Seven Fires

My husband is a biologist and his work takes him to every corner of the globe. Where he doesn't have friends before a trip, he has several by the time he leaves. With all of his hobnobbing, he doesn't spend much time shopping for souvenirs. But, when he goes to Mongolia or South Africa or Bolivia or wherever, he knows that, if he's going to pick up a gift for me, a food-related item would be likely well-received. When he went to Hokkaido a couple of years ago, he brought back the most enchanted box of confections that I could have ever imagined. The candy/pastry-making shop that he got it from was right there, so everything was so fresh. The flavors were generally muted but compelling, the textures were so delicate, and every item was gorgeously packaged. It exuded the essence of perfection.

He came back from Argentina a few weeks ago and brought me a book, Seven Fires: Grilling the Argentine Way by Peter Kaminsky and Francis Mallmann. I had read a review of it in a cooking magazine a few weeks earlier and was not particularly drawn to it based on that. But then I had the book in my hands and started to look at it one night after things were tidied up well enough and everyone but me was in bed ... and I couldn't stop reading it and looking through it. Sometimes a book can truly transport you, and this is one of those. Now, I am a huge fan of Naomi Duguid and Jeffrey Alford. I have all of their books, and talk about transporting! I will write about them in a post, soon. But their books are ones you dip into when the mood strikes; you don't read them through all at once. Seven Fires drew me through from start to finish in a sitting because it was about one man's passion, his deep love of place (rural Argentina) and the finest version of its culture. Peter Kaminsky's friendship-inspired writing and the evocative photos pull it all together, and it makes for a masterful book.

The book focuses on meat, of course. I am not the most ravenous meat eater in the world, as I have said before, but I can appreciate its allure. And I certainly love to be outdoors, near a well-tended fire, awaiting any well-prepared thing that might be roasting or bubbling over that fire, after a long day of tromping and digging and all the other wonderful outdoor things there are to do. I can just feel it: the sun starts to go down, the warmth that was in the air begins to suck away, and the cool chill draws you closer to the fire. Throw in a frightfully accomplished chef, and it makes for divinity.

While Mallmann clearly directed them, the information on the verso of the title page indicates that the recipes in the book were developed by Donna Gelb and Lucía Soria. Bravo to them, too. They have written down and tested Mallman's recipes beautifully. Aside from what you would expect, such as A perfect steak, how about Burnt ricotta salata, tomatoes and olives, Butternut squash soup with garlic and white wine, Empanadas Mendocinas, Striped bass with olive oil, herb, lemon, and garlic salsa, Stacked ratatouille, or Crunchy roasted potato and arugula salad?

I won't copy the recipe for Una vaca entera. Instead here is one for

Patagonian Potato Galette

I haven't kept count, but I will bet that I have made a million of these. I always serve them under a rib-eye steak and let the warm juices seep into the crispy potatoes. They're good with lamb--in fact, with almost any simple grilled or roasted main course.

In order for the potato slices to stick together they need to retain their starch, so do not rinse them after you slice them--they should go right into the cast iron. They can be made several hours in advance and kept at room temperature.

Serves 4

4 Idaho (baking) potatoes, scrubbed and patted dry
1 cup melted Clarified Butter [recipe follows]
Coarse salt

Using a mandoline, slice the unpeeled potatoes 1/16 inch thick (do not rinse); keep the slices of each potato in a stack to prevent them from discoloring.

Heat a chapa or 12-inch cast-iron skillet over a low flame (if you have two skillets, make two galettes at a time). Add 2 tablespoons clarified butter to each skillet. Working quickly, lay down a circle of potato slices around the perimeter of the skillet, with their edges overlapping by about 1/2 inch, angling them slightly up onto the side of the pan, because they will shrink down as they cook. (Do not angle the potato is using a chapa). Continue toward the center of the pan, forming overlapping circles in the same manner until you have filled the pan; use the smaller potato slices toward the center, and cover the gap in the center with a slice. Spoon 2 more tablespoons of clarified butter around the edges of the galette and over the potatoes, making sure to cover the center. Raise the heat to medium-high, place a heavy pan on top of the potatoes to weigh them down and help them stick together, and cook, without moving the potatoes, for 12 minutes; if one side of the galette seems to be browning faster, rotate the pan and/or adjust the heat if necessary.

After 12 minutes, remove the weight and, using two wide spatulas, flip the galette to cook on the other side. If any potato slices fall out of place, tuck them back in. Replace the weight and cook for 7 or 8 more minutes, or until browned on the second side and cooked thoroughly. Drain on a paper towel and sprinkle with coarse salt to taste. Repeat with the remaining potatoes. Transfer to a heated serving plate and top with a [cooked] rib-eye steak.

If the galettes are prepared in advance, transfer to baking sheets and warm in a 350 degree F oven for a minute or two before serving.


Clarified Butter

The flavor that butter adds to a dish is unique and marvelous. Clarifying butter removes the solids that tend to burn an ruin the taste.

Makes about 3/4 cup

1/2 pound unsalted butter

Slowly melt the butter in a small heavy saucepan over medium-low heat; do not stir. Remove from the heat, and carefully spoon off all the foam from the top. Pour the clear liquid butter through a fine-mesh strainer lined with cheesecloth, leaving behind the solids in the pan. Once cool, the clarified butter can be refrigerated for weeks.

Silver Nutmeg

When I first moved to Lincoln, I didn't know anyone here so I occupied my time with a lot of bike riding, and I signed up to have a table at the farmers' market selling baked goods. I love to bake and thought it would be a good way to see how hard it would be to bake a lot, on a schedule. I also wanted to find out if I would make or lose money doing it. A one-person bakery in super-miniature.

As I recall, I was required to have a name for my stall. I struggled to think of a good one. I had a copy of the Twentieth-Century Children's Book Treasury in which there is this nursery rhyme:
I had a little nut tree, nothing it would bear
But a silver nutmeg, and a golden pear
The King of Spain's daughter came to visit me
And all because of my little nut tree
Silver nutmeg. I loved that. I worked hard at preparing an elaborate sign for it.

I also worked hard baking all Friday evening, after working a full day, and through the night, without sleeping, to get ready for the Saturday market each week. Needless to say, I did not make money if you factor in the cost of labor, but even in ingredients I barely broke even. People go to the market to buy produce and plants. They may stop and buy a brownie to eat while they walk around, but they do not stock up on palmiers, small chocolate cakes and such, to get them through the week. For recipes, I used one of my favorite books for cookies, Chocolate Lover's Cookies & Brownies, with recipes developed by Beatrice Ojakangas, who is one of my favorite cookbook authors. I also used Maida Heatter's Book of Great Cookies and Maida Heatter's Book of Great Desserts, two outstanding contributions to cookbookery.

Though it was not profitable, I don't regret the experience. And I had one successful week (my final one, in fact), during the July Jamm festival. That week I decided to do a Muffin Madness sale, and I baked several kinds of muffins. I made chocolate-chocolate chip, bran, low-fat blueberry, cinnamon crumb, and a few others. I piled them in a big heap on the table. This was a huge hit. Wouldn't you know, I sold almost every muffin I made. My favorite one was based on "Yellowman's Banana Lime Bread" from the Caribbean chapter of Sundays at Moosewood Restaurant (by Ned Asta). The muffins had a dense crumb, a strong sweet-tart flavor, and a heavy moistness from the sugar syrup they were infused with. One young woman came by and bought one. A few minutes later she came back and bought every other one I had, sat down on the curb next to me and ate all six more!! That's one kind of small success, anyway. And they are kind of addictive, it's true. Here is the recipe:

Yellowman's Banana Lime Bread

In St. Lucia and Anguilla, I made friends with some local people after repeated visita to the same beaches. I won't forget their great nicknames: Merit, Rah's Bucket, Campbell Soup, Sugar Ray, the Ram, So-Lar, Freakout, Domino, Split, and Gorgeous. This tasty bread is named after Yellowman.

