm not promising I'll be able to restrain myself from just eating them plain right then and there.

And now I'm off to daydream about hot sauces and dried chiles, cayenne and Aleppo pepper, capsaicin and the Scoville heat scale. My father will be so proud.

Rajas con Crema
Serves 4

4 fresh poblano chiles
1/2 white onion
2 tablespoons butter
1/4 cup milk
Kosher salt
1 tablespoon Mexican crema or creme fraiche
2 epazote leaves, chopped (optional)

1. Char the chiles over a gas flame or on a very hot grill until blackened. While still hot, wrap in paper towels to steam and cool. Remove the stem and seeds and rub off all the blackened skin and clinging seeds with the edge of a spoon or the paper towels. (Don't wash them; much of the flavor goes down the drain.) Don't worry if a little skin remains. If you want a milder taste, remove the ribs inside the chiles. Cut into lengthwise strips 3/4 inch wide.

2. Cut the onion into thin strips, from the stem to root instead of across (they hold their shape better this way).

3. Melt the butter over medium-low heat in a heavy frying pan and cook the onion and peppers together for 5 minutes, stirring often.

4. When the onion is softened, pour the milk over the vegetables and cook very slowly until it is evaporated. Season with salt to taste. (Can be made head to this point and refrigerated; reheat before serving.)

5. Just before serving, stir in the crema or creme fraiche and epazote, if using. Serve hot.
Molly Wizenberg’s Slow-Roasted Tomatoes

October 7, 2007

Would you like to know how you, too, can eat 13 plum tomatoes in one sitting, aided only by a second dining companion who, let's be honest here, never actually gets his fair share because you are far too busy eating the tomatoes all by your greedy, greedy self? (Try to be gracious, really, and let the poor man stab a few onto his fork. He's had a long day.)

You take the plum tomatoes, you halve them, you sprinkle them with a wee bit of salt and ground coriander and then you let them go in the oven until they're shriveled and wrinkly and fragrant, and oozing oil and juices. If you're patient and easily distracted by television or books or good conversation, then do these the way Molly tells you to: in a low oven for close to 6 hours.

If you're anything like me, impatient, and positively bewitched by a roasting tomato (oh, I'm hopeless – by any tomato at all, really), make the oven hotter and then chain yourself to a sturdy piece of furniture for two hours, because otherwise you'll be absolutely compelled to continuously wrenching open the oven door in despair because it's not time to take the tomatoes out yet, but you're starving and they're gorgeous and that smell! God help me, I can't wait any longer.

The tomatoes on the edge of the pan get sort of barely leathery and the ends are faintly crisped and charred. The tomato taste is so concentrated that it almost turns into something else. These are the ones to be lifted off the pan with quick fingers, they're hothothot, and popped into your mouth while the table's being set. The tomatoes in the middle of the pan are thicker and filled with a delectable slurry of juice and oil. These are the ones to pile on a piece of good country bread along with a judicious drizzle of oil.

Of course, you could also plop them on your plate alongside whatever you're having for dinner or chop them up and toss them with freshly cooked pasta or stick them in a sandwich, even. With good manners and restraint, you could even store these in the fridge for a while. But I'll bet that most of them just get speared by your fork and popped in your mouth right then and there, hot out of the oven, and before anyone else gets wise and comes along to share in the bounty.

They taste best this way, I think.

Slow-Roasted Tomatoes

Ripe tomatoes, preferably Roma
Olive oil
Sea salt
Ground coriander

1. Preheat the oven to 200 degrees Fahrenheit. (If you're feeling impatient, preheat the oven to 300 degrees Fahrenheit.)

2. Wash the tomatoes, cut off the stem end, and halve them lengthwise. Pour a bit of olive oil into a small bowl, dip a pastry brush into it, and brush the tomato halves lightly with oil. Place them, skin side down, on a large baking sheet. Sprinkle them with sea salt and ground coriander—about a pinch of each for every four to six tomato halves.

