Notes on Dinner

Pie Crust – just make your own

Posted on November 22, 2011 | 11 comments

The simple pleasure of making your own pie crust should not be underestimated

Until this morning, you might have said my approach to pie crust was a little fraught. I fussed and worried, wildly flip-flopping allegiances from the practical and traditional Joy of Cooking to the fantastically overwrought Cook’s Illustrated. (Although I have to say, the Cook’s vodka pie crust recipe is pretty impressive. I love the science of the alcohol as a replacement for water. Such brilliant and subversive fun!) I could never settle on MY piecrust though, and shouldn’t one be able to have a single recipe to use every time? One of the best things my mom makes is piecrust and if you watched her make one, you’d never guess how perfect it is. She uses no gimmicky trick in making her all butter crust. And it is perfectly flakey. My mother credits the lemon juice but I say she handles the dough in a way that I just haven’t been able to figure out. Anyway, after my experience last week, I think I’m onto something.

I was thinking about piecrust with regard to quiche because my kids are suddenly obsessed by quiche, less for its gustatory pleasures than literary. (My kids read the Bone graphic novel series so they’re wildly into quiche right now.) I reached into the bookshelf for Mastering the Art of French Cooking – who would know better than Ms. Child about the best quiche method? Suddenly, I knew I was on a mission and actually it wasn’t quiche that was calling to me but crust. After a recent bad experience (confession alert!) with a frozen Trader Joe’s pie crust I was determined to just do it myself, and speedily without over-thinking. I was going to try the Julia method! (Just to put this craziness into context – this is minutes before I had to leave for the school bus!) I started rummaging around for the ingredients like a madwoman, yelling to the kids to “Get your coats and lunch boxes and wait by the front door with the dog! I’ll just be a few minutes!”

Weirdly, there was no fussing around. Even though Julia Child has a reputation for being complicated, her pâte brisée recipe turned out to be the pie crust I was looking for. In just 15 minutes, far less time than it takes to defrost a frozen pie crust, you can easily make one from scratch. You probably won’t even have to go to the grocery store.

Ms. Child does not use any wacky ingredients (i.e. vodka). What she details is a technique that was new to me. Fraisage. Nobody ever talked about fraisage in any of the other recipes. Combine the technique with a trusty food processor and all of a sudden a once dreaded pie crust is a thing to whip up in a few stolen moments before the school bus arrives. The dough turned out silky, pliable and it was a breeze to roll out. The baked crust was refined and flaky, unlike my previous crust work which, although flaky, had a sort of homely brutishness, stemming from a fear of over-handling the dough. If you are fearful, you’ll never fully amalgamate the butter with the flour and the pockets of butter embedded in the dough will be enormous, causing shrinkage and a blobbish crimped edge. With Ms Child’s method, the fat is perfectly united with the flour, creating those little melty steam pockets to make perfect flakiness. In addition, this dough will not shrink disturbingly.

Fraisage sounds like a complicated technique you’d have to apprentice yourself to a patissier in France to learn, but it’s not. I figured it out in fifteen minutes between throwing the breakfast dishes in the dishwasher and running the kids out to the bus stop, so obviously you’ll be able to. Unless you are a deeply inexperienced baker I would think you will not need a dry run for this recipe. Please make your own pie crust. We need to preserve our cooking culture! Pie bakers unite! Just say “No!” to vile, palm oil sullied, industrial crusts!

Pâte Brisée – for one double crust pie

2 1/2 c. flour
1 tsp salt
1 tbsp sugar
1 cup unsalted butter, very cold, cut into 1/2 inch cubes. (I cut them, put them on a plate and put them in the freezer until I’m ready)
1/2 cup + 4 tbsp ice water) and perhaps a little more

Blending dry ingredients

Combine the dry ingredients in the bowl of your food processor and pulse a few times to fully combine.

Butter - in 1/2" cubes

Distribute the butter over the flour evenly

Add the butter, distributing it evenly over the flour mixture. Pulse 4 or 5 times. Now you have to be very quick. With the machine on, add a half cup of water all at once. Then quickly turn it off. Pulse 5-7 more times.

Curd-like crumbles show the dough is done with the food processor

The dough should look like dry curds, if not, add small amounts of ice water (by the tablespoon, no more), to the dough, pulsing carefully. When it looks like the photo above, on to fraisage!

Just before fraisage

Lightly flour an area on your counter where you can manipulate the dough. You’ll need a clear clean 18″ square area. Place the dough on the counter.

Pushing the dough away with the heel of my hand

Using the heel of your hand (your palm will be too warm and start to melt the butter) quickly press down and away from you, small amounts of the dough, smearing it out about 6 inches. This smearing is the fraisage.

Using a dough scraper or a stiff spatula, pull all the dough together and knead it (not too much) into a smooth-ish round ball.

