HOMAGE TO FROMAGE

HI-YO

2011-11-14T15:15:00.000-08:00

HEAVEN, n. A place where the wicked cease from troubling you with talk of their personal affairs, and the good listen with attention while you expound your own. - Bierce, A

It will not be any different. It will be exactly the same.

SOMEBODY MIGHT SEE YOU UP THERE

2011-08-17T10:27:00.000-07:00

NOTEBOOKS

I imagine, in other words, that the notebook is about other people. But of course it is not. I have no real business with what one stranger said to another at the hat-check, counter in Pavillon; in fact I suspect that the line "That's' my old football number" touched not my own imagination at all, but merely some memory of something once read, probably "The Eighty-Yard Run." Nor is my concern with a woman in a dirty crepe-de-Chine wrapper in a Wilmington bar. My stake is always, of course, in the unmentioned girl in the plaid silk dress. Remember what it was to be me: that is always the point.
It is a difficult point to admit. We are brought up in the ethic that others, any others, all others, are by definition more interesting than ourselves; taught to be diffident, just this side of self-effacing. ("You're the least important person in the room and don't forget it," Jessica Mitford's governess would hiss in her ear on the advent of any social occasion; I copied that into my notebook because it is only recently that I have been able to enter a room without hearing some such phrase in my inner ear.) Only the very young and the very old may recount their dreams at breakfast, dwell upon self, interrupt with memories of beach picnics and favorite Liberty lawn dresses and the rainbow trout in a creek near Colorado Springs. The rest of us are expected, rightly, to affect absorption in other people's favorite dresses, other people's trout. - Joan Didion

BIG SKIES

2011-06-06T12:53:00.000-07:00

"Big sky, big enormous place, big wind, blow all over the place.

Big storm, wreaking havoc and waste but it can't hold us down anymore."

BIG SKY

2011-05-30T20:27:00.000-07:00

- Winfield, MO -

- All roads lead to heaven, just some of them are longer than others. -

CHEREE CHEREE

2011-02-04T22:32:00.000-08:00

THANK YOU FOR ALLOWING ME MY FULL RANGE OF EXPRESSION

2011-01-03T17:57:00.000-08:00

Yesterday, n. The infancy of youth, the youth of manhood, the entire past of an age. - Ambrose

CASTOR AND POLLUX

2010-12-26T17:15:00.000-08:00

The King of England painfully climbed the two hundred and eight steps which led to Merlyn's tower room, and knocked on the door. The magician was inside, with Archimedes sitting on the back of his chair, busily trying to find the square root of minus one. He had forgotten how to do it.

"Merlyn," said the King, panting, "I want to talk to you."

He closed the book with a bang, leaped to his feet, seized his wand of lignum vitae, and rushed at Arthur as if he were trying to shoo away a stray chicken.

"Go away!" he shouted. "What are you doing here? What do you mean by it? Aren't you the King of England? Go away and send for me! Get out of my room! I never heard of such a thing! Go away at once and send for me!"

"But I am here."

"No, you're not," retorted the old man resourcefully. And he pushed the King out of the door, slamming it in his face.

"Well!" said Arthur, and he went off sadly down the two hundred and eight stairs.

MOST WONDERFULLEST

2010-12-17T22:21:00.000-08:00

Ambition, n. An overmastering desire to be vilified by enemies while living and made ridiculous by friends when dead.
- AMBROSE

- I know it rained, you know it rained! -

THE CHA CHA IS NO MORE RIDICULOUS THAN LIFE ITSELF

2010-12-14T01:30:00.000-08:00

- Neal's Yard Dairy, Borough Market -

- I have something to say about the difference between American and European cities but I've forgotten what it is.

I have it written down at home though. -

ONE SUAVE FUCKER

2010-12-10T11:28:00.000-08:00

- See that clock on the wall? In five minutes you are not going to believe what I've told you. -

I CANNOT COMMAND WINDS AND WEATHER

2010-12-04T20:07:00.000-08:00

"If I were to be made a knight," said the Wart, staring dreamily into the fire, "I should insist on doing my vigil by myself, as Hob does with his hawks, and I should pray to God to let me encounter all the evil in the world in my own person, so that if I conquered there would be none left, and if I were defeated, I would be the one to suffer for it."
"That would be extremeley presumptuous of you," said Merlyn, "and you would be conquered, and you would suffer for it."
"I shouldn't mind."
"Wouldn't you? Wait till it happens and see."
"Why do people not think, when they are grown up, as I do when I am young?"
"Oh dear," said Merlyn. "You are making me feel confused. Suppose you wait till you are grown up and know the reason?"
"I don't think that is an answer at all," replied the Wart, justly.
Merlyn wrung his hands.
"Well, anyway," he said, "suppose they did not let you stand against all the evil in the world?"
"I could ask," said the Wart.
"You could ask," repeated Merlyn.
He thrust the end of his beard into his mouth, stared tragically at the fire, and began to munch it fiercely.

FROMAGE!

2010-12-03T11:12:00.000-08:00

- La Fromagerie -

Glorious.

Thank you to the monger who accidentally gave me the selles sur cher instead of piave. The taste more than made up for the looks from people on the tube wondering if I had mouldering gyms socks and/or a travel compost bin tucked in my bag.

WALKING LONDON

2010-11-30T22:06:00.000-08:00

Urbanity, n. The kind of civility that urban observers ascribe to dwellers in all cities but New York. Its commonest expression is heard in the words, "I beg your pardon," and it is not consistent with disregard of the rights of others. - Sir A. Bierce

GO TELL THE WOMEN THAT WE'RE LEAVING

2010-11-16T07:07:00.000-08:00

MUTE OR LOW.
Sorry Warren.

I couldn't help thinking, surrounded by balding suits having brorgies in the face of all this, that somehow a point was
being missed and that if anyone was getting the message traced by Warren Ellis's rent bowstrings, it was the ladies.

AUSTRALIA. WHAT FRESH HELL IS THIS?

2010-11-14T22:12:00.000-08:00

Grinderman blew out my mic. WATCH ON LOW OR MUTE.
(though their stomachs probably turned in unison upon the typing of that directive)
The album doesn't do justice to the live show. Or rather, the live show more than does justice to the album.
Is there any hope our hipsters will keep their figures as trim? "Will anyone care?" might be more the question.

- Heathen Child - New York - 2010 -

HALLOWED WEEN

2010-10-30T23:22:00.000-07:00

- At some goddamn point a man's due to stop arguing with himself and feeling
twice the goddamn fool he knows he is cause he can't be something he tries
to be every goddamn day without once getting to dinnertime and fucking it up. -

- David Milch/Wild Bill Hickock -

PARTNER

2010-10-26T22:24:00.000-07:00

- Resisting any proffers of assistance, he began to fill the grave, turning his back
on the crowd, that after a few moments' hesitation gradually withdrew. As they
crossed the little ridge that hid Sandy Bar from view, some, looking back, thought
they could see Tennessee Partner, his work done, sitting upon the grave, his
shoulder between his knees, his face buried in his red bandanna handkerchief.
But it was argued by others that you couldn't tell his face from his
handkerchief at that distance; and this point remained undecided. -

I'D ROOT THIS MOUNTAIN DOWN

2010-10-18T20:07:00.000-07:00

Outcome, v.t. A particular type of disappointment. By the kind of intelligence that sees in an exception a proof of the rule the wisdom of an act is judged by the outcome, the result. This is immortal nonsense; the wisdom of an act is to be judged by the light that the doer had when he performed it. - A.B. Esq.

MOLE IN THE GROUND

2010-10-16T21:33:00.000-07:00

Dog, n. A kind of additional or subsidiary Deity designed to catch the overflow and surplus of the world's worship. - Ambrose

- animal therapy with Dixie and Gizmo -

MAKE SURE YOU HAVE EXPERT TIMING

2010-10-14T23:14:00.000-07:00

12.
The spectacle presents itself as something enormously positive, indisputable and inaccessible. It says nothing more than “that which appears is good, that which is good appears." The attitude which it demands in principle is passive acceptance which in fact it already obtained by its manner of appearing without reply, by its monopoly of appearance.

Translation:
Whoa fire!

BIG SKY

2010-10-11T21:09:00.000-07:00

- Branson, MO -

TURNING TIME AROUND

2010-10-08T22:38:00.000-07:00

Motion, n. A property, condition or state of matter. The existence and possibility of motion is denied by many philosophers, who point out that a thing cannot move where it is and cannot move where it is not. Others, with Galileo, say: "And yet it moves." It is not the province of the lexicographer to decide. - Am.Bi.

BALD-HEADED BITCHES

2010-10-04T20:08:00.000-07:00

J.D. Williams as terminal corner boy Bodie emerges as a tremendous actor with or
without his white do-rag, filched from a production of The Crucible. - Lorrie Moore

I'm not sure about the last part but the first part sounds about right.

Also, this. Bunk's take here.
Really wish I'd been reading these recaps while watching, I am a sucker for "Bunk drunk" and "Herc fuck-ups."

WHICH IS A FUNNY THING TO SAY...TO YOURSELF

2010-09-30T22:24:00.000-07:00

Dance, v.i. To leap about to the sound of tittering music, preferably with arms about your neighbor's wife or daughter. There are many kinds of dances, but all those requiring the participation of the two sexes have two characteristics in common: they are conspicuously innocent, and warmly loved by the vicious. - A.B.

ON THE BOWERY

2010-09-27T21:34:00.000-07:00

- Italian Neorealism hit the lower part of Manhattan like a ton of BRICKS! -

- or something -

HOME

2010-09-12T12:56:00.000-07:00

Longevity, n. Uncommon extension of the fear of death. - M. Bierce

- That's as may be but I'll still miss sitting on the counter and smelling steamed shirts -

NEXT BEST THING

2010-09-04T01:01:00.000-07:00

"This month my financial condition has prevented certain journeys of the imagination."

WAH! WAH!

2010-08-23T19:10:00.001-07:00

- brimmeth! -

NO ONE GETS OUT OF LIFE ALIVE

2010-08-08T23:23:00.000-07:00

I hope that the triumvirate of Neal, Newman and Howe are somewhere cracking wise.
I'd brand myself sentimental for indulging in the emotional memory of cinephilic delight inspired by Hud
(the pleasure of images again trumping an occasionally clunky script and scattered cowboy cliches)
if I didn't think I grant as much tenderness to these three as God might.

IL FAUT FAIRE BOUILLIR LA MARMITE

2010-08-05T22:39:00.000-07:00

HOSPITALITY

2010-07-28T21:05:00.001-07:00

Sauce, n. The one infallible sign of civilization and enlightenment. A people with no sauces has one thousand vices; a people with one sauce has only nine hundred and ninety-nine. For every sauce invented and accepted a vice is renounced and forgiven.
- Mr. Ambrose Biercerton

- dinner was a product of patience (see July 5th), perseverance and paratha -
- I of course was completely useless and merely sat, heat-stricken, reaping the gastronomic benefits -

FRISCALATING?

2010-07-22T20:32:00.000-07:00

"more" is obviously a relative term

in the meantime: tory + cowboy hats + rack focus = depletion of tape stock

DOWN BY SMITTY

2010-07-05T21:04:00.001-07:00

Patience, n. A minor form of despair, disguised as a virtue. - Amb. Bie.

- Smitty's Jukebox Museum - McAllen, TX -

More to come

"YOUR REPAST AWAITS YOUR MOUTH"

2010-06-20T22:25:00.001-07:00

Pig, n. An animal closely allied to the human race by the splendor and vivacity of its appetite, which, however, is inferior in scope, for it sticks at pig. - A. Biercey

- courtesy Corky's, Memphis Airport -

BRE(A)D AND BUTTERED

2010-06-11T23:16:00.001-07:00

"Where a man's at ain't necessarily for you to know neither."

KINGS

2010-06-01T21:35:00.001-07:00

Out-of-doors, n. That part of one's environment upon which no government has been able to collect taxes. Chiefly used to inspire poets. - Amby Bierce

Efforts to board the ship proved fruitless.

GOOD COMPANY

2010-05-23T21:57:00.000-07:00

Anne: My idea of good company is the company of clever, well-informed people, who have a great deal of conversation; that is what I call good company.
William: You are mistaken. That is not good company, that is the best.

-Persuasion

WOULD YOU PLEASE ASK THE LADY WITH THE LOG TO SPEAK UP?

2010-05-06T20:47:00.001-07:00

-salted caramel apple-

-Do you want some more pie? A whole pie?
-YES I WOULD MISS JOHNSON. AND A PIECE OF PAPER AND A PENCIL. I PLAN ON WRITING AN EPIC POEM ABOUT THIS GORGEOUS PIE.

YOU LUCKY CUSS

2010-05-04T15:22:00.001-07:00

braised cabbage - black bean garlic sauce - tabasco
omelette
sesame seeds - black pepper

They were heading in the direction of Schieffelin's mule. Would that fool beast have sense enough to stick to cropping grass or, under sudden lyric urge, would it intone a hymn to the evening star? An aria at this crisis would be fatal.

OH NOW I REMEMBER, I'M RADIOACTIVE

2010-04-15T23:25:00.001-07:00

Morning, n. The end of night and dawn of dejection. - Ambrose Bierce

But also: breakfast!

Too much Ambrose Bierce? Impossible!

BREAKFAST

2010-04-11T15:22:00.001-07:00

Sandra posts so many marvelous images but I always find myself drawn most to the breakfasts. There's just something about breakfast in Europe. But then, there's also something about breakfast in the states. As usual I start with a definitive emotion and end in a muddle but maybe I can at least say that whenever I'm abroad breakfast feels compulsory, in a good way.

DETOX SCHMEESMOX

2010-03-29T12:16:00.001-07:00

Even a bad cup of coffee is better than no coffee at all. - David Lynch

L'HORLOGE INDIQUE JEAN-GEORGES

2010-03-03T21:43:00.001-08:00

Leisure, n. Lucid intervals in a disordered life. -Ambrose Bierce

NO SOUND

2010-02-28T12:26:00.001-08:00

It snowed on Friday to the point that even making it to the bakery felt like a treat-meriting feat. Almond croissants and a slate-colored sky are not a recipe for melancholy but the following seemed appropriate.

