my madeleine

Nigella's Chocolate Raspberry Pavlova

2012-02-04T13:48:00.001-05:00

Hello.

Since I last wrote (really wrote) (uh, last year!), a lothas happened. There was Thanksgiving, then Hanukkah, and then Christmas. Ibrined a turkey. I ate latkas. I braised veal. I whipped some cream to top a cloud-like pavlova that I haven’tstopped thinking about since.

It was cold, and then it waswarm, and then it was cold again. There was New Years: I made gnocchi withbrowned butter and sage, and devoured salad with sautéed dates among good friends. I bought new (big) eyeglasses and, as a result, find myself looking ata stranger in the mirror.

My essay in O the Oprah Magazine was published(check it out!). I spoke with Christopher Kimball on America’s Test Kitchen Radio (podcasts are on iTunes!). I realized that the book I’m editing for thatsame company has a rapidly approaching deadline. (BTW, it’s a great book, acookbook, on shelves this fall. I’ll tell you all about it soon.) But despitethis impending due date, I first sought out and then accepted even more freelancedeadlines, which I continue to struggle to meet (oy!).

This is all to say that overthe last two months, I first felt energized. And then I felt tired. And then Ifelt sick.

A month or so ago, I camedown with shingles. Yes. Shingles. Let me tell you, this is not an illness Irecommend. But being sick did give me the excuse to watch 6 episodes of Downton Abbey in one go. Just as soon as I began to feel better, however, I caught awinter cold. A bad cold. One that fogged my head, stopped me up, reminded me yetagain what it is like not to be able to smell. It seemed impossible that myimmune system could be as nonchalant as to let anything else attack my body.But then this week I had the flu. The flu! It was only a 24-hour bug. But rightnow? I feel drained.

So. I’m here. And I’m goingto try and stay here. I can’t make any promises. But I miss words. I miss my words. I miss that magic of sittingdown and letting them come, of arranging them and rearranging them, of coaxingthem to become what I want.

At least there’s alwayspavolva. Right?

This fall, the Culinary Guild of New England read my book in their book club, and I had the honor ofattending the meeting. This particular gathering was the best of its kind: Adessert potluck. And while everything I ate there was well done, there was onedish that stuck with me. A chocolate pavolva. It was crisp yet pillowy, thesweet countered by a cloud of unsweetened whipped cream and a mound of freshraspberries piled on top. I asked for the recipe, and was pointed to Nigella Lawson.

I thought about this pavolvafor a good three months before I attempted to make my own. I mean, meringue canbe finicky, and raspberries aren’t really in season. But then I did, on Christmas Day.And it was good.

Chocolate Raspberry Pavlova

via Nigella Lawson

Meringue can be intimidating, I know. The key is tomake sure that you whip the egg whites to the desired consistency (stiff andshiny). The sugar, which you add slowly to the mix after the egg whites aresatiny and smooth, delays and then stabilizes the egg foam, helping themeringue hold its shape as it bakes. The addition of balsamic vinegar (an acid)helps the egg proteins to thicken at a lower temperature, with a more tenderresult.

It’s important to cook the meringue slowly. After itbakes at 300 degrees for a bit over an hour, don’t remove the meringue from theoven. Instead, turn down the heat, crack the door a smidge, and let it situntil completely cool. This slow, gentle cooking helps the meringue to remainpillowy and intact. (But don’t worry if it falls in the center after baking.Mine did. The beauty of this dessert is that 1. you invert the meringue so thatthe smooth bottom becomes the top and 2. the whipped cream hides allimperfections anyway.)

Ifyou don’t have access to superfine sugar (I didn’t) it’s easy to make: Justwhirl regular granulated sugar in the food processor for a bit.

6 large egg whites

2 cups superfine sugar

3 tablespoons unsweetenedcocoa powder, sifted

1 teaspoon balsamic vinegar

2 ounces dark chocolate,finely chopped

2 cups heavy cream

4 cups raspberries

1 ounce dark chocolate

Preheat the oven to 350degrees Fahrenheit. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.

Nigella suggests outliningthe shape of your 9-inch cake tin on the parchment paper in pencil, and then flippingover the paper so that when you place the raw meringue on the sheet, it won’ttouch the pencil. She’s a smart lady.

Beat the egg whites in yourstanding mixer until soft peaks begin to form. Then, begin adding the sugar ina slow stream, beating the eggs until they are stiff and shiny.

Now add the cocoa, vinegar,and chopped chocolate to the egg whites. Mix gently, but thoroughly, with arubber spatula.

To bake the meringue: dab abit of meringue on the underside the parchment paper on the baking sheet tosecure it in place. Then, pile the meringue batter within the outlined 9-inchcircle in the center of the parchment. Use your spatula to smooth and round.

As soon as you place themeringue in the oven, turn the heat down to 300 degrees. Cook for 1 to 1 ¼hours. The meringue is finished when it looks crisp and dry on top, but is still“squidgy,” says Nigella, when you prod it with your fingers.

Don’t remove the meringuefrom the oven. Instead, turn off the heat, and open the door a tiny bit. Letcool completely, at least an hour or two. (The woman who made this pavlova atthe book club I attended said that she left it in the oven overnight. Just,FYI.) When ready to serve, invert the baked meringue onto a large plate andpeel off the parchment.

Now, beat the cream in yourstanding mixer gently until it is thick and cloud-like but still soft. Pile iton top of the meringue. Scatter the raspberries on top. And then grate theremaining 1-ounce chocolate (a vegetable peeler works well, too) on top ofthe raspberries. Done!

I am...

2012-01-15T14:09:00.000-05:00

... still here. I swear. AndI'll be back soon. Probably with a recipe. Maybe for this pavlova, which I madelast month, and haven’t stopped thinking about since. And I’m not really ameringue person. So that says a lot.

PS. Check out the Februaryissue of O, The Oprah Magazine if you get a chance – I’m happy to report that I have anessay (with recipes!) within.

thanksgiving

2011-11-27T09:17:00.001-05:00

Marcella Hazan's Pear Cake

2011-11-20T11:13:00.001-05:00

Thedays are melting away quickly. I can see them go from the window near my desk,the light drip drip dripping down the skyline. This begins at 5, at 4, now at3:30 I have to flip on my lamp. I love the approach of winter. Suddenly the airsmells of sweet, sudden cold, of braised beef, of apple cider spiked with rum.But I miss the light. Especially now that I’m working in an office, bound to adesk. At least I sit by a window, where I can watch the light fade against thepattering, frozen rain.

This week isThanksgiving. And then it’s my birthday. I turn 29. The punctuation mark to mytwenties. The end of a beginning. The beginning of an end. I don’t think I’llmiss this decade. It’s been exciting and full. But I’m tired. I’d like to sinkinto my life in a way that doesn’t constantly hurt. Hurt? No. I suppose I likethe movement. I like the excitement and the growth. I guess what I want issomeone to invent a new brand of makeup, one that will prevent the handful ofpeople who come to hear me talk about my book from asking if I’m fourteen.You’re not? Oh, well then are you married? No? You should eat more. You’re skin and bones.

Writing a book—amemoir—has been an empowering experience. A vulnerable one, too. Two weeks agoI was in Detroit for a book fair, and then New York City to speak at the PublicLibrary. Last week I was in St. Louis for another book fair, and I did an eventwith the New England Culinary Guild. I love talking about my book, about thesense of smell. These events fill me with energy, make me thankful to be alive.They also make me think about my life in a very direct manner. Why are you not a chef? I’m often asked.The questions that follow range from small (Whatdid you eat for breakfast?) to large (Howdid you fall in love?). There are questions about my loss of scent (Whydid you recover?), many of them coming from those with something at stake (How can I recover, too?). We oftencircle around to the questions I likewise ask myself: Will you write another book? Whatwill it be about? The answers are there, but not always as cut and dry asI’d like. Isn’t that always the case?

I’ve been behind onthe blog. I know and I’m sorry. I meant to be better. I was doing so well for awhile. But we all know how life gets in the way. How work gets in the way. Howsometimes maintaining sanity and health alongside a crazy schedule can beimpossible. How sometimes I wonder how I’m maintaining anything at all.

But here is somethinggreat. A pear cake. From Marcella Hazan.

I found this recipein The Essential New York Times Cookbook. I made the cake a number of weeks agofor the first time. I brought it to a party where it really didn’t belong.Standing next to elaborate chocolate mousse tarts and finely wrought cupcakesgarnished in candied orange peel, this little cake paled, shrinking against thewall like that flower we’re always talking about, the one I embodied when I wasin high school. But, hey, this cake is good. Really good. It is that cut and dry.

Marcella’s pear cakeis simple. The batter consists of eggs, whole milk, sugar, flour, and a pinchof salt. After peeling and slicing 2 pounds of pears, you add them right to themix, and pour the batter into a pan. Before it goes in the oven, you dot thetop with some butter, which coats and sizzles and helps to provide a nicebrowned crust. Because the ingredients are so simple, the flavor of this cakereally comes from the pears. As it should.

Marcella’s Pear Cake

From Amanda Hesser’s The Essential New York Times Cookbook

Thiscake is a lovely dessert, the punctuation mark to a simple meal. It’s alsogreat for breakfast, a big wedge sliced in the lingering darkness of analmost-winter morning. I’d eat it pretty much any time, though.

½ cup breadcrumbs,fine and dry

2 large eggs

¼ cup whole milk

1 cup sugar

Pinch salt

1 ½ cups all-purposeflour

2 pounds Bosc pears,ripe

2 tablespoonsunsalted butter

Place a rack on theupper third of the oven, and then preheat the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit.Butter a 9-inch cake pan, add the bread crumbs to the pan and swirl it todistribute the crumbs evenly. Give it a little shake and turn upside down torelease the extra loose crumbs.

In a large bowl, beattogether the eggs and milk. Add the sugar and salt. Beat until well combined.Add the flour and mix well.

Peel the pears, andthen slice them in half. Remove and discard the seeds. Cut the pear halves intothin slices, and then add them to the bowl. Mix well. (The batter will be quitethick.)

Now, pour the batterinto the pan. Make sure it’s evenly spread. Dot the surface of the batter withthe butter. Bake for 45 minutes. The top will be golden brown. Cool slightlyand then remove from the pan. Serve warm or at room temperature.

Butternut Squash Salad with Spices, Lime, and Green Chile

2011-10-31T06:14:00.000-04:00

The week after Ireturned from London, I received a package that followed me home. My lovely UK editor had sent it, the best kind of parcel, one filled with books.

The books included amemoir by a woman who learned to live on a farm, a “how to” book on drinkingwine by Victoria Moore and a cookbook by Yotam Ottolenghi.

I had heard ofOttolenghi before. He's a chef in London with four restaurants named afterhimself and another called Nopi. He writes a column in the Guardian, whichbegan about vegetarian cookery and now expands much wider. The cookbook myeditor sent me was his first cookbook, a UK-version cookbook, charming with itsBritishisms: aubergine not eggplant, grams not cups. I cooked a number ofdishes—most recently a honeyed sweet potato and chickpea stew, which remindedme that simple is great and healthy can taste far better than good. I’ve beenenamored of Ottolenghi ever since.

The other day, I wenton a cookbook-buying binge. My schedule has been so packed the last few weeksthat I haven’t had much time to cook. And since cooking is one of my favoriteways to unwind, to relax, to push the cobwebs of anxiety out of my brain, I’vebeen feeling like my insides are tied up in knots. Even if I don’t have time tocook, however, I could never give up those few minutes before bed when I read.And I’ve been reading lots of cookbooks. I love it when I can get lost in acookbook like I would in a novel. It inspires the best kind of dreams.

Anyway. On thiscookbook-buying binge, I purchased Ottolenghi’s newest vegetarian tome: Plenty. It’s a beautiful book with a pillow-presscover and recipes organized by vegetable. (Last night I dreamt about eggplant.)

And last weekendBecca came to visit. She’s one of my best friends but lives in San Francisco,so seeing each other in person is a rare delight. Her first night here I cookeda little vegetarian feast from Plenty.It included a salad made with roasted butternut squash, sweet spices, spicypeppers, limes, cilantro, and a yogurt-tahini sauce. It sounds like a mouthful,but it was pretty much perfect. I’ve been thinking about this salad so muchever since that I made it again Friday night for some other lovely friends, whoagreed.

To make this salad,you take a butternut squash, peel it (or not; I kind of like the crunchyroasted skin), slice it, and roast it with a brush of oil mixed with cardamomand allspice. When you serve it at room temperature, the squash is sprinkledwith crunchy slivers of a spicy green pepper, the herby wash of cilantro, tartpieces of lime, and a nutty, smooth sauce. I don’t know what it is about thissalad, but it works.

Butternut SquashSalad with Spices, Lime, and Green Chile

Adapted from YotamOttolenghi’s Plenty

2 limes

Salt

4 tablespoons olive oil

1 big butternut squash

1 tablespoon cardamom

1 teaspoon allspice

½ cup Greek yogurt

2 ½ teaspoons tahini

1 tablespoon lime juice (ormore to taste)

1 green chile (I usedjalapeno), stripped of seeds and pith, sliced thin

2/3 cup cilantro leaves,picked off the stalk

Preheat the oven to 400degrees Fahrenheit.

For the limes: trim off thetops and bottoms of the limes with a paring knife. Now with the limes standing stableon a cutting board, use your knife to cut down the sides, slicing off the skinand the white pith. Quarter the naked limes, and then cut into very thinslices. Place these slices in a bowl, add a 1-tablespoon drizzle of olive oiland a sprinkle of salt.

For the butternut squash:Cut the squash in half lengthwise, and scoop out the seeds with a spoon. Now,cut the squash into slices – about ½ inch thick. Lay them out on a baking sheet(Ottolenghi suggests on a piece of parchment paper).

Mix together the cardamomand allspice in a small bowl. Add 3 tablespoons of olive oil, and stir. Brushthis spiced oil over the squash. Season the squash with salt. Roast for about15 minutes, or until tender, and then let cool. (Here is where you can peel offthe skin… or not. I’ve done it both ways, and love the slight crunch when it isleft on.)

