Food

« Older Entries

Roast Chicken with Port and Orange

Wednesday, May 15th, 2013

 

I wrote about Alice B. Toklas chicken – roast chicken with port and orange –  after I returned from France last year.  After making this family favorite recently, I thought I need to sing it’s delicious and easy song once again.   It makes a stunning, elegant weeknight dinner; the only tricky ingredient is finding the 50 minutes it takes to cook.

Here’s an abridged version of the original post:

A really good thing to read if you have any interest in the gossipy stories about Picasso, Matisse, Cezanne and the circle of Bohemian painters Gertrude Stein collected is The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas. Toklas was Gertrude Stein’s life-time companion, an amused observer of the early-20th century Montmartre atelier scene, and a great cook.  (Stein wrote the book, but insisted “everything about it is Toklas except the authorship.”)

To read the Toklas autobiography is to learn that Matisse was virile, his wife not so much, but she made an excellent potted hare.

Fernande, Picasso’s deadly dull but gorgeous girlfriend, could only talk about makeup, dogs and hats.  This famously dolorous early Picasso lover is comically tolerated by both Gertrude Stein and Toklas.  Stein is always sending Toklas off to keep Fernande busy, so she and Picasso can talk about serious subjects.

Picasso always seems to be in a state of being driven out of his mind by Fernande’s vapidity, but is unable to abandon what a great model she is, or something else.  At one point Picasso has ended it with Fernande, but sets her up in an apartment on Montmartre, hoping she can give Americans French lessons to earn a living (and he can therefore quit supporting her.)  Stein believes if Fernande is ok than Pablo’s ok, so she sends Toklas off to be Fernande’s first student, first of two, ever.

About the residents of her adopted country, Toklas says, “the French are like their Bourbon Kings: they learn nothing; they forget nothing.”

Gertrude Stein died in 1946 at seventy-two.  Toklas died in 1967 at age 89.  While Stein had established a trust upon which Toklas could live, and they had shared their amassed collection of 27 Picassos, 7 Juan Grises, and Matisse, a legal battle prevented Toklas from accessing the collection.  She died penniless in a rented flat in Paris, supported by the generosity of friends.  In the New York Times obituary, James Beard wrote, “Alice was one of the really great cooks of all time.  She went all over Paris to find the right ingredients for her meals. She had endless specialities, but her chicken dishes were especially magnificent.”

This chicken roasted with oranges and port is a favorite in our home.  Go ahead and make it twice in a week because, as Toklas once wrote, “if perfection is good, more perfection is better.”

 

 

Roast Chicken with Port and Orange from Alice B. Toklas 

serves 4-6

Ingredients

1 medium-sized (about 3½ pounds) roasting chicken, preferably free-range

Salt

2 tablespoons unsalted butter

2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

½ cup ruby port

½ cup orange juice

3 tablespoons heavy cream

Zest of 1 orange, grated

Salt and freshly ground black pepper

 

Instructions

When you bring the chicken home from the market, unwrap it and sprinkle it generously with salt. Cover and refrigerate it until ready to cook. Bring the bird to room temperature before cooking. Do not rub off the salt.

Preheat the oven to 400°F.

In a large ovenproof skillet warm the butter and olive oil over medium heat. Brown the chicken breast side down, for 3 to 5 minutes then turn it over and brown the other side for 3 to 5 minutes.

Place the skillet in the oven and roast the chicken for 45 minutes. Pour the port over the chicken and baste it. Roast for 10 minutes more, than add the orange juice and baste again. Roast for about 5 minutes more. The chicken is done when the juices of the thigh run clear when pierced with the blade of a sharp knife, or when the thigh wiggles easily. Remove the chicken from the oven, transfer it to a cutting board, and let it rest as you make the sauce.

Skim as much fat off the top of the juices in the skillet as you can and discard. Place the skillet over medium heat and add the cream, stirring up the crispy bits on the bottom. Add about half the orange zest and allow the sauce to reduce as you stir constantly for a few minutes.

Carve the chicken and transfer it to a serving platter. Pour some of the sauce over the chicken and transfer the rest into a gravy boat or small pitcher and serve it at the table. Sprinkle the remaining orange zest over the chicken.

Tags: , , , ,
Posted in Food | 1 Comment »

Old Boyfriend Pie

Wednesday, May 8th, 2013

 

 

This is an old column I’m reprinting, because someone recently asked me for the recipe.  For the record, it is hands-down delicious, my daughter’s favorite meal.  Serve it hot or room temperature.  It can dress up or dress down.  Take it to the picnic or serve a warm wedge for an anniversary dinner, although in that case you should probably call it something different, not a time to revisit old boyfriends.

 

I was nineteen, wearing Laura Ashley dresses, red cowboy boots, and studying literature.  John, twenty, drove a small black pick-up truck and was studying architecture.  We were adorable.

