I asked for a cookbook to review, received it in the mail the next day, and then I had to review the thing! That means shopping, cooking and then writing. Hence the mysterious gap in my blog posts.
I chose 200 Fast and Easy Artisan Breads, by Judith Fertig. Remember when Mark Bittman published a no-knead bread recipe in the New York Times? It created a sensation, and since then everyone has been falling all over themselves to produce and publish recipes for such a bread, including Jim Lahey, the baker Bittman wrote about.I made his bread, but I gave it to a family who had just had a baby, and never heard how they liked it. Plus I burned my hand because I baked the bread in a Dutch oven and grabbed the handle right after I took it out. Which I totally knew I would do. Anyway, Judith Fertig doesn't have you using a Dutch oven. She has you use a hot pizza stone, onto which you slide the dough via a peel or a cookie sheet.
The basic principle of no-knead bread is that it uses more water in the dough, and needs a longer time to rise. "Fast and easy" is a bit of a misnomer here. Just because you don't have to knead this bread doesn't mean it's particularly easy, but it is fairly simple, and the best part is you can make a dough and bake it later, in two separate batches, even. You just need room in your refrigerator for a big old 16-cup bowl of dough. Get ready to clear most of one shelf.
The part that I find a little nerve-wracking is the moment when the dough goes in the oven. Because the pizza stone is preheated in the oven, you need to transfer the dough quickly. A half cup of cornmeal acts like little ball-bearings, as she says, for this very wet dough. You sort of jerk it onto the pizza stone and it skootches right over onto it. I'm sure you can imagine this confident gesture. I can, too. I just haven't actually summoned up the nerve to do it because, in my pessimism, I imagine it flopping onto the rack and sagging down to the bottom of the stove. O me of little faith! For me, this is the culinary equivalent of skydiving, but it isn't Judith Fertig's fault. Nevertheless, my timidly pushing the blob onto the stone worked fine. And the bread was great. Nice air pockets and blistered crisp crust.
I made the most basic recipe as well as the extra slow version using a "biga." I think she needs about a half cup more water in the biga and a half cup less in the rest of the dough, as I couldn't possibly mix the biga with the amount of water she gave..
She has many more versions, mainly variations on a few simple master recipes. Her recipe format is very consistent and easy to follow. Please don't skip the initial explanations in the beginning of the book. I wish there were pictures of a biga that's ready to use, as her verbal description left a lot to the imagination, and mine deflated and I had to throw out my first one. Fast and easy? Hmmm. After some trial and error. I don't mind, really. That happens when you learn something new, right? It's that objectionable title. And fast? Hmmph. Given that "slow" is a word with some cachet now in the food world, she could just as well have said "Slow, Easy Breads." I'm sure Orwell would be laughing, if he ever bothered with such important domestic topics instead of fretting about little old totalitarianism.
I'm happy to have this resource and will explore the other variations later. I don't object horribly to kneading, either, and will do that when the mood strikes me. It's always helpful to have another trick up one's sleeve, though. This offers a completely different time frame and that's what's helpful. Remember, it's slow. Not fast. Dang these tricky words.
Disclaimer: My payment for this review was the copy of the book.
Nov 18, 2009
Oct 22, 2009
The Life and Death of a Seattle House: 700 West Kinnear Place
A woman, a man, and a teenage girl are eating homemade vegan burgers, sitting on floor pillows. The man and the girl,who are guests, pretend to like the burgers. He forces one down, but she hides hers in a napkin, asks to be excused, and flushes it down the toilet. The girl is enraptured by the house; she had murmured "sweet," as she and the man had climbed the steps to the porch, where they could see the Space Needle, most of Seattle's downtown, and even Mt. Rainier. The woman had loved the man in a previous life, and the man is feeling sad about several things. The girl has been recently traumatized by violence and betrayal. The subtext of the scene is rich.
But it's all artifice: The three people are the actors Lili Taylor, Peter Krause, and Lauren Ambrose. And those are the first and possibly last vegan burgers to ever be served in that house, 700 West Kinnear Place. My Uncle Fred was the real homeowner, and his idea of dinner was a steak with pat of butter melted on top.
Uncle Fred had told me back in 2000 that the house had been filmed for an episode of Six Feet Under. Finally, last year I started sporadically watching the series. Because it's the best TV drama I have ever seen, I had almost forgotten about 700 West Kinnear's role. But there it was, turrets looming into Season 2, "Driving Mr. Mossback", its fading yellow paint and brown-trimmed windows a tribute to the last of Queen Anne Hill's shabby gentility, the already lavish Seattle view pumped up needlessly with a telephoto lens.
This was no passing shot of a house in order to establish a sense of place, it was the place itself. It was the house that Nate, Peter Krause's character, had lived in before his father died and he had to help with the family funeral home in Los Angeles. Lili Taylor plays an old flame, Lisa, who remains deeply in love with him. She still keeps his shirt in the closet.
My grandmother's family moved to this house in 1906 from Syracuse, months before Uncle Fred's birth in the only bedroom without a view. The family attended Plymouth Congregational Church, often walking all the way down the hill and back every week. My great grandfather was a banker, full of Protestant rectitude, back in the days when thrift and modesty were virtues. The house was big, but with four children, three of them boys, and maiden Aunt Laura and my great grandmother's mother also living there, it was full. The children walked every day to Queen Anne "grammar school" and then Queen Anne High School, and all of them attended either Oregon Agricultural College or University of Washington, or some combination thereof. Fred grew up to become a lawyer. A stint in the Army during World War II was the only time in his life he did not live at 700 W. Kinnear Place.
