And then there was bread

First of all, it needs to be said that in preparation for this post I decided to peruse the Internet for some bread related puns. I’ve also decided to spare you the details but I did entertain myself for a good twenty minutes (that’s what happens when you’re overworked and underemployed: you seek out unusual ways to unwind).

Yesterday, while I was shop sitting my mother’s store, a dark car pulled up, a man jumped out, launched himself through the open gallery door, and pushed a yogurt container full of a watery, floury, substance into my hands with specific directions on how to “feed” it. After a brief moment of total confusion, I realized that this was the gentlemen who had stopped by my mother’s store the day before and who she had confided in, telling him that her daughter was home mixing up a batch of bread starter for what she feared would be another failed recipe attempt. This gentleman was so excited by my alleged novice bread-baking efforts that he insisted that he drop off his own, very tested, and very successful starter from the cookbook of Tartine Bakery in San Francisco. And that’s how the Tuesday afternoon event came to be when I was drive-by-yeasted with this beautiful starter. I was thrilled to have the bread recipe, but I was overjoyed (once I figured out just exactly what was going on) by this idea of sharing the recipe, passing on the starter, breading it forward, if you will (yeah, the phrasing needs work, but the thought is there).

I don’t bake bread. I’m sure you can guess at least one reason why –I harbor a not-so-secret contempt for recipes that require absurd amounts of waiting around time, and bread, rising for at least two hours, getting punched down and then rising again, and then needing even more resting time after it’s been shaped but before it ever actually enters the oven, definitely qualifies itself for this category. Then there’s the following directions issue. Bread is not an improvised dish – the proportions matter, crucially so. But I’m trying to change, really. I have now made several batches of cookies successfully for teatime at the inn, and each batch has been received with rave reviews (aka lip-smacking yummy noises). And mind you, these are guests that I am feeding the cookies to and who are, unlike my own family members, under no obligation to choke down botched cookie recipes to make me feel special. The cookie reviews are in, they’re real, and they’re good.

Finally, back to the bread issue, there is the kneading problem. I can’t knead bread. I imagine it’s the yeast that is the offender, triggering an allergic reaction that causes my hands to break out in eczema and hives, to become red and inflamed and raw by the time the dough is ready for the oven. I do believe that good food is a labor of love, but when the whole blood sweat and tears thing becomes shockingly real, you have to draw the line somewhere. That is the real reason that lead me to Jeff Hertzberg and Zoë François' book, Healthy Bread in Five Minutes a Day, (you may recognize it as a continuation of their other bestseller, Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day). The beauty of this bread is that, like a sourdough, you mix up one big base batch, which is good for up to two weeks in the refrigerator (my current sketchy refrigerator issues aside), and then you just break off hunks of the starter, mix in other ingredients, and create several different breads with little preparation time throughout the weeks. And (drum roll please) kneading is not required. It’s a wetter dough using both active yeast and vital wheat gluten that you just quick mix together and then leave to do its thing. I’ll admit that I was nervous, but I am thrilled to report that my first loaf was a wonderful success. It’s a bit misshapen, and I don’t think it was actually supposed to be that small, but it’s beautiful nonetheless. I snuck down to the kitchen several times that evening just to stare at it in adoration. I am not going to reproduce the recipe here because although the ingredients are straight forward, the recipe's true charm lies in the specifics of the directions and the attention to detail provided by the authors that simply cannot be paraphrased. They literally answer all questions; never are you left hanging thinking, but I don’t have a baking stone, what now?! Just use parchment paper and a cookie sheet. The book is brilliant.

I will say that the five minutes a day thing is pure gimmick: it refers to the time it takes to tear off a chunk of dough and mix in the rest of the ingredients – herbs, seeds etc. The time spent preparing the initial base, the hours and hours of rest time, and then the actual baking time, do not seem to fit into these five minutes. I mean, let’s face it, your oven likely won’t even reach baking temperature in five minutes, so, if you purchased this book thinking you would actually have a beautiful loaf in less time than it takes for your morning coffee to percolate, well, you should probably keep that to yourself. But the good news is, you’ve purchased a great book filled with a lot of useful information – grain facts and nutrition, recipes for breads and meals that revolve around them, and some general baking tips as well, not to mention directions that are well written, and narrative that is a delight to read. Marketing gimmick or not, I was willing to give this approach to bread-making a try, and the results are heartily filling and fulfilling, and left me craving more. But the best part is, by making bread in bigger batches, there is plenty to pass on to friends. I’m thinking about starting a mail order bread service – Short of Dough Bakery, or maybe I Need a Raise Boulangerie. I’m still working on the title.

