Flawed Mom

Sweet Survival: Tales of Cooking and Coping

noreply@blogger.com (Writermom) — Thu, 10 Jul 2014 05:34:00 -0700

At long last, my book is coming out from Greenpoint Press on September 15. Many thanks to everyone who helped me get it out of my head, onto the page and into the world---especially Jessica Wolf, who edited it, and Bob Lascaro, who designed the cover. It will be available for pre-order soon! lhttp://www.greenpointpress.org/upcoming_books.html

Buttered Coffee

noreply@blogger.com (Writermom) — Sat, 10 May 2014 12:36:00 -0700

I have a new story up on HuffPo. Thank you for reading!

It's Mother's Day, Baby. Butter Yourself Some Coffee

You are not going to be cooking for yourself on Mother's Day. You are not going to be making restaurant reservations either. You're going to let the people who made you a mother take care of that. You are, however, going to make yourself one hell of a cup of coffee, because any day that calls for celebration also calls for a little liquid pick-me-up. A few weeks ago, I was sitting on the...

Lemons, salt, anchovies, garlic and chicken too

noreply@blogger.com (Writermom) — Mon, 14 Apr 2014 11:02:00 -0700

I have a new story up on HuffPo. Thank you for reading! You'll need to hydrate for this one...

Chicken With Lemons And Other Great, Salty Stuff \| Laura Zinn Fromm
	I love salty food. Perhaps that is because I have low blood pressure. I also love garlic and onions. Perhaps that is because I have no taste buds lef...

If Chocolate is Your True Religion...

noreply@blogger.com (Writermom) — Sat, 12 Apr 2014 05:18:00 -0700

My story on making "chocolate bark" and chocolate-covered matzoh for Passover and Easter is up on HuffPo. Thank you for reading!

The Best Chocolate Dessert Recipe For Passover (And Easter Too ...
	One of my many failings is that I like sugar. I can't give it up. Two of my friends have given up sugar and they look fantastic. They've each lost, l...

Gltuten-Free Cookies

noreply@blogger.com (Writermom) — Sat, 15 Feb 2014 20:19:00 -0800

My story on making (eating) gluten-free chocolate chip cookies on a snow day is up on HuffPo. Thank you for reading!

The Gluten-Free, Dairy-Free Cookie Recipe That Got Me Through A Stressful Day

www.huffingtonpost.com

You would think that going away for a long weekend with your girlfriends would insure you returned home relaxed and happy to...

Wild in Winter

noreply@blogger.com (Writermom) — Fri, 7 Feb 2014 12:55:00 -0800

My story on making a creamy wild mushroom sauce while beating back winter doldrums is up on HuffPo. Thank you for reading!

Chicken in the Snow

noreply@blogger.com (Writermom) — Thu, 23 Jan 2014 15:55:00 -0800

My story on braising and roasting a chicken is up on HuffPo. Thank you for reading!

The Greatest Roast Chicken Recipe In The World

huffingtonpost.com

I feel ridiculous writing another story about cooking chicken but this one is so astonishing, so easy and delicious, that with the snow day coming after an already long weekend, I have to share.

Faith, in Cookies

noreply@blogger.com (Writermom) — Sun, 22 Dec 2013 05:43:00 -0800

My story on baking through a birthday is up on HuffPo. Thank you for reading!

The Amazing Cookies That Will Restore Your Faith

COMMENT |GREAT RECIPE

Lashed

noreply@blogger.com (Writermom) — Sun, 10 Nov 2013 05:52:00 -0800

My story about vainly throwing our younger son's bar mitzvah is up on Huffington Post. Thank you for reading!

What False Eyelashes Did For Me

Posted: 11/09/2013 7:34 am

noreply@blogger.com (Writermom) — Tue, 5 Mar 2013 07:10:00 -0800

Come Enjoy Trumpet Fiction!
Sponsored by Ducts.org

KGB BAR

85 East 4th Street (between 2nd & 3rd Ave)

Saturday, March 9th, 6:45 p.m.

Please join us for an evening of fiction!

Jacob M. Appel is a physician, attorney and bioethicist in New York City. He is the author of the novel, The Man Who Wouldn't Stand Up (Cargo, 2012) and more than two hundred stories that have been published in literary journals including Missouri Review, Southwest Review and Virginia Quarterly Review. His fiction has been short-listed for the O. Henry Award, Best American Short Stories, and Pushcart Prize anthology on numerous occasions. His collection, Scouting for the Reaper, won the 2012 Hudson Prize and is forthcoming in 2013. Dr. Appel also writes about the nexus of law and medicine, contributing to The New York Times, Chicago Tribune, San Francisco Chronicle and many other leading periodicals. He is a graduate of Brown University, Harvard Law School, Columbia University’s College of Physicians and Surgeons, and the MFA Program in Creative Writing at New York University.

__________________________________________________________________

Margaret Hundley Parker’s work has been published in the New York Times, Time Out New York, Oxygen.com, Ducts, the MetroTimes, etc., and performed at the North Carolina Literary Festival, CBGBs (where she was a cocktail waitress in the ‘90s), the Dog & Pony Show, the 24-Hour Plays, and with the Chapel Hill band Speed McQueen. She has been an editor at FIT magazine and Road & Travel. Her book, the KISS Guide to Fitness, was published in 2002 by Dorling Kindersley. She currently edits for vocabulary.comand visualthesaurus.com, and plays bass with the sparkly indie rock band Lamintated Menu. Her novel “Below the Belt” was born here at Trumpet Fiction, and has been patient while she tends to her human children. She has an MFA from Sarah Lawrence, and sometimes teaches writing at FIT. She lives in the Hudson Valley with her gang.

__________________________________________________________________

Laura Zinn Fromm worked for Business Week for eight years as a reporter and editor, where she received the Clarion Award and the Newspaper Guild’s Page One Award for Labor Reporting. Her work has been published in The New York Times, Business Week, Patch, Ducts.org, Writing Raw, New Jersey Life & Leisure and Wellesley magazine. She has taught at Columbia and Montclair State and now teaches fiction and creative non-fiction through the New York Writers Workshop. She holds an M.F.A. from Columbia and is currently working on a “themoir,” In the Shadow of Lunacy, and a (hopefully funny) cookbook, My Inner Fruitcake. For more info, please visit Flawedmom.com and Myinnerfruitcake.com

Hope to see you there!
Jonathan Kravetz
Editor-in-Chief
Ducts.org
Jon@ducts.org

New York Writers Resources is the parent corporation of New York Writers Workshop, a collective of writers and teachers working in New York City and elsewhere; Ducts.org, a literary webzine; and Greenpoint Press, an independent publishing house devoted to quality fiction and nonfiction.

Contact: New York Writers Workshop, P.O. Box 2062, Lenox Hill Station, NewYork, N.Y. 10021. newyorkwritersworkshop.com

Dr. Drew, this Friday, May 6 at 9 p.m.

noreply@blogger.com (Writermom) — Tue, 1 Jan 2013 08:06:00 -0800

My older son and I are scheduled to appear on Dr. Drew this Friday night, May 6.

I'm not talking about Liz Lemon's gorgeous, vapid boyfriend "Dr. Drew Baird" (aka Jon Hamm) from "30 Rock," though I wish I was. You may know the real Dr. Drew as the internist who does celebrity rehab and interventions. Dr. Drew has an on-line narcissism test, "How Narcissistic Are You?" In early April, Dr. Drew started a new show that looks at human behavior and features a range of celebrities and non-celebrities. The new show is on HLN, Monday-Fridays, 9 p.m. EST.

The Friday show includes a segment entitled, "When parents supply teens booze." (Yes, I have my imaginary flak jacket on.) One of Dr. Drew's producers called last Friday and said he'd seen us on the CBS Early Show and asked if we'd like to be on Dr. Drew. Since I am trying to sell a book of humorous essays about parenting and my older son is working towards an acting/stand-up comedy career, I said we'd do it. (I'm also trying to sell a book of short stories, but I doubt Dr. Drew is going to ask me about that.) When the producer texted that he would send us "a fancy town car," and tacked on a smiley face, I smiled back.

The show was actually supposed to air tonight but that show is now devoted to Osama bin Laden's death. Breaking news is always a shock, even when the bad news turns out to be good. This morning, the producer called to delay the interview. He asked if I had been affected by 9/11. My first cousin was on the first floor of one of the World Trade Center buildings at the moment that the first plane hit. He was supposed to be on one of the top floors, but stopped to use the bathroom. My brother, who worked nearby, jumped on a ferry back to New Jersey and showed up at our door. The father of one of the boys on my younger son's LIttle League team last year was killed in 9/11 and I thought about that every time the boy got up to bat. So though I was affected by 9/11, I was not affected in a way that would interest this producer, thank God.

HLN is CNN's network "dedicated to covering news stories that hit home." I have to admit that the first time I ever watched Dr. Drew was Saturday morning. He was interviewing Nikki Sixx, the bassist for Motley Crue, who was promoting his new book This is Gonna Hurt: Music, Photography and Life Through the Distorted Lens of Nikki Sixx and talking about his addictions. I don't think we will be as interesting to watch but please tune in anyway!

Looking for the silver lining behind Hurricane Sandy

noreply@blogger.com (Writermom) — Fri, 2 Nov 2012 16:26:00 -0700

If you’ve been following the news, you know that Hurricane Sandy hit New Jersey with a vengeance a few days ago. We've had power outages, downed trees, closed roads, no heat, no refrigerator, no freezer, no working washing machine or dishwasher, no Internet access, no school, long gas lines and a lot of spoiled food. There's been the constant sound of ambulances, fire trucks and police cars pounding their alarms as they race from emergency to emergency.

This is not the normal course of events out here in the New Jersey suburbs.

Our house has been cold and dark. We are one of the many millions of people in New Jersey who have lost power but in a way, we’re lucky. We’ve been lighting candles and going to bed under a big pile of blankets. My brother and sister-in-law, who live several towns away, do have power and took my kids in. They also have my sister-in-law’s sister and her family living there, as well as assorted friends and neighbors, so their house is full. My husband and I have been hunkering down at night, wearing layers of pajamas and long underwear, and reading by flashlight and candlelight. It’s kind of romantic except when it’s not. Last night, we headed over to my mother's, who had the foresight to install a generator two weeks ago. That wasn't particularly romantic, since we slept in the family room and our dog nudged us to wake up at 4 a.m. but at least we didn’t have to wear ski socks to bed.

Last October, we also had a massive storm. It happened during one of my nephew's bar mitzvahs, and though the lights went out, the food was cold and the music stopped, it was one of the most joyous occasions I have ever attended because my sister-in-law and her sisters gathered everyone together and led us all in dance and song.

This hurricane has made me think about what we don’t have and what we do. I decided to make a list of what I'm grateful for what we do have so I didn't start drinking old, red wine, alone, at 4 p.m. Here's hoping that wherever you are, you and the people you love are warm and safe.

I’m grateful I can wake up in the morning and boil water for coffee.

I’m grateful that before she left town, my neighbor showed me how to pour boiling water through our drip filter, let it seep, then press the little button at the bottom with a spoon, and whoosh! Coffee comes out!

I'm grateful I lived on a chicken farm in France one summer when I was 16 and watched my French “mother” sauté chicken parts on the stovetop every day for lunch. She used bars of butter, handfuls of garlic, mounds of onion slices, plenty of salt and pepper and did not remove the chicken fat. Hot, buttery chicken makes for a very fine, French mid-day meal, one on which you can snack all day and which is so good, you end up feeling that anything is possible.

I’m grateful I made Magic Bars (shredded coconut, condensed milk, chocolate chips, Graham crackers crumbs, and a stick of butter), lasagna with sausage and chicken Marbella (chicken marinated in red wine vinegar, olive oil, brown sugar, and white wine, and cooked with olives, capers and prunes) before the storm hit because all that buttery, marinated, sweet, salty, fattening stuff keeps for a while.

I’m grateful no trees fell on our house.

I’m grateful that my mother had the foresight to buy a generator two weeks ago, and that even though it stopped working yesterday, a nice man came to fix it today.