Yields 1 loaf

Batter
3/4 cup brown sugar, packed
1/2 cup butter, softened
2 eggs, lightly beaten
1 cup mashed bananas (about 3 bananas)
3 tablespoons milk (or plain yogurt)
1 tablespoon fresh lime juice
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
3/4 cup unsweetened grated coconut, toasted (see note)
2 cups unbleached white flour
1 teaspoon baking powder

Glaze
1/4 cup brown sugar
1 tablespoon butter
1 tablespoon rum
3 tablespoons fresh lime juice

1/4 cup unsweetened grated coconut, toasted

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees and butter a 9x5x3-inch loaf pan.

To make the batter, in a large mixing bowl, cream the sugar and butter. Stir in the eggs, bananas, milk or yogurt, and lime juice. Add the salt, ginger, and grated coconut and mix well. Sift the flour and the baking powder together in a separate bowl. Add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients and mix them until smooth. Pour the batter into the buttered loaf pan and bake for an hour, or until a knife inserted in the center comes out clean. Cool the bread for about 10 minutes before removing it from the pan.

Meanwhile, for the glaze, combine the brown sugar, butter, rum, and lime juice in a small saucepan on low heat, stirring constantly for about 5 minutes, until it becomes a thin syrup. Pour this glaze over the loaf, spreading it with a spatula or spoon to coat the top and sides. Sprinkle toasted grated coconut evenly over the glazed loaf (blogger's note: I always omit the coconut topping, and I sometimes omit the coconut in the bread, too, but it's better with the coconut in it).

Note: Spread the grated coconut on an unoiled baking tray and toast in a 300 degree oven or toaster oven for less than a minute. Be careful not to let it burn--it's delicate.

Louisiana

I lived in Louisiana for a while. Not long after Hurricane Andrew rolled through southern Louisiana, knocking houses all over the marsh like toys in a messy room, I was offered my first professional position as librarian at the Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium in Cocodrie. Cocodrie is about as way down south as you can get in Louisiana--and is essentially in the Gulf of Mexico because all of the houses are on stilts in that area.

After I moved there, I knew I was no longer in Western New York when I would take the alternate route home in my car and have to swing all the way back around instead because huge alligators were lying all over the road and I couldn't get by. Once I took my dog for a walk on the levee and, just too few feet away from me, I saw the hugest alligator known to man or woman and, as I backed s-l-o-w-l-y away, I knew I had to move. The very, very long snake that darted out from behind me on that same walk (I had walked by it???) chilled me to the bone, and I started to look for another job right then and there. And here I am in Nebraska. We occasionally get tornadoes rolling through and we have garter snakes, but there are not the daily hazards here that lurked around every corner down there (velvet ants, very large spiders, hurricanes, regular flooding, drunken nudity on Bourbon Street).

(Picture copyright 2005, otzberg; on Flickr. Used by permission (requested attribution))

Around the time I was getting ready to move from my teeny, giant spider-occupied house in Chauvin, Louisiana, I was slowly riding my bike down the street after dark sometime. I was weaving the tire back and forth, as you do when you ride a bike slowly, and at one point I heard a decided crunch underneath me. I looked down and I had bike-road-killed a crawfish. I actually ran over one and killed it. On the road. I took it as an omen that my decision to leave was correct.

One thing I really loved about living in Louisiana were the crawfish boils. Lots of spicy crawfish, potatoes, corn on the cob, and sausage (which didn't eat back then). I could eat a couple of pounds of crawfish or more at a sitting, easily. I cooked all sorts of wonderful seafood while I lived there, like a memorably fantastic ceviche-based triggerfish stew that I made from Sundays at Moosewood Restaurant, a book that I was using a lot when I lived there. I also made lots of fried fish using Bobby Flay's Bold American Food (there's a really great Southwestern U.S.-inspired potato salad recipe in there, by the way, full of bits of chopped tomato, jalapeño, scallion, red onion, garlic and cilantro, that has become a staple for me, and a great Corn & wild rice pancake recipe. A good book all around, really.).

I found it amusing reading John Thorne's Serious Pig where he said that he found the seafood boils in Louisiana underwhelming. His tastes and mine often gibe, but not in this case. I can understand if it wouldn't be to someone's taste--it provides a one-note spiciness and no refinement of culinary skill to pull off. But I really love it. Thorne talks about Cajun and Creole foods in that book quite a bit. He goes all wistful in those passages, so there is probably some unmentioned back story there, but the foods there did not provoke that sense in me at all. They were foreign to me at first, but so straightforward and "of the place" that I quickly assimilated food-wise--when the food was good anyway. Just like here, it was not always easy to find a good place to eat, unless you love poboys, which you could often find a representative version of, and that I didn't care for at all. I'm just not much of a deep-fried-something + mayonnaise-on-white-bread kind of gal.

Also in Serious Pig, Thorne roundly, and rightly I take it, criticizes the Sesquicentennial edition of the Picayune's Creole Cook Book. I have that book, and have used it some but, since reading that it was poorly compiled and edited, I'm glad not to feel that I ought to. It's full of basic, if distinctive, fare, that I will gladly partake of when visiting the wild country of Louisiana, but will not often try to replicate now that I have left the place.

However, though it's touristy to say so, I will admit that I really miss the evaporated milk-lightened, chicory-laced café au lait and powdered sugar-covered beignets in the French Quarter. I made beignets as dessert after Christmas Eve dinner last year, from a box mix put out by the restaurant in question, Café du Monde, and they were so like the kind you get there, I was impressed by how easy they were to make.

Well, after all of my experiences in Louisiana, I can recommend that if you get your hands on some fresh triggerfish, this stew will showcase it well. From Nancy Lazarus in the "Africa South of the Sahara" chapter of Sundays at Moosewood Restaurant:

Casamance Stew

The sea and rivers of West Africa are abundantly blessed with fish, an important food source. This stew is inspired by Yassa, a popular specialty of Casamance, the southernmost coastal region of Senegal. Yassa is a spicy marinated dish prepared with poultry or fish. I've added sweet potatoes, because I think it's even more delicious with that soft sweetness providing a counterpoint to the lemony tang of the onions and fish.

The fish caught in West Africa's warm, shallow waters tend to be firmer and more substantial than our usual cod or flounder, so look for a firm, even chewy, fish that won't be lost in this tasty stew.

Serves 6

Marinade
1/2 cup fresh lemon or lime juice
1/2 cup white vinegar (blogger's note: 4-6 tablespoons is enough)
2 tablespoons tamari sauce
2 tablespoons peanut oil
1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
3 large garlic cloves, minced
2 or more seeded chiles, minced

1 1/2 pounds firm flesh steaks or fillets, such as monkfish
4 cups sliced onions

2 cups 1-inch cubed sweet potatoes
1 tablespoon peanut oil
1 red bell pepper, chopped (optional) (blogger's note: I omitted this)
salt to taste

Combine the marinade ingredients. Rinse the fish well. If you're using a large fillet, cut it into serving-sized pieces. in a large glass bowl, layer about half of the onion slices. Pour some marinade over them. Then add the fish and the rest of the onions and marinade. Cover and refrigerate for at least 2 hours, but preferably overnight or all day.

