Baby Time

Between being sick and having my hair catch fire at a restaurant last night (yes, I could not make this up.  Terrifying, embarrassing, resulted in a lot of tears on my end but all is fine thanks to Patrick being so quick thinking), it has been a rough start to the New Year.  The upside is on New Year's day, Patrick and I made our first baby together.

No, not that kind of baby (dirty mind you!).   We made a beautiful, golden Dutch Baby.  The pancake batter is so quick and easy to make it was finished and in the oven by the time  Patrick came back from the bodega with bacon and apples for the filling/topping.  All you do is spin flour, eggs, a touch of salt, and half and half (I'm sure whole milk would work as well) in the blender until everything comes together.  I added vanilla since I had just bought some Mexican Vanilla from Rancho Gordo (check out this website for incredible artisan beans, chiles, etc.) but it would be perfectly fine without it.  The batter then goes into an oven-safe skillet (cast iron is best) that has been warming in the oven with a tablespoon or two of butter in it.  Our baby was puffy and golden, similar to a fallen souffle, in just under 20 minutes. 

You can serve the Dutch baby with just a sprinkling of powdered sugar and a squeeze of lemon but Patrick decided to render a few slices of bacon, then saute apples with the bacon and maple syrup.  The sweet and salty combination of bacon, maple syrup, and tender apples was perfect with the pancake meets crepe like batter.  We spent the entire meal concocting possible fillings (savory mushroom and cheese was at the top of the list) for our next baby.

Dutch Baby
1-2 Tbs. unsalted butter 
4 eggs
1/2 cup flour
1/2 cup half-and-half (or whole milk)
pinch of salt
splash of vanilla

Preheat your oven to 425.  Place your skillet (we used a medium-sized cast-iron skillet) in the oven to warm.  You can melt your butter and brush it with a pastry brush on the bottom and up the sides of the pan but it is so much simpler to let the heat of the oven melt the butter for you.  I used a papertowel to help get the butter up the sides of the pan.  Alternatively, we were thinking next time to just melt the butter and blend it with the other ingredients in the blender.

While your oven and pan are preheating, blend all of the above ingredients in a blender until combined.  Pour into the pan and bake in the oven 15-25 minutes (ours finished in just under 20 minutes) until your baby is puffy and golden.  The sides should puff up around the pan but the inside will fall into itself.

Remove and either sprinkle powdered sugar and lemon juice on top or make a filling of your choice.  This would be delicious with just maple syrup and butter.  Apples and bacon is a great breakfast option as well.

Fall is here....

I have been gone a long time and I have no good excuse but I will try. I moved to Brooklyn (big adjustment) and was training for the marathon, then ran the marathon, and really, even to my ears, lame excuses, but I am back and with it the recipe that was really the main reason I started this blog. Yes, it sounds big. Huge in fact. This is it, the ultimate recipe, which I guess implies it all goes downhill from here but I hope not as that would mean the end to my little blog.

The recipe, as many of you have fondly heard me call it over the years, is known in the family only as "Mama's Soup." Someone, my guess is my brother or myself, dubbed it a long time ago and the name stuck. It is the soup we grew up on, particularly delicious in cold weather, but eaten year round in our household. I probably ate a bowl of this soup once or twice a week my entire life, which if you do the math... well, it's a lot of mama's soup.

I decided to make it this past Friday night (perhaps the social life needs a pick-me-up if I am staying home making soup on a Friday evening) to accompany the most perfect dinner - boiled fingerling potatoes with butter and herbs, an assortment of delectable treats from Russ and Daughters (smoked whitefish salad, herring in mustard and dill, herring in cream sauce, chicken liver, etc.). Sometimes the Russian Jewish girl in me just has to come out. It's a good thing Patrick spent years in Norway and can appreciate a good pickled herring with a plate of Mama's soup.