3. Bake the tomatoes until they shrink to about 1/3 of their original size but are still soft and juicy, 4 to 6 hours (at 300 degrees Fahrenheit, these are ready after 2 hours). Remove the baking sheet from the oven, and allow the tomatoes to cool to room temperature. Place them in an airtight container, and store them in the refrigerator.
Florence Fabricant’s Fettucine with Mushroom Ragù

October 4, 2007

I'm not one for meat substitutes. Give me steak or don't, but please don't make me pretend that grilled tofu cloaked under some peppercorn sauce is meant to stand in for a juicy, rare side of beef, or that tofu crumble – for Pete's sake – is meant to be eaten by beings, human or otherwise, in an otherwise perfectly acceptable ragù. It's not that I don't like tofu, because I love it, it's just that I prefer it under more honest circumstances (oh, lord, that sounds pretentious). Tofu is gloriously wiggly, perfectly squishy, the curd of beans and nothing else. Steak is juicy and chewy, perhaps tinged with smoke and subtly gamey – nothing else. They each serve their own delicious purpose, and there's no need to confound them. Right?

My point is that I am not one to look for anything other than the real thing. If I'm in the mood for steak, I buy myself a nice one, I sprinkle it with salt, I broil it, and I eat it. If it's steak I'm craving, I'm usually ravenous, trying to fill some deep-seated hunger, some molecular clamoring for iron and protein. So I don't buy a seitan slab, or a portobello mushroom for grilling, because I've learned that if you trick your body like that it ends up resenting you for it. And who wants a resentful body? Not me. Honesty is the best policy.

All of this to say that when I first read Florence Fabricant's recipe for a meatless meaty pasta sauce, I sort of shook my head and moved to turn the page away. But something made me stop, and read again. Minced mushrooms, okay, but then tomato paste and tapenade for ballast and flavor, mmhmm, red wine for depth and body, yes, and fresh pasta to elevate this into something really good, perhaps. Suddenly, I was making a shopping list and planning dinner.

(Alright, I'm easily swayed. I'll give you that.)

And it's not like this holds a candle to a real ragù. No way, no how. But it's not really supposed to. It's its own splendid little sauce, earthy and dark and interesting, one of the fastest meals you'll ever make (now that certainly doesn't compare to a typical Italian meat sauce) and richly satisfying, much to my surprise. You'll finish your plate and find yourself swiping the sides with bread just to pick up all the little extra smears of sauce.

Perhaps you'll even think, who needs meat? I swear I didn't…

Fettuccine with Mushroom Ragù
Serves 4

3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
3 cloves garlic, slivered
1/2 cup chopped onion
1 pound cremini mushrooms, very finely chopped
2 tablespoons tomato paste
1 tablespoon black olive paste (tapenade)
1/3 cup dry red wine
1 tablespoon minced fresh oregano, or 1 teaspoon dried
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
12 ounces fresh fettuccine
Grated pecorino, for serving

1. Heat 2 tablespoons oil in a large skillet. Add garlic and onion and sauté until soft. Add mushrooms and cook over medium heat until they wilt and give up their juices. Do not let juices evaporate. Stir in tomato paste and tapenade. Add wine, cook briefly, then season with oregano, salt and, generously, with pepper. Remove from heat.

2. Bring a pot of salted water to a boil, add fettuccine, stir to separate strands and cook about 3 minutes. Drain. Transfer fettuccine to skillet. Add remaining oil. Cook, gently folding ingredients together, until mushroom mixture has reheated and is evenly mixed with fettuccine. Add salt and pepper if needed. Serve, with cheese on the side.
Diana Kennedy’s Meatballs in Tomato and Chipotle Sauce

October 1, 2007

I am a changed woman. I spent four days in Mexico last week and had nothing less than an epiphany while I was there.

What was it, you ask? Well, it turns out that I adore Mexican food.

