Keep the Feast

Perfect Recipe: Ganache

2009-05-07T16:15:00.004-04:00

Ganache is equal parts chocolate and cream melted together. From this union, all sorts of fantastic creations sprig forth. In melty liquid form, it is perfect on ice cream. Cooled, it can be scooped with a very small ice cream scoop or a tablespoon and rolled into balls and coated with cocoa powder to make truffles. But my favorite use for ganache is when it is cooled to room temperature and whipped into frosting. Basically, this is like making a very chocolately thick whipped cream. It is amazing.

Of course, the better the quality of chocolate, the better the ganache. I usually use Callebaut, but sometimes, after the holidays, I make ganache from all our leftover Fannie Mae candy from our Christmas stockings. To make ganache, heat cream to the scalding point (when little bubbles will form on the edges but not yet boiling) and stir the chocolate (cut into chunks) into the cream to melt it. Usually the heat from the cream will be enough to melt the chocolate. I measure the cream by volume and the chocolate by weight and I try to keep the proportions equal.

White Wine Weather

2009-05-06T09:52:00.001-04:00

Spring has returned, white wine too--
The tulips make their grand debut.
The grass is greening, sweat is beading
On my skin and glass as I sit reading.

Eggs in Purgatory

2009-05-05T23:33:00.003-04:00

Eggs in Purgatory-- uova al purgatorio-- is an inventive and tasty dish with a very confusing name. The dish has three components: first, grilled bread (I rubbed mine with garlic while it was still hot). Second, a marinara sauce, and third, eggs which are sort of poached/fried on the hot, sizzling, simmering marinara sauce. I could not find any explanation about its name, and recipes gave only a passing reference to any sort of theological connection. Most mentioned that the marinara sauce in which the eggs cook should be very spicy. One assumes this is a culinary expression of what the cook believes about purgatory. Or maybe it's just a confusion about a fra diavolo sauce, which should be spicy because the name means "brother devil." Then again, maybe the dish was originally called uova al pomodoro (tomatoes), which would render this search for a theological connection a grand waste of time.

Purgatory is a very confusing aspect of the doctrine of eschatology. First, it is not the same as limbo, which was sort of an afterlife antechamber where the souls unbaptized babies and virtuous people who lived before Christ went after their death. The church no longer teaches that it exists. Purgatory is still a part of current church teaching. Basically, after death, the soul is separated from the body. The soul travels to be judged by God and if the person died in a state of perfection and forgiveness, then the soul goes straight to heaven. The church teaches that the saints are among this group. It requires not only having lived a very good life, but also having received absolution for all sins in the sacrament of reconciliation.

But most people do not die in a state of perfection, but do die in God's grace and friendship. These souls (i.e. everybody besides the heaven-bound saints and the hell-bound unrepentent sinners), "are indeed assured of their eternal salvation; but after death they undergo purification, so as to achieve the holiness necessary to enter the joy of heaven" (CCC 1030). Basically, purgatory is a soul stairmaster with the pace and mileage set by God at the time of judgment. It is one-directional-- the church is very clear that all the souls in purgatory are eventually brought into heaven. The popular vocabulary used to describe purgatory is purification, maturation, and waiting, all of which remind me of long-simmered Italian food. So we're on to something here.

One last word about purgatory: the prayers of the living for the dead shorten the length of time the soul is required to stay in purgatory. So a soul can be "prayed out" of purgatory if there are enough prayers earnestly offered for him or her by those who remain on earth. And not only do our personal prayers for our relatives and friends "count" toward speeding up the stopwatch, but there are prayers for the dead offered in the liturgy of the Eucharist at every mass. My students are always comforted to know that even the loneliest, oldest person who dies with nobody to remember to pray for her is still being prayed for by the entire church every day all over the world.

Though Dante gave us the great terrifying metaphors for the hierarchy of purgatory and hell, the church hasn't explained exactly what souls can expect. Because Jesus and Saint Paul did talk about judgment but did not explain anything about purgatory, much of the theological doctrine about purgatory is vague or undeveloped. Does time or space exist there? How can the soul wait if it cannot experience time? How can the soul work if it cannot experience space? Will there be a purifying fire? Doesn't that seem like a bit of hell-- a harsh punishment for people who lived lives that have merited them eventual admission to heaven? If there is a fire, perhaps that means the sauce in uova al purgatorio should be full of chiles. But I don't think there is a purifying fire, so I think the sauce should be very mellow and smooth and simmered for a very long time.

EAT THIS NOW: Asparagus

2009-05-04T13:07:00.003-04:00

Spring has barely arrived but already there is a bit of asparagus in the market. To celebrate the return of green to our lives and plates, I've been making Spring Panzanella, an Italian crouton salad traditionally made with tomatoes and peppers, but transformed for the season with plenty of green vegetables. It's very simple and doesn't require a real recipe. First, blanch tons of asparagus, broccoli and maybe even some peas. Then make homemade croutons, nice and crusty. Then toss the croutons with the blanched vegetables and cucumber, maybe add some basil or other herbs, and plenty of lemon vinaigrette. The croutons soak up the vinaigrette so it can't be made too far in advance, it does get soggy after about twenty minutes.

Perfect: Granola Cookies

2009-04-30T13:10:00.006-04:00

I was recently catering a dinner for athletes and I wanted to make a dessert that was really worth the calories without being too indulgent. These cookies taste great and since they're studded with nuts, oats and fruit, they have some redemptive nutritional value. The ingredients are versatile -- use any dried fruit, any chocolate chips, or any nuts you like best.

Granola Cookies
17 ounces all-purpose flour
1 1/4 teaspoons baking soda
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoons salt
2 1/2 sticks unsalted butter, room temperature
15 ounces brown sugar
2 large eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 cup chocolate chips
1 cup old-fashioned rolled oats
1 cup craisins or raisins
1 cup walnuts or pecans

Sift together the flours, baking soda, baking powder and salt and set aside. Cream the butter and sugar in a stand mixer for about five minutes, or until very light and fluffy. Add the eggs and vanilla and mix on high for another minute. On low speed, add the dry ingredients 1/4 cup at a time. Using a rubber spatula, fold in the chocolate, oats, fruit and nuts. Chill the dough, covered in plastic wrap, overnight. Use a very small ice cream scoop to form the cookies and arrange them on a parchment-lined baking sheet. Gently pat down the center slightly. Bake in a preheated 350°F oven for about ten minutes.

Frigidaire Guilt Trip

2009-04-29T19:00:00.004-04:00

My refrigerator talks to me at night,
Here’s what she has to say:
There’s food in here you need to eat
To beat it to decay.

But if my fridge could hear me like
I can clearly hear her voice,
I’d make excuses for myself
And claim I had no choice.

I apologize about those chicken breasts
And all that guacamole.
It went brown and sour and gross
Just like the ravioli.

I forgot about that block of cheese
Hidden there in the back.
It went moldy way before
I could shred it for a snack.

So before I go to sleep I drop
To my knees to say a prayer,
To confess to all the food I’ve wasted
And left too long in there.

Backyard Sacraments

2009-04-28T13:06:00.004-04:00

Sure, Christians do a good job spreading an impressive banquet for Christmas, Easter, Baptisms, and weddings, but in our family, that's just the beginning of the list of reasons to feast. My mother is a prolific entertainer, and her approach to hospitality is very simple: any reason is a good reason to throw a party. She taught me to pray like we celebrate and celebrate like we pray: with joy, with love, and with others. And though she does a great job with Christmas, her best parties are in the summer.

A sacrament is a sacred moment. The church gives us the sacraments to bless and consecrate life as we go along living it. But even though the Catholic Church has a swollen list of seven sacraments, it doesn't seem to cover every sacred moment in life. Though it does a good job sacramentalizing the big stuff: birth (Baptism), feasting (Eucharist), love (Matrimony), mistakes (Reconciliation), maturity (Confirmation), commitment (Holy Orders) and sickness (Anointing), I have always wondered, what is the sacrament that celebrates the intellect? A first promotion? Peace? I don't think we need more sacraments, but I think a wider understanding of sacramentality will help us, as a church, remember that God is present in all these sacred moments. Living sacramentally means living in and out of the blessing of the church, starting with the sacraments, and into a sacramental lifestyle of giving and forgiving in all we do.

How, then, does that affect our lives? A sacramental worldview affects the reasons we gather, the way we feast, the attitude with which we relate. Everyday moments can be holy. I don't think the great Catholic theologian Karl Rahner had a barbeque in the backyard of my home in the Chicago suburbs when he wrote about the sacramentality of everyday life, but his words can be applied. He explains that wherever "God becomes manifest in the concrete in the life of an individual through the church which is the basic sacrament of salvation, we call this a Christian sacrament." And by church, he does not mean the brick-and-mortar building, but "wherever there are human beings there is 'church'."

The summer party is a well-worn routine at our home, and like an old vaudeville family, we all have a role in entertaining the crowd. My mother, the leader, makes list after list and makes sure there is enough room in the fridges and ovens for everything; my stepfather, the roadie, sets up the tables and handles the lawn and garden (these parties are always outdoors and no, it never rains); my brother, the magician, polishes and presses and makes everything beautiful; my sister, the acrobat, passes food around and is generally charming; and I, the trained monkey, cook until the very last minute before guests arrive. It's quite an act.

But perhaps comparing it to vaudeville isn't quite the right metaphor. No, it's truly more like a liturgy. There are priests and deacons and altar servers who plan the feast, and when the people arrive, there is storytelling and music and food. The liturgy of our domestic church is at no time more glorious than the backyard party. Whether in celebration of one of the seven sacraments or one of the everyday sacraments like a graduation or a birthday, it is a resplendent sacred offering, a gathering of the holy people, a reminder to love one another.

Many dishes rotate onto the backyard party menus, but there is one unbreakable rule: everything must be room temperature and prepared ahead of time. A typical menu would look like this: an enormous green salad or two, some sort of starch like white beans or couscous or pesto farfalle, and loads of sliced beef tenderloin and little brioche and mustard sauce for sandwiches. For dessert, there's fruit tarts or ice cream sandwiches or homemade sorbet. We've pretty much cooked through the entirety of the Barefoot Contessa cookbooks. But for about five years in a row, this dish was at every single summer party, so I'll share the recipe.

Mexican Corn
2 16-ounce bags frozen corn kernels
2 15-ounce cans black beans
1 jalapeno or poblano chile, minced fine
1 red bell peppers, diced
1/2 cup cilantro, washed and torn into pieces
2-3 scallions, chopped
2 avocados, pitted and diced
1/4 cup lime juice
1/4 cup olive oil
2 teasoons salt
1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
Fold together all ingredents and serve in a big bowl. If the corn is still frozen, it will defrost in about an hour and will keep the dish chilled until guests arrive, but it might create additional water as it defrosts, so the lime juice and olive oil should be added after the water is drained.

EAT THIS NOW: Ricotta

2009-04-27T13:15:00.002-04:00

I really hate ricotta cheese. Everyone is allowed one or two things that they just don't like. For about twenty years I didn't eat lasagna because of the ricotta. When I make my own lasagna now, I use just a bit of ricotta melted into a bechemel sauce, which I can tolerate. And then everything changed. I just tasted fresh ricotta from the farmers' market. It should not be called ricotta. It should be called something else, some divine word that makes you think of lightly salted clouds of sweet cheese softness. Either farmers' market fresh ricotta needs to change its name or that crap in the grocery store needs to be renamed. To celebrate my new discovery, I sauteed a heap of mushrooms in a bit of olive oil, salt and pepper until brown and soft and topped them, still warm, with bits of ricotta and basil. It was so amazing we ate it two nights in a row. I might have to make it again immediately.

Perfect Recipe: Vinaigrette

2009-04-23T20:55:00.008-04:00

We're getting into picnic season, the outdoor party season, the backyard barbecue season, and so there isn't a better time to make up a huge batch of lemon vinaigrette to have on hand. I always have a big jar of it in the fridge. The virtue of having it in a large quantity (it never goes bad, really) is that you have immediate flavor for any sort of greens or vegetables. Sure, it works on lettuce or tomatoes, but it's also great for marinating chicken for the grill, for a cold pasta salad, or for brushing on vegetables as they grill. Another reason to make your own salad dressing is to avoid the commercially-produced stuff, which is extravagantly expensive considering the quantity and chock-full of preservatives and questionable ingredients. One last tip about vinaigrettes: go ahead and change any of the ingredients as long as the ratio stays about one part acid (citrus juice or vinegar) to three parts oil.

Lemon Vinaigrette
(makes 20 ounces)
Zest of one lemon
4 teaspoons Kosher or Sea salt
2 teaspoons freshly ground black pepper
16 ounces (2 cups) olive oil
6 ounces (3/4 cup) fresh lemon juice
4 tablespoons (1/4 cup or 2 ounces) Dijon mustard
4 tablespoons (1/4 cup or 2 ounces) honey
Shake all ingredients in a jar and use liberally. Shake before each use. If it becomes unpourable in the cold refrigerator, allow it to come to room temperature before re-shaking and using.

Curves

2009-04-22T19:58:00.004-04:00

Bless us, O Lord
And these, my hips
Which may never receed
And are bouncy, not tight.
Oh well, Amen.

Pasta Rosaries

2009-04-21T13:24:00.004-04:00

As a child, I was obsessed with arts and crafts. I would check books out of the library on calligraphy and clay jewelery and how to make my own paper, and I've taught myself to knit and quilt and obviously, to cook. It's not surprising that I was also a zealous girl scout and I earned a full vest of patches. Now, as a grown-up craft lover, I've applied that same enthusiasm-- now we have a word for it, DIY-- to my lesson plans. As a catechist, I believe there must be a healthy balance between teaching theology in a relevant, creative way and organizing activities the kids enjoy, like crafts and games, that keep them interested on a level that engages their playfulness. So since it's May and we're trying to emphasize Mary, last week in my fifth grade classroom, we made rosaries out of pasta. I couldn't resist sharing a picture since this is the ultimate food-meets-theology craft.

Eat This Now: Olive Oil

2009-04-20T18:56:00.005-04:00

Everywhere, catechists are preparing their confirmandi to be presented to bishops for the sacrament of Confirmation. Every time I witness a Confirmation I find it incredible in this age of widespread skepticism about organized religion. I am always moved by my favorite part of the rite-- the anointing with chrism. Catholic sacraments are very sensual, a point too often overlooked by whose who criticize the church for being impersonal. What is necessary for the sacraments is also necessary for life. Can you imagine living without water, bread, wine and oil? The sacraments require us to gather “stuff” from daily life, bless it, and bring it into contact with our (young or old) body.

First Eucharist is obviously the sacrament with the easiest connection to food and feasting since it marks the beginning of a Christian’s sacred routine of accepting and being nourished by the holy food of God. Even baptism usually leads into a family brunch and the sacrament of matrimony is incomplete without a big feast and lots of dancing. The sacrament of Confirmation does not immediately lend itself to thoughts of food and nourishment. But I had two great experiences this year that will be forever etched into my memory in connection with Confirmation. The first is the lingering, celebratory lunch I enjoyed with other catechists after we finished our work in the church. (Good work deserves good food.) The second is this olive oil cake.

Chrism Cake
8 ounces flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 cup sugar
zest of one orange
½ cup plain or vanilla yogurt
½ cup extra-virgin olive oil
3 large eggs
½ teaspoon sea salt
1 cup sliced almonds
Butter and flour a tube pan (or spray with Baker’s Joy). Preheat the oven to 350°F. Sift together the flour and baking powder. In a large bowl, rub the orange zest into the sugar until well incorporated. Whisk in the yogurt, oil, eggs, sea salt, and ¾ cup of almonds. Gradually add the flour and whisk until incorporated. Pour into the prepared pan and sprinkle the top with the reserved ¼ cup almonds. Bake for 35 minutes. If desired, brush the warm cake with a glaze made with equal parts honey, orange juice and brandy or orange liqueur. The oil and yogurt keep this cake moist for days.

Citrus Infusion

2009-04-17T18:55:00.004-04:00

Grand Marnier and Cointreau are wonderful but are also prohibitively expensive for me and the finer points of their taste, which make them expensive, are lost in mixed cocktails or a recipe like crepes suzette. Triple sec is strong and rough and there isn't much selection in between these two extremes. To make homemade orange liqueur in the style of Grand Marnier, mix inexpensive brandy with orange peel (no white pith) and allow the mixture to mascerate at room temperature for about a week. Shake the mixture twice daily. Eventually the orange color from the peel will transfer into the brandy and give it an intense orange flavor. Strain the mixture through a coffee filter and enjoy as a substitute for Grand Marnier, Cointreau, Curaçao or triple sec.

Perfect Recipe: Jam

2009-04-16T18:50:00.005-04:00

There is a certain joy in making jam because I feel like it, not because I have to. In an earlier historical epoch, the crafts I enjoy so thoroughly—quilting, canning, knitting—would have served a necessary function, and perhaps, would have exhausted me. Now, these same activities revive me after my energy is stripped from modern life (subway commuting, staring at a computer, department store shopping, you get the idea). I am grateful I no longer have to put up jam over a steaming pot of water heated by a woodstove. I am also grateful to make jam with just a few ingredients and to witness the fruit’s release of natural pectin, which gives the jam a gentle gelatinous wiggle, unlike the nasty commercially-produced stuff. I am grateful for the pioneers but that I am not one of them.

Plum Berry Jam
10 ounces red plums, core removed and peeled, cut into ¼-inch dice
(some plums with thin skins do not need to have the skins removed. The skins will actually help the jam become gelatinous quicker)
10 ounces sugar
5 ounces strawberries, hulled, cut into ¼-inch dice

Mix the plums and the sugar together in a saucepan and allow the fruit to mascerate for 30 minutes. Put the saucepan over medium heat and allow the fruit to simmer for about 20-30 minutes. Add the strawberries and cook for an additional 10 minutes. If desired, mash the fruit into pulp using a potato masher or immersion blender. To test the jam, drop a bit of jam on a frozen plate. If the jam spreads thin, continue cooking. If it remains formed in the rounded drop, it’s ready. Pour into self-sealing canning jars.

Unmerited Grace

2009-04-15T18:49:00.003-04:00

With coffee in hand, I thought with a yawn,
Is that the last frost burning off the lawn
Of Riverside Park on the Hudson’s shore
Over my windowsill, steps from my door?
Could winter really be over at last?
Can we expect warmth to be forecast?

But the old man never bit me this year.
Compared to my youth, this was not severe.
Breath clouds unseen, snow barely fell--
If it never arrived, can I bid it farewell?
If never wilted, can my spirits revive

When the crocus and robin arrive?

EAT THIS NOW: Lamb Cake

2009-04-13T19:00:00.000-04:00

My mom used to make a yellow cake every Easter in a lamb-shaped tin cake pan and cover it with white frosting and coconut. She’d arrange a face out of jelly beans and spread some green-tinted coconut around the lamb to look like grass. It was an idyllic little pastoral scene, I must admit. Last year, my brother gave the lamb cake demonic red eyes. This year, I took it to a whole new level. Hidden beneath the white coconut frosting was a (blood) red velvet lamb cake. Has the sacrifice of the atonement ever been expressed in baked goods? Not be outdone, my mother made a chocolate lamb cake with chocolate frosting and named it after her brother, the black sheep of the family. Is this disturbing or funny? I don’t know.

DAILY BREAD: Hot Cross Buns

2009-04-10T09:18:00.004-04:00

Seventh in a series for Lent.

Until today, the only thing I knew about Hot Cross Buns was hot to play the tune on the recorder.

A few years ago, I remember firing off an email to Rita, my conversation partner on the connection between food and theology, about my misunderstandings about hot cross buns. Why do Christians eat them on Good Friday—aren’t we supposed to be fasting? How is a food with a black raisin cross on it supposed to celebrate the resurrection? After an embarrassingly long discursus on the symbolic possibilities of using golden raisins, I closed my email to Rita, and apparently my mind, to hot cross buns.

But the nature of my kitchen, cycling in and out of liturgical and agricutural seasons, means every recipe comes back again, and like the crocuses popping out of the brown earth to remind me of spring, the idea of hot cross buns came back to my mind this Holy Week.

My research into the recipe and tradition of these sweet rolls made me eat a little crow. The cross is not made of black raisins, but instead, is made of white icing, making the symbol of resurrection more appropriately than my misunderstood and misinterpreted black raisin symbol of death. Eating them on Good Friday is a grand way of actually starting the feast that will culminate on Easter Sunday (or after the vigil Mass on Saturday). The raisins go into the dough, like reminders of the black and bleak moments which flavor all our experiences, even the most delicious ones, and the dough rises around them.

Because I’m a first-year catechist at a Catholic middle school, I’ve been especially adamant about correcting the confusion between spring symbols and Easter symbols this year. Given the delicate age of our students, the teachers follow a policy of allowing, if not exactly defending or encouraging, belief in family traditions about the Easter Bunny and Santa Claus. When I ask about Easter traditions, all I get are explanations of Easter Egg Hunts. Of course, what I want to explain is, “By showcasing the fertility symbols you’re actually participating in a vernal equinox celebration, so when your Uncle Barry shows up in a large rabbit costume, please address him as the Spring Sex Celebration Bunny not the Easter Bunny!” But instead I bite my tongue because I cherish my memories of Easter Egg Hunts (remember the year there was an egg in the chandelier!) and a basket filled with peeps, chocolate bunnies and a kite.

Maybe the symbols are a little confused, but there’s really no harm. But when I’m honest about what I love about Easter: trumpets and crumpets, White lilies and Lily Pulitzer, I realize that there is, and has to be, room for all sorts of symbols at the feast. I can’t imagine the Easter without lamb (is there any better time to roast the sacrificial agnus dei?) but I also make a puffy risen souffle, a reminder that the cycle of death into life repeats every spring and every Lent.

Hot Cross Buns
(makes 7 buns)
8 ounces bread flour
1 ½ teaspoons yeast
½ cup sugar
pinch orange zest
½ teaspoon salt
4 ounces whole milk
1 ounce water
6 tablespoons butter
1 egg
½ cup raisins
For icing:
2 ounces confectioner’s sugar
2 ounces cream cheese
2 tablespoons milk or water
In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, yeast, sugar, and zest. Whisk in the salt and set aside. In a saucepan, scald the milk and water and add the butter, stirring until the butter melts. Allow the liquid to cool slightly and then carefully whisk the warm liquid into the beaten egg. Add the liquid mixture to the dry ingredients, mix until a wet ball forms, then knead for about ten minutes, or until smooth and glossy. Either a stand mixer fitted with a dough hook or a food processor makes kneading the dough easier. Add the raisins and allow the dough to rise until doubled in bulk, about 90 minutes. Form the dough into seven balls and place in a buttered cake pan and allow the rolls to rise again until puffy, about 60 minutes. Bake at 375°F for 20 minutes, or until browned. To make the icing, whisk together the cream cheese and confectioner’s sugar, adding water as necessary to make a thick but spreadable consistency. Allow the rolls to cool, then mark each bun with an icing cross.

