I recently realized that I haven't posted a recipe on Frost Street in over six months. That hardly seems right. And since I recently found these fresh local strawberries and rhubarb at Fairway, it seemed right to do a short recipe post on the perennial Frost Street staple: pie.

The end of the rhubarb season generally runs into the beginning of the strawberry season, which is probably why these plants always seem to go together in a pie. Their flavors match pretty well too; the sourness of rhubarb requires a lot of sugar and some contrasting flavor notes to make it enjoyable, and fresh ripe strawberries provide both. Conversely, delicate strawberries don't stand up to well to the heat of baking , but rhubarb contributes both body and a sour background flavor base that allows their sweetness and unique aromatic characteristics to shine.

Strawberry Rhubarb Pie

Ingredients:

For the Crust:

• 1/4 lb. Lard, chilled
• 4 tbsp. (half a stick) unsalted butter, chilled
• 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/2 tsp. salt
• 1/4 cup water
• ice

For the Filling:

• 1 quart (2 pints) fresh strawberries
• 1 lb. rhubarb stalks
• 1 to 1 1/2 cups sugar
• 3 tbsp corn starch
• 2 tbsp. butter

Procedure:

1. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees.
2. Stir the salt into the water until dissolved, then add a few cubes of ice. Let stand to chill.
3. Cut the lard and butter into half-inch cubes and place them in a chilled bowl. Add the flour and roll the chunks of fat in the flour with your fingertips, mixing them and breaking them up until the flour looks like wet sand and there are a few chunks of fat of varying size remaining interspersed in the flour.
4. Drizzle half the ice water over the flour and stir it in gently with a fork. Try to bring the dough together with your hands. If it won't hold together, keep drizzling in ice water and stirring it in until the dough is just moist enough to hold together. Gather the dough into a ball, place it in a plastic bag, and put it in the refrigerator for at least a half hour.
5. Meanwhile, wash and dry the rhubarb and trim off the ends (the leaves are poisonous; the roots are tough), and cut the stalks into one-inch chunks. Wash and dry the strawberries, hull them and halve them, and add them to the rhubarb. Mix in the sugar (using more or less depending on the sweetness of the strawberries) and the cornstarch, and toss all the ingredients together. Let the filling stand at room temperature for at least twenty minutes, stirring occasionally.
6. Remove the crust dough from the refrigerator and let it stand at room temperature for a few minutes to soften. Roll it out on a floured surface to a thickness of about 1/8 inch. Gently line a greased pie pan with the dough, and cut away any excess, leaving an overhang of about 1/2 inch. Collect the scraps and refrigerate them; they can be re-rolled and used to garnish the top of the pie (for example, in a lattice pattern) or saved for another use.
7. Flute the edge of the pie using your fingertips, for example by pinching the overhang with your thumb on one side and your index and middle fingers straddling your thumb on the other side, to create an offset pattern. If the dough gets warm and too soft to work with, refrigerate it for twenty minutes then continue.
8. Stir the filling one last time and pour it into the pie crust. Cut the 2 tbsp. butter into small knobs and dot it over the filling. If you are using your scraps of pie dough to garnish the top of the pie, do so now.
9. Put the pie pan on a baking sheet with raised sides (to catch any bubbling over) and place it in the center rack of the preheated oven. Bake at 375 degrees for 30-40 minutes or until the filling has boiled and the crust is golden brown. Allow to cool for at least 20 minutes before serving. Serve with a scoop of vanilla ice cream and a sprig of mint.

   Posted by jeremy at 01:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I've never understood Jews who get excited about Chanukah. It is not a thrilling holiday. You will not find the story of Chanukah in the Hebrew Bible. You have to refer to the "deuterocanonical" texts of the Septuagint to find it. It is the story of a fundamentalist priestly family called the Hasmoneans, who led an insurrection against the assimilationist Hellenic rulers of Judea in the second century B.C. It is said that first day of Chanukah is the day the Hasmoneans re-took the Temple in Jerusalem from their foreign occupiers and rededicated it with a three-month-late celebration of the seven-day Festival of Huts. They established a dynasty that ruled tenuously and briefly from Jerusalem under the constant onslaught of far more potent empires, and then they faded into history. Centuries later, as the Talmud was being compiled, the nortoriously verbose rabbis of the Jewish academies in Babylon could only generate seven pages of material on this obscure festival. To put this weak effort in context, consider that the ancient sages produced whole tracts on the proper etiquette for using the bathroom. When the Talmud turns to the festival of lights, the very first line is: "What's Chanukah?"

Perhaps to add some flash to an otherwise uninspiring narrative, these sages posited a miracle. In this version of the story, when the Hasmoneans re-took the Temple they found that their Hellenist occupiers had defiled all but a single vial of the Temple's sacred oil by breaking the High Priest's seals with their filthy gentile hands. This single vial should have been enough to light the ceremonial lamps for only a single day, but -- and this is the miracle part -- it lasted for eight days, long enough for the Hasmoneans to ... pick some olives and press more oil.

This story doesn't do much to make me more excited about Chanukah, but the supposed miracle of the oil did give rise to the only tradition that redeems the holiday for me. During the eight nights of Chanukah, Jews are instructed to eat foods fried in oil. Say what you want about the Hasmoneans and their dubious miracles, I will take any excuse I can get to eat things that have been deep-fried.

Many Jews of European descent are familiar with sufganiyot, the jelly doughnuts that ashkenazis incorporate into their chanukah diet. My ancestors in Babylon fulfilled their oleic obligations with a different kind of dessert. This is zingoulah, a funnel cake soaked in the ubiquitous rosewater syrup that drenches all pastries from that part of the world. My grandmother made it with yeast, but my mother and I have Westernized the recipe a bit with the substitution of beer. I can't think of a more fitting way to observe a holiday that celebrates violent opposition to cultural exchange.

Recipe: Zingoulah

Ingredients:

For the batter:

• 2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 3/4 cup sugar
• 1/2 tsp. salt
• 1 pint beer

For the syrup:

• 2 cups sugar
• 1 1/2 cups water
• 2 tbsp. lemon juice
• 1/2 tsp ground cardamom
• 2 tsp. rose water

• Canola oil for deep frying

Heat the canola oil in a pot as large around as you want your zingoulah to be. Make sure not to fill the pot higher than the half way mark. Use a deep-frying thermometer and heat the oil to 330 degrees.

Sift together the flour, sugar, and salt, and whisk in the beer in stages. Stir until thoroughly incorporated, then let rest at room temperature for at least half an hour.

Meanwhile, heat the sugar, water, and lemon juice in a saucepan until boiling. Boil for five minutes, then remove from the heat. Stir in the cardamom and rosewater, and set aside in a wide, flat dish to cool.

Using a funnel or a cup with a spout, pour the batter in 1-cup batches into the hot oil, moving the funnel around the pan to create an interlaced web of batter that will hold together when cooked. Deep fry until the sides are golden brown and the top is set, then flip with tongs or a spider. After 30 to 60 seconds cooking on the second side, remove the funnel cake and drain on paper towels.

When the funnel cake is cool enough to handle, but still warm, dip it in the syrup on both sides and set it on a serving plate or in a storage container. Stack the zingoulah on top of each other as each one is finished; the syrup will drain down the stack. The last one will be the sweetest of all.

Posted by jeremy at 12:42 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (1)

This month's IMBB theme, hosted by Derrick at Obsession With Food, triggered a Frost Street flashback. A little over a year ago I was browsing the fish counter at Citarella when I came across something I had never seen before. Up in the front of the display was a pile of huge sea scallops. All of them were faintly yellow, which meant they were "dry" scallops: most commercially-marketed scallops are soaked in a brine solution to preserve them, which turns them milky white. But what struck me most about these particular scallops was not that they were big, nor that they were ivory-colored, but that each of them had a coral-pink pod attached to its side. Citarella was selling dry sea scallops, with roe.

The summer of 2003 was the first and last time I ever tasted scallop roe. I bought a few and prepared them different to understand their flavor and their behavior in the kitchen. I found they were best poached, retaining their striking color while taking on a firm but tender texture. Their flavor is round but subtle, similar to that of the belly section of a clam. Having decided that scallop roe were best poached, and having no way to obtain them other than in conjunction with fresh, sweet sea scallops, an ideal use of these rare treats immediately suggested itself: I would make them into a terrine.

This photo was taken with a film camera, so I didn't know until it was developed that I had failed to capture a sharp image of my proudest achievement in the kitchen. This is a mousseline terrine: the body of it is a fine forcemeat enriched with heavy cream and bound with egg whites. For this I cribbed a recipe from the CIA's Garde Manger textbook, provided after the jump. [There's also a primer on terrine assembly using a roasted vegetable terrine recipe also derived from a recipe in the CIA textbook]. I folded in some finely-chopped chives to provide some visual appeal and a pungent flavor to offset the sweet richness of the scallop farce, and I dropped in the roe as garnish for the terrine. I had originally planned to line the terrine with prosciutto, since I've often paired scallops with cured pork (usually bacon) in the past, but in the end I decided the ham might overpower the delicate flavor of the roe, and used blanched leek leaves instead.

Continue reading "IMBB 9: The Best Thing I Ever Made" »

Posted by jeremy at 11:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

I've discussed my family's Iraqi Jewish background before, in the context of recipes and more somber matters. I've heard my aunts and uncles tell stories of how, in the summer months, when the Tigris River shrinks from its banks in the scorching heat, previously submerged islands are revealed in midstream. At times like these, people would row out to the islands in the evening and enjoy the earthly pleasures of Mesopotamia: song, dance, and the flesh of the unique species of carp native to the Tigris. The meal of choice on nights like these was masgouf, a butterflied fresh-caught fish roasted gently over a smoky open fire. The fish would be split open along the spine rather than the belly and secured a safe distance over the fire by forked sticks stuck in the ground at an angle nearby. The finished dish was a communal meal, eaten right off the bone with no utensils but the fingers God gave you.