Dough divided in equal halves

Divide it into two equal halves, dust lightly with flour, flatten into disks and wrap with plastic.

Ready to rest

Now the dough has to rest. Do not imagine that you can just skip this part. (Which is what I used to do.) Put it in the freezer for an hour or the refrigerator for at least two hours or up to 3 days. It can be frozen for weeks and defrosted in the refrigerator. If it is too hard to roll out, bash it hard with your rolling pin. You can then knead it quickly into a flat disk, ready to roll out.

Lightly flour the dough and roll it out into a circle, firmly but gently, always rolling away from you. Periodically, you might want to run a thin flexible knife or offset spatula underneath to ensure the dough hasn’t stuck to the counter.

Roll the dough until 1/8″ thick. Using your rolling pin to support it, carefully drape the dough over the pie pan.

Repeat with the other circle.

Fill with apples, berries or whatever your heart desires. (In case you are wondering what I’m doing, it’s apple. Send a note to comments if you need directions for fillings! I am always happy to help.)

Happy Thanksgiving!

P.S. When my pie is finished, late morning on Thanksgiving, I will definitely post a picture!

11 Comments

Posted in easy, Fast, Uncategorized

Tagged dessert

The insipid taste of failure

Posted on November 16, 2011 | 4 comments

What a crazy week. For lots of reasons, there’s no way I can write up the spaetzle I wanted to write about today. So I am going to tell you about the salad that failed. Isn’t it pretty?

There was a potluck at the preschool – a pre-Thanksgiving dinner. Our class was responsible for vegetables. I thought I was so clever for not bringing sweet potatoes. Or green beans. And, all the ingredients came from what I had in the refrigerator, so I was patting myself on the back because it came out looking so gorgeous and it was just what was on hand. The combination of sweet fennel and oranges, funky blue cheese and currants seemed unusual and sort of brilliant. I nearly called up my neighbor to have her taste it with me before I walked out the door (I wish I had done this!), positive this salad would get people talking.

Well, I can tell you, it didn’t. The blue cheese, a fancy Italian one called Rossini, was aggressively ripe and floral, overpowering the oranges. The shallots didn’t pull their weight at all. The currants, plumped in a champagne vinegar solution seemed like an afterthought. I really wanted toasted walnuts, but the pre-school is nut-free, so those were a no go. Sigh. Even the dressing was insipid.

I can’t believe I served that mess to all those nice people!

Back to square one.

4 Comments

Posted in Failed, Uncategorized

Potage Parmentier

Posted on November 9, 2011 | 2 comments

One of the best things that ever happened to me, culinarily speaking, was brought about by a ruptured appendix.

I was in a hospital room for over a week, dopey from morphine after emergency surgery. My mother thought it would be the perfect opportunity to fill out applications for a summer abroad. (She also thought that would be the time for me to learn to knit a sweater. Lumpy, ridden with holes, very strange colors. I refused to wear it of course.) Crossing my fingers for Paris, I blearily filled in the applications, dreaming of croissants, Croque Monsieur and hoping I’d learn to love coffee so I could order a cafe au lait in a real Parisian cafe. (Je voudrais un café au lait s’il vous plaît!)

Weeks later, the letter with my assignment arrived. A family with 4 girls – fantastique! The charming little village nearest the farm was too far to walk to from the house, though. No swanning around town drinking coffee for me. Hmmm. A photo fell from the leaves of a long letter I could barely understand. Seated around a rustic wooden table under a brick arch, a large happy family. The girl in the foreground was blowing her nose dramatically. A little girl sat next to the father(?), peeking out from under a large plaid napkin which was on her head. At the head of the table, an elderly lady beamed, arms crossed. A cheerful woman looked over her shoulder toward the camera, could that be the mother? A begging dog with pointy ears sat in the foreground. Several bottles of wine, some mineral water and some cheese in white paper wrappers littered the table cloth. Not surprisingly, it didn’t look at all Parisian.

Six weeks later, jet lagged, I found myself sitting at that same table. Mme Sabin, smiling but speaking no English, had picked me up from a square in Toulouse. It was dark when she arrived, all the other kids had been picked up already. We’d driven in silence, the awkward teenager kind, under a black and starry sky to the farm, in one of those very French cars with the sardine top. Now, she stood at the stove preparing a potato and onion omelette, all smiley as she was in the photograph, pointing at things to see what I wanted. With the omelette steaming on a plate in front of me, she cut some baguette and set it out with butter and plum preserves. After dinner she brought out the largest basket of fresh cherries I’ve ever seen. There might be ten unforgettable meals in my life and that is one of them.