Skipping Seder?

2009-04-09T20:40:00.005-04:00

This year, Passover and Holy Thursday are being celebrated right on top of one another, a thrilling coincidence for those who are interested in this sort of liturgical detail, since Jesus' Last Supper was actually a Passover Seder dinner. So although these feasts were linked on that night, since then, they have become divergent sorts of celebrations. At a seder meal, Jews celebrate the angel of death "passing over" the homes of observant Jews during the plagues sent to punish the wicked pharaoh with an annual symbolic feast; Christians memorialize and commemorate the event of the Last Supper in the liturgy of the Eucharist, their own symbolic feast. The symbolism of bread and wine and community and sacrifice are present in both celebrations, but in different ways. America Magazine recently published an interesting article by Rabbi Daniel F. Polish about the connection between these two celebrations, which I recommend.

The Christian interest in the passover is understandable: Jews celebrate a holy moment of their history with a feast that is as didactic as it is delicious. What Christian wouldn't be curious about it and be a little bit jealous? After all, Jesus was a Jew, so trying to learn more about him through the feasts he ate seems not only innocent, but also spiritually interesting. In my parish ministry work and in the classroom, I have struggled with whether or not it is appropriate for Christians to learn more about Jewish holidays like Passover by experiencing a Seder dinner. Although I am intrigued by these traditions as someone who loves the connection between food and theology, I’ve concluded, through the guidance of Christian and Jewish friends who are more educated about and sensitive to syncretism and supercessionism than I am, that it is best for Christians to redirect their curiosity into eating, not praying the Seder.

I think Christians can cook and feast upon the symbolic foods of the Passover Seder, but should stop short of actually hosting one. In other words, eating the symbolic foods is OK, praying the Haggadah is not. But of course, if a Christian is invited to a Seder hosted by a Jew, it is an invitation that should be accepted immediately and with excitement, from first cup of wine to the last word of prayer. What is inappropriate is for Christians to generate their own Seder celebration and to reconfigure the ancient prayers to their own use. (Thus, I am disappointed that our sensitive new Christian President, Barack Obama, hosted a Seder at the White House.)

The problem is that when Christians host a seder, though their intentions may be admirable (like to learn more about Jewish traditions and thereby to try and participate in healthy Jewish-Christian relations) the actual act is inappropriate and ironically undermines their good intentions. Ritual-loving Christians have the ultimate food-meets-theology event, the re-creation of their symbolic salvific moment: the Eucharist. Especially in contexts where Eucharistic theology is very high liturgy (for lack of a better term) it is especially inappoproiate for Christians to try and snatch the symbols of the Jewish celebration for their own. In other words, it's greedy.

So instead of designing a Christianized Seder celebration, I’ve hosted Jewish-themed cooking classes in the context of young adult parish ministry—an evening of cooking brisket and charoset and kugel and matzo ball soup while talking about their symbolism and significance. In my work as a middle-school catechist, I’ve taught the sixth graders about the Exodus by doing a show-and-tell lesson with a Seder plate filled with symbolic foods like matzah, horseradish, roasted egg, bone, and saltwater. In both contexts, what separates my actions from crossing the line is the omission of the Haggadah, or the prayers read at a Seder. My advice: if you want to eat the Seder, don't pray it unless a Jew is teaching you how.

Learning how Jews feast through their history is fascinating, but it's inappropriate to re-create the solemnity or prayerfulness of the Passover where it is not my place to do so. That said, I think whipping up the traditional foods of Passover can be thrilling from a cultural and culinary standpoint. So Christians, go ahead and prepare and share the traditional foods of the Passover, read Exodus, ponder the flight from Egypt and the might of God, but don't call it a Seder.

When I've taught Christian communities about the Seder through the symbolic foods, this recipe, which symbolizes the mortar of the bricks layered by the Jews when they were slaves in Egypt, is always a huge hit.

Haroseth

1/3 cup Kosher wine
1/3 cup raisins or other dried fruits
2 large apples, peeled, cored and chopped
1/3 cup walnuts, chopped
1/3 cup almonds, chopped
1/3 cup pecans, chopped
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon ground cardamom
3 tablespoons honey
Mix the wine and raisins and allow the raising to plump slightly, about 20 minutes. Mix together the raisins and wine, apples, nuts, spices and honey. Serve with matzah.

Angus Dei

2009-04-08T13:53:00.002-04:00

Thick columns of sacrificial smoke
Rising with the prayers of ancient folk
Suggest God is pleased with barbeque
As a way of saying thank you.
Forget eggs benedict, scrambled or fried.
To celebrate the love for which Jesus died
Grill up some lamb, the chops or a leg.
Sin of the world wasn’t taken away by an egg.

Chipotle Tomato Soup

2009-04-06T18:38:00.004-04:00

Tomatoes in the winter taste awful.
Tomato soup is always delicious.
Winter is a great time to eat soup.
Thus… You see the problem.

The work-around is to avoid mealy hothouse beefsteaks and use the winter tomatoes that actually do have flavor—cherry or grape tomatoes—and roast them to concentrate the flavor. I always add homemade chicken stock and a can or two of San Marzano plum tomatoes, which are packed at the peak of flavor, and end up with a really good tomato soup any time of year.

Roasted tomatoes and onions lend themselves to chile flavors very well, which is the inspiration behind this soup. Chipotles are smoked Jalapenos, so the smoky chile works well with the roasted blistered skin of the tomatoes. Growing up, a standard lunch on a Saturday afternoon was Campbell’s topped with lots of microwave popcorn. This soup is the grown-up, spicy version of that childhood classic. Ancho chile powder is widely available now (thanks to Bobby Flay talking about it on the Food Network constantly) and the flavor is much milder and deeper than cayenne or chili powder blends. Ancho chiles are often compared to spicy raisins. To make the ancho chile popcorn, prepare the hot oil in a pot as you would to make stovetop popcorn but add a good tablespoon or so of ancho chili powder. As the popcorn pops in the chile oil, it will perfume and flavor it. Make sure you toss the hot popcorn with plenty of good Kosher or sea salt.

Chipotle Tomato Soup
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 pint grape or cherry tomatoes
1 very large red onion, peeled and quartered
4 garlic cloves, peeled
2 teaspoons kosher salt
1 teaspoon ancho chile powder
One chipotle pepper from a can of chipotles canned in adobo (just one pepper, not one can)
1 (28-ounce) can San Marzano plum tomatoes
1 pint (2 cups) homemade unseasoned chicken stock
Preheat the oven to 450°F. On a rimmed sheet pan, toss together the olive oil with the cherry or grape tomatoes, onions and garlic and sprinkle with the salt and ancho chile powder. Roast until the tomatoes are browned and blistered, about 30 minutes. Scrape everything from the sheet pan—juice and lose tomato skins and seasoning and all—into a blender and puree with the one chipotle pepper, can of tomatoes and their juice, stock. If your blender isn’t big enough to fold everything, puree in batches. Pour the soup into a pot and simmer for at least 30 minutes. Season to taste with extra salt and pepper.

DAILY BREAD: Walnut Raisin

2009-04-03T09:19:00.010-04:00

Sixth in a series for Lent.

I am a disciple of Rose Levy Beranbaum. She is as systematic in her approach to baking as Rahner, Tillich, Barth or Calvin are in their approach to theology. Her books (no, tomes) on cake, pastry, and bread are books I cannot live without. But even as must-haves, I do not open them frequently. Her recipes are so detailed (and also so reliable) that I always make sure I have the time and energy to follow every step just as she’s designed. In The Bread Bible, she tackles every kind of bread and dough starter; some of her basic recipes require three or four days of prep time. But the results are worth it not only for the delicious loaves that come out of the oven, but also for the little tips I learn every time I try one of her recipes. Like reading systematic theology, it’s tough and it’s thick but it’s always really fulfilling. I had a grand time with her pecan raisin bread (I used walnuts), which was fabulous right out of the oven, and even after it went a bit stale, it was excellent sliced into thin crostini to support a light dinner of soft cheese and crisp apples with a glass of Cabernet.

Spiritual Simmer: Tortilla Soup

2009-03-30T09:20:00.008-04:00

Fifth in a series for Lent about soup.

In my house, tortilla soup is an excuse to enjoy the infrequently practiced delight of deep frying. Like every one else, we try to eat very healthy at home and avoid frying foods. But every once in a while, with an excuse as healthy as garnishing a hot bowl of veggie-laden tortilla soup, we go for it. Frying tortilla strips is so easy, it should be the starter recipe for everyone who is intimidated of frying at home. I always use canola oil and just enough to cover whatever it is I'm throwing into the pot. In this case, about 8 ounces of oil in a saucepan does the trick. If the oil is smoking hot, the tortillas barely soak up any oil, so I find I have almost as much to save and re-use after I'm done as when I started.

As for the actual soup, tortilla soup seems to describe a basic chile and tomato Mexican/Latin American chunky soup with lots of garnishes besides tortillas-- cheese, avocado, scallions, lime wedges. Some have corn, chicken and beans, some don't. The soup recipe is flexible, the fried tortilla strips are necessary.

Tortilla Soup
6 white corn tortillas, cut into 1/4-inch-wide strips.
1 cup canola oil (for frying only)
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 white onion, diced
1 poblano chile, diced (Jalapenos are hotter)
3 cloves garlic, minced
12 ounces beer (Mexican preferably)
1 quart (4 cups) unsalted chicken stock
1 28-ounce can whole tomatoes (coarsely chopped or squeezed)
2 teaspoons ground cumin
2 teaspoons chili powder
1 teaspoon oregano (Mexican preferably)
2 teaspoons kosher salt
½ chicken, cooked and shredded 1 can black beans, drained and rinsed
1 ½ cups corn (about 3 ears cut from cob, or frozen is fine)
Heat the oil in a skillet until it reaches 375°F on a deep fat thermometer. The oil should come about an inch up the side of the pan. Working in batches, fry tortilla strips until crisp, 30 seconds to 1 minute. Flip half way though the frying time. Sprinkle with salt immediately after they come out of the oil. To make the soup, heat the olive oil in a heavy-bottomed stockpot over medium-high heat. Sauté onion, chile and garlic until the onion is translucent, about 7-10 minutes. Add the stock and beer, stirring until the foam subsides. Add the tomatoes to the pot with the cumin, chili powder, oregano, and salt. Boil the soup for ten minutes then add the chicken, beans and corn and simmer, covered, for about 20 minutes. Garnish with tortillas and cheese, scallions, cilantro, or diced avocado.

DAILY BREAD: Rolls

2009-03-27T23:30:00.005-04:00

Fifth in a series for Lent.

I learned to cook because I wanted to create great dinner parties for my friends. My curiosity, and the good will of my hungry college friends, allowed me to experiment with new menus and new guest lists. Though I was decent at cooking generally, and on the bakng side, my cakes and pies were good, I had no experience with yeast and breads. But I recognized that the well-set table always needs a good bread basket so I set out to bake dinner rolls. Most of my efforts yielded under-risen and over-baked pucks of dough and I surrendered to bakery rolls for years. Once my bread baking skills advanced and I was able to move back to rolls, I learned two tricks: 1) allow the dough to have lots of time to rise in the bowl and again to rise in the balls and 2) do NOT overbake them. They're done when they're golden browned though they may seem too soft in the middle. Trust me-- they'll be pull-apart perfect and great for your guests.

Dinner Rolls
15 ounces bread flour
1 package instant dry yeast (about 2 ¼ teaspoons)
¼ cup sugar
4 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened or melted
1 teaspoon kosher salt
1 egg, beaten
¾ cup milk or water

In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, yeast and sugar. In a small bowl, whisk together the butter, salt, eggs and water. Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients and mix to combine using a wooden spoon (or by hand). After a few minutes, the mixture should become a shaggy ball. Remove the dough from the bowl (along with any scraps) and knead for ten minutes. Place the dough into a buttered bowl and cover tightly with plastic wrap. Allow it to rise until doubled in bulk, which could take anywhere from 1 ½ to 3 hours.

When it has doubled in bulk, punch it down and divide the dough into equally-sized balls. This recipe will make 8 hamburger buns, 12 dinner rolls, or 24 small rolls (perfect for appetizers like mini burgers or mini lobster rolls). Use your hands to form them into rolls in the following way: force the dough through the circle formed by pinching the tip of your thumb and index finger together. When most of the dough has passed through, capture the end close to your palm and pinch it tight to close it off.

Place the balls, pinched side down, into a buttered 9-inch by 13-inch baking pan and preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Brush the rolls with melted butter or a beaten egg. Cover them with plastic wrap and allow the rolls to rise again for about one hour. Bake until golden, about 14-18 minutes.

Perfect Recipe: Empanadas

2009-03-26T18:25:00.008-04:00

Good empanadas are all about the dough. You can throw anything inside for filling-- leftovers work especially well. Leftover taco meat and salsa, leftover chili (drained of liquid a bit), leftover pork tenderloin and sauteed peppers and onions, even leftover spinach and mashed potatoes (throw in some chili flakes). They're so easy to serve as an appetizer because you can make the dough, roll it out, fill the empanadas, and place them on the baking sheet, covered in plenty of plastic wrap, the day before the party and then eggwash and bake them right before the guests arrive.

Empanada dough
2¼ (11 ounces) cups unbleached all-purpose flour
1½ teaspoons salt
½ cup (1 stick) cold unsalted butter, cut into ½ inch cubes
1 large egg
¼ cup ice water
1 tablespoon distilled white vinegar

I use a food processor to make the dough. First, I pulse together all the dry ingredients. Then I add the butter, water and vinegar and allow the machine to run until the dough has formed a ball that flies around and around the bowl. Chill the dough a bit before rolling it into one big empanada with the filling of your choice (or small two-inch empanadas, perfect for a party). To crimp the edges of the dough, just pull the dough from the bottom to the top, around and onto itself, as you advnce along the edge. At the end of the edge, tuck the end of the dough below the crimped edge. Bake the empanada(s) on a parchment-lined baking sheet at 350 degrees for about twenty minutes, or until golden brown. The crust may develop a cracked look, as pictured above, from the egg wash, but that's normal.

I always serve them with this sauce:

Lime Crema

1 cup sour cream*

¼ cup freshly squeezed lime juice

¼ cup fresh cilantro, minced very fine

¼ cup white onion, minced very fine

1 teaspoon cumin

½ teaspoon kosher salt

*My friend Michael suggests substituting plain Greek yogurt (it's thicker than regular yogurt) instead of sour cream.

Spiritual Simmer: Broccoli Cheddar

2009-03-23T15:59:00.010-04:00

Fourth in a series for Lent about soup.

This recipe was inspired by a fridge full of leftovers and some broccoli that was about to turn bad. And from such humble scraps came an unplanned (and delicious) soup that not only saved what would have been wasted, but also exalted the virtue of simplicity which is central to Lenten practices, both in the kitchen and outside it.

Broccoli Cheddar Soup
2 tablespoons butter
1 small onion, diced
1 cup broccoli stems and florets, chopped
1 clove garlic, peeled and minced
2 cups unseasoned chicken stock
3/4 teaspoon kosher salt
1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1 cup cooked rice
1/2 cup finely chopped broccoli florets
3 ounces cheddar, grated
2 tablespoons heavy cream or half and half

In a large saucepan, heat the butter over medium heat and saute the onion and broccoli stems and chopped florets for about five minutes, or until theonion is translucent. Add the garlic and cook for another 1-2 minutes, or until fragrant. Add the stock and season to taste with salt and pepper. Simmer the soup, covered, for twenty minutes. Puree the soup in a blender and return it to the pot. Add the rice and the remainder of the broccoli and simmer for about five minutes. Finish the soup by stirring in the cheddar and cream and serve hot with crusty bread.

DAILY BREAD: No-knead bread

2009-03-20T09:15:00.011-04:00

Fourth in a series for Lent about bread.

This Lent, I have been searching out the very best recipes for bread and sharing them with you on Fridays. There is an unkneaded bread recipe from the Sullivan Street Bakery which has been floating around ever since Mark Bittman of the New York Times reported on it in his Minimalist column years ago. I've seen Jacques Pepin and the folks at Cooks Illustrated endorse the technique-- very high praise.

The dough uses a tiny amount of yeast and an extremely long period of rising time to create a dough with a crackly crust and lots of air bubbles inside. And in any bread recipe, that is a magical combination. The more yeast is in a dough, the faster it will rise. The longer it is allowed to rise, the larger the air pockets will be. The technique reminded me of the woman who leavens three measures of flour from just a bit of yeast in Matthew 13.

The dough is so wet it pours like melted mozzarella and after it rises for eighteen hours, it smells like a brewery, but I confess, it creates the most professional texture I have ever enjoyed in a homemade loaf. Partially, this is the result of baking in inside a covered stockpot, which traps the moisture escaping from the dough to create steam, perfect for encouraging the crust usually achieved by the kind of professional steam ovens I used to see in action when I worked at Wild Grains Bakery. It’s a great technique and I do plan to use the covered stockpot tip for future loaves.

The actual taste of the bread is very plain, reminiscent of popcorn, but it’s a great platform for grilled cheese or for dipping in soup. A loaf of this unkneaded bread is more like the manna God gave the Israelites in the desert-- it may be plain but at least it is nourishing without requiring much effort.

But I must admit, the effortless process of making this dough left me feeling bored and idle. I like to work bread dough with my hands and feel it come together as my own personal creation. As a baker, and in some sense as a theologian, I guess I'm defending works righteousness—if you want it, you have to participate in making it. My culinary-theological hero, Fr. Robert Farrar Capon, criticizes a culture of expecting perfection without work. He says it is not “our gastronomic destiny to eat like kings while practicing nothing but the most minimal kind of cooking.”

Does food we attentively and actively work to create taste better? Mark Bittman's answer is an emphatic no, and given his popularity, I assume many people would agree. His admirable culinary project is to pare down ingredient lists, equipment and methods to the barest necessities; this bread is an astonishing marvel of his minimalist philosophy. But in my kitchen, where baking bread is a form of spiritual practice (especially during Lent), I wonder if this unkneaded method is really needed?

Here's a bread-baking basic: during the rising time, pockets and bubbles of air form in a wet dough easier than in a stiffer one that contains a higher ratio of flour. The dough with more flour is much easier to knead but is less likely to rise with the desirable air trapped inside the loaf. Ironically, all dough becomes more elastic and easier to knead after a few minutes of kneading. What is sticky and annoyingly stuck to the countertop may become a perfectly supple and smooth ball of dough even without the addition of flour. So this method, where kneading is not necessary at all, and in fact, is not even possible since the dough is so wet, is attractive to bakers who have found kneading a frustrating mess.

After the initial stickiness is overcome (when the gluten has started to form), kneading the dough is enjoyable if the baker can resist adding more flour to the dough in those first few minutes. First, it is satisfying physical exercise for the biceps and forearms, even abdominal muscles and hamstrings if you rock into the dough with your whole body through every push of the wrist. Why would I invite a food processor or stand mixer to steal away an activity that I find so therapeutic, not to mention spiritual?

Again, I have to bring back Fr. Capon to the conversation since we seem to totally agree on the spiritual satisfaction of kneading dough into bread. He explains that kneading “perfects the texture of the bread, and, more important, it is good for your soul. There are few actions you will ever take that have more of the stuff of history in them. A woman with her sleeves rolled up and flour on her hands is one of the more gorgeous stabilities in the world.” This isn’t eroticizing housewives, it’s sanctifying housework.

The dough is ready to rest and rise when it takes on the suppleness and temperature of the hands that have kneaded it and feels like skin: soft, warm, and dry to the touch. Based on that description, what other Christian practice can create such a powerful memorial of Jesus, the bread of life? My aunt tells a story about when she was pregnant and realized the warm little ball of dough she had been caressing and kneading was about the size of her baby inside of her. Bread of life, indeed!

Baking bread is an opportunity to attend to the physical experience of making simple food that nourishes our most basic human need: to be filled and fulfilled. More than just cerebral belief, Christianity is a profoundly intimate and bodily experience: we experience the world which forms our faith through our human bodies, we pray with our human bodies, we love others and serve others with our human bodies. The church community is symbolized as the body of Christ.

I believe in making our everyday experiences, and our daily bread, as holy as this earthly experience allows. What is celebrated on the altar table can be connected to our dinner table at home. Disconnected from daily life, even the most beautiful liturgy becomes dangerously irrelevant. We make our faith just as we create what nourishes us, body and soul. As the prayers of the liturgy of the Eucharist remind the faithful, our spiritual food is bread that is broken, which earth has given and human hands have made. But human hands barely touched this bread to make it. No-knead bread is fine, but it’s unsatisfactory as a Lenten practice.

Perfect Recipe: Ravioli

2009-03-19T15:58:00.009-04:00

The dishes that really impress my guests are often the ones that rely on the simplest ingredients and the greatest technical skill. It’s easy to make an impressive meal out of pricier ingredients, but the mark of a truly competent cook is transforming cheap ingredients into something spectacular. (In other words, rack of lamb will always be an easy showstopper but it’ll always be expensive.) Especially during Lent, when plainer meals are in season, I favor simple food served with impeccable style. Something like creation ex nihilo, or at least nearly nihilo.

One dinner that consistently impresses my guests is homemade ravioli. This version, with a goat cheese and ricotta filling, makes a great Lenten Friday night dinner. Since filled fresh pasta freezes beautifully, I always make a big batch and freeze the majority for later. It’s almost as easy and quick as ordering pizza.

Actually, homemade pasta of any kind still carries with it a certain mystery because most people think making it is a complicated project. Actually, the dough practically makes itself and it requires just one piece of specialty equipment, a pasta roller, which even at $100 isn’t even that expensive when you consider the lifetime of service it promises to provide. The savings from making fresh pasta at home will more than pay off the investment of an authentic hand-crank pasta machine.