When you're ready to cook, lift the fillets out of the marinade and set them aside. Cover the cubed sweet potatoes with cool, salted water, bring them to a boil, and then simmer for a few minutes until they are barely just tender. Drain any excess liquid. Meanwhile, in a heavy, nonreactive skillet, gently sauté the onions in the peanut oil for about 20 minutes, until lightly browned. Add the red bell pepper, if used, for the last 5 minutes of sautéing. Combine the sautéed onions and bell pepper with drained sweet potatoes and marinade and simmer for about 20 minutes.

While the vegetables simmer, briefly grill, broil, or sauté the fish until lightly browned on both sides. Add the fish to the simmering vegetables and continue to simmer for 15 minutes (blogger's note: 5 minutes is plenty) more or until the fish is just cooked through. Salt to taste.

Serve Casamance Stew in wide, shallow bowls on plenty of rice or steamed millet (blogger's note: I had it without rice or millet). If you like, garnish with chopped fresh parsley, cilantro, or scallions (blogger's note: I added none of these). Extra tamari at the table might be appreciated (blogger's note: not needed at all). Gombo and maize pudding or banana chutney would make this meal a feast.

In Bruges

I am getting ready to give a paper in Brugge, Belgium, in a couple of weeks. It will be on the economics of open access publishing. I am preparing in earnest for it now and I'm sure that I will be ready well enough. I have signed up for a bike tour from Brugge to another town close by for right after the conference. Then I planned a couple of free days after that. I was considering going to some other country from there after that, since I have never been to Luxembourg, The Netherlands or Germany. Or I may just stay in Brussels for that time, which I'm sure would be great--all the chocolate, and fresh seafood there. That would suit me just fine.

Just today, it occurred to me that I have never much studied Belgian food. So I was looking on Amazon for a Belgian cookbook and ran across this one:


I had not heard of it and was considering getting it, sight unseen, but I resisted. I thought that I could first do some research online about the foodways of Belgium.

A couple of days ago, I brought a pile of books downstairs, getting ready to add them to my Book of the Day list that I send out via Twitter. I wanted to get the citations entered so that I could put the books back. I glanced over at the one on the top of the pile, and this is what I had unwittingly pulled:

La Cuisine Chantraine: The Complete Collection of Original Recipes Created at the Restaurant Chantraine in Brussels by Charles Chantraine (Barrows, 1966).

What a goofball I am.

So, what's in this small volume? French food, essentially, dishes such as Hot liver pâté canapés, Cold braised celery with anchovies, Cherry consommé, Pear salad with celeriac, Grilled chicken with green herb sauce, Wild game with chestnuts, and Strawberries with port and currant jelly sauce. As Belgium shares a border with France, this is not surprising. I'm sure, though, that traditional Belgian foods reflect its bordering Germany just as much. Belgium is known for its beer as well as its chocolate, so I can only imagine that I will find delicious sausages there, and hearty potato dishes, as well as delicately sauced shellfish and refined pastries. It should be a wonderful conglomeration of the best of Western European foods. I am so excited to find out first-hand!

Here's a very simple dessert recipe from La Cuisine Chantraine.

La Dessert de Marcelle
Bananas and Cream

To serve four:

4 bananas
3/4 cup heavy cream
Juice of 2 lemons
6 tablespoons granulated sugar

Mash thoroughly or sieve the bananas. Mix them with the cream, and blend in the lemon juice, strained, and sugar to taste. Chill thoroughly.

Serve very cold in small goblets or parfait glasses, with lady fingers.

Appetizers

In True Tuscan (HarperCollins, 2005), Cesare Casella writes:
Over the years I've read various "theories" on
antipasti, mostly having to do with foods designed to
stimulate the appetite or somehow prepare the diner
for the meal that follows. My own theory is that it's
all about social order, that appetizers are a way of
showing how refined a diner or his host is ... I'm no
blueblood, but I am a true believer in multiple
courses. The trick, of course, is to serve food well,
without overwhelming yourself with too much work or
your guests with too much food.
I can't tell you what a revelation this was for me to read. Now, I will have a party with only small plated dishes, or I will have a regular dinner party, but I do not often make appetizers for my dinner parties. We once had a visiting researcher from Mexico, and I made an appetizer when we had him over for dinner, but that was one of only a few times I combined the two. As it is, my husband and I are both university faculty and I have all of a sudden realized that, for certain crowds, it would be the thing to do. And what fun to do something a little more extravagant than usual.

By themselves, I am a huge fan of appetizers and hors d'oeuvres. The idea of of them, eating them, and preparing them, are all appealing to me. When I used to have more time available to entertain and to cook for general pleasure, I would make a dozen different kinds at a time. My stepson and I once prepared seven hours straight for a faculty reception my husband and I were giving for a wonderful Parisian friend, Jean-Pierre, who was staying with us for a couple of weeks. One book I used a lot for that event was the fabulous Martha Stewart's Hors D'Oeuvres Handbook (Clarkson Potter, 1999). For that party, we made Chèvre grapes, Smoked turkey on blueberry scones, Baked honey shrimp with baguette rounds, Shaved roast beef on baguette rounds with horseradish cream, Bratwurst slices with French mustard, Date-nut bread topped with cream cheese and peach chutney, Bleu and cream cheese spread on dried pear slices, Grape tomatoes stuffed with anchovies, capers and Parmesan, Spicy-sweet blanched almonds, and Brownies with walnuts. I also used the Joy of Cooking for those. We made the bread from a dough I had prepared the day before. The date-nut bread, blueberry scones and brownies we made that day. We peeled 10 pounds of shrimp, we scooped out dozens of grape tomatoes and globe grapes and stuffed them one by one. The pear slices with bleu and cream cheese spread each had a single herb sprig on top. Everything was so lovely, and the party was relaxed and fun. It was quite a while ago now that we did this, but I will try to find a picture of the spread and post it sometime.

I have done a few parties similar to that (and I once did a dessert party that was elaborate, but lost on my college-age friends at the time) and I dream about putting together another one.

Until then, I will just start to think up a menu. And I'll give you a fun recipe from The Pooh Party Book (Dutton, 1971) that would be elegant for a party.

Violet Honey Sauce for Ice Cream or Cake

1-2 large bunches of violets
1 pint jar with lid
boiling water
2 lemons, juiced
1 teaspoon water
1 1/2 cups sugar
1/2 cup honey
2 tablespoons cornstarch (optional)

- If you live where violets grow, then you can make this delicious Honey Sauce for cake and ice cream.
- Wash the violets and remove the stems.
- Pack the violet blossoms into the jar. Fill it full.
- Cover the violet blossoms with boiling water and let stand for 24 hours.
- Strain the violet water and add the lemon juice.
- In a teaspoon of water over a low flame, mix the sugar and honey together until syrupy.
- Add the violet water and lemon juice.
- This is a delicious sauce which you can thicken with the cornstarch, over low heat, if you like.
But, as it happened, it was Rabbit
who saw Piglet first. Piglet had
got up early that morning to pick
himself a bunch of violets.
From The House at Pooh Corner

Boston

Many years ago, I was accepted into Boston University and managed to go there for three semesters before heading back home to finish up at SUNY College at Buffalo. My father drove me to the airport to move to Boston. On the way, he ran out of gas. I made the flight but it was a harrowing way to begin my college career.

The dorms were full that semester so, before ending up in a cool brownstone on Buswell Street, the school put a bunch of us up in the Sheraton downtown for a few months. This was an incredible step up from my living situation at home. Kind of fairy tale-like.

