The Wednesday Chef

Doesn't that look dull? And trust me, this post probably won't be much of anything either. I've been back for three days and the closest I've come to cooking was getting on Ben's nerves as he kindly roasted a chicken for me on my first night home again, and then microwaving spinach in the plastic bag it came in last night. I almost passed out from the total grossness of this, but the convenience factor was huge, and besides, after ten days of not a single fruit or leafy green vegetable passing my lips, I could not be picky about how I prepared my vitamins before getting them into my system. Time was of the essence.

Before I left on my trip, I put a sack of beets in the fridge, figuring one of my roommates might cook them up while I was gone. But she hadn't and so last night, I decided to use them up, after making sure they hadn't gone to rot in the crisper. I used a recipe from Food and Wine that was contributed by an American woman who teaches at a Moroccan cooking school near Marrakech. The recipe is not anything earth-shattering, but I loved the method for preparing the beets.

You plunk three pounds of beets (or 1.5 pounds, if that's all you have, like me) in a cake pan. No oil, no cleaning, no nothing. You cover the pan with aluminum foil. You stick the pan in a preheated oven. An hour and a half later you have tender, full-flavored, delicious beets that you cool off for a bit before peeling.

The recipe has you cut the beets into strips and toss with paprika, cumin, lemon juice, oil and salt. It's a perfectly serviceable salad and especially good if you've been deprived of fresh vegetables for some time. Did it blow my mind, this recipe? Not really. But I did like how easy it was to prepare. And that is that (I warned you).

An aside: I am so happy to be home again. Ah, the glory of pouring myself a bowl of organic cereal for breakfast, and dousing the flakes with skim, skim!, milk. And having a crunchy apple to snack on. Whenever I like! Morning, noon, night. It's a luxury we take for granted until we're stranded in some massive convention center that makes the Javits Center look like someone's postage stamp garden, eating only cardboard Broetchen filled with one limp slice of cheese and a forlorn little disc of cucumber. Yes, it's good to be back.

Way back in the beginning days of this blog, I mentioned in a post off-handedly that my hand-held mixer was stuck at the highest stage, making whipping egg whites and creaming butter exercises in frustration and rendering my kitchen bespattered every time I had to use it, which was often. Little did I know that an attentive reader would read this aside and decide to help me out.

Cath, at A Blithe Palate, is in possession of several mixers, both hand-held and standing (and if you have to ask if this isn’t overkill, you obviously know nothing about kitchen appliance obsession. Or how important it is to have his-and-hers mixers. Because it is! Very important.) Cath decided that instead of letting one of her mixers languish unused in a drawer somewhere, she’d send it off to me.

I can’t really put into words how this makes me feel. I’m obviously grateful, but it’s not just about a total stranger sending me a gift for no good reason except for her own kind-hearted sweetness. I’ve also made my very first Internet friend. So, "stranger" doesn’t really feel right anymore.  Cath, my dear, thanks a million!

During my Paris weekend, I stumbled across a bakery on the rue des Deux Ponts on l’Ile Saint Louis. The windows were filled with the kind of old-fashioned baked goods which set a special boulangerie apart from the more quotidian ones. I couldn’t help but go inside and poke around for a bit. I ended up buying something I’d never seen before, a croquet bourbonnais. Made with pulverized almonds, salted butter and sugar, it was a flat and hard and square confection, only about an eighth of a inch thick. We broke off shards of it and crunched away while standing on one of the two ponts. The croquet was a satisfying snack, with a nice snap to it and not too sweet. I haven’t quite figured out yet where it comes from or how you make it, but for now I’m savoring the memory of my mother and I, standing in the sun and breaking off piece after piece until there was nothing left but a square of waxed paper. Thanks for the lovely weekend, Mami.

For this month's Sugar High Friday, Kelli at Lovescool decided that we all should use deep, dark chocolate as the main ingredient for our entries. To prevent boredom, she stipulated that we try something new and interesting, not the everyday workhorse recipes that are foolproof and deja-vu (and –lu). I guess there is such a thing as too many molten chocolate cakes.