My favorite memory of this recipe is from a charity dinner for 22 people I hosted about five years ago. I challenged myself to keep the grocery bill as low as possible because all the proceeds of the meal went to Love Makes a Family, a CT-based non-profit advocacy organization working for equal marriage rights for same-sex couples. I spent a full day rolling out hundreds of cheese ravioli and making a slow-simmered vodka tomato cream sauce. The total cost for a beautiful salad, homemade foccaccia and a plate of ravioli came to just a few dollars per person. I was able to raise so much money for a great organization that night by spending time, instead of cash, on my guests.

Homemade Ravioli

(makes about sixty 1.5-inch by 1.5-inch ravioli)
Fresh pasta:
½ cup (7.5 ounces) semolina flour
1 cup (12.5 ounces) all-purpose flour
3 tablespoon olive oil
5 eggs, beaten

1 teaspoon salt (not coarse salt)
Cheese filling:
6 ounces Chevre
15 ounces Ricotta
2 ounces Parmigiano-Reggiano, grated
One small head garlic (about ten cloves)
1 1/2 teaspoons Kosher salt
¼ teaspoon Lemon zest
¼ teaspoon nutmeg

To make the pasta, mix the flours together on a clean countertop and form a mound with a well in the center. Drop in the oil and eggs and stir, carefully, with a fork, gradually adding more flour to the dough bit at a time until a shaggy ball develops. Knead the dough for five minutes and allow it to rest in a bowl, covered in plastic wrap, for about fifteen minutes. (Alternatively, the mixing and kneading can be achieved in a food processor.) Divide the dough into six or seven pieces and work each piece through a pasta machine to the thinness of the 5 setting.

To make the filling, coat the head of garlic in olive oil and wrap in foil. Roast at 325°F for 20-30 minutes, or until the cloves are soft. Allow the garlic to cool to room temperature. Squeeze the soft roast garlic from the papery skins and mix thoroughly with the cheeses, salt, pepper, zest and nutmeg. The filling can be made days in advance. Other grated cheeses can be substituted as long as they will remain a bit firm when melted.

Plop one-tablespoon blobs of filling, assembly line style, every three inches down the sheet of thinly rolled fresh pasta and “glue” the top sheet to the bottom by painting the edges with water. Carefully use your fingertips to squeeze any air out of the ravioli. Cut out the ravioli into squares and freeze individually on a parchment-lined cookie sheet.

After about thirty minutes, the pasta will be frozen solid and you can flick the ravioli off the parchment and into plastic zipper bags and into a safe spot in the freezer until you’re ready to eat. To cook, boil the ravioli in small batches in rapidly boiling salted water for about three minutes, or until the ravioli have risen to the surfaced and float there for about sixty seconds.

Forced

2009-03-18T09:28:00.005-04:00

Spring will sprout, and with it repentance.
Punctuating winter’s last frozen sentence.
Trees will blossom in a week or two
But I cannot wait for their big debut
Of tiny green leaves and pale pink flowers
Demonstrating nature’s redemptive powers.
So I’ve stolen branches from outside
To see if they’ll bloom where I reside
Coaxed with hot water and plenty of light.

Why does forcing them fill me with delight?

Will he feed his lambs?

2009-03-17T12:19:00.004-04:00

"Like a shepherd he feeds his flock; in his arms he gathers the lambs, Carrying them in his bosom, and leading the ewes with care" (Isaiah 40:11). A bishop is asked to be many things as shepherd to his flock: magisterial communicator, ecclesial enforcer, pastoral guide, and innovative steward of dwindling resources. A recent Commonweal article about New York City's new archbishop, Timothy Dolan, leads me to have hope in the future of my archdiocese.

In his article, he starts with stories about his experience as leader of Catholic Relief Services. He talks about the people he's met, their poverty and difficulty, and the response he, as CRS's leader, is able to offer in the form of direct aid. What excites me is that he starts with experience. Many people, myself included at times, fear bishops and cardinals wander between the cathedral and fundraising functions in long flowing robes escorted by a coterie of ambitious priests with nary a thought as to the faith-shaping experiences that shape the daily lives, and political priorities, of the laity. Instead of giving a cursory nod to experience, it's Archbishop Dolan's captivating starting point in this, and so many articles, which is a comforting sign. He weaves stories of his experience with quotes from pontifical publications, translating the official word from the Vatican into life as its lived. This, too, is an exciting sign of things to come, as we are in greater need than ever of our US church leaders to explain what is really happening in Rome.

CRS has launched an advertising campaign that features an impoverished-looking brown person with a caption referencing Mother Theresa's oft-quoted summary of her incarnational theology of service in Calcutta: "meeting Jesus in the distressing disguise". Archbishop Dolan talks of faraway places where he's seen CRS aid make a difference, like Mother Theresa's India, but I hope he also addresses the poverty I see every day on street corners in New York City. City Harvest reports that one in seven city residents--more than one fourth of whom are children-- now rely on emergency food. How will he lead CRS, and the considerable resources of his own archdiocese, to confront local poverty and hunger? How will Archbishop Dolan feed his flock? Hopefully, with food.

Spiritual Simmer: Minestrone

2009-03-16T23:35:00.012-04:00

Third in a series for Lent on soup.

My friend Rita, who I met in seminary and is now a priest, guided me from being a student who cooks into understanding my theological vocation as intimately tied to nourishment and cooking. She and I put together a reading course about these themes and pitched it to the curriculum committee as a practical ministry course. We set out to cook and serve a series of meals for hungry crowds of seminary students. The first was a community dinner during Lent for about 200 students. We had enthusiasm, but we didn't even have a soup pot.

As I chopped vegetables and simmered the saucy broth in a pot borrowed from the Catholic campus ministry at Saint Thomas More, I thought about who would be served with our soup. I thought about how the simple soup would symbolically and physically nourish the hungry students. I thought about our community's theological diversity-- Catholics, Protestants, non-Christians, too-- and how eating together as a community did not mimic our academic and often tense time together in seminar rooms. When we gathered together to eat simple food and drink cheap wine and beer, we had fun, we smiled, we enjoyed each other's company and our differences seemed to compliment and enrich our conversations. That description sounds idealized, but it really was wonderful, and simple, and for me, transformative.

I remember explaining to my spiritual advisor that making the 2000 ounces of soup for my community felt like the most prayerful offering I'd given during my time in divinity school. When I reminisce about that semester of cooking and studying food and theology, I'm confident I learned more about sacramental nourishment in the kitchen than in the classroom. Or, at least, the grace of both worked together on me to help me understand that to do Eucharistic theology, it's important to believe, on a deep personal level, in the importance of the cerebral and physical hunger that brings us to the altar table together.

Graduate students, some with children wrapped around their calves, lined up with bowls and spoons for the minestrone and for an instant, looked like any lunchtime queue at a soup kitchen (though surely better dressed). And for people who were in the throes of intense study, who may not find themselves ministering on breadlines or at food pantries (though they may have wished they had time to volunteer), it was a powerful image of the universal ethics of hunger. As the room swelled into conversation and laughter and people came back for seconds and thirds, the soup pot was gradually emptied. All ate and were filled with simple food that served as a sacramental reminder for some, and enough fuel to head back to the library for others.

Garden Vegetable Minestrone Soup
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 large (white or yellow) onion, diced
1 cup diced carrots (slightly blanched)
1 cup diced celery

3 cloves garlic, peeled and minced
1 tablespoon kosher salt
2 teaspoon freshly ground white pepper
1 14.5-ounce can diced tomatoes
1 28 ounce can tomato sauce
2 14.5-ounce cans canelli (white) beans
4-5 cup water or stock
1 cup corn (frozen is fine)*
1 cup peas (frozen is fine)*
1 cup green beans, cut in 1 inch pieces (frozen is fine)*
About ¾ pound of any small pasta
1/3 cup fresh chopped herbs, such as parsley, basil, oregano, rosemary and/or thyme
Parmigiano-reggiano, grated or shaved

* I've also used a frozen mix of carrots, peas, corn and green beans and the soup has turned out very well.

In a stockpot, heat the olive oil over medium heat. Sweat (which means saute the onion until translucent but not browned) the mirepoix (onion, celery and carrot), which will take about 5 minutes. Add the garlic, salt and pepper and continue sautéing about 3 minutes longer. Add the tomatoes, water or stock, tomato sauce, beans and corn and bring the soup up to a boil. If you are using dried herbs or any woody herbs like rosemary or thyme, add them now. Simmer for about fifteen to twenty minutes, or until the carrots are softened. While the soup is simmering, cook the pasta in a large pot of salted water until barely al dente, about 4 minutes. Five minutes before serving, add the peas, green beans, pasta and leafy herbs and bring back up to a boil. Simmer for an additional fine to ten minutes, adjust the seasonings and garnish with Parmigiano-reggiano. Serve with crusty bread.

DAILY BREAD: Soda Bread

2009-03-13T11:20:00.006-04:00

Third in a series for Lent about bread.

My father took my brother Patrick and I on a driving trip through Ireland about twelve years ago that has lived on in family lore as the worst trip ever. What lofty ideals he had about bringing his children to visit their ancestral homeland are not known. The trip factually consisted in a week without golf for him (a true shame; he loves links courses), Guinness for us (we were still quite underage), or a day without rain. I remember the cliffs of Moher and the Waterford factory and seeing The Lord of the Dance with Michael Flatley and touring the Bank fo Ireland building as pretty cool, but the endless parade of small towns with identical sweater shops and green valleys full of sheep was interminably boring. And at that time, so were my brother and father. (I was sixteen and a self-centered princess; we've all changed a lot since then.)

We drove from town to town and settled into a triple-en-suite in a different b&b everywhere we landed. The first, Mrs. Quigley's, was tiny and near where we found a bodega-cum-postoffice (so ubiquitous in Ireland), that had Ritz crackers and chunky peanut butter, which we, picky homesick American teenagers, found to be a thrilling snack. I remember the place in the country, which had horses and dark green walls and whole milk yogurt (wow) with fresh cherries for breakfast. We all remember, and still laugh about, Mrs. Flahive's bar in Dingle where the cash register was just a drawer.

But the food I remember most of all, and the calories that probably sustained me throughout the week, was brown bread with butter. It was thick and sweet and dense and until I started making it myself, I hadn't tasted anything like it since. This recipe makes a bread that lasts for over a week, or maybe even longer if it's kept in the fridge. It is excellent with stew but also great toasted with jam. It's a great recipe for a beginner because it's leavened (or raised) with baking soda, not yeast, so the margin or error is minuscule.

Oh, how I would love to take that trip to Ireland now, as an adult, with my family now that we're all grown up! I cannot imagine anything as relaxing as driving through that green scenery or seeing the art of Dublin or hearing live music in a country pub. And I think my sister and my husband, who missed out on the trip last time, absolutely need to see Ireland. Someday, I hope we go back. Until then, there's brown soda bread for remembering.

Brown Soda Bread

10 ounces wheat flour
10 ounces all-purpose unbleached flour
1/2 cup wheat germ
2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking soda
8 tablespoons (1 stick) unsalted butter, cut into small bits
2 cups shaken buttermilk
2 tablespoon molasses
optional: 1 cup raisins or currants and 1 tablespoon caraway seed

Preheat oven to 400°F and grease a loaf pan. In a very large mixing bowl, whisk together all dry ingredients and blend in butter with your fingertips until mixture resembles coarse meal. Make a well in center and add buttermilk and molasses, stirring until a dough forms. I you are including caraway and raisins, add them now. Gently knead the dough in the bowl until smooth, about 2 minutes. Transfer the dough to the prepared loaf pan and bake for about 35-45 minutes, or until the loaf is browned and sounds hollow when tapped.

The Brigids

2009-03-11T14:25:00.006-04:00

For Siobhán

Disregard this shite: fairies, rainbows, parades.
Treasure is passed through tangly braids
From Himself, like an illuminated Kell bird.
Brigid heard Patrick preaching the Word
And together they’re patrons to sturdy-legged saints
Who squeeze holy prayers from humble complaints.

When there was no tea or mash or bread,
And families were sleeping four to a bed,
Faith grew strong though children died.
Was it grace alone kept the Irish alive?
Will I stand to inherit my ancestor’s soul,
Though I’ve never lived a day on the dole?

Folklore rises from fourth century stones.
Was Brigid ordained? The facts are not known--
If she vested and preached and sacramentally fed.
Couls she really pray Jesus into wine and bread?
Was she accepted by those whom she served?
Did she wear vestments that bulged where she curved?

Did her tummy get knotted and tell her what to do?
Did she flex angry muscles when she needed to?
For faith, truth is not always required.
We believe she must have been inspired
With one charming as hell disposition.
(She was the first sainted Irish politician.)

Across the water from the island monastic
Brigid intercesses for a lass ecclesiastic
Who is Irish, by way of other places.
Who sings, preaches, feasts and embraces
The hungry, the stubborn, the lonesome and queer,
Saying: “You are very welcome here.”

Spiritual Simmer: Stew

2009-03-09T09:34:00.012-04:00

Second in a series for Lent about soup.

Stew is the thick wool socks of the winter menu. There is a certain time of year that all foods play a starring role, and the boring gray cold of midwinter is when stew should be, needs to be, wants to be made in large quantities. My butcher sells whole chuck roasts, bones and all, for about two bucks a pound and once a year I indulge myself and cut the meat away from the bones and make real homemade gelatinous beef stock.

Comfort foods in February are sort of dangerous so close to spring when the heavy clothes will begin their hibernation, but they’re what we crave, so we give in. But you have to at least see my point that it’s a little weird that we eat such heavy foods when the impetus to get outside and work off the calories of a heavy meal is at an all-time low for the year. Nobody wants to take a long stroll in the cold bleak darkness after dinner in February. Once I’ve put the winter coat in the closet when I come home from work, it doesn’t come out again until morning.

The first stew I conquered was Julia Child’s Boeuf Bourguignon and though I’ve experimented with the genre since then, I have circled back around and can now profess my belief in this recipe as the grandmother of them all. What doesn’t taste better bathed for a few hours in wine, cognac, herbs and rich stock? Yes, Beef in Guinness Stew is fun in March and Carbonade Flamande is a study in minimalist flavors, both are so so so good, but nothing beats Julia’s boeuf.

The most common misconception about stew is that it’s cheap. This is absolutely false. Yes, chuck beef is cheaper than, say, a rib roast, but if you don’t have the luxury of my cheap butcher, stew beef will run four or five bucks a pound (which is at least double the price of chicken, the uncontested champion of cheap protein). What we should say about stew is that it’s cheaper than a steak. Of course, these two dishes aren’t really comparable—they scratch such different sorts of itches—but they come from the same big animal nonetheless.

The recipe I've linked to above tells most of the story. I always use more fresh thyme-- I throw in 6-7 sprigs-- and I usually use thick-cut bacon instead of blanched salt pork. Actually, sometimes I just sear the beef in leftover bacon grease, which imparts a subtle smoky pork flavor without the extra fat of the whole lardons (which I usually find too chewy and fatty in the final stew). I also leave the onions and carrots in the stew (I think Julia did, too) and skip step 34 completely.

I've learned that it's really important to ear the beef chunks in a surprisingly hot pan. The more color the stew meat takes on during the searing process, the more flavor will be in the final stew. At a very high temperature, the beef with sear without cooking all the way through. Of course, it's also very important to sear the meat in batches-- an overcrowded pan will steam, rather than sear, the meat, making the formation of a browned crust impossible.

In addition to tomato paste, I also add about a cup of cognac when I deglaze the pan. It adds a depth of flavor to the finished product. Plus, it's fun to flambe!

On the right, you're seeing one of my best tricks for garlic-- making a paste with a microplane zester. It assures that there will not be any surprising chunks of garlic in the final stew.

Beef stew is tough and stringy when it is undercooked, not overcooked. This defies all the rules of cooking beef, but then again, beef chuck responds to cooking in a different way than the steak cuts. Chuck is layered with connective tissue and collagen, which needs to be brought to a high temperature-- 180 to 200°F-- before it begins to give in and get soft and delicious. So the stew must be kept at a bare sinner, like in a 300°F oven for two hours, before the beef relaxes into the fall-apart stew we all love. If the beef doesn't yield into tender chunks when pressed with a fork, put it back in the oven. This goes for pot roasts, too!

To thicken the stew, I use a beurre manie, which is an easy butter and flour paste. In equal parts, mash room temperature butter and flour together with the back of a spoon in a medium mixing bowl. Whisk some of the hot stew liquid into the paste (about one cup per tablespoon of paste) and add the thickened liquid back to the pot. Simmer vigorously for about ten minutes for the flour to achieve full thickening power. This method will assure the flour will not form lumps in the liquid-- it's also great for making gravy with stock, wine and pan drippings.

DAILY BREAD: Rosemary Oatmeal

2009-03-06T09:14:00.015-05:00

Second in a series for Lent about bread.

I developed this recipe when I was living in Princeton, NJ and was eagerly anticipating Ruth Reichl's campus visit to give a talk on the history of food. She is the editor of Gourmet magazine and has written three memoirs of her life in the food world. She is my hero. But all day before the talk, I felt like I needed to make her something. I thought about what would be a good gift, about what would be delicious but simple, and about what ingredients I had on hand in the house. I decided to make her a loaf of this delicious bread and as it baked, I wrote her a note of gratitude for her wonderful books and for her magazine, which have filled me with so much inspiration. When the talk was over, I nervously gave her the loaf of bread and felt that although it was sort of a strange gift, it was also a great expression of what I'm all about: bread as thankfulness.

Rosemary Oatmeal Sandwich Bread
1 package instant dry yeast (2 ¼ teaspoons)
5 cups white or wheat flour (25 ounces), or a mixture of both
2 cups warm water (100-115 degrees)
3 tablespoon clover honey
1 tablespoon salt
1/3 c. unsalted hulled sunflower seeds
2/3 c. rolled oats, plus more to garnish
2 tablespoons dried rosemary, crumbled
1 tablespoon unsalted butter, melted

Fill a glass measuring cup with two cups of warm water and add the honey and salt, stirring to dissolve. In a large bowl, combine flours and yeast. Add the wet ingredients and mix the dough together with clean hands.

When the mixture has formed a shaggy ball, turn it out onto a lightly floured countertop and knead for ten minutes. If, after three minutes, the mixture still resembles a shaggy ball or is sticking to the hands, add more flour or water as needed. Near the end of the kneading time, add the oats, seeds, and rosemary, combining carefully. Set the dough into a buttered bowl and cover tightly with plastic wrap. Or place the dough on the counter and cover with a large bowl.

Place the bowl in a warm place to rise. The dough will rise to double in bulk after 1-1/2 hours. As it rises, preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Punch down the risen dough and shape into two equally sized balls, the shape of toy footballs. Place them in buttered loaf pans and brush with butter and top with extra oats or rosemary.

Allow the loaves to rise again, about 30 minutes. Bake until top and bottom are golden and the loaf sounds hollow when tapped, about 45 minutes. This bread freezes very well if wrapped carefully in plastic wrap and placed in a plastic zipper bag. It also makes great dinner rolls.

Perfect Recipe: Ice Cream

2009-03-05T09:09:00.007-05:00

My first job was in an ice cream parlor, and though I worked there for many years, I never got sick of it. Endlessly versatile, simple or complex, and delicious in a sundae or a shake, ice cream is just one of the best foods ever. Like so many other foods, I started making ice cream myself to see if I could replicate my favorite flavors at home and for friends. My craziest ice cream experience, so far, was making about a hundred ice cream sandwiches for a graduation party a few years ago. Everything was homemade. My husband and I woke up early and stayed up late to keep our two little freezer canisters in nearly constant spinning motion so all the ice cream would be frozen in time for the party. We made mint ice cream with chocolate cookies, lemon ice cream with gingersnaps and strawberry ice cream with shortbread. I couldn't possibly choose a favorite.

Making the ice cream base is as simple as making a thin custard and from there, the flavor combinations are endless. Some flavors-- like ground espresso, vanilla bean, lemon zest or cinnamon-- are steeped into the milk and cream before the sugar and egg yolks are whisked in. Fruit puree, usually raw and seedless, or melted chocolate are added after the custard has finished cooking and has cooled a bit. Nuts, chocolate chunks and caramel swirl are added while the base is being frozen in the machine.

Vanilla Ice Cream
1 cup whole milk
1 vanilla bean
1 cup heavy cream
1/2 cup sugar
6 egg yolks

Scald the milk and cream in a saucepan. Scalding the milk means heating it gentle over medium heat until tiny bubbles form all around the edge. Scalding is the step before the milk will begin to boil. Slice the vanilla bean lengthwise and scrape the seeds from the pod. Add the pod and seeds to the milk and cream and turn off heat.

Cover the saucepan and steep for 30 minutes. Remove the vanilla pod and discard. Return the cream mixture to a simmer. In a separate bowl, whisk the egg yolks and sugar. Add the hot cream mixture to the eggs slowly, whisking constantly to keep the eggs from scrambling, and then return the mixture to the pan over low heat. Cook the mixture for about five minutes, whisking constantly, or until slightly thicker.

Pour into a bowl and refrigerate until very cold (overnight is best). If you are adding any additional flavors, like strawberry, shown on the left, add abut 3/4 cup of strained puree at this time. Freeze the ice cream according to your ice cream maker’s instructions. For most models, this requires pouring the chilled base into the frozen machine basin and spinning until it is the consistency of soft-serve before freezing (overnight is best). A pint of cream base will produce about a quart of frozen ice cream.

For a friend's birthday, I made my first ice cream bombe, which was so much fun and such a showy dessert. First, I scooped chocolate clementine ice cream into a small bowl, lined with plastic wrap, to make the center layer. When it was frozen, I scooped vanilla cognac ice cream into a medium bowl, lined with plastic, until it was about half full. I removed the plastic wrap from the center layer and plopped it into the medium bowl of vanilla cognac ice cream and smoothed out the top.

I repeated the same procedure for the outside layer, strawberry elderflower, and frozen the whole thing overnight. Lining the bowls with plastic wrap made removing the ice cream from the bowls really easy. I used a set of glass nesting bowls from Williams Sonoma to make three layers that fit into one another perfectly.

Once the bombe was frozen sold, I inverted it onto a cake plate and unmolded it from the bowl and removed the plastic. As I coated the outside of the bombe with melted chocolate, the chocolate froze to the ice cream, so I worked really quickly. But you could even just serve it like this, without the chocolate. Or you could cover it in a thin layer of whipped cream.

I covered the whole thing in toasted chopped hazelnuts (which also hid all my frosting mistakes) and served it in big wedges. I dipped the knife in hot water between slices which made it very easy to cut through the frozen ice cream. It was such a great alternative to a birthday layer cake and I really didn't think it was much more complicated. You could also make this days and days before the party, unlike a cake.

