A Finger in Every Pie

Oh, The Horror

It was like a bad dream.  Less than 48 hours had passed since my return from the glorious Southwest of these here United States, Santa Fe to be exact, and I had already met up with friends twice at places that pass for Tex-Mex/Mexican restaurants in New York City -- at their behest, of course.   I guess it's summer and people want margaritas -- I can't really think of a better excuse.

It's true what they say.  You can't go home again; or for  a more literal interpretation, going to places where food originates turns you into a snob about that kind of cuisine once you DO go home.

For example, to your left is a sopaipilla.  Perhaps you knew that already, in which case this paragraph is for the uninitiated.  At many, many restaurants in the Southwest, these puffy, flaky, crunch, doughy pillows of fried bread are brought to your table along with your entree.  Tortillas are good with chile; so is cornbread.  But a piping hot sopaipilla elevates your   bowl of red or green to a whole new level. 

Trust me, there weren't any of those babies at Mary Ann's (shudder) on Monday afternoon, or at the (hah!) Santa Fe Grill in Park Slope on Tuesday night.  To be fair, it wasn't anyone's fault, really.  My teaching partner suggested that we meet at the Upper East Side Mary Ann's for our planning meeting.  This suggestion was really in order to make it convenient for me, since I live only 12 blocks away.  It was pouring down rain, so after our meeting I ordered some take-out and brought it home to G.  We agreed that oatmeal has more zip than Mary Ann's enchiladas.  The next night some girlfriends suggested the Santa Fe Grill for our Brooklyn drinks date, and I just didn't have it in me to come up with an alternative.  So I quietly went along with the cruel irony of it all.   I did have a slightly better quesadilla there at the Grill, but anyone who has had recent contact with actual salsa and real green and red Chimayo chiles would simply sneer. 

I'm having a bit of trouble wiping a tiny, microscopic sneer off my face as I write this; maybe what all our mothers said was true, and my face has frozen this way.  Doesn't really matter about the sneer, as long as my mouth still opens so that when I go BACK to New Mexico later this summer, with G in tow, I can shovel in as much food from the Plaza Restaurant as humanly possible.  The Plaza, a humble dineresque venue right on the central plaza in Santa Fe, serves marvelous food at (surprise!) diner prices.   

Carefully peruse the picture to your right.  I know it looks sort of like a big mess, but it's actually only part of the wonderful plato combinación that I consumed on one of my days in the actual town of Santa Fe.  Most of the time I was at a lovely resort/retreat/conference center about 25 miles from Santa Fe, where the food was delicious -- much of it organically grown on the premises.  It was a bit spa-like and austere, which was fine.  The only problem was that there was nothing even vaguely Southwestern about the soy-glazed salmon, quinoa-millet pilaf and sauteed vegetables that we ate with some frequency over the week-long stay.  I managed to wangle my way into  Santa Fe 3 times (I was like a kid at camp, begging to go to town) and I ate at the Plaza twice.   I stumbled upon them my first time in town and suddenly remembered that I'd read a glowing review in Roadfood, so my choice for lunch was set. Now I absolutely crave their food, but I'm back in NY, where people seem determined to subject me to the likes of some kind of nasty faux texxy or mexxy or who knows what, but nothing good. 

Back to my plato combinación.  On that fateful first day in town, I had a challenging morning of shopping from the independent vendors on the Plaza (spending wa-a-a-a-ay too much money on quite a few items of very beautiful jewelry that would cost the earth here in Gotham but were very reasonable in Santa Fe).   I was in need of fuel.  After all, I still had more shopping to do:  blue cornmeal and chilies and cooking ingredients as well as other little souvenirs.  So I ordered this meal, which was comprised of what you see in the second photo (perfect chicken enchilada in green chile, cracklingly crunchy chile relleno filled with hot molten cheese, yummy rice and beans and salad garnish); what you see above left:  a carnitas taco with two sauces; and the heavenly sopaipilla at the top.  It was all wonderful, and I took plenty of leftovers back to the compound (I mean the resort) with me.   

