That's Cooking!

A lot of people want to know: “Does Craig ever cook for you?”

Normally the answer is “no, never, he just likes eating,” but last week the answer became: “Yes, but only when I slice my finger.”

I blame the new peeler. Strangely, since moving to this apartment, I’ve lost not one but two peelers. The first I actually lost lost (it was a Y-shaped peeler, and one of my favorites); the other I accidentally broke when it mysteriously inverted itself so the peeler part was faced inwards and the non-peeling part was faced outwards. Peelers in my kitchen don’t stand a chance.

My newest peeler is from Williams Sonoma and it’s a hardcore peeler. You can merely brush the surface of whatever it is you’re peeling–an apple, a pear, the face of a rival food blogger–and the skin seamlessly slips away. Such was the case when I started peeling apples to make Gale Gand’s apple crumb cake from her very pretty book “Brunch.”

This recipe is astoundingly easy. It’s listed as “Quick Pear Streusel Coffee Cake” (I didn’t have pears so I used apples) and “quick” is the optimal word: in just a few minutes, your house or apartment will smell wonderful. The resulting cake is beautifully moist, cinnamon-y and deeply comforting.

And, as if to prove how easy it is, if you slice your finger while peeling one of the apples? Your non-cook boyfriend can step in to save the day.

While I was bleeding profusely, Craig pinched together the streusel topping. This is his hand sprinkling it over the top:

Asking him now how he felt about helping me make this coffee cake, he offers this inspiring response: “Micromanaged.”

This is the cake that brings people together! Why not micromanage the non-cook in your life and have them whip you up this cake? Just slice your finger, bark orders and enjoy some crumby comfort.

Easy Apple Crumb Cake
from Gale Gand’s “Brunch”
by Gale Gand

For the cake:
Unsalted butter, for the baking dish
1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
2 1/4 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 large egg
1/2 cup whole milk
4 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted
2 ripe pears (she likes Bartlett) or apples (I like Granny Smith) [she says to leave the pears unpeeled (how ironic!); if you use apples, like I did, you should probably peel them], cored and chopped

For the streusel topping:
1/2 cup sugar
1/4 cup all-purpose flour
3 tablespoons cold unsalted butter, cut up
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

Heat the oven to 400 degrees. Butter an 8-inch square baking dish.

To make the cake, combine the flour with the baking powder, sugar, salt and cinnamon in a medium bowl. In a separate bowl, beat the egg and then mix in the milk and melted butter. Pour the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients, add the pears, and mix well. Pour this into the buttered baking dish.

To make the streusel, mix the sugar, flour, cold butter, and cinnamon in a bowl by pinching them together with your fingers until well combined. Sprinkle over the top of the batter.

Bake the cake for 30 to 35 minutes, until it is golden and dry on top. Cool in the pan, and then cut into squares. This cake keeps for up to 4 days, covered, at room temperature. Trust me, though: it won’t last that long.

Go to Source

Last weekend, I decided to make a very ambitious breakfast of poached eggs on roasted potatoes with Hollandaise sauce. It took a whole carton of eggs (three for the Hollandaise, four for poaching and the rest for throwing away after the yolks bled into the whites) but the resulting dish, as you can see, was pretty dazzling. It’s the kind of breakfast that makes you, the chef, feel proud and triumphant, roaring with the might of a culinary lion. “I made that!” you keep saying to yourself, reluctant to disturb the plate with a fork. “I really made that.”

“Yes,” says your companion, digging in.

“I’m a culinary lion!” you continue. “Rawwwwwwwwr!!”

You may get strange looks after that, but just ignore them: you deserve your moment in the sun.

This dish involves three separate techniques that, when they come together, form a beautiful whole. Let’s take them one at a time.

Technique One: Roasting The Potatoes
To roast the potatoes for this dish, I used a recipe I’d been eager to try since I read about it on Food52: Tad’s Roasted Potatoes.

Tad Friend, brilliant New Yorker writer and Amanda Hesser’s husband, developed a roasted potato technique that relies on one essential ingredient: old potatoes. Explains Hesser: “As potatoes age, their starch turns to sugar, making them denser, softer and easier to caramelize.”

In January, I bought a bag of white potatoes for this very purpose and finally, this past weekend, I put them to use:

You preheat your oven to 375 and cut your potatoes into little cubes (3/4 inch cubes, according to the recipe, which is why you see that ruler there.) You only want to cut up enough to form an even, flat layer in your cast iron skillet.

Drop the potatoes in there and then coat generously with olive oil (a heavy pour). Season with salt and pepper and drop in 3 garlic cloves and 8 sprigs of thyme or rosemary. Toss around and flatten once again.

Place in the oven and roast for 40 minutes, scraping and turning the potatoes every ten minutes. The potatoes, when done, should be a beautiful dark brown and cooked all the way through (taste one):

That’s it for the potatoes! Now on to the next technique.