Loaves and fishes

          The first week of food in Brookline has come down to two things: loaves and fishes. The former has been mostly experimental -- testing out recipes in the new gas oven as I've only ever had electric ovens, and slightly finicky ones at that. First I had to figure out how to turn the thing on (there's no knob, you just punch in the desired temperature and it fires itself up), then I had to spend a few moments panicking that I was about to blow up both myself and my new apartment, then I finally felt confident enough to bake the bread. The results have been...uneven. I should mention that I decided to start with the less exciting breads; the ones that have the cheaper ingredients. I figured if I were going to botch a recipe, I'd rather scratch mass quantities of cornmeal than pine nuts, and as it turns out, this was a wise decision. The corn bread is adequate, though dry, and then there is the french bread. It smells like french bread, it feels like french bread, it tastes like french bread (and good french bread too, I might add), but it looks remarkably like a rather large cookie. The good news is, though none of the bread endeavors are attractive, they are palatable, and new roommates have now ingested enough of these doughy experiments, entirely unprovoked, to send the message that they are happy to have myself and misshapen bread here to stay.

          Now for the fish. I have experienced over the past week a very real and severe form of food OCD. There are so many choices, and so many ingredients, and I want them all, and I want them now, and I want them at the best price I can get. In order to preserve some sanity, I decided to focus on one ingredient: smoked salmon. It's great protein, holds up well in the fridge for the week, and is a secret craving of mine. I tracked around the neighborhood several times until I felt confident that I had found myself a deal, and happily bounded home with my 8oz of smoke salmon fillet for $7. And that's when I bumped into my roommate on the doorstep, having just returned from the Russian Deli up the block where she had purchased 12oz of smoked salmon belly for $1. My first thought was probably what yours is right now -- $1 salmon sounds like the easiest way to contract a massive case of food poisoning. But, since kind roommate has declared that she has eaten this $1 wonder salmon every week for 3 years and is still alive and kicking, not to mention beautifully nourished, I decided I should taste test. The results are lunch.

          Other food wonders this week include a citrus, fennel salad to kick a cold, yummy homemade yogurt cheese -- the cheap and fat free alternative for total cheese addicts (guilty)--, and this beautiful tile that is the backsplash in my new kitchen.

Zucchini Bread, or how to force-feed surplus vegetables to your friends

          Last summer was my first season of serious vegetable growing, and my first experience with the frightening prolificacy of squash of all sorts. My crop of Costata Romanesca Zucchini was the first of the plants to flower in my community garden plot and, in the beginning, every burgeoning green or yellow finger that grew forth felt like an exciting feat of gardening success. I would ride my bicycle home, admiring the fresh-picked green specimens in my basket, and contemplating what an awesome gardener I was.

          Soon the leaves grew broader, the stalks grew taller, and the zucchini plants started taking over the plot. At this point, I began ignoring them altogether. But still, I couldn't help tripping over 2 foot zucchinis spilling out into the rows. The baseball bat-sized monstrosities were sauteed, put in casseroles, pawned off on unsuspecting (but often grateful) co-workers, and sometimes stored with the best of intentions until no longer edible. As much as I began to cringe at the thought of eating more squash by summer's end, leaving nature's bounty to rot seemed wholly ungrateful. So I turned to Paula Deen.

          This recipe for zucchini bread solves many squash-surplus woes. Firstly, it hardly tastes like vegetables at all - which is a relief to those who get queasy at the mere thought of shoveling more zucchini into their battle-weary digestive systems. My boyfriend didn't lay a finger on the loaf I had in the kitchen for at least two days due to his insistence that he HATES zucchini. But he gladly consumed the whole piece once assured that the - shall we say "generous" - amounts of sugar and vegetable oil in the recipe surely remove the bread from the health food category and place it in a world all its own. Secondly, the recipe, making two loaves and calling for two cups of grated zucchini, will make a sizable dent in your stash. This amount is equivalent to two small zucchinis or one large, and I have even been known to throw a little extra into the batter without detriment to decadence or deliciousness. What results is an exceptionally moist, perfectly spiced, quick bread ideal for breakfast or an afternoon snack. And you can take my word for it -- giving away your second loaf of bread will be so much easier than convincing your neighbors to take one more zucchini off your hands.

Zucchini Bread

Makes 2 loaves

3 1/4 cups Flour

1 1/2 tsp Salt

1 tsp Nutmeg

2 tsp Baking soda

1 tsp Cinnamon

3 cups sugar

1 cup Vegetable Oil

4 Eggs*

1/3 cup Water

2 cups Zucchini, grated

1 tsp Lemon juice

1 cup Walnuts, chopped

Preheat oven to 350 F. Combine flour, salt, nutmeg, baking soda, cinnamon and sugar. In a separate bowl, mix together oil, eggs, water, zucchini, and lemon juice. Mix wet ingredients into dry, then fold in nuts. Pour into two greased, standard loaf pans, and bake for around 1 hour, or until tester comes out clean.

* Eggs can be substituted with egg replacer to make a vegan bread which is, I swear, nearly identical in taste and texture. Just don't tell Paula Deen.