I arrived in Boston with pennies in my pocket and no prospect of an income at all. My first meal in town was a submarine sandwich from a place across from the campus on Comm Ave. and they put pickles right on the sandwich! I loved that. But the sub took a good portion of my money, so I needed a plan.

BU had (maybe still has?) a mostly-vegetarian dining room, called the Banner Room, so I went to apply for a job there. That way, I figured, I could eat at least during my work shifts. I was hired and I worked as much as my schedule would allow.

I worked very hard and I learned many things about food service there. I also learned some about the great cuisine of New England. Having grown up in the Northeast U.S., the foods of New England were not foreign to me, but to be right in the heart of New England, and surrounded by all manner of wonderful sea foods, baked beans, sweet corn bread, chowders, pies, etc., was heavenly. If pressed, I would have a hard time deciding which U.S. regional cuisine I prefer more: New England or Lowcountry Southern. Well, I can't pick; I love them equally well.

There are so many fabulous cookbooks that cover the foods of New England and, of course, the Thornes write about it, too, and I am huge fans of theirs. One of my very favorite books is Rain, Hail and Baked Beans: A New England Seasonal Cook Book by Duncan MacDonald and Robb Sagendorph (Ives Washburn, 1958; reissued by Dover in 1993 with the title Old Time New England Cookbook). I adore the organization of the book by parts of seasons, such as early fall, fall, early winter, and so on. For this time of year, the chapter is called "End of Summer, August 2-September 9," and it includes simple but good recipes for Concord grape jelly, Rose petal jam, Deep-dish pear pie, Peach sauce, Cold fruit soup, Sauerkraut, and Fried pies.

The introductions to each chapter are fun to read. The text for the "End of Summer" chapter begins:
The rainy spell you may be complaining about
in August lasts longer than most people believe it
should. And when this happens, you are sure to be
reminded that it rained on July 15 last, the day of
St. Swithin. The superstition is that if it rains
on this day, it will rain for forty days and then
some. When St. Swithin died, he asked that he not
be buried inside the cathedral where he had
preached. Rather, he preferred being somewhere
outside, perhaps a long walk, so he could be nearer
to the people of his parish. But his instructions
were not followed out. He was buried within.
Several centuries later, when it was decided that
his wishes should have been complied with, his
remains were removed to a grave outside by a walk
beneath the cathedral eaves. On the day of his
reburial, legend says, it rained furiously and kept
on for weeks and weeks. Thus his connection with
heavy rains almost any time from July 15 and on
into August.
The authors go on to acknowledge the surplus of produce at the end of summer, they mention the cyclical decline in diversity of bird life in the region around this time of year, and talk some about the origin of the term Dog Days, and lots of other fun things. Great reading, good, solid recipes. A delightful book.

Another book about New England regional cuisine is The Transcendental Boiled Dinner by John J. Pullen (Lippincott, 1972). This is one that I picked up from my friend in Kansas, about whom I wrote about in my very first blog post. I knew nothing about the book before I began reading it last year, but was so smitten by it that I read it straight through in a sitting. Pullen was an excellent writer, and very charming and funny, and his book-length instructions, and admonitions, about how to prepare the very best "boiled" beef dinner (which, by the way, must never actually be boiled--only ever simmered) are so engaging that I will surely read the book a few times more.

There are, of course, many other books on the foods of New England, but these two are charming, if older, examples.

Here is a brief and absolutely delicious-sounding recipe from Rain, Hail and Baked Beans from the "Early Fall, September 10-October 20" chapter:

Squash Pie

1 1/2 cups squash pulp
2/3 cup brown sugar
2 eggs, beaten
1 cup cream
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon ginger
1 9-inch unbaked pie shell

Combine ingredients. Mix well. Pour into pie shell. Bake in hot oven (425 degrees) for 45 minutes, or longer.

Cucumbers, Pickles

This is the second time I have had gobs of small cucumbers on hand and very little, or no, dill. The last time this happened, a few years ago, the poor cucumbers mostly went to waste, so they are part of our abundant compost now.

Because the dill that we planted did not do very well this year in the garden, a few days ago I went on a mission to find dill. I went to Super Saver, the discount grocery store in town, knowing that they were my best bet for finding some. They often have outstanding, unusual produce, and I recalled seeing dill there at some point in the past. I was in luck. They had two large bunches of dill that had seen better days, but were not quite past pickling quality. That, along with the single large sprig I got from our garden, was enough to can eight quarts of cucumbers.

Our grape vines are crazily prolific this year, so we have tons of grape leaves. I have read that adding a grape leaf improves the flavor of the pickles a lot. I have never made them without grape leaves, so I can't attest to their importance, myself. The pickles that we make are always quite good, so I'd say it's worth putting the leaves in if you have them handy.

Many cookbooks have recipes for cucumber pickles, including the Joy of Cooking and The Martha Stewart Living Cookbook: The Original Classics, and there are always new books coming out about pickling, canning and preserving, like Jam It, Pickle It, Cure It and Other Cooking Projects (by Karen Solomon; Ten Speed, 2009), which I looked at the other day and liked a lot. It's always great to look at new books coming out because they always offer something new--a new take on things, a new voice, a new hand. I do not own this one, but it's on my wish list.


Despite the dozens of pickle recipes that I surely have in my cookbook collection--even without this book--I use an adaptation of my mother-in-law's recipe, the one my husband grew up on. Here is our version of it:


Claire Gardner's Pickles (Regular Type) (Dictated 2003)

Pickling cucumbers
Canning salt
Garlic cloves, peeled
Dill
Grape leaves, fresh (optional)
Hot peppers (aka chilis), any kind, dried or fresh (optional)

Use quart, wide-mouth canning jars with metal rings, and always use fresh lids. Clean the jars and rings very well, preferably in the dishwasher with a heated dry session. Do not wash the rubberized lids in the dishwasher.

Begin boiling a few quarts of water in pots or tea pots. Then begin heating some other water in a low-sided pan, so that you can simmer the lids and rings. They should come right out of simmering water before putting on the jars.

Begin boiling a few cups of white vinegar in a pan.

Rinse the cucumbers very well in a bowl of water and then under running water. As they are rinsed, put them into absolutely clean bowls. Also rinse the grape leaves and/or chilis, if using, also under running water.

Peel 2 to 3 cloves of garlic for every jar you'll be filling. Rinse them well in running water after peeling them.

Place one grape leaf (if using) and one chili (if using) in each jar. Then put in a wad of dill (I only use the fronds, not the stems) and add 2-3 peeled garlic cloves. Put in 1 tablespoon of canning salt (do not use regular table salt and certainly don't use sea salt, or you'll have cloudy brine). Then start to stuff the jars--not packed too tightly--with cucumbers. Try to leave a little room at the top and don't have cucumbers sticking all the way up so that they will touch the lids when they are upright.

Then put a butter knife in the jar to diffuse some of the heat, so the jars don't crack, and pour in 1/2 cup of boiling white vinegar. Then fill the rest of the jar with boiling water, leaving 1/2 inch at the top.

After filling each jar, wipe the rim with a very clean, wet dish towel.

Then, using tongs, pull out a lid from the simmering water and place it on the top of the jar. Do not touch the lid with your fingers. Then pull out a ring from the simmering water, using the tongs, and carefully screw the lid on. Be careful not to screw it on too tightly--just tight enough to be completely screwed on, but not beyond that at all.

Write the canning date on the top of the jar in Sharpie.