Technique Two: Hollandaise (in a Blender)

The hardcore cooks among you might scoff at this shortcut for making Hollandaise sauce, but would you scoff if I told you that I learned this technique from a certain cookbook called “Mastering The Art of French Cooking” by Julia Child? I didn’t think so! Yes, right there on page 81, Ms. Child has a recipe for “Hollandaise Sauce Made in the Electric Blender.” It’s wonderfully easy.

In the blender, place 3 egg yolks, 1/4 tsp salt, a pinch of pepper and 1 to 2 Tbs lemon juice.

Then cut up one stick of butter and melt it in a little pot until it’s foaming.

Turn the blender on and carefully drip the hot, melted butter into the whirring egg yolks (you may need to use a towel so it doesn’t splash up and burn you). Go slowly: drop by drop as it emulsifies and then a thin stream after that. Julia says: “By the time two thirds of the butter has gone in, the sauce will be a thick cream. Omit the milky residue at the bottom of the butter pan. Taste the sauce, and blend in more seasonings if necessary.” (I added more salt, pepper and lemon juice after tasting it.)

That’s it! Easy, breezy Hollandaise:

Technique Three: Poaching Eggs

No pictures here: this is an unpleasant, ugly process. And I can’t claim any expertise here–it’s the kind of technique you just have to do and do and do again (as illustrated in the “Julie & Julia” movie.)

Here’s what I did: I filled a Dutch oven with water and carefully raised it to just under a simmer (a little bubble every now and then). I filled a separate bowl with ice water. I added salt to the hot water (just a bit) and a splash of vinegar (red wine, though white wine vinegar is preferable). I cracked each egg into a tiny bowl and carefully slipped the egg into the almost-simmering water by getting the bowl as close to the surface of the water as possible. Then, immediately, I used a spoon to coax the white around the yolk. There were lots of strands and ugly things floating around, but I ignored them.

Four minutes later, I lifted the egg with a spider into the ice water. This stops the cooking and also rinses the vinegar off the egg. I did this with the rest of the eggs (and they all, somehow, managed to stay together). Then I emptied the pot of the water and the white floaty stuff, cleaned it, refilled it with water, brought it up to a simmer and reheated the eggs.

This was certainly the most tedious part of making this breakfast but also the part I’m the most glad about. The fact that the poached eggs were solid on the outside and runny on the inside was a real culinary coup and it made the breakfast as enjoyable as it was. Here it is, again, in all its glory:

Do you dare attempt it this weekend? All you need are potatoes, garlic, thyme, a carton of eggs and a dream. The rest will take care of itself.

Go to Source

I thought I’d take some time to write about Super Natural Every Day. The manuscript and photography are due this summer so why not wipe the spelt flour off my cheek, let the quinoa simmer on its own for a bit, and share a bit about how I’m working toward that not-so-far-off date?

I’ll start by telling you about my creative process, which, in a broad sense, starts by collecting things that inspire me. I keep all sorts of scraps, notebooks, photos and random text files around. They live in drawers, on desktops, some are paper, others are digital. Thoughts and inspirations set aside for later, someday, next year. Occasionally, I’ll cluster a few of these things together if there is some sort of connection that strikes me as interesting. If I’m really excited about something, that particular cluster might end up in an envelope or folder.

Many of the ideas, images, and thoughts related to this new book lived in a simple paper folder for a time. I’d add a copy of a recipe from one of my notebooks occasionally, or a photo of a place that evoked a certain feeling or sense of place. I might pull the folder down every few months, spread all the notes and elements across a table and think about what I was looking at. What could I add? What should be taken away?

There was a point when I thought it was time to get more serious. If I wanted to turn this into a cookbook what might it look like? Feel like? What would the themes be? How would it be structured? Which recipes? I started answering some of those questions and began to work on an outline.

My outlines usually start by organizing the book into sections, and then breaking those sections down into more detail (and recipes). As the project matures the outline turns into a 4-5 page road map/blueprint for the book. This document changes and evolves constantly based on what I feel is working and what isn’t. But having a strong outline in place helps to let me know (at a glance) where I’m at in the overall process and where I’m headed. It’s surprisingly easy to get lost.

I color code and mark up one version of my outline based on where I’m at. A plus mark following a recipe name means it is tested and has a head note. Two pluses means a photo is completed. A plus before the name means I’ve converted the recipe into international weights and measures. Highlighting the recipe name in green? That means it’s in good shape and ready for some time in a kitchen other than my own.

Sorry, let me back up a bit. Around the time I’ve fleshed out an outline, I also set up a binder (see the first image). At this point it’s pretty much a dummy book. I fill it with sheet protectors and section dividers. It helps me imagine the actual object I’m working on. It keeps me organized and enables me to actually see any progress I’m making. My outline corresponds with the pages in the binder, page by page. I assign one recipe per sheet protector, the most current version of the recipe is visible. If there is a photo to go with a recipe I have it in the same pocket visible through the back side. It makes it easy to move pages and recipes around, and keep track of versions of recipes (and related notes).