The house served as a refuge for my grandmother after she divorced during the Depression and was taking care of my mother, born in 1929. I have many old faded pictures of my mother as a baby in a wicker baby carriage on that airy porch, as a toddler playing with a dog, as a gawky young girl under the apple trees. I visited with my mother and grandmother when I was in high school, then on my own in the mid 1980s, with a friend in 1990, and with my husband in 1998, when we were newly married.
To me, 700 W. Kinnear held the past together, and served as proof of my family's rootedness despite two later generations of military life. The house still ran on the knob and tube electricity rigged up by Uncle Fred and his brothers in the 1920s. Fred didn't drink much or clean out his liquor cabinet often; I found a bottle of some kind of hard liquor that dated from 1918. Quilts my great grandmother made, old radios that had names of Pacific Northwest radio stations on the dial, books owned by three generations shelved companionably together in barrister bookcases; whenever I visited, I inhabited the place, breathed its memories, and made it mine.
In 1998 my husband and I made a special dinner for Fred. It was more gourmet than his buttered steak, involving fresh pasta and gorgonzola. We bought everything, including the wine, at Pike Place Market. At some point during this dinner we offered to renovate the third floor and live there. We would help Fred maintain the place--he was 93 by then and still fixing the roof himself--and John would get a tech job easily in Seattle. I told Fred how much we loved the house and what it meant to me. He wrote me a sweet letter later, saying he thought not. He lived in the house until 2001, when he sold it and moved to a retirement community. The last time I saw Uncle Fred was that year, when he flew East to attend my grandmother's 101st birthday party. At the party he said to me, "I should have agreed to get that house historically certified. Because I sure do hate what this guy is doing to it."
My grandmother died in the spring of 2002, and then Uncle Fred on July 4 of that year. He was an all-American, self-effacing, pragmatic guy, dispensing painfully firm handshakes and bear hugs into his nineties. He was a trial lawyer and a gentleman, a dying breed. When my friend Karen and I were browsing his bookshelves we found a book turned backwards with the spine inside. It was The Joy of Sex. He had been long widowed by that point.
My brother Dan and I flew out for his memorial service, but I stayed longer to get a sense of Seattle as a place that had meant home to me. I wandered up Queen Anne hill to see the house. The windows were boarded up, and a huge semi was parked in Fred's rose garden, which had been unkempt for a year. This was not a house. It was a corpse. I walked under the old apple trees, and saw that his blackberries were ripening on the vine. A clawing grief took hold of me. I pulled myself together and rang the doorbell of a neighbor, who gave me old pictures of the house that she had saved. She said the next owner was moving the house several feet so he could subdivide the part of the yard with the apple trees. She gave me tea and we commiserated together, and celebrated Fred's life.
The house is for sale again, a house made so luxurious that no one can afford it, a house made so huge that no one can fill it. After moving the house, renovating down to the studs and finishing all the raw spaces, then adding a gluttonous new porch and a kitchen no one will cook in, the owner is moving on, perhaps going broke. The attic, with its dusty books and old family things, is now a vast beige space covered in carpet. The once-utilitarian basement, with all Fred's ancient tools, is also covered in this viral beige carpet and "finished." I don't recognize the house any more, its soul surgically removed. Its austerity and restraint are gone, which is what made the view so full of grace.
No one living here will tinker with tools in the basement, fix their own roof, or mow their own lawn. No film companies will impute Bohemianism to this new place. But one thing makes me take heart. Nobody can stop blackberries from growing like weeds in Seattle.
But it's all artifice: The three people are the actors Lili Taylor, Peter Krause, and Lauren Ambrose. And those are the first and possibly last vegan burgers to ever be served in that house, 700 West Kinnear Place. My Uncle Fred was the real homeowner, and his idea of dinner was a steak with pat of butter melted on top.
Uncle Fred had told me back in 2000 that the house had been filmed for an episode of Six Feet Under. Finally, last year I started sporadically watching the series. Because it's the best TV drama I have ever seen, I had almost forgotten about 700 West Kinnear's role. But there it was, turrets looming into Season 2, "Driving Mr. Mossback", its fading yellow paint and brown-trimmed windows a tribute to the last of Queen Anne Hill's shabby gentility, the already lavish Seattle view pumped up needlessly with a telephoto lens.
This was no passing shot of a house in order to establish a sense of place, it was the place itself. It was the house that Nate, Peter Krause's character, had lived in before his father died and he had to help with the family funeral home in Los Angeles. Lili Taylor plays an old flame, Lisa, who remains deeply in love with him. She still keeps his shirt in the closet.
My grandmother's family moved to this house in 1906 from Syracuse, months before Uncle Fred's birth in the only bedroom without a view. The family attended Plymouth Congregational Church, often walking all the way down the hill and back every week. My great grandfather was a banker, full of Protestant rectitude, back in the days when thrift and modesty were virtues. The house was big, but with four children, three of them boys, and maiden Aunt Laura and my great grandmother's mother also living there, it was full. The children walked every day to Queen Anne "grammar school" and then Queen Anne High School, and all of them attended either Oregon Agricultural College or University of Washington, or some combination thereof. Fred grew up to become a lawyer. A stint in the Army during World War II was the only time in his life he did not live at 700 W. Kinnear Place.