We both loved old houses, beautiful sweaters, and good food.  I conquered him with homemade croissants, because those were the days I had nothing better to do but challenge myself with chilled butter and flour.  He made homemade ice cream, and collected antique ice cream molds.  For a few years John drove a tomato-red, 1930’s ambulance.  He took a photo of it, which he sent to me as that year’s valentine.

John and I broke up (a few times), but we ended up living down the street from each other in the North End of Boston for while, a time in which some of our best meals were initiated with a phone call:

“Hey, Heather, watcha’ got?  I’ve got two avocados, some mozzarella that better get eaten today, and farfalle.  And a beer.”

He would arrive at my apartment with said ingredients, and we’d put something together with the olive oil, escarole, shallot and figs that were my only provisions, embryonic moments of the Iron Chef.

Our shared aesthetic has never dulled.  We talk on the phone now, and he tells me how his espaliered pear trees are doing and I tell him about my asparagus bed and husk cherries.  We both named our daughters Isabelle.  One day, after not seeing each other for years, I ran into him on a Boston street and we were wearing the same Irish knit sweater.

When I told him I was writing a food column, he said, “Hey, I’ve got a great recipe!”

“Can you mail it to me?” For some reason I can’t imagine cyber-correspondence with John.  He’s written my address on a seashell, put a stamp on it and mailed it successfully around the world.  I couldn’t imagine emailing him.

“No, I’ll just tell you -” and I think John’s got it right again, because isn’t that how a recipe should truly be, right there in your mind ready to make, or to teach someone else, not something deep in the pages of a book or lost in a manila file folder?

Yes, there should be a scallop, not a fish carved into this pie; as usual I was rushing.

 

Old Boyfriend Pie

serves 8-10

 

Ingredients:

1.5 pounds scallops

About 8 small round potatoes – 1 inch to 1/5 inches in diameter

2 large onions chopped

2 tablespoons olive oil

2 teaspoons dried thyme

A good pinch of red pepper flakes

Salt and pepper

1.5 cups of cheddar cheese

½ (one half cup) cup cream or milk

1 double pie crust

(These are my proportions for a double crust, but you can use your own.  It should be made with butter.)

2 cups of flour

Dash salt

5-6 tablespoons ice water

1.5 sticks unsalted butter cut into pieces

Put flour, salt and butter in a food processor and pulse until it is like meal.  Add five tablespoons of ice water, and pulse again, fairly aggressively.  If it doesn’t come nicely into a ball, add the last tablespoon of water.  Divide dough in two, wrap in saran wrap, and chill for a 1/2 hour.

Keep potatoes whole but parboil them in lightly salted water for about 12 minutes, or until a fork inserts into them, but they do not yet crumble.

Saute onions in the olive oil until clear, about 5 minutes, with the thyme, red pepper flakes and salt and pepper.  (Be more generous with the spices if you want.)

When done, toss potatoes and onions together in the pan.  Roll out the first pie dough, and lay it into a 10 inch pie pan.   Put the potatoes and onions into the bottom pie crust.  Press the scallops into the curves in the potatoes, pressing all down.  Sprinkle the cheese over the top.  Pour the milk or cream over all.

Roll out the second pie crust, and place on top, crimping together the edges.  Cut attractive slits to release the steam.  John says a fish is nice, but a simple hatching like petals of a flower is lovely, too.

Bake at 350 degrees for about 45 minutes, or until the crust is browned.  Allow to sit for at least 20 minutes before cutting as there is a lot of delicious sauce that runs out otherwise.

Tags: ,
Posted in Food, Uncategorized | 7 Comments »

Barbara Erkkila’s Oatmeal Macaroons

Wednesday, May 1st, 2013

 

Barbara Erkkila, journalist, author of Hammers on Stone, a history of Cape Ann granite, and Village at Lanescove, told me a year ago that she doesn’t cook.  Then she told me that many years ago, when Robert Frost was in Lanesville posing for Walker Hancock, Hancock came to Erkkila to bake our National Poet Laureate’s birthday cake.

“Plain white cake with white frosting,” Erkkila told me impatiently; she had other things to tell me about than cakes, like the UPI award she won for getting the story of the first Gulf of Maine Shrimp landing in Gloucester, or swimming in the Baltic Sea in 1960, post Sputnik.  Erkkila studied Russian at Boston University to prepare for that trip.

When I first met Erkkila I would ask her for a recipe, hoping for something from the good old days of Finns and artists partying in Lanesville, but Erkkila always seemed impatient with that request; she would much rather talk about the new book she’s working on.

She may be a hardcore journalist, but she’s also kind.  The last time I went to see her, just before Christmas, I didn’t need to ask; she offered a recipe.  It took me a couple of months to get around to making these “oatmeal macaroons,” which Erkkila says came from a Royal Baking Powder Company cookbook from 1927 entitled, “Anyone Can Bake.”  When I finally made them, and tasted them warm from the oven, I just laughed.  After all these years of “not cooking,” Erkkila still knew not just a good recipe, but a GREAT recipe.  These cookies are amazing; not a macaroon at all, but a thin, crisp lace cookie studded with earthy oatmeal.  They have a “snap!” that could crack air.  They are ridiculously easy to throw together, and – ta-da! – gluten-free!