Mme. Sabin was cooking all the time for her large family and all the farm hands and she clearly had a system to get it all done. We might refer to this as her culture. What else do you call it when the necessity of cooking for so many people marries so well with what is at hand? All the vegetables came from the garden. Often we had rabbit that she trapped there. Chickens certainly came from the hen house. The milk we picked up across the road. Every other day the bread man would deliver baguette, and sometimes croissants in his little white truck. On Sundays, we had Kir and pâté on little toasts under the willow tree on a stone table built around the trunk. It sounds like a stunning lifestyle magazine spread but it wasn’t all prettied up like that. Life on their farm was very beautiful, but also matter-of-fact and practical.

Lunch always started the same way. Soup in a wide plate. (Is that why I always go on about a wide soup plate? Possibly.) A potage of vegetables from the garden and potatoes. Water – just that, not broth. I was used to Campbell’s, ramen noodles with their little foil MSG flavor packs. At home, our soups spoke of salt and flavor enhancers. At home we never had anything puréed. Nothing ever such a rich and varied green. Nothing tasting so cleanly vegetal. On the farm I learned to clean my bowl with a piece of baguette, tasting every last drop. And to follow it with an aged cheese that tasted complicated, barnyard-y; always beckoning “just one more taste!”.

It was only after I returned that my mother told me the real story of how I ended up on the farm. Apparently, hopped up on morphine, I’d reversed the order of my preferences, putting an agricultural family at the top of my list, and Paris at the very bottom. The program director was very surprised by my choice but said nothing. I was incredibly lucky.

A few weeks ago, I had lunch with a very nice lady who served a puréed soup her husband had made using vegetables from their CSA. He has spent time learning to cook in France. She served it in wide bowls with baguette alongside. I took one bite and suddenly, like traveling in time, I was right back on the farm. The long table with the red checked cloth, littered with wine and water bottles, and the white paper wrappers from a funky aged cheese. How very nice it was to go back.

Potage Parmentier – a variation on a recipe from Julia Child, Mastering the Art of French Cooking. You can substitute many kinds of vegetables in this recipe. Chard, lettuce, zucchini. Any soft leaves should be added at the end. Any cabbages or kale towards the beginning. Trust that you will need only water and salt to achieve a soup with great flavor.

5 potatoes – Yukon gold are my choice, peeled and sliced
4 leeks, sliced white and tender green
2 rutabagas – medium sized, peeled and sliced
a bunch of watercress, cleaned
2 1/2 quarts of water
1 tbsp sea salt
1/2 c. heavy cream
12 slices baguette, sliced and carefully browned in 1 tbsp olive oil, 1 tbsp butter over medium high heat

Put the potatoes, leeks, rutabagas, water and sea salt into a heavy bottomed soup pot and bring to a boil. Partially cover and simmer slowly for 40 minutes or until you can easily mash the vegetables with a fork.
Add the watercress and simmer 5 minutes more.
Purée the soup with an immersion blender.
Just before serving heat just until simmering and add the cream.
Serve hot with croutons. (I am a slave to homemade croutons, although plain baguette is also very nice.)

Famille Sabin

2 Comments

Posted in easy, Uncategorized

Roasted Mess

Posted on November 1, 2011 | 9 comments

It will come as a surprise to no one, I’m guessing, that I love a good story about making dinner. A perfect recipe, a revolting mistake, something surprisingly easy yet creative – I like them all, but my very favorite stories involve some measure of wacky desperation.

When I was in college, I had this hilarious roommate who would tell us a story about her father’s favorite dinner, something referred to in their family as “Stewpot”. (The mere mention of the word would make her eyes roll and me crack up.) Her mother, who was a photographer and who really didn’t like to cook much, kept a big covered casserole in the freezer and every evening she’d scrape the leftovers into the pot. On Sunday night the whole thing got pushed in the oven and half an hour later: voila! Stewpot, a steaming mystery mess. Always different and yet somehow always the same. The astonishing part is that my roommate’s dad was a true gourmet, passionate and really knowledgeable about food. He introduced me to bread pudding with creme anglaise at their country club – a revelation! (What can I say?! It was 1991). He planned my roommate’s lavish wedding feast with great attention to every detail. He knew his way around elaborate French menus and could order wines from around the world with aplomb. And yet he still craved Stewpot on Sunday night. I have to wonder though, did her mother ever have a big pile of leftover spaghetti bolognese to mix in? Or the blackened end piece of a grilled salmon? Hopefully any leftover kung pao chicken was left out, that would be too crazy. If it were only meat and potatoes maybe Stewpot would actually be okay.

When I was in my early twenties and had first moved to San Francisco, my friend Sarah’s mother tried out a recipe on us. If she’d actually followed the recipe, a heap of roast vegetables and Italian sausage would have been served with waffles and maple syrup for breakfast. Sarah’s mother served it with scrambled eggs which was delicious and made a lot more sense to me. Years later, I recreated the burnt edged tangle of roast fennel, peppers, potatoes and Italian sausages. Instead of serving it for breakfast, we eat it for dinner. I imagine that between the name I coined for it: “Roasted Mess” and the picture above, this will not be the most popular recipe I’ve written about. It does look pretty messy and not enticing like the lovingly photographed, artfully arranged pictures on most food blogs. It’s a little Stewpot-y looking. Could that be the last contents of the crisper and the meat drawer hacked up and tossed thoughtlessly into a roasting pan?!!

