Showing posts with label butter. Show all posts
Showing posts with label butter. Show all posts
Saturday, December 19, 2015
cookies--christmas and otherwise
I never fail to be delighted by the simple roll-and-cut cookies we do every year at Christmas. (Of course my children are delighted by them as well). I've blogged about them a gazillion times before, but couldn't resist showing you this year's batch. I love how they turned out. I was lazy and only dyed two colors of icing, but it's sort of nice to keep the palette simple. I've posted the recipe here. The recipe for the icing is here.
And I wanted to let you know about the oatmeal-walnut-fudge cookies I also made. They didn't really "work" for me as a Christmas cookie (not Christmassy enough! so hearty!), but I love them as a "granola bar" of a lunchbox cookie. They are so toasty and walnutty and the fudge center is fun and a little different. I found the recipe here.
english muffin toasting bread
I love toast. When I came across this recipe for English muffin bread (via Pinterest), I knew I had to make it. This weekend I finally remembered to buy the bread flour it calls for and I whipped this up on Sunday. It's a truly easy recipe--I love the soft bread dough recipes, the ones you stir up with a wooden spoon and that require no kneading.
So my honest review is that this tastes delish, but it really bothers me that it will not brown up when toasted. No matter how long I toast it, it will burn at the edges before really becoming brown and toasty. That almost makes this a non-repeater for me. I want my toast to be toasty! That said, this does have a deep, toasty flavor that truly is reminiscent of an English muffin. Also, the texture is super crisp and crunchy, which I love.
I want to do a side-by-side comparison between this vs. this bread as toast. My mind is already turning towards summer when I can bake a lot of bread recipes and compare them as toast.
Thanks so much to everyone who has been stopping by and commenting. It's so nice to still have readers, despite my infrequent posting. Thank you!
PS--this article is a fascinating read about the toast craze that is sweeping San Francisco. Do read it--it's more about mental illness and the lack of support there is for mentally ill adults, but it is also very inspiring because this particular woman has found a way to survive and thrive. I loved it. The same story as a podcast is on the current episode of This American Life (episode #520--"No Place Like Home" (listen through to the end--it's the last story).
Thursday, December 17, 2015
Cream Cheese Pound Cake
I have finally learned how to use the espresso machine that Brandon chased down on eBay and gave me for Christmas in 2011! The best part of this development, however, is not the double espresso that I can now enjoy each morning while sitting on the living room floor with June, reading Madeline or singing along (poorly, loudly) to our favorite song, “On the Road Again.” No, no, the best part is that while I make said double espresso, I get to recite aloud for June and Alice, in my best/worst Italian accent, the molto gag-worthy slogan written in loopy script on the side of the machine:
In other news, do you know what goes nicely with espresso? Cream cheese pound cake. CREAM CHEESE POUND CAKE! (Holy holy holy, finally. Delancey and Essex have been needy lately, heedlessly gobbling up my time. Stupid restaurants. My sincerest apologies.)
Listen: I’m not normally pound cake person. Not a real pound cake person. I may have gotten riled up about a pistachio pound cake last year, and there was that sweet potato pound cake a few years ago, and I may have put a berry pound cake recipe in my first book, and I may have even found my way around a few Sara Lee frozen pound cakes as a teenager - remember the crust on top? The way it was soft and spongy and eerily uniform in its brownness? I loved that part - but those were all special cases. I don’t get wildly excited about pound cake as a general concept. I can get behind a nice, plain cake, maybe a busy-day cake, but pound cakes are often too plain, too heavy, too doorstoppy. Pound cake, in the classic sense, strikes me mostly as a vehicle for transporting strawberries (or other fruits) and whipped cream from a plate into my mouth. I know that, in the eyes of many, there’s all kinds of sacrilege in this paragraph, but I’m feeling daring.
All that said, this pound cake is exceptional. It caught me off guard. I was looking for a way to use up some cream cheese that I had lying around, and I came upon the recipe in the excellent book Southern Cakes, by Nancie McDermott. That’s the same book that gave us the sweet potato pound cake, so it’s not surprising that this cream cheese version is spot-on. But really, it’s a keeper. Lovely is the right word for it. There’s nothing revolutionary about the ingredients - just your basic pound cake building blocks, plus a pack of cream cheese - but it’s unusually moist and even-crumbed, with a top crust that crackles like a wafer. And as you begin to chew, here comes the cream cheese, a gentle tang kicking through the sweetness. I love the way McDermott describes it: she says that the cream cheese makes a “quiet little sensation.” Am I alone in being unable to use the word sensation without thinking of INXS, and then having to listen to this song a few times, feeling mopey about Michael Hutchence’s untimely death 16 years ago? Probably?
Anyway, I baked two loaves and froze one of them, and both Brandon and I noticed that the frozen cake, once thawed, was even better than the fresh one had been. This discovery makes me want to bake a half-dozen of these cakes and stash them away for future occasions that demand sweets on short notice. Like tomorrow’s breakfast.
Cream Cheese Pound Cake
Adapted from Southern Cakes, by Nancie McDermott
This recipe was shared with McDermott by one Suzanne O’Hara of Burlington, North Carolina, and it comes together with remarkable speed and ease. I think I’ll be making it often.
3 cups (420 g) all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
¼ teaspoon fine salt
2 sticks (226 g) unsalted butter, at room temperature
One 8-ounce (226 g) package cream cheese, at room temperature
3 cups (600 g) sugar
6 large eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
Preheat the oven to 325°F. Grease and flour a 10-inch tube pan or two 9-by-5-inch loaf pans. (I also lined my pans with parchment, because it makes the cakes so easy to remove.)
In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, and salt.
In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, combine the butter and cream cheese, and beat on medium speed until soft and fluffy. Add the sugar, and continue to beat for about 2 minutes more, stopping once to scrape down the sides. Add the eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition. Beat in the vanilla. Reduce the mixer speed to low, and add the flour mixture in three doses, beating only until the flour is absorbed and scraping down the sides of the bowl as needed. Scrape the batter into the prepared pan or pans.
Bake for about 1 hour and 15 minutes (for a tube pan) or 55 to 60 minutes (for loaf pans), or until the cake is golden brown, pulling away from the sides of the pan, and a cake tester inserted into the center comes out clean. Transfer the cake to a wire rack, and cool completely before loosening the sides with a thin knife and removing the cake from the pan.
For Music ~ Puccini
For Art ~ Bernini
For Espresso ~ Pasquini
In other news, do you know what goes nicely with espresso? Cream cheese pound cake. CREAM CHEESE POUND CAKE! (Holy holy holy, finally. Delancey and Essex have been needy lately, heedlessly gobbling up my time. Stupid restaurants. My sincerest apologies.)
Listen: I’m not normally pound cake person. Not a real pound cake person. I may have gotten riled up about a pistachio pound cake last year, and there was that sweet potato pound cake a few years ago, and I may have put a berry pound cake recipe in my first book, and I may have even found my way around a few Sara Lee frozen pound cakes as a teenager - remember the crust on top? The way it was soft and spongy and eerily uniform in its brownness? I loved that part - but those were all special cases. I don’t get wildly excited about pound cake as a general concept. I can get behind a nice, plain cake, maybe a busy-day cake, but pound cakes are often too plain, too heavy, too doorstoppy. Pound cake, in the classic sense, strikes me mostly as a vehicle for transporting strawberries (or other fruits) and whipped cream from a plate into my mouth. I know that, in the eyes of many, there’s all kinds of sacrilege in this paragraph, but I’m feeling daring.