The house served as a refuge for my grandmother after she divorced during the Depression and was taking care of my mother, born in 1929. I have many old faded pictures of my mother as a baby in a wicker baby carriage on that airy porch, as a toddler playing with a dog, as a gawky young girl under the apple trees. I visited with my mother and grandmother when I was in high school, then on my own in the mid 1980s, with a friend in 1990, and with my husband in 1998, when we were newly married.
To me, 700 W. Kinnear held the past together, and served as proof of my family's rootedness despite two later generations of military life. The house still ran on the knob and tube electricity rigged up by Uncle Fred and his brothers in the 1920s. Fred didn't drink much or clean out his liquor cabinet often; I found a bottle of some kind of hard liquor that dated from 1918. Quilts my great grandmother made, old radios that had names of Pacific Northwest radio stations on the dial, books owned by three generations shelved companionably together in barrister bookcases; whenever I visited, I inhabited the place, breathed its memories, and made it mine.
In 1998 my husband and I made a special dinner for Fred. It was more gourmet than his buttered steak, involving fresh pasta and gorgonzola. We bought everything, including the wine, at Pike Place Market. At some point during this dinner we offered to renovate the third floor and live there. We would help Fred maintain the place--he was 93 by then and still fixing the roof himself--and John would get a tech job easily in Seattle. I told Fred how much we loved the house and what it meant to me. He wrote me a sweet letter later, saying he thought not. He lived in the house until 2001, when he sold it and moved to a retirement community. The last time I saw Uncle Fred was that year, when he flew East to attend my grandmother's 101st birthday party. At the party he said to me, "I should have agreed to get that house historically certified. Because I sure do hate what this guy is doing to it."
My grandmother died in the spring of 2002, and then Uncle Fred on July 4 of that year. He was an all-American, self-effacing, pragmatic guy, dispensing painfully firm handshakes and bear hugs into his nineties. He was a trial lawyer and a gentleman, a dying breed. When my friend Karen and I were browsing his bookshelves we found a book turned backwards with the spine inside. It was The Joy of Sex. He had been long widowed by that point.
My brother Dan and I flew out for his memorial service, but I stayed longer to get a sense of Seattle as a place that had meant home to me. I wandered up Queen Anne hill to see the house. The windows were boarded up, and a huge semi was parked in Fred's rose garden, which had been unkempt for a year. This was not a house. It was a corpse. I walked under the old apple trees, and saw that his blackberries were ripening on the vine. A clawing grief took hold of me. I pulled myself together and rang the doorbell of a neighbor, who gave me old pictures of the house that she had saved. She said the next owner was moving the house several feet so he could subdivide the part of the yard with the apple trees. She gave me tea and we commiserated together, and celebrated Fred's life.
The house is for sale again, a house made so luxurious that no one can afford it, a house made so huge that no one can fill it. After moving the house, renovating down to the studs and finishing all the raw spaces, then adding a gluttonous new porch and a kitchen no one will cook in, the owner is moving on, perhaps going broke. The attic, with its dusty books and old family things, is now a vast beige space covered in carpet. The once-utilitarian basement, with all Fred's ancient tools, is also covered in this viral beige carpet and "finished." I don't recognize the house any more, its soul surgically removed. Its austerity and restraint are gone, which is what made the view so full of grace.
No one living here will tinker with tools in the basement, fix their own roof, or mow their own lawn. No film companies will impute Bohemianism to this new place. But one thing makes me take heart. Nobody can stop blackberries from growing like weeds in Seattle.
Oct 20, 2009
In Which the Whole Family goes to Distrito in Order to Save on Babysitting
Distrito has been on our list for a while. The "cheapest" (really?) of superstar Jose Garces' restaurants, and the only one with a pink VW convertible you can eat in. So when it looked like yet another birthday was staring me down, we, and by that I mean I, made a reservation for all four of us.
For our birthdays in the past, Mr. Dream Kitchen and I would get a sitter. This time we thought, maybe the boys are ready to appreciate some decent food, and maybe we'll save some bucks? I don't think we did the latter, but the boys loved it, and we all tried a lot of different dishes. My new discovery was pork belly in green mole, the unctuousness of the belly undercut by the sharp green sauce. We ordered a lot of small plates, and our table was also small, so something was bound to end up on the floor. Fortunately it was only a basket of tortillas wrapped in a cloth napkin, and not my perfect grapefruit margarita.
There was a huge TV screen above the landing on the stairs to the second floor, and the boys kept running up to check the Phillies' progress against the Dodgers, which was not so good that one game. We were in our own little area close to the restrooms, which I never like, but it was basically the kids' table, so our isolation was no doubt warranted. The restrooms are disconcerting in that everyone shares the same troughlike sink in the corridor. So no primping with just the gals at Distrito. It seems a shame. Don't women deserve their sanctuary?
We had great soft tacos with marinated skirt steak, and tamales with pulled pork, and flatbreads with forest mushrooms. Everything was wonderful, except I thought the mushroom flatbread had too fungal a taste in about ten percent of the bites I took. The guacamole and the regular fresh salsa were amazing--so complex and warmly spiced. Next time: no pink car and maybe the tasting menu.
For our birthdays in the past, Mr. Dream Kitchen and I would get a sitter. This time we thought, maybe the boys are ready to appreciate some decent food, and maybe we'll save some bucks? I don't think we did the latter, but the boys loved it, and we all tried a lot of different dishes. My new discovery was pork belly in green mole, the unctuousness of the belly undercut by the sharp green sauce. We ordered a lot of small plates, and our table was also small, so something was bound to end up on the floor. Fortunately it was only a basket of tortillas wrapped in a cloth napkin, and not my perfect grapefruit margarita.