 

At 94, Erkkila still knows a great story, even if it’s about a cookie; her beautiful taste in all things hasn’t faded one bit.

 

 

I served these recently with a homemade tequila ice cream from Kinfolk Magazine, a resource in homespun, hip-hop beauty for which I thank Sarah Kelly of The Roving Home.  I loved this ice cream recipe at first site because it didn’t require an ice cream machine. Every ice cream maker I’ve owned has done nothing but make me appreciate The Dairy Train and Molly’s Sweet Tooth even more.  I suspect the creamy texture, spooned out of a saran-wrapped covered bowl, has something to do with using confectionary sugar and not granulated sugar.  This is everything homemade ice cream should be, minus unpacking the freezer to find space for a contraption as big as a lobster pot that holds two cups of dessert.

 

I offer this wisdom from Ralph Waldo Emerson as quoted on the back of Kinfolk, “We dare not trust our wit for making our house pleasant to our friend, and so we buy ice-cream.”

 

Barbara Erkkila’s Oatmeal Macaroons

makes 3 dozen

Ingredients

1 cup sugar

1 tablespoon melted shortening

2 eggs

3/4 teaspoon salt

2 1/2 cups rolled oats

2 teaspoons Royal Baking Powder

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Instructions

Mix sugar with shortening; add salt, eggs, rolled oats, baking powder and vanilla.

Mix thoroughly.

Drop on cookie sheets lined in parchment paper about half teaspoon to each macaroon, allowing space for spreading.

Bake about 10 minutes in moderate oven at 350 degrees.  Let cool on parchment, as cookies will firm up when they’re not hot, and are thus easier to transfer.

Tags: , , , , ,
Posted in Food, Uncategorized | 1 Comment »

Bacalau a Braz

Tuesday, April 16th, 2013

 

This is a fascinating Portuguese dish that demonstrates that culture’s affection for a pile of crispy potatoes.  Cooked cod is mixed with a warm pile of delicate homemade french fries, and then scrambled with a batch of eggs, a fabulous culinary study in texture.  Probably born from a hungry fisherman with too many eggs on his kitchen counter, Bacalau a Braz has become a classic in Portuguese cuisine.

 

 

 

I added a garden taste to the whole rich dish, topping it with a “salsa” of roasted cherry tomatoes, lemon, olives and parsley.  The soft texture of fish and egg mixed with the crisp potatoes is a surprise, not something our often segregated plates of meat, vegetable, and starch usually offer, but home-y delicious.  Or Porto-delicious.

Originally made with salt cod – the “bacalau” part – I use fresh cod in mine, but feel free to purchase that wooden box of the salted stuff.  Soak it over night, and rinse a couple of times the next day, and simmer in the recipe as I do the fresh cod.  Salt cod is delicious for its own reasons – I bow here to Ken Rivard, who reminded me that the results of this dish using salt cod is really a very different taste.  Still, fresh cod – even better, hake or pollock – is readily available, and in this case simpler.

 

 

Bacalhau a Braz

serves 4

Ingredients

1 pound fresh cod

1 lemon sliced

1/2 a teaspoon peppercorns

1 bay leaf

1 teaspoon red pepper flakes

2 teaspoon salt, divided

8 tablespoons olive oil, divided  (perhaps more to fry the potatoes.)

3 large baking potatoes, peeled and cut into thin strips like very skinny french fries

1 large onion, thinly sliced

1 teaspoon oregano

8 large eggs

1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper

4 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley, divided

2 cup cherry tomatoes

1/2 cup pitted black olives

1 tablespoon lemon juice

 

Instructions

Make the roasted cherry tomato sauce:  Preheat oven to 400 degrees.  Toss tomatoes in olive oil, and spread in a baking dish.  Roast for fifteen minutes, or until just beginning to crack and brown.  Remove from oven, and allow to cool a bit.  Toss into a medium sized bowl, and mix in about 6 lemon slices (reserving at least 3 for the fish), 1 tablespoon olive oil, 3 tablespoons parsley, olives, lemon juice, salt and pepper.  Stir gently together and set aside.

To make the gratin:  Fill a shallow skillet with one inch of water.  Bring to a simmer and add lemon peel, pepper corns, 1 teaspoon of salt, bay leaf and fish.   Cover, and simmer for seven to ten minutes, or until fillets begin to flake.  Remove fish from broth and cool.  Flake the fish, checking for bones.

Heat four tablespoon olive oil in a large skillet and fry potatoes in batches until brown and crispy.  Drain on paper towels, sprinkle liberally with salt, and start the next batch, adding more oil if necessary.