Remember the sound? Of bullets in dead bodies? Like a shot into a rotten leg, a wet thick leg. All a man is: wet leg of blood. Remember the flap of a turn curtain in a blasted window, fragment whispering in that awful breeze: never, forever, never, forever. - Michael Shaara

BLUE

2010-02-21T20:43:00.001-08:00

Even the ordinary White House staff was somewhat alarmed. Kissinger was asked at a meeting whether the invasion did not expand the war. "Look," he replied, "we're not interested in Cambodia. We're only interested in it not being used as a base." The wider justifications he cited dealt with superpower relations. "We're trying to shock the Soviets into calling a Conference," he said, "and we can't do this by appearing weak." William Safire asked if it did not breach the Nixon Doctrine, and Kissinger replied, "We wrote the goddamn doctrine, we can change it." At the end of the meeting Haig stood up and shouted, "The basic substance of all this is that we have to be tough." That was indeed a point. -William Shawcross

SARDINE CAPER

2010-02-17T18:49:00.001-08:00

-sweet potato-quinoa-capers-sardines-
surprisingly delicious

-Mr. ffolliott, with a double 'F'.
-I don't get the double 'F'.
-They're at the beginning. Both small 'F's
-They can't be at the beginning.
-One of my ancestors was beheaded by Henry VIII. His wife dropped the capital letter to commemorate it. There it is.
-How do you say it, like a stutter?
-Just a straight 'fuh'. -Foreign Correspondent

SARDINE CUISINE

2010-02-11T17:59:00.000-08:00

Not fancy feast, just sardine pate. On Finn Crisps. With mustard. I was going to have an Alton but I had neither bread nor avocados, having just blown through a batch with the help of a butter tasting (bread butter and avocado: gross? more gross than avocado and cheese? same thing, nearly). So instead I just ate this, inspired by this, and wondered afresh why everyone has been so newly gaga over sardines lately. Didn't we always know they were delicious? Aren't they always on those "top healthy foods you think are putrid but are actually tasty and good for you" lists? I put sardines on and in everything, and tonight that was rye crackers. It probably did taste a lot like cat food.

SNOW DAY

2010-02-10T21:09:00.001-08:00

Weather, n. The climate of an hour. A permanent topic of conversation among persons whom it does not interest, but who have inherited the tendency to chatter about it from naked arboreal ancestors whom it keenly concerned. The setting up of official weather bureaus and their maintenance in mendacity prove that even governments are accessible to suasion by the rude forefathers of the jungle. -Ambrose Bierce

INCIDENTAL LENTILS

2010-02-07T21:09:00.001-08:00

Again with some food, because I actually made something more interesting than vegetable medley last week: vegetable medley with SAUCE. Inspired both by Heidi's always enticing recipes and a friend's current struggle with GERD (don't ask, it's as awful as it sounds and prohibits the use of spice and tomatoes, amongst other things. But on the plus side it always makes me think of Steve Martin saying "Gern Blanston," which never gets old.) I made this lentil-almond stir-fry last week and am posting it primarily because of the adapted mint sauce I made by accident. As with a lot of Heidi's recipes this one is immensely adaptable but I like what I came up with so here it is.

Lentil-Almond Stirfry with Walnut-Mint Sauce

thanks Heidi

2 cups cooked puy lentils
1 sweet potato cut into 1/2" pieces
2 shallots, sliced
a dozen or so brussels sprouts, quartered
several dates, chopped
1/4 cup sliced almonds, toasted
olive oil

For mint sauce:

~1/4 - 1/3 cup fresh mint
1 jalapeno, deveined and deseeded
1 Tbl lemon juice
2-3 Tbl olive oil
pinch of salt
1-2 Tbl honey
1/3 cup walnuts

Pulse all the mint sauce ingredients in food processor until the mint is broken down but not entirely pulverized. Adjust honey to tone down the spice level to your liking.

Add a splash of olive oil to skillet and cook the potatoes and shallots, covered on medium heat, for about five minutes. After the potatoes are cooked through but not mushy, take of the lid and raise the heat. Cook and stir potatoes until they are browned.

Add lentils and cook until everything is heated through. Remove from pan and set aside.

Add a little more olive oil to the skillet and cook the brussels sprouts with a hit of salt until they are cooked through and browned.

Add the lentils, potatoes, shallots and almonds to the pan and stir until everything is warm and incorporated.

Serve topped with chopped dates and mint sauce.

I couldn't take a better picture than Heidi so here are the Hidden Cameras instead:

LATE NIGHTS AND BROWNIE BITES

2010-02-07T14:58:00.001-08:00

So much for veering away from baking. Last week I had one of those old pangs of baking desire around 1 in the morning. Not one to deny old impulses, and having just purchased some cocoa powder, I answered the call. I've been wanting to make a batch of Baked brownies for a few weeks now but have had neither the eggs nor the chocolate nor the wherewithal to plan ahead to do so. Enter this recipe, which calls for only two of the first and none of the rest, and results in a brownie delicious enough to please everyone and resemblant enough of a boxed-mix brownie to especially please those beset by nostalgia for such things. It comes together quickly (I was in bed by 2) and next time I'm throwing in some chocolate chips at the end.

Thanks to Smitten Kitchen (heed her suggestion to put them in the fridge prior to cutting).

WINTER'S BONE

2010-01-31T21:22:00.001-08:00

It’s been a long time since my last entry. Job has been nuts, haven’t been baking (successfully, or at least creatively) very much, felt a little schmoopy gloopy about the whole food blog thing, and realized that since the rules about what constitutes a fromage worthy of homaging were already pretty loose I might as well extend the boundaries of “fromage” to include non-food-related items. Fromage as a concept, as it were (a prof once said mid-lecture “…as it were – wait. As it were WHAT?! Don’t let me ever say that again.”). So here it goes again, with less pressure and rigidity and, hopefully, greater regularity.

My homage today is brief but heartfelt. In this remote corner of cyberspace it’s the merest whisper but it's a John Turturro "do not seek the treasure!"-style whisper. I worked on a movie called Winter’s Bone that yesterday was awarded both the Screenwriting and Grand Jury prizes at Sundance. I feel profoundly lucky and very proud to have had anything to do with this project and would just like to say thank you thank you thank you to everything that aligned to make it possible and a million congratulations to everyone involved.

And thanks to mom for the flowers.

I DARED. IT WAS WORTH IT.

2009-02-28T00:30:00.000-08:00

I decided that what with all my unrequired veganizing and complicating of things, I should join the ranks of the Daring Bakers. One might decide to brand me rather a rash baker or perhaps an incorrigible one, but neither of those handles lend themselves to wearing capes so "daring" it is. In any case, this is my first post as a daring baker and I'm very honored and excited to be counted among them. As a daring baker I am responsible for completing a culinary challenge each month. One of the requirements is typically little to no variation from the given recipe, a restraint at which I initially balked but which is really a blessing where I'm concerned. Sometimes I should just follow the recipe because someone along the line has to have know what they were doing. Particularly if they were French.

Anyhoot, here's the blurb: The February 2009 challenge is hosted by Wendy of WMPE's blog and Dharm of Dad ~ Baker & Chef. We have chosen a Chocolate Valentino cake by Chef Wan; a Vanilla Ice Cream recipe from Dharm and a Vanilla Ice Cream recipe from Wendy as the challenge.

This was the perfect challenge. Not only have I lately been nostalgic for my old favorite dessert (the chocolate cake from Just Desserts that only made an appearance on birthdays) but my ice cream maker was long overdue for a dust-off (two or three less than successful runs and it's been moldering in the corner for months? who am I?). This task was also a true challenge because it forced me to attack a technique I have never attempted: whipping egg whites into stiff peaks. No, my aversion to eggs in baked goods is not actually covering up a latent fear of exposing a gimpy whisking arm, but I don't make meringue and I rarely make cakes and etc etc basically I've never done it. I have emulsified in the name of aioli, however, so I entered the challenge only slightly daunted.

The cake that emerged from my chocolate fume-belching oven was so delicious and decadent that I almost couldn't believe I had produced it without the help of oats, yogurt, molasses, bananas or any of my other frequent crutches. The soy ice cream was not as much of a success story, but it was passable (luckily I had enough soy milk leftover to keep me from going into a chocolate coma while eating the cake). All in all this challenge was a joy and I can't wait until next month!

Chocolate Valentino Cake and Vanilla Pecan Soy Ice Cream
courtesy of the Daring Bakers, with help from PPK and David Lebovitz

A note regarding the cake: I had neither the required cooking utensil (an 8" springform pan) nor any parchment paper with which to line it. I split the batter into two buttered and sugared 6" ramekins instead and they worked perfectly. The cakes were a cinch to tip out of the ramekins and the sugary crust did not detract from their deliciousness.

For cake:

16 oz semisweet chocolate, roughly chopped
1 stick + 2 Tbl unsalted butter
5 large eggs, separated

Preheat oven to 375.

Put chocolate and butter in a heatproof bowl and set over a pan of simmering water (the bottom of the bowl should not touch the water) and melt, stirring often.

While your chocolate butter mixture is cooling. Butter your pan and line with a parchment circle then butter the parchment.

Whip the egg whites in a medium/large grease free bowl until stiff peaks are formed (do not over-whip or the cake will be dry).

With the same beater beat the egg yolks together.

Add the egg yolks to the cooled chocolate.

Fold in 1/3 of the egg whites into the chocolate mixture and follow with remaining whites. Fold until no white remains without deflating the batter.

Pour batter into prepared pan, the batter should fill the pan 3/4 of the way full, and bake at 375F/190C

Bake for 25 minutes until an instant read thermometer reads 140F/60C.
Note – If you do not have an instant read thermometer, the top of the cake will look similar to a brownie and a cake tester will appear wet.

Cool cake on a rack for 10 minutes then unmold.

For pecans:

2 cups toasted (for about 10 minutes at 350) and chopped pecans
1 1/2 tsp vegetable oil
1 1/2 Tbl dark brown sugar
1/4 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp cayenne pepper
2 1/2 tsp maple syrup
3/4 tsp coarse or kosher salt

Mix other ingredients together before adding pecans. Thoroughly coat the nuts and spread them on a parchment or foil-lined baking sheet.

Place baking sheet in the 350 degree oven for 10 minutes, making sure to stir the nuts a few times while they cook. Remove and allow to cool, separating the nuts as they become cool and crispy.

For ice cream:

6 oz vanilla soy yogurt
4 oz silken tofu
2 tsp vanilla
1/3 cup maple syrup
1 cup soy milk

Combine all the ingredients in food processor and blend until thoroughly combined and smooth. Pour into ice cream maker and follow the instructions, adding the cooled pecans just as the ice cream is beginning to thicken.

OLIVE YOUR SHORTBREAD WILL BE BETTER WITH OLIVES (SORRY)

2009-02-24T11:22:00.000-08:00

I've thanked my lucky stars many a time since Abraço wheeled into town. While they use different beans than oft-missed (yet thankfully oft-supplied) Blue Bottle, Jamie makes as masterful a cup of coffee as I've had the joy to shotgun in New York.

Aside from the impeccably-prepared caffeine injections, Abraço boasts a number of tasty goods. Though the pain perdu comes in at a very close second, my favorite of the lot is the black olive shortbread. Upon inquiring after the recipe I was politely declined but left with the helpful (and also self-evident if my brain hadn't been blitzed by deliciousness) suggestion that it's pretty much just shortbread with olives in it. Armed with this information and the confidence that the combination of olives, butter and sugar couldn't possibly lead to an unsavory result, I attacked the olive shortbread on Christmas Eve in anticipation of the imminent availability of family members virtually obligated to stroke my baking ego.

I can't take credit for much, seeing as I used Deb's shortbread recipe to the letter and literally just smashed whole kalamata olives into the dough, but I want to pass this along because it's so easy and so delicious. While the idea might sound a bit odd at first, think of the olives as simply a way of adding more salt with the added benefit of a meaty texture to complement the crumbliness of the shortbread. Much as I've gotten over my aversion to anchovies by thinking of them simply as little salt bombs, so anyone should get over a fear of injecting olives into baked goods.

Kalamata Olive Shortbread
by way of Abraço and Smitten Kitchen

A note: when I make this again I will roughly chop the olives in order to better incorporate them into the dough. I will also use a larger pan so that I am able to spread the dough a bit thinner so the resultant shortbread is a bit crispier.

1 1/2 sticks unsalted butter, melted
5 Tbl cane sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 tsp salt
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 cup kalamata olives, roughly chopped

Line your baking sheet/pan with enough aluminum foil that it overhangs the sides.

Whisk together the butter, sugar, vanilla and salt. Add the flour and mix until just incorporated. Fold in olives.

Spread the dough evenly over your baking sheet. You're going to have to really press this stuff into the corners, I used the back of a rubber spatula.

Let the dough rest for a couple hours or overnight (don't refrigerate).

Preheat oven to 300 and place rack in the lower third.

Bake for 45 minutes, remove and let cool for 10 minutes. Cut shortbread into desired shapes and place on parchment-lined baking sheet. Return to the oven for 15 minutes, then remove and place on a rack to cool.

NOW YOUR BUN WILL LOOK SPECTACULAR

2009-02-17T19:37:00.000-08:00

I don't know much about tahini outside of the deliciousness factor. There appear to be different types, but, well, actually I have no idea. I have had a jar in the cupboard (actually in two cupboards and a trunk, it's taken quite a tour of the Park Slope/Boerum Hill area) since purchasing it in the "ethnic foods" aisle of this deceptively nondescript goldmine of cheap sundry goods when I was working down the street. Tahini is also available at the co-op but, though I haven't done the research or read all the articles (spoken like a true liberal arts major), it doesn't seem like the same stuff. It seems thicker, more spread-like. Anyway, maybe I'll get around to googling that soon but in the meantime, I feel pretty confidant in suggesting that any tahini you can get your hands on will do just fine in the following recipe.

I'd originally purchased the tahini with the intention of making this, and I'd like to follow through on that but am in the middle of a mini-cookie roll at the moment. The hazelnut crackles were a smash hit with...me.....so I decided I needed to reach for success once more. The following did not disappoint. The combination of sesame and cranberry was inspired and yes, they were the perfect size. I might have to issue a decree that no doughballs shall exceed 1 tsp within 100 feet of my kitchen.