For the sauce: Whisktogether the yogurt, tahini, lime juice, and two tablespoons of water. Seasonto taste with salt. (The sauce will be thick, but you want to be able todrizzle it over the squash, so add more lime juice or water to taste to thin itout if necessary.)

To serve: Arrange the squashon a serving platter. Drizzle with the yogurt-tahini sauce. Spoon the limeslices and their juice evenly over top. Scatter the chile slices. And then thecilantro. Enjoy.

New Orleans

2011-10-22T08:58:00.000-04:00

Matt and I flewdown to New Orleans—one of my favorite cities in the world, his hometown—a fewweeks ago. My mother and her boyfriend, Charley, joined us.

Stepping outside that firstmorning, I inhaled the thick, warm air. It smelled like earth, like dew, likethe tropics. We weren’t in Boston anymore.

We spent the weekendexploring. The French Quarter. The Marigny. Uptown, downtown, the GardenDistrict. On Sunday, we took a trip out to some plantations, their grounds lined with ancient Live Oaks. We had a lovely meal at Sylvain. And a fantastic one at NOLA. Therewas a fried green tomato po’boy that kind of blew me away. A Sazerac at theColumns Hotel. My love of beignets will never falter; especially if I continueto eat them alongside the thick, bitter coffee served at the Café du Monde.

One afternoon a streetmusician—who played the clarinet like it was a living thing, like she didn’tjust want to, but she needed to—stoppedus in our tracks. When she was joined by a little boy playing a recorder, I melted into my shoes.

I finished the long weekendwith an interview at the local NPR affiliate, and a reading at the GardenDistrict Book Shop. Talking about smell in New Orleans is especially fun,because, well, the smells of New Orleans are especially intense. From the rich,spicy aroma of shrimp gumbo to the rather unpleasant olfactory assault ofBourbon Street on a Saturday night. From the sweet scent of powderedsugar melting atop a hot beignet to the briny breeze coming off theMississippi River. It’s a city filled with life.

(While in the city, my momand Charley stayed at The McKendrick-Breaux House.It’s on Magazine Street, in the quite-funky Lower Garden District. Theowner, Brett, is fantastic. He collects old yearbooks, and makes a mean pancake.Need a place to stay? We highly recommend.)

Breakfast

2011-10-02T10:00:00.002-04:00

Pasta alla Norma

2011-09-25T08:21:00.000-04:00

I’m still here.

For much of this summer I’ve been running on adrenaline, speeding along from event to event,reading to discussion to book club, and always to day job, day job, day job.

London threw me for aloop, though. The jet lag on top of the running on top of the events on top ofthe day job… and then a wedding in Maine and a baby-naming in Cambridge and atrip to Philadelphia… all within the course of one week? Stick a fork in me.

But of course I’m notdone.

Today I'm looking forward to an event at Stir, a demonstration kitchen and cookbook shop run byBarbara Lynch here in Boston. It’s an open house, from 12 – 2:30pm today, and ifyou’re in the area, you should definitely come, because I’d love to meet you.And then on the 10^th I’ll be in New Orleans, one of my favoritecities on earth, to talk even more smell at the Garden District Book Shop. Andon the 13^th, I’ll be at the Peabody Institute Library in Danvers,MA. For more, see the events page on my website.

Oh, and here? I willwrite more, better, soon. I promise.

I’ve been trying tofigure out what to write. I could write about the wedding I attended in Maine.It was on an island near Brunswick. We watched the bride and groom exchangevows as the sun set over the lagoon. Or I could write about the joy of meetingthe new baby daughter of a good friend in Cambridge. Or I could rewind evenfurther and write about London, and that lovely yet short trip during which I playedthe tourist, ate some excellent Lebanese food, and spoke a lot on the BBC. Nowthat I think of it, one moment there really stands out.

Late one afternoon, Iwalked alone from my publisher’s office in Notting Hill back to my hotel inSouth Kensington. Despite the warnings I’d received before my trip, the weatherin London was nice. The sun shone bright on streets of red brick buildings. AsI walked, I listened to the sounds of people speaking with accents onlyfamiliar to me from movies, to buses rumbling their double deckerness over the wrong-wayroads. I had a few hours to kill and let my mind wander. Amid the errant musingson clotted cream and Marmite, I thought about how far I was from home, howstrange it felt to be there, how wonderful and exhausting and insane. I was ina different country, an unfamiliar city. But there I was, meeting people whowere moved by the same books and the same words, people who could all betransported by the same smells. I know this sounds trite. Or silly. Or sad. Butin one moment it struck me how small the world really is. And how incredibly,unforgivingly large.

Anyway, I’ll leaveyou with a recipe. Because those have been severely lacking here in the lastfew months. (This sad fact is something I plan to change.)

Friday night Iarrived home from work and grocery shopping pretty late. I didn’t start cookinguntil 8:30pm. But I was determined to use a recipe from Cook’s Illustrated,because I read Cook’s Illustrated recipes all day, and they often stick to themeaty part of my brain. I had been doing research on the effects of salt onvegetables and had become fixated on this recipe for Pasta alla Norma, a chunkyeggplant tomato-based sauce that takes to rigatoni like a hug.

I sipped some whiskey(because I love a good whiskey) as I took out my knife. After the applicationof salt and a stint in the microwave, I watched the diced eggplant release itsliquid. Browned in the pan, and then removed, the spongy vegetable turned outsoft and flavorful...not at all waterlogged. The sauce came together withminced garlic and anchovies (which are salty and meaty and not fishy at all),and crushed tomatoes from a can. First came basil, then pasta, then cheese. Mattand I ate while watching an old episode of The Sopranos. It was everything Ihoped it would be.

Pasta alla Norma

Adapted from Cook’sIllustrated (also known as: my place of work)

3 small eggplants (or 1large), cut into ½ inch pieces

Salt

3 tablespoons olive oil

4 garlic cloves, minced

2 anchovy fillets, minced

½ teaspoon red pepper flakes

1 28-oz can crushedtomatoes

1 pound pasta (ziti,rigatoni, penne, etc)

6 generous tablespoonsbasil, chopped

1 cup shredded cheese (theyrecommend ricotta salata; I used a combination of pecorino romano an asiagocheese)

First, place the dicedeggplant in a medium-sized bowl and toss with 1 teaspoon of salt. Then, line amicrowave-safe plate with coffee filters. (The filters will absorb more of theeggplant’s excessive moisture than, say, a paper towel). Place the eggplant onthe plate in a single layer, and microwave on high power for about 10 minutes. The eggplantshould be dry and kind of shrively. Let cool a bit.

Now put the eggplant back inthe bowl and toss with 1 tablespoon olive oil. Heat another tablespoon of oilin a large nonstick skillet over medium-high heat. Add the eggplant and cookuntil nicely browned and tender. This should take about 10 minutes. Be sure notto stir too frequently, or the eggplant will break apart. Once cooked, removethe eggplant from the skillet and set aside.

Add another tablespoon ofoil to the skillet along with the garlic, anchovies, and pepper flakes. Keepthe pan off the heat for 30 seconds or so, using the residual heat to cookthese delicate ingredients very lightly, not allowing them to burn. Then setthe skillet back over the burner and add the tomatoes. Bring to a simmer and letcook for about 10 minutes.

Meanwhile, bring a big potof water to boil. Add salt (2 tablespoons or so), and cook pasta until al dente. Reserve a half-cupof pasta water before draining the pasta and then placing the noodles a big serving bowl.

Add the eggplant back to theskillet filled with sauce, and stir gently. Let simmer for 3 minutes. Now, addthe basil. Season to taste with salt. Add the sauce to the pasta, and stir tocoat. Drizzle a glug of olive oil over the top if you like. Serve, sprinkled with a healthy handful of cheese.

London

2011-09-16T13:16:00.000-04:00

(More soon...)

Scents

2011-09-09T16:57:00.001-04:00

I walked to work thismorning, a long stroll through the lifting fog. It’s been a hazy week of rain.The moment I left my apartment and shut the door behind me, I could smell burnttoast and musty rug. Outside, I smelled the lingering rain on the sidewalk, awhiff of the Dove conditioner in my hair. As I walked, there was a hint ofearth and dead, early-autumn leaves. A hot metal twang to the subway carrumbling by. I could smell the flowery perfume of a woman on her way to work,the coffee from a café with an open door, and the familiar wet scent of a dogwho had just rolled around in the grass. I fly to London tomorrow. I wonderwhat smells that will bring.

Lake George

2011-09-06T06:45:00.000-04:00

Francis Lam's Perfect Five-Minute Raw Tomato Pasta

2011-08-29T06:28:00.000-04:00

August.

Tomatoes.

Need I say more?

This is the month tomatoes storm the markets. Plump, rainbow-colored tomatoes complete with wrinkles and crags and warpy misshapen stems. Sweet as candy. I have eaten so many tomatoes this month—hungry for them always, trying to appease my craving before they’re replaced with the apples and squash of autumn.

I’ve roasted them, simmered them, sliced them and served them with mozzarella, basil and a sprinkle of salt. I’ve eaten them in sandwiches and in salsas. But I’ve found myself coming back to the same recipe a number of times this summer: Francis Lam’s Perfect Five-Minute Raw Tomato Pasta. Generally, I cringe at recipe titles that use words like “perfect,” or anything resembling a superlative. But I’ll let this one slide, because Francis… this man doesn’t lie.

My father and stepmother came over for dinner last Sunday. It had been a crazy week, one in which time swung around and trickled away, warping and rolling like desert tumbleweed. Sometimes I feel like life is moving too quickly, and other times way, way, waaaaay too slowly.

In any case, I didn’t begin to cook dinner for my family until only a few minutes before they arrived. I chopped up the tomatoes, plunked them in a bowl. I topped them with a layer of arugula, and then one of thinly sliced red onion. I boiled the pasta and heaped it on top, letting it sit for two minutes to take the raw edge off the onions and just barely wilt the greens. I then tossed the whole lot with Parmesan cheese and piled it onto the waiting plates. Dinner was served.

Francis Lam’s Perfect Five-Minute Raw Tomato Pasta

Serves 2 – 4

I used a combination of local red vine and colorful heirloom tomatoes for this recipe, as well as a pint or two of cherry tomatoes. The more colors the better; I like a rainbow of a dish. But if you don’t have a really great selection of tomatoes—ripe and juicy and sweet—I’d recommend making something else. The tomatoes make this dish.

2 ½ pounds tomatoes (the riper the better, colors are key)

2 loose cups arugula

Scant ¼ cup shaved red onion

1 pound linguini

Olive oil, to taste (your best kind)

Salt and pepper, to taste

Red wine vinegar, a glug or so

Parmesan cheese

Chop the tomatoes into ½ inch pieces and put them, with all their juices, into a large bowl. (A very big bowl.) Season with salt and pepper, and a splash of olive oil. Stir and taste. I added a splash of red wine vinegar. Francis says this is optional, but I love that added bright tang.

Bring a big pot of water to boil. Add some salt, and then the pasta. Stir.

While the pasta cooks, lay the arugula on top of the tomatoes, and then layer the slices of red onion on top of that.

When the pasta is done, drain it and dump it straight into the bowl. Leave it there, untouched, for 2 whole minutes. Grate the cheese while you’re waiting. Now, stir it all together, add the cheese, and taste for salt and pepper. Serve.

Upcoming Events

2011-08-25T07:14:00.001-04:00

A quick note on some upcoming events for Season to Taste:

First, I’ll be at the Boston Public Library next week! On Wednesday, August 31^st at 6pm, as part of their Author Talk Series. Boston friends: I’d love to see you there.

And then in September… I’m crossing the pond. I’ll be in London the second week of the month to promote the UK version of Season to Taste, which is published by the excellent folks at Portobello Books. Among other things, I’ll be doing a reading at Clerkenwell Tales on Tuesday, September 13^th at 6:30pm. I could not be more excited for the trip. I’ve never really been to London before (no, I won’t count the field trip I took with my high school marching band…). If you have any recommendations for things to do, see, or eat, pass ‘em along!

(For more, check out the events section of my website. In the next couple months I’ll be doing readings in Philadelphia, New Orleans, Danvers, Detroit, and New York City!)

Soaking Them In

2011-08-21T08:35:00.000-04:00

Last weekend we went to visit my dear friend Sarah and her husband, Joe. They live in a beautiful apartment overlooking the choppy water of Lake Champlain in Burlington, Vermont.

I wanted to sit down and write more about that weekend. About the local burgers and beer. About the mountain we hiked, and the sandwiches we ate while sitting on the bare rock face of its summit. About the boat ride, the swim, and the comfort of old, old friends.

But now that I’m sitting here, my fingers on my keyboard, my coffee cup rattling with ice, my schedule semi-cleared, all I can think of is how much I want to curl up on the couch and read a novel.* This summer has been all about producing words, maneuvering words, constructing sentences and watching them fly away. (Book, blog, freelance, day-job, press.) I’ve loved it. Every bit of it. But right now I’m tired. So instead of producing more words, I’d like to take a brief moment and simply soak them in.

*Look at Me. (I’m on a Jennifer Egan kick.)

This week.

2011-08-11T06:59:00.000-04:00

Wedding Cake II

2011-08-08T05:45:00.000-04:00

The first time I baked a wedding cake, I was in the middle of writing my book. I had been playing the role of a hermit, in fact, up at a writer’s residency in Woodstock, New York. Three days before the wedding I drove to Boston, baked the entire cake at my mother’s house in one go, and then transported it to Maine on my own. (Oy!). That cake was for Ashley and Colin, two of my dearest high school friends. It was four tiers of dense almond cake with layers of lemon curd and blueberry jam, frosted with a swiss buttercream. There were some dicey moments in the course of its construction, but I won’t hold back: it rocked.

The second time I baked a wedding cake was last weekend. I baked this one over a couple of days—kitchen-time found after work, sandwiched among a handful of interviews about my book, and readings done plum across the state. What was I thinking? Who knows.