I’m grateful my brother and sister-in-law, who live half an hour away, do have power, and are willing to take my kids in.

I’m grateful that LL Bean is willing to do two-day delivery for fleece blankets and a battery-operated radio.

I’m grateful that our dog doesn’t seem to care much that the house is cold and dark.

I’m grateful that all of my students in New York and New Jersey are basically okay, especially my student who has cancer, and my student who lives in a rural area, has no power and kids at home but still managed to email us her submission this morning.

I’m grateful that the supermarkets still have food and ice.

I’m grateful that red wine doesn’t need to be refrigerated.

I’m grateful for the three pairs of candlestick holders we received as wedding gifts.

I’m grateful for flashlights and batteries.

I’m grateful that our two coolers are filled with ice and are keeping our eggs, cheese, and milk cold.

I’m grateful for free Wi-Fi at Starbucks and Dunkin Donuts.

I will be grateful when the trains start running back into New York.

I’m grateful that my writing partner reminded me that we could wear ski hats and socks to bed!

I’m grateful for running water, especially hot water.

I’m grateful for washing machines, and wondering when we’re going to be able to use ours again.

I’m grateful for the ability to slow down, read, think and talk to my friends and family in an unhurried way that I haven’t felt for the past thirty years.

I’m grateful we are not on respirators.

I’m grateful for this soothing and wonderful book, Home, by Marilynne Robinson, which is about family, love, prodigal sons, friction between adult brothers and sisters, piss-poor decisions, religion, leaving home, coming back, and being together in the Midwest in the 1950’s. Robinson’s book, Gilead, won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 2005, and this book Home, which came out in 2008, is a companion piece to that book---it deals with the same characters, some of them in greater depth. The book has a lovely, slow, rhythm. It calms you down, makes you think and and feel grateful for whatever love you do have.

I’m grateful that yesterday morning, I finally had the energy to go for a run with our dog, worked up a sweat and felt warm for the first time in days.

I’m grateful that Café Beethoven in Chatham is up and running, and that even though you can't get free Wi-Fi there, they serve a delicious latte in an elegant glass with a handle. And I’m particularly grateful to the woman behind the glass counter, who not only confirmed that the frosting on the cupcake was buttercream but also offered to heat it up for me.

I’m grateful that when two guys got into a fight at the gas station because one cut the other off in line, two cops showed up to give them tickets, even though it meant the rest of us had to wait 30 minutes to get past them.

I'm grateful that when I went to clean out the last bits of food in the freezer today, I spotted half of a red velvet cake that I made a year ago. Before I tossed it, I sampled the thick, cream cheese frosting. Reader, I ate it all.

I'm grateful that for 30 minutes today, I remembered to feel grateful.

Chocolate Cake That's Gluten Free---Happy Passover

noreply@blogger.com (Writermom) — Mon, 9 Apr 2012 14:20:00 -0700

I have been very fortunate when it comes to cake. Most of the time, it works out quite nicely. Apple cake, chocolate chip cake, Devil's food cake, white birthday cake---these are the cakes I've made that have turned out well, and by well, I mean, they have been so delicious that my family devours them and I can't stop eating them, even when I take the leftovers, hide them away in the freezer, and dive into their frost-bitten pieces in a PMS frenzy two months later.

But this post isn't just about cake. It's also about teaching. I've been very lucky when it comes to teaching. Almost five years ago, I received an email from Columbia, where I'd gone to graduate school in my thirties. Pursuing an MFA in fiction when you're thirtysomething is a bit of a fool's errand. There's no guarantee you're going to get anything resembling a real job once you finish your degree. I didn't care so much, because I knew that once I finished my thesis, I would turn my attention to my boys, then two and six, and focus on driving them all over God's green earth. (When it comes to suburban motherhood, a driver's license is much more useful than a graduate degree.) But one day, Columbia sent out an email blast, looking for teachers. Even without a shred of experience or a published short story, you too could teach creative writing to Columbia undergrads and graduate students as long as you had a degree. The catch was you didn't get paid. But since I had nothing else going on in the intellectually-stimulating department, I said yes.

Almost five years later, I'm happy to say that teaching creative writing has been one of the highlights of my life. After eighteen months of teaching for free at Columbia, I switched to teaching for money at the New York Writers Workshop. My students there have been fantastic---the majority have been really smart, serious, neurotic, ambitious, funny and reliable. (Even more reliable than I am, sometimes. A few weeks ago, I was really sick and had to cancel class. Six of the students showed up anyway and held class without me.) I've had lawyers, TV producers, engineers, sports reporters, investigative reporters, Harvard MBA's, kindergarten teachers, New York Times editors, actresses, artists, psychologists, a sex researcher, a former sex worker, yoga instructors, receptionists, secretaries and software engineers as students. And a few of them actually cook, though it wasn’t until this week that I had the nerve to ask one of them for a recipe.

This Passover, we are invited to two Seders. Normally, we host at least one, but my sister-in-law invited us for the first night and a close friend of mine from high school invited us for the second. I am thrilled to be going as a guest this year. The last couple of months have been rough---my middle-aged cousin died suddenly of a heart attack in February and my brother-in-law Rich, a software engineer in Berkeley who has an adorable eighteen-month old son, was diagnosed with cancer in March (you can read about his chemo and recovery on the blog he shares with his wife, Richandlorien.) While we were vacationing in Colorado, my older son skied into a tree (he had a helmet on, thank God), and I came home to find that a very old friend from Business Week had unexpectedly died of cancer. Usually, I try to cook and write my way out of stress, but this year it was a massive relief to know that other people were going to be preparing the festive meal.

But going as a guest this Pesach means I'm out of my element. Like any self-respecting guest, I offered to bring dessert to the Seders, without having an actual plan for making one. Because we usually host, I've never made a Pesadich dessert. I usually make brisket and chicken, roasted string beans, potato kugel, and occasionally horse radish, but because desserts are an easy thing for guests to bring, I've delegated them.

So I emailed one of my former students---a Columbia trained lawyer, Orthodox Jew and feminist who is also an excellent writer and an avid cook. (Sometimes, she would be so busy cooking for Shabbat or a Jewish holiday that she would skip class.) I figured she'd have a good recipe for Passover dessert. She emailed back and said she doesn't really do Passover desserts because her older son is allergic to eggs. Still, she was kind enough to send me this recipe for Flourless Chocolate Cake. Since the recipe was a bit of an experiment, I decided to make it this morning. If it was a disaster, I'd make meringue cookies or fruit salad on Friday.

The original recipe called for pecans, but because my sister-in-law is allergic to pine nuts and my high school friend's son is allergic to peanuts, I decided to substitute dried cherries and apricots for the nuts. Then, I started to feel bold. The cake didn't look that hard, and how bad could chocolate and dried cherries be? I decided to double the recipe and make two cakes. The recipe warned that the cakes would be flat (no flour to make them rise). They were. The cakes aren't all that pretty either--no one will accuse these cakes of getting by on their good looks. But they taste delicious. If you don't celebrate Passover but are looking for a delicious gluten-free dessert, this cake will also work beautifully for Easter.

Happy holidays.

Excellent Flourless Chocolate Cake for Passover, adapted from MyBissim.com

(To print recipe out, click here:)

6 eggs – at room temperature

1 cup sugar

5.3 oz / 150 gr high quality dark chocolate

5.3 oz dried cherries and/or apricots

2 Tablespoons vegetable oil

2 Tablespoons good unsweetened cocoa powder

1 Tablespoon brandy

Preheat oven to 350f / 180c.

Line a 10”/ 24 cm pan with baking paper and oil the sides.

Place the chocolate and dried fruit in a food processor and grind into very small crumbs.

Separate the eggs and transfer the egg whites to the mixer. Whip on medium-high until they begin to whiten and gradually add the sugar. Continue beating for 3 minutes until you get a thick white foam texture. Slow the mixer and add in the following order: yolks, oil, cocoa, nuts and chocolate and brandy. Continue mixing until even and transfer to pan.

Lower the oven temperature to 340f / 170c and bake for 55 minutes. Don’t prick the cake or it will fall immediately!

Flourless cakes tend to lose height when cooled – to help make it more even, remove from the oven and use a sharp knife to separate the cake from the pan sides. It doesn’t have to be a single movement so don’t push. Cover with a towel and let it cool.

Chocolate Glaze:

3 oz / 80 gr. dark chocolate

4-5 Tablespoons whole milk

1-2 tablespoons confectioner’s sugar

Chop the chocolate and place it in a bowl with 4 tablespoons of milk. Melt in the microwave for two minutes. Mix. When cake has cooled, spread on top. Then take powdered sugar, put in a sifter, and sift over cake.

My Inner Fruitcake

noreply@blogger.com (Writermom) — Fri, 23 Mar 2012 15:30:00 -0700

Hello readers! Sorry there have been no posts for so long. I am working on a cookbook and will post again when I come up for air. (Actually, right at this moment, I’m on vacation and the air is thin here, so I’ll post again when I’m closer to sea level, back in New Jersey.) I will also be posting on my new website, My Inner Fruitcake, so please go there and subscribe if you’d like to read about food, family and friends. More to come. Thank you for checking in!

Sunday Night Supper: This Column is Looking for a New Home

noreply@blogger.com (Writermom) — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 11:18:00 -0800

This story on making and eating old-fashioned apple cake and Magic Bars ran on Patch yesterday morning. Due to budget cuts, Patch has stopped using freelancers so this is my last Sunday Night Supper column for them. But as always, if you have recipes or comments to share, please go to the Patch site. Your comments could help land a new home for this column. Thank you, as always, and happy Valentine's Day.

Patch's House & Home

Sunday Night Supper: Apple Cake and Magic Bars.

Hello, loves. Since this will be my last Sunday Night Supper column, I thought I’d go out with a bang. I love to cook, but I love to bake even more, and what I love the most is when someone shares a recipe that she (or he) really loves and this new dish turns out to be shockingly spectacular.

This happened New Year’s weekend. Every year since Y2K, we've been going to my brother's house in Montclair for New Year's. It's always a heady crowd, literally and figuratively. My sister-in-law Nancy is a psychologist. She has two sisters. One is a high-powered TV executive who is married to a psychoanalyst. Another sister, a law professor, used to be married to a psychiatrist and is now married to a physics professor. My sister-in-law's mother writes for The New York Times; her father is a retired judge. You can see where this is going. They’re all really smart. Worse, they all know food – know it and love it. My brother likes to make turducken – that’s a turkey with a duck and a chicken cooked inside it. His brother-in-law, the psychoanalyst, makes extraordinary combinations of roasted vegetables when he's not grilling outside in winter. My sister-in-law's sister, the law professor, is close with Rosie O'Donnell's brother Daniel, and he’s taught her how to make a fabulous salad with a wonderful dressing. The dressing has honey in it, and the salad always has sunflower seeds and cranberries...you get the picture. Rosie O’Donnell’s brother's salad rocks. The bottom line is I go to this New Year's Eve party every year, and I’m often the dumbest person in the room and not even the best cook.

Last year, I brought Key Lime Pie. That was a disaster, not because it tasted bad (it didn't) but because it was ugly. All the other desserts were beautiful. This year, I planned to bring dessert again, but my sister-in-law warned there would be other desserts as well – a spectacular sorbet situation, known as the Bomb, and a dramatic chocolate fountain in honor of the birthday of a niece. My sister-in-law (remember, she’s a psychologist), gently said that given the competition, maybe I should just bring appetizers.   Fine, I would pick up some appetizers at the Wine Library but I was intent on making dessert too. I had already bought the condensed milk for Magic Bars (also known as Outrageous Cookie Bars) and damn if I wasn't going to use it. The thing about Magic Bars is they are a crowd pleaser. People don't realize how much they miss sweetened condensed milk until they bite into it. Then they can't stop eating it. But Magic Bars are easy. Magic Bars are nothing new. They take almost no effort to assemble and everyone knows it. With just five ingredients (six, if you add nuts), your five-year old could make them as long as you help with the oven. I felt a little sheepish bringing Magic Bars to this party of foodies. But they were my favorite thing to make (and eat) and I wanted to start the New Year off by sharing them.