So back to the soup: it is the chicken soup of my childhood, a chicken broth base (homemade of course), with pastina, potatoes, onions, carrots, cauliflower as the substance, and a sprinkling of fresh dill to finish it off. Mama starts with the broth. Chicken (she uses large pieces and then saves the meat for chicken salad whereas I use soup bones as I despise the taste of boiled meat), a quartered onion, garlic, carrot, celery, fennel, really any scraps of root vegetables can go into a large pot with cold water, salt and pepper. It's brought to a boil and allowed to simmer until you have a lovely broth. Strain out the vegetables and the chicken and discard (or save the chicken for chicken salad if you so prefer).

Then a phone call is usually put in to Mama as to the exact order the rest of the ingredients must go in in order to ensure the soup is exactly like hers. This time I interrupted her while she was having dinner on vacation to make sure I got the order right. First, drop a handful of pastina into the soup, then peel and cube a large potato and parsnip and throw them into the pot. Separate the cauliflower into florets and tough white stems. Cube the white stems and add to the pastina, potatoes and parnsip. While those cook saute shredded carrots and onions in a little olive oil until they are sweet and slightly cooked through. Once the cauliflower stems have softened a bit add the florets and carrot-onion mixture to the simmering broth. Season with salt and pepper, let cook until the cauliflower is just softened, then stir in a large handful of dill and enjoy.

This makes a large pot of soup for almost nothing (I think I paid $5 for all of the ingredients) and will last you for days. It is the Jewish version of minestrone (particularly when Mama adds tiny matzo balls to the broth), a humble peasant-style soup, a soup that can be eaten with a hunk of buttered bread and some boiled potatoes, a soup that will leave you asking for seconds and thirds. Which, if you grew up in my house, was forced upon you whether you liked it or not. This soup is my mother's legacy, a tribute to her heritage and more importantly, the love she bestows on all of us, through the kitchen. It only took twenty-eight years and countless tupperware containers brought back to college dorm rooms, but I finally perfected the recipe...or at least as close to it as I can get without actually going home.

Tomato Love

If I were stranded on a desert island and could only bring three things one of them would definitely be tomatoes. They encompass the fruit and vegetable genre, are sweet yet savory, and come in a myriad of colors, shapes, and flavors. If I ever develop a green thumb, or move to greener pastures (not likely for a city girl like me), or hit it big in the lotto and buy an apartment with my own private terrace (a girl can dream!), I plan to grow my own tomatoes. This would probably be cost efficient as I can easily graze through a pint of tomatoes in the course of an evening. I love them so.

Before I lived in New York I knew your basic plum, vine and cherry tomatoes. The farmers at the Greenmarket have opened my eyes to the beautiful varieties of heirloom tomatoes. Yesterday, while wandering through Union Square I bought a pint of these beauties. In hues of purple, yellow, green, and rose, all they needed was a sprinkling of salt, a squeeze of lemon, olive oil, garlic, and a chiffonade of mint. It was the perfect salad to end yet another hot and humid day.

This evening, after a run to the Manhattan Bridge and back, I came home needing more than salad. Inspired by Tyler Florence's "Tyler's Ultimate" cookbook, I made a slightly modified version of his Beef Noodle Salad. Seared flank steak, sliced thin, is served atop cold soba noodles that are tossed with Satur Farms wild arugula, roasted cherry tomatoes, peanuts, and mint. These are all bound together with a salad dressing of argula, peanuts, lime juice, serrano chile, and olive oil. The dressing is vibrant green and spicy from the chile and arugula. Can I just say I love that arugula also goes by the name of "rocket." So much more fun to say and perfect for this robust summer salad.

**I made enough noodles for four people with plenty for leftovers, depending how hungry you are. Since I was cooking for myself I used 1/2 pound of steak, enough for dinner tonight and lunch tomorrow. This recipe makes more than enough noodles to vary it up for at least four meals if you like myself and take leftovers for lunch over the next few days. Some seared shrimp, grilled chicken or tofu would be delicious on top of this salad. Then again, the noodles are so good on their own you can just eat them on their own.