Yes, me! The girl who hates cilantro and always wrinkles her nose when her boyfriend suggests Mexican food, so much so that he's stopped asking and only occasionally complains about it. The girl who never understood why burritos and tacos and enchiladas draped with strings of goopy cheese and stuffed with pallid bean mush were practically the national food for kids of her generation. The girl who tried very hard to be a good sport and find something – anything – to like about the Mexican food available to her and who finally just threw in the towel and resigned herself to disliking it – an unpopular stance at best.

The truth is, I still don't like the Mexican food in New York or that stuff listed above – I'm still convinced it's not worth my time or my money. But the Mexican food in Mexico? The flaky, fragrant tortillas, the myriad salsas glittering red, green, pink and burgundy in the sun, the chewy, lean meat, charred and blistered on an open grill, the pure, clean flavors, the freshness and the spice – oh, the blessed, blessed spice – well, like I said, it was almost a religious experience.

And. The moment I realized I had fallen, hook, line and sinker: lost in thought while chewing on a mouthful of salad that topped a crunchy tostada, I crunched down on a cilantro leaf and it was like sunlight bursting through a shaded glen or something – suddenly, I got it! Bright and earthy at the same time, the flavor exploded in my mouth, tying all the other things together – the crispy tortilla, the unctuous crema, the spicily dressed salad. For those of you who know just how much and how long I've loathed the stuff, unhappily so, you can only imagine my glee. If I hadn't been sitting at the table with people to whom I couldn't admit my sudden discovery for fear of sounding like an utter fool, I would jumped up right then and there and shouted to the heavens, "Cilantrooooooooooo!"

Yeah. It was a momentous couple of days, for sure. Now that I'm back home again, I've done nothing but pore over the few Mexican recipes I have in my house and tried to find somewhere in Queens (there must be somewhere, right? A taco truck, a hand-pulled cart?) that will sell me the kind of food I ate in a little dot of a town in Baja, at an outdoor stand where a bowful of roasted jalapenos cooled next to the blackened grill and our tacos came filled with chopped, grilled meat, a shower of diced white onions and chopped cilantro, and a fluid avocado salsa, unlike anything I'd ever seen or tasted before.

For Ben, this conversion is like the Second Coming.

Last night, I triumphantly held aloft a long-clipped recipe from the LA Times for Diana Kennedy's meatballs that I'd been hoarding all by its lonesome, since it's one of the only Mexican recipes I've clipped over the years. The meatballs are made from a flavorful mix of pork and beef and stuffed to the gills with chopped zucchini and onion – the meat barely binds the vegetables together, making for light and flavorful little albondigas. Even better, the meatballs aren't first seared in a pan, like so many polpette of my youth, but rather braised directly in a simmering sauce. It makes for an easier clean-up and lighter, brighter-tasting meatballs.

Better still, the sauce: plum tomatoes whizzed together with a few canned chipotles (my mother bought us an immersion blender while she was visiting – thanks, again! – and that thing is a powerhouse. I didn't even bother peeling my tomatoes and they liquefied in a matter of seconds) and gently simmered with some olive oil and chicken stock. That stuff is addictive – I could have eaten just the sauce on rice for dinner. Except not really, because those meatballs were completely delicious – spiced with restraint, tender and sweet from the braising, the perfect tasty foil to the spicy sauce. I gave the leftovers to Ben today and am regretting it wholly.

Oh, Mexico. I'm sorry it's taken me so long. But I'm here now! Consider this my first entry into a whole new world I cannot wait to discover. I haven't yet bought my own cilantro, but that day is coming and soon.

Meatballs in Tomato and Chipotle Sauce
Serves 6 to 8 (about 34 meatballs)

Meatballs
12 ounces ground pork
12 ounces ground beef
1 medium zucchini
8 peppercorns
1/4 teaspoon cumin seeds
1/4 teaspoon dried Mexican oregano
2 eggs, lightly beaten
1/3 cup finely chopped onion
1 1/2 teaspoons salt

1. Place the ground pork and beef in a food processor and pulse several times. Transfer to a large bowl. Trim the ends of the zucchini and chop finely. Add to the bowl.

