Orangette

It's all there

2009-07-13T18:58:00.000-07:00

Well. That took a little longer than I expected. Thank you for hanging in there, and even more, for being so understanding. I missed you all, and I missed being here.

I was having a pretty rough time a couple of months ago. You could probably see it more clearly, actually, than I could. I have never, ever, done something as consuming as this opening-a-restaurant business. Even writing a book doesn’t compare. People had warned us that projects like these always take twice as long and cost twice as much as you expect them to, and dude, that is Seriously. No. Joke. It’s been like Little Shop of Horrors over here, only the role of Audrey II, the man-eating plant, is being played by a small neighborhood restaurant called Delancey. This thing, it eats up more hours, and more cash, and more human flesh – last week’s tally: 1 splinter, 1 blister, 1 army green bruise, and 3 burns – than I could have ever imagined.

The truth is, for a while, this restaurant scared the crap out of me. I didn’t want to say it in those exact words, but it did. You might remember that when I first announced it, I said that Brandon was opening a restaurant? That’s how it started. It was his idea. I was wary. My love for food has always been about home cooking, not the restaurant industry. I like the intimacy, the quiet, and the scale of home cooking. A restaurant is a different beast. It’s exciting, to say the least, but it’s also unrelenting. It means that you work when everyone else is playing. It means long hours, little security, and even less money. I should also mention that I’ve seen a restaurant gleefully chew up and spit out one marriage and cheerfully maim a second. As far as I know, home cooking doesn’t mean, or do, any of that. This is the kind of stuff that I couldn’t stop thinking about it.

Still, I wasn’t going to stand in his way. I knew how much he wanted it, and I wanted to support him. I knew that his vision for this restaurant was a humane one, more like an overgrown dinner party than a scene out of Kitchen Confidential. I knew that this restaurant, either way, had the potential to turn our lives upside down – to take us over, really – but in the beginning, it was still pretty abstract. It was easy to brush off. It was easy to pass him power tools and Cool Ranch Doritos, and to cheer. Until it actually did take us over, and then I had a lot of thinking to do.

And what I decided, ultimately, is to stop thinking so much. Rather than fight it, or worry that the shape of our lives is changing, or what the hell are we doing, or whatever, I decided to get right in the middle of it. I decided to work in the kitchen at Delancey, full-time. I had originally thought that my involvement there would be on the periphery, that I would help plan the menu and develop desserts, and that I might be the host a couple of nights a week. But a few weeks ago, when we cooked our first practice dinner there, a thank-you for our designers and a few friends, I was in the kitchen with Brandon, making arugula salads and washing about eight million dirty dishes, and it just felt right. I was so happy to be working with my hands that way, to feed a room full of people and give them a good night. I felt like a part of the place. And it reminded me of something that Brandon said to me a few months ago, when the construction seemed like it would never end. He said that even though I couldn’t see it yet, this restaurant would embody everything that matters to us. And he was right. It’s all there.

So I’m going to be in the kitchen, manning the pantry station, when we open. That means that if you order a salad, some cured meats, some pickles, or a dessert, I’m your girl. I have no lofty dreams about how long I’ll be able to do it full-time - I want to keep writing, and doing both might be nuts - but it’s right for right now. Things are only going to get busier around here, but it feels like a good kind of busy. I’m ready for it. And I can’t wait to share it with you.

Some time away

2009-05-18T21:06:00.000-07:00

It feels uncomfortable for me to write this, since it’s not exactly good news, but here goes: I need to take some time away from this site.

As you’ve probably noticed, I’ve been struggling a bit here in recent weeks, trying to keep this blog sailing along at her usual clip, and it’s not working very well. Between helping Brandon with Delancey and meeting my own work deadlines, I’ve been stretched thin. I’m not doing a very good job of any of it. Actually, I’m doing a pretty awful job of all of it.

This site has always been about a kind of love - a love for food, namely, and for writing - but right now, that love is temporarily redirected toward some other, more immediate demands, like helping my husband to tile and grout the (ginormous) facade of a pizza oven. In the spirit of keeping it real around here, I have to admit that I need some time to focus on the restaurant - and, if we’re being deadly honest, to try to enjoy the process, rather than feel overwhelmed by it. I also have some work-related travel coming up, and it needs my attention, too.

I’ll be back in a few weeks with the well refilled, I hope, and with plenty of recipes and stories for you. In the meantime, I hope you’ll understand my silence. With summer so close, and barbecues and gin and tonics and whatnot, I’ll bet you won’t even notice.

P.S. If you’d like to follow the progress of Delancey, you should check out Brandon’s Twitter feed. And I’ll be posting photos on Flickr, too.

It really does help

2009-05-11T19:23:00.000-07:00

A few evenings ago, I felt very uninspired about making dinner. This has been happening a lot lately, far more than I should probably admit, as someone who is supposedly crazy about cooking. I could attribute it to lots of causes, but I think these things go in cycles for all of us, these urges to cook or not cook, and no matter our individual circumstances, it’s only sane to acknowledge that. Sometimes I want to make two types of sauce gribiche, and other times, I want to claw my eyes out and then call for a pizza delivery. I know I should try to find some sort of happy medium in this, and maybe I will someday. But in the meantime, I have found that it’s useful to sit down and make a list. I call it The Crap I Like to Eat (CILTE) List, and it really does help.

Here is what I do: at the top of the sheet of paper, I write CRAP I LIKE TO EAT. You can write whatever you want, but I find this to be a crucial first step, especially the mild cussing. Cursing at your food forces it into submission, I find, and that’s very important in times like these, when you need to reassert yourself and your can-do in matters of the kitchen. Now, underneath that heading, you’re going to list dishes or recipes that you’ve made, and that you’re eager to make again. If you’re doing it right, this process should make you very hungry. If you can’t think of anything to write down, open up a cookbook, scroll through a blog, or take a bath and stare into space for a while. Basically, you’re looking to collect ideas, an arsenal of inspiration that you can visit whenever you feel inclined toward eye-clawing. Then you put this piece of paper somewhere prominent - on your desk, or the kitchen counter, or stuck to the bathroom mirror - and when you don’t feel excited about making dinner, you look at it until you do.

My first CILTE list was short and sweet: fake baked beans, chicken salad, and broccoli soup with lemon-chive cream. It may not sound like a lot, but it kept me away from scrambled eggs and salad, my default setting, for an entire week. I made another list yesterday, and I thought it might be helpful to share it, in case you’re considering making one of your own. I haven’t been trying many new recipes lately - trying to open a restaurant feels like experimentation enough - so the recipes on my list lean more toward the comfortable, well-worn variety. They’re old shoes. For some people, trying new recipes is relaxing, but much to my chagrin, I am not those people. I tip my hat to them, and then, for the millionth time, I make Marcella Hazan’s tomato sauce with butter and onion, item #1 on my list.

Also present on the current CILTE list is chickpea salad, and braised greens with chickpeas and garlic. There is also roasted broccoli with shrimp, with or without the shrimp - the broccoli goes with everything - and Brandon’s soba with peanut-citrus sauce. And yesterday afternoon, I made rhubarb compote. I ate some of it just now, as a snack with plain yogurt, and it would also be good with fresh ricotta, or Greek yogurt, if you’re fancy. Or straight-up, with nothing, if you’re not. I cut the sugar by a couple of tablespoons, and it tastes just right to me.

And last week, I made spinach and green garlic soup twice. Somehow, we still aren’t tired of it, so I bought another bunch of green garlic, the one in that first photo up there, and I’m making it again tonight. I am relentless.

If you make a list, and if you feel like sharing, would you tell me what goes on it? I would love to know.

Something called sauce gribiche

2009-05-05T23:46:00.000-07:00

About five years ago, I think it was, I went out to dinner with my friend Keaton and ate something called sauce gribiche. I had never heard of it before, but it was a kind of coarse vinaigrette, with chopped cornichons and capers and hard-boiled eggs, and it was served over asparagus. I don’t know why I remember it so clearly, aside from the fact that I dripped some of it onto my pants, but ever since, I’ve thought about it sometimes, usually when I’m supposed to be thinking about more important things, and I’ve wanted to try making it. It took me a while, as you can see, but yesterday, I finally did. Twice.

The thing is, as I learned while tearing my hair out, there is no one sauce gribiche. Its origins are almost certainly French, but from there, it gets tricky. Look in one book, and you’ll be told - very authoritatively, of course - that it’s a mayonnaise with pickles and herbs, a close cousin of tartar sauce. Look somewhere else, and you’ll be told that it’s a vinaigrette with parsley and hard-boiled eggs. Apparently, it’s sort of like pizza: to one person, the word means a deep-dish pie with pineapple and Canadian bacon, while to another, it’s a thin crust dotted with fresh mozzarella. Am I right? Has Delancey fitted me with a permanent pair of pizza goggles? I can’t be sure.

Anyway, I don’t know what a proper sauce gribiche is, if there even is one, but I can tell you that I have now made two different sauces that go by that name. I can also tell you that it was very confusing, because neither tasted like what I had had before, but I liked them both. Either way, I thought you should know about them, because they’re good company for so many springtime foods, like halibut and new potatoes and asparagus, or cold roasted chicken. There is no time like the present to get confused about sauce gribiche.

The first specimen up there, in the bowl and on some boiled potatoes, is an adaptation of a recipe from The Zuni Café Cookbook. It’s essentially a mayonnaise with lots of Dijon mustard, shallots, fresh herbs, and capers, and it starts with a soft-boiled egg. You cook the egg for four minutes, so that the white is set but the yolk is still liquid, and then you mash it in a bowl with mustard and salt. It’s kind of ingenious: when you add olive oil, the yolk binds it to make a mayonnaise, while the white breaks up into little bits and nubs, adding texture to the sauce. To that you add the herbs and other seasonings. We tried spooning ours onto a few boiled potatoes, because that was what we had in the house, and it was nice enough. But when we chopped the rest of the potatoes into chunks, tossed them with more sauce gribiche, and let them sit in the refrigerator overnight, it made a bang-up potato salad, rich but bright, one of the best I’ve ever eaten. It’s bookmark-worthy.

The second gribiche, which comes from one of the Chez Panisse cookbooks, is more like the one I ate five years ago, a riff on vinaigrette. It’s kicky but sleek, a French translation, sort of, of chimichurri. It’s delicious. It has more herbs than the Zuni method, and its egg gets hard-boiled and chopped, and it calls for a few cornichons, which means that I got to buy a whole jar and eat them while I cooked, a plus in any category. We ate it on some steamed leeks, which I don’t actually recommend - turns out, sauce gribiche isn’t a great fit for oniony things - but when I go to bed tonight, I hope to dream of it spooned onto some blanched asparagus or a plate of leftover roast beef. I can hardly wait.

Zuni Café’s Four-Minute Egg Gribiche
Adapted from The Zuni Café Cookbook

This version is essentially a mayonnaise, and it’s particularly important to use a very mild-tasting olive oil. If your oil is at all bitter, or if you’re unsure, use a mixture of it and a more neutral-tasting oil, like canola.

2 medium shallots, finely chopped
2 Tbsp. sherry vinegar or red wine vinegar
1 large egg
1 Tbsp. Dijon mustard
Salt
1 ¼ cups mild-tasting olive oil
2 tsp. thinly sliced chives
2 tsp. finely chopped parsley
2 tsp. finely chopped chervil
½ tsp. finely chopped dill
2 Tbsp. capers, rinsed and dried, coarsely chopped

Combine the shallots and the vinegar in a small bowl, and set aside to macerate while you prepare the rest of the sauce.

Put the egg in a small saucepan of barely simmering water, and bring it to a boil. Then reduce the heat and simmer for about 4 minutes. Drain, and put the egg in a bowl of ice water to cool completely.

When the egg is cool, crack and scrape it into a medium bowl. Add the mustard and a pinch or two of salt. Mash it all together, and then begin whisking in the oil, just a few drops at first, then gradually increasing the flow to a thin stream. Stop adding oil when the mixture is satiny and has lots of body, like – and I love that Judy Rodgers describes it this way – a hot fudge sauce. Stir in the herbs and capers. Add the vinegar and shallots, and adjust with salt to taste.

Serve with grilled fish or poultry, fried seafood, roasted potatoes, boiled shrimp, or asparagus, or - my personal preference - as the dressing for a fantastic potato salad.

***

Chez Panisse’s Sauce Gribiche
Adapted from Chez Panisse Café Cookbook

For this recipe, it’s important to use a big, fruity-tasting olive oil, because it will be the foundation flavor here. You want one with a round fragrance and as little bitterness as possible.

1 large egg
1 medium shallot, finely chopped
2 Tbsp. lemon juice, or to taste
2 Tbsp. finely chopped parsley
2 Tbsp. finely chopped chervil
2 Tbsp. thinly sliced chives
Finely grated zest of ½ lemon
1 Tbsp. capers, rinsed and finely chopped
3 cornichons, finely chopped
¾ cup olive oil
Salt, to taste

Put the egg in a small saucepan, and cover with cold water. Place the pan over medium-high heat, and bring to a boil. As soon as it boils, remove the pan from the heat, cover it, and set a timer for 12 minutes. When the timer goes off, drain away the hot water and rinse the egg under cold water until it is thoroughly cool.

Meanwhile, combine the shallot and the lemon juice in a small bowl. Set aside to macerate while you prepare the rest of the sauce.

Combine the parsley, chervil, chives, lemon zest, capers, cornichons, and olive oil in a small bowl. Whisk well. Peel the egg, and then finely chop the yolk and dice the white. Add the egg to the bowl. Add the lemon juice, shallots, and a good pinch of salt, and whisk well. Taste, and adjust with more lemon juice and salt, if needed.

Serve over asparagus, steamed or boiled potatoes, grilled endives, fish, cold roasted chicken, or other cold leftover meats.

About cake

2009-04-27T23:57:00.000-07:00

Today, I thought it would be nice to talk about cake.

Actually, that’s a lie. Today, I thought it would be nice to eat cake. That’s all. Anything else is completely optional. I’m easy to please, as long as there is cake around.

Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about cake. This is not an unusual condition for me, but it happens particularly often when I’m feeling frazzled or tired or harried, right around the same time that I start listening to the easy listening station on the car radio and feeling genuinely soothed by it. It’s pretty clear that you need a good night’s sleep when “Peaceful Easy Feeling” comes on the stereo and you almost choke up, sitting there behind the wheel of your Honda with its missing hubcaps, singing a mournful duet with Glenn Frey as you thump-thump over the speed bumps of residential Seattle. It is also pretty clear that you need cake.

The cake up there, the very plain-looking one in the pictures, is not a beauty, but it’s a bang-up solution to the problem. It’s a recipe that I’ve been playing with and tweaking for the past few weeks or so, inspired in part by Miss Edna Lewis’s wonderful busy-day cake. It is my personal conviction that we all need some sort of busy-day cake in our repertoire, and though I love Miss Lewis’s take on the theme, this one, I think, will be mine. It’s rustic and coarse-crumbed, almost like a muffin, with a faint whiff of nutmeg and whole wheat. I’m calling it an “everyday cake,” and Brandon would like me to clarify that, as cakes go, it’s not strictly dessert material. It’s a snack, ideally, something you would eat with tea or coffee, iced or hot, in the hours between lunch and dinner. It’s homely and humble and not very sweet, and it’s deeply reassuring. If you really know what’s good for you, you’ll slice off a wedge, pick it up between your thumb and index finger, lean over the sink, and eat it in approximately four, maybe five, large bites. Pay no attention to the plate and fork in the top photo. I don’t know what I was thinking. All you need is the cake.