There was a huge TV screen above the landing on the stairs to the second floor, and the boys kept running up to check the Phillies' progress against the Dodgers, which was not so good that one game. We were in our own little area close to the restrooms, which I never like, but it was basically the kids' table, so our isolation was no doubt warranted. The restrooms are disconcerting in that everyone shares the same troughlike sink in the corridor. So no primping with just the gals at Distrito. It seems a shame. Don't women deserve their sanctuary?
We had great soft tacos with marinated skirt steak, and tamales with pulled pork, and flatbreads with forest mushrooms. Everything was wonderful, except I thought the mushroom flatbread had too fungal a taste in about ten percent of the bites I took. The guacamole and the regular fresh salsa were amazing--so complex and warmly spiced. Next time: no pink car and maybe the tasting menu.
Oct 12, 2009
Popcorn, The One True Mennonite Way
Mr. Dream Kitchen's family of origin is Swiss-German Mennonite, going way way back, on both sides. You know those three-way mirrors they have in dressing rooms, and how if you angle the sides close in, and stand a few inches from the center, you can see yourself multiplied an almost infinite number of times? It's like that. There were some Amish too, way back when, and maybe some Amish Mennonite just to add yet more diversity. Thank goodness Mr. Dream Kitchen married Ms. Dream Kitchen to invigorate the gene pool by adding Irish, Scotch-Irish, English, and French. Maybe the next generation will mingle with Italians and Greeks! That would just be crazy.
Anyway, Mr. Dream Kitchen grew up eating popcorn and playing games every Sunday night, as a nice counterpoint to the church ritual in the morning. Occasionally they would watch Disney on TV instead of playing games. I believe that his family is genetically predisposed to not be hungry enough for real food on Sunday nights. And probably that pot roast or ham with scalloped potatoes served after church, along with Jell-O salad and pie, kind of helped as well.
We have carried on this popcorn tradition, without the big Sunday meal earlier in the day. We have waffles, from scratch (of course), sausage, and fruit every Sunday after church. In the evening we augment the popcorn with a big bowl of apple slices. This is the only time we eat in the living room, which is where we watch our Sunday night family movie. So it's a continuation of the (insert 14-letter Swiss-German name here) tradition but revamped.
Now. About the popcorn itself; let's get down to it. It is from Yoder Popcorn in Topeka, Indiana. We either go there ourselves because my inlaws live near there, or we order it. (For the woefully ignorant I must explain that the Yoders are Mennonite. Almost anyone named Yoder has some Mennonite back there in the three-way mirror.) Anyway, Mr. Dream Kitchen prefers Tiny Tender, but the boys like Yoder Yellow. I could go either way. We use Yoder's flavored coconut oil, too. Gasp. Yes, it's fat fat fat, but coconut oil is actually good for you, in small quantities. So you ingest a tablespoon a week, no big deal. And it tastes fabulous. We cook it in a Stir-Crazy, but when it busts, and it will, we're going to return to the old hand-cranked on the stove.
Careful that you don't let the fabulousness of this popcorn tradition blind you to the spiritual message I have for you, my wayward brothers and sisters! Mennonites choose the narrow way when it comes to popcorn, and everyone else should follow and do likewise. When the end times arrive, you don't want to found to be in any of the following compromising positions regarding popcorn:
-Microwaving it (Yes, Yoder sells microwave popcorn, but only to the damned)
-Microwaving it at the office and stinking up the entire floor. It is a noxious stench.
-Using that soulless invention, the air popper. What is the point?
-Buying your popcorn already popped. Please. I'm praying for you.
Anyway, Mr. Dream Kitchen grew up eating popcorn and playing games every Sunday night, as a nice counterpoint to the church ritual in the morning. Occasionally they would watch Disney on TV instead of playing games. I believe that his family is genetically predisposed to not be hungry enough for real food on Sunday nights. And probably that pot roast or ham with scalloped potatoes served after church, along with Jell-O salad and pie, kind of helped as well.
We have carried on this popcorn tradition, without the big Sunday meal earlier in the day. We have waffles, from scratch (of course), sausage, and fruit every Sunday after church. In the evening we augment the popcorn with a big bowl of apple slices. This is the only time we eat in the living room, which is where we watch our Sunday night family movie. So it's a continuation of the (insert 14-letter Swiss-German name here) tradition but revamped.
Now. About the popcorn itself; let's get down to it. It is from Yoder Popcorn in Topeka, Indiana. We either go there ourselves because my inlaws live near there, or we order it. (For the woefully ignorant I must explain that the Yoders are Mennonite. Almost anyone named Yoder has some Mennonite back there in the three-way mirror.) Anyway, Mr. Dream Kitchen prefers Tiny Tender, but the boys like Yoder Yellow. I could go either way. We use Yoder's flavored coconut oil, too. Gasp. Yes, it's fat fat fat, but coconut oil is actually good for you, in small quantities. So you ingest a tablespoon a week, no big deal. And it tastes fabulous. We cook it in a Stir-Crazy, but when it busts, and it will, we're going to return to the old hand-cranked on the stove.