Fear not. I haven’t lost my mind. I know it’s not the prettiest thing I’ve written about. Aside from requiring no special cooking techniques or equipment and very little in the way of time, Roasted Mess is delicious. I love the crisp, salty, slightly burnt edges, the sweetly velvet peppers, the floral fennel, the caramel-crisp onions. I love how you just throw it together and push it in the oven. The potatoes practically become french fries if you don’t overcrowd the pan. (Don’t!) And don’t be tempted to use a glass roasting dish like Pyrex. It won’t work. Nothing will brown properly on glass. Use a steel or aluminum sheet pan for this recipe.

Roasted Mess – serves 4

1 bulb fennel, cored and sliced into 1/4″ wedges
1 large red onion, peeled and sliced into 1/4″ wedges
4 Yukon Gold potatoes, scrubbed and sliced into 1/4″ wedges
1 red pepper, cored and cut into 1″ pieces
4 fennel spiced Italian sausages cut into 1″ pieces
2 tbsp olive oil
2 tsp fennel seed, crushed
3/4 tsp kosher sea salt, several grindings black pepper
1/4 cup finely chopped parsley (I really don’t see this as optional)

Preheat the oven to 350.
In a large bowl, or directly on a large rimmed cookie sheet, toss the vegetables with the olive oil, crushed fennel seeds, salt and pepper. Spread over the pan in one layer, do not crowd. Place in the oven.
After 20 minutes, turn the vegetables.
After 15 more minutes add the sausages and raise the oven temperature to 375.
Roast another 25 minutes or until toasted and caramelized. A few little burnt bits are highly desirable – I eat those in the kitchen on my own.
Scrape everything onto a large platter and scatter with parsley.

p.s. Leftovers are excellent in a fritatta with a little goat cheese.

9 Comments

Posted in easy, Fast, Uncategorized

White Bean Soup with Croutons

Posted on October 25, 2011 | Leave a comment

“Although, for the sake of practicality, alternatives are given for homemade meat broth, the hope here is that you ignore them, relying instead on the supply of good frozen broth that you try always to have on hand.”

Marcella Hazan, Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking

Even though it stresses me out a little bit, I have to say I love that quote. Many times it has been running through my head and gotten me off the couch and into the kitchen with a few leftover chicken carcasses, a couple of pounds of chicken wings and a pile of onion, carrot, celery and parsley stems. Ms. Hazan seems to have little patience for slackers. Homemade chicken stock is not hard to make anyway and as I’ve said before, life is too short to rely on boxed chicken stock. Even the organic kind is really a lab concoction and shouldn’t be used in any soup where the broth is the star. What you need for this soup is homemade stock.

Chicken broth is so popular in my house that every year when I ask my 9 year old what he wants for his birthday he has a quick single word answer: “Broth.” Instead I make this soup which is broth-y but not quite as uncelebratory as a plain bowl of chicken broth. I guess some people might say a simple bowl of white beans, chicken broth, parsley and garlic isn’t party food at all. If you got off the couch and started making your own broth, I think you might be singing a different tune.

Anyway, this post is not about broth because I already covered it months ago. This post is about White Bean Soup, which is a lot easier than the kale and fennel version I also love. If my kids beg me to make anything, they beg for “white bean soup – with extra broth! Can you make it with extra broth please?!” and I make it if and only if we have chicken broth in the freezer. Last night I used my last 3 bags which Martin had to wrench off the freezer floor – I guess I haven’t made broth since early spring. Clearly I’m going to have to get off the couch and dust off my stock pot.

White Bean Soup with Croutons – serves 4 generously

1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil
1 tsp chopped garlic, about 1 fat clove
2 cups dried cannellini beans
2 bay leaves
12 black peppercorns
2 cloves of garlic crushed
Sea salt and ground pepper
6 cups homemade chicken broth
2 tbsp chopped flat leaf parsley
Croutons for garnish – see below
green extra virgin olive oil and grated parmesan also for garnish

The night before you want to make the soup, put the dried beans in a large bowl and cover with 2-3 inches of water.
In the morning, drain the beans and put them in a large pot covered with 2 inches of water. Add the bay leaves, the peppercorns (in a tea ball if you have one – it makes it a lot easier to fish them out), and the 2 crushed garlic cloves. Bring the pot to a boil and then turn it down quickly to maintain a gentle simmer. Leave the pot partially covered. Simmer for 45 minutes and add salt to taste. I would add about 1 teaspoon. When the beans are tender, turn off the stove and leave them until you are ready to make the soup. This could be a lot later in the day – the beans will be fine just sitting there.
Heat 1/2 c. olive oil in a large heavy soup pot. (I use a 7 qt. Le Creuset) Add the chopped garlic and over medium heat, cook the garlic until it is pale gold.
Drain the beans and add them to the pot. Grind in some pepper and a pinch of salt, then stir and cover. Turn down the heat and wait 5 minutes.
Add the 6 cups of stock and turn up the heat until the soup in simmering. Simmer for 5-6 minutes and add the parsley. Stir and serve hot with olive oil, grated parmesan and the croutons floating on top.