All that said, this pound cake is exceptional. It caught me off guard. I was looking for a way to use up some cream cheese that I had lying around, and I came upon the recipe in the excellent book Southern Cakes, by Nancie McDermott. That’s the same book that gave us the sweet potato pound cake, so it’s not surprising that this cream cheese version is spot-on. But really, it’s a keeper. Lovely is the right word for it. There’s nothing revolutionary about the ingredients - just your basic pound cake building blocks, plus a pack of cream cheese - but it’s unusually moist and even-crumbed, with a top crust that crackles like a wafer. And as you begin to chew, here comes the cream cheese, a gentle tang kicking through the sweetness. I love the way McDermott describes it: she says that the cream cheese makes a “quiet little sensation.” Am I alone in being unable to use the word sensation without thinking of INXS, and then having to listen to this song a few times, feeling mopey about Michael Hutchence’s untimely death 16 years ago? Probably?
Anyway, I baked two loaves and froze one of them, and both Brandon and I noticed that the frozen cake, once thawed, was even better than the fresh one had been. This discovery makes me want to bake a half-dozen of these cakes and stash them away for future occasions that demand sweets on short notice. Like tomorrow’s breakfast.
Cream Cheese Pound Cake
Adapted from Southern Cakes, by Nancie McDermott
This recipe was shared with McDermott by one Suzanne O’Hara of Burlington, North Carolina, and it comes together with remarkable speed and ease. I think I’ll be making it often.
3 cups (420 g) all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
¼ teaspoon fine salt
2 sticks (226 g) unsalted butter, at room temperature
One 8-ounce (226 g) package cream cheese, at room temperature
3 cups (600 g) sugar
6 large eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
Preheat the oven to 325°F. Grease and flour a 10-inch tube pan or two 9-by-5-inch loaf pans. (I also lined my pans with parchment, because it makes the cakes so easy to remove.)
In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, and salt.
In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, combine the butter and cream cheese, and beat on medium speed until soft and fluffy. Add the sugar, and continue to beat for about 2 minutes more, stopping once to scrape down the sides. Add the eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition. Beat in the vanilla. Reduce the mixer speed to low, and add the flour mixture in three doses, beating only until the flour is absorbed and scraping down the sides of the bowl as needed. Scrape the batter into the prepared pan or pans.
Bake for about 1 hour and 15 minutes (for a tube pan) or 55 to 60 minutes (for loaf pans), or until the cake is golden brown, pulling away from the sides of the pan, and a cake tester inserted into the center comes out clean. Transfer the cake to a wire rack, and cool completely before loosening the sides with a thin knife and removing the cake from the pan.
A broccoli pizza
You women who manage to keep up smart, articulate blogs while raising young children? You women who manage to keep up smart, articulate blogs while working and raising young children and doing all that household stuff that most of us wind up doing? I throw myself at your feet. I don’t have anything remotely original or insightful to say on the subject; I just think you’re remarkable. I have childcare twelve hours a week, jobs with flexible hours, a supportive spouse, and a kid who (usually) sleeps well (please don’t let this jinx me, please don’t let this jinx me), and yet I fight to get to this space. Of course, part of the problem could be that, each night, when I sit down in front of the computer, I wind up lip-syncing to Fleetwood Mac on YouTube, inspecting my reflection in the window and wondering what kind of atrocities I would have to inflict upon my hair in order to pull off a convincing Stevie Nicks next Halloween. (I WILL, OH, I WILL.)
The other night, after June was asleep and before I turned on Fleetwood Mac, I went down to the dungeon, also known as the garage, and dug up three boxes of old Polaroids. I was looking for two shots that I needed to scan and send to my editor for my next book, but instead I found approximately four thousand others that I had forgotten I ever took. I never found the two images that I actually needed - no doubt tucked away for “safekeeping,” never to be seen again - but I did find this:
Eureka! A broccoli pizza atop a shop vac! And a crimini pizza and Brandon’s favorite very very sharp knife, on a cutting board, balanced haphazardly on a rung of an extremely dusty ladder!
These shots are from early 2009, the winter when we were building Delancey and testing recipes, shortly after Brandon finished building and curing the wood-burning oven but before the restaurant had anything resembling a kitchen.
I was slicing mushrooms that night on a folding card table, wearing the same gray hooded sweatshirt that I’m wearing at my desk this morning, only today it’s not crusted in drywall. That night feels sort of romantic to me now, now that I know how it all turned out, but at the time, I was freezing, and it was dark in there and everything was covered in debris, and we were tired, always tired.
Yesterday June and I ate dinner at Delancey with a friend from our childbirth class and her nine-month-old daughter. I sat in one of the chairs that were stacked precariously in this photo, and June tasted (by which I mean sucked awkwardly on, and then wore) her father’s pizza for the very first time. June, the child I had no idea I even wanted to have, back when I took this photo!
I am easily awed this morning. This might be my espresso talking.
And Katie was our server. Sweet Katie! Still there, after three and a half years! A billion years in Restaurant Time.
One day almost four years ago, in early June of 2009, the chef of the restaurant across the street, which was then A Caprice Kitchen but is now The Fat Hen, knocked on the door of Delancey. We were inside, doing some construction task or other, and she handed us a package wrapped in white paper. It was a gift from the elderly lady who lived in the apartment behind her restaurant, she said, and the lady had asked her to deliver it to us. I peeled off the tape and folded back the paper, and inside, there was a homemade cake, a dome of vanilla cake with vanilla frosting, sculpted into soft, feathery peaks.
The older lady never came to Delancey, and I never met her - though Brandon did once, and he reports that she was very shy. She moved away at some point to a retirement home. There’s now a young couple in the apartment that was hers, and from what I can tell when I park my car on the street outside, it sounds like one of them plays the drums. But the residual warmth of her gesture struck me the other night in the garage, and I can still feel it.
The other night, after June was asleep and before I turned on Fleetwood Mac, I went down to the dungeon, also known as the garage, and dug up three boxes of old Polaroids. I was looking for two shots that I needed to scan and send to my editor for my next book, but instead I found approximately four thousand others that I had forgotten I ever took. I never found the two images that I actually needed - no doubt tucked away for “safekeeping,” never to be seen again - but I did find this:
Eureka! A broccoli pizza atop a shop vac! And a crimini pizza and Brandon’s favorite very very sharp knife, on a cutting board, balanced haphazardly on a rung of an extremely dusty ladder!
These shots are from early 2009, the winter when we were building Delancey and testing recipes, shortly after Brandon finished building and curing the wood-burning oven but before the restaurant had anything resembling a kitchen.
I was slicing mushrooms that night on a folding card table, wearing the same gray hooded sweatshirt that I’m wearing at my desk this morning, only today it’s not crusted in drywall. That night feels sort of romantic to me now, now that I know how it all turned out, but at the time, I was freezing, and it was dark in there and everything was covered in debris, and we were tired, always tired.
Yesterday June and I ate dinner at Delancey with a friend from our childbirth class and her nine-month-old daughter. I sat in one of the chairs that were stacked precariously in this photo, and June tasted (by which I mean sucked awkwardly on, and then wore) her father’s pizza for the very first time. June, the child I had no idea I even wanted to have, back when I took this photo!
I am easily awed this morning. This might be my espresso talking.
And Katie was our server. Sweet Katie! Still there, after three and a half years! A billion years in Restaurant Time.