I also wanted to make something that showed real effort. Okay, I wanted to show off. I had a new recipe for apple cake sitting in our recipe holder. A friend of a friend had emailed it – she had gotten it from her Grandma Becky. This woman, Jodi, had given me a recipe for a cream cheese chocolate chip pound cake, which was beyond delicious (see Sunday Night Supper.) Then she emailed a recipe for her late grandmother's apple cake. “It's heavy," she warned. "And it's great."

Heavy and great sounded perfect. Plus, we had all the ingredients. Or so I thought. I mindlessly didn’t check the pantry before I started to cook. The recipe called for vegetable oil instead of butter. I knew we had a big bottle of vegetable oil in the pantry. Oh, look there it is. It's empty! But we had corn oil. Corn was a vegetable, right? I smelled the corn oil. It smelled way too strong to be mixed up with a bunch of apples and flour. I called my neighbor, who sent her 11-year-old over with a cup of vegetable oil. Well, not quite a cup. I had to top it off with a little corn oil. Then I went to work. The batter was thick, heavy and yummy. (I shouldn’t be admitting to scarfing down raw batter but this is my last column, so I'm putting it all on the table.) The recipe had instructions that said, "Grease tube pan and dust." Dust with what? I wondered. Duh, dust with flour.

The cake had apples on top. When I took it out of the oven, it wasn't pretty. I flipped it over and it fell apart. I put it right side up. The cake was ugly. That was the only way to describe it. I showed it to my mother, who agreed it was ugly, but said it would probably still taste good. We brought it to the New Year's party and someone brought it to the table. People stared at it. "That is ugly," someone said. Then they pounced on it. There was no serving piece. People grabbed pieces of it with their hands.

"I think that's the best dessert I've ever had," my brother said.

"Wow," my friend Jessica said.

"People love the cake," my husband said reassuringly as he took another piece.

I made this cake again to bring to my brother and sister-in-law’s Super Bowl party last Sunday. The crowd was almost identical to the New Year’s crowd. The cake was just as ugly as it had been before. The reaction was the same. The cake was gone in minutes. I don't know why this cake is so good. Maybe it's the combination of vegetable oil and orange juice. Maybe it's the four eggs. Or maybe it's Grandma Becky, who knew what she was doing when she baked but probably had no idea that several decades after she first started baking this cake, people would still be pulling it apart and gobbling it up.

Valentine's Day is in two days. Either, or both, of these desserts could make the object of your affection love you that much more.

Thank you for reading and cooking along with me these past five months. It’s been a pleasure.

Click here for a printable copy

Grandma Becky's Apple Cake

Ingredients:

3 cups flour

1 cup veg. oil

2 1/2 cups sugar

4 unbeaten eggs

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/3 cup orange juice

2 1/2 teaspoons vanilla

3 teaspoons baking powder

Beat all ingredients until smooth

Mix the following in another bowl:

6 thinly sliced apples

2 teaspoons cinnamon

3 tablespoons sugar

Grease and dust tube pan. Place one layer of batter and one of apples in the middle. Another layer of batter and top with remaining apples.
Bake at 350 for approx. 1 1/2 hours until top looks done and toothpick comes out clean.

Magic Bars (aka Outrageous Cookie Bars)

Ingredients

1/2 cup (1 stick) butter or margarine

1 1/2 cups graham cracker crumbs

1 can (14 oz.) NESTLÉ® CARNATION® Sweetened Condensed Milk

2 cups (12-oz. pkg.) NESTLÉ® TOLL HOUSE® Semi-Sweet Chocolate Morsels

1 cup flaked coconut

1 cup chopped walnuts

Directions

PREHEAT oven to 350° F.

MELT butter in 13 x 9-inch baking pan in oven; remove from oven. Sprinkle graham cracker crumbs over butter. Stir well; press onto bottom of pan. Pour sweetened condensed milk evenly over crumbs. Sprinkle with morsels, coconut and nuts; press down firmly.

BAKE for 25 to 30 minutes or until light golden brown. Cool completely in pan on wire rack. Cut into bars.

If you've enjoyed reading Laura's Sunday Night Supper column would like to read more of her work, check out her blog, Flawed Mom.

Related Topics: Food, Love, New Year’s Eve, and Super Bowl

This column is ending, but these Magic Bars and apple cake will see you through the winter.

By Laura Zinn Fromm

Email the author

5:45 am

Super Food

noreply@blogger.com (Writermom) — Sun, 5 Feb 2012 06:05:00 -0800

This story on what to eat during the Super Bowl ran on Patch this morning. As always, if you have recipes or comments to share, please leave them on the Patch site. Go Giants!

Sunday Night Supper: Wing Men

Even if you don't pay attention to every play, the Super Bowl provides an opportunity to chow down.

By Laura Zinn Fromm | 5:00 am | 1 comment

A few weeks ago, I was digging into a plate of Buffalo wings at Bunny's in South Orange. We had gone there to watch a Steelers game with our neighbors, one of whom is from Pittsburgh. I'll admit I had my back to the TV and was far more interested in the food than the football. I don't care much about football, though I've spent most of my life living near and with people who do.

Bunny's deep fried Buffalo wings are really good, one of the restaurant's top sellers, along with the pizza and garlic salad. Sadly, I had to bolt those wings down and leave some behind to go pay a shiva call. I spent the next few days craving wings and decided I'd use Super Bowl XLVI as an excuse to make them– not that I was actually planning to watch all that much of the game.

My brother played football in high school and my younger son plays it now, but while my brother and father had their eyes glued to the TV on Sundays, my mother and I went to the ballet. Even now that I have two sons and three nephews who are avid Giants fans, I can't commit to sitting through a game. (On my birthday, my husband and sons went with my brother and his family to watch the Giants lose to the Redskins while my mother and I saw My Week with Marilyn.)

I love the Super Bowl commercials and the half-time show and the stories surrounding the teams: Giants linebacker Mathias Kiwanuka's grandfather was assassinated while prime minister of Uganda, and for a while there was a rumor going around that Eli Manning and his wife were looking at a big house in town and moving in (they didn't.) But usually, I just glance at the headlines and hand the Sports section to my kids.

Given that the Giants have made it to the Super Bowl and everyone I know with a heartbeat plans to watch them (hopefully) beat the Patriots again, to not be fully invested in the game is a little shameful. To compensate for my lack of interest, I'll put some football-friendly food on the table – and not just because this column comes out on Sundays and that’s what most of you will be doing. Hopefully, the food will be good enough to distract everyone from the fact that I'm upstairs catching up on the first few episodes of the second season of Shameless.

Because I knew wings would go over well and because my craving for them hadn't been satisfied, I decided to track down a recipe to make for the Super Bowl. I tried to persuade Leslie "Bunny" Pogany, the third generation owner of Bunny's, to give me hers. She was cheerful and chatty but like any self-respecting proprietor, would only share a few key ingredients. (Pogany's grandmother, Amelia Cucciniello, had 11 children and started the restaurant in 1933, shortly after Prohibition ended. She was one of the first people in Essex County to get a liquor license.)

"They're fresh wings and we marinate them a little bit in fresh spices and after we fry them we toss them with some Def Con sauce," said Pogany. She added that Def Con is now the official hot sauce provider for the New Jersey Devils and that the founder, John Dilley, who hails from Maplewood, originally asked her to partner with him to sell the sauce but she said no. "Who the hell would know it would take off like that?" she laughed.

It was an interesting story but I still needed a recipe. I emailed my foodie friends and family to see if they had any wings and other crowd-pleasing, Game Day dishes to share. My neighbor, the Steelers' fan, said that her husband made wings all the time and used a "ton of butter."

My friend Julie, who lives in California and is a whiz at making low-fat, great food, told me to check out the Skinny Taste site. There was a a recipe for "Skinny Buffalo Wings," which called for broiling the wings, instead of deep frying them, and not using butter at all (see recipe below). I found a recipe for a relatively low-fat blue cheese dressing, and my friend Lolly told me about a dish she makes for her grown kids – sliced hot dogs cooked in mustard and black currant preserves. This may sound bizarre but the combination is wonderful – I was sneaking spoonfuls of the jelly-mustard mixture out of the pot all afternoon.

My mother-in-law emailed a recipe for mayonnaise-and-artichoke dip, the delicious, old fashioned kind you grew up eating. Then my sister-in-law Lorien, who lives in Berkeley and is not a football fan but knows how to cook for a crowd, sent a recipe for an artichoke frittata that she had made both for her son's first birthday party and a friend's potluck wedding. My younger son, who would be in Indianapolis if he could, wandered into the kitchen as I was taking out the ingredients for these dishes, and helped cooked them up.

The no-fat wings were excellent, as was the blue cheese dressing. (If you want a more traditional recipe for deep-fried Buffalo wings and blue cheese dressing, see the ones from Epicurious below.) The artichoke frittata was shockingly delicious – easy to prepare and impossible to ruin. I overcooked it, didn't use the right cheese (I substituted Parmesan for Asiago), poured it into a casserole dish that was too deep, and skipped the bread crumbs. Still, it was perfect. As Lorien said, "Can't lose with that much cheese."

Whether you are watching the Super Bowl today or avoiding it, let's hope the Giants bring home a win.

Lorien's Artichoke Frittata

Ingredients:

One 16-ounce jar, marinated artichokes

1 bunch of green onions (scallions), chopped

2 cloves garlic, minced

2 tablespoons fresh parsley, minced

2 tablespoons olive oil

5 eggs

½ cup bread crumbs (can omit)

¼ teaspoon salt and pepper

dash of Tabasco

½ pound grated cheese (mixture of Jack and Asiago)

½ cup grated Romano

Saute green onions, garlic and parsley in olive oil and set aside to cool.

Meanwhile, pour out oil from the artichoke hearts into a bowl. Chop up the artichoke hearts. Beat the eggs and add in the bread crumbs, salt and pepper, Tabasco, and grated cheese. Add in artichoke hearts and greens and mix.

Grease a 8-inch dish and cook at 350 degrees for 30-40 minutes, until lightly browned and eggs are set.

Lolly's Hot Dogs with Mustard and Black Currant Jam

Ingredients:

2 packages Hebrew National Hot Dogs

2 ounces Guldens Spicy Brown Mustard

24 ounces (2 jars) Black Currant Jam

Put jam and mustard into a pot. Slice up each hot dog into four or five pieces. Put hot dog pieces into the pot and cook until they "pop." Serve with toothpicks.

Skinny Buffalo Wings (adapted from Skinny Taste)

Traditional buffalo wings are deep fried and made with lots of butter. These are broiled to reduce fat and calories and we eliminated the butter altogether. You can adjust the heat to your taste. Great for appetizers, lunch or dinner!

Servings: 9 • Serving Size: 2 chicken wings •

Calories: 204 • Fat: 5.4 g •Carbs: 2.3 g • Fiber: 0.6 g

Ingredients:

3 pounds (about 18) chicken wings
1/2 cup + 2 tbsp Franks hot sauce
1/4 cup white vinegar
2 tbsp oregano
4 tsp paprika
1 tbsp garlic powder
1 tbsp chili powder
salt and fresh pepper
2 celery stalks, sliced into strips
2 carrots, peeled and sliced into strips

In a large bowl combine chicken, 2 tbsp hot sauce, vinegar, oregano, paprika, garlic powder, chili powder salt and pepper. Mix well and let marinate for 30 minutes.

Place wings on a broiler rack and broil on low, about 8 inches from the flame for about 10-12 minutes on each side. (All ovens are different so be careful not to burn and make sure it is cooked before removing.)

While chicken cooks, heat the remaining hot sauce until warm. Toss the hot sauce with the chicken and arrange on a platter. Serve with celery and carrot strips and blue cheese dressing or dipping.