Tension, rising

         I’m afraid the honeymoon is over. After a full day spent baking bread, and some biscotti, and churning some frozen yogurt too (I hadn’t had a full day off in awhile; I made sure to use my time wisely) I came to the conclusion that Healthy Bread in Five Minutes a Day could have some flaws. The recipes are technically sound, and produce loaves that are texturally masterful. However, now that I have surpassed the initial panic of following a recipe carefully, and have graduated to some of the more advanced recipes, I have found some fault. The proportions listed for extras are simply not cutting it. For instance, the pesto pine nut loaf was shockingly lacking in flavor, as was the honey, milk, and raisin loaf. And the olive spelt bread was texturally spot on – dense, but not too dense – but the fruit flavors were non-existent, leaving the bread tasting much like what so many people have come to distrust in “healthy” recipes: that lingering, cardboardy sensation. I still say definitely make this bread; the recipes are scientifically stable and the texture is pleasing, but then add in 2 to 3 times the suggested amount of any extra ingredients listed – salt, olives, pine nuts, garlic, the list goes on – to achieve a bread that will really wow. Props still, Jeff and Zoë, for a bread book that has great narrative, directions, and masterful recipes, and for giving me the confidence and the jumping off point for some creative loaves.

Three recipes to beat a hurricane

Here are some fast recipes to satisfy that feeling of ok, so there is a severe hurricane warning, which I think is going to blow over into nothing, but just in case, I have plucked every blooming thing from the garden…now what to I do with it all?

1.) Slice It

Flash Grilled Vegetables

You’ll need:

Vegetables (something along the lines of eggplant, zucchini, summer squash, onions, peppers, you get the idea)

Olive oil

Salt and Pepper

A grill (gas, charcoal, whatever you’re working with)

A long fork or spatula

This recipe is unbelievably easy (once you get the grill going -- charcoal grilling is a bit of a labor of love, but we do love it). Take any of your heartier, woodier vegetables, slice them thinly, and throw them on the grill with some salt and pepper and olive oil, and that’s it, done deal, just cook until tender and crispy. They are delicious served hot, or save them for another day. Chilled, grilled vegetables are a lively addition to any salad. Tonight we served up grilled eggplant, onion, and garlic scapes, and once the vegetables had been pulled from the grill, my mother very gracefully demonstrated how she removes the veggie basket from the Weber – by inserting the spatula between basket and grill, and flipping the former end-over-end onto the gravel driveway where is can cool down properly. For the record, her methods may not be orthodox, but my mother is an excellent griller, and in the Grill Basket Olympics, I would rate tonight’s dismount a very perfect 10.

2.) Dice it

Fresh Bruschetta

You’ll need:

Tomatoes (cherry, heirloom, whatever you picked will be delicious)

Olive oil

Salt and Pepper

Fresh Basil

Garlic

Good bread, sliced

The proportions of this recipe are entirely dependent upon the amount of tomatoes you are using and how much you really like garlic. First, slice your loaf of bread, lay the pieces out on a cookie sheet and drizzle them with olive oil, then put the pan under the broiler. Don’t forget about it! The bread will be perfectly toasted in just a few moments. Once golden and crisp, remove the bread from the broiler and rub a clove of garlic over the slices for a little extra flavor. Slice and dice your tomatoes into generous chunks. Drizzle a little olive oil over the tomatoes for flavor, but the majority of the liquid in this dish should simply come from the beautiful tomato juices. Finely chop several cloves of garlic, one clove to about every three meaty-sized tomatoes is usually appropriate (though I have been known to implement a 1:1 ratio), and add in a fistful of fresh basil, also chopped finely. Eat immediately, or whenever you feel like it. The bruschetta is beautiful served cold, and is also a great salad topping.

3.) Puree It

Pesto

You’ll need:

Basil

Garlic

Olive Oil

Parmesan

Salt and Pepper

Pine Nuts

A Food Processor

Really, you can mix these ingredients together in any quantity that is appealing to you to get a consistency that you also find the most pleasing. I personally like my pesto to be thick and have little liquid. My favorite recipe, and the one I have reproduced below, is from Healthy Bread in Five Minutes a Day, and creates a thicker pesto with quite a satisfying bite. Use the pesto immediately, or freeze it in ice cube trays to be thawed out in individual portions at a later date.

Pesto

4 cloves garlic

2 cups fresh basil leaves, loosely packed

1/2 cup pine nuts

2 ounces grated Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese

1 cup olive oil

1/2 teaspoon kosher salt

1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

Process all ingredients together in a food processor until smooth (or not, I think pesto is best left a bit chunky). Also, having just run through my pine nut stash from last year, I headed to the grocery store only to discover that I must have taken out a small bank loan the previous summer in order to have been able to afford what is, apparently, a rare delicacy. Pine nuts in the grocery store run about $10 for an amount too small to mention, Trader Joe's offers a slightly larger package for $9, but truthfully, if you want to make a lot of pesto, you should find yourself a grains and spices wholesaler to stock up. Or, if you’re pressed for time and cash, do what I do, which is to substitute sunflower seeds (only $1.49 for a whopping 1lb bag at Trader Joe’s!) for the nuts. The texture is indistinguishable and I enjoy the flavor as well.