I've seen so many "recipes" for bombes that use store-bought ice cream, which seems like such a ridiculous fake-out when making homemade ice cream is fun and you get to experiment with flavors.

Does carrying this cross make me look fat?

2009-03-04T12:00:00.005-05:00

What to give up is a big decision--
Cocktails or dessert or television.
The penitential fasting of the Orthodox East
Is said to heighten the taste of the feast.
Your quest to be skinny is not holy.
Don’t give up steak and guacamole
Just to be ready for bathing suit season.
(Or, at least, don’t make Lent your reason
To eat less pizza and processed food
So you can look better in the nude.)
Lent is a time to pray peace out of quiet.
Jesus is not excited about your Lenten diet.

Spiritual Simmer: Bouilliabaise

2009-03-02T06:58:00.005-05:00

The first in a series for Lent about soup.

Bouillabaise is a fish stew that uses traditional Provencal flavors-- saffron, fennel, tomatoes, herbs-- to make the savory broth the seafood swim in as they poach. It's a great dinner for a Lenten Friday night since it is meatless. It may seem that this rich soup misinterprets the rule about abstaining from meat on Fridays during Lent, but in fact, I think the abstinence rule isn't only about sacrifice. Instead, I think the idea is to encourage Catholics to make a little intention, to remember, to make one change in the routine of their daily lives. It's an old tradition, but I like it. And any excuse to make this amazing meal is totally worth it. So have fun, and pretend you're a ancient fisherperson with some great leftovers from your daily catch.

To learn about bouillabaisse, I consulted every encyclopedia and cookbook I could find. The endless disagreements in the culinary world about what belongs in a proper bouillabaisse are tedious for the American cook, since most of the local fish used for a true bouillabaisse are not available in our markets here. Whereas I'm usually very traditional, with bouillabaisse I make an exception and I use whatever shellfish I can find-- clams, shrimp, lobster, mussels-- and a bit of cod or firm mild fish. The essence of bouillabaisse is the combination of cheap and plentiful seafood and a long-simmered broth, which I can accomplish by adapting the traditional ingredients to what is cheap and plentiful here. Maybe it's not a true bouillabaisse, but it's delicious.

New York City Bouillabaisse
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 onion, peeled and thinly sliced*
1 bulb fennel, thinly sliced*
3-4 cloves garlic, peeled and thinly sliced
1/4-1/2 teaspoon saffron threads
1/4 teaspoon orange or lemon zest
2 cups dry white wine
1 quart shrimp stock
1 14-ounce can tomatoes, pureed smooth in a blender or food processor
1 teaspoon kosher salt
1 teaspoon white pepper
optional: 1 pound baby Yukon gold potatoes, thinly sliced*
1 pound shrimp, peeled and deveined
2 pounds clams, cleaned and disgorged**
2 pounds mussels, cleaned and disgorged**
1/2 pound firm mild fish, skin removed and cut into cubes
Fresh flat-leaf Italian parsley, for garnish
*I use a mandoline to slice all the ingredients to the same thickness-- about 1/16 of an inch.
**To clean and disgorge mollusks, place them in a bowl of very cold water with a few tablespoons of flour or cornmeal. After about ten minutes, the little mollusks will hve eaten and degorged the indigestible flour along with all the gritty sand left in their shells. Drain, rinse, and reservuntil ready for use.
Heat the olive oil over medium heat in a stockpot and saute the onion, fennel, and garlic slowly, until translucent. Add the saffron, zest and wine and simmer until the wine reduces by about half. Add the tomatoes and stock and bring to a simmer. Season with salt and pepper. If you are using potatoes, add them at this point. Add more water if necessary to cover all the vegetables. After the broth has simmered for about twenty minutes, turn up the heat to high, add all the seafood and cover the pot. (Add the shrimp and fish first and the clams and mussels on top.) The steam from the broth should force the clams open in about 5 minutes. When the clams have opened and the shrimp are nearly opaque, the bouillabaisse is ready. Serve sprinkled with parsley, a squeeze of lemon and a drizzle of good olive oil. Crusty bread is a necessity to soak up the delicious broth.

DAILY BREAD: Foccacia

2009-02-27T09:13:00.010-05:00

First in a series for Lent about bread.

I love recipes that multi-task. Like the cinnamon roll dough that can also be brioche, challah, cinnamon raisin swirl bread or a King Cake, my pizza dough is equally versatile. As thin-crust pizza, it only requires a quick rise in a warm spot before it's loaded with toppings and baked at a high temperature. But if the dough is placed in a generously oiled pan, like a 8-inch by 8-inch baking dish, and allowed to rest and rise and get airy on the inside, it will transform itself into foccaccia with pockets of yeasty air bubbles and lots of flavor. The dough may need two or three hours to get really airy, so allow plenty of time. If the dough has been frozen, it may need even longer, so don't rush it. To flavor the foccaccia, I just toss some fresh herbs like rosemary and thyme on the top, a little sprinkle of coarse sea salt and fresh ground black pepper and bake it at 450°F for about ten to twelve minutes, or until golden and beautiful. To make garlic focaccia, toast thinly sliced garlic cloves with a little oil in a medium-hot skillet until lightly browned and very aromatic. Sprinkle the garlic chips on top of the foccaccia before baking.

Kitchen Christian

2009-02-26T12:45:00.005-05:00

Keep the Feast is giving up booze for Lent. So on Fridays, I'll offer a recipe for good homemade bread instead of a cocktail. Bread and wine share a common element-- yeast-- critical for fermentation that allows alcohol to develop in wine and airy pockets in bread. This Lent, we'll devote Fridays to bread instead of wine-- keeping the fast instead of the feast until Easter. Additionally, we'll focus on soup every Monday because the simmering soup pot of my winter home kitchen helps me cultivate a simpler, more prayerful, monastery mindset. Bread and soup are two foods that foster meditative, intentional practices with an ascetic edge, perfect for Lent.

I've been baking bread for years but only recently feel I've become any good at it. When I started baking bread, I had some early successes-- white sandwich bread from my 1964 edition of the Joy of Cooking is a recipe I remember baking with, well, joy-- which helped me gain the confidence which carried me through the occasional frustrations that came later. Bread is simple: flour, yeast, water, and salt. But it is the conditions, not the ingredients, that matter most-- time, temperature, texture, and human touch. Bread, like life, is the careful balance and attention to the particularities of environment.

When I was a graduate student in New Haven, I threw away pounds and pounds of bread dough that never rose. I'd wait hours and hours, even overnight, for the dough to rise, but it never did. I tried fresh yeast and organic flour, but it couldn't create even a little bubble. I was studying Eucharistic theology for the first time and I so deeply wanted to create a beautiful loaf of bread in my own hearth with my own little dinner table altar, but it could not be done. I was expecting something out of a cartoon: the anthropomorphized dough pushing the lid off the bowl ready to be wrangled into the oven, but my dough was more bashful. I created mounds of terrible unrisen playdough. Finally, unexpectedly, grace came to me, and I realized the problem was the tapwater, which was too alkaline for the yeast to live. Without water, there is no life. So I made bread with bottled water for three years and I test the water every time I move.

My love affair with bread started before I ever baked a loaf myself. For two years in college I worked the counter at Wild Grains Bakery in Madison, Wisconsin. I remember it as the best tasting, and best smelling, bread I've ever had-- crispy French boules and baguettes, spongy honey whole wheat, deep sweet rye, and airy and addictive ciabatta. I remember Mikael, who communicated with me through the language of warm buttery brioche rolls and gigantic Russian smiles. (Who needed English?) Every Friday, families from the local Jewish community would line up for fresh challah and I, a Catholic philosophy student, learned about their rituals through their stories and gratitude for our beautiful braided loaves. During those years, I learned about the mysterious centrality of nourishment as a dominant theme of all religious experience.

In the bakery and in my own kitchen, I've learned that yeast is a miracle and the stuff of sacramental mystery. These Friday bread recipes will be like a pilgrimage through my holy loaves and breads I have loved and shared in communion with friends. Even though Lenten prayers focus on the long walk to Calvary, the resurrection is not far away. The bread of life has life, breathing yeasty air in bubbles and growing as it rises along with our Lenten intentions and, eventually, with Christ out of the tomb and back into life. But during Lent, we wait for the rise.

Ash Wednesday

2009-02-25T09:21:00.004-05:00

Because I do not hope to turn again?
But are we not all made of hope?
Nothing but turning, again and again.
This, neither my first nor my last fast,
A fixed point around which the hoping swirls
Springing metanoia from a spiral curl.

Anoint my head with compost,
Mark me with a cross of rotten scraps
Of last year’s feasts and diversions.
Holy water and praise words gone,
replaced by gray skies and early nightfall--
We simmer, we concentrate.

An accumulated heap of critcism: a life,
To be gathered and burned and scattered.
And unto dust the pile of effort shall return,
But from where did it come?
It was never holy work. Or was it?
Yes, teach us to sit still. (And wait.)

Laissez les bon temps rouler!

2009-02-24T13:28:00.032-05:00

Gumbo, as a dish and as a cooking process and a cultural tradition, is one of the finest examples of how the liturgical calendar leads the kitchen calendar to encourage the home cook to be more spiritually conscious. On Fat Tuesday, or Mardi Gras, the day before Lent officially kicks off on Ash Wednesday, the Christian household should empty itself of all rich foods that would tempt them during the self-deprivation season of Lent. So the gumbo pot is filled with meat and fat and shrimp, making a thick, larder-emptying stew. In the lifecycle of the church, from death through resurrection to life again, Gumbo is the perfect death-row final meal to feast on before Lent begins.

Cajun and Creole cuisine blends international ingredients, French technique and American execution. Gumbo is the main course of the mixed-race, postcolonial European, Acadian exile, Native American and unidentifiably blended African culture that, like the church, is better for having simmered in diversity. The ingredients tell the story—okra from Africans, filé from the Native Americas, roux from the French, peppers and tomatoes from the Spanish.

Creole and Cajun food are the spicy, lazy, imperfect, rustic dishes, the American interpretations, of the continental forefathers. Like jazz, another American invention, Cajun and Creole dishes all riff on the same chords—sausage, shrimp, rice, crab, oysters, okra, tomatoes and spices. There are a few master recipes which make up the backbone of this delicious cuisine. Gumbo is a roux-based stew that starts with the holy trinity and can contain any type, or many types, of meat and seafood. It is served ladled over white rice. Jambalaya is a saucy pilaf of rice seasoned with tomatoes and the holy trinity and can also contain any type, or many types, of meat and seafood. Jambalaya does not contain a roux. Etouffee usually goes not contain a roux and comes from the word for smothered. It’s a sauce containing the holy trinity that smothers, or stews, meat or seafood. Etouffee is served over rice to soak up the sauce. All these dishes are traditionally sprinkled with scallions and parsley and served with hot sauce on the side.

The trinity is a mixture of diced white or yellow onions, green bell pepper, and celery in about equal proportions. Lots of garlic is added to transform the trinity into the holy trinity. It is cooked in the roux before the liquid is added to the gumbo pot and is the basic flavor of the stew. The trinity is an adaptation of mirepoix, swapping green bell pepper for the carrot, which, when added to the classic French roux, strengthens the French foundation of Creole cuisine.

Filé powder is a Native American ingredient, it is made from ground sassafras leaves and is widely available in southern markets, and even in other areas of the country. (I can buy it at Fairway here in NYC.) It does not need to be cooked and it does not impart a dominant flavor. It is sprinkled on the rice before the gumbo is ladled into the bowl to thicken the stew very slightly.
It should be used in place of okra, not in addition, because okra will thicken the gumbo significantly, especially if the gumbo sits overnight. Only one ingredient—okra or filé powder—should be used for Gumbo and since the word gumbo comes from the African word for okra, it is a common choice.

"Season your seasonings" is a phrase I learned from a friend of a friend fro Louisiana, whose grandmother is their family resource for Louisiana cuisine. It refers to the generous amount of salt, pepper, and cayenne necessary to flavor the sauce of the gumbo. The seasonings a sprinkled on the trinity as it cooks in the roux, and once the sauce has simmered a while and the flour has been fully abcorbed into the sauce, may need to be adjusted. I am always amazed a how much seasoning a good gumbo needs, especially if the andouille is mild.

I always make Cajun/Creole food to celebrate Fat Tuesday, but I try to choose something with a roux. To be honest, making my Mardi Gras roux, standing at the stove, is usually when I finally decide on my Lenten promise. Which, this year, is to write on my blog more often! Making a roux can be a spiritual experience, as many people in the Catholic wards of New Orleans can attest. A roux is two ingredients—fat and flour—simmered and scraped and cooked in a cast iron skillet to the desired color. Roux tastes like dirt but makes anything cooked in it taste amazing.

Some people measure the type of roux by elapsed cooking time—a six-pack roux is a dark roux that is made while the cook drinks six beers—but roux is usually classified by its color. As the flour in the roux cooks, it browns and, like caramel, gradually goes from a blond colored paste to the color of sand, then almond, then peanut butter, and finally milk chocolate. The complex flavor of a slowly cooked chocolate roux adds the indescribably delicious flavor to gumbo. It cannot, and should not, be rushed, especially on Fat Tuesday, when the prayerful Christian practices of Lent get a jump start. Like risotto, like marinara it takes time but not much attention, leaving the mind to wander to spiritual places.

Filé Gumbo
12 ounces smoked andouille sausage, diced
¾ cup rendered fat (if sausage grease is not enough, add enough bacon fat or vegetable oil or canola oil or lard or butter to make about 3/4 cup)
1 cup all-purpose flour
1 medium yellow or white onion, peeled and diced
1 green pepper, diced
4 large ribs celery, diced
2 tablespoons garlic, peeled and minced
2 teaspoons salt
1 teaspoon black pepper
1 tablespoon Tony Chachere’s seasoning blend
(or substitute 1 additional teaspoon each salt, cayenne and black pepper)
1 tablespoon Italian seasoning blend
(or substitute 1 teaspoon each dried basil, oregano and parsley)
1 bay leaf
optional: 1 teaspoon cayenne
1 12-ounce beer (I use Miller High Life)
4 cups (1 quart/32 ounces) unsalted shrimp* or chicken stock
1 14.5-ounce can crushed tomatoes or 1 ½ cup tomato juice
2 cups cooked chicken or turkey, shredded
1 pound peeled and deveined Gulf shrimp, any size
Ground filé powder** (for serving) or ½ pound sliced okra
Garnishes: chopped parsley, scallions, Tabasco
2 ½ cups dried long grain white rice

* To make shrimp stock, simmer the raw shells and tails with 4 cups water for one hour and strain

** Filé powder is ground sassafras leaves and thickens the sauce. It has no substitute, but sliced okra is another traditional thickening ingredient that can be used instead of filé in gumbo.

In a well-seasoned cast iron skillet, brown sausage and remove to a plate, leaving the rendered fat in the pot. Season the chicken with salt and pepper and brown the pieces in the fat. Remove the chicken to a separate plate. If necessary, add fat (or oil or butter or lard) to make about 3/4 cup and heat until melted before sprinkling in the flour.

To make the roux, use a flat wooden spatula to move around the floury paste on the bottom of the pot, constantly stirring over medium low heat until the flour gradually takes on more and more brown color. After about 20-30 minutes, it will be the color of milk chocolate.

Add the holy trinity (onion, pepper, celery, garlic) and sauté 5-7 minutes. The vegetables will soften as they are covered in roux. Season your seasonings (translation: add the salt, cayenne and pepper, plus Italian seasoning & Tony Chachere’s seasoning blend).

Add the stock, beer, water, tomatoes and bay leaf and stir thoroughly to incorporate the roux into the liquid. Bring to a boil and simmer 10 minutes. Add the chicken (or turkey), browned sausage and okra (if using instead of filé) and simmer 30 minutes.

Taste and adjust the seasonings accordingly. The gumbo should be the consistency of a thick soup or a thin stew, so add water if the roux or the okra has made it too thick. While the gumbo is simmering, prepare the rice according to the package instructions.

Once the rice is cooked, remove the bay leaf and add the shrimp to the gumbo and simmer for 5 minutes. To serve the gumbo, mound some rice in a bowl and sprinkle with a bit of filé powder, if using. Ladle the gumbo over the rice and garnish with parsley, scallions and Tabasco to taste.

EAT THIS NOW: King Cake

2009-02-23T12:21:00.015-05:00

The pantry-emptying tradition of Mardi Gras, or Fat Tuesday, marks the high holy day of excess and indulgence. And while critical observers may view Bourbon Street intemperance as the opposite of Christian behavior, the traditional excesses are at least based on sound theology. In centuries long past, people gave everything up for Lent instead of one token sacrifice, as is the modern practice.

Mardi Gras was the “use it or lose it” day to bake up cakes and sweets from all the eggs, butter, and sugar left in the larder. A festal pancake dinner is still traditional for many Christians on Shrove Tuesday. Lent is a time of deprivation and Mardi Gras is the last day of opportunity, so the theologically-oriented kitchen will create a party from anything that may offer too much temptation in the long Lenten weeks to come.

Full of eggs, sugar and butter, the King Cake isn’t a cake at all, but is a rich, sweet, eggy brioche dough, like a cinnamon roll, baked into a braided ring with a small plastic figurine hidden inside. It is decorated with royal icing in the colors of the Mardi Gras carnival: green, gold and purple, symbolizing rebirth, wealth and regal power. But the tradition goes back even further into history and into the liturgical calendar, to the beginning of the Carnival season, Epiphany, when the three Magi visited the Christ Child and his family in Bethlehem bringing gold, frankinsense and myhhr, three gifts befitting a king. Fat Tuesday is both an ending and a beginning, and the round ring of the King Cake symbolizes the eternal cycle of the Christian year.

The partygoer whose piece contains the symbol is crowned the King of the Carnival and is responsible for baking the King Cake next year. Of course, my friends impressively avoided the piece with the baby Jesus and once again I was once again named the King, which means the King Cake recipe stays with me for another year. And actually, I’m delighted, because it is so easy to make because I just use my cinnamon roll dough.

After the first rise, divide the dough into three equally-sized pieces, which I stretch into long ropes (each about one foot long). After a ten-minute rest, stretch each ropes to about eighteen inches and braid them together, tucking the ends together to form a circle. At this point, the baby Jesus figurine should be tucked inside the dough (a nut or dried bean is a good substitute). The second rise happens when the King Cake is on the baking sheet and the oven is preheating. Eggwash the puffy dough and bake at 350°F for about 30 minutes, or until golden brown.

I make challah from the same recipe and technique (one long braid instead of the ring) and sprinkle sesame seeds on the egg wash. This bread is amazing fresh, but if your loaf goes a little stale before you finish it, it makes incredible French toast. Speaking of French toast, the same dough in a cinnamon swirl variation makes is also wonderful.

Cinnamon swirl bread can be made from the same cinnamon roll dough-- after the first rise, spread a half recipe of the dough to about 12-in x 12-in square, smear with softened butter, sprinkle with cinnamon and sugar (in equal amounts) and raisins if you'd like.

Roll up and bake, seam side down and eggwashed, in a loaf pan after about a 45-minute second rise. From one recipe for cinnamon rolls, you can also make broche rolls, challah, cinnamon bread—all delicious options! You can also play around with the original recipe, adding toasted pecans, swapping some or all of the cinnamon for cardamom or using brown sugar instead of white sugar in the swirl.

Drink it up

2009-02-20T12:29:00.004-05:00

My amazing friend Megan, whose talent for home bartending is second to none, found herself inspired with a bunch of leftovers and nearly empty bottles in her liquor cabinet. There's a cocktail called a Calimocho she had heard about-- half and half red wine and cola-- that she used as her base. She also added a bit of Amaro and a bit of Nux Alpina Walnut Liqueur. I cannot imagine you have these items around your house, but if you do, try it! In the spirit of Mardi Gras, clean out the bar and concoct something new before Lent begins!

Recipe

2009-02-18T12:18:00.004-05:00

What am I supposed to do with this
old yellow notecard, except reminisce
about when I needed recipes and books
And a stable full of television cooks
to teach me what took years to discover:
That I was born to be a food lover.

Perfect Recipe: Frosting

2009-02-12T09:57:00.010-05:00

There are a few convenience foods that people should really stop buying, like frozen pie crust, salad dressing and canned frosting. I admit, seven minute frosting and buttercream are sort of tricky, nothing could be easier than cream cheese frosting. It's a little tangy, a little sweet, and really, really simple.

To make the frosting, soften 1 part cream cheese and 2 parts butter (I usually leave both out on the counter for about 6 hours or overnight). Whip it in the mixer on high with the whisk attachment with a bit of vanilla extract and add confectioner's sugar until it becomes the thick, airy consistency of frosting. For a pound of butter and a half pound (eight-ounce) container of cream cheese, I use at least one pound of confectioner's sugar. The good news is that the frosting cannot be overbeaten-- it just gets fluffier and fluffier!

Everyone knows the frosting is the best part of the cupcake, but you'll need something to go below this delicious cap of fluffy frosting, so here's my red velvet cake recipe. Red velvet cupcakes are just chocolate cupcakes that are dyed red for some sort of Southern reason. Leave out the food coloring, and these are great chocolate cupcakes. To frost them, you'll need 1 pound butter, 1/2 pound cream cheese, 1 pound confectioner's sugar and 1 teaspoon vanilla. You can also substitute Marscarpone for the cream cheese for an Italian twist.

Red Velvet Cupcake
10 ounces all-purpose flour
1/2 cup Dutch-process cocoa powder (measured, not weighed)
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 sticks (8 ounces) unsalted butter, room temperature
1 1/2 cups sugar
3 large eggs
1 cup well-shaken buttermilk
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 tablespoon red food coloring

Prepare a muffin tin with paper liners or spray with Baker's Joy. Preheat the oven to 350°F. Sift together the first five ingredients three times and set aside. In the bowl of a mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, cream the butter and sugar until fluffy and light, about five minutes. Add the eggs, one at a time, and beat until incorporated, scraping down the sides of the bowl as needed. In a small bowl, mix together the buttermilk, vanilla and food coloring. Alternatively, add wet and dry ingredients, beginning and ending with the dry ingredients. Pour the batter into 24 muffin cups and bake for 22 minutes.

Expectations (A haiku)

2009-02-11T15:24:00.001-05:00

Pretty good is all
we should expect from berries
in February.