Cranberry Oatmeal Sesame Crisps
a riff on these, from the as-yet infallible Celine

a note: Celine calls for half brown sesame seeds and half black sesame seeds. I didn't want to spring for the black sesame seeds but I loved the way the black specks looked in her cookies so I used some poppy seeds instead, thinking they wouldn't add much of a flavor component. Fortuitously, since I love poppy seeds, they did lend a great flavor so I'm inserting them in the recipe. They don't give the same visual pop that the black sesame seeds would have, so next time I think I'll use both colors of sesame seeds and still include some poppy seeds so that's how I've listed the ingredients below. I think these would also be really good with chocolate, chopped walnuts, or raisins in place of cranberries.

Makes about 100 cookies depending on the twee levels in your kitchen.

1 1/2 cup whole wheat pastry flour
1 1/2 cup rolled oats
3/4 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
2 Tbl poppy seeds
5 Tbl brown sesame seeds
5 Tbl black sesame seeds
1 cup dried cranberries
1 cup light brown sugar
1/2 cup cane sugar
1/2 cup soy milk
1/2 cup tahini
3 Tbl canola oil
3 tsp pure vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 375.

In a small bowl, sift together flour, baking soda and salt. Whisk in sesame and poppy seeds and oats and set aside.

In a medium bowl whisk almond milk, tahini, oil, vanilla and sugar together into a paste-like mixture.

Gradually add dry ingredients to wet, whisking consistently and adding more soy milk if necessary to incorporate dry. Fold in the cranberries.

Evenly place doughballs of 1/2 to 1 tsp in size on a parchment-lined baking sheet and gently flatten them. You can dust them with sugar if you want, I did so to a few and didn't have a preference.

Bake for 9-10 minutes (like the hazelnut cookies, you'll know when they're the right shade of brown) and remove from the oven. If possible, leave them on the cookie sheet for a few minutes before putting them on a rack to cool (otherwise they stick a bit to the rack, which was only a little bit annoying and certainly not disastrous).

Eat.

LONG LIVE THE CHIPS

2009-02-10T17:56:00.000-08:00

The last of the snowmen eyes have gone to good homes in the form of about 90 delicious cookies. This extravagant number was achieved not by a bucket of cookie dough but by making dough balls so small that I felt absolutely ridiculous cramming them onto my baking sheets. Luckily I placed my trust in Heidi (which has never been a bad idea except for when I took her encouragement to make this exquisite cake as multiple mini-cakes (the downside being abject failure, the upside being that since I couldn't get the cakes out of the pan I got to eat them all myself with a spoon)) and sure enough these cookies turned out to be the perfect size. They are airy and crispy like these guys, but I resisted the strong urge to put pepper in the batter or salt on top, instead following the recipe exactly. I did use hazelnuts instead of walnuts, but that was just because it was the best I could do in a belated celebration of Nutella Day. At least I didn't use applesauce this time, just straight butter.

I don't know about making these into ice cream sandwiches but they are delicious dipped in milk or coffee and would probably actually be even better crumbled over ice cream...I'll be right back.

Chocolate-Hazelnut Oatmeal Crackle Cookies
thanks to Heidi

To reiterate: really make these cookies small, even if you feel dubious. Maybe it's just because I was never allowed to have cookie crunch cereal when I was a kid, but the revelation that small cookies = more cookies = handful of cookies in my mouth was one that hit hard. Re chocolate: Heidi says to use a bar of chocolate of your choosing but I just used mini-chocolate chips because I couldn't bear to see them sitting on the shelf any longer. They worked out just fine but I wouldn't recommend using regular-sized chocolate chips because they will be way too big for the cookies. Re hazelnuts: I didn't toast them or skin them before chopping and the cookies suffered no ill-effects. makes 80 or so cookies depending on how small you make them

5 oz mini-bittersweet chocolate chips
1 cup whole wheat pastry flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 cup old-fashioned rolled oats
1/2 cup hazelnuts, finely chopped
1/2 cup unsalted butter, at room temperature
1/2 cup natural cane sugar
1/2 cup light brown sugar
1 Tbl molasses
1 large egg
1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1/4 cup large-grain sugar for dusting (optional)

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees.

Whisk together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt and oats.

Beat the butter until fluffy, then beat in the sugar followed by the molasses, egg and vanilla.

Add the flour mix and stir by hand until mixed thoroughly, then add nuts and chocolate chips and mix just until uniformly incorporated.

Evenly distrubute doughballs of about 1/2 - 1 tsp in size over parchment-lined baking sheets. Flatten the balls and, if desired, sprinkle some large-grain sugar over each one.

Bake cookies for about 8 minutes, rotating sheets halfway through. Mine might have taken a little longer but just keep an eye on them, there's no mistaking when they turn the right shade of brown and crispy. They also continue to crisp up while they cool so don't worry if they're a little bit soft when you take them out of the oven.

STATE STREET IS BAKE STREET

2009-01-25T12:26:00.000-08:00

I had to buy some mini chocolate chips to use as eyes for the snowpeople I made for the holidays but of course, as is the case for most of the adornments required by seasonal treats, I wound up with more chips leftover than chips used. They've been languishing with the frosting, red hots and sprinkles of assorted colors for the past month, and while the others might be in danger of meeting their fate in the trash, I figured I should do my best to make use of the chocolate. Of course my initial idea was a nostaligic revisiting of the Toll House recipe on the back of the bag but equally unsurprising was my decision to complicate things. After discovering that I had an abundance of hazelnuts I wound up tweaking a recipe from the Food Network's toothy and bafflingly slim Italian bombshell. The experiment was a solid success, producing a cookie that, while sort of vegan, retains its post-oven crispness such that it is perfect to dip in ginger tea. Pulsing the oats and nuts resulted in a uniform texture that was pleasantly nutty and granular, and the mini chocolate chips sat well alongside the similarly-sized chunks of hazelnut.

Chocolate-Hazelnut Veganish Cookies
inspired by Giada

brief note: Despite the inclusion of apple butter, these cookies do not taste like apple. There is a subtle fruitiness that pairs well with the chocolate and hazelnuts, almost like a fruit cake or lebkuchen. I wish I could say that I had been inspired to purposely emulate such established and successful a combination of flavors, but really I just used apple butter as a butter substitute and luckily it turned out well.

Also, I'm pretty sure that between halving the original recipe and jettisoning the butter, I managed to use twice as much butter substitute as butter. Meaning that I used 1/2 cup apple butter and 1/2 cup oil instead of what should have been 1/4 cup of each if I'd been paying more attention. The cookies turned out great but I'm suggesting that 1/3 cup of each be used because I think that would be fine and perhaps better given the proportions of the original recipe.

-makes 32 cookies-

1/4 cup rolled oats
1 1/8 cups whole wheat pastry flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
1/3 cup apple butter
1/3 cup canola oil
1/4 cup Fage 0% yogurt
1/2 cup light brown sugar
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 tsp pure vanilla extract
1/2 cup hazelnuts
7 oz semisweet mini chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 350.

Toast hazelnuts and discard as much of the husks as possible before pulsing them in the food processor until chopped to your preference. I ground them to a pretty fine consistency because I didn't want huge chunks. Set aside.

Pulse oats in food processor and whisk together with flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt.

Whisk together oil, apple butter and yogurt and add sugar and vanilla.

Gradually add dry mixture to wet and stir until just mixed before adding chocolate and nuts.

Set batter in fridge for 5-10 minutes before arranging tablespoon-sized dollops on a lined baking sheet.

Bake for about 15 minutes or until crisp. As happens with vegan fare, these fake-vegan cookies require some supervision. I baked the first sheet at 325 and they took over 20 minutes to firm up so I raised the temperture for the second round. Don't be alarmed, it's more a question of needing to frequently assess their done-ness rather than risking over-done-ness. These don't burn easily. Do remember that they will continue to crisp up after you set them on a rack to cool.

POWERING THROUGH THE SOUR CREAM

2008-12-24T14:35:00.000-08:00

So the 16 oz. of light sour cream that resulted from the aforementioned series of misunderstandings was not all of it. The remaining 16 oz. haunted me with its siren call until I decided that despite the February expiration date, that stuff had to be out of the fridge before I left for California. I used the opportunity to veganize the previous recipe, aside from the the sour cream of course. The combination of banana and yogurt worked very well, with only a hint of banana permeating the cake. If forced to choose I would say I liked this version better, but that might only be because I made more topping and dressed it up with more fruits.

Identity Crisis Coffee Cake
Thanks to Deb for posting the helpful agave-related info. I made this version of the cake before receiving them but next time I go for agave over granulated sugar I'll follow her liquid proportions and baking time suggestions.

For cake:

1/2 cup vegetable oil
1/2 cup raw cane sugar
1/2 cup light brown sugar
1/4 cup agave syrup
1/2 cup 0% Fage yogurt
1 banana, mashed
1 1/2 tsp vanilla
16 oz light sour cream
3 cups whole wheat pastry flour
1 tsp baking powder
1 1/2 tsp baking soda

For topping:

1 1/4 cups dried currants
1 cup dried cranberries
1/4 cup dried apricots, chopped
1 1/2 - 2 cups chopped walnuts
1 - 1 1/2 cup light brown sugar
2 1/2 tsp cinnamon

Preheat oven to 350°F and grease a 9" x 13" pan.

Mix topping ingredients in bowl and set aside.

Sift together flour, baking soda and baking powder in medium-sized bowl and set aside.

Using an electric mixer, combine wet ingredients. Gradually add flour and switch to a mixing spoon if necessary.

Pour a little more than half of the batter into the prepared pan, smoothing it until it is more or less even.

Evenly sprinkle half of the topping and cover with the rest of the batter. Smooth the top as best you can and sprinkle the rest of the topping evenly over the cake.

Bake for an hour or so until a toothpick comes out clean (might take a little longer).

DAMN FINE CUP OF CAKE

2008-12-19T07:33:00.000-08:00

Through a series of misunderstandings and a case of mistaken identity (though, if the cream cheese had sat in the cupboard much longer it probably would have at least smelled like sardines) I ended up with a surplus of sour cream in the fridge. "Surplus" meaning "some," because typically there is none. I don't know what people do with sour cream but baked potatoes aren't usually on the menu and I can't think of any other dish that would require me to purchase the stuff. True to form, I decided to figure out something to make with the sour cream rather than let it go to waste. This of course required employing kitchen staples that otherwise would have gone towards a planned and necessary dish in the service of using up the sour cream, amounting to a net loss of food funds. At least it would have amounted to a net loss had the resultant coffee cake not been so damn delicious and had it not prompted me to finally use the currants I've been carting around for about seven months now.

This coffee cake is the kind of coffee cake that motivates you to make a pot of coffee just to have an excuse to eat it. It is moist and soft but quite firm and slices well without crumbling into bits. You can adjust the streusel to meet your taste; when I make it again I'm going to layer just a bit more in the middle. This took me back to the days when I was near obsessed with eating coffee cake every Sunday, with the plus of not making me feel like I was going to need someone to cart me around in a wheelbarrow for the rest of the day. It keeps very well in the fridge so you don't need to eat three warm mugfuls topped with raspberry jam in one sitting. Unless you want to.

Currant-Walnut Coffee Cake
I spent way too long trying to find cake recipes that included sour cream and discoverd that for a 9" x 13" cake most recipes required essentially the same proportion of ingredients. Eventually ended up amalgamating this one and this one. I'm not a big fan of putting chocolate in bread so I liked the idea of the currants and jettisoned the addition of cocoa powder. I was considering veganizing the cake by subbing yogurt for eggs but didn't have yogurt, and also considering using agave syrup as a healthier sweetening agent but worried about the batter becoming too soupy. The substitution of agave for sugar necessitates the reduction of other liquids by 1/3 and I didn't know if the sour cream counted as a liquid, if the eggs technically counted as a liquid...I decided it wasn't worth the stress. That said, next time I might try going 1/2 cup sugar and 2/3 cup agave and leaving the other ingredients as is. Next time I will also use whole wheat pastry flour, which I was holding in reserve for these.

For cake:

1/2 cup vegetable oil
1 1/2 cups sugar
3 eggs
1 1/2 tsp vanilla
16 oz light sour cream
3 cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp baking powder
1 1/2 tsp baking soda

For topping (you can't really mess this up, just use as much of each ingredient as you prefer):

2 cups dried currants
1 1/2 - 2 cups chopped walnuts
3/4 - 1 cup sugar (I used raw florida crystals but next time I will use light brown)
2 tsp cinnamon

Preheat oven to 350°F and grease a 9" x 13" pan.

Mix topping ingredients in bowl and set aside.

Cream butter and sugar until fluffy, then add eggs and vanilla and mix until thoroughly incorporated.

Sift flour (I think this is important) and whisk together with baking soda and baking powder.

Incorporate, alternating between adding the sour cream and the flour mixture to the wet ingredients.

Pour a little more than half of the batter into the prepared pan, smoothing it until it is more or less even. I say a little more than half because I like my filling as close to in the middle as possible and have had too many loaves and cakes ruined by filling sinking to the bottom and sticking to the pan. Avoid the devastation.

Sprinkle batter with a little more than half (depending on how you like your filling to topping ratio) of the the currants and nuts and cover with the rest of the batter. Smooth the top as best you can and don't worry if the smoothing process churns up a bit of the filling. Sprinkle the rest of the topping evenly over the cake.

Bake for 50 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean. Not only did I dig into it immediately without it dissolving into a steamy mess, but I left it in the pan to cool without it suffering any ill-effects. The edges did not toughen and the bottom did not burn. Once I did want to transfer it, it slipped right out of pan without leaving a speck of itself behind.

IT WAS EASIER THAN GOING TO THE CO-OP

2008-11-24T15:46:00.000-08:00

Despite having plans to cook up a storm, and despite having already knocked out two varieties of cranberry sauce, last Sunday I found myself a couple hours post-cranberry clean-up making ravioli from scratch. The initial urge was to use up stuff in the freezer in order to give the turkey a little more room. Why this culminated in me with flour up to my eyeballs and a waterfall of raw egg cascading over the counter I can only explain by saying that an idea born of sanity does not always end with a sane result. Luckily in this case the result was at least pretty tasty and the required skills can be filed under "useful kitchen knowledge."