On a diet

In the middle of Julia Child’s and Alex Prud’homme’s My Life in France, I paused over the notion that Julia and husband Paul would need to start a strict régime to lose a bit of weight. Certainly the thought had occurred to me that their daily intake sounded a bit rich, but I had brushed it aside thinking that the descriptions must be overindulgent while the portions were a bit more conservative. Nevertheless, there it was in Julia’s words, diet. So, naturally, I began to ponder, what did diet and exercise look like, exactly, for Paul and Julia Child? She doesn’t go into specifics, and I admit I have not done advanced research on the exercise fads of the time, but I can’t help but picture Julia Child, dressed appropriately in sneakers and a rather modest skirt, power-walking down the street, pitched forward with her great height to get some momentum, and pearls swinging frantically at her neck with each great stride. And even if it’s likely miles from the truth, this notion makes me smile.

And then, while perusing my winter 2003 copy of Gastronomica, I discovered another gem in an article celebrating Weight Watchers’ success in it’s 40^th year of operation: an original recipe from the Weight Watchers cookbook circa 1947:

Cannoli (Italian Pastry)

Ingredients:

“Pastry” Cases:

2 slices enriched white bread, cut horizontally to make 2 thin slices (“twofers”)

4 cardboard tubes, each 1 1/2 x 4 1/2 inches (toilet paper size), wrapped in aluminum foil

2 tablespoons diet cream soda


Filling:

1 1/3 cups ricotta cheese, well drained

Artificial sweetener to equal 1/2 cup sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1/2 teaspoon orange extract

Prepare “Pastry” Cases: Flatten the twofers with a rolling pin. Roll each slice around a paper tube. Bake at 400 F for 10 minutes until bread is golden brown. Remove bread from tube and return to oven for 5 minutes more, or until inside is lightly toasted. Combine soda and vanilla extract and sprinkle over twofers.

Prepare Filling: With an electric mixer, beat ricotta until smooth, add remaining ingredients and continue to beat until light. Spoon equally into prepared “pastry” cases. Chill in refrigerator until very cold. Makes 2 luncheon servings.

Please, whatever you do, do not make this recipe. Fist of all, the recipe itself has technical problems, for instance, the vanilla is listed, quite clearly, under “filling” but then you are told to use it specifically in the preparation of the “pastry” cases. Then there is the problem that the word “pastry” appears only in rather mocking quotes. And finally, if cannoli were absolutely needed and calories were a problem, perhaps the answer would have been to use skim milk ricotta, or to eat a salad on the side. White bread cooked on an old toilet paper tube is only an appropriate diet strategy because it should sufficiently make you lose your appetite. Oh Weight Watchers, what can I say other than you’ve come a long way, baby. 

For the birds

I liked feeding ducks. As a kid it was my most favorite outing—toting too old sandwich bread to the pond and pinching off pieces to feed the waterfowl. They were mostly mallards, I think, brilliant, green-necked males and the subtler but intricately patterned brunette females, still with that one spot of dazzling blue on the lower wing. There are all sorts of posted warnings now, that offering them bread makes the birds too dependent on human interaction, compromises migration instincts, and disrupts necessary flight patterns. For the greater good, you shouldn’t feed the ducks.

Weary of grandparents, and even parents alike, who begin stories with stale refrains of back in my time…

“...gas was less than a dollar,”
or
“...one always wore a belt with pants,”
or even
“...I walked to school, uphill both ways,”

imagine my dismay that at the age of twenty-seven I have become the sort of old-timer who says, “In my day, we fed ducks.” Except I’m too young to throw up my hands in absolved dismay of social obligation; the ducks and I have too much time left. I’ve learned to heed the signs.

I can’t be certain, but I imagine it was an extrapolation of childhood memories that lead me to my next avian endeavor. By senior year of college I had an off-campus apartment: two bedrooms, fifth floor, balcony overlooking the main drag. With quaint visions of colorful flocks alighting at my kitchen window, I started tossing bread onto the terrace—heels of the whole-wheat loaves I carried home in excess each afternoon following a too early bakery shift. And then I waited for my eco-urban bird feeder to lure in the exotic droves.

Expecting an exaltation of larks, imagine my surprise when five hundred pigeons arrived, set up permanent residence on the fire escape, and (no polite way to say it, really) crapped everywhere. The invasion was so immediate and dense that it prompted an abrupt visit from the building manager by the next morning. “Sooooo,” he began, “have you noticed the bird problem on the balcony?” I shrugged. “Any idea how it happened?” he continued. “Um,” I suggested, “global warming?”

Of course the truth was that it was my fault. That I’d intentionally thrown bread onto the balcony in a shortsighted attempt at bird bevy turned public biohazard. And I’d feel worse about it now, but I’m fairly certain I evened out any karmic debt by scraping mounds of bird feces into trash bags for the duration of my lease. Oh, and I named most of the pigeons too. Not with cutesy, feathery titles but real, adult names that I imagined matched their very serious and bustling schedules. Susan, Fredrick, Steven, Jonathon, Lorelei…the list goes on. It’s how I made the best out of the situation at hand.

Because I often pride myself on sound decision-making and risk evaluation, it makes me smile now to think that I was once naïve enough to expect birds of paradise when pigeons were the more obvious reality. I’m fairly certain it’s the sort of memory enduring optimism depends upon.