EAT THIS NOW: Avocado

2009-02-09T12:27:00.007-05:00

Everybody eats turkey at Thanksgiving. Everybody eats cake on their birthday. Everybody eats guacamole during the Superbowl. Sometimes seasonality is about what's right, not ripe. The Superbowl has nothing to do with the Christian calendar, but just to show my appreciation for seasonal foods of the American household, here is my guacamole recipe. And since competition seems to be in the air, I will say it’s the best damn guacamole ever.

Guacamole
2 avocados, cut in half, pit removed, flesh scooped out with a spoon
¼ - ½ teaspoon Kosher salt (to taste)
¼ teaspoon cumin
1 clove garlic, minced
1 tablespoon fresh lime juice
¼ cup red onion, diced
¼ cup tomatoes, seeded and diced
2 tablespoons cilantro, chopped
optional: minced Poblano, Jalapeno or Serrano chile (ascending order according to heat)

Mash the avocado in a bowl with the salt, cumin, garlic and lime juice. Fold in the tomato, onion, cilantro and chile if desired.

STOVETOP BLACKBOARD: Risotto

2009-02-05T09:58:00.008-05:00

I think in the back of my mind, I started this blog to write about risotto. It is the perfect spiritual cooking experience. Like Christian prayer, it takes no skill but is improved with experience. Like Christian ethics, it is based on foundational principles and is mysteriously more complex than its basic ingredients. Like Christian theology, it takes a attentive eye directed on the main idea and spending lots of passive time caressing the details.

Almost every risotto ingredient can be found around my kitchen at all times—the house is always stocked with Arborio rice, homemade stock, herbs, butter and parmigiano-reggiano. From there, it takes just a little scrounging around to find some flavors—peas and shrimp from the freezer, a shallot and garlic from my countertop bowl of potatoes and papery-skinned things, maybe some mushrooms from the fridge or even dried from the pantry. It can be made at any time but not at a moment’s notice. Risotto is a delicious investment and it comes from what’s around.

I am no good at carving out time for prayer or meditation. I admire people who can stop and sit and say their prayers in the midst of daily life—I have never had this charism. I’m much more of a multiple burners sort of person—prayer in action, prayer in life, prayer at all times but not usually by itself. I think that’s another reason I love liturgical prayer and am still a church-going person-- there’s no cell phone, no email to check, no cooking, no picking up after the house, no paper and pen. But prayer, for me, happens more often out of church as in one.

I say prayers at the stove. I chop onions, I contemplate my questioning heart; I season the salmon, I think my thoughts with God; I slice the beef, I dream my dreams; I simmer my sauce, I simmer inside. Risotto is twenty minutes of just looking at rice absorb liquid, so my mind goes around to places it hasn’t had time to go. That, to me, is prayer. Stilted, interrupted prayers, but they are my own and I no longer try to change them the way I did when I was a young student and I thought prayer had to be structured and located and intentional. God is always, but especially, with me when I acknowledge the sacred presence and continue the conversation that most often happens in the restorative action of my little tiny kitchen chapel.

Mushroom Risotto
2 tablespoons olive oil
2 tablespoons (1/4 stick) unsalted butter
1 cup (3 ounces) mushrooms (crimini or shittake), stems removed and diced
1 ounce mixed dried mushrooms*
1 cups hot water
½ cup shallot, peeled and minced
2 cloves garlic, peeled and minced
1 cup Arborio rice
¾-1 cup white wine
1 teaspoon kosher salt
½ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1 teaspoon fresh thyme leaves
1 1/2 cups unsalted chicken stock
½ cup freshly grated parmigiano-reggiano
2 tablespoons unsalted butter
* Dried Porcini would be divine, but expensive-- they're musky, meaty delicious dried mushrooms and in small quantities are affordable indulgences. Sometimes I grind them to a powder in a coffee bean grinder or spice mill and add the powerful powder to the stock.

In a saucepan, heat the water and stock until boiling and add the dried mushrooms. Covethe saucepan and turn off the heat. Allow the mushrooms to rehydrate for about twenty minutes. As they're rehydrating, heat the butter and oil in a skillet over medium heat. Sweat the shallot (meaning cook it but do not allow it to brown) until softened, about two minutes. Add the fresh mushrooms and garlic and toss with the shallots, sauteeing for about 6-10 minutes, or until softeed and a little browned. Add the rice and toss to coat with the shallots and mushrooms. The rice should sound like glass beads when stirred. Add the wine and simmer over medium-low heat until reduced by half. Remove the mushrooms from the stock and chop finely before adding to the risotto. Turn on the heat below the stockpot and allow the stock to come to just about a simmer. One cupful at a time, add the stock, stirring almost constantly to incorporate the stock into the rice. If your skillet is lightweight, you can also swirl the risotto instead of stirring it. Season with salt and pepper as you go. Add more stock when the previous cupful has been about half absorbed. After about twenty minutes, the rice will be tender and will have absorbed all the stock and there will be a loose sauce formed around the grains of rice. Fold in the parmigiano-reggiano and butter and serve. If you have the means of buying a truffle, by all means shave some on top for a treat.

EAT THIS NOW: Grapefruit

2009-01-26T09:11:00.006-05:00

This time of year, I need to taste something fresh but not artificial. Whether grown in Arizona, California or Florida, the season for citrus fruit is in the winter. Of course, there’s no season for local grapefruit up here in New York, and in addition, grapefruit is available all year round here, but it’s nice to at least recognize it’s current seasonality. Almost everything in it comes from far away, where it’s warm: like a plate of dreams of summer weather.

I toss the grapefruit with Boston lettuce and a little red onion. I typically go on a tear with this salad during this time of year. It’s also excellent with avocado instead of, or in addition to, tomatoes. (Tomatoes are usually terrible now, but these were OK.) To make supremes of grapefruit, or any citrus fruit, actually, cut off the ends to it sits flat on the cutting board. Next, use a thin knife to cut off the rind and all the white pith. Cradle the fruit in your palm and use the thin knife to free the sections from the membranes. To make a vinaigrette with all the grapefruit juice that you can squeeze from the empty membranes, combine 1/3 cup grapefruit juice with 2/3 cup olive oil, 1-2 tablespoons honey and and 1 teaspoon each salt and pepper. Shake vigorously to combine and dress the salad liberally.

The Easterner

2009-01-23T12:23:00.003-05:00

I have to share this cocktail because I love it so much. My cocktail-shaking muse, Megan, first made this for me from a recipe she found in Gourmet and later we tasted a similar version at The Modern, which swaps the Bourbon for Rye and also adds Fee Brother’s Grapefruit Bitters. So good.

STOVETOP BLACKBOARD: Coq au Vin

2009-01-22T09:27:00.006-05:00

For a very special friend’s 30th five years ago, I made a very special feast of French food. The aesthetic look was as fabulous as a graduate student party could be—lots of candlelight and champagne and two dozen really fun people stretching down one long table. The main course was coq au vin: delicious but homely. It was sort of a sticky purple mess of bones and blubbery chicken skin. Since that event, I’ve been working on how to rescue coq au vin from the sort of dish whose presentation has to be excused instead of exhalted. Finally, I’ve settled on this refined version without bones or skin but just as delicious as the original.

Coq au Vin
2 cups red wine
2 cups chicken stock
1 bay leaf
2-3 springs fresh thyme
2 tablespoons olive oil
2 strips thick smoky bacon
1 whole chicken, bones, skin and backbone removed, cut up into large 2-in x 2-in chunks
(or about 8-10 boneless chicken thighs)
2 teaspoons kosher salt
1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
¼ cup brandy or cognac
2-3 tablespoons tomato paste
1 cup pearl onions (frozen are fine)
1 cup carrots, peeled and diced
1 cup crimini mushrooms, cleaned and quartered if large
½ cup peas (frozen are fine)
¼ cup fresh Italian flat-leaf parsley, diced
6 tablespoons (3/4 stick) unsalted butter, room temperature
4 tablespoons (1/4 cup) flour

In a stockpot, heat the wine, stock, bay and thyme over medium heat until hot but not boiling. Heat the olive oil in a skillet and add the bacon. Sauté the bacon until most of the fat has rendered out, 4-5 minutes. Remove the bacon and cut into chunks or crumble into pieces. Toss the chicken pieces in the salt and pepper to coat on all sides. Working in batches, sauté the seasoned chicken in the hot fat until browned a bit on all sides. Remove the chicken to the stockpot.

Off the heat, add the brandy or cognac to the skillet and flambé if desired. To flambé the alcohol, make sure there are no vertical flammable objects above the pan (like oven mitts or towels, cabinets or yourself). Carefully touch a flame to the alcohol and stand back. The flame will eventually go out on its own. Once the flame is out, use a flat-bottomed spatula to loosen the browned bits from the bottom of the pan. Whisk in the tomato paste into the sauce and add the sauce to the stockpot, whisking to combine. Add the pearl onions and carrots to the stew and cover the pot. Place in a 250°F oven for 90 minutes.

To thicken the sauce of the stew after it comes out of the oven, whisk in a beurre manie. To make the beurre manie, mix together equal parts (4 tablespoons each) softened unsalted butter with all-purpose flour in a small bowl with the back of a spoon, to make a paste. Whisk the liquid into the paste and then whish the liquidy paste into the sauce. At this point, the peas can also be added to the stew. Bring the sauce to a boil to cook out the floury taste and to allow the stew to simmer to thicken thoroughly, about 5-10 minutes.

To brown the mushrooms, heat 2 tablespoons butter in a skillet over medium heat and allow the mushrooms to absorb the butter when they hit the pan. After 4-5 minutes without being touched, the mushrooms will begin to exude a bit of their own liquid. Toss the mushrooms a few times until they are browned all over. Season with salt and pepper and toss with the fresh parsley. Serve on top of the stew. Sere the stew with crusty bread on the side or over egg noodles, as pictured above.

EAT THIS NOW: Greens

2009-01-19T09:07:00.006-05:00

January is a bleak time to get energized about eating healthier, yet I do admit that the fresh new year on the calendar entices me into thinking about healthy self-improvement. Like me, maybe you’re looking for a little patch of green in the middle of winter’s beige comfort foods. Why wait for spring grass to grow from the brown earth? Sow a little patch of green on your plate!

I took a fascinating nutrition class in college, from which I remember only four things. First: the nutritional comparison between white and wheat bread is so lopsided I came away thinking white bread shouldn’t even be categorized as food. Second, dark green leafy vegetables are the best food to eat, period. Third, and also almonds, they’re really good, too. And fourth, eating locally has both ethical and nutritional benefits.

The example my professor used to support his claim was farm-fresh Wisconsin butter-- no doubt UW propaganda, but fascinating nonetheless. Eating local foods like butter, from local cows that have been feasting on local clover, means the proper enzymes for good digestion are balanced in our ecosystem and in our bodies. (When I read Michael Pollan five years after I took my college final exam, his argument sounded wonderfully familiar.)

There’s a too-often overlooked section of the market (super- or farmers’)—between the beets and the scallions—where the superfoods live. Dark green leafy vegetables are abundant, cheap and delicious. It’s not just spinach—there’s Swiss chard and collards and mustard greens and kale and escarole and, and, and the list could go on. Some are bitter, some are mellow, but all are good (good for you, too). And in the middle of winter, I can imagine nothing more exhilarating than exploring a whole new food genre.

Yes, they do require some prep and yes, they do require a little cooking—steam the leaves or throw them into an oiled sauté pan to wilt slightly. And they really do require some fat and flavor—certainly salt, perhaps onion or garlic, maybe a touch of cream in the spinach, but a little rendered bacon fat is delicious, too. Olive oil is better for you but less fun.

Bacon fat? What? Well, it’s better to add a few drops of something unhealthy (but delicious) to entice you to ingest these greens. It’s like a gateway drug and soon enough you’ll wean yourself off the pig grease. I believe greens are healthy enough to overpower the adverse health affect of bacon fat-- like pomegranate margaritas or cheddar on broccoli.

Here’s a preprandial platter that is good and good for you. Throw together some onion and garlic-laced warm greens with a whole wheat baguette and a cute bowl with a few almonds.

Wilted Winter Greens
1 pound greens, trimmed of big or woody stems, washed in a salad spinner, and chopped
1-2 tablespoons unsalted butter or olive oil (even a little bacon fat)
1 shallot, peeled and thinly sliced
2 cloves garlic, peeled and thinly sliced
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste

Heat a skillet over medium heat and coat the bottom with butter or olive oil. Sauté the shallots and garlic for 1-2 minutes, or until fragrant but not too browned. Toss in the washed, chopped leaves. The heat from the pan will release the liquid from the leaves closest to the heat, which will create steam that will wilt the whole bunch. It goes quickly, so work your tongs to toss the leaves around the pan. (Watch them shrink like Colorforms!) Season with salt and pepper and enjoy the wilted greens warm.

Stovetop Blackboard: Pound Cake

2009-01-15T09:00:00.007-05:00

Pound cake should be dense but not heavy, light but not airy. For years, I made pound cakes and teacakes that tasted average but were heavy as bricks. There is nothing worse than being excited about a baking project and then having to convince yourself to finish it as it sits, pathetically and untemptingly, on the counter. I had given up and then, at a Christmas party four years ago, I had a Grand Marnier pound cake that knocked my socks off. I think I ate about six slices. A friend of a friend, a pastry chef named Alex, made it. She beats the egg yolks into the batter and reserves the whites, which she whips to soft peaks in a separate bowl and then carefully folds them into the batter at the end. While this seemed to me it would make the cake too airy, it actually produces the perfect consistency.

Grand Marnier Pound Cake
(makes 2 loaves or one tube pan or bundt cake)
2 teaspoons baking powder
2 teaspoons baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
3 cups (15 ounces) flour
1 1/2 cups (3 sticks) unsalted butter, softened
1 cup sugar
zest of 1 lemon
zest of 1 orange
5 eggs, separated
1 1/2 cup (12 ounces) sour cream
Preheat the oven to 350°F and butter and flour the pan to prepare it. Sift the flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt together. In a bowl, cream the butter and sugar with the zests with a mixer at high speed until lightened and yellow, about 3-5 minutes. Add the egg yolks and beat thoroughly. Add the dry ingredients and the sour cream, alternating, until Incorporated. In a separate bowl, beat the egg whites until stiff but not at all dry. Fold in these egg whites into the batter, carefully. Pour the batter into the prepared pans and bake for about one hour, or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean.
Glaze:
1/2 cup freshly squeezed orange juice
1/4 cup Grand Marnier* (or other orange liqueur)
1/4 cup sugar
2 teaspoons lemon juice
To make the glaze, simmer all four ingredients for 3-4 minutes and cool slightly. Brush the glaze on the cool cake and let it stand at least ten minutes.
* I’ve also tried this cake with more affordable orange liqueur and it is still really tasty.

Oh my darlin'

2009-01-14T09:03:00.005-05:00

This is a tricky poem to write
Of winter citrus: small and bright.
I’d talk of darling clementine
But orange is a word without a rhyme!

Not forever gone and lost
A box appears amid the frost.
Loose peels hide fruit within
Juicy pulp in membranes thin.

Stovetop Blackboard: Meatloaf

2009-01-08T21:53:00.002-05:00

Meatloaf holds a place of honored sacramental symbolism in my life (teaser for a future post-- it's what we ate the night we got engaged to be married!) and so I'll hold onto those thoughts until I have good reason to share them. My issue with meatloaf this afternoon is epistemological. What is meatloaf?

Specifically, I'm puzzling with the relation between meatloaf and meatballs. Cousins? Siblings? Twins? Are meatballs just little bits of meatloaf? The way I make these dishes, they are more similar than separate. Meatloaf has barbecue sauce within and bacon layered on top. Italian meatballs have lots of dried Italian herbs and parmigiano in the mixture and are simmered in marinara. Swedish meatballs rely on ground caraway and the traditional velvety cream sauce to stand out from their european friends.

But in all of these recipes, I use a mixture of ground meats (beef and pork for sure, lamb occasionally and veal on the rare occasions when I disregard my ethics, like say, when it's on sale). Both are lightly bulked with homemade breadcrumbs and bound with an egg. A little grated onion is a non-negotiable necessary ingredient in both.

Meatloaf
1 1/2 pound ground beef (15-20 % lean)
1 pound ground pork or lamb or veal
1 teaspoon kosher salt
1 teaspoon black pepper
1/2 cup barbecue sauce or catchup
1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
1/4 cup onion, minced
1/2 cup bread crumbs
4 strips of thick smoky bacon

Mix all the ingredients except bacon until just barely mixed-- do not overmix. Pat into a loaf pan and place bacon in one layer on top. Bake at 350° for about one hour.

Italian meatballs
1 1/2 pound ground beef (15-20 % lean)
1 pound ground sausage (sweet/mild or hot)
1 teaspoon kosher salt
1 teaspoon black pepper
1 teaspoon Italian seasoning
1/4 cup grated parmigiano-reggiano
1/4 cup onion, minced
1/2 cup bread crumbs
1/4 cup olive oil
Mix all ingredients except olive oil together and form the meatballs into golfball-shaped spheres. Heat the olive oil in a cast iron skillet or frying pan over medium-high heat. Sear the meatballs on all sides until browned. Simmer the meatballs in a covered pot of marinara sauce in the oven at 350° for about 45 minutes to one hour, or until cooked through.

Epiphany

2009-01-06T19:16:00.000-05:00

I admit: Episcopalians do the season of Epiphany right. Instead of turning away from Christmastime after two weeks like Catholics, they extend the season of Epiphany until the beginning of Lent. Ordinary time isn't really a time for feasting for any particular purpose. Yes, every Sunday offers the liturgical imperitive to feast in celebration of the Resurrection of the Lord, but the Monday through Saturday reasons to feast is significantly diminished in these green vested months. The winter ordinary time of the Roman calendar that extends from the Baptism of the Lord to Ash Wednesday is truly perplexing to me: are we supposed to be feasting or fasting?

Fasting is more (spiritually) satisfying when set off by feasts. Of course, as soon as Ash Wednesday hits, the feasting is over and the fasting begins. Which leads me to think that this period of ordinary time should really be an extension of the pre-Lenten feast of Mardi Gras. And from my research, I've learned that the European carnival season begins at Epiphany and extends until Shrove, or Fat Tuesday (translation: mardi gras). Is this period, however titled, a celebration of the feast that has passed (Epiphany) or looking forward to feast that is to come (the cupboard-emptying Shrove Tuesday feast before Lent begins)?

Nothing summarizes Mardi Gras' debauched tangle of Pagan and Christian and European traditions like its central confection, the King Cake. A traditional New Orleans King Cake is named for the celebration of the kingly visitors to the infant Christ, the Magi, but is served at Mardi Gras, 53 days after the feast day of Epiphany. It's a rich brioche-like yeast bread, sometimes filled, and covered in (ironically, yet appropriately, named) royal icing and purple, green and gold sugar crystals. Sort of an explosive disaster of frosting and bread. But that's another post.

So I propose we rename these 44 days between Christmas and Lent the Liturgical Season of Cake. This thought was triggered when I was asked to bring a dessert to a dinner party tonight and my immedaiete reaction was to make a boozy English fruit cake in honor of Twelth Night or a French frangipane galette in honor of Epiphany. But I hadn't the time nor the confidence to make a truly resplendent fruit cake (yes, they do exist!) and I wanted something a little more exciting than the almond paste filled puff pastry tart feastured in Feast Day Cookbook. (My love for this darling idiotic book is the subject of yet another post.) I wanted to come up with something that at least attempted to capture the season (cake, booze, nuts), however confusing it's become to me.

I remembered the Rum Cakes I begged for on my childhood birthdays but I couldn't quite remember the recipe. (Actually, I remembered it exactly but doubted myself because it's so simple and so not like anything my made-it-from-scratch mother usually went out for.) I ended up going for the Dorie Greensan version from Baking: From My Home to Yours.) My Mom's version is just a yellow box cake mix prepared according to the package directions (with one package or vanilla pudding mix added), baked in a tube pan and drizzled with walnuts mixed with confectioner's sugar and rum.

Kevin Mitchell was a funny dude

2008-12-31T09:41:00.003-05:00

a resolution
silly as any other:
this year, eat more pie

Kitchen Salvation

2008-12-30T06:11:00.004-05:00

I want to start this commentary my stating that I understand some health problems are unavoidable and that I hope the healing of touch of the holy one will be with all those who suffer the pain and fear of serious illness. Now, having said that, I am going to tell you what I think is the biggest problem America has to solve: health-less consumption. Specifically, the greedy and wasteful consumption of fuel in the form of food.

The food network has used its poetic licence to make many words-- Rachel Ray’s stoup, something between stew and soup, is a good example. I’ve noticed a new word is popping up in food programming: healthful. This is a word like ‘healthy’ without the legal issues that may come from a TV personality claiming a food is healthy which it may not be for everyone. Healthful habits start in the market, are reinforced in the kitchen and enjoyed at home. Yes, ‘healthful’ may be a euphemism and it may be vague, but I like it.

Healthless is the opposite of healthful, the antithesis of moderation, a way of eating that relies too much on animal fat for flavor and too little on the intake of vitamins from varied plant sources. Healthless habits are formed around a lifestyle made too busy by long hours at the office and in front of the TV. Healthless habits are killing Americans through preventable diseases like heart disease, diabetes, high blood pressure and cholesterol.

Food seems to be the root cause of these problems, yet the solution shouldn’t always (or even often) be pharmaceutical; let's go back to food and change our American relationship to it. If food is the problem, cooking may very well be the answer. Can we get some people off Lipitor and into aprons?

If every person who claims they are too tired and ignorant to cook took a crack at learning to make one dish—just one thing they love to eat and want to make at home—a revolution could begin. One new dish becomes two, becomes three, becomes a dozen family favorites. I am overwhelmingly excited about Jamie Oliver’s new crusade. The ministry of food: his term has its origin in British politics for him and sacramental connotation for me, but both Jamie Oliver and I are advocating for a change in lifestyle that will bring about a change in life.

It’s the start of the new year and I feel bombarded with advertisements for gyms and diets and weight loss programs. So many people take on diet-related New Year’s resolutions, but I wish learning to cook was a more common way to explore healthful consumption every January. I often take the benefits are of knowing how to cook a nice simple meal at home for granted. This New Year, I am going to recommit myself to my involvement, thought small, in helping others cook more healthfully through my blog and my cooking classes.