Corn-Shallot Ravioli
makes about 24 ravioli + a little extra dough for some linguini

Note: I followed Mario Batali's recipe for pasta dough, though I was eyeing Lidia Bastianich's while I was doing it. Lidia's doesn't call for as much egg, and uses this thing called the food processor, which has real walls, not walls made out of flour...I think next time I'll use Lidia's. Or maybe I'll go with Mario again but use a food processor because flour makes a very weak retaining wall and egg is no fun to clean up and if you have a recurrent and mysterious wrist ailment you might not want to engage in aggravating activities such as kneading. In any case, the dough turned out quite well and I added a ton of black pepper to the basic recipe to positive effect.

Dough:

3 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
5 eggs
1 - 2 Tbl pepper (If you don't like pepper, just leave it out or add a preferred spice.)

Filling:

3 shallots, finely chopped
1 package frozen sweet corn
generous amount grated pecorino romano (~ 1 cup)
3 Tbl Major Gray's mango chutney
salt and pepper to taste

To make dough:

Dump the flour onto a wood surface (be it counter or cutting board) and make a mound with a well in the middle of it.

Whisk eggs together and pour into the well. Note: you might want to do this gradually to avoid a disaster. On my first attempt I overestimated the depth of the well and the strength of the "walls" and ended up with raw egg everywhere. I ended up pouring in a little bit of the egg, mixing it with the flour, pouring in a little more, mixing, pouring, mixing, etc until the egg was fully incorporated into the flour. At this point there was still a fair amount of loose flour but just keep packing it together and evenually you'll be able to form a uniform ball.

Knead for 10 to 15 minutes (the dough should be stretchy). Wrap dough ball in wax paper and let it sit for about 30 minutes while you make the filling.

To make filling:

Sautée shallots in olive oil until translucent.

If you're me, add the frozen corn to shallots (after rinsing the particularly icy chunks) and nudge it around with a spatula until it seems cooked. If you think ahead, follow the cooking instructions on the corn and THEN add it to the shallots.

Add chutney (Use as much or as little as you like and be aware of adding too much sweetness to the already sweet corn. I like Major Grey's green label because it's got more a spicy kick to it but can imagine that adding a sweeter chutney would end in an unappealing saccharine glop.)

Remove mixture from heat and add grated pecorino romano to taste. Season with salt and pepper.

Pulse mixture in food processor until uniform in texture. Put in fridge until read to assemble ravioli.

Assemble the ravioli:

Cut off a quarter of the round of dough and run it through the pasta maker. I got down to the second to last degree of thickness and might even try to go for the thinnest setting next time because the ravioli were still a bit thick.

Lay pasta sheet on cutting board and arrange dollops of filling evenly along one of the edges, keeping in mind to leave enough room in between for the seams. Brush water along outer edge and in between the filling and fold the empty half of the pasta sheet over the filling. Press along the seems to create a bond between the pieces of dough (I realized while doing this that a lot of air gets trapped in with the filling if you don't firmly expel it from the cavity. This doesn't make a lot of difference in the resultant ravioli aside from making them less unwieldy than they are if puffed up tighter than a drill sergeant's chest.). Cut the ravioli along the seams and stack between layers of wax paper in fridge until ready to use. Continue to use 1/4 chunks of your original dough ball until you've used up all the filling, at which point use the remainder of the dough to make whatever shape pasta you deem fit.

Bring water to a boil and cook ~ 10 minutes or until pasta tastes done.

The Merits of Carrots

2008-11-22T16:04:00.000-08:00

Let Thursday stand as evidence that I am not trying to eradicate dairy from my diet. Between the two kinds of stuffing, sweet potato pie, butter-soaked onions etc I'll be well set in that department but as is my wont I shall now let you in on yet another "why does this cookie recipe look like a stew recipe?" recipe.

I had squirreled away four cans of tomatoes and a hefty supply of carrots and shallots with the intention of making a double-batch of Batali sauce but as the days went by I was faced with dwindling ambitions and carrots on the verge of wilting. Not one to simply eat the carrots, I went in search of a carrot cookie recipe. Alright if you must know, I looked for a carrot-ginger cookie, obvs. The search proved much more difficult than I anticipated, mainly because that combination of ingredients tends to get you a bunch of results for carrot cake, or carrot cake cookies. I was not interested in carrot cake. Finally I found three recipes and after combining and veganizing them I hit on success. I have not forsaken bananas, but carrots made an argument for careful consideration in the "mushy items you can put in baked goods" competition.

Vegan Oatmeal Carrot Ginger Cookies
Like most of my vegan cookies, these did not retain their crispness once they had been stored. My theory is that my use of primarily liquid dairy substitutes makes for a cookie that ultimately succumbs to its own moisture. This does not affect the taste but I was a little embarassed to offer them to people at work. Their crumb-mumbled declarations of "delicious!" made me feel better, but I really wish I could keep the out-of-the-oven crisp shell from fading.

Another note: these would also be good with some raisins added. I did not have rasisins.

1 cup all purpose flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp nutmeg
1/8 tsp ground ginger
6 Tbl unsweetened apple sauce
2 Tbl apple butter
2 Tbl vegetable oil
1/2 cup dark brown sugar, packed
1/8 cup agave syrup
3/4 tsp vanilla
1/4 cup 0% Fage (or any egg subsitute equivalent to 1 egg)
1 cup oats, old fashioned or quick (not instant)
3/4 cup shredded or grated carrots
1/2 - 1 cup chopped nuts (I used pecans and just a few walnuts)
1/4 - 1/3 cup chopped crystallized ginger (confession: I did not really measure how much ginger I put in. That goes for the nuts too.)

Preheat oven to 375.

Mix together all dry ingredients save nuts and ginger.

In another bowl, whisk together the wet ingredients until thoroughly mixed.

Gradually add flour mixture and mix until evenly distributed, then add in nuts and ginger.

Line baking sheet with parchment and evenly distribute dough balls roughly 1-2 Tbl in size.

Bake for 10-13 minutes or until browned and crisp. Be patient and don't worry too much about them burning. These are very forgiving and very moist cookies.

Makes about 24 cookies unless you don't eat ANY of the dough, in which case you might squeeze out a couple more.

Bananas

2008-10-13T17:47:00.000-07:00

I used to hate bananas. Actually, I sort of still hate bananas. I like banana sliced in some yogurt, or in a pancake, or in an oatmeal chocolate-chip cookie from Vegan Treats, but I can't make it through more than half of a plain old banana without retching. Luckily for my potassium intake there are so many ways to consume bananas other than their raw form. Subbing bananas for eggs in many baked goods is an excellent way to use up the slimy buggers, reap their nutritional benefits, avoid the cholesterol pitfalls of eggs and, at least in my experience, leave the resultant baked good with only the merest hint of banana flavor. Of course if you're going for a veritable banana bread you'll want to amp up the banana in the recipe, but by subbing about 3/4 to 1 mashed banana for each egg in a cookie or quick bread recipe you should not be reeling with banana after each bite.

Lately I've been obsessed with bananas and have eschewed eggs nearly all together. This has not always been successful, but it has not been the fault of bananas. (The incident of the lemon yogurt cake in which I subbed oil for butter and ground flax with blueberries for eggs will be referred to simply as The Unfortunate Collapse.) The obsession was primarily inspired by my discovery of a cache of frozen bananas in our new temporary freezer (thanks Elin!). Freezing bananas is ingenious. They look incredibly gross and sometimes leave an unsightly ooze on the freezer shelf but that's better than leaving them collecting fruit flies until you're obligated to whip out the flour or toss them. Forced baking never yields the best results (except for those vegan banana oat bombs I made awhile back, but I'd say those were more the result of a fixation). I argue that frozen bananas are even better for baking than the ripest of ripe bananas because the innards emerge post-thaw in such a gelatinous ooze that they mix right up with the rest of your wet ingredients without requiring much mashing.

Having learned to embrace a proclivity to boost the gas bill, I popped a couple frozen bananas into a bowl of warm water and messed around with this recipe with happy results. The muffins emerged moist (but not in that undercooked "I can tell something that was not egg or butter was used in this baked good" way) and perfectly crispy on top. Prepare for winter: make these post haste.

Banana-Nut(s) Muffins
I omitted the chocolate chips that were included in the original recipe because, come on, let's at least maintain the charade that muffins are not cake long enough for me to slather peanut butter, nutella, plain old butter or maybe something comparatively healthy but still not quite like apple butter on them. Also, I really don't like banana and chocolate together. I know. It just doesn't work for me, if I want chocolate I want chocolate, not banana-y chocolate. I might also omit the coconut next time, though I'm concerned that that might result in a drier crumb. Were blueberries still in season I would certainly have tossed some in. Ditto re crystallized ginger. And finally, as I am currently nursing a fondness for seeds, I might experiment with some sunflower or pumpkin seeds stuck on the tops (though such adornments typically lend themselves most harmoniously to breads including squash or pumpkin).

2 super-ripe bananas
1 tsp vanilla
2/3 cup packed light brown sugar
6 Tbl unsweetened apple sauce
1/4 cup unsweeted soy milk
1/2 cup vegetable oil
2 cup whole-wheat pastry flour
1/4 cup chopped pecans
1/4 cup chopped walnuts
1/4 cup shredded coconut
3 tsp corn starch
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp nutmeg
1/2 tsp salt

Preheat oven to 350 and grease your muffin tins. I do this by rolling vegetable oil around in one depression, wiping most of it up with a paper towel and then distributing oil to each subsequent depression with the sopping towel.

Using a hand mixer beat bananas, sugar, apple sauce, vanilla, oil and soymilk until a semi-smooth mixture results. Don't worry if there are still some discernible pieces of banana in the mix, unless you prefer removing all traces of your ingredients' former selves. I like a chunk of banana now and then.

Whisk together the remaining ingredients and gradually stir into the wet mixture until just mixed.

Evenly distribute batter into muffin tin and bake for about 25 minutes or until a tester comes out clean.

Let cool slightly in tin before turning them out on a rack to cool completely.

Makes about 9 muffins depending on size of muffin tin.

Ginger is King

2008-10-07T11:47:00.000-07:00

I am a ginger addict. Give me a baggie of crystallized ginger at the Co-Op and you will find me a few minutes later sweating and shaking in line while polishing off the last medallion. Restraint isn't my strong suit anyway and when it comes to ginger any attempt at moderation is a wasted ten seconds of self-delusion. I try to stick chopped crystallized ginger in pretty much anything I bake, even though the resultant pebbles of tongue-searing spice aren't everyone's flavor of choice. Occasionally even I will admit that the pleasure of consuming the ensuing baked good might have been heightened by the omission of ginger, but generally I make wise decisions where butter and sugar are concerned. Stumbling across the following ginger cookie recipe was one of the smartest things I ever did. I meant to post them last winter but my first batch didn't even see tupperware due to being scarfed down by myself and some dinner guests. While not as bitingly gingery as the previously-posted vegan ginger snaps adapted from How It All Vegan, these cookies still have a nice zing to them and are less dense and more cakey. They cook up perfectly every time with nice cracked tops and freeze very well. You might even want to eat them with a few tablespoons of apple butter for dipping. These are the lengths to which people who were deprived Dunk-a-roos will go.

Almost Vegan Apple Butter Ginger Cookies
I riff on this recipe, using yogurt for my egg replacer (hence the not quite vegan-ness, though of course you can use soy yogurt if that's your prerogative ) and adding sundry fillings as desired. Dried cherries do pretty well and I'm sure some chocolate wouldn't hurt things.

1 1/2 cup whole wheat pastry flour
1/3 cup sugar (I use florida crystals)
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp ground ginger
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp nutmeg
1/2 tsp sea salt
1/3 cup chopped crystallized ginger (or more)
4 Tbl canola oil
4 Tbl blackstrap molasses
1/4 cup unsweetend apple butter (I like Kime's)
1/4 cup yogurt (any kind will do, even non-fat. If you'd like to use another egg replacer just use however much evens out to one egg, i.e. 1 1/2 tsp Ener-G Egg Replacer. I have not tried using a banana in these for fear of imparting an unwelcome banana taste but maybe the ginger would take care of that).
Turbinado sugar for dusting.

Preheat oven to 350.

Whisk together wet ingredients.

Whisk together dry ingredients.

Mix wet ingredients with dry ingredients.

Line baking sheet with parchment paper. Scoop dough balls roughly 1-2 Tbl in size and roll in sugar to coat. Evenly place on baking sheet.

Bake for about 12 minutes or until the cookies appear set. Remove from oven, let cool on rack.

Makes approximately 24 cookies.

Dirtbombs

2008-06-12T21:32:00.000-07:00

A muffin is a difficult creature. The muffin top is universally lauded while the muffin bottom generally labeled innocuous if not a downright waste of time. I suggest that this unfortunate attitude towards the muffin is a result of a slew of uninventive and bland muffins saturating the market. Of course the crispy browned muffin cap will be relished and the bottom left to moulder in its wax paper if it isn't interesting enough to garner interest. The trick to muffins is to make them pleasing enough in flavor and fillings that the crisp of the top is merely an added bonus. Else the muffin experience is one that veers dangerously close to pastry regret, sparking self-flagellation and vows to never again spend money or time or both on an uncommitted baked good.

I don't often make muffins in the absence of a function since they don't lend themselves to moderate consumption. When the time comes it's the whole muffin or nothing, not so much because half a muffin will not keep as well as a slice of cake but because for the dedicated eater wrapping up half a muffin is insulting. Muffins don't inspire me in the way of cookies or cakes, and living in close proximity to each of these fine muffin purveyors typically deflates my muffin-baking sails.

However, I got to thinking about muffins while obsessively plotting my gustatory attack on San Francisco and wondering how I might weather eating a slice of pizza, a cheese roll, a vegan chocolate mint cookie, a piece of foccacia (depending on the topping of the day) AND a cornmeal blueberry muffin from the glorious Arizmendi without keeling over. I haven't come up with a solution short of "sack up and take it like a cheese detective" (post-Arizmendi note: it can be done. It's not pretty, but it was delicious) but the last item on that list of must-haves reminded me of the baked offering that, in conjunction with a provocatively spicy soy chai latte, inspires me to brave the laptop jockeys at Ritual: the dirt bomb.

Does all this gibbering have any bearing on whether you should go make dirt bombs right now? Not really. At the last minute I decided to make use of some ground flax, not yet having experimented with it as an egg substitute, and then decided to oh hell just make them vegan. I'm not crazy enough to have foregone the whole rolling in butter and cinnamon-sugar bit but if for some reason (I don't want to hear it) one wants to skip that step, rest assured that the muffins sans butter bath are very tasty on their own.