Cantaloupe and Tomato Gazpacho, a Summer Soup

          It was a proper, memorial day this past weekend; the sun was shining, the temperature was up in the 70's and 80's, and there was an occasional cool breeze off the water. I know about the breeze because when I wasn't pulling consecutive doubles at the restaurant, I sat on the pier and ate a protein bar, and watched the tourists and the fishermen at the town landing hauling their boats in and out of the water. I needed the money so I was happy to work 50 hrs in 4 days. Trial by fire is the name of the game in a restaurant. However, a night or two before the holiday weekend, I had a summer revelation; I remembered cold soup. Hence today's post; Cantaloupe and Tomato Gazpacho.


          This soup is the quintessential summer soup. Gazpacho has about as many variations as there are days in summer, so feel free to be creative, but this is how I got it going:


1 cantaloupe, skin off, de-seeded, cut into chunks
3 hothouse tomatoes, skin off, de-seeded
1/4 onion, chopped
1 shallot, chopped
1/2 red pepper, chopped
1 lemon, juiced
small bunch of basil, chopped
crusty bread
olive oil
salt/pepper
dash worchestershire sauce (optional)


          Cut an x in the tomatoes and dump them into a pot of boiling water for less than a minute. Take them out, run under water, and remove the skin. Clean your basil. Take a good handful of your crusty bread and soak it in water.

          Next, cut the tomatoes in quarters, takes the seeds out over a bowl/fine mesh strainer, and reserve the juice for later.

          Cube the cantaloupe, tomatoes, onion, shallot, and pepper. Throw all the bits in the food processor, or whatever you have, and pulse it all together. Add the juice of the lemon, the bread, the basil and, most likely, all the reserved tomato juice. Stream in the olive oil. Add salt and pepper to taste, and perhaps the worchestershire sauce if you dig that too.

Apples, Darling

You might’ve thought Jess and Zach’s Apple Day post was saliva-inducing and exhaustive enough (cider donuts, tart, and upside-down cakes?!) to fulfill the I Would Eat That Off A Squirrel annual apple-coverage quota, but I am here to tell you that you were mistaken. Apple harvest comes but once a year, friends, and I am committed to celebrating its bounty by consuming as many apple-filled baked goods as my waistline will tolerate.

My personal apple-mania began this year during my first ever visit to the Common Ground Country Fair in Unity, Maine. Unity is not exactly on the beaten track (i.e. at least 2 1/2 hours from outlet shopping of any kind), but is well worth the trip for anyone interested in green-living, sustainability, homesteading, or eating from the earth. It is also a must-stop for anyone interested in learning how to cook apple crumble over an open fire. I definitely fall into this category, and so Pete and I made our way to the Maine Guide Encampment to check things out. There we found a team of canoe guides who have clearly gotten portable, wilderness cooking down to a science. With the help of a collapsible metal “oven” called a Sproul Baker, they are able to cook breads, biscuits, and desserts in a timeframe similar to standard oven cooking, and without charring everything to an acrid and blackened crisp. I was impressed and have a new dream of becoming a canoe-traveling, backwoods baker. Thus, my lingering lust for apples...

After the fair, I returned from Maine with a sorry sack of apples from a U-Pick orchard that did not size up to my visions of autumnal splendor. Fortunately, Jess rescued me with an assortment of sweet, juicy, and gorgeous specimens from her jaunt to New York, and I wasted no time putting them to use. With a morning visitor expected, I woke up extra early to whip up an Apple Pecan Quick Bread and was delighted by the results. The recipe calls for orange juice, which lends a sunny and unexpected flavor and makes the recipe an interesting alternative to the standard cinnamon-and-nutmeg-spiced apple quick bread.

Apple Pecan Quick Bread
Lightly adapted from The Magnolia Bakery Cookbook

1 ¾ cups Flour
¾ cup Sugar
1 tbsp Baking powder
½ tsp Salt
⅔ cup Orange juice
⅓ cup (5 ⅓ tbsps) Butter (unsalted preferable)
2 Eggs
1 ½ cups (about 2 medium) Apples, grated (I peeled one, and left skin on the other)
½ cup Pecans, chopped

Preheat oven to 350 F, and grease a loaf pan (glass preferable). Sift dry ingredients into a large bowl, then make a well in the center. Stir in wet ingredients until just combined, then gently fold in the apples and pecans. Pour batter into pan and bake for 50-60 minutes, or until top is golden brown and a tester comes out with moist crumbs attached.


My next bushel-busting attempt was Apple Hand Pies. With upcoming party plans in the works, I wanted to test some recipes that would not require ample plates and cutlery. If faced with a whole pie and not enough plates or forks, I could definitely make it work, but I thought my party guests might appreciate something slightly more civilized. Thus, I consulted A Cozy Kitchen’s recipe for a spicy and lemon-scented apple pie filling, tucked into an envelope of Joy the Baker’s Buttermilk Pie Crust. As it turns out, this is a heavenly pairing that’s worth every bit of the fuss. I’m not sure if it’s the unusual method of using a rolling pin to combine the butter into the dry ingredients, or the use of buttermilk to moisten the dough, but this recipe yielded a pie crust that flaky, buttery dreams are made of.