Here are the three major benefits of turning toward a healthful practice like cooking at home:

1. Home cooking is better for the body.
Every beginner cook I have ever taught in my cooking classes has started with chicken and rice. Basic foods such as these are so much better for our bodies than the basic fare of restaurants, cheeseburgers and steaks and fried things, which are truly annoying to make at home. So anyone cooking in the home will automatically cook more healthful foods than restaurants, will eat fewer fried foods and use less butter, cream and salt. (Restaurants use these three in quantities that would frighten most home cooks, especially beginners.)

Why people buy a home security system yet trust what they put into their bodies to an unseen stranger is very confusing to me. Restaurant chefs do not have our health in mind when they create our food. I’m not encouraging everyone to attend to every area of their life with greater vigilance (we don’t need more to be scared of these days) but I do encourage everyone to reflect a little more about what and how we control our daily lives.

“Eat less and move more” is the basis of every piece of healthy diet advice. People who go to the gym after work and then are too exhausted to cook a meal really perplex me. I’m not against exercise but this seems to me to be a very strange order of priorities. And the core workout benefit of the kitchen should not be overlooked: kneading bread dough, lifting heavy pots and pans, carrying around grocery bags and whipping cream by hand!

2. Home cooking is better for the mind.
I admit: cooking can be stressful and expensive for beginners, but like any good hobby, practice encourages greater rewards as skills develop. Home cooking can be cultivated into a restful and relaxing hobby—a great way to power down after a long day. I have a rule that I will not take on any hobby that cannot be done while sipping wine. I am a naturally stressed person and I need my hobbies to untangle the mental knot I make for myself every day. The rhythm of chopping and slicing and watching ingredients turn into a meal is a mesmerizing way to turn the mind away from the stress of the day and into the rest of the night.

Cooking is tangentially related to shopping at the market, monitoring the pantry inventory and appreciating the opportunity of leftovers. These parts of the cooking hobby can also be relaxing. Wandering around the market, the culinary cathedral, can be a meditative time to dream of flavor combinations, to follow the seasons, to imagine the glory of meals as yet unmade. Home cooks are creative. Creativity breaks the competitive consumer mental cycle, making room for imagination. Stress is bad for the body so imagination, the opposite of stress, is good for the body. You can trace out the rest of that syllogism yourself.

3. Home cooking is better for the soul
This is a blog about food and theology, so there’s always a tie-in to the church. The Catholic Church has a consistent ethic of protecting and respecting the dignity of human life. Most people suspect the church only cares about abortion, but in fact, the church’s position on capital punishment, euthanasia, stem cell research and all topics related to when life begins and ends are affected by this very consistent ethical system. Eating right to stay alive is a part of that comprehensive right-to-life umbrella. Human beings, created in the image of God, have a responsibility to be/stay/become healthy so they can do the hard work to which everyone has been called by God: sharing the love of God will all people.

When I teach cooking classes, I can see students get excited about food. I can see them starting to plan out their first dinner party and getting excited about the glorious tables they will set for their friends. For anyone who has been bitten by the cooking bug, it’s not long before entertaining is a part of their life, infecting their home like a virus. Entertaining is not about food and table settings—it’s about offering oneself, to give joy to another person.

What could be better than for human spirits to be joined at the table, nourishing each other with food and conversation? Can this happen in a restaurant? In a restaurant, there’s no moment where a person offers a plate to another and says: “eat this; I made it for you.” In Bed and Board, Fr. Robert Farrar Capon writes of the table, the board, explaining that with frequent use it will, "always give birth to liturgy." What will save our bodies may very well feed our souls.

Magnificat as Holiday Travel Narrative

2008-12-27T18:46:00.000-05:00

My due date? Oh! Where do I start?
After I leave you, then we depart
Back to home, to pack and prepare
So I’ll have just a little of the baby there

Then to see my folks, just for a bit
They want more time, we can’t commit.
A bit more of the birth will happen there
Before we hit the road. (It’s so unfair.)

Joe’s people were southern, way back when.
So my first delivery was in an animal pen.
The roads to the south are an absolute mess
The annual trip fills us with stress.

But the memory of it makes me sentimental
The night was silent, holy and gentle.
The celebration that is my favorite one
Is the birth when I first met our son.

Oh! Elizabeth, my cousin adored
My soul doth magnify the Lord.
Why all this travel in my condition?
Is there a reason, or just a tradition?

The Christ (and pie) bearers

2008-12-25T13:28:00.005-05:00

The name Alice comes from the Greek word for truth. I am named for my mother, Alice, who is named for her mother, Alice, who is named for her mother (you get the idea). I have always loved my name and I hope to someday pass it along. These Alices have been amazing women, and at least the two generations before mine have been excellent cooks and entertainers. In other words, they’ve passed on more than their name to me. I feast on my inheritance.

My mom starts decorating the house for Christmas in mid-November and the celebration culminates on Christmas night when her siblings and my cousins pile into our house for dessert. Their family name is Christopher, coming from the Latin words for Christ-bearer. On Christmas, Christ comes into the world and the Christophers come into our house.

The table is piled high with traditional desserts: Aunt Millie’s apple pie, Aunt Ellen’s nut tarts and cheesecake, and (if we’re lucky) Barb and Ginny’s shortbread. We said goodbye to Uncle Bart last spring but will we keep making his famous lemon chiffon pie? I hope so. My mom always makes a candy cake (their childhood birthday cake which, ironically, contains no candy) and chocolate walnut wafers.

In a delightful coincidence, my mom’s married name is Cook. She is her kitchen, she is her parties, she is her name. Her generous entertaining style is the stuff of Christian inspiration. She is an incarnationally-minded hostess: she treats everyone like they are the holiest person in the world.

Identity is a construction of a hodge-podge of coincidential parts. Or is it? When her names are taken together, Alice+Christopher+Cook, her identity is revealed: the one whose cooking bears the truth of Christ.

EAT THIS NOW: Cookies

2008-12-22T21:18:00.007-05:00

What makes a cookie a Christmas cookie? Returning Christmas to its more sacred traditions is a vague project when it comes to confections. In my family, we eat chocolate walnut wafers from the Fannie Farmer Cookbook every Christmas, but there’s nothing that relates them to the religious symbolism of Christmas.

I was asking around and a friend who knows way more about church history than I explained that the early Christmas cookies were likely in the shape of a pig! Another friend offered a response that has become a limited, but working, definition: a Christmas cookie is sugar cookie dough baked in the shape of a Christmas symbol like a tree or a star or an angel. This makes sense to me especially when extended to iced gingerbread people.

The problem with this definition is that it doesn’t allow for cookies like pecan crescents, a holiday staple (you’d never see them in June, would you?). Germans and Scandanavians make fantastically traditional Christmas cookies with pepper and spice, which points to a sense of seasonality. (Honestly, what else is around in winter but spices?) Though pfeffernüsse is delicious, it seems like a thin connection to Christmas to me. I remember Grandma Galasso making mountains of pizzelle for her Italian family in December and she’d find this whole query ridiculous, so I grant than I’m overthinking a very simple and delightful tradition.

In the December 2005 issue of Gourmet, there’s an article about a woman who makes spoon cookies for her friends. Essentially, it’s a straightforward shortbread cookie dough shaped into the bowl of a spoon, baked and sandwiched together with jam. The process as she described it sounded grueling and exhausting. So obviously I had to try it.

The trick with these cookies is to brown the butter first. (I used a european-style butter.) Browning the high fat content butter was so much fun—it volcanically sputtered and gurgled and bubbled in a truly unexpected way. And they really do get better after a few days and they last for weeks!

This, to me, is the perfect Christmas cookie because it pairs complexity and simplicity. Christmas: the season of light and hope, and stress and sweat. These cookies are symbolic of the tension between my love of Christian traditions and the imperfect ways they find their place in the modern world. Like the perfect Christmas gift shopped for and packaged and wrapped with so much effort, it delivers, satisfyingly. I don’t think anyone enjoyed them as much as I did!

Pomegranate Punch

2008-12-19T18:43:00.001-05:00

The holiday party guest is more openminded than most, joyfully making the rounds, hangover to hangover, from Thanksgiving to Epiphany. Most punches are disappointing-- just cheap alcohol disguised in over-sweetened juice. ("Punch" is a promise of what it’ll deliver the next morning.) This is a tried-and-true punch that is pinkish but not too girly and made ever so elegant by the addition of fresh pomegranate seeds.

It can be made in two ways. Option A is mimosa-ish: throw the first three ingredients in a nice pitcher; mix half and half with champagne in a flute and throw in a few seeds. Option B is punch-ish: stir up the first three ingredients in a big bowl and toss in a large ice cube*. Pour on the bubbly (slowly) and float the seeds on top. (If you don’t have a proper punch bowl and ladle, forget it unless you’re going for that dorm party aesthetic.)

*To make a big ice cube, freeze water in an empty cylindrical container (like a quart yogurt container) until solid, preferably overnight. To release the cube from the container, run the outside under hot water until it is free. It will melt slowly in the punchbowl and prevent it dilution.

Pomegranate Punch
1 cup pomegranate juice (if I don’t juice my own I prefer POM over other narieties
1 cup freshly squeezed orange or clementine juice (strained)
½ cup orange liqueur (Grand Marnier, Cointreau or triple sec)
1 bottle affordable champagne, cava or prosecco (bubbly + white + dry)
seeds of 2 pomegranates

To seed a pomegranate without making your kitchen look like a murder scene (those seeds squirt red juice everywhere!), pick the seeds from the fruit into a bowl inside your sink, even underwater. And wear an apron just in case.

STOVETOP BLACKBOARD: Mashed potatoes

2008-12-18T18:41:00.003-05:00

Mashed potatoes are on the holiday table from Thanksgiving through Christmas so I thought I’d give this workhorse recipe the respect it deserves. They are the glue that holds the holidays together. Unfortunately, lots of mashed potatoes also taste like glue, which is a problem. The recipe below is really easy (my potato novice Dad just mastered it!).

It hardly matters that the roast is great if the potatoes are awful.

Mashed Potatoes
1 10-12 ounce potato per person

(your choice: red/waxy, russet/"baking" or Yukon/ yellow potatoes will all work great)
1 tablespoon butter
2-4 tablespoons dairy like half and half, whole milk or cream
salt and pepper to taste

Submerge the potatoes, peeled and cut into big chunks, into a pot of cold water and bring to a boil. Cook the potatoes until they are totally soft when poked with a fork (even falling apart a little is OK). Drain the potatoes and use a food mill, handheld masher, ricer or mixer to mash them. Don’t ever use a food processor. Add the butter, salt and pepper to the potatoes before you begin to mash them and a good splash of the milk or cream (I add more as I mash along). You do not have to heat up the butter or dairy before you add the hot potato. Gluey mashed potatoes come from overmashing the potatoes, so be quick with your work. For skin-on mashed potatoes like the pile pictured above, just skip the peeling step and use any method for mashing other than the ricer. The peel won't go through the holes.

1 Thess 5:16

2008-12-17T18:39:00.001-05:00

Dear Thessalonians: "always rejoice!"
We’ve heard from the ancient penned voice
It makes modern readers ask the question:
How sad were they before this suggestion?

EAT THIS NOW: Chestnuts

2008-12-15T12:36:00.001-05:00

As I was making cookies last weekend, I had intended to try substituting chestnuts for pecans or walnuts in a crescent cookie recipe. I’ve used canned chestnut puree in soufflé (delicious) and chestnuts packed in water for Thanksgiving stuffing (also great). This time I bought whole fresh chestnuts and roasted them, in their skins, in the oven for about 30 minutes, singing that Nat King Cole song in my head the entire time. It was a charming little scene, trust me.

But when I peeled the roasted chestnuts (they look like little brains, like walnuts), I was amazed to discover chestnuts are soft and starchy! They’re not hard like nuts at all so they wouldn’t be an appropriate substitute (which explains why chestnuts used in baking are usually in the form of chestnut flour). So I switched gears and added them to roasted squash soup, reserving a few for garnish, which was perfect. Lesson: holidays require flexibility.

EAT THIS NOW: Ginger

2008-12-06T21:21:00.001-05:00

This Advent, I’m trying to fill my kitchen with the lessons of the Sunday lectionary. Naturally, I’m cooking with all my favorite holiday flavors: strong aromatic spices, citrus and butter, for instance. The peppery, spicy bite of ginger really wakes up the mouth—and the spirit—at Christmastime. After all those long months of ordinary time, gingersnaps (perhaps the truest Christmas cookie) is the perfect food to snap us from our slumbers and “be alert” as today’s Gospel implores (Mk 13:33). Can you believe it’s been ordinary time since last May! How could we not have fallen asleep after all that ordinariness?

Chewy gingersnaps
2 ½ cups (12.5 ounces) all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 ½ teaspoon ground ginger
½ teaspoon ground black pepper (or even more!)
¼ teaspoon ground cloves
½ teaspoon ground cinnamon
¼ teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/8 teaspoon ground cardamom
1 ½ sticks unsalted butter, room temperature
1 cup dark brown sugar
½ cup sugar
¼ cup molasses
1 egg

For the best results, use fresh (as in recently purchased) spices. I use a coffee or spice grinder to grind the ginger, pepper, cloves and cardamom to a fine powder. I grate nutmeg and cinnamon with a microplane.

Preheat the oven to 350°F. Sift together the dry ingredients and spices. Cream the butter and sugars in a mixer on high heat until light and doubled in volume, about 3-4 minutes. Add the egg and beat thoroughly. Gradually add the flour to the mixture until incorporated. Chill the dough for 30 minutes. Roll the dough into balls and coat with white sugar. Bake in batches on a parchment-lined cookie sheet for 8-9 minutes.

Rye, NY

2008-12-05T06:21:00.003-05:00

Christians have a commitment to consume a local diet while understanding their complicity in the global marketplace. The church is of and for the people of a certain local context while simultaneously being in communion with universal needs of people everywhere and throughout history. I love going to new churches and listening to the prayers of the faithful, which so often reflect the local issues and sorrows and joys of the people of the neighborhood. If Christian Eucharistic feasts reflect this spiritual tension between local and imported theology, couldn’t the Christian kitchen, too? What about the bar?

Eating local foods is consistent with Christian ethics: it relieves our reliance on fossil fuels for food transport and encourages seasonally driven feasting. My interest in eating and drinking locally is playfully exploratory, not exclusively committed. I still like Spanish wine and Italian olive oil and French cheeses and Belgian beer and plan to continue buying them because they are so tasty, which trumps the ethical offset of sourcing these items locally. (This is my choice; maybe you’re more ambitious than me.) If eating local foods is good than drinking local drinks should also be good, right? Now whiskey is being made right here in the state of New York for the first time since Prohibition.

Eating locally is about trying to capture a location’s essence and flavor and terroir (the “somewhereness” of a place, loosely translated from French, meaning the flavor drawn from its microclimate). When I think of the seasoned BBQ pits of Hill Country in Texas or the sun-filled vineyards of Napa Valley in California, I drool over their local riches. What they make is delicious because it is rooted in the ground, in the habits and traditions and colors. But I wonder-- can that really be shipped?

According to the spirit of the laws about bottled-in-bond Bourbon whiskey, every bottle must be bottled and aged in one place, from one distillation season, one distillery and one distiller. This ensures the “good stuff” will contain, even if only on in imagined level, the Southern charm of Kentucky’s rolling hills and thoroughbred horses. So it’s not spectacularly off base to examine the provenance of a New York Whiskey: what, exactly, does a New York microdistilled whiskey capture: capitalism, real estate, ambition and immigrants? A walk through midtown mixes the fragrance of horse manure from tourists’ carriages, stale subway fumes, spat-out cigarette ends and the burnt sugar stench of peanut vendors. Who would want a taste of this place on the rocks?

Though deceptive, the label means to be suggestive: Hudson Rye Whiskey is not made in Manhattan, it should be made into Manhattans. The Manhattan cocktail is a New York Prohibition-era original: whiskey, vermouth and bitters shaken with ice; it’s mysteriously greater than the sum of its parts like the three disparate land masses of the five boroughs that make up New York City. New York is full of annoying individual New Yorkers but as a system, taken together, it hums with charm. This whiskey is so expensive I didn’t want to mix it. But once I did, with Italian vermouth and Agnostura bitters (localism be damned) it took on a new life. It’s a really great Manhattan.

Unfortunately, the grain used to distill Hudson Rye Whiskey is not grown in New York but the whiskey is distilled here. The apples in Hudson vodka are sourced from local orchards, which does indicate the distiller’s commitment; if rye could be grown locally in the Hudson Valley, I assume they’d explore a way to use it instead of shipping other grain here. But can a product be called local if the raw materials are not grown locally? Does it matter if the raw ingredient is markedly different from the product (grain to whiskey, in this case) and if the process is dependent on other local environmental factors (water, charred barrels, grist mill, etc.)? This question is easier to answer in organic circles and for whole foods (an organic apple is an organic apple-- there are rules), but I wonder: how much of a product needs to be sourced locally for it to be called local?

Sometimes, how we drink is how we dream. So this has really been a reflection on where I dream I live. It’s really a story about the relationship between New York City and New York State, and as new resident (just passed the one year mark), I am left wondering if these two have anything to do with one another. Can politics be bottled? This product, even in the way the old-fashioned medicinal-looking label advertises it, is like a bottled upstate vacation.

But this Friday, I’m staying here in the city and imbibing my vacation. So relaxing and no traffic!

2008-12-04T15:06:00.003-05:00

A few weeks ago, around the time of the feast of Elizabeth of Hungary, I met the friendly blogger Jeff Deasy at a fantastic Hungarian pastry shop on the Upper East Side to talk about local and sustainable foods. We had a lovely discussion about the ethics of eating-- mine sacramental, his entrepreneurial-- and I encourage you to check out his blog for news and commentary about food justice issues. He's posted a profile about Keep the Feast on his blog: www.americanfeast.com.

EAT THIS NOW: Endive

2008-12-01T13:56:00.004-05:00

Eating seasonally is not only about eating what is perfectly ripe at every moment. It's also about adjusting what what's available in which season. Summer is long over, with its beautiful berries and corn. The tomatoes stuck around into early autumn and then we started in with the apples and the squashes. And now we begin winter's frosty walk toward spring again.

All year round we have onions and celery and fennel and greens, but who needs them in summer when there is so much else to tempt us? And although the bright juicy flavors of that season are gone, abundance remains for those willing to adjust their expectations. If you can't be with the one you love, honey, love the one you're with. Thank you, Steven Stills.

Endive is the workhorse of this salad: surprisingly structurally strong and a bit bitter . We've feasted on this salad a few times in the past couple of weeks. Not because we can't have it in summer-- we can-- but to remember that lack is opportunity in disguise. This is really fresh, light food, like summer food, but available in winter. It's a great starter to the warm comfort food of these cold weather months.

Endive Salad
1 head endive
1 apple or pear, unpeeled and sliced thin
1/2 cup toasted pecans or walnuts
1 pomegranate
1 lemon
1 tablespoon Dijon mustard
1/3 cup olive oil
1 teaspoon kosher salt
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

To prepare the endive, trim the core end and carefully peel off the leaves. Continue to trim the core end so the leaves can be snapped off easily. All but the innermost leaves can be used. To seed and juice the pomegranate, empty and clean your kitchen sink, place a bowl in the center of it and put on an apron. Cut into the skin of the pomegranate and break it roughly in half. Using your fingertips or a little blunt knife, carefully remove the seeds, being careful not to break their skin. Toss about 1/2 cup of pomegranate seeds onto the endive, arranged on a platter with the nuts and apples (or pear). Squeeze the pomegranate over the bowl to release the juice. Discard the solids and strain the juice from the white pith and skin. To make the dressing, whisk together the pomegranate juice (about 1/2 cup), lemon juice, mustard, olive oil, salt and pepper. Dress the salad lightly and reserve the extra dressing for another use.

The Native

2008-11-28T18:25:00.001-05:00

The Thanksgiving meal is a celebration feast of our American roots-- squash and turkey and cornbread. I've put together a Thanksgiving libation that draws only on ingredients that are indigenous to America: blueberries and cranberries from New England, sweet syrup tapped from Maple trees in the Native American tradition, and corn (in the form of whiskey). So yes, it's possible that I could have shaken a few of these at the first Thanksgiving. And drunk them all myself because the spiritually sober pilgrims were probably drinking Concord grape juice, another American original.

The Native
1 1/2 ounces Wild Turkey Bourbon
1 1/2 ounces maple-berry syrup (recipe follows)
Shake with ice and strain into a cocktail glass. To make a big pitcher for a crowd, mix the Bourbon and syrup in equal parts and serve over ice.

Maple-berry syrup:
1 cup fresh cranberries
1 cup blueberries (frozen are fine)
1 cup water
1/2-1 cup pure maple syrup (sweetness to taste)
Boil the first three ingredients until the cranberries start to audibly pop. Smash the berries into the liquid with a potato masher and simmer 5 minutes. Strain the syrup an discard the solids (so not what the pilgrims would have done, I recognize). Stir the maple syrup into the liquid and refrigerate until cold. Thin with water if necessary.

Poem: To Whom?

2008-11-26T18:27:00.005-05:00

The thanks-for-what litany starts:
“For my three kids and their good hearts.”
“For another year with Grandma here.”
“And in these times, for my career.”
But it begs the question: To whom?
We believe in someone, I presume.
Shall we go around again, and mention--
Or will that lead to too much tension?

How to Keep the Thanksgiving Feast XV

2008-11-16T19:18:00.002-05:00

Every good dinner needs a good postlude chat. So when I signed off last night, we were on our way over to the apartment where the dinner would be held. While I was doing the last hour of cooking at our apartment, my husband Scott was bringing over the first load of stuff in our car. There were already three guys there doing set-up and floral arrangements and all that. Scott came back for me and the hot food about 5:10, right on schedule. We loaded everything into the car quickly and were on our way. Except the car wouldn’t start. He mentioned something about being low on gas. We were parked on a very steep hill. It just kept clicking and clicking. He tried again. Clicking.

Just as he was popping the hood, I RAN back into our building and came out running wildly behind an enormous careening shopping cart that is usually kept in the lobby. (For reasons such as this? One wonders.). I think I was screaming “shopping cart! shopping cart!” as I ran. We loaded everything into the shopping cart and abandoned the car where it was double parked in front of our building. Then the two of us, running, pushed the shopping cart through the Upper West Side of Manhattan.

I wanted to take a picture, but as you may recall, the camera had slipped out of my turkey-greased fingers earlier in the afternoon and is now nonfunctional. You just have to imagine me in my chef’s jacket and danskos and he with all his tall Scandinavian rower muscle pushing an oversized green shopping cart with a huge turkey down the streets of Harlem. Your mental picture is better than anything I could have captured digitally, I'm sure.