Everyday Cake
Inspired by Edna Lewis’s Busy-Day Cake

I don’t ordinarily like baking with whole wheat flour, to be perfectly honest. I am told that this constitutes some sort of major personality flaw, like finding real enjoyment in making babies cry, but I can’t help it. However, that said, when I set out to make this cake, whole wheat flour somehow seemed right. It seemed fitting for an everyday sweet, the kind of thing you would want to snack on, rather than save for after dinner. I had a bag of white whole wheat flour in the fridge, so that’s what I used, and it’s a great product. I combined it with regular all-purpose flour, using equal amounts of each, and the finished cake has a subtly nutty flavor and a hearty texture, which is exactly what I was after.

1 stick (4 oz.) unsalted butter, at room temperature
1 ¼ cups granulated sugar
3 large eggs
2 tsp. vanilla extract
1 cup unbleached all-purpose flour
1 cup white whole wheat flour
2 tsp. baking powder
¼ tsp. salt
A few gratings of nutmeg, or to taste
½ cup whole milk or plain yogurt, at room temperature

Preheat the oven to 375°F. Grease a 9-inch springform pan with butter or cooking spray.

In the bowl of a stand mixer, blend the butter and the sugar until light and fluffy. One by one, add the eggs, beating well after each addition. Add the vanilla extract, and beat to blend.

In a medium bowl, whisk together the flours, baking powder, salt, and nutmeg.

Add about ¼ of the flour mixture to the butter mixture, and beat on low speed to incorporate. Add 1/3 of the milk or yogurt, and beat again. Add the remaining flour mixture in three more doses, alternating each time with a bit of milk or yogurt, and beating to just combine. Using a rubber spatula, scrape down the sides of the bowl and stir to incorporate any flour not yet absorbed.

Scrape the batter into the prepared pan, spreading it evenly across the top. Bake for about 35 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. (This cake seems to want to brown quickly on top, so after about 20 minutes, you might want to peek into the oven and tent the cake with aluminum foil, if necessary.) Cool in the pan on a rack for 20 minutes; then remove the sides of the pan and continue to cool.

Serve at room temperature. Or slightly warm, if you want.

Note: I store this cake at room temperature, covered with plastic wrap. It’s very good on the first day, but I like it even better on the second. By the third day, it starts to dry out, but it still tastes good.

I get a glimpse

2009-04-21T00:32:00.000-07:00

Restaurant-wise, we are entering what I call Crackdown Mode. That sounds sort of scary, I realize, as though it might involve body armor and high-tech weaponry, but what it actually means is even scarier. It means that this restaurant, this Delancey thing, is now a full-time job. Not just for Brandon, but for me, too.

It feels good. It feels good to be caught up in its momentum, pulled along by something so tangible and so big. But it also feels like diving into a murky pool, enormous and very deep, and I can’t see a damned thing. I know I have to jump in, and I want to jump in, but let me tell you, it is dark down there. I hope that doesn’t sound too depressing, because I don’t mean it that way. What I mean is that it’s consuming. It’s complete immersion. We move by feeling our way. And sometimes, every now and then, I get a glimpse of what it will look like in the end, when it’s finished and open and full of noise and food and fire in the oven, and it makes me so proud and so excited that I don’t know whether to grin, or sob, or both. And the afterglow of that lights the way through the muck for a while, until I get a glimpse again.

This morning, we went to our friend Olaiya’s house and sat around her table for four hours, making lists and dividing up tasks. It was first official Delancey Planning Meeting. I don’t know how we made it this far without one. Olaiya is my role model in the departments of neatness and personal organization, and she has tons of experience in the restaurant industry, and she is also, most notably, a saint. She’s going to be our right hand woman for the next couple of months, as we get Delancey up and running. Every day, we get a lot done, but somehow, there’s still more to do. I’m convinced that our to-do lists secretly meet up and breed each night, while we sleep. To give you an idea of what I mean, here’s some of what we did today, in addition to our meeting:

Chose colors for the façade and front door
Decided on the hallway light fixture
Chose the dining room floor color
Finalized the wall color for one bathroom
Bought more paint
Sold some equipment that we don’t need
Made a mockup of a light fixture, using a cider jug and an Edison 1910 bulb
Finalized the list of sodas that we will carry
Planned the opening
Decided how much staff to open with
Had an electrician rewire and put in light switches

I know I said a few weeks ago that we were aiming to open in mid-May, but we’ve now moved on to look toward June, with our fingers firmly crossed. If I were my mother, this is the part when I would smile and shrug and say cheerfully, Tune in for the next episode! I love it when she says that.

I thought you might like to see some photos of the latest developments. To wit, the bar stools up there on the left. Most of the restaurant equipment and decor is secondhand or made by us, but the bar stools are new, a splurge from Design Within Reach. To the right of them are a few of the chairs for the dining room. They’re mid-century Danish, found on Craigslist and elsewhere. Of the rest of the dining chairs (stacked just out of view), about half came from Sunset Bowl, our neighborhood’s historic bowling alley, which closed last April after more than fifty years of business. They’re mid-century teak Thonet chairs, and after Brandon bought them at auction, our friends Shauna and Dan let us store them in their garage for an entire year. You can see them, scrubbed clean and draped with plastic sheeting to ward off dust, in the second photo above. And the table bases, a few of which you can see on the right immediately above, came from a local restaurant that lost its lease and closed a few months ago. I like to think we’re resurrecting them.

Also, the dishwasher has now been installed. And the dishwashing sink, the prep sink, two floor sinks, the mop sink, and the hand sink. Restaurants require a ridiculous number of sinks. Brandon wanted me to do an entire post on the sinks and title it “Sink or Swim.” You can see how excited I was about that idea.

I am, however, very excited to announce that we have completed seven of what will be eleven concrete tabletops. Each one requires an entire bag of cement, a little over four quarts of water, and a lot of sweat. That’s Brandon up there, patting the wet concrete into its melamine mold. And below, he is unscrewing the sides of the mold to release the tabletop that we poured the night before. I just noticed that he is wearing the same shirt in both shots, which means that he probably never took it off. Fresh clothes are sometimes less important than the to-do list.

Once each slab of concrete is dry, it gets painted with several coats of sealant. Then it is nestled into a natural steel frame, and any gaps around the edges are filled with silicone or resin. Then the whole thing gets glued to a piece of plywood, which is then screwed to the table base. Like so:

We got the idea for the table design from Rose Bakery, in Paris. (If you have its cookbook Breakfast, Lunch, Tea, you can see the tables in a few of the photos, particularly on pages 57 and 90.) Here’s what the edge of the table looks like from above.

This particular concrete slab was one of the early ones, and it has more bubbles than the recently completed specimens. Brandon has gotten to be quite a pro at working with concrete. I had no idea he was so handy.

And here’s the oven façade, or what will soon be the oven façade, once it’s covered over with tile board and then Heath seconds. The tiles will be a sort of brownish gray. And to the right there, just behind the façade, will be the salad station. Beyond that will be prep tables, and a fridge, and storage space. Soon.

And sometimes Brandon fires up the oven, even though we’re too distracted to make much from it. We fire it up anyway, and we make some pizzas, and we stare at the flames for a while, and I take some pictures, and then we go to sleep. And then we do it all again.

Its name is farro

2009-04-14T10:51:00.000-07:00

As I type this, it is cloudy again, and cold. The weather today leaves much to be desired. Such as some sunlight, for starters, and warmth, and caramelized onions. Right now, I really, really desire caramelized onions.

I know that this picture doesn’t seem to have much to do with onions, nor does it even seem appetizing, I imagine, but bear with me for a second. What you see there is my new ideal lunch: warm farro with French lentils, caramelized onions, and feta. It’s ugly as sin, and it’s also completely delicious. It’s a little like a lentil salad and a lot like mujadara, and if I could somehow ensure - maybe through magic, or fervent prayer - that there would always be a bowl of it in the fridge, I would gladly eat it every single day.

I don’t know about you, but I find this time of year to be uniquely annoying. It’s not winter, but it’s also not quite spring. There are artichokes and asparagus, but aside from that, it’s hard to know what to eat. So I go to the pantry, and I open it and sigh, and then I bring out the grains and legumes, the humble arsenal of the in-between season. Usually, I make the aforementioned mujadara, a soulful rice dish with green lentils and lots of caramelized onions. It is very, very difficult to beat. More recently, I also tried this recipe for koshary, a close cousin of mujadara that includes some seared macaroni, and it was pretty wonderful, too. (In particular, you should try Francis’s method for cooking rice. It’s perfect.) But then I found something to beat them both, and its name is farro.

Farro, the Italian name for emmer wheat, has been cropping up all over the place lately, so you’ve probably heard of it. If you haven’t, it’s a wheat grain - a kernel, really - and it looks a little bit like barley. Whole grains are making a big comeback right now - quinoa, bulgur, whathaveyou - but to tell you the truth, farro is the only one that I actually get excited about. It’s chewy and slightly sweet and has a big, nutty flavor, and it can be used in salads, soups, riffs on risotto, and about a million other things. Which is where mujadara comes in. The other day, when I went to make mujadara, I was feeling a little frisky, and instead of pulling out the usual bag of rice, I decided to try using farro. It is a sad day, I realize, when a person comes to associate the words ‘feeling frisky’ with eating boiled wheat kernels, but I am not ashamed to admit it. It was fantastic.

Especially with some feta, crumbled or strewn in hunks, on top. And hot sauce, for dining companions named Brandon.

Though it may appear otherwise, this bowl is not wearing a halo over there on the left side - that’s just an odd play of light on Brandon’s jeans - but it might as well have been. This stuff is worthy of halos and more. The lentils are earthy and rich, and the farro is plump and toasty, and then there are the sweet, sticky onions, and those three alone would be fine, but with some tangy feta on top, it deserves a lot of superlatives. It’s similar to mujadara, for sure, but it tastes entirely different from the usual rice-based specimen. It has a nuttier, more complex, more satisfying chew, and basically, I would like some right this minute, at 9:32 am, only an hour after breakfast. That pretty well sums up how I feel about it.

P.S. San Francisco! I’m coming to you again! This Saturday, April 18, at 3:00 pm, I will be at Omnivore Books on Food for a reading and signing. If you’ve never been to Omnivore, or if you have, please stop by. It’s an amazing little store, and I’m honored to do an event there.

Warm Farro with French Lentils, Caramelized Onions, and Feta

What follows is closer to a set of guidelines than it is to a real recipe, so do with it what you will. The most important part is the onions: be sure to take your time with them, and stir them frequently. Make this on a Sunday, or on a weeknight when you have some extra time to cook.

We eat this as a main dish, but it would be a nice side for almost any roasted or grilled meat. It is also delicious - and prettier - with some cooked kale or chard stirred in. Just boil the greens in nicely salted water for about 5 to 7 minutes, until tender but not mushy; then drain them, squeeze all the water out, coarsely chop, and add to the farro mixture.

And about farro: most of what is sold in the U.S. - I’ve found it at Whole Foods and fancy grocery stores, or you can get it from ChefShop - is grown in Italy, but there are also some domestic producers, like Bluebird Grain Farms in Winthrop, Washington. It is usually sold semi-pearled (semiperlato), meaning the some of the bran has been removed. If you buy whole farro, though, it will likely need to soak overnight before cooking - rather than a brief soak for semi-pearled - and will need to cook for 30 to 45 minutes more.

2 medium or large yellow onions
Olive oil
Kosher salt
¾ cup farro
½ cup French lentils, carefully picked through for pebbles and debris
Feta cheese
Hot sauce, such as sambal oelek (optional)
Lemon (optional)

First, the onions: slice them thinly. When I caramelize onions, I slice mine about ¼-inch thick, and I slice them lengthwise, from top to bottom - going “with the grain,” so to speak - so that they hold their shape. (If this makes no sense, check out the first two minutes of this video, from Fine Cooking. It’s a great demonstration.)

Pour a few glugs of olive oil into a large (12-inch) skillet. You want to be generous here, nearly coating the bottom of the skillet. Warm the oil over medium-high heat. When it’s hot, dump in the onions. They should sizzle. Stir them to coat, and then add a couple of pinches of salt. (Some people say that this causes the onions to fall apart more quickly, but I do it anyway. I like that it causes them to release some water, so that they stay moister, and it seems to make them caramelize more evenly, too.) Reduce the heat to low or medium-low, and continue to cook slowly, stirring occasionally. First, they will soften a bit; then they will go a little golden; and then they will begin to caramelize. It takes a long time to do this properly, so be patient – and stir regularly, especially as they take on color. My last batch of caramelized onions took about an hour and a half. When they’re done, they will have shrunk down in volume by quite a lot, and they should be a deep amber color and almost translucent.

Meanwhile, once you’ve got the onions started, put the farro in a medium bowl, add cold water to cover, and set it aside to soak for 30 minutes. Then drain it, turn it out into a medium saucepan, and add 3 cups of cold water and ¼ teaspoon salt. Bring to a boil over medium-high heat; then reduce the heat and simmer until tender but still a little chewy, about 30 minutes. It’s up to you, really, how “done” you want your farro. At 20 or 25 minutes, mine is usually too tough, but a few minutes later, it’s perfect: no longer a major jaw workout, but still al dente, for lack of a different term. When the farro is ready, drain it, and set aside.

While the farro is cooking, put the lentils into another medium saucepan. Add 3 cups of cold water and ¼ teaspoon salt. Bring to a boil over medium-high heat; then reduce the heat and simmer until tender but not falling apart, about 20 to 25 minutes. Drain, and rinse briefly under cool water.

By this point, ideally, your onions will be nicely caramelized. Now combine it all – onions, farro, and lentils – in a bowl and stir gently. Taste, and adjust seasoning, if necessary. Serve with feta crumbled on top and, if you like, hot sauce and/or a squeeze of lemon.

Note: Leftovers keep nicely in the fridge. Rewarm slightly before eating.

Yield: 3-4 servings

The truth is

2009-04-07T22:08:00.000-07:00

I have to tell you something sort of unpleasant today, but somehow, I don’t think you’re going to be surprised: I have not been doing much cooking lately.

I was hoping to be able to avoid the topic, but I can’t. There is a lot going on over here, and you can see it as clearly as I can, so there’s no point in trying to fool anyone. The truth is, for the past week, we’ve been living on a pot of pinto beans spiked with Tapatio, four steamed artichokes, a few pans of scrambled eggs, a quart of ice cream, one bag of Cool Ranch Doritos, and one bag of Blazin’ Buffalo & Ranch Doritos. I am not too proud to admit it. I am also not too proud to blame Delancey. In fact, I totally blame Delancey, with all my heart. Yesterday, I managed to roast some parsnips for lunch, and I felt so pleased with myself, so absolutely elated,
as though I’d suddenly discovered that my oven door opened directly into Narnia. It was really something.