Apple Hand Pies
From A Cozy Kitchen and crust recipe from Joy the Baker, as interpreted by me.

Yields about 15 pies (except I got 10, plus one scrappy-looking one)

Pie Crust:

2 sticks Unsalted butter, cold
2 ½ cups Flour
1 tbsp Sugar
1 tsp Salt
½ cup Buttermilk, cold 

Cut the butter into 1-inch pieces and, in a separate container, measure out the buttermilk. Place both in the freezer to chill for about 10 minutes. Sift the dry ingredients into a medium bowl, then toss in the cold butter. Dump the mixture onto a clean work surface and use a rolling pin to flatten the butter cubes into the flour. This will create small “sheets” of butter coated in flour. Roll until no cubes of butter remain. I used a spatula to scrape up any mounds of butter stuck to the counter. Return mixture to bowl and chill in the fridge until butter is cold again. Then, make a well in the center of the dough mixture, and pour in the chilled buttermilk. Using one hand, mix in the buttermilk until barely combined. My dough felt slightly wetter than I hoped for, but it came together well and worked perfectly later on. Divide dough into two disks, wrap in plastic, and return to fridge for at least one hour.

Filling:

4 medium Apples
½ tsp Lemon juice
½ tsp Lemon zest
½ cup Sugar
¼ tsp Salt
¼ cup Flour
1 tsp Cinnamon
¼ tsp Nutmeg (freshly grated preferable - it’s worth the trouble)
1 Egg (for egg wash) 

Peel and core apples, then dice into ½-inch chunks (keep pieces small for easier filling later on). Zest the lemon and add to bowl, then juice lemon and pour juice over apples. Stir to coat. Add dry ingredients to bowl and mix gently.

Assembly:
Remove pie dough from fridge and let sit for a few minutes. Meanwhile, line 3 small cookie sheets with parchment paper (greasing would probably work OK, too). Roll out one disk of dough to ⅙-inch thickness. Use a circular kitchen item with a 5 to 6 inch diameter to cut circles from dough (I used a small metal bowl about 6 inches in diameter). Place circles on cookie sheets (4-5 per sheet - it’s ok if they overlap at this point) and return to fridge while you continue rolling and cutting the second disk of dough. Save dough scraps and mush them together to roll out again. Repeat until all dough is used. 

Prepare one ramekin or small bowl with water and in another crack and scramble one egg. Remove first tray of dough circles from fridge. Place a heaping ¼-cup of apple filling into the center of one circle. Using your fingers, moisten the outside edges of the dough with water. Pick up two sides of the dough and press gently along edges to secure the two sides together, creating a half-moon-shaped hand-pie. Place the pie back down on parchment and crimp edges together with the tines of a fork. Repeat until all pies are assembled, and place back into the fridge to chill for 15 minutes. Preheat oven to 375 F. Remove first tray from fridge and coat with egg wash (I used my fingers, though a pastry brush would’ve been preferable). Cut a slit in the top of each pie to vent steam, etc. Continue until all trays are complete, and place in oven. Bake for 20-30 minutes, or until golden brown and bubbly.

I have enjoyed each seasonally, satisfying bite of apple-enriched delicacy, and have tried not to become overwhelmed by all of the culinary options for autumn’s most iconic fruit. And then I remember that pumkin season is also upon us. And cranberries! And with that, I head back to the kitchen to make the most of what fall has to offer.

In search of the tenth muse

The past week has been hectic, and my lack of posts certainly reflects that. My inability to sit in front of the computer and compose a relatively coherent piece of work is not due entirely to a lack of time and sleep, though both factors have contributed, but rather due to the fact that my eating habits have been horrifying, to say the least. Opening week at a restaurant is a wonderful/terrifying experience. I have never worked longer hours and yet so easily lost track of time. I leave for work at 7am and arrive home anytime after 7pm with little ability to account for what exactly transpired in that 12 hour span; I know only that I’m deservingly tired and hungry in a very serious way.

While the pace is demanding and everyone is keeping up beautifully, there are still kinks to be worked out. Some of them do revolve around the wait staff, and the fact that while we have six servers on the floor, one making drinks, and two designated bussers, we could easily use double that number as we push through hundreds of diners each day. Managers aren’t so much managing as they are also running frantically around the dining room tossing bread at hungry patrons because the servers are so pressed for time we rarely have a moment to deliver the bread tableside ourselves.

Some of the hiccups in this first week have involved the kitchen staff as well. They too are keeping up with the demanding pace during service, but it has come at a price: the staff meal has been lost in the shuffle. The first day we were served a mini-bagel each. I looked at the tiny wheat wheel in horror, quietly trying to control the hissy fit creeping towards me with the realization that I was expected to go eight hours on this bagel, and this bagel alone. By the end of the first night shift, even the floor manager was huddled in the corner with the servers as we all gnawed on the heels of bread; the remnants of innumerable loaves sliced throughout the day to be laid out on the tables while the guest awaited their entrees. There have been whispers and thoughts of scrambled eggs, and a few puff pastries and salad greens have materialized on the line a few mornings for us, but so far staff meal has been a bit lean, and that means that the rest of my eating habits are decidedly not so.