Oh, and when it came to deciding upon what to drink, I took a leaf out of Heidi's book.  A while ago in her beautiful blog 101 cookbooks, Heidi mentioned iced tea made of jamaica (aka hibiscus) flowers.  So when I saw "Jamaica-lemonade cooler" on the menu at the Plaza, I knew just how I would cool down.  What a treat.

I have no recipes for you yet, but I did bring back lots of ingredients.  Whatever I come up with, it can't possibly taste as good as the bright hot dry weather, the endless sky, the mesas, and the dramatic scrim of the Sangre de Cristo moutains.  Santa Fe,  I miss you already, and I'm coming back...

On Hiatus...and a Peek at Brownie Nirvana

A Finger In Every Pie will be on hiatus for a while.  I'm going out to Santa Fe (first trip to New Mexico -- whoo hoo!) for a conference/writing retreat with one of my many hats on -- this time as part of the leadership team of a national educational network.  So amid the lovely New Mexico surround, days will be spent in conference rooms, meeting and planning and writing -- and evenings will be spent in fun, with good conversation, margaritas and hot tubs, all at a what looks to be a lovely resort,  in the company of a group of truly smart, funny colleagues. 

But just to tantalize you until I get back, I baked a batch of brownies this morning, and it may very well be that the  brownie of the ultimate chew factor which I have sought for so long is within sight.  And yet...and yet...I would miss the quest...so I'll probably still keep tweaking the brownie recipe, at least until I find another mountain to climb.  Recipe and details on my return...

SHF #9: Falling Apart with an Apricot-Pluot Tart

"Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold..."
    - William Butler Yeats
It looks pretty, doesn't it.  Well, that was before we cut into it.  Pretty is as pretty does.  You know how it is with those custard and fruit tarts.  Unless you glue them together with a ton of sticky glaze instead of the preferable light sheen, they do tend to fall apart upon the moment of cutting and serving.  And that tendency is only heightened by a crumbly walnut crust and a pastry cream filling lightened with mascarpone cheese and well...there's a reason why I'm not showing you how it looked when it was plated, so to speak. 

The first picture also doesn't really show how challenged I was when I tried to make a gorgeous whirling swirling design with my fruit, and ended up with a partial tart of whirling swirls, and then just a lot of room that needed to get filled in by fruit.  Next time I'll do this more mathematically, and figure out where the center of the tart actually is so that I have a place to begin my pinwheels of jewel-toned fruit.  Below you can see how the design got sidetracked:

However, this tart's refusal to slice neatly or to arrange itself into a perfect swirl pattern had no effect on its flavor.  Truthfully, the combination of fragile, cookie-like walnut tart crust, rich mascarpone pastry cream and slices of fragrantly ripe apricots and pluots brushed lightly with apricot glaze made a rather delectable summer dessert.  And it all came about by chance. 

I was determined to participate in this month's Sugar High Friday, having missed the last one.  Knowing that I'll be out of town all next week, it seems unlikely that I'll get anything posted for Viv's eggciting IMBB.  So that was all the more motivation to make something sumptuous for this month's theme of tantalizing, titillating, tempting tarts, brought to us by the amazing folks at life in flow, who also bring us the vital food porn watch. 

I decided to cook with what I had in the house.  Fortunately, I tend to keep lots of baking and cooking ingredients in the pantry and fridge at all times.  I'd been on a recent fruit-buying binge, so I knew that the apricots and pluots were just begging to be used.  In addition, there was a lovely container of mascarpone in the back of the fridge.  So the combination was waiting to happen, and happen it did.  We enjoyed our crumbly, fall-aparty slices last night after the tart had its photo op.  Hopefully you'll be able to tune in to the comments section a bit later on to see what my workmates (who really look forward to Sugar High Fridays) think of it...