Not as great a something, though, as the roasted asparagus with walnut crema that I made for dinner a few hours later. The oven and I were on a roll.

I found the recipe in A16: Food + Wine, by Nate Appleman and Shelley Lindgren, executive chef and wine director, respectively, of the restaurant A16. I’ve wanted to go to A16 for a long time now, but somehow, whenever I’m in San Francisco, I wind up so distracted by every option on every street corner that I completely forget what I went there for. I think sensory overstimulation is a requirement for any proper visit to the Bay Area, so I don’t fight it too hard, though it means, sadly, that I have never been to A16. Luckily, the book makes a happy stopgap. It’s visually stunning - clean but warm, with lots of luminous photographs on sturdy matte paper - and the recipes walk a fine, perfect line between simple and complex, rustic food and restaurant food. It’s the kind of cookbook I feel inclined to keep on the nightstand, so that I can read it in bed. Just this past weekend, it won Book of the Year in the 2009 IACP Cookbook Awards, so if you need a really firm, serious endorsement, there you go. It also contains the most inspired asparagus recipe I’ve run across in ages, which is why I’m rattling on and on like this.

It was 70 degrees in Seattle yesterday, unreal for April 6, and I decided to mark the occasion by driving with the windows down and buying some asparagus. The A16 book was lying on the coffee table in the living room, and at some point in the afternoon, I picked it up to put it somewhere else, and when I did, it fell open to page 102, the recipe for Roasted Asparagus with Walnut Crema and Pecorino Tartufo. I took it as a sign. From Narnia.

The recipe title sounds fancy, and the finished dish tastes fancy, too, but in essence, it’s very straightforward. First, you make the walnut crema. You bring some water to a boil, toss in some walnuts, and cook them until they’re tender to the tooth. While this is going on, you sweat some red onion in a skillet. Then you dump both items into the food processor with some of the walnut-blanching water, blend it all up, and then pour in olive oil while you blend it some more. The resulting mixture, now worthy of the handsome word crema, looks a little like hummus, but it tastes somehow more like a distant cousin of pesto: fragrant, rich, and deeply savory. You spoon it onto a platter, top it with roasted asparagus, shave some ribbons of pecorino over the whole thing, and splash it with olive oil. The pecorino melts against the hot asparagus, and it’s salty and tangy, and the walnut crema sort of slithers beneath it all, subtle but beguiling. We scraped our plates, and then we had it again for lunch today.

Roasted Asparagus with Walnut Crema and Pecorino
Adapted from A16: Food + Wine

The original version of this recipe calls for Pecorino Tartufo, a sheep’s milk cheese with black truffle, but barring that, any aged pecorino works nicely. I used Pecorino Romano. The original recipe also calls for finishing the dish with some toasted walnuts, but I skipped that part. The walnut crema carried plenty of nut flavor for me, and I thought that anything more was overkill. Maybe I’m weird. Either way, I finished mine with a squeeze of lemon, and it was a nice counterbalance to the richness of the crema.

This recipe is intended to serve six, and even if you don’t need to feed that many, I would go ahead and make the full amount of crema. It will keep in the fridge for a few days, and you can roast the asparagus as needed. (One bunch is perfect for two people.) Also, Brandon has a hunch that leftover crema would make a terrific sauce for pasta, tossed with fresh garlic, lemon, and a little Italian parsley.

For walnut crema:
Kosher salt
1 ½ cups raw walnuts
½ cup plus 1 Tbsp. extra virgin olive oil
1 small red onion, diced (about 1 cup)

For asparagus:
3 bunches fat asparagus (about 30 spears, total)
Extra virgin olive oil
Kosher salt
1 block Pecorino Romano or Pecorino Tartufo
Lemon wedges, optional

To make the walnut crema, bring a pot of salted water to a boil. Add the walnuts, and blanch for 8 to 10 minutes, or until tender in the middle. (I pulled mine out after 8 minutes, thinking that they seemed tender enough, but I should have left them for the full 10 minutes. My finished crema was slightly grainy, probably meaning that my walnuts weren’t soft enough.) Drain the walnuts, reserving ¼ cup of the cooking water. Set aside separately.

In a small skillet, warm 1 Tbsp. olive oil over medium heat. Add the onion and a generous pinch of salt, and sweat for about 7 minutes, or until golden brown and softened. Remove from the heat.

In the bowl of a food processor, combine the walnuts, the reserved cooking water, and the onion, and process until creamy. Taste for seasoning: it will probably need a decent amount of salt. With the motor running, slowly add ½ cup olive oil, processing until blended. The crema should have the consistency of a creamy hummus. If it seems too thick, add a little water. Taste again for seasoning, and then transfer to a bowl or other container. Cover, and hold at room temperature. (Crema can be stored, tightly covered, in the refrigerator for a few days. Bring to room temperature before serving.)

Preheat the oven to 500°F. Line two baking sheets with aluminum foil.

Snap the tough ends from the asparagus spears. Rinse them, and then dry them well. Spread them in a single layer on the prepared baking sheets. Drizzle them lightly with olive oil, and roll them around, smearing the oil with your hands, to coat evenly. Season with kosher salt. Bake for about 8 minutes, shaking the pan once or twice, until blistered, slightly charred, and tender.

To serve, spoon the crema evenly across the bottom of a platter. Arrange the asparagus spears on top. Working quickly, while the asparagus is still hot, shave Pecorino generously over the platter. Finish with a drizzle of olive oil, and serve immediately, with a squeeze of lemon, if you like.

Yield: 6 (first-course) servings

The dead who dream

2009-03-30T23:19:00.000-07:00

We are long overdue, I think, for a Restaurant Day. So much so, actually, that I’m not sure where to start. But I guess the front door is as good a place as any.

I know I haven’t mentioned it around here much lately, but The Thing That Will One Day Be Delancey marches on, slowly but surely. With emphasis, I guess I should say, on the slowly part. We are doing this on a very slim budget, which means that most of the work is done with our four hands - mainly Brandon’s, actually, to be perfectly fair - and with borrowed labor, borrowed pickup trucks, and borrowed tools from friends and family. I can’t imagine doing it any other way, especially not in this grisly economy, but we are no match for a contractor and a construction crew, and when bedtime comes, we sleep like the dead. The dead who dream of wood-fired pizza.

But somehow we like it, and we still like each other, and that feels reassuring. Our plans were approved and stamped by the city last Friday, and the liquor license came in the mail today, and though we hit a snag on the plumbing this morning that required self-medication in the form of some coconut macaroons, we are aiming to open in mid-May. With emphasis on the aiming to part. So don’t quote me on that quite yet.

A lot happened over there - at “the space,” as we call it - while I was out of town, so I feel as though I have about three posts’ worth of news for you, but today I want to tell you about two items in particular: the floor, and the oven.

When we started, half of the floor was carpeted, and half of it was painted the shade of blue you see above. What we wanted was a natural concrete floor: no paint, no nonsense, just a coat of sealant. So Brandon ripped out the carpet, and then he rented something called a Shot Blaster.

Privately, I hoped that the Shot Blaster was some sort of high-tech bartending tool, or maybe a weapon for firing one-ounce portions of vodka at my enemies. I pictured it as something akin to the marshmallow bazooka I once read about in a SkyMall catalog, battery powered and promising to launch “edible, full-sized marshmallows up to 40’, forever changing the rules of engagement for marshmallow gun confrontations.” But I was wrong. A Shot Blaster is a cross between a vacuum cleaner, an industrial sander, and a tennis ball machine. You push it (slowly and laboriously; it’s tricky) over a surface, the same way you would a sander, and as you do so, it shoots out and circulates thousands of tiny steel balls, which pummel whatever is beneath them, removing paint, carpet glue, anything that crosses their path. The Shot Blaster removed the blue paint, but unfortunately, it also left a weird, conspicuous pattern in its wake - like the trail a vacuum cleaner leaves as it moves over carpet, only more aggressive - and worse, it revealed some nasty cracks in the floor, cracks that had been filled with cement until we Shot Blasted the living crap out of them.

Needless to say, it was a disappointment, not to mention a huge waste of money. For a minute there, we looked at each other, and we were Tom Hanks and Shelley Long in The Money Pit. After weighing our options, we decided to reseal the cracks and paint the floor. We also decided never to speak of the Shot Blaster again. We’ve chosen a paint color, a warm shade of gray, and maybe the next time we have a Restaurant Day, I will show it to you.

On the upside, the wood-burning oven has arrived, and that, THAT, is what this whole place is about. Of course, it arrived in pieces, weighs nearly 4000 pounds, and took 24 hours to assemble, but it’s a beauty. It was worth it.

It’s an Italian-style oven, made by a California-based company called Mugnaini. Brandon tried a number of different styles and brands and concepts, both gas-fired and wood-burning, and this one was the winner. We could have bought it fully assembled and ready to use, but that would have required removing a large window to install it, and possibly a wall. Instead, we bought the oven in parts. And to make sure that we didn’t completely botch its assembly, we flew someone up from the company to help us. (Somehow, that was actually cheaper than it would have been to remove and replace a window. Don’t ask.) His name was Michael, and he was so fantastic, so charming and knowledgeable and immediately at ease, that we were tempted to adopt him as some sort of long-lost uncle. That’s him, the blur in the picture above, preparing to piece together and lay the oven floor, which is what you see below.

Once the floor was in place, the dome of the oven could be built above it. The dome was composed of thick, curving panels, a little like petals from an enormous tulip, that fit snugly together and were crowned with a final, circular panel. Each of them, each panel, weighed over 200 pounds.

The spaces between the panels were filled with refractory cement, and then the whole dome was wrapped with ceramic fiber, and then the thing was encased in metal walls, and then on top went a ton of refractory cement and perlite, for thermal mass and insulation. For the record, I do not pretend to know what thermal mass is.

In fact, I was given a special dispensation from most of this. For the better part of the process, which went on until 2 am, I was at home, asleep. But Brandon and Michael took a lot of pictures, and if you want to see the entire process, every single step, you can geek out right here.

When I arrived the next morning, it was done. Magic.

Of course, we then had to move it from where it was built, in the center of the room, into its proper location against a wall in the kitchen-to-be. That part did not involve magic, but rather me, Brandon, and our friend Ben, early in the morning and bleary-eyed, inching the thing around on a hydraulic handtruck, using some masking tape, a plastic protractor, and a 30° wedge cut out of cardboard to maneuver it into the right position before the ventilation people arrived to build the chimney.

Now that the oven is in place, we can pretty it up with some tile and start to construct the bar and the kitchen around it. That’s next. That, and making concrete tabletops. I can tell you about that another time, if you want. Until then, you know where to find me.

P.S. Actually, aside from Delancey, you can find me at Third Place Books this Friday night, April 3, at 6:30 pm.

The feeling of it

2009-03-23T19:35:00.000-07:00

I’m not sure what to say today. Pretty much the only thing that comes to mind is whoa. And wow. And thank you.

Actually, it’s more like THANK YOU. With lots of !!!!! at the end. Just to be perfectly clear.

I don’t have much to show for the past ten days, I have to admit. I took a couple of cameras on the road with me, but somehow, I only brought them out when I was in transit, in the subway or on a train, or in an airplane, half asleep between Newark and Seattle, sitting next to a window whose surface was so intricately, so elaborately, so eerily scratched-up that it looked like the thumbprint of a giant. Oh well.

I guess I also managed to take a couple of meal-time shots, but really, only a couple. So, no, I don’t have much to show for my time on the road. Nothing except a few spent Sharpies, some dirty clothes, and a lot of disbelief and wonder that it ever happened at all.

Somehow, when I thought about doing a book tour, I imagined myself standing painfully, night after night, in front of a roomful of empty chairs, listening to the hum of the ceiling lights and cracking halfhearted jokes with the guy at the cash register to keep from curling into the fetal position and dying on the spot. But miraculously, that was not the case, not even once, and I have you to thank for that. Thank you. This blog has always felt to me like a conversation, a conversation that we’ve had for going on five years, but until now, I never got to see your faces, and you never got to see mine. In the past couple of weeks, that has started to change, and I like the feeling of it.

So thank you, and thank you again. Thank you to the bookstores who hosted me, to the friends and family who gave me beds and blankets and bought me cheeseburgers, to those of you who e-mailed and left comments here, and to those of you who came out to say hello, bearing brownies, biscotti, cookies, rugelach, olives, jam, dish towels, maple syrup, fancy salt, and handwritten recipes. You people! You people. I won’t ever get over you.

You know, there’s a little espresso machine repair shop up the hill from our apartment - yes, Seattle lives up to its stereotypes - and I’ve been thinking about it lately. The guy who runs the place is terrific. He’s very quiet and intentional, and very happy in a quiet, intentional way. He never rushes or seems harried, and half of the time, rather than charging you to fix your machine, he tells you how to fix it yourself, for free. He has a dry-erase board in the shop where he writes observations or snatches of wisdom, things seemingly simple - dead-simple, really, and even somewhat hokey - that you somehow wind up thinking about for days, turning over and over like a coin in your pocket. My friend Ben has taken to referring to the espresso repair guy as his Guru on the Hill, which nicely sums up how we feel about him.

Anyway, this weekend, Ben called to tell me that he had gone to the shop last week, and when he walked in, the guru was writing on the dry-erase board, and what it said was, “I can’t wait to see what happens next.” I don’t know about you, but I think there is something sort of great about that. And I second it, in about eight million different ways.

I am going to keep this short, since I’m more tired than I would like to admit. But I’m going to cook this for dinner tomorrow, which I’m pretty excited about, and next week, you should be prepared for an onslaught, a deluge, a whathaveyou of all things Delancey, because a lot is happening over there.

So, onward we go.

P.S. The book events aren’t entirely over. Click here for more, and if you’re in or near Olympia, you can find me this Friday, March 27, at 6:30 pm at the Olympia Timberland Library. It’s free and open to the public, so come on out.

What a kick

2009-03-09T15:04:00.000-07:00

[Update: New Yorkers, please see below for information about a second event - just added! - at Idlewild Books on March 19.]

Hi, all.

I can’t stay for long today, but I had to stop in for a minute. I just had to thank you for all of your hugely kind comments and e-mails about the book. I’m not so good at replying right now, but please know that I read every one, and that you have made my day many times over. This whole book thing feels completely crazy, really. It feels as though I’ve been given a bit part on some flashy, fancy TV show - maybe I’m a murder victim on the autopsy table on CSI: NY, let’s say - and even though I’m only on screen for 20 seconds, probably with bad makeup and a huge, gaping chest wound that makes everyone wince and cover their eyes, what a kick it is, an absolute kick, to be there at all.

I just wish that I could make it go by a little less quickly. I’ve got to figure out how to slow down my brain. On the other hand, I’ve also got to figure out how to speed up my dishwashing technique. Two days ago, on Saturday, I was still washing dishes from last Tuesday.

Oh well.

I’m getting on a plane tomorrow, and here’s a list of where I’m headed. If you’re anywhere nearby, please come say hello. I would love to meet you. I know I’ve said it before, but I wasn’t kidding: to me, that’s the best part of this whole thing.