But I made this cake for the sister of another good friend of mine from high school, who likewise was married in Maine. I used the same almond cake recipe, except this time with layers of fresh strawberries and strawberry jam. I was more careful in my frosting, and used equipment a (tiny bit) fancier than a butter knife and my hands. I had Matt, who was in Afghanistan during my first wedding cake extravaganza, to help me transport the frosted layers north. Boom.

Though it means that I don’t have a new recipe here for you today, I’m glad that I repeated many of the elements of my first cake in my second. Making a wedding cake with limited time and a home cook’s equipment? It’s doable but, man, it’s also hard. Not hard in a heavy lifting or a cost cutting way, really. I struggled more with the volume. A wedding cake takes a lot of eggs, butter, and sugar. It takes a lot of time.

And the trouble with time? With time, I’ve learned, comes attachment. With every additional minute that I spent coaxing 14-inch cakes to bake in even lines, frosting not to curdle, and strawberries to balance just so, I became more and more invested in the life of this cake. And by the time I arrived in Maine, unloaded the layers, cut the dowels, and constructed the tiers, a lot of minutes, hours and days had ticked by. When I finished the second bout of frosting and my consequent painstaking progress in leveling and decoration, this cake felt like more than a cake. It was a living thing, an extension of my body, a 60-pound baby spun from my own hands.

Kind of like my book.

I thought about this a lot last weekend. Because as I baked my first wedding cake, I was in the middle of writing my book. I was buried in outlines and research; I had no idea where it would go. Back then, it was all about the creativity. It was all about forging new paths ahead. I was living in a miniscule studio in Brooklyn, had a boyfriend fighting a war in Afghanistan, and was using 14 pounds of almond paste to create a wedding cake in my mother’s kitchen with nothing but a couple recipes and a half-baked plan. If I could make and transport that cake, then of course I could finish my book. It was all about magical thinking. What surprised me is that it worked.

During this wedding cake experience, however, my book was done. More than done. It launched itself out into the world two months ago, a little living thing that I spun from scratch and then let go. I’ve struggled with the indisputable fact that so much about publishing is luck and circumstance, that way more is out of my control than I’d like. I baked my life into a narrative. I frosted it with reportage, chapter structure, and so many words. Then I put it on a platter and sent it out to be served.

(Don’t get me wrong: Season to Taste has received some wonderful press. The events I’ve done, the responses I’ve gotten, and the people this book has touched leave me both honored and proud. It’s just all outside of my control.)

But when it came time to serve this second wedding cake, a series of circumstances conspired to form a distinct possibility that it would not be displayed at the reception before it was cut and devoured. That no one would see the constructed tiers, the smoothed out frosting, the strawberries balanced around its rim. Normally this wouldn’t bother the baker, as the baker is not usually present at the ceremony and reception. But I’ve known the bride and her family since I was a kid, and it was a delight to be present throughout.

So I found myself standing on the porch of the farmhouse where the wedding took place, thinking about my cake. I could see the White Mountains in the distance, and the falling evening light. Why become so attached to something, some inanimate thing, when its course is left so up to chance? Why did I stress about the structure, the flavors, the timing of each and every piece when it was always possible that it could just languish in the house?

Later, when the sun had set, the temperature dropped, and with mosquitoes suddenly buzzing around our necks, Matt and I carried the cake out on a big wooden plank down to the tent filled with guests. With the help of the caterer, we cleared a spot on the table and let it sit. “The wedding cake!” I heard a little girl yell from across the dance floor. Some things are out of my control, but others, with a little effort, exist completely within.

And then...

2011-07-31T17:57:00.000-04:00

…I baked a cake. (More soon.)

"State of Wonder"

2011-07-24T19:38:00.000-04:00

After a week filled with driving (Cambridge to North Conway, NH and back; Brookline to Portsmouth, and home) on Friday morning it was a relief to find myself climbing into an airplane instead of a car. Even if it was a tiny plane.

I had a reading scheduled that night in Manchester, Vermont, and so I flew from Boston to Rutland on an 8-seater—gripping my armrest, my seatbelt tightly cinched. As a kid, I never had a problem flying. But as the years have passed, my anxiety has grown. It’s not so bad that I won’t fly. I’m restless and curious and in love with travel. But I can’t seem to banish the few minutes of heart-palpitating fear straddling takeoff. This was no different.

But I had never before been able to see so much of the flight process: how our little plane joined a line of jets waiting to take off, snaking around the runway one after another, pausing before finally blasting off into the air. When we launched into the sky, I could see the pilot pressing buttons, the plane clicking and bouncing, and the buildings of Boston parading below. I watched the land turn from open and farm-filled to tree-lined and hilly. By the time we reached Vermont 40 minutes later, I couldn’t tell if the scraggly white puffs on the horizon were snow-capped mountain peaks or a hazy expanse of clouds.

Manchester is a beautiful little town in southern Vermont. I arrived early and took myself out to lunch. Over the pages of Ann Patchett’s new novel, State of Wonder, I ate a salad filled with heirloom tomatoes, forest mushrooms, and seared salmon. It was hot out, as it was everywhere, and afterward I did some work in the frosty container of my hotel room. With the arrival of Matt, who had begun driving north from Boston as soon as he finished work, we headed out for my reading at the Northshire Bookstore, a huge and hugely wonderful independent bookstore in Manchester Center.

If I’ve learned anything in the last month, it’s that I love readings. I love going to readings. I love reading at readings. It’s been such a joy to meet so many of you interested in the sense of smell, in taste and flavor and cooking. I’ve been impressed by the questions asked and comments made by members of the audience. I knew that writing and publishing a memoir would be personal for me, but I didn’t realize how personal it would be for others. I’m humbled and inspired by the stories I’ve been told.

After the reading, Matt and I drove back to our hotel, and sat on the back porch with a tumbler of whiskey and a glass of white wine, respectively. We began chatting with an interesting couple sitting to our left. This couple was older than us, and before we even began speaking with them, I had been entranced by the way the evening light fell against the woman’s white hair, and the way that the two of them looked so in love. The next thing I knew the drinks had multiplied, it was close to midnight, and the time had come to collapse into bed.

On Saturday Matt and I hit the road. Flying was fun, but driving has allowed us to explore. We meandered along back roads in Vermont, pausing to buy maple syrup and then, later, some cheese. We crossed over to New Hampshire, and slowly wound our way down to Massachusetts—all big trees, gravel roads, and muggy breeze along the way. Matt, a southern boy at heart, says he’s fallen in love with New England through all of the driving we’ve done. I tend to agree.

New Hampshire

2011-07-20T09:13:00.000-04:00

Matt and I spent last weekend in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. We hiked a lot, and slept even more. Just what I needed.

Tonight I’m returning north to do a reading in Portsmouth. I’ll be at the RiverRun Bookstore. 7pm. See you there?

Coming Up

2011-07-13T06:32:00.000-04:00

I haven’t been cooking a whole lot. It’s too hot here in Boston. (Right now, sitting at my kitchen table before 7am, I feel like a sweaty piece of salmon, wrapped in parchment, baking en papillote.) When the temperature rises above 90 degrees, my diet revolves around three things: salad, white wine, ice cream. Not the best blogging fodder, but, hey, it works for me.

Other than that? My book came out. It sure isn’t storming the bestseller list, but it’s gotten some wonderful press, and some very kind words, and, damn, I’m proud. (Interested? You can buy it here!)

I want to give you all a little heads up about events coming up in the next couple weeks.

First off: I’ll be at RiverRun Books in Portsmouth, NH, next Wednesday evening (July 20^th) at 7pm.

On Friday, July 22^nd, I’ll be at the Northshire Bookstore in Manchester, VT, at 7pm.

On July 26^th, (Tuesday), I’ll be at the Odyssey Bookshop at 7pm in South Hadley, MA.

And on that Thursday, July 28^th, I’ll be at a Literary Luncheon at the Where The Sidewalk Ends Bookstore on Cape Cod. (With Jennifer Egan! And Daphne Kalotay!) (Tickets necessary.)

I'd love to see you any/everywhere.

Peas & Carrots

2011-07-07T06:57:00.000-04:00

Blueberry Pancakes

2011-07-05T07:22:00.000-04:00

The last few weeks of moving, of doing, of the ups and downs and adrenaline that come with public speaking, have been exhausting. Wonderful, but exhausting. And this weekend? I crashed.

I woke up Saturday morning, sat down at my computer, and tried to do some work. But my body ached, my eyelids drooped, and little wisps of anxiety twirled around my ears. A little voice repeating itself: How am I going to get everything done? Ah, that familiar chant. Occasionally it's a comforting one. Sometimes even inspiring. It usually fades away as I dive into my work. But on Saturday, it just wouldn’t stop. I couldn’t think beyond the internal noise. I turned on the radio, hoping to drown it out. I left my computer to go on a run, looking for silence via speed. Nothing helped. So I gave up.

Matt and I drove to Brookline, where we ate roast beef sandwiches and salads with aged gouda, peanuts, and crispy shallots at Cutty’s. We went to Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts, where we wandered among the new Art of the Americas wing, and then stared at the bulbous, strange glass forms by Chihuly. My favorite moment? Standing on a staircase overlooking the museum restaurant, watching people eat. I didn’t think about deadlines once.

And Sunday morning I woke up feeling better. Like I could possibly face the to-do list of the next week. Like I might be able to get everything done. But first I made pancakes. Blueberry ones. And let me tell you: they were good.

Blueberry Pancakes

From Cook’s Illustrated (also known as: my employer)

Light and fluffy, sweet and tangy, these pancakes have the perfect amount of spring. They use milk soured with just a bit of lemon juice, baking soda and powder, melted butter and only one egg. I used fresh blueberries, but frozen would also be fine.

1 tablespoon lemon juice

2 cups milk

2 cups AP flour

2 tablespoons sugar

2 teaspoons baking powder

½ teaspoon baking soda

½ teaspoon salt

1 egg

3 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted and cooled

2 teaspoons vegetable oil

1 cup blueberries (fresh or frozen)

Whisk together the lemon juice and milk in a medium sized bowl and set aside to thicken. In another medium bowl, whisk together the flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, and salt.

Whisk the egg and melted butter into the milk until combined. Make a well in the center of the bowl containing the dry ingredients, and pour the milk mixture within, whisking lightly until just combined. (A few lumps will remain; don’t over mix!)

Heat a nonstick skillet over medium heat for about 5 minutes. Add 1 teaspoon of the oil. Pour ¼ cup of the batter onto 3 spots in the skillet, and sprinkle some blueberries over each pancake. Wait until large bubbles begin to appear on the pancake (about 2 minutes) before you flip them. Cook for 1 ½ - 2 minutes longer, until golden brown. Repeat. (You can keep the finished pancakes warm in a 250-degree oven.) Enjoy.

Lately

2011-07-01T09:44:00.000-04:00

Check out Season to Taste in the news! (And come on over to Facebook to stay up to date.) (Thanks, friends.)

Tonight

2011-06-28T14:20:00.000-04:00

Hi friends. Just a little reminder: I’ll be at the Harvard Book Store tonight at 7pm to read from and discuss my book, Season to Taste. Hope to see you there!

The First Week

2011-06-26T11:56:00.000-04:00

It’s hard to put my mind around all that has happened in the last week.

I went to New York City.

My book was published.

I spoke with radio hosts, reporters, readers and friends.

There was a party. And then a dinner. (Perhaps) a couple bottles of wine.

The week was overwhelming. But also fantastic. It was week in which I often had to stop and ask myself: is this real?

A few moments stood out:

The chocolate cake with cream and cherries at Café Sabarsky, which I shared with Matt on a brief moment of calm.

A long walk through Central Park, taken alone and early, accompanied only by the scent of coffee from a takeout cup in my hands and the sound of Nick Drake humming in my ears.

Leonard Lopate.

The evening I attempted to cook dinner for my brother and his girlfriend, Ashley. Well, attempt is the wrong word. I did successfully pull off dinner: Salmon with a mango-jalapeño salsa, and asparagus, which I roasted with salt, pepper, and parmesan. The problem came later. His apartment, five days out, still smelled like fish. Ah, unventilated NYC apartments. (Sorry, Ben!)

Joan Hamburg.

The Greenlight Bookstore in Brooklyn, which is light and airy with artfully arranged stacks of books. When I read there on Wednesday night, we filled the store with some of my favorite smells: rosemary and chocolate, garlic and cucumber. Laundry detergent, too. (Strange? Perhaps. But, hey, why not?)

And, of course, there was the moment when I stood in the center of a room in the back of a restaurant. The room was filled with family, friends, and colleagues. I had a glass of white wine in my hands. The book-launch party was in full swing. My mother AND my father were there, as well as their significant others. I looked to my right to see my brother, Ben, and my boyfriend, Matt, standing side by side. To my left were some of the scientists and anosmics I wrote about in my book. There were old friends, and new ones. My agent and my publicist. My editor, also named Matt, quieted the room to give a beautiful, moving toast. As he raised his glass—as all of these people who stood by me as I struggled, who watched me as I moved on, raised their glasses, too—I experienced the funniest sensation rising in the back of my throat. I couldn’t tell if it was the beginning of a laugh or a cry. But when it emerged as a smile, I thought my cheeks might burst.

There’s a lot more to write about. I’m going to write about it soon. But right now? I’m back in Cambridge. And I spent Saturday afternoon baking.

My original plan was to leave you with some food rather than further attempts to sort out the messy jumble that is my brain. Because that’s what it all comes down to, right? My love of cooking was the inspiration for my book, the way I got myself through the ups and downs of writing it, one of the many ways I can now celebrate with friends.

But, as often seems to happen, things did not go exactly as planned.

I baked Joanne Chang's Lemon Bars. I've made these intensely lemony lemon bars a few times now. They aren't quick. Nor especially easy. But I love them. There's nothing more calming, I think, than standing at the stove, stirring a slow-heating pot of lemon curd, watching it move from pale to deep yellow with each swish of my wooden spoon. The moment when it changes from a thin liquid to thick, pillowy curd is magic.

