A Baking Life

i can't do it

2012-01-27T08:11:00.000-05:00

I can't put up text in this space without giving you a visual, too. Even if the two are wholly unrelated.

So here, have some tomatoes. And then you can go read about my morning.

treasure all the more

2012-01-27T07:42:00.000-05:00

It's still dark at 6am. Most days it is, anyway. Today, though, there is a soft light, coming from both above and below, a glow that fills the dark air. White-blue, it feels equal parts magical and softly comforting, a light that hints of cocooning and transformation.

It's a snow day.

Last year was a very snowy winter around these parts. Kalen wasn't in school yet, so snow days weren't part of our family language, but statewide, enough days of school were missed that it became a common topic of conversation, part of the small talk at the gas station and post office and grocery store, even (insomuch as it affected municipal budgets) making it onto the local news.

At our house, it meant I had a lot of shoveling to do. For a while it seemed as if every other night, after dinner, I was out clearing the new pile of snow at the foot of our driveway left behind by the snowplow's incessant pass-bys, so that Josh could pull in when he got home.

I like to shovel. I didn't mind. (Although it became harder and harder to toss the snow onto piles that were approaching five feet tall.)

This year, though?

The ground was bare when we went to bed last night. I've only shoveled once, and that was mostly for kicks - the inch of light, fluffy snow was definitely not in anyone's way. We've had only two storms move through that left a layer of white on the ground, and each time I rushed the boys out to play in it, knowing that it was a fleeting opportunity. Soon, the air would warm, the rain would come, and the snow would be gone.

It's like we're having a Seattle winter this year.

And again today. It's not 6am any more. Closing in on 7:00, I can hear the boys stirring and beginning to chat across their bedroom. They will want to make a snow fort, or maybe a snow whale. I will need to hurry them out once again, because the air has already changed. Looking out the window as the glow fades to dawn, past the bird feeder that the cardinals take possession of in the early hours, I notice that the snow on my car has cracks in in, where it is shifting and clumping together. The precious white covering the yard is quickly loosing the smoothness of its youth, becoming pockmarked and dimpled as it ages into slush. Closer to me, the precipitation that is blowing against the window has become audible. A clickety-tapping sound that reminds me of sparkles. Icy sleet.

It's warming up. The radar says the rain is almost here. Maybe if we hurry we can get in one good snowball fight before breakfast.

These snow day windows of opportunity sure do slam shut quickly this year. Which makes me treasure all the more the times we manage to slip through them, just in time.

one I plan on keeping

2012-01-06T21:50:00.000-05:00

I didn't resolve anything for 2012.

I considered it for about half a minute. I thought about my resolution track record, trying to remember what I'd been determined I should or shouldn't do in past years. But I couldn't remember any of it.

And the more I thought about it, the more I realized that, even when I have made New Year's resolutions, they have always been half-hearted, done because this is what people do, not because I actually cared about them.

Naturally, I can't remember ever accomplishing a New Year's resolution. Or feeling all that guilty about my slacking, either.

Here's the thing: my life doesn't shift at the stroke of midnight on December 31st of each year. The old year's projects and goals are never wrapped up neatly, ready to step aside for the blank slate of the new year. Fresh starts rarely correspond to January 1st in my life. And in who's life could they possibly?

Life is messy, life is jumbled, and life has no concept of the Gregorian calendar. Personal challenges come at me at all times of the year, requiring just the sort of self-awareness, concentration, and resolve that many view as the siren call of early January. And so, if in October I suddenly find myself deep in self-reflection, identifying problematic areas that need my attention, my intentions to work constructively on those issues feel far more valid, more genuine (and more likely to be accomplished) than any reluctant attempt I might cobble together in order to join the New Year's resolution party.

So there you have it. Apparently I'm a year-round resolutions gal, one who never actually uses the term 'resolution.' But self-improvement and growth are always welcome (if not necessarily with open arms), and seem at times to be a near-constant presence in my life. So what does this mean for me? A more relaxed January, for one thing, free of the pressure to change. But also a lovely, more organic sense of time, ebbing and flowing without hard stops and starts. An outlook that allows next month to be anticipated just as eagerly as next year, since they're all blank slates when you think about it. And a commitment to tackle problems now, as they arise, instead of waiting for the right or more convenient time.

Which is why, in early December, I stopped putting sugar in my coffee.

A few weeks earlier, as part of my first annual exam with a new doctor, I'd had blood drawn to "establish baseline numbers" for things like cholesterol and blood sugar, to compare against as I get older. (Yes, I was slightly miffed to be told I'm old enough to have to start worrying about those things. Turns out I should have been miffed that I hadn't been tested sooner.)

My blood sugar registered just high enough to be considered prediabetic.

Prediabetic! I was shocked, as was my doctor. I don't have any risk factors for diabetes! Except, perhaps, for a genetic tendency to have blood sugar problems in spite of a lack of obvious lifestyle risk factors, a tendency that seems to run through my father's side of the family.

Upon hearing the news, I freaked out, naturally. I vowed never to touch sugar again. I turned a blind eye to all the baking and recipe testing I'd been doing (the shortbread for the Ratio Rally, the gingerbread cookies for Williams-Sonoma's blog, the roasted pear and sweet chevre custard for 40 Paper). I began researching all the lifestyle changes a diabetes diagnosis requires, getting ready for a huge switch.

Except that . . . in all the commotion of my panic attack, I forgot that I hadn't actually been diagnosed with diabetes, and that my blood sugar numbers were low enough that my doctor was only mildly concerned. I think her exact, gentle advice was to try to increase my daily activity and eat less refined carbs, and we'd check it again later. No major lifestyle changes required right now. I calmed down and eased up on myself a little.

But still, I've dropped the sugar from my coffee in favor of honey (which I like the flavor of so much more), and went ahead and gave up my beloved morning French press for an Americano, after reading that caffeine can negatively affect blood sugar (espresso being lower in caffeine, since it's in contact with the coffee grounds for a much shorter time). I ate very few treats over the holidays, giving away much of the chocolate and cookies and candy that made it into our house. I'm making a concerted effort to add more low-glycemic foods to our already-healthy eating habits, despite the kids' near-constant requests for pasta. And I'm working on the increased activity part (realizing, finally, that being on my feet all day and chasing after my kids doesn't cut it as exercise).

It almost sounds like I made a resolution, doesn't it? Somehow, with the slight timing difference and health scare aspect of it, it doesn't feel like a New Year's one to me, and I'm adamant about not calling it a resolution, but it's certainly a commitment to change. And one I plan on keeping.

Interestingly, it doesn't (yet) feel all that hard to me. I think living gluten-free helps. Having been told many years ago that celiac disease requires you to permanently change what you eat encourages an attitude of more easily accepting that your eating habits need to reflect what your body does and does not need. No gluten? No big deal, there's plenty else to eat. So now, if my body needs me to stick to blood sugar-friendly foods, well then, that's just what I'll do. I've still got plenty of options, and the kitchen knowledge to make whatever I might be craving.

Except for . . . the cheating. With celiac, cheating isn't an issue. You simply don't do it. But the idea of suddenly (cold turkey, if you will) giving up all refined sugar and all starchy, carbohydrate-heavy foods doesn't sit well with me. I've always believed in the merits of eating everything in moderation, and now is no different. So I'm bucking pretty hard against the notion that I need to avoid sweet potatoes, and corn tortillas, and bananas. (And what about chocolate???) I love them. I consider them healthy. And I can't give them up. But with moderation, and creative food pairings, I think I'll be okay.

In this spirit of being gentle to both myself and my expectations of myself, I made this Thai-inspired dinner the other night. The peanut sauce is delicious and versatile, and the dish is full of lean protein, but embarrassingly few vegetables make an appearance, and certainly the rice sticks are not on the "good" list of low-glycemic foods. I'm okay with that. We rarely eat rice sticks. We eat vegetables all the time. And sometimes, you just have to give in to your cravings.

Which might be another good New Year's non-resolution.

Chicken and Pork with Thai Peanut Sauce and Rice Sticks
Yields 4 servings

For the sauce:
6 tablespoons natural crunchy peanut butter
3 tablespoons fresh lime juice (about ½ a lime's worth)
2 tablespoons gluten-free tamari
2 tablespoons cold water
1 tablespoon honey
1 tablespoon chopped cilantro
2 large cloves garlic, chopped
1 teaspoon chili garlic sauce (we like Huy Fong brand, adjust amount according to preference)
½ teaspoon fish sauce
½ teaspoon sesame oil

For the rest of the dish:
¼ red onion, finely diced, divided
½ pound ground pork
2 chicken thighs, deboned and the meat coarsely chopped
½ package (about 4 ounces) rice sticks, softened in boiling water
4 tablespoons peanut oil, for sautéing
lots of fresh basil, coarsely torn, for garnishing
lime wedges, for garnishing

Make the sauce:
Combine all sauce ingredients in a food processor or blender and process until combined. More water can be added to adjust consistency. Set aside.

Finish the dish:
In a large skillet, heat the peanut oil over medium-high heat until it begins to shimmer. Add half of the diced onion to the pan (reserving the rest for garnishing), and sauté until it softens. Add the chopped chicken and ground pork to the pan, season with kosher salt, and cook until the meat is cooked through. Off the heat, stir in one third of the peanut sauce.

Drain the rice sticks and thoroughly toss them with one third of the peanut sauce. Divide among four bowls, top with cooked meat and garnish with remaining diced onion, torn basil leaves, lime wedges, and remaining peanut sauce.

weekend breakfast::at home

2011-12-10T16:20:00.000-05:00

::The night before, par-bake your favorite pizza crust.

::Next morning, preheat the oven as hot as it will go.

::Top the crust with your favorite breakfast items and bake it until everything is cooked to your liking.

::(Decide that next time, you should probably crack the raw eggs directly onto the crust.)

::Serve with hot coffee, grated Parmesan, and maybe even some sriracha.

::Breakfast pizza. A civilized way to start your day, despite the kids fighting in the background, the dog barking in the yard, and the cold wind whipping around your house.

gluten-free ratio rally confessions

2011-12-07T08:00:00.004-05:00

Maybe it's just me, but sometimes these Ratio Rally posts have a bit of a confessional air about them.

This is not a bad thing. It's nice, as a baker, to read about your peer's slip-ups in the kitchen, the flavor combinations that they thought would work but flopped, the recipes that they'd never before tackled for fear they'd be too advanced, or even the everyday challenges posed by equipment failure or last-minute ingredient substitutions. Knowing that others have had to deal with some of the same problems I've encountered during my baking career? It makes everyone seem that much more authentic, relatable, human.

It also brings into focus the "Rally" part of this endeavor. It's not merely about the rush and enthusiasm of everyone posting about the same topic on the same day. It's about reaching out to each other, and all of you, to share knowledge, swap stories, and expand our culinary repertoire through collaboration. It's a group effort, for sure.

I was reminded of this late last week, as I was throwing away an entire batch of black walnut shortbread.

Yes, a whole batch, trashed. I never do that. I can't bear to throw away food - it goes against all my sensibilities. And to be honest, rarely do I make anything that is so bad as to be unpalatable. Even if it's not great, we'll still eat it.

But man oh man, were those cookies bad. It all started with the walnuts.

I get crazy ideas sometimes. Randomly, I'll remember hearing or reading about some food or ingredient that I've never tried, never even seen, maybe, and I'll decide then and there that not only do I need to track some down immediately, but that I'm going to love it unconditionally, and will soon be trumpeting it's virtues to anyone who will listen. So it was with the black walnuts.

Everything I'd read made them out to be a gourmet delight, much better than conventional, English walnuts, and worth the splurge. So I splurged, and spent a lot of money on a tiny little bag of nuts, took it home and opened it, and . . .

Ewww. What's that smell? Have they gone bad? The expiration date's months away! But there's a sweet, almost alcoholic air coming from those nuts. Do nuts ferment? A taste reveals no answers, only more questions. Why are they so . . . funky? Is that really a trace of blue cheese under all those dusty, sweetly-stale layers?

Fortunately, I'd bought two bags (assuming, of course, that I would love them so much that I might need to start stockpiling them), so out came specimen number two. Also fermented-scented and weird. Why my red flags weren't waving wildly in my face, I don't know. But I kept going.

Convinced that all those online resources couldn't be wrong about the luxurious gourmet-ness of black walnuts, I toasted some, ground them up, and mixed them into a standard shortbread recipe.

While baking, the magic of butter and sugar managed to muffle any off-scents the walnuts were emitting, and I was genuinely looking forward to trying the cookies. I broke off pieces for myself and Josh, and took a bite. I immediately knew it wasn't right, but I didn't really have more than a split second to think about why before my attention was drawn to what Josh was doing. What Josh's face was doing, more specifically.

It had gone into convulsions. His mouth was twisting side to side in a truly unnatural way. His eyes were scrunched up, practically closed, and his cheeks were sucked in, even as his tongue made acrobatic tumbles in and out of his mouth.

He was, to put it mildly, in the throes of the most vile flavor he'd ever eaten.

Let me tell you, it doesn't feel good to know that you made a cookie that caused your husband to gag and choke and make references to all the disgusting, nasty things you're never supposed to write about on a food blog. Not good at all.

Clearly, there was no room for discussion, no nuanced debate over this cookie's traits. It needed to leave our kitchen now.

Stupefied (and chagrined), I took to Facebook the next day, wondering what others knew about black walnuts. Turns out, many people don't like them. "Odd," "vile," and "funky" were all mentioned. Huh. I started to feel a little bit better. It wasn't completely my fault that Josh had to wash his mouth out; black walnuts have a very peculiar flavor, and it seems they're one of those love-it-or-hate-it things. I wish I had known this earlier. (Our unscientific tests point to a heavy "hate it" trend, as everyone at the restaurant was also revolted by the nuts. We even ordered a box of them from one of our suppliers, just in case the grocery store inventory really was spoiled, and the response was the same. Maybe they're not so luxurious after all.)

However, I couldn't just chalk the loss up to experience and walk away. I needed walnut shortbread. I needed it for the restaurant, for a new dessert I'm developing, and I needed it for the Ratio Rally, which is all about cookies this month. I needed to make this work.

Luckily, all it took was using regular walnuts in the recipe. I'm normally not a big fan of walnuts; hence my excitement over a "gourmet" walnut that promised a different taste. But between toasting the nuts and using a high-quality butter, plus the addition of a hint of cardamom, the bitter, dry flavor I always associate with walnuts was nowhere to be found in these cookies.

And aside from teaching me that some foods are best left untouched, my failed batch of shortbread reminded me of a little baking trick, one of those things I seem to periodically remember and then forget again. When I had tried the black walnut shortbread, before being overcome by the awful flavor, I had noticed that the texture was just a bit too dry, too crumbly. (Even for shortbread, which is supposed to be a light, crumbly cookie.) I didn't want to tinker with the ratio by adding more butter, so I fixed the texture problem with an egg yolk. A hard-cooked, sieved egg yolk, to be precise.

Adding a hard-cooked egg yolk that has been pushed through a fine mesh strainer adds just enough protein and fat to the cookie dough that it becomes enriched in an almost imperceptible way. The flavor is still delicate and buttery, the texture crumbly and melt-in-your-mouth, but it holds together just a bit better, and feels just a bit softer on the tongue. It's a little bit of magic, taking an almost-there cookie to perfect.

Thank you so much to the lovely Caroline of The G-Spot Revolution for hosting this month. And please be sure to follow the links to all of the Rally-er's delicious posts. With so many incredible options at your fingertips, your holiday cookie planning can stop right here!

Amanda | Gluten Free Maui | Simple Shortbread
Amie Valpone | The Healthy Apple | Grapefruit Sugar Cookies
Brooke | B & the boy! | Candy Cane Shortbread
Caleigh | Gluten Free[k] | Mulled Spice Cookies
Caneel | Mama Me Gluten Free | Cardamom Date Cookies
charissa | zest bakery | Coconut Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies
Caroline | The G-Spot | Double Chocolate Chip Peppermint Cookies
Claire | Gluten Freedom | Chai Latte Cashew Cookies
Erin | The Sensitive Epicure | Spritz Cookies with Jam
gretchen | kumquat | Classic Sugar Cookies
Irvin | Eat the Love | Apple Brown Butter Bay Leaf Spice Cookies
Jean | Gluten Free Doctor Recipes | Reindeer Cookies
Jenn | Jenn Cuisine | Basler Brunsli
Jonathan| The Canary Files | Vegan Salted Oatmeal Cherry Cookies
Karen | Cooking Gluten Free! | Mexican Wedding Cakes
Lisa from Gluten Free Canteen | Molasses Rum Raisin Cookies
Mary Fran | frannycakes | Pinwheel Cookies
Meaghan | The Wicked Good Vegan | Vegan Chocolate Chip Cookies
Meredith | Gluten Free Betty | Chocolate Peppermint Cookies
Morri | Meals With Morri| Stevia Sweetened & Grain-Free Thumbprint Cookies with Apricot Preserves
Pete & Kelli | No Gluten, No Problem| Belgian Speculaas Cookies
Rachel | The Crispy Cook | Melomakarona
Shauna | Gluten-Free Girl | Soft Molasses Cookies
Silvana Nardone | Silvana's Kitchen | Old-School Italian Jam-Filled Hazelnut Cookies
T.R. | No One Likes Crumbley Cookies | Cinnamon Lemon Cookies

Walnut Shortbread
Yields one 8-inch round shortbread; recipe can be doubled or tripled

The ratio for this recipe is roughly 3 flour: 2 fat: 1 sugar (The ground nuts are included as part of the 'flour' in this ratio.)

22 grams raw walnuts, toasted in a 325ºF oven for 8-10 minutes or until fragrant, and cooled
1 Tbsp granulated sugar
121 grams Tara's gluten-free pastry flour
½ tsp xanthan gum or psyllium husk powder
½ tsp cardamom
113 grams (1 stick) best-quality unsalted butter, room temperature
52 grams confectioner's sugar, sifted
½ tsp vanilla extract
¼ tsp fine sea salt
1 hard-cooked egg yolk from 1 large egg, pressed through a fine mesh sieve
Granulated sugar, for sprinkling

Preheat the oven to 325ºF. Have ready an eight-inch tart pan, or other appropriately-sized baking pan.