Drain that oil, but then return one additional tablespoon of fresh olive oil to the same pan.  Add the onion and saute until golden brown, about ten minutes.  Stir in the oregano, a sprinkle of salt, and reduce the heat to low

Gently stir in the fish and fried potatoes, reserving a good cup of potatoes for garnish.

Whisk together the eggs with salt and pepper, red pepper flakes, and one tablespoon parsley.  Pour the eggs over the fish, onion and potato mixture, and stir very gently until the eggs are cooked, about 3 minutes.  Do not let them stick to the bottom of the pan and brown.

Serve hot with a healthy spoonful of tomato mixture piled on top, and then the reserved fried potatoes.

Tags: , ,
Posted in Food, Uncategorized | 4 Comments »

Cape Ann Fresh Catch Dinner – Baked Hake with Mushrooms and Cream

Friday, April 12th, 2013

 

Whole fish don’t scare me anymore.  Last week’s Fresh Catch, a whole hake, lay in my sink, and I actually thought how great it was to live in a place where, for years and years, a whole fish lying in someone’s sink was just another Thursday dinner.  How many people can say that anymore?  Who on earth has the luxury of messing around with a large, meaty fish heavy with firm white meat, fresh from the sea, just on any old weekday night?

Unschooled in filleting, I went at my hake with common sense and a slim, thin knife.  My fillets came out pretty well.  I lay them in a buttered baking dish, and then received a phone call from my friend, Nola.  She told me to bake them covered with wild mushrooms, onion, and white wine.  After they are cooked, remove the fillets from the pan, put the mushrooms, onions and broth in a saucepan with some cream, cook that for a bit, and then re-cover the whole fish in sauce.

Yeah, just another Thursday night dinner in Gloucester.

 

Baked Hake with Wild Mushrooms and Cream

 

Serves 6

 

Instructions

 

2 pound hake fillets

butter for the baking dish

3 cups mushrooms (I used small shitakes and button mushrooms.  If the mushrooms are small, leave them that way, but slice larger mushrooms.)

1/2 red onion, sliced thinly

2 cups white wine

1 cup cream

salt and pepper

chopped parsley

 

Instructions

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.  Butter a 9” x 12” glass baking pan, or a suitable baking dish.

Lay the fillets in the buttered dish, folding the thinner end back onto the fish if it doesn’t fit in the pan.  Sprinkle liberally with salt and pepper.  In a medium bowl toss together the mushrooms and onions, and season with salt and pepper.  Spread mixture over the fish.  Pour the white wine over all, and cover the dish with foil.  Bake for 15 minutes with the foil, and then remove the foil and bake for 5-10 more minutes or until the fish begins to flake.

Without the mushrooms, onions, and juices, remove the fillets to a warm serving dish.  (You can return this to the turn-off but still warm oven at this point.)

Pour the mushroom remains into a saucepan, and heat.  Pour in the cream, and simmer for five minutes, or until the flavors are melded and the sauce has slightly reduced.   Pour the sauce all over the fish.  Sprinkle with chopped parsley, and serve immediately.

 

 

Tags: , , ,
Posted in Food, Uncategorized | 2 Comments »

Olive oil and Marmalade Cake

Thursday, April 11th, 2013

 

 

This post begins with quince, detours into methods for researching historic recipes, and ends in a marmalade cake.   The history of marmalade, as I learned from a three day class on reading historic recipes with Sandy Oliver, begins with quince.

According to Alan Davidson in The Oxford Companion to Food, a quince first fell from a branch somewhere in the Caucacus, the chunk of land where Europe ends and Asia begins, thousands of years ago.  Davidson says that the Troy-defeating golden apple Paris handed to Aphrodite was a quince.

“Stay me with flagons, comfort me with apples: for I am sick of love;”  those solace-making fruits from Song of Solomon, Davidson repeats, were mostly likely not apples but quince.

Quince hopped to Ancient Crete, where sage cooks preserved raw fruits in honey.  At some point – again Davidson here – people realized that cooking quince first not only resulted in a softer product when the clay pot was opened a year later, but in a firm, nicely congealed paste.  Cretans had opened their urns to the powers of pectin.  From this preserve, quince began a long, happy career as the star of the breakfast and dessert table.

D. Eleanor Scully in Early French Cookery believes quince preserves probably arrived in France via the Romans, who called it melimelum.  That root that leads directly to  “marmalade,” or the Portuguese marmelada and the Spanish membrillo, usually unstrained versions of preserved quince with visible fruit.

Karen Hess, in Martha Washington’s Booke of Cookery, follows quince preserve’s travels from the Middle East to Spain, where in 1492 the sweet departed with confectioners escaping the Inquisition to Genoa.

According to S. Anne Wilson in The Book of Marmalade, quince marmalade’s exact arrival in England was recorded on a shipping inventory from Portugal in 1495.   The first English citation of marmalade, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, is 1524.  Marmalade, its popularity riding on this knobby, yellow fruit’s ability to congeal, and probably also its medicinal promises, began with quince, and for about a thousand years remained only a quince product.