One day almost four years ago, in early June of 2009, the chef of the restaurant across the street, which was then A Caprice Kitchen but is now The Fat Hen, knocked on the door of Delancey. We were inside, doing some construction task or other, and she handed us a package wrapped in white paper. It was a gift from the elderly lady who lived in the apartment behind her restaurant, she said, and the lady had asked her to deliver it to us. I peeled off the tape and folded back the paper, and inside, there was a homemade cake, a dome of vanilla cake with vanilla frosting, sculpted into soft, feathery peaks.
The older lady never came to Delancey, and I never met her - though Brandon did once, and he reports that she was very shy. She moved away at some point to a retirement home. There’s now a young couple in the apartment that was hers, and from what I can tell when I park my car on the street outside, it sounds like one of them plays the drums. But the residual warmth of her gesture struck me the other night in the garage, and I can still feel it.
Pasta with Yogurt, Peas, and Chile
Every so often, I encounter a recipe that makes me want to forgo the usual niceties of a post - the introduction, the story, the conclusion, the delicate foreplay - because that would only slow you down, when what you should really do is grab your shoes and make a list and run to the grocery store and throw some money at the cashier and run back home and make this immediately and I mean it, go, right now, DO IT.
One such recipe is Conchiglie with Yogurt, Peas, and Chile, from the stunning book Jerusalem, by Yotam Ottolenghi and Sami Tamimi. Even June is all over it.
The only problem is that I made it for a late dinner a few nights ago, when the sun was already well into setting - which is really and truly very late, here in my northern city - and it was too dark to take a picture. Today I tried to take a picture of the photograph in the cookbook, but that didn’t pan out either.
-1.jpg)
(Yeah, yeah, my child owns a pair of elastic-waist jeggings. In my defense, they were hand-me-downs.)
In any case, you can picture it yourself. First, you zizz some Greek yogurt, olive oil, peas, and garlic in a food processor until the mixture is an even shade of pale green. Then you heat a pot of water and boil some pasta in it, and while that’s going, you warm some pine nuts and chile flakes in a skillet filmed with olive oil until the nuts are golden and the oil is red, and you also heat some more peas in a little bowl of water scooped from the pasta pot. When the pasta is ready, you drain it and fold it together with the yogurt sauce, the now-warm peas, some torn basil leaves, and some crumbled feta. The hot pasta heats and loosens the sauce, and the overall effect is creamy but not heavy in the least, bright where you hit a basil leaf or a pea, salty where you hit a lump of feta. You scoop it into a bowl, spoon over some pine nuts and the chile oil, which brings that kind of low, creeping heat that makes your lips tingle, and as I scraped my bowl and went back to the kitchen for seconds, I decided it was the best thing I’ve made in a long, long time. (The best savory thing, I should clarify. Nothing compares to cake. Who do you think I am?)
Yesterday afternoon, June and I went to our friend Lecia’s house for a visit and an early dinner, and while we were sitting around on the floor, talking and catching up and watching June torment the family cats, Lecia mentioned that, the previous night, she’d made what she thought might be the best pasta she’d ever had.
“It has yogurt, and peas. I think you’d like it,” she said. “Have you heard of the book Jerusalem?” (!!!)
I told you so.
c
Adapted slightly from Jerusalem, by Yotam Ottolenghi and Sami Tamimi
The original version of this recipe calls for conchiglie, or shell-shaped pasta, but you could use any small pasta shape you like: orecchiette, penne, farfalle, and so on.
If you have some exotic type of dried chile, like Urfa chile, Aleppo chile, or Kirmizi biber, you lucky lucky dog, this is a great place to use it. If not, you can use regular red pepper flakes. I happened to have some Aleppo chile, and though it was ground, not in flakes, and probably a few years old, it worked beautifully. Oh, and if you’re worried about the amount of heat, consider starting with a little less of the chile than what is called for - or just don’t put much chile oil on your pasta.
2 ½ cups (500 g) whole-milk Greek yogurt
2/3 cup (150 ml) olive oil
2 medium cloves garlic, crushed or pressed
1 pound (500 g) fresh or thawed frozen peas
Kosher salt
1 pound (500 g) pasta shapes of your liking
Scant ½ cup (60 g) pine nuts
2 teaspoons Turkish or Syrian chile flakes, or red pepper flakes
1 2/3 cups (40 g) basil leaves, coarsely torn
8 ounces (240 g) feta cheese, coarsely crumbled
In the bowl of a food processor, combine the yogurt, 6 tablespoons (90 ml) of the olive oil, the garlic, and 2/3 cup (100 g) of the peas. Process to a uniform pale green sauce, and transfer to a large mixing bowl.
Bring a large pot of water to a boil, and salt it until tastes like pleasantly salty seawater. Add the pasta, and cook until it is al dente. While the pasta cooks, warm the remaining olive oil in a small frying pan over medium heat. Add the pine nuts and chile flakes, and cook for 4 minutes, or until the pine nuts are golden and the oil is deep red. Also, warm the remaining peas in some boiling water (you could scoop out a bit of the pasta water for this); then drain.
Drain the cooked pasta into a colander, and shake it well to get rid of excess water that may have settled into the pasta’s crevices. Add the pasta gradually to the yogurt sauce; adding it all at once may cause the yogurt to separate. Add the warm peas, the basil, feta, and 1 teaspoon kosher salt. Toss gently. Serve immediately, with pine nuts and chile oil spooned over each serving.
Yield: about 6 servings
One such recipe is Conchiglie with Yogurt, Peas, and Chile, from the stunning book Jerusalem, by Yotam Ottolenghi and Sami Tamimi. Even June is all over it.
The only problem is that I made it for a late dinner a few nights ago, when the sun was already well into setting - which is really and truly very late, here in my northern city - and it was too dark to take a picture. Today I tried to take a picture of the photograph in the cookbook, but that didn’t pan out either.
-1.jpg)
In any case, you can picture it yourself. First, you zizz some Greek yogurt, olive oil, peas, and garlic in a food processor until the mixture is an even shade of pale green. Then you heat a pot of water and boil some pasta in it, and while that’s going, you warm some pine nuts and chile flakes in a skillet filmed with olive oil until the nuts are golden and the oil is red, and you also heat some more peas in a little bowl of water scooped from the pasta pot. When the pasta is ready, you drain it and fold it together with the yogurt sauce, the now-warm peas, some torn basil leaves, and some crumbled feta. The hot pasta heats and loosens the sauce, and the overall effect is creamy but not heavy in the least, bright where you hit a basil leaf or a pea, salty where you hit a lump of feta. You scoop it into a bowl, spoon over some pine nuts and the chile oil, which brings that kind of low, creeping heat that makes your lips tingle, and as I scraped my bowl and went back to the kitchen for seconds, I decided it was the best thing I’ve made in a long, long time. (The best savory thing, I should clarify. Nothing compares to cake. Who do you think I am?)
Yesterday afternoon, June and I went to our friend Lecia’s house for a visit and an early dinner, and while we were sitting around on the floor, talking and catching up and watching June torment the family cats, Lecia mentioned that, the previous night, she’d made what she thought might be the best pasta she’d ever had.
“It has yogurt, and peas. I think you’d like it,” she said. “Have you heard of the book Jerusalem?” (!!!)
I told you so.
c
Adapted slightly from Jerusalem, by Yotam Ottolenghi and Sami Tamimi
The original version of this recipe calls for conchiglie, or shell-shaped pasta, but you could use any small pasta shape you like: orecchiette, penne, farfalle, and so on.
