Spring Radishes

American poet T.S. Eliot wrote that “April is the cruellest month.”  That is certainly true in Minnesota, and if Eliot had lived here, his line from The Waste Land  (in which April is a stand-in for spring), would likely have read: April is the cruellest month, preceded by March, followed by May, and then sometimes June is also pitiless….and don’t get me started on January!

Spring is a tease in Minnesota.  Long winters leave us longing desperately for sun and warmth, yet we can never reliably count on either until well into June.  Minnesotans consider our true summer as starting on the 4th of July and ending at Labor Day–barely two months long. Well, most of the time it’s that long.

And this spring has been especially withholding.  I can count on one hand this year’s truly lovely, lilac-scented spring days–and still have a couple of fingers left over.  So, it was a joy to thin the radishes in my garden this week, and find tiny reddish-white baby ones big enough to eat.

I grew up eating radishes dipped in salt and loved them that way, but I love them even more the way the French eat radishes.  I find the French to be true omnivores.  Not only do they eat everything, but they find a way to prepare whatever they eat in a fine-cuisine manner. Radishes are delicious with salt, but try them sliced and spread with butter then sprinkled with a little salt.  Your cardiologist surely won’t approve, but go ahead anyway, and then respond with a classic Gallic shrug.

Spring Fever Frustrated

I set a rule for myself when I started this blog: I wouldn’t complain or criticize or scorn food or those who cook it. Of course, rules can be interpreted so that a particular transgression isn’t really a rule-breaker.  In any case, my complaint is against an anonymous “they.”  And not about their cooking abilities.

I am fortunate in my work life to have a real room for an office–with a door, a closet, and a 6-foot high window that actually opens.  The window sustains me through long winters and too many hours in front of a computer. It looks out towards the Mississippi River, which I can’t actually see, as it’s a mile away, but I know it’s there and at times I imagine myself on Huck and Jim’s raft where it would be “kind of solemn, drifting down the big, still river, laying on our backs looking up at the stars.”  But “they” in their infinite wisdom, require air conditioners to be put in my window in early May and remain there until October.  Cutting off the pleasurable sounds and smells of a long-awaited spring.  Air conditioning isn’t really needed up on the third floor until well into July when, with all the doors closed by order of the fire marshal and windows blocked up with air conditioners, the swelter of a hundred-year-old brick building makes me woozy.

So, I bit my tongue and said thank you to the man who installed my air conditioner this week, and said good-bye to the birds chattering and arguing, the cool wind blowing through the screen which would have been followed by warm and then hot waves of summer wind. I channeled my frustrated spring longings into baking. We had a family request for a birthday lemon meringue pie last week, and I gladly obliged.

The bright yellow filling is a cheery color and the tart lemon flavor complements perfectly the light and lightly-browned meringue which is supported by just enough buttery crust to satisfy your desire for richness.  It was an ideal antidote to the stifling poison of closed windows.

Cook’s Illustrated – Ultimate Lemon Meringue Pie
Makes one 9-inch pie. Published November 1, 1994.

Graham Cracker-Coated Pie Shell
1 1/4 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon table salt
1 tablespoon granulated sugar
6 tablespoons unsalted butter , chilled and cut into 1/4-inch pieces
4 tablespoons vegetable shortening , chilled
3–4 tablespoons cold water
1/2 cup graham cracker crumbs

Lemon Filling
1 cup granulated sugar
1/4 cup cornstarch
1/8 teaspoon table salt
1 1/2 cups cold water
6 large egg yolks
1 tablespoon lemon zest from 1 lemon
1/2 cup lemon juice from 2 to 3 lemons
2 tablespoons unsalted butter

Meringue Topping
1 tablespoon cornstarch
1/3 cup water
1/4 teaspoon cream of tartar
1/2 cup granulated sugar
4 large egg whites
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

For the pie shell:
1. Mix flour, salt and sugar in food processor fitted with steel blade. Scatter butter pieces over flour mixture, tossing to coat butter with a little of the flour. Cut butter into flour with five 1 second pulses. Add shortening; continue cutting in until flour is pale yellow and resembles coarse cornmeal with butter bits no larger than a small pea, about four more 1-second pulses. Turn mixture into medium bowl.

2. Sprinkle 3 tablespoons cold water over mixture. Using rubber spatula, fold water into mixture; press down on dough mixture with broad side of spatula until dough sticks together. If dough will not come together, add up to 1 tablespoon more cold water. Shape dough into ball, then flatten into 4-inch-wide disk. Dust lightly with flour, wrap in plastic, and refrigerate for 30 minutes before rolling.