There are no native American quince, but by the time Europeans were settling in the Americas the fruit was beloved, and not to be left behind.   The quince marmalade in the Martha Washington Booke of Cookery dates to 1608, but Hess believes it is probably an English recipe from the 1550’s.  Hess says she does not know exactly when marmalade stopped being only a quince product, but sites Gervais Markham’s 1615 orange version as the first written example of rogue marmalade.

I assembled this intense marmalade history in a workshop entitled, “Every Dish Has A Past: A Workshop in Historic Recipe Research” with Sandy Oliver, one of the country’s leading experts on culinary history.  Oliver began a career in culinary history cooking on an open hearth in Mystic Seaport years ago, before she moved to Islesboro, Maine.  For years she edited a newsletter called Food History News.  Her books on foodways include: Saltwater Foodways: New Englanders and Their Foods at Sea and Ashore in the 19th Century (1995) which won a Julia Child Award for distinguished scholarship. The Food of Colonial and Federal America (2005), Maine Home Cooking (2012), and with Kathleen Curtin, co-author, Giving Thanks: Thanksgiving History and Recipes from Pilgrims to Pumpkin Pie.

Oliver’s class was held in Historic Deerfield, in a week when the museum and Deerfield Academy were both closed.  We twelve culinary history students and our teacher were the only visible souls walking the street lined in 18th and 19th century homes.  And then there was a blizzard.  As one participant said, “This would be a great setting for a murder mystery.”

For three days we existed in a bleak, snowy New England familiar to the people who had written the centuries-old cookbooks through which we combed.

Oliver assembled us in a room in the Flynt Museum.  We each had our computers, and at the back of the room was a long table piled high with old cookbooks, reprints of old cookbooks, and Oliver’s favorite resource, The Oxford English Dictionary.

We were each to have arrived at the course with a recipe or subject to research;  after a morning lecture, we spent the rest of the time heads down.  Occasionally someone in the class would look up and say, “Erica, aren’t you doing research on ‘collops?”  There’s something here you might want to see -”  A lot of that happened; books were passed around as one person researching “wilted salads” came upon a recipe that another person researching “hot water pies” needed.  After our research was semi-complete, we were to make a chart of approximately 8 – 10 recipes, starting with the oldest, and listing the ingredients and methods in each, thus seeing easily, for example, when rosewater was dropped from a quince marmalade recipe, or in an example Oliver handed us, when squirrel was dropped from Brunswick Stew, and chicken added.

From our charted recipes, we were to assemble a final recipe that we thought would be best.  The last afternoon, we assembled in a kitchen in Historic Deerfield to prepare our recipes in an open hearth.  Historic Deerfield attendants had already lit a blazing fire in the beehive oven where students would bake their apple and hot water pies.  A fire roared in the fireplace where a student’s apple pudding would boil in a pot of water that hung from the crane, and beef collops would fry in a pan over a mounded pile of hot coals.

When all was prepared, there was supper.

Once I was home I serendipitously received three jars of marmalade from the great produce grower – a favorite of Julia Child’s – Frog Hollow Farm.  With all I now knew about marmalade, I followed Oliver’s research, and charted some excellent recipes for marmalade cake.  I never would have thought to use olive oil, which makes a sublimely moist, dense, and soft crumb, but Essex antique dealer Andrew Spindler said this was how he made his marmalade cake.  With that clue, I tracked an olive oil and marmalade cake to Portugal.  Olive oil, a little anise, a marmalade glaze with star anise and vanilla bean, this cake is my effort to take the best of a few marmalade cake recipes.  Some research comes from the OED; some is inspired by friends.

This is a sweet, dense cake accented with the slightly bitter taste of marmalade from the topping, which may catch some people by surprise.  I recommend using a high quality marmalade; the bitterness is bright but less edgy.

Heather’s Olive Oil and Marmalade Cake

 makes two 10” round cakes.

 

Ingredients

3 large eggs, room temperature

1 1/4 cups whole milk

2 cups sugar

1/4 cup orange liqueur or orange juice

1 1/2 cups extra-virgin olive oil, plus more for oiling pans

1/4 cup orange marmalade

1 tablespoon lemon zest

1 teaspoons ground anise seed or 2 teaspoons whole anise seed

2 cups cake flour

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon baking powder

6 tablespoons lemon or orange marmalade – for topping

star anise

vanilla bean scraped

2 tablespoons orange liquor or orange juice

Directions

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Wipe 2 (10-inch) round cake pans with olive oil.

Lightly beat eggs with paddle attachment in standing mixer on high for 1 minute until frothy. Add milk, sugar, liqueur, olive oil, orange marmalade, lemon zest, and anise. Mix for 1 minute until well blended. Mix in the flour, baking soda and baking powder until well blended and smooth.

Pour half of the mixture into each oiled cake pan. Bake for 1 hour. Place on a rack to cool. Run a knife around the edges and place it on a plate.