Then turn all of the jars upside-down on a clean counter top and leave there for 8-12 hours. Then turn them upright and store in a cool, dark place, but not the refrigerator. You can eat them in 3 months, but they will be better after 4 or 5 months, and good for a year, at least. I don't know how long after canning these pickles I would trust eating them, but 2 years would be my own, unofficial limit, if for no other reason than possible deterioration of quality after that point.

You can add other seasonings to these pickles if you wish, like cloves or allspice, I'm sure. But I have not experimented with that. The hot pepper version is very hot. We usually just make them plain, with dill and grape leaves only.

Popsicles

Last week, when I went to pick up my son from all-day pre-school, he was crying his eyes out, leaning back on the head teacher, and she was holding his face with a piece of gauze. "I was just going to call you," she said. He had fallen (as he has a tendency to do) and hit his upper lip on the wooden part of a couch. His front tooth punctured his cheek, and I had to take him to get a stitch that night.

Poor little guy! He couldn't eat much for a couple of days, so I thought about what might be good to give him. He didn't like ice put on the wound, so I thought: we used to make homemade juice popsicles when I was a kid. So I found some Dixie cups in the cupboard and filled them with some bottled strawberry lemonade and froze them with some popsicle sticks and plastic spoons poking out.

They were fun for him to eat, they got some cold on the wound and got some little bit of nutrition into him for a short time. I liked having a few myself. They're good for this time of year anyway.

Here's the Lime-Cream Pops recipe ("Fit to Eat") from The Martha Stewart Living Cookbook (Clarkson Potter, 2000).


Lime Cream Pops
Makes 16 pops or 1 quart of sorbet

These are half sorbet, half frozen yogurt; for sorbet alone, follow steps 1 and 2 only. Freeze the pops in popsicle molds, available at grocery and housewares stores, or paper cups; use a stick or spoon in the center for a handle.

2 cups sugar
1 1/2 cups fresh lime juice
1 tablespoon grated lime zest
Lime Frozen Yogurt (recipe follows)

1 Combine the sugar and 2 cups water in a medium saucepan, and bring to a boil. Reduce heat to low; simmer until the sugar dissolves, about 5 minutes.
2 Prepare an ice-water bath; set aside. Pour the sugar syrup into a bowl set in the ice bath; set aside until chilled. Remove the bowl from the ice bath, and stir in the lime juice and zest. Transfer to an ice-cream maker and freeze according to the manufacturer's instructions.
3 Spoon 1/4 cup frozen lime sorbet into each of 16 4-ounce (1/2-cup) popsicle molds or paper cups. Place molds in the freezer to set for about 1/2 hour.
4 Remove the molds from the freezer. Spoon 1/4 cup frozen yogurt on top of the sorbet. (If the frozen yogurt has hardened in the freezer, allow it to soften until it is spoonable.) Insert wooden sticks three-quarters of the way into the molds, and place in the freezer until the entire pop is fully set, at least 4 hours. Freeze the remaining frozen yogurt in an airtight container for up to 5 days.

Lime Frozen Yogurt
Makes about 1 1/2 quarts

1 quart plain low-fat yogurt
3/4 cup fresh lime juice (about 5 large limes)
3/4 cup sugar
1/4 cup light corn syrup
1 teaspoon grated lime zest
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

1 Place yogurt in a fine sieve or cheesecloth-lined strainer set over a medium bowl; chill for about 1 hour, until about 1 to 1 1/3 cups liquid has drained from the yogurt. Discard liquid; set yogurt aside.
2 In a bowl, combine lime juice, sugar, corn syrup, lime zest, and vanilla; whisk until sugar dissolves; about 2 minutes. Add strained yogurt; whisk to combine. Transfer to an ice-cream maker; freeze according to manufacturer's instructions. If necessary, work in 2 batches, keeping remainder refrigerated while freezing the first batch. Store in a plastic container in the freezer for up to 1 week.

Kebabs

I know that lots of people love grilled meats, like my friend Joni, who I wrote about in an earlier post. Being still fairly new at meat-eating, I am not so much in that camp. There is one concoction, though, that I do often enjoy and that's kebabs.

After reading Brian Geiger's recent article in Fine Cooking about marinades and all that they can and cannot do, I decided to put together a marinade of buttermilk, lots of fresh herbs, garlic, salt and pepper. Then I put in chunks of skinless chicken thigh and chicken breast and let it sit for a couple of hours. I roasted some zucchini rounds with olive oil, salt, pepper and a little Penzey's Brady Street cheese sprinkle and some Roma hot house tomatoes with olive oil, salt and dried oregano. Then I threaded the chicken on skewers with the pre-roasted zucchini and tomatoes (I like my kebab vegetables to be cooked through) and I stacked the loaded skewers on a plate and took it outside to the waiting, hot, charcoal-filled grill.

I put three of the dark-meat skewers on and saw that that was all I could put on over hot coals. I guess that I had waited too long because the coals had diminished considerably. My husband and I worked together to lift the grate up to put more charcoal in the grill, but we didn't have potholders and the stick and tongs that I picked the grate up with failed me and down went two of the lovely kebabs. As I am wont to do, I shrieked a bit. I only had nine skewers to start with, so two down was a considerable portion. But then I got it together and grilled what was left and brought out a bunch more little meat bits not on skewers and all was well again.

I had made Rose Levy Bernbaum's pasta salad, from her Rose's Celebrations book, with quinoa pasta, beans cooked from dried, fresh herbs, oil-cured sun-dried tomatoes, a Vidalia onion, and U.S.-grown corn on the cob, which just started showing up in stores last week. I cut a part of a watermelon into wedges. I roasted a sweet potato that I had cut into oven fries. And there was our Sunday feast.

The kids were not too happy with it, but I sure was. The meat was properly cooked through, with charred spots, the vegetables were flavorful and tender, the salad was a great accompaniment, the watermelon was so refreshing after a winter and spring with none. Yes, an affirmation that kebabs are my favorite grilled dinner. I'm so glad it's finally summer again.

Bocce Club Pizza

While I'm on the subject of the old neighborhood, I will mention Bocce Club pizza. I grew up near one of the original locations, the one on Clinton Street, and it was the only pizza I knew for most of my childhood. When I was five, I went as a witch for Halloween, and my parents made me a witch's hat out of a Bocce Club pizza box. As an older teen, I was gleefully offered some Pizza Hut pizza by a friend, and I was excited to try the famed pie. I took a big bite and was immediately struck by how wrong everything was with it! The crust was offensive tasting, the sauce was baked into it and the cheese was solid and nasty. There was nothing good or correct about the Pizza Hut version of pizza. Disgusting. And now, where I live, in Lincoln, Nebraska, Pizza Hut might be considered to be one of the better pizzas available. We have something here called Valentino's pizza, which locals genuinely love. But, my god, it is even worse than Pizza Hut, it is worse than a frozen pizza. It is truly, inedibly bad, with a bitter cardboard crust, bitter, almost nonexistent sauce, and a coating of unparalleled tasteless, granular cheese product. And you can't get green olives.

Ok, so Bocce Club pizza, what is it like? I have not had one in ages, but I think I can conjure it up. A crust that is the correct balance between tender and firm--with a freshly-made wheaty, yeasty taste. Delectable charred bits of cheese cling to the bottom of the crust from the incredibly high-heat oven that the pizza was baked in. The liquidy sauce has a sprightliness to it and a natural sweetness, with a hint of herbs. The cheese oozes like it's almost liquid in places and has a pleasant tangy edge and a lingering creaminess. The toppings are robust and flavorful, and you can get green olives. The anchovy pizza has just the right hint of fish--it's not smothered with them like other places do their anchovy topping.