"Vegan" Dirt Bombs
The flax seed worked fabulously as an egg replacer and the blueberry gave a nice subtle dimension to the muffins. Next time I make these I'm going to stick in some fresh blueberries or blackberries.

2 cups whole wheat pastry flour
1 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
1/8 teaspoon cardamom

1/2 cup vegetable oil

1/2 cup agave nectar

2 tablespoons ground flax seed mixed with 6 tablespoons water

1 cup soy milk

for topping:

3/4 cup melted unsalted butter

1/2 cup granulated sugar

1 1/2 teaspoons cinnamon

Preheat oven to 375 and grease your muffin tins.

Sift dry ingredients together into a mixing bowl.

Whisk vegetable oil, agave nectar and soymilk together and add the flax/water mixture.

Pour the flour mixture into the wet ingredients and mix until evenly integrated.

Pour equal amounts into muffin tins and bake for about 25 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean.

Let muffins cool before dipping them in melted butter and then rolling them rigorously in the cinnamon-sugar mixture. Allow the sugar to set before digging in. Or don't.

Makes 12 dirtbombs.

Slavery to Savory

2008-06-04T20:30:00.000-07:00

I enjoy baking and enjoy eating my baked goods, but I've come to realize that when I have the urge to bake cookies what I often want is something more akin to a cracker. Same goes for a hankering for chips, which is why these have changed my life and I can't seem to stop touting them at every opportunity. This realization spells the end of the need to justify veganizing countless perfectly reasonable cookie recipes, for the answer to that indignant question of why anyone would mess with butter and eggs is this: I prefer salty to sweet. Though my recent introduction to self-made chocolate croissants courtesy of an ingenious suggestion by visitor Anna to stick chunks of dark chocolate into a crispy plain croissant ("they just taste so much better that way!") was a revelation for which I cannot thank her enough, when it comes down to it I would sooner never eat chocolate again rather than forgo bread, crackers, cheese, etc.

That being said, crackers can only be so decadent (alright prove me wrong) and the best cookie recipes come from that melding of sweet and savory, a savory treat decadent enough to truly be a treat. The following buttery peppery nutty nuggets that pass as cookies are such a treat. Involving too much sugar to be called crackers, yet pervaded by a magnificent spiciness that smacks into the butter with a satisfying muffled thud of agreement.

Hazelnut Black Pepper Cookies
from Chocolate & Zucchini
yields approximately 60 cookies

I have made these cookies a couple times now and discovered that chilling the dough for an hour doesn't really seem necessary unless you are squeamish about getting more butter residue on your hands while constructing the dough balls. While they don't call out for a plethora of additions the way some cookies do, this time around I added some diced crystallized ginger to half the batch and they turned out wonderfully (just watch out for the spice factor).

3/4 cup whole hazelnuts
1 2/3 cup whole wheat flour (I have used whole wheat pastry flour as well as a combination of whole wheat and all-purpose with germ and both have worked just fine)
2/3 cup rolled oats (Clotilde suggests spelt flakes, which I have not yet tried since I am typically flush with rolled oats rather than spelt flakes)
1/2 cup + 2 Tbl unrefined cane sugar
1 tsp baking soda
1 pinch salt
1/4 tsp ground black pepper (1/2 tsp if you want a wallop)
10 Tbl butter, chilled
2 Tbl orange blossom water (Clotilde suggests rose water, but fear of ending up with cookies smelling and potentially tasting like potpourri I have only used orange blossom water. Plain water is fine as well seeing as you really just need something to add a bit of moisture to the dough, but the combination of smells provided by the orange blossom water and pepper is worth it.)

Preheat oven to 300 F unless you are going to chill the dough for an hour, in which case preheat the oven when the dough is almost finished chilling.

Toast hazelnuts in a dry skillet until they are fragrant and be careful not to burn them. Let them cool a bit before chopping them roughly, either by brandishing your best mallet or carefully using a chopping knife.

Mix all ingredients except for the butter and orange blossom water and whisk until blended.

Finely dice the butter and add to the dry ingredients. Either use a pastry cutter or your hands to work the butter through the flour mixture, breaking up the resultant butter balls until you get something like coarse meal.

Gradually add the orange blossom water whilst stirring until the dough is damp enough that you can pack it together into two balls.

If desired, cover the bowl with a dishcloth and set aside to cool for an hour.

Place walnut-sized dough balls on a baking sheet (I was dubious about emulating something so diminutive as a walnut but dough balls this size do result in appropriately sized cookies considering how much flavor is in each one. This way you can dip two in your tea rather than bolting through one larger mass), flatten them down and bake for 25 minutes until just barely browned around the edges.

Leave on baking sheet for a few minutes before setting them on a rack to cool.

Keen on Beans

2008-06-03T21:28:00.000-07:00

It's been over two months. Sorrysorrysorrysorrysorry. Alright, onward.

I never liked beans much. String beans frenched and dressed with lemon juice yes, but vulgaris, no. Hamburger soup involved painstakingly removing all the kidney beans and piling them like sweating larvae around the perimeter of the plate, imaging that the two likely tasted quite similar. I'd ask for my burritos without beans, my tortas without beans, wouldn't touch a bean-tainted salsa let alone a bowl of chilli. Funnily enough (or perhaps not so surprising), even my countless bean-based co-op meals did not do much to pique my interest in the foul little things. I can't quite pinpoint when the tide turned and I think nutrition of all things actually had the most to do with it: I decided that I'd better start liking beans. Now it seems all bets are off as far as how long it will take before I'm sick of beans seeing as I'll down a nice can of Goya anything in about as long as it would take me to work through an equivalent serving of sorbet or Tomme Crayeuse. Beans with salmon, beans with spinach, beans with kale, beans with cumin and chile, beans and grape tomatoes (rarely beans and rice, hm.).

In an attempt to hasten the approach of summer, I made the following salad sometime in March. Though I initially thought it would suffer from the near tasteless peppers (seasons Tory, produce has seasons), the dressing packed enough of a punch that combined with the richness of the black beans it pulled together a pleasing dish. Now that my procured peppers are up to the task of providing a crispy combination of sweet and sour, the dressing provides a subtle compliment to the natural play of flavors provided by the key ingredients. Unless you're one of those people unlucky enough to taste soap instead of the glory that is fresh cilantro, said green is a treat as a garnish for this salad.
Black Bean Bell Pepper Salad
from Smitten Kitchen

A note in regards to beans: I say use Goya. Yes, yes, you can soak your own if you wish but I've had nary a bad can of Goya anything. They are never mushy or flavorless and hold up under vigorous rinsing. Black, chick, cannellini, go to town.

2 cans black beans
4 bell peppers (I use one of each color)
1 medium white onion (Use red at your peril. I like to eat raw onions so I didn't perish.)
3 Tbl olive oil
1 tsp cumin
3/4 tsp salt
1/2 tsp honey
1/8 tsp cayenne pepper
juice from one lime
fresh cilantro

Rinse the beans well and drain them.

Seed and chop the peppers and onion and mix with the beans.

Whisk the remaining ingredients together, and toss over the bean mixture. Adjust to taste depending on your penchant for sweet and spicy (I typically add a bit more salt and a few cranks of pepper).

Garnish with cilantro.

Deprivation and Innovation

2008-03-20T06:29:00.000-07:00

whilst watching Aliens

I'm not certain what it is about late night baking, but lately I've found myself settling in around midnight exorcising some floury demon. A few weeks ago a couple hours of indulging in cheeses, olives, bucatini all' amatriciana and three flavors of gelato at Otto resulted in an inexplicable and quite frankly distressing craving for cookies. Maybe olive oil + wine + curds + pig's jowl = cookie, I don't know. Forced to abandon my initial idea to hit up Build A Green Birdbath Milkpaint Corkboard Bakery for their stealth vegan chocolate chip cookie bomb of addiction, I decided that my cookie craving could be standing in for a desire to create and went home and started mixing. [Paul Reiser! Sigourney Weaver and her terrible hairdo do not trust Paul Reiser. He explains 57 lost years in the same tone he'd tell Jamie that Murray ate her slipper. Cats know what humans do not! Oh, oops, dream sequence. Wow I really don't remember a lot of this movie.]

I was going to make these, but my penchant for pseudo-veganization and complications rode high once more. Molasses is my friend of late so there was no question about that oozing in somewhere, and I've been trying to figure out when and how butter substitutes are suitable so I tried an oil and apple-butter combo. [You should believe Ripley, ill-coiffed Lily Tomlin look-alike skeptic and company.] Conceding that my cookie had morphed into a different animal entirely, I threw in cinnamon and pecans for the hell of it.

I was dubious during the preparation process since until the addition of the yogurt the dough has the gritchy consistency of lake sand. The resultant cookie bomb [stick to your guns Ripley, those colonial marines can suck it. And those drinking glasses are completely impractical.] was a fantastically dense hunk of savory nuttiness with enough of a hint of sweetness to still qualify it as a cookie. Their crisp shell masks an unexpected chewiness and have kept marvelously in the freezer. I wouldn't go so far as to suggest everyone adopt "When In Doubt, Add Molasses" (or maybe "Ultimate Badasses Use Molasses"?) as their new baking motto, but I continue to be flummoxed and fascinated by the stuff. Just beware treacle-filled bowlers...

Vegan Cocoa Pecan Molasses Cookies
Makes 3 dozen cookies

Adapted from this original non-vegan recipe. The resultant cookie bomb is dense and cakey with a vague nutty and fruity flavor imparted by the apple butter and the molasses. Though many recipes that call for yogurt stipulate full fat, I myself have never had a problem using non- or low-fat and prefer to use Fage when possible. Suggested alternate additions in place of chocolate chips and pecans: peanut butter chips, walnuts, dried cranberries or sour cherries.

1 cup whole wheat pastry flour
1 cup unbleached all-purpose flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
8 Tbl unsalted butter or oil (safflower) (I used 6 Tbl oil and 2 Tbl apple butter)
1/3 cup molasses
1/3 cup light brown sugar
1 1/3 cup granulated sugar
2 tsp vanilla
1 tsp cinnamon
14 Tbl unsweetened cocoa powder
2/3 cup plain yogurt
1/4 cup chocolate chips
1/2 cup chopped pecans

Preheat oven to 350°F.

Whisk together the flour, baking soda, cinnamon and salt.

Mix together the oil and sugar, then add cocoa powder and mix until well-blended. At this point the dough resembles wet dirt.

Stir in yogurt, molasses and vanilla (the dough should become much more manageable after these additions). Mix until just combined and toss in the chocolate chips and pecans.

Evenly place tablespoon-sized dollops on baking sheet and bake for about 10 minutes or until the tops of the cookies look set. Remove from oven and leave on baking sheet for a few minutes before removing to a wire rack.

Bruising and Boozing

2008-03-16T19:57:00.000-07:00

The following series of posts will be horribly out of chronological order but nevertheless replete with deliciousness so I feel little chagrin. I'd all but chained myself to my chair to get some posts dashed off when my wine-seltzer-fruit punch cocktail (not as good as it sounds...or perhaps just as good as it sounds?) kicked in and instead of typing out the five or so entries I've had swirling in the cranial vortex for the past few weeks my fingers started searching out new things to bake. Sharing responsibility with the alcohol for this baking itch was a near-moldering banana in the fruit basket that gradually loomed so large in my sights that I could resist it no more than Macbeth his ghostly knife. For that banana to come to rest in the trash would be a musaic tragedy, and I was going to save it. Deciding that I also wanted to use maple syrup and nuts, I scoured the web and ended up working from a composite of about a dozen recipes.

Let's just get this out of the way: the cookies are vegan. Let's get another proclamation out of the way: I have a feeling that the majority of cookie recipes I post will be vegan. There's little logic to it, I've already declared my fealty to Lord Dairy in so many words, but I really like dense salty cookies and quite often going vegan is the way to achieve this result (though just wait until I try my black olive shortbread, those buggers are going to be so oozy with salt and butter that after eating them you won't be able to engage in anything requiring dextrous digits). There will be no further apologizing or justifying in this department but, being a fan of grandiose statements applied to trivial subjects, I hereby dedicate myself to pushing the limits of applesauce, bananas, psyllium and all other stand-ins for lactose and embryos. Onward.

Vegan Maple Banana Oatmeal Cookies
yields 36 cookie nuggets

A few notes:
-I have fallen in love with the taste of maple syrup in baked goods but you can certainly substitute brown sugar if you'd like a cookie without that maple edge.
-Bananas are often employed as an egg substitute (~1/2 pureed banana per egg) and can have a surprisingly minimal effect on the overall taste of a baked good. My confounding recent conversion to the pro-banana camp leads me to suggest that another half or even whole banana be employed in this recipe to really give these cookies a banana kick, the one lends a pleasing hint and does the job of an egg but some might desire more of a smack of banana flavor.
-I'm not positive that the soy milk is necessary, I just thought the dough seemed a bit dry.
-Though I resisted the my typical urge to start adding ingredients willy-nilly, I am fairly convinced that additions such as apple butter, crystallized ginger, yellow raisins or ground flax seeds would all yield a tasty result.

3 Tbl oil (I used canola, I suspect safflower or any vegetable oil would work just as well)
1/2 cup honey
1/2 cup maple syrup
1 mushy banana, puréed or otherwise reduced to a pulp
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 Tbl unsweetened soy milk
1/2 cup chopped pecans
2 cups whole wheat pastry flour
1 1/2 - 2 cups rolled oats
1 tsp salt
1 tsp cinnamon

Preheat oven to 375F.

Sift together the dry ingredients and set aside.

Whisk the oil, honey, maple syrup, soy milk and vanilla. Stir in the banana, pecans and rolled oats.

Gradually add the flour mixture, stirring whilst adding and thoroughly mixing until dough is a gummy mass.

Evenly distribute tablespoon-sized dollops of dough on baking sheet and flatten slightly if desired. These cookies really do not spread during baking so if you prefer discs to nuggets, prep accordingly before putting in the oven.

Bake for 10-12 minutes until cookies are slightly browned and crisp. Remove from oven and cool on rack.

Aching and Baking

2008-01-30T22:50:00.000-08:00

"Why do you want a vegan cookie?" "Why did you get the soy chicken salad instead of the chicken salad?" "Soyrizo? You mean chorizo, right?...it's made out of what?!"