This week:

Capitola, CA
March 10, 7:30 pm
Booksigning
Capitola Book Cafe
Free event, open to the public

San Francisco, CA
March 11, 6:00 pm
Booksigning
Book Passage (Ferry Plaza)
Free event, open to the public

Oklahoma City, OK
March 14, 2:00 pm
Booksigning
Full Circle Bookstore
Free event, open to the public

And next week:

The March 16 event at Ceiba in Washington, DC is now full. There were a huge number of RSVPs, far more than I expected, and there just isn’t enough physical space in the room to accommodate everyone. I’m so sorry about that.

But, on the upside, we have scheduled a second DC event:

Washington, DC
March 17, 12:30 pm
Booksigning
Borders
1801 K Street NW
Free event, open to the public

And for those of you in New York, please note that due to large numbers at last week’s events in Seattle and Portland (thank you!), Idlewild Books is now asking that you RSVP if you plan to attend:

New York, NY
March 18, 7:00 pm
Booksigning
Idlewild Books
Free event, open to the public, but please RSVP to: events@idlewildbooks.com

Update: Due to demand, we have added a second(!) event at Idlewild Books in New York:

New York, NY
March 19, 7:00 pm
Booksigning
Idlewild Books
Free event, open to the public, but please RSVP to: events@idlewildbooks.com

See you out there.

I mean it

2009-03-02T17:51:00.000-08:00

I would like to sit down here today and write as though everything were normal, as though I were actually capable of forming complete sentences. But the truth is, I am an absolute maniac. Tomorrow is the official release date for my book, a day that I never really trusted would come, and I feel alternately so ecstatic and so freaked out that I can’t decide whether I need to run around the block a few dozen times or lie down for a nap. In the meantime, I will eat some sweet potato pound cake. As you can see, that’s been my fallback position for a few days now.

Many of you have written already(!) to say that you have the book in your hands, and that you’ve started to read and cook from it, and I want to thank you for that. Thank you. I wouldn’t have written the thing at all if it weren’t for you, and I mean it. I hope that, if you can, you will come out and let me shake your hand and thank you in person. I’ll be looking for you.

To those of you in the Seattle area: I will be at University Book Store tomorrow night - Tuesday, March 3 - at 7:00 pm. I’m baking some coconut macaroons with chocolate ganache for the occasion, and as an added bonus, I will probably be blushing uncontrollably through the entire evening. It’s a show you don’t want to miss. (4326 University Way NE)

To those in the Portland area: I will be at Powell’s this Friday, March 6, at 7:30 pm. I can’t guarantee any macaroons, but I will no doubt still be blushing. (1005 W. Burnside)

And an update on the Washington, DC event: a number of you e-mailed or left comments to express an interest in coming that night, but I now need a formal RSVP. If you plan to attend, please e-mail cheeseandchocolate (at) gmail (dot) com to say so. The event will be at Ceiba on March 16 from 5:30 to 7:00 pm, with a cash bar, complimentary hors d’oeuvres, and books for sale. The DC event is now full. Whew! I’m so sorry that we cannot accommodate more of you; we’ve just run out of space.

I think that’s all for now. I anticipate that I won’t be able to post much for the next couple of weeks, but I will stop by to remind you of where I’ll be, and when, and at what time, and whatnot.

And when I get back, I’ll have a new Delancey update for you. Last week, the wood-burning oven arrived - that’s the first step in building the kitchen - and it’s beautiful. It weighs 3,600 pounds. Its arrival heralded two days of sweat, heavy lifting, and cement-mixing for Brandon, and for me, a few rolls of film and an early morning in my pajamas, helping to move it into position in the soon-to-be kitchen with the help of a plastic protractor, masking tape, and a cart that vaguely resembled a handtruck on steroids. Needless to say, I have some photographs for you. Although none of them feature my pajamas, so don’t get your hopes up.

Until then, be well, bake yourself some sweet potato pound cake, and thank you, always, for being here.

Sweet Potato Pound Cake
Adapted from Southern Cakes, by Nancie McDermott

I was introduced to this cake by my friend Shari, who co-curates the inspiring site this joy+ride. (That’s me in the current issue, #12. Thank you, sweet Shari.) She not only gave me the cookbook that contains this recipe, but she also posted an enticing photo of it on Flickr the other day. She has never led me astray in anything, so I took the hint. I immediately flipped on the oven and pulled some butter out of the fridge, and I suggest that you do the same.

This cake is perfect for late winter: moist, fragrant, warmly spiced, with a flavor a little bit like – and I mean this in a very good way – a spice doughnut. Or maybe an applesauce doughnut. In short, I am going to be making it for a long, long time. You can roast, peel, and mash the sweet potatoes ahead of time, and from there, the cake comes together fairly quickly and easily. The recipe comes with an optional buttermilk glaze, which I used and liked very much, but you could go either way. The glaze is mainly for added flavor and moisture: in my experience, it isn’t one of those types that sits prettily atop the cake, but rather soaks in like a syrup. The overall effect was dangerous. I think I ate about five slices on Saturday. Consider that a warning.

For the cake:
3 ¼ cups all-purpose flour
2 tsp. baking powder
½ tsp. baking soda
½ tsp. freshly ground nutmeg
½ tsp. salt
½ cup milk (low-fat is okay)
1 tsp. vanilla extract
8 oz. (2 sticks) unsalted butter, at room temperature
1 cup sugar
1 cup light brown sugar
4 large eggs
2 cups mashed cooked sweet potatoes

For the buttermilk glaze (optional):
½ cup buttermilk
½ cup sugar
4 Tbsp. (½ stick) unsalted butter, cubed
1 ½ tsp. cornstarch or flour
¼ tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. vanilla extract

Preheat the oven to 350°F. Grease and flour a 10-inch tube or Bundt pan. (If your pan is nonstick, you can get away with just some cooking spray; no need to flour.)

In a medium bowl, combine the flour, baking powder, baking soda, nutmeg, and salt. Whisk well. In a small bowl or measuring cup, combine the milk and vanilla.

In a large bowl, beat the butter, sugar, and light brown sugar until light and fluffy, stopping once or twice to scrape down the sides of the bowl. Add the eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition. Add the sweet potatoes, and mix until the batter is combined. (The batter may look terrible at this point: curdled, weird, terrible. Don’t worry.) With the mixer on low speed, add half of the flour mixture. Beat to just incorporate. Then add half of the milk mixture, and continue to beat on low until well blended. Add the remaining flour, followed by the remaining milk, and beat on low until the batter is thick and smooth.

Scrape the batter into the prepared pan, and bake for 60 to 75 minutes, or until the cake springs back when pressed lightly and a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Cool the cake in the pan on a wire rack for 20 minutes. Run a thin knife around the edge to loosen the cake, and then carefully invert it onto the rack.

Meanwhile, make the glaze, if using. In a medium saucepan, combine the buttermilk, sugar, butter, cornstarch, and baking soda. Place it over medium heat, and bring it just to a gentle boil. Immediately remove it from the heat, stir well, and set it aside to cool to room temperature. Add the vanilla, and stir well.

Set the wire rack - with the cake atop it - over a rimmed sheet pan. Spoon the glaze through a fine-mesh sieve over the warm cake. (I recommend using a sieve because my batch of glaze had some little gelatinous bits of clumped cornstarch in it.)

Cool completely before serving.

Now you know

2009-02-24T18:46:00.000-08:00

I have a confession to make. It probably seems like I live and breathe to cook, right? It probably seems like I never get tired of stirring and whisking and chopping, like I go to sleep at night spooning the refrigerator and wake up each morning to find a skillet under my pillow and a rainbow arcing gently, benevolently, over the stove. But the truth is, there are many days when I would rather do anything than cook. ANYTHING. Like, hit-myself-over-the-head-with-the-aforementioned-skillet anything. Anything.

Lately, I’ve been having a lot of those days. At first, I thought it was because of my recent run of bad recipes. It’s hard to feel terribly excited about spending time in the kitchen after you’ve botched a number of meals in a row. Remember that Great White song, “Once Bitten, Twice Shy?” I sort of feel like that. I am also so overdue for a haircut that I’m starting to look like the lead singer in that video. This can’t lead anywhere good, I fear, especially because I don’t have a pair of leather chaps to complete the look.

But really, I think my problem is even bigger than that. I think my problem is peanut butter. I lose all motivation when there is a jar of peanut butter around. Given an adequate supply of sandwich bread, I will eat peanut butter and jelly sandwiches indefinitely, to the near-complete exclusion of other foods. I might bake something sweet now and then - the occasional cookie or cake, maybe - but otherwise, it’s all peanut butter, all the time. I know this because it’s what my life has been like for approximately a month. I am a sick, sick woman. Now you know.

But Brandon, bless his optimistic heart, apparently believes that I am still capable of redemption, because he staged an intervention last week. He told me, quite simply, that I had to stop buying sandwich bread. I nodded solemnly. Not long after, I successfully made a salad. And yesterday, I made soup, a puréed broccoli soup with a lemony, chive-spiked sour cream to spoon on top. I feel better already. Good enough, even, to foresee another batch in my near future. And after that, I might get my hair cut.

The soup in question is something that I had once intended to include in the book, but I worried that it sounded too boring. I don’t know. Broccoli soup isn’t an easy sell. I had a friend try the recipe, and she loved it - so much so, she reported, that she had to stop herself from eating the lemon-chive sour cream by the spoonful - but still, I was worried. So I yanked it. I moved on. I made other soups, and I sort of forgot about it. But the other day, while leafing through some photographs from a couple of years ago, I found a shot of this soup, and I realized that I missed it. So yesterday, I made it again, and now I don’t know why I ever doubted it. It was delicious.

It’s a pretty quick, simple soup, as these things go. It was inspired by a couple of different recipes: one that I read somewhere for a fairly basic broccoli soup, and one that Brandon found in college, a recipe for a puréed broccoli soup with leek, served with an herbed sour cream. He tells me, incidentally, that it was the first soup he ever puréed. I don’t know how he remembers this kind of stuff. Obviously, the part of my brain that was made to store such things is filled with song lyrics by Great White.

Our joint version starts with some onion and leek and garlic softening in a pot, and then into that goes a decent amount of chopped broccoli, some stock, and the rind from a small piece of Parmesan cheese. It all simmers together for about twenty minutes, during which time you slice some scallions and chives and zest a small lemon. Then you take out a small bowl and stir the scallions and chives and lemon zest into some sour cream, along with a little lemon juice, grated Parmesan, and garlic. By this point, the broccoli should be tender, and the cheese rind should be soft and sticky, and the whole pot should smell fantastic, very savory and fragrant with Parmesan. You pull out the rind, purée the soup, stir in some of the sour cream mixture, and then you serve it with another spoonful of sour cream on top. It’s both mellow and bright, light and rich, soothing in parts and punchy in others, and, I think, ideal lunch material. It’s not peanut butter, but I almost don’t mind.

P.S. I built a little page to list my book signings, and if you haven’t yet seen it, click here. The book comes out next(!) Tuesday(!), and I’ll be at the University Book Store in Seattle that night.

Broccoli Soup with Lemon-Chive Cream

I like this “cream” best when made with sour cream, but I’ve also used plain whole-milk yogurt, and it’s very good that way too. If you do use yogurt, keep in mind that it has less fat than sour cream, so you’ll probably need to add some olive oil to balance the acidity of the lemon. (Or just use less lemon!) I also found that the yogurt-based “cream” needed a pinch of sugar to balance it.

Oh, and should you have some of the sour cream mixture left over, it makes a great dip for potato chips.

For the soup:
1 Tbsp. unsalted butter
1 Tbsp. olive oil
2 medium leeks, white and tender green parts only, sliced
1 small yellow onion, coarsely chopped
3 cloves garlic, coarsely chopped
1 ½ lb. broccoli, both crowns and stems, trimmed and coarsely chopped
5 cups chicken or vegetable stock
1 rind (about 2 inches square) from a piece of Parmesan cheese
¾ tsp. kosher salt, or less if your broth is well salted

For the sour cream:
1 cup sour cream (not low-fat or nonfat)
2 scallions, white and pale green parts only, very thinly sliced
¼ cup minced chives
1 tsp. grated lemon zest
2 Tbsp. fresh lemon juice
½ cup finely grated Parmesan cheese
½ tsp. kosher salt
¼ tsp. pressed or minced garlic

In a small stockpot or Dutch oven, warm the butter and oil over medium heat. Add the leeks and onion, and cook, stirring occasionally, until they have softened and the onion is translucent, about 10 minutes. Add the garlic, and cook for one minute. Add the broccoli, stock, Parmesan rind, and salt, and stir to mix. Bring to a boil, reduce to a simmer, and cook, partially covered, until the broccoli is tender, about 20 minutes.

While the soup cooks, prepare the cream. In a medium bowl, stir together the sour cream, scallions, chives, lemon zest, lemon juice, grated Parmesan, salt, and garlic, mixing until fully combined. Taste, and adjust as necessary.

To finish the soup, remove the Parmesan rind. Using a blender and working in small batches – when puréeing hot liquids, never fill the blender more than one-third full – purée until very smooth. (Alternatively, purée it in the pot with an immersion blender.) Return the soup to the pot, add a few dollops of the cream mixture – I add about 1/3 cup – and stir to incorporate. Taste for seasoning, and adjust as necessary. If needed, rewarm the soup gently over low heat.

Serve the soup with a spoonful or two of the remaining cream on top.

Yield: 4-6 servings

A first-rate mess

2009-02-17T00:42:00.000-08:00

On Saturday night, we covered the table with newspaper, dumped out a pile of Dungeness crabs, and made a first-rate mess.

My mother was in town for the long weekend. She’s a champion crab-leg sucker, so to celebrate her visit, we bought three large crabs, cracked and cleaned, and Ben came over, and Brandon put some Django Reinhardt on the stereo, and after a few minutes, the wine bottle was covered with smears of crab and bits of shell, and it was such a good night that, looking at this picture and knowing that the scene is over, balled up and packed into the trash can outside, I feel sort of on the verge of a sob. I also feel immensely relieved that my mother is now back in Oklahoma, where I can’t see her frown when she finds out that I have outed her as a crab-leg sucker.

If I didn’t have relatives in San Francisco, I might never have learned about Dungeness crab. In Oklahoma, we certainly didn’t have any. But in San Francisco, at my mother’s twin sister’s house, we sometimes ate it on Christmas Eve, with sourdough, green beans, white wine, and a roll of paper towels for napkins. When I was eighteen, I decided to go to college there, and though I wasn’t thinking specifically of improving my access to fresh Dungeness crab, the prospect didn’t hurt. Every now and then, I would go to see my aunt over weekends and holidays, and in the winter and early spring, when Dungeness crabs are in season, we would sometimes splurge on a couple for dinner. I liked the whole idea of them: their sweetly saline meat, the ritual of the newspaper on the table and the paper towels in our laps, the casual slurping and the communal mess, the way it all felt so California. I liked to think that, in eating them, I too was California, in a sense. Whatever I was, I wasn’t Oklahoma City anymore. Every time I would drive across the Golden Gate Bridge, I would feel close to squealing, thinking, I LIVE HERE! I never got tired of it.