My Upper West Side Apartment is no place for an open fire, I don't have any pointed sticks handy, and anyway I'm a long way from the Tigris. But when summer rolls around I start thinking about the simple satisfaction of roasted fish, and I seek out ways of quieting my cravings. This time it began with a whole red snapper, cleaned and split -- unavoidably -- along the belly.

Lacking woodsmoke to impart flavor to the flesh of this generally bland fish, I decided to help it along by stuffing it with slices of onion and lemon, fresh parsley, coarse salt, and olive oil. I scored the flesh for even cooking and seasoning (just salt and olive oil on the outside) and set it on a metal rack to go into a hot (425 degree) oven.

Traditional garnishes for masgouf include chopped onions and tomatoes, as well as the clay-oven flatbreads common to Iraq and much of the Middle East. Since I had already thrown authenticity out the window, I replaced the flatbread with grilled polenta, boosted the onions and tomatoes with some fresh parsley, and paired my Manhattan Masgouf with a crisp white wine.

For all my tinkering with this centuries-old dish, I did manage to retain one small piece of tradition: I quickly abandoned my fork and dug into the roast snapper with my bare hands. I've got to say, it really does make for a more satisfying meal.

Posted by jeremy at 01:09 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Memorial Day. The unofficial first day of summer. Across the country, people are taking the covers off their pools, firing up their grills, and celebrating the start of another year of red-blooded American backyard living.

Here in Manhattan, some of us lawyers (particularly us junior lawyers) are in the office on Memorial Day. It could be worse; after all, we don't have backyards, we don't have outdoor grills, and we sure as hell don't have swimming pools. No, we live in 500-square foot apartments; pay more in rent per month than the mortgages on those houses with the outdoor grills and the swimming pools, and work 100 hours a week to pay for it. So today instead of grilling up a batch of steaks, burgers, and chops; instead of whipping up some fresh mayonnaise for a homemade potato salad; instead of cracking open a cheap domestic beer with family and friends; I billed 10 hours and ordered in sushi for one, which I ate at my desk.

But city life has its advantages. At Citarella this weekend, there are three crates of softshell blue crabs in the center of the fish display, with a little sign in front of them that reads: $2.99/ea. Softshell season began the day after the first full moon in May, and the little critters are waiting for me, practically right outside my front door. So in one of my free moments this holiday weekend, I fried up some softshell crabs, tempura style, and made a sandwich with shredded raddichio, fresh basil, and miso-sesame vinaigrette.

You can have your fishmonger clean your softshells for you, but you'd better be ready to cook them right away. Otherwise, get crabs that still fight back a little when they're picked up, keep them on ice until you're ready to cook, then snip their heads off just behind the eyes with a sharp knife or scissors.

When I was a kid, we went crabbing in the Chesapeake Bay with a chicken thigh tied to a wire trap. Growing up in Maryland, they teach you to distinguish male from female blue crabs based on the shapes of their bellyplates (girl crabs have a capital dome, boy crabs have a Washington monument). Any softshell you find at market will likely be a female, which makes cleaning it easier.

After you've snipped off the crab's face, peel back the bellyplate to expose the gill filaments underneath. Brush those back with your fingers, uncovering the body shell underneath.

When you've pulled the bellyplate down, grip it firmly, twist it back and forth, and break it loose, pulling out the intestinal vein along with it. If you don't like the flavor of the crab liver (a/k/a tomalley), press down on the body to squeeze out the yellow goo inside. Rinse your softshell, pat it dry with a paper towel, then coat it with crumbs or batter and fry it up.

Maybe I don't have a backyard full of friends and grilled meats and cold beer. But hey, look what I can put together on a moment's notice with the vast epicurean resources at my fingertips. Surely the conveniences and luxury of fine city living are worth the price we pay with the best years of our lives. Clearly, I have made the most of Memorial Day weekend in Manhattan.

Posted by jeremy at 11:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

For today's "Is My Blog Burning?" event, I decided to draw on some family history. My mother's family is from Baghdad; they are among the hundreds of thousands of expatriate Iraqi Jews who fled their home of two thousand years in the wake of rising Arab-Jewish hostility. Today the Iraqi Jewish community -- which once numbered over 100,000 strong in its native land -- is scattered across the globe: in England, Australia, India, Canada, and the United States. Traditions that held sway since the time of the Hebrew prophets are slowly fading into oblivion. So the IMBB? "rice" theme has offered me an opportunity to keep one of those traditions alive: the Sabbath meal.

This is T'beet, the traditional Sabbath lunch of Iraqi Jews. Jews are forbidden by religious law from kindling or extinguishing a flame on Saturday, the Jewish day of rest. Accordingly, any meal to be eaten hot on the Sabbath must be set on a fire before sundown the night before. The Jews of Europe have accomodated this imperative with cholent: a slow-cooked stew of meat, beans, and vegetables, which I find utterly revolting. My ancestors relied instead on the middle-eastern staple of rice in composing their Sabbath lunch: a stuffed chicken stewed in tomato sauce and spices and baked into a cake of aromatic basmati rice. After twelve or more hours of cooking, the rice forms a hard, delicious crust on the outside, while the rice surrounding the chicken becomes irresistably tender and absorbs all the flavors in the pot. A rice stuffing within the chicken is the most intense of all: it is heavily spiced and absorbs all the juices of the chicken as it cooks.

As you can see in the above image of T'beet deconstructed, you can have your rice three ways. The rice to the left of the chicken has hardened into a crunchy, nutty shell. At top right, you can see the pillowy rice that surrounds the chicken. At bottom right is the intensely flavored rice from the stuffing. Incidentally, a chicken cooked in this manner emerges from the oven tender enough to cut with a spoon.

The key to this dish is the Iraqi Jewish version of five-spice powder: an aromatic compound of cardamom, allspice, cloves, cinnamon, and turmeric mixed in equal portions (with maybe a little extra cardamom for good measure). It will fill your kitchen with the most fragrant aromas all night and into the day. Just be sure to use a non-stick, oven safe pot: you have to be able to get the burnt rice crust out eventually (it's the best part). Teflon is fine, but for a more traditional preparation I use enamel-coated cast-iron.

Recipe: T'beet

Ingredients

• 1 whole chicken
  
• 5 tbsp olive oil
  
• 1/3 cup diced onion
  
• 1/3 cup diced tomato
  
• 3 29-oz. cans simple tomato sauce (I use Hunt's)
  
• 3 tbsp Iraqi Jewish five-spice powder (see above)
  
• 3 tsp. salt
  
• 8 3/4 cups basmati rice, rinsed
  

Mix the diced onion, diced tomato, 3/4 cups of the rice, 1 tbsp of the spice mixture, and 1/2 tsp of the salt in a bowl. Add 2 tablespoons of the tomato sauce and, if available, the diced giblets of the chicken (heart and gizzard only; not the liver). Keep refrigerated.

Rinse the chicken thoroughly inside and out and pat dry with a paper towel. Stuff the body and neck of the chicken loosely with the stuffing (the rice will need room to expand as it cooks), and either sew the openings shut or skewer them closed.

In a 10-qt., non-stick, oven safe pot or dutch oven, heat the olive oil over medium-high heat. When the oil is hot, add the chicken breast-side up. Brown until quite dark, 5-6 minutes. Turn and brown the breast side, another 5-6 minutes.

When the chicken is thoroughly browned on both sides, pour the remaining tomato sauce over it (the chicken should be breast-side down at this point). Fill the pot with water to cover the chicken, making sure there is still room between the water level and the top of the pot. Add the remaining five-spice mixture and salt, and stir to combine. Cook uncovered until the boil is reached.

Once the liquid begins to boil, bring the heat down to a simmer. Cook, partially covered, for about 30 minutes. Then add the remaining rice to the pot, pouring it around the sides so it does not pile on top of the chicken. Cover the pot and put it in the oven. Allow to cook overnight.

At lunchtime on Saturday, remove the pot from the oven and uncover it. Let it stand for about 10 minutes, then invert it onto a serving platter. Scrape any remaining crust off the inside of the pot with a wooden spoon (or other utensil safe for non-stick surfaces) and layer it over the T'beet. Serve to a large, hungry family, making sure everybody gets a little of the chicken and a little of each of the three types of rice. Be careful to remove the skewers or twine you used to seal the chicken as you carve it up. A large serving spoon is the only serving utensil you will need.

Posted by jeremy at 03:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (13) | TrackBacks (0)

I told you that when spring arrived in New York you'd see a shad recipe here. Well we've had a string of days breaking the 70-degree barrier, so I guess it's about time. This morning I made a real Hudson Valley breakfast, with shad-roe scrambled eggs and a bacon-wrapped shad roe.

It all started with a single shad roe from Citarella.

The whole roe actually consists of two egg sacs connected by blood vessels and membranes, which must be cut away. Once that's done, you have two options: open the roe sac or leave it whole. The only conceivable reason for opening it, in my view, is to add it to scrambled eggs -- the egg grains within become tough and gritty if exposed to direct heat. That's why most recipes call for broiling or pan-frying a whole shad roe, often dredged in flour.

I decided to try it both ways. First, I wrapped one of the roe sacs in about five slices of Niman Ranch thick-cut bacon. When wrapping, it's a good idea to make sure the strips overlap and all the seams are on the same side of the roe, so it will hold together in the pan and the roe sac itself won't come into direct contact with the hot surface (which could cause it to scorch or split open). Place the bacon-wrapped roe seam-side down in a dry skillet on medium-low heat. It is very important to control the temperature; if the roe is overcooked it dries out and takes on a sandy texture as the egg grains within solidify. Just let the roe cook until the bacon on the underside appears to be cooked through and crisp on the outside (the seams should hold together when you tip it to the side with a spatula to check for doneness). Repeat on the other side, and remove the roe from heat as soon as the bacon is cooked through on the second side. The whole process will take 15 to 20 minutes.