Apparently, the old Bocce Club pizza place is still there, with the same guy, Rudy, running it. He must be in his 70s now. It's in an inner city neighborhood with many empty lots around and ramshackle houses nearby. My dad, who still lives near there, said that Bocce's is in the news sometimes for armed robbery still, so it makes me wonder if Rudy still wears a gun on his hip, like he always used to.

I used to go pick up the pizza when I was still living with my parents, and the small galley waiting area held maybe ten people comfortably enough. There were no seats, just that galley. And there was a high opening that allowed the waiting people to see the pizza-making action. Rudy worked quickly, without stopping, grabbing a crust, shaping it, slapping on sauce, sprinkling on cheese, placing toppings--quick, quick--in the blasting oven. Taking a pie out as he put one in. Putting it in a box, closing the box, calling out a name. And again, the same. How I loved that pizza.

Now, the best pizza I can get is at a bar called Yia Yia's here in Lincoln. It has a thin crust and some good toppings. But it's not that kind of homemade, charred, oozy, tangy, sprightly thing that I fell in love with as a wee one. The best thing I can do now is make my own, in my pitiful 500 degree oven. I have not yet found a really great crust recipe, but I have used this one, from the Chez Panisse Café Cookbook with some success.

Pizza Dough
Makes enough dough for about 6 pizzas.

SPONGE
2 teaspoons dry yeast
3/4 cup lukewarm water
2/3 cup bread flour

DRY INGREDIENTS
4 cups bleached white flour
1/4 cup rye flour
1 teaspoon salt

1/3 cup olive oil

To make the sponge, dissolve the yeast in 3/4 cup lukewarm water and stir in the 2/3 cup bread flour. Allow this mixture to sit until quite bubbly, about 30 minutes.

Mix together the white flour, rye flour, and salt in another bowl. Stir 1 cup of cold water and 1 cup of these dry ingredients into the sponge. Mix thoroughly and let sit for another 30 minutes.

Add the remaining dry ingredients and the olive oil and knead, by hand or in an electric mixer fitted with the dough hook. Knead until the dough is soft and elastic, about 5 minutes. It may be necessary to add more flour if the dough is wet, but add only enough flour to form a soft, slightly sticky dough. A very soft, moist dough makes the best crust.

Put the dough in a large bowl, cover, and let rise in a warm place until doubled in size, about 2 hours. For even better-tasting, more supple dough, let the dough rise slowly overnight in the refrigerator.

Punch down the dough and divide into portions--4-ounce balls for pizzettas, 3-ounce balls for crostatas, or 7-ounce balls for standard pizzas. Form each portion into a nice smooth sphere. Allow the dough balls to rest at room temperature, wrapped in plastic, for an hour or so before shaping and baking. Individual dough balls may also be frozen, then thawed overnight.

Penny Candy

There were several neighborhood stores where I grew up near Fillmore and Clinton Streets in Buffalo, New York. One was Felski's (near Eagle and Smith Streets), where I would go to get a quart of milk for my mother when I was only five, and it cost a quarter. Another was a place that my father called Pani Sunshine, Pani being the Polish word for Mrs., and Sunshine because the lady there was so sour-pussed. I forget their last name, but her son's name was Freddie, and he lived with his mom all of his life. She was a squat Polish-American lady with frizzy hair and he was a trim, dark-haired guy with a mustache. The store became known as Freddie's after a while, because he more often manned the store over time.


(It used to be so neat and tidy--how it's deteriorated; sad)

I got to thinking about Pani Sunshine the other day because my son was given a trinket in a treat bag at a birthday party, a little plastic guy with a parachute. I recalled vividly how I used to buy those at the corner store, along with balsa wood airplanes, Bomb Pops (when I had enough money--they were a whole quarter) and tons of penny candy, which was truly one cent each. I loved the little red fish, which are now known as Swedish fish, probably the best. We also got Tootsie Rolls (another favorite), hard candies, licorice, nougats, and so many others.

Where we live now, unlike where I grew up, there is no corner store, no full grocery store, no butcher, no pharmacy, no mom-and-pop cleaners, no office supply/toy store, no dentist, no wedding gown shop, no liquor store, no beauty salon, no gas station. You scarcely had to leave my neighborhood to engage in commerce of just about any stripe. The old neighborhood is completely cut off from the rest of the city by viaducts over which, back then, trains rumbled by day and night. In fact, the backyard of the first house that I lived in was bordered by a train track. I remember listening to the deafening roar of the train as it sped by at crazy speed in the middle of the night and, to this day, that sound (in the distance now) never fails to soothe me to my core. An older child may have been afraid of such a racket, but my infant ears knew nothing else and it meant night-time and peacefulness to me.

We lived in four houses in that neighborhood over the years, and my father lives in yet another there now. The third house that we lived in, on James Street, is occupied by my aunt, uncle and cousin--still in the family. That is the house that is around the corner from Pani Sunshine (on the corner of Eagle and Montgomery Streets), but the store closed down long ago, as have most of the others in the neighborhood.

From time to time, I have tried my hand at making candy, with mixed success. When homemade candy turns out well, it is a stunning bit of kitchen magic. Fresh candy is vastly superior to most commercially-made candy mostly because the factory-made stuff just isn't fresh enough to be great. I tend to only buy and eat candy around candy-themed holidays like Halloween and Easter because that's when you can get the freshest batches. An elusive quality evaporates quickly in candy almost just as much as it does for baked goods.

There are lots of great candy recipes in cookbooks. You can make your own marshmallows, nut brittles, chocolate-covered nuts and fruits, candied popcorn, candied fruit peels, caramels, truffles, hard candies and lollipops, rock candy, and on and on. I have a couple of books devoted to candy recipes, The Antoinette Pope School Candy Book from 1949, and Candy from the Good Cook series from Time-Life (1981). But there are candy recipes in The Joy of Cooking, many of Maida Heatter's books, many of Martha Stewart's books, and scattered around in all manner of cookbooks, here and there.

Here's a an easy recipe for Chocolate Armagnac Truffles from The Martha Stewart Living Cookbook: The Original Classics. There is a whole chapter devoted to candy in that book, including recipes for caramels, fudge, pralines, nut brittles, popcorn balls, almond nougat, toffee and fruit jellies. If you try the truffle recipe, let me know what you think of it.

Chocolate Armagnac Truffles

Makes 5 dozen

12 ounces best-quality semisweet chocolate
1/2 cup heavy cream
2 tablespoons Armagnac (brandy or orange liqueur may be substituted)
1/2 cup Dutch-process cocoa powder, sifted

1. Chop chocolate and place in a large heat-proof bowl. Bring cream to a boil in a small, heavy saucepan; pour over chocolate. Stir until chocolate is melted and smooth. Stir in liqueur. Refrigerate until firm, at least 3 hours or overnight.

2. Scoop up 1/2 teaspoon chilled chocolate; quickly roll into a ball. Continue until all the mixture is used. Place cocoa powder in a bowl; roll truffles in cocoa to coast. Chill until firm. Store in an airtight container in the refrigerator for up to 2 weeks.

Out of Africa

It's not that I don't love Italian food. I adore pesto-laced meatballs, herb-doused vegetable melanges, freshly made ravioli filled with butternut squash, Sicilian specialties with their deeply satisfying tomato sauces. Yes, I do. But it has been wearing on me for years now that food magazines so often feature Italy as a destination, or they feature Italian food. Truly, with all due respect to the great cuisines of Italy, this has gotten old, people.