To say that I’m hungry when I leave work is a gross understatement. Starving or ravenous would be a closer approximation, and the terms desperate and irritable also apply. The best way I can think to describe my level of hunger is to say that I would eat my own foot if I could get it in my mouth. By the time I leave my shift, I would eat anything and everything I can get my hands on, and that means that, on more than one occasion, the leftover cheesecake from lunch service, random scraps of polenta, a wayward oyster, some crumbles of goat cheese, dregs of the cauliflower soup, and the crust off a quiche, among other odds and ends, were all consumed, all at once, and still my stomach could not be sated. Dinner is no longer a meal so much as a conglomeration of whatever I grab first from the cabinets and shovel into my mouth. Bowls, plates, and cutlery of any kind are all optional most evenings. My mother has not called me once before 9pm this past week. I can only assume she greatly fears the possibility of speaking to me while my blood sugar levels are still plummeting.

Gastrea is the tenth muse, created and named by author/philosopher Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin in his work, The Physiology of Taste: Or, Meditations on Transcendental Gastronomy. Gastrea is essentially the muse of food, or that of the delights of taste and her creation is based on the idea that all that lives needs nourishment. I am acquainted with this tenth muse because I have spent the week slogging through a good chunk of homework, much of it devoted to different theories and methods through which gastronomy can be studied and discussed. I have found my readings in Transcendental Gastronomy and the invocation of Gastrea to resonate particularly boldy this week during which I have regretfully eaten food purely for nourishment while pleasure and creativity have been displaced to the back burner. There are certainly more details about work and school still to come, and recipes too, but for now I will leave you with this invocation of Gastrea, a hope for delicious things to satiate a never-ending appetite, and a simple sum up of this week's activities.

In the past week I have… 

started classes and am enjoying the material but am far too tired to talk about it,

put in a 50 hour waitressing work week, about which I am also too tired to go into detail,

still failed to produce a fried egg that looks halfway appetizing,

cut myself decently with the new ceramic knife Zach optimistically gave me for Christmas (we all knew it was just a matter of time),

eaten an unspeakable amount of honey directly from the jar to try to stage off moody sugar crashes with only limited success,

fallen asleep twice still dressed and with the lights on,

fallen asleep once still sitting at the kitchen table,

fallen asleep while on the phone with my boyfriend, who was kind enough just to hang up and not mention it in the morning,

dropped my apple on the Fenway, bite-side down, on my walk home from work and ate it anyway because I was so flipping hungry,

blown through a box and a half of bandages on pesky foot blisters,

and finally made one meal that looked moderately appetizing and sat on the plate long enough for me to snap a photo. The recipe follows. 

Black rice noodles with spinach, kale and pepita pesto and a fried egg.

You’ll need:
One serving of King Soba black rice noodles
2 cups combined kale and spinach leaves, stems removed and chopped roughly
1/4 cup pepitas
2 Tbs. olive oil
1 clove garlic
salt and pepper to taste
1 Tbs. fresh basil if you have it (which I do, because the Thai basil plant is actually still alive. I don’t want to talk about the Genovese basil though) and a bit extra for garnish
1 Tbs. grated parmesan cheese
Enough water to reach the desired consistency, about 1/4 cup.

Makes about 1 cup pesto.

Begin by cooking your greens until they are wilted but still vibrant. Allow them to cool slightly, then add them to your blender or food processor along with the pepitas, olive oil, garlic, salt and pepper, basil, cheese, and water. Add the water in stages to avoid making the pesto too runny. Bring a pot of water to a boil and cook your noodles. While you are cooking your noodles, poach or fry your egg. Since I don’t like to do dishes, I use the same pot for everything, cooking first the greens, then the noodles, and finally the egg and removing each from the boiling water with my mesh ladle. Serve hot and garnish with some fresh basil and salt and pepper.

Olive Loaf and Laughable

          The series of events that took me from kitchen to bedroom with the fresh bread dough were actually quite logical. With that being said, I recognize that, having woken up at 3am this morning spooning the dough bowl, I might have crossed a line.

          I mixed up my latest batch of bread – kalamata olive and rosemary – and gently turned it into a large bowl to rise. I waited an hour, nervously peeking over the edge of the bowl, but nothing happened. This is not the kind of dough you knead to pack with air; you just mix the ingredients once and rely solely on the yeast and vital wheat gluten to do their thing. That means that temperature is essential. And the kitchen was too cold.

          I thought it just needed more time, but after nearly 3 hours the dough’s progress was pathetic, and I was becoming antsy. So I did what I thought seemed right: I brought the dough bowl upstairs, heat rises after all. But the temperature difference on the second floor seemed negligible. I plunked the bowl on top of the dryer and contemplated turning it on, but after battling internally with my desperation to save the loaf and my moral standards about energy conservation, I decided it just wouldn’t do. That’s how the bowl made it to the foot of my bed where I wrapped it into a nest of down comforter and curled up with my book while I waited for the bread to rise.