In a small food processor or clean coffee grinder, combine the toasted walnuts and 1 Tbsp sugar and process until finely ground. Set aside.

In a small bowl, whisk together the pastry flour, xanthan gum or psyllium husk powder, and cardamom. Set aside.

In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment (alternately, you can use a mixing bowl and handheld electric mixer), cream the butter until light and creamy. Add the confectioner's sugar in three additions, beating well after each one and scraping down the paddle and sides of the bowl as needed. Mix in the vanilla, salt, ground walnut mixture, and sieved egg yolk. Finally, add the pastry flour mixture, in three additions, mixing just until combined.

Press the dough evenly into your tart pan, and chill for 10 minutes. Sprinkle surface liberally with sugar, and bake for 30-35 minutes, or until shortbread is golden brown and surface is cracked and crinkly. Cool completely on a wire rack before cutting into wedges. Shortbread keeps, wrapped airtight at room temperature, for up to 1 week.

the exception

2011-11-22T02:43:00.000-05:00

Is there anything to say about New York that hasn't already been said?

Probably not. But seeing as no one has yet said anything about my recent trip there, I'm going to forge ahead.

We went for the food. And good lord, did we eat well. Practically as soon as our plane touched down, we raced over to Peels, just in time for a late brunch of shrimp and grits and one of pastry chef Shuna Fish Lydon's gluten-free orange and almond cakelettes. We loved it. We especially loved the space - there's some really good restaurant design going on there.

And that pretty much set the tone for our entire trip. We ate great food in beautiful spaces, and ogled all of it. Broiled king crab with aioli at Nobu Next Door. Amazingly fresh, creamy ricotta with figs, raspberries, pine nuts and honey at Prune (not to mention one of the best Bloody Marys I've ever had). A wonderful raw kale and grapefruit salad at Eataly's rooftop beer garden, Birreria. Marinated sardines with pickled beets at Babbo that were absolutely perfect. Incredibly complicated and complex cocktails at Death + Company. (I had the Sweet Hereafter. Highly recommended.) Homemade mallomars from TuLu's. Fancy pastries from Eataly. Baked eggs with creamy spinach at Pulino's. Cipollotta pizza at Palà Pizza. Belgian frites. Salted peanut caramel tiramisu. Jalapeño cheddar muffins. Chocolate soufflé with shiso syrup and white chocolate. Probusto sausage and krauti. Fig sorbetto. More fancy cocktails...

Seriously, the list just goes on and on, and trying to remember it all makes my head spin. (The fact that I am typing this late at night certainly doesn't help.) I was touched and relieved at every turn, finding again and again that it was not only easy to eat gluten-free in the city, but that I had a plethora of choices everywhere we went. I never felt limited or concerned that my needs weren't being accommodated. (Well, there was that one server at Birreria. But he was the exception. You've always got to have one.) But there was something interesting about all that food, something we hadn't expected.

It wasn't better than what we have here in Maine.

Don't get me wrong, it was great, really really great, it's just that the food scene in Maine (especially in Portland and here in the Midcoast region) has practically exploded recently with phenomenal products, restaurants, and chefs. We eat really well here. It was actually incredible for us to realize this, because we'd imagined Manhattan's restaurants as being these cities on the hills that nothing around here could hold a candle to. (An opinion influenced, surely, by the year we lived there, and couldn't afford to eat out anywhere.) True, there are no Per Se's and Eleven Madison Parks around here. And certainly, there are a lot of places in Maine that serve really awful food. But for the most part, for the places we chose to eat at in NYC and our favorite restaurants at home, they're all in the same league. Wow.

After flying back in to Portland, we stopped for one more meal before driving to pick up the boys at my parent's house. (Oh, how I missed them. I was restless and itching to get back to them.) We ate at El Rayo Taqueria, because somehow, in our crazy attempt to hit every place on our list, we had forgotten to get Mexican food in New York. Starving after a hurried morning rushing to catch our flight - and literally running through the airport, being escorted by security - we descended hungrily on chips and salsa and guacamole, fish tacos and grilled chicken tacos, pork tamales, corn on the cob with chipotle mayonnaise and cotija cheese, and Mexican chocolate pudding. It was awesome. Comforting, flavorful, and fresh. Josh knows the manager, so we chatted with her, trading compliments. The owner of one of our favorite wine distributors dropped by on a sales call, so we got to catch up with him and sample some wine. Good food and personal connections, all rolled into one. A great meal.

We are so lucky.

We are lucky also, I think, to realize this right now, as we head into not only a season of gratitude and compassion for each other and our lives, but also the end of the busy season, restaurant-wise. It can be all too easy in Maine, in a tourist town like ours, to bemoan the dearth of customers in January compared to August's highs. But really, despite our appreciation for them, it's not those here-today-gone-tomorrow summer people who sustain us. It's the locals. The regulars, who come in on a cold Tuesday night not because of any special occasion, but because they appreciate good food and are frequent supporters of it when they find it. And it's the growing population of these enthusiastic eaters that has allowed coastal Maine to become a culinary force to be reckoned with. They allow us to do the work we love, with the dedication and passion we feel it deserves, while simultaneously making it possible for us to make sustainable choices regarding where we raise our children and how we live as a family. Thank you.

The culinary culture we crave, that we have been working towards for the past decade, and the small-town, family-oriented community we feel is best for our kids, they both overlap right here. We truly have the best of both worlds. As we head into the cold and dark of the coming season, I will remember this often, with gratitude.

Understanding all this will help you put into context what I'm about to say next.

We did have one dining experience in New York that blew us away. I don't even want to call it a meal, because it was so much more than that. It might have been the best restaurant we've ever been to.

We had dinner at Gramercy Tavern.

I don't think I can write adequately about this. The entire thing was phenomenal, from the way we were greeted when we arrived to the tiny amuse bouche (one of three) of curried chicken served in a Brussels sprout leaf to the kitchen tour the manager led us on at the end of our meal. The whole time, Josh and I couldn't stop spouting off superlatives. The service was impeccable. The timing of the courses was fantastic. Our server was better than any we've met before. And the food . . . oh, the food. I sort of lost my mind (and my vocabulary!) over the food. I remember saying, when I took the first bite of my pork loin and belly entrée, "This is perfect. This tastes just exactly as it should." There was no need to say any more. We ate a surprising lobster salad with apples. Beef tartare with root vegetable chips and one pristine, glistening egg yolk. Josh had a special of fresh pappardelle bolognese, with meltingly tender braised beef. The already-mentioned pork loin, which was served pink (truly, we are all over-cooking our pork) and accompanied by spicy, vinegary carrots, tender leek hearts, and creamy wedges of white sweet potato. Oh, and crispy, ridiculously flavorful pork belly and a scattering of pork rinds. Needless to say, I was in a hazy, pork-induced oblivion for a while there. I did manage to raise my head just long enough to taste Josh's duck dish (breast and confit), but quickly turned my attention back to my own plate. I hate to overuse the word, but it really was perfect, in every sense.

It didn't matter that we were full; dinner at Gramercy includes dessert. I wouldn't have left without tasting some of pastry chef Nancy Olson's creations anyway. So I had the peanut butter semifreddo, which was a delightful study in contrasts. The kitchen sent out the pear sorbet sundae. We ate Harbison cheese, from one of my favorite artisan cheesemakers. I believe Josh had the apple upside down cake, but to be truthful, I had stopped paying attention to what he was eating a while ago. The steady march of food and drink to our table was overwhelming, in the most heady, opulent of ways, and by the end it was all I could do keep up my end of the conversation. And then, as if they hadn't already done more than enough, Josh was handed two smartly packaged muffins, to bring back to the hotel for the next morning. There were sincere apologies that the pastry kitchen had no gluten-free baked goods to send me into the night with. (I wasn't feeling left out. I had my muffin from TuLu's waiting for me).

I have fallen head over heals in love with Gramercy Tavern.

If you take away only one thing from this post, let it be this: eat at Gramercy Tavern. If ever you are in The City, eat at Gramercy Tavern. Eat at Gramercy Tavern, so that, for those few hours of that one night, you can have the experience of being fully, totally enveloped and seduced by true artistry.

That is New York.

The more I thought about how to describe our Manhattan vacation, the more I realized that it was all about artistry. The food, the architecture, the sidewalk musicians, the fashion, the faces, the history, the public art - everywhere we turned, we were face-to-face with art, with beauty. The only way for me to really explain that is with visuals, so I'm leaving you with some (ah, ahem, maybe a whole lot of) images from our trip. And if you scroll way, way down to the end, you'll even find a recipe, inspired by one of the dishes we ate in New York.

Speaking of recipes, 'tis the season for lots of menu planning, recipe searching, and festive gatherings. If you're looking for inspiration, might I direct you over to Williams-Sonoma's blog, The Blender? They're compiled a Virtual Thanksgiving Potluck (although I think it's application covers much more than just Turkey Day), featuring an array of seasonal recipes, including four of mine. Personally, I think that spicy sweet potato soup might make the rounds at our house next week, when we just can't bear the thought of Thanksgiving leftovers showing up in one more meal.

Have a wonderful week, friends. Thank you for being here.

Lacinato Kale and Grapefruit Salad
Serves 4-6

Maybe it's because I was still recovering from our Gramercy Experience the night before, but my eyes immediately honed in on the raw kale salad when we sat down at Birreria. Crisp, dark greens, tart citrus, and the nuttiness of Parmesan work together to create a dish that tastes great, but better still, tastes like a great thing to give to your body. I loved it so much I had to recreate it when we got home, and it's going to grace our Thanksgiving table in a few days. But if raw kale and grapefruit are a little too untraditional for your family, might I suggest that you break it out once the holiday meal has passed, and a little detox feels like just what you always wanted. The original salad was dressed with an anchovy vinaigrette, but I found that the elusive richness of sesame oil makes a great substitute.

2 bunches Lacinato kale (also known as Tuscan or dinosaur kale), stems removed and leaves chopped into bite-sized pieces
2 large grapefruits, segmented (a great how-to video can be seen here), juices reserved
4 Tbsp fruity extra-virgin olive oil
1 tsp sesame oil
6 or 7 Tbsp fresh grapefruit juice (depending on how much your grapefruits yielded, and also how tart you like your vinaigrette)
kosher salt and freshly ground pepper, to taste
Parmesan-Poppy Frico pieces, for garnish (see below)

Combine the chopped kale and grapefruit segments in a serving bowl.

In a small mixing bowl, combine the olive and sesame oils. Slowly drizzle in the grapefruit juice, whisking constantly, to emulsify. Season with salt and pepper, to taste.

Gently toss the kale salad with the grapefruit vinaigrette. Top with pieces of Parmesan-Poppy Frico, and serve immediately, with extra frico to pass around.

For the Frico:
This is more a method than a recipe. Simply grate a bunch of Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese (or other hard cheese) with a microplane or the small holes of a box grater over a silicone baking mat-lined sheet pan. Pat the cheese down and spread it out into a thin layer, filling in any large gaps with more cheese. Generously sprinkle poppy seeds over it. Bake in a 350º oven for 3-5 minutes, or until the cheese has melted and just the edges have begun to brown. Cool completely, then use a thin metal spatula to lift the frico off the baking mat. Break it into smallish sized pieces, and store in an airtight container at room temperature if not using immediately.

as it should be

2011-11-02T00:57:00.000-04:00

You know how sometimes you'll stop by a favorite blog and find a post that starts out, "I've been trying to write this post for a while now...?" And then the author talks a bit about the writer's block s/he's been suffering, or the conflicting feelings s/he's been wrestling with about broaching a particularly touchy subject, or even all the extraordinary busyness of ordinary life that has conspired to keep him/her away from the computer.

This is that post.

Except that this is very much not that post.

My excuse for not having written this sooner is not one that I ever see brought up in other blogs. At least, not the blogs I read.

I have been having trouble getting this post to you because I keep falling asleep.

No, I do not have narcolepsy, or mono, or even an inordinately exhausting life.

I simply have a child with a bedtime routine that routinely puts me to sleep, as well.

Every night, I lay down with Wylie until he falls asleep. And snuggling with my little boy at the end of the day, in a cozy bed in a dark room, is apparently exactly what my body needs to trigger my own sleep mechanisms, despite my best efforts to stay awake. If I wake up at all, it is often not until 10:30 or 11pm; too late to begin writing for a mama who needs to be up at 6:45 the next morning. Sometimes I wake with a start when I hear the front door shut and the dog start doing her excited, tail-wagging wiggle dance; Josh has arrived home, so it must be closing in on midnight. Definitely too late to write.

To compound the problem, evenings are the only time I get anything that resembles a block of kid-free, uninterrupted time to write. Preschool ended up not being a good fit for Wylie right now, so he's back at home every day, and my promising pastry assistant is no longer working at the restaurant, so the little bit of daytime freedom that was opening up for me has abruptly disappeared.

I'm actually okay with this, usually. Decisions were made that were in the best interests of all involved, and I'm enjoying having, for the first time in both of our lives, regular periods of one-on-one time with Wylie.

But at 11 o'clock at night, groggy and grumpy that I have missed yet another night of "me" time? That's when I realize that part of this system is broken.

Wylie and I need to find another way to get him to sleep. One that is nurturing, efficient and unobtrusive to Kalen (they share a room), but that allows me to stay alert and awake and productive past the kiddo bedtime hour.

I'd like to propose a trade. Not with Wylie, necessarily, although wouldn't it be wonderful if he was rational and mature enough to barter his way to a mutually agreeable bedtime routine? No, I'd like to trade with all of you. Josh and I have talked about some strategies that we think might work, but really, we're just stabbing at the dark here; Kalen's transition was under very different circumstances. I'd love to know how other families have transitioned their little ones to independent sleepers, especially when said little ones are really not so little at all anymore, and are in fact around the ripe old age of three.

So, you tell me all your secrets and tricks, and in exchange I'll give you the recipe for perfect cinnamon cream cheese ice cream. Perfect because it's quick and easy, and stays smooth and creamy in the freezer for weeks, but also because it tastes perfect. The cinnamon is warm and cozy — as it should be — not high-pitched and biting like a Red Hot®, the way some cinnamon ice creams I've had are. And the tang of the cream cheese makes you realize that this is a real, sophisticated Flavor, not merely some cinnamon garnishing vanilla ice cream.

In fact, this ice cream may be the only one you need as we approach the holiday season, with so many pies in our future waiting to be à-la-moded, and baked apples and cranberry-pear crisps wanting to get in on the action too. Just another nod to its perfectness.

At the end of the week, Josh and I are heading off on whirlwind four days of eating our way through lower Manhattan. Yes, that's right, folks: a kid-free vacation. One that involves air travel and reservations at fancy restaurants and late-night drinks. It's a bit mind-boggling to imagine myself doing such adult things, for days in a row, after so many years of being a constant parent. Mind-boggling and exhilarating, for sure. And when we get back, after the pain of missing my children has worn off, the Wylie-Tara Sleep Project will commence. For now, simply making the commitment to change what has become a well-worn (and worn out!) habit is enough for me. But very soon, I'll need some concrete plans.

Here I am, ready and waiting for your suggestions, friends. And, to prove to you how serious I am, I'll go ahead and keep up my end of the bargain: The Recipe.

Cinnamon Cream Cheese Ice Cream
Yields 1 quart

This recipe is really just a variation of my Vanilla-Brown Sugar Ice Cream recipe, with a few tweaks here and there. And while the tweaks may seem minor, the end result is a different product altogether. Where the original ice cream tastes of the simplicity of my childhood summers, this version is all grown-up, with extra tang from more cream cheese and the richness and heat of quality cinnamon. For me, if I'm going to be eating ice cream in the colder months, atop my slice of apple pie or alongside a fudgy brownie, this is the one I want.

360 gr/12 fluid oz whole milk
360 gr/12 fluid oz heavy cream
120 gr light brown sugar
8 gr light corn syrup
¾ tsp vanilla extract
¾ tsp best-quality ground cinnamon
large pinch kosher salt
55 gr cream cheese, room temperature, in a small bowl

Have ready a metal bowl set over an ice bath.

Combine everything but the cream cheese in a small saucepan over medium-high heat. Stir with a wooden spoon to dissolve the sugar. Bring to a boil, then reduce to a fast simmer and simmer for 5 minutes. Transfer to the metal bowl in the ice bath. Whisk a small amount of the mixture into the cream cheese until the cream cheese has dissolved, then whisk the cream cheese mixture into the ice cream base. (I find an immersion blender works especially well for fully incorporating the cream cheese.) Once the ice cream base has cooled, transfer it to the refrigerator and chill until very cold, up to overnight.

Strain the ice cream base into your ice cream maker and freeze according to the manufacturer's instructions. Pack the churned ice cream into glass storage containers (or use a metal loaf pan), press plastic wrap or parchment directly onto the surface, cover tightly, and freeze. Ice cream keeps for up to 3 months.

stop-you-in-your-tracks good

2011-10-15T02:16:00.000-04:00

Did you catch what I said earlier? About the chicken class?

Yeah, I'm that person. Every time I want to tackle a new project, be it knitting or planning a garden or photography, I find it impossible to just jump in headfirst. Before I can do, I have to learn. I do extensive Internet research, I check books out of the library, I seek out tutorials, and I talk to anyone I can find who knows more than me about whatever topic it is I'm currently obsessing over.

Obviously, then, when I decided I wanted, no, needed, hens, I immediately signed myself up for chicken school.

Okay, that might be exaggerating a little bit. It was not so much a "school" as a "three-hour introductory class on the basics of keeping chickens." But still, it was me once again embracing the role of student before embarking on a new adventure. And it was a good starting point for a girl like me, one with no close friends or neighbors keeping chickens from whom to learn the ropes, who had no idea that hawks and racoons would suddenly be problematic creatures, who naively assumed chicken wire would be the best material for constructing a chicken fence (apparently its uses run parallel to duct tape - good for everything but), and who never would have guessed that a dog crate is handy to have around for dealing with broody hens.

I'm happy to report, I'm finding chicken husbandry utterly fascinating.