Careful that you don't let the fabulousness of this popcorn tradition blind you to the spiritual message I have for you, my wayward brothers and sisters! Mennonites choose the narrow way when it comes to popcorn, and everyone else should follow and do likewise. When the end times arrive, you don't want to found to be in any of the following compromising positions regarding popcorn:
-Microwaving it (Yes, Yoder sells microwave popcorn, but only to the damned)
-Microwaving it at the office and stinking up the entire floor. It is a noxious stench.
-Using that soulless invention, the air popper. What is the point?
-Buying your popcorn already popped. Please. I'm praying for you.
Oct 9, 2009
Biba on Fire: A Pizza Story
Friday is pizza day at the Dream Kitchen.
Ever since Biba Caggiano's Trattoria Cooking came out in 1992, I have been making my own pizza crust from her recipe. My book got scorched on the gas stove the day I first made pizza for my husband, who was then a nervous date pretending to like zucchini, and I was a nervous hostess setting my cookbook on fire. I think the book got soaked one other time, but maybe that was just Chris Schlesinger's Thrill of the Grill. Strangely, that one hasn't been scorched. And now, apparently, my Trattoria Cooking has been misplaced. I rarely look for these things--it will show up someday and I'll be so happy.
The reason I got this book is I went to "study" aesthetics in Rome for four weeks with the Temple University Rome Program in 1991. I remember sleepily reading Kant on a train for ten minutes, and attending lectures on Bernini while daydreaming about, you guessed it, the next trattoria.
The best pizza I ever had in Italy was on a hasty stop at a respected pizza mecca in Naples, on our way to Capri. We had a train to catch and were bordering on frantic. We got off the train from Rome with our overnight bags, dashed over to this pizza place that started with an M, sat down and ordered. Of course they only had two kinds, margherita and marinara, and the only beverage was a bottle of Coca-Cola. We sat at long tables with lots of loud men, some with gorgeous clothes and others with workers' uniforms.
The walls were blank, except for two things, a recessed shrine to Mary, and a soft-porn picture of some starlet. The pizza margherita was light, crisp, ethereal, with the purest, freshest tomato sauce adorned with basil. Even the cheese was levitating. The Coca-Cola, I'll not call it "Coke," in its wondrous bottle, was bracingly cold and sweet. Then we split for the station, practically running. We made our train.
Now back to my homemade pizza, a completely different genus than the Neopolitan because it's thick and I use a rolling pin and put a whole bunch of stuff on it and five other reasons. Because that was there and then, and this is here and now.
Biba Caggiano's Basic Pizza Dough Recipe (Doubled), Filtered Through Memory Because I Can't Find the Book
I usually put the following ingredients in the bread machine, but you could always knead the dough for about six minutes until the it's soft and pliant. It will take about the same amount of time to rise. But you should proof the yeast in the water for four or five minutes if you're kneading by hand.
3 cups flour
2 tablespoons olive oil
heaping teaspoon salt
1 2/3 tablespoons yeast (actually it would be 2 tablespoons but seems like too much)
1 1/4 cups lukewarm water (I nuke for 30 seconds)
After I push the start button, I set a timer for 7 minutes so I can check it later and make sure it's forming a ball. I often need to add more flour and scrape the sides with a spatula.
When it's ready (about 1 hour and 40 mins. later), I punch it down and take it out. I flatten it by hand at first and then use an oiled French rolling pin. That's the kind that's thick in the middle and narrow on the ends. Then I crush 2 cloves of garlic and put it in my mortar and pestle with a little olive oil and fresh ground pepper. Love to crush stuff in my mortar and pestle. Have no idea whether this is the right thing to do, don't care. It's immensely satisfying. Then I schmear that over the crust with my hands.
Oh, I've preheated my oven to 450 by now. I look in the fridge for provolone, or even cheddar or pepper jack . . . work with me, here, because pizza night is also use-up-the-fresh-veggies and cheese night. Tonight there's quite a bit of sliced provolone in the lunch supplies, also some broccoli rabe from the CSA. I like to caramelize a couple onions ahead of time. Today it will probably be the broccoli rabe, lightly steamed and wrung dry (no soggy pizza!), a finely chopped jalapeno, raw onion in thin rings, and I guess some pepperoni to appease the guys.
I bake it for 14 or 15 minutes.
It's kind of a thick pizza but I need this much to feed us all, and I'm too lazy to make two thinner pizzas. So it's kinda Chicago. I don't preheat the stone, either. Again with the laziness, along with an unwillingness to deal with a peal, or sear my flesh. Plus, it's just great as it is.
Ever since Biba Caggiano's Trattoria Cooking came out in 1992, I have been making my own pizza crust from her recipe. My book got scorched on the gas stove the day I first made pizza for my husband, who was then a nervous date pretending to like zucchini, and I was a nervous hostess setting my cookbook on fire. I think the book got soaked one other time, but maybe that was just Chris Schlesinger's Thrill of the Grill. Strangely, that one hasn't been scorched. And now, apparently, my Trattoria Cooking has been misplaced. I rarely look for these things--it will show up someday and I'll be so happy.
The reason I got this book is I went to "study" aesthetics in Rome for four weeks with the Temple University Rome Program in 1991. I remember sleepily reading Kant on a train for ten minutes, and attending lectures on Bernini while daydreaming about, you guessed it, the next trattoria.
The best pizza I ever had in Italy was on a hasty stop at a respected pizza mecca in Naples, on our way to Capri. We had a train to catch and were bordering on frantic. We got off the train from Rome with our overnight bags, dashed over to this pizza place that started with an M, sat down and ordered. Of course they only had two kinds, margherita and marinara, and the only beverage was a bottle of Coca-Cola. We sat at long tables with lots of loud men, some with gorgeous clothes and others with workers' uniforms.