When done, the roe should still be faintly red at the very center, and its texture will be creamy and smooth.

The flavor of shad roe is more calf's liver than caviar: bloody, fatty, with a strong hit of metallic iron flavor. That's why it pairs so well with bacon and onions; it's the liver of the sea (well, technically, the liver of the river; but that just sounds silly).

I sauteed some onions in the bacon drippings and then added three eggs scrambled with the other half of my shad roe, broken up into pieces, to complete another traditional shad roe dish. I don't believe I was as successful with this preparation; I found it difficult to gauge the proper temperature and I believe I overcooked the roe. The flavor of iron and fish fat was still present, but the texture was off. Better luck next time I guess. The shad season still has over a month to go.

Posted by jeremy at 10:22 AM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

I read the eggs chapter of Harold McGee's excellent On Food and Cooking on the train on the way upstate to visit Lisa Friday evening. I've been thinking about eggs all weekend. Lisa and I went hiking in the Catskills yesterday, and on the way home I nearly killed us swerving into a roadside farmers' market, hoping to find farm-fresh eggs. I emerged both alive and successful, so that today I may offer you this Soft-Boiled Egg Cake.

This cake is not made with soft-boiled eggs; it's something of a gag made to resemble its namesake dish. I made two small angel food cakes, hollowed them out, filled them with warm lemon curd, and covered them with whipped cream (well, actually, leftover CoolWhip from a long-forgotten strawberry shortcake experiment, but you get the idea). When you cut it open the lemon curd runs out like the gooey yolk of a soft-boiled egg.

You can use store-bought angel food cake for this, but I originally conceived of the idea as a way to avoid the waste that is typical of recipes that call for only half of a separated egg. The angel food uses the egg whites, while the lemon curd takes care of the yolks.

Recipe: Soft-Boiled Egg Cake

Ingredients:

For the angel-food cake:

• 4 egg whites
  
• 1/2 cup confectioner's sugar
  
• 1/2 tsp. cream of tartar
  
• 1/2 tsp. vanilla extract
  
• 1/3 cup cake flour
  
• pinch salt

For the lemon curd:

• 4 egg yolks
  
• 2/3 cup granulated sugar
  
• zest and juice of 2 lemons
  
• 1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter
  
• pinch salt

For the "shell":

• 1/2 cup whipped cream (or, if you must, CoolWhip)

In a clean mixing bowl, whisk the egg whites together with the cream of tartar and vanilla extract until foamy. Add half of the confectioners sugar to the egg whites in stages while whisking. Continue whisking until medium peaks form.

Sift the cake flour with the rest of the confectioner's sugar and the salt. Fold the dry ingredients into the egg whites in stages. Pour the batter into small cake molds and bake in a 350 degree oven until a skewer comes out clean; about 15-20 minutes. Cool completely before unmolding.

For the lemon curd, whisk together the egg yolks with the sugar and salt until creamy. Add the lemon zest and juice and cook over a double-boiler until the mixture just starts to thicken. Whisk the butter in by tablespoons over the double-boiler, and continue whisking until the curd thickens to your liking.

Cut the centers out of two angel food cakes and stack them with their wide ends touching. Cover the outside of the cakes, except the top, with the whipped cream, and smooth it out evenly. Pour the warm lemon curd into the top of the cake, cover the hole with the plugs of cake you cut out of the centers, and smooth whipped cream over the top.

When you cut into this cake, if the lemon curd is still warm it will run out onto the plate like a soft-boiled egg yolk. If the lemon curd is chilled, it will simply sit there, but the gimmick is only slightly less amusing. Enjoy.

P.S. - Thanks to Renee at Shiokadelicious for hosting this event.

Posted by jeremy at 02:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (10) | TrackBacks (1)

Ingredients:

• 1 head savoy cabbage
• 3/4 lbs. ground beef
• 3/4 lbs. ground pork
• 3/4 lbs. ground veal
• 2 cups cooked white rice (cooled to refrigerator temperature if you will not be cooking the stuffed cabbage immediately after mixing the filling)
• 1 medium onion, diced
• 2 29-oz cans Hunt's Tomato Sauce
• 1 tbsp. Worcestershire Sauce
• Salt, Pepper, and Sugar to taste

	After removing the outer leaves, core the cabbage by cutting around the stem at an angle with a paring knife. Remove as much of the tough white flesh of the core as possible without damaging the inner leaves.
	Place the whole cabbage, stem side down, into a pot of gently boiling salted water.
	As the outer leaves loosen, pull them away from the head and rinse them under cold running water to stop the cooking. You may need a paring knife to cut the base of the inner leaves off what's left of the core. Give the inner leaves a little more time to soften in the pot before rinsing them. You may want to use a rubber glove; the leaves and water will be very hot. Continue this process until you have separated all but the smallest leaves; it should take about 15 minutes.
	When the leaves are cooled, cut away the ridged part of the rib running down the center of the leaf, to make it roughly the same thickness as the rest of the leaf. This will make the leaf less rigid and easier to stuff. (Incidentally, the savoy cabbage is preferable to green cabbage precisely because its leaves are thinner, flatter, and less rigid).

Mix together the ground meat, rice, diced onion, Worcestershire sauce, and 1/4 cup of the tomato sauce. This will be the filling for the cabbage; keep it in the refrigerator unless you are ready to stuff and cook the cabbage immediately.

	Place a trimmed leaf on a cutting board with the stem end facing away from you. Place a handful of the meat filling in a ball on the near end of the leaf.
	Roll the near end of the leaf over the filling and toward the stem end, stopping when the filling is halfway covered.
	Fold the sides of the leaf over the filling, tucking any excess under the side flaps.
	Continue rolling the filling toward the stem end, holding the side flaps closed as you roll.
	Let the cabbage roll rest on the stem end. It should hold together on its own as long as it's resting on a flat surface.
	Use a spatula or other flat utensil to transfer the golumpki to an ovenproof pot with a lid. Season the remaining tomato sauce with salt, pepper, and sugar, and pour it over the golumpki. Cover the pot and place it in a 250-degree oven for three to four hours.
	When the golumpki are finished, you can serve them immediately. However, they benefit from an overnight stay in the refrigerator, where the flavors can come together. Chill them quickly by refrigerating them in a shallow dish, then reheat them before service in a 350 degree oven.

Posted by jeremy at 08:18 AM | Permalink | Comments (14) | TrackBacks (0)

Here's yet another attempt to coax culinary blood from the proverbial stone that is unleavened bread. Matzah brei is the pascal equivalent of french toast. The French term for french toast is pain perdu (and I'll bet you thought it was "toast"). Pain perdu is literally "lost bread": bread that has gone stale but can be brought back to life by a soaking in eggs and milk. Personally I don't know what life matzah ever had in it to be reawakened, but mine are a resourceful people, who never shrink from a challenge.

The great standing debate over matzah brei is whether it should be sweet or savory. Sweet matzah brei is more like french toast, made with vanilla and a little sugar, and sometimes served with maple syrup. Savory french toast is more like a matzah omelet: it's often made with onions and black pepper, and often has a higher proportion of egg (food blogger Amy even makes hers with bacon, which is funny on at least three different levels). My uncle actually splits the difference, putting maple syrup on a savory onion matzah brei (which is gross on at least three different levels).

I prefer the sweet variety, so here's my matzah brei recipe:

Ingredients:

• 1 piece matzah
  
• 1 large egg
  
• 3 tbsp milk
  
• 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
  
• pinch sugar
  
• pinch salt
  
• 1 tbsp butter
  

Whisk together the egg, milk, vanilla, sugar, and salt. Break the matzah into bite-sized pieces and put them into the egg mixture to soak, stirring them around to coat them completely. Leave them to soak for about 15 minutes in the fridge.

Melt the butter in a skillet on medium heat. When it begins to bubble, add the matzah and egg mixture and stir constantly until it dries and begins to brown slightly. Remove to a plate and serve with maple syrup.

Posted by jeremy at 12:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

We Jews eat matzah to remind us that our ancestors were slaves in Egypt. We make it into pizza because we're Americans now, and slave food sucks.

Matzah pizza sucks marginally less than matzah alone, so here's a recipe for my observant readers.

Ingredients:

• 1 piece matzah
  
• 1/2 cup marinara sauce (homemade or from a jar, but the latter may not be strictly kosher for Passover)
  
• 2-3 oz. fresh mozzarella
  
• 5-6 fresh basil leaves
  
• 1 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
  
• salt and pepper
  

Line a baking sheet with aluminum foil, and place it in a preheated 500-degree oven.

Spread the tomato sauce over the matzah, leaving the edges dry. Tear the mozzarella into pieces and scatter them over the sauce. Place the basil on top of the cheese. Drizzle the pizza with the olive oil, and sprinkle with salt and pepper to taste.

Place the matzah pizza on the heated baking sheet and quickly close the oven door. Remove the entire baking sheet when the cheese begins to brown and bubble, or in approximately 8-10 minutes.

The tomato sauce will have softened the center of the matzah, so be careful when transfering to a serving plate. Also be careful when eating: a fork and knife may be necessary.

Posted by jeremy at 01:06 AM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (1)

Belatedly, here is your Valentine's Day dessert: Frozen Chocolate Mousse Hearts. Turns out my coeur à la crème molds were good for something after all; line them with plastic wrap and they're just regular old heart-shaped molds. You can't bake with them, but for this cold dessert you don't need to.

This recipe makes enough mousse to fill two standard sized wine glasses, which is a perfect presentation if you don't have heart-shaped molds (or if it isn't Valentine's Day). It's more than enough for two small coeur à la crème molds; fill a couple of wine glasses half way with the excess and save them for another day.

Recipe: Frozen Chocolate Mousse

Ingredients:

2 eggs, separated
4 oz. dark chocolate, finely chopped
1/4 cup sugar
1/2 cup heavy cream
pinch salt

In an electric mixer (or by hand if you must), whisk the egg whites with the salt until stiff peaks form.