I know it doesn't make much sense. I love ice cream, chorizo tortas slathered in crema and the lasagna-esque chocolate peanut-butter cookies from Grey Dog, but I also love Soy Delicious with vegan oreos, soyrizo quesadillas and stand by my conviction that Keri's Kreations' chocolate chip cookie is worth badgering my friends in San Francisco to cart over to me if they can't swing by Arizmendi for their hockey puck of a vegan chocolate mint cookie. I believe I need to put this issue to rest once and for all: vegan food can be really good even if (especially if) it isn't peppered with the righteousness and obduracy that accompanies so many of its proponents. Consequently, while I avidly follow developments in bacon, fat-free vegan also features in my regular rotation. I don't generally make much of a point to harp on fat content (why take any joy out of piping hot cheese grits?) but delicious is delicious and if it comes rolled up in a fat-free bundle then that means more for me.

Which leads me to biscotti. I set out to make quinoa cookies, but lacking rolled oats and fielding a thoroughly horrified reaction from the mother upon my suggesting I sift packets of oatmeal to separate out the oats, I needed to change my plan with a quickness. While it is easy to think of biscotti as stale-tasting cookies served up either shrink-wrapped or crammed and crumbling in jars at your local coffee house, I prefer to think on the unfailing sensation of decadence whenever an unrequested crisp little biscotti arrives alongside a cappuccino. Nostalgia won a double victory tonight, for not only did these subtly spicy little crisps trigger fond memories of their predecessors but they have also cemented what was previously a suspicion that coffee should never be served without them. While I am plotting more elaborate ingredient variations, Susan's simple recipe for success continues the trend of fool-proof baking begun by the beer bread. Much as bread is not bread unless there is a dairy product on or in it, coffee is not coffee unless it comes with a cookie.

Ginger Biscotti
adapted from Fat-Free Vegan

I was tempted to maintain the veganness of the original recipe by using a banana in place of the Ener-G egg replacer (an item of which I am fond but not currently in possesion), having done so successfully recently in the service of some apple butter ginger cookies. Fearful of ending up with either mushy or banana-tainted biscuits, I decided to sack up and use an egg and as much water as was required to achieve the desire consistency of dough. If you insist on vegan integrity, use 1 1/2 Tbl Ener-G and 6 Tbl water plus more if needed. Adding the chopped walnuts was a success, and next time I'm going for dried cranberries and a good dredging through some melted bars of Dagoba xocolatl.

1 cups all-purpose unbleached flour
1 cup whole wheat pastry flour
2/3 cup sugar
2 tsp ground ginger
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp ground cloves
1/4 tsp (packed) freshly grated nutmeg
3/4 tsp baking soda
3/4 cup roughly chopped walnuts
2 eggs
6 Tbl water
1 Tbl molasses
1/2 tsp vanilla

Preheat oven to 350.

Sift together the dry ingredients. In another bowl, whisk together the eggs and water.

Gradually add the egg mixture to the dry ingredients followed by the molasses, vanilla and walnuts. Mix well, adding more water just until the dough holds together. It will be sticky

Divide the dough in two and place on a floured surface. Shape each half into two logs about 2" wide and transfer to an an oiled cookie sheet or silicone baking mat, Flatten the logs to about 1 inch high. Bake for 30 minutes.

Take the baking sheet out of the oven and cool the biscotti for 10 minutes (it didn't take a full ten before I could successfully cut into the logs but don't risk breaking them).

Cut the half-baked logs into 1/2" slices on the diagonal.

Place the slices cut-side down on the baking sheet and bake for 10 more minutes before turning them over and baking for another 8-10 minutes.

Remove from oven. They will likely still be somewhat soft in the center but will harden as they cool. And then soften upon being dipped in espresso.

Beers and Tears (of joy)

2008-01-24T22:20:00.000-08:00

I have a lot to cover. I know I said that San Francisco's luscious pastries, damn fine coffee and superlative pizza would have their day(s) and they will. I think. But right now I am motivated by the mad ecstasy of warm carbs to share with you as quickly as possible the method by which you too might experience the singular joy of warm bread at midnight. I don't do yeast these days, though I have before and hope to once more. The primary reason why I have not attacked my old standard, Cuban Easy Bread, is because whenever I read a recipe directive to "place dough on floured surface" I immediately cringe at the thought of placing a precious lump of dough on any surface of my kitchen, floured or no. So until I have a nice wood countertop to flour to my heart's content and clean with boiling water and oil with oils, yeasty bread will have to wait. Hence beer bread. Beer bread is an infinitely satisfying amalgam of quick bread and yeast bread, requires practically no effort or baking talent and acts as a stellar vehicle for whatever fixins for which you might be jonesing (though fruit probably wouldn't work too well as filler, stick to savory). Though it lacks the satisfying crisp crust of a veritable loaf, it toasts brilliantly and possesses the chewy elasticity of a kneaded bread. The ineffable delight of oven-fresh bread is one I discovered at school, lurking in the kitchen waiting with a ladle of butter/salsa/peanut sauce for loaves oozing with jalapeno-jack to come out of the oven, marveling at the occasional emergence of foccacia, challah, sourdough, witnessing the regenerative power of sizzling crumbs and learning that carbs consumed standing up and in good company are not ones to be counted.

Whole Wheat Beer Bread
from a recipe from Farmgirl Fare

When I first made beer bread I used all-purpose flour and included chives, caramelized shallots, sundry herbs and sharp cheddar cheese. The result was nothing short of delicious, but after trying out this whole wheat version I think that the hint of beer that lingers in the bread weds more successfully with the darker wheat flavor than with regular flour. A note about the beer: though recipes recommend using an Irish Pale Ale, I used a darker brew. The resulting taste is definitely heavier on the beer side of things so if you would prefer something that has a better chance of skating by unnoticed on the AA buffet table, use a lighter beer. Also, this bread has a tendency to get a bit soggy after being wrapped in foil. This can be countered either by toasting individual slices or popping the whole loaf into the oven at 200 degrees for a few minutes until the top dries out. Finally, a layer of cheese on the top of the loaf pre-baking can't hurt.

2 cups whole wheat flour
1 cup all-purpose flour
1 Tbl granulated sugar
1 tsp salt
1 tsp dried oregano
1 tsp dried rosemary
1 tsp dried thyme
1 Tbl baking powder
1+ cup grated cheese of your choice, sharp cheddar works well
14 ounces beer (or 12 ounces beer & 2 ounces water)

Heat oven to 375 degrees.

Combine flour, sugar, salt, herbs and baking powder in a large mixing bowl. Slowly stir in beer and cheese and mix just until combined.

Spread in a greased 8-inch loaf pan, brush with egg glaze and bake about 45 minutes until golden brown and a toothpick stuck in the center comes out clean.

Cool in the pan on a rack for 10 minutes. Remove from pan and cool 10 more minutes.

shame

2008-01-15T22:08:00.000-08:00

I don't presume to suggest I have enough of a readership at the moment to render an unannounced absence of such length "inexcusable" exactly, but it is certainly not good in terms of its reflection on my professions of dedication to homaging. I'm not trying to make excuses but the past two months have been rather tumultuous. One day after the last post our little Tory started a new job, a development which had several effects. One was to cut the fromaging down to one day a week (the busiest day no less), thereby making extensive research and lingering behind the cheese counter near impossible and putting the "cheese of the week" feature in jeopardy. I know that is a flimsy excuse at best, but I hope to apply myself with gusto to making up for the dearth of dairy on this site. Another effect of newfound employment was a schedule that hardly allows for eating, let alone chefery or invetigating. While the wilds of Astoria undoubtedly hold a few gems, I haven't been able to convince any of my coworkers to try out Sarajevo Fast Food and the bodegas enticing me with hastily scrawled signage advertising tortas do not deliver. Such are my paltry excuses, which add up to "whine whine whine I'm tired whine whine."

This isn't to say I've been entirely inactive. I did make a thoroughly aesthetically disastrous batch of spice cookies, an even tastier cakier version of my peanut butter cookies (more syrup, less sugar), tried some stellar Brooklyn locations (top runners Lucali and the Soul Spot), uncovered some chickens named Patrick in Chinatown, pigged out on Taster Matt's irrefutable masterpiece sinker: farfalle ala canned salmon as well as an inspired mushroom bread pudding, found what I'm going to deem the best place to get tasty cheap fake meats, and whipped up many a masterful batch of cheese grits. All of this plus San Francisco adventures when we return...after I get some more sleep.

Coffee and Bagels

2007-11-12T16:30:00.000-08:00

For an incorrigible snob I like a fair number of decidedly unsnobby foodstuffs. Or rather, I can be surprisingly undiscerning in regards to the quality of even my favorite consumables. For example, despite appreciating a really exemplary cup of coffee, I'll guzzle down diner coffee, bodega coffee, instant coffee with condensed milk with equal appreciative gesticulations for all. This contradicts my inability to eat dumplings from anywhere except Prosperity Dumpling without mentioning that better dumplings could be had, or to derive equal pleasure from Gordo's and El Farolito. Maybe a leniency when it comes to coffee as opposed to burritos is attributable to a crippling need for coffee however I can get it and an undeniable attraction to someone dumping mass quantities of cream and sugar in my cup without batting an eyelash in judgment.

Despite my equal opportunity approach to coffee I am still baffled by how many New Yorkers seem numbed to whether or not their coffee is tasty. Given the superior attitude of New Yorkers (I'm not knocking it, assuming said attitude in good company is one of the reasons I like living here) I'm not sure why they don't seem to have demanded excellence where coffee is concerned. Plus, coffee is such an easy thing to wax snobby about, effortless elitism! For people who will rant about fluffy bagels until the cows come home, lattes masquerading as cappuccinos and abominable chai don't seem to irk them much.

Which brings me to bagels, an article to which I claim absolutely no attachment. Bagels were not part of my regular childhood diet, I have no fond memories of getting piping hot bagels with my parents every weekend and piling them with lox and whenever I found myself in Noah's I usually got a bialy or some rugelach. That said, I still understand the controversy surrounding traditional bagels versus the puffy interlopers. My problem with the puffies is not that they buck tradition, but that there is absolutely no point in eating a bagel unless it is of the small, dense, crisp variety and liberally piled with a cream cheese varietal and preferably some smoked fish. With these combined elements, a bagel becomes something special, an actual dish. Without them, you might as well eat a piece of good toast or munch on a baguette. You could get away with just buttering a bagel, but it had better be a damn fine bagel or it is a veritable waste of caloric intake. I'd rather eat slices of flank steak plain than construct a sandwich of wonderbread, and I'd rather eat lox with my fingers than put it on a pillowy excuse for a bagel.

End rant.

Lucky for me there are two places in the Southish Slope that allow me to feel superior in both my coffee and bagel intake. The first is Café Regular, a pint-sized little gem that serves up La Colombe coffee straight and to the point. Aside from orange juice and an assortment of pastries from Baked and Sullivan Street, the offerings are coffee and only coffee. While small enough that you can reach over and touch the bar from the bench running along the wall, it is a pleasant place to sit and steeped in faux-Parisian-ness. Clichéd as it may be, you can't argue with the comforting nature of the décor and the cumulative effect of warm wood panelling, bric a brac that could have been lifted from a grand-mère's attic or twentieth-century train station and a piping hot double cappuccino.

After securing your caffeine, hit up the Bagel Hole. Don't be dissuaded by the lack of ambiance, the energy here goes into the bagels. Sporting little other than a counter and wire baskets of bagels, the Bagel Hole serves up the densest, most flavorful and inevitably warm from the oven bagels I've found in New York. They don't need a toaster because the bagels are always warm and crisp, they don't skimp on the spreads and the price is right. I don't see myself regularly trudging down to the Bagel Hole, but if I do eat a bagel I make it count.

Demand the best! Enjoy the worst! Here's to inconsistent yet unyielding snobbery!

Café Regular - 318 11th Street between 4th and 5th
The Bagel Hole - 400 7th Avenue between 11th and 12th

We Are Celiac

2007-11-06T10:37:00.000-08:00

Roommate John had confirmed last week that he has celiac disease, a revelation that was welcome in that it finally answers why he hasn't been feeling too hot but unwelcome in that it strikes things like soba noodles from his diet. In the spirit of continued indulgence in the face of perceived limitations, I decided to make him a treat to show that living gluten-free does not have to mean living treat-free.

I settled on cookies after realizing that any bread or cake-like enterprise would involve at least two types of flour. Eschewing flour altogether seemed even more decadent than layering several varieties, so flourless peanut butter cookies it was. Though the dough gave me some cause for consternation (being essentially a wet blob of sugary peanut butter), these cookies emerged from the oven solid and delicious. The recipe can be simplified or dressed up however you like, and made glutenous if you must.

Gluten-Free Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies
Inspired by a recipe from Gluten-Free Girl and doubled and dressed up a bit by me.

Adding two full cups of sugar made me feel a bit gross so I decided to replace one of the cups with half a cup of honey. After the success of the ginger snaps I switched out a bit of the honey for maple syrup at the last minute. There's nothing wrong with sticking to the sugar, but personally I liked the way the hints of maple and honey played with the peanut. In terms of choosing what type of peanut butter to go with, obviously if you prefer not to have peanut chunks then go with creamy, and if you decide on a salted variety then you don't need to add salt yourself. If I'd thought a little bit more ahead I would have put in some fresh chopped peanuts and next time I'm going to toss in some chopped pecans.

2 cups unsalted chunky peanut butter
1 cup sugar
1/8 cup maple syrup
3/8 cup honey
1/2 tsp salt
2 tsp baking powder
2 eggs
1 cup Sunspire rich dark semi-sweet gluten-free dairy-free chocolate chips
turbinado sugar for dusting

Preheat oven to 350.

Cream the peanut butter and sugar thoroughly by hand, then add the honey and maple syrup.

Beat in the eggs one at a time followed by the salt and baking powder. Make sure that each ingredient actually gets mixed into the dough and not just pushed around on the sides. Use hands if necessary.

Add chocolate chips and mix.

Roll the dough into balls. I used about 1-2 tablespoons per ball, but acceptable cookie size is open to interpretation.

Dredge balls through the sugar and place on baking sheet lined with wax paper.