Croutons

1 baguette
1 tbsp butter
2 tbsp olive oil

In a 10″ or larger heavy skillet, heat the butter and olive oil over medium heat.
As the butter melts, slice 12 thin slices from the baguette.
When the butter is no longer actively foaming, add the sliced baguette in one layer to the pan. Check the bottom of the bread after one minute (it’s so sad if the bread burns!) but it will probably take 2-3 minutes total until the bottom is deeply golden and crisp.
Flip the bread and toast the other side, equally carefully.

I would make extra croutons for sure.

Slow Roasted Tomatoes

Posted on October 17, 2011 | 4 comments

I first had these slow roasted tomatoes at Vios, the Greek restaurant around the corner from my house. It’s just the right kind of neighborhood restaurant – with couples, old people, teenagers and families all mixed up. The owner is Greek, his eyes twinkle when he talks and he often sits down to chat at your table. He makes this chicken souvlaki plate that I just love so I had to try to make all the parts at home. Nestled on a small oval plate are little skewers of chicken flecked with thyme, the creamiest tzatziki shot with green olive oil, warm triangles of pita (crisp on the outside, moist on the inside!), a tangle of flat-leaf parsley leaves and thin ribbons of red onion dressed in olive oil. You take all the parts and combine them as you wish – my favorite kind of eating.

The best part though, and the part I had the most difficult time figuring out, are the slow roasted tomatoes. The tomatoes are key. I had this idea of eating under the grape vine trellis in my back yard surrounded by big platters of grilled chicken, salads, hummus and tzatziki, in the heat of a warm summer night: my very own home a Greek taverna! Most of the pieces of the menu are so easy but those darn tomatoes had me stumped. I couldn’t figure out how to match their melting caramelized savory-sweetness.

I actually called the restaurant to see if they would give me the recipe. The person I spoke to was polite and friendly but rather vague, some might say cagey. She said, “Well, you just cut the tomatoes up, put a tiny bit of sugar on them, a pinch of salt and cook them for a really long time in a low oven.” Hmmm. “How low?!” I asked. “Uhhh, well, I really couldn’t say. A low oven. For a long time.” She laughed. “How much sugar?!” I whined. She laughed again but wouldn’t tell me anything else. I was on my own.

After several tries I am happy to say I think I’ve nailed it. I made them last week with the last tomatoes from the garden. We had these dense paste tomatoes hanging from the vines and they were just right for the job. Big heirloom tomatoes are too juicy for this recipe. The cool thing is that even those dreadful wintertime Roma tomatoes actually work pretty well slow roasted. So even if summer is long gone and there is no chance at all of recreating your very own Greek taverna in the backyard, you can still pretend in your dining room. That’s what I do.

Slow Roasted Tomatoes

and I mean slow – 2-3 hours

a dozen Roma tomatoes or similarly meaty tomato
2 tbsp olive oil
1/4 tsp of sea salt
1 tbsp sugar
2-3 3″ sprigs of fresh thyme

Heat the oven to 250.

Cut the tomatoes in half lengthwise and using a teaspoon or your smallest finger, push the seeds out and discard them. In a large bowl toss the tomatoes with the salt, sugar and thyme.

On a large rimmed sheet pan arrange the tomatoes cut side up.

Bake until they are somewhat shriveled and browned at the edges – this could take 2-3 hours. Be sure to save all the juices from the pan to drip over the tomatoes and keep them moist.

There are many ways to serve these slow roasted tomatoes if you aren’t up for a massive Greek feast. Try them tossed with hot pasta and goat cheese and some torn basil leaves. Slip them into a sandwich like this one. Or if you’re flagging in the late afternoon, pull a few out of the refrigerator and eat them with more goat cheese on rye crisp crackers. You’ll be happy you did.

4 Comments

Posted in easy, Slow, Uncategorized

White Fall Salad with a green variation: Fennel, Apple, White Cheddar and Hazelnut

Posted on October 4, 2011 | Leave a comment

White Fall Salad

I really hate to write about food that requires any sort of special equipment to be successful. I haven’t written up my favorite honey-saffron ice cream recipe or about the crazy pasta shapes I love or anything that might require a tool that falls into the realm of food geekiness. (That would include, for example, my ice cream maker and the pasta attachment on the KitchenAid.) A mandoline slicer falls into a category of esoteric kitchen equipment that most people don’t have much use for. Few people feel they need to julienne or shave things wafer-thin. So initially I was a little reluctant to write about this fennel salad.

