Happy New Year!

Posted on January 1, 2013 by Chelsea

Oh friends, it happened. I made it. Yesterday I made the last two Bittmans on my list and completed, albeit a year later than I’d originally intended, my project. I have reflections to share, certainly, and I have changes and excitement and promises for the new year, but first, I think, let’s work with the program. Two Bittmans. Two reports:

“14. Steam or poach 2 cups of pumpkin cubes until tender. Meanwhile, sauté 1 cup sliced shiitake mushroom caps in vegetable oil with a few drops of sesame oil. Boil 4 cups water and whisk some of it with ⅓ to ½ cup of miso. Stir miso mixture, pumpkin and mushrooms into water and heat everything through, then serve, drizzled with more sesame oil.”

Because we were planning to reach midnight by ~~eating as many snacks as possible~~ ~~eating our way to midnight~~ snacking, I wanted a light dinner to precede the countdown. This seemed to fit the bill. And it had to, after all, since it was the only soup left and the calendar was screaming December 31^st.

2 cups peeled, cubed butternut squash (I had some in the fridge, and suspected pumpkin would be hard to find)

1 1 oz. package dried shiitake mushrooms

1 TB vegetable oil

¼ tsp (or to taste) toasted sesame oil, plus some for drizzling

3 packets instant tofu miso soup mix (all I could find at my grocery store)

water

white wine

To reconstitute my shiitake mushrooms, I soaked them in a mixture of white wine and almost boiling water for 15-20 minutes, until they were plump and soft.

While the mushrooms soaked, I cubed up my butternut squash and submerged the pieces in a pan of salted water. I brought this to a bare simmer and cooked it just until the squash pieces were tender – 10-15 minutes – then drained the pieces in a colander. Don’t overcook them, because they will start to fall apart. Set the squash pieces aside.

When the mushrooms were tender, I scooped them out of their bath and decided the remnants shouldn’t go to waste. I poured the soaking broth into a little pot to bring to a boil, so I could use this already flavored liquid as the base for my soup. While it heated, I stemmed and sliced the mushrooms.

Since the shiitakes were now basically cooked, I probably could have skipped Bittman’s sautéing step. But honestly, I’m not one to pass up the opportunity to ingest sesame oil, so I dutifully dribbled vegetable oil with a few (or a few more than a few) drops of sesame oil in the (drained and dried) pan I’d used to simmer my squash and sautéed the mushroom slices over medium heat until they dried out a bit and started to take on some color.

While this colorization happened, slowly and so aromatically, I made the broth. I poured all three miso soup seasoning packets – tofu and seaweed and all – into a small dish, then mixed in about ½ cup of my heated mushroom soaking liquid and whisked gently to dissolve the powdery soup mix. This created a slightly thickened slurry, which I poured with the rest of the liquid and the butternut squash cubes into the mushroom pan.

After a few moments of reheating, we dipped up bowlfuls and ate.

N. wasn’t sure (he sometimes takes issue with the texture of reconstituted mushrooms), but I inhaled it with devotion. I love the flavor of miso soup, and the mild sweetness of butternut squash against the salty umami and fleshy squish of the mushrooms was lovely.

It was light but still satisfying, and the tofu and vegetables from the soup mix were so welcome that I’d advise you, if you are using straight miso rather than a pre-mixed, additive laden packet, to consider adding some tofu or seaweed or green onion just to contribute a little substance and contrast to the soup.

Dinner done, we moved on to the second stage of the evening.

“89. Vegetable crackers: Slice beets, sweet potatoes, plantains or parsnips or all of the above into 1/8-inch disks (a mandoline is helpful) and toss lightly in olive oil. Spread the slices on baking sheets, sprinkle with salt, pepper and, if you like, other seasonings and bake at 400 degrees for 10 to 12 minutes. When browned, flip the chips over and bake for another 10 minutes or so.”

This sounded tasty, and I’d always intended to make it for a party. With a dear friend coming over to ring in the new year with us, and since hunks of cheese alone might be deemed a slightly imbalanced offering (though so, so delicious…), this seemed like a perfect opportunity. Beets were out of the question (N.’s nemeses since childhood), and I couldn’t find plantains in my grocery store’s produce section, so we were left with the nutty herbiness of parsnips and the always dependable earthy sweetness of sweet potato.

3 medium parsnips, peeled

½ large sweet potato, peeled

generous dose of olive oil (maybe ¼ cup?), plus more to grease the cookie sheets

1 tsp each (or to taste) salt, pepper, and garam masala

To prepare for roasting, preheat the oven to 400F and line two cookie sheets with aluminum foil. Drizzle with olive oil and spread to cover the surface of the foil evenly.

While the oven preheats, tackle the vegetables. I don’t have a mandoline, but I do have a ruler, and I must confess I did bring it to the kitchen to give myself a better idea of what 1/8 inch looks like. My slices were not quite even, but they did verge on passable. I tossed them – big coins of harvest orange and speckled white – in a glass bowl with the olive oil and the spices until they were evenly coated.

Spread the vegetable coins across the cookie sheets in a single layer, not overlapping, not in piles. If they cook in a stack, they will soften but not brown or crisp. Stow them in the oven for 12-15 minutes, or until they are just beginning to brown.

This next step is a true exercise in patience. Unless you are far more talented with a spatula than I, you will have to flip each piece over individually. You have to, because otherwise one side will burn and the other side will flutter limply into cooked-but-not-crisp status. Trust me on this one. When you have laboriously flipped each coin, shove the tray back into the oven for another 10-12 minutes.

At this point, you’ll have to use your judgment. My offerings were, after this additional time, cooked through but not remotely cracker-like in texture. Another five minutes in the oven might have done the trick. Putting them back in, failing to set a timer, and heading to the couch to eat dinner (I was trying to multitask) is not advisable. I didn’t remember them until I smelled the slightly spicy aroma of parsnips, and by then it was too late – many of the little coins had gone from crackers to briquets.