Fresh off the train from NYC, though, I believed that I could complete this recipe without all equipment needed. The last thing I wanted to do was make an emergency run to the market. But I've realized something very important for this recipe, something you shouldn't do without: parchment paper. Because yesterday I baked the shortbread; I made the curd. Together, they came out of the oven a perfect daffodil yellow, jiggly like a very firm Jell-O. But this morning, when I went to slice and serve them, I couldn't get the bars out of the pan. Without the layer of paper underneath, they were completely stuck. Even my sharpest knife would not save more than just a few. I had planned to bring these to a party tonight--looking perfect, of course--and in my frustration, I may or may not have slammed around a few pots and pans.

The carnage was delicious, though. You just need to eat it with a fork from the pan, rather than with your fingers from a cocktail napkin. And I guess it's fitting. The inspiration for my book was food, yes. But it was also failure, and loss, and what it takes to move on. A fork, a pen...whatever. I'm happy to be where I am.

Joanne Chang’s Lemon Bars

From her cookbook, Flour

Shortbread

2 sticks butter, unsalted, room temperature

6 tablespoons sugar

2 tablespoons confectioners sugar

1 egg yolk

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 cup all-purpose flour

1 cup cake flour

½ teaspoon baking powder

½ teaspoon salt

Lemon Curd

2 cups lemon juice (about 14 lemons)

1 stick butter, unsalted

¼ cup heavy cream

8 eggs

4 egg yolks

2 cups sugar

1 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

First make the shortbread: In a standing mixer fitted with the paddle attachment (or use a handheld mixer, or a wooden spoon) cream the butter, sugar, and confectioners sugar until light and fluffy. (This will take about 5 minutes in the standing mixer; 10 in the handheld, or with a spoon.) Beat in the egg yolk and vanilla until combined, another couple minutes. (Make sure to scrape down the sides of the bowl with a rubber spatula as you go.)

Sift together the flours, baking powder and salt in a separate bowl. Slowly add this to the butter mixture, mixing on low speed until fully combined and evenly mixed. (About 15 seconds.) Wrap the dough in plastic, forming a disk, and then store it in the fridge for at least 30 minutes (and up to 5 days).

Now, make the lemon curd: In a nonreactive saucepan, mix the lemon juice, butter, and heavy cream and place over medium-high heat until just about ready to boil. Meanwhile, in another bowl, whisk the eggs and egg yolks until blended, and then whisk in the sugar. Take the lemon mixture off the heat. Add a tiny bit to the egg bowl, whisking away. Add a tiny bit more. Whisk. Keep doing this, slowly, until all of the lemon mixture is combined with the eggs. Now, pour the entire bowl back into the saucepan and place over medium heat. Cook, stirring constantly with your wooden spoon, until the curd thickens enough to coat the back of the spoon (about 8 minutes). Make sure to regularly scrape the bottom of the pot as you make this so that the eggs don’t scramble.

Remove the lemon curd from the heat. (Chang suggests you strain it through a fine mesh strainer here. I don’t. But I’m sure the curd would be just a bit smoother and more uniform if I did…) Whisk in the salt and vanilla. (You can store this in the fridge for up to 4 days. Just add a few minutes of baking time if you do.)

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. I highly suggest you follow Chang's directions to flour the dough disk and two large sheets of parchment paper. Place the dough between the sheets, and roll it out into a 9 x 11 inch rectangle, about 1/4 inch thick. Peel off the top sheet of parchment, and transfer the bottom sheet and the dough into a 9 x 11 inch baking pan. Press the shortbread out with your fingers to fit within. It’s okay if it’s not smooth, but the dough should evenly reach every corner of the pan. Bake for 20 minutes, until golden brown. Remove from the oven and pour the lemon curd on top, spreading evenly across the top.

Bake for 15 – 20 minutes more, until the curd has set and jiggles, as Chang says, like firm Jell-O. Let cool to room temperature on a rack. Refrigerate for at least 4 hours before you cut. And then, of course, enjoy!

Happy Publication Day!

2011-06-21T07:31:00.001-04:00

My first book, Season to Taste: How I Lost My Sense of Smell and Found My Way, is officially out in the real world today! (It's available to order here, or here, or here. Or, find it in a bookstore near you!)

For my New York friends, I’ll be doing a reading/discussion with my excellent editor, Matt Weiland, at the Greenlight Bookstore in Brooklyn tomorrow, Wednesday, June 22^nd, at 7:30pm. For my Boston folks: I’ll be reading at the Harvard Book Store on Tuesday, June 28^th, at 7pm. (I have some other events scheduled, too, which you can see on my website.) I would love to see you any/everywhere!

*Update: I had the date for my Brooklyn reading originally wrong in this post. (Whoops! Coffee = needed, STAT!) It's June 22nd, (not the 23rd), at 7:30pm. See you then!

Father's Day

2011-06-19T16:25:00.000-04:00

Pie in the Times

2011-06-15T07:07:00.000-04:00

I baked seven pies in thirty-six hours.

Seven (7!) pies. That’s a lot of pie for a household of just two (2!). As a result, for a while there I was eating pie for breakfast, and then again after lunch. I gave away thick slices to family and friends, wrapping them tightly in plastic, ferrying them away on china plates. One night, even, Matt and I ate pie and only pie for dinner. Well, no. There was ice cream, too. But, still, that’s a lot of pie. Why? Well, let’s backtrack a minute:

When I was small, my mother baked strawberry rhubarb (or often just rhubarb) pies. She used a recipe from her mother, Marian, who had written it neatly in cursive on an index card now yellowed with age. I wrote about this pie in my book. And I’ve written about it here before, too. For that blog post, I played with the recipe a bit. I substituted my butter-and-shortening piecrust for my grandmother’s all-butter one. I reduced the amount of sugar in the filling, because I found the original overly sweet. But despite these changes, the pie was not my own. Not really. It was still my grandmother’s, and my mother’s, fitting snug in with the memories of my childhood.

When Pete Wells, the editor of the New York Times Dining Section, asked me to develop a recipe to run with this article about Season to Taste, one that pulled at the themes of the book, I immediately thought of that pie. After all, this particular pie deals in emotion and memory, smell and taste and flavor, baking and home. Not to mention the fact that strawberries and rhubarb are in season. Done!

(But, wait. Can we pause for a second here? An article about Season to Taste in the New York Times?!? Pete Wells asking ME to develop a recipe?!? Excuse me while I go do a little dance. Or, alternatively, take a long nap. Getting my head around this fact is exhausting.)

But for this article, I wanted to make the pie my own. To spice it up. And to do this, and do it well, I had to experiment. I had to test some different things out. And so I did. Seven times. In thirty six hours. Deadline baking! It was fun.

In the end, I made a streusel topping, rich with butter and crunchy with pecans, and added orange zest to the filling. I used three kinds of ginger: candied and a bit of powdered in the topping, and grated two tablespoons from a knob of fresh ginger in the crust. It’s crunchy and smooth, sweet and tart with a little bit of spice. I didn't end up taking any pictures of the final version, only the numerous iterations in between. Though you can find the finished recipe here.

I know that I’m biased, but this pie? Even though I’ve eaten more pie in the last couple weeks that I have in the last few years combined, and sometimes wonder if I’ll ever want to again, I think it’s great.

This is just to say...

2011-06-12T15:48:00.000-04:00

I have eaten

the cherries

that were

on the counter…

Summer

2011-06-09T22:14:00.000-04:00

I had forgotten the scent of summer. The sweet green aroma of grass. The flowery, petal-pink whiffs of my mother’s garden. The thick, wet cloud smell that hovers in the air in the hour before it rains.

Matt and I moved into this apartment a year ago this week. That day, sweaty and exhausted, we paused after hours of moving heavy boxes up the stairs. The breeze blew through our open windows, bringing the aromas of sun-warmed brick and barbecued smoke. I remember inhaling and thinking, hey, this can be home.

Today it’s raining, and the scent of earth wafting through those same open windows is particularly intense. I’m watching lightning pierce the sky in a way that looks more like special effects in Hollywood than Reality, Cambridge, MA.

I’m going to make dinner in a few minutes.* It’s the same dinner I’ve made a few nights this week. It involves six things: Lettuce (arugula), asparagus (steamed), pecans (toasted), goat cheese (crumbled), and a vinaigrette (balsamic vinegar, Dijon mustard, garlic, salt, pepper, and olive oil). I toss all that together in a big bowl, and top it with chicken breasts (bone-in, skin-on) that I’ve roasted, let cool, and sliced. This is my favorite hot weather food. It tastes like summer.

*I made it. It was good.

A Party

2011-06-06T22:52:00.000-04:00

On Sunday, my father and stepmother threw a party for my book.

Season to Taste is going to be published this month. (Two weeks!)

At the party, I wore the perfume that I bought in France, back when I was reporting the book. Its smell reminds me of the beach.

I talked with some new friends and some old friends. (And a baby named Hannah, with perfect, perfect toes.)

There was cake.

(The air smelled like champagne.)

I read from my book.

And afterward, I thanked my family.

Because not only did they throw me a lovely party.

But they took care of me when I was down.

(They sure know how to celebrate, too.)

Crawfish. Boil.

2011-05-31T06:52:00.000-04:00

Matt and I spent the long weekend in New Orleans. Crawfish were consumed.

Back

2011-05-27T16:55:00.000-04:00

I’m sitting here at my kitchen table. It’s the Friday before Memorial Day weekend. The hour is early, and I’m drinking coffee (bitter, black), listening to the sounds (rumbling buses, babbling recent graduates) and inhaling the smells (floral wafts of spring, a touch of car exhaust) filtering through our now-open windows. I’m trying to think of what to say about this past week. But it’s been such a big week that I can’t quite get my head around it. An exciting, wonderful week. But right now all I can think about is how much I want to go to sleep. Even though I just woke up.

It began in Atlanta, where I was a keynote speaker at the BlogHer Food Conference. Jory Des Jardins interviewed me on stage. I’m just beginning this whole “public speaking” thing – a terrifying and exhilarating experience, one that both humbles and inflates at the same time – and this was a new format for me. A great format, though. There’s something so much more personal and intimate about a conversation rather than a speech. I’ve never much liked speaking at anything. I’m a with girl at heart.

Anyway, it was a wild time. The whole thing. I’ve never been in a room filled with so many bloggers, or so many smart phones constantly ablaze with Twitter feeds. There are some excellent summaries of that entire weekend here, here, here, here, and many, many other places, too.

Afterward, I flew to a hazy, drizzly New York City, where I walked streets that smelled of wet cement, blitzed with sudden whiffs of hot dogs, candied nuts, and heavy breaths of rain. I saw some old friends here, and some others there. My mother came to town, and we shimmied our way through a jam-packed Alexander McQueen exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, gazing at dresses that looked less like dresses and more like contemporary art. I went out to dinner with Philissa, just back from Israel, who I haven’t seen since her wedding in October. We ate in the dim back room of an East Village restaurant, a meal that involved fresh ricotta from Brooklyn, sweet peas, asparagus and a tempura poached egg. I punctuated the evening with cold sips of dry white wine, a bowl of beer-steamed mussels and, later, a fat slice of rhubarb pie.

Over the next couple days I did some book stuff, too. And the moments that stand out for me like pin-pricks, the ones that slowed down time, came when I got up in front of people—sometimes lots o’ people, others just one—and talked. I spoke at the Jewish Book Council annual event. I chatted with Melissa Clark on stage and signed some galley copies of my book at the Book Expo America. And all the while I talked about my sense of smell, my love of cooking, and my work. It’s been almost a year since I finished writing Season To Taste, and while I’ve never forgotten how much I love the subject and enjoy the process of writing, the power and immediacy of the experience had faded a bit with time.

It’s back now, though. And I’m thankful for that.

This week.

2011-05-19T06:52:00.000-04:00

Matt is in Colorado, hiking.

I’m at home, working. But just for a bit.

Tomorrow I fly to Atlanta, where I’ll be speaking at the BlogHer Food Conference. Though I’ve been blogging about food for, wow, more than six years now, I’ve only met a few bloggers in person. I'm curious to see if the rest of you actually exist in 3-D.

After that, I fly straight to New York City, where I have a humdinger of a schedule already set. Among other things—exciting things!—I’ll be at BookExpo America signing books and then speaking on the Author Insight Stage with none other than the fabulous Melissa Clark . I can’t wait.

This is all to say that this week, here in Boston, I’ve been a bit frazzled. It’s hard to sleep when you’re this excited. It’s hard to remember where you left your keys, or the remote, or your favorite pair of shoes when your mind is already in Atlanta or New York and certainly not here in Boston, among the menial objects of the day-to-day.

And eating? Well, that’s been simple. These last few days I’ve found myself reverting back to the dishes I cooked for myself when Matt was in Afghanistan—the quick, easy, vegetarian kind that I love to eat when I’m alone. Usually some kind of vegetable, preferably green in color. Parmesan cheese. Salt & pepper. Poached egg. Done.

Right Here

2011-05-17T06:14:00.000-04:00

We’d been planning to move for a while.

Matt and I have lived in our apartment—a small but functional, noisy but beautiful Cambridge apartment—for a year now. We chose it quickly, on a lightning trip from New York City a few weeks before my lease in Brooklyn ran out and my book was due. This was in the hazy months after Matt returned from his deployment in Afghanistan and decided that, yes, he would go graduate school. The move back to Boston, the city where I was born, wasn’t surprising, but it still came as a shock. It’s not that I didn’t think Matt would be accepted to graduate school, or that once he was, he would decline. But he had filled out this particular application while wearing an Army uniform, serving his third tour of duty at war, this time in the mountains near the Pakistan border. That whole year felt surreal.

So this apartment? We made that choice fast. It’s a great place, but a tiny place. There’s a small bedroom, a living room with galley kitchen, a bathroom and a little closet. Sometimes the only thing I want is a room of my own. (Hi, Virginia.)