It's not just the thrill of collecting freshly-laid eggs that I'm most looking forward to. (Although it's a big one, being as it is the leading cause of my campaign to install hens in our yard.) The more I learn, the more excited I get to witness the differences between various breeds (we're hoping to have two, maybe three varieties), and to laugh at all the humorous antics hens are (apparently) known to perform, and most certainly to share in my children's experience of caring for and bonding with the creatures whose "product" they are already so in love with.

Of all we do to be part of the self-produced local food movement, I anticipate that having chickens will be a lot more life-changing and fulfilling than, say, our small garden plot has proven to be. (Not to knock gardens! I love ours! It's just that, most of the time, the interaction and entertainment factors are quite low.)

So anyway, there I was at the chicken class, listening to discussions around different types of feeders and how much kitchen scraps you can feed your hens and what size and shape your roosts should be to allow the ladies to use them to warm their feet in the winter, when the conversation turned to gluten-free food.

It should have been unsurprising. Gluten-free is on the tips of so many tongues these days that it has a habit of sneaking into even the most unsuspecting conversations. And really, given that the class was taking a break to visit the store downstairs, where, among the naturally-dyed yarns and locally-made soaps, gluten-free baked goods were prominently on display, it was inevitable.

The most surprising thing, actually, was the tone of the chatter. It was so . . . negative.

I was waiting in line at the cash register when I heard the cashier caution the man in front of me about the whoopie pie he was trying to buy.

Cashier: "You know that's gluten-free, right?"

Man: "Oh, no, well, I'll get it anyway."

"Are you sure? I feel I should warn you: it's an acquired taste," the cashier said, delicately.

Things went downhill from there. The cashier recounted other customers who hadn't liked the whoopie pies. A woman behind me had had them once, when she was trying to eat gluten-free. They were awful, she said.

At that point, the gluten-free lifestyle more generally became the topic around which the talk swirled. How hard it was to find things to eat. How expensive all the gluten-free (packaged) foods at the grocery store are, and how bad they taste. The whoopie-pie-hating woman exclaimed that she was so happy when she gave up eating gluten-free, that living that way was unbearable. Everyone else agreed, in a chorus of talking over each other with their gluten-free horror stories.

This was where I jumped in.

I practically had to shout to be heard above all the eager-to-complain voices, but finally I had the floor. I spoke emphatically, with an urgency that was new to me; never before had I so strongly felt the need to defend the gluten-free lifestyle. And while I may have gone on too long, and been too fervent in stating my case, I think I got my point across.

Food that comes with a warning, that needs to be apologized for, is not good food. Gluten-free should be no exception; no one should have to settle for food that, in its most polite description, is an "acquired taste." Living gluten-free should be far from unbearable.

I talked about my work at the restaurant, about the rave reviews we get for our gluten-free focaccia and pasta and all the desserts I make. I talked about this space, and all the other amazing gluten-free bloggers and bakers and chefs and cookbook authors out there proving daily that gluten-free food is not only not a shadow of its gluten-full cousin, but in some cases actually, defiantly, better.

But you know what? I didn't have any concrete evidence with which to prove my point. I didn't have anything to feed to my classmates. All I had was my convictions and some business cards and the whoopie pie the guy at the cash register gave me for free, because he wanted my opinion of it.

It was not a good whoopie pie. It was a very bad whoopie pie, in fact. I would not want to eat enough of those whoopie pies to acquire a taste for them. And yet, as the cashier explained to me, they wanted to have gluten-free treats for sale, and support local businesses. There was only one local gluten-free bakery, so it was these whoopie pies (and chocolate chip cookies and brownies) or nothing.

While I understand the desire to accept fresh-baked gluten-free items with gratitude and bite our collective tongues against any criticism we may have (Hey! The fact that there even are local gluten-free bakeries is a big deal, and we should support anyone out there making an effort to feed us well!), it still doesn't feel very good to be presented with food that is unpalatable. Not now, not when the culture has changed and we've realized that gluten-free can be stop-you-in-your-tracks good.

I don't want my food to make me sick. And I want to eat tremendously, phenomenally well. These two desires should not be mutually exclusive.

So what to do? Well, we've got to keep making amazing food, for one thing. We've got to keep sharing our knowledge and discoveries, spreading the word on how to make gluten-free taste great. When we find a product or company worth talking about, we've got to do our best to promote it. And we've got to be patient. Because as explosively popular as gluten-free has become, it is still a very, very different way for most people to approach baking and cooking. And, like all foods, there's always going to be a range of gluten-free food out there, from the barely passable to the five-star. Accepting that, while still working to tip the scale further and further away from the "passable" end of things, is the job of many food movements right now. We're in good company.

And if we're lucky enough to do all that with a delicious, pillowy-soft, seasonally-scented whoopie pie in hand, well, all the better.

Multigrain Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Whoopie Pies
yields 2 dozen individual cookies, and 1 dozen whoopie pies

These whoopie pies are not only far better than any of the ones I remember eating as a child, they also have the added benefit of being a lot healthier. Packed with whole grains and pumpkin, the fluffy domed little cakes sandwich a filling that eschews the traditional questionable ingredients (shortening and marshmallow fluff) for cream cheese and pure maple syrup. As an added bonus, they are gum-free. Whoopie!

65 grams light buckwheat flour
55 grams almond flour
55 grams Tara's all-purpose gluten-free flour (or your favorite all-purpose blend)
50 grams certified gluten-free oat flour
25 grams potato starch
20 grams teff flour
8 grams/2 tsp baking powder
4 grams/1½ tsp roasted Saigon cinnamon (regular cinnamon is fine, too)
3 grams/1 tsp psyllium husk powder
3 grams/½ tsp fine sea salt
pinch ground cloves
dash of freshly ground black pepper (I did about 10 turns on my pepper mill)
50 grams sour cream
4 grams/1 tsp baking soda
175 grams light brown sugar
114 grams/1 stick unsalted butter, room temperature
212 grams pumpkin purée
52 grams/1 large egg
1 tsp vanilla
175 grams/1 cup bittersweet chocolate chips
1 recipe Maple Cinnamon Cream Cheese Frosting (recipe follows)

Preheat the oven to 375ºF. Line two sheet trays with parchment or silicone baking mats. Set aside.

In a medium-sized bowl, whisk together the buckwheat flour, almond flour, all-purpose flour, oat flour, potato starch, teff flour, baking powder, cinnamon, psyllium husk powder, salt, cloves, and black pepper. Set aside.

In a small bowl, stir together the sour cream and baking soda. Set aside.

In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, cream together the brown sugar and butter. Add the pumpkin, and mix until smooth. Beat in the egg and vanilla, scraping down the sides of the bowl as necessary.

With the machine on low speed, add the flour mixture to the pumpkin mixture in three additions, alternating with the sour cream. Mix in the chocolate chips.

Using a small ice cream scoop with a spring release mechanism (I use this one; you want something that scoops 3-4 tablespoons of dough), scoop the dough onto the prepared sheet trays, about 2 inches apart. Bake the cookies for 12-15 minutes, or until the edges have just begun to brown, the tops are cracked and dry, and a tester inserted near the center comes out clean. Cool completely.

To assemble the whoopie pies, fill a piping bag fitted with a large star tip (or just use a large plastic freezer bag and snip off one corner) with the cream cheese frosting, and pipe a spiral of frosting on the flat sides of half of the cookies. Sandwich with the remaining cookies. Wrap each whoopie pie in plastic wrap and refrigerate for up to three days. Whoopie pies can be served cold or at room temperature.

Maple Cinnamon Cream Cheese Frosting
Yields enough to fill 1 dozen whoopie pies

454 grams/16 oz cream cheese, room temperature
226 grams/8 oz confectioner's sugar, sifted
140 grams/10 Tbsp unsalted butter, room temperature
80 grams/4 Tbsp pure maple syrup
30 grams/2 Tbsp heavy cream
¾ tsp roasted Saigon cinnamon (regular cinnamon is fine, too)

Combine all in a mixing bowl and beat with an electric mixer to thoroughly blend. (You could also use a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment or a whisk and elbow grease!) Refrigerate until needed.

settling in

2011-10-01T02:04:00.000-04:00

Long absences are funny things.

Whether it's reunions with old friends, returning to a beloved-but-seldom-visited location, the long-anticipated commencement of your favorite season, or simply rereading a much-loved book you've practically forgotten about, it's easy to hype it up and expect the experience to be intensely exciting. With the rush of memories you know it will conjure, and the fervor and anticipation with which you will approach it, it seems like the entire thing should be a jumble of emotional fast-talking and laughing and catching your breath while you're swirled around in a nostalgic soup.

I've found, however, that these things usually happen a lot more gently, organically almost. There's that initial burst of excitement, but pretty quickly everything calms down and you just sort of . . . ease into it, as if the absence, all that space and time, had never happened. It feels natural, and easy, and right.

I think this might apply to blogs, too.

I've been absent from this space for several weeks now, which in the instantaneous world of the Internet is a pretty long time. And a lot has been happening, between parties and first days of school and backyard poultry classes and hiring and training a new pastry cook at the restaurant and weekend travel . . . you get the idea. We're busy.

And as much as I'm not writing regularly here, I'm thinking about this space more than ever, wishing I was here, trying to scheme up ways to get just a little more time each day so that maybe I can eventually have a recipe for you with pictures to go with it and some text, just a little, so that it feels like more than merely a page out of a cookbook.

I've fantasized about all the stories I will tell you, about how remarkably my first-day-of-school worries for Kalen were proven to be completely unnecessary, about how fortunate I feel to finally have an extra set of hands in the 40 Paper pastry kitchen, and about our family's increasing excitement about and commitment to getting some hens next year. And then, of course, I wouldn't be able to leave without waxing ecstatic about last weekend's Fair, which is one of our most-looked-forward-to events of the year.

But you know what? Just like The Fair and the best reunions, now that I'm finally back in this space it doesn't feel all jumpy and excitable like I'd expected. I don't want to give you lots of extended, breathless recounts of everything that's happened between then and now, running anxiously from topic to topic to make sure I haven't left anything unsaid. Because being here again feels comfortable and normal. And easing back into our routine, with photos from last weekend and a recipe for a delicious and unusual apple cake, feels right, and a lot more authentic.

Catching up and settling in, with a slide show and good food. Classic reunion fare, wouldn't you agree?

It's good to be here again with you, friends.

Tuscan Apple Cake (Torta di Mele)
Yields 1 9-inch round cake, or 8 individual cakes

This cake is one of the newest additions to the 40 Paper dessert menu. It's light, only faintly sweet and a little bit homey, with the unmistakable fall flavor profile of spiced apple. Of course, we fancy it up with a scoop of cinnamon cream cheese gelato and lots of spiced caramel, but the cake is delicious all on its own, or served simply, with a side of vanilla ice cream. We use it to feature one of my favorite local apples, the Honey Crisp, but feel free to use your own favorite variety. You can pretty much assume that if you love a particular apple in pie, you'll love it in this cake.

unsalted butter, room temperature, for greasing pan(s)
100 grams granulated sugar, plus additional for coating pan(s)
1 large Honey Crisp apple (or other tart, firm apple), peeled, cored, quartered, and sliced into 24 thin wedges
220 grams whole eggs (about 4 large), room temperature
55 grams granulated sugar
60 grams sour cream
1 Tbsp vanilla
zest of one lemon
70 grams Tara's gf pastry flour
33 grams almond flour
¾ tsp cinnamon, plus additional for apple slices
¾ tsp baking powder
½ tsp xanthan gum (optional; your cake will be a bit firmer with it)
¼ tsp freshly ground nutmeg
1/8 tsp fine sea salt
375 grams peeled, cored and thinly-chopped Honey Crisp apples (or other tart, firm apple)

Preheat oven to 350ºF.

Generously butter the bottom and sides of a 9-inch springform pan, or 8 large ramekins. Coat with a layer of granulated sugar, then scatter the 100 grams of granulated sugar over the bottom of the pan, shaking it gently to evenly distribute the sugar. (If you're using ramekins, divide the 100 grams of sugar among them; it's just under 1 Tbsp per ramekin.) Arrange the apple slices in one layer in the prepared pan/ramekins, and sprinkle lightly with cinnamon.

In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the whisk attachment, beat the eggs and sugar until very light and foamy. It should more than triple in volume. Beat in the sour cream and vanilla, then stir in the lemon zest.

In a small bowl, whisk together the pastry flour, almond flour, ¾ tsp cinnamon, baking powder, xanthan gum (if using), nutmeg, and salt. Fold into the egg batter. Gently stir in chopped apples to thoroughly distribute.

Pour batter into prepared pan(s) and bake for 15-18 minutes for ramekins, or up to 22 minutes for the springform pan, or until the top is golden brown and shiny, and the cake has started to pull away from the sides of the pan. Cool on a wire rack for 20-30 minutes, then remove sides of springform pan to finish cooling. (If using ramekins, let cakes cool completely in them.) Cake can be served at room temperature, but I find it's even better warmed up. At the restaurant, we upend the ramekins onto a plate (the cakes easily slip out), warm the cake briefly in the microwave, then use a blowtorch to caramelize the sugar syrup and apple slices on the bottom (now top) of the cake. It's wonderful.

Cake keeps, wrapped airtight and refrigerated, for up to one week.

gluten-free brioche doughnuts

2011-09-07T08:00:00.002-04:00

This is supposed to be about doughnuts.

That's why you're here, right? Because you've been promised doughnuts? Don't worry, I've got them. Crispy, tender, not-too-sweet yeast doughnuts that taste like brioche, piped full of a tart, spiced plum jam. They taste like early fall. They taste like breakfast. They taste like damn fine doughnuts.

It's Gluten-Free Ratio Rally time once again, and I'm determined to get back in the game. Missing last month—cake!—was disappointing, to say the least. There was no way I was going to let doughnuts pass me by, too.

Which was why, in the midst of everything going on in our little corner of the world, I found myself making plum jam during stolen moments at work. Making doughnut dough at midnight two days ago. And frying up the pastries at noon yesterday, when I really should have been making a nutritious lunch for my suddenly-school-aged boys.

Did you catch that? "School-aged boys?"

Yeah.

This week, I turn into the Mother of Kids Who Go to School. Which, I am perfectly aware, happens regularly to mothers everywhere, all the time. Maybe you've even experienced the transformation yourself. But for such a normal, everyday occurrence, it sure does have the force and momentum of the unknown, doesn't it? I think I'm more unsettled by what's happening than the boys are.

Wylie had his first day of preschool yesterday. Crazy, that this little guy who still feels so young to me, who I still instinctively think of as a toddler, who was practically just born, could be ready for school, even if it is only two mornings a week. Adorable Wylie, who last night asked me to hold him "like a buckle." "Please hold me, like a buckle. Because I'm tired. Sometimes I wake up and I'm tired, so please hold me like a buckle." I have to remind myself that he's the same person who counts to 20 and makes up his own stories and draws amazingly clear pictures of people and craves the company of other kids. Today is his third birthday. He's ready.

And then there's Kalen. He starts school tomorrow. Real school, big kid school, where you go for seven hours a day and need school supplies and have to be able to use the bathroom on your own. We have been preparing for this day for months. Talking about it, gathering the necessary gear, and discussing strategies for soothing away-from-home anxiety. He's nervous, I'm nervous, and I still have no clear sense of whether tomorrow will be disastrous or empowering for him. But every day, as I watch him read for longer and longer stretches of time, or work out a solution to a problem that seemed complicated to my mind, or perform impressive feats of balance and bravery on the playground, I realize that school is not going to be that big of a leap for him. He's been naturally moving in that direction for a long time now, picking up new skills left and right, embracing new experiences. He's ready.

But me? I had no idea it would feel like this. I had thought I would be looking forward to the novelty of kid-free time. I had imagined it would open up a world of possibilities of Things I Can Get Done during the daylight hours. All summer long, I've been looking forward to this time with excitement.

I had not imagined I would be feeling preemptively lonely.

I had also not understood what it would mean for the rhythm of our family. I didn't see coming the sudden, tumbling-over-itself halt of summer, that season that had for so many years simply eased us gently into fall, sleepily and without fanfare. I hadn't realized how much the pace of our daily lives would be dictated by school schedules. Gone are mid-day trips to the library. Bedtime comes too early on a school night to afford us the suddenly-apparent luxury of spending the early evening playing in the backyard, coming inside only at the last minute for a quick, late supper before falling into bed. Josh is trying to accept the hard fact that his ritual of having a lazy breakfast with the boys will now be a special, rare occurrence. And Wylie has no idea that his days will be significantly changed, with his built-in best friend and playmate now gone for most of the day.

Changes, you know? They can be hard to take.

Add to this emotionally-charged mix Wylie's birthday and my in-laws visiting and a very heavy work load at the restaurant, and you can see why I'm having trouble really focusing on the doughnuts right now. (My ratio should be a giveaway - it's messy and scattered, just like me.)

Instead, I'm using all my energy just trying to keep up with the pace of our life, trying to accept where we are right now, bittersweet though it may be. I'm trying to learn to let go, to let my children be themselves out in the world, to encourage independence and self-assuredness.

It's a challenge, for sure. Because all I really want to do right now is slow down and hold on tight. Figuratively, I want to hold on to this fleeting moment in our lives, to fully appreciate this time of transition and growth, but I also want to hold on in the literal sense. I want to hug and snuggle and hold my boys as much as possible, keeping them close to me for as long as I can.

I want to hold on like a buckle.

Thank you to the wonderful Meg, of Gluten-Free Boulangerie, for hosting this month. Please check out her blog, where she lists all of the participants in this month's rally, and all of the mouthwatering doughnut and fritter creations!

Brioche Doughnuts
Yields 2 dozen 2½-inch doughnuts

Like I said, I made this dough around midnight the other night, realized at the last minute that I was almost out of my pastry flour blend (blame it on Wylie's birthday cake), and decided that it was far too late to worry about making more. I ended up using a mishmash of flours, but the grain/starch balance is still approximately what I had planned on: about 37% grains to 63% starches. If you don't feel like using the flours or quantities listed, substitute whatever you have on hand, keeping the ratio around 1:2 for grains to starches.