To cap off a Sunday dinner I had for some friends, I decided to make a recipe from an old issue of The New York Times Magazine – cut out and glued into my trusty little book. Once again, I don't remember much about the article, but the recipe came from Maida Heatter, a doyenne of American baking. In addition to calling for 24 ounces of chocolate and 10 whole eggs (I kid you not), it included honey as the sweetener. I thought this was an interesting twist on the average flourless chocolate cake recipe. An aside: the recipe heading says Robert's Redford Cake. But Googling it punctuated that way turned up nothing. So I have to assume that Maida intended this cake for Robert Redford himself and that The New York Times might have printed a typo. Minds blowing left and right on that one.

The cake was gorgeous to look at and tasted just fine. Of course, anything with that amount of chocolate and butter and eggs would be bound to taste just fine. But it didn't blow us away. The ganache was incredible – especially since it was still fresh and warm and sort of flopped luxuriously over each slice. But the cake itself was oddly devoid of much deep chocolate flavor. The consensus was that, all in all, this dessert wasn't all that special.

Robert Redford Cake
(Adapted from Maida Heatter)

For the cake:
1 1/2 sticks unsalted butter, plus additional for greasing the pan
flour for dusting
1 cup blanched hazelnuts or almonds
12 ounces semisweet chocolate
1/2 cup honey
10 eggs, separated
1/4 teaspoon salt

For the frosting:
3/4 cup heavy cream
12 ounces semisweet chocolate

1. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Butter a 10-by-3-inch round or springform cake pan. Line bottom with parchment. Butter parchment. Dust with flour. Shake out excess.

2. Grind nuts to a powder in a food processor. Set aside.

3. Break up chocolate and melt in the top of a double boiler over shallow, warm water on moderate heat. Transfer to a bowl and let cool.

4. Meanwhile, in the bowl of a mixer, beat butter until soft. Gradually add honey; beat until smooth. Add egg yolks, two or three at a time, beating until mixed after each addition. The mixture will look curdled, but this is OK). Add nuts and cooled chocolate. 

5. In another bowl, beat egg whites with salt until whites barely stand up when beater is raised. Fold egg whites into chocolate in three batches. Pour into pan. Bake at 375 degrees for 20 minutes. Reduce temperature to 350 degrees and bake for 50 minutes more, or until a cake tester comes out clean. Remove and let cool. Remove from pan. With a long sharp knife, level top.

6. Break up the chocolate for the frosting. In a saucepan over medium heat, cook cream until it forms a skin on top. Add chocolate, reduce heat to low and stir with a whisk until smooth. Transfer to a bowl and stir occasionally until cool and slightly thick. Pour icing over cake and smooth top and sides until covered. Serve immediately, or store at room temperature overnight.

*To see all the other entries in this month's Sugar High Friday, go to Lovescool for Kelli's exhaustive round-up and the glorious chocolate whatsits that everyone else created for the event.

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Dear reader, I must confide in you a small secret you might not have known about me. For the past two months, I have been using plastic flatware. Gasp! Can it even be called flatware if it’s not made of some kind of metal? I don’t know. But silverware it certainly is not. The circumstances of how this came to pass are not interesting enough to blog about. Apparently, though, my friends think it’s hysterical that even during dinner parties, I have had the audacity to present them with plastic forks and knives to eat with. I admit, it’s funny in an appalling kind of way (and appalling in a funny sort of way? Never mind).

But now those barbarian days are over! Thanks to Ebay, I am the proud owner of six gorgeous forks and six gleaming knives – all tipped with a lovely bone handle. I feel all grown up again. I can have friends over for dinner with no shame. I can actually cut a piece of meat, twirl spaghetti, and hear the satisfying clink of metal against china when my plate is empty. But my enthusiasm is dampened (only somewhat) by the fact that the plastic isn’t out the window just yet. After all, I have yet to find matching spoons…

I’m off to Paris to eat macarons, stroll through the narrow streets of the Marais, gaze longingly at store windows, and see various members of my family for a few days. I hope to fill my soul with enough joy and light to get me through the following week, in which I probably won’t see the light of day. Posting will be sporadic! Will my readers stick around? Only time will tell. I plan to drown my separation anxiety from the blog in a souffle…

A plus!