And so for the last couple of months, we’ve seriously entertained the idea of moving to an apartment a bit farther out and, therefore, a bit larger. I combed Craigslist ads and checked out big, rickety apartments in Watertown. I saw smaller, quirkier spots in north Cambridge. I met even met with a realtor, who drove me all around town, jangling keys, opening doors, and making me rethink my budget, my bank account, and my life.

Nothing felt right.

Last year when I first walked into this apartment, however flawed it may be, I felt something. What? I don’t know. A little whisper, tickling the fuzz on the lobe of my ear: This is a place I can live.

And so we’re staying. Right here.

We’ve lived here for just one year, but it’s been a crazy year. This is where I finished writing my book, where Matt finished his first year of school. I’ve freelanced articles from the kitchen table and read countless novels on the couch. There have been wonderful times, horrible times, and a whole lot of dinner parties in between. Also: I can walk to work. Done.

With our decision to stay official, on Saturday Matt and I cleaned. Everything. We mopped, scrubbed, swept, vacuumed, dusted, reorganized, rearranged, recalibrated the entire apartment. We’re pretty tidy people, but, man, can grime build up. I’ve never been so happy to live in a small space. As it was, I was exhausted at the end of the day. If the apartment were any bigger? I might not have survived.

We emerged from the fog of Pine-sol and dish soap a few times for nourishment. Once, to eat slices of pizza that we had picked up earlier that morning at Iggy’s. Mine was topped with ramps, tomato sauce, and goat cheese. The crust was both billowy and crisp. Thank you, spring.

Later, much later, when the sun had far faded and our apartment was thoroughly scoured, I cooked. The oven was shiny and bright. The fridge, clean and clear. I cooked a simple dinner, because that’s all I could muster. I coated chicken breasts with flour, egg, bread crumbs and Parmesan and then fried them, lightly, on the stove. I simmered carrots with some water, salt, and a pat of butter, cooking them down until a glaze formed. And there were green beans—straight from the freezer to a pot of boiling water. Dinner should not have been that ridiculously good.

Later, we sat on the couch with bowls of chocolate ice cream, watching an old World War II flick. It was Saturday night; the sounds of young people cavorting on the streets outside trickled up through our windows, mixing with the pitter patter of rain.

It’s never felt better to be home.

Tuscan-Style Rosemary-Garlic Pork Rib Roast with Roasted Potatoes

2011-05-11T07:01:00.000-04:00

I have a lot to be thankful for. A beautiful home, a supportive boyfriend, a book that will be published next month. I have a new job as an editor at America’s Test Kitchen, where I’ve only been working for a few weeks but have already learned quite a lot, my mind filled with all things cooking and food. I actually had a dream that I was a pot roast the other night. I woke up sweating profusely; thinking about muscle fibers, denaturing proteins, and the way collagen melts to gelatin when it’s subjected to the right temperature for long periods of time. What? I don’t know.

But I’m thankful. I spent years writing my book—wonderful, exciting years, but years of extreme financial instability, filled with anxiety over bills, health insurance, and rent. I’m thankful that I could take those years to write. I’m thankful that I can now take a little step back and relax.

But, oh, the point of this post? I’m thankful, too, that here in Boston my family lives close by. And this past weekend we celebrated Mother’s Day. I cooked.

In honor of my mother, and also in honor of the countless hours I’ve been poring over the Cook’s Illustrated archives of late, I used one of their recipes for a roast: Tuscan-Style Rosemary-Garlic Pork Rib Roast with Roasted Potatoes. For this, I bought a bone-in center-cut pork roast from the butcher. I brined it. I seared it, fat-side down. I cut off its bones, sliced through its center, and rubbed the meat with a fragrant garlic-rosemary paste. After tying the layers of flesh and bone all back together with twine, like a present, I stuck the roast in the oven, the bottom of the pan moistened with just a bit of white wine. A half hour later, I added the potatoes. An hour and a half after that? Dinner. It was great.

I served the pork roast and potatoes with asparagus, which I roasted with Parmesan and lemon. For dessert, I made strawberry shortcakes—tender, flaky biscuits sandwiching a pile of fresh strawberries and a pillow of whipped cream.

As we ate, the sun descended beneath the spring-green trees that line the sky outside our windows. At the table, there was good wine, and a lot of laughter. I could the smell the biscuits baking in the oven the second they were done… that sudden waft of toasted butter. I couldn’t help but think about the months right after I was hit by a car while jogging here in Boston—the accident that ultimately caused me to lose my sense of smell. My mother took care of me then. My whole family did. I’m thankful that I was close to them then. I’m thankful that I’m close to them now.

Tuscan-Style Rosemary-Garlic Pork Rib Roast with Roasted Potatoes

From Cook's Illustrated

Roast

2 cups kosher salt

2 1/3 cups dark brown sugar, packed

10 large cloves garlic , peeled and crushed lightly with the back of a knife

5 sprigs fresh rosemary

1 bone-in, center-cut, 4-pound pork rib roast

Garlic Paste

10 cloves garlic , minced to a paste (or pressed through a garlic press)

1 ½ tablespoons fresh rosemary, chopped

1 teaspoon ground black pepper

1 tablespoon olive oil

1/8 teaspoon kosher salt

¾ cup dry white wine

2 pounds medium red potatoes, quartered

2 tablespoons olive oil

1. Brine: Dissolve salt and brown sugar in 1 1/2 quarts hot tap water in large stockpot. Stir in garlic and rosemary, and then add 2 1/2 quarts cold water. Put the roast into the brine, and then the pot into the refrigerator. Brine for three hours. Rinse roast under cold water and dry thoroughly with paper towels.

2. For the garlic rub: While the roast brines, stir together the garlic, pepper, rosemary, olive oil, and salt in small bowl. Mix to form a paste, and set aside.

3. Prepare the roast: When roast is done brining, adjust oven rack to middle position and heat oven to 325 degrees. Heat a heavy-bottomed skillet over medium heat until hot, about 4 minutes. Place roast fat-side down in skillet and cook until well-browned, about 8 minutes. Transfer roast browned-side up to cutting board and set aside to cool. Pour off the fat from the skillet and add the white wine. Increase the heat to high and bring to boil, scraping skillet with wooden spoon until browned bits are loosened, about 1 minute. Set skillet with wine aside.

4. Now, cut the rib bones off of the roast. To do this, hold the roast so that the bones are perpendicular to the cutting board. Beginning from the far side, use small swipes of your knife, to cut the rib bones from the meaty flesh, following the curve of the bones to the backbone until the meat is free of ribs.

5. With the roast laying flat on the cutting board, fat-side down, make a lengthwise incision in the pork loin, slicing through entire center of the meat, stopping one inch from the end. Fold the meat open. Rub this inner flap of meat with 1/3 of the garlic paste. Fold the meat back together, and on the side of the loin where the ribs were once attached, rub the remaining paste. Now, place the bones back on the loin in exactly the same position they were before slicing them off. Tie the entire roast together, using seven individual lengths of twine. Sprinkle the browned side of the meat with 1 teaspoon pepper. Set the roast rib-side down in a large roasting pan. Pour the reserved wine and browned bits from the skillet within. Put the roast in oven.

6. When the pork has roasted 15 minutes, toss potatoes with olive oil in medium bowl and season generously with salt and pepper. Baste the pork with its accumulated juices and the wine from the bottom of the pan. After pork has roasted 30 minutes, add the potatoes to the roasting pan, stirring to coat. Continue to roast the pork (basting every 20 minutes or so) until the center of the loin registers about 135 degrees on instant-read thermometer. This should take 65 to 80 minutes. (You can add a half-cup of water to the bottom of the pan if all of the wine evaporates, to prevent burning.) When done, transfer the roast to the carving board and tent loosely with foil. Let it stand until the center of the loin registers about 145 degrees on an instant-read thermometer, an additional 15 minutes. In the roasting pan, arrange the potatoes in a single layer. Increase the oven temperature to 400 degrees and return potatoes to oven, roasting until tender and browned, 5 to 15 minutes longer.

7. Cut the twine off of the roast and remove meat from bones. Set the meat, browned-side up, on the cutting board and cut into 1/4-inch-thick slices. Serve immediately, with potatoes.

Lately

2011-05-04T07:07:00.000-04:00

Baked Rhubarb Compote

2011-05-01T13:49:00.000-04:00

When I was a little girl, my mother made strawberry-rhubarb pies. When she was small, her mother made them, too. If I ever have a daughter, she’ll grow up eating the fruit pies of my past. There’s nothing quite like a recipe studded with memories, one that taste of spice and time. I’ve written about this here before.

Though I had a few bites of a transcendent strawberry-rhubarb pie made by my stepmother the other day, I haven’t made any myself. I haven’t had time to bake. Or to write. Or to even eat, really. This whole “new job” thing? On top of the whole imminent “book publication” thing? Wow. Time has taken on a whole new dimension. It no longer feels traceable, reliable, or manageable at all. It’s moving way too fast; and much, much to slow. It’s hyped up on over-stacked google calendars, on phone dates and deadlines and the electric shrill of my alarm clock. It’s bloated with commuting, with paper work, and the confusing architecture of a new office. The elongated gray faces of the scores of workers heading home on the T at 5pm make the time draaaaaaaaaag.

But I’ve been thinking about rhubarb ever since I picked it up at the market last week. Generally I enter the grocery store with a well-thought list, concrete with recipes lodged in the soft tissue of my brain. This time my plan didn’t included rhubarb, because I really only buy rhubarb to make pie, and I don’t have time to make pie right now. Sometimes, I wonder if I ever will again. I was drawn to its vibrant colors, however: the bright reds, soft pinks and dark forest greens. I bought a whole pile of the slick stalks on a whim, brought them home, and tried to figure out what to do.

Alice Waters helped.

In her cookbook, Chez Panisse Fruit, Waters writes about rhubarb, which is really a vegetable but often treated as a fruit. It’s tart, crisp, and can be luscious with juice when cooked. It’s excellent in pies and crisps, ice creams, soups, and jams—not to mention alongside rich meats like pork and foie gras. “Rhubarb is the vegetable bridge between the tree fruits of winter and summer,” she writes.

Inspired by Waters’ baked rhubarb compote recipe, I sliced and chopped my stalks and laid the pieces out in a pan. I sprinkled them with sugar, and then with orange juice and zest. Covered in foil, I baked them at 350 degrees for about twenty minutes, then removed the aluminum and baked them for 10 minutes more. What emerged was a silky sweet compote, lush and velvety, but with that familiar tart rhubarb bite. This compote works as a side to something savory—like the fat bone-in pork chops that I served that night, seared on the stovetop and then finished in the oven—or something sweet—like the Greek yogurt I ate for breakfast the next morning. Simple and quick, tart and smooth, like a pinprick pause of flavor in what has become a huge wash of time.

Baked Rhubarb Compote

From Alice Waters’ Chez Panisse Fruit

When I baked this compote, I eyeballed the amount of sugar and orange juice based on the volume of rhubarb spread out in the pan. I’m not sure how much rhubarb I began with, but I added just enough sugar to coat the stalks, and then enough orange juice to make the whole concoction look moist. I used the zest of about a half an orange, too. Here are Waters’ instructions, for those more inclined to follow a recipe with concrete numbers.

1 pound rhubarb, rinsed, wiped dry, trimmed of leaves and tough stumpy ends, sliced in half and chopped into chunks

1 orange (Waters suggests Valencia)

½ cup sugar

Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Mix together the rhubarb with the sugar, zest of the orange, and about 3 tablespoons of juice in a 9- or 10- inch non-reactive baking pan. Cover and bake for 25 minutes. Remove the cover and bake for another 5 – 10 minutes. A knife should slide easily into the rhubarb. Serve warm.

Scents

2011-04-28T06:28:00.000-04:00

Yesterday, after work, I went for a run around Jamaica Pond. Along the way, many smells jumped out at me: the damp woody tones of bark mulch, the soft perfume of new flowers unfurling from the earth. There was a whiff of deodorant. Cigarette smoke and sweat. A musty breath of pond water. Wet dog. Car exhaust. At one point, I smelled the sulfur-sweet scent of a fire, which reminded me suddenly of California, that dry, arid state where I lived amid a blazing spate of them back in 2008. But here in Boston? Perhaps it was simply a barbecue, lit to celebrate spring.

State of the Book (IV)

2011-04-25T07:00:00.000-04:00

I wanted to share Season to Taste's cover design for the UK, where it will be published (by the wonderful Portobello Books) in August. I find it fascinating to see how the cover design changes from country to country. I'll be sure to share others as they come along. In the meantime, what do you think?

Negroni

2011-04-22T06:29:00.000-04:00

Last weekend Matt and I celebrated a birthday with a (couple) bottle(s) of red wine, a hunk of creamy cheese and, later, an apple crisp. We shopped for discount clothes, navigating among herds of consumers laden with heavy bags and crumpled receipts, and then, exhausted, curled up on the couch to watch the final episodes of Mad Men. We finished our taxes and filled up our fridge. There was an intense bout of spring cleaning thrown in the mix.

On Monday, we woke up at my dad’s house in Lexington, Mass, blinking and bleary in the pitch-blackness of 4:30am. After rolling out of bed, we walked the few blocks toward town center, where we stood in a surprisingly large crowd of people to watch a reenactment of a battle from the Revolutionary War. (Ah, Patriot’s Day.) And later that night, Matt and I gathered with the rest of my family and some friends for a Passover Seder, where we ate charoset and maror, brisket, matzah kugel and big wedges of lemon cheesecake.

But what I want to write about now had little to do with any of that hectic activity, those planned events. One of the best moments last weekend came quiet and alone. Sunday, 5pm. Matt and I had just concluded the Clorox-scented cleaning of our apartment. I felt tired and my legs, sore. My hair was frizzy and my clothes, a mess. I’ll admit, I was anxious. I’ve been anxious. For a reason, though: I began a new job this week. A real job, with a real schedule, a real office, and real responsibility. Really, I couldn’t be more pleased. But, as always, anticipation is the worst part.