Whisk together the egg yolks with the sugar until they thicken and turn pale yellow.

Heat half the heavy cream in the microwave until it boils (this shouldn't take more than 45 seconds). Pour the hot cream over the chopped chocolate in a bowl and mix it together gently with a whisk until the chocolate is melted and the mixture is smooth.

Whip the remaining heavy cream to soft peaks.

Stir the chocolate into the egg yolk mixture and stir until fully incorporated. Fold the whipped cream into the chocolate and egg yolks, and finally fold the egg whites into the whole lot by thirds.

When the egg whites are fully incorporated, pour the mousse into your molds or wine glasses, cover them with plastic wrap, and put them in the freezer for at least two hours. Remove the mousse ten minutes before service to soften it.

The heart-shaped mousse pictured above is coated with ganache, a mixture of equal volumes of heavy cream and dark chocolate melted together and poured over the top to create a glossy coating. You could also top it off with whipped cream, dust it with powdered sugar or cocoa, or garnish it with some berries. Enjoy.

Posted by jeremy at 07:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (1)

As promised, this post is dedicated to explication of the process of creating the stuffed, boneless, skinnless, re-skinned chicken breast -- a process so involved I only make this dish for Valentine's Day.

	Begin with a whole chicken, rinsed and dried, and cut off the last two joints of each wing. Save them for stock, or for a snack.
	Lift the skin over the breast around the neck, and with a sharp knife split the skin down the center of the breast.
	Flip the bird over, and cut through the skin down the center of the back.
	Pull the skin away from the breast, breaking the membranes connecting the two with a knife or your fingers.
	Pull the skin away from the thigh in the same manner. Use your fingers to pull apart the membranes connecting the joints of the leg and the skin around them. Be careful not to tear the skin.
	When the skin has been pulled away from the leg, grasp the skin and pull it inside-out and off the leg entirely. You will be left with a sleeve of skin that used to envelop the leg joint. The skin should now only be attached around the one remaining joint of the wing.
	Remove the breast from the bone by cutting down along the breastbone and following the contour of the ribcage (you should either remove the wishbone before this or cut through it and remove the pieces afterwards).
	Keeping the now-boneless breast attached to the wing joint, cut through the shoulder joint connecting the wing to the rest of the carcass.
	Place the breast skin-side down on a cutting board, and remove the separate "suprème" muscle (often referred to as a chicken "tender"). You can either keep this piece inside the stuffed breast or save it for another use; either way you should remove the tough tendon inside it by scraping the meat off it. Butterfly the breast by cutting halfway through it down the middle and then slicing it center-to-edge parallel to the cutting surface, making sure not to cut all the way through.
	Unfold the butterflied chicken breast, and it's ready to stuff. When you've added everything you want to add, roll the breast up (using the suprème to cover up any open spaces, if necessary), and wrap the skin around it to cover it completely. Seal the skin by pulling the "sleeve" from the leg over the wing joint, and if necessary secure the seams with a wooden skewer. This picture shows a butterflied breast ready for stuffing, center; a separated suprème, lower left; and a stuffed and wrapped breast, upper right.

You can use whatever you want to stuff this bird; I use artichoke hearts, prosciutto san daniele, fresh basil, mozzarella di bufala, locatelli romano, and stravecchio parmigiano. Rub the whole stuffed breast with olive oil and sprinkle with salt and pepper, and roast at 375 degrees until well-browned and cooked through (the total time will depend on your choice of stuffing; it could be anywhere from 30 minutes to over an hour). Lisa's chicken is served on a bed of linguine with a tomato-cream sauce (and of course, the obligatory red pepper hearts I told you about before). This should not be a wasteful dish: the dark meat can be removed from the bone and used in pasta, sausages, salads, or what have you. The bones, of course, will make an excellent stock. Once you get familiar with the process of preparing a chicken this way, you'd be surprised at how versatile the technique is; you can build any style of dish by varying your stuffing, sauce, seasonings, and accompaniments. Good luck, and don't get discouraged. Even if you don't get the butchery part right, you've still got a whole chicken to work with, and that ain't half bad.

Posted by jeremy at 09:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Anyhow, back to Valentine's Day. Lisa had demanded that I make her a potato and salmon dish like the one she had at the CIA. I don't have a smoker in my apartment (yet), so I had to either get store-bought smoked salmon -- an expensive and uninspired proposition -- or find an alternative. I got a small piece of tail-end salmon fillet from Citarella on Friday evening, and hoped 24 hours was enough time to cure it. Turns out it was perfect.

In days of yore, Scandanavian fishermen discovered how to preserve their catch of salmon by covering it with salt and burying it in the sands above the high-tide line. After a few days, it became gravad lachs: grave salmon. Today it is known as gravlax, and you no longer need a sandy shoreline in Sweden to make it -- a refrigerator and a two-pound sack of beans will do just fine. The raw salmon fillet is generously coated with a curing mixture of 2 parts salt, 1 part sugar, some herbs or spices (usually cracked pepper and chopped fresh dill), and a splash of booze -- I used a specialty akvavit I picked up on a trip to Copenhagen, but your favorite vodka or gin will work too. Wrap it in a porous material (cheesecloth is best; not having any handy I used parchement), place it in a roasting or baking pan in the fridge, and cover it with a 2-pound weight (you should put the weight on a plate or sheet pan to evenly distribute it over the whole fillet). Depending on the size of the fillet, you should have gravlax in anywhere from 24 to 72 hours. Just make sure to flip the fish over halfway through the curing process, and to periodically drain the liquid that is drawn out by the cure (the fillet will shrink by about 1/3 and become surprisingly firm due to water loss). Rinse the salmon thoroughly and pat it dry, and it's ready for slicing.

Gravlax should be sliced on a bias from head end to tail end to get long, thin slices that cut across the grain: the bias should be only slightly steeper than the natural taper of the fish's body from head to tail. To make Lisa's Valentine's Day appetizer, I shredded some russet potatoes in the Cuisinart, sautéed cakes of the shredded potato (seasoned with salt and pepper) in some clarified butter, and layered the finished cakes with slices of my homemade gravlax. I garnished the dish with salmon roe, fresh dill, and crème fraîche thinned out with a little lemon juice. Sappy as it may seem, I couldn't resist the temptation to use my heart-shaped cookie cutters on the one day of the year they would come in handy.

Posted by jeremy at 10:22 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

While your roast chicken is resting under a foil tent, you can -- and should -- make a quick gravy in the same pan the chicken was cooked in. The chemical reactions that occur during cooking - caramelization of the sugars from the vegetables and the Maillard reactions involving the proteins from the meat - will leave lots of crusty brown bits stuck to the bottom of your roasting pan. If you look at these bits as simply more work for the dishwasher, you are missing the entire point of roasting. These brown bits, diluted in a flavorful liquid which is then thickened with flour, will concentrate all the best flavors of the chicken and aromatics you just cooked in a savory gravy that is as good on starch as it is on the chicken itself. Ingredients can vary, but the important steps are fourfold:

1. Pour off the excess grease from the pan
   
2. Deglaze the pan by pouring in a cool liquid while the pan is still hot
   
3. Strain the liquid
   
4. Thicken with flour to create gravy
   

Within these steps are an infinite number of possible variations, most notably in the liquid (or liquids) you use as the base for your gravy. My favorite method runs as follows from the end of Thursday's chicken recipe:

1. Pour off the excess fat from the pan, without removing the vegetables, and reserve. Chop up the heart and the gizzard (removing the gristle from the gizzard first) into small pieces and add them, along with the neck, to the pan.
   
2. While the roasting pan is still hot, pour in 1 cup of dry white wine. It will bubble and hiss and make you think you've made a terrible mistake, but trust me, you're doing fine. With a wooden spoon, quickly scrape the bottom of the pan to loosen all the brown bits off and start dissolving them in the wine, which will settle down in a few seconds. Once you've scraped the bottom of the pan clean, put the roasting pan on a burner (yes, on the stove) and bring it to a boil. Reduce the wine until it is almost dry, then add two cups of chicken stock (homemade or from a can). Bring this again to a boil, stirring constantly.
   
3. Once the boil is reached, quickly strain the liquid through a fine-mesh strainer into a heat-proof container (a 2-cup pyrex measuring cup should be perfect if you properly reduced the wine). Do not press the solids into the strainer, simply tap or shake it to get all the liquid out.
   
4. Hopefully you have about 3 tablespoons of chicken fat and olive oil left over from step 1. If you don't, add melted butter to make up the difference. To this, add 3 tablespoons of flour and stir it thoroughly to create a lump-free slurry. Pour your strained liquid back into the roasting pan, put it on medium heat, and stir in your fat-flour slurry. Stir constantly as it slowly comes to a boil. The gravy is as thick as it is ever going to get once the boil is reached, and should be on the heat for at least three minutes from the time the slurry is added, to cook away the rawness of the flour. If you want you can strain it again, but if you made your slurry properly you shouldn't need to. Season it with salt and pepper to taste, and pour onto your chicken - which should by now be just ready to carve - or just about any starch - mashed potatoes are always a winner with a roast chicken.
   

Posted by jeremy at 10:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Perhaps owing to the fact that this blog began as the days were growing shorter and colder, I've written a lot about comfort foods. Chalk it up to light-deprivation if you will. Even though the days are getting longer now, New York has been pummelled by onslaughts of arctic wind over the past few weeks. The need for comfort food has not abated.

This week it was roast chicken. A good roast chicken is one of the easiest and most satisfying meals you can make yourself. When choosing a chicken, pay a little more for a better bird. Bell & Evans and Murray's are both quality birds you can find in a lot of supermarkets, they cook up juicier and with richer flavor than generic chickens. Small-farm organic chickens can be fantastic, but quality varies. Mass-produced birds from agribusiness outfits like Purdue and Tyson are cheap, but you get what you pay for; they tend to be waxy, bland, and overprocessed (do you really want to eat something prepared by these guys?). If you start with a good bird, you'll have a hard time screwing up this recipe. And the leftovers are great cold or reheated.