Beef Noodle Salad

Dressing:

• a few handfuls of arugula
• juice of one lime
• 1 chile pepper (i used a serrano but Tyler's recipe calls for Thai Chile)
• 1/4 cup of dry roasted peanuts
  
• 1/2 cup of olive oil
  
• salt
  

Throw all of the above ingredients in a blender and puree until you have a smooth dressing.
Season with salt.

Salad:

• 12 oz. soba noodles or glass noodles
• 1/2 - 1 lb. of steak**
• 1 pint cherry tomatoes
• 1 bunch or several large handfuls of arugula
  
• a handful to 1/4 cup of dry roasted peanuts
  
• a handful of mint
  

Boil water for your noodles. When it is up to a rolling boil add salt and whatever noodles you like. Soba noodles take 4-5 minutes to cook while thin glass or cellophane noodles can cook in 2 minutes. Drain and rinse the noodles with cold water when they are done. In the meantime, heat a skillet, cast iron preferably if you are cooking indoors and do not have a grill, and pour in enough olive oil to lightly coat the pan. Season the steak with salt and pepper on both sides and sear it 2-3 minutes on each side. Depending what cut of meat you use you may want to finish cooking the meat off in the oven (if you have a particularly thick piece of meat). Let the meat rest on a cutting board while you combine the other ingredients. Throw the tomatoes into the same pan you used for the steak and let them roast in a 400 degree oven for 10-12 minutes. They are done when they are sizzling and the skins are lightly blackened.

Toss the noodles, arugula, roasted tomatoes, mint, peanuts and dressing together. Top with steak and enjoy.

**Tyler's recipe calls for NY Strip Steak but given that was $29.00/lb at Whole Foods I opted for a cut of flank steak.

Edible Brooklyn Beer Event at BAM

Summer in New York is finally here. Humid with constant afternoon thunderstorms, it's the kind of summer New Yorkers dread, the kind that leaves you sweaty, sticky and loathe to enter the subway system with its stale air and over air-conditioned cars. It is also the kind of weather that leaves me with no desire to cook anything beyond simple salads and icy drinks. This probably explains why I made the same melon smoothie for breakfast every day for a week straight.

Clearly I am a creature of habit, which is why events like Edible Brooklyn's Good Beer at BAM (Brooklyn Academy of Music), was the perfect antidote for a rainy Wednesday evening. Restaurants from all over Manhattan and Brooklyn came out offering delectable nibbles with beer pairings from local breweries. I tried pickled beets from Great Performances caterers paired with Ithaca Cascazilla's beer. From Ici, a Brooklyn restaurant I've been meaning to try but have yet to get around to, I had cornbread with summer squash and raw milk Vermont Cheddar. Jasper Hill Farm, a family farm from Greensboro, VT, was there with their complex yet subtle Vermont Ayr and Cabot Clothbound Cheddar cheeses.

A vegetarian I am not and I nearly swooned over the weiner schnitzel with cucmber and potato salad. I had two servings but consoled myself with the fact that the servings were bite sized. Schnitzel & Things may just be my new favorite truck that has joined the food truck craze taking over the City. Jim Lahey's Chelsea pizza place, Company (Co.), was outside (also in a truck) dishing up their margherita, popeye, and flambe pizzas. I was lucky enough to get there early and secured a slice of the flambe paired with a tasting of Southampton Publick House Doublewitte beer.

I am sure I am forgetting what other nibbles I may have had (or perhaps a deliberate omission in an effort to not portray myself as a complete piglet) but overall a successful and educational event. Other than learning that I can indeed consume numerous bites of Wiener Schnitzel while simultaneously balancing a full glass of beer (finally, the multitasking skills I learned in law school came in handy) I also learned these interesting facts about beer and New York. Something to think about the next time you decide to have a beer...