The ratio for these doughnuts is: 9.7 flour:.25 yeast:3 milk:1.2 honey:3.34 eggs:2.5 butter. Not my best ratio, for sure. As easy as this dough was to work with, and as nicely as it fried up into doughnuts, I'm sure it could be tinkered with more to produce a cleaner ratio. Feel free to have at it!

250 grams cornstarch
157 grams Tara's gf pastry flour blend
50 grams certified gluten-free oat flour
28 grams brown rice flour
1 tsp xanthan gum
1 tsp psyllium husk powder
12 grams fine sea salt
150 grams whole milk
3 large eggs
1 egg yolk from a large egg
60 grams honey
13 grams active dry yeast
1 tsp vanilla extract
125 grams unsalted butter, room temperature and cut into small pieces
canola oil, for frying
confectioner's sugar, for dusting
½ cup Italian prune plum jam (recipe follows) or other favorite jam, for filling (optional)

In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, add the cornstarch, pastry flour, oat flour, brown rice flour, xanthan gum, psyllium husk powder, and salt, and mix on low speed until combined.

In a small bowl or liquid measuring cup, whisk together the milk, eggs, egg yolk, honey, yeast, and vanilla to dissolve the honey and yeast.

With the mixer on low speed, slowly pour in the liquid mixture, mixing until combined. Increase the speed to medium and slowly add the butter pieces until they are all incorporated.

Turn the dough out into a medium-sized bowl, cover with plastic wrap, and let sit at room temperature for 1 hour, then refrigerate for 12-48 hours. Because this dough lasts so long refrigerated, you don't have to fry the full batch of doughnuts at once. You've got the freedom to cook them over the course of a couple days, which is good, since having lots of day-old doughnuts hanging around is never ideal; they're best fresh from the fryer.

Whenever you are ready to make the doughnuts, remove the dough from the refrigerator. Line two baking sheets with parchment or wax paper. Roll the dough out on a lightly floured board until it is ½ inch thick, and using a 2½-inch diameter cutter (I use my biscuit cutter), cut out 24 discs of dough (you can re-roll and cut the scraps without a problem). Place the discs on the prepared baking sheets, cover loosely with plastic wrap, and let rise for 90 minutes. The doughnuts won't increase in size much, but they'll be pillowy soft and tender, without a trace of chill. Alternately, you can use a traditional doughnut cutter to cut rings and doughnut holes. They'll rise and cook just the same, and you won't have to bother with filling them.

In a large, heavy-bottomed saucepan, heat 4 inches of canola oil to 340ºF. Working in batches, use a spatula to gently place the doughnuts in the oil, making sure not to crowd the pan, and adjusting the heat to maintain the 340ºF temperature. Flip the doughnuts with the spatula when the bottoms are uniformly golden brown. When the doughnuts are puffed and both sides are golden brown, remove with a slotted spoon and drain on a wire rack until just warm to the touch.

Toss doughnuts in powdered sugar. Fit a pastry bag with a small (¼-½ inch) round tip and fill with jam. Push the tip into the side of each doughnut and pipe 1-2 tsp of jam into them. Serve warm, or at room temperature within the first 3-4 hours of making them.

Italian Prune Plum Jam
Yields 1 quart. Far more than you need for the doughnuts, which is good, because you'll want lots of jam leftover to enjoy through the fall.

2 pounds Italian prune plums, pitted and sliced into wedges
300 grams (1½ cups) light brown sugar
1½ tsp roasted Saigon cinnamon
4 tsp fresh lemon juice

In a large, non-reactive saucepan, thoroughly combine the sliced plums, sugar, and cinnamon. Let sit at room temperature for one hour, until the plums have released much of their juice and the sugar is mostly dissolved.

Add the lemon juice, and bring the fruit to a boil over medium-high heat. Reduce the heat to medium-low, and simmer, stirring occasionally, for 2 hours, or until the fruit is broken down and the liquid has thickened. Purée the jam using an immersion blender, and test for thickness - continue simmering if you want a thicker jam.

Transfer the hot jam into clean glass jars, seal, and refrigerate for up to 3 weeks, or can according to the manufacturer's directions.

spending my time

2011-08-18T02:34:00.001-04:00

Let’s talk about neglect, for a moment, shall we?

I’ve been going to work a lot lately. Like nineteen-of-the-last-twenty-days a lot. So I think it’s safe to say that I’m not neglecting the dessert menu at 40 Paper. In fact, the current menu might be my favorite one yet.

But working that much? It's making me feel very neglectful of other parts of my life. My attention to housework has become minimal. My actual accomplishing of any of it is practically non-existent. While scrounging around in the fridge trying to pull together dinner, I remember that it's been weeks since I've gone grocery shopping. Which I haven't really noticed, since we've been eating far fewer meals at home than we're used to. And the times when we do manage to make it to the dining room table to sit down and eat . . . well, most of those meals aren't anything to write home about, never mind post on a food blog.

Needless to say, this space hasn’t gotten as much attention from me lately as I’d like. Although the stories that I could tell (of drive-through coffee in place of breakfast and prepackaged snacks hurriedly wolfed down at work) might be instructional, in a don't-do-this sort of way, they aren't really inspiring me to sit down and write. Plus, I haven't been doing much in the way of recipe development, outside of restaurant menu work, so I don't have any baked goods to give you.

It's easy to start feeling frustrated in the face of all this, frustrated at myself and at my lack of time and at unfinished tasks and at the dust bunnies threatening to take over the house.

But then something horrible happens to a family, a family I don't know at all, but one I feel connected to nevertheless because of this crazy, wonderful thing called food blogging, and instantly, like a switch has been thrown, everything is called into perspective.

I'm not neglectful. I'm doing exactly what I need to be doing. Because all the dirty laundry and cluttered counters, the slapdash meals and unmowed lawn, even the overdue library books and scum on the shower walls — none of them really matter. Not really.

What is important is that I'm spending my time in a professional kitchen again, one which has given me complete creative control over the food I make. I am spending my time contributing value to something that's important to me and my family, and it in turn makes me feel valuable.

I am spending my time with my family, taking the boys to local summer festivals where we've celebrated things as diverse (or interestingly similar, depending on your perspective) as lobsters and fairies. I am spending my time watching my children experience bounce houses and go down impossibly tall slides and race around a garden maze.

I am spending my time exploring a state park, searching for wild raspberries, listening to the foghorn, and discovering treasures on the beach. I am spending my time outside with my boys, thrilled that they feel so comfortable and at home in nature.

And this week, I am preparing to spend my time enjoying my extended family's annual late-summer camping trip. Three whole days away from home, where I can't vacuum even if I wanted to, where swimming and roasted marshmallows and naps are mandatory, and where Josh and I have planned our first (mini)date in over two months. I can't wait.

So you see? I'm accomplishing exactly what needs to be done. It's a relief to realize that all my guilt trips have been completely unnecessary. In that spirit, I hope this post finds all of you exactly where you need to be, as well, doing everything you can to keep your priorities in line.

********

Actually, I do have a baked good to share with you: a recipe for really awesome gluten-free bagels! But you're going to have to travel to get it — don't worry, it's not far, just over to The Blender, Williams-Sonoma's blog, where I have a post on gluten-free lunch ideas for kids heading back to school. I was honored to be asked to contribute to the site, and I'd love for you to head over and check out my article! But first, read on for my kids' favorite pesto recipe . . .

Kale Pesto
Yields approximately 3 cups of pesto

Speaking of neglect, this pesto fortuitously came about due to my neglectful gardening habits. Last fall, I forgot to harvest the last of the kale, and there was a frost, and then snow, and I pretty much figured the kale was done for and I'd rip the dead stems out of the ground in the spring. Well, imagine my surprise when spring came and the kale sprang to life! And not just any life, but really vigorous, growing-like-a-small-tree life. Although we cut from it now and again, it finally starting encroaching on the rest of the garden too much for me to ignore any longer, so I got out a large knife and sawed away at the stem (it was like wood!) until the three-foot-high stalks broke off. I made this pesto, and felt grateful for such a large harvest, which flourished with no direct input from me. I had intended to dig up the roots of the kale stumps, to make room for a late-summer planting, but when I went back out to check on the garden, all the stumps had sprouted a fresh crop of kale leaves! I had no idea kale was such a determined plant. It makes me love it — and my large batch of pesto — even more. Because on nights when my neglect of dinner-planning seems like it's about to ruin our evening, this pesto is a life-saver. Toss it in pasta, spread in on pizza or sandwiches, pair it with roasted vegetables, or brush it over your favorite protein before baking. It's versatile, it's delicious, and it's healthy, and having a bunch stashed away in the freezer is a wonderful culinary security blanket for me.

4 large bunches kale, tough stems removed
100 grams (about 3.6 ounces) grated Pecorino Romano cheese
60 grams (about 2.12 ounces) raw walnuts
2 large garlic cloves, cut into pieces
100 grams (4 fluid ounces plus 4 tsp) extra-virgin olive oil
Kosher salt and freshly-ground black pepper, to taste

In a large pot of boiling water fitted with a steamer insert (a large pasta or lobster cooker works well), steam the kale for 5 minutes, then drain.

Put the steamed kale, cheese, walnuts and garlic into the bowl of a food processor fitted with the blade attachment, and process while slowly drizzling in the olive oil. Scrape down the bowl as needed to get all the kale puréed, and then season to taste. Pesto keeps, refrigerated, for up to a week. However, I advise freezing most of it in ice cubes trays, so that you'll have a stash of pesto ready at a moment's notice. After the cubes have frozen, pop them out and stick them in a freezer bag — you'll have easy access to kale pesto for the next three months!

sort of like a flash mob

2011-08-10T15:51:00.000-04:00

As I was weeding the garden yesterday afternoon, one ear attuned to the bedroom windows above me, listening for the sounds of Wylie getting up from his nap, I wondered what I might talk to you about, pickle-wise. I wondered how many of you, like me, throughout childhood knew pickles only as the dull, usually limp, green spears that came out of the jars lining the condiment aisle of the grocery store, sharing space with the mustard and barbeque sauce. And similarly, I wondered if any of you were shocked at the difference in flavor, texture, and aroma the first time you tried a true dill pickle, made by the mother of a friend, from cucumbers and dill straight out of the garden. Was it the first time you realized that dill was a real flavor, from an actual plant, and not just a word on a label? And that pickles were made from cucumbers? And did you then find yourself in the position of having to choose? Suddenly, it wasn’t enough to either like pickles or not. Whether or not you were a pickle person now had to be qualified, based on your feelings about the store-vs-homemade pickle issue — a divisive one, to be sure. (I was squarely in the store pickle camp. As a child, the homemade ones were, with their intense vinegariness, their crunchy-crisp texture, their unmistakable, unfamiliar dillness, too unnerving to one not raised on them.)

And later that evening, as I was making dinner (risotto, which, by the way, you don’t have to stir continually in order for it to work, regardless of what the cookbooks want you to believe. Life doesn’t need to come to a halt for risotto), I started thinking about my other childhood pickle experiences. They were few, to be honest. I liked sweet relish on my burgers and dogs (veggie burgers and tofu dogs, more often than not), but for the longest time I was oblivious to the fact that relish is just chopped up pickles. So not really an example of pickle awareness. My other formative pickle habit was as a component of sandwiches. Not the deli meat variety, but in peanut butter sandwiches. With mustard, preferably.

That sounds really weird, doesn’t it? Like maybe a person who loves peanut butter, pickle and mustard sandwiches is not be someone you necessarily want to take culinary advice from.

On the other hand, maybe it’s early evidence of a palate open to non-mainstream flavors, willing to eat — and enjoy! — foods that most would shun, a foodie in the making.

Anyway, for years that was pretty much it, in terms of my pickle education. In fact, it wasn’t until late college, when I finally tried sushi, that my eyes were opened to the variety of foods that could be pickled, and the range of flavors that are used. Pickled ginger? Carrots? Daikon? Plums? Bring it on! I loved everything I tried.

But still, pickles have remained around the periphery of my food life. I get a kick out of unusual pickles on antipasti plates, I devour the pink pickled onions Josh occasionally makes, but I myself never pickle anything. Not for any particular, definable reason, either. It just never crosses my mind to do so.

So I was excited and intrigued when, after the roaring success of Shauna’s first open-invitation, Internet "party," she announced another one. A Pickling Party. And here we are today, with people everywhere posting about their experiences making pickles! It feels sort of like a flash mob, only better — recipes are being shared, ensuring that this exuberant event has a lifespan longer than a few minutes. And the thing that I like best about it is how approachable it makes pickling seem. The message is that anything can be pickled, everything tastes great pickled, and pickling is an easy process. Pickles for all!

For all the options out there with pickles, I decided early on that I didn’t want to have to go shopping in order to participate in the party. If I was going to try my hand at pickling, I was going to take the anyone-can-do-it-with-whatever-you-have-on-hand message to heart and find something around the house to pickle.

I ended up with leek scapes. Before this summer, I didn’t even know leeks grew scapes; they don’t show up next to the garlic scapes everyone gets all swoony over at the farmer’s market. But the forlorn leeks that I had left in the garden last fall (completely unintentionally – I forgot to harvest them before we got frost and the ground firmed up), which to my surprise revived themselves this spring, also to my surprise sent up tall scapes this summer. I did a little research and discovered that (of course!) the scapes are edible and utterly delicious, in a leek-meets-asparagus sort of way. I also discovered that if you continue to neglect the plant (which fits right in with my overall gardening philosophy), the scapes will open up a great big pom-pom of a flower, which you can snip off and dry and collect the seeds from, for the next year’s planting. Done and done! I love learning how to make good use of a plant through the entirety of its life cycle.

But . . . hmm. Pickled leek scapes. I still didn’t know what I was actually going to do. The thing with pickling is that it’s only partly about that which is pickled; you also have to decide what flavors you want to impart to your pickle! Without any pickle-making personal history, I felt lost. But when I mentioned the Pickle Party to Josh, his immediate and urgent response was, "Make Asian pickles."

Of course. All the pickles I’ve loved the most have been Asian in some form or another, whether we’re talking the pickles that show up at our local sushi joint, or the ones that find their way into the dishes at our favorite Asian street food restaurant. So Asian pickled leek scapes it was.

Seasoned rice vinegar, fish sauce, garlic, lime, cilantro, chili peppers – just typing them all together makes my mouth water. I love these flavors. When I tasted the pickling brine I had concocted, I wanted to douse it on everything. Instead, I mixed it with just-harvested sliced leek scapes, and stuck it all in the fridge to mingle for a day or two. No canning for me this time, although I do love to can and am not at all intimidated by the process. But I wanted this pickle experience to be all about simplicity and ease and going with what you already have on hand, and I didn’t have any sterilized jars or new lids hanging around the house. It's wonderful that pickling can be such a hands-off process, if you need it to be.

Also, in the spirit of using all edible parts of the plant, I added a sliced leek bulb to the brine, in place of the shallot I had been planning on using. Leek bulbs, which look like albino shallots, form at the base of the leek plant after the flower has been snipped off (which I did several weeks ago); it’s the plants’ last-ditch effort at extending its life. And it tastes delicious, even when raw. I couldn’t think of anything bad that would come from adding them to the pickle jar.

So how are the pickles? They’re very good. They’ve got a mild oniony flavor that is able to stand up to the intense brine, and because they’re sliced on the diagonal to expose more inner fibers (and minimize the surface area of the outer tough stalk), the brine was able to penetrate all the pieces easily. They’re crisp and firm and make a nice sound in your mouth when you bite down on them. Plus, the slices of garlic and leek bulb that were part of the brine are now also pickles, and pretty awesome pickles at that.

Mostly, however, it’s the brine that’s the star here. I can’t tell you how much I love it. When the pickled scapes are gone, I’m saving the brine for another batch of refrigerator pickles, maybe carrots this time, or beets. I’ll have to see what’s ready in the garden. Or maybe I’ll just pour it over a bowl of rice and top it with a fried egg. Anything to extend its use in my kitchen. Which, as I understand it, is essentially what pickling is all about.

Asian Pickled Leek Scapes
Yields ½ a pint, recipe can be doubled or quadrupled

½ fluid cup seasoned rice vinegar (look for one containing sugar, not corn syrup)
Small splash of fish sauce (optional, but lends a wonderful depth of flavor)
Juice of 1 lime
1 leek bulb, thinly sliced (alternately, you can use a shallot)
½ to 1 whole hot chili pepper, sliced (use more or less depending on how spicy you want your pickles; I didn’t make any attempt to remove the membrane)
1 clove of garlic, thinly sliced
1 Tbsp chopped cilantro
¼ tsp salt
1 to 2 leek scapes, to total about 2½ feet in length, sliced thinly on the diagonal

Combine all but the sliced scapes in a small saucepan over medium heat and bring to a simmer. Add the scapes and return to a simmer, then remove from heat and allow to steep for 20 minutes.

Pour everything into a clean half-pint jar, tightly seal it, and give it a good shake to make sure all the aromatics in the brine are well-distributed. Refrigerate for at least 24 hours to allow the flavors to develop.

you might decide

2011-07-30T01:53:00.000-04:00

The next time your youngest wakes you up far too early, with the sunlight still sparkly and new, and your head cottony with sleep, you might not squeeze your eyes shut, hoping he will go read books so that you can doze for ten more minutes. Instead, you might pay attention to that light, and the air it flows in on, and notice something. It's cooler, yes, but there's something else, something indescribable and almost indefinable, something that your Maine-born bones and lungs and skin instinctively sense before your mind has a chance to catch on.

Summer is fading.

Sure, there are still plenty of days of heat and blinding sunshine to come, but there, in the early morning light, you can sense fall.

Summer is short in Maine.

And so, in that prophetic light, you might decide to get out of bed, herd the boys downstairs, and turn on the oven. You might gather round you all the fruit that hums I am summer with each juicy bite, a half-dozen free-stone peaches and handfuls of garnet-hued raspberries and tiny wild blueberries. You might toss it all together with a scoop of sugar, a squeeze of lemon juice, a splash of almond extract, and pinches of roasted cinnamon and tapioca starch, confident despite the lack of recipe guidance, because summer has no recipe. You might even do this before you put the coffee on, such will be your sense of urgency: you need to capture this fleeting season as much and as many times as possible.