So, Sunday. I sat at the kitchen table early that evening, the sun falling behind the brick-gabled buildings outside. Inspired by a recent article in Bon Appetit, I made myself a Negroni—a mix of gin, sweet vermouth, and Campari. Sunset pink, bitter and just a bit sweet. I sipped it in a thick glass filled with ice while listening to the sounds of the street, the hum of the radiator, the windows rattle and clink against the early spring wind.

Negroni

Adapted from Bon Appetit

Makes 1

2 tablespoons gin

2 tablespoons sweet vermouth

2 tablespoons Campari

Orange twist

Mix all ingredients in a glass filled with ice. Stir. Enjoy.

Patriots' Day

2011-04-18T13:23:00.000-04:00

And then we ate pancakes…

Cinnamon Rolls

2011-04-13T08:32:00.000-04:00

While Matt was deployed to Afghanistan, he lived on a small Army base outside a dusty town close to the Pakistan border. His recall to the Army from the reserves in 2009 had been a complete surprise, and the long months of this deployment—his third—crawled along in slow motion for both of us.

Before I met Matt, I had never known anyone serving in the military. I hadn’t met a single veteran of America’s current wars. I didn’t know the difference between a sergeant and a lieutenant, a corporal and a colonel. I could easily pass over the boldface headlines charting the battles in Iraq or Afghanistan that littered the front page of the newspaper. I could read articles about soldiers wounded in battle or widows left at home and feel something, of course, but a transitory something, a feeling that didn’t cut, one that certainly didn’t last. Honestly? Before I met Matt, I didn’t understand the kind of pride that comes with serving something so vast as a country. I had no idea how far a sacrifice could reach.

I don’t know what all that says about me. Or America at large. But having Matt called back gave me a glimpse into a world I had never known.

Matt departed only months after I signed the contract for my book. At the time, I was living in a studio apartment the size of a breadbox in Brooklyn, where I spent most days of that year writing alone. While he was gone, we communicated through email and short, grainy phone conversations on Skype. I heard stories of Matt’s work on the base, of his patrols in the grim villages nearby. He told me about autumn helicopter rides over the vast mountains of Afghanistan and the hours trudging through deep feet of winter snow. Some of his stories were funny, others disturbing, all of them difficult in some way.

I tried as hard as I could to show my love and support. I sent letters and packages filled with books and socks and homemade zucchini bread. I won’t pretend that I was perfect: over the course of that year I felt alternately angry, lonely, guilty, and depressed. But I knew that Matt—and all of the men and women so far from their homes and their families, fighting multiple tours of duty in the Middle East—had it much worse. And this is why it both surprised and touched me that, despite all of that distance and danger, Matt was able to send me tiny reminders of his love.

One dark, cold morning in February, he sent me an email about cinnamon rolls. A Master Sergeant in the Air Force working at his base in Gardez had made a batch for the soldiers on post. They were the best, Matt said, that he’d ever had. “They were out of this world,” he wrote. “Everyone thinks so.” He continued: “I got [the recipe] for you because I know you love making cinnamon things. And I hope it brightens your day a bit.”

It did.

I’ve made these cinnamon rolls a few times now. Yes, regular readers will be correct in assuming that I have an (unhealthy?) obsession with all things brioche, cinnamon sugar, pecans, butter, butter, and butter. But, hey, we only live once. And these cinnamon rolls, whether consumed on post in Afghanistan or here in Cambridge at brunch with friends, are just as good as Matt promised.

This recipe comes courtesy of the now-retired Master Sergeant Daniel Borca, who I’d like to thank, so much, for his service, and his wonderful pastry skills. He and I have been emailing back and forth, and he's sent me another version of this recipe, one calibrated for a larger batch, which he recently made for his church. Email me if you're interested. I think I could manage to bake, eat, and write more about cinnamon rolls. You know, if I have to.

Gooey Cinnamon Rolls

Adapted from Daniel Borca

These cinnamon rolls are rich and buttery, sticky and gooey, crunchy with pecans and thick with a vanilla-tinted icing—so pretty much the Best Thing Ever. It’s possible to make these in one day. But I like to spread the work out over a few, this way making sure I’m never in the kitchen for more than an hour at a time. I let the dough, and then the assembled raw rolls, each rise in the fridge overnight. This way all you have to do is roll out of bed on a Sunday morning, throw the pan of cinnamon-laden dough in the oven, whip up an easy icing, and there you go: immediate gratification, a decadent morning meal.

Dough:
¼ ounce package of yeast
½ cup warm water (no more than 110F degrees)
½ cup warm milk
¼ cup sugar
1 teaspoon salt
1 egg
3 ½ cups all purpose flour

1/3 cup butter, room temperature, cut into pieces

Filling:
¾ cup sugar

pinch of ground nutmeg
pinch of ground cloves
pinch of salt
2 tablespoons ground cinnamon
1 cup pecans, lightly toasted and chopped (or raisins or walnuts) (totally optional)

Wash:
½ cup butter, melted

Glaze:
4 tablespoons butter
2 cups powdered sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
3 - 6 tablespoons warm milk
pinch of salt

First, dissolve the yeast into the water, and set aside. After a few minutes, it should begin to foam.

Meanwhile, combine the flour, sugar, and salt in the bowl of a standing mixer and, using the paddle attachment, mix to combine. Add the softened butter and the egg. Mix until course. Now add the warm milk, and then the yeast and water solution and mix until a dough is formed. Be careful not to over mix: it should be slightly sticky, but pull away from the sides of the bowl.

Place the dough in a lightly oiled bowl (turning to coat), and cover loosely with plastic wrap. Here, you can either let it sit at room temperature until doubled in size (around 2 hours), or throw the whole thing in the fridge overnight, and deal with it the next day.

At this point, make the filling by mixing all of the ingredients (except for the pecans; keep those separate) together in a bowl. Set it aside.

When the dough has doubled in size (or when you've removed it from the fridge and let it sit out for a half hour or so), divide it in two. Roll out each section, one at a time, on lightly floured surface in order to make a rectangular sheet about ¼-inch thick. Spread the the melted butter wash all over the surface of the dough, and then sprinkle the filling mixture, and then the pecans, liberally.

Now, roll up the dough into a long log, and seal edges with a pinch of your fingers. Cut the log into even slices, about 1½-inches each, and place the wheels, cut side up, in a buttered baking pan. Whatever filling mixture falls out in the process, sprinkle over top.

Here, you can let the rolls rise at room temperature until they’ve again doubled in size (about 45 minutes), or cover loosely with plastic and let them hang out in the fridge overnight.

When you’re ready to bake, preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. (If they've been in the fridge, take them out and let them warm up at room temperature for a half hour or so.) Bake the rolls for 12 to 15 minutes. They should end up a light golden brown.

While they’re in the oven, make the glaze: first melt the butter in a saucepan and then, off the heat, whisk in the powdered sugar. Add the vanilla and the pinch of salt. Stir in 3 tablespoons of milk to begin, and add more if the glaze is too thick.

When the rolls come out of the oven, pour the glaze all over their tops. (Make sure you do this when they're still hot, so the glaze can soak right in.) Serve warm. With napkins.

Moments

2011-04-11T15:47:00.000-04:00

On Thursday morning last week, I sat at a table by the window of a coffee shop in midtown Manhattan. It was a cool, brisk day. Looking outside, I could see a vendor selling kabobs from a cart, his cooking smoke trailing up into the sky, and a FedEx truck double-parked on the street. High heels, iPhones, messenger bikes, skyscrapers, and taxicabs: The landscape of New York.

Inside the cafe there were baristas in aprons, mugs of bitter dark roast, and the continual hiss of milk being steamed. The crowd of caffeine-guzzling stockbrokers in suits and tourists lugging large backpacks swirled around me as I sat, unmoving at my table. The scent of coffee saturated the air.

I had been working for an hour or so when I noticed an older woman with craterous wrinkles lining her face stand up from the table to my right. She wore a towering fur hat—half Siberia, half high fashion, I thought—a thick pair of 1950’s-style, black-rimmed glasses, and lipstick as red as it comes. She stood in the corner, clasping her extra-large mug of coffee in her hands, and began to sing.

There had been a mix of jazzy blues songs playing on the café’s sound system: Etta James, Bing Crosby, and the like. This woman simply sang along. Loudly. But she didn’t know the words. Mainly she just improvised, belting out a hum, warbling like a bird. Though I saw a few heads turn and a couple shoulders shrug around me, most of the café dwellers ignored the sudden influx of noise from this small, wizened woman in the fur hat. I watched her, transfixed.

She had a good voice. She really did. She just looked so strange there among the blazered businessmen and women, the laptops and smart phones. She looked like a misplaced movie star gone to seed. Like someone who belonged in a different era. In a different body, another café, among a more dynamic crowd. But I watched her swing her hips, hum, and smile somewhere in space. And, I thought, perhaps she’s exactly where she wanted to be.

Later that night, I walked along Broadway near Union Square, heading downtown to meet my brother for dinner. I used to spend a lot of time along that stretch of Manhattan, as I once worked in a building not too far away. It’s been almost a year since I moved from Brooklyn to Boston, and I’m still constantly shocked by how little, and how much, everything has changed. There are new restaurants and shuttered stores, fresh hordes of college kids and no sign of the guy who used to sell me coffee from the cart on the corner. I was comforted by the familiar rumble of the subway, the hot air spewing up from the sidewalk vents. That unforgettable scent of perfume mixed with spring and rain and concrete. I love New York. I miss New York, especially the tiny moments—like watching the sun sink below the Chrysler Building, like buying a Mr. Softee ice cream cone and eating it while walking down the street, like hearing an old woman sing to herself in a room where no one listens.

That night my brother and I ate at Otto, a Mario Batali and Joe Bastianich-owned pizzeria on 8^th Street and 5^th Avenue. Ben and I have eaten there together many times—scores of meals shared, dozens of pizzas consumed. I’m not sure when we decided to make Otto a brother/sister tradition, but somehow we did. Traditions that sneak up on you are the best kind, I think.

Ben and I used to eat at Otto once or twice a month when I lived in the city. Now, we visit whenever I’m in town. We always order the same thing: Pizza Marinara for me, (a simple yet gutsy pie studded with garlic and chilies), and Pane Frattau for him (tomato, Pecorino, egg—well, “two eggs, please”). A bottle of red wine. Sometimes we share a smattering of appetizers to begin.

On Thursday, Ben told me that he had recently discovered something mind-blowing on the menu, something that I had never before tried. “Sformato di Parmigiano,” he said. “You’ll love it.” We ordered it, of course: a light and creamy Parmesan custard served alongside a radicchio and balsamic salad. When it arrived at the table, I took a bite. And then another. The pillow-like texture of the sformato with its rich, savory edge was cut by the sweet acidity of the dressing and the crunch of the purple lettuce. That first bite? It was a perfect bite. A perfect bite on a non-perfect night, the rain just beginning to patter on the dark street outside. That’s another kind of New York moment I miss.

Stay tuned...

2011-04-07T15:27:00.000-04:00

State of the Book (III)

2011-04-05T11:37:00.000-04:00

Yesterday I wrote a post about cinnamon rolls—a hot, gooey mess of a recipe; the best kind of recipe, really—and I’m almost done. But not quite. And in the meantime, I figure it’s time for another update on the book.

April is here, which means that in a little less than three months from now, Season to Taste will be published. (June 21^st, to be exact). Three months! I remember when the publication date was years away. Years. That was when Matt was deployed to Afghanistan and I was living in a tiny Brooklyn studio, spending long days outlining chapters, talking to sources, and reading reams of scientific literature. I felt sure there was no way I would ever finish. It just wasn’t possible that this mess of Word documents and interview transcriptions would ever find their way into a cohesive book. Thank God I was wrong.

And so since I last wrote, my publicist at HarperCollins has been working hard to schedule readings and events. First off, I’m excited to be speaking at the BlogHer Food Conference in Atlanta at the end of May. (Anyone else going? I’d love to meet new folks!) And right after that, I’m heading to the BookExpo America in New York City. So far I also have a June reading scheduled at the Harvard Bookstore and others scheduled for July around Boston, in New Hampshire, and Vermont. Most of my writing career has taken place alone with my computer, with long hours behind a desk—I’m thrilled to move it out into the world. I hope to meet as many of you as I possibly can!

Also, I’ve had the honor of two more exciting blurbs for the book from authors I have long admired (!!):

"Molly Birnbaum writes with great curiosity and depth, reawakening in us all the sense of taste that we take for granted."

- Amanda Hesser, author of The Essential New York Times Cookbook

"When Molly Birnbaum lost her sense of smell in a brutal accident, it was a tragedy for her plans to become a chef, and yet it was a strange kind of gift, too. Deprived of one sense, Molly drew on all the others, and on her memories of aroma, to become a masterful and moving writer. And we, her readers, are the ultimate beneficiaries of her great heart and her vast talent. Season to Taste is a memoir, an inquiry, a rumination, and a love story, too, delivered with a poet's touch and a scholar's restless intellect."

- Samuel G. Freedman, author of Letters to a Young Journalist

And, finally, here’s a link to the book’s Facebook page. Click “like” if you want to keep up on the news as it happens closer to the publication date. If you want to pre-order Season to Taste, you can click here, here, here, or here. Many, many, many thanks in advance.

Tomato Soup

2011-03-31T14:34:00.000-04:00

I read Wallace Stegner’s Angle of Repose for the first time a little more than five years ago. I picked it up a few months after the car accident that caused me to lose my sense of smell—those slow, lonely months when I was recovering at my mother’s house in Brookline, Massachusetts.

This book, which won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1972, is in part the story of a wheelchair-bound historian named Lyman Ward. As the novel begins, Lyman—who already had one leg amputated and is suffering from a crippling bone disease—has moved into the home once owned by his grandparents. Divorced and with a distant son, Lyman moved there in order to begin dictating into a tape recorder the story of his grandmother, a promising artist and writer who followed her husband to the American West a century before. This novel is also hers. Angle of Repose is vivid and tragic, both intimate and impenetrable, one spanning culture and generation. Needless to say: I loved it.