But eventually I finished college, and I went back to Oklahoma. My father made the drive with me a few days after graduation, and I was so terrified by the thought of leaving San Francisco that I had heartburn for the entire trip. One afternoon, I remember, we pulled over at a rest stop in New Mexico and shared a slice of blackberry pie that we had bought earlier in the day, in Albuquerque. The wind was whipping my t-shirt around like mad, and my chest felt so tight and painful that I was sure, absolutely sure, that I was dying. Once we got to Oklahoma City, I knew, I would be diagnosed with some sort of rare, fatal condition and given only a few months to live, and everyone would take pity on me and send me back to San Francisco, where I would live out my final days in a Victorian with a view of the bay. It would be beautiful and tragic, not only because I was only 22 and had never had a real boyfriend, but also because I would probably die in the summertime, when there is no fresh Dungeness crab.

But instead, the heartburn went away, and I didn’t die. I had a great summer. My hair was short and spiky, and I had a pink halter top. I met a guy in a grocery store and fell in love, and he made my chest feel tight in a much better way. That fall, I applied to graduate school. I wanted to go to UC Berkeley, but the only school that wanted me was the University of Washington. So I moved to Seattle, and it was here that, shortly after, I learned that Dungeness crabs were named for a town on the coast of Washington State, which is where they were first commercially harvested. Which means, I think, that I was actually supposed to be here, not in San Francisco, all along.

Now when I eat Dungeness crab, I feel very Seattle. Somehow, I never get tired of that either.

Dungeness crab doesn’t need much in the way of a recipe, but I can tell you that it, served with the roasted broccoli from this recipe (minus the shrimp, and use kosher salt, not regular, and don’t forget the finishing squeeze of lemon), a loaf of sourdough, and a bottle of some sort of crisp white wine, makes a dreamy mid-February meal. Just be sure to have a few layers of newspaper on the table, and some lobster picks and nutcrackers, for getting at the meat. If you want, you can also melt some butter - clarified, if you’re fancy - and set that out as a dip. Most importantly, don’t forget to put a couple of paper towels in your lap, or else you’ll have rivulets of crab juice running down your forearms and onto your pants. Actually, that’ll happen no matter what you do, but it’s nice to be able to sop it up occasionally. Otherwise, it gets sort of sticky. If you’re Ben, you’ll also spray crab juice all over the front of your shirt, but that’s a special case.

After dinner, after you’ve rolled up the newspaper and the crab shells inside it and wiped down the table, a batch of chocolate chip cookies becomes important, as does some port or Scotch. And after that, a good, long sleep.

About Dungeness crab

- The season for Dungeness crab runs from November or December through late spring. Many people say that the sweetest crabs are the ones available at the very beginning of the season, but the ones we ate last weekend were pretty delicious too.

- Buy your crab from a vendor you trust, and unless you’re going to go out on a boat and catch it yourself, buy it cooked. (Some markets sell live crabs, but buying a live one is not a guarantee of quality.) Your fishmonger should be happy to clean and crack it for you, so when you get home, you only have to do a little work with a nutcracker to access the meat.

- Buy the crab on the day that you plan to eat it - it doesn’t keep well - and store it in the refrigerator until shortly before serving. I like to let mine sit out for about 20 minutes before eating, so that the meat isn’t too cold.

- If you don’t live on the West Coast (or in a city where fresh crab might be flown in daily), you can mail-order Dungeness crab from places like this. (That link goes to my favorite fish market in Seattle.) It’s a splurge, but if you can do it, do it.

- Dungeness crabs weigh from one to two pounds or so. We bought three big ones, and they amply fed four of us.

Ring the bells

2009-02-09T22:12:00.000-08:00

February, February. I had forgotten how trying it can be.

I seem to have come down with a cold. I battled it for the better part of last week, and I thought I had won, but yesterday, it sneaked up and kicked me behind the knees, the way I do sometimes to Brandon when we’re in line at the grocery store, only I’m gentle and giggly about it, and this cold is neither. But I wanted to stop by here today anyway, because I have some good news for you. (And some butterscotch cookies! I made a recipe that worked! Ring the bells!)

The news is this. Those of you who lobbied for a book event in New York, take note: your wish has been granted. I will be at Idlewild Books on March 18 at 7:00 pm, and I am so, so excited to say that. I expect to see you all there. OR ELSE.

And now, the cookies.

If I didn’t have a sinusache, or a headache in my sinuses, or whatever the clinical term might be, I might have been able to take a better, less blurry photograph for you. But today was not the day for that. So please take my word for it: those are cookies, not lumpy pennies. They’re the butterscotch cookies from Judith Jones’s memoir The Tenth Muse. When I was reading it, this was the first recipe I dog-eared, even before the céleri rémoulade, and I don’t know why on earth it took me over a month to make the thing. I certainly won’t wait another month to make it again.

In the headnotes, Jones attributes this recipe to Schrafft’s, a restaurant in Manhattan where, as a child, she used to go for ice cream sodas or a sundae. (I particularly like her description on page 16: “I would sometimes go with a few classmates to Schrafft’s, one of the chain of genteel restaurants where the waitresses were all of Irish descent and dressed parlor-maid-style in black with a starched white apron and headpiece.” Parlor-maid-style! Headpieces! Hire me!) Apparently, whenever she went to Schrafft’s, she would leave with a dozen of their butterscotch cookies, her favorites at the time. But then Schrafft’s closed, and with it went the cookies. Years later, no doubt in a moment of spectacular brilliance, Jones asked James Beard if he remembered those butterscotch cookies, and he not only remembered them fondly, but he called the president of the company and asked for the recipe. I need a James Beard in my life.

But barring that, a few butterscotch cookies is a fine substitute. They may be sort of homely, the brown paper bag of the cookie genre, but they more than make up for it in texture and flavor. They’re thin and crisp - almost wafer-like, thinner than they look in the photo above - with a fine, lacy edge and a freckling of crunchy pecans. The unbaked dough is relatively simple, sweetened with dark brown sugar and punched up with a decent amount of vanilla and salt, but it bakes up to something complex and sophisticated. The finished cookies are sweet but not too sweet, salty but not too much so, fragrant with whatever it is that makes butterscotch smell like butterscotch. I think it’s time for my next dose of antihistamine.

These cookies would be delicious, I imagine, with tea or coffee, or maybe as the bookends of an ice cream sandwich, with vanilla or coffee ice cream. For now, I’m eating them with my therapeutic cocktail of hot water with honey and lemon, and even that isn’t too bad.

Schrafft’s Butterscotch Cookies
Adapted from The Tenth Muse, by Judith Jones

The original recipe does not specify whether or not, or how much, to pack the brown sugar. I lightly packed mine, just enough to smooth the top, and it worked out nicely. Also, does anyone know what the nonfat dry milk does here? It must do something important, but I’m stumped.

Lastly, note that the flavor of these cookies takes some time to develop. I baked them last night, and they were good, but they were even more interesting by this morning. And they’re fantastic tonight.

1 ¾ cups all-purpose flour
½ tsp. baking soda
½ tsp. salt
14 Tbsp. (1 ¾ sticks) unsalted butter, at room temperature
1 ¼ cups dark brown sugar
1 large egg
2 Tbsp. nonfat dry milk
1 Tbsp. vanilla extract
1 cup finely chopped pecans

Preheat the oven to 375°. Grease two cookie sheets, or line them with silicone mats.

In a small bowl, whisk together the flour, baking soda, and salt.

In a medium bowl, cream the butter and sugar. (I used my stand mixer for this.) Add the egg, dry milk, and vanilla extract, and beat to incorporate. Add the dry ingredients, and beat to blend. Fold in the pecans by hand. Drop the batter by heaping tablespoonfuls onto the prepared baking sheets, leaving 2 inches between each mound. (I was able to fit about 10 or 11 cookies on each sheet.) With damp fingers, press each mound into a circle about 2 ½ to 3 inches in diameter. Bake for 8 to 10 minutes, or until lightly browned. Carefully scrape up the cookies with a spatula, and transfer them to a rack to cool. Repeat with remaining dough on cooled baking sheets.

Store cooled cookies in an airtight container at room temperature.

Yield: about 30 cookies

Candy is dandy

2009-02-02T20:40:00.000-08:00

If I were Ogden Nash, I would have something very clever to say today. I’m sure of it. Maybe something like, candy is dandy, but this biscotti is not(-y). Yes?

Or candy is dandy, but I’m going to flush this biscotti down the potty? I think that might be it.

Or, ooh ooh, I’ve got one: Molly isn’t jolly, because this salad was pallid. ZING!

What a week it was. After the quiet glory of cabbage with hot sauce, it all went downhill.

I can’t remember what we ate on Monday night, which is not a good sign. And then on Wednesday, I made the most spectacularly tasteless soup to ever sit atop my stove. It was so bad that we wound up going out for pho instead, leaving the soup to sit in its pot and reflect on its wrongdoings until we threw it away the next morning. On Saturday, we ate the leftovers of the pho we bought on Wednesday and then tried to go buy cupcakes for dessert, only to find that Cupcake Royale was completely sold out. And yesterday, I spent the afternoon happily padding around the kitchen, making granola, trying a new biscotti recipe, and washing gai lan to sauté in olive oil and garlic and serve with sausage and polenta, only to find that the biscotti was bland, the gai lan was even more bland, and I was tempted to burst into tears in the middle of dinner, except that our friend Ben was with us. I’ve been trying to limit my crying fits to audiences of family, and sometimes strangers on the bus.

And then, this morning, I tried to make oat cakes from Home Baking. Judging by the photograph in the book, these oat cakes were supposed to resemble digestive biscuits, or something akin to Carr’s Wheatolos. (Does anyone else remember those?) I will never know for sure, however. The recipe said that the dough would come together to form a mass in the food processor, but instead, mine turned into oat-and-brown-sugar hummus. Pita chip, anyone?

I think this would be the part when I say, candy is dandy, but hummus is among us. (Sorry?)

Even the bag of recycling that sits in the corner wanted to scream.

All of which is to say that I have nothing for you today. I know, I know, and I’m sorry. But I can offer you a suggestion, and it is this: that you make this dish as soon as you possibly can. We made it for dinner the week before last, and it was so perfect that I’m still thinking about it. It was so perfect, in fact, that I won’t even try to make up a rhyme about it, and today, that is the highest praise I can give.

The best we can hope for

2009-01-26T20:30:00.000-08:00

Monday.

I would take any day over Monday. Any day. Even my seventeenth birthday, which was a very disappointing day. The only way I might be convinced to change my mind is if Mondays, as a rule, took place in a quiet room with white walls and a wood floor and muted sunlight, a large armchair, a stack of first-rate books, a fudgy brownie, and a small black-and-white dog who sits beside you in the armchair, curled up like a trussed pot roast. But that is not my Monday.

I did, however, have a good lunch today, which was a decent trade. Sometimes I think a good lunch is the best we can hope for.

What you see up there, in the wok, is green cabbage stir-fried until it caramelizes at the edges, tossed with sambal oelek and soy sauce. I call it Cabbage with Hot Sauce. It doesn’t look like much to speak of, I know, and I’m sorry about that. But if you eat it alongside some toast and cheddar, or a fried egg, one with a nice, saucy yolk, you won’t think twice. I hope.

We’ve been eating cabbage this way for a while, but it’s such a plain, off-the-cuff method - hardly even a recipe, really - that until yesterday, it never occurred to me to mention it here. I guess it’s a little like the chickpea salad that way, although more feisty in flavor. Brandon came up with the idea a few years ago, when he was still living in New York. I was visiting him, and we had bought a green cabbage for some recipe that I now can’t remember, and after making whatever it was, half of the cabbage was still sitting in the crisper drawer. So one day, for a late breakfast, Brandon fished it out, sliced it into thin ribbons, and chucked it into a hot wok with a dribble of oil, a spoonful of hot sauce, and some soy sauce for seasoning. We ate it with hummus and pita, or maybe it was cheddar and some bread. I can’t remember. But it was delicious - spicy and earthy and a little sweet from the fire under the wok - and the next day, when I flew back to Seattle, I took the leftovers in a to-go container that we found in his housemate’s cabinet, along with a bagel and cream cheese from Absolute Bagels. It sounds like an iffy combination, but somehow it was spectacular, both hot and soothing, salty and sweet, and I was both so happy and so desperately sad to leave, and sometimes, when I sit very still and let my mind go to the places where it goes when I don’t stop it, I miss those days so much.

But luckily, I did marry him, and now I can have that cabbage any time, so it’s okay. It’s also nice that he has hands that photograph well, and that he doesn’t strangle me with them when I stand up in the middle of lunch and scream, “WAIT! DON’T MOVE. Where’s my camera? I’ve got to climb up on the chair....”

Anyway, so now the cabbage is yours. That’s what I’m trying to say. It’s not dinner party material, particularly, but if you have a soft spot for cabbage, and if you have some hot sauce rolling around in your refrigerator door, it is a very fine way to put them to use. We ate it for lunch yesterday, with fried eggs from the farmers’ market, and it was so simple and right that I decided that you needed to know about it. And the leftovers today, with a couple pieces of toast and some slices of sharp white cheddar, something rich and cooling, made me feel all the more certain.

Have a good week, everyone.

Cabbage with Hot Sauce

This is more of a method than a recipe, so the quantities I’ve listed below are only approximate. Just taste as you go, and tweak to your liking. It’s hard to mess this up, as long as you get some color on the cabbage.

When choosing an oil for this, be sure to choose one with a high smoke point, the safest bet for high-heat cooking. We usually use canola oil, because I keep it around for making granola, but we have also used peanut oil and grapeseed oil. (Or, if you’re the type to have lard lying around - ooh la la - you could use that. It has a high smoke point too.) To learn more about high-temperature oils and fats, click over here or here.

½ head green cabbage, quartered and sliced into ¼-inch-thick ribbons
½ medium fennel bulb, thinly sliced (optional)
Canola oil, or another oil with a similarly high smoke point
¼ tsp. to 1 tsp. sambal oelek, to taste
Soy sauce, to taste
Salt, to taste (optional)

Place a wok over high heat. Let it heat thoroughly; it should even smell hot. Working quickly, pour in a glug of oil* and then immediately add the cabbage and the fennel, if using. Stir briefly to coat with oil, and then leave it alone for a minute or so, to allow the vegetables to begin to take on some color. Then add sambal oelek to taste, and stir again. (If you have a hood over your stove, turn on the fan! The hot sauce gives off spicy fumes.) Continue to cook until the vegetables are browned in spots and wilted. It won’t take long. Then add a glug of soy sauce, and stir well again. Taste, and season with more soy sauce or salt as needed.

Serve hot or warm.

Yield: 2-4 servings, depending on what else you’re having

* Be sure to have a lid nearby, or some baking soda, since hot oil always runs a risk of flaring up.

Calls for cake

2009-01-19T22:38:00.000-08:00

On a Sunday afternoon in January, it is very important to bake an apple cake.

Especially if the sun is shining, which it doesn’t often do in Seattle, and if you can open the front door for an hour or two and your dog can sit on the stoop without his tiny, ridiculous Polarfleece coat, which is a minor miracle, because he is a major sissy about cold weather. And especially if the apple cake in question is this one, with a rich, buttery base that crisps lightly at the edges, a layer of fanned-out apples, and a thin cinnamon glaze that puffs ever so gently as it bakes.