Recipe: Roasted Whole Chicken

Ingredients:

• 1 whole chicken, 3-4 lbs.
  
• 3 medium onions
  
• 5 medium carrots
  
• 3 celery stalks, with greens
  
• 5 medium cloves garlic
  
• 3 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
  
• 1 tbsp dried herbes de provence (a blend available in most spice sections)
  
• salt and fresh-ground black pepper
  

Preheat the oven to 425 degrees.

Coarsely chop the carrots and celery, quarter the onions, and roughly crush the garlic. Reserve.

If the giblets and neck are inside the cavity of the chicken, remove them. Rinse the chicken inside and out in cold water, and pat dry (again, inside and out) with paper towels. Cut out the wishbone by cutting around both sides of it with a paring knive and pulling it out with your fingers (this makes carving a lot easier).

Sprinkle the inside of the chicken generously with salt and pepper. Stuff the cavity with half an onion, all the garlic, and enough carrots and celery (in equal parts) to fill it up.

Truss the chicken. This step is often overlooked, but it ensures that the light and dark meat cook evenly, and helps the bird retain its juices. Cut a length of kitchen twine three to four times the length of the bird. Bend the wings back to tuck the third joint underneath the first joint. Place the bird breast-side up, neck facing away from you. Put the center of the twine under the triangular tail piece. Bring both ends around the outside of the ends of the drumstick, then bring them down on the insides of the drumsticks, criss-crossing them. Now bring each end of the twine around the side of the bird towards its neck, and pull tightly to bring the legs together. Bring the ends around the outside of the wings and tie them together at the neck, squeezing tightly to make the bird as compact as possible. Cut away any excess twine once you have a secure knot.

Rub the outside of the trussed bird with the olive oil, and sprinkle it with the herbs, about 1 tsp of salt, and a sprinkling of black pepper.

Pile the remaining vegetables into a roasting pan just large enough to hold the chicken, mounding them around the edges of the pan. Place the chicken, breast-side up, on top of the vegetables. Bake at 425 degrees for 60 to 80 minutes (if you still have the neck and giblets, add them to the pan after about 40 minutes, excluding the liver). To test whether the chicken is done, prick the thickest part of one thigh with a fork or skewer. The juices should be faintly rosy. If they are completely clear, your chicken is overdone.

Remove the pan from the oven, set the bird on a separate carving board, and loosely cover it with tin foil. It should rest for about ten minutes before you carve it. If you don't let it rest, the juices will spill out all over your carving board instead of staying in the meat where they belong. You can use this time to make a pan gravy. More on that tomorrow.

Posted by jeremy at 04:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Last night I discovered that Fairway will slice their Grade A Hudson Valley Foie Gras to order. Although several other gourmet grocers in the city carry foie gras, most of them will only sell it whole (although D'Artagnan will sell shrink-wrapped packs of two pre-cut slices). Where each whole foie weighs about a pound and a half, and costs around fifty bucks a pound, Fairway is the place to go if you want to try just a taste of this treat. But before I get ahead of myself, a few words about the controversy surrounding foie gras are in order.

Foie gras, French for "fat liver," is the liver of an engorged migratory waterfowl. In France mainly geese are used, in the United States ducks are prevalent. Over 4,000 years ago, the ancient Egyptians discovered that the livers of geese were fatter and tastier when they were about to migrate than at other times of the year. This is because the birds gorge themselves in the weeks prior to migration in order to store up enough energy for their long seasonal flight. This energy is generally stored in the animal's liver in the form of fat. In the wild, a migratory waterfowl's liver will double or triple in size through the self-gorging process. The Egyptians were the first to domesticate these birds and artificially fatten their livers by gorging them prior to slaughter.

The Egyptians passed on their knowledge to the ancient Romans, who took a liking to the fatty livers and began gorging geese on a diet of figs. This practice was brought to the province of Gaul, where it has been nurtured lo these many centuries. A few hundred years ago, with the discovery of the New World, corn replaced figs as the primary medium for fattening up the geese. Today in southwestern France, the current capital of foie gras culture, raising geese for their livers is a deeply-rooted tradition. Most families have a goose that the lady (or, if present, the grandmother) of the house is responsible for keeping and gorging with corn and table scraps, to make its liver ready for the Christmas and New Year's feasts. Today, the typical foie gras is 6-10 times the size of a normal liver, and is approximately 80% fat (roughly the same as whole butter).

For decades, owing to strict import restrictions, foie gras was available in this country only in preserved tins of mousse or terrine. Then in the 1980s, a pair of entrepreneurs established a farm in New York state for the cultivation, harvesting, and sale of foie gras from a hybrid duck breed, using a system first developed in Israel. The result was Hudson Valley Foie Gras, the first legal, fresh foie gras available in the United States. Today, Hudson Valley continues to be the primary - if not the only - supplier of fresh foie gras to the nation. Hence, the foie gras you find in your specialty grocer's meat case is the exact same product as is served in the country's finest restaurants.

So what's the problem? Well, the problem is that any argument against using animals for food is exponentially more persuasive in the case of foie gras. As PETA will be happy to tell you, the life of a bird destined to produce foie gras is not one that you or I would want to live. The birds are kept in small pens to limit their movement (and concomitant burning of food energy or risk of injury). Where the traditional method of gorging involved pouring food down the animal's throat through a funnel and sometimes tamping it into its stomach with a stick jammed down the esophagus, today a metal nozzle attached to a pressurized hose injects cornmeal mush down the gullets of hundreds of birds, seriatim. As with any factory farming operation, the animals become susceptible to injuries or diseases which often go untreated, and unsuitable animals are either allowed to die painful deaths or simply killed outright. Add to this the process of force-feeding, and the production of foie gras can easily appear to be a barbaric and inhumane enterprise.

There is evidence for the animal-rights position on foie gras in the nature of the product itself. Foie gras comes in three "grades" or levels of quality. A grade "A" foie gras looks like the picture above: smooth, creamy beige in color, and firm. Livers graded "B" and "C," on the other hand, are less highly prized because they are bruised, marred with blood, lacerated, or misshapen. Generally these defects are not the result of processing; they are injuries sustained by the animal in the last days of its life, either as a result of confinement or as a result of the gorging process, and likely caused the animal considerable pain.

On the other hand, there have been spirited defenses of foie gras production from its practitioners, who believe it is safe and humane, and who seem to deeply care for the well-being of their animals. And it must be stressed that gorging, while inherently repugnant to human beings, is a part of the natural life-cycle of these birds. Furthermore, they do not possess a gag reflex, and always swallow their food whole.

The arguments over foie gras have spilled out into the streets. Shortly after it began operations in the United States, Hudson Valley's farm was raided by New York state police at the instigation of PETA. The farm was initially shut down on charges of animal cruelty; these charges were eventually dropped and the record in the case sealed. More recently, animal rights activists have vandalized a California restaurant that serves foie gras, causing significant property damage and fear for the personal safety of the chef and his family.

So where do I come out on all this? As I've said before, it is hypocritical and dangerous to try to dissociate the idea of meat-eating from the idea of killing. The animal that gave forth the pristine boneless skinless chicken breast at your grocer or in your caesar salad probably had a pretty horrible life too. It was forcibly debeaked and declawed, held in pens where scuffles with other animals could injure or kill it, subjected to the rough handling of high-volume farming, and finally slaughtered with grotesque efficiency. There's no real way around it in the modern economy: all meat is cruel. Is foie gras any worse than assembly-line poultry, beef, or pork? Would it be more humane if it came from a bird that had been hand-gorged by a French grandmother than from a bird that was fed with a metal tube? Frankly, I don't see how. And I think this is where the animal rights argument breaks down for people who have faced what it means to eat meat and have decided to do it anyway.

I suppose I count myself among such people. And for me, a seven-dollar, 3/4-inch thick slice of foie gras from Fairway is about as good as it gets.

Recipe: Seared Foie Gras

Ingredients:

• One slice fresh, grade A foie gras (3/4 inches thick)
  
• Salt and fresh-ground white pepper
  
• 2 tbsp apricot jelly
  
• 1 tsp water
  

Using a sharp knife, score each side of the foie gras in a cross-hatch pattern, cutting about 1/8 inch deep. Dip the knife in warm water as necessary to prevent it from sticking. Season with salt and pepper on both sides.

Heat a non-stick pan on high heat. While the pan heats up, combine the jelly and water in a microwave-safe bowl, and microwave on high for 20 seconds. Stir until smooth.

When the pan is very hot, place the foie gras in it. Sear it for 15-20 seconds, or until well-browned, then turn over. After another 20-30 seconds, pour on the apricot glaze and immediately remove the foie gras and sauce to a warm plate. It is essential not to overcook this dish; foie gras is mostly fat and will melt completely away if cooked too long, and you want the slice to have a very rare center.

Serve with toasted brioche or baguette slices and a sweet wine such as Sauternes.

Posted by jeremy at 10:03 AM | Permalink | Comments (5)

The Internet appears to have penetrated the wilds of the New York Capital Region, allowing me to post from afar. So this is Christmas, and what have I done?

Christmas dinner was at Lisa's aunt's house this year, and Lisa's mom asked this morning if anybody wanted to make the stuffed mushrooms she was supposed to bring over. Having already opened all my presents, I volunteered. Recipe following.

Stuffed Mushrooms

Ingredients:

• 3 dozen large white button mushrooms
  
• 3/4 cup Italian seasoned breadcrumbs
  
• 4 strips bacon, cooked and chopped into small bits
  
• 1 tbsp minced garlic
  
• 3 tbsp olive oil
  
• 6 tbsp butter
  
• salt, pepper, and paprika
  

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Wash the mushrooms in cold water, and dry with a paper towel. Pull the stems out of the mushroom caps by wiggling them back and forth until they separate. Set the caps on a greased baking sheet, top sides down.