3. Generously sprinkle work area with 2 tablespoons graham cracker crumbs. Place dough on work area. Scatter a few more crumbs over dough (see illustration 1, below). Roll dough from center to edges, turning it into a 9-inch disk, rotating a quarter turn after each stroke and sprinkling additional crumbs underneath and on top as necessary to coat heavily, (see illustration 2). Flip dough over and continue to roll, but not rotate, to form a 13-inch disk slightly less than 1/8-inch thick.

4. Fold dough into quaarters; place dough point in center of 9-inch Pyrex pie pan. Unfold to cover pan completely, letting excess dough drape over pan lip. To fit dough to pan, lift edge of dough with one hand and press dougn in pan bottom with other hand; repeat process around circumferences of pan to ensure dough fits properly and is not stretched. Trim all around, 1/2-inch past lip of pan. Tuck 1/2 inch of overhanging dough under so folded edge is flush with lip of pan; press to seal. Press thumb and index finger about 1/2-inch apart against outside edge of dough, then use index finger or knuckle of other hand to poke a dent on inside edge of dough through opening created by the other fingers. Repeat to flute around perimeter of pie shell.

5. Refrigerate until firm, about 30 minutes. Use fork to prick shell at 1/2-inch intervals; press a doubled 12-inch square of aluminum foil into pie shell; prick again and refrigerate at least 30 minutes.

6. Adjust oven rack to lowest position, heat oven to 400 degrees. Bake, checking occasionally for ballooning, until crust is firmly set, about 15 minutes. Reduce oven temperature to 350 degrees, remove foil, and continue to bake until crust is crisp and rich brown in color, about 10 minutes longer.

For the filling:
7. Mix sugar, cornstarch, salt, and water in a large, nonreactive saucepan. Bring mixture to simmer over medium heat, whisking occasionally at beginning of the process and more frequently as mixture begins to thicken. When mixture starts to simmer and turn translucent, whisk in egg yolks, two at a time. Whisk in zest, then lemon juice, and finally butter. Bring mixture to a brisk simmer, whisking constantly. Remove from heat, place plastic wrap directly on surface of filling to keep hot and prevent skin from forming.

For the meringue:
8. Mix cornstarch with 1/3 cup water in small saucepan; bring to simmer, whisking occasionally at beginning and more frequently as mixture thickens. When mixture starts to simmer and turn translucent, remove from heat. Let cool while beating egg whites.

9. Heat oven to 325 degrees. Mix cream of tartar and sugar together. Beat egg whites and vanilla until frothy. Beat in sugar mixture, 1 tablespoon at a time; until sugar is incorporated and mixture forms soft peaks. Add cornstarch mixture, 1 tablespoon at a time; continue to beat meringue to stiff peaks. Remove plastic from filling and return to very low heat during last minute or so of beating meringue (to ensure filling is hot).

10. Pour filling into pie shell. Using a rubber spatula, immediately distribute meringue evenly around edge then center of pie to keep it from sinking into filling. Make sure meringue attaches to pie crust to prevent shrinking . Use spoon to create peaks all over meringue. Bake pie until meringue is golden brown, about 20 minutes. Transfer to wire rack and cool to room temperature. Serve.

Real American Food

I’ll be hosting several international college students and one former South American ambassador in a few nights–with instructions to provide them an American dinner experience.  International students don’t often get invited into an American home when they study in our country–and how sad is that?  So, it feels like a big responsibility.

But what exactly is a typical American dinner?  Macaroni and cheese?  And would that be homemade or Kraft from the box?  I once made my oldest son, when he was a toddler still in his high chair, a gourmet version of mac and cheese:  I lovingly prepared good quality penne pasta with a sauce of organic whole milk and the best Wisconsin aged cheddar.  It was a labor of love as I prepared to wow him with sophisticated flavors and put him on the road to appreciating fine cuisine.  You can see where this is going.  He refused to touch it after the first bite.  In later years none of my children ever turned down a $.25 box of generic macaroni and cheese.  Go figure.

So, back to real American food.  Is it the drive-thru at McDonald’s? We invented the fast food chain, after all.  Or is it Americanized Chinese take-out?  Or a vegetarian or vegan meal, or a buffet where everyone gets to choose what he or she eats?