Canyon Ranch Bleu Cheese or Roquefort Dressing

Ingredients
2/3 cup buttermilk
1/3 cup canola oil mayonnaise
1/2 cup nonfat sour cream
1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
1 1/4 teaspoons dry mustard
1 1/4 teaspoons granulated garlic
1 1/4 teaspoons onion powder
1 1/2 tablespoons white vinegar
1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1/2 teaspoon sea salt
1 tablespoon white wine
1/2 cup crumbled bleu cheese or Roquefort cheese

Instructions

In a medium bowl, combine all ingredients except for cheese and mix well. Add cheese and gently stir to combine.

Serving Information

Makes 2 cups dressing, each 2-tablespoon serving equals approximately:
65 calories
3 gm. carbohydrate
5 gm. fat
10 mg. cholesterol
2 gm. protein
206 mg. sodium
0 mg. fiber

Buffalo Chicken Wings (from Epicurious.com)

For blue-cheese dressing

1/2 cup mayonnaise
1/4 cup plain yogurt
2 ounces crumbled blue cheese (about 1/2 cup)

4 celery ribs
3 pounds chicken wings (12 to 14)
2 tablespoons vegetable oil (if grilling) or 6 cups vegetable oil (if deep-frying)
1/4 cup unsalted butter
3 to 4 tablespoons hot sauce such as Frank's or Goya
1 1/2 tablespoons cider vinegar

Make dressing:

In a bowl whisk together mayonnaise and yogurt and stir in blue cheese (dressing will not be smooth). Dressing may be made 8 hours ahead and chilled, covered Cut celery into thin sticks. Soak celery in a bowl of ice and cold water at least 30 minutes and up to 1 hour.

Cut off chicken wing tips, reserving for another use, and halve chicken wings at joint.

To grill wings:
Preheat grill.

Pat wings dry. In a bowl rub 2 tablespoons oil onto wings and season with salt. Grill wings on an oiled rack set 5 to 6 inches over glowing coals until cooked through and golden brown, 8 to 10 minutes on each side.

To deep-fry wings:
In a large (5- to 6-quart) deep heavy kettle heat 6 cups oil until a deep-fat thermometer registers 380° F. Just before oil reaches 380°F, pat dry 6 or 7 wings. Carefully lower wings into oil and fry, stirring occasionally, until cooked through, golden, and crisp, 5 to 8 minutes. With a slotted spoon transfer wings to paper towels to drain. Pat dry and fry remaining wings in same manner, returning oil to 380°F between batches.

In a large skillet melt butter over moderately low heat and stir in hot sauce, vinegar, and salt to taste. Add grilled or fried wings and toss to coat.

Serve chicken wings warm or at room temperature with dressing and celery sticks.

Dorothy's Hot Artichoke Dip (adapted from Kraft )

Ingredients:

1can (14 oz.) artichoke hearts, drained, chopped

1cup KRAFT Real Mayo Mayonnaise or MIRACLE WHIP Dressing

1cup DI GIORNO Grated Parmesan Cheese

1 clove garlic, minced

PREHEAT oven to 350°F. Mix all ingredients until well blended.

SPOON into 9-inch pie plate.

BAKE 20 to 25 minutes or until lightly browned. Serve with crackers or vegetables.

Related Topics: Bunny's, Super Bowl, and WINGS

Memories, Meat Loaf and a Cup of Cake

noreply@blogger.com (Writermom) — Sun, 29 Jan 2012 08:25:00 -0800

This story on the example set by a friend's mother. coupled with her recipes for life, meat loaf and a cup of cake, ran on Patch Sunday morning. If you have recipes or comments to share, please leave them on the Patch site. Thank you!

Patch's House & Home

Sunday Night Supper: Meat Loaf, Chocolate Cake and a Whole Lot of Memories.

Karma is a boomerang. If you catch it, throw it back.

All roads lead to Brooklyn, which is another way of saying that if someone does you a good turn, you might eventually be lucky enough to return it.

About 100 years ago, my husband and I were set up on a blind date. We had a couple of mutual acquaintances and worked across the street from each other, but we didn't know anything about each other's friends or families. One of the first things he did was introduce me to his best friend and his best friend’s girlfriend.

Best Friend had graduated from Midwood high school in Brooklyn, the same high school my mother (and Woody Allen) had gone to. He had grown up ten blocks from where my grandparents had lived for more than 60 years. The Best Friend's accent and mannerisms were instantly familiar to me; he reminded me of my father---brusque, direct, funny, and occasionally risqué, with a fondness for smoking cigars and grilling steaks. Best Friend and his girlfriend, and my future husband and I, ended up living in the same building on the Upper West Side. We spent a lot of time together, doing what twentysomethings do--drinking wine, eating humus and flatbread, and making plans to eat and drink some more. Eventually we all got married and I promised the universe that one day we would try to set up another couple on a blind date that yielded a marriage, or at least something comparable.

But I wouldn’t be telling this story if it weren’t for Best Friend’s mother, Lolly, an astute, white-haired, and cheerful lady who was also an excellent cook. Once the kids went to college, Lolly and her husband Al packed up the house in Brooklyn and decamped for Greenwich. On summer weekends, my husband and I would pile into Best Friend's car and drive up to to see them. Lolly and Al owned a a ranch house with a big kitchen and a pool surrounded by flowers. Al was a gruff obstretrician with a dry sense of humor. By the time I met him, he had retired and was perfectly content watering his flowers with a garden hose, pulling leaves out of the pool and wandering into the kitchen to see his wife. He was happy enough to see us but didn't dote on us the way Lolly did; he seemed to regard my husband and me as the freeloaders we were.

Lolly, on the other hand, would stand in her white kitchen and greet us with platters of fruit and vegetables. "Come in, come in," she’d say as we pulled up in the driveway, as if she had been waiting all week for us to arrive. She is one of those lovely and intelligent women who has taken care of people her whole life, and doesn't seem to have resented a minute of it. Often, she would be working in the kitchen with her mother Billy. Lolly grew up in Michigan, and when she gave birth to her fourth son, her mother came to live with her and help raise the kids. Those two women always seemed delighted to be in each other’s company. They'd move quickly around the kitchen, laughing and talking. "Here, dear, take this outside," they'd say, as they handed us platters of food.

The kitchen looked out onto the pool and as we sat on our butts in the sun, Lollly and Billy whipped up the kind of wholesome dishes that children crave and grown-ups try to grow out of but can't: Meat loaf with chilli sauce, hot dogs with mustard and black currant jelly, spinach dip in a "bowl" of bread, and layer cake made from Hershey’s chocolate syrup and peach preserves. Sometimes, I would go into the kitchen to see what they were doing and ask for the recipes. "Oh, honey, you don't need a recipe for this," they'd say. "It's so easy." Then they'd recite it from memory. Though my mother and grandmother got along well, my parents did not, and to watch these three adults move peacably around the same house was a total pleasure.

The years passed. Eventually, we all had babies and moved to the suburbs. Billy passed away. Then Al did. He and Lolly were married 41 years. At his funeral, I wondered what Lolly was going to do now that her house was empty, but other than exchanging annual holiday cards and the occasional email, we didn't talk much.

Then, one Christmas, my husband and I took our kids on vacation. On the plane were another set of parents, their two pre-teen kids and a grandfather. We were all headed to the same resort, so we end up spending a lot of time together, sitting on the docks and circling the buffet in the restaurant. The grandfather, Walter, was a radiologist whose wife had just died of lymphoma. He was an avid sailer and liked to talk about books and sailing. He was a pleasure to be with, but it was clear that he was at loose ends and grieving for his wife. At the end of the vacation, I exchanged emails with his daughter-in-law and we went our separate ways.

A few months later, we got together with Best Friend and his family. Best Friend said that Lolly was was dating but hadn't found "the one." I mentioned Walter; he lived near Lolly, maybe they should meet. My husband was skeptical; he didn't remember our promise to the Universe. I immediately emailed Walter’s daughter-in-law. “I have someone for Walter,” I typed, We made a date to get Walter and Lolly together, with us "kids" as chaperones.

On a beautiful August day, we all went sailing on Walter's son's boat. At the end of the afternoon, I pulled Lolly aside and asked what she thought. She shrugged and said, "Maybe."

After we docked, I asked Walter if he wanted to see Lolly again.

"I'll get her number from my daughter-in-law," he said.

"I have Lolly's email address and phone number right here."

"Okay, I'll take it," Walter said.

Three and a half years later, Walter and Lolly are going strong. "We have our aches and pains but we're having fun," she says, laughing. She watches what he eats and makes him go on walks; he takes her sailing. They go to the opera, the ballet, the Philharmonic, medical conferences and out for dinner. They’ve been kayaking and white water rafting. Next month, they’re going to the Galapagos. Lolly just turned 79, Walter is almost 82. When I called Lolly to tell her I was wriitng about her and her cooking, she offered to send me her recipe for Five Minute Cake in a Cup. "I have lots of great tips and recipes to share," she said.

The day after I talked to her, it was raining and miserable. I wanted comfort food and made Lolly’s meatloaf. It only took a few minutes to mix up. While it was cooking, the kitchen smelled wonderful. But the result wasn't pretty. My older son poked at it and said, “This looks strange.” He took a bite. “This is actually really delicious,” he said, then had seconds and third. My younger had seconds.

The next day, I made Lolly's "Cup of Cake." In five minutes, there was a dense and awesome piece of chocolate cake, courtesy of the microwave, sitting in a coffee cup. I dove into it with our houseekeper Maria and my younger son. We were all shocked by its goodness and the ridiculously short time it took to make it.

As I write this, I am looking at Lolly's meat loaf recipe, which I scribbled out in green magic marker on a piece of notebook paper, a few weeks after my husband and I met in 1991. I had no idea then our lives would continue to intersect or that I would be lucky enough to eventually help Lolly find new love. I just knew that her food was delicious and I wanted to be able to create the kind of life she had made for herself, where grown children hang around the pool, and the table is always full and there is always someone nearby, willing to make you meatloaf.

Lolly’s Meatloaf

Preheat oven at 350 degrees.

2 pounds chopped sirloin (85% lean)

1 Portuguese roll

1 onion

1 bottle Heinz chili sauce

Salt and pepper

Soak roll in water until it's mushy (about a minute). Squeeze out water. Mix the roll with the meat. Add salt, pepper and a little garlic (fresh or powder).

Press meatloaf into a 8X8 square pan.

Pour half bottle of chili sauce on loaf. Slice a smal onion and lay slices on top of sauce. Bake for 35-45 minutes. If using a meat thermometer, until meat gets to 165 degrees.

Lolly's Cup of Cake (Five Minute Microwaved Chocolate Cake)

Take one large coffee cup and into it, add the following:

4 tablespoons flour

4 tablespoons sugar

2 tablespoons cocoa

Mix well.

Then add:

1 egg

3 tablespoons milk

3 tablespoons vegetable oil

3 tablespoons chocolate chips

A little vanilla.

Put in microwave for 3 minutes at 1,000 watts. It will rise to the top. Cool before tipping out onto a plate.

Lolly’s Oven-Baked Chocolate Cake with Peach Preserves

Preheat oven at 350 degrees.

1/4 pound butter, softened

1 cup sugar

4 eggs

1 can Hershey's syrup

1 cup self-rising flour

1 teaspoon vanilla

Jar of peach preserves

Grease and flour a 3 quart Pyrex dish. Cream butter, gradually add sugar. Add eggs, one at a time, beating after each addition. Add Hershey's chocolate syrup.Add self-rising flour. Add vanilla. Mix.

Pour into Pyrex dish and bake for 40 minutes. Serve with peach preserves.

Building Better Girls

noreply@blogger.com (Writermom) — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 11:18:00 -0800

You may not have noticed, but there's a big "Blog Her" banner running along the top of this blog. When I signed up to be part of the Blog Her network, I didn't read the fine print on the contract, which said that 25% of these posts had to be original, i.e. not links to posts that run on other websites and in other publications. This morning, I received a pleasant little email from the folks at BlogHer, reminding me that I'm periodically supposed to post fresh material. I don't want to get thrown out of BlogHer, and not just because they throw a great annual conference in Manhattan. Women need women, writers need writers and I like being part of this group. With that in mind, here is fresh material. Thank you for reading.