The walls were blank, except for two things, a recessed shrine to Mary, and a soft-porn picture of some starlet. The pizza margherita was light, crisp, ethereal, with the purest, freshest tomato sauce adorned with basil. Even the cheese was levitating. The Coca-Cola, I'll not call it "Coke," in its wondrous bottle, was bracingly cold and sweet. Then we split for the station, practically running. We made our train.
Now back to my homemade pizza, a completely different genus than the Neopolitan because it's thick and I use a rolling pin and put a whole bunch of stuff on it and five other reasons. Because that was there and then, and this is here and now.
Biba Caggiano's Basic Pizza Dough Recipe (Doubled), Filtered Through Memory Because I Can't Find the Book
I usually put the following ingredients in the bread machine, but you could always knead the dough for about six minutes until the it's soft and pliant. It will take about the same amount of time to rise. But you should proof the yeast in the water for four or five minutes if you're kneading by hand.
3 cups flour
2 tablespoons olive oil
heaping teaspoon salt
1 2/3 tablespoons yeast (actually it would be 2 tablespoons but seems like too much)
1 1/4 cups lukewarm water (I nuke for 30 seconds)
After I push the start button, I set a timer for 7 minutes so I can check it later and make sure it's forming a ball. I often need to add more flour and scrape the sides with a spatula.
When it's ready (about 1 hour and 40 mins. later), I punch it down and take it out. I flatten it by hand at first and then use an oiled French rolling pin. That's the kind that's thick in the middle and narrow on the ends. Then I crush 2 cloves of garlic and put it in my mortar and pestle with a little olive oil and fresh ground pepper. Love to crush stuff in my mortar and pestle. Have no idea whether this is the right thing to do, don't care. It's immensely satisfying. Then I schmear that over the crust with my hands.
Oh, I've preheated my oven to 450 by now. I look in the fridge for provolone, or even cheddar or pepper jack . . . work with me, here, because pizza night is also use-up-the-fresh-veggies and cheese night. Tonight there's quite a bit of sliced provolone in the lunch supplies, also some broccoli rabe from the CSA. I like to caramelize a couple onions ahead of time. Today it will probably be the broccoli rabe, lightly steamed and wrung dry (no soggy pizza!), a finely chopped jalapeno, raw onion in thin rings, and I guess some pepperoni to appease the guys.
I bake it for 14 or 15 minutes.
It's kind of a thick pizza but I need this much to feed us all, and I'm too lazy to make two thinner pizzas. So it's kinda Chicago. I don't preheat the stone, either. Again with the laziness, along with an unwillingness to deal with a peal, or sear my flesh. Plus, it's just great as it is.
Oct 8, 2009
From James Beard's American Cookery: Macaroni and Cheese
"There is absolutely no substitute for the best. Good food cannot be made of inferior ingredients masked with high flavor. It is true thrift to use the best ingredients available and to waste nothing."--James Beard,The Fireside Cookbook, 1949
__________________________
Oddly enough, my mother never made macaroni and cheese. Once, when I was about twelve, I was over at the Gallaghers' house, another Army family near where we lived, in Worms, Germany. Mrs. Gallagher was cubing orange cheddar to make mac and cheese and I felt the sharpest longing for it. Perhaps, like beer, it was deemed too lowbrow by my mother. So I guess it makes sense that when I salvaged James Beard's American Cookery from her library, I made the macaroni and cheese right away.
This cookbook, published in 1972 by Little, Brown, was bought by my mother when we returned from our three years in Germany. Beard loved food, period, but especially American. He traveled the country in search of its regional foodways. So this book, written before the food renaissance, is a treasure. "American" doesn't mean non-ethnic; he champions Italian-American and other melting-pot "cookery" as well. One quirky thing about the book is that he spells "pasta" with an "e" at the end: "paste." In the "Grains and Pastes" chapter, on page 588, is the quintessential macaroni and cheese. It's the baked kind, with a white sauce. I used this recipe back when I was first pregnant, when I craved cheese in all forms, and I've never looked back. I soon memorized it, which makes cooking it so much easier.
Soon I made it my default go-to recipe for families with new babies. And we have it about once a month, with extra sharp white cheese from the local warehouse store. I always, always double the recipe. I may have even quadrupled it once! It's rich and creamy in the inside, crusty and golden on top. There is no other macaroni and cheese.
Here is the recipe, doubled, with my annotations:
American Cookery's Macaroni and Cheese
1 lb. macaroni (cavatappi is fun here, too, but not classic)
6 tablespoons butter
1/3 cup flour
3 cups milk
2 teaspoons salt (you may not need this much)
1 teaspoon dried mustard
Dash Tabasco (I don't do this, I forgot this was here! Guess I didn't memorize all.)
2 to 3 cups grated Cheddar cheese (don't buy pre-grated, the sharper the better)
Buttered crumbs (I rarely bother)
Boil the macaroni in salted water until just tender. Drain well. Prepare a white sauce--melt the butter in a heavy saucepan, blend with the flour, and cook several minutes over medium heat. (Two minutes maybe; don't let it get past golden) Heat the milk to the boiling point, stir in the flour-butter mixture, and continue stirring till it thickens. add the seasonings and simmer 4 to 5 minutes. Butter a baking dish or casserole (13 x 9). In it arrange alternate layers of macaroni, sauce, and cheese, ending with cheese. Cover the top with buttered crumbs. bake at 350 degrees for 25 minutes, or until the top is nicely browned and the sauce is bubbly. Serve at once.