I decided to pick out the worst offenders – Lucy reports that she didn’t mind a bit of charred flavor – and eat the salvageable ones anyway.

To make them a bit more exciting (and disguise any lingering burned taste) I made a little dipping sauce. You’ll need:

juice from 1 lime

2 TB honey

1 tsp garam masala

½ – 1 cup Greek yogurt

Whisk the first three ingredients together with a fork until they are smooth. In increments, add Greek yogurt until your sauce reaches the desired thickness. Mine was about the consistency of ranch dressing, but much more interesting in flavor.

These crackers (with and without the sauce) were – if you were able to overlook the overcooking – a nice alternative to crudites or store-bought crackers. They weren’t quite as crispy (except the ones that were too crispy), but they had a lovely deep flavor and none of the powdery, processed taste some crackers can have. They are also a gluten-free offering and, minus the yogurt and honey sauce, vegan as well.

I served them alongside a cheese platter,

Joy the Baker’s chili spiced sharp cheddar cheese crackers,

assorted sweets,

and my appetizer version of Bittman’s “Marshmallow Topping for Adults” dish: thick discs of sweet potato roasted until tender, topped with a dollop of cream cheese and sprinkled with a pecan brown sugar blend before being broiled until the sugar bubbles and the cheese slackens toward melting.

And champagne, of course.

Happy New Year. I hope you celebrate your achievements, meet your goals, and find happiness in your own self. I’ll be checking in again later this week with some reflections and announcements. Welcome to 2013.

Finish line

Posted on December 29, 2012 by Chelsea

The problem with cramming for final exams – as many of my students were doing only a few weeks ago – is that you end up trying to process too much information, and just as quickly as you learn new things, the old things you thought you knew start sliding away. That’s the glory and the power of writing. Once it’s on the page, it’s solid. No matter how many holiday dinners you eat (I’m onto my third or fourth at this point), those words will still tell you exactly what you did and (sometimes) how you felt about it.

I feel like I’m cramming for my final. Last week, before the holiday, before the family time, before the outpouring of memories and laughter and swallowed tears of all kinds and barking and yelling and joy, I made three Bittmans in a desperate bid to stay on top of the project.

“42. Brussels Sprout Sliders: Trim and halve large brussels sprouts, toss with olive oil and roast at 400 degrees until tender but not mushy. Using the brussels sprout halves as you would hamburger buns, sandwich them around a piece of crispy bacon or ham, maybe a little caramelized onion, and a dab of whole grain mustard. Keep everything in place with toothpicks.”

I always intended to make this one for a Halloween party. It seemed fitting: for some, brussels sprouts are a frightening, disdained vegetable. But this new perspective on them makes them fun and perhaps even appetizing to those disbelievers who see them only as a bitter waterlogged grenade of disappointment. But I never did. So they became an appetizer for two:

6 brussels sprouts, trimmed and halved

2 strips bacon, cut into eight even pieces (you’ll use six for the brussels. Eat the other two, or share with a tall, handsome somebody who shows up in the kitchen when the smell becomes too enticing to ignore)

dab (maybe 1 tsp total?) whole grain mustard

Preheat the oven to 400F.

Line a small baking dish (I used a 9” cake pan) with aluminum foil and drizzle the foil with olive oil. Brush or rub the olive oil into an even layer so every millimeter of foil is covered.

Set the sprouts, cut side down, on the oiled foil, spacing them evenly so none are touching. This will ensure even roasting rather than steaming.

Roast for 15 minutes, until the cut edges are browned and just crisp. Using tongs, flip over each sprout so they teeter on their curved sides. Roast for another 15 minutes.

While sprouts are roasting, cook the bacon. Mine was already cooked – saved from another porky occasion – so during the last five minutes of sprout roasting I added the bacon pieces to the pan to heat them up a little.

When the sprouts are browned and lightly tender, set them aside until they are cool enough to handle. As soon as you can bear to touch them, add a tiny spread of mustard across one cut edge, seat the bacon atop it, and place another sprout half on top to complete the sandwich. Drive a toothpick through the whole thing and serve as an hors d’oeuvre.

We gobbled these down like we hadn’t eaten in weeks. They were delightful and I highly recommend them as a party item: crisp bacon, zesty mustard, and the nutty crunchy slight bitterness of roasted brussels sprouts, all collected together in one perfect bite. Perhaps a New Year’s Eve treat to help the hours pass.

Soup and bread seemed like a good meal to follow our sprouts.

“82. Cornmeal Flatbread with Onion and Sage: Mix 1 cup cornmeal with 1 teaspoon salt; slowly whisk in 1½ cups water. Cover and let sit for an hour (or up to 12 hours in the refrigerator). Put ¼ cup olive oil in a 12-inch ovenproof skillet along with a thinly sliced red onion; stir. Heat the skillet in a 400-degree oven for a few minutes, then stir and pour in the batter. Bake at 375 degrees until the flatbread is crisp at the edges and releases easily from the pan, about 45 minutes.”

I followed these directions fairly exactly, with the exception that I used only half an onion. The olive oil and onion went into the oven for five minutes at 400F, at which point the onion slices were sizzling and the oil was shimmering beautifully.

Bittman neglects to note where and when to add the sage, so I stirred a tablespoon of finely chopped fresh sage into the batter just before adding it to the skillet.

This concoction baked for 45 minutes, until it was set, the onions were crisp-tender, and the whole thing loosened easily from the skillet and slid almost gracefully onto a serving tray.

We cut large wedges and tasted. It was unlike any other bread I’ve come across – more like baked squares of polenta than anything else, which made sense when I stopped and thought about it. Were I renaming this dish, I think I would call it Polenta Pizza. It was well oiled and spongy in texture, squishing pleasingly between our teeth and driving us back for additional tastes. N. wasn’t sure he liked it at first, but then he went back for a second slice and then a third. When I ribbed him about this, he said he was still deciding what he really thought, and needed more samples to truly make up his mind.