You might say it’s whatever you want it to be, since we are a nation of immigrants and fusion inventions.  Except that when you eat a meal that’s definitely NOT American, you know it.

What would you serve?

Amaretti Toast

I am on a detective’s hunt for the exact flavor of a simple-looking yet decadent-tasting pastry I bought in a coffee shop recently.  Actually, I’m on a search for the ingredients in the pastry so I can make it myself at home. I could just ask the coffee shop folks but that would take the fun out of being a food detective.  I did ask them the name of the pastry and they told me “Babka Bread.” I didn’t know Babka bread but I know its cousins, French Brioche and Italian Panettone.

But this sweet concoction was clearly more than a slice of bread.  I’d never seen anything like it before, and I was intrigued. It looked like a cross between a substantial slice of white bread and a thick slice of pound cake topped with some kind of baked layer of icing. Its taste was just as rich yet airy and meltingly sweet as its looks were inviting. The cake (could it really be a bread?) was light but also as if it had been left out so the edges had gotten just a bit stale and crunchy.  The topping, which seemed to have been spread on and then broiled, tasted distinctively of almond paste.

I mulled over the almond paste flavor, going through in my mind all the dishes I knew that included almond paste–which were exactly three:  marzipan, almond croissant filling, and amaretti cookies.  (I’m sure there are more, but almond paste has never been a staple in my baking.)  I quickly searched for an amaretti cookie recipe and knew I needed to start experimenting if I were to replicate that pastry.

As soon as I tasted the amaretti cookie dough, I was almost certain I’d found the topping. It was perfectly spreadable and had just the right sweet yet strong almond flavor.  In this first run at experimenting,  I toasted some thick slices of a brioche-type bread I’d made recently and had on hand, spread a generous layer of amaretti cookie dough on top and baked it in the oven. Wow!  I hadn’t made an exact copy (the amaretti spread really needed a lighter, less-bread-like base), but not too bad.

It wasn’t exactly your daily bread-and-jam snack; rather more like an aristocratic version of it. It had the kind of flavor where if you’re seriously discouraged about something, say, a snowstorm in mid April or the sad realization that the world is a violent place or that at your age you’ll never become President or write a runaway best-selling masterpiece–well, a thick slice of toasted bread, spread generously with richly sweet amaretti cookie dough and baked in a 400-degree-oven for about 10 minutes or so accompanied by your favorite cup of hot tea or coffee will cheer you right up!

Mystery #1 solved.  Stay tuned as I continue the hunt for the airily light bread needed for the base.  Can any of you give me clues about Babka bread?

Amaretti Cookies (from JoyofBaking.com)

8 ounces canned almond paste

1 cup superfine or castor white sugar (see Note below)

2 large egg whites

Extra white sugar or Swedish pearl sugar for dusting cookies

Note:  Make your own superfine sugar by processing regular granulated white sugar in your food processor for about 30 seconds or until sugar is ground very fine. 

Preheat oven to 375 degrees F and line two baking sheets with parchment paper.  Have ready a pastry bag fitted with a 1/2 inch plain tip.

Using Food Processor:  Break the almond paste into small pieces and place in bowl of food processor, with the sugar.  Pulse until the mixture is very fine. Add the egg whites in three additions, processing well after each addition. Continue processing the dough until very smooth (about one minute). 

Using Electric Mixer: Break the almond paste into small pieces and place in bowl of electric mixer along with the sugar. Mix on low speed until very fine. Add the egg whites in three additions, mixing well after each addition. Continue mixing the dough until very smooth, about 3 to 4 minutes.

Fill the pastry bag with the almond mixture. Pipe 1 1/2 inch mounds onto the parchment paper, spacing about 1 inch apart. After you have filled the baking sheet with cookie mounds, take a damp paper towel and lightly press the top of each cookie to smooth out the surface (you want to smooth out the tip of dough at the top of each cookie caused from piping). Lightly sprinkle a little sugar on top of each cookie.

Bake for 15 minutes, or until the cookies have risen, are a deep golden color and have tiny cracks. Remove from the oven and place baking pan on a rack to cool. When cool gently peel cookies from parchment. If they stick to parchment, turn the paper over, take a damp paper towel and gently wipe the bottom of the parchment paper to loosen the cookie.

Recipe Sharing

When I started this blog, someone asked me if I was really going to share my recipes with the public. Or rather, she asked in disbelief:  ”What?!! You’re going to give away your secrets?!”