With your fruit toppling over itself in your favorite red baking dish, you will turn easily, unthinkingly, towards the grains, letting your fingers sift through a pile of rolled oats accented with small scoops of almond flour, teff, and pastry flour. A little bit of brown sugar, for that caramelized flavor, and more of the roasted cinnamon, and you're ready for the butter. Of which, you will almost certainly tell yourself, a whole stick is not excessive, not in the company of all those berries and whole grains. You will become more convinced of this as your fingers work it into your oats, and the warmth of your hands and the softening butter easily release a sweet, nutty aroma that wafts around your head, whispering that you've done a good thing. As you spread the crumbly topping over the waiting fruit, you will not be able to stop your hands from popping a few pieces into your mouth. Don't feel guilty; the fruit won't miss it.

An hour later, when the bubbling crisp comes out of the oven and you're cajoling the boys to brush their teeth so you won't be late for your farmer's market meet-up with a friend, you might pause for a moment, privately pleased at how productive your morning has already been.

You will be even more pleased with yourself when you realize that the not-too-sweet crisp is a perfect midday snack, shared with your friend after the trip to the market and a walk to the beach, so that the boys could get in some good rock clambering and tide pool investigating. You might even appreciate the energy boost it gives you, as you head back outside to dig a new garden bed.

And because that crisp reminds you of a healthy sort of dessert, you will not think twice when, late in the day, the boys' heads snap to attention at the sound of an ice cream truck winding its way through the neighborhood. You will grab some cash, hurry the boys onto the sidewalk, and wave the truck over, at which point you will buy them their very first, ever in their lives, ice cream truck ice cream. And you will smile and laugh at their excitement and glee, dinner be damned, because what's the point of growing up in a small coastal Maine town if you can't experience the old-fashioned, summer thrill of the friendly ice cream truck man?

At the end of the evening, with exhausted boys falling gratefully into their beds, you will tuck them in and say your goodnights, listening with a full-of-love heart as they list all the things about the day that made them glad. You might decide that nothing makes your day more than knowing your children feel so much joy and contentment with their lives.

And just think, it all started with that light.

a really great 'just'

2011-07-23T02:22:00.000-04:00

Ah.

The heat arrived today.

We've been hearing about this monster heat wave for a week. Many of you have been suffering through it for a week or more. Even here in Maine, it's been hot.

But today, today was when we really joined the party and found ourselves so hot that we continued sweating while laying still with a fan blowing on us at night.

There's not a lot of central AC in Maine. I've never lived with it, and I don't know anyone in-state who does. For most of the year, we Mainers scoff at the idea. What a waste of energy! Whatever happened to window fans and popsicles and playing under the sprinkler?

And then, predictably, for about a week every summer, a heat wave hits and we try every remedy we've ever known and nothing works to cool us down and the heat becomes the only thing we can talk or think about, when we're able to talk or think at all.

I wanted to talk to you today about grilled flatbread pizza. It's a staple menu item at 40 Paper, and one of the things that we don't currently offer a gluten-free version of. I've trained myself to skip right over that section of the menu when I'm having dinner there, but I do admit that it's sometimes tempting to lean in close for a whiff when the boys are enjoying their favorite artisan salami flatbread, and I've felt envy more than once upon overhearing the staff rave about the roasted apple pizza.

So I was really excited to tell you that I made a fabulous gluten-free replica the other night. The dough is easy to make, grills wonderfully, is so tender and supple that you can fold it over itself without it breaking or even cracking, and tastes so good (especially with the smokiness from the grill) that Kalen and Wylie gobbled up one whole flatbread before I had time to top it. When Josh came home and saw the leftovers in two plastic-wrapped bundles in the fridge, he (wrongly) assumed that one packet was pizza from the restaurant, and the other was my version. "I can't even tell them apart!"

I like it when he can't tell the difference between the gluten-free dinners I make at home on a whim and the gluten-full food the kitchen at the restaurant sends out on a nightly basis.

So these gluten-free grilled flatbreads will soon be available at 40 Paper. Well, just as soon as we figure out a reliable way to grill them without any gluten contamination from the grill the 'regular' flatbreads are made on every day. (I'm crossing my fingers that the solution doesn't include me hunched over a portable grill in the back parking lot.) I'm so excited that we'll have another entire menu category that will be celiac-friendly!

But I had even bigger plans for you, for this space. I wasn't merely going to offer you fantastic gluten-free grilled flatbread pizza. I was going to make another batch, and show you that it could easily fold around falafel, or kebobs, or sliced steak, or a jumble of your favorite vegetables and dressing for a 'salad sandwich.' So many options with this flatbread recipe. I'm pretty sure it would also bake up fine in a really hot oven, which might be more convenient than working over coals, although certainly not more fun.

Those were my plans. Until . . .

The Heat.

Now, all plans are dashed, food is served cold or at room temperature at best, and there's no way I'm building another fire or turning on my oven until this weather pattern shifts. So you just get the pizza.

Which is still a really great 'just,' if you ask me.

When I was very young, I was convinced that on hot summer nights, the foot of the bed was the coolest spot for sleeping. Something about the other side of the pillow always being the cooler one must have extended, in my 8-year-old mind, to the entire bed. I remember spending many nights with my head jostling for space among all the stuffed animals and Cabbage Patch® dolls I kept against my footboard.

Tonight, with my face still shiny with sweat at midnight, when even the heat emanating from this laptop is too much for me to handle, I think I just might try it again. It's either that or the sprinkler.

Grilled Flatbread Pizza
Yields 4 flatbreads
Inspired by Elizabeth Barbone

139 grams white rice flour
100 grams brown rice flour
65 grams cornstarch
42 grams almond flour
30 grams sorghum flour
20 grams gluten-free oat flour
1 Tbsp xanthan gum
1 Tbsp turbinado sugar
1 tsp psyllium husk powder
1 tsp fine sea salt
8 fluid oz plus 2 Tbsp water
4 fluid oz plus 2 Tbsp whole milk
2 egg yolks from 2 large eggs, room temperature
1 Tbsp canola oil
1 packet (2¼ tsp) active dry yeast

Combine all the dry ingredients except the yeast in the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment and mix on low speed until combined.

Heat the water and milk in a small saucepan set over medium heat until they feel warm but not hot to the touch, about 90º-100ºF. (Alternately, you can warm them in the microwave.)

Whisk the egg yolks, canola oil, and yeast into the warmed water/milk, then add the liquid mixture to the dry ingredients and mix on low speed just to blend. Increase speed to high and mix for 5 minutes.

Divide the dough into four pieces. (It will be quite sticky.) Place each portion on separate pieces of parchment or waxed paper that have been generously greased with olive oil. Use your fingers (dipping them in olive oil as needed to keep the dough from sticking to them) to spread each dough out into an oval, circle, or long rectangle shape. Your flatbread, your call. Cover the doughs lightly with pieces of olive oil-greased plastic wrap and allow them to rise in a warm location for 45 minutes. It's a good idea to have your doughs on baking pans or trays, to facilitate carrying them out to the grill.

Prepare your grill. I am old-school and use hardwood charcoal, but any gas grill will work fine as well. You want the grill pretty hot, but not screaming hot, and you definitely don't want lots of flames reaching up that will burn your flatbread before it's cooked through. Cooking over open fire is certainly an art, one that I'm just learning, and I don't have the language or experience yet to tell you exactly what temperature you need to be at. Play with it. You'll soon figure out what works for you.

Bring your risen doughs, a pair of tongs, a spatula, and a large plate out to your grilling area.

Remove the plastic wrap covering the flatbread doughs. Working with one dough at a time, use the corners of the parchment to lift it and slowly lay it face-down on the grill. You want it to go on smoothly and land flat, not in a mushed heap. Gently remove the parchment paper. (I used the spatula to help peel it off - it's very sticky dough!)

The flatbread will cook very quickly - really, it's a matter of seconds here. Use the tongs to lift the flatbread to check how it's cooking and move it around a bit if one side appears to be cooking faster than the other. You're looking for evenly-dark grill marks. At this point, you'll notice that the top of the flatbread is starting to look dry and cooked around the edges - this is when you use the tongs to flip it over. Cook the other side of the flatbread just until dark grill marks appear (I'd advise you not to let it burn, except that I like a bit of black on my pizza), and transfer it to the waiting plate. Repeat with the remaining three doughs. The flatbreads can be made up to a day in advance, keeping them wrapped airtight until you're ready to top them.

Top the flatbreads with whatever you choose, and stick them under the broiler (I used my toaster oven) for 5-8 minutes to heat the toppings and melt any cheeses. Serve hot.

we all scream

2011-07-13T02:15:00.000-04:00

Growing up, my family made ice cream in the summer.

I don't remember it being a big deal, no more so than the trips to the beach and playing in the kiddie pool on the lawn and eating watermelon until my whole face and neck and forearms were slick with that sticky water.

It was simply one of the many perks of the season.

For most of my childhood, we had an old-fashioned hank-crank ice cream maker. With wooden slats stained black around the edges from years of moisture seeping out, and an inner chamber that probably turned out at least a gallon of ice cream per batch. I remember clearly the sound of that churn when it was packed with ice and rock salt, my dad sitting on the floor with it, cranking the handle around and around. Once I had the arm strength to turn the thing with any real force, I got added to the rotation of churners; the ice cream took forever to make and was hard work, made even harder when a big chunk of ice would get lodged between the wooden tub and the metal ice cream canister, and you'd need to give the crank a power-charged shove to get the thing turning again. Homemade ice cream was something you worked for.

The ice cream we always made was simple. Just milk, cream and sugar (or was it honey?), with some vanilla or mint extract for flavor. Sometimes there were chocolate chips, that would freeze up hard and be a jaw workout when you got a mouthful.

But the flavor was amazing. Bright and pure and freshly dairy, if that makes sense. Nothing to weigh it down, no thickness to coat your tongue and dull the experience. Just the perfect flavor of sweet cream rushing forward, exploding in your mouth even as the texture was dissolving into nothing on contact. (This last part was especially true when you ate the ice cream soft, straight from the churn.)

I always loved that ice cream.

I did not, however, always love it the next day, after it had been packed into Tupperware® containers and frozen solid overnight. And by solid, I mean solid. That stuff was so hard to scoop out! The scoops really weren't "scoops" at all, but shavings, jagged little pieces that you managed to scrape off the surface before the pressure was too much and your spoon bent backwards.

And once you finally extracted a bowlful, the experience of eating was nothing like it had been the day before. The ice cream had crystallized. It felt gritty in your mouth, and then it melted away. There was no richness, no creaminess, nothing left of the decadence of eating it fresh from the churn. The flavor was still strong, but it wasn't the most prominent feature anymore, having now been superseded by the sensation of eating ice crystals.

Still, it was homemade ice cream and it tasted good and we ate it anyway, grateful to have it.

But then I grew up, and found out about custard-based ice creams, and there was no turning back for me. Homemade ice cream became a much more grown-up affair, what with the egg yolks and tempering and creating elaborate, mature flavors. An added bonus was the diminished risk of my rich and creamy ice cream becoming more ice and less cream while I slept (although it did still happen with distressing regularity).

I have been haunted, however, by the memory of the flavor of that long-ago homemade ice cream. To my palate, custard-based ice creams taste more of eggs than fresh, pure cream, in the same way that homemade chocolate pudding is delicious, but very different from, say, chocolate milk. And sometimes, I just want some vanilla ice cream that tastes pure. I want it to scream at me that all it's made of is cream and vanilla, without distracting me with a fullness, a fattiness, that needs to be worked around in my mouth before it dissolves. I just want to taste my childhood summers, in one singular, startlingly intense flavor.

And I would like to be able to easily scoop it out of its container the next day, please.

Enter Jeni Britton Bauer. Do you recognize that name? I didn't, until very recently. I started hearing some chatter around the Internet about a new ice cream book that was out, by the owner of Jeni's Splendid Ice Creams, which is based in Ohio, and which I had never heard of. So I read some of the (rave, I might add) reviews, and felt like I had finally found the ice cream guru I needed. Here was a woman advocating leaving out the eggs from ice cream! And yet, her recipes produce rich, creamy, intensely-flavored confections, that don't ice up when frozen and remain scoopable the next day.

She's apparently got several secrets that ensure the success of her recipes. I say 'apparently,' because I haven't actually gotten my hands on a copy of the book yet. But from what I can gather from the reviews I've read, Jeni reduces her milk and cream mixture to eliminate some of the water, uses corn syrup to prevent ice crystals, adds a bit of cream cheese to the mix for body, and thickens it further with cornstarch.

To someone wishing to replicate and yet improve upon their childhood ice cream ideal, this all sounds like genius — if unorthodox — advice. I decided to plunge right in, book or no book to guide me. Because it's been hot, and we really needed ice cream now, and besides, there weren't any eggs in the house to add to my recipe even if I'd wanted to, not after my overzealous fresh pasta-making episode of a few days prior.

And then, as if it was the most normal thing in the world — just another hot weather perk — I made perfect ice cream. It tasted exactly how I wanted it to, needed it to: fresh and clean and lively, nothing heavy, nothing dull. It was still creamy and smooth and actually scooped the next day which, to be quite honest, flabbergasted me, despite the fact that I was hoping for just that.

I gave some to Josh. "What do you think?"

He took a thoughtful bite. His eyes lit up.

"What's in it?" he asked. "No," I said, "I want you to react to the ice cream, not the ingredients. Tell me what you think of it."

A moment, and then he started talking. He talked about making ice cream with his dad as a kid, the clean flavor of real cream it always had, the fact that he'd never had ice cream like that anywhere else, how much he loved it. He couldn't stop smiling.

I had made the ice cream that he had eaten with his dad.

It's no small feat, giving that back to someone.

Vanilla-Brown Sugar Ice Cream
Yields approximately 1½ pints

240 gr/8 fluid oz whole milk
240 gr/8 fluid oz heavy cream
80 gr light brown sugar
5 gr light corn syrup
1 tsp vanilla extract
large pinch kosher salt
30 gr cream cheese, room temperature, in a small bowl

Have ready a metal bowl set over an ice bath.

Combine everything but the cream cheese in a small saucepan over medium-high heat. Stir with a wooden spoon to dissolve the sugar. Bring to a boil, then reduce to a fast simmer and simmer for 5 minutes. Transfer to the metal bowl in the ice bath. Whisk a small amount of the mixture into the cream cheese until the cream cheese has dissolved, then whisk the cream cheese mixture into the ice cream base. Once the ice cream base has cooled, transfer it to the refrigerator and chill until very cold, up to overnight.

Strain the ice cream base into your ice cream maker and freeze according to the manufacturer's instructions. Pack the churned ice cream into glass storage containers (or use a metal loaf pan), press plastic wrap directly on the surface, cover tightly, and freeze. Ice cream keeps for up to 3 months, although how anyone could resist eating it in the first few days is beyond me.

gluten-free ratio rally: pasta

2011-07-06T08:00:00.006-04:00

"Betta's pasta recipe was one egg for every etto of all-purpose flour . . . At Babbo, Mario compensated for his being unable to find a reliable supply of half-wild, genuinely small-farm eggs by tripling up on the yolks he could get: for every pound of flour (call it four etti), he'd use three eggs, plus eight yolks, not to mention salt, a dribble of olive oil, and a little bit of water."

—Bill Buford, Heat

And that was how Mario Batali's pasta recipe came to be widely known. Not the pasta recipe printed in The Babbo Cookbook, but the recipe actually used at Babbo. An until-that-moment secret recipe.

Obviously, any pasta that Mario Batali serves at his restaurant is going to be wonderful. It seemed entirely appropriate, then, to use that as my jumping off point when working on this month's Gluten-Free Ratio Rally topic of fresh pasta. I also liked the parallel it drew for me, knowing as I do that Josh and his cooks at 40 Paper base their unique pasta recipe on the same one Buford famously announced to the world. My gluten-free version might not be that much of a departure from theirs!

I first discovered the joys of making gluten-free pasta when I got Shauna's book, and began obsessively making her pasta recipe. It is not an exaggeration to say that a whole new world was opened up to me. A world featuring the glories and versatility of fresh pasta. It's no secret that I was over the moon.

And until now, I have felt no need to experiment with Shauna's recipe; it worked, I loved it, why change it?

But when Jenn challenged us to develop our own fresh pasta recipes using the ratio approach, I was excited to find out how much wiggle room there is in gluten-free pasta making. If I used different flours than Shauna did, and different amounts of them, would I end up with a product I liked as much as hers? And what if I used Batali's recipe instead as my guide for the quantity of eggs?

Well, the Batali vs. Ahearn worries were unfounded. Once I looked more closely at the recipes, I found that they were actually very similar, insomuch as they both greatly increased the amount of egg used compared to more traditional pasta ratios. This was encouraging, and further validated my devotion to Shauna's recipe, while permitting me to use Batali's recipe as my starting point without fear of failure.

I played with flours a bit, replacing the quinoa flour Shauna recommends with millet flour, a grain that I've been loving a lot lately, and which doesn't have that back note of bitterness I always detect in quinoa. I used a little less gums, a little more egg, and realized triumphantly when I began rolling it out that I had made a perfect-textured dough. No parchment was needed, and very little flour was used as I rolled it, because this dough was soft and pliable and not at all sticky!

It cooked up wonderfully, with a flavor that was so clearly and deliciously pasta, yet was so different from any of the dried gluten-free pastas on the market, that it made me wonder once again why I ever buy the dried stuff. In the time it took for my pot of water to boil, I had the pasta rolled and cut and waiting to be cooked. Packaged pasta is not a time-saver!

In addition to fazzoletti, I also made ravioli, just to find out if I could. You see, at 40 Paper they recently tried out a new pasta recipe, which worked great for all preparations except ravioli: it lacked the necessary additional pliability, and cracked when filled. But my pasta? No issues at all! There wasn't even a sense that I should handle the dough carefully, that it might split if I was too hurried. It just worked, plain and simple. And it felt wonderful. I filled them with a lemony ricotta mixture threaded with spring onions, and tossed them with butter-sautéed wild mushrooms. Eaten outside, in the summery late-night air, they were the perfect supper. (Oh, and the solution to 40 Paper's pasta problem? More egg yolks. I'm beginning to think that therein lies the secret to pasta greatness.)