So we push this thing about two blocks and I switch from stress to silly and start laughing. I remark that this is the sort of story that should be remembered for my funeral. He finds the humor in it too, and we keep pushing and laughing all the way there—about half a mile, I’d say. We pass the bewildered security guards and ride the elevator, impatiently, wordlessly, sweatily, to the eighteenth floor and roll it right into the kitchen. Since I was doing this event as mixture of ministry and an expression of my gratitude, I can laugh it off. In that moment I realized I could not cater for a living—too many unknowns to deal with as a daily career.

Scott was the champ of the night: loading, hand-washing, helping, lifting and just generally being the greatest guy in the world and helping me do this food-meets-ministry thing that I do. It was that good-guy-ness that actually got us into trouble, because all the time the car was sitting with its four-way flashers on while he was loading and unloading had depleted the battery. After he left me to carve and serve, he went back for a jump.

In summary: the food was delicious, the guest of honor was touched, the host was grateful, the event was a success, my marriage is in great shape (can't say as much for my legs) and I am thankful. Today we rested our weary bodies and collected the leftover fragments in baskets and put it all away in cupboards until next time.

...Thanks be to God.

How to Keep the Thanksgiving Feast XIIII

2008-11-15T16:56:00.004-05:00

4:58 PM.

Turkey needs about five more degrees. Stuffing and squash are staying warm in the second oven. Potatoes are mashed, buttered, creamed, salted. I just jumped out of the shower.

14 posts
13 cups of homemade stock
12 hour days (x2)
10 pounds of potatoes
9 days of daydreaming/planning
8 (plus 20) pound turkey
7 cups of heavy cream
6 times through the Temptations greatest hits
5 trips to the grocery store
4 pounds of butter
3 times running the dishwasher
2 days
1 feast.

On my way to the site. Say a prayer for me. The guests will arrive at 6. Thanks for sharing this with me and "happy turkey leg" as my stepmother Laura would say. Amen.

How to Keep the Thanksgiving Feast XIII (lucky 13)

2008-11-15T16:01:00.002-05:00

just got a call- 10 more pilgrims are coming to the feast! Will we have enough? No idea. Just going to wing it. I threw a dozen more plates at Scott and he'll bring them over. Loving threw them, I mean. And sort of politely, too.

I just peeled ten pounds of potatoes in fifteen minutes. That must be some sort of record.

Have I mentioned I don't exactly know how to use chafing dishes? I'll have to figure that out when I get there. Tee hee.

4:03 PM-- going to the other oven to check the squash. That is going to be so damn good. When it comes out, I'm going to cover it with cheddar and scallions, which will melt into it and make it delicious. Gotta go.

How to Keep the Thanksgiving Feast XII

2008-11-15T15:27:00.003-05:00

by 2:00 the stuffing was made. I took the two deboned leg/thigh portions and put a big old layer of stuffing between them, trussed with kitchen twine, brushed with butter, lots of salt and pepper, onto a roasting pan, into a 400 degree oven at 2:15. The breast got a different butter treatment when it came out of the brine-- compound butter (6 tablespoons unsalted butter at room temperature mixed with 1 tablespoon each freh thyme, sage and kosher salt) shoved under the skin. A bit of olive oil all over the mound of skin, salt, pepper, into the oven. After about 30 minutes I turned the oven down to 325 and was amazed to see the dark meat was almost done!!!!! Wow!

3:00 PM. I peeled and seeded three big acorn squashes and placed them in a chafing dish with about ten peeled and smashed cloves of garlic and two red onions, peeled and quartered. Drizzled olive oil, salt and pepper over the whole thing. That's roasting in a neighbor's oven at 350. I'll go up and check on it in an hour.

3:35 PM. My canning pot is the only one big enough to fit all the potatoes, so it's being called into service. The water's hot so I've got to peel those spuds and get them cooked. I'll mash just before Ileave the house at 5.

Scott is loading the car with the first load of stuff. I just cut up the brownies, wrapped them and threw them out the door after him. He can get into the site at 4:00 and he;s going to stop on the way to buy ice. He is the best.

The gravy thickened overnight-- I can tell even though it's still chilled-- so I have to remember to thin it out with more stock when I heat it up.

Maybe I'll have a minute to post later. Maybe not. It's HOT HOT HOT in here!!!!!!

How to Keep the Thanksgiving Feast XI

2008-11-15T12:49:00.005-05:00

1:12 PM. I want everyone to know that my husband is in the kitchen cooking a frozen pizza right now, which is incredible on several levels. First, the oven is empty and the kitchen isn't a disaster area. Second, that we have frozen pizzas in our house.

I just got back from Citarella, where I bought a beautiful piece of Bishop Cropwell English Stilton for the salad. Everything is beautiful at Citarella. Everything is beautiful right now. Perfect time to talk about stuffing. I'm going to put my feet up and have a glass of wine. (I just typed 'glass of time' accidentially and thought about not deleting it because it is the perfect sort of slip for my mind right now.)

I love stuffing-- it is the overlooked hero of the Thanksgiving feast. Conceived from leftover bread and scraps, I assume, it has a certain frugality I find reassuring while being a celebration of the simplest flavors. A little kitchen etymology lesson: when the seasoned bread is stuffed in the bird, it is called stuffing, when it baked separately, it is called dressing.

In many ways, I think the onion is the centerpoint of the Thanksgiving meal, not the turkey. There are onions in almost everything I am making today: scallions in the dip for the crudite platter, shallots in the salad dressing, more scallions and shallots with the roast squash, jumbo spanish onions in the stuffing. The stock, and thus gravy and stuffing, are full of long-simmered onions. I've restrained myself from frying onions sprinkle to on the mashed potatoes or putting chives in the herb butter I'll slip under the skin of the turkey.

So much attention being is to local artisinal heritage breed free range all-natural organic turkeys and none is being paid to the poor onion who does so much more to affect the taste of the meal. Why is that? As a portmodern academic cook, I want to hear, in detail, of the experiences of the too-long overlooked and underheard peasant onion. Perhaps partner with celery to offer us twin narratives in vignette form. That would be lovely.

Stuffing is more of a method than a recipe. It is the balance of moist and crisp, sweet and savory, crunchy and soft.
I like to follow this general method (today I am making about five times this amount):
1 tablespoon olive oil
1/2 pound sausage (raw or smoked, crumbled or sliced), bacon, ham or cooked turkey giblets
1 small onion, diced
2 ribs celery, diced
2 cloves garlic, peeled and minced
1 apple or pear or 1 cup applesauce
10 ounces bread crumbs or cubes (absolutely, completely dried out)
1/4 cup half and half, cream or milk
1 cup homemade unseasoned chicken or turkey stock
2 tablespoons butter
1 tablespoon herbs (sage is great)
1 teaspoon kosher salt
1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper, red pepper flakes or cumin
Saute the sausage (or pork product of your choice) in a but of olive oil. When it is no longer pink, add the onion and celery and garlic and cook for about 3-4 minutes. In a small bowl, whisk together the egg, half and hald, stock and butter. In a large bowl, tos together the stuff in the skillet with apples (or pears or applesauce), the bread cubes, herbs, salt and pepper and the wet ingredients. Pour into a baking pan, dot with butter, and bake until warmed through (all the ingredients are already fully cooked).

Alternatively, stuff into the turkey. It will expand as it cooks and absorbs the juices of the cavity of the turkey, so make sure the turkey is only stuffed about 3/4 of the way full. I like to line the inside of the turkey with cheesecloth and then spoon the stuffing into the cheesecloth. When it is filled, twist the ends of the cheesecloth together and tie with twine. When the turkey is fully roasted, retreiving the stuffing from the turkey is so easy-- just pull out the bag. I learned this trick from the America's Test Kitchen Cookbook.

Homemade bread or a leftover baguette can be used instead of stuffing mix, but should be more than just day-old or a little stale. The bread should be completely dried out so the stuffing isn't gooey after it is cooked. Dried out cornbread is delicious in stuffing, but I offer the same suggestion: dry it out completely before moistening it again with the liquid ingredients. Sems redundant to dehydrate something just to rehydrate something, but it is an important step to make sure the stuffing is moist, not wet.

Oh shit! The camera just slipped out of my fingers and it's broken-- no more pictures!?!!!!

How to Keep the Thanksgiving Feast X

2008-11-15T10:33:00.003-05:00

10:39 AM:

Something a caterer once left behind
Has proven to be a fortunate find
Like a big belly held off my hip
Ready to work with a wire whip.

Egg whites or cream fall into peaks
With arm-tiring whisking techniques.
You need a big bowl for full aeration.
(That is the point of this little narration.)

Since now and then I keep the feast
With a hungry crowd of twenty at least,
Any recipe can now be made double
Without any real hassle or trouble.

Forgotten by them, beloved by me
especially when cooking a large quantity.
Grateful for what was given not bought:
What an appropriate Thanksgiving thought.

How to Keep the Thanksgiving Feast IX

2008-11-15T07:46:00.006-05:00

7:59 AM. Good morning friends. I had a long dream about white oval platters last night and at the end of the dream, a very large round one appeared, which would be the perfect size for the turkey. It was amazing. I was disappointed when I woke up to realize it wasn't real and I'd be left with the little one instead. I am now officially living and dreaming about this meal.

Scott made good coffee and I jumped into planning (thinking is what I do best first thing in the morning). Party planning is an exercise in updating lists. Lists are control. I think good food without stress comes from control. Go ahead psychoanalyze that, see if I care.

I am completely obsessed with Jamie at Home on the Food Network. I wake up early on Saturdays to watch it-- it is totally amazing. He makes incredibly simple but beautiful food at this farm-meets-house location with five outdoor kitchens. I anticipate it all week and I actually set an alarm on Saturday mornings to watch it. But those [insert expletives here] Food Network producers have once again replaced what would have been joyful programming with that [insert very nasty expletives here] Rachael Ray. I want to say so many bad things right now!

Here's what Rachael Ray and her devotees do not understand about food and cooking: sometimes it takes time. Sometimes it's nice to cook for a few minutes and then sit for a few minutes, repeat and repeat for a few hours. Having a glass of wine and reading a magazine article on the couch while a sauce simmers on the stove is one of the most enjoyable experiences of life. When cooking is compressed into thirty minutes, what is the point? Is that living? Is that not applying the rigidity of the workday to our mealtimes? The kitchen and table has the transformative potential to unwind what the day wound-- why don't we let it? How can we allow the table to be a place of daily renewal and community if the sweaty cook has been beholden to the unforgiving strictures of an egg timer?

I am mad that my show isn't being broadcast today, but what makes me even more upset is what has replaced it: Rachael Ray's Thanksgiving in 60. You and I have been on a journey together with this meal for almost 24 hours and we face another 10 to go. It has been delightful, revelatory, relaxing and affirming. I've prepared dishes one at a time, with time for little reflections in between. I've breathed fresh air and I've run errands. Without spending a lot of time on this meal, it would have been awful and harsh and rushed and manic. To watch her pull off the meal on the clock is sort of entertaining. But if I want to watch time records being broken, I'll stick to sports. I don't respect the whole premise of her whole project.

To give her credit, Rachael has drastically changed many of the recipes so they can be made in an hour, so she avoids the real problem of roasting a turkey in such a short amount of time. And I think it's good when Thanksgiving is approached creatively and breaks away from the standards. Brava, Rachael, for your streamlined interpretation of Thanksgiving to its simplest flavors. But I am left wondering if that takes away some of joy of the feast. Is there a idfference beteen a Thanksgiving feast and a turkey dinner? Yes. I like that Thanksgiving is an overcrowded buffet with so many choices. It's the one time a year we celebrate the harvest and bounty and the overabundance of God's gifts to humanity. Why relinquish that opportunity just because it takes some time?

Thanksgiving is a holiday about gratitude and if preparing the meal makes thankfulness impossible, what's the point? Do we sacrifice one person into the sputtering volcano of the kitchen so everyone else can have a good time? But when cook, I truly believe I am having a better time than anyone else gathered together on Thanksgiving. You could not pay me to watch football on Thanksgiving-- I've tried it and it is the worst feeling in the world.

I think there is a deep-seeded resentment in people who cook the meal and don't feel thanked. Maybe that makes them want to get it over with quickly and easily. But when the table is laid with the feast and the guests wrap their whole self into it, their wordless gratitude makes me so happy. At the end, I often want to start all over again just to relive that moment when I, as the cook, have the privilege of offering, of inviting, of giving the meal as the fruit of a few days' labor. When the cook isn't stressed, the offering to the guests is more purely in touch with the roots of this feast. The cook should always be able to sit and relax and be grateful, too. Can that happen after just an hour in an overscheduled kitchen when the Thanksgiving meal has so many parts?

I took my anger out on my rolling pin. Crusts are chilling in the fridge and I'll bake those pies around 9 am. Not much to do until then. I think I'll watch the leaves fall off the big tree.

How to Keep the Thanksgiving Feast VIII

2008-11-14T20:10:00.005-05:00

7:45 PM. I forgot to tell you I also made this earlier. I didn't get to those crusts. Something to do tomorrow.

We have dinner plans and our friends are here so I have to make this short. The gravy is delicious, beautiful and tasty. I had some stuck-on roasty bits of fond in the roasting pan, so I poured about two cups of wine into the pan and threw it back into the warm oven to deglaze, lazy style.

Gravy
12 tablespoons butter
12 tablespoons flour
2 cups white wine, used to deglaze the pan
about ten cups of unsalted homemade enriched turkey stock
(from roasted bones simmered with chicken stock)
2 teaspoons fleur de sel

Here's the quick explanation: make a roux and cook it for five minutes, stirring constantly. Strain in the wine mixture and stock and whisk vigorously. Boil for fifteen minutes, season to taste. Cover the skin with plastic wrap, refrigerate and bring back up to boiling slowly, whisking constantly.

I cleaned the kitchen because yes, I am a neurotic perfectionist and it really, truly does make me sleep better. And I did the labelled lay-out of all the platters and serving dishes, too:

How to Keep the Thanksgiving Feast VII

2008-11-14T18:56:00.006-05:00

7:07 PM. I am not too sure why cranberry sauce/compote/relish/chutney/jam/preserve is really necessary on the thanksgiving plate-- it seems too tart and so sweet, so red and so very out of place. I try it every time but it just seems to zing way out of the balance of the turkey-gravy-potato-stuffing balanced bite composition. But just a tiny little bowl never seems to look right on the table, so I make a quart-size batch.

Does anyone know how any traditions, especially the out-of-place ones, really get started? I have no idea how this particular batch of cranberry sauce got started. But every thanksgiving-ish event I throw, there's always a fair bit of cranberry sauce leftover. And there's always at least a pint leftover, so I use that to start the next batch, going with what other ingredients sound good to me that day. I never stray very far from sugar, citrus zest, other berries, sometimes ginger, sometimes aromatic spices. And tomorrow, I am sure there will be a bit leftover and that will start the next batch. All I added to this batch was 1 teaspoon fresh ginger, 1/2 cup organic brown sugar, 1 bag of frozen raspberries and 1 bag of cranberries. I simmered everything together for about fifteen minutes and it will be perfectly gelled after a night in the fridge. Done.

How to Keep the Thanksgiving Feast VI

2008-11-14T16:47:00.004-05:00

4:47 PM. Minor crisis averted. So one of the tough things about my catering business is that sometimes for small parties I end up doing all the event management crap in addition to the food end of things. I can deal with rental companies and logistics and floral arrangements and all that, but when the event is more than, say, eighteen people, the food keeps me so busy I really don't like to additionally have to stress about the place and the stuff and the guests list and the rest. This event is sort of a hybrid-- mostly catering with a little event planning thrown in.

The location of the dinner is an absolutely breathtaking apartment in Morningside Heights where the president of a nearby major school lives who Serene knows because they're presidential buddies. He has been reported to be very nice, but we are to avoid contact with him for the sake of politeness and privacy. So the rental company (a new outfit I've not worked with before) was supposed to load everything into the lobby of the building, not his apartment. Then my guys would load everything in tomorrow a couple of hours ahead the guests arriving.

But as he was wandering the building today and saw all the stuff lying around he decided to just have it all carted up to his apartment, which has a great space for catering staging off the kitchen. Not a big deal for him. But when I showed up to check on the order and grab a few things, I freaked out. Obviously. Because there was nothing in the lobby and the security desk hadn't seen any drop-offs. So I snap into crazy mode and start making calls on my half broken cell phone and everyone says the stuff is at the site, but there is no evidence. This is the point at which the ten-second clip for the ad of my reality TV show should have been shot. Can a person yell pastorally?

Security calls upstairs and The Pres explains he asked for it to be brought up. So I switch form freak-out to panic because This Is Not What We Agreed On and I am sure trouble lies ahead in the form of yelling at the help (that would be me). And I try to do something about my hair in the elevator and sort of poke myself in the cheeks so I don't look like a corpse.

I go upstairs and he greets me in the foyer. He's so nice and so kind looking and so not shocked by the fact that I look like a wet dog (it's raining out) and stink like roasted turkey necks. Sort of Attridge-like. And all the stuff is there. It is safe. There is no trouble. He was just acting presidential. And I think we talked for a while, which I do not remember because I just kept repeating to myself in my head: make sure the chafing dishes fit in the oven before you leave. He scrams, I ravage the stack of rental stuff, the oven is large (pre-disaster averted) and I grab the stuff I need, which is heavier than I thought it would be.

So I just continued to walk the two blocks home for this well-deserved cocktail and storytelling. But I never got to the grocery store while I was out, so I have to go out again in a minute. Just after my heart starts beating normally again. Nobody is trying to mess this up. It's all going to be excellent. The world is full of cooperative people: that's the theological lesson of the evening.

How to Keep the Thanksgiving Feast V

2008-11-14T15:39:00.001-05:00

3:49 PM. I've added the roast turkey backbone, wing tips, tail and neck to a pot with about 12 cups of chicken stock, a few extra celery ribs and a carrot. These will simmer for about three hours, or until the stock is extra rich. Then I'll strain it for the gravy (7 cups) and stuffing (5 cups).

Passive worries that the rental company hasn't yet dropped off all the dishes and stuff for tomorrow. I just called, they say it's there, but I'm going to have to stop by the site to make sure. I need the steam pans for tomorrow morning prep anyway. Paranoia and fret about the legnth of the to-do list are descending into the kitchen.

I need to get out of this house. It's hot in here. I know I need a ladle from the hardware store, and they have these really nice big cupcake liners, so I'll pick up some of those for the cut brownies to be served in. I haven't picked out the wine, so I'll swing by the store on my way and have them get the cases ready for my guy to pick up tomorrow. I hear there is fresh air outside where it doesn't smell like turkey necks.

Yeah, I need to get out of here. Clean shirt, fresh list, and off I go to the site, wine shop, hardware store, grocery store, back in time for cocktail hour. And then the day-before questions begin: what can be done now, what can be done in the morning, what needs to be right before guests arrive. The lists will get more and more complicated. But that's not until later. There's some peace outside. Never thought I'd say that about New York.

How to Keep the Thanksgiving Feast IV

2008-11-14T14:52:00.006-05:00

3:08 PM. Maybe you're into this day of thanksgiving blog posts. Maybe you think this project is nuts. What I am about to do is probably going to make you think I am compulsive and crazy. This was only sort of planned. I'm pulling out the sewing machine and some scrap fabric to make an elasticized cover for the outside of my crock pot. I am planning to fill the crock pot with the delicious gravy. The crock pot has a porcelain liner so even if it's unplugged, it will keep the gravy warm while everything else is kept warm in chafing dishes. But crock pots are ugly.

So I'm solving it with my ridiculous domestic skills. It's like making an enormous scrunchie, which (I think) was the first thing I ever sewed all on my own (shut up-- it was 1987). If you saw the amazing NYC penthouse apartment the dinner was going to be laid out in, you'd know the table shouldn't have a downhome aesthetic.

This is such a classic touch of intergenerational insanity from my mom, who has been known to be sewing new tablecloths as the guests arrive. And curtains. But the guests would never know.

How to Keep the Thanksgiving Feast III

2008-11-14T12:53:00.011-05:00

1:48 PM. Brownies in the oven. Gladys Knight on the ipod. Dishwasher is running from the morning session. I am having the time of my life, obviously.

We're going to roast this bird. I've grilled, smoked, poached, fried and sauteed turkeys-- stuffed, trussed, rolled, brined, butterflied, encrusted and deboned. In another post I'll tell you about the Great Princeton Turkey Cookoff of 2006. Maybe next week.

Since this bird will be presented already carved, I can roast it in pieces instead of whole. This allows me to manipulate the roasting time and temperature to ensure that the light and dark meat are both cooked perfectly, which is nearly impossible when they are cooked together. (The light meat is less dense than the dark and cooks faster.) Maybe, before turkeys were genetically engineered to have enormous breasts, they roasted at about the same time (like little chickens), but now, the two types of meat are pitted against one another in a sworn fight to a dry and overcooked death.

I am going to cut out the backbone first and snip off the wing tips, which I will use for the gravy. Then I'll take the two leg/thigh portions off the breasts, leaving just the bone-in breast (with wings) to be brined overnight and roasted tomorrow. I'm going to remove the bones from the leg/thigh portions, brine this meat overnight with the breast, and then stuff and truss the dark meat into two rolled roasts to be roasted tomorrow. It will make carving so incredibly easy and the dark meat will look so beautiful on the platter.

If you have never cut up a turkey before, follow these visual directions I posted about chicken a few months ago. The method is exactly the same (the bird is just bigger).

I like brining. I've read the science about why it matters and why it works. (The people at Cooks Illustrated/America's Test Kitchen/Cooks Country sold me on it about five years ago and I would link to their explanation if it wasn't annoyingly something we have to pay to read, like their recipes.) A lot of hassle is made about where and how to manage the brining bird. Here's what I do that alleviates all the stress: I keep my kitchen clean and my inventory low. This morning before I started my work, I cleaned out the vegetable crisper drawer of my fridge. I'll put a unscented kitchen bag in there, load in the turkey, pour on the chilled brine, cinch the bag and close the door. No need for 3AM alarm clocks to change ice packs in coolers for fear of a post-holiday bout of trichinosis. And everyone has a refrigerated vegetable drawer.