If you have some exotic type of dried chile, like Urfa chile, Aleppo chile, or Kirmizi biber, you lucky lucky dog, this is a great place to use it. If not, you can use regular red pepper flakes. I happened to have some Aleppo chile, and though it was ground, not in flakes, and probably a few years old, it worked beautifully. Oh, and if you’re worried about the amount of heat, consider starting with a little less of the chile than what is called for - or just don’t put much chile oil on your pasta.
2 ½ cups (500 g) whole-milk Greek yogurt
2/3 cup (150 ml) olive oil
2 medium cloves garlic, crushed or pressed
1 pound (500 g) fresh or thawed frozen peas
Kosher salt
1 pound (500 g) pasta shapes of your liking
Scant ½ cup (60 g) pine nuts
2 teaspoons Turkish or Syrian chile flakes, or red pepper flakes
1 2/3 cups (40 g) basil leaves, coarsely torn
8 ounces (240 g) feta cheese, coarsely crumbled
In the bowl of a food processor, combine the yogurt, 6 tablespoons (90 ml) of the olive oil, the garlic, and 2/3 cup (100 g) of the peas. Process to a uniform pale green sauce, and transfer to a large mixing bowl.
Bring a large pot of water to a boil, and salt it until tastes like pleasantly salty seawater. Add the pasta, and cook until it is al dente. While the pasta cooks, warm the remaining olive oil in a small frying pan over medium heat. Add the pine nuts and chile flakes, and cook for 4 minutes, or until the pine nuts are golden and the oil is deep red. Also, warm the remaining peas in some boiling water (you could scoop out a bit of the pasta water for this); then drain.
Drain the cooked pasta into a colander, and shake it well to get rid of excess water that may have settled into the pasta’s crevices. Add the pasta gradually to the yogurt sauce; adding it all at once may cause the yogurt to separate. Add the warm peas, the basil, feta, and 1 teaspoon kosher salt. Toss gently. Serve immediately, with pine nuts and chile oil spooned over each serving.
Yield: about 6 servings
Apricot Macaroon Tart
I’ve started this post four different times now, on five different days. I’m already tired of it, and I still haven’t figured out how to start. Does that ever happen to you? Do you do what I do and take a "break" to raid the walk-in at Delancey for chocolate chip cookie dough? Do you tell yourself, What harm could it really do if I listened to Freedom '90 again? Do you ever wonder if you’ve missed your chance to be a dancer in a Janet Jackson video? Shall we start this thing already?
First, I want to tell you that I was elated by your response to Delancey. Totally elated. Ecstatic. Even slightly stoned. I’m still coming down from it. Thank you so very, very much. And HURRY UP, MAY OF 2014!
Now, speaking of Delancey: when I was cleaning up the office there a couple of weeks ago, I found a large container of shredded, unsweetened coconut. We’d been using it to make macaroons that were served with a key lime mousse, but the mousse was no longer on the menu, and the coconut wasn’t flagged for another use, or not yet. So I took it home - a rare benefit of being the unfortunate person charged with maintaining the office! I WIN THIS TIME - and made something with it that we liked so much, and ate so quickly, that I made it again less than a week later. The recipe I’m talking about comes from Heidi Swanson’s wonderful Super Natural Every Day, a title that has recently joined the select group of favorite cookbooks that I keep on top of our refrigerator. It’s called a macaroon tart.
(For the record, June did not eat any, but she wished she could.)
What we have here, or what we had before we ate it all, is a buttery crust that tastes and crunches a little like shortbread, topped with hunks of soft summer fruit and a blanket of chewy macaroon. Heidi’s original recipe calls for studding the tart with blackberries, but I had some beautiful apricots on the counter, so I used them instead. I also threw in a few raspberries, but I preferred the apricots. I loved the apricots. In fact, I want to call this an Apricot Macaroon Tart. I think I will. And while I’m in the business of making bold statements, I should say that I also took liberties with the crust. I hope Heidi will still call me a friend. Her recipe calls for white whole wheat flour, but my niece Hillary is living with us this summer, and she’s gluten-intolerant, so I gathered up my courage and tried making a gluten-free version of the crust. I used a mixture of buckwheat, brown rice, and tapioca flours, and though I don’t know what the tart would taste like as Heidi intended it, I liked the toasty, nutty flavor of the buckwheat so much that I now can’t imagine the tart without it. Apricot, coconut, butter, buckwheat. I’m in.
Happy weekend.
Apricot Macaroon Tart
Adapted from Heidi Swanson’s Super Natural Every Day
A word (or many words) about flour: using Shauna’s 40/60 ratio for gluten-free baking, I whisked up a batch of all-purpose flour mix from 100 grams of buckwheat flour, 100 grams of brown rice flour, and 300 grams of tapioca flour. (I then used 170 grams of this mixture in the recipe.) I have no idea how well this mix of flours would work in other recipes, and I probably did everything wrong, but it worked nicely here, yielding a crust with a crunchy, slightly nubbly texture and great buckwheaty flavor. The one thing that I will say, however, is that the crust wept a not-insignificant amount of butter onto the sheet pan. I have to assume that this had something to do with the mix of flours I used, and their properties? Anyway, I doubt that the original recipe, as Heidi conceived it, has a butter-weeping problem. In any case, consider yourself alerted. If your crust leaks a little butter onto the sheet pan, don’t worry. That’s why the sheet pan is there.
And one more word about flour: even if you do eat gluten, as I do, you really should consider using some buckwheat flour. The next time I make this tart, I might try using a mixture of buckwheat flour and standard all-purpose flour - maybe one-third buckwheat and two-thirds all-purpose? Not that white whole wheat flour or whole wheat pastry flour are not interesting enough, but I really love what buckwheat brings to this crust.
Oh, and if you find yourself without pistachios and are contemplating a trip to the grocery store: don’t worry about it. I’ve forgotten to add the pistachios both times that I’ve made this tart, and though I imagine it would be prettier and maybe a little, little bit tastier with them, it’s wonderful without.
Finally, if you live in Seattle, I strongly recommend the apricots from Bill’s Fruits, a stand toward the Ballard Inn end of the Ballard Farmers’ Market.
For the crust:
1 ½ cups (170 g) white whole wheat flour, whole wheat pastry flour, or a mixture of flours (see above)
¾ cup (60 g) unsweetened finely shredded coconut
½ cup (100 g) sugar
½ tsp. fine sea salt
10 tablespoons (140 g) unsalted butter, melted and cooled slightly
For the filling:
2 cups (140 g) unsweetened finely shredded coconut
1/3 cup (70 grams) sugar
Pinch of fine sea salt
4 large egg whites
8 ounces (225 g) fresh apricots, pitted and quartered
1/3 cup (45 g) pistachios, chopped
Preheat the oven to 350°F. Butter a 9-inch round removable-bottom tart pan, and set it on a rimmed sheet pan.
To make the crust, combine the flour, coconut, sugar, and salt in a medium bowl. Stir to mix. Stir in the butter, and mix until the dough no longer looks dusty and all flour is absorbed. Press the mixture evenly into the bottom of the prepared pan: it should form a solid, flat layer. Bake for 15 minutes, or until barely golden. Remove from the oven, and set aside to cool for a few minutes.
While the crust bakes, prepare the filling. Combine the coconut, sugar, and salt in a medium bowl. Stir to mix. Add the egg whites, and mix until well combined. When the crust is baked, evenly distribute the apricots over it. Drop dollops of the filling over the fruit, using your fingers to nudge it into the spaces in between.