Finely chop the mushroom stems. In a skillet, heat the olive oil and 3 tbsp of the butter over medium-high heat. When hot, add the chopped mushroom stems and cook for 2-3 minutes.

When the mushrooms begin to exude water, add the breadcrumbs and garlic and stir thoroughly. If the mixture appears dry, add a bit more butter. Cook, stirring, for 2-3 more minutes, or until the garlic no longer smells raw. Add the bacon; season with salt and pepper to taste.

Spoon the stuffing mixture into the mushroom caps, packing it tightly and mounding it slightly over the top of the caps. Dab the top of each stuffed mushroom cap with a bit of the remaining butter, and sprinkle with paprika.

Place the mushroom caps in the oven for 10-15 minutes or until the mushroom caps begin to soften. When finished, serve immediately or store covered in the refrigerator until service. The mushrooms can be reheated in a 350 degree oven for 8-10 minutes, or until warmed through.

Posted by jeremy at 10:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

My cholesterol having plunged to dangerously low levels, last night I took it upon myself to self-medicate with a massive dose of animal fats. I stopped by Citarella on the way home to pick up one of their dry-aged steaks.

Dry aging is gross in theory, but there's no comparing a quality aged steak to a one that hasn't gone through the treatment. Basically, a whole side of beef (or a large primal cut like the short loin, where porterhouses come from) is stored in a temperature- and humidity-controlled environment for several weeks, where it essentially rots. Or at least the outside does. In the process, the water in the meat evaporates, concentrating the meat's beefy flavors and increasing its fat-to-lean ratio, while the natural enzymes in the meat break down its tough connective tissues, tenderizing it. The rotten edges are then trimmed away, and the beef is sawn into steaks.

Keep in mind, rot is a pejorative term not entirely apt for the process of dry-aging, which can be compared to the noble rot of grapes that yields stellar dessert wines. When the process is carefully controlled by someone who really understands it, the results are little short of miraculous.

Fairway and Citarella dry-age their own beef, which is just awesome. You pay through the nose for this service; a dry-aged USDA prime steak will cost about twice as much pound-for-pound as a non-aged USDA choice steak. But as an occasional indulgence, it's well worth it. Last night I went to Citarella and got a one-and-a-half pound porterhouse. Peter Luger would call this "Steak for Two", but I intended to dine alone.

There is perhaps no greater culinary sin than overcooking a dry-aged steak. Unfortunately, learning to cook a steak right takes practice. But practice can be had on less noble cuts of beef, until you're ready for the big time. Cooking directly over a flame is obviously the best way to go, but for those of us Manhattanites who had to kiss the charcoal grill goodbye when we signed our lease, the preparation below is a suitable alternative. It's an Americanized variation on bistecca alla Fiorentina, a huge porterhouse cut grilled by ingenious Tuscans over scorching hardwood fires with olive oil and herbs. I polished it off with an Oregon pinot noir, which was was pleasant but hopelessly outmatched by the food.

Recipe: Early Grave Porterhouse Steak

Ingredients:

• 1 dry-aged USDA prime porterhouse steak, at least 1-1/2 inches thick and preferably thicker, about 1-1/2 to 2-1/4 lbs., at room temperature
  
• 1 tsp. coarse sea salt
  
• 1/2 tsp. fresh cracked black pepper
  
• 5-6 cloves garlic
  
• 5-6 sprigs fresh rosemary
  
• 6 tbsp. butter, at room temperature
  

Preheat the oven to 450 degrees.

Season the steak agressively with the salt and pepper. Smash, peel and coarsely chop the garlic. Place an oven-safe pan large enough to hold the steak over high heat. When hot, add 2 tbsp. of the butter and, as soon as the butter is melted, the steak. It is important that these ingredients be at room temperature. If cold, the butter will begin to burn and blacken before it is fully melted, and the meat will take longer to cook; either of these circumstances will negatively affect your steak.

Sear the steak on one side for 1-2 minutes, until a dark brown crust forms. Flip the steak over, then add two more tbsp. of butter, half the garlic, and a couple sprigs of rosemary to the pan. Sear the second side for 2-3 minutes, or until the same brown crust has formed.

Place the remaining butter and garlic and two more sprigs of rosemary on top of the steak and place the whole pan into the oven. Experience will tell you when your steak is done, but it should not take more than 5-6 minutes. The meat should still be yielding when pressed, although it should spring back slightly. Remove the steak to a plate and let it rest (this is crucial) for 5-10 minutes. While the steak is resting, remove the cooked rosemary from the pan and pour the garlic and butter over the steak. Garnish with the remaining sprigs of rosemary.

Posted by jeremy at 10:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

There was a blizzard upstate this weekend. Having received advance warning that we would soon be snowed-in, Lisa and I picked up two bottles of red wine and a bottle of scotch, along with the ingredients for some of our favorite winter comfort foods - braised short ribs for me, macaroni and cheese for her. It was going to be a cozy weekend.

I've previously mentioned the spartan conditions in Lisa's kitchen. To make mac-n-cheese, we had to get her a cheese grater and a wire whisk. She's slowly building up a decent array of kitchenware she'll never use.

Knowing what I know about her stove, I probably should have thought twice before getting the all-stainless whisk. At one point I was whisking the bechamel for the mac-n-cheese, and reached to turn down the burner. Apparently the stainless steel whisk in my right hand, scraping against the bottom of a metal pot on the front heating coil, formed a complete circuit with the metal temperature knob in my left hand. Every muscle in my left arm convulsed like a jackhammer gone berserk, in time with the 60 Hz alternating current running through the electric range; the whisk was shaken violently from my grip and fell clattering to the floor. I'd never been electrocuted before this weekend, and having now had the experience I don't recommend it. I'm just grateful there was probably only enough current running through that stove to run a cheap clock radio. From now on Lisa gets only rubberized-grip kitchen utensils, and I use a dishcloth to adjust the heat on her stove.

After this near-death experience, a tall glass of Laphroaig settled my nerves enough to allow me to complete the meal. For the short ribs, I used the same loaf-pan-covered-with-aluminum-foil method I used to make the first meal I ever cooked for Lisa. I braised them in the remnants of the more disappointing of the red wines we'd bought the day before. As for the mac-n-cheese, I made enough to feed Lisa for the rest of the week. She may need it: she's on her way up to Albany today, and they've just gotten about a foot of snow.

Recipe: Macaroni and Cheese

Ingredients:

• 2 lbs. dry macaroni (elbows or shells)
  
• 1 qt. whole milk
  
• 6 tbsp. unsalted butter
  
• 4 tbsp. all-purpose flour
  
• 1/4 lb. gruyère cheese, grated
  
• 1/3 lb. aged cheddar cheese, grated
  
• 1/4 lb. parmesan cheese, grated
  
• 1/4 tsp. ground white pepper
  
• Pinch nutmeg
  

First, make a bechamel. In a heavy-bottomed saucepan, whisk together the flour and 4 tbsp. of the butter to form a roux. Stir constantly over medium-low heat for 4-5 minutes, but do not let the roux brown. Add 1/2 qt. of the milk and whisk thoroughly to remove lumps; raise heat to medium-high. As the sauce approaches the boil, add more cold milk. Repeat until all the milk has been added. Keep whisking until the sauce comes to a boil, then remove from heat. Stir in pepper and nutmeg, gruyère and cheddar.

Meanwhile, bring a pot of salted water to a boil and add the macaroni. Boil for 7-8 minutes, or until almost tender. Drain, and toss with half the bechamel. Pour into a large gratin dish or casserole, and pour remaining bechamel on top. Sprinkle with Parmesan and dot with remaining 2 tbsp. of butter. Place under a broiler for 3-5 minutes or until the top begins to brown. Remove and serve.

Makes 10-12 servings

Recipe: Short Ribs braised in Red Wine

Ingredients:

• 4-6 beef short ribs

• 1/2 bottle red wine

• 2 medium carrots
  
• 1 medium parsnip
  
• 1 small turnip
  
• 3 small celery stalks (from the heart, with greens if possible)
  
• 1 medium onion and/or white portion of one medium leek
  
• 2-3 medium cloves garlic

• 1 bay leaf
  
• 1 bunch parsley
  
• 1 sprig fresh thyme (or 1/4 tsp. dried)
  
• 4-6 black peppercorns
  
• 2-3 whole cloves

• 1/4 cup all-purpose flour
  
• 1/2 tsp. salt
  
• 1/4 tsp. ground black pepper
  
• 3 tbsp. clarified butter, or 2 tbsp. whole butter with 2 tbsp olive oil
  

Wash, peel, and coarsely chop the vegetables.

Sift together the flour, salt, and pepper, and dredge the short ribs. Place a pot just large enough to hold all the short ribs in one layer over high heat. Add the clarified butter, and when almost smoking add the short ribs meat-side down. Sear to a dark brown, then turn over. When dark brown on both sides, remove to a plate and hold. In the same pan, saute the vegetables, adding additional butter if necessary. Brown the vegetables slightly, then remove the pan from the heat. Layer the short ribs over the vegetables, add the herbs and spices, and pour in the red wine. Cover and place in a 300-degree oven for 3-4 hours.

Remove the short ribs from the braising liquid and place in a heavy-duty tupperware container. Strain the braising liquid and vegetables through a fine-mesh strainer over the short ribs (do not press the vegetables through), cover, and refrigerate overnight. The next day, remove the fat that has separated to the surface, reheat the short ribs slowly in the liquid (or shred the meat and reheat in the liquid), then remove the meat and reduce the braising liquid to 1/4 its original volume. Serve with mashed potatoes and steamed green vegetables (or, if you're in the mood, with mac-n-cheese).