To make the topping, put 6 tablespoons of marmalade into a small saucepan with the anise, vanilla, and orange liquor.  Heat to a simmer and cook for 3-4 minutes.

While the cakes are still warm, poke holes with a toothpick or skewer into them, and pour the divided topping over each.  Cut each cake into wedges and serve.

 

Tags: , , , , , ,
Posted in Food, Uncategorized | No Comments »

Early Spring Soup, based on Kesakeitto

Wednesday, March 27th, 2013

 

Here is a course for Easter brunch or dinner that looks like a painting and tastes like a spring garden.  Based on a Finnish recipe called Kesakeitto, or Finnish Summer Soup, this is a small mound of the most delicate spring vegetables pooled in a broth of hot, fresh milk, garnished with smoked salmon and peas.  My version of the dish crosses the Atlantic and backs up a season; I call it “Early Spring Soup in New England.”

 

Small parsnips, baby turnips, tiny yellow beets, broccoli florets, the tiniest baby potatoes, and a dice of carrots, all looked quickly in boiling salted water, mound in the center of each bowl.

I looked for the best vegetables I could find.  I chopped the larger vegetables like parsnips and carrots, (Never use “baby carrots,” as they are not young at all, but old wooden carrots cut down.) still looking for the smallest versions of them, into a tiny dice.  If a beet or turnip was small enough, I sliced them into rounds.   Along with a variety of vegetables, I wanted a variety of shapes, not just a pile of diced Birds Eye veggies.  The only vegetable I kept whole were the tiny potatoes.

I found a treasure of root vegetables at the Somerville Winter Farmer’s Market, but if seeking freshly dug produce isn’t on your to-do list this week, a keen eye at the grocery store will be allow you a beautiful palette in your bowl, and probably a delicious one.

All the vegetables are cooked in boiling, salted water, beginning with the vegetables that make take the longest, (in my case it was the potatoes,) to the vegetables that will cook the fastest, using your judgement.  My order went like this:  potatoes cooked for two minutes, then I added the diced parsnip and carrots, then the beets and turnips, then the broccoli.

Half the deliciousness of this soup is the milk broth, simply the freshest, best milk you can find heated with a tiny bit of sugar and flour, and poured hot over the vegetables.  The thirty-eight Jersey cows at Appleton Farms in Ipswich can take a bow here;  for them I can thank the clean, sweet dousing all those lovely vegetables receive.

I slit open a few snap peas, and saved the tiny beads inside for a garnish, along with some thinly sliced radishes, and fresh dill.  Rosy chunks of smoked salmon crumbled over the top.  I prefer the hot-smoked chunky kind for this, and used the locally cured Sasquatch smoked salmon available at Willowrest in Gloucester, but Steve Connolly also sells excellent hot-smoked salmon.

 

 

This recipe isn’t as traditional as deviled eggs or lemon meringue pie, but it’s a true if not beautiful display of Easter in New England, when the local parsnips are a better taste bargain than the still-woody Mexican asparagus at the grocery store.

At a recent Spring at Howlets Lunch I hosted with Sarah Kelly of The Roving Home we served this soup around Sarah’s magnificent birch, fungi, moss and snowdrop centerpiece.

 

 

 

Early Spring Soup, based on the Finnish Kesakeitto

 

serves 6-8

Ingredients

4 cups organic whole milk, preferably local

1 tablespoon sugar

2 tablespoons flour

2 teaspoons kosher salt, plus 1 tablespoon for the vegetables

8 cups of tiny, fresh vegetables:  broccoli, green beans, cauliflower, new potatoes, zucchini, carrot, onion, asparagus tips, kohlrabi, beets, turnips, fennel, radishes,  and especially peas

water to cover

for the garnish:

1/2 pound hot-smoked salmon

fresh radishes, thinly sliced

fresh peas, or the tiny peas from inside 4-5 snap peas

fresh dill, chopped

fresh pepper, use white pepper if you want to retain the whiteness of the milk

 

Instructions

In a large saucepan stir together the sugar, flour and salt.  Slowly at first, stirring to blend, add the milk.  Whisk until mixture is smooth.  Gently heat the milk, whisking it occasionally to keep the flour from cooking on the bottom of the pan. Do not let it boil.

In a separate large pot, bring the salted water to a boil.

Prep the vegetables, peeling the potatoes, carrots, beets and turnips to keep them tender, and cutting all into roughly equivalent size.

When the water boils, drop in the vegetables that will take the longest to cook, like the potatoes, carrots, turnips, parsnips, etc.  Cook for 1-2 minutes, and then add the lighter vegetables like radishes, peas, and broccoli.  Remove the vegetables with a slotted spoon or sieve, and distribute them evenly into heated bowls.  Pour the hot milk over the vegetables but not to cover.  Allow the vegetables to rise attractively in a mound out of the milk.

Crumble the smoked salmon over the top, and garnish with radish, peas, and dill.  Grind some pepper over all, and serve immediately.