I picked up my old copy of the book, its pages crinkly and yellow with time, again this week.

As a preface, I am a re-reader. If there is a book that I love, I will read it multiple times—enough times that sentences echo through my head, the plot seared into my brain. I re-read for some of the same reasons I write: in order to slow down, to make sense of it all. I’ve read some of my favorite books more than a dozen times and I’m actually surprised that I haven’t read this particular Stegner novel more than once. After all, I loved it. I thought about it for years after I put it down. I even went through a short phase in which I gave a new copy of the book to anyone who had a birthday, both family members and friends. But I never again cracked its spine myself.

Re-reading the novel this week, though, I remembered why. Lyman Ward’s bodily decay keeps him a slave to a wheelchair, helpless without human aid. He cannot move by himself, bathe by himself, do anything, really, that requires the use of healthy limbs—something many of us (myself included) often take for granted. Stegner inhabits Lyman’s body and mind in this book. And within it, like Lyman, we readers all yearn for the past.

When I first read this novel I was recovering from the injuries of my car accident—a broken pelvis, fractured skull, the tendons severed in my left knee. And as a result, I could relate to Lyman on a level I had never before known. My injuries were nothing as severe as his, of course. And I certainly wasn’t suffering them all alone. But for the first time in my life, I understood what it felt like to be trapped in a body, to be physically incapable of taking care of myself, to fear the future and long for the past. Re-reading now, I remember how this impressed me, moved me, and totally freaked me out.

This is all to say that this morning I went on an errand in downtown Boston, one that required a fifteen-minute walk down cobblestone streets. The heels of my boots clicked on the ground, and because it was early and there was hardly anyone else around, the sound echoed on the buildings towering up on either side of the road. It was a hollow sound, an unfamiliar sound. And it reminded me of the way sentences from books like Stegner’s ricochet through my head. For example, one I had just read while on the subway: “She went into the main parlor, got herself a glass of punch, and stood by the west window watching the sun embed itself in long flat clouds.”

There isn’t anything too mind-blowing in that sentence. But as the sharp sounds of my boots echoed on the buildings, the words “west window watching” beat a rhythm in my head. I thought about the sun embedding itself in the clouds, like a journalist in Libya or Iraq, or undercover cops in inner city drug rings, and that struck me as both strange and bold.

And then, later, when I came home and first cooked and then ate some tomato soup for lunch, I read a bit about Wallace Stegner on the Internet. One of the first quotes that came up as attributed to him made me smile. "We write to make sense of it all." Isn’t that true.

Creamless Tomato Soup

Adapted from Cook’s Illustrated

This is a thick and creamy (yet creamless!) tomato soup. Made with canned tomatoes and the clever twist of white bread for heft, it’s an easy, bright, and flavorful dish. I like to eat it for lunch, while reading a book.

¼ cup olive oil

1 onion, chopped

3 garlic cloves, minced

a pinch of hot red pepper flakes

1 bay leaf

2 28-oz cans whole tomatoes

1 tablespoon honey

3 slices white bread (or vaguely multi-grain, as I used), crusts removed, torn into pieces

2 cups chicken broth

In a Dutch oven or thick-bottomed pot, heat a couple of tablespoons of olive oil over medium-high heat on the stove. Add the onion, garlic, red pepper flakes, and bay leaf. Stir frequently, cooking until the onion is translucent, about five minutes. Add the tomatoes and their juice. Stir together, and then mash with a potato masher (or the back of your wooden spoon) until the tomatoes are broken up, leaving no pieces larger than 2 inches. Add the honey and bread. Bring the soup to a boil and then reduce the heat to medium. Stirring occasionally, cook until the bread begins to break down, about five minutes more. Remove the bay leaf.

Take the soup off the heat. Using an immersion blender (or, transferring the soup in batches to a blender), process until the soup is smooth and creamy, which will take a few minutes. When finished, add the chicken broth. Return the soup to a boil and season to taste with salt and pepper. Serve with a drizzle of olive oil or, as Cook’s Illustrated recommends, some chopped chives, too.

Pork & Lemon Polpettine

2011-03-28T13:48:00.000-04:00

The last two weeks have been a blur. A hazy, churning blur. What day is it? Which way is up? Why do none of my socks match? I don’t even know.

First, Matt was on spring break from graduate school. I wish I had had the foresight to budget/plan for an official vacation myself. But last time I checked, self-employed freelancers weren’t swarming the beaches of Cancun in mid-March. Not that Matt wanted to go to Cancun. Not that we're even really beach people. But still.

Anyway. So instead of being on vacation, I spent a week trying to pretend I was on vacation—staying up late, spending money, yes please I’ll have another glass of wine—even while working like crazy. Let me tell you, this doesn’t lead to the most relaxing (or healthy) of times. I spent the next week trying to catch up.

As you know, Matt’s sister got married in New Orleans. Then we spent a few days in upstate New York with friends. On top of that, I got some article assignments and had a few job interviews. There’s that impending book release date, and all sorts of other stuff to wade through before June.* My friend had a baby and my mother, a birthday. There was a black-tie West Point celebration thrown in there, too. Phew.

And so when I think about what I’ve been eating in the last week or so… hmmm. What have I been eating? I had good intentions, certainly. A whole lotta plans. But right now all I really remember is the late-night Indian takeout that we got as a last resort. Last resort Indian food is always a gamble. But put some spicy chana masala and creamy chicken madras in front of two starving people who already know they’ll be up late scrambling to finish homework and meet deadlines, it’ll be devoured in minutes. Coupled with a rerun of The Office and a cold Harpoon IPA? Heaven.

But! But. I remember now. On Friday night we paused to celebrate my mother’s birthday at her home in Brookline. It was just four of us: Matt and me, my mom and her boyfriend, Charley. We drank some nice wine. Ate some melty cheese. I cooked.

I decided to make Nigel Slater’s Pork and Lemon Polpettine from one of my all time favorite cookbooks, The Kitchen Diaries. (You’ve probably guessed my love for this cookbook already as I do quote it a lot...) (Here’s another good one: “Almost anything is edible with a dab of French mustard on it.” I live by that.)

Don’t let the name “polpettine” intimidate you. It sounds fancy, but these are nothing but meatballs at heart. Small, juicy, pork meatballs. Slater calls them “delectably moreish little balls.” Exactly.

To make them, you mix together the ground meat with breadcrumbs, herbs, a bit of Parmesan and a lot of lemon juice and zest. There are some anchovies thrown in there as well. If you’re afraid of anchovies, don’t worry. My mom is terrified of anchovies (Hi, Mom!) but she had no complaints. In reality, they add a subtle but rich and salty depth that I love. These polpettine cook quickly with a bit of olive oil and butter in a sauté pan on the stove. I served them and their simmered stock juices over pasta: linguini with a simple sauce of melted butter, grated Parmesan and Gruyere, salt and lots of fresh ground pepper. Roasted Brussels Sprouts on the side. (Good with a dab of French mustard, FYI).

The meal was quick and humble, but good enough to clear the blur of these last two weeks, to make us stop, laugh, and wipe our plates clean.

Pork & Lemon Polpettine

Adapted (barely) from Nigel Slater’s The Kitchen Diaries

1 ¼ cup white breadcrumbs

1 pound ground pork

1 lemon, zested and juiced

1 large handful of parsley, chopped

6 sprigs fresh thyme, leaves stripped from stems

2 tablespoons grated Parmesan

10 anchovy fillets, chopped

¼ cup flour

2 tablespoons olive oil

3 tablespoons butter

¾ cup chicken stock

Combine the breadcrumbs, pork, lemon juice and zest, parsley, thyme, Parmesan, and anchovy in a big bowl. Season with salt and pepper. Mix thoroughly. (I used my hands.)

Roll 18 or so balls of the pork mixture. (About a heaping tablespoon-full each). Place them on a baking sheet that you’ve dusted with flour. Roll the meatballs in the flour just before cooking to coat.

Heat the olive oil and butter in a heavy sauté pan over medium-high heat. Fry the polpettine in batches, careful not to overcrowd the pan. Cook for five or six minutes, turning for even browning. (I rolled them only twice during this time, to create a good crust on each side and make sure they don’t fall apart.) The meatballs should be crisp and golden. When they’re bronzed, put them all back in the pan, reduce the heat a bit, and sauté until they’re cooked through, an additional seven or eight minutes.

Now, remove the meatballs and pour out most of the fat. Add the chicken stock. Let it simmer down for a few minutes, scraping up any browned bits from the bottom of the pan. Serve the meatballs, and their sauce, over pasta.

*If you’d like to be kept up to date on all the news and events related to my book, Season to Taste, please check out my Facebook page, and click “Like”!

Woodstock

2011-03-23T07:39:00.001-04:00

Spinach and Cheese Strata

2011-03-21T14:33:00.000-04:00

This weekend Matt and I took a whirlwind trip to upstate New York. The excuse: to celebrate the birthday of a dear friend. We met Katia (and her boyfriend, Kenan) as graduate students back in New York City. They are still there, which is one of many reasons that the city seems altogether too far from Boston, even if it’s really only a few hours away.

This weekend a whole bunch of us crowded into a rental house perched off a country road in Woodstock, the same little town where I spent a month writing in the autumn of 2009. Back then, I wrote: “It’s so quiet at night I can hear the crickets. I can hear water trickling from down the road. It gets so dark that the moon illuminates the trees, shimmering through the leaves like diamonds, and it’s not hard to imagine all sorts of ghosts waiting just behind the creek.” Not much has changed.

On this weekend, we hiked up a(n icy) mountain, exploring the graying shell of what once was a hotel and climbing a fire tower that made me feel a bit dizzy when I looked down. We played football (poorly) on the front lawn of our house and communed with the glowing (Super)moon while drinking beer on the porch, inhaling the scent of charcoal from the grill. We ate a lot of good food, including an excellent carrot and feta salad, and a lemon cake so finely wrought it could have come from a professional kitchen. We drank (quite) a bit. It was fun.

Six couples stayed in the house, and each one was responsible for one meal over the two-day stay. Matt and I were assigned breakfast on Saturday. I decided to make a spinach and cheese strata, mainly because I could prepare the entire thing Friday before we even got in the car and the next morning all I would have to do is roll out of bed and stick it in the oven. Matt offered moral support.

This strata has been written about elsewhere. I’ve made it a number of times now, though, and I just love it. Well, I love most things that involve any combination of French bread, eggs, spinach, Gruyere, and Parmesan cheese. But there is something about the texture of this strata that I find addictive. The bread soaks up the custard, creating an almost pudding-like interior, with a crunchy, crusty top. It’s a perfect make-ahead dish for a crowd, especially a crowd of city-folk waking up to a cold country breeze and the happy sounds of birds chirping in the woods.

Spinach and Cheese Strata

Adapted from Gourmet

1 (10-oz) package of frozen spinach, thawed

1 large onion, finely chopped

3 tablespoons unsalted butter

1 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon black pepper

1/4 teaspoon nutmeg

8 cups French bread (about 1/2 pound), cut into 1-inch cubes

2 cups coarsely grated Gruyère (about 6 oz)

1 cup finely grated Parmigiano-Reggiano (about 2 oz)

2 3/4 cups milk (I used whole)

9 eggs

2 tablespoons Dijon mustard

Squeeze the water out of the spinach, and then chop fine.

In a large skilled, cook the onion in the butter over medium heat until soft, 4 – 5 minutes. Add 1/2 teaspoon salt, 1/4 teaspoon pepper, and the nutmeg. Cook another minute, stirring. Add the spinach. Take off from the heat.

In a well-buttered baking dish (a 3-quart gratin dish, or some other shallow, preferably ceramic baking dish) spread a third of the bread cubes. Then add a third of the spinach mixture, spreading evenly. Then: one third of each cheese. Repeat twice with these layers. End with cheese.

In a large bowl, whisk together the milk, eggs, and Dijon. Add the remaining 1/2 teaspoon salt and 1/4 teaspoon pepper. Pour this evenly over the strata in the baking dish. Cover with plastic wrap and chill the whole thing for at least 8 hours, but up to one day.

To bake: Preheat the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Let the strata stand at room temperature for about a half hour. Bake, uncovered on a center rack until cooked through—about 45 – 55 minutes. It will be puffy and golden brown.

In the Moment

2011-03-18T08:12:00.000-04:00

Matt and I spent the weekend in New Orleans, that colorful city where he was born.

Before we began dating one another, almost four years ago now, I had never been to Louisiana. I didn’t know the difference between Cajun and Creole, between a muffuletta and a po’boy. I had never heard the phrase “Pass a good time.”

But we’ve been down to visit his family a healthy handful of times now. I’ve eaten beignets in the French Quarter, listened to music in the Marigny, and wandered among the beautiful houses in the Garden District. We’ve gone running along the levee, which snakes beside the mighty Mississippi, and watched the process of rebuilding in the lower Ninth Ward after Hurricane Katrina. We’ve been there for Mardi Gras and for Jazz fest. There have been pots of gumbo, bowls of jambalaya and etouffee, and crawfish eaten by hand. And each time I visit, I’m struck by the mood of the city and the attitude of those who live there. It’s different than where I’m from, that’s for sure.

In Nine Lives, a wonderful book about New Orleans that spans the 40 years from Hurricane Betsy to Katrina, Dan Baum writes:

While the rest of Americans famously dream and scheme and chase the horizon, New Orleanians are masters at the lost art of living in the moment. If we’re doing okay this minute, goes the logic—enjoying one another’s company, keeping cool, and maybe having something good to eat—of what earthly importance is tomorrow or next week? Given the fragility of life, why even count on getting there? New Orleanians are notoriously late showing up, if they show up at all, because by and large they don’t keep calendars. Calendars are tools for managing the future, and in New Orleans the future doesn’t exist.