This odd little bread course could easily be dunked in saucers of warmed marinara sauce, or sprinkled with mozzarella or parmesan for a pleasing salty bite. Though the onions and sage were good, you could probably saute almost anything in that skillet before adding the batter: sausage, peppers, mushrooms… anything you’d put on a pizza.

A decadent appetizer and a well-oiled pizza/bread need a sober, sensible kind of soup to balance them out.

“19. Saute chopped onions, garlic, celery and carrots in olive oil, then add chopped tomatoes (boxed are fine) with their juice, lentils and stock or water to cover. When everything is soft, add a squeeze of lemon juice or a splash of red wine vinegar. Garnish with parsley.”

Since we were leaving town the next day, I didn’t want huge quantities. (This still made enough for four, but I froze the leftovers so nothing was lost)

½ red onion (left from the flatbread, so convenient), diced

4-6 small cloves garlic, minced

1/3 cup each celery and carrots, sliced

¾ cup lentils

13.5 oz can petite diced tomatoes

2½ cups chicken broth (or vegetable broth, or water)

1 TB lemon juice

2 TB fresh, finely chopped parsley

salt and pepper to taste

I heated 2 TB olive oil over medium heat, then tossed in the onions to sweat for a minute or two before adding the garlic and the other vegetables. When the onions were translucent and tender, I added the tomatoes, lentils, and broth and turned the heat up to medium high until the whole pot came to a boil.

Once boiling, I gave it a healthy stir and then turned the heat down so the soup would just simmer, letting the lentils soften gently and the vegetables tenderize.

Simmer for at least 35 minutes, then taste the lentils to see if they are tender enough for your taste. We like them soft but not mushy, with minimal resistance but still able to hold their shape.

Just before serving, squeeze in the lemon juice, stir gently, and dip into serving bowls. Scatter the surface with a grassy sprinkle of parsley.

We liked this, though it wasn’t the best lentil soup I’ve ever had. The flavors were enticing and the lemon juice made it a bright, rather than heavy, soup. The problem with it was that I like my lentil soup more like a stew or a chili. The brightness of the lemon made the shower of shredded pepperjack cheese I was considering adding seem extraneous and out of place, and I tend to get crotchety when denied cheese. But alongside the flatbread and the richness of the brussels sprouts, it was hearty but didn’t weigh us down.

2012 is fading like the last sheen of daylight across the hills in winter. 2013 charges toward us, all mystery and sharp promise. I thought about cheating and saying I was done; these three dishes are the final three, I made it, all boxes are checked, all questions answered, funtoosh, kaput (extra points if you can name my source!), but I just can’t. I’m too close. This final exam is too important. This resolution needs to be one I keep. I have two dishes left. I have two days, one of which will be spent driving from the Sierra Nevada foothills where N.’s parents live back to Los Angeles and my little house. I hope I’m going to make it. The finish line is in sight. Now I just have to stagger across it.

Giving thanks

Posted on November 25, 2012 by Chelsea

The house feels empty. Wednesday through Saturday, my family visited for Thanksgiving. This morning, with them on the road home, fog hovering sticky in the sky, the cheery burgundy tablecloth in the washing machine, and a stack of lingering dishes I’m trying to ignore proclaiming themselves from the sink, our little home was stark and cold. I could say that the memories of the holiday will keep me warm, but that would only be true in a metaphorical sense. What I really want is another baked apple.

“90. Baked Apples: Combine chopped pecans and chopped dried fruit (raisins, dates, figs, cranberries all work) and toss with maple syrup and a sprinkle of cinnamon, allspice or nutmeg or all three. Fill the cavities of cored apples with the fruits and nuts, dot each with butter, put into a baking dish and roast about 30 minutes, until tender. Better with vanilla ice cream.”

We had a few small apples from our local Farmers’ Market waiting for attention in the fruit bowl, so I set about collecting partners for them to make a dessert for two.

2 small apples

¼ cup chopped pecans

¼ tsp pumpkin pie spice (I agree with Joy the Baker that we should probably just make our own, but if you, like me, purchased some in a moment of confused weakness, this seems a harmless way to put it to use)

1-2 TB each:

chopped dried figs (I used black Mission, my current favorite)

craisins

golden raisins

3 TB maple syrup

Preheat the oven to 350F.

Core the apples, keeping the bottoms intact if you can. If you can’t, just wrap the bottom quarter or so in aluminum foil and set them in a baking dish. This will keep the filling from escaping.

In a small bowl, combine the nuts, fruit, and spice(s). Drizzle in the maple syrup and stir gently to combine – you want even stickiness throughout.

Using a small spoon, or your fingers, insert as much filling as you can into the cored apples. You will notice that this quantity makes about twice as much as you need for 2 small apples. That’s okay. The leftovers are a fantastic topping for oatmeal the next morning.

Once full, stow your apples in the oven for 30 minutes, or until they are tender when pierced with a knife. Liberate, evacuate to a dessert plate, and pair with vanilla ice cream.

These were a lovely dessert. They felt light, because they were primarily fruit, but were still sweet enough to satisfy that after-dinner craving. The apples still had some resistance, but were warmed through and starting to collapse into themselves. The ice cream was a perfect accompaniment – I wouldn’t want this dessert without it. I might ideally have chosen an apple with more tartness to contrast against the sweetness of the syrup and dried fruit, but in such a case, especially if the apple were on the large size, I would advocate a longer baking time. If the fruit and nuts protruding from the top of the apple start to brown too much, give them a tinfoil hat to hide beneath.

“84. Sage Crackers: Pulse 1 cup flour, 1 teaspoon salt, ½ cup Parmesan and 4 tablespoons cold butter in a food processor. Add ¼ cup cream and 1 tablespoon finely chopped sage. When just combined, roll as thinly as possible, score into squares, sprinkle with salt and bake at 400 degrees until golden. Let cool, then break into pieces.”

I’ve always liked a nice cheese-and-crackers platter as an appetizer option, and these seemed like a good option to lead into the big Thanksgiving meal: relatively easy to make, but impressive – who wouldn’t be staggered by the effort of making homemade crackers even with a homemade feast to produce as well?