Actually, now that I’m typing this, I don’t know whether to call this thing a cake or a tart. It has elements of both, but it isn’t decisively either. The recipe comes from my friend Judy Amster, and I’m not sure what she would call it. One day last November, I ran into her at the home of her son, my friend Matthew Amster-Burton, and she pressed a folded piece of paper into my hand, explaining simply that it was the recipe for an apple dessert, and that I would love it. When Judy says that kind of thing, I listen. She has not only an encyclopedic knowledge of food, but also the most enormous cookbook collection I have ever seen. She has the kind of cookbook collection that, in some people, causes spontaneous weeping. This particular recipe, she explained, came not from her bookshelves, but from a friend of a friend in Canada, who originally got it from a Canadian magazine. It was delicious, she promised. It took me two months to find the time to try it, but I listened. I listened, Judy. I know what’s good for me.

But, yes, back to its name. How about an apple tart cake? It’s a little confusing, but it’s fitting. I like it. You can call it whatever you want, frankly. The recipe Judy gave me, printed from an e-mail, had no title at all. Instead, it began matter-of-factly with the command, “use a springform cake thingo, butter and flour it.” I love that. That’s all I needed to know, really.

The ingredients for this dessert are basic pantry staples, but I’d never made a recipe quite like it before. The base - the cake-like part - is assembled in the food processor, a mixture of sugar, flour, baking powder, butter, vanilla, and egg that you pulse until it resembles cornmeal. You dump that into your buttered, floured springform cake thingo, and you spread it evenly across the bottom. Then, atop that, you arrange thin slices of apple - preferably a tart kind, like Granny Smith - in a circular pattern, like a frilly French tart. Then you bake it for a little while, during which the apples start to soften and go fragrant, and the cake-like base begins to firm. Then you pull it from the oven and spoon over it a topping of melted butter, sugar, cinnamon, and egg. It looks very runny and completely wrong, but when you return it to the oven, it slowly sets, puffing just a little bit, forming an opaque, burnished glaze on top of the apples.

We ate it last night, while we watched Jaws on DVD, and that Judy, she was so right. The base was nubbly and chewy and moist, but along the very bottom and the outer edges, it crisped like the edge of an oatmeal cookie. The apples on top were soft and juicy, and the cinnamon topping lay over it all like a thin blanket, maybe cashmere with satin trim, binding the whole thing under the warmth of cinnamon. I loved it. And today, when I had another slice after lunch, it was even better. It had mellowed overnight, relaxing its sweetness and letting the apple flavor come to the fore. I was hoping to save some for a special inauguration-watching breakfast tomorrow - a new president definitely, definitely, calls for cake - but I just ate the last pieces after dinner, so I guess that won’t be happening. Unless I get up early to bake another one. Which I might.

P.S. Hey, speaking of the inauguration, I’m looking into the possibility of going to Washington, DC, on my book tour in March, and I need your help. I need to know how many of you might come to an event there, if I did do one. It would likely be held in the evening during the week of March 16, at one of my brother’s restaurants: DC Coast, Ten Penh, Ceiba, or Acadiana. DC will probably be my only East Coast stop, so if you think you might want to come, leave a comment here, and please don’t be shy. It would be so nice to meet you.

P.P.S. The DC event has now been confirmed! You people are the greatest. Click over here for more information.

Apple Tart Cake
Adapted from Judy Amster’s friend

For this cake, it is particularly important that your oven temperature is accurate. If it runs too hot, the base of the cake could burn before the apples are fully cooked, and the topping, too, could burn before it has time to set.

Also, if your apples aren’t terribly tart, you might consider reducing the sugar in the base a little bit, down from 1 cup to maybe, say, ¾ cup.

1 cup granulated sugar
1 cup all-purpose flour
1 tsp. baking powder
5 Tbsp. cold unsalted butter, cut into a few pieces
1 tsp. vanilla extract
1 large egg, lightly beaten
3 large Granny Smith apples, peeled, cored, and sliced very thinly

For topping:
3 Tbsp. granulated sugar
3 Tbsp. unsalted butter, melted and cooled slightly
1 tsp. ground cinnamon
1 large egg

Preheat oven to 350°. Butter and flour a 9-inch springform pan.

In the bowl of a food processor fitted with the steel blade attachment, combine the sugar, flour, and baking powder. Pulse to mix. Add the butter, and pulse until no large lumps remain. Add the vanilla and the egg, and blend well, until it resembles cornmeal. Dump it into the prepared springform pan. Nudge it around with your fingertips to distribute it evenly, and then gently press it along the bottom of the pan. You’re not trying to really tamp it down; you just want to compact it a little. At the edges, let it curve up ever so slightly, like a tart shell with a very low, subtle rim. Arrange the apple slices over the base in a tight circular pattern. It may seem as though you have too many apple slices to fit, but keep going. Really squeeze them in. Slide the pan into the oven, and bake for 45 minutes.

Meanwhile, make the topping. Combine the ingredients in a small bowl, and whisk to blend well. After the cake has baked for 45 minutes, remove it from the oven, and spoon the topping evenly over it. Bake for another 25 minutes or so, until the topping looks set. Transfer the pan to a wire rack, and cool for 20 minutes. Then run a thin knife around the edge to release any areas that may have stuck, and remove the sides of the pan. Cool completely before serving.

Note: This cake is even better on the second day. So if you can, make it a day ahead: just wrap it in plastic wrap and leave it at room temperature until you’re ready to eat it. We ate ours plain, but I think it would be great with vanilla ice cream.

Yield: about 8 servings

Squirrel it away

2009-01-13T00:32:00.000-08:00

I’ve been thinking for days, days, about what to call this dish.

It’s not that somebody else didn’t already name it, because they did. It’s called Cream of Scallop Soup, and I found the recipe in Gourmet a month or two ago, although I can’t remember which issue it came from, exactly. (I don’t have room to save magazines in their entirety - only chosen pages - and the page that includes this recipe has no issue date.) Cream of Scallop Soup is a perfectly reasonable name, but it’s boring. Also, when I hear it, I envision, unfortunately, raw scallops and cream whirring in a blender. I probably shouldn’t have told you that, should I? Either way, this dish deserves a more special name. It deserves a name that reflects how stunningly lovely, how drop-your-spoon-in-shock delicious, it is.

So, what could we call it instead? Maybe we should try a French translation. Most things sound better in French, I think. (Except my name, which winds up sounding like Moe Lee.) How about Crème de coquilles Saint-Jacques? Or, fancier, Coquilles Saint-Jacques dans leur bouillon a la crème fraîche? Maybe too fancy. How about Poached Scallops in Crème Fraîche Broth? Or Scallops ‘n Cream? It could be like Cookies ‘n Cream. Only different.

Whatever we choose to call it, I suggest that you bookmark this recipe right now - or go tear it out of your own copy of Gourmet - and squirrel it away for a festive occasion. It might be a little bit extravagant, both flavor-wise and money-wise, for an everyday dish, especially during these post-holiday weeks, but I wanted to go ahead and write about it, because it is so, so good. And also because Olaiya and Ben, two of our friends who ate it with us on New Year’s Eve, have requested the recipe, and I mean to deliver.

Our New Year’s Eve dinner was a potluck, and this dish was my main contribution, aside from a pan of brownies for dessert. (There was also, of course, the céleri rémoulade, and a grated carrot salad, but Brandon did most of the labor on those.) Olaiya had requested seafood, and I happened to have this recipe lying at the top of my file, so I took it as a sign. I hadn’t made it before, but the list of ingredients made my mouth water: sea scallops and crème fraîche, fish stock and white wine, shallots, thyme, and egg yolks. The recipe also had a very fine pedigree, having been adapted, the magazine noted, from brothers Jean and Pierre Troisgros of the famed restaurant Troisgros in Roanne, France. I don’t usually like to make dishes for the first time when there are lots of other diners involved, but the worst that could happen, I figured, was that it might turn out terribly and we would be forced to skip straight to the brownies, which would be fine with me anyway.

So I got some fish bones and made the required fish stock. It was my first go at fish stock, but it went swimmingly. (Sorry. Couldn’t resist.) Then I went out and splurged, since it was New Year’s Eve, on some stunningly gorgeous fresh scallops. And then we gathered the ingredients and went to Olaiya’s, where I had such a nice time with everyone and the champagne and the céleri rémoulade and the flash on my camera that, when the time came for our main course, I proceeded to cook the absolute crap out of those innocent scallops. They were tough and rubbery and so, so sad. I was even sadder. But we had to at least try the finished dish, I decided, and so I marched on, dividing them among our soup bowls and dousing them with their creamy broth, a fragrant amalgam of the stock and some crème fraîche, scented with shallot and thyme and thickened ever so slightly with egg yolk.

We sat down to eat it, and everything went silent. No one spoke for at least a minute. If you have ever experienced such a phenomenon, you will know that it can mean only one of two things: a) that your dining companions are completely speechless with ecstasy, or b) that they cannot talk because they are desperately preoccupied with finding a place to spit out the food that they are chewing. I feared the worst. But then Ben raised his head, smiled, and slowly, solemnly, pronounced my name, which, in his personal dining language, means that everything is well.

Actually, it was better than well. The overcooked scallops may have had less textural appeal than a pencil eraser, but the rest of the dish was supple, silky, completely spectacular. The broth itself was complex and aromatic, rich but not the least bit heavy, a sequence of flavors that opened with the brightness of wine and lemon and closed with the sweetness of cream. I don’t know any better way to describe it than to say that it seemed impeccably French, which is to say that it tasted harmonious and refined and very Old World fancy, as though it should be presented by a waiter in a tuxedo with flawless posture and a perfectly waxed mustache. I made it again tonight, just to be sure that it was as good as I remembered - only the best for you - and with properly(!) cooked scallops, it most certainly was. I am not a great fan of Mondays, but if they all ended this way, I might change my mind.

And speaking of great things, thank you so much for your enthusiasm about the book cover. It blew me away. Really. After two years of relatively solitary work on this book, it’s hard not to be nervous, I have to admit, about beginning to share it. Thank you for making it feel a little bit less scary, and a lot more fun.

Cream of Scallop Soup
Adapted from Gourmet and The Nouvelle Cuisine of Jean & Pierre Troisgros

Be sure to read through this entire recipe before you start. Once you begin, you’ll want to move quickly, or else the scallops will get cold. For a very sophisticated dish, it’s fairly quick and simple to pull together, especially if you make the white fish stock (which is also fairly quick and simple) ahead of time. I made my stock the day before, and when it came time to make dinner, all I had to do was retrieve it from the fridge.

Oh, and about sources: Trader Joe’s sells fantastic frozen scallops for $10.99 a pound, which is a great price. The package is labeled Wild Japanese Scallops, I believe. They were just as tasty as the more expensive ones from the Sea of Cortez that I bought on New Year’s Eve. Also, for the fish stock: to get bones, call your local fish market. If you give them a day’s notice, they should be happy to set aside some bones for you. I called my old faithful, Wild Salmon Seafood Market, and they gave me all kinds of halibut bones and scraps, free of charge.

¾ lb. sea scallops, tough ligament removed from side of each if attached
Salt
1 cup white fish stock
½ cup dry white wine
1 small shallot, chopped
1 thyme sprig
¾ cup crème fraîche
2 large egg yolks
Black pepper
2 Tbsp. finely chopped chives

Rinse the scallops, and then pat them dry. Quarter them, and season them with 1/8 tsp. salt.

In a heavy medium saucepan, combine the stock, wine, shallot, thyme, and ½ tsp. salt. Bring to a boil over medium-high heat, cover, and boil for 5 minutes. Strain through a fine-mesh sieve into a bowl, pressing on the solids before discarding them. Return the liquid to the saucepan. Bring it to a boil, then stir in the scallops and simmer, covered, stirring occasionally, until the scallops are just cooked through, about 2 minutes. (Do not overcook. If anything, leave them rare; they will continue to cook after you remove them from the heat.) Remove the scallops with a slotted spoon, and keep them warm, covered. Reserve the cooking liquid in the saucepan.

Meanwhile, put the crème fraîche in a small saucepan, and bring it to a simmer over medium-low to medium heat. Simmer until it reduces slightly, about 3 minutes. Add it to the cooking liquid in the medium saucepan, stir well, and simmer together for another 3 minutes.

In a small bowl, whisk together the egg yolks, ¼ cup of the crème fraîche-cooking liquid mixture, and ¼ tsp. pepper. Add half of the remaining crème fraîche mixture to the yolk mixture in a slow stream, whisking constantly. Then pour it all back into the medium saucepan, whisking. Cook over very low heat, whisking, until just slightly thickened, about 1 minute. Do not boil. Remove from the heat, taste for seasoning, and salt as needed.

Divide the scallops among 4 small soup bowls, and then ladle the soup on top. Sprinkle with chives. Serve immediately.

Yield: 4 servings

What it's about

2009-01-05T20:31:00.000-08:00

It recently occurred to me that I don’t often mention books here, which is kind of weird, since I am pretty fond of them. I’m almost as fond of them, in fact, as I am of food, which is saying quite a bit. Then again, I have an almost pathologically bad memory for plot, so I’m not sure what I would say about books anyway. The other day, I was talking with a friend about Persepolis, by Marjane Satrapi, which I read a few weeks ago and loved dearly, and I realized that, aside from a scene about the main character’s grandmother removing her bra and flower petals falling from its cups, I could hardly remember a thing about it. It’s sad.

So before I forget the details of my most recent read, the lovely memoir The Tenth Muse, by renowned editor Judith Jones, I wanted to be sure to tell you about it. Not only because it was lovely, and lovely really is the word for it, but because it gives a glimpse into a seminal time in cookbook publishing. (Jones helped launch the careers of Julia Child, Madhur Jaffrey, Marcella Hazan, and lots of other people whose names, go figure, I now can’t remember.) Also, it inspired me to make céleri rémoulade, which I hope I don’t forget about anytime soon. Or ever.

If you’ve been reading for a while, you may remember that I have a thing for celery root. It’s sort of the Philip Seymour Hoffman of vegetables: pale and a little scruffy, not exactly handsome by common definitions, but rippling, rippling, with integrity and talent. Vegetables can have integrity, right? And talent? I hope so, or else I’m going to have to find a new analogy, and that could take a while.

Most of the time, when I buy celery root, I use it only for soup. But for a while now, I’ve been thinking about céleri rémoulade, a salad composed of julienned celery root tossed in a mayonnaise-based dressing. It’s a fairly common, old fashioned thing in France, where it can be purchased ready-made at almost any grocery store and is often served as a starter in very traditional restaurants, alongside salads of grated carrot or cubed beets. I never felt particularly excited about it when I lived there, to tell you the truth. It always seemed sort of lifeless and fusty, like the smell of the canned green beans that my childhood babysitter Virginia used to boil into oblivion. But in recent years, ever since I started using celery root in my own kitchen, I’ve wondered often about old céleri rémoulade, and about how delicious it might be, especially if made with homemade mayonnaise. So when Judith Jones mentioned it in her memoir, even going so far as to include her recipe, I decided that it was time to try.