Last weekend, I went with a group of women to a spa in the Berkshires. It was a lovely few days, full of vinyasa and restoration yoga, steam baths, clean towels, locker combinations, salad bars and hot food fixed by other people. My friend and I went for a walk in the snow one sunny afternoon but mostly we stayed inside. The weekend was a gift from my mother, who understands that mothers periodically need to get out from under. I didn't once put on makeup or wear anything but workout gear and sneakers. Though there were some men at this spa, the vibe is definitely women-friendly, with everyone sitting in the dining room, freely talking about menopause, hot flashes, weight, books, marriage, divorce, the better-looking masseuses, clogs, and salad dressing.

While I was there, I read one of the best books I've read in a long time, Elissa Schappell's Blueprints for Building Better Girls. This is a collection of short stories, peopled by characters who get older and jump around the country. Many of them know each other. The stories revolve around the demands of female friendship, getting a bad reputation in high school, eating disorders (in girls and boys), rape, female promiscuity, the fraught relationship between mothers and daughters and mothers and teenage sons, infertility, infidelity, rescue dogs, and the bliss (or lack thereof) of marriage and child-rearing. This book was fantastic. It was brilliant, brave, and energizing, Some of it was gut-wrenching. In the middle of the story "Aren't You Dead Yet?," the narrator, a playwright, writes about an aspiring artist she's involved with and a play she'd written that he wanted to read. "I'd never written anything like that, nothing expressly female. Nothing that felt true like that. I mean, nobody cared about that stuff. Ray wanted me to read it to him."

If you are a girl, woman, mother or wife, or know someone who might turn into a mother or wife, read this book. Most of the characters are resilient women who are deeply unnerved by the challenges life has thrown at them. You'll probably relate to a few of them. In the story, "Elephant," two young mothers meet on a playground, exchange life stories and become close friends. This was one of the saddest and most memorable descriptions of the pitfalls of marriage and child-rearing, and the importance of female friendship I've ever read. The story rips your heart out.

I gave one of the stories, "The Joy of Cooking," to a writing class I taught last semester. The story is narrated by a divorced, middle-aged mother, who attempts to give cooking advice to her anorexic daughter. Both mother and daughter cling to each other but are also trying to forge new lives for themselves. For various reasons, none of the students in my class liked the story. I loved it. The mother-daughter jousting felt familiar but fresh and funny. You learn what it's like to be in a clinic for girls with eating disorders. And though there was a sad undercurrent running through the story, it also makes you laugh out loud.

This whole book was pleasantly disturbing. Buy it for yourself or take it out of the library and discuss it with your sister, your mother, your daughter, your book group, your friend.

Guilty Pleasures: Cooking, Reading and Reading about Cooking

noreply@blogger.com (Writermom) — Sun, 22 Jan 2012 15:40:00 -0800

This story on cooking according to the women who write the Canal House cookbooks ran on Patch Sunday morning. If you would like to leave a comment or share recipes, please go the Patch site. Thank you!

Patch's House & Home

Home Alone, With Cookbooks for Company

If you’re forced to hide out, take Canal House cookbooks with you.

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Some days, you literally can't face the world. That happened to me last week. I had gone to see a dermatologist about a spot on my nose. The dermatologist took out her magnifying glass, reassured me it wasn’t cancerous, and offered to laser it off. She said she'd also remove anything else on my face that might be potentially hazardous. Insurance would pay for it all, she promised. Then she added it would look like I had chicken pox until the skin scabbed over. “But makeup will cover that,” she said cheerfully.

Easy for her to say. Both my kids jumped back when they saw me. “You look like you have a million pimples!” my younger son cried. I decided to go into hiding. Since I wasn't scheduled to teach until the end of January, the kitchen was a good place to do it. Fortunately,Canal House Cooking Volume No. 6: The Grocery Store, a bright green cookbook with a lovely textured cover, had just arrived from Amazon.

This is a gem of a book, the sixth in a series of seven (so far) written by Melissa Hamilton and Christopher Hirsheimer, two food writers/artists/cooks/stylists who live and work in Lambertville, N.J. They also have a website called Canal House and if you sign up, they will send you luscious descriptions of what they are cooking for lunch, with pictures to make you hungry. Melissa Hamilton is the younger sister of Gabrielle Hamilton, the author of Blood, Bones & Butter, The Inadvertent Education of a Reluctant Chef. Gabrielle Hamilton is a bisexual, divorced mother of two boys and the owner of the New York restaurant Prune. She writes beautifully of her parents' divorce and her fractured childhood, folllowed by tales of cooking, marriage, child-rearing and starting a restaurant. Her memoir is a page-turner, and I couldn’t wait to see what her little sister was capable of.

It turns out, Melissa Hamilton and her friend are capable of quite a lot. I carried Canal House Cooking #6around with me for a week, underlining quotes and stories, and jotting down notes about the recipes. The book feels like a diary of the two women’s friendship, as well as a marvelous timeline of their meals together. The women are clearly soul mates who understand each other’s moods and cravings. “We started a tradition three years ago,” they write. “We shop for each other. We can’t remember who started it, and it doesn’t matter anyway. It began as an act of kindness for a busy friend. But as often happens, the giver gets a greater gift...A breast of veal, she’ll like the challenge. A ruffly savoy cabbage and some ground lamb: She’ll figure out what to do with that.” We all need friends like these. Even if you don’t have them, with these two women chatting about how they take care of each other, you’ll feel as if you're on your way to finding them.

Reading this book, I felt the way I did when I first dug into M.F.K. Fisher’s The Gastronomical Me, and discovered how addictive and comforting food writing could be. Fisher was the high priestess of food writing and a marvelous story teller. Her topics were food and love and our longing for both, and she had the good sense to occasionally poke fun at herself. Hamilton and Hirsheimer are just as charming and self-aware and their books have the playful, confessional tone of two women sipping tea, and probably something stronger, who have decided to hand you a cup and let you listen in on their conversation. Truthfully, you never even have to cook from these Canal House books. You can just revel in the authors' wry observations and longings.

But since I was trapped in the house, I did want to cook what they were describing. As it turned out, not every recipe was as wonderful as it sounded. I started with the New England Clam Chowder because my younger son loves this and orders it whenever he sees it on a menu. I had never made it before, because my husband doesn’t like clams and I didn’t want to bother shucking them if he wasn't going to eat them. The Canal House recipe calls for canned clams - cheap and easy enough. But the soup came out flat. Turkey bacon or chili powder might have revved it up. The asparagus frittata was also bland. Were this any other book, I probably would have put it down, forever, but the writing was so good and I felt that these women had become dear friends so I decided to give their recipes another chance.

I'm glad I did. Sometimes, my younger son comes home from school, raving about the pound cake from the cafeteria. Hamilton and Hirsheimer have a recipe for pound cake that I figured would be even better. Under the words, “POUND CAKE,” they write, “makes a great big cake!” How can you resist that? Then they add, “this is the simplest cake in the world, made from an old recipe so basic you hardly need to write it down---a pound each of butter, sugar, eggs and flour, all beaten together...” Who knew that pound cake was named for the pounds of ingredients that went into it? This old-fashioned cake is dense and delicious, and doesn’t take long to make. You pour the batter into a tube pan. Just taking out a tube pan summons lovely memories of bake sales, picnic tables and birthday parties. Make sure to grease the tube pan carefully. I didn’t grease ours carefully enough and a few choice pieces stuck to the pan. Of course, I scooped them out with my fingers but if you have company coming or higher standards than I do, make sure to slather a lot of butter around the tube. Or don't and have yourself a cake party. My older son was at acting class; my younger son was in the dining room with his Spanish tutor. I was alone in the kitchen with some sticky pieces of cake. Need I say more?

My quarantine was coming to an end but after the success of the pound cake, I decided to make one more thing: Gingered Chicken in Cream. The Canal House women call this recipe "luxurious" and it is. It makes one of the best roast chicken dishes I've ever tasted. I started it on Thursday, marinated the chicken overnight and cooked it Friday. The recipe calls for garam masala and the authors assume you know what that is.

After decades of eating Indian food but never making it, I had a vague notion of what garam masala was. (A quick search reveals that garam masala is a combination of ground cumin, coriander, cardamom, ginger, cloves, bay leaves, black peppercorns and cinnamon.) You can pick it up at Trader Joe’s or Whole Foods but since I wasn’t leaving the house to go shopping, I made it from scratch, borrowing my neighbor’s coffee grinder to finish it off (see recipe below.) If you make it, your house will smell delicious and and the scent of it lingers wonderfully for days. The spices also work to keep the chicken fresh. Five days after I made it, we were still nibbling at it.

One of my favorite quotes about cooking (and life) comes from MFK Fisher's The Gastronomical Me. In it, she writes of cooking with her younger sister Anne. "I am more modest now, but I still think that one of the pleasantest of all emotions is to know that I, I with my brains and my hands, have nourished my beloved few, that I have concoted a stew or a story, a rarity or a plain dish, to sustain them truly against the hungers of the world." The Canal House authors make you feel that you can do the same thing.

Pound Cake (adapted from Canal House Cooking, Volume #6)

Ingredients:

1 pound unsalted butter, at room temperature

1 pound (2 cups) superfine sugar

1 pound (9 large) eggs

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1/2 cup heavy cream

1 pound (3 cups) pastry flour (if you don't have pastry flour, use an equal combination of multi purpose flour and cake flour)

1 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon cream of tartar

1/4 teaspoon ground caramom

Preheat oven to 325 degres. Put butter in bowl of standing mixer. Beat until light and fluffy, 8 minutes. Gradually, add sugar to butter as you continue to beat, until batter is creamy, about 5 minutes. Add eggs one at a time, incorporating each completely before adding the next. Add vanilla and heavy cream.

Sift together flour, salt, cream of tarar and cardamom into a bowl. Wiht mixer on low speed, slowly add sifted dry ingredients while you continue to beat batter until it is all mixed together. Don't overbeat batter.

Pour batter into a lightly greased non stick angel food cake or tube pan. Bake until the top is golden and slightly split, about 1 hour and 15 minutes.

Lemon or orange syrup: Heat 1/2 cup fresh orange or lemon juice and 1/2 cup superfine sugar together in a small pan over medium heat, stirring with a wooden spoon until sugar dissolves completely and syrup thickens slightly. Remove from heat and allow to cool a few minutes. Use a thin skewer and poke holes all over top of cake and brush with syrup.*

*I like pound cake almost soaking in syrup so I quadrupled the recipe for the syrupThe result was a very moist, rich cake, which lasted a long time.

Gingered Cream Chicken (adapted from Canal House Cooking, Volume #6)

Ingredients:

Kosher salt

1 tablespoon garam masala (recipe below)

2 tablespoons ginger garlic paste (To make this: Peel and chop one five-inch finger of fresh ginger. Mash up six cloves of garlic, add a little salt and olive oil. Mix in a food processor. Leftovers keep for a week.)

1 chicken, 3-4 pounds, rinsed, dried

1 large yellow onion, thinly sliced

Extra virgin olive oil

2 cinnamon sticks

1 cup heavy cream

1 small bunch cllantro, finely chopped

Rub 1 tablespoon salt, then the garam masala, then the ginger-garlic paste all over chicken, inside and out. Truss chicken with kitchen string. Put in plastic bag and refrigerate for at least 4 hours and up to 2 days.

Preheat oven to 450 degrees. Put onions in bottom of roasting pan. Drizzle with a little olive oil. Add cinnamon sticks and 2 cups wter. Place chicken on onions and roast until bird is golden and thigh registers 155 degrees on meat thermometer, about 1 hour.

Remove pan from oven and transfer chicken to platter. Set the roasting pan on stovetop over medium heat and whisk in the heavy cream. Cut the chicken into serving pieces. Strain the sauce (or not, just discard cinnamon sticks) and pour over the chicken. Garnish with cilantro.

Garam Masala, from about.com Indian Food

This easy-to-make spice blend is the heart of most Indian dishes. A combination of different spices, it probably has as many recipes as there are families in India! Here is a basic one. Once you get a feel for the taste it gives your cooking, experiment and alter it to suit your needs.