Bittman’s directions and quantities here are pretty specific, so I just followed his directions. I omitted the salt, because Parmesan carries so much of its own tangy hit, and my parents are not big salt eaters. It should also be noted that pulsing this mixture until just combined does not create a rollable dough, unless my idea of “just combined” is different from Bittman’s. However, turning out the just-clinging crumbs onto a floured board and kneading for only a minute or two does produce a nice textured ball of dough that can be rolled out with minimal sticking.

I’d recommend aiming for a shape as close to a rectangle as possible. Further, roll that rectangle to the size of your biggest cookie sheet. That way you can carefully transport onto the greased or parchment-lined sheet tray by draping the dough loosely over the rolling pin. Score it very gently into rectangles or squares of your chosen size (cut halfway through the dough with a knife, not all the way through), and into the oven with it!

When I checked these 20 minutes later, they were a little more golden than I wanted. They were, in fact, heading toward a burnished bronze (is that not the kindest way ever of saying they were all-but-burned?).

After the cracker sheet had cooled for a few minutes, I broke it along the scored lines into neat (mostly) rectangles and we passed around a few samples. The outside edges, which were thinner, had a slightly over-toasted flavor we didn’t love. The inside rectangles, though, were crisp and flavorful, with a flaky – almost chalky – texture reminiscent at once of pie crust and shortbread. My dad in particular, who enjoys this texture, thought they were great.

And now the confession: my final Bittman for this week is a bit of a cheat. But I’m okay with that, because I also think it was a bit of a cheat for him, though in the best and most useful way.

“101. Buy some cheese. Unwrap it and put it on a plate with some walnuts and fruit; let come to room temperature. Serve with good bread.”

This is the final numerical entry of the list, and that means it’s in the dessert category. While I accept that some people prefer a cheese course to dessert, I’m not sure I consider this an acceptable option for Thanksgiving. It is, however, acceptable as an appetizer idea, as I mentioned above. So that’s what I did. In addition to the sage parmesan crackers above, I made my favorite craisin rosemary biscotti-style crackers with white bean and almond dip, and set them all out with some creamy Stilton, a nice rich chevre, and a wedge of Manchego obtained from a stand at the Farmers’ Market where we finally decided we’d had too many samples to feel right about not purchasing. Surrounding these, I added dried apple rings, black Mission figs, and a fresh Granny Smith cut into slim slices. The walnuts, which I was ready to add as well after a brief toasting, were subjected instead to accidental scorching, and had to be sacrificed. We will speak of them no further.

What can you say about a cheese platter, besides that it was delicious? We adored the Manchego, and soft crumbles of Stilton paired well with the fresh apples. I tried fig and goat cheese together, and now I think chevre-stuffed-figs sounds like an amazing experiment. We decimated the platter in little over ten minutes, but thankfully were not too stuffed to take full advantage of the turkey dinner that followed.

With Thanksgiving handled, that leaves only five weeks of 2012, and only twelve Bittman selections to go! New Year’s Eve is on a Monday, but that still counts as this year if I need to jam in a few final selections, right?

I think I can, I think I can, I think I can…

Trick or Treat

Posted on November 4, 2012 by Chelsea

Halloween is easily in my top three holidays. I have to give the prize to Christmas, because it means family and love and sweaters, but Thanksgiving and Halloween chase each other in circles to gain second place. Despite that love (overwhelming in some cases, especially if you, like N., are not invested in costuming yourself at every possible occasion), this is the first year in almost a decade that I’ve done nothing to celebrate. No costume. No party. No decorations. We bought candy for the six kids that showed up (only six! The whole evening! Was it just because it was a Wednesday, or do kids not trick or treat like they once did?) and I definitely listened to the Halloween party mix my friend D. made for me a few years ago, but it felt a bit like a lost holiday.

I did embrace the season, though, the following day. Having Thursdays off gave me the opportunity to do something I’ve been wanting to do for years: pillage Target’s day after Halloween sale for leftover clearance items (read: treats!).

The tricks began when I began work on the evening’s dinner. It was, I realize in retrospect, a bit of a Chopped style enterprise: appetizer, entree, and dessert, each made with ingredients I’d not expected to meld. In each case, however, the “trick” aspect of the dish was my doing, not the recipe’s.

“12. Garlic-Rosemary Figs: Soak dried figs, stems removed, in warm water until plump; drain and halve. Heat rosemary and lightly smashed (and peeled) garlic with olive oil on medium-low heat, until softened. Add figs, along with some fresh orange juice. Cook until saucy.

Pairing figs, garlic, and orange juice seemed odd. Nevertheless, I collected enough for one portion (this was not N.’s kind of dish):

6 dried black mission figs

1-2 tsp fresh rosemary

2 smashed, peeled garlic cloves

1 TB olive oil

juice from 1 small orange (⅓ – ½ cup juice)

I heated some water in my teakettle and poured it over the figs (which I’d halved prematurely. Apparently paying attention to the directions is kind of important), which I let stew on the counter for half an hour.

Figs vaguely plumped, I drained them and set them aside, then put the garlic cloves, rosemary, and oil into a cold pan. I heated it over medium for five minutes or so – just until the rosemary started to sizzle and the garlic turned a little blonde. Then I added the figs and orange juice, and simmered for fifteen minutes or so, until the orange juice had reduced considerably.

I plated, I ate, and I considered. This didn’t taste bad, but it didn’t marry absurdly well either. The rosemary and the figs were lovely. The orange juice and figs were fine (though the orange was a bit overpowering). The garlic and figs were… unobjectionable. They just weren’t my favorite.

I must say, though, I recalled while I was cleaning up after dinner that this entry was in the “Sauces and Relishes” category. I had eaten it straight. This was, perhaps, why I wasn’t enamored of it. Therefore, I’d recommend spooning this over lamb chops, or pork tenderloin, either of which would add some savory notes to make the garlic feel less anomalous.