Apricot-Pluot Tart with Mascarpone Custard and Walnut Cookie Crust

Walnut Tart Pastry

2 cups + 2 Tbsp. flour
1/2 cup confectioners' sugar
1/4 tsp. salt
1/2 cup ground walnuts
1 cup cool butter, cut in chunks
2 egg yolks

Preheat oven to 350F.  Place flour, sugar, salt and walnuts in the workbowl of a food processor.  Pulse to mix.  Add butter in chunks, and pulse until the butter is in pea-sized lumps.  Add egg yolks, and pulse just until a dough is formed.  Take it out and knead it very lightly to mix.   Press into a fluted tart form with removable bottom (this filled a 10" tart form, with quite a bit left over.  It would probably make 2 8" tarts).  Chill for 30 minutes, and then bake for 25 - 30 minutes, until nicely browned and cooked through.  Baking time will depend on the thickness of the tart dough as well as your oven's eccentricities, so it's wise to check the crust regularly from 15 minutes baking time on.   Remove from oven, and cool on a rack.  Don't remove the fluted tart ring yet. 

Mascarpone Crème Pâtissière

1 cup whole milk
1 cup heavy cream
1/2 cup + 1 Tbsp. sugar
1 whole egg
4 egg yolks
2 Tbsp. flour
2 Tbsp. cornstarch
1 tsp. vanilla bean paste
8 oz. Mascarpone cheese

Beat the egg, yolks, flour, cornstarch and 1 Tbsp. of sugar together in a bowl until light and lemon colored.  Heat the milk and cream together with the remaining 1/2 cup of sugar until steam begins to rise from it.  Slowly whisk half of the hot milk/cream  into the egg mixture until thoroughly mixed.  Then pour this back into the rest of the milk, whisking all the time, and heat slowly until the mixture begins to thicken.  Keep beating/whisking it as it thickens, until a custard that mounds when you drop a spoonful of it back into the pot is formed.  Remove from the heat, and stir in the vanilla.  Whisk again lightly to make sure the mixture is smooth and uniform.  Cool to room temperature, and then refrigerate to chill thoroughly.  When the mixture is chilled, beat in the mascarpone cheese.   Chill again. 

Assembly:

4 ripe pluots or plums
4 ripe apricots
1/3 cup of apricot preserves, heated and strained

Slice fruit into neat crescent-shaped slices.  Fill the cooled Walnut Pastry with the chilled Mascarpone Cream.  Arrange the sliced fruit into concentric circles or a swirl pattern or whatever else might delight you and your audience of tart-eaters.  Brush lightly with the warm strained preserves.  Chill once again to help all the elements set up a bit, and then serve. 

In Cross-Section

The following is about cauliflower -- and about my brother.  You've probably encountered him in the comments section of this blog.  He's that fellow who's always telling me not to eat swordfish because of the mercury, or asking where his share of the goodies are, but mostly lauding my efforts. 

He does have other things to occupy him on occasion.  In fact, he's both award-winning and outstanding in his field.  (I was going to make some kind of dreadful pun about him being out standing in a field somewhere, but I'll spare you.)

In addition to keeping busy with all this commenting, he's also an excellent cook.  He's even mentioned the possibility of writing a guest post here at some point in the not-too-distant future.  We can dream, can't we?   My brother and I talk and commiserate and ask each other's counsel about many things.  Some of those things are culinary.  Whenever G hears me on the phone saying "marinate it for at least an hour before you pan-sear it" or "okay, okay, I promise I'll use organic lemons from now on" he knows that the person most likely to be on the other end is my brother.

My brother is the person who taught me to cut cauliflower in a cross-section before I oven-roast it.  This method both provides lots of surface area to get crisp and brown, and makes a very artistic presentation -- lovely flat cauliflower-scapes.   There's something so beautiful about this vegetable in cross-section.  I love seeing how it grows, the branches and flowerets arching away from the stem. 

This preparation is one of G's favorites.  We slice our lovely cauliflower, oil it, season it, roast it, admire it -- and then devour it. 