Garam masala is best made fresh just before you begin cooking, but if you haven’t got the patience (like me!), make a batch ahead and store for several months in an air-tight container in a cool, dark place.

Prep Time: 10 minutesCook Time: 4 minutesTotal Time: 14 minutes Ingredients:

4 tbsps coriander seeds
1 tbsp cumin seeds
1 tbsp black peppercorns
1 ½ tsps black cumin seeds (shahjeera)
1 ½ tsps dry ginger
¾ tsp black cardamom (3-4 large pods approx)
¾ tsp cloves
¾ tsp cinnamon (2 X 1” pieces)
¾ tsp crushed bay leaves

Preparation:

Heat a heavy skillet on a medium flame and gently roast all ingredients (leave cardamom in its pods till later) except the dry ginger, till they turn a few shades darker. Stir occasionally. Do not be tempted to speed up the process by turning up the heat as the spices will burn on the outside and remain raw on the inside.
When the spices are roasted turn off the heat and allow them to cool.
Once cooled, remove the cardamom seeds from their skins and mix them back with all the other roasted spices.
Grind them all together, to a fine powder in a clean, dry coffee grinder.
Store in an air-tight container in a cool, dark place.

Duck in Winter

noreply@blogger.com (Writermom) — Sun, 15 Jan 2012 05:35:00 -0800

This story ran on making duck and remembering Mom's version of it ran on Patch Sunday morning. As always, if you have recipes. comments or memories to share, please leave them on the Patch site. Thank you!

Sunday Night Supper: Duck, Duck, Mom

Duck brings back memories and Mom to the kitchen.

By Laura Zinn Fromm | 7:05 am

New Year’s is full of resolutions. You’ll be thinner, kinder, and happier. You’ll play fewer games of Words With Friends on-line and – gasp!– maybe even play Scrabble with people in person. You’ll eat better and healthier. You'll eat less fat and fewer carbs. You'll load up on raw vegetables and fresh salmon.

You will, you will, you will and then, of course, you won’t. January is a cruel month. You get back from whatever holiday you've taken, start out with the best of intentions, try to be good for a few days, amend your New Year’s resolutions and then what do you have? The rest of January to muddle through. If you live in the Northeast, January is the harshest month because it's cold and when you finally get to the end, all you get is a nose-dive into freezing February.

To stay sane post New Year's, I try to do something new every January. Usually, that just means buying a new cookbook and cooking from it but I always start out the month planning to take up some new game or sport. My neighbor and I went for a walk the other morning. We talked about taking an EMT course, doing competitive rock-climbing and buying snow shoes. Oh, the fun we would have! I said I might take up bridge, which my grandmother played almost up to her death. As always, our conversation turned to food. My neighbor's goal was to make a zillion meatballs to sell at a wrestling tournament her son was competing in. I said I planned to make duck while my kids watched the Giants game.

Yes, duck is expensive and fattening. So what? This is January, and we have to find our pleasures where we can. Plus, the duck dish I was thinking about was worth saving for. It had been almost two years since I had made it and I could still remember how happy we all were sitting down to it. The beauty of duck is it lasts a while. Make this dish on Sunday and you will still be happily nibbling on it Wednesday. And this particular dish is so rich, delicious and nutritious, you won’t need dessert or a side dish to go with it (though you may need a cup of coffee later to keep you awake.)

I learned to make duck from my mother. When I was growing up, she made Duck a l' Orange. Later in life she complained that making a whole duck was messy because it splattered but she made it frequently throughout my childhood. There are plenty of things about growing up that I'd rather forget about but my mother's food is not one of them. She was an excellent cook who learned by watching Julia Child on TV. She made elaborate meals almost every night and her bible was Craig Claiborne's The New York Times Cookbook.

My parents eventually divorced but for years, my mother bent over backwards to make the dishes that my father loved – Yorkshire pudding and roast beef, filet mignon, veal scallopini, lamb chops, spare ribs, spaghetti with meat balls, lasagna, tongue, stuffed potatoes, fried chicken, matzoh ball soup, garlic bread, chocolate mousse surrounded by lady fingers, chocolate and Grand Marnier souffles and apple pie. My father was a lot of things, some of them not so nice, but he was smart and successful and we ate well. From my parents, I learned that to cook is to please.

Almost two years ago, I found this duck recipe in the New York Times Dining section. I love the Dining section. When I was growing up, it was called the Living section, and my mother was once featured in it in a story that ran on on Dec. 10, 1975. The headline was "He Designs Meals - And Kitchens as Well. My mom and her friend John Cristaldi, a carpenter turned kitchen designer, cooked a meal for Craig Claiborne, then the food critic for the Times. Somehow, my mother persuaded Claiborne to drive out to Short Hills and sit down in her kitchen so “Uncle John” could cook an old fashioned Italian meal for him. John made Claiborne sesame steak, broccoli rabe, zucchini with tomato sauce and sauteed chicken with Italian sausages.

He discussed his cooking philosophy, said he grew his own basil and oregano, and learned to cook from his father, a stone mason. I'm looking at the story now. There are the old blue tiles from my parents' kitchen, there is Uncle John, there is the island where my father used to stash the Famous Amos chocolate chip cookies he brought back from Zabar's. They're all gone now, and my mother doesn't cook much anymore but she still lives in that house and the stovetop is still there.

The Dining section remains my favorite section of the paper. Every Wednesday morning, I turn to it before I read the more pressing news of the front page. Some days, I'll cut or print out some recipes, put them in a recipe binder and forget about them. But other days, I cook whatever the Times tells me to. This duck recipe came out on one of those days. Last Sunday, I took out the recipe again. My mother was coming over to say hello to my kids, while they watched the Giants play the Falcons.

While they were watching, I made duck. All I can say is, Oh, Mama. This dish will make your heart race. I doubled the amount of string beans the recipe calls for because I love string beans and that way I could pretend this was a watercress and string bean salad with a little duck thrown in, and not the other way around.

You start this recipe by melting honey in a pot. Nothing beats the smell of warm honey. Once you add the raw sugar, salt and nuts to it, your party has started. If you do nothing else with your life, make these nuts.

The first time I made this recipe, the wax paper stuck to the nuts. This time, I let the nuts cool and put the tray into the refrigerator for a half an hour. When they were really cold, the wax paper came off easily.

The duck itself takes little time to make. Clark’s recipe says it only takes about 8 minutes in the oven, though I found it takes 12-15 minutes to cook two thick duck breasts. After the first the eight minutes, I took the duck breasts out. They were gorgeous and grilled dark on top, but inside they were raw. I sliced them in half lengthwise, so that there were now four thin duck breasts on the platter, and cooked them a few more minutes.

My mother came upstairs just as I was arranging the duck on a platter with the greens. "Oh, duck!" she said. Her eyes lit up. I like to think that I've lived my life in opposition to my mother but the reality is I've moved back to the town where she still lives, and like her, I cook all the time. We take turns driving each other crazy but she has taught me a thing or two. I made her a plate to taste. As my mother bit into the duck, she looked happier than I've ever seen her in my presence. “I think this is the best thing you’ve ever made,” she said. Thanks, Mom.

Duck Salad With Almonds, String Beans and Watercress (adapted from The New York Times)

Time: 75 Minutes, makes enough for four people

Ingredients:

1 tablespoon honey

pinch salt

1 cup slivered almonds

2 tablespoons raw sugar

2 duck breasts, trimmed (1-1/2 pounds total)

1 teaspoon kosher salt, more as needed

1 teaspoon chipotle or other chili powder

1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

1/2 teaspoon ground cumin

1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1/4 cup plus 1 teaspoon extra virgin olive oil

1 garlic clove, minced

2 tablespoons fresh lime juice

1 bunch watercress

1-2 pounds string beans or haricot verts

1. Heat oven to 350 degrees. In a small saucepan over medium heat, cook honey and salt until thin and runny, then mix in almonds until coated. Add sugar and toss to coat. Spread nuts on baking sheet (lined with parchment paper) and bake, stirring once, until deeply golden brown, 10 to 12 minutes. Let nuts cool, put them in the refrigerator to cool for half an hour or so, then peel off the wax paper and break up clumps with your fingers.

2. In a medium pot on medium-high heat, bring six cups salted water to boil. Fill a medium bowl with ice water. Cook green beans until bright green and tender, 2 to 4 minutes depending on thickness of beans. Drain, then plunge into ice water to stop cooking. Drain and pat dry.

3. Raise oven heat to 400 degrees. Using a sharp knife, score duck fat into a crosshatch pattern, with cuts a half-inch apart. You want to cut through fat but not into flesh of duck.

4. In a small bowl, mix salt, chili, pepper, cumin and cinnamon. Rub mix all over duck, working it into the fat.

5. Set an ovenproof pan on the stove over medium-low heat. Add 1 teaspoon of oil, heat for a few seconds, then add duck, fat side down. Sear without moving until dark brown, about 10 minutes (if it starts to burn, lower the heat). Flip duck and cook for 1 minute, then transfer pan to oven and roast until meat is done to taste, 4 to 8 minutes longer for medium rare (130 degrees). Let duck rest on a cutting board. Reserve 2 tablespoons of fat from pan.

6. Mash up garlic and make a paste from garlic and a pinch of salt. In a small bowl, mix it with lime juice and a half-teaspoon salt, then drizzle in remaining olive oil, whisking well.

7. In a large bowl, toss green beans and watercress with reserved pan drippings and just enough of dressing to coat. Taste and add salt if desired.

8. Slice duck breasts and toss with salad. Garnish with almonds and serve.

Existentialist Cooking in the 'burbs

noreply@blogger.com (Writermom) — Sun, 8 Jan 2012 05:33:00 -0800

Hello, East coasters, and if there are any readers on the West coast who are reading this blog, hello to you too. This story on making tuna, inspired by a recipe from Le Bernardin, a memory of reading Camus, and my husband's decision to clean out his office, ran on Patch this morning. As always, if you have comments or recipes to share, please leave them on the Patch site. Thank you, as always, for reading!

Sunday Night Supper: By Camus and Le Bernardin

Just because a recipe from a fancy restaurant calls for grilling outside in summer doesn't mean you can't use a broiler in January.

By Laura Zinn Fromm | 5:00 am

At the beginning of New Year’s weekend, we flew home from California. We’d had a lovely vacation, meandering up the West Coast, starting in Los Angeles, then winding our way north until we finally pulled up to my brother and sister-in-law’s house in Berkeley. My kids spent a lot of time dipping their toes into the beautiful, cold Pacific while my husband and I shivered and stared at gorgeous sunsets.

The drive up the California coastline was long, and we had a few bouts of car sickness, but none of us got sick. Yet, the minute we got home, my younger son and I almost immediately resumed the sinus infections we'd been fighting for months.

Something in our house was aggravating our sinuses, and I was pretty sure my husband’s office was the culprit.

This office had once been a pleasant place to work. It wasn’t big; someone less charitable might call it a walk-in closet with a decent-size window and nice carpeting. But we tried to make it work. Shortly after we moved in, we hired a carpenter to make built-in book shelves, drawers and a desk. This guy set up shop in the garage and over the course of a few weekends, finished the work. He charged us next to nothing and did a great job. It turned out he charged so little because he had recently been in prison, which is where he learned his carpentry skills. But that's another story.

A painter stained the shelves and cabinets, we put up new wallpaper and my husband settled in. But even on his best day, my husband doesn’t file. Papers piled up; bank statements sat on prospectuses; the room became stuffy; the floor and counters disappeared. My husband relocated to the desk in our bedroom; the office became a storage room filled with dust. When we got back from California, I argued that all that dust was making us sick. I had no idea if that was true, but it seemed like it could be. My husband finally agreed to clean it out and filled five garbage bags with stuff.