Of course I don’t know New Orleans—not like a native or anyone who has lived there full time—but there’s something about the city, something that pulls me in, that begs me to peel back its layers of culture and celebration as well as its destruction and pain. It’s a hard city and a fabulous one. I love it there.

We took the trip this past weekend for a happy event: Matt’s sister, Cara, was married. The wedding was a beautiful ceremony in the cavernous, echoing church in the French Quarter followed by a hopping reception in City Park, complete with sparkling umbrellas and a second line around the dance floor. Matt can certainly cut a rug.

But this weekend was not all about parties and fun. The entire time we were in New Orleans I was glued to the news of Japan. The earthquake and tsunami, the resulting destruction, loss of life, and threat of nuclear disaster. It was a strange juxtaposition of celebration and terror, one that I’m still not sure how to process. My heart goes out to those suffering in Japan—not to mention those in Egypt, in Libya, in Bahrain, in every country where social upheaval, poverty, and natural disaster are taking their toll on the every day. Here are some places where we can help.

And all the while, I’ve been thinking about something that Ruth Reichl wrote on her blog last week:

There is no time, ever, in which a terrible disaster is not taking place somewhere on the planet. And thanks to modern technology, we know all about it almost immediately. As I see it, we have a moral responsibility to respond to those disasters in the best ways that we can. Write letters, send money, do whatever possible to alleviate pain, end suffering and make the world a more just place.

But in the face of ongoing disaster, it is also our moral responsibility to appreciate what we have. That is why cooking good food for the people that I love is so important to me; in a world filled with no, it is a big yes.

So eat a good breakfast. Be grateful for what you’ve got. Enjoy the sunshine while you've got it. Then go out and save the world.

She wrote these words on Friday in response to online criticism received over a tweet she wrote during the tsunami —“Basking in sunshine. Gently fried eggs, soft golden yolks. Bright salsa: chiles, onions, tomatoes. Black beans. Warm tortillas. So fine.”

There have been mixed reactions to her tweet, and to her response. I reflected on her words as I watched the events unfolding in Japan while celebrating Cara’s wedding. They resonated with me strongly there in New Orleans, a city that has been destroyed several times by its own disasters and continues to recover, a place that truly understands the fragility of life and the beauty of the moment. In New Orleans, as Dan Baum said, the future doesn’t exist. Sitting there in that church, dancing there with Matt, remembering how lucky I am, I took some comfort in that notion. There wasn’t much else I could do.

New Orleans

2011-03-16T14:48:00.000-04:00

And We're Off...

2011-03-10T19:45:00.002-05:00

… to New Orleans!

We're heading down early tomorrow morning in order to celebrate Matt’s sister’s wedding. (Beignets will be involved.) See you next week!

Chunky Lola Cookies

2011-03-09T12:39:00.000-05:00

My mother teaches a class in her home every Friday afternoon. For the past few weeks, she’s hired me to bake something for her students. I know, I know: my mother hires me to bake! Nepotism, indeed. But there’s no denying it: I can make a mean cookie. And this one, right here? It’s especially good.

Chunky Lola Cookies

These kitchen-sink cookies - crunchy with walnuts and melty with chunks of dark chocolate - come from Joanne Chang’s recent cookbook, Flour, which I've written about before. Here, I swapped her suggested pecans for walnuts, which I toasted lightly in the oven before chopping and adding to the dough. I also swapped sweetened coconut flakes for unsweetened. This was in part due to the fact that I only had unsweetened coconut in my pantry, but also because I like my cookies to be sweet but not too sweet, and cutting the added sugar in the flakes of coconut is a good way to tone that down a bit. Finally, instead of measuring out a ¼ cup ball of dough to make a big, beefy cookie, I used a heaping tablespoon full to create a more manageable disk. I reduced the cooking time as a result.

Ingredients:

½ cup plus 3 tablespoons unsalted butter, room temperature

⅔ cup granulated sugar

⅔ cup light brown sugar

2 eggs

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 ¼ cup flour

⅔ cup old fashioned rolled oats

1 teaspoon baking soda

½ teaspoon kosher salt

9 ounces dark chocolate, chopped

1 ¼ cup walnut halves, lightly toasted and chopped

1 cup unsweetened shredded coconut

Directions:

In a standing mixer (or by hand, with a wooden spoon) cream the butter and sugars. In the mixer, this takes about five minutes at medium speed. By hand, with some added vim and vigor, this takes about ten. Add the eggs and vanilla and mix until fully incorporated.

In a separate bowl, mix together the flour, oats, baking soda, and salt. Toss in the chocolate, nuts, and coconut and stir to combine. Then, add the dry goods to the butter and egg mixture slowly, mixing or stirring until all of the odds and ends are fully incorporated into the dough. Wrap the cookie dough snug in plastic and place in the fridge for 3 – 4 hours, or overnight.

When you’re ready to bake, preheat the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Use a tablespoon to create balls of dough (a heaping tablespoon full) and place them an inch or two apart on a baking sheet. Squish each ball down with the palm of your hand to create a flat disk. Bake for around 10 - 13 minutes. The edges will be bronzed and the center still a bit soft. Let cool on the baking sheet for a few minutes, and then transfer the cookies a wire rack. Enjoy!

Roasted Brussels Sprouts

2011-03-07T12:35:00.000-05:00

We’ve been busy around here. Last week was especially intense. This is nothing to complain about, of course. The nasty winter weather decided to loosen its vice-like grip and, suddenly, my calendar filled up with panels, lectures, happy hours, and dinners with friends. It was a somewhat exhausting week, but also totally great. I mean, what isn’t great when the morning light is already streaming through the windows when I wake up, and it’s again possible to run outside? Goodbye, winter. Hello, spring.

Here are a few bits and pieces of my week spent barely at home: I spoke on a panel about science writing at Brown and listened to a lecture on education, the military, and what it means to serve. I ate gummy bears at an Oscars viewing party and drank vodka and soda at a noisy, dark little bar. There was a dinner of burrata and wild boar ragu at a table filled with new friends, and a meal of butternut squash soup and salad shared with a woman I’ve known for 26 years. Last night we met my mother and her boyfriend at The Beehive, a funky restaurant in the South End, for flatbread with brie, salmon with kale, a pretty awesome lemon cheesecake and, of course, a bit too much wine.

And now, on this gloomy Monday morning, I’m sitting at my computer in the kitchen with a mug of coffee and a ripe Bartlett pear. I’m looking forward to a day of writing. I’m looking forward to tonight when I will cook. Because it’s been a while since I spent some time at the stove. And I miss it.

Now, I love to eat at restaurants. I love good service and interesting wine. There’s little better than a well-wrought plate of food, exciting with new flavors and textures, a meal that I would never have at home. But I like eating out to be special. I don’t ever want it to get old.

I read a few lines in Nigel Slater’s The Kitchen Diaries last night before bed. In his March 12^th entry, Slater writes about a week in which he ate out more often than not and barely had time to cook:

“Eating out remains an absolute treat for me; especially so this year, when for one reason or another I have spent so much time at home. Even if I could eat out every night, I wouldn’t. Although I will admit to occasionally getting a bit ‘cooked out’, I cannot pretend I don’t enjoy putting something I have made for someone on the table. To this day, it still sends tingles down my spine.”

Me too.

Tonight I’m going to cook a very simple meal. It will just be Matt and me at the table. We’ll probably talk about boring, everyday things—his schoolwork, our taxes, and renewing the lease on my car. I’ll cook a pan of meatballs, ones made with ground beef, bread crumbs, parmesan, and basil. I’ll probably serve them over a thick puddle of polenta. I’ll make a big bowl of Brussels sprouts, roasted with olive oil, salt, and pepper. I'm not sure that my spine will actually tingle. But it will be close.

Roasted Brussels Sprouts

This isn’t really a recipe. It’s a super simple technique for a dish that I’ve made hundreds of times in the past. I know that there are a lot of Brussels sprout haters out there. But if done well, they can be soft yet crunchy, salty and sweet, as addictive as candy. And if you only knew the number of times members of my family—including my little brother, who rarely cooks—have texted me to ask for this recipe, you would have to believe that these little green orbs can be turned into something quite special.

Brussels Sprouts

Olive Oil

Salt and Pepper

Preheat the oven to 425. Trim the bottom end of each sprout, and then cut them in half. Place the sprouts in a thick roasting pan, making sure to include the extra leaves, which will grow dark and crispy in the oven. Drizzle with olive oil to coat. Sprinkle generously with salt and pepper. (I like mine to be very salty, like French Fries.) Roast for 20 – 30 minutes, until the sprouts are cooked through with patches of deep golden bronze. Enjoy!

This morning...

2011-03-04T09:46:00.000-05:00

I baked.

Roast Chicken Breasts with Garbanzo Beans, Tomatoes, and Paprika

2011-03-02T15:39:00.002-05:00

Yesterday I read an obituary in The Economist. It was one for Santi Santamaría, a Catalan chef who fought for a traditional view of food and cooking. He died in February at age 53.

The obituary talks about how Santamaría cooked pure, unadulterated food at his restaurant, Can Fabes—food that “looked like what it was.” This was different from another famous Catalan chef, Ferran Adrià, whose restaurant, El Bulli, is located just an hour’s drive north. The obituary outlines just what Santamaría thought of the “tinkerings” of molecular gastronomists like Adrià, chefs who serve “mosaics of sea anemones and parmesan-infused air” and desserts like “‘Autumn,’ where sweet and spicy powders make up a forest floor that is strewn with chocolate leaves.” Santamaría was not a fan. The Economist writes:

“Autumn” at Mr Santamaría’s establishment meant the earth-smell of mushrooms fresh-picked in the woods, damp-feathered game pulled from the huntsman’s pouch, and lentil stew so rich, so redolent of the season, that as the lid of the tureen was lifted Mr Santamaría’s hands would start to rotate sedately, wafting the aroma upwards, and his eyes to close with sheer rapture.

I love this obituary.

I love it because I'm in love with the idea of a man who believed in pure, unadulterated food, whose life was “loudly dedicated to taste, real taste, lingering pleasure for all the senses,” one who spent his life cooking this kind of food with passion.

And I love this obituary because I love obituaries. I love all obituaries—the art of writing about a life in conclusion, the art of celebrating the dead. And this one was especially well done.

I used to write obituaries for a newspaper in California. That paper, a small weekly, prided itself on publishing long, narrative pieces and I was lucky to be given space to write—to really write—about those who had passed away. There were farmers and fishermen, artists and Vietnam veterans, fathers and daughters and wives. There was Bea Blum, a dance teacher extraordinaire, and Eleanor Hamilton, the elderly sex columnist who championed the cause of love even late in life.

Sometimes I found it difficult to write these articles. After all, they all involved spending time with people who were in mourning, those who had barely gotten their minds around the fact that a loved one had died. But the majority of the subjects that I wrote about had lived long, interesting lives. I loved the idea of sending them off with a public recognition, an ink-on-paper celebration.

I’ll never forget that horrible week, however, when a nine-year-old girl drowned in a stream while having a picnic with her family and my editor asked me to write her obituary. I had never read, let alone written, an obituary for one so young. How do you celebrate the end of a life that was barely lived? But I contacted her relatives and spoke with her teacher and her priest. I went to her funeral and, later, spent time with her mother, who showed me her daughter’s bright pink dresses, her latest High School Musical soundtrack, and stacks and stacks of her favorite books. “A voracious reader,” I wrote, this little girl “could finish a book in a day; a paper clip marked her place on page 143 of The Hidden Staircase, a Nancy Drew volume she had borrowed from the library and not yet finished.”

As it turned out, I wrote this obituary in the same week that my own grandfather passed away, and I soon flew across the country for his funeral in New York. I wrote about that a bit here. That was a rough week—a rough couple of weeks—ones that kept me bouncing between ideas of youth and old age. I spent a lot of time in the kitchen that month, baking bread and braising pans of meat. It gave me the space to think.

In fact, I spent a lot of time in the kitchen when I worked for in California. With days spent memorializing death, I found it important to concentrate on the small sensory pleasures of my living life. That tiny town in Northern California was the perfect place to do so; it was filled with farmer’s markets and fresh oysters to shuck, crashing waves and whales and the ocean air that smelled of salt. It was there that I first made this dish, a simple but comforting meal of roasted chicken breasts with garbanzo beans and tomatoes, served with a spicy yet cool sauce of yogurt, paprika, and red pepper flakes. I cooked it frequently then. The flavors reminded me of home.

I began thinking of all of this yesterday as I read Santi Santamaría’s obituary. In the article, a young Santamaría is described as devouring cookbooks and learning to cook cuisines of all kinds. But in his life he returned again and again to the flavors of Catalonia, where he was from. The Economist writes: “It was fitting that the last meal he made, before he died of a heart attack at his new restaurant in distant Singapore, was a pa amb tomàquet, fresh tomato pulp and olive oil pressed onto bread, the purest taste of home.”

Roast Chicken Breasts with Garbanzo Beans, Tomatoes, and Paprika

Adapted, barely, from Bon Appetit

¼ cup olive oil

4 garlic cloves, pressed

1 tablespoon smoked paprika

1 teaspoon cumin

½ teaspoon red pepper flakes (I use a very generous ½ teaspoon here)

½ cup plain or Greek yogurt (I recommend full fat!)

4 chicken breast halves with bones

1 15-oz can garbanzo beans, drained

1 container cherry tomatoes

1 cup fresh cilantro, chopped

Preheat oven to 450 degrees Fahrenheit. Mix the first five ingredients together in a bowl. Pour 1 teaspoon of this mixture into another small bowl, and then whisk in the yogurt and set aside.

Place the chicken on a large rimmed baking sheet and rub 2 tablespoons of the spiced oil over the chicken. Add the beans, tomatoes, and ½ cup cilantro to the rest of the spice mixture and toss to coat. Pour this around the chicken. Season everything generously with salt and pepper.

Roast until the chicken is cooked through, about 20 minutes. Sprinkle with the rest of the cilantro. Serve the chicken on a plate with the bean mixture spooned over, and then with a dollop of yogurt sauce on top.