That is an interesting divide in the cooking world–between those who guard their recipes closely and those who freely share. Obviously, some people need to keep their recipes a secret when their livelihood is at stake. Yet, even so, there are cooks and restaurants who gladly give out a recipe if you ask. And some who refuse.

I love the urban legend about the cookie recipe that Neiman Marcus billed a woman $250 for (when she understood the cost to be $2.50 and they refused to remove the exorbitant charge from her bill).  She was so outraged she retaliated by spreading the recipe all over the internet.  They really are deliciously rich cookies and deserved to be savored and shared. Plus, their buttery chocolateness gets an extra boost from the satisfaction of believing that a lone individual was able to stick it to the big corporation. Even if only in a fantasy.

Years ago I shared with a good friend one of my tried-and-true soup recipes. It was one I made often when my kids were young and they were willing to eat practically anything I cooked. The soup is simple, tasty, and filling–perfect for our wintry April temperatures!

Assembled

I don’t get to see this friend often, but she’s told me that she liked that soup so much she makes it every Friday as a family dinner. She gets a delicious and healthy soup for her family and I know that once in a while someone is thinking about me fondly on a Friday night. Can’t beat that return on a decision to share.

What’s your philosophy of recipe-sharing and recipe secrets?

Ready to Eat 

Lentil and Brown Rice Soup (from the 1985 Gourmet cookbook Menus for Contemporary Living)

• 5 cups chicken broth
• 3 cups water
• 1 1/2 cups lentils, picked over and rinsed
• 1 cup brown rice
• a 32- to 35-ounce can tomatoes, drained, reserving the juice, and chopped
• 3 carrots, halved lengthwise and cut crosswise into 1/4-inch pieces
• 1 onion, chopped
• 1 stalk of celery, chopped
• 3 garlic cloves, minced
• 1/2 teaspoon crumbled dried basil
• 1/2 teaspoon crumbled dried orégano
• 1/4 teaspoon crumbled dried thyme
• 1 bay leaf
• 1/2 cup minced fresh parsley leaves
• 2 tablespoons cider vinegar, or to taste

In a heavy kettle combine the broth, 3 cups water, the lentils, the rice, the tomatoes with the reserved juice, the carrots, the onion, the celery, the garlic, the basil, the orégano, the thyme, and the bay leaf, bring the liquid to a boil, and simmer the mixture, covered, stirring occasionally, for 45 to 55 minutes, or until the lentils and rice are tender. Stir in the parsley, the vinegar, and salt and pepper to taste and discard the bay leaf. The soup will be thick and will thicken as it stands. Thin the soup, if desired, with additional hot chicken broth or water.

Parmesan toasts are an ideal accompaniment to this hearty soup.

Quiche

This is my first Easter in several decades where I haven’t spent the Saturday before Easter dying eggs and over-indulging in jelly beans.  Since no kids are at home this Easter, I’m taking the holiday off.

As I imagine you more experienced empty-nesters know, a first holiday without your children is a bitter-sweet day.  The quiet and empty afternoon brings up precious memories of experiences now in the past and never to return.  Toddlers plunging their hands into the egg-dying cups; 6-year-olds excited for Easter baskets and hidden eggs; teenagers kindly (or grumpily) indulging their mother in keeping the family traditions going. Ah, but now that my children are off on their own, there is the quiet and empty afternoon!

However, I still succumbed to the 2-for-1 sale on a dozen eggs at the store, and now have all these pre-dyed and pre-boiled eggs to contend with.  When I’m looking for egg dishes, I nearly always turn to the classic French quiche. It’s simple, always successful, deliciously egg-y and cheese-y, and looks beautiful right out of the oven.

Of course, it’s full of ingredients that are currently out of favor in terms of what’s considered healthy–eggs, cheese, bacon, cream, butter, flour.  Well, perhaps the pinch of nutmeg won’t do you any harm.

My favorite recipe comes from a 1961 cookbook published by Gourmet.  It’s called Gourmet’s Basic French Cookbook and is full of classic French recipes and techniques for cooking and baking.  (1961 is the same year Volume 1 of Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking was published, which was the start of taking the intimidation factor out of French cuisine.)  I’ve reproduced the recipe below in its original form–with a few notes–to give you the flavor of the book’s recipes.

Happy Easter!