But here is fall, misty and damp. Leaves are on the brink of yellow. The air is beginning to cool and local apples are appearing in the market, crisp and sweet-tart. Rubenesque end-of-summer heirloom tomatoes are a thing of the past. (I was getting a little sick of them anyway!) Now we’ll have a heap of paper thin fennel threaded with slivers of apple, shavings of sharp cheese and studded with toasted hazelnuts, all dressed tartly in cider vinaigrette. If you are serving the salad with something beige or brown like roast chicken, you may want to add a handful or two of arugula which looks gorgeous and is also intriguingly bitter against the floral fennel and the sweet apple. This is a salad for fall. If you don’t have a mandoline, you’d better sharpen your best chef’s knife, take a deep breath and get ready to slice.

White Fall Salad: Fennel, Apple, White Cheddar and Hazelnut

serves 4

1 apple – I like pink lady but honeycrisp is also very good, in matchstick julienne
1 fennel bulb, cored and sliced as thinly as you can manage
about 1/3 cup sharp white cheddar, shaved into very thin slices with a cheese slicer (or a vegetable peeler!)
a handful of hazelnuts, toasted for a few minutes in a skillet over medium heat (please don’t burn them)
optional: a handful or 2 of arugula leaves

Toss all ingredients together with your hands on a large white platter.

6 tbsp olive oil
3 tbsp cider vinegar (I like Bragg’s)
1/2 tsp salt
a few grindings pepper
1/2 tsp Dijon mustard

Whisk all ingredients together with a fork until emulsified. Drizzle over salad and gently toss.

White Salad with Arugula

If you are interested in owning a mandoline slicer, I have heard that this Japanese version is very good and a great buy. There is something very satisfying about slicing so precisely and efficiently, but that just might be a combination of the food geek and architect in me.

Heap of shaved fennel and mandoline

Roast Chicken 101

Posted on September 26, 2011 | 10 comments

I remember my first roast chicken. I was in college. Somebody had given me a copy of The Frugal Gourmet. (I quickly graduated to The Silver Palate – thank god!) The “Frugal” recipe called for a lot of olive oil, a moderate oven and just over an hour of roasting. I probably don’t have to tell you that this produced one very blond bird. The skin was pale, glistening, floppy and kind of freaky. It was very very moist and the flesh perhaps a tinge more pink than I am comfortable eating. For some inexplicable reason, I made roast chicken from that recipe for years. I wasn’t really up on the beauty of a perfectly roasted fowl. (The Silver Palate wasn’t big on things like that – it was more like “Glazed Blueberry Chicken” than roast.) So I didn’t make a roast chicken very often. It was just too gross.

A lot later, years and years actually, I was introduced to the Judy Rodgers method. By that time, Roast Chicken had acquired a retro-chic and was often offered “for 2 – in approximately one hour” at fashionable bistrots. Ms. Rodgers’ recipe was one of those and involved salting the bird 3 days in advance, gently placing herbs under the carefully loosened skin and something called “bread salad”. Please don’t quibble that bread cannot really be salad. Relax, follow the directions and don’t look back. Just don’t. Judy Rodgers’ Roast Chicken with Bread Salad is the ultimate in ludicrously delicious comfort food made of mainly humble ingredients. I had it once in her restaurant in San Francisco, Zuni Cafe and only later discovered the recipe. It’s a little laborious – don’t let that deter you.

Roast chicken should be the workhorse of at least a monthly recipe repertoire. It can be dinner, then leftovers can be sandwiches or quesadillas the next night. The bones and drippings from a roast chicken make an excellent base for stock. Which can be made into soup on day three or four. Roast chicken makes the house smell like you’ve been slaving in a hot kitchen in order to lavish affection on those who are lucky enough to be eating dinner with you. However, a three day marathon is a tall order on a weekday. So after a little trial and error, I’ve tweaked the recipe. Taking a cue from an excellent teacher at Mugnaini Cooking School, I’ve combined recipes and a little common sense that comes from cooking for a family of five. This Roast Chicken requires only a little time and tastes wonderful. The pan drippings are liquid gold. Even though the method is streamlined, you won’t be giving up much. (You really should make Ms. Rodgers’ bread salad version some rainy Sunday though.)

Roast Chicken 101

the secret is the salt rub

The chicken will need to rest in the refrigerator for one night. The prep takes only 15 minutes though. All that’s left is to roast the following day.