I apologize for not having a prettier photograph to show you, but Brandon and I made the céleri rémoulade for a New Year’s Eve dinner party at our friend Olaiya’s house, and when I took this picture, it was long past dark and I was wearing my new party dress and had had two small crab cakes and two glasses of champagne, which, in my person, is not enough food to counter the powerful effects of champagne, one of which is to make me turn on the flash and take awkward pictures of everything, including the old pair of black heels I was wearing.

Also, céleri rémoulade is not an attractive dish, so I’m not even sure that a prettier photograph was possible. Prettiness is not what it’s about. It’s about the clean, fragrant crunch of celery root, and the alchemy of mayonnaise and Dijon mustard. It is wonderfully creamy, yes, and somewhat rich, but its flavor is light, bright, even hungry-making, a perfect start to a meal. We all had second helpings, even though there was more food coming, and I cursed myself for having waited so long to try it in the first place. Don’t make the same mistake. We served ours as part of a trio of salads, along with a carrot one and a lentil one with fennel. We then moved on to a cream of scallop soup that, despite its total snore of a name, is one of the most delicious things I ate in 2008. I’ll tell you about that next week. (And no, for the record, I am not pregnant in the photograph above. Or in real life. It’s just a poof in my dress.)

And while we’re on the topic of books, I’m so happy today to show you the cover of mine! I’ve been wanting to share it with you, but I had to wait until it was 100% finalized, and that took a little while.

If you recognize the image, it’s because it appeared in this long-ago post about our honeymoon. I took it in Brentwood Bay, BC, at a sweet little spot called the Boathouse, where we stared at giant purple starfish under the dock and I tried to wrap my head around the fact that I was somehow a married woman. At the time, the book was still deep in gestation, and I had no idea that those mugs, and those glasses, and that dreamy greenish cabinet would ever go anywhere but into my camera and, possibly, onto this site. This life of mine has been very surprising.

The book comes out in less than two months now, on March 3. You can read more about it here, and you can order it, if you feel so moved, at any number of places, like this one or this one or one of these. I’m thrilled to say that I will be doing a tour, visiting a handful of cities for readings and signings and whatnot, and hopefully, I’ll get to meet(!) many of you. When the time gets a little closer and I have more details to share, I’ll let you know. I can’t wait.

Céleri Rémoulade
Adapted from The Tenth Muse, by Judith Jones

Some recipes call for grating the celery root here, but I find that grating makes for strands of celery root that aren’t quite substantial enough, or crunchy enough. I prefer to julienne mine.

1 small to medium celery root, about 10 ounces
6 Tbsp. mayonnaise, preferably homemade
1 Tbsp. plus ½ tsp. Dijon mustard
2 Tbsp. whole-milk plain yogurt
Salt, to taste
Lemon juice, to taste
Sugar, to taste (optional)

First, prepare the celery root. To peel it, use a sharp vegetable peeler or chef’s knife to trim away the dirty outer “skin.” One end may be especially hairy-looking: you’ll want to use the knife to trim it clean.

Next, julienne the celery root. If you have a food processor with a julienne attachment – not a shredding attachment; that’s not quite right – try using that. That’s the easiest way to julienne. Or, if you have a mandoline with a julienne attachment, you can try doing it that way. However, keep in mind that celery roots are very dense and hard, which could make using the mandoline a bit dangerous. Instead, you might want to julienne by hand, with a sharp knife. To do so, cut the celery root in half. Position one half on its flat side, so that it is steady, and cut it into very thin slices. Then lay those slices flat on the cutting board, stacking them if you like, and cut them into matchsticks. Repeat with the remaining half. It’s a tedious process, to say the very least, but it’s worth it.

In a medium bowl, stir together the mayonnaise, mustard, yogurt, and a pinch of salt. Taste, and adjust seasoning as necessary. Add the julienned celery root, and toss to mix. Taste, and adjust seasoning again as necessary. We found that ours needed a little bit of lemon juice (about ¼ teaspoon) and a pinch of sugar, as well as more salt.

Chill until serving. Judith Jones recommends making this salad a few hours ahead of serving, so that the flavors can develop, but we liked it best shortly after it was made, when the celery root was at its most crisp and crunchy.

Yield: 4 servings

Delancey

2008-12-30T01:13:00.000-08:00

Is it just me, or is anyone else feeling sort of holiday food’ed out? I never thought I would say this, but if I see another cookie, cake, or slice of chocolate pecan pie, I am going to do something crazy, like look the other way. Today, after lunch, I stood in front of the last of the cranberry upside-down cake from Christmas dinner and, fork poised in mid-air, thought, Nah, nevermind. Sometimes I hardly know myself at all.

So let’s not talk about food right now. Instead, I thought we might have a Restaurant Day. Because a major detail has been decided since I first told you about the restaurant, and we want to share it with you. Namely, the name.

The restaurant is going to be called Delancey. We chose it because it reminds us of New York, and since Brandon’s pizza sensibility is so rooted there, it seems fitting. It’s the name of a street in Manhattan, as well as a subway stop, and though it’s not in a particularly glamorous part of town, when Brandon was living in New York, it was one of his favorite stations: always bustling, packed with all sorts of people going to all sorts of places. Plus, isn’t it a pretty word? To me, it feels kind of classy and old-fashioned, like dark wood and tarnished copper and old men in tweed suits smoking cigars. Not that the restaurant will necessarily include any of those things, but we like the idea.

Also, for those of you who asked and those who have speculated, Delancey will be in Ballard, on 70th Street NW, between 14th and Alonzo Avenues. There’s a sweet little strip of businesses there, and Brandon is thrilled to have snatched a spot among them. Number 1415, to be precise.

I went over to the space a couple of weeks ago, in the midst of the big snowstorm, and I took some photographs for you. The place doesn’t look anything like a restaurant yet, so don’t get too excited. I just thought you might like to see it in all its various stages, from ladders and dust (right now) to the day the doors open (in early spring, we hope). If you’d like to view any of the photographs in a larger size, just click on them.

Right now, Brandon is working on pretty boring things: picking out toilet fixtures, submitting applications for various permits, and scraping down the popcorn ceiling. But I think there’s often something beautiful about boring things, like light fixtures and painter’s tape.

Or a mural of two ships, sailing peacefully across the wall above the main door. Once we start painting, I have a feeling it won’t be there anymore.

There are also lots of buckets. Soon they won’t be there anymore either. I won’t miss them.

Here’s a prep table. It holds the all-important bag of Cool Ranch Doritos. And in the back there, you can see the three-compartment sink that will go in the kitchen. When Brandon brought it from the restaurant supply store, it fit into our friend Bonnie’s car by mere centimeters.

And here are Brandon’s new best friends, a surgical mask and a scraper, his tools for removing the gnarly popcorn ceiling. (He had it tested for asbestos, and it came back safe, so please don’t worry.) They’ve spent lots of hours together, that man, that mask, and that scraper. Personally, I like spending time with the boom box on the chair. While I took this photograph, it played Bruce Springsteen’s “Glory Days” for me.

I think that’s all for now, but when we have more to show and tell, we certainly will. There are more Restaurant Days to come, for sure.

In the meantime, here’s to a warm and bright New Year! I hope your 2009 is even better than you can imagine. Thank you, always, for being here.

Like winter and warmth

2008-12-23T12:46:00.000-08:00

Hi, friends.

I’m writing this from Oklahoma City, from my old bedroom in my mother’s house, where I used to, as a teenager, write gushy poems about 18-year-old boys with sideburns. I had a real thing for 18-year-old boys with sideburns. I don’t anymore.

I now have a thing for whiskey-soaked dark chocolate Bundt cakes. They hold their liquor better. Among other things.

I can’t talk for long today, because we arrived in Oklahoma around ten o’clock last night and then stayed up too late talking, so I’m tired. I still can’t believe that we even got here, given how snowed-under Seattle is right now. The day before we left, we watched people snowboard down the hill on 65th Street in Ballard. On the way to the airport, we passed a guy on cross-country skis, making his way slowly, cheerfully, up the road. It was all pretty dreamy, really, so long as you didn’t have anywhere important to be. Like the airport, for example, or your mother’s house in Oklahoma. The fact that our flight even left SeaTac yesterday was, we decided, our Christmas miracle. So I think I should keep this short today, and get back to appreciating that miracle by crawling under the covers in my old bed.

But before I do that, I wanted to make sure that you had this Bundt cake recipe. If you haven’t yet had your Christmas miracle, well, ta daaa! Here it is.

I am not, under ordinary circumstances, a great fan of alcoholic desserts. Many of them seem to involve Amaretto, and I just don’t like it. This admission makes me sound sort of boring and unfun, I know, as though I sit around on Saturday nights and read the Oxford English Dictionary with a magnifying glass, but I say it so that you will understand how special this particular alcoholic dessert is. I am a great, great fan of this Bundt cake, or boozy cake, as I like to call it. You have to pronounce that as one word: not boozy cake, but boozycake. Just so you know.

The recipe comes from the New York Times, from an article by Melissa Clark that ran about three weeks ago. It’s a riff on an old Maida Heatter recipe, a rich, dark chocolate cake punched up with not only a quarter-cup of instant espresso, but an entire cup, a cup, ONE CUP, of whiskey. It has a soft, moist, tightly woven crumb, and it makes the kitchen smell very sophisticated, like winter and warmth and the dinner parties my parents used to throw when I was little, after they put me to bed. It smells very chocolatey and very boozy. Because it is very boozy. The night I made it, I cut a slice while it was still a bit warm, and eating it, standing over the kitchen counter, I actually felt a little woozy. And no, I did not intend to make that rhyme. Although once I saw it happening, I didn’t exactly stop it, either.

If you can, try to make this cake a day before you want to serve it, to allow the flavors to mellow and meld. On the first day, the flavor of the alcohol threatens to drown out the chocolate, but after a little overnight rest, they reach a sort of compromise, complementing each other instead of competing, the deep darkness of the chocolate rising to meet the heady afterburn of the whiskey. If you, like us, haven’t trimmed your tree yet, this would be just the kind of thing for that, for eating with one hand while you hang ornaments with the other. To add to the festive feeling, you could even turn on that old Mannheim Steamroller Christmas album, the one that came out in 1984 and that my family continues to trot out every single December. If you eat enough boozy cake, the synthesizers might actually sound kind of nice. Imagine that! What a cake.

Whiskey-Soaked Dark Chocolate Bundt Cake
Adapted from The New York Times

I used St. George whiskey for this recipe, but next time, I think I would use bourbon. Whatever you choose, be sure to use something that you like to drink on its own; its flavor is the real centerpiece here.

2 sticks (8 oz.) unsalted butter, softened, plus more for the pan
2 cups all-purpose flour, plus more for the pan
5 oz. unsweetened chocolate
¼ cup instant espresso powder
2 Tbsp. unsweetened cocoa powder
1 cup bourbon, rye, or other whiskey, plus more for sprinkling
½ tsp. kosher salt
2 cups granulated sugar
3 large eggs
1 Tbsp. vanilla extract
1 tsp. baking soda
Confectioners’ sugar, for garnish (optional)

Preheat oven to 325°F. Grease and flour a 10-cup-capacity Bundt pan (or two 8- or 9-inch loaf pans).

In a heatproof bowl set over – but not touching – a saucepan of simmering water, melt the chocolate until just smooth, stirring occasionally. Let cool.

Put espresso and cocoa powders in a 2-cup (or larger) glass measuring cup. Add enough boiling water to come up to the 1 cup measuring line. Stir until the powders dissolve. Add the whiskey and salt. Let cool.

Using an electric mixer, beat the butter until fluffy. Add the sugar, and beat until well combined. Add the eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition. Beat in the vanilla extract, baking soda and melted chocolate, scraping down the sides of the bowl with a rubber spatula.

With the mixer on low speed, beat in a third of the whiskey mixture. When liquid is absorbed, beat in 1 cup flour. Repeat additions, ending with the whiskey mixture. It may seem like there is too much liquid, but don’t worry; it’s okay. Scrape the batter into the prepared pan, and smooth the top. Bake until a toothpick inserted into the center of the cake comes out clean, about 1 hour and 10 minutes for a Bundt pan. (Loaf pans will take less time; start checking them after 55 minutes.)

Transfer the cake, still in its pan, to a rack. Unmold after 15 minutes and sprinkle warm cake with more whiskey. (I did this by pouring a little bit into a teaspoon, and then shaking the teaspoon over the cake. I’m guessing that I used 3 teaspoons’ worth in all.) Cool completely before serving, garnished with confectioners’ sugar, if you like.

Note: This cake tastes even better on the second day, when the intensity of the alcohol mellows a little bit.

Yield: 10 to 12 servings.

Look at that

2008-12-15T23:18:00.000-08:00

I’ve been sitting here for the past twenty minutes, trying to figure out how to start this post. I hate it when this happens. I have nightmares about it, even.

Well, let’s see. How about a photograph? Maybe it will jump-start something. One can hope.

One can also, while hoping, tiptoe over to the fridge and steal some of the peppermint bark in that photograph, even though it’s supposed to be saved for holiday gifts. That’s another option. Just don’t tell Brandon, because I told him earlier today that he couldn’t have any. Then again, he’s over at the restaurant space right now, drinking a beer and eating Cool(!) Ranch(!) Doritos(!) while he rips out the carpet, so it’s really only fair that I should have a snack here too. Like peppermint bark. Which is, for the record, very refreshing. And inspiring! Look at that. I just wrote a whole paragraph.

I was introduced to this particular peppermint bark by my sister Lisa, who always, always, finds the best recipes. For a few years now - or maybe even several; I can’t remember - she has made it for the holidays. She gives most of it away to friends, but she usually sets aside a tin for the family to eat during Christmas, when we’re all together. Last year, when we spent Christmas Eve at her house on Long Island, I’m pretty sure I ate more peppermint bark than dinner.

Lisa and I were on the phone the other day, having a marathon catch-up session, and while we talked, I made a batch of chocolate blocks. I happened to mention that I was working on my holiday gift-making, and Lisa confided that she was running behind on hers. She usually makes both peppermint bark and bittersweet almond bark, handing out small sachets of each, but this year, she told me, so many people have asked for the peppermint bark that she is thinking of skipping the almond one entirely. I was sad to hear that - last Christmas Eve, I also ate more almond bark than dinner - but I understand. That peppermint bark is special.

Before I tasted Lisa’s version, the words peppermint bark weren’t even in my vocabulary. I guess I thought of it as one of those cutesy things you get in a gift basket but never eat, like tiny jars of cheese spread or plastic-encased summer sausages. Most of the time, it was simply a sheet of pallid white chocolate with crushed-up peppermint candies mixed in - or, in a slightly fancier incarnation, a layer of dark chocolate topped with a layer of white chocolate with crushed-up peppermint candies mixed in. I know this will sound like sacrilege to some, but I couldn’t get excited about it.