2. Finely grind the peppercorns and cumin seeds in a spice grinder or mortar and pestle and add to the meat. Add the oregano, eggs, onion and salt and gently use your hands or a spatula to thoroughly combine all the ingredients.

3. Gently form the mixture into 1 1/2 -inch meatballs. Place on a baking sheet and refrigerate while making the sauce.

Sauce and finish
2 pounds tomatoes
2 to 4 chipotle chiles en adobo, more or less to taste
3 tablespoons vegetable oil
3/4 cup chicken broth
Salt

1. Bring a large pot of water to a boil. Core the tomatoes and place them in the boiling water. Reduce the heat and simmer for 5 minutes. Drain the tomatoes and cool for a few minutes.

2. Process the tomatoes and chipotle chiles in a blender or food processor until smooth.

3. Heat the oil in a large skillet and add the tomato sauce. When it comes to a boil, reduce the heat and simmer for 5 minutes. Add the chicken broth. When the sauce comes back to a simmer, add the meatballs.

4. Cover the pan and simmer the meatballs over low heat until they are cooked through, about 50 minutes. Adjust the seasoning by tasting and adding salt just before the end of the cooking time. This dish can be prepared a day ahead or can be frozen and reheated.
Mark Bittman’s Scrambled Eggs with Shrimp

September 25, 2007

Hmmm. Okay. I think I know what you're thinking. But you try and scramble eggs mixed with soy sauce and see if you don't end up with a plate full of, well, brownish-brackish-looking slop. Thank goodness there are those little bits and pieces of pink shrimp to brighten things a bit, but still, I know this dish won't be winning any beauty contests any time soon.

And that's just fine. I'm used to comfort food looking gorgeous, though that may be my cultural chauvinism talking – after all, I think tomatoes in any form are superstars – but it's about time I settled down and realized that comfort food isn't always pretty. What it can be is, um, comforting and warm and perfectly balanced between salty and plain – a mishmash of elements that make eating dinner feel like being coddled.

I made this after bringing my mother to the airport (an absolute pleasure, if that can be believed, now that I live in Queens) – when I got home again, Ben wasn't there yet and the apartment felt empty – lonely, for the first time. My mother's presence, so tangible just hours before, had vanished with nothing but a faint whisp of her fragrance hanging in the air. There were other signs of her, too, the precise ordering of the detritus on our dresser top, the neat pile of old newspapers in a corner of the office, all the loose buttons on my pants and Ben's tightened once again.

Normally, I would have made spaghetti with tomato sauce to soothe the sting of saying goodbye, but we'd had it for lunch (how's this for weird – making a dish your mother taught you and having her ask you when it's time to throw in the basil). What I wanted and needed was something swift and simple and there's nothing like Chinese (pseudo or not) to cheer you up when things are threatening to look stormy. So a pot of boiled rice came together easily enough, and sauteeing shrimp with beaten eggs and soy sauce wasn't much harder.

It was a good dinner, nothing spectacular, but it was interesting and warmed our bellies, slipped a comforting arm around my shoulder and squeezed. It was a relief to have Ben home at the table with me finally, filling up the apartment. We ate our little dinner, alone for the first time in a week, and laughed about our mothers and our families. A good night, unexpectedly.

(It's funny how eggs become a conduit for all things – good and bad. The flavors of earthy truffles or delicate chives are amplified in a pile of beaten eggs. So, too, the faintly saline quality of tender little shrimp. Make sure your soy sauce and sesame oil are good and fresh, otherwise you risk eating eggs that have an edge of unpleasantness to them. And don't let your eyes be bigger than your stomach. This dish will serve four and no more – not because of ample portions, but because the richness will fill you up before you know it.)