Gently press dough balls with fork to flatten them and create a pleasing ridge pattern.

Bake for about 10 minutes. The cookies will be soft when you take them out so leave them on the baking sheet for at least 5 minutes before transferring them to a cooling rack.

Attempt to let cookies harden completely before eating, or just chow down. Milk is advisable.

Wannabe Vegan

2007-10-31T18:48:00.000-07:00

Many of my favorite food blogs have been posting ginger snap recipes for some weeks now. I have finally caved to self-imposed pressure and perennial yearning for everything ginger and decided that instead of binge eating baggies of crystallized ginger discuses from the co-op I would actually put them in something. I hope the title of this blog would preempt any confusion resulting from the following recipe, but to make it perfectly clear: I am not a vegan. I do, however, really really enjoy vegan goods, particularly vegan pastries. How can one who demands nimbusesque airiness from her crème brulée also go nuts for vegan cookies stout enough to be used in shot put is another of my delightful contradictions, but there it is. I think it is the very ways in which vegan pastries veer from the typical embodiment of pastry that makes me love them. Not that a vegan pastry can't be fluffy and melt as ephemerally across the tongue as the lightest Ladurée macaron*, but I like them when they're thick, a bit savory, uncomplicated and rustic. Something that might be pounded on a piece of slate and seared in a hearth dripping with tar. It doesn't make much sense but all I know is that the vegan cookies at Maxfield's haunt me enough that my two most recent visitors generously toted them in tupperware through airport security mostly to make me shut up, and that I'm long past the point of trying to affect a hoity attitude in regards to vegan recipes.

We arrive at the gingersnaps. These thick little patties hearken back to the co-op days when books like How It All Vegan were godsends for cook crews at the ends of their wits and shaking at the thought of facing a mass of diners deprived of dessert. It contains some blissfully simple and straightforward recipes, of which this is one. I have tweaked and complicated it a bit to include elements that make me happy. The dried fruit held up well and rounded out the flavor nicely.

*this is a lie

Vegan Gingersnaps
Adapted from How It All Vegan and tested on many a dirty hippie
Yields about 36 cookies

If you want this in its ultimate simplicity, eliminate the apple butter and use 1/2 cup of oil, forget the crystallized ginger, vanilla extract, and dried fruit and go for it. They'll still be good. Adding cinnamon and/or nutmeg would also be good.

2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
3/4 cups maple syrup
1/4 cups molasses
1/4 cups vegetable oil (I used safflower)
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1/4 cup apple butter
5 Tbl fresh grated ginger
1/3 cup minced crystallized ginger
1/3 cup dried cranberries
1/3 cup dried sour cherries
turbinado (or any form of coarse sugar) if desired for topping

Preheat oven to 350.

Whisk together dry ingredients until uniformly mixed, then add wet ingredients.

Toss in dried fruit at the end and mix until just mixed. The dough will be thick and unwieldy.

If you're up for it, attempt to form Tablespoon-sized balls out of the dough and roll them in turbinado crystals. I ended up sprinkling the sugar on top of the dough balls and think it worked quite well.

Arrange on baking sheet and bake for 12-15 minutes. Do not be alarmed by their failing to spread, for they are resilient and will not shift dramatically from their blobular state. They also seem miraculously burn-proof.

Pour some soy milk into a jar, read about kombucha, dumpster diving and DIY ricotta in a quarterly months behind the curve (you know I love you, Edible Brooklyn), and contemplate the Master Cleanse.

Triumph and Prosperity

2007-10-30T19:28:00.000-07:00

I am a bit hesitant to out Prosperity Dumpling as the best dumpling place in Manhattan, but I feel fairly confident that my mentioning it will not send such a clamoring hoard to its door that the dumpling man will up the prices and lower the quality. For truly, forget either the Allen or Mosco Fried Dumpling, forget Tasty Dumpling and Dumpling House, Prosperity Dumpling's dumplings are superlative and put all others to shame. First: they are fried to a delicate crisp that crackles when bitten but does not leave coagulated oil in its wake. Second: they are always served so piping hot that you might have to wait to eat them rather than scarf them down with a quickness lest they become gelatinous blobs of lukewarm fry within seconds. Third: the filling is loosely and evenly packed rather than a dense nugget of vacuum-packed-esque pork that belies a recently frozen state:

An even bigger pull than the dumplings are the sesame pancakes, which put most focaccia to shame. The sesame pancake exits the oven as a large salt-infused disk dusted with sesame seeds and dotted with chopped scallions. It is divided into slices and either served as such or filled with beef and/or pickled vegetables (carrots, cucumbers, cilantro). Pleasantly chewy and only so slightly oily, the sesame pancake is a perfect snack to eat with or on your way to some bubble tea.
Though exalting Prosperity Dumpling is no waste of time, there is greater impetus for this entry: the stuffed pancake. While I was conducting hardcore investigative dumpling research when I first arrived in New York and needed extreme motivation to brave the extreme weather conditions, I happened upon a review of Prosperity Dumpling. Discovering that it was practically ungoogleable, with nary a yelp review or other blog entry devoted to it (no longer the case), I decided that I had to give it a try. Thrilled at discovering the best dumplings of the bunch and a stellar sesame pancake to boot, I was nevertheless dismayed at my inability to get my hands on the fabled stuffed pancake. Visit after return visit I was circumvented or outright rebuffed by the otherwise extremely personable proprietor. After the aforementioned visit during which he reduced me to embarrassing sputters of agitation, I was reluctant to return and embarass myself further but filled with even greater dedication to what had morphed from a healthy curiosity to a crusade. Though I had visions of ambushing the dumpling man at 7:30 am and demanding that he apply himself to a stuffed pancake, I soon realized that I'll sooner seek out random food items at all hours of the night than at all hours of the morning. Maybe if I were up until 7:30 hitting up the dumpling man would be an option, but waking up early enough to do so definitely wasn't. My next tactic was to take someone along and hit the guy from two sides: 1) are you going to embarrass and refuse me in front of my friend and 2) will you risk losing the business of two people instead of one (not that he will ever really be in danger of losing mine as long as the sesame pancake stays on the menu).

Rebecca recently moved to a new place so convenient to investigations that I have barely been able to contain myself. My junior year obsession with bubble tea and spicy chicken reared its dormant head, near incoherent demands for cake issued forth and before anything else I dragged her, willing but falling short of annoyingly obsessive, to Prosperity Dumpling. Dumpling Man again tried to give us the runaround, and this time he too had a "second" in the form of a friendly cook, who boisterously echoed his more sheepish statements of "we don't have it?" and "it is hard to make...". Finally, after hearing that we would wait for as long as it took and happily purchase two of the pancakes, the two of them set off to cook some up.
Here's the dismally anticlimactic kicker: the stuffed pancake is not very good. It's not bad, but it doesn't hold a candle to the variety of dumplings or the sesame pancake with beef. The exterior, despite being piping hot, was rather tough and difficult to maneuver, and the filling sat resolutely separate from the dough and was similarly difficult to puncture. This meant that rather than biting into a wonderful melding of the two, we were forced to pry off pieces of dough and eat them separately from chunks of congealed pork-vegetable mix. I wouldn't be surprised if a forced stuffed pancake is destined to take on the characteristics of its producers and consumers and come out leaden, sullen and dispirited, so I'll keep requesting them in the hopes that I wasn't nursing a pipe dream all these months. Or maybe I'll try if I can get them to make me the equally unavailable chive and egg pancake...

Tis the Season for Gluttony

2007-10-23T17:15:00.000-07:00

Though the recent weather might be trying its damnedest to make us believe otherwise, it is fall. Lucky for me, I have no attachment to the whole leaves - changing - nip - in - the - air - first - cold - snap idea of fall and instead the change in season manifests itself in the form of newly desired and available foodstuffs. The apple cider donuts at the Grand Army Farmers Market suddenly dominate my thoughts on Saturday mornings and spiced pecans shift from decadent treat to diet staple. Realizing that we had both abruptly developed an unprecedented obsession with pumpkin, Rebecca and I decided to ring in the season by making some pumpkin bread. The resultant loaves or their imminent successors might make an appearance soon, but in the absence of images and recipe I will just say that there was much consuming of batter on my end and Rebecca's loaf nearly fell apart under the weight of its own chocolate chips. As soon as we parted I promptly put half of my loaf safely in the freezer lest I convince myself days that pumpkin bread 3 meals a day is a small sacrifice when facing potential spoilage, and pondered what to do with my leftover pumpkin puree.

In addition to bringing a craving for spicy breads (squash harvest loaf, I'm looking at you), fall carries with it a hankering for stew. With this in mind I set to invetigate pumpkin soup recipes and ended up settling on one that augmented the pumpkin with cannellini beans. Though lacking some of the ingredients suggested by various recipes (fresh sage, basil, bay leaves) and one apparently key ingredient (chicken or vegetable stock), I decided to take a whack at it. What came of my efforts was something in between a soup and a stew and decidedly fantastic. The recipe itself is very simple but the pumpkin not only adds a unexpected dimension to the flavor but actually heightens the performance of the beans. I have made many a white bean soup that turn out more like bean mush which, while tasty, cannot exactly be deemed a veritable "dish." I decided to go with Pecorino-Romano over the Parmesan that was unanimously called for by the recipes I found and believe this was a wise choice. It is both creamier and saltier than Parmesan and melts wonderfully into the soup. The cherry tomato garnish was less an appropriate mixing of flavors and more a nod to what might be the last good batch. Though the passing of summer brings much cause for regret, thank goodness it's time once again to fatten up for winter!

Pumpkin-White Bean Soup:

The following recipe is more than open to experimentation. In regards to the liquid, I used 2 cups water, 1 cup fat-free buttermilk, and then dashed some regular milk in there towards the end. It depends on how creamy you want the soup and clearly if you'd like to use chicken or vegetable broth as other recipes suggested, I'm sure it would be tasty. I happened to like the absence of sodium and chicken flavor, but taste varies.

dollop olive oil
1 medium-sized sweet onion, coarsely chopped
1 clove garlic, minced
1 15 1/2 oz can cannellini beans, rinsed and drained
15 oz unsweetened pumpkin purée
3 1/2 cups liquid
~ 1/2 tsp cayenne pepper (less if you're not a spice fan)
1/4 tsp dried oregano
dash nutmeg
salt and pepper to taste
grated Pecorino RomanoHeat olive oil in medium-sized saucepan.

Toss onion and garlic into medium-sized saucepan with some salt and pepper and simmer until onions are translucent.

Add remaining ingredients and simmer for approximately 8 minutes.

Remove pan from heat and blend approximately one cup of the mixture at a time in blender until the consistency is even, the beans and onions as uniformly pureed as desired. Be very careful with this step, my first attempt sent the blender cover rocketing sky-high along with some boiling soup.

Transfer back to pan and reheat, serve garnished with grated Pecorino and anything else that deserves to be garnish. Perhaps some nice bacon, or...bacon.

The Homage Is Alive

2007-10-15T20:30:00.001-07:00

Alright, I know there hasn't been any homaging to fromage yet so here's a brief entry just to prove to myself and the ether that contrary to what is suggested by the content of this blog thus far, fromage is my first and truest love. Behold, the cheese plate! Or rather, the cheese that used to be on a plate but is now on the floor!

Les Fromages:

Tomme de Ma Grand-Mère: a mild goat cheese produced just south of the Loire Valley. Its bloomy rind conceals a brilliant velvety interior that carries a hint of salty mushroominess and manages to be simultaneously dry and creamy in texture. Not as complex and heart-stopping as its flashy cousin Tomme Crayeuse but pleasing nonetheless. Wedded with a bit of honey it is scrumptious. Also wins points for sounding like an oath one might hear roared by a medieval baron upon hearing that the goats have fled the fief.

Durrus: a washed rind Irish cheese made from raw cow's milk that thankfully makes its way into the states. Smooth and and slightly gummy, it leaves an uncomplicated but lasting taste with a faint after-kick of salt.

Lincolnshire Poacher: a sharp smoked British cheddar named after this fantastic ditty, the poacher packs the punch of an aged cheese without being too crumbly or salty. Smooth but yielding a satisfying snap, it went perfectly with the membrillo and hot coppa.

Gres de Vosges: somewhat like a Camembert or Munster and graced with a decorative fern leaf, the Gres de Vosges is oozy but not runny or offensively stinky. The mellow saltiness melts across the tongue and lacks the bitter aftertaste of so many stinky cheeses.

Les Accompagnements:

Membrillo: quince paste, of Spanish origin and preferable to the increasingly popular guava paste. Complements salty cheeses such as Manchego, Idiazabal, Cheddar etc.

Hot Coppa: I don't know much about meats, but this had a full and very slightly salty taste that went especially well with the Poacher.

Air-Cured Genoa: see above re I know nothing about meats. This had a lighter and less salty flavor than I have come to expect from stiff salamis. It was inoffensive and went nicely with the dried fruits.

Honey: see "delicious."

small treats: dried cranberries, dried cherries, hazelnuts, tamari roasted almonds. I'm running out of bluster and gustatory foofery: these were all super good.

disclaimer: I've been known to eat my fair share of cheese in one sitting but lest you think I laid this out on the floor to allow for solo reclining and gorging in order to circumvent the whole "how do I get up from the table now?" conundrum, this spread actually was moved to the floor to yield the table to a masterful meal whipped up by Blake and Elin. Taster Matt and I could probably get away with saying we helped, but the help was mostly in the form of unintelligible supportive noises, i.e. "oooooooo!" "aaaaaaaa!" "whaaaaa?!" "butter!"

Cooking vs. Invetigating

2007-10-15T19:28:00.000-07:00

Lately I have been so torn between various extremes that I might as well recalibrate to zero and call it “grounded” rather than continue in this stomach-churning state. While not the bulk of what contributes to the churn, deciding whether to apply myself to cooking or to seeking out the fine cooking of others is one quandary that makes up the grand recipe of unrest. Often the factors of time and wallet plumpness make the decision for me, but both of those fail me when it comes to fast food. Street food can be purchased and eaten in a hurry for a fair price, just as a bowl of quinoa and onions can be whipped up in a few minutes flat and leaves some change for a dessert of candied ginger discs. Luckily my itchy invetigation foot usually kicks in to give me that deciding boot out of the kitchen and typically lands me far from my home. Call it martyrdom or self-punishment or misplaced reward syndrome, but the sorer the feet, the damper the brow, the tastier the reward. An invetigation that combines food with the exploration of new terrain is the best one there is.