It would be disingenuous for me to tell you this process is all sunshine and flowers. Writing and photographing a book is hard for me. Aside from this (quite public) recipe journal, I’m a relatively private person. The book process takes me out of my comfort zone. Maybe because it’s such a monumental effort to make it happen? So many people involved! It’s just an entirely different world of expectations, with all hopes tied into a single grand gesture. I think to myself - I want this book to be good, I want it to find the slice of people who will find something special in it, I want it to find a home in welcoming kitchens. I want the recipes to work in your kitchens. And on and on and on. Just know, I spend a certain amount of time talking myself out of the trees.

So I’m here, chipping away at the book one word, one sentence, one head note, one photograph at a time. The binder is bulging, with only a few blank pages left to fill, but I suspect I’ll be testing, tweaking, and revising down to the last minute…I know many of you would be amazing testers - I might need to enlist some of you for a bit of help, if you’re game (more details on that in a future post)…

Continue reading SNE: The Manuscript…

Go to Source

The other day a friend of mine, wildsheepchase, asked me if we had any tips on getting sticky dough off of utensils once you’re done baking. This is a common problem; bread dough is notoriously difficult to get off of even smooth surfaces (like bowls), and small utensils can be tricky to get truly clean.You’d think the simple answer would be to do what you were taught about cleaning up as you go:

Go to Source

This morning I tweaked a recipe and I wasn’t even cooking. I was reading Twitter (as I do every morning after reading The New York Times, Google Reader, and checking Facebook) and I saw my friend Elise Tweet about her beet hummus. I clicked to the recipe (see here) and then I Tweeted to her: “Have you considered adding horseradish to your beet hummus? I wonder if that’d work?” She Tweeted back: “love the idea of adding horseradish to the beet hummus. yummmmmmm.” That’s what’s known as a Tweet tweak and it’s just one example of the many tweaks I’ve been tweaking, lately, in my newfound life as a recipe tweaker.

This tweak streak started a few weeks ago when Craig and I threw a little party for our February birthdays and, being the person that I am, I bought way too many lemons and limes. When the party was over, I used the lemons to make lemon sherbet and the limes? What would I do with those limes? I decided to make a favorite cake–The Barefoot Contessa’s lemon cake (recipe here)–and to substitute the limes for the lemons. And thus was born the Leftover Lime Cake:

Everyone who ate it ooohed and ahhhed and asked for the recipe. “It’s not a recipe,” I explained, “it’s a tweak.” They looked at me blankly. Such is the life of a recipe tweaker.

The next tweak I tweaked was an idea I got after reading your comments on my Heaven & Hell Cauliflower Pasta post. Brenda, a commenter, asked: “The fennel seeds are used whole? Not ground? Not toasted?”

Well, yes, Brenda they’re normally used whole. It’s not like I even came up with that, it’s in the original Zuni Cafe recipe, but your comment got me thinking. What if I did toast the fennel seeds first? And what if I then ground them up in a coffee grinder?

Behold the best Heaven & Hell Cauliflower Pasta I’ve ever made:

As always happens when you toast and grind a spice, the fennel flavor here was much more pronounced. I also took it easier on the salt this time around after some of you complained that the dish was too salty (a strange complaint, I think, since–besides the anchovies–you’re always in control of how much salt you add. It’s not like I gave salt amounts!) But still, I’d always been too un-Bloomberglike in my salting of that particular dish, so this time I took it easy. And Craig said: “This is the best version of this you’ve ever done.”

Take a bow, recipe tweaker.

Not all of my tweaks, however, have proved successful. Sometimes what I define as a “tweak” is really just me being lazy. I was excited to make the scallops in Thomas Keller’s “Ad Hoc at Home.” I followed his instructions to brine them in salt water:

But, when it came time to cook them, I ignored his instruction to use clarified butter (which would take a little time to make) and, instead, “tweaked” the recipe with olive oil as the new fat. The resulting scallops–which were supposed to be golden brown and crusty–were sad, soggy, unseared specimens (you can see them at the top of this post).

But all wasn’t lost. I “tweaked” the recipe so instead of serving them with whatever it is Thomas Keller wants you to serve them with, I served them on a bed of cabbage cooked with bacon and wine (a recipe I learned from Rebecca Charles when we made our fish musical. Recipe here.)

So even a bad tweak has a silver tweak lining. And that’s the point, isn’t it? The beginner cook cooks nervously, makes mistakes and follows a recipe like it’s the written word of God. The intermediate cook might make a change here or there, but does so cautiously. It’s only when you make big, bold changes–swapping limes for lemons, grinding and toasting your spices, ignoring the Mighty Keller–that you can call yourself a real cook. AKA: a recipe tweaker.

Go to Source