 

Tags: , , , ,
Posted in Food, Uncategorized | 3 Comments »

Casserole Chartreuse of Fresh Salmon, a toast to the Mediterranean Diet

Sunday, March 3rd, 2013

 

I published a column discussing the long history and solid science behind the Mediterranean Diet on February 8th – http://heatheratwood.com/blog/?tag=pasta-with-lemon-and-capers but, because on February 25 The New England Journal of Medicine declared it gospel ihttp://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa1200303 I’m offering another recipe that mirrors the Mediterranean Diet Pyramid, this one with Provencal roots.

 

 

I found La Chartreuse de Saumon Frais a la Provence in the 1973 gastronomical darling , “The Auberge of the Flowering Hearth,” in which the great food writer Roy Andries de Groot tires of answering his guests’ questions about the green bottle of liquor on his table after every meal, and flies to France to chase down the mysteries of the 130-herb liquor – Green Chartreuse -  produced by hermits in the Chartreuse mountains.  Only two monks ever know the exact recipe at one time.   Once in the Chartreuse, Mr. De Groot’s senses are hijacked by the bewitchingly faultless meals and critically superb wines presented to him each day by the two women running the small hotel – The Auberge – where he is staying.  The subject of his trip and book are no longer Carthusian Monks but Les Mesdemoiselles Artaud and Girard and their perfect seasonal cuisine of the southeastern corner of France.

 

This recipe is unusual – unusual to prepare, unusually simple and unusually delicious.  Onions, Boston lettuce, tomatoes and lemons are layered in a sauce pan, and then covered in fish fillets.  The same layers are piled on top of the fish, only in reverse, starting with lemons and ending in onions.  White wine is poured over all; it’s covered tightly, and disappears into a low oven for 2 1/2 hours.  All those vegetables, a bit of fresh fish and a bit of olive oil?  This dish could be the Poster Child for the Mediterranean Diet.

 

 

The recipe recommends that you uncover the dish at the table, allowing the fragrant steam to hit your guests in their appetites.  I prepared this with salmon, but Les Desmoiselles also recommend fresh tuna.  The whole ends up being a stewy pile of braised fish and vegetables balmy with lemon, blushing with summer.  (Yes, this would be best made in season, but I welcomed the aromatic lightness of this dinner, even made with leafy grocery store lettuces and vine-ripened tomatoes.)  Crack the baguettes, pour the dipping oil, fill your glasses with wine, and make a toast to the best diet in the world.

 

 

Casserole Chartreuse of Fresh Salmon 

La Chartreuse de Saumon Frais a la Provencale

from The Auberge of The Flowering Hearth, by Roy Andries De Groot

 

serves 4-6

 

Ingredients

 

2 pounds tuna or salmon

approximately 1/4 cup olive oil

6 medium onions, thinly sliced

8 medium tomatoes, peeled and sliced

2 medium heads Boston lettuce, washed, dried and shredded

4 lemons, peeled and cut into thin slices

salt and pepper

2 cups white wine

 

Instructions

 

Choose a tightly lidded casserole or enameled iron pot so that it can be used for frying on top of the stove and for braising in the oven, and one that is also handsome enough to come to table as the serving dish.  Set it over medium heat, add 2 tablespoons of the olive oil and quickly brown the fish steaks on both sides, then lift them out with a slotted spatula and hold.

 

Preheat oven to 275 degrees.  Now put into the pot half the slices of onion and let them just gild.  Then add, in neat layers half the slices of tomato, half of the shredded lettuce and half the lemon slices.  Sprinkle with salt and pepper.  Lay the fish steaks on this comfortable bed, then cover them with the same vegetable layers in reverse:  lemon, lettuce, tomatoes, raw sliced onions, and at the end more good sprinkles of salt and pepper.  By now the various juices will have gathered at the bottom of the pot.  Adjust the heat until you hear a merry bubbling from below and let it continue for about 5 to 10 minutes, to reduce the liquid and concentrate the flavors.  Then, add the 2 cups of wine and bring it up quickly to the boil.  When wine is boiling, put on the lid and set the pot in the center of the oven to braise, poach and steam the contents very slowly for about 2.5 hours.  When you bring the pot to the table, do not lift the lid until your guests are assembled – the first puff of the superb bouquet will raise the appetites to a fever pitch.  This dish is equally good hot or cold.

 

Tags: , , , , ,
Posted in Food, Uncategorized | 4 Comments »

Lunch Alone: Coconut Lime Spinach

Saturday, February 23rd, 2013

This is not a recipe; this is an invitation to a late winter, pawing towards spring, lunch.  I made this simple little bowl the other day after re-reading a column I had written numbering the health benefits to coconut oil.