In the middle of the purge, he came downstairs, waving a card. “Hey, look what I found!” he said. “Can you make this?” It was a card from Le Bernardin. Inside, it said, “Wishing You a Hot Summer!” and next to that was a recipe for Slate-Grilled Tuna Steak with Soy Ginger Vinaigrette and Romaine. The card had a cheerful, life-is-good vibe. On the front was a picture of a handsome, middle-aged man, his gray hair closely cropped. He wears a pair of dark sunglasses and an expensive-looking watch. The sun shines down upon him and his expression is gleeful as he lifts up the grill and peers inside. The look on his face says, “I’ve never even heard of a government bailout!" Nothing about the card says recession, unemployment or sub-prime loans. I flipped the card over to see when it had been printed; it had to be way before the stock market crash in 2008. A quick call to Le Bernardin confirmed that in fact the card was quite old. "This is actually from 2002 and pictured is Chef Eric Ripert, chef and co-owner of Le Bernardin," said Cathy Sheary, who works in the chef's office. "It is taken from his cookbook – A Return to Cooking."

Let's not even discuss the fact that my husband had mail sitting in his office for almost a decade. Back to his original question: Could I make this recipe? (And could I look as cool and tan as Eric Ripert while doing it?) Into my head popped a quote from Camus’s The Stranger, which roughly translated goes, In the midst of winter, I found within me an invincible summer. Or some such.

We did have all the ingredients, except for the tuna and tomatoes. Tuna was easy enough to get, but we were many months away from ripe tomatoes. The recipe also suggested you lay a piece of slate over your grill and cook on it. Maybe that worked for the sous chefs at Le Bernardin, but I wasn't about to attempt that in 12-degree weather. Still, a part of me thought what the hell – if I could remember Camus, I could do this. I would use canned tomatoes and broil instead of grill. (I know there are hardy souls out there who grill on their patios in winter. Go with God.)

We bought two pounds of tuna for $18.99/pound at Kings. It’s not fun to pay that much for fish, but itis fun to start thinking about summer when it's freezing out. I used a can of tomatoes from the pantry; they ended up being fantastic with the marinade. The recipe called for two fresh tomatoes; I used four canned. The dish made enough for two meals and on the second night, my older son went searching for the tomatoes, but we'd polished them off. Next time, I will double the marinade and use the whole can.

This recipe was fantastic, which is what you might expect from Le Bernardin. My older son described it as, "Hawaiian-y and summery but it’s winter so a good contrast." My younger son, who is not a fan of fish, said, "It's good – for fish." My husband, who threatened to eat a slice of pizza on the way home from work but backed off once I screeched that I'd marinated fish for an hour, waxed rhapsodic once he dug into the tuna. “This is really yummy and delicious," he said. "Great job! You should be a chef.” (Oh, go on.) I think my husband was amazed that something he had fished out of a pile (forgive the pun) had turned into a meal. And all in the midst of winter...well, you know the rest. Happy January.

Tuna Steak with Soy-Ginger Vinaigrette and Romaine, Adapted from Le Bernardin

4 6-ounce yellowfin tuna steaks
Fine sea salt and freshly ground pepper to taste
1 tablespoon herbs de Provence (this is a combination of rosemary, fennel seeds, oregano, marjoram, thyme and savory; combine two tablespoons of each and save the extra for another recipe)
1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
2 tomatoes, cored and cut in half (I used four canned)
1 garlic clove, peeled and sliced
1 tablespoon minced ginger
2 tablespoons minced shallots
1 tablespoon oyster sauce
2 tablespoons sherry wine vinegar
4 tablespoons canola oil
1 tablespoon soy sauce
1/2 teaspoon fresh lime juice

Small pinch cayenne pepper

2 heads romaine leaves, left whole, washed and dried

Season tuna steaks on both sides with salt, peppers and herbes de Provence. Generously rub extra virgin olive oil on the tuna, coating both sides. Season tomato halves with salt, pepper, herbes de Provence and sliced garlic; drizzle with oil Allow tuna and tomatoes to marinate one hour.

Make soy-ginger vinaigrette by whisking together ginger, shallot, oyster sauce and sherry wine vinegar. Whisk in canola oil, soy sauce, lime juice and cayenne pepper. Season to taste with salt and pepper; set aside.

Turn broiler on and let it heat up. Cover cookie sheet or broiler pan with tinfoil. Pour some marinade on the tin foil and place tuna and tomatoes on top of the marinade. Broil for five minutes on one side. Then turn over and cover tuna steaks with more marinade. Broil for five minutes or more until done. Top with remaining marinade. Serve with romaine lettuce.*

*If you want to use slate and grill the tuna the way Le Bernardin suggests, follow these instructions:

Start a large charcoal fire in the grill. When coals are very hot, place slate on the grill and heat slate until it is very hot, about 30 minutes. Pour some marinade all over the slate and lay tuna on top of the oil. Place tomatoes on the slate, cut-side down. Grill tuna on the slate until it is browned on the bottom, then turn it over to grill on the other side – remove the tuna from the slate when it is browned on both sides but is still rare in the middle. When tomatoes are lightly charred, turn them over to finish cooking on the other side (they should be soft but still hold their form.) To serve, dress romaine leaves with some of the soy-ginger vinaigrette arrange on plates. Place one tomato and one tuna steak on each plate; drizzle more soy-ginger vinaigrette around each dish.

Baby, It's Cold Outside

noreply@blogger.com (Writermom) — Thu, 5 Jan 2012 09:20:00 -0800

This story ran on the Patch site this morning. As always, if you have comments or recipes to share, please go to the Patch site. Thank you!

Chicken Soup for the Cold

Some days the only thing you really want is chicken soup - or maybe carrot.

In my grandparents' two-family house in Brooklyn, dinner always started with a hot cup of soup. My grandfather would take the subway home from his office on Wall Street, and my grandmother, rested and energized from a day of playing duplicate bridge, would place a cup of hot soup before him. They had the division of labor all figured out: Grandma would cook and sew, and Grandpa would fix things and clean up.

When winter starts blowing cold air on your mood, some days the only thing you want is soup. That happened to me last weekend. After a Saturday jammed with wrestling practice, baseball, tennis, and a basketball game (granted, these were my kids’ activities, not mine, but I was exhausted from all the driving and watching), I woke up Sunday morning feeling, as the French would say, like merd.

Sedated by a cupful of Nyquil the night before, I was sleeping peacefully when my husband went to the gym. He figured I’d get up eventually and drive our younger son to religious school and he would pick him up. But I was basically unconscious. When I fell out of bed at 10 a.m., it was only because our dog was throwing herself at the bedroom door, scratching and crying, no doubt thinking I was dead. I went downstairs. The house was delightfully quiet. Was it possible my husband had dropped my younger son off at religious school, taken my older son to the gym, and let me sleep in peace? How fabulous!

Uh, no. Both kids were actually in the house - one fast asleep, the other sitting quietly in the basement, zoning out in front of the TV, waiting to be carted off to Sunday school. But the habits and misunderstandings of men, women and children and the complications that ensue when they share the same space is not what this story is about. This story is about soup and the yearning for it.

The soup I craved was chicken soup, but the only soup we had in the pantry was canned tomato. When you're sick, canned tomato soup is not going to solve your problems. Then I looked in the freezer. There was a frozen chicken carcass, circa mid November, and a package of boneless chicken breasts. I could throw some soup together and it wouldn't take long. I downed a cup of coffee, got out two pots, and went to work.

The beauty of a frozen chicken carcass is that it can last a good, long time. This carcass was from a recipe for jalapeño chicken that came from Lisa Fain’s The Homesick Texan Cookbook. We ate it two or three days in a row and then got sick of it. But it was so good, I couldn’t bear to throw out the carcass or the meat so I put it all into ziplock bags and hid them in the back of the freezer so the carcass wouldn’t scare anyone. Into a big pot it all went. I covered it with a quart of chicken stock, turned on the stove, let it boil, then simmer. and added two handfuls of kale. That was soup number one.

Then I took the boneless chicken breasts and tried to think about what to do with them. I had taken a soup class with Pam Riesenberg a few weeks earlier. We had made several soups, one of which was a lovely chicken barley soup with spinach. The problem was I was trying to avoid gluten so didn’t want to use the barley. And we didn’t have any spinach, nor did I have the energy to go to the supermarket. I used Pam’s recipe as inspiration, and made do with what I had: Four skinless, boneless chicken breasts, frozen peas, carrots, a package of bean threads (look just like noodles unless you know better), and chicken stock. Pam’s recipe called for two breasts but I used four, so that the soup could serve as a real dinner for my older son, who was trying to make weight for wrestling and needed a lot of low-fat protein.

Both soups were excellent, though I must admit, I was the only one who liked the chicken with kale, so I will not include the recipe here. (If you really want it, email me.)

My husband and my older son loved the chicken chunk soup. I ate cup after cup of it until I felt better. My younger son said he didn't like soup but changed his mind once I poured it onto his plate and called it chicken stew. (It was that chunky.) The same day I made these soups, my neighbor called and said she was making carrot soup with dill, from the New Basics Cookbook. “Do you know it?” she asked. Of course, I knew it. Every person who lived on the West Side in the '80s and '90s knew of the New Basics Cookbook and its slimmer, older sister, The Silver Palate Good Times Cookbook. “It’s page 93.” Oh. Carrot soup did sound good and easy but I was tuckered out from boiling the chicken.

A few days later, though, we went to walk our dogs. “Do you have any dill leftover?” I asked. My neighbor did. She handed over her leftovers, plus a couple of celery stalks. That carrot soup was divine and after the first ten minutes of prep, took next to no time to prepare. The recipe calls for creme fraiche at the end. I didn't add it, because we were all supposedly watching our weight, but you should.

Stay warm and to paraphrase the patron saint of iToys, stay hungry.

Chicken Chunk and Bean Thread Soup with Peas and Carrots (inspired by Pam Riesenberg, Home Appetit)

Ingredients:

1 tablespoon olive oil

4 carrots, peeled and diced (or several handfuls of baby carrots, diced)

4 celery stalks, diced

1 medium onion

4 boneless, skinless chicken breasts, cut into bite-size pieces

6 cups chicken broth

1/2 bag of bean thread (glass noodles)

1/2 teaspoon dried thyme

1/2 cup of frozen peas (or more, if you desire)

In soup pot, heat oil over medium heat and add carrots, celery and onion. Cook until tender, about 8 minutes. Add chicken, stir and cook another 2-4 minutes. Add chicken broth and thyme and bring to boil. Stir in bean threads, cover and reduce heat to simmer, about 10 minutes, until bean threads and chicken are cooked through. Add in peas and cook a couple of minutes. Season with salt and pepper and serve.

Carrot Soup with Dill (inspired by the New Basics Cookbook)

Ingredients:

1 tablespoon (half stick) unsalted butter

1 large onion, diced

2 1/2 pounds carrots, peeled and diced (I used baby carrots)

2 ribs celery, leaves included, diced

8 cups chicken stock

1/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons chopped fresh dill

1 teaspoon salt

1/4 teaspoon black pepper

Pinch of cayenne pepper

6 teaspoons creme fraiche (optional)

1/4 cup finely diced red bell pepper, for garnish

6 dill sprigs, for garnish

Melt butter in soup kettle. Add onion and cook over low heat until wilted, ten minutes. Add carrots, celery, stock, 1/4 cup dill, salt, pepper and cayenne. Bring to boil, reduce heat and cover. Simmer until carrots are tender, about 40 minutes. Allow to cool slightly.

Puree the soup, in batches, in a blender or food processor. Return to kettle, stir in remaining two tablespoons of dill, and adjust through. Heat through.

Serve each bowl of soup with a dollop of creme fraiche, a sprinkling of red pepper and a spring of dill.

Let 2012 be a Piece of Cake

noreply@blogger.com (Writermom) — Mon, 2 Jan 2012 16:12:00 -0800

This story on the healing powers of old-fashioned chocolate chip pound cake ran on Patch Sunday morning. If you have any comments or recipes to share, please go to the Patch site. Thank you to everyone who has read these columns, written comments, and shared recipes these past few months. It has always been my dream to write a weekly food column (really! ) and you have helped me do it. Happy New Year and may 2012 be full of health, happiness, sweetness and many, many pieces of cake, both real and imaginary.

Sunday Night Supper: Let Them Eat Cake

Some nights, cake solves everything.