A few weeks ago I experienced premature Red Hook withdrawal. Though the ballfields vendors were safe for another month or so I still felt the impending onset of pupusa tremors. I have a few Sunset Park destinations staked out for snowy late night fixes, but suddenly even those seemed tinged with potential disaster. What if Ine’s closes? What if Rico’s gets snowed under? I need further back-up. Having found my first torta of New York after doing some stealth recon in Astoria (the foolproof equation of [observed passing torta - amount of torta consumed by consumer = possible distance from torta vendor] led me straight to Atlixico and a middling but welcome chorizo infusion), Queens seemed to be the way to go. After consulting the internet, Taster Matt and I set out for Jackson Heights with a tentative list of vendors who, unbeknownst to them, would soon be auditioning for the roles of Team Red Hook alternates.

First on the menu was a beverage at Aqui Colombian. “Beverage” turned out to be a misnomer, these colossuses were meals. While Taster Matt went for the cholado, I went for the supposedly less rich champus. I’m not sure what part of two cups of sweet corn kernels immersed in what is best described as an icy cinnamon gazpacho translates into “light,” but all of it translated into delicious. The champus isn’t as much of a looker as its cholado companion, whose fruit-studded condensed milk-drenched shredded coconut self required both fork, spoon and straw, but both performed equally well.

We walked from 37th to Roosevelt to get started with savory. I was hell-bent on pupusas, which for some reason I insisted would be sold at the “two ladies taco cart” mentioned in a fantastic map posted to Chowhound**. I can only ascribe this conviction to brain fever or hunger-induced daftness because there was nothing in our research to indicate that this was so. In the spot designated to the two ladies, we found a cart manned by one lady with a sign indicating both sopes and pupusas were imminent. I approached the cart with gusto but was thrown by said lady’s deflated preemptory order confirmation: “tacos? SIGH!”. Her countenance shifted dramatically upon my rejoining with “No! Pupusas!” Our ensuing chat revealed that, though she is Salvadorian and a confirmed whiz at pupusa production, her most common request (which she attributed to the ethnic make-up of the neighborhood) is for tacos. The resultant pupusa was resplendent and topped with shredded lettuce, crema and cojita rather than pickled cabbage or onions. Its pancake-like appearance was deceptive and hid an impressive quantity of beans in its crispy folds. After Taster Matt bowed to my needling and tried the sopes (practically identical to the pupusa except with the beans outside instead of inside the masa patty), we moved on.At this point we encountered the nadir of our invetigation in which I was brought to the edges of a despair felicitously dispelled by our happening on a jolly arepa cart.*** I wish I could give a more accurate address for the arepa cart but all I remember is that it was on 37th and came equipped with a cooler full of seven different unmarked sauces hanging off the grill. We were lucky to even get a picture of this one considering how quickly it went. It by no means quelled my determination to make a trek out to the famed Arepa Lady one of these weekends, but it was crisp and plump with meats.Next Taster Matt was thirsty and decided on a Malta Paisa, “a non alcoholic cereal beverage.” I’d like to say that this purchase was the product of impetuousness but honestly it was the result of much deliberation and ultimately won out over other offerings by virtue of its containing no high fructose corn syrup. I think my expression says enough.
Still addled from the lack of fine dessert offerings and a fruitless search for a coffee that met my high standards for purchasing, we settled on a chalupa of all things for “dessert.” The mob surrounding the cart at the base of the stairs to the 82nd St. stop was promising, but as is often the case with such foodstuffs the quality of the chalupa was somewhat unevaluatable because of the overwhelming qualities of heat and fry. Neither of these are ever cause for quibble or woe, and the chalupa was deemed an innocuous but satisfying end to the invetigation. And so concluded the journey to Jackson Heights: while not a Red Hook equal, certainly deserving of the title of “understudy.”

*http://queens.about.com/od/eatingout/a/latinoeats.htm

**http://www.chowhound.com/topics/388653

***A brief word on the despair: it was brought about by a niggling feeling that there existed some tarte tatin-eclipsing Central/South American dessert or pastry that I just hadn’t yet laid eyes or hands on. Dutifully scoping out every bakery on my list, I still didn’t find anything that even piqued interest in my tastebuds let alone promised to topple my existent hierarchy of pastries. Dismayed at my complete disinterest in trying any of the alternately desiccated or oleaginous offerings I began to think that my stomach was either racist or cowardly. Patient in the face of this utterly ridiculous parody of a quandary, Taster Matt gently suggested that maybe I just don’t have a taste for the most ubiquitous Central/South American desserts. I added conchas to the short list of desserts I no longer bother insisting on liking (see glutinous rice) and resigned myself to concentrating my searches to the savory.

End of Summer Denial

2007-09-19T22:43:00.000-07:00

A quick entry because summer is fading and I, contrary to all expectations, am actually feeling pangs of regret. Though perhaps those pangs are less regret at the loss of summer and more impending terror at the imminent cold with which this Californian had a tormented relationship last winter. There was lots of cursing and nary a hole-less pair of shoes, lets just leave it there.

Never having spent a summer in New York, I entered August somewhat unfamiliar with the sensation of unrelievable weather-prompted discomfort. Air-conditioning was no substitute for an ocean breeze and generally resulted in the infuriating condition of being constantly on the verge of illness despite a mean outdoor temperature that should have left any parasite ready throw in the towel. Having neither lake, pool, nor sprinkler to throw myself into, I found myself searching for other extreme methods of warding off brain fever.

One particularly painful afternoon while trudging up my block after a fruitful but incredibly ill-advised solo trek to Red Hook, I was consumed by a desire for, of all things, an apple. But not just any apple, I wanted the COLDEST APPLE IN THE WORLD. Without any companions handy to make helpful suggestions like “why don’t you take a nice cold shower” or “let’s go stand in the freezer section of the co-op for a few minutes,” I instead stood with sweat-matted hair and sunblock-clogged pores losing my last unfried brain cells to imaginings of apples trucked in from the Siberian tundra. I briefly considered a smoothie but quickly realized that I didn’t want any sickly warm banana or even frozen yogurt to contaminate the purity of my arctic apple. Thus was born what became my go-to snack of the summer: the apple icee.

Apple Icee

2 red apples, cubed. I prefer something with a bite, Empires work well.
1/2 cup soy milk
~ 14 ice cubes, preferably smashed up a bit
dash cinnamon
1 tsp vanilla extract (note: I was convinced that this was a good idea and persisted in adding it to my icees. Upon reflection I realized that vanilla extract added to liquid does not result in a vanilla-flavored beverage, but still had a hard time giving up adding just a bit to the blender)
2 spoonfuls blackberry-merlot sorbet
optional: dollop honey, sugar, maple syrup

Mix ingredients in blender and pulse until well-blended. The apple icee retains its deliciousness regardless of how emphatically one punches the buttons on the blender. I prefer leaving a few apple and ice chunks but a nice frappe tastes great too.

Everything Tastes Better With Peanut Sauce

2007-09-03T22:48:00.001-07:00

I have always been an excellent and thorough eater. The Mom professes that my first word was “eat” (although I wouldn’t put it past her to pull my leg on that front). She also reports that with the onset of mastication came exclusive and vociferous demands for cheese, grapes and baguettes. The Dad, big fan of pre-dinner nibbles, lavished paté and shot glasses of wine on my burgeoning palate. I ate the three vinegary piles of shredded beets, carrots and zucchini that accompanied the croque monsieur at my favorite childhood café, not because of a grudging acceptance of the nutritional value of veggies but rather an early-established affection for a cleaned plate. And, according to the two meal-providers of my formative years, even when I was still demanding a cup of crayons along with my appetizer I was routinely ordering the best items on the menu.

As stated, this appreciation for foods and ability to pick the doozy off of any menu did not necessarily go hand in hand with refined tastes. Case in point: at age 6, already filled to the knee socks with snobbery, I ran out of mayonnaise one bread slice into a turkey sandwich. Shortly thereafter I was spreading peanut butter on the other slice of bread, having thought no further than "what else in this kitchen is spreadable?" Peanut butter popped up before mustard, so peanut butter it was. And I kept making my sandwiches this way. For awhile. Now, peanuts have a place alongside cream and meat, but the point is that my brain went no further than mayonnaise = spreadable = peanut butter. A more recent example: A couple weeks ago (faced with a nearly empty kitchen and very empty wallet) I spread honey mustard on one side of a two-month-old spinach tortilla and cracked brown mustard on the other, evenly distributed slices of packaged provolone on the canvas, and, as an afterthought, added a spattering of sweet and tangy simmer sauce before heating the whole thing in a skillet. And I have been considering making this again.

I don't know if I'll ever hone this baffling combination of discerning and completely blind taste, and in my heart of hearts I think I'll always have these bursts of fondness for utter crap. Not "bad for you but still so good" crap like fried dough balls and jaegerschnitzel, but "who in their right mind puts those ingredients together and calls it a success" crap. Consequently, I'm going to try to be careful with what I post here and indicate if something falls into the "only appreciated by the bat-shit crazy or ageusiac" category. Now on to the recipe:

Though there will be a great deal of homaging to fromaging in the days to come, I'm going to kick off with one of my favorite non-cheese toppings to virtually any dish: peanut sauce.

I decided on this peanut sauce partly because it required me to get more Bragg's, which is always exciting, and partly because I was almost out of sesame oil so had even more reason to try a new market in Chinatown I've had on the list (which in turn allowed me to stock up on enough soba noodles to hold me until April and suspiciously took me close enough to Prosperity Dumpling that it was pure obligation that forced my foot in the door*).

But ultimately I chose this as my first recipe posting because the first time I made this sauce is my first memory as a "grown-up" of having produced something from scratch that made lots of people happy. It wasn't until I lived in a co-op my sophomore year of college that I began to really discover the kitchen. Cook crew involved 4 people preparing a meal to feed approximately 80, which was daunting but infinitely satisfying. The first time around it was purely daunting, left me all but paralyzed with anxiety, and with half an hour left to go I struck upon this recipe for peanut sauce and thought wildly "everyone likes peanut sauce! They can slather peanut sauce all over everything and all will be delicious!" The resultant 5 pitchers of sauce dogged me for the rest of the year, but the constant invocations of “that peanut sauce” were, I like to think, equal parts teasing and hope for another batch.

Spicy Peanut Sauce
(originally tweaked from a recipe in Mollie Katzen's Enchanted Broccoli Forest)

This recipe is fail-proof and infinitely tweakable depending on your penchant for spice. Though not one who can lay claim to a spice poker face (being more prone to immediate sweating, reddening and worrisome gasping when confronted with even the slightest excess of chili dust) I like this sauce to rate a "crisp brow beading" on the spice sweat meter. While any spicing agent is acceptable, I have had the best results with crushed arbol or pequin chiles (exercise caution with the seeds!)

1 cup peanut butter (I prefer creamy unsalted)
1 cup boiling water
4 tb rice or cider vinegar
1 1/4 tsp salt
4-5 cloves garlic, minced
1 tsp fresh grated ginger
4 tb honey or sugar
2 tb Bragg's or soy sauce
4 tb sesame oil
1/2 tsp crushed red pepper (to taste)

Place the peanut butter in a medium sized bowl.

Add boiling water and stir patiently until uniformly blended (add water gradually for more control over viscosity).

Thoroughly stir in remaining ingredients and adjust to taste.

makes approximately 3 cups and keeps in the fridge
suggested uses: top any noodle concoction, slather on bread, eat straight out of the jar

* I finally pinned down the proprietor on the mysteriously never available "stuffed sesame pancake" which is rumored to be phenomenal. And by "pin down" I mean exited with a series of cagey and vague answers that didn't leave me any more enlightened than before I put him on ice. This is a rough approximation of the interrogation:

"Do you ever have the stuffed sesame pancake?" "Sometimes."
"Do you know when you'll next have it?" "I don't know."
"Are you ever going to have it?" "I...don't know."
(desperate now)"If I come first thing, when you open, will you have it???" "...I....don't know."

Appearing to feel both guilt and embarrassment at my distress and unsightly piteousness, he followed this last "I don't know" up with "It is very hard to make....so sometimes, if someone wants it, I'll make it" accented by a shrug of the shoulders. Ah-ha, I thought, now we're getting somewhere. It seems I am not one of the hallowed few who merits a stuffed sesame pancake. Having harassed the poor man enough, I trundled away perfectly content with my usual sesame pancake with vegetables. I am however planning a friendly but determined ambush at the crack of opening and will continue the assault until I get my hands on one of those stuffed pancakes.

Beginnings and Confessions

2007-09-02T20:35:00.000-07:00

I might be a better eater than I am a cooker.

This might not seem like that great an admission but for me it is a nearly constant source of shame and frankly one of the motivations for embarking on this exercise in the first place. I'm a decent baker, I make a mean omelet and pancake brunch double-whammy, have bent the blender to my will in the service of nut-milks and hot sauce and I have practiced a few of my childhood staples enough to be able to rattle them off without too much flop sweating. I just can't claim much in the way of kitchen intuition.

My passion for food, insatiable appetite for recipes and terminology, and the chunk of encephalon dedicated to cataloguing and cross-referencing eateries attests to my gastronomic commitment, but I need practice. As much as I probably wouldn't mind eating cheese samples three meals a day, I want to be more than the master of the cutting-board dinner. I want to reign over my kitchen without needing gimlets to bolster my spirits. I want to have all the burners and the oven going without descending into tight-lipped anxiety because my sides are congealing and fading while my mains sullenly refuse to seize their potential. I want to enhance food prep with conversation (perhaps even laughter) without risking catastrophe, and serve up heaping fragrant plates of deliciousness.

I want to be able to share my love of food with my friends.

While it might be awhile before I can invite anyone over for dinner without barricading myself in the kitchen and entertaining guests with a symphony of bitter oaths and clanging pans, in the meantime I can build towards that glorious day and still share all of my favorites (and my foibles) with you lot.

And so, while I do not profess any great culinary ingenuity as of yet, I set out with equal parts trepidation and temerity to humbly pay homage not only to fromage, but to all of the foodstuffs that have nurtured my gustatory curiosity into what now borders on a compulsion.

Roll on, wheels of gouda, as the great Earth rolls on!