Scrambled Eggs with Shrimp
Serves 4

3/4 cup raw shrimp, peeled
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
3 tablespoons peanut oil, corn oil or butter
8 eggs
2 tablespoons soy sauce
1 tablespoon sesame oil
1/2 cup chopped scallions
Chopped fresh cilantro leaves for garnish, optional

1. Devein shrimp if you like; if large, cut into bite-size pieces. Sprinkle with salt and pepper.

2. Put oil or butter in a large skillet, preferably nonstick or cast iron, and turn heat to medium. When hot, add shrimp. Cook, stirring, until shrimp is somewhat pink. Beat eggs in a bowl with soy sauce and sesame oil.

3. Turn heat to medium high and add eggs and scallions. Cook, scraping pan with a rubber spatula. Fold eggs over themselves, breaking up curds. If mixture clumps, remove it from heat and stir, then return to heat.

4. When eggs are creamy, adjust seasoning, garnish if you like and serve immediately.
My Kitchen, At Last

September 23, 2007

It’s been 58 days since we moved. And though the kitchen was largely unpacked for the past 54 of those days, I’ve felt strange about showing it to you. Maybe because it still felt so new and unfamiliar, or maybe because it hasn’t felt entirely ready. But with my mother here this week, rearranging cabinets (unbidden, but much appreciated), attaching hooks left and right (my oven mitts will lie flat no more!), getting stains out of things (my favorite tablecloth) and generally being a star by cooing over everything, from the view out of our balcony to the choice of painting in the kitchen, I think it’s time for me and my kitchen to get over our stage fright. Here goes nothing.

The stove, a terrifying thing that spits fire and brimstone whenever you turn it on. Ben’s knuckle hairs got burned clean off the first time he used it. I secretly adore it; it reminds me of the fire power in a restaurant kitchen. Except it’s not entirely level, which seriously annoys me. Don’t you hate it when oil pools in the corner of one pan and doesn’t level out? (As for the towel under the drying rack, ugh and double ugh. I’m on the hunt for a pretty tray to go underneath it, but haven’t found anything cute and affordable yet. Hence the towel. Oh, it’s so gross you have no idea.)

The tea kettle – there’s a story there. We each came to the apartment with our own kettles: mine an 8-year old Alessi thing that’s been with me since I lived in Paris in 1999, Ben’s a gift from his sister. Though we compromised (stop snickering, Ben) on most of the things in the kitchen (getting rid of duplicate forks, say, or stockpots because how many stockpots does one couple actually need?), we both dug our heels in when it came to the pots and so they occupied the back two burners for close to a month. I’d use mine in the morning for my tea, he’d use his for his coffee. When I realized, though, that fighting for my tea kettle would involve admitting that it was a birthday gift from an old boyfriend and that my attachment to it was, now, somewhat untenable, I decided to let go. Washed and dried, it sits in one of our cupboards. I peek at it every now and again. But I’m getting used to the red one.

This is something I call my German corner: three milk glass containers for cocoa, tea and coffee, a wooden shelf, that onion basket – all transported over from Berlin, piece by piece, year by year. I didn’t really expect them to all end up together, but they did. Sage and rosemary from my CSA dry on the left and right shelf hooks. (Full disclosure: the "Kaffee" jar holds all my cookie cutters (more fleamarket finds), while the other two jars are currently still empty.)

What, your kitchen doesn’t come with a Terminator bobble-head doll that has half its face blown off? Why on earth not? He’s there keeping Mr. Peanut company. That thing is one of Ben’s prized possessions and to be honest, though I mock him for it, I kind of get a kick of out Ah-nold in the kitchen. It’s just so ridiculous. The freezer door displays some of the house-warming cards we got. (Ben’s mother’s, on the left, was definitely the most creative – she gave us a set of sheets and crafted a whole house on the wrapping paper, complete with a New Yorker cartoon of a dancing couple. We can never, ever, recycle this.)