• Bloomberg declared July the "Month of Good Beer"
• In 1900, Brooklyn housed almost 50 breweries.
• The last brewery closed in Brooklyn in the 1970's.
• The borough is now experiencing a renaissance of sorts, with three breweries open in Brooklyn and many in the outer regions of Long Island and Upstate New York
  

Spring and Summer...Finally Here

Summer is finally here and despite the fact that it has rained for oh, 40 of the last 45 days, the Union Square Greenmarket is finally moving beyond the winter root vegetables to gorgeous spring onions, tender greens, and zucchini. Tomatoes are still $4 lb. (and therefore still out of reach) but walking through the greenamarket today was pure pleasure. I filled my arms with yukon potatoes, zucchini, purple onions and baby beets. At home a ratatouille, inspired by the recipe in Molly Wizenberg's A Homemade Life**, served over a crushed potato and topped with a spoonful of fresh ricotta, was the perfect dinner after an exhausting yoga class.

It seems that all I want lately are fresh, light flavors redolent of the spring and summer bounty to come. I experience this every year as the weather shifts from the cool days of spring to the heat of summer. I am fortunate enough to date a chef (or "cook" as he prefers to call himself for he does not yet run his own kitchen ) who loves the city as much as I do but has a penchant for a more rural life. During the rainy months of April and May Patrick escaped the city on his days off from the restaurant to hunt for morels and ramps in a nearby state park. I am the lucky girl who was forced to be the guinea pig for homemade gnocchi with ramp pesto, bacon, and morels (yes, feel free to hate me). What can I say...I love that he has the soul of an italian grandma trapped in the body of 20-something man. So this is an ode to a meal that I could not get enough of...thank goodness marathon training started otherwise I may have regreted that second bowl of gnocchi.

**Molly writes one of my favorite food blogs - http://orangette.blogspot.com/
I bought her book the week it came out (impressive for a cheapo like me to not wait for it to come out on paperback!) and have read it several times over already.

Ratatouille Recipe:

Start by cubing and sauteing your zucchini in olive oil. I like to cook it separately from the other vegetables until it has some color and is starting to soften. Set the zucchini aside on a separate plate. If you have eggplant repeat and set aside. I did not have eggplant on hand when I made my ratatouille but I have heard some people like to brush the eggplant with olive oil and bake in the oven until tender. This seems like a good way to reduce the amount of fat in the recipe as eggplant soaks up oil like a sponge.

Next, cook some chopped onions and garlic until they are translucent and start to soften. I like to add chile d'arbol once the onions have started to cook down but any spicy pepper will do. I tend to like all my food to have a little spice or acid so this may not be for everyone. If you have anchovies on hand (stop wrinkling your nose, anchovies are not only good for you but add a phenomenal depth of flavor to any dish) add them in as the onions cook and they will melt down into a delicious slightly salty addition to your ratouille. If you do use anchovies be less liberal when you add salt to the dish.

After you have cooked the onions down add tomatoes and continue to cook until the tomatoes start to break down, approximately five minutes. I like to add a touch of tomato paste if my tomatoes are not in top form. Add the eggplant and zucchini back in and cook down another 10-15 minutes until all the vegetables have softened (but are not mushy) and melded together. Season with salt, pepper and a splash of red wine vinegar. I like to fold in some slivered basil or mint after I take the ratatouille off the heat. Eat immediately or let cool to room temperature - enjoy!

The Beginning...

I've been wanting to start this blog for a long time but have not been able to find the words or the incentive to start writing. This week I finally feel spurred into action. Maybe it is because it's Monday. Or maybe it is because the passing of Michael Jackson feels so surreal. Whatever it may be I decided this is finally the time to begin this blog. It is not my first time blogging (I have blogged about my running and training for a marathon before) but this time I feel fearful...fearful of what may come and what I want this blog to be.