Though this “appetizer” wasn’t fantastic, I ate it with a fantastic grain-salad-turned-hash inspired by Smitten Kitchen. I want to revisit this hash, because I think it could use some additions, but here are the basics:

Line a baking sheet with aluminum foil. Set it in the oven and preheat to 400F. Yes, you are preheating the pan along with the oven.

Peel and halve a butternut squash. Seed half of it and cut that half into small cubes. In a bowl, toss the cubes with salt, pepper, and olive oil, then tumble onto the baking sheet (where they will sizzle immediately – this is a good thing) and stow back in the oven for 35-45 minutes, or until they have golden edges and creamy soft middles.

During the last ten minutes of squash roasting, push the squash to the sides of the pan (or just grab another pan, if you aren’t invested in avoiding dishes, like me) and stack 4 cups or so of trimmed, cut kale that has also been tossed in olive oil, salt, and pepper. The kale and squash will cook down a little more together, and you will be left with something not quite like kale chips, but a bit more textured than if you’d boiled or steamed it.

While the squash and kale roast, cook 1 cup of bulgur wheat in chicken (or vegetable) broth. When done, fluff gently with a fork and toss with squash and kale.

During the last few minutes of roasting time, toast 2 TB pumpkin seeds in a dry pan until they begin to snap and crack.* Be careful not to burn them. Toss with bulgur and vegetable mixture.

In the pumpkin seed pan (again, avoiding dishes), heat an egregious quantity of butter until foamy and crack in an egg to fry until the edges frizzle and brown and crackle. Despite a few careful taps, on this egg of all eggs – the egg I wanted to photograph quivering atop my hash, the egg I wanted to show just cut and lusciously runny – I somehow shoved my thumb through the yolk and it broke all over the pan. Nasty trick, egg.

Nevertheless, I piled my hash up on my plate, carefully laid the fried egg over it, and dug in. It was a hearty, pretty, perfectly autumnal dish. It needs some tweaking before I’m thrilled with it – perhaps some sautéed leeks folded into the bulgur, or some light spices on the butternut squash – but this was a delightful start.

I turned to dessert:

“96. Sweet Autumn Gratin: Combine cubed pumpkin or sweet potato with cranberries and hazelnuts in a buttered baking dish. Sprinkle with brown sugar and toss. Drizzle cream all over, dot with butter and bake until soft, bubbly and browned, 50 to 60 minutes. Re-warm before serving if you like.

I’m going to give you a list not of my ingredients and procedure, but of what I should have used and done.

1 big sweet potato, peeled and diced

½ cup dried cranberries (I didn’t have fresh, so I don’t know what they would be like. Presumably more successful because they would emit, not swallow, liquid)

½ cup walnuts, coarsely chopped (I couldn’t find hazelnuts anywhere – who would have thought this would be the food item I would miss most from Oregon?!)

¼ – ½ cup brown sugar, depending on how sweet you like it

¼ cup heavy cream

¼ cup butter

Preheat the oven to 400F. Butter a 9×13 inch pan (my round, much smaller dish was a poor choice).

Toss the sweet potato chunks, cranberries, and walnuts with brown sugar. Spread them out in the pan in an even layer. Pour on the cream, then pinch off pieces of butter and dot them over the top.

Bake for an hour, or until the sweet potato pieces are fully cooked.

I did few of these things. My sweet potatoes were in bigger-than-they-should-have-been chunks, piled up in a small casserole dish, starving for cream (I only had a tablespoon or two) and shorted on sugar. As a result, at the end of an hour they were hot but still resistant in texture. I think what you want is melting, creamy softness.

Tricked again.

To remedy this problem, I tried several things. First, I made a bourbon hard sauce (equal parts sugar and water, stir to melt. Add ¼ cup butter, stir carefully until it melts. Add a shot or two of bourbon, cook just a minute or two to take the edge off) to pour over the top. This helped, and I willingly ate a serving, but it was lacking whipped cream or ice cream or, bizarrely, pie crust.

I didn’t figure out the pie crust thing until the next day when I was making empanadas for dinner. As I pressed my fork into the edge of the dough to crimp it, I was flooded with the right answer: tiny hand pies stuffed with my sweet potato mixture!

This was clearly the right thing to do. Saturday afternoon, I unrolled a pie crust on my counter, cut out 3 inch circles, and proceeded to fill them with a teaspoon or two each of the gratin, which I’d mashed with a fork to make smoother and therefore more manageable.

Once filled, fold in half, press and then crimp with a fork, and brush with egg wash (1 egg yolk + 1 TB water). Sprinkle with turbinado or other raw, chunky sugar, and bake in a preheated 400F oven for 15 minutes, or until the tops are golden brown and the dough is flaky.

These make lovely, tiny snacks. The craisins give a punch of tartness to the sweet, earthy, almost heavy sweet potato and walnut pairing. There are subtle floral hints in there, because before putting it away that first night I admit to dumping the bourbon sauce over the whole thing, but this adds a flavor I wouldn’t change. The dough is buttery and flaky and collapses easily around the filling, and it’s difficult to prevent yourself from standing over the pan as it comes steaming out of the oven and eating four or five in a row, scalding your tongue and not caring at all.

Perfect November treat.

* You could, I suppose, use butternut squash seeds, if you are the sort of person with the forethought to save, rinse, and dry the seeds while you clean your squash. I, clearly, am not.

Three for One

Posted on October 7, 2012 by Chelsea

Sometimes you are faced with not enough: not enough time, not enough money, not enough to do…

And sometimes you are faced with too much: too much bounty, too much responsibility, too much joy. These are both their own kind of problem. And if I have to choose, faced with these Januses, I will always go for too much. Even if I fall short.

Last week I only managed one Bittman. This week, in a startling display of ambition and motivation, I did three.

One of the biggest challenges of this project (aside from cooking, photographing, and writing about the food… you know… actually doing it…) has been deciding what to serve these dishes with. I’m not up for roasting a chicken or a turkey every week to emulate the Thanksgiving spirit of the project, so I try to piece them together with other entrees. As you’ve seen, if you’ve been following the project for any length of time, sometimes I choose well, and sometimes I decidedly don’t.