So there you go. Yesterday I encouraged you to push past any pastry fears you may have and make a pie, and today I'm telling you that making fresh gluten-free pasta is as easy as boiling water. It's all about expanding your horizons around here right now. Confidence and trust, people. That's all it takes. That, and maybe some extra egg yolks.

Here are all the other participants in this month's Gluten-Free Ratio Rally. Thank you so much to Jenn of Jenn Cuisine for hosting this month's Rally! Please be sure to check out her blog, where she's also got the complete rundown of all the Ratio Rally posts. There are some delicious pasta dishes being blogged about today, so you may become just as fresh-pasta-obsessed as I am! And if you're on Twitter, you can follow the gluten-free pasta conversation with the hashtag #gfreerally.

Brooke from B & the Boy made Ravioli with strawberry filling and chocolate berry sauce
Caneel from Mama Me Gluten Free made Multi-grain fettuccine
Charissa from Zest Bakery made Linguini with smoked salmon and creamy vodka sauce
Erin from The Sensitive Epicure made Ravioli with shrimp, spinach, mushrooms and cheese filling in browned butter
Gretchen from Kumquat made Vegetable lasagna
Jean of Gluten-Free Doctor Recipes made Gluten-free fettuccini
Jenn from Jenn Cuisine made Tagliatelle with smoked salmon, peas and parmesan
Lisa from Gluten Free Canteen made Lokshen kugel
Karen from Cooking Gluten Free made Homemade gluten free pasta
Mary Fran from Frannycakes made Pasta with pink vodka sauce
Meaghan from The Wicked Good Vegan made Vegan gluten-free homemade pasta, in creamy artichoke tagliatelle
Meg from Gluten-Free Boulangerie made Fettuccine with sun-dried tomatoes
Pete and Kelli from No Gluten, No Problem made Tortellini
Rachel from The Crispy Cook made Smoked paprika noodles with garlic scapes and herbs
Shauna from Gluten-Free Girl and the Chef made Gluten-Free Fresh Pasta
Silvana from Silvana’s Kitchen made Lemon-poppy pasta with tomato, corn and basil
TR from No One Likes Crumbley Cookies made Tomato basil pork raviolis

Fresh Fazzoletti (Handkerchief Pasta) with Wild Mushrooms & Spring Onions
Yields 4 servings

The ratio for this pasta is 4.5 parts flour to 3.5 parts egg

For the pasta:
100 grams corn flour
65 grams tapioca starch
60 grams millet flour
2½ tsp xanthan gum
100 grams (approximately 2 large) whole eggs
75 grams (between 4 and 5) egg yolks
10 grams (just over 2 tsp) extra-virgin olive oil
1 tsp fine sea salt

For the final dish:
4 oz/113 grams mixed wild mushrooms (I used crimini, shiitake, and oyster)
4 Tbsp/57 grams unsalted butter
4 spring onions, white and green parts thinly sliced
4 tsp whole fresh thyme leaves
an 8-inch length of a leek scape, thinly sliced into discs (alternately, use a garlic scape)
4 handfuls of spicy mixed baby greens
4 Tbsp/57 grams unsalted butter
1 recipe fresh fazzoletti
fresh lemon juice, to taste
kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste
freshly grated Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese, for garnish

Make the pasta dough:
In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, combine the flours and xanthan gum and mix on low until thoroughly blended.

Add eggs, egg yolks, olive oil, and salt and mix on medium speed for 3 minutes. Dough will come together in a ball and be slightly tacky to the touch.

Wrap dough in plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least 1 hour, or up to overnight.

To roll out by hand:
Cut the dough into 8 pieces. Work with one piece at a time, leaving the rest wrapped in plastic. Roll the dough out on a floured board (I use tapioca starch), dusting the surface with additional flour as needed. The dough should be pliable and stretchy, almost bouncy. Roll the dough out as thinly as possible, aiming for a long rectangle. If the dough gets too long to work with, feel free to cut it in half, covering one piece with plastic while continuing to roll out the other half to your desired thinness.

To roll out with a pasta roller:
Cut the dough into 4 pieces. Work with one piece at a time, leaving the rest wrapped in plastic. Roll the dough out by hand on a floured board (I use tapioca starch), dusting the surface with additional flour as needed, until the dough is about ¼-inch thick, or just thin enough to fit through your pasta roller at it's largest setting. Continue rolling the dough out using your pasta roller, starting at the largest setting, and working down until the pasta is very thin, but not tearing as it goes through the roller. On my roller, I go down to the #5 setting.

To make the fazzoletti:
Use a knife or pizza wheel to cut the pasta sheets into square-ish pieces. Toss the fazzoletti in a bit of corn flour or tapioca starch, to prevent the pieces from sticking together. Cover to keep pasta from drying out.

To make the final dish:
Put a large pot of salted water on to boil.

Meanwhile, in a large sauté pan set over low heat, sauté the mushrooms and 4 Tbsp butter with a large pinch of salt until the mushrooms are soft, about 3-5 minutes.

Add the spring onion, thyme, and leek scape, and continue to sauté over low heat.

When the pot of water has come to a boil, add the pasta rags and cook just until al dente, about 2-3 minutes. Drain pasta and add to the pan of mushrooms.

Add the baby greens and the other 4 Tbsp butter and gently toss to combine everything, cooking until the butter has melted and the greens are wilted. Season with lemon juice, kosher salt, and pepper, and divide between 4 plates. Top each portion with a generous amount of grated Parmigiano-Reggiano. Serves 4.

do you know what today is?

2011-07-05T02:45:00.000-04:00

It’s Pie Day. And last I checked, there were over 1400 people participating in this enthusiastic event organized by Shauna from Gluten-Free Girl and the Chef. That’s a whole lot of pie. So don’t even try to see them all, tempting as it may be. Better to check out a couple dozen or so, until you’ve looked at and read about so many tantalizing versions that you’re compelled to abandon the computer in favor of your kitchen and a pie plate. A much better use of your time, in my opinion.

But before you take off from this page, in search of more pies and tarts and crostatas and quiches and everything else all these exuberant bakers have created, I’d like to talk to you for just a moment about my gluten-free pie crust.

I haven’t brought it up in a while. I don’t want it to seem like I’m harping on the subject. But if you’re gluten-free, I really think you need to know about this pie crust. This is the crust that I used for my favorite apple pie, for the galette that initiated my love affair with apricots, for the tomato tart that kicked off last summer for me, and it's the crust that has most recently been featured at 40 Paper as both a peach-basil crostata and a raspberry-almond crostata. This is the crust that a recent (non-gluten-free) customer at the restaurant was so impressed by that she had a whole conversation about it with Josh, and was amazed to discover it is gluten-free. And she was no ordinary customer – she had a pastry arts degree.

When a person who knows her pastry and can eat the best gluten-full pie crusts fawns over a gluten-free one, that’s when you know it’s really good.

So yes, this crust tastes wonderful, and it has flaky layers that thrill and amaze me every time I make it. But I also love this crust because of how easy it is to make, and the fact that you could almost be fooled into thinking you’re working with a gluten-full dough when you’re rolling it out. Except, of course, that it’s more forgiving than traditional pie dough. There’s no gluten in it, so you don’t need to worry about it toughening up. If it happens to crack or break, you can just patch it back together, and no one will be the wiser. And although keeping things cold counts during the making of the dough, once you’re at the rolling-out stage, you actually want the dough to warm up a bit; it makes it more pliable, easier to work with and less apt to break apart.

I don’t know anyone who’s afraid of pie. But I know a lot of people who let pie dough intimidate them into a corner, unable to believe that they could possibly harbor the skills needed to make a good crust. Throw in the need for that crust to be gluten-free, and the intimidation becomes paralyzing. So many people miss out on pie because of this!

Today’s event is designed to change that. To show people that pie doesn’t need to be perfect to be good. That there are ways around the fear of pie crust – maybe you make a crust that just needs to be pressed into the pan, or you forgo the dough altogether and make a cookie or graham crust, or perhaps you just buy a premade crust. If it ends with a fresh, homemade pie in your house, it’s all good.

But if you want to make a crust, if you want to feel the satisfaction of overcoming your trepidation and make a pie that your friends and family won’t be able to get enough of, then you should make this crust.

If you want to make a gluten-free crust that will still be talked about long after the pie it held is gone, this is the crust you want.

Happy Pie Day, everyone!

Raspberry-Lime Pie

Yields one double-crust 9-inch pie

We devoured this pie yesterday, at our family’s annual 4^th of July barbeque. I had made it in the morning, in the rush of packing and organizing and trying to get out the door at a reasonable hour. It’s not my most attractive effort, with cracks and leaks and even some burned edges, and all the photos taken quickly, in bad lighting. But it tasted phenomenal. And that’s the wonderful thing about pie: it’s such a redeeming, Everyman sort of dessert. Even when it’s falling apart, it’s good. There was strong consensus yesterday, however, that this pie wasn't just good. It was amazing.

Make some pie. You’ll be glad you did.

For the crust:

12 Tbsp/180 grams unsalted butter, cold
2 cups/268 grams Tara's gf pastry flour blend
1 tsp xanthan gum
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 tsp baking powder
1/2 cup/4.5 ounces/about 128 grams cream cheese, cold
5 Tbsp ice water

For the filling:
7 cups fresh or frozen raspberries
3/4 to 1 cup granulated sugar, depending on the tartness of your berries
4 Tbsp cornstarch
zest of 1 lime
juice of half of one lime
1/2 tsp ground cardamom (optional, though I highly recommend it)

1 egg, whisked with 1 Tbsp water, for egg wash
granulated sugar, for sprinkling

Make the crust:
Cut the butter into small pieces. Wrap it in plastic wrap and freeze it until frozen solid, at least 30 minutes. Place the flour, xanthan gum, salt, and baking powder in a reclosable gallon-size freezer bag and freeze for at least 30 minutes.

Place the flour mixture in a food processor fitted with the metal blade and pulse for a few seconds to combine. (Depending on the size of your food processor, you may need to make the recipe in two batches.) Set the bag aside.

Cut the cream cheese into 3 or 4 pieces and add it to the flour. Process for about 20 seconds or until the mixture resembles coarse meal. Add the frozen butter cubes and pulse until none of the butter is larger than the size of a large pea. Remove the cover and add the water. Pulse until most of the butter is reduced to the size of small peas. The mixture will be in particles and will not hold together. Spoon it into the plastic bag. (It is easiest to divide the mixture in half at this point.)

Holding both ends of the bag opening with your fingers, knead the mixture by pressing and squeezing it, from the outside of the bag, until the dough holds together in one piece. Repeat for remaining dough mixture.

Separately flatten the two halves of dough into discs, wrap each in plastic wrap, and refrigerate them for at least 45 minutes, and preferably overnight.

Roll out the crust:
Place one disc of dough on a well-floured board. Dust lightly with additional gf flour, and gently roll out into a circle with a diameter of about 11-12 inches. As the dough warms, it will roll out easier; go slowly at first, while it's still cold and fragile. As you roll, periodically lift the dough and rotate it, dusting your board and the top of the dough with additional flour as necessary to ensure that it isn't sticking to your board or rolling pin. If the dough cracks a bit, just press it together with your fingertips - don't worry, this dough can handle a bit of wrangling! When it's the right size, gently pick it up (your rolling pin can be used to 'carry' it), and place it in a 9-inch pie plate, carefully easing the dough into place. Don't try to stretch the dough, as it will just shrink back when baked. Again, any cracks or breaks can be pushed and patched back together. Trim the dough so that it overhangs your pie plate by about an inch. (This dough tastes really good by itself, so when you trim the edges, you may want to save those scraps and bake them off for a little snack. Treat yourself.)

Assemble and bake the pie:
Preheat the oven to 400ºF.

In a mixing bowl, combine the raspberries, sugar, cornstarch, lime zest and juice, and cardamom (if using), and gently stir to thoroughly coat the berries. Pour the filling into prepared crust, mounding it towards the center.

Roll out the second disc of dough in the same manner as the first.

Brush the perimeter of the bottom crust with the egg wash, and gently place the second dough circle on the pie, pressing the two crusts together (against the lip of the pie plate) to seal them. Press/patch together any cracks or tears that form. Trim any excess crust and fold the edge under itself, decoratively crimping if desired. Refrigerate for 10 minutes.

Brush the surface of the pie with the egg wash and sprinkle generously with granulated sugar. Using a sharp paring knife, cut several slits in the center of the crust to allow steam to escape during baking.

Place pie on a parchment-lined baking sheet and bake in the center of the oven for 1 hour, covering the crust with a foil collar after 45 minutes if it browns too quickly. The pie is done when the filling is bubbling and thickened.

Try to cool the pie on a wire rack for at least an hour before cutting into it. Serve warm or at room temperature just as it is, or with a dollop of whipped cream or a scoop of vanilla ice cream.

cookbook review: The Whole Foods Kosher Kitchen

2011-06-28T19:50:00.000-04:00

Cookbooks these days have become works of art. We display them on our coffee tables, give them our coveted, valuable kitchen counter space, we read them in bed as if they were gripping novels. Their pages are glossy, the recipes are illustrated by full-page color photographs, and we all try not to allow them to appear used. No dog-eared pages, no splatters of oil or smears of chocolate, no notes in the margins.

No one wants to deface a work of art.

I've got to say, I find this whole glamorization bit somewhat irritating, and definitely stifling. When the book comes with an unspoken Wrinkle Not, Smudge Not code of use, it's hard to believe that the recipes inside are for approachable, real, attainable foods. And suddenly, in browsing through these immaculate tomes, the joy of cooking becomes someone else's joy, someone with elite training and a gourmet pantry and infinite patience and a lackey to clean up afterwards.

We can ogle the images, we can imagine how amazing all the dishes must taste, we can wish we lived closer to the chef's restaurant so that we could try them out for ourselves, but it takes an intrepid soul to push past the fantasy presented in those pages and get into their own poorly laid-out, messy, lived-in kitchen to try to cook the food for themselves.

Rather than empowering, such books can actually be quite intimidating.

But great food — and the making of it — should be accessible to anyone who wants it. Instead of scaring you away from your own kitchen, hinting that maybe you are inadequate, a good cookbook should have you preheating the oven and pulling mixing bowls off the shelf before you've even looked to see what the last chapter is about. The book should loose its pristine quality as quickly as possible, as you mark recipes you're inspired by and drip egg white across the pages and get flour stuck in the binding. The book should make you excited to cook.

All this is not to say I don't appreciate beautiful cookbooks. I do. I love beautiful things, and art, and glamor. And I have my share of trophy books, ones with the dust jackets still in place and spines still uncracked. But those ones don't inspire me to actually make food. They inspire me to dream about other people's luxurious, exotic lives. All very well and good on a lazy Sunday morning, but not very useful when actual food is expected of me.

This is as odd way to begin a cookbook review. As if I am either going to tell you the book is too beautiful to be functional, or that it is functional, and thus not exactly eye candy.

It's neither, actually.

I was recently sent a review copy of Lévana Kirschenbaum's new cookbook, The Whole Foods Kosher Kitchen. Now, I'm not kosher, nor do I have any close friends or family who keep kosher, but the 'whole foods' aspect was a definite draw for me. That and also the fact that the publisher touted the extensive number of gluten-free dishes in the book. And if I'm being completely honest, I should mention that the idea of committing myself to cooking out of a book I might never have looked twice at appealed to me, in a dorky, homework-loving sort of way.

Here's why I might not have given this book a second look if I came across it at a bookstore: it's not a coffee table cookbook. It's not written by a well-known celebrity chef. There are far more recipes than photos. It's softcover. It's not an ugly book, but neither is it a gorgeous cookbook by today's standards. And as horrible and hypocritical it is of me to say so, it's hard these days to get interested in a book like that, when you're being wooed by the fancy-schmancy famous books on the top shelf.

This is too bad, and I have learned my lesson. Because every recipe I tried in this book was wonderful. I will be making them again, along with all the other dishes I haven't had time to try, but which sound delicious. Ms. Kirschenbaum has crafted a cookbook that celebrates healthy eating with recipes that will appeal to a wide range of cooks. Not only is the entire book kosher, but much of it is also gluten-free, dairy-free, or vegan, and helpful tips for variations and substitutions abound. The entire first chapter is devoted to laying out all the benefits of eating whole, unprocessed foods that one makes from scratch. And yet, none of the book feels preachy. Out of all the tools used to encourage a healthy lifestyle, guilt never makes an appearance. Ms. Kirschenbaum's tone throughout is enthusiastic, positive, and infectious. Reading her prose and recipes makes it clear that one of the easiest ways to embrace life and honor our bodies is through food. Real food. Whole grains. Legumes. Fresh produce. Heart-healthy fats. Natural sweeteners.

This is not to say that all the recipes are "hippy" health food. Yes, tofu makes many appearances. And there are lots of nuts and seeds, leafy vegetables, and exotic spices. But thankfully, modern cuisine has moved past the tofu stir-fries and lentil burgers that once typified "health food." Now, you can choose from Tilapia Fillets with Miso Sauce and Shiitake Mushrooms, Moroccan Turkey Patties in Lemon Sauce, or Arborio Risotto with Spinach and Asparagus. Need more meat? How about the classic Boeuf Bourguignon or some Chinese Meat Loaf? Looking for dessert? You've got a myriad of choices, ranging from Ricotta Almond Pie to Lemon Coconut Mousse to Chocolate Jasmine Marble Cake. Seriously, people. These decadent, tantalizing foods are good for you! I sort of feel like I've discovered a culinary secret; a trove of alluring recipes hidden inside such an unassuming book.

We ate the White Bean Salad with Artichokes and Swiss Chard at my niece's 4th birthday party, and I was amazed at how well all the elements melded together. The rich, earthiness of the chard and beans, the brightness of the lemon, and the rosemary under it all, providing an elusive flavor that no one could pin down, but everyone loved. It's my new favorite go-to dish for potlucks.

I made the Pasta with Broccoli and Salmon for a weeknight dinner for the me and the boys. Pasta is part of the regular rotation around here. Adding broccoli and salmon to it is not unheard of. But making a roux-based milk sauce which the salmon is cooked in and ground broccoli is stirred into? That's a whole other way of cooking dinner for me, and suddenly old, boring ingredients seemed new again. (Although maybe not visually appealing. That was an odd dish for me to try to photograph. Forgive me, and know that it really did taste wonderful!)