This Bekvam cart from Ikea is swiftly shaping up to be one of my favorite things in the apartment. I’ve hung my cake plate on the right side, and oven mitts on the other. My trusty RobotCoupe sits on the first shelf, along with our place mats (salvaged from a life in the gutter). Wine and olive oil stand at attention on top, along with two thrifted Alessi bread baskets, and a mini pumpkin from the CSA.

The painting in the kitchen, a watercolor of a cut lemon and a glass, was left to me by my ex-stepfather, a convoluted and not entirely accurate label for a man who I miss terribly every day. He would have turned 63 two weeks ago and has been dead for more than three years now. This still seems entirely impossible. I so much wish he could see where I live now and come over for a glass of wine with me on the balcony at dusk. If I close my eyes and think very hard, I can imagine him sitting next to me now, rubbing his forefinger along his brow, flashing his funny little dimple when he smiles and lisping raspily. But when I open my eyes he’s gone. So I pass this painting, and others, every day and think about him instead. It’s not enough. It never will be.
Weds Chef in the House

September 21, 2007

Yes, it’s true, dear readers. I was on The Martha Stewart Show, along with Sarah and Sebastian, Deb, and these charming folks. It was a surreal experience, as you might well imagine, but a lovely one, too. And even though Martha thinks my blog is called Weds Chef (as might many of her viewers now, too, due to a teleprompting snafu), I was so glad to be there.

Notes from The Show:

-During one of the commercial breaks, one of the crew members goes around answering a popular question from the audience: naming the paint colors of the walls and trim of the studio (Benjamin Moore something-or-other).

-I have to get myself to Macy’s – stat – to get a bowl or two from Martha’s new line. Maybe a cake stand, too. They’re all gorgeous.

-On and off camera, Martha is sharp and funny. Very smart (as if anyone still thinks otherwise). And wearing killer shoes.
Claudia Fleming’s Maple Baked Apples

September 19, 2007

In the blink of an eye, my melancholy about the end of summer evaporated – poof! – like the puff of steam rising off a cup of coffee in the cold. I think it might have something to do with our Sunday – the day that started out with cozy, chocolate-studded rolls on the couch, the lazy morning that was too cold for my flimsy summer nightgown and called for my beloved 12-year old high school sweatshirt to be donned (much to Ben's chagrin, I'm sure).

In the crisp afternoon air (is there anything better than a September afternoon in New York City? Anything better at all, seriously? I don't know how there can be), we hopped on our bicycles for our first (we've been unpacking for a looong time, I suppose) real exploration of our neighborhood. Down one street, then another, past the archetypal Forest Hills high school, over a flimsy overpass, down a set of crumbling stairs, we emerged triumphant near Meadow Lake – a pretty little body of water situated conveniently between two highways (aaaah, New York, so pretty, so peaceful – does there need to be a highway everywhere? Apparently, yes.).

From there, where we saw a little turtle sunning himself insouciantly on a water pipe and wild geese getting their webbed feet wet, we cycled over to Flushing Meadows Corona Park where we saw cricket matches and soccer games, heard the crowd roaring for the Mets at Shea, and felt our bicycle tires whooshing through the very first little yellowed leaves, fallen and crisping along the walkways. Back home, we kept our balcony door closed, and cooked up our gateway meal into the colder season – the perennially delicious lemon chicken. And all the while I was thinking, practically humming: fall is here and it is glorious.

I am fickle, aren't I?

The next few months stretch ahead deliciously – with tickets to The New Yorker Festival (finally, after years of spending that week at a convention center in western Germany), a blustery weekend for walking on the beach, reveling in the cloudless blue skies on near-constant repeat, and apple-picking galore. The apples now are so good – hard and crisp, snowy-white, glossy-skinned. I know I was just mourning the passing of those mounds of warm summer tomatoes, but if I can have a counter top filled with new apples, bursting with juice and crunch, I can be happy indeed.