This week, riffling through the slowly diminishing options, it occurred to me for the first time that I could serve them as complements to each other. They were all, after all, conceived for the same imagined table. They should work together quite nicely.

“7. Cranberry-Orange Sauce: Cook a bag of fresh cranberries with orange and lemon zest, cut up (peeled) orange segments, ¼ cup sugar (or to taste) and a bit of minced jalapeño or chipotle.”

This sounded good and, with the slightly cooler temperatures we’ve been privileged to receive lately, a nice symbol of our entry into Fall. Cranberries and oranges are a frequent couple – almost too expected – but there’s a reason they appear together so frequently. And with the addition of lemon juice and some spice, this seemed far enough from traditional to avoid being boring.

1 bag cranberries (probably 1 pound?)

Zest of 1 lemon

Zest of 1 large or two small oranges (mine were little Valencias from our Farmers’ Market)

Segments of 1 large or two small oranges

¼ – ½ cup sugar, depending on your taste and the tartness of your berries

Dash of spice, depending on your taste

I bounced the cranberries into a pot, zested the lemon and oranges over them, and then cut the peel from the orange and sliced out supremes. For good measure, I squeezed as much juice from the wasted scraps of orange as I could, then topped the mix with sugar and a dusting of cayenne (I had neither jalapeno or chipotle available) and pushed it onto the back burner.

I let the pot come to a boil over medium heat, stirring occasionally to melt the sugar evenly and prevent it from burning until the cranberries released some juice to protect the mixture. Once it boiled, I lowered the heat and let the whole thing simmer for about 20 minutes. At one point I tasted, decided there wasn’t enough sugar or cayenne, and added more of both. The addition of sugar was a good thing. The addition of more cayenne was less so. I’d caution you to start with less than you think you will want. The mixture does not taste at all spicy while it’s hot. When it cools, though, it becomes fiery. It was still tasty, though. We ate it sticky and thick and room temperature, dabbing up popped clusters of ruby and letting it linger on our tongues – but not too long – enough to wake our taste buds from the spice. As an autumnal side, this works very well and is a pleasant update to the traditional cranberry sauce. It would also make a glorious topping for a baked brie, perhaps with some rosemary or red wine glugged in for good measure.

While the cranberry sauce was heating, I turned my attention to its companion.

“59. Blanch thinly sliced potato and leeks until tender but not mushy; drain well. Layer the vegetables in an oiled or buttered baking dish, then top with a mixture of bread crumbs and lightly sautéed chopped bacon (some cheese mixed in is pretty good, too). Broil until golden brown.”

Potatoes and leeks are a combination that, a mere year or so ago, I didn’t realize existed. Now it’s such a natural pairing I can’t believe I never knew about it before. Sliced blanched potatoes and sautéed leeks now fill every frittata I make. I collected:

2 russet potatoes, peeled

1 massive leek, tough tops and root ends removed, halved vertically (rinse it out well at this point) and sliced into slim, slim, oh-so-slim half moons

1 lb. bacon

½ – 1 cup bread crumbs (I used Italian seasoned)

Knowing how good leeks can be when they are sweated and barely brown, and conscious that the beauty of bacon grease shouldn’t go to waste, I made a few changes to Bittman’s directions.

First I cooked the bacon. You likely don’t need a whole pound of it, but this guaranteed an appetizer: one still sizzling slice each for N. and for me. If you aren’t cooking for or with someone else, go wild and have two all by your lonesome.

While the bacon cooked and the cranberries simmered and popped, I put a pot of water on to boil. When its aggressive bubbling demanded attention, I carefully lowered in the potato slices and gave them free reign for five or ten minutes.

When it was edging toward crisp, I set the bacon aside to cool and drain a bit on a paper towel lined plate. I dumped the potatoes into a colander when they were barely cooked through.

Time for the leeks. I scraped my board free of the slender, just green shards, capturing a satisfying fizz as the vegetation hit the pan. You want to stir with some frequency here, and not raise the heat above medium; we’re looking for a light sauté, not a heavy brown.

The shards collapsed into resistant-less ribbons, and I pushed them to one side to add the drained, cooling potatoes. With adept wooden spoon manipulation, I managed to achieve something like layering: half the potatoes flat on the bottom of the pan, the leeks draped across them, and the rest of the potato slices on top.

I turned on my broiler, and while it heated I crumbled the bacon, tossed it with bread crumbs, and dusted the potatoes with the mixture. But dust wasn’t enough. They required a landslide. I drizzled the top with olive oil, knowing the bread crumbs would need it to brown, and slid the whole pan into the broiler (note: if you use a skillet or pan for this, rather than a casserole dish, be sure you wrap any plastic or rubber with aluminum foil before you put it into the broiler. We don’t want your nice pan handles to melt…).

Five minutes later, the parts of the crumble I had oiled were beautiful brown (the other parts remained sandy and unaltered, much to my chagrin) and the dog was close by, nose moist with curiosity and the urge to assist.

We loaded our plates, completing the meal with a completely unnecessary slice of toasted jalapeno cheese bread, and ate.

As has proved often the case with Bittman’s layered vegetable dishes, I expected this one to be a gratin, and it just wasn’t. Some cream, some cheddar cheese, some binding between the vegetables, would have been ideal. But not crucial. They weren’t supposed to be scalloped potatoes, after all. The bacon and bread crumbs made them exciting, and the leeks were almost creamy nestled between the thick slices. Honestly, forgetting to salt the water I boiled the potatoes in was the only real unfortunate mistake. Two down, with only one mistake (two, I suppose, if you count the overly spicy cranberries, which I suppose I do), is pretty promising.

To make this a trifecta, on another night I chose another autumnal option.