Roasted Cauliflower in Cross-Section

1 large cauliflower
2 Tbsp. olive oil (herb-flavored oils work well here)
Herbed sea salt, pepper

Preheat the oven to 425F.  Slice the cauliflower across the entire head in inch-thick slices.  Some of it will crumble or be in small cross sections, while the center pieces will be large and fan-like.  Use about a tablespoon of the olive oil to oil a large baking sheet.  Spread the cauliflower out in a single layer, brush or drizzle with the remaining oil, and season with salt and pepper.  Roast for about 7 minutes; flip cauliflower slices with a pancake turner so that the top side can brown.  Continue roasting until the cauliflower can be easily pierced with a knife and is just tender. 

Shortcut and Sweet, Cold Beets in the Heat

Have I mentioned in a previous post that my mother was an excellent cook?  I suppose I have. In consideration of where my love of cooking has its origins, I’ll probably mention it again.  A bit of a culinary pioneer for her time, she used far fewer convenience foods and many more fresh vegetables and homemade dishes than her friends.  Most of her soups, stews and braises cooked slowly and simmered long.  She made her own salad dressing and applesauce, always.  As a child, I wasn’t aware that applesauce came in jars – at least not until I began attending the local public school.  And as I know I've mentioned previously, all of this good home cooking was done on a working woman’s schedule, since the  small business she and my father ran generally kept them busy for a good 50 – 60 hours a week.  This of course meant that she was a woman often in need of shortcuts.  Not everything could be made from scratch; not everything started with fresh, raw foods. 

She loved to entertain, and her friends from the much tonier parts of our town clamored to come to her dinners.  In summertime, she was fond of starting a company meal with a small bowl of chilled soup.  One of her favorites was a summer borscht.  Her trick was to use one of those tall jars of very sweet beet borscht that you find in the Jewish food section of most supermarkets.  She would add tinned tomatoes, dill, scallions, and a cube of beef stock concentrate, and give it all a whirl in the blender, then chill it and serve it with sour cream and more chopped dill.   The tomatoes and the beef bouillon cube cut the sugariness of the prepared borscht, so the resulting soup was elegant and refreshing.  Despite being a purely vegetable soup, it also had a substantial feeling to it.  If it was not intended as part of a longer dinner, it made a very good meal in and of itself, with sandwiches or good bread, cheese and a salad. 

That’s true of my version as well.  It adapts well to a gazpacho treatment, meaning that it can be served with little side dishes of extra minced scallion, dill, cucumber, and chopped hard-cooked egg, as well as the dollop of sour cream, crème fraîche or yogurt which completes the bowl.   My father is fond of this soup with a whole cold boiled potato in it, to spoon up as he eats.  And I have had it served with a whole hard cooked egg instead of chopped egg, the white convex surface rising prettily out of the dark magenta soup, ready to receive the same treatment from your spoon as the potato.  Here's one of those places that you can start with a theme, and see what variations work best for you and your particular situation.   

I don’t use bottled beet borscht, finding it too sweet for my taste.  I usually start with those nice vacuum-packed cooked beets that you can find in fancy food stores, imported from France.  And for soup in a hurry, I use canned tomatoes as well.  To supplement the liquid missing from the tall jar of borscht, I use reconstituted beef or vegetable stock concentrate.  Of course, there’s no reason why you couldn’t make this soup completely from lovely fresh farmer’s market provender: beets from your favorite farm stand, roasted or simmered gently until tender, and tomatoes just blanched, peeled and seeded.  Maybe you have your own homemade stock to use – do so, by all means.   Perhaps when cooking beets or peeling tomatoes for some other meal, you may want to make extra with cold soup in mind. 

There are times, however, when we’re all in need of a culinary quick trick or two, as M.F.K. Fisher was prone to note when sharing some of her own.  Here’s the version I made this weekend.  We had houseguests, and most of our preparation time was spent cleaning the house and getting their room ready for them.  Cooking was not the priority, and yet I wanted to have something special in the house for Jane and Grace, driving down from cool, pristine Maine to spend this hot weekend in New York.  Jane has always loved borscht, all kinds of borscht.  A bowl of the hot winter borscht from Veselka was a true friend to her when she lived on the Lower East Side.  And this cold version of my mother’s became such a favorite that Jane begged for and published the recipe in a New England paper several years ago. 