The truth is that these first apples of fall are best eaten raw, really, polished to a high sheen on the lapel of your jacket (ooh, jackets, appealing again after so long) and munched on an outdoor walk, or quartered and coupled with a piece of cheese, beads of apple juice pooling at the bottom of the plate. But if you've got your mother, say, coming to town and need to serve a wholesome dessert after dinner that can be eaten with a spoon (is there anything more soothing after a transatlantic flight or at the close of the kind of day that makes your hair stand on end?), you'd be well-served to bake a few of your apples in an inch of fragrant apple cider, stuffed with a chunky mixture of dried fruits and nuts.

Basted with the cider and a spoonful or two of syrup, the apples soften and swell, turning cloud-like in the heat. Firm apples are the ones to choose, but even those might not be immune to an explosion here or there, snow-white flesh spilling out of its red-jacket casing like a Victorian bosom. You could pour a thin line of heavy cream around the apples, creating a caramel-cream sauce, but that almost goes too far – we ate these warm and plain and found them divine.

Oh, fall.

Maple Baked Apples
Serves 6

1/3 cup firmly packed dark brown sugar
3 tablespoons roughly chopped dried cherries
3 tablespoons chopped dried figs
2 tablespoons roughly chopped toasted sliced almonds
2 tablespoons roughly chopped toasted pecans
6 large firm baking apples, cored but not peeled
3 tablespoons butter, cut into 6 pieces
1/2 cup apple cider
2 tablespoons maple syrup

1. Heat the oven to 400 degrees. In a small bowl, mix together the brown sugar, cherries, figs, almonds and pecans.

2. Place the apples in a baking pan or casserole dish and stuff their cavities with the fruit and nut mixture. Place a piece of butter on top of the stuffing.

3. Pour the apple cider and maple syrup into the bottom of the baking pan and bake the apples, basting every 5 to 7 minutes, until they are tender, 25 to 35 minutes.

4. When the apples are tender, transfer them to a serving platter and cover with foil to keep them warm. Strain the pan juices into a small saucepan and bring to a boil over high heat. Reduce the heat and simmer the mixture until it becomes syrupy and reduces to a sauce, about 5 to 10 minutes. Spoon over the apples and serve immediately.
Nigella Lawson’s Chocolate-Almond Whirligig Buns

September 17, 2007

Sometimes – do you know those mornings? – all you want is a truly trashy breakfast. No ascetic shreds of wheat in a bowl with thin, blue milk, no virtuous globes of fruit cut up into a stern puddle of white yogurt, no hard-boiled egg eaten, hurriedly, on the way to the train. Some mornings, the ones when you wake up languidly, stretching like a cat, with sun streaming through the blinds and a blissful sense of purposelessness enveloping you, the perfect breakfast is puffy and sweet, threaded with butter and sugar and pockets of melting chocolate, and best eaten on the couch. Absolutely no balance is needed when you're starting the day off with something like that, well, other than a cup of something hot and steaming.

Ben was still asleep on Sunday morning when I snuck into the kitchen. Doing my best not to wake him with my kitchen clangings, I stealthily shook flour into a bowl, heated milk and butter on the stove, and came to a screeching halt when I read, then re-read, Nigella's amounts of instant yeast. Three packets? As in Three Entire Packets? As in 6 and three-quarter teaspoons of instant yeast? I went online in an attempt to figure out if this was a misprint, then found my answer in Nigella's How to Be a Domestic Goddess on my bookshelf: yes, she really does mean three whole packets, which will seem like a positively obscene amount of yeast, but just go with it, it'll be fine, I promise. Because what you'll end up with will be a riotous tangle of fragrant dough baking up into burnished perfection just in time for when your sweetheart shuffles into the kitchen, eyes growing wider by the second when he spies what awaits him on the kitchen counter.

(And remember, folks, instant yeast is also known as bread-machine yeast or rapid-rise yeast. It's not the same as active dry yeast, which needs to be proofed in liquid before being added to the flour. Instant yeast goes directly into the dry ingredients.)