“64. Mushroom Bread Pudding: Put 6 cups of good bread (day-old is best) cut into 1-inch chunks into a buttered baking dish. Beat 4 eggs with 2 cups of milk and ½ cup grated Parmesan and pour over the bread. Sauté 4 cups of sliced mushrooms until tender with a teaspoon or two fresh thyme leaves and mix into the bread. Bake until just set, about 40 minutes.”

Mushrooms and thyme are so nice together. They are earthy and deep and musty, like the back of a dark pantry into which no anxious hands have reached for some time. Since they were more precise than usual, I followed Bittman’s ingredient quantities almost to the letter.

I sautéed the mushrooms and thyme in butter, taking time to let the slices soak up the butter, then expel their own liquid. Only after that, as the moisture from the mushrooms evaporates from the pan, can the mushrooms take on the same kind of crisp brown sear as a steak pressed into a screamingly hot pan.

While the mushrooms cooled, I tore up the crusts of a month’s worth of sourdough bread (I keep them in the freezer for just these sorts of occasions) and pressed them gently into a buttered square glass baking dish. I grated cheese – swiss and parmesan – and cracked eggs from the Farmers’ Market into a bowl, marveling at the rich orange yolks you just can’t get in the grocery store. I stabbed them, flooded them with milk, and whisked in the cheese.

I turned to assembly. First, mushrooms must be tossed with bread. Attempt even distribution. Then, a careful, rich pour of the dairy component, taking care to attend to the corners, until the bread almost floated in a puddle of would-be custard.

One of the things I’ve learned in my years of bread pudding production is that pressure and soaking time yield the best results. I carefully pressed a layer of plastic wrap over the top of my pudding and set it in the fridge for an hour, while N. and I answered the velvet brown eyes begging for “walkies.”

Upon our return, it was as simple as preheating the oven to 375F (pull the pudding out of the fridge and let it approach room temperature as your oven heats), sliding the baking dish onto a rack, and reluctantly grading a paper or two as 45 minutes ticked by (I like my bread pudding a little more than “just” set).

A puff in the center signifies doneness. Mine levitated just barely in the middle, but the custard was set and the edges of bread not submerged were crisp and darkly golden.

The serving spoon broke sharply through the crisp top but then exhaled through the custard underneath. Piled on our plates next to an amazing skillet casserole of deeply browned sautéed Brussels sprouts and chopped walnuts drizzled with a balsamic glaze, we accepted its golden softness. With a higher ratio of eggs to milk than most bread puddings I’ve made, this had almost a soufflé quality, though vastly more substantial. It was rich and earthy and savory, and I suspect it will be just as good for breakfast as it was for dinner.

Three more down. This can be done. 2012 has already been a year of many accomplishments. Why not go for too many, rather than hesitating at not enough?

Food from Fiction Potluck

Posted on June 3, 2012 by Chelsea

So what does one do, you might ask, as a newly minted Doctor of Literature, unfettered from the everyday proletariat academic concerns? Well, one grades, and one line edits, and one revises frantically, and frankly, one feels completely different and not different at all. The school year isn’t over, even though (as of Tuesday, when I upload my “completed” dissertation to our Graduate School’s website) my degree is. So my daily duties no longer include anxious preparing for the big day, but they still include student emails and lesson planning and reading.

But because they don’t include anxious preparation and last minute rethinking and nail biting about what the committee will think, these days can also include celebrations. Last night was one such celebration: a party I’ve wanted to have for several years now. The style: potluck. The theme: “Food in Fiction.” Interpretation: bring a dish inspired by or mentioned in a book. That’s it. There are so many vivid options in novel, drama and film, and our guests had only to choose one and recreate it in the material, taste-bud-bearing world.

We had tremendous fun, in brainstorming, in cooking, and in sharing the variety of dishes from books we love. As I mentioned to one friend who thanked N. and I for the great party on his way out the door, this is a party we had to have before parting ways as many of us graduate this June, because only in this company could we feel so self-congratulatory and so excited about immersing ourselves in something so nerdy.

Here are a few of the dishes we enjoyed. I suggested to folks that they provide the description of the food in question from its source text so guests would know what they were eating and which world it was taking them to. We had Victorian sandwiches and High Modernism Stew nestling next to a magical realist chutney and a warm wassail of fantasy. What wandering, all in one house…

Cucumber sandwiches from Oscar Wilde’s “The Importance of Being Earnest.”

Rorschach’s beans from the graphic novel “Watchmen.”

Boeuf en daube from Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse.

A trio of deviled eggs to breathe life into Hemingway’s thoughts on being hard boiled in The Sun Also Rises.

A wonderfully smoky molasses cake inspired by the molasses-drenched dinner scene in Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird.

Well spiked butterbeer (you drop in a few marshmallows which, as they melt, mimic the foamy head on the beer) from J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series.

Not pictured: (more!) deviled eggs, from Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon, sautéed marinated mushrooms inspired by Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, raspberry cordial from L. M. Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables, and a few sourceless delights: meatballs (Cloudy with a chance of, perhaps?), and a bread, cheese, and hard salami platter. These were justified by their authors with the claims that “surely there must be moments of literary eating that include these items,” which I was quite willing, given their deliciousness, to accept. And of course, wine. If we were picky, we could call this an homage to Hemingway, whose characters “get tight” with abandon, or to Carroll’s Alice, who does imbibe from the mysterious bottle demanding she “drink me.”

I made two offerings: a take on the “green as grasshoppers” chutney so adored by Saleem in Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children, and a pork pie stuffed with hard boiled eggs from Roald Dahl’s Danny the Champion of the World. Both turned out extremely well, but I want to talk about the pie first.