I have high hopes that this blog will truly be an extension of myself, of the food I love to eat and cook, and how it brings people and family together. So I thought I would start with an old standby in my family, a cake I started making about four years ago. It's a recipe for almond cake with lemon curd that I adapted from Jody Adams cooking, In the Hands of a Chef. Lemon curd is made, chilled, and then spooned on top of a buttery almond cake. The recipe always makes double the amount of curd that is needed but the extra curd is lovely on toast the next morning (or if you're my dad, eaten by the spoonful as a midnight snack). I have made this cake many times but I have yet to figure out a way for the whites to not separate from the curd as it is heated. Given that it is strained I figure no one knows (until now) and it makes no difference in how it tastes yet I can't help feeling frustrated by it every time I make it.

But I am leaving out the best part of this cake. It came accidentally one day when I had only large ten-inch springform pans available. When made with a nine-inch springform pan the cake comes out about two inches high with a dense crumb. However, when made in a wider pan the cake comes out thinner with a crisp yet delicate crust. Paired with lightly sweetened whipped cream this cake is requested by family and friends every time I come home for a visit. I hope you love it as much as I do.

***After many requests I am adding the recipes to future postings. From In the Hands of a Chef:

Lemon Curd:

• Grated zest and juice of 2 lemons
• 3/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons sugar
• 4 extra-large eggs
• 6 tablespoons unsalted butter, cubed

Cake:

• 9 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened
• 1 cup plus 1 tablespoon flour
• 1 cup plus 1 to 2 tablespoons sugar
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
• 2 extra-large eggs
• 1/2 cup ground toasted almonds
• 2 tablespoons toasted sliced almonds

Garnish:

• 1 tablespoon almond liqueur (optional)
• 1/2 cup heavy cream (optional)
• 2 tablespoons confectioners' sugar or as needed

Directions

Combine the lemon zest and juice in a nonreactive saucepan with the sugar and eggs and beat well. Add the butter and cook over medium heat, stirring constantly with a rubber spatula or wooden spoon, until the sugar dissolves and the mixture thickens into curd. Be sure to keep scraping the bottom of the pan during the few minutes this takes you; you don't want the eggs to scramble before the curd forms. If you're the nervous type, make the curd in a heatproof bowl over a pot of boiling water (the bowl shouldn't touch the water). The curd will take just a little longer to thicken, about 5 minutes. Strain the crud into a bowl and press a piece of plastic wrap against the surface so a skin doesn't form. Refrigerate until cool, at least 1 1/2 hours.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Grease a springform pan with 1 tablespoon of the butter and dust it with 1 tablespoon of the flour. (I like to use a 10-inch pan for a crispier cake. If you would like a denser taller cake use a regular 9-inch pan).

Cream the remaining 8 tablespoons butter in a large bowl with 1 cup of the sugar until light and fluffy. Sift the remaining 1 cup flour, the baking powder, and salt together and stir into the creamed butter.

In a separate bowl, beat the eggs until they start to foam. Do not overbeat, or the cake will be tough. Add the eggs and ground almonds to the flour and butter mixture, mixing well.

Scrape the batter into the prepared pan. Drop 8 individual tablespoons of lemon curd evenly around the outside of the cake, leaving a 1-inch border around the edge. Try to place the curd so there's an even amount of cake batter between each dollop of curd. Drop 3 tablespoons curd in the center. Refrigerate any remaining curd for another use (hint: breakfast toast). Sprinkle the top of the cake with sliced almonds and 1 to 2 tablespoons sugar, according to taste.

Bake until the cake is toasty brown on top and a toothpick or knife inserted into the cake comes out clean (be sure not to insert it near the curd), about 40 minutes. Let cool for 10 minutes, then remove the sides of the pan and let cool completely on a rack.

If serving the cake with whipped cream, add the almond liqueur to the heavy cream and beat until the cream is stiff. Sift a thin, even layer of confectioners' sugar over the top of the cake. Present the cake at the table and offer the almond whipped cream on the side. (I usually do not have almond liqueur on hand and prefer to incorporate a tablespoon or two of confectioners sugar to lightly sweeten the whipped cream instead of sifting it over the top).