Some nights, you just want to bury your head in the sand and ask for mercy. My older son came home on one of those nights, looking miserable.

"Today was nothing but bad news," he said. He hadn't done well on a test and had banged his head again in wrestling, getting another concussion, causing the school trainer to say he couldn't wrestle again until he saw a doctor. I had just gotten back from my own doctor, with yet another prescription for antibiotics for a sinus infection that would not go away. My birthday was in five days, and I was pretty sure no one had made any plans for it - except me, in my head. It was cold out, gray and December. Not quite the holidays, but with all that anxiety and pressure of having to get stuff for people hanging in the air. I hugged my older son and tried to make him feel better.

"Oh," he said. "I have to bring snack for advisory."

"What does that mean?"

"I have to bring in snack for advisory," he said slowly.

"When is advisory?"

"Tomorrow morning at 9:20."

"You're telling me now?" It was 6:15 p.m.

"You can just get donuts or bagels or something."

When was I supposed to do that? My younger son had basketball practice that night and I had to read papers for a writing class I teach.

"Sit down and have dinner," I commanded.

Dinner was macaroni and cheese out of the box for my younger son and heated-up chicken soup from the night before for my older son. My husband was out with someone from work. We ate and tried to be cheerful. As much as I enjoy cooking, the nights when I don't cook, or don't cook much, are just as pleasant as the night when I do. When we finished dinner, I felt oddly energetic. I could see why people didn't feel the compulsion to cook like maniacs all the time. I tried to figure out when I was going to run to the local Dunkin Donuts or bagel place, neither of which was open at night. I could get up early in the morning and run out but that would really suck. Then I remembered a recipe I had found on my computer earier that afternoon. The advisory kids could have that.

It was a recipe for chocolate chip pound cake. I had discovered it on my desktop and printed it out. (I also found a picture of one of my kids' classmates, a pretty girl in short shorts, gleefully giving me the finger.) I couldn't remember who had sent the recipe to me but I thought it might be my husband's aunt Elaine, who had made a chocolate chip poundcake the prior Saturday night when we went to her house to celebrate her son's birthday. But I didn't remember receiving a follow-up recipe from Elaine and this pound cake had a cinnamon and sugar topping, which Elaine's cake didn't have. Plus, the recipe was typed in Courier, not a font Elaine normally used. I thought the recipe might have come from my friend Denise, who is super organized and sends recipes out as soon as you ask for them. But her son has celiac and she was unlikely to use a recipe that called for two cups of cake flour. Finally, I went through my emails and saw the recipe was from my friend Terri, who sends me what turns into all my best cooking ideas. But Courier wasn't a font she used either.

I emailed Terri. "Whose recipe is this?"

"Madeline Weiner's friend's grandmother," she typed back. "Do you want to call her?"

Yes, I wanted to call her. This was a night that called for tallking to Grandma, dead or alive. I called Madeline, who said the recipe came from her friend Jodi Skriloff. I called Jodi and she confirmed that the recipe had indeed come from her Grandma Becky. "She made it for the brunch for my bat mitzvah," Jodi said. (Jodi's bat mitzvah was in May 1979.) "That was when everybody started to eat it and ever since then, everyone has been taking the recipe and making the recipe. My grandmother also had a really awesome apple cake recipe, realy heavy and delicious." Could she send that along too? Jodi said sure. "I'l tell you a little tip," she added. "I always freeze the pound cake, and cut it frozen. It's really good frozen."

This chocolate chip pound cake has very simple ingredients that you're likely to have on hand. There is no sifting of flour or waiting for the chocolate to melt or cool, no rolling out of pie dough, no separating of eggs. It took me five minutes to gather the ingredients. Then I asked my older son if he wanted to bake the cake with me. Normally, when I ask him if he wants to cook or bake with me, he says, "I have to..." and it turns out he is doing something very important and meaningless on Facebook. But this night, he said sure. For 25 minutes, we stood together in the kitchen and baked. He buttered the tube pan and mixed up the butter, cream cheese, and eggs while I measured out the dry ingredients.

This is one of the easiest cakes you'll ever make. We started at 6:52 and finished at 7:15, then put the cake in the oven. It was old fashioned and wonderful. As I sliced it up, I took the crumbs, put them on a plate and called for my kids to come down. We could not wait for it to freeze so we stood around the kitchen, cooing and licking the hot crumbs off our fingers. That cake pretty much solved all our problems that night. Or it seemed to, which is almost the same thing.

Grandma Becky's Chocolate Chip Poundcake

Beat together:

8oz pkg cream cheese

1 stick butter

1 ¼ c sugar

2 eggs

1 tsp vanilla

In another bowl mix:

2c cake flour

¼ tsp salt

¼ tsp baking soda

¼ tsp baking powder

Add dry ingredients to creamy mixture

Add ¼ c milk and mix all tog.

Add 1 pkg mini chocolate chips. Mix well and pour into greased tube pan.

Sprinkle with ½ c cinnamon sugar mixture

Bake at 350 for 50-60 minutes until tester is clean.

Make Your Day Merrier with this Holiday Meat Sauce

noreply@blogger.com (Writermom) — Sun, 25 Dec 2011 09:47:00 -0800

This story on making meat sauce ran on Patch this morning. As always, if you have recipes or comments to share, please leave them on the Patch site. Merry Christmas and happy holidays, all around!

Sunday Night Supper: Feel Better with this Holiday Meat Sauce

This bolognese sauce is a delicious and glorious way to heal and celebrate.

By Laura Zinn Fromm
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December 25, 2011

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Why is that mothers can’t stay in bed and be sick?

I felt ill one afternoon and went to lie down. There it was. The saddest scene of all. Mom. Lying down. During the day. When other people in the house are awake and need her for…nothing, everything, something incredibly minor and meaningless but also absolutely crucial and pressing.

Actually, it was a cloudy, winter afternoon and no one needed me for anything at that moment so I went upstairs. Our dog Roxy followed me. She is a yellow labrador retriever and not the sharpest knife in the drawer (she can't retrieve anything except food) but she's smart enough. I closed the shades. Roxy must have sensed I was in distress because she started to bark. “Woof, woof!”

I willed her to go away. She barked at me again. “Woof! Woof!”

I didn’t need a translator. The bark went like this: “Mommy, get up! You look dead! Show me you're not!" I silently barked back: Shut up.

“Woof, woof!”

I closed by my eyes. “Shut up!” I yelled. “Go downstairs.” Roxy looked at me with her big brown eyes. She stared at me hard. It was a look that said, “Move it, girl!” Coming from her, that was pretty nervy because she does next to nothing. In the mornings, we run or go for a walk. She spends the rest of the day napping in the family room, or waiting in the dining room for someone to ring the bell. She only comes to see me if she needs to go outside or wants a snack. Hours go by, and she doesn’t stop by to say hello. But the minute I am prostrate, she gets hysterical.

Nobody wants to see Mom lying down. Adults are supposed to be busy. Except when they feel like crap. I got out of bed, pushed her out of the room and shut the door. She sat in the hallway and barked and barked.

I couldn’t friggin' stand it. Nothing is louder or more persistent or sounds more anguished than a dog when it wants something. Meanwhile, I wanted someone to take care of me: An old Italian aunt, humming in her apron on a Sunday afternoon, stirring a big pot of meat sauce. She would say, “Come sit down, darling, take a load off, this is for you,” and she would hand over a bowl of meat sauce and a plate of buttered noodles, and give me a kiss on my forehead. This older Italian woman does not exist in my life but still I yearn for her.

I hauled my butt out of bed. Maybe if I wandered around in a daze, I would feel better. I opened the freezer, and spotted a package of ground meat - veal, beef and pork. I did not feel like making meatballs, which I always ruin, or meatloaf, which I love but have trouble persuading my children to love too. I wanted the sauce my imaginary aunt would have cooked for me.

Who, besides vegans and vegetarians, doesn’t love Bolognese meat sauce? This recipe comes from Mark Bittman's book, How to Cook Everything. That book is a God-send and everybody who has a kitchen should own a copy. I mashed up some baby carrots, onions, celery and turkey bacon in the food processor and sautéed them in olive oil. I added ground meat, and white wine, then took a can of whole tomatoes, crushed the tomatoes in my hand, and sauteed those too. I let the sauce cook and cook. At the end, I added a cup of cream. You don’t need to use cream in this recipe. I have made this before with skim milk and it works just as well. You could use real bacon too, and it would taste divine, but the turkey bacon makes it taste just awesome. And at the end, you can add Parmesan cheese, which makes it even more delicious.

This sauce takes a long time. It involves a lot of standing and stirring. Because I wasn't feeling great, I chased it with a diet Coke. If you were feeling festive, you could invite people over, sip some wine while you stir the sauce and have yourself a delightful few hours. It's a great sauce to make on a holiday or a Sunday afternoon, such as today, which being Christmas, is both. The trick is to invite friends or family over and have them devour it with you, or set aside some containers and freeze the leftovers, because this recipe makes a lot.

There are plenty of nights when I'm too lazy to cook, or I'm teaching and I ask my babysitter to boil up some macaroni and cheese, or take a box of pizza out of the freezer. But there are also plenty of days when I cook - to make myself feel better, to avoid writing, to stir up my writing, or to have something tangible to share at the end of the day. By the time I was done making this sauce, I felt better. This sauce has a strange power; it makes you feel as if you've done everything right. It's that good.

The secret ingredient is the smoked turkey (or bacon or pancetta.) What makes it, and almost any ragu, delicious is the combination of mashed up carrots, celery and onions, garlic, salt and pepper, which, when combined with salt and milk or cream, and stirred in a heavy saucepan for a couple of hours, turns into a paste so delicious, with sweet, tart flavors that aren’t easily identifiable, but taste like love. Which dinner should.

I didn't give any meat sauce to my dog. But I bet my imaginary great aunt would have.

Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah and Happy New Year, wherever, however and whatever you celebrate. See you in 2012.

Meat Sauce, Bolognese Style (Ragu), adapted from Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything

Takes about 2.5-3 hours, mostly unattended

Ingredients:

2 tablespoons olive oil

1 small onion, minced

1 carrot, peeled and minced (I use a handful of baby carrots and mince them; the more carrots you use, the sweeter the sauce)

1 celery stalk, minced

1/4 cup minced bacon or pancetta (I used turkey bacon)

1 pound lean ground beef, pork or combination

1/4 cup dry white wine or juice from canned tomatoes (I used wine)

1 28-ounce or 35-ounce can whole plum tomatoes, drained

1 cup chicken stock

Salt and ground pepper to taste

1 cup cream, half-and-half or milk (I use a combination of cream and skim milk)

Freshly grated Parmesan cheese, optional

Put olive oil in a large saucepan. Turn heat to medium low and a minute later, add onion, carrot, celery, bacon or pancetta. Cook, stirring occasionally, until vegetbales are tender, about ten minutes.

Add ground meat and cook, stirring and breaking up any clumps, until all traces of red are gone, about 5 minutes. Add wine or tomato juice, raise heat a bit, and cook, stirring occasionally, until most of the liquid is evaporated, about 5 minutes.

Crush tomatoes with your hands and add them to the pot; stir, then add stock. Turn heat ot low and cook to a slow simmer, stirring occasionally and breaking up tomatoes and any clumps of meat that remain. After an hour or so, add salt and pepper. Cook for at least another hour, until much of the liquid has evaporated and the sauce is very thick.

Add cream, half-and-half or milk, and cook for another 15 to 30 minutes, stirring occaisonally; taste and add more salt and pepper as needed. Sprikle Parmesan on sauce while it is warm. Serve immediately with pasta.*

*Sauce can be covered and refrigerated for a day or so, or put in a closed container and frozen for several weeks.

Frommedy

noreply@blogger.com (Writermom) — Sun, 25 Dec 2011 06:36:00 -0800

My older son, part-time wrestler, full-time student and all-the-time-aspiring-comic, has launched a new blog, Of course, I’m biased but I think it's really funny and sharp. If you want to read what a 15-year old has to say about the big and small world he occupies, check out Frommedy.