Bake for 20 to 30 minutes, until the peaks of the filling are deeply golden. Cool completely before topping with pistachios, slicing, and serving.
Yield: 8 to 12 slices, depending on how much you like dessert.
First, I want to tell you that I was elated by your response to Delancey. Totally elated. Ecstatic. Even slightly stoned. I’m still coming down from it. Thank you so very, very much. And HURRY UP, MAY OF 2014!
Now, speaking of Delancey: when I was cleaning up the office there a couple of weeks ago, I found a large container of shredded, unsweetened coconut. We’d been using it to make macaroons that were served with a key lime mousse, but the mousse was no longer on the menu, and the coconut wasn’t flagged for another use, or not yet. So I took it home - a rare benefit of being the unfortunate person charged with maintaining the office! I WIN THIS TIME - and made something with it that we liked so much, and ate so quickly, that I made it again less than a week later. The recipe I’m talking about comes from Heidi Swanson’s wonderful Super Natural Every Day, a title that has recently joined the select group of favorite cookbooks that I keep on top of our refrigerator. It’s called a macaroon tart.
(For the record, June did not eat any, but she wished she could.)
What we have here, or what we had before we ate it all, is a buttery crust that tastes and crunches a little like shortbread, topped with hunks of soft summer fruit and a blanket of chewy macaroon. Heidi’s original recipe calls for studding the tart with blackberries, but I had some beautiful apricots on the counter, so I used them instead. I also threw in a few raspberries, but I preferred the apricots. I loved the apricots. In fact, I want to call this an Apricot Macaroon Tart. I think I will. And while I’m in the business of making bold statements, I should say that I also took liberties with the crust. I hope Heidi will still call me a friend. Her recipe calls for white whole wheat flour, but my niece Hillary is living with us this summer, and she’s gluten-intolerant, so I gathered up my courage and tried making a gluten-free version of the crust. I used a mixture of buckwheat, brown rice, and tapioca flours, and though I don’t know what the tart would taste like as Heidi intended it, I liked the toasty, nutty flavor of the buckwheat so much that I now can’t imagine the tart without it. Apricot, coconut, butter, buckwheat. I’m in.
Happy weekend.
Apricot Macaroon Tart
Adapted from Heidi Swanson’s Super Natural Every Day
A word (or many words) about flour: using Shauna’s 40/60 ratio for gluten-free baking, I whisked up a batch of all-purpose flour mix from 100 grams of buckwheat flour, 100 grams of brown rice flour, and 300 grams of tapioca flour. (I then used 170 grams of this mixture in the recipe.) I have no idea how well this mix of flours would work in other recipes, and I probably did everything wrong, but it worked nicely here, yielding a crust with a crunchy, slightly nubbly texture and great buckwheaty flavor. The one thing that I will say, however, is that the crust wept a not-insignificant amount of butter onto the sheet pan. I have to assume that this had something to do with the mix of flours I used, and their properties? Anyway, I doubt that the original recipe, as Heidi conceived it, has a butter-weeping problem. In any case, consider yourself alerted. If your crust leaks a little butter onto the sheet pan, don’t worry. That’s why the sheet pan is there.
And one more word about flour: even if you do eat gluten, as I do, you really should consider using some buckwheat flour. The next time I make this tart, I might try using a mixture of buckwheat flour and standard all-purpose flour - maybe one-third buckwheat and two-thirds all-purpose? Not that white whole wheat flour or whole wheat pastry flour are not interesting enough, but I really love what buckwheat brings to this crust.
Oh, and if you find yourself without pistachios and are contemplating a trip to the grocery store: don’t worry about it. I’ve forgotten to add the pistachios both times that I’ve made this tart, and though I imagine it would be prettier and maybe a little, little bit tastier with them, it’s wonderful without.
Finally, if you live in Seattle, I strongly recommend the apricots from Bill’s Fruits, a stand toward the Ballard Inn end of the Ballard Farmers’ Market.
For the crust:
1 ½ cups (170 g) white whole wheat flour, whole wheat pastry flour, or a mixture of flours (see above)
¾ cup (60 g) unsweetened finely shredded coconut
½ cup (100 g) sugar
½ tsp. fine sea salt
10 tablespoons (140 g) unsalted butter, melted and cooled slightly
For the filling:
2 cups (140 g) unsweetened finely shredded coconut
1/3 cup (70 grams) sugar
Pinch of fine sea salt
4 large egg whites
8 ounces (225 g) fresh apricots, pitted and quartered
1/3 cup (45 g) pistachios, chopped
Preheat the oven to 350°F. Butter a 9-inch round removable-bottom tart pan, and set it on a rimmed sheet pan.
To make the crust, combine the flour, coconut, sugar, and salt in a medium bowl. Stir to mix. Stir in the butter, and mix until the dough no longer looks dusty and all flour is absorbed. Press the mixture evenly into the bottom of the prepared pan: it should form a solid, flat layer. Bake for 15 minutes, or until barely golden. Remove from the oven, and set aside to cool for a few minutes.
While the crust bakes, prepare the filling. Combine the coconut, sugar, and salt in a medium bowl. Stir to mix. Add the egg whites, and mix until well combined. When the crust is baked, evenly distribute the apricots over it. Drop dollops of the filling over the fruit, using your fingers to nudge it into the spaces in between.
Bake for 20 to 30 minutes, until the peaks of the filling are deeply golden. Cool completely before topping with pistachios, slicing, and serving.
Yield: 8 to 12 slices, depending on how much you like dessert.
Soft Apricots with Riesling and Vanilla Bean
I just sat down, looked at the calendar, and noticed that it’s August 9th. June is eleven months old today. On Monday, Delancey will be four years old, and on Thursday, Essex will be one. Is this what happens when you become a firm-and-fast adult? You’ve done enough stuff and crossed paths with enough people that at some point, each day comes with a birthday or anniversary? I mean, in addition to bills and tax deadlines and increasingly tight hamstrings? In other words: there’s always a new reason to eat cake, isn’t there? Or drink wine? Both?
-1.jpg)
I have a very cold bottle of riesling in the refrigerator. But there is no cake here, and that is because there is no oven. We live in a 1958 house, brown enamel appliances and knotty pine cabinets and banana-colored formica and all, and a couple of weeks ago, the tiny, squeaky-doored Hotpoint oven up and died. No warning! Just when we had finally put aside our differences - you say you’re 400 degrees, I say you’re 350 - and reached an understanding! There won’t be cash for a proper renovation for a while yet, so Brandon went out last week and found a cheap used oven to temporarily replace it. And now we’re waiting for the Sears guy to come install it, because if we did it ourselves, it would all end in a sudden flash of light and a cloud of smoke, and I do not mean to imply that there would be wizardry involved.
In the meantime, there is no cake, but there are apricots poached in riesling and vanilla bean. (Which were supposed to be baked in riesling and vanilla bean, but blah blah blah BLAH.)
It’s probably too late in the summer to talk about apricots? Let’s do it anyway. I’ve made these apricots three times already this year, and I’m not ready to stop. I just made them a fourth time tonight. The recipe is a twist on two others: Nigel Slater’s Baked Apricots with Lemon Tea, from Tender, Volume II (also known as Ripe) and my friend Jess’s Sugared Apricots with Cardamom Pistachios. Nigel’s, if I may refer to him on a buddy-buddy first-name basis, calls for baking apricots in sweetened lemon verbena tea with star anise and a vanilla bean, and Jess’s calls for dredging them in sugar before baking them in white wine and serving them with cardamom-dusted pistachios. I took one recipe in each hand and banged them together, and ta da, I give you Soft Apricots with Riesling and Vanilla Bean.