Quiche Lorraine

Line an 8-inch pie pan or a 10-inch flan ring with pate à tourte. Broil 6 not-too-thin bacon slices and arrange the pieces over the bottom of the pastry shell.  Cut 6 ounces of Swiss cheese into small, thin slices and arrange on top of the bacon.  Beat together 3 eggs and 1 yolk (I use 4 eggs, which seems to work out just fine.) with 1 tablespoon flour, 1/2 teaspoon salt, and a pinch of nutmeg and add 2 cups rich milk or milk and cream (half-and-half for us 21st-century cooks) and 1 tablespoon melted butter cooked until it is a little brown.  Pour the mixture over the bacon and cheese and bake the quiche in a moderately hot oven (375 degrees F.) for 30-35 minutes, or until the custard is set and the top is brown.  Serve warm.

Pate à tourte (Pastry for two-crust pies)

Cut 5 tablespoons butter and 5 tablespoons lard (or other shortening) into 2 cups flour sifted with 1/2 teaspoon salt, mixing the butter and lard in with the finger tips or with a pastry blender.  Add 6 or 7 tablespoons cold water, or enough to make a firm dough, handling it very gently.  Chill the dough for several hours before using it. The pate à tourte resembles the standard American pie pastry.  Notice that the recipe specifies half lard and half butter–lard for flakiness, butter for flavor.

You’ll only need about half of this recipe for one quiche.

Soused Porter Cake

Given that it was just St. Patrick’s Day and there were extra cans and bottles of Guinness lying around the house, (Well, doesn’t that happen at your house?) I wanted to find a creative way to consume them. Opening the can and pouring into a glass not qualifying as “creative.”  Tasty, yes.

I’d already tried, and loved, the Gramercy Tavern’s gingerbread that includes some Guinness or other stout.  (Have you tried that one yet?)  So, when I came across this recipe for Porter Cake, it called to me.

Sadly, the cake didn’t live up to its promise to be rich and moist. Rich it was, but moist it definitely was not.  So, since I was in the mood of adding alcohol to my baking,  I was reminded of a recipe of M.F.K. Fisher’s (a great food writer from the heyday of food writing when food writers often drank heavily and wrote unabashedly about it.  Does anyone besides my mom remember the cookbooks of the late 1940′s by Morrison Wood where every recipe had some alcohol in it?).

M.F.K. Fisher’s recipe is called “Rum Toddy for a Cake.”  A simple mixture of heated orange juice, brown sugar, and dark rum.  Pour the warmed elixir over the cake hot out of the oven, and let the orange-y rum goodness transform this cake into something magically rich and moist.  Now it lives up to its promise!  Cake can be enjoyed with another of those cans of Guinness or an extra rum toddy.

Porter Cake (from Rachel’s Irish Family Food)

• 3 1/2 cups (450g) all-purpose (plain) flour
• 1 teaspoon grated or ground nutmeg
• 1 teaspoon pumpkin pie spice (I made my own of nutmeg, cloves, ginger, allspice)
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• Pinch of salt
• 1 cup (225g) butter
• 1 cup packed (225g) light brown sugar
• 1 pound (450g) golden raisins (sultanas) or raisins or a mixture of both
• 3 ounces (75g) chopped candied peel, store-bought or homemade
• 2 eggs
• 1 (12-ounce/330ml) bottle porter or stout

Preheat the oven to 350°F (180°C/Gas mark 4). Line the sides and bottom of an 8-inch (20 cm) high-sided round cake pan (the sides should be about 2 3/4 inches/7 cm high) with waxed (greaseproof) paper. (I used an angel food cake pan and it worked like a charm.)

Sift the flour, nutmeg, spice, baking powder, and salt into a bowl. Rub in the butter, then stir in the brown sugar, raisins, and candied peel.

Whisk the eggs in another bowl and add the porter. Pour into the dry ingredients and mix well. Pour into the prepared pan.

Bake for about 2 hours. If the cake starts to brown too quickly on top, cover it with aluminum foil or waxed (greaseproof) paper after about 1 hour. The cake is done when a skewer inserted into the center comes out clean. Allow the cake to sit in the pan for about 20 minutes before turning it out and cooling it on a wire rack.

M.F.K.Fisher’s Rum Toddy for a Cake

1/2 cup packed brown sugar

1 cup orange juice

1/3 cup dark rum

Dissolve sugar in orange juice over low heat. Remove from heat, add rum, pour slowly over hot cake.  Let cake stand until cool.