Now that I'm reading the actual recipe, I see that what I memorized is really my own adapted version, which is: Blend the grated cheese in with the thickened white sauce, off the heat (instead of layering). Cover until the macaroni is ready. Drain the macaroni well, return to pot, and add cheese sauce. Mix well and pour into baking dish.
__________________________
Oddly enough, my mother never made macaroni and cheese. Once, when I was about twelve, I was over at the Gallaghers' house, another Army family near where we lived, in Worms, Germany. Mrs. Gallagher was cubing orange cheddar to make mac and cheese and I felt the sharpest longing for it. Perhaps, like beer, it was deemed too lowbrow by my mother. So I guess it makes sense that when I salvaged James Beard's American Cookery from her library, I made the macaroni and cheese right away.
This cookbook, published in 1972 by Little, Brown, was bought by my mother when we returned from our three years in Germany. Beard loved food, period, but especially American. He traveled the country in search of its regional foodways. So this book, written before the food renaissance, is a treasure. "American" doesn't mean non-ethnic; he champions Italian-American and other melting-pot "cookery" as well. One quirky thing about the book is that he spells "pasta" with an "e" at the end: "paste." In the "Grains and Pastes" chapter, on page 588, is the quintessential macaroni and cheese. It's the baked kind, with a white sauce. I used this recipe back when I was first pregnant, when I craved cheese in all forms, and I've never looked back. I soon memorized it, which makes cooking it so much easier.
Soon I made it my default go-to recipe for families with new babies. And we have it about once a month, with extra sharp white cheese from the local warehouse store. I always, always double the recipe. I may have even quadrupled it once! It's rich and creamy in the inside, crusty and golden on top. There is no other macaroni and cheese.
Here is the recipe, doubled, with my annotations:
American Cookery's Macaroni and Cheese
1 lb. macaroni (cavatappi is fun here, too, but not classic)
6 tablespoons butter
1/3 cup flour
3 cups milk
2 teaspoons salt (you may not need this much)
1 teaspoon dried mustard
Dash Tabasco (I don't do this, I forgot this was here! Guess I didn't memorize all.)
2 to 3 cups grated Cheddar cheese (don't buy pre-grated, the sharper the better)
Buttered crumbs (I rarely bother)
Boil the macaroni in salted water until just tender. Drain well. Prepare a white sauce--melt the butter in a heavy saucepan, blend with the flour, and cook several minutes over medium heat. (Two minutes maybe; don't let it get past golden) Heat the milk to the boiling point, stir in the flour-butter mixture, and continue stirring till it thickens. add the seasonings and simmer 4 to 5 minutes. Butter a baking dish or casserole (13 x 9). In it arrange alternate layers of macaroni, sauce, and cheese, ending with cheese. Cover the top with buttered crumbs. bake at 350 degrees for 25 minutes, or until the top is nicely browned and the sauce is bubbly. Serve at once.
Now that I'm reading the actual recipe, I see that what I memorized is really my own adapted version, which is: Blend the grated cheese in with the thickened white sauce, off the heat (instead of layering). Cover until the macaroni is ready. Drain the macaroni well, return to pot, and add cheese sauce. Mix well and pour into baking dish.
Oct 6, 2009
In Search of the Perfect Cannelloni: A Tribute to Gourmet Magazine
My mother was always a good cook. As for any harried mother of her era, the pressure of having to present dinner every night meant the occasional Spam, canned franks and beans, even TV dinners. (We loved our Swanson's TV dinners and their foil compartments.) Her inner gourmand was latent, ready to spring into action, as she meticulously copied recipes from Gourmet for dishes like Osso Bucco, complex time-consuming labors of love. She had lived in Rome soon after college in the early 1950s, working for a cooking show at a TV station. My mother and the rest of the production staff ate the food after the show was done. After six months she got sick and had to come home, but even the food in the Rome hospital, served by kindly nuns, was a revelation to her.
So my mother, as an Army wife trundling about here and there with her recipe boxes and issues of Gourmet, sought to call forth la dolce vita with her Italian recipes. In restaurants she would often order cannelloni. After a few bites, she would mourn the gap between her memory of feather-light, delicate cannelloni in Italy, and their leaden, soggy American counterparts, which were inevitably drowning in a sea of thick sauce. Not to be daunted, my mother spread her wings beyond Italian to French, inspired by Julia like everyone else. When she became an empty nester, she ventured on to Spanish and Portuguese dishes. She and my father began traveling to both countries, and they would order adventurously off the menu at some small family restaurant or inn wherever they happened to be.
Throughout all of it was Gourmet, its thoughtful, intelligent writing a constant source of inspiration and instruction, its photography celebrating the sensuousness of food and capturing the atmospherics of its rituals. When I was in my twenties, living in Philadelphia with a tiny bit of disposable income ($12,000 to $15,000 before taxes), I borrowed my mother's old issues and copied recipes from them. By hand, of course. Finally my mother gave me a subscription in 1989. I was a graduate student in English at Temple, with even less money than before, but a houseful of roommates and a taste for dinner parties on the cheap. At the time Gourmet ran a feature called Gastronomie sans Argent, French for "cooking without money." That was where I learned about the quiet glory and dignity of beans. Gourmet discontinued the feature, perhaps implying that almost all readers want to hold back on the caviar and truffles.