That "old-standbys-turned-new" phenomenon happened again when I made the Chocolate Almond Date Smoothie. I make smoothies a lot, and I eat chocolate and almonds a lot. But I never combine them to make a healthy meal-in-a-glass. Soaking the raw almonds in boiling water allowed even my wimpy blender to easily grind them up. They didn't completely purée however, which gave my smoothie a coarse texture I rather liked. Somehow I feel that if it's going to be an acceptable meal substitute, you shouldn't be able to chug it in one giant gulp. A friend sampled the smoothie and loved it, remarking that it reminded her of something she'd had before, that she couldn't put her finger on. I felt the same way. Maybe there's a chocolate-almond-date bar out there that I ate years ago with this same flavor?

When I was told that this cookbook had a lot of gluten-free options in it, I just sort of assumed that meant a lot of naturally gluten-free dishes. (It is all about whole foods, after all. Most of which are naturally gluten-free.) So I was pretty amazed — and skeptical — to find a recipe for Gluten-Free Bread! Of course I had to make it. And I was all prepared to be super-critical and not like it nearly as much as the breads that more established gluten-free bakers have been creating lately. Well, that bread humbled me. It was really good. I attribute this partly to the freedom given to the reader to create a bread they will like; the recipe simply calls for "3 cups gluten-free flour," with some suggestions of gluten-free flours in parenthesis. Knowing my current grain preferences, I used a combination of light buckwheat, gluten-free oat, teff, and brown rice flours. But it's not just the flour combination that made this bread good. It's a truly solid recipe. I made half the batch into rolls and, taking Ms. Kirschenbaum's suggestion, made the rest into a pizza crust, which I turned into a breakfast pizza for a Summer Solstice walk and picnic I took the kids on. We loved it. And I am learning to trust that good gluten-free baking can be found in unexpected places.

Finally, I made pie. Chocolate Peanut Butter Pie, to be exact. And while that sounds good, my motivation for making it was based on something else entirely: the recipe called for silken tofu.

Years ago, my mom regularly made a tofu chocolate pudding, which sometimes got poured into a pie crust to make tofu chocolate cream pie. Only it wasn't a chocolate pudding/pie, but carob. This was back in her hippie-macrobiotic days, and I loved it. It tasted like, predictably, carob and tofu, mildly sweetened with honey. I know I'm at risk of loosing my culinary credibility here by admitting to my youthful preferences, but I can't apologize or make excuses for my childhood taste buds. So anyway, I was curious to see if I still loved the tofu-carob/cocoa combination as much as I remembered.

Thing is, Ms. Kirschenbaum's pie calls for chocolate chips and cocoa powder, plus peanut butter and cream cheese and white sugar and coffee and brandy. Um, yeah. A far cry from the puritanical ingredients in Mom's pie. Obviously, it was awesome. And bore no resemblance to the tofu pies of my childhood, which in retrospect I think is a good thing. To my surprise, I didn't even notice or care that the graham cracker crust (I used these) was held together with vegetable oil, instead of the melted butter that would have been my default choice. It was just an insanely rich, fudgy pie that, despite my making a half batch and dividing it into two mini pies in an attempt at portion control, I managed to devour in a ridiculously short period of time. Woe is the family that lives with me and doesn't learn to claim their share of desserts before I get to them!

So, after all this (I can't believe you read this far!), I suppose the question is, do I recommend the book? And the answer is definitely yes. Oh sure, I had some issues with it, such as some of the vague units of measurement (a large bunch? a good pinch?), and the fact that, despite offering lots of ways to make an item dairy- or gluten-free if necessary, when a recipe specifically calls for a dairy-free version of a normally dairy-full ingredient, there is no acknowledgement that you can use the original dairy version in its place. (For the record, I used regular cream cheese in the chocolate pie, and regular milk powder in the gluten-free bread, both with no ill effects. So apparently the substitutions work both ways.) But taken as a whole, the book is full of inventive, tempting recipes that you can feel good about eating. And better still, it's approachable, down to earth, and inviting.

This cookbook might actually be one that begins to look lived in, as only the best, most cherished possessions do.

White Bean Salad with Artichokes and Swiss Chard
Reprinted with permission of the publisher

1/3 cup olive oil
6 large garlic cloves
1 large bunch flat parsley
Good pinch red pepper flakes
1 large sprig rosemary, leaves only
1 large bunch Swiss chard, leaves and stems, thinly sliced
2 cups frozen artichoke hearts or bottoms, halved, quartered if larger (I used canned hearts)
3 cups canned white beans, drained and rinsed
Juice and zest of two lemons
Ground pepper to taste

Heat the oil in a large skillet. In a food processor, finely grind the garlic and parsley and add to the skillet. Sauté until just fragrant, about 1 minute. Add the red pepper flakes, rosemary, and Swiss chard and sauté 2 to 3 minutes. Add the artichokes, reduce the flame to medium and cook covered for 3 more minutes. Let the mixture cool, transfer to a platter, and combine with all remaining ingredients. Serve at room temperature.

Variations:

Throw in some flaked cooked salmon or smoked salmon.
Throw in some diced cooked or smoked chicken or both.
Throw in some sun-dried tomatoes, good olives, diced tomatoes, sliced basil.

in the company of boys

2011-06-23T01:42:00.001-04:00

When I really stop to think about it, I don't yearn for my children's baby days.

Maybe it's because they weren't that long ago. Or maybe I'm just not that kind of mother.

But if you ask me, their babyselves, as sweet and squishy and wonderful as they were, don't really hold a candle to their kidselves, when you come right down to it. Because now they're kids with real personalities, who make up their own jokes and assign you ever-changing roles in their fantasy play and love helping with the vacuuming and gardening and get obsessed over squiggly straws and are often too busy to talk because they're doing Very Important Work and who honk my nose and get excited about bugs and worms and ballet and sing wherever they go. Kids who say I love you with more sincerity than most adults can muster. Being around these two people, watching them amaze and confound me every day, is the reason I had babies, after all.

But it takes a certain amount of awareness, a presentness, to remember this fact on a regular basis. When the boys are fighting constantly and it feels like everything I say is the wrong thing and the noise level is driving me batty, it can be tempting to (among other things) wax nostalgic about the times when all they did was lay around and babble and require regular feedings. Doing this, I have found, does nothing to solve the problems at hand, and leaves me feeling more frustrated and more at a loss, incredibly, than I was before.

This is where Josh comes in.

He rarely tells stories about the boys when they were babies. This is not, I think, because he doesn't clearly and fondly remember those times, but because he is so fully immersed in the now of these boys' lives. He is so good at watching them, at really seeing them and who they are and who they are trying to become, that most of his fatherly energy is spent reveling in their current selves.

He pays attention to little changes in vocabulary or inflection, changes that hint at leaps and bounds of growth about to appear. He knows how to draw out and enhance hilarious aspects of their personalities that I have no access to. He knows them intimately, surprising even me with his insights into what they truly need. For a mama who has a tendency to get too caught up in what I think should be happening, what I had planned on happening, watching Josh's unabashed joy at simply being in the company of his boys can be just the parenting lesson I need.

It's a little late, but it's just as true as ever: Happy Father's Day, Josh. You do an amazing job.

Devil's Food Cake with Chocolate Cream Cheese Frosting
Yields one 9-inch round layer cake
Adapted from David Lebovitz

Josh hinted in a not-so-subtle way recently that he'd really like a big, rich chocolate cake. Father's Day seemed like the perfect occasion to comply, and the boys had a blast frosting and decorating it for him. But this cake is so easy to whip up that any occasion, or no occasion at all, will do nicely.

1½ cups Tara's gf pastry flour mix
9 Tbsp extra dark Dutch-process cocoa powder
1 tsp baking soda
3/4 tsp xanthan gum
½ tsp fine sea salt
¼ tsp baking powder
4 oz unsalted butter, room temperature
1½ cups granulated sugar
2 large eggs, room temperature
½ fluid cup strong brewed coffee
½ fluid cup whole milk

Preheat the oven to 350ºF. Butter two 9-inch round cake pans and line the bottoms with circles of parchment paper.

In a mixing bowl, sift together the pastry flour, cocoa powder, baking soda, xanthan gum, salt, and baking powder. Set aside.

In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, cream together the butter and sugar until very light and fluffy. Add the eggs, one at a time, and mix until fully combined, scraping down the bowl and paddle as needed.

Add half of the flour mixture to the butter mixture, mixing on low speed until combined. Scrape down the bowl. Combine the coffee and milk, and mix it into the batter. Add the rest of the flour mixture and mix thoroughly.

Divide batter between prepared pans and bake in the center of the oven for 25 minutes, or until a tester inserted near the center of the cake comes out clean, and the cake has begun to pull away from the sides of the pan.

Cool cakes in their pans for 10 minutes, then turn out cakes from pans and finish cooling completely on wire racks. At this point, cakes may be wrapped airtight and kept at room temperature for up to three days before frosting.

Assemble cake and frost with Chocolate Cream Cheese Frosting (recipe follows). Cake keeps, at room temperature, for up to 4 days.

Chocolate Cream Cheese Frosting

8 oz cream cheese, softened
4 oz unsalted butter, room temperature
4 oz confectioner's sugar, sifted
3 oz unsweetened chocolate, melted
3 Tbsp whole milk
2 Tbsp + 1 tsp heavy cream
1 tsp vanilla
pinch of fine sea salt

In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment (or in a mixing bowl with an electric mixer), cream together the cream cheese and butter until light and smooth. Add remaining ingredients and beat until thoroughly combined. The quantity of milk and/or confectioner's sugar can be adjusted to achieve a thicker or thinner consistency.

If not using immediately, frosting can be refrigerated for up to three days. Bring to room temperature before using.

a flurry of energy

2011-06-18T03:09:00.000-04:00

I got really excited about this little project the other day. So excited, in fact, that I posted on Facebook how excited I was.

It seems silly. All I was doing was making granola bars.

I can't even remember what got me started down this particular path. Did I read something somewhere? See a particularly attractive granola bar on another site? Maybe I was just standing in front of the kitchen cupboard, staring at its contents, wondering what I could make with all of it that would be different from what I've made before. That's the most likely answer.

I always get the best inspiration at the most mundane moments.

Anyway, the result was that I got completely swept up in an all-encompassing, urgent need to make granola bars now. Illogical, I know. I mean, I'm not even really a granola bar-type of person! True, I used to love those Nature Valley bars. (Or maybe I just loved that there were two in the package. As a kid, I was always hungry, and two-for-ones were right up my alley.) But I haven't even thought about granola bars in years. Yet the sudden thought of a crisp, crunchy, sweet and nutty snack was addictive, and pulled me in. Somewhere in there I suppose I realized that I could create something that was pretty healthy, a whole-grain, high-fiber snack I could feel good about, but I have to admit that "health food" was not very high on my list of motivating factors. I was too blinded by the crunchy-sweet-nutty part.

I learned long ago that once I fixate on a food, I might as well go ahead and make it, because that tunnel-vision isn't going away until I do.

And giving in to my desires further fueled my excitement. I started scouring the kitchen, which moments before had seemed empty of interesting ingredients, and came up with almonds, pecans, hazelnuts, roasted cinnamon, Steen's syrup . . . my granola bars were getting better every minute!

And when I realized that granola bars are basically just the right proportion of dry and liquid ingredients (like a ratio!), baked until firm, my mind reeled at all the intoxicating combinations I could try.

You're excited too, aren't you? You're in your kitchen right now, pulling the dried apricots and almond extract and coconut oil off the shelves (or maybe it's pine nuts and currants and lemon oil), barely able to think in the flurry of energy that will soon deliver to you your perfect granola bars. I knew it. I knew these things were compulsion-inducing. I knew you'd love it. I'll get out of your way.

Nutty Granola Bars
Inspired by Alton Brown
yields one 9x9-inch pan

These granola bars are quite sweet, which means that they're probably not breakfast food (for the kids, at least). But the sweetness is balanced in part by the Steen's, which imparts a bitter, molasses-like note. And the nuts, teff, and oats provide another layer of flavor to counter the sweeteners. As Josh said, "They remind me of candy, but they taste healthy." Feel free to customize them to your tastes and what's in your cupboards. Any dried fruit that you use should be stirred in at the end, when you're combining the dry and liquid mixtures. Chop anything large, like dried apricots, cherries, or apples, into small pieces.

2 oz whole raw almonds
1½ oz whole raw hazelnuts
1 oz whole raw pecans
8 oz certified gluten-free rolled oats
½ oz flaxseed meal (if you don't need to eat gluten-free, wheat germ would also be good here)
.65 oz almond flour/meal
.35 oz teff flour
3 oz (by weight) honey
3 oz (by weight) Steen's cane syrup, or an equal amount of molasses, honey or your favorite liquid sweetener
1.75 oz light brown sugar
1 oz unsalted butter (I think coconut oil would make a fabulous substitute)
2 tsp vanilla
1 tsp roasted Saigon cinnamon, or regular cinnamon
½ tsp kosher salt
Optional: up to 6 oz dried fruit

Preheat the oven to 350ºF. Butter a 9x9-inch baking pan.

Coarsely chop all the nuts (in a nut mill, food processor, or by hand).

Mix together the chopped nuts, oats, ground flax, almond flour, and teff in a medium-sized mixing bowl. Spread the mixture on a baking sheet and bake for 20-25 minutes, stirring occasionally, until the oats are crispy but not yet beginning to brown. Remove from oven and reduce oven temperature to 300ºF. Return oat mixture to mixing bowl.

Meanwhile, combine the honey, syrup, brown sugar, butter, vanilla, cinnamon, and salt in a small saucepan over medium-low heat. Heat just until all the sugar has dissolved.

Pour honey mixture over oat mixture and stir thoroughly. (If you're adding dried fruit, stir it in now.) Press evenly into the prepared pan and bake for 25-30 minutes, or until firm and the edges start to pull away from the sides of the pan. Cool completely in pan, then cut into bars and wrap airtight. Granola bars keep, at room temperature, for up to 1 week.

images of our weekend

2011-06-16T01:35:00.000-04:00

Last weekend Josh and I celebrated our 7th wedding anniversary by escaping to an island.

My mother took the kids, we dropped the dog off at a kennel, and we took the ferry across the harbor to North Haven Island, to stay at Nebo Lodge.

We had a truly wonderful, relaxing time, and returned home reinvigorated and ready to face summer — and all its craziness — head on.

I thought you might like a glimpse of our time there.

I'll be back soon with a new recipe for you!

what's going on in all that green

2011-06-08T00:30:00.002-04:00

The Farmer's Market has been up and running here for a couple of weeks now. Mostly, everything on offer is green.

At first, I admit, it feels disappointing. After a long winter of unending bundles of dark leafy greens to get us through the cold, stormy days, hearing that the Farmer's Market is - at last! - open at the town landing sounds like a liberation. Finally, we can refresh our palates and plates with all the glorious local produce that's available for only a few short months here in Maine!

We rush the kids out the door and walk the short distance down the street to find . . . stall after stall stacked with boxes and bundles of green, with only the demure blush of radishes to disrupt the monochromatic view.

Oh right. We're still weeks away from any real color here, the heirloom tomatoes and wild raspberries, fiery chilies and purple potatoes, sweet corn and yellow watermelons. The growing season, especially after our recent rainy Spring, is still in its infancy here.

We don't realize it at first, but this is actually a blessing. Because we don't turn around and go home, we start looking more closely at what's going on in all that green. We find kale microgreens, which are adorable. Without the crush of other customers, reaching in front of and standing impatiently behind us, we have time to talk to our favorite farmer, and learn more about her new meat and raw milk offerings. And we discover Ruby Streak.

That sounds like a fancy cocktail. Or an eyeshadow color. Or (dare I say it), a porn star.

It is better than all of that.

It is a spicy baby leaf mustard green, and I am obsessed with it. Frilly and spiky and looking somewhat intimidating, it has an addictive green heat that travels all the way up your nose, like wasabi. I eat it plain, out of hand. I sauté it with kale from my garden and onions and chili garlic sauce, and top it with a fried egg. I chop it up and add it to a quick pasta dish of tomatoes, garlic, and thyme. And the other day, when the fridge inventory was down to three eggs and half a portion of pie dough, I made it the main character in a delicious tart.

Technically, I know I should call it a quiche. It was egg-based, as quiches always are. But for me, "quiche" conjures up the watery-broccoli, soggy crust varieties from my childhood, baked in store-bought pie shells. (Sorry, Mom!) That's not what I made.

My tart had a custard base enriched with a bit of cream cheese and goat cheese, with some crisped bacon thrown in for good measure. Most importantly, it was baked in a tart pan, which I think adds a touch of class to just about everything it holds.

Josh ate it warm for breakfast. I ate my serving later, at room temperature, for lunch. It would be ideal at a brunch. And if you live somewhere where it's not yet too hot to bake during the middle of the day, I think it'd make a lovely light dinner on the back deck, paired with a salad (spiked with more Ruby Streak!) and a rosé or crisp white wine.

It's just that versatile. And delicious.

Ruby Streak Tart
yields one 8-inch tart

1 half-batch of Best-Ever Gluten-Free Pie Crust (Make a full batch, and freeze what you don't use. I guarantee it will come in handy soon.)
3 large eggs
3 fluid oz whole milk
1 Tbsp heavy cream
30 grams cream cheese
30 grams goat cheese (our local favorite is from here)
1 tsp fresh-squeezed lemon juice
kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste
2 slices of bacon, coarsely chopped and cooked over medium-low heat until crispy
1 large handful of Ruby Streak greens, or other baby mustard green, chopped, plus additional whole leaves for garnish

Preheat the oven to 350ºF.

On a lightly floured board, roll out the pie dough to a diameter of about 10 inches. Transfer to an 8-inch round tart pan and trim excess. Line with parchment or foil, and fill with dried beans, rice, or other pie weights. Place on a baking sheet and bake for 15-20 minutes, or until edges are lightly golden brown and bottom is dry, but has not yet begun to brown. Remove parchment/foil and weights, and set tart shell aside. Don't turn off the oven.