Here’s the gist: take seven or eight fresh apricots, cut them in half, and press their cut sides into a saucer of sugar. It doesn’t take much - just a couple of tablespoons, and you could use even less, if you prefer. Then arrange the apricot halves in a baking dish if you’re baking them, or in a skillet if you’re poaching them, and tuck a split vanilla bean in there, too. Pour in a good splash of riesling. Then slide them into a hot oven, or set them over a low flame, and let them stay there until their color deepens to the orange of a very good egg yolk, their flesh gets velvety, and if you pick one up in your hand, it feels heavy, slack, almost jiggly, like a slightly tired water balloon. You could eat them warm, but I like them very cold, with a spoonful of their winey syrup.
I first made apricots this way last summer, and though I didn’t write down the method or bookmark the recipes, when this summer came around, I remembered it, sort of, and after a couple of go-rounds and tweaks, I feel confident about sharing it. I think it might be my absolute favorite thing to do with apricots, which is saying a lot, but I’m going to go ahead and write that down before I second-guess it. Either way, I’m posting this not only for you, but also to record the method for myself, so that next summer, I’ll be able to find it without scratching my head. And then maybe I’ll be able to make it five or six times, instead of only four.
P.S. This will simultaneously destroy you and rebuild you (via Youngna Park). Thank god for radio.
P.P.S. Ask, and ye shall receive:
Soft Apricots with Riesling and Vanilla Bean
You could use any sweet-ish white wine here, though I particularly love the flavor of apricots with an off-dry riesling. (I’ve been using Memaloose 2012 Idiot’s Grace Riesling.) I’ve also used Dolin Blanc vermouth and Cocchi Americano, and both have yielded great results. You’re also welcome to try a drier white wine, or a rosé, and if you do, please report back.
2 tablespoons (24 grams) sugar
7 or 8 apricots (450 grams, or 1 pound), halved and pitted
1 vanilla bean, split and seeds scraped free
1/2 cup riesling
Preheat the oven to 425 degrees.
Measure the sugar into a saucer or a small plate. Press the apricot halves, cut side down, into the sugar: each one should wind up with a nice sugar crust on one side. Arrange the apricots, skin side down, in a baking dish that will comfortably hold them all in a single layer. Scrape the vanilla seeds into the baking dish - don’t worry if they clump - and wiggle the vanilla bean down between the apricots. Pour the riesling into the dish, taking care to pour it between the apricots, so that you don’t wash away the sugar.
Bake for about 30 minutes, or until the apricots are tender. [Alternatively, you can do this all on the stove, placing the apricots in a large skillet with a lid and cooking them very gently over very low heat, covered, for 35 to 40 minutes.] Sometimes they start to fall apart, and that’s okay, but I like them best when they maintain their shape and barely resist the fork. Allow them to cool, and then carefully layer them in a jar, and pour the syrupy juices over the top. Chill thoroughly. They’re best eaten icy cold, and as long as they’re covered in syrup, they’ll keep for more than a week.
Serve the apricots with a drizzle of their vanilla-flecked syrup, or with a scoop of ice cream (salted caramel is very good) or a spoonful of plain yogurt.
Yield: many tiny snacks or breakfasts, or dessert for 4 people
-1.jpg)
I have a very cold bottle of riesling in the refrigerator. But there is no cake here, and that is because there is no oven. We live in a 1958 house, brown enamel appliances and knotty pine cabinets and banana-colored formica and all, and a couple of weeks ago, the tiny, squeaky-doored Hotpoint oven up and died. No warning! Just when we had finally put aside our differences - you say you’re 400 degrees, I say you’re 350 - and reached an understanding! There won’t be cash for a proper renovation for a while yet, so Brandon went out last week and found a cheap used oven to temporarily replace it. And now we’re waiting for the Sears guy to come install it, because if we did it ourselves, it would all end in a sudden flash of light and a cloud of smoke, and I do not mean to imply that there would be wizardry involved.
In the meantime, there is no cake, but there are apricots poached in riesling and vanilla bean. (Which were supposed to be baked in riesling and vanilla bean, but blah blah blah BLAH.)
It’s probably too late in the summer to talk about apricots? Let’s do it anyway. I’ve made these apricots three times already this year, and I’m not ready to stop. I just made them a fourth time tonight. The recipe is a twist on two others: Nigel Slater’s Baked Apricots with Lemon Tea, from Tender, Volume II (also known as Ripe) and my friend Jess’s Sugared Apricots with Cardamom Pistachios. Nigel’s, if I may refer to him on a buddy-buddy first-name basis, calls for baking apricots in sweetened lemon verbena tea with star anise and a vanilla bean, and Jess’s calls for dredging them in sugar before baking them in white wine and serving them with cardamom-dusted pistachios. I took one recipe in each hand and banged them together, and ta da, I give you Soft Apricots with Riesling and Vanilla Bean.
Here’s the gist: take seven or eight fresh apricots, cut them in half, and press their cut sides into a saucer of sugar. It doesn’t take much - just a couple of tablespoons, and you could use even less, if you prefer. Then arrange the apricot halves in a baking dish if you’re baking them, or in a skillet if you’re poaching them, and tuck a split vanilla bean in there, too. Pour in a good splash of riesling. Then slide them into a hot oven, or set them over a low flame, and let them stay there until their color deepens to the orange of a very good egg yolk, their flesh gets velvety, and if you pick one up in your hand, it feels heavy, slack, almost jiggly, like a slightly tired water balloon. You could eat them warm, but I like them very cold, with a spoonful of their winey syrup.
I first made apricots this way last summer, and though I didn’t write down the method or bookmark the recipes, when this summer came around, I remembered it, sort of, and after a couple of go-rounds and tweaks, I feel confident about sharing it. I think it might be my absolute favorite thing to do with apricots, which is saying a lot, but I’m going to go ahead and write that down before I second-guess it. Either way, I’m posting this not only for you, but also to record the method for myself, so that next summer, I’ll be able to find it without scratching my head. And then maybe I’ll be able to make it five or six times, instead of only four.
P.S. This will simultaneously destroy you and rebuild you (via Youngna Park). Thank god for radio.
P.P.S. Ask, and ye shall receive:
Soft Apricots with Riesling and Vanilla Bean
You could use any sweet-ish white wine here, though I particularly love the flavor of apricots with an off-dry riesling. (I’ve been using Memaloose 2012 Idiot’s Grace Riesling.) I’ve also used Dolin Blanc vermouth and Cocchi Americano, and both have yielded great results. You’re also welcome to try a drier white wine, or a rosé, and if you do, please report back.
2 tablespoons (24 grams) sugar
7 or 8 apricots (450 grams, or 1 pound), halved and pitted
1 vanilla bean, split and seeds scraped free
1/2 cup riesling
Preheat the oven to 425 degrees.
Measure the sugar into a saucer or a small plate. Press the apricot halves, cut side down, into the sugar: each one should wind up with a nice sugar crust on one side. Arrange the apricots, skin side down, in a baking dish that will comfortably hold them all in a single layer. Scrape the vanilla seeds into the baking dish - don’t worry if they clump - and wiggle the vanilla bean down between the apricots. Pour the riesling into the dish, taking care to pour it between the apricots, so that you don’t wash away the sugar.