I recently made a friend on Twitter, Courtney, and she and I have exchanged a few E-mails about African food. Why isn't the food of the vast continent of Africa explored more often? Africans continent-wide have done amazing things with beans, okra, peanuts, plantains, etc. The easterners have perfected curry as well as the Indians. The former colonization brought with it at least one good thing, namely hybridization of African foods with French, Portuguese and other cuisines.

But start to look for African cookbooks for an American audience, and you will be hard pressed to find many. Marcus Samuelsson, the acclaimed African-Swedish chef, has explored the foods of his continent of origin in The Soul of a New Cuisine: A Discovery of the Foods and Flavors of Africa. Dr. Jessica B. Harris wrote The Africa Cookbook several years ago, and it's a classic book by now--good for those looking for authenticity. And there are a few other books available but, relatively speaking, they are few and far between.

Just when Courtney and I were exchanging our thoughts on the underrepresentation of African foods in the U.S., coincidentally, the first issue that I received of the Thornes' newsletter, Simple Cooking, was a special issue devoted to African foods! It was full of well-researched information and contained several recipes.

African food needs to have its day in the spotlight. I want injera and Ethiopian curries, bobotie, rusks, black-eyed pea fritters, gombo, chicken with rice, West African-style, just as much as all those great things I listed from Italy. When the wave comes, I will be there riding it.

Nana

The legend in our family is that our ancestors were Polish royalty. As kids, my cousins and I loved this tidbit and would affect Polish/Buffalo, NY, accents and say things that we thought sounded royal. Our supposed heritage gave us a bit of cockeyed confidence. I was glad to grasp onto the possibility of a royal lineage.

This birthright did not extend very far, however. In the area of food, we were treated to certain ethnic specialties, to be sure, like freshly-made pierogis, Polish sausages made by butchers right in our neighborhood, deli meats of all stripes, delicious pickles, tender rye bread encrusted with fresh, naturally-sweet caraway seeds. The yeasted, crumb-topped coffee cakes were perfection.

But those were not our everyday foods. My Nana, my mother's mom, took care of us kids quite often. She was not big on cooking, but she was big on thrift. She made a few things in heavy rotation, like hamburger pie, plain hamburgers and plain white rice, canned green beans, stuff like that. Milk was always the reconstituted kind, skim, from powder. And there were lots of generic-brand cookies and Wonder bread. I loved good food, even back then, but I didn't mind eating at Nana's. At any rate, it gives you something to compare the good stuff by, if you really get to know the not-good kind.

Nana drank coffee all day long. She sometimes had people over and they'd play Yahtzee or pinochle while they smoked one cigarette after another. They argued with each other incessantly, always taking affront to each other, and swearing liberally. They used Polish to say things to each other that they did not want us to understand. They were loud, and they didn't pay too much attention to us. We played in the backyard a lot.

When Nana neared the end of her days, I visited her almost every day. I listened to her stories--always about herself, never asked about me (she would have been a fine blogger, I think)--and I did things for her like go to the store, clean stuff in her house and just keep her company. I was in college then, and a full-bore vegetarian. I planned to make her and my great-aunt Rose, Nana's step-sister, a dinner from Jeanne Lemlin's Vegetarian Pleasures, a book that I still use from time to time: mushroom quiche, Irish soda bread, home fried-potatoes and onions, fruit salad. I bought all the ingredients, then dawdled a few days. I have set the story up so you can guess that I did not get to make that dinner for Nana. Aunt Rose and I shared it together a few days after Nana was gone. So, whenever I use Vegetarian Pleasures, I think of Nana, what a character she was. From royalty? Perhaps. Let's just say it was so.

Books I Wished I Loved More

I have said in my posts that I own a lot of cookbooks. Too many, really. I am currently contemplating which ones to get rid of. There are are very many that I will keep even though I don't use them too much. There are ones that I just like to look at, and series of books that I like to retain as a set. One such set is the Chez Panisse books, the only one of which I use consistently is the masterful, Chez Panisse Desserts, by Lindsey Remolif Shere. The Chez Panisse books are gorgeous, and the recipes are great whenever I do dip into them and make something. It helps that I had dinner at the restaurant a few years ago, thanks to my dear friend Jean, who surprised me with a visit there after I consulted with her about pamphlet cataloging in her library at the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace at Stanford for a week. I will always have fond memories of chick peas with cardoons and old vine zin upstairs in the Chez Panisse Café. But, do I grab a Chez Panisse cookbook when I am rooting around trying to decide what to make for dinner all week? Not so much.

Even the perfectly-bound The Art of Simple Food, which I thought I might use more than the others, I do not use. Aspects of it miss the mark for me, with my idiosyncratic tastes. Take the "Four Essential Sauces," for example: Vinaigrette, Salsa Verde, Aïoli and Herb Butter. OK: vinaigrette. I'm on board with that one. But do I need a new recipe for it? Mm, no. Salsa verde? Sounds good = "green sauce." It has parsley, lemon zest, garlic, capers, salt, pepper and olive oil. I use a version of this flavoring when I cook off the cuff, and it's great. Will I use this particular recipe? Probably not. Now aïoli and herb butter, I'm not on board with these. Butter and mayonnaise just hanging out there, not incorporated into something, ruin a dish for me. I am not a bread-and-butter fan. I like bread, even butter-rich brioches and coffee cakes, but the oily slick of butter on the surface of something is intensely unappealing to me. Ditto for mayo. Makes me in the minority--and I hang my head for it.


OK, here's another glitch with this one: Fava bean purée. Do I give in to the lure of fresh fava beans each year? Yes, I do. I grab handsful of the puffy pods each spring and I stand at the kitchen counter peeling each pod and then each bean after that to create a small mound of split, stinky beans. Then I wonder what to do with them. Fava bean purée sounds promising, in fact. But then I look at the recipe: "Bring a pot of water to a boil as you shell the beans from: 4 pounds fava beans." Whoa! Four POUNDS. I might shuck a pound or so, and it takes up all my spare time for the week. OK, so: cut the recipe into fourths, right? Fourths? OK, so: cut it down to: 2 tablespoons of olive oil, one garlic clove, 1/4 branch of rosemary, salt, 2 tablespoons of water and 1 more tablespoon of olive oil. It's doable, but it doesn't seem worth the effort to make a purée from so few beans, so I skip blanching them and I just braise the small mound with some olive oil, garlic, salt and a handful of herbs and skip a recipe altogether. Dang. The Art of Simple Food goes unused yet again.

Unused, yes, but not unloved. I love what Alice Waters and the Chez Panisse people have done for our food culture. Their books are beautiful. Of course, I will keep them, and cherish them. Though I'll have to wait to have fava bean purée until next time I visit the restaurant.

Floor Pie

Since we have a large, healthy rhubarb plant, I often make rhubarb pies in the spring, and again in the fall, when we get our second harvest. In the fall of 2007, I made one, using the recipe from Ken Haedrich's great book, simply called Pie. It was gorgeous--a crisp homemade sugar-dusted butter crust, jam-like sweet-tart filling, perfectly baked. I had remembered to put it on a cookie sheet so the juices that had spilled out were well contained. It was a very satisfying pie-making experience.

Then I went to take it out of the oven.