Chilled Beet Soup, aka Summer Borscht

2 250 gram vacuum packets of cooked beets (or 18 oz. of home-cooked beets)
1 16 oz. can of tomatoes in puree (or an equivalent of freshly blanched, peeled and seeded tomatoes)
2 large scallions
A large fistful of dill
2 tsp. of beef or vegetable stock concentrate (I use Better Than Bouillon), reconstituted in 2 cups of water
2 tsp. sugar
pepper to taste
2 Tbsp. Balsamic vinegar

Combine 3/4 of the beets in a blender jar along with everything else, and whirl until smooth.  Taste for seasoning.  Go for a balance of sweet, tart and salty, adding more dill if necessary.  Stir in the last 125 grams of beets, julienned or chopped into little dice.  Chill, and serve with a dollop of Greek yogurt, sour cream or crème fraîche, and more minced dill.  Chopped  cucumber, hard boiled eggs and boiled new potatoes can also be added for a more substantial soup.   Another alternative is to add some yogurt or sour cream at the blender stage for a thrillingly pink soup rather than a dark garnet bowlful. 

Accompany with good pumpernickel bread and sweet butter. 

Dates with Destiny: Paper Chef #7 Has a Winner!

The beauty of Paper Chef rests, of course, on the remarkable ingenuity and high culinary standards of its participants.  As you may know, this monthly food blogging event is the brainchild of the tireless Owen at Tomatilla (who is also the daddy of Digital Dish).  As last month’s winner, the task falls to me to judge this month’s round-up.  The seventh edition is certainly no exception to the creativity and overall deliciousness we’ve seen in the past.  The fun part of this round was the discovery of such a wide range of dishes using the specified ingredients (Medjool dates, honey, buttermilk and eggs).  We have truly been presented with a dazzling array of both sweet and savory courses.

Many have commiserated with me on the difficulty of my task.  As nearly all the previous judges have noted, it just ain’t easy.  Sixteen splendid entries have appeared, all using the stated ingredients in tempting plates ranging from puddings to pot pies.  As far as I can tell from combing the archives, this is the greatest number of participants yet for a Paper Chef event.  Like the food-blogging community, Paper Chef just keeps on growing; kudos once again to Owen for providing us with ongoing fun and a sterling round-up each month.

After reading all the entries carefully, I asked myself just one question:  which of these would I most like to eat?  I have to say that I would have been happy to have many of these dishes appear magically in front of me – but one really stood out. 

This month’s winner is Sarah of The Delicious Life, for her Feta Soufflé with Walnuts, Dates and Feisty Greens.  She spun a sultry tale of last-minute haste due to an unexpected weekend date of her own.  Despite this, she managed to combine the other kind of dates, the chewy ones, along with the rest of the required elements, into a petite yet seductive plate that had my tastebuds singing simply from the description, not to mention the delectable photo.  And all this happened while she underwent her virgin attempt at souffléing -- so to speak.  As many of you have hastened to tell her – don’t worry, Sarah, it gets even better.  Seriously, this sounds like the sort of perfect first course one might find on the menu of a favorite restaurant.  I think it would also make a delightful guest lunch or light supper.
   
I am tempted to give honorable mentions as well, but with so many ingenious recipes and enticing photos, the task is just too difficult.  As I look again at Owen’s round-up I see frozen desserts that I want immediately, savory chicken and seafood dishes to try, breakfast yummies, delights inspired by my favorite Middle Eastern cuisine, lots of baked goods and even fried treats to savor.  As I used to say in my misspent youth, so many dates, so little time…

   

Late Spring Tonic: A Bowl of Green

I used to...stand in deep contemplation over my vegetable progeny with a love that nobody could share or conceive of who had never taken part in the process of creation.  It was one of the most bewitching  sights in the world to observe a hill of beans thrusting aside the soil, or a rose of early peas just peeping forth sufficiently to trace a line of delicate green.
    -   Nathaniel Hawthorne, Mosses from an Old Manse


Sometimes I really envy the farmers at the Greenmarket, who get to feel those feelings that Hawthorne describes above.  It's been a long time since I've had a garden.  I make do, however, with the produce I purchase.  Like temporary adoptees, I think of them as Hawthorne's and my "vegetable progeny" -- whom I then cut up and throw into a pot. 