In a small bowl, whisk together the eggs, milk, and heavy cream until thoroughly blended. (I like to use a stick blender for this.)

In another bowl, stir together the cream cheese and goat cheese to make a paste. Add a small amount of the whisked eggs and stir to thin out the paste. Slowly add the remaining eggs, whisking constantly to fully combine. Stir in the lemon juice and season with salt and pepper.

Scatter the cooked bacon evenly over the bottom of the blind-baked tart shell, and cover it with the chopped Ruby Streak. Pour in the custard, going slowly so as not to push all the mustard greens away from the center of the tart. Lay reserved whole Ruby Streak leaves decoratively on the surface of the tart.

Bake on a baking sheet in the center of the oven for 20-25 minutes, or until the custard is fully set but has not yet begun to brown. Cool on a wire rack. Tart may be served warm or at room temperature.

gluten-free ratio rally: pâte à choux

2011-06-01T09:00:00.007-04:00

I've been feeling distracted lately. Lots to get done, lots to plan for, lots of interruptions every day. Thoughts swirling, even when I'm sitting still. Never feeling like everything on my list will be crossed off.

I'm not actually complaining. Most of what is taking up my time and energy is good. New desserts that are getting rave reviews at 40 Paper. Lots of playdates for the boys. Visits with Eli. Making plans for an anniversary weekend away for Josh and myself. Glorious weather to enjoy, after weeks of cold and gloom. Even the homey, small-town excitement of watching our town's Memorial Day parade ready itself, since the staging area was down the road from our house. It's gearing up to be a good summer.

But still, sometimes I think it would be nice to be this photo:

Solitary, content, bathed in light, lacking nothing. Sweetly satisfied.

You see, if I'd actually been feeling anything like that recently, I probably wouldn't have almost forgotten to make those frangipane puffs pictured up there. As it was, the second half of May was a bit disorienting for me, and suddenly here it was the end of the month and I hadn't even thought about June's Gluten-Free Ratio Rally challenge, never mind started playing with ratios.

But this month is pâte à choux! And there was no way I was missing that. Pâte à choux is a pastry chef's best friend, even if that pastry chef happens to bake gluten-free. How many other basic recipes can be baked, boiled, or fried, prepared sweet or savory, and can be adapted to so many varied "mix-ins?" Pâte à choux is an indispensable trick to have up your sleeve.

Plus, pretty much everything you can make with pâte à choux is delicious, and a little bit magical.

There are many wonderful people posting amazing recipes based on pâte à choux today. I'm betting there are also a lot of explanations of how each participant got to their final recipe, the ratios and techniques that worked for their particular set of ingredients. I love these types of conversations. I love the science behind baking, the little changes and tweaks that result in big differences in outcome. I've got two pages of notes on my thoughts about and experiments with gluten-free pâte à choux, and my comparisons of lots of professional recipes. I want to be in on the action.

However, I've also got two feverish little boys who need my attention today. They don't care about why I think a high percentage of starches in the flour mix yields the best-tasting choux. (It's mostly because, to me, the ideal choux tastes of egg and butter, not flour.) They don't care how satisfying it was for me when, in the last-minute rush to make these puffs, I looked in the fridge for something to flavor them with and found the inspiration for not one but two variations on a theme: a wedge of Parmigiano-Reggiano and frangipane leftover from recipe development for 40 Paper. And it certainly doesn't matter to them why I think the food processor is absolutely the way to go when mixing the dough (although if they had seen the loose, lumpy mess that came out of my stand mixer they might be better able to appreciate the beauty of the food processor turning it into a thick, smooth, extremely sticky paste.)

They just want stories and promptly refilled water bottles. They need thermometers and cool washcloths. They want snuggles and puppets with silly voices and their next dose of bubble-gum flavored Tylenol, soon please.

And I, of course, will comply. No questions asked, no hesitation when it becomes clear that we need to shift gears away from my plans for the day and instead focus fully on the little ones. Because that's what we mamas do. Instinctively, willingly, lovingly.

Admittedly, though, it will be wonderful when the boys have their normal appetites and energy levels back. Especially if it means they're up for some more pâte à choux products. Because this mama has a long list of delicious posts she wants to bake her way through!

Here are the other talented participants in this month's Ratio Rally. Many thanks to Erin of The Sensitive Epicure for hosting this month, and for offering a wealth of information and invaluable assistance to all the Rallyers! There are some wonderful creations presented here, and I hope you are inspired to make your own pâte à choux - you'll discover that, with the right ratio and technique, it can be quite easy! See what others are saying by following the conversation on Twitter, using the hash tag #gfreerally.

Amanda of Gluten-Free Maui made Earl Grey Cream Puffs
Amie of The Healthy Apple made Pâte à Choux with Creamy Macadamia Icing
Britt of GF in the City made Cream Puffs & Profiteroles
Caleigh of Gluten Free(k) made Savoury Paris-Brest
Caneel of Mama Me Gluten Free made Key Lime Cream Puffs
Charissa of Zest Bakery made Choux Shine: Koshi-an Filled Cream Puffs
Claire of Gluten Freedom made Chocolate Eclairs
Erin of The Sensitive Epicure made Gougères Filled with Herbed Goat Cheese & Churros
Gretchen of Kumquat made Cheddar Gougères with Date & Pine Nuts
Irvin of Eat the Love made White Cheddar Fennel Gougères stuffed withPorcini & Shallot Goat Cheese
Jenn of Jenn Cuisine made Gruyere & Herbed Gougères
Lisa of Gluten Free Canteen made Cracked Pepper & Cheese Gougères
Lisa of With Style and Grace made Cherry Garcia Filled Cream Puffs
Mary Fran of Frannycakes made Marillenknodel with Ginger & Cardamom Sugar Chai Cream Puffs
Meaghan of The Wicked Good Vegan made Vegan GF Cardamom & Rose Water Cream Puffs
Meg of GF Boulangerie made Chouquettes
Meredith of Gluten Free Betty made Gluten Free Churros
Morri of Meals with Morri made Draft Cider, Saffron & Chive Gougères
Pete & Kelli of No Gluten, No Problem made Almond Choux Florentines
Rachel of The Crispy Cook made Cream Puffs with Coffee Cream
Robyn of Chocswirl made Gruyere & Parmesan Gougères with Sage & Thyme
Sea: Book of Yum made Rose Vanilla Cream Puffs & Eclairs
Silvana of Silvana’s Kitchen made GF Spinach Gnocchi Parm
T.R.of No One Likes Crumbley Cookies made Beignets

Basic Pâte à Choux
yields enough for 2-3 dozen puffs or gougères, depending on size

The ratio for this recipe is 1.6 parts liquid:1.1 parts butter:1 part flour:2.5 parts eggs

40 grams cornstarch
15 grams tapioca starch
8 grams sorghum flour
70 gr unsalted butter
1/4 tsp fine sea salt
73 grams water
15 grams heavy cream
15 grams whole milk
2 large eggs plus just under 2 egg whites (to yield 160 grams), thoroughly whisked

Preheat oven to 425ºF. Line a baking sheet with parchment or a Silpat.

1. In a small mixing bowl, combine the cornstarch, tapioca starch, and sorghum and whisk to thoroughly combine. Set aside.

2. In a medium-sized heavy-bottomed saucepan set over medium-low heat, melt the butter, salt, water, heavy cream, and milk until the butter is completely melted and the mixture has just come to a gentle boil.

3. Once the butter/milk mixture has come to a boil, add the flour mixture to the saucepan and stir constantly with a wooden spoon, cooking for 1 to 2 minutes. You'll know the batter is ready when it comes together in large, smooth clumps and leaves a film of butterfat residue on the bottom of the pan.

4. Immediately transfer the batter to a food processor fitted with the blade attachment and pulse for 20 seconds to cool slightly.

5. With the food processor running, pour in the whisked eggs in a slow, steady stream and process until the batter is a thick, smooth paste, about 1 minute.

6. Scoop (or fill a piping bag and pipe) small mounds of choux onto the prepared baking sheet, allowing room for each puff to expand a little. Use wet fingertips to smooth down any peaks of dough that might burn.

7. Bake for 10 minutes at 425ºF, then (without opening the oven!) reduce heat to 375ºF and bake for an additional 15 to 16 minutes, or until puffs are golden brown and firm. Cool on a rack.

Variations

For Parmesan & Black Pepper Gougères, add 40 grams grated Parmegianno-Reggiano cheese and freshly ground black pepper (to taste) to the choux after adding the eggs in Step 5. Process until thoroughly combined.

For Frangipane Puffs, add 18 grams granulated sugar to the saucepan in Step 2, and add 100 grams of frangipane to the choux after adding the eggs in Step 5. Process until thoroughly combined. You may need to bake the puffs for a minute or two less than the above recipe calls for, unless you don't mind a little extra color on your puffs - it's just the sugar in the choux caramelizing (which isn't really a bad thing, now is it?).

new loves

2011-05-28T02:31:00.000-04:00

Ok, so first things first.

Last week, my amazing sister gave birth to the sweetest little boy ever. It was a wonderful day. Her early labor was light enough that we were able to go out to lunch (she drove!), and then we spent the afternoon watching old Cosby Show episodes via Netflix, baking cookies, and doing some last-minute baby name brainstorming. Late in the evening, with my sister surrounded by those who love her most, little Eli emerged, all chill and relaxed from the get-go. We spent the next few hours intoxicated by the ethers of baby love that enveloped us all, marveling over his perfect head and long fingers and especially wrinkly feet.

What must it be like to enter this world immediately surrounded by such tremendous love? New babies make all of life seem so precious and miraculous. It's nice to be reminded of that feeling in the midst of the normalcy of day-to-day living. At the same time, I completely love the idea of Eli melding seamlessly into our extended family, with his unquestioned presence becoming our new normal. Perfect.

All of this lovely commotion, coupled with the fact that I have been busy developing new desserts for the restaurant, means that I haven't been doing much home baking lately. In fact, there has been nothing since those incredible chocolate cookies last week.

But I haven't been all that bothered by my baking neglect. I've been too preoccupied by fruit and herbs.

It's not summer here in Maine. Heck, it's barely spring - we've just emerged from two weeks of rain and gloom, and the sun feels like a glorious, if slightly unfamiliar, long-ago friend. The bounty of local fruit is quite a ways off. I've been late starting our garden, so there are no herbs growing off the front porch. But still, I can't stop thinking about - and eating - these things.

Recently, I combined mango, avocado, mint, honey, and lemon juice for a refreshing, not-to-sweet accompaniment to our breakfast. One of the new desserts for 40 Paper is a peach-basil crostata, the making of which has caused me to fall completely in love with basil simple syrup. And during a play date two days ago, to distract the three little people crashing through my house, I made a fruit salad starring a perfectly ripe Athena melon.

I'd never knowingly had an Athena melon before. It was an impulse buy at the grocery store, along with some shipped-in-from-the-other-side-of-the-continent strawberries. But it looked and smelled close enough to a regular cantaloupe that I knew I'd love it.

Cantaloupe have always reminded me of lazy summer mornings with my mother. In my mind, my adolescent summers were full of hot, sunny mornings where I'd come downstairs to find a cantaloupe sliced and waiting. I feel like my mother and I often ate our slippery, perfumed pieces together, outside, the juices dripping off our chins and fingers into small puddles on the wooden deck, where the always-nearby wasps and honey bees would soon find them.

In reality, like the eggs and potatoes and so many other foods I always thought my mother loved and ate with us, only to later discover she hates, cantaloupe might be on her Do Not Eat list. My summers of mother-daughter cantaloupe gorging may actually have been quite solitary. But still, it makes for a nice memory.

And so, with such bright, steamy mornings still far off in our future, I decided to channel the feeling from my childhood and pretend for a while that summer is already here. Lots of that beautiful melon, with its pastel rind and creamy interior, supported by the other fruits taking up my counter space: apricots, peaches, and bananas. I tossed it all with a drizzle of clover honey and then, feeling inspired (and remembering my apricot-thyme pairing from last year), chopped some thyme leaves to sprinkle over it.

My bowl sat on the counter waiting, while I rounded up more snacks for the hungry boys and mediated the kind of disputes that can only occur between 2-year-olds. By the time I got back to it, the flavors had melded and it had unified into a dish. A bright, fresh, soft, herbally sweet summer dish. My childhood memories, all grown up. And it occurred to me then that I have never added thyme to a food and later regretted it.

So there you have it. A new life. A new fruit-and-herbs obsession. And the perfect snack for a spring afternoon, when what you're really craving is summer.

Have a wonderful weekend, everyone!

Fruit Salad with Thyme

This is really more of an idea than a recipe. You don't need me to tell you how to make fruit salad. But just as a reference, here's a rundown of what I did.

1/2 of a ripe Athena melon, or cantaloupe
1 ripe banana
1 ripe peach
1 ripe apricot
clover honey, to taste
a handful of thyme sprigs, to taste

Slice all the fruit into bite-sized pieces and put them into a serving bowl. Drizzle with honey, toss to coat.

Pull the thyme leaves off the stems and coarsely chop. Add to the fruit salad and toss to combine. Allow salad to sit at room temperature for 5-10 minutes for the flavor of the thyme to permeate the dish. Enjoy.

waiting . . . ever so impatiently

2011-05-19T09:03:00.001-04:00

My sister is about to have a baby.

Any day now - any hour now - I should be getting The Call.

Not the call that the baby is here, come and visit. That's the call that most people wait for, and get.

But I'm waiting for the call telling me the baby is coming now and I'd better get myself to her house pronto. I'm waiting to be called into action.

My sister is having a home birth, and I am lucky to be part of her birthing team. This is fairly normal stuff in my family. As a child, I attended the home births of both my sisters, decades ago. Kalen and Wylie were both born at home, in this house that has become so precious to me largely because of that fact. And I was there when my sister had her first child, my lovely, incredible niece. This should feel old hat to me.

It doesn't. I am prickly with anticipation, jumping each time the phone rings, feeling let down each time it is not The Call. I go to bed slightly more anxious every night, my cell phone on the nightstand next to me, obsessively checking one last time that it's on and charged and will not fail to rouse me with the middle-of-the-night jangle I am convinced is coming tonight. Every conversation I have with Josh, regardless of the topic, contains some variant of, "Well, if she has the baby today . . ." I can't stop thinking about this new person, this perfect unique child whose entrance into this world I will experience. My family, growing.

And I am not even the one having the baby.

All this waiting and eager anticipation has its benefits. I'm keeping the house quite clean, assuming that I'll be leaving at any moment and not wanting to saddle Josh with lots of chores. And I've been stocking up on baked goods to bring to the birth - one of the midwives is gluten-free, so I'm taking responsibility for ensuring she's got snacks to keep her energy up. Multi-grain rolls and cereal muffins are ready to go, and I think I'll be bringing some of the extra dough for these double chocolate chip cookies. Because couldn't everyone use some rich, intense chocolate goodness during those first dreamy post-birth hours?

I made a big batch of this cookie dough today, partly to have something to direct my nervous energy towards, and also because I thought having cookie dough to bake off might be a fun activity for Josh and the boys to do while I'm gone. (Assuming that this baby comes in the next day or so, anyway, while there's still some dough left!) Like I said, I'm stocking up on baked goods.

I've been all about intense, dark chocolate lately, and these cookies are no exception. With so much Dutched cocoa powder in them they're almost black, they have the depth of chocolate flavor I've been craving without a tooth-aching sweetness. Over-sized semi-sweet chocolate chips are a nice contrast to the dark chocolate crumb, and a scattering of kosher salt lends a suggestion of sophistication and refinement. They are equal parts crispy and chewy, and utterly addictive.

They are, hands down, my new - and quite possibly forever - favorite cookie.

Thanks, Baby - you're already bringing good things to my life. I can't wait to thank you in person, while I nuzzle your sweet cheeks and cup your tiny, precious feet in my hand. The sooner the better.

{Update: I got The Call! Well, actually, it was The Text. Technology these days. Anyway, I'm off!}

Double Chocolate Chip Cookies
yields 2 to 5 dozen, depending on size

390 grams Tara's gluten-free all-purpose flour mix
90 grams Dutch-process cocoa powder (I highly recommend substituting 20 grams with black cocoa powder, if you have access to it)
2 tsp xanthan gum (optional, but definitely advisable if you use a gf flour mix that is less than 65% whole grain)
2 tsp baking powder
1 1/2 tsp baking soda
1 1/2 tsp kosher salt
284 grams unsalted butter, room temperature
284 grams light brown sugar
227 grams granulated sugar
2 large eggs
2 tsp vanilla
340 grams semi-sweet chocolate chips
kosher salt, for sprinkling

Preheat the oven to 350ºF. Line two baking pans with silpats or parchment.

In a medium bowl, combine the flour, cocoa powder, xanthan gum (optional), baking powder, baking soda, and salt, and whisk thoroughly. Set aside.

In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, combine the butter and two sugars. Mix on medium speed until light and fluffy.

Add the eggs, one at a time, mixing on medium and scraping down the bowl between additions. Mix in the vanilla.

Add the flour mixture in 3-4 additions, mixing on low speed until just combined, and scraping down the bowl as needed.

Add the chocolate chips, and mix on low just until they are evenly distributed. (At this point, the dough may be refrigerated for up to two days, baking off when needed. Alternately, you can freeze the dough, scooped into balls, for up to three months. Thaw overnight before baking.)

Scoop the cookie dough onto your prepared baking pans. Depending on the size cookie you decide to make, you should be able to fit anywhere from five to 12 cookies on each pan. Lightly press down on the balls with the palm of your hand to flatten them, and sprinkle the surface with kosher salt.

Bake for 12-20 minutes (shorter time for smaller cookies, longer for larger ones), or until the edges of the cookies are firm, but the centers are still soft and indent when you gently touch them. (With cookies this dark, the color is not an indicator of doneness.) Cool on the pan just until the cookies have firmed up enough to safely transport them to a wire rack, about 3 minutes. Finish cooling on the rack.

Cookies are phenomenal warm, but will still taste incredible at room temperature. They keep, wrapped airtight at room temperature, for up to three days.