Every year at Christmas, my mother renewed my subscription. We would compare notes and point out recipes to each other. In 1996, my husband asked me to marry him. (I said "OK" instead of "Yes" and I'll never live that down.) The September issue had a recipe for Dark Chocolate Wedding Cake with Chocolate Orange Ganache and Orange Buttercream, which we found irresistible, and we had our caterer's pastry chef make it. Naturally, the groom and I forgot to eat the cake until it was only a devastated mess of crumbs and icing. And delicious crumbs they were. Someday I will make it myself.
By that time, Epicurious was up, which helped me find and collect even more Gourmet recipes. I started recycling my old "hard" copies, because I could save the recipes in my virtual recipe box. I'm not sentimental about the actual paper, except the September 1996 issue. Gourmet has been there for me no matter whether I needed an eggplant fix, an unusual vegetarian lasagna, or a wildly popular apple cake.
For my mother and me, Gourmet opened up a space for us to celebrate the bounty of this world and to share that with others. Beyond the recipes and travel stories, amazing writers like the late Laurie Colwin and the late David Foster Wallace, and the living Jhumpa Lahiri, to just think of three. And of course the indefatigable Ruth Reichl. She embraces food as memory, but also charts new directions. Under her watch, Gourmet has become political in the best way, covering plant genetics, fair food, and the locavore movement.
More than anything, Gourmet showed us how to live la dolce vita, whether we are rich or poor. With the advent of celebrity chefs, interactive websites and food blogs (ahem), food porn TV, and the professionalization of cooking, real food writing recedes to the background, unable to compete with its flashy new stepsisters.
My mother died suddenly at the age of sixty-nine, a week after learning she had her first grandchild on the way. My father has faithfully renewed my Gourmet subscription for the past ten years. Although my mother never found that perfect cannelloni, she certainly relished the search. May we seek la dolce vita the best we can, with wine and food, laughter and friends, and generosity of spirit. Here's to Gourmet, and life beyond.
So my mother, as an Army wife trundling about here and there with her recipe boxes and issues of Gourmet, sought to call forth la dolce vita with her Italian recipes. In restaurants she would often order cannelloni. After a few bites, she would mourn the gap between her memory of feather-light, delicate cannelloni in Italy, and their leaden, soggy American counterparts, which were inevitably drowning in a sea of thick sauce. Not to be daunted, my mother spread her wings beyond Italian to French, inspired by Julia like everyone else. When she became an empty nester, she ventured on to Spanish and Portuguese dishes. She and my father began traveling to both countries, and they would order adventurously off the menu at some small family restaurant or inn wherever they happened to be.
Throughout all of it was Gourmet, its thoughtful, intelligent writing a constant source of inspiration and instruction, its photography celebrating the sensuousness of food and capturing the atmospherics of its rituals. When I was in my twenties, living in Philadelphia with a tiny bit of disposable income ($12,000 to $15,000 before taxes), I borrowed my mother's old issues and copied recipes from them. By hand, of course. Finally my mother gave me a subscription in 1989. I was a graduate student in English at Temple, with even less money than before, but a houseful of roommates and a taste for dinner parties on the cheap. At the time Gourmet ran a feature called Gastronomie sans Argent, French for "cooking without money." That was where I learned about the quiet glory and dignity of beans. Gourmet discontinued the feature, perhaps implying that almost all readers want to hold back on the caviar and truffles.
Every year at Christmas, my mother renewed my subscription. We would compare notes and point out recipes to each other. In 1996, my husband asked me to marry him. (I said "OK" instead of "Yes" and I'll never live that down.) The September issue had a recipe for Dark Chocolate Wedding Cake with Chocolate Orange Ganache and Orange Buttercream, which we found irresistible, and we had our caterer's pastry chef make it. Naturally, the groom and I forgot to eat the cake until it was only a devastated mess of crumbs and icing. And delicious crumbs they were. Someday I will make it myself.
By that time, Epicurious was up, which helped me find and collect even more Gourmet recipes. I started recycling my old "hard" copies, because I could save the recipes in my virtual recipe box. I'm not sentimental about the actual paper, except the September 1996 issue. Gourmet has been there for me no matter whether I needed an eggplant fix, an unusual vegetarian lasagna, or a wildly popular apple cake.
For my mother and me, Gourmet opened up a space for us to celebrate the bounty of this world and to share that with others. Beyond the recipes and travel stories, amazing writers like the late Laurie Colwin and the late David Foster Wallace, and the living Jhumpa Lahiri, to just think of three. And of course the indefatigable Ruth Reichl. She embraces food as memory, but also charts new directions. Under her watch, Gourmet has become political in the best way, covering plant genetics, fair food, and the locavore movement.
More than anything, Gourmet showed us how to live la dolce vita, whether we are rich or poor. With the advent of celebrity chefs, interactive websites and food blogs (ahem), food porn TV, and the professionalization of cooking, real food writing recedes to the background, unable to compete with its flashy new stepsisters.
My mother died suddenly at the age of sixty-nine, a week after learning she had her first grandchild on the way. My father has faithfully renewed my Gourmet subscription for the past ten years. Although my mother never found that perfect cannelloni, she certainly relished the search. May we seek la dolce vita the best we can, with wine and food, laughter and friends, and generosity of spirit. Here's to Gourmet, and life beyond.
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