Bake for about 30 minutes, or until the apricots are tender. [Alternatively, you can do this all on the stove, placing the apricots in a large skillet with a lid and cooking them very gently over very low heat, covered, for 35 to 40 minutes.] Sometimes they start to fall apart, and that’s okay, but I like them best when they maintain their shape and barely resist the fork. Allow them to cool, and then carefully layer them in a jar, and pour the syrupy juices over the top. Chill thoroughly. They’re best eaten icy cold, and as long as they’re covered in syrup, they’ll keep for more than a week.
Serve the apricots with a drizzle of their vanilla-flecked syrup, or with a scoop of ice cream (salted caramel is very good) or a spoonful of plain yogurt.
Yield: many tiny snacks or breakfasts, or dessert for 4 people
Rachel’s Zucchini
It was a summer of greatest hits. I’ve always been a redundant cook, content to repeat a couple dozen recipes over and over (and over and over and over), recipes that I know as though they were wired into me, the way I know my name, the alphabet, and lyrics to songs that haven’t seen radio play since Bill Clinton was president. (Wheeeeee...) This summer, I really let myself run wild in that department, which is to say that I have done nothing even vaguely wild, and it has been great.
I’ve made meatballs three times now, my best meatballs, which are Cafe Lago’s recipe cooked in Marcella Sauce. There was a batch of Lago’s pomodori al forno, too, using San Marzano tomatoes from the farmers’ market. I made Amanda Hesser’s exceptional almond cake again, this time pressing a dozen apricot halves into the batter and sprinkling them with sugar before baking. I made a batch of Dana Cree’s tried-and-true rhubarb compote with butter and orange liqueur and, in a moment of uncharacteristic foresight, put it in the freezer for winter. I’ve made my new standard granola recipe at least a half-dozen times: the Early Bird granola, but with no brown sugar and no dried cherries, with a touch less maple syrup and olive oil, and with almonds and walnuts and extra coconut in place of the seeds and pecans. Very weirdly, in a woo-woo cosmic way, I found myself making banana cereal muffins on the same day this year that I made them last year, September 7th, the day that I was in early labor. And for June’s first birthday, my mother and I baked carrot cake - which, for the record, June was not terribly into. (She’s more into blueberries. And this week, lamb soup with cannellini beans, and being a regular cut-up.)
But the best thing that I made this summer, and made and made and made, was Rachel’s zucchini cooked in olive oil, a plain name for a dish that tastes anything but. (It also looks pretty plain - not an insult; just a statement of fact - so, behold! A slightly blurry picture of a few zucchini before they were cooked.)
In general, I tend to be boring with zucchini. I roast it. The end. For a while, about ten years ago, I was briefly into simmering it in a tomatoey sauce with capers, a recipe that I pulled out of a magazine and had forgotten about until approximately one minute ago, when I started this sentence. But mostly, I roast it - until I found Rachel’s wonderful method, and now, for the foreseeable future, I will be doing zucchini this way. If there’s still summer squash at your local market, or if you’re one of those people burdened with a glut of it from your own garden - a problem I would like to have someday - hop to it, as my mother says.
Rachel’s zucchini is beautifully Italian in its simplicity. There’s nothing to it but olive oil, garlic, basil, and zucchini that’s had the living daylights cooked out of it. I grew up believing that vegetables should be cooked so that they still have fight in them: green beans should squeak between your teeth, snap peas should snap, and the color of broccoli should never, ever be indistinguishable from an olive. But in the past few years, as I tip into early middle-age - as my friend Ben soooooooo politely put it a week ago, when I turned 35 - I have come to understand that not all vegetables want to be served al dente, and that many stand to benefit from being forgotten on the stove for a while. Take, for example, Francis Lam’s eggplant sauce for pasta, another recipe that made repeat performances this summer. And this zucchini.
It begins with an unflinching amount of olive oil and a couple of whole garlic cloves. You warm them together in a large skillet for a few minutes, so that the garlic perfumes the oil, and then you fish out the former and toss it. Then you add the zucchini to the pan and stir it well, so that it’s coated in that good, garlicky oil, and you let it coast like that, cooking slowly and steadily, until it’s very soft - almost soft enough to fall apart, but not quite - and then you stir in a few torn-up basil leaves, and it’s done. The first time I made this zucchini, I took a hint from Rachel and ate mine at warmish room temperature, with some fresh mozzarella and crusty bread for sopping. Subsequent times, I served it next to scrambled eggs, stirred into pasta, and, for June, chopped finely and topped with crumbled sheep’s milk feta. But I think I like it best with just milky cheese and bread, straight from the skillet. The zucchini is almost melty in its softness, and the faint whiff of garlic, the olive oil, and the fresh basil together push the same buttons that pesto does, but with less work. I could eat it every day, and for another couple of weeks, I probably will.
P.S. This week on our craft cocktails column for Food52, a last hurrah for tomatoes! HURRAH. I love that cocktail. (I make mine with gin.)
P.P.S. What are your greatest hits, recipe-wise?
Rachel’s Zucchini
Adapted from this recipe
2 to 3 tablespoons olive oil, enough to seem generous without leaving the zucchini oily
2 large garlic cloves, peeled and left whole
1 ½ pounds (680 grams, or about six medium) zucchini, sliced into ¼-inch-thick rounds
Kosher salt
A handful of fresh basil leaves
Fresh mozzarella, for serving
Crusty bread, for serving
Put the olive oil in a large (ideally, 12-inch) skillet, and add the garlic. Warm over medium heat, turning the garlic cloves occasionally, for about five minutes, or until the garlic is fragrant and just beginning to turn golden. (Do not, under any circumstances, allow the garlic to burn.) Remove and discard the garlic. Add the zucchini to the garlicky oil, along with a generous pinch of salt, and stir to coat the slices with oil. Cook gently over medium (or even medium-low) heat, stirring occasionally, until the zucchini is very soft - no longer creamy-white on the inside, but rather a pale shade of yellowy green. (For Rachel, this took 15 to 25 minutes, but for me, it takes closer to 45 minutes.) When the zucchini is ready, remove it from the heat. Tear the basil leaves, and stir them into the zucchini, allowing them to wilt in the heat.
Serve warm or at warmish room temperature, with fresh mozzarella and bread.
Yield: 2 generous servings
I’ve made meatballs three times now, my best meatballs, which are Cafe Lago’s recipe cooked in Marcella Sauce. There was a batch of Lago’s pomodori al forno, too, using San Marzano tomatoes from the farmers’ market. I made Amanda Hesser’s exceptional almond cake again, this time pressing a dozen apricot halves into the batter and sprinkling them with sugar before baking. I made a batch of Dana Cree’s tried-and-true rhubarb compote with butter and orange liqueur and, in a moment of uncharacteristic foresight, put it in the freezer for winter. I’ve made my new standard granola recipe at least a half-dozen times: the Early Bird granola, but with no brown sugar and no dried cherries, with a touch less maple syrup and olive oil, and with almonds and walnuts and extra coconut in place of the seeds and pecans. Very weirdly, in a woo-woo cosmic way, I found myself making banana cereal muffins on the same day this year that I made them last year, September 7th, the day that I was in early labor. And for June’s first birthday, my mother and I baked carrot cake - which, for the record, June was not terribly into. (She’s more into blueberries. And this week, lamb soup with cannellini beans, and being a regular cut-up.)