Makes 2 servings

Posted by jeremy at 09:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I've never eaten cassoulet before, which perhaps makes me unqualified to make it, but I'm going to try anyway. Cassoulet is the signature dish of a broad swath of southwestern France, and has inspired fierce opinions, grand celebrations, and even macabre violence. For all this, nobody can say for sure what it really is. Julia Child offers at least four different variations for the dish. Escoffier can't even give a definitive answer -- ESCOFFIER, for crissakes -- he offers two completely different versions under the category of mutton entrees, one of which does not include mutton. The États Généraux de la Gastronomie Française says that in order to be called cassoulet, a dish must contain 30% meat -- they don't care whether you use pork, sausage, lamb, or confit of duck or goose -- and 70% "other" ingredients -- white beans, herbs, aromatics like garlic and onion, pork rind, and broth. Thanks a lot guys. You've been a big help.

Just about every city, town, village, hamlet, and household from the Pyrenees to Provence will claim the secret to "authentic" cassoulet, with Toulouse and Castelnaudary vying for top honors. Typically of the French, these endless and intense rivalries for worldwide gastronomic bragging rights all circulate over what is, at its essence, a peasant dish. Cassoulet generally includes the most unwanted scraps of meat (besides the offal) available; it is a hodgepodge of odds and ends. The confit of goose is the shell within which was once housed foie gras, perhaps the most famous product of the Medi-Pyrénées. The mutton is likely taken from a sheep that can no longer produce milk for the region's famous cheeses. The casserole is studded with the pink garlic that grows everywhere around Lautrec. And the whole is held together with the ultimate peasant staple, the white bean.

Of course, the French will tell you that only special varieties of lignot beans will do for a proper cassoulet, but that's just them getting all snooty about what is ultimately just leftover casserole. Julia says that the good old American Great Northern Bean is just fine -- and who am I to argue with Julia? I've assembled duck legs for confit, pork, lamb, and pork belly, as well as a couple pounds of beans. I even splurged on some ail rose de Lautrec at Fairway. I couldn't find a decent pork and garlic sausage, although I do have some merguez, the garlicky, gamey lamb sausage. I haven't decided yet whether to use it, or to try making my own pork sausage. Nor have I decided how many times I'll crack the gratinated crust that will (hopefully) form over my cassoulet while it cooks - seven or eight (the question has divided frenchmen for centuries). But that's all for tomorrow. Tonight, I've got to soak my beans and cook my meats. I'll also need to make a stock - I have some bones set aside for just this purpose. And I haven't even mentioned the four other courses I have planned. It's going to be a long haul to dinner tomorrow night. And miles to go before I sleep...

Posted by jeremy at 10:57 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Anniversaries and birthdays are really the only appropriate occasions for breakfast in bed. Which is unfortunate, because it's probably the second most enjoyable experience you can have in that particular part of the house.

Yesterday I made Lisa breakfast in bed for our anniversary. I'd been out shopping for ingredients the day before, so I didn't have to leave the house. Here's what was on the menu:

Brioche French Toast

Ingredients:

• 1 brioche loaf
  
• 3 eggs
  
• 1/3 cup milk
  
• 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
  
• 1 tbsp brandy or liqueur (I used Calvados; you can use cognac, amaretto, frangelico, or anything else that will give an added layer of flavor)
  
• pinch salt
  
• 1/8 tsp each: fresh-ground nutmeg, allspice, and cinnamon
  

Slice brioche loaf into slices one-and-a-half inches thick. Whisk together remaining ingredients. In a frying pan on medium heat, melt 1 tablespoon of butter. Dip the brioche slices into the batter quickly, twice on each side, and place in the pan. Cook on one side until golden brown, then flip. When browned on the other side, remove from pan. Reserve in oven on low heat (180 degrees) until ready to serve. Dust with powdered sugar and serve with hot maple syrup and bacon or sausage (Lisa got Applewood-Smoked Niman Ranch bacon and Citarella's chicken-apple sausage) To keep the bacon flat and make it crispy without burning it, cook it in a 325-degree oven on a wire rack over a roasting pan (to catch the drippings) for 20-30 minutes, turning once halfway through.

Seasonal Fruit Salad

November is a great time for seasonal produce, and this salad was a celebration of autumn fruits. I made Lisa a salad of pears, persimmon, and pomegranate. A few notes:

• Persimmons come in two varieties, the tall, bell-shaped American variety (called "Hachiya") and the squat, round Japanese variety (also known as "Fuyu"). I prefer the American variety, though it is a little less forgiving. Persimmons are not ripe until they are squishily soft, and when underripe they have the astringency of a cheap underaged red wine spiked with witch hazel. Keep them in a closed brown paper bag until they ripen; add a banana to the bag to speed the process. When ripe, cut off the top, cut out the core as you would a tomato or strawberry, and cut into longitudinal sections. Set the sections peel-side down on a cutting board, and run a sharp knife as close along the peel as you can to separate the flesh. The flesh remaining on the peel is a treat for the chef; you can scrape it off the peel with your teeth like you would an artichoke leaf. The flavor of persimmons is difficult to describe; it has a honeyed sweetness, floral aromas, and a hint of winter spice. The color is somewhere between salmon and coral.

• Pomegranates are easier than they look. Cut them in half through the blossom, and if necessary into quarters. Gently brushing the seeds with your fingertips should free them. Peel away the thin membranes as necessary to expose more seeds, and bend back the outer shell to loosen them. This can be messy, so you may want to wear an apron. The seeds add tartness, crunch, and a blood-red splash of color.

• Different pears are good for different things. For a fruit salad where the main body comes from the soft floral flesh of persimmon, I used a moderately firm-fleshed and mildly sweet Bartlett pear. Peel with a vegetable peeler, core and cut into chunks. Because the peeled flesh will brown quickly, give it a squirt of citrus juice to keep it from oxidizing. I tossed in a few tangerine segments, but you could use a bit of lemon, orange, or grapefruit juice.

I garnished this salad with a few leaves of Thai basil from my kitchen-counter herb garden. It did not require any sugar.

Champagne Cocktails

Weekend brunches aren't complete without a bubbly beverage. I made us two different cocktails; a classic Bellini and a blood-orange Mimosa. Both were made with nonvintage Veuve Cliquot Ponsardin, my favorite all-purpose Champagne. For the bellini, I used Looza peach nectar, and for the mimosa, I used fresh-squeezed blood orange juice from Citarella. To assemble the cocktail, fill a champagne flute 1/3 full with fruit juice, then add champagne to the 2/3 mark, and top with a splash more of the fruit juice. Make sure all the ingredients are chilled before mixing.

Posted by jeremy at 02:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Two years ago I put the family turkey in brine on the afternoon before Thanksgiving. After a 20-hour soak, it roasted up juicier and tastier than any turkey we'd ever had before. I was hooked from then on, and when I got my first wild turkey this weekend, there was never any question whether I'd brine it.

Hmm. I probably should have accounted for the weight difference between the 22-pound behemoth I made two years ago and the six-pounder I brought back from Rhinebeck. The latter bird probably didn't require a 24-hour pickling.

So yeah, my turkey came out a little salty. Still very tasty, though. And I am still a firm believer in brining; I just need to get a better feel for how long it takes. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Brining is a great way to infuse flavor and moisture where it is absent - for example, in your garden variety turkey breast. Commercial producers have been wise to this for years; lots of turkeys are injected with a salt-sugar solution. So is Armour's "Always Tender" brand of pork, from which the natural flavor, moisture, and tenderness has been bred out over the decades-long quest for yet another white meat: for every pound of "Always Tender" pork you buy, you're getting about an ounce and a half of brine.

The basic ratios of a brine can be adjusted to taste, but a general guideline is 1 pound of salt to a half pound of sugar to four gallons of water. It is very important to go by weights here, because the weight of granulated ingredients (like salt and sugar) depends entirely on the size of the grains (or, more accurately, the amount of empty space between the grains). Table salt grains are a little smaller than sugar crystals, so a pound of table salt takes up a bit less space than a pound of granulated white sugar (about 1/4 cup less). A pound of kosher salt, on the other hand, will take up about twice as much space as a pound of table salt. If you simply must go by volume, a cup of granulated sugar weighs about 0.4 pounds; you can figure out the rest.

A brine can - and should - be more than just salt and sugar, though; it's a vehicle to infuse the meat of the bird with flavor. Herbs, spices, and alcohols (with attendant acidity) are all typical. For my wild turkey, I went with flavors typically associated with game: cloves, juniper berries, allspice, sage, thyme, bay leaf, and peppercorns. I even added a splash of cider vinegar and bourbon. To make a brine, boil the salt, sugar, and spices in half the volume of water you'll need. Hold the remainder of the required volume of water aside in the form of ice water. Once the brine reaches a boil, simmer it for a few minutes, then take it off the heat and stir in the ice water. You MUST NOT put the bird in the brine until the latter is cold; if you do you're inviting a nasty food-borne illness to the table. If the ice water doesn't cool the brine enough, stick it in the fridge.

Before putting my wild turkey in the brine, I had to clean it. Even your most processed domestic turkey will have a few hairs in its nooks and crannies. With wild turkeys it's a little different, though. Wild turkeys have dark black feathers, and these feathers have a pigment in their roots. So even after I pulled the hairs out, there was often a little inky glob of goop trapped under the skin, which I had to extract using the zit-popping skills I developed as a teenager. Pretty gross the first time I did it, but after that it wasn't so bad.

So after a (too lengthy) soak in the brine, I took out my wild turkey and rinsed it thoroughly, inside and out. Dried it with a paper towel, brushed it all over with melted butter, and stuck it in the oven. High heat (450 degrees) for 20 minutes to crisp the skin, then low heat (325 degrees) to cook it through. The whole thing was done in just over an hour.