          I woke up several hours later to the smell of bright olives and yeast, and for a moment thought I might be outside. I was in my bed, of course, having fallen asleep reading, and now hugging the dough bowl tightly to my chest. I quickly hustled downstairs and tucked the bowl into the refrigerator as if nothing out of the ordinary had just transpired, but I did notice that the dough had risen to the appropriate height, my body heat having provided that essential temperature shift.

          When I let this story slip this morning over breakfast service at the Inn, my coworkers of course had a few things to say about it. The jokes, many of them cheap shots and, obviously, lewd, ranged from puns about taking something to bed to get a rise out of it (ha) to the ever classic, “Hey, any port in a storm.” I agree that I may have taken my love of food to a new level last night, but pulling the dough from the refrigerator this afternoon to ready it for baking, I poked the now fluffy loaf and couldn’t help but think to myself, a little affection goes a long way.

Bad news begets Brie

            Yesterday I got a bit of bad news. Our landlord dropped in to tell us that in the Fall the rent would rise by a nominal percent, and she’d be moving into one of the bedrooms. After she, the bearer of bad news, left, one roommate immediately pulled a bottle of wine from a kitchen cabinet and the rest of us debated if we were still hungry enough for dinner. The first words from my mouth were, “I could stress vomit right now, if I needed to,” and then wondered if it were actually about to be an involuntary reaction. The stress stayed down, but dinner was forgone, just in case.

            Today I woke up, pulled on my clothes and sneakers, and hiked down to the grocery store immediately. I was on a mission for Brie cheese—it just seemed like the right thing to do. Perhaps being buried in delightful food memoirs for the past few days, homework for my most recent food writing class, with florid images of MFK Fisher and Angelo Pelligirini modestly spreading cheese on bread to pair with their afternoon meals, I knew that a bit of Brie and some fresh toast would make the day more palatable.

            I’m not sure where my love of Brie comes from truly, though I associate it with my maternal grandmother’s house where I imagine we ate it in large quantities during childhood visits. Other delicacies consumed with Fifi (that’s what I called her) included chocolate milk and those little boxes of cereal that you open on their sides and pour the milk directly into. I always ate the Froot Loops first. Likely, these gastronomic delicacies, never allowed at home, were more influences of my Uncle who traveled with us than my Grandmother who I remember as a remarkably classy woman. My love of Brie might actually be inherited directly from my own mother who baked it to gooey perfection for nearly every dinner party she threw when I was still a child. Brie remains deliciously happy in memory.

            That’s the thing about food and memory; the two are inextricably linked and therein make for the best stories. Food memoir has long been my favorite genre, I suppose there is just something so easy and joyful about tucking into a good meal and a good story together. Still, I think often, probably too much so, about my own story. Though I aspire to be a memoirist myself, after plowing through pages filled with rogue chefs in the seedy, culinary underbelly, or pastoral gourmands who fell in love with exotic persons and cuisines in some distant land, I worry that my story is, frankly, a bit boring. My history of drug and alcohol abuse is terribly pathetic, mostly because I tend to fall asleep after a single glass of wine, my parents never owned a farm, and I did not meet the love of my life in a summer cottage abroad, nor do we live blissfully, stuffed to the gills with fresh farmer’s cheese, in said cottage now. My boyfriend currently lives in a tent in Montana, actually, while I live in Boston and we share meals by snacking in separate time zones, audibly obscuring our words with full mouths through an already iffy cell-phone connection. If I were to write a food memoir it wouldn’t be about Michelin starred bravado, nor my quaint flat on the Rue de la something-or-other buried deep in the heart of fabulous, French cuisine. It would be about frying noodles in the back of a Ford short bus on a very temperamental camp stove, and that bottle of Sriracha chili sauce that has moved now to three apartments and has accumulated a sizeable ring of crusted on condiment, expanding around its squeeze-top much like the rings of a tree grow each season; a visible marker of its past.

Today, I opened the kitchen cabinet to search out lunch and saw the bottle of Sriracha. “Well,” I said to it, or to no one in particular, I’m really not sure which, “we’re moving again,” and then I sat down to a lunch of arugula salad, a poached egg, and a bit of Brie cheese, lightly melted on fresh, hot toast. I will move again, and it will be fine, I crunched to myself. I will finish graduate school and eventually end up with a career, I reached for the napkin. I will write my food story, and somebody other than my parents will actually read it, I slurped at the dregs of some watered down wine. I will finally throw out the Sriracha, I paused. Maybe.

Lunch for sometimes optimists

A bowlful of baby arugula greens
Several lean string beans, raw, split in half lengthwise and then widthwise
A few fresh basil leaves, torn over the bowl

Salt and pepper to taste
A drizzle of olive oil, tossed evenly over the greens
One egg, poached, and laid on top of the salad
Fresh wheat bread, homemade is delightful but any hearty, decent loaf will do
A schmear of Brie cheese, lightly melted on the toast

Prick the egg to begin your meal, the still runny yolk is the perfect dressing for the greens, and oh so delicious when mopped up with the last corner of bread and bit of Brie. Lovely as is, but also pairs well with a little white whine, and then, perhaps, an afternoon nap.