 

 

Lauric acid is what makes coconut oil a nutritional hero; according to multiple web sources including Dr. Oz, http://www.doctoroz.com/videos/surprising-health-benefits-coconut-oil.

lauric acid is a saturated fat made up of medium chain triglycerides – short-length hydrogen atoms that behave differently than the bad saturated fats.  Lauric acid is said to lower the risk of heart disease, raise HDL levels, lower cholesterol, have a positive effect on thyroid function, and lower high blood pressure.  Coconut oil is almost all lauric acid.

Dr. Oz and a bunch of sites on the web claim that just 2 tablespoons of coconut oil a day will make your hair shiny, your wrinkles disappear, your herpes go away along with the common cold and AIDS.  It’s an antibacterial and an antiviral.  It improves liver, kidney, and bladder function along with just about everything else.

If you’re still unconvinced about the whole saturated fat thing, know that the Sanskrit word for coconut palm is kalpa vriksha, “tree which gives all that is necessary for living.”

Back to lunch.  Eat this alone because it’s embarrassing how simple it is, but it’s too edgy and bright to miss.  One could file it under “simple and delicious,” “vegan,” even “gluten-free,” but I would file it under things to have for a solo lunch in late February.  The lime is sharp as a pirate; the cumin is south of the border, and the coconut oil is plush.  All of it is good for you.

The flowering quince branches are a delicate pennant of spring.

 

 

 

 

Lunch Alone:  Coconut Lime Spinach

serves 4

Ingredients

1 tablespoon coconut oil

two peppers sliced, either red, yellow, or orange

salt and pepper

1 teaspoon ground cumin

1/2 pound fresh baby spinach

juice from half a fresh lime

1 cup rice, preferably basmati

chopped salted peanuts or toasted sesame seeds

Instructions

Prepare rice as usual.

Heat a large saute pan to medium high.  Add coconut oil, and allow to melt.  Add peppers, and saute until beginning to wilt and brown.  Sprinkle with salt, pepper, and cumin.  Toss in spinach.  Stir and toss until spinach begins to wilt.  Squeeze on lime, and cook a little longer.

Serve over rice.  Garnish with peanuts or sesame seeds.

 

Tags: , ,
Posted in Food, Uncategorized | 6 Comments »

Sweet & White Potato, Gruyere, and Rosemary Galette

Monday, February 18th, 2013

 

File this recipe under “Worth Pulling Out The Mandoline For.”

Let’s start with the crust:  two disks of buttery pie dough pressed together, between which lay a lusty sprinkle of fresh rosemary, gruyere cheese and black pepper.

That’s how this galette begins.

It’s middle is paper-thin slices of white potatoes and sweet potatoes -  thus the mandoline – occasionally sprinkled with salt and more gruyere.

It’s end is a pour of warm cream steeped in garlic.  Oh, and a little more gruyere.

Bake for an hour and a half at 450 degrees.

Invite friends over, pour the Pinot Noir, and embrace the blizzard.

 

 

Sweet & White Potato, Gruyere and Rosemary Galette

Instructions

1 double crust pie dough (see below)

1 tablespoon chopped fresh rosemary

1/4 teaspoon freshly ground pepper

2 cups (8 oz.) shredded Gruyère cheese, divided

1 1/2 pounds Yukon gold potatoes, peeled

1 1/2 pounds sweet potatoes, peeled

1 teaspoon kosher salt

2/3 cup heavy cream

1 garlic clove, minced

Garnish: fresh rosemary sprigs

 

Instructions

Preheat oven to 450°.   Divide the pie dough in two, and roll each out into equal 13-15 inch circles.  Sprinkle one dough with rosemary, pepper, and 1/2 cup cheese; top with remaining piecrust, and roll over it to press the doughs together and make them a little larger.  Lay in a 9-inch springform pan, allowing the ends to hang over the edges;  Chill.

Meanwhile, preferably with a mandoline, thinly slice Yukon gold and sweet potatoes.

Layer one-third each of Yukon gold potatoes, sweet potatoes, and salt in prepared crust. Sprinkle with 1/4 cup cheese. Repeat layers twice, pressing layers down slightly to fit.

Warm cream and garlic together just until small bubbles form on the top, and pour over potato layers in pan.  Sprinkle with remaining 3/4 cup cheese, and fold into the center the pastry edges.  Cover pan with heavy-duty aluminum foil. Place on a baking sheet.

Bake at 450° for 1 hour. Uncover and bake 25 minutes or until potatoes are done and crust is richly browned. Let stand 10 to 15 minutes. Carefully transfer to a serving plate, and remove sides of pan.

 

 

 

Pie Crust

ingredients

2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour, plus extra for rolling

1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, very-cold, cut into 1/2 inch cubes

1 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon sugar

6 to 8 Tbsp ice water

 

instructions

 

Combine flour, salt, and sugar in a food processor; pulse to mix. Add butter and pulse until mixture resembles coarse meal.  Add ice water 1 Tbsp at a time, pulsing until mixture just begins to roll into a ball.  Remove dough, and divide into two equal disks.

Tags: , ,
Posted in Food, Uncategorized | No Comments »

« Older Entries