But then, THEN, there was Lisa’s version, which is really Bon Appétit’s version, a recipe that ran in the magazine ten whole years ago, in 1998. It consists of not one layer, not two layers, but three layers. The top and bottom are white chocolate, onto which you sprinkle crushed peppermints, and the middle layer is a bittersweet ganache, ever so slightly soft and truffle-like, spiked with peppermint extract. It’s pretty, for one thing, but it’s also unusually delicious: heady with mint, only moderately sweet, and surprisingly sophisticated, crunchy in parts and smooth in others, like a proper chocolate confection. It’s Americana, yes, but Americana in a vintage designer dress. If the butter cookies I made last week bore a faint resemblance to my grandmother, this peppermint bark is my fantasy great-aunt: the one who lives in San Francisco, wears Jackie O. dresses and glasses with vermilion frames, makes hot chocolate from scratch, and always knows what’s showing at SFMOMA. What a lady she would be. I wish she actually existed. At least I have peppermint bark.

This recipe takes a bit more time than the average bark specimen, what with the layering of chocolates and the required chilling in between, but it’s worth the effort. Once you have your ingredients ready, it’s really very easy: you just chop, melt, smear, and repeat. And while it cools, you can do any number of important things, like washing dishes, or chiding your husband for eating Cool Ranch Doritos without you, or calling your sister to thank her for her brilliance.

Three-Layer Peppermint Bark
Adapted from Bon Appétit, December 1998

When you’re shopping for white chocolate, make sure that the words “cocoa butter” appear in the list of ingredients. When I went to buy mine, I was shocked by how many brands contain absolutely no cocoa butter. (Instead, you get only sugar, hydrogenated oil, artificial flavorings, and the like.) I wound up using Callebaut, which isn’t cheap, but it was a worthy splurge.

Also, to crush the peppermints coarsely, Bon Appétit advises tapping the wrapped candies firmly with the bottom edge of an unopened 15- to 16-ounce can. I used a heavy glass jar, and that worked fine too.

17 oz. white chocolate, such as Callebaut, finely chopped
30 red-and-white-striped hard peppermint candies, coarsely crushed
7 oz. bittersweet chocolate, such as Ghirardelli 60%, finely chopped
6 Tbsp. heavy cream
¾ tsp. peppermint extract

Turn a large baking sheet upside down, and cover it securely with aluminum foil. Measure out and mark a 9- by 12-inch rectangle on the foil.

Put the white chocolate in a metal (or other heatproof) bowl, and set it over a saucepan of barely simmering water. (Do not allow the bottom of the bowl to touch the water.) Stir occasionally until the chocolate is melted and smooth; if you take its temperature with a candy thermometer, it should register 110°F. Remove the chocolate from the heat. Pour 2/3 cup of it onto the rectangle on the foil. Using an icing spatula, spread the chocolate to fill the rectangle. Sprinkle with ¼ cup of the crushed peppermints. Chill until set, about 15 minutes.

Meanwhile, combine the bittersweet chocolate, cream, and peppermint extract in a heavy medium saucepan. Warm over medium-low heat, stirring frequently, until the mixture is just melted and smooth. Cool to barely lukewarm, about 5 minutes. Then remove the baking sheet from the refrigerator, and pour the bittersweet chocolate mixture over the white chocolate rectangle. Using an icing spatula – make sure you cleaned it after using it for the white chocolate, above! – spread the bittersweet chocolate in an even layer. Chill until very cold and firm, about 25 minutes.

Rewarm the remaining white chocolate over barely simmering water to 110°F. Working quickly, pour the white chocolate over the firm bittersweet layer, using your (again, clean) icing spatula to spread it to cover. Sprinkle with remaining crushed peppermints. Chill just until firm, about 20 minutes.

Carefully lift the foil from the baking sheet onto a large cutting board. Trim away any ragged edges of the rectangle. (These are yours to nibble at, a little prize for your efforts.) Cut the bark crosswise into 2-inch-wide strips. Using metal spatula, slip the bark off of the foil and onto the cutting board. Cut each strip crosswise into 3 sections, and then cut each section diagonally into 2 triangles. Or, alternatively, just cut each strip into smaller pieces of whatever size you like. That’s what I did.

Pack into an airtight container, with sheets of wax paper between layers of bark to prevent them from sticking to one another. Store in the refrigerator. Serve cold or, to emphasize the slight softness of the bittersweet layer, let stand at room temperature for 10 minutes before serving.

Note: This bark will keep for up to 2 weeks, if not more. If you plan to pack it in a tin or baggie with other holiday sweets, be sure to wrap it separately in plastic wrap. Or maybe wax paper and then plastic wrap, so that it doesn’t sweat. If you left it naked, so to speak, to mix and mingle with other cookies or candies, everything might wind up tasting and smelling like peppermint.

Yield: about 36 pieces, or more, if you cut them smaller

For that very reason

2008-12-08T22:05:00.000-08:00

I don’t know where to begin. You people spoil me. Do you know that? Brandon and I cannot even dream of how to adequately thank you for the immensely kind and utterly galvanizing comments you left in response to The Big Restaurant Announcement. Some of you even sent e-mails, offering advice, encouragement, and hands-on(!) help(!). I’m still trying to pick my jaw up off the floor. Thank you. Or rather, I mean, THANK YOU. If I could hire a plane to write it in the sky, I would, because that would best capture the magnitude of the sentiment. But we have a budget to stay within, you understand.

So, onward we go, right? I will keep you posted, I promise, as the process moves along. This week, Brandon’s main project is to design the layout of the kitchen, which is a rather fraught endeavor, as you can imagine. And soon I’ll be spending some time over there with my cameras, documenting the construction process, which I’m pretty excited about. I like taking pictures of messes - it’s the neatnik in me, I think, trying perversely to impose order - and what we’ve got right now definitely qualifies as a mess.

As does, conveniently, this photograph. These Danish butter cookies are not only one of the most wonderful things I have eaten lately, but they are also among the most difficult items I have ever, ever, tried to photograph. For one thing, they’re plain and monochromatic, as butter cookies generally are. They’re lovely to eat, but sort of boring to look at. Also, I’m almost positive that while I was washing the dishes, they held a secret meeting on the cooling rack and decided, just for fun, to wiggle a little bit each time I tried to take their picture. I think they also got the sun in on the game, because the light today was awful. Don’t even ask about the close-up shots. If I had a dime for every time I cussed at these blurry naughties, I would have, well, like, a dollar. That may not seem like much, but it could buy me a first-rate bagel at Absolute Bagels. To punish the cookies for their disobedience, Brandon and I ate about a half dozen of them, and then, take that, I put the rest in the freezer. Something tells me they won’t act up again.

This weekend, and these cookies, marked the beginning of my annual holiday baking ritual. Those of you who have been reading for a while may remember that a cloud of powdered sugar generally hovers over this site each December, and this one is no exception. For the third year in a row, I’ve decided to give handmade gifts for the holidays. Mainly because it makes me feel good, but also because it keeps me out of the mall, which is good for everyone, I assure you. I’m making a number of candies and cookies, like this and this and this and the recalcitrant specimens above, and I’m also making a few non-food things that I won’t reveal here, because their recipients might be reading. And because handmade doesn’t necessarily mean homemade, I also bought a few things from this beautiful shop, and from this one too. If money were no object, I would also buy a ban.do for my cousin Sarah, who loves to wear tiaras, because ban.dos are sort of like tiaras, only better. Sadly, I think she will have to settle for something a little less impressive, but it’s the thought that counts, I hear.

But about the butter cookies. I hope I didn’t make them sound too maddening, because the truth is, so long as you don’t come after them with a camera, they are completely docile. And they’re very, very delicious, which is all that matters. They may be modest little ladies - yes, somehow, they seem female to me; I can’t explain it - but they’re beguiling: delicate and not too sweet, rich with the flavor of pure butter and tender enough to melt the second they meet your tongue. The first one I tasted made my eyes roll back in my head, and that doesn’t usually happen unless there is chocolate involved. I found the recipe in this month’s Gourmet, and it sounded so perfectly simple that I had to try it. It was sent to the magazine by a reader in New Jersey, who explained that it was a fifth-generation family recipe from Denmark. Having now tried it, I can well understand its longevity. It is, without a doubt, a keeper.

It begins with a pound of butter. The key, I think, is that it calls for Lurpak butter, a particularly delicious - if pricey - brand produced, of course, in Denmark. I know that sounds fussy, but it’s worth the trouble to seek it out and pay the extra pennies, because it really is a wonderful butter, and these cookies are all about the butter. If you’ve ever eaten store-bought Danish butter cookies, you will recognize the concept, only the homemade version is worlds - entire universes, even - more delicious. To make it, you start by creaming the butter in a mixer, and then you add flour, baking soda, and sugar. Like I said, perfectly simple. You roll out the dough between sheets of plastic wrap, and then you chill it briefly, until it feels firm to the touch. Then you cut it into rectangles, brush it with egg and sprinkle it with coarse sugar, and bake until the edges go barely golden.

The finished cookies are dainty as sand dollars, with the familiar, irresistible, and profoundly reassuring fragrance of warm butter. If these cookies wore clothes, I’m pretty sure they would wear roomy blouses and long, full skirts with pastel flowers and, underneath, flesh-colored pantyhose and white satin slips with fine lace trim. Actually, now that I’ve typed that, I notice that I have just, in essence, described my grandmother. But it fits, and it’s how I feel about these cookies. They’re not hip or flashy or even photogenic, but I sort of love them anyway, and maybe even for that very reason.

Real Danish Butter Cookies
Adapted from Gourmet, December 2008

These would be really, really wonderful with a cup of tea. If you plan to give them as gifts, be sure to package them carefully, since they’re so delicate.

4 cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp. baking soda
1 lb. unsalted Lurpak butter, at room temperature for 1 hour
¾ cup granulated sugar
1 large egg, beaten
3 to 4 Tbsp. sanding or other coarse-grain sugar, such as Turbinado

Set racks in the upper and lower thirds of the oven, and preheat to 325°F. Line 2 large baking sheets with parchment.

In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour and baking soda.

In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, beat the butter until fluffy. Then add the sugar and beat briefly to combine. Add the flour mixture, and beat on low speed until just combined. (Unless you have a plastic guard that sits around the rim of the bowl, this will make a big mess at first, with flour flying everywhere. I found that carefully holding a dish towel around the top of the bowl helped a lot.) The dough will appear crumbly, but if you squeeze a bit in your hand, it will cohere. Divide the dough in half.

Roll each half between large sheets of plastic wrap into a rectangle approximately 10 by 15 inches, about 1/8 inch thick. Transfer, still in plastic wrap, to a baking sheet, and refrigerate until firm, about 30 minutes. Then remove the top layer of plastic wrap and cut into
2-by-1 ½-inch rectangles. (I tried this with some of my dough, but I found that the finished, baked cookies were a little larger than I wanted, so I wound up cutting next batch of rectangles in half, and I liked that size better. You might want to play around and decide for yourself.) Arrange the rectangles 1 inch apart on the prepared baking sheets. If the dough becomes too soft, chill or freeze until it is again firm enough to handle.

Brush the tops of the cookies very lightly with the beaten egg, and then sprinkle with sanding sugar. Bake the cookies, 2 sheets at a time, switching positions of the pans halfway through baking, until they are very pale golden, 12 to 15 minutes. Cool on the baking sheets for 5 minutes; then carefully slide the cookies, still on the parchment, onto wire racks. Cool completely. Make more cookies with the remaining dough, baking on cooled, freshly lined baking sheets. Reroll scraps once.

Note: Cookies will keep at room temperature for up to a week. Because I don’t plan to give mine away to friends for a week or two, I froze mine, and I’ll bet they’d be just fine that for a month or two, easy.

Yield: about 9 dozen cookies

I can't wait

2008-11-24T23:18:00.000-08:00

Hi, all.

I am writing this from an airplane somewhere between Seattle and Newark, en route to my in-law’s house for Thanksgiving. I’m afraid I don’t have a recipe for you today, but the view is very nice, and I can offer you that, at least. If you squint hard enough, the wing of the plane looks a little like a dolphin tail, so it’s really two pictures in one. I hope you will find it a fair exchange.

Or, if not, I can offer a little piece of news instead. Actually, it’s a huge piece of news, but calling it little makes it feel more manageable. Brandon is opening a restaurant.

My heart stopped for a second, just typing that.

When I met him about 3 ½ years ago, Brandon was a graduate student in music composition. Actually, if we’re getting down to the nitty-gritties, he was a graduate student in music composition until last March, when he went on leave to focus on the restaurant full-time. It may seem like a strange transition to make, but he has been working in restaurants since he was a teenager, and cooking isn’t all that different, conceptually, from writing music. The work itself is certainly not the same, but both are creative processes, ways of taking separate elements and arranging them, balancing and tweaking, to make something new. Anyway, those of us who know him – which, in a sense, includes all of you – know that he loves food. The man can run circles around me in the kitchen. I like to cook, yes, but he is a cook.

He is also obsessed with pizza. As a grade-schooler, he used to go to a pizzeria near his parents’ house in New Jersey and pepper the owner with questions about dough and mozzarella. When I met him, he lived on the Upper West Side, but he trekked out to the middle of Brooklyn at least once a week to wait patiently in line at DiFara. Last year, he agreed to drive a car from San Antonio to Los Angeles just so he could try the pizza at Mozza, and he took an overnight trip to Phoenix for the sole purpose of eating at Pizzeria Bianco. So when he told me that he wanted to make pizza, it didn’t exactly surprise me. It may have scared me a little, but it didn’t surprise me.

The wheels have been in motion for quite a while – over a year, I think – but he signed a lease on Friday, so we feel ready now to say something here. We wanted to go ahead and share it with you, because we’re excited. And also, you know, a little scared, which seems only sane. But mainly, we’re excited. I hesitate to say too much today, but I can tell you that the restaurant will be here in Seattle, in our neighborhood. The windows are covered with plastic right now, and the door is kind of garish and wonky, but it’ll be prettier soon, I promise. If you squint hard enough, you might get a sense of it. Or see a dolphin tail. You never know.

I say that the restaurant is Brandon’s, because it is: it’s his baby, his vision, his sweat. But I will be there too, helping where I can, and the menu, which I can’t wait to show you, is a real combination of his style and mine. It is inspired by two of our favorite restaurants: Zuni Café, in San Francisco, and Boat Street Café and Kitchen, where Brandon has worked for the past two and a half years, since he moved to Seattle. It happens, yes, that the emphasis will be on pizza, but there will also be wood-fired vegetables from local farmers, seasonal salads, charcuterie, and rustic desserts, the kind I like to make at home. I can’t wait.

There is a lot of work ahead, no doubt, but he plans to open in the springtime. Hopefully early spring, though we’ll see. My book comes out on March 3, so our heads are sort of exploding at the moment. But don’t worry! We have a lot of help. Susan Kaplan of Boat Street has been a hugely generous mentor, and our friend Carla Leonardi of Café Lago has spent hours with us at the oven and in the kitchen. And my brother David, who owns five(!) restaurants in the DC area, calls to check in and field questions and cheer, which makes me so happy that I feel kind of weepy right now.

I know there are a lot of details missing from this story, but I will tell you more as I can. In the meantime, thank you, always, for being here, and for believing in me, in him, and in us. I’ll see you back here on December 8, once we’ve had time to take some deep breaths, sleep in, cook Thanksgiving dinner, wander around New York and eat pizza, and get ready for what comes next.