So, yes, the dough – it was easy-peasy. It comes together in a matter of seconds, then all you have to do is knead it to a smooth, elastic state. This takes a few minutes, if you're doing it by hand, but on a lazy Sunday morning, there's no better way to ease your way into wakefulness. And, while I didn't exactly miss baking with yeast during the summer, there's no better way to welcome our cooler temperatures than by slapping around a yielding piece of dough. The dough, buoyed by the ridiculous quantity of yeast, practically exploded out of the bowl – billowing puffily upwards with what looked like almost unrestrained glee.

I punched down the dough, spread it with a paste of sugar and butter, scattered chopped almonds (in place of the splintered pistachios called for in the original recipe) and fat chocolate chips over the dough, then rolled it up into a plump, nay, corpulent sausage of doughy, sweet goodness. Nigella also has you roll one reserved piece of dough into a rectangle to form the bottom of the rolls, but I'm not exactly sure why. If you make these, I'd suggest skipping this step. After another quick rise, the pan went into the oven and the dough practically shot skywards, growing and twisting and glowing in the heat of the oven.

The recipe says to bake the buns at 450 degrees Fahrenheit, but after only 20 minutes, that bottom rectangle was scorched into a flat, black plank. So, my suggestion to those of you itching to make these right now is to bake the buns at 400, without that bottom sheet of dough, for 25-30 minutes. Keep an eye on them, maybe they'll have to go for a few minutes longer, but something tells me that will be just right.

Oh, you're meant to wait until these puppies have cooled a bit before tearing them apart and eating them, but to that I just say good luck. The scent of them baking will wake up even the deepest sleeper in your house and, before you know it, pleading eyes and beseeching hands will push your careful self aside to reach for the hot pan. In a blink, you'll be on the couch, popping sweet, plump strands of fluffy dough studded with chocolate chips and crispy almonds into your mouth, thinking it was sensible indeed to throw caution to the wind. Who cares about burned mouths when there are more buns to be eaten?

Chocolate-Almond Whirligig Buns
Makes 20-30 buns

Dough
5 to 5 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1/3 cup superfine sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
3 packets instant yeast (6 3/4 teaspoons)
7 1/2 tablespoons unsalted butter
1 2/3 cup milk
2 large eggs
Vegetable oil

Filling
8 1/2 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened
1 cup plus 1 tablespoon superfine sugar
3/4 cup slivered or sliced almonds
1 cup semisweet chocolate chips
1 large egg, beaten

1. To prepare the dough, combine 5 cups of flour, sugar, salt and yeast. In a small saucepan, combine butter and milk and heat to lukewarm. Beat the eggs lightly, then whisk them into the milk mixture. Sitr the liquid ingredients into the dry ones.

2. Using a mixer with a dough hook, or by hand, knead dough until smooth and springy, adding more flour if necessary. Form into a ball and place in a clean, oiled bowl. Cover with plastic wrap and let rise in a warm place until double in size, about 30 minutes.

3. Punch down dough. Line a 13 x 10-inch baking pan with parchment paper. On a floured surface, roll out one-third of the dough and place in pan (I skipped this step and think you should, too). Roll out remaining dough to a rectangle about 20 to 10 inches.

4. For the filling, mix together the butter and sugar to a paste. Spread the paste over large rectangle of dough. Sprinkle almonds evenly over the dough, then top with chocolate chips. Starting from longest side, carefully roll up dough so it looks like a long sausage. Cut dough into 20 slices, about 3/4 inch thick, and arrange with a cut side up on top of the dough in the pan.

5. Preheat oven to 400 degrees (original recipe says 450). Brush buns with beaten egg and let them sit in a warm place until puffed up and snugly fitting pan, about 15-20 minutes. Bake until buns have risen and are golden-brown, about 25 to 30 minutes. Remove from baking pan to cool on a rack. Serve warm.

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