Danny the Champion of the World is the story of a boy and his father. Without giving too much away, I will only say that Danny’s father suffers an injury almost halfway into the book, and when Doc Spencer, the family physician, brings him home from the hospital to the gypsy caravan in which he and Danny live, Doc also brings Danny a package from his wife:

“Very carefully, I now began to unwrap the waxed paper from around the doctor’s present, and when I had finished, I saw before me the most enormous and beautiful pie in the world. It was covered all over, top, sides, and bottom, with rich golden pastry. I took a knife from beside the sink and cut out a wedge. I started to eat it in my fingers, standing up. It was a cold meat pie. The meat was pink and tender with no fat or gristle in it, and there were hard-boiled eggs buried like treasures in several different places. The taste was absolutely fabulous. When I had finished the first slice, I cut another and ate that, too. God bless Doctor Spencer, I thought. And God bless Mrs. Spencer as well” (Dahl 85-86).

Since my first trip through Danny, I salivated over this savory pie Danny enjoys. And this party was the perfect excuse to attempt my own.

I found a perfect (and much prettier) base recipe for my pie in the archives of the blog Married… With Dinner. Though I followed their basic instructions, I made a few amendments for ease and expense. The key points are as follows:

Use a springform pan. That way the pie is tall and regal and can sit magically outside a pie plate all on its own.

Roll the bottom crust out large enough to come almost all the way up the sides of the springform (I used storebought crust and it work out just fine), so you can connect top and bottom more easily.

I squashed together a mixture of ground pork, pork sausage, finely chopped ham from a ham slice, salt, cayenne pepper, ground cloves, and black pepper. I pressed a thin layer of the meat mixture onto the bottom of the pie crust, then laid six hard boiled eggs in a circle through the middle of the pie (regrettably, with ham-covered hands, I did not get a photo of this). Then I lightly packed the rest of the meat mixture around and over the eggs and sank a bay leaf deep into the very center of the pie.

A traditional English pork pie has warm pork stock poured into a hole in the crust just after baking, which turns into a thick jelly as the pie cools. This did not sound particularly delicious to me, though I did like the idea of a rich layer of something atop my pork. I decided on cheese. I grated about a cup of sharp cheddar and sprinkled it lightly on top of the meat before draping the top pie crust over it. I cut a little hole in the center of the crust and sliced some steam vents for additional release before baking.

It’s a long baking process (almost two hours), but you are dealing with raw pork, so the cooking time needs to be sufficient. When the pie is almost done, Married… With Dinner recommends you carefully release the spring on the pan and brush an egg wash all over the top and sides of the pie. Fifteen minutes more in the oven and this results in a beautiful, shiny golden glaze all over the pie. It also, in case you are lazy like me and didn’t brush an egg wash over the top edge of the bottom crust to help the lid adhere, creates an after-the-fact glue to hold base and lid together.

I let my pie cool on the counter for an hour or so, then tented it with aluminum foil and stowed it in the fridge until the party started. It did, after all, have to be a cold meat pie.

It was fabulous. The meat was nicely spiced and the ham bits shredded in added some smoky, salty variety. The hard boiled eggs were, indeed, delightful treasures to find, though I admit to over-boiling them slightly so their yolks were not as bright as they could have been. Still, this is hardly a complaint. It was like a meatloaf wrapped in flaky, buttery crust, and the cheese was a nice additional flavor and richness. I suspect this could have been just as good warm as it was cold, but the pie might not have held together quite as nicely.

My second offering was a cilantro coconut chutney. Saleem, as Midnight’s Children comes to a close, receives a meal from a blind waitress. He lists:

“On the thali of victory: samosas, pakoras, rice, dal, puris; and green chutney. Yes, a little aluminum bowl of chutney, green, my God, green as grasshoppers… and before long a puri was in my hand; and chutney was on the puri; and then I had tasted it, and almost imitated the fainting act of Picture Singh, because it had carried me back to a day when I emerged nine-fingered from a hospital and went into exile at the home of Hanif Aziz, and was given the best chutney in the world… the taste of the chutney was more than just an echo of that long-ago taste – it was the old taste itself, the very same, with the power of bringing back the past as if it had never been away…” (Rushdie 525).

I found a recipe for a coriander chutney replete with tart lemon juice, lip puckering spice from serrano chiles, and bright, bright green cilantro, tempered by shredded coconut. The recipe called for unsweetened coconut but I, in my haste, having only sweetened, forgot to rinse it to get some of the sugar off before dropping it into my food processor. As a result, my chutney was lightly sweetened, but no one seemed to mind that, especially when it was spread onto the pakoras I made.

I searched around online and made a master recipe from a combination of ideas for these pakoras. Mine included:

4 cloves garlic, smashed and finely minced

2 tsp. each:

Garam masala

Turmeric

Chili powder

Salt

2 cups Bob’s Red Mill gluten-free all-purpose flour (pakoras are made with garbanzo bean flour, and though the Bob’s Red Mill mix is a blend including potato starch, it is composed mostly of garbanzo and fava bean flours, so since I had it, I decided a little break from tradition would be okay. This is literature, after all. It’s all interpretation anyway!)

1 ½ cups water

½ head cauliflower, diced

¾ large onion, diced

1 small sweet potato, diced

1 quart vegetable oil

Heat the vegetable oil to 375F in a large, sturdy pot. I used my dutch oven.

While the oil heats, whisk together the dry ingredients and garlic until well combined, then slowly whisk in the water to form a thick, smooth batter.

Add the diced vegetables and stir to combine.

Drop spoonfuls of the batter (ever so carefully! Watch out for splashes!) into the hot oil and fry for 5-6 minutes, or until the batter is deeply golden and the vegetables inside have magically cooked.

I got to taste one of these. It was crunchy and starchy and slightly spicy and wholesome and delicious. It was vegan. It was gluten-free. Topped with the chutney it was fresh and springy and spicy and then gone. By the time I went back to have another, the giant platter I’d made was empty, and only a spoonful or two of chutney remained. Pride overwhelms disappointment, in moments like these. My little experiment was so successful it prohibited me from tasting further. So I had another deviled egg instead.

Full and happy, we fell into bed at midnight with a sinkful of dishes and a fridge-full of leftovers to look forward to. It’s like reopening a book to your favorite chapter: whose world will I lunch from, dine from, be returned to today?

"blackberry-eating in late September"

food, in so many words.

Category Archives: Appetizers