(1) 4 pound (or thereabouts) free range chicken
1 tbsp kosher salt, I like the Real Salt brand for this, and everything else actually – it really does make things taste better
1 tbsp mixed fresh herbs – the shrubby ones, like rosemary, sage and thyme
the zest of one unwaxed organic lemon, removed with a Microplane grater
freshly ground black pepper
1 heavy duty skillet, not cast iron, it will get too hot. The skillet must be able to go from the stovetop to the oven

Rinse the chicken in the sink in a large colander. Pat dry with paper towels and set it in a small roasting pan that will fit, with the chicken in it, in your refrigerator.
Rinse and dry the herbs and remove the leaves. With a sharp chef’s knife finely chop the herbs, the salt, the pepper and the lemon zest.
Rub this seasoned salt thoroughly all over the bird.
Cover lightly with parchment and place in the refrigerator overnight, breast side up.
When you are ready to roast, preheat the oven to 475.
When the oven is hot, take your heavy duty skillet and place it on the stove over medium heat. Leave it for 5 minutes.
After five minutes, place the chicken, breast side up, in the pan. There will be a loud dramatic slapping sound as the cold chicken hits the hot pan. Put the whole thing in the hot oven. Set the timer for 30 minutes.
After 30 minutes you’re going to need to flip this bird. Don’t worry, it’s not such a big deal. Using a metal spatula, carefully loosen the bird from the pan. (Because you placed the cold bird on a very very hot pan, this should be quite easy.) Drape a mitt over the skillet handle so you don’t forget and grab onto it. This has happened to me and it was not funny. I couldn’t grab onto anything for days afterwards. Using a few wadded paper towels, grab the bird by the legs and quickly flip it onto it’s breast. With mitts, put it back in the oven for 20 minutes.
After twenty minutes, flip the bird back onto it’s back. Place it back in the oven for 5 or 10 minutes to recrisp the breast skin.
Remove the chicken from the oven and then the skillet and let it rest on a platter or cutting board while you deal with the drippings.
Pour off all the clear liquid on the bottom of the skillet. I usually pour it over those paper towels I used to flip the chicken and throw it away. The clear stuff is just chicken fat. It’s the browned bits on the bottom that you want.
Pour a couple of tablespoons of water into the pan and set over medium heat. Using a wooden spoon, scrape up all the browned bits until they blend into the water, forming a glossy brown liquid – this is actually liquid gold. Believe me.
Cut up your chicken. I use kitchen shears for the job. Arrange the pieces on a platter and dribble a tablespoon or two of the pan drippings over the top. Save the rest with all the bones for stock. You can freeze the bones and drippings together and do this later. Maybe on the weekend.

This probably looks like a lot of directions. Yes, it takes a little planning. Just do it once when you have a little extra time, perhaps on a Sunday afternoon. You’ll soon see it’s a little bit of work with a huge pay-off.

My final piece of advice to the cook is, make sure you get the wings. They will be crisper than the most crispy delicious thing imaginable (better than pommes frites!) and perfectly seasoned. The small amount of flesh will be moist and simply fall from the bones. Be very careful not to make a big deal out of it. Just make sure you get them. My nine year old has caught on to my little land grab so now he gets one of the wings, but that’s just between the two of us. No one else is the wiser.

We served our roast chicken with a salad of shaved fennel, julienned apples, toasted hazelnuts and white cheddar. I’ll tell you how to make that next time.

10 Comments

Posted in easy, Uncategorized

Tagged chicken, easy

Backyard economics

Posted on September 21, 2011 | 3 comments

Look at this pretty picture! These are most of the kinds of vegetables we grew in the new raised beds this summer. It’s only photo-shopped a little bit, the reds brightened, the cropping tightened, the whole thing tweaked a little bit brighter than the original.

And here is the bowl of soup I made with those vegetables, sans the tiny beets. (Tiny because we really didn’t water enough) They would have been odd in this soup anyway.

The beets ended up in a salad. As I had to buy celery, onions and garlic, not to mention the olive oil and parmesan cheese, this soup was only locavore-ish.

Did the notion though, that the bulk of the ingredients came from the backyard, make this soup taste extra good? Maybe so. It was a lovely soup. Delicate and subtle. The colors were almost nicer than the flavors: gold carrots, pale purple and creamy white beans, reddish shreds of tomato, a dark green chop of sage and a swirl of green olive oil, staining the heap of parmesan on top. It did taste good although I wished I remembered to squeeze a teaspoon of lemon juice in, just as I put it on the table.

I was most excited about growing the shelling beans. They’re hard to come by up here. I think I’ve seen some sorry-looking, old borlotti beans once at Pike Place Market. Our yield from the garden was barely enough for one pot of soup so I filled in with dried cannellini.