Incidentally, your turkey is done when it reaches the right temperature, not after a certain number of minutes per pound have elapsed. A meat thermometer inserted into the thickest part of the thigh should read about 155 degrees. Carry-over cooking (the additional cooking that takes place due to latent heat after the food is removed from the oven) will bring the temperature to 160 degrees, at which point the turkey will be fully cooked but still tender and juicy. Breast meat cooks faster than leg meat, and does not need to be cooked to as high a temperature (155 degrees or so will do), so you may want to measure the temperature of the breast meat separately and cover it with aluminum foil for part of the cooking process. Some chefs even remove the breast and cook it separately, although this pretty much ruins the presentational impact of a huge bird on a platter. Pay no attention to the USDA; their 180-degree mandate is as certain to make your turkey taste like tree bark as it is to kill any disease-causing bacteria, and the chances of contracting a food-borne illness from a properly handled and prepared turkey cooked to 160 degrees is infinitesimal. If you don't have a meat thermometer, you can just poke the thickest part of the thigh with a skewer; the juices will still be faintly rosy when the turkey is ready.

I guess if I had to describe the flavor of wild turkey, I'd say it's basically the same as domestic turkey, just with more turkey-ness. That is, those qualities of flavor that distinguish turkey breast from chicken breast, and dark turkey meat from white turkey meat, are more prominent in a wild turkey. It's a gamey flavor with hints of wild herbs, wood, and straw. I don't know that it's really worth the extra money I paid for it. Certainly not after I loaded it with salt. The difference between my wild turkey and a properly prepared, good quality domestic turkey is really more one of degree than of kind, notwithstanding my diatribe of yesterday.

Posted by jeremy at 07:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

It's that time of year again. Lisa came to see me this weekend with a cold, poor thing. Of course, that means I now have a cold. Add to that the recent monsoon, the four vials of blood I'm missing since my doctor's appointment yesterday, and the flu shot I'm getting this morning, I can pretty much count on feeling like ass for the rest of the week. I've been popping zinc and sudafed and aspirin like tic tacs, and washing it all down with quart after quart of orange juice. But at times like these, every son of a Jewish mother knows that the best medicine is a big bowl of homemade chicken soup. Here are a couple recipes for a week's worth of soup, the first for colds without tummyaches, the second for colds with tummyaches. Now eat up, darling.

Recipe: Roasted Chicken and Garlic Soup

Ingredients:
1 whole chicken
9-12 cloves garlic (unpeeled)
3 medium carrots
3 stalks celery
1 medium sized turnip
1 medium sized parsnip
3 medium sized yellow onions
1 sprig rosemary
4-6 sprigs flat parsley
3 sprigs thyme
1 small bunch sage
1 bay leaf
1 small bunch fresh celery greens (from the ends of the center stalks)
8 black peppercorns
3 whole cloves
Kosher salt and fresh-ground black pepepr as needed
Extra virgin olive oil

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Rinse the chicken and cut it up the chicken into pieces, reserving the back and the neck. Season the back and the neck with salt and pepper and place on one side of a roasting pan. Toss the garlic, unpeeled, in some olive oil and sprinkle with salt and pepper, and place in the other side of the roasting pan. Roast at 350 degrees until bones are browned and garlic is soft, about 30 minutes.

Meanwhile, season remaining chicken pieces with salt and pepper. In a 12-quart stockpot, heat 3-4 tablespoons of olive oil over high heat until almost smoking. Place chicken pieces skin-side down in pot and leave them there until the skin is fairly dark brown, about 5-8 minutes (you will have to do this in batches; just remove the already-browned pieces to a plate while you brown the remaining pieces).

Tie the parsley, sage, rosemary, thyme, celery greens, peppercorns, cloves, and bay leaf into a sachet d'epices. (This is just a "bag of spices," and could be some leek greens wrapped around the spices and herbs, tied up with twine, or a pouch of cheesecloth also tied up with twine. If you lack any of these, you can always toss the herbs and spices straight into the soup, but it's impossible to get them out later, so you're liable to crunch down on a peppercorn or get a woody thyme stem stuck between your teeth.) Peel and coarsely chop the carrots, parsnip, and turnip; chop the celery and peel and quarter the onions.

When all the chicken is browned, pour off the oil in the stockpot (reserving the brown bits in the bottom of the pot, unless they have turned black, in which case you should rinse out the pot). Peel the garlic by pulling apart the peel, which should now be brittle and separated from the meat of the clove, or by squeezing the cloves and scraping out the meat with a knife (take care not to mix in any bits of the peel). Place all the ingredients in the pot (with the neck and back on top) and fill with cold water, making sure not to fill all the way to the top (to avoid boiling over). Place on medium-high heat, uncovered, until the soup comes to a boil. Once the boil is reached, partially cover the pot and reduce heat to a simmer. Simmer for 1-2 hours. Remove sachet d'epices, back, and neck (which can be nibbled on but will break into a million tiny bones under pressure from a soup spoon). Season with salt and pepper to taste.

Serve immediately, or let cool to room temperature covered before transferring to tupperware for refrigeration.

Recipe: Old Fashioned Chicken Soup

Ingredients:
1 whole chicken
3 medium carrots
3 medium sized yellow onions
3 stalks celery
4-6 sprigs flat parsley
3 sprigs thyme
1 small bunch fresh dill
1 bay leaf
1 small bunch fresh celery greens (from the ends of the center stalks)
8 black peppercorns
3 whole cloves
kosher salt and fresh-ground black pepepr as needed

Rinse the chicken and season it inside and out with salt and pepper. Place in a 12-quart stock pot and fill with cold water to the ten-quart mark. Bring to a boil, uncovered.

Meanwhile, peel the carrots and chop coarsely. Peel the onions and cut into quarters. Chop the celery coarsely. Tie the parsley, thyme, dill, bay leaf, celery greens, peppercorns, and cloves into a sachet d'epices (see above). When the pot starts to boil, reduce to a simmer and add vegetables and the sachet d'epices. Cook, partially covered, 2 to 3 hours. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

Serve immediately, or let cool to room temperature covered before transferring to tupperware for refrigeration.

Posted by jeremy at 10:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Another recruiting lunch at another neighborhood Italian today. The restaurant shall go nameless here, because I'm only interested in one item on their menu: "cantucci e vin santo." When I went to Florence for the first time a year ago, I ended almost every meal there with the classic Tuscan dessert of cantuccini con vin santo. And I have to quibble with this restaurant's interpretation of one of my favorite after-meal indulgences.

Vin santo - or "holy wine" - is a magnificent dessert wine made in the chianti region of Italy. Like most great dessert wines, it gets its sweetness from a beneficial mold known as the "noble rot," which dries and shrivels wine grapes on the vine, concentrating their sugar content so that the wine they yield is sweet and robust, if limited in quantity (it's said that a single glass of Chateau d'Yquem, the world's most famous Sauternes, requires an entire vine's worth of grapes). The best vin santos I've tried combine the honeyed sweetness of Sauternes with the heady aromas of sweet sherry and the warm, full body of tawny port. In short, it's like having all my favorite sweet spirits in a single glass.

The classic accompaniment for vin santo are the little almond cookies from Prato known as cantuccini. Cantuccini are literally "little cantucci," and cantucci are variations on the classic but often underappreciated Italian cookies, biscotti. The word "biscotti" means twice-cooked, a reference to the two-step baking process that leaves the cookies dry and hard. Cantucci and cantuccini, being loaded with egg yolks, are so hard when dry that you could crack your teeth on them. This makes them a perfect vehicle for the vin santo, with which they enjoy a symbiotic relationship. The cookies are dipped into the vin santo (traditionally served in a small tumbler rather than a stemware glass), which softens them and infuses them with its unique perfume and the warmth of its alcohol. When the cookies are gone, a few crumbs settled at the bottom of the glass lend a gentle almond note to the remaining wine, which can be sipped like any other digestif.

So what's my beef with the "cantucci e vin santo" I had today? I have no quarrel with the vin santo; even mediocre vin santo is still a rare pleasure. No, I'm more concerned with the cookies that were being passed off for cantucci. Half of the cookies were beige, Starbucksesque biscotti, the other half were butter cookies with pine nuts - not biscotti at all, and certainly not cantucci. I've played around with a few recipes I found on the Internet - in English, Italian, and German - and amalgamated them into one that I prefer for making my own cantuccini. Kept in an airtight container, they keep for weeks or even months (there being little to no water in them, there is no medium for harmful organisms to grow in). In a pinch, however, I've been known to pick up a bag of cantuccini from one of my favorite specialty markets; the brand that tastes most authentic to me comes in a white mylar bag with a picture of the cookies on the front and red cursive lettering reading "cantuccini" above the picture.

Recipe: Cantuccini

Ingredients:
500g all-purpose white flour
400g granulated sugar
250g whole, peeled almonds
3 eggs
3 egg yolks
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 tsp amaretto
1/4 tsp salt
small pinch saffron

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. In a large mixing bowl, combine 2 of the eggs and all of the egg yolks with the vanilla, amaretto, salt, and saffron, and beat thoroughly. Add 350g of the sugar and whisk until fully incorporated. Sift together flour and baking powder, and add in stages to mixing bowl, stirring to incorporate until you have a sticky but firm dough. Stir in the almonds until evenly distributed in the dough. Set aside to rest.

Line a baking sheet with a Silpat or greased parchment paper. Divide the dough into two portions, and form each into a baguette-shaped loaf three to four inches wide on the baking sheet. Bake at 350 degrees for about 20 minutes, or until outside is hard and beginning to brown. Meanwhile, beat the remaining egg with a few drops of water. Remove the loaves from the oven, brush them with the egg wash and sprinkle them with the remaining sugar. Cut them into diagonal slices about 3/4 inch thick, space them out on the baking sheet, and return the sheet to the oven for 10 more minutes or until completely dry and golden brown at the edges. Cool completely on a rack before storing in an airtight container.

Alternative flavorings for the cantuccini include cinnamon, cardamom, nutmeg, and citrus zest, but I find that amarreto and saffron remind me most of the cookies I had in Florence. If you don't have a scale to measure the dry ingredients, you should (a) get a scale for measuring ingredients for baking, since it's the only way to be accurate, or (b) approximate using standard volume-to-weight conversion ratios.

Posted by jeremy at 08:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)