As the rest of the world is no doubt aware, those of us in the Northeast have spent a fair amount of time writing, talking, blogging and whimpering about our late, chilly spring.  Not to complain more, but rather as a note of curiousity about what's happening climactically, there have been very few springs in living memory where I find myself wearing flannels to bed in June.  I know one person who's happy, though.  G detests warm weather.  Any time the mercury goes above 65, he considers that an unholy hot day.  I believe he dreams that someday we'll move to Alaska.

As far as food, here's what I've discovered.  My timely spring longing for all manner of fruity and herby and salady and green things has been surging in my blood despite the cold.  At the same time, I find that I still want something hot and comforting on blustery, rainy, nasty or just damp and chilly days.   The solution is a warm bowl of green.  It needn't be rich -- one can easily dispense with the cream called for in many pureed soup recipes, especially when it seems to dull the sprightly flavors of  vegetable and herb.   As for G, well, there are few things that make for a more joyous suppertime in our house than a bowl of soup.  Almost any soup makes him purely happy, particularly if it's paired with a grilled sandwich containing cheese somewhere between the bread.

My two most recent bowls o' green are Asparagus-Leek Soup and Green Bean Basil Soup, pictured above.  Since blogs have been rampant with asparagus recipes lately and you may feel a bit inundated, I'll share the green bean with you.  It will be good as a cold soup later in the summer too, when our local green beans and basil are finally at the farmers' market.  For now, I cheat and use stuff that's obviously been trucked in from elsewhere, coz I need my green. 

This soup is a bit of revelation to most people.   "Green bean soup?  Never heard of it."  Neither had I.  I found the recipe years ago in The Tassajara Recipe Book, an old but still tasty vegetarian tome by the venerable Ed Brown of Tassajara Bread Book  and Greens Restaurant fame.   The recipes, like those in the Bread Book, are from the Tassajara Springs Zen Center.  My changes were to use leeks instead of onions and scallions, and to put basil right in the soup instead of topping it with a separate basil butter. 

Those Zen monks eat well.  I cut a fair amount of the butter and all of the cream out of this recipe.  It's not that I'm anti-fat or don't love my dear dairy friends --  I do, I do.  I just love a little springtime spring in my step too, no matter how cold it is outside. 

Green Bean Soup with Basil
adapted from The Tassajara Recipe Book

Makes 6 - 8 servings

2 pounds bright velvety green beans
3 fat leeks (or more, if they're smaller)
2 Tbsp. butter or olive oil
Salt and pepper
1 1/2 cups well-washed fresh basil leaves
Grated rind of one organic lemon

Wash and trim the beans, and cut them into short lengths.  Boil them until they're just crisp-tender.  Drain them and save the water as your soup stock.  Set aside about a cup of the lightly cooked beans for garnish. 

Wash, trim and slice the leeks.  Heat the butter in a large saucepan or soup kettle, and when it foams, add the leeks.  Saute them until they're soft and smell heavenly.  Add the beans, and just enough of their cooking water to cover.  Bring to a boil, and simmer until the beans have given up all signs of resistance, but are still nice and green.  This is the difficult part.  You don't want them overcooked, but they have to be soft enough to puree. 

Puree batches of the soup in a blender, adding a handful of basil leaves midway through the pureeing process.  Be patient and puree this well.  That way you won't have any nasty little fibers to deal with.  When all the soup is pureed and back in the pot, grate the zest of an organic lemon into it.  Season with salt and pepper, stir well, taste and adjust seasoning.  Serve, garnished with the reserved green beans floating on each bowl.