I guess this is how it goes for beginners. I’m a total novice gardener and I still have a lot to figure out. This is my first serious attempt at growing a variety of produce. Until now, we’ve pretty much only grown tomatoes and a few herbs. The tomatoes grew up to be gangly plants, throwing themselves over their wire cages onto the ground. I know we’re supposed to prune them back but it’s really hard to cull those baby tomatoes in the interest of the bigger redder ones. I’m not a true farmer at heart I guess.

And anyway, no farmer could stomach a $350 pot of vegetable soup. Which is what it cost when you add up the cost of plants, the raised beds, the soil. Even Thomas Keller would blanch. The raised beds will last for years though. I’m almost positive I can maintain my interest in growing food. And I also think, as we get better at this, we’ll choose plants more carefully. The tomatoes have actually been pretty great this year. The carrots (all 7 of them!) sweet and a gorgeously yellow gold. The beets were tiny but still delicious, thin skinned and perfect though small. I am sure if we had actually watered regularly, they would have been a lot bigger. The kale and the cauliflower, not so much. I have to admit to being squeamish about those freaky fat green caterpillars. They’re vicious to boot. The kale was wraith-like after they were through with it and the cauliflower bored black with holes. I was supposed to pick them off but their wiggly little caterpillar bodies gave me the heebie-jeebies.

So the question is, in the end, is it worth it? The planning, the planting, the building of hoop houses to nurture delicate baby vegetables through a very cold spring? (I didn’t remember to count the materials for the hoop houses, so I guess that brings the cost of that pot of soup to $450. Ouch.) Growing vegetables on a small city lot isn’t really about saving money I guess.

For me, yes, it was worth it, though this probably wouldn’t be true for everyone. We still have lots of tomatoes and tomorrow I will start my first of several batches of tomato sauce for the freezer. There will be more batches if the warm weather holds and more tomatoes ripen. So I guess it wasn’t just one pot of soup. There will be a few other dinners completed with produce from the garden. The kids learned a few things too. I’d send my 4 year old out to get some basil (“How many leaves, Mom?!” “Ten!”) then distantly hear his little voice counting followed by ten squished leaves in his hot hand. My older two saw the kale fail and the tomatoes and beans thrive. They tried a few new vegetables. My daughter attempted to grow fennel. It doesn’t seem to be hot enough here to get a fat bulb but she loved nibbling on the fronds. These little things add up. I bet every year we’ll get better at growing our own vegetables.

Am I painting a more rosy picture of our vegetable patch than I should? Like the photograph, I’m tweaking my interpretation of the experience, imagining it was prettier and richer than it really was. I really only made one simple pot of vegetable soup after all. Many people here in Seattle have very successful productive vegetable gardens. I really can’t say that about mine. Does it matter? I’m thinking about it…

Nope. It doesn’t. I loved my garden and my single pot of soup and I’m sure next year will be even better.

If you’re curious about the soup, it’s the first recipe I wrote up for Notes on Dinner. You can find the recipe here. If you do have shelling beans, just cover them with water by 1 1/2 inches and simmer for 20 minutes.You may want to add a bay leaf or two. After 20 minutes, start checking to see if they’re ready. Add salt to taste. Save the cooking water for the soup.

3 Comments

Posted in Uncategorized

Summer swan song: my final peach dessert of 2011

Posted on September 9, 2011 | 2 comments

After this one last dessert recipe, I promise to get back to notes on dinner.

: If you always wanted to make a fancy looking French-y style tart but were afraid to, this would be the perfect place to start.

I’m not too sure what’s going to happen when peach season is over. I will be bereft and unable to write about anything, probably. Until it is utterly and officially gone though, I will be making this gorgeous peach tart. You should too. I don’t think I’m overstating it if I say it’s shockingly easy. You mix the crust with a fork – there’s no butter to rub into the flour! Then push the dough into a tart pan with your fingertips – there’s no pastry to roll out carefully and trim! Ms. Amanda Hesser over at Food 52 doesn’t peel her peaches but I have this nifty soft fruit peeler and we are having a little fling so I’m always looking for excuses to use it. It looks like this:

: Soft fruit peeler

You have to decide what works for you but I do like a peeled peach. Or a nectarine. This tart would possibly be very nice with plums. Or peaches scattered with raspberries…You can and should play with this recipe – it’s fun.

Last week I substituted brown sugar for the white in the mix on top, and some oatmeal for the flour. Next time I might scatter a few sliced almonds on top – they would complement the almond extract in the crust nicely. But you can leave the recipe alone if you want. It’s quite perfect as written. I was afraid the topping would be too sugar-y. I worried I would take a dim view of the olive oil crust – that it would be oily and too pungent. I was wrong, wrong, wrong.

Celebrate the end of the first week of school, or the last sunny weekend of the summer (or my birthday!) by making this tart. You’d better hurry up. Peach season won’t last forever.

And do whip some cream softly to serve with it, please.

: Check out the gorgeous crisp crust

You can find the recipe here, at Food 52.