But the best thing that I made this summer, and made and made and made, was Rachel’s zucchini cooked in olive oil, a plain name for a dish that tastes anything but. (It also looks pretty plain - not an insult; just a statement of fact - so, behold! A slightly blurry picture of a few zucchini before they were cooked.)
In general, I tend to be boring with zucchini. I roast it. The end. For a while, about ten years ago, I was briefly into simmering it in a tomatoey sauce with capers, a recipe that I pulled out of a magazine and had forgotten about until approximately one minute ago, when I started this sentence. But mostly, I roast it - until I found Rachel’s wonderful method, and now, for the foreseeable future, I will be doing zucchini this way. If there’s still summer squash at your local market, or if you’re one of those people burdened with a glut of it from your own garden - a problem I would like to have someday - hop to it, as my mother says.
Rachel’s zucchini is beautifully Italian in its simplicity. There’s nothing to it but olive oil, garlic, basil, and zucchini that’s had the living daylights cooked out of it. I grew up believing that vegetables should be cooked so that they still have fight in them: green beans should squeak between your teeth, snap peas should snap, and the color of broccoli should never, ever be indistinguishable from an olive. But in the past few years, as I tip into early middle-age - as my friend Ben soooooooo politely put it a week ago, when I turned 35 - I have come to understand that not all vegetables want to be served al dente, and that many stand to benefit from being forgotten on the stove for a while. Take, for example, Francis Lam’s eggplant sauce for pasta, another recipe that made repeat performances this summer. And this zucchini.
It begins with an unflinching amount of olive oil and a couple of whole garlic cloves. You warm them together in a large skillet for a few minutes, so that the garlic perfumes the oil, and then you fish out the former and toss it. Then you add the zucchini to the pan and stir it well, so that it’s coated in that good, garlicky oil, and you let it coast like that, cooking slowly and steadily, until it’s very soft - almost soft enough to fall apart, but not quite - and then you stir in a few torn-up basil leaves, and it’s done. The first time I made this zucchini, I took a hint from Rachel and ate mine at warmish room temperature, with some fresh mozzarella and crusty bread for sopping. Subsequent times, I served it next to scrambled eggs, stirred into pasta, and, for June, chopped finely and topped with crumbled sheep’s milk feta. But I think I like it best with just milky cheese and bread, straight from the skillet. The zucchini is almost melty in its softness, and the faint whiff of garlic, the olive oil, and the fresh basil together push the same buttons that pesto does, but with less work. I could eat it every day, and for another couple of weeks, I probably will.
P.S. This week on our craft cocktails column for Food52, a last hurrah for tomatoes! HURRAH. I love that cocktail. (I make mine with gin.)
P.P.S. What are your greatest hits, recipe-wise?
Rachel’s Zucchini
Adapted from this recipe
2 to 3 tablespoons olive oil, enough to seem generous without leaving the zucchini oily
2 large garlic cloves, peeled and left whole
1 ½ pounds (680 grams, or about six medium) zucchini, sliced into ¼-inch-thick rounds
Kosher salt
A handful of fresh basil leaves
Fresh mozzarella, for serving
Crusty bread, for serving
Put the olive oil in a large (ideally, 12-inch) skillet, and add the garlic. Warm over medium heat, turning the garlic cloves occasionally, for about five minutes, or until the garlic is fragrant and just beginning to turn golden. (Do not, under any circumstances, allow the garlic to burn.) Remove and discard the garlic. Add the zucchini to the garlicky oil, along with a generous pinch of salt, and stir to coat the slices with oil. Cook gently over medium (or even medium-low) heat, stirring occasionally, until the zucchini is very soft - no longer creamy-white on the inside, but rather a pale shade of yellowy green. (For Rachel, this took 15 to 25 minutes, but for me, it takes closer to 45 minutes.) When the zucchini is ready, remove it from the heat. Tear the basil leaves, and stir them into the zucchini, allowing them to wilt in the heat.
Serve warm or at warmish room temperature, with fresh mozzarella and bread.
Yield: 2 generous servings
Craft Cocktails
I planted about a half dozen plants back in late May, and I don’t know how to explain it, but they’re not dead yet. It’s difficult to describe how much that satisfies me. I am not a gardener by any stretch of anything, but I noticed the other morning, as I was puttering around (in a pair of old bagged-out maternity leggings and a tank top that I accidentally cut a giant hole in and can now only wear for puttering), watering the plants with my Hario coffee kettle (because I have no watering can, and because I keep forgetting to buy one, and because I am obviously a very, very classy person), that it gives me inordinate pleasure to watch plants grow. I don’t think I’ll ever call myself a gardener, but I do like to garden. I might keep at it. At any rate, I was glad for that realization. I think it’s good to keep track of what makes me happy. I like to think that’s part of what I do on this site, and why I like to keep coming back here.
Which is to say: have you read this piece about summer, written by my friend Gemma? I’ve been feeling nostalgic about the idea of summer lately, thinking about the kinds of summers I want June to have as a kid, and what Gemma wrote made my chest tight.
I’ve also been thinking about another summer story, from The New York Times. I never managed to have a teenage summer romance, myself - probably because I never had a teenage romance, not in any season; boo hoo hoo - but in 1965, Joyce Wadler had a one, and it was great.
Speaking of memories, a really interesting piece (and useful tips!) about writing, memory, and how to hold onto ideas.
Similarly(-ish), on keeping a notebook in the digital age.
Once you’ve read all that, you might consider rewarding yourself with a watermelon, mint, and cider vinegar tonic. I’ve been sitting on that recipe for more than a month now, waiting for our local watermelon season. I will wait no more.
And speaking of drinks, I am thrilled (!) to announce, last but not least, that Brandon and I are writing a cocktail column over at Food52. It’s called Craft Cocktails, and every other week, we’ll be sharing a new recipe from Essex. I’ve long been an admirer of Food52, its smart recipes and good style and very good people, and we are totally, totally thrilled (!) to now play a small part in it. (Cheers, Kenzi!) Our first recipe went up yesterday afternoon, and it’s for a Campari Shandy, our unofficial Summer Drink of 2013.
Happy weekend, and bottoms up.
Which is to say: have you read this piece about summer, written by my friend Gemma? I’ve been feeling nostalgic about the idea of summer lately, thinking about the kinds of summers I want June to have as a kid, and what Gemma wrote made my chest tight.
I’ve also been thinking about another summer story, from The New York Times. I never managed to have a teenage summer romance, myself - probably because I never had a teenage romance, not in any season; boo hoo hoo - but in 1965, Joyce Wadler had a one, and it was great.
Speaking of memories, a really interesting piece (and useful tips!) about writing, memory, and how to hold onto ideas.
Similarly(-ish), on keeping a notebook in the digital age.
Once you’ve read all that, you might consider rewarding yourself with a watermelon, mint, and cider vinegar tonic. I’ve been sitting on that recipe for more than a month now, waiting for our local watermelon season. I will wait no more.
And speaking of drinks, I am thrilled (!) to announce, last but not least, that Brandon and I are writing a cocktail column over at Food52. It’s called Craft Cocktails, and every other week, we’ll be sharing a new recipe from Essex. I’ve long been an admirer of Food52, its smart recipes and good style and very good people, and we are totally, totally thrilled (!) to now play a small part in it. (Cheers, Kenzi!) Our first recipe went up yesterday afternoon, and it’s for a Campari Shandy, our unofficial Summer Drink of 2013.
Happy weekend, and bottoms up.