While the beautiful pie was baking, my pot holder somehow got wet. If you have ever tried to use a wet pot holder to pick up something hot, you know that this does not work. The water conducts the heat from the hot pan instantly, burning you mightily. So that's what happened. I picked up the cookie sheet with the wet pot holder before I realized that anything was wrong and ohh, ohhhhhh, ooooops!!! I dropped the pie to the right of the oven. The whole thing had spilled out onto the floor. I shrieked over and over. My husband and older son thought I was hurt, but no.

It was actually lovely just lying there, half smashed. It didn't know it wasn't supposed to be there. It smelled great. I had worked hard on it. My son, who was three at the time, asked if we could eat it anyway. I told him that only ants and dogs really ate Floor Pie. But, I said, we can have a few bites from the top, where it had not touched the floor. So we three sat there, gingerly selecting small bites from the top. It was really good. But we restrained ourselves and only had a smidgen. Then I threw the rest out. It was surprisingly easy to clean up, all that pie.

Here is a picture of my latest effort. My friend, Ann, who I wrote about in an earlier post, gave me the nifty pie bird. This is the first time I've used it. More reason not to drop another pie--wouldn't want to break the bird.



Here is the recipe I used from Pie:

All-Rhubarb Pie

Alaskan Eskimos and Afghans--Waverly Root tells us in Food (Simon and Schuster, 1980)--eat rhubarb raw. The rest of us, when we eat it at all, like it cooked in a pie. (Rhubarb is, after all, also known as pie plant.) Here's a pie recipe for those who like their rhubarb straight up, without infringement from other fruit such as strawberries or raspberries, two common pie companions. There's a fair amount of sugar in the pie, to counter rhubarb's tart flavor, and a little orange juice and zest for added zing. Rhubarb gives off a lot of juice, so do let the pie rest for several hours before serving to give the juices plenty of time to set.

Makes 8 servings.

[1 recipe for a double pie crust]

Filling
5 cups fresh rhubarb stalks sliced crosswise 1/2 inch thick
1 1/4 cups plus 2 tablespoons sugar
2 tablespoons orange juice
Grated zest of 1/2 orange
Big pinch of salt
1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
3 tablespoons cornstarch
2 tablespoons cold unsalted butter, cut into small pieces

Glaze
Milk or light cream
Sugar

1. If you haven't already, prepare the pastry and refrigerate until firm enough to roll, 1 to 1 1/2 hours.
2. On a sheet of lightly floured waxed paper, roll the larger portion of the pastry into a 12-inch circle with a floured rolling pin. Invert the pastry over a 9-inch standard pie pan, center, and peel off the paper. Gently tuck the pastry into the pan, without stretching it, and let the overhang drape over the edge. Place in the refrigerator for 15 minutes.
3. Combine the rhubarb, 1 1/4 cups of the sugar, the orange juice, orange zest, salt, and nutmeg in a large bowl. Mix well, then set aside for 20 minutes. Preheat the oven to 400°F.
4. Combine the remaining 2 tablespoons sugar and the cornstarch in a small bowl, then stir the mixture into the rhubarb. Turn the filling into the chilled pie shell and smooth the top of the fruit with your hands. Dot the filling with butter.
5. Roll the other half of the pastry into a 10-inch circle on a sheet of lightly floured waxed paper. Moisten the outer edge of the pie shell with a pastry brush. Invert the top pastry over the filling, center, and peel off the paper. Press the top and bottom pastries together along the dampened edge. Using a pair of scissors, trim the pastry to an even 1/2-inch overhang all around. Turn the pastry back and under, sculpting the edge edge into an upstanding ridge. Poke several steam vents into the top of the pie with a fork or paring knife, including a couple along the edge so you can check the juices there later. To glaze the pie, brush the top pastry with a little milk and sprinkle lightly with sugar.
6. Place the pie on the center oven rack and bake for 30 minutes. Reduce the oven temperature to 375°F and rotate the pie 180 degrees, so that the part that faced the back of the oven now faces forward. Just in case, slide a large aluminum foil-lined baking sheet onto the rack below to catch any spills. Continue to bake until the pie is golden brown, about 25 minutes. When done, you should notice thick juices bubbling out of the steam vents along the edge.
7. Transfer the pie to a wire rack and let cool for at least 3 hours, preferably longer, before serving.

Recipe for success
* Because of the red color, rhubarb makes an attractive lattice-top pie.
* Even though this is an all-rhubarb pie, feel free to substitute a cup or two of raspberries for an equal amount of sliced rhubarb.
* If your rhubarb comes with leaves attached, do not eat them. They contain something called oxalic acid, which can cause sickness or even death.

(Blogger's note: Not often do you see a recipe that ends with the word "death," eh? That's some pie!)

Erma Mabel's Rhubarb Cake

Over the years, I have collected all of the Moosewood cookbooks, just because. They were written by different people each time, and some of the books are better than others. I purchased the Moosewood Restaurant Book of Desserts when it came out in 1997. I leafed through it when I got it and saw lots of things that I wanted to try. The Navajo Peach Crumble was outstanding, made with fresh, super-ripe peaches and a cornmeal topping. The sandy cornmeal with the baked peach compote underneath was a perfect combination. The Butterscotch Banana Cream Pie was very good, and so was the Pumpkin Cheesecake, the 110th Street Walnut Crescents and the Cornmeal Cookies. Etc. A few of the spiced items are a little under-spicy for me, but I just add more cinnamon, nutmeg, or whatever, to those things and then they are great.

The really great recipe from this book, though, has turned out to be the rhubarb cake. I make it two or three times a year when rhubarb is in season, and it's always devoured within hours. It's very easy to make and is spongy and a little bit eggy tasting. It is the right sweetness for the amount of rhubarb that is called for. As I have been writing, I had a piece. Then I went back for another just after that.

Here is the recipe. If you make it, let me know what you think of it.

Erma Mabel's Rhubarb Cake

Rhubarb is one of those welcome, reliable, carefree perennials that herald the spring in gardens throughout the whole eastern United States, and out West, too. The beautiful ruby stalks make great pies, cakes, and sauces. They cook up soft and have a tangy fruit flavor. Thankfully, rhubarb stalks are available seasonally in markets everywhere. The leaves of the plant are always discarded because they are inedible and poisonous.

Here is a recipe that originated many generations ago in the hills and hollows of north central West Virginia. It made its way to Ithaca, New York, and onto the Moosewood menu via Erma Mabel's granddaughter, Lisa Wichman, and great granddaughter, Robin Wichman--both dessert chefs at the restaurant.

Serves 8

1/2 cup butter, at room temperature
1 cup sugar
3 large eggs
1 1/2 cups unbleached white flour
3 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup milk
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
2 1/2 cups chopped rhubarb* (about 4 stalks)
*Cut the rhubarb into 3/4- to 1-inch pieces

Preheat the oven to 350°. Butter the baking dish and lightly dust it with flour.

With an electric mixer, cream the butter and sugar until light. Add the eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition. In a separate bowl, sift together the flour, baking powder, and salt. Combine the milk and vanilla in a small bowl or cup. Alternate adding the dry and the wet ingredients to the butter mixture, beating well after each addition.

Spread about 2/3 of the batter into the prepared pan. Sprinkle it with all of the rhubarb pieces. Top with the rest of the batter, spreading it as evenly as possible but with a light touch--try not to push the rhubarb pieces into the bottom layer of batter. Bake for 35 to 40 minutes, until a knife inserted into the center comes out clean and the cake is golden brown.

Variation Replace the rhubarb with 2 1/2 cups of fresh blackberries.

Preparation time: 30 minutes
Baking time: 35 to 40 minutes
Equipment: 7 x 11-inch nonreactive baking dish, electric mixer