Overnight Brine
(for any poultry or pork)
1 cup salt
1 cup sugar
4 cups boiling water
peel of one orange
10-12 whole cloves
2-3 bay leaves
2 cups apple cider
Dissolve the first two ingredients into the water and stir until all the crystallized granules have melted. Add the peel, cloves and bay. When the brine has come to room temperature, add 2 cups of cold apple cider and stir. Immerse turkey in brine, adding more water as necessary to submerge the meat into the liquid.

I'm going to go wrestle the bird into the brine and into the fridge. When the brownies come out of the oven, I'm going to jack up the temperature to 450 degrees. I'll toss the backbone (cut up) and the wing tips with olive oil, salt and pepper, and roast until they are browned and beautiful, about 45 minutes. Then we'll do the gravy. Yes, gravy can be made an entire day (or two or three) ahead and heated up when the table is set. Just add the juices that accumulate on the cutting board to the pre-made gravy for that little extra turkey flavor, if you like. The ability to make the gravy ahead of time with the backbone and wing tips is another great reason to roast your bird cut-up, or at least butterflied.

Damn those brownies smell good. Timer just beeped-- break is over. I'll leave you with this image, one of my favorite paintings, Alice Neel's Thanksgiving.

How to Keep the Thanksgiving Feast II

2008-11-14T11:17:00.010-05:00

12:46 PM. OK, crusts are done, ready to be rolled later and chilled overnight. Now I am moving on to the next task that can always be done way ahead of time: the salad dressing. Often, the salad is the first and the last thing I do when I am rolling out a party. Make the dressing first, toss it with the greens last. Are these not the biggest shallots you've ever seen?!?! That's a quarter to show the scale!

Shallot-Port Reduction Vinaigrette

1-2 tablespoons rendered bacon fat
8 ounces shallots, peeled and diced
1 tablespoon sugar
1 cup Port wine
(substitute red wine, sherry or pomegranate juice)
1 teaspoon Kosher salt
1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
3 tablespoons sherry vinegar
1/3 cup olive oil

Heat the bacon fat in a skillet until hot but not smoking and add the shallots. Cook, stirring constantly, until translucent or slightly caramelized. Add the sugar and stir together, seasoning with salt and pepper. Add the port and allow it to simmer about 3-4 minutes, or until reduced by about half. Allow the mixture to cool. Add the shallot-port reduction to the oil, vinegar, salt and pepper and shake vigorously to emulsify.

Tomorrow's salad will feature red leaf lettuce, stilton, sliced pears, dressed with this delicious shallot-port reduction. Under usual circumstances I would throw some toasted walnuts in there and substitute walnut oil for the olive oil, but there's an allergy in the bunch so I'm skipping those ingredients. If you served this with some thinly slices prosciutto or serrano, it's be a great meal on its own.

10 minutes for leftover cassoulet and food network zone-out. Then I'll make Barefoot Contessa Outrageous Brownies (no nuts, of course). They're so much better the day after they are made, so it's a perfect task for today. Back in a few hours for Turkey Talk.

How to Keep the Thanksgiving Feast

2008-11-13T18:30:00.008-05:00

Tomorrow I will be catering a Thanksgiving dinner for Serene Jones, the new president of Union Seminary, who will be installed in events around the neighborhood and campus this weekend. Her family is joining her for the celebration, so they thought it would be a great idea to do Thanksgiving while they are all together. Serene advised me on a reading course about food and theology when we were both at Yale. The class was transformational for my vocation and I am indeed very grateful for her and so excited about her new appointment.

If my courses in Systematic Theology with Serene taught me anything, it is the importance of the "invitation", of knowing we are welcome and wanted and valued by God in whatever state of life we find ourselves. I feel so special to have been asked to be a part of the celebration. I imagine this will be an amazing weekend of good theology and a bit of good cooking.

I'll be preparing all the traditional dishes-- turkey, gravy, potatoes, squash, pies, cranberries-- and blogging about it as I go about my work. My plan spans two days (today and tomorrow) and I'll keep you involved with pictures and commentary at every step along the way.

I think it's perfectly insane to try and make a Thanksgiving dinner in one day. The Thanksgiving meal is an exercise in sequential organization: what goes into the oven when and for how long. As our traditional meal, it's really a lot of sweaty work. A multi-course plated meal would be so much easier to prepare than this buffet of almost all piping hot foods. But that's somehow appropriate-- celebrating American history with instantly gratifying comfort food seems right for us. Tradition is often the antithesis of spontaneity.

This morning I am going to make four batches of single-crust pie dough to be rolled into the pie plates later on this afternoon, chilled overnight, and then filled and baked tomorrow. I've already prepared the pumpkin. Here's how. I bought a 10 pound pumpkin when I went apple picking upstate last month (they last forever), cut it in half, scraped out the seeds and "pyuk" as it's called in my family, peeled the skin and chopped it into 2.5-inch by 2.5-inch chunks. I set the chunks into the steamer basket over a stockpot with about two inches of boiling water and cooked the pumpkin in the hot steam for about 30 minutes, or until soft. I pureed the pumpkin in a food processor until it was totally smooth. I set the puree over a coffee filter-lined strainer and set the strainer in a large bowl, all covered in plastic wrap, in the fridge overnight. The pumpkin released about a pint of liquid and I'm left with enough think pumpkin puree for four pies. Here's the recipe for one pie (I'll quadruple it when I make the filling tomorrow).

Real Pumpkin Pie
2 cups (15 ounces) thick pumpkin puree (see above or use one can)
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/2 teaspoon each ground cinnamon and nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon each ground ginger and clove and salt
2 eggs
1 12-ounce can evaporated milk
Mix all ingredients together with a large whisk and pour into a pie plate prepared with a raw, very cold, pie crust. I usually set the pie plate on the oven rack and pour the filling into the pie plate there to avoid dripping any of the filling out while transporting it to the oven. Make at 400 for 45 minutes.

More later, of course...

EAT THIS NOW: Figs

2008-11-10T06:25:00.002-05:00

Figs are one of the most frequently mentioned foods in the Bible, weaving in and out of both Testaments and usually with enormous symbolism. Think of the fig leaves that covered Adam and Eve's shame, the symbols of ripe and unripe fruit all over the Old Testament, symbolic of a promised land of feasting (and frequently mentioned in the litany of complaints about the wait to be delivered there). The trees themselves are symbols, too, of shade and ownership and the responsibility of tending to what provides good food. In season, I love fat fresh figs with some kind of cured pork (pictured here with Serrano), maybe some gorgonzola or stilton, glass of nice wine or port. Sometimes I roll these ingredients together and throw them under the broiler. Warm crispy pork-wrapped figs are so good when the weather starts to snap. It's the perfect harvest reminder to be grateful for what we have while we still have it.

STOVETOP BLACKBOARD: Cassoulet

2008-11-06T18:31:00.003-05:00

There are times to feast, of course. Celebrations, holidays, promotions, engagements: the events that demand we stop our everyday lives to remember the goodness and sweetness of life. This makes me think of champagne and party foods and smiles seen through candlelight, late nights and happy memories. But there are also impromptu celebrations where there may not be fancy foods or anything bubbly, but all the rest of the happiness and joy of celebrating people. Sometimes when are are celebrating we are not feasting. And then there are foods that are themselves feasts: roasts and multi-course journeys of tastes and anticipation. Sometimes when we eat a feast we have reason to feast, sometimes not.

Cassoulet is not fancy food-- it is just peasant beans dressed up with big flavors-- but it is a feast whenever its eaten. And even though there isn't any special reason to celebrate right now, other than life s always pretty good, we are eating cassoulet for dinner. It's hearty and filling and so extremely flavorful. It is a feast, it makes a feast, it is festal. It converts any day into a feast day.

Like the lasagna recipe, making cassoulet is complicated. An authentic cassoulet will take a few days. If you rehydrate beans, make your own stock, make your own duck confit (roasted duck legs suspended in rendered duck fat), you're looking at two or three days of attention before you get to dig in. (More if you grind and smoke your own sausage... but that's going a little far, I know). And since cassoulet is so much better the day after it is made, the feast is delayed another day so the flavors can develop in the fridge. But it is so good, and so worth the anticipation. In fact, just completing a cassoulet is an event worthy of a celebration. It's a midwinter diversion.

But of course, there's a quicker way that is very nearly as satisfying. Use canned beans, drained, store-bought sausage and stock, and roasted chicken thighs instead of duck confit. (Dare I suggest shredded leftover cooked chicken as an option?) Even with touches like homemade breadcrumbs, the simple version is on the table in about 90 minutes (the last 30 of which is unattended baking time).

Chicken sausage cassoulet
1 pound dried small white beans
1 pound sausage
4 strips of thick-sliced bacon cut into 2 inch pieces
(or a 3 inch piece of salt pork cut into 2 inch by ½ inch lardons)
2 ribs of celery, diced
1 small yellow onion, peeled and diced
1 large or two thin carrots, peeled and diced
2 cloves garlic, peeled and minced
1 teaspoon kosher salt
1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1 bay leaf (fresh or dried)
1 tablespoon fresh thyme leaves, stripped from woody stems
(or 1 teaspoon dried thyme or Italian seasoning)
¼ cup all-purpose flour
2-3 cups unsalted homemade chicken stock, heated
4 chicken legs-thigh portions
Garlic-crumb topping:
1 tablespoon garlic, minced
¼ cup olive oil
2 cups fresh bread crumbs
½ teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon black pepper
2 tablespoons fresh flat-leaf Italian parsley, chopped
(or 2 cups seasoned bread crumbs)

To prepare dried beans for cooking, soak them in water overnight. The next day, rinse them and simmer in fresh water until softened, which may take up to two hours for older beans. Alternatively, the quick soaking method can be used, which requires only an hour soak in hot water, followed by a simmer in fresh water until tender. If canned beans are used, these steps can be skipped entirely.

In a heavy skillet, sauté the sausage until nearly cooked through and remove it from the pan, leaving behind the fat. If the sausage is already fully cooked, sauté it until some fat renders out, and remove it from the pan. Into the fat from the sausage, sauté the bacon or salt pork over medium-low heat until cooked through but not too crisp, removing it but leaving the fat in the pan. Season the chicken with salt and pepper. Over medium-high heat, saute the chicken in the fat until browned on both sides. Remove to the separate dish of sausage and bacon.

Into the fat in the hot skillet, add the celery, onion, garlic and carrot and sauté over medium heat for about eight minutes, allowing the vegetables to become golden. Add the beans and season with salt and pepper. Add the flour, bay leaf and thyme to the beans and stir to combine. Pour in 2 cups of hot stock and stir well until the flour is fully incorporated. Pour about half the bean mixture into a 9 inch by 13 inch casserole dish and spread on a layer of sausage (sliced or unsliced), bacon or salt pork, topping with the remaining beans. Use the remaining stock to bring the liquid level up to just about the top of the beans.

Nestle the chicken, skin side up, into the top layer of beans. The cassoulet will develop substantial flavor if allowed to sit in the refrigerator overnight at this point. Preheat the oven to 325°F. If the cassoulet has been refrigerated, bring it to room temperature on the counter for 30 minutes and bake for 30 minutes, or until the chicken is cooked through.

Use a food processor to pulse a stale baguette into coarse crumbs (not powdery or fine). Sauté garlic in oil in a skillet over medium heat, stirring until fragrant, about 1 minute. Add bread crumbs, salt, and pepper and sauté, stirring, until crumbs are crisp and golden, about 3 minutes. Turn off the heat and stir in the parsley. Remove the cassoulet from the oven remove the cover. Increase the oven to 450°F. Spread the bread crumbs topping on the cassoulet and either bake for five-ten minutes or until golden browned and crusty.

EAT THIS NOW: Chili

2008-11-03T18:38:00.003-05:00

Chili is a cold-weather meal in my family and I remember eating it on New Year's Day when I was a kid. About five years ago, when chipotles were getting popular but I didn't yet know how to really use them, I made chipotle chili for the first time. It was a disaster. Instead of adding one chipotle pepper, I added the entire can.

It was a pot of inedible food and I was doggedly determined to fix it. I added more tomatoes, thinking it would thin out the flavor, but the spicy peppers just infused all the tomatoes. I added more beans thinking the extra bulk would soak up some spiciness and redistribute it. After a few hours of throwing good food after bad, I had to admit defeat. Now I know how spicy an individual chipotle is and I only use one per batch. I freeze the rest in tiny plastic zipper bags. It takes me about a year to go through the fifteen or so peppers in every can. My mouth hurt for two days after that bad chili-- I learned my lesson.

In retrospect, I realize my instinct wasn't bad. Too often chili is realy mild, like spaghetti sauce with beans in it. Chili should really be flavored with chiles in the old-fashioned cowboy way: fresh or rehydrated chiles that would mask the flavor of dead cattle to make a good sticky bowl of chow to be scooped up with cornbread. And I like chili with beans so if you are expecting a long discussion about Texas red versus Cincinnati five way, sorry to disappoint you.

I often use cooked chicken or turkey instead of beef in my chili, and it is one of my top five favorite ways to use up leftovers. Or try this: mix together a quart of chipotle chicken chili, a pound of cooked macaroni, 8 ounces shredded cheddar and scallions, bake 30 minutes and you have the perfect superbowl casserole. I don't even usually like food like this, but I love that dish.

Chipotles are smoked Jalapenos, but you can definitely use fresh chiles instead. Just make sure to taste as you go-- you can always add more but can never add less.

Chipotle Chili
1 tablespoon olive oil
2.5 pounds ground beef (or 2-3 cups cooked chicken, diced)
1 yellow onion, diced
1 red pepper, diced
2 cloves garlic, minced
1-2 chipotle chiles, chopped very fine, and 1 teaspoon liquid from a can of chipotles
packed in adobo
1 tablespoon ground cumin (more to taste
2 teaspoon ancho chili powder, or a chili powder blend
1 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
2 28-ounce can of whole tomatoes and their juice, crushed by hand
2 15.5-ounce cans of red or pink kidney or white beans, drained and rinsed

Optional garnishes: cheddar, scallions, sour cream, cilantro, oyster crackers

In a stockpot, heat the beef in the oil over medium heat. Saute until no longer pink, breaking the meat up with a flat-bottomed wooden spoon. Add the onion, red pepper and garlic and cook until fully translucent but not caramelized, about ten minutes. Mix in the chipotle, cumin, chili powder, salt and the tomatoes. Add the beans and simmer uncovered for half an hour. The tomatoes will break down as they cook and the spices will develop. If you crave more spiciness, add some of the adobo sauce from the chipotle can. If you are using chicken (or turkey) instead of beef, add it now and simmer an additional 30 minutes. Flavor will develop overnight, so make the chili a day ahead if possible.

Cornbread
3 cups (15 ounces) all-purpose flour
2 cups yellow cornmeal
4 teaspoons baking powder
½ teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoons salt
½ cup brown sugar, packed
½ cup honey
2 cups buttermilk
4 large eggs
½ pound (2 sticks) unsalted butter, melted
Adjust oven rack to middle position. Preheat oven to 400°F. Whisk flour, cornmeal, baking powder, baking soda, and salt in medium bowl until combined; set aside. In a separate bowl, whisk together the brown sugar, honey, buttermilk, eggs and butter until combined. Fold wet ingredients into dry ingredients. Pour batter into greased 9-inch by 13-inch baking pan. Bake until golden brown and toothpick inserted in center comes out clean, about 18-22 minutes.

STOVETOP BLACKBOARD: Hummus

2008-10-30T05:51:00.005-04:00

Hummus isn't exactly expensive, unless you want an enormous pile of it for a party. Then, it adds up. But making hummus at home is so cheap it feels like cheating. A bag of chick peas (also called garbanzo beans or ceci) is under a buck. If you don't already have these things at home, add them to your cart: olive oil, lemon, cumin, tahini, salt, pepper. Total cost for an enormous bowl of hummus: under five bucks, which is at least four times less than buying the preservative-laden stuff in the little plastic packages.

If you aren't organized enough to rehydrate your own beans, use the canned ones, but watch that decision eat into your savings and the taste of the final product. Hummus can be boring without a little help from roasted garlic, a little parsley or roasted red peppers or even roasted chiles. Throw in some roasted eggplant for a spread that combines the best of two classics: babaghanoush and hummus (delicious). Is this a disgraceful amalgam of middle eastern-style spreadable dishes? Probably. But ask your vegetarian friends what they like and be creative, I say.

Folklore suggests hummus may be one of the oldest known prepared foods. I like the symbolism of occasionally eating the simple foods of other cultures. It's good to eat rice and beans every once in a while just to remember how simpler foods support life for lots of people in the world. Hummus is like that, too: a staple of the Arab diet that I can enjoy with just a tiny bit of connection to a religiously significant land I have never visited except for little culinary trips through a bag of dried chick peas.

Hummus

1/2 pound chick peas (also called garbanzo beans or ceci)
1/4 head garlic
1/2 cup tahini (sesame paste)
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon cumin
1/2 teaspoon pepper
1/4 cup olive oil
juice of one lemon (plus some zest, to taste)

To rehydrate the chick peas, pour the dried beans into a bowl and cover with boiled water before bed. The next day, drain them and and simmer in water or chicken stock until soft. To roast the garlic, cover the unpeeled cloves with olive oil and place the oiled half head of garlic in a small oven-safe dish. Cover with aluminum foil and roast for 30 minutes at 350 degrees. When the cloves are cool enough to handle, add them to a food processor with the chickpeas. I like warm hummus, so I usually puree the chick peas warm. Add the rest of the ingredients (make sure the tahini is well stirred) and puree until smooth. If the mixture is too thick, add water 1 tablespoon at a time until it reaches the desired consistency. Serve with toasted pita wedges and cucumber.

Litany of the Kitchen Saints

2008-10-29T06:16:00.004-04:00

If a saint is someone who helps us believe
Then on this particular hallowed eve
Of the feast of all saints I'd like to suggest
We honor the canon, and all of the rest
Of holy people, folks regular and lay
Who were great but maybe didn't pray.

I learned how to cook, I'll happily confess
from Saturday morning shows on PBS.
The Frugal Gourmet and Martin Yan,
Justin Wilson and Jacques Pepin.
But the archangel feasting with God above
is Julia Child (and Paul her great love).

The food network deserves credit today
for Chiarello, Batali and Flay
Alton Brown and Jamie Oliver, too,
and of course Ina Garten-- thank you.
Into the kitchen, their pilgrimage site
Where miracles happen every night.

Dorothy Day Apple Butter

2008-10-28T20:31:00.003-04:00

It’s the end of October and my mind turns to those who have gone away. And since tomorrow is the 28th anniversary of Dorothy Day’s death, I’m thinking about her. The fact that it’s the 28th is significant: she left as I was coming in.

Dorothy Day has haunted me for many years, not demanding but persistently asking: why aren’t you, Alice, doing more for the poor? She and Peter Maurin created, ex nihilo, the Catholic Worker movement right here in New York City. I remember staying up very late in divinity school reading Dorothy Day and not being able to stop, mimicking in my nonstop reading her energetic capacity for generosity I was absorbing from every page of her collected works, By Little and By Little. She wouldn’t let the church talk her out of being sucked from the far left into community organizing, into unions, into socialism. She was Catholic and she was for political change—out of this complex conflict of her heart she found the ability to give everything away and love strangers. Ministry is about combining passions, she taught me.

At the Catholic Worker, they welcomed in the poor with coffee and apple butter sandwiches on Mott Street to help them be a bit less cold, less hungry, less frustrated, less alone. But no less blessed. She wrote, "It is a battle to remember that we are made in the image and likeness of God when employers, treating you with less consideration than animals, turn you indifferently away. It is a fierce battle to maintain one's pride and dignity, to remember that we are brothers of Christ, who ennobled our human nature by sharing it." I don’t know the working poor that she knew, but through her writing, I have had an introduction. I am grateful for that, and to know about her compassion.

On the anniversary of her death I tried to go out to her grave at Resurrection Cemetery on Staten Island. I don’t usually visit gravesites but I thought it would be a good way to remember her where she had her conversion. I wanted to go there and read these words of hers to the patch of grass that grows over her bones in the ground: "Breadlines are not enough... the heart hungers for that new social order wherein justice dwelleth." And "Our problems stems from our acceptance of this filthy, rotten system." I have been wondering what she would think about the market problems of today. I wonder what work she would be doing. I am more curious about what she would be writing. How would she make sense of this? Make gospel of this? Make love of this?

So for the pilgrimage I thought I’d leave school around 3 o’clock. My route required me to take three busses and the Staten Island ferry (very appealing on the first really windy and cold day of the year) but the estimated travel time would be three and a half hours and the cemetery closes every day at 4:30. It literally could not be done. I work with the very rich, she with the very poor; a pine box in a donated grave on Staten Island is a far way away from a privileged private school on the Upper East Side.

But on the same day of the cancelled graveside visit, I was thinking about the economy and trying, desperately, to understand it with my embarrassingly small knowledge of economics or finance. All I know about Wall Street is that I’d rather eat glass than chit-chat with one of its soldiers. Now I am furious at myself for not being more patient when I meet these folk. For not tolerating their self-importance in order to glean from them some insight into what they do and how this happened.

I’m still thinking about apples. Every time the word depression is whispered on the news, I think of men in worn overcoats selling apples in the 30s. I think of breadlines. I think of Dorothy Day. Will those men in worn overcoats ever sell apples on the street again? Probably not. But what does a depression look like today? Who will rise up as the new Dorothy Day and what will that ministry look like now? Does the church have anyone in the ranks? And now, who will criticize the greedy and feed the hungry? Who will remind us all of the holiness of every single person?

Then, she formed Houses of Hospitality as a part of the Catholic Worker movement. Poured coffee and soup, grew food at their upstate farm, talked and gave and tried and tried and tried. She wrote, "These are the men on our breadlines. These are the men who come to us for shelter, for clothing. And while we are trying to change the social order, while we are trying to build a new civilization within the shell of the old, we must perform the Works of Mercy and take care of our brothers in need." And she wrote about the beatitudes and breadlines with a nagging persistence and prophetic beauty that has kept her legacy alive long enough to inspire so many young people doing church work. Born and died in the same year, but we did not miss each other and for that I am grateful.

Apple butter sandwiches are one of the food refrains of her writing-- seems that was often all they had to offer the long breadlines with their coffee in the morning. I am going to make apple butter from the applesauce leftover from my upstate apple picking trip. I've never made it before, but it seems simple: simmer applesauce, brown sugar, maybe a bit of cider and some cinnamon until it is reduced to a thick paste.

STOVETOP BLACKBOARD: Lasagna

2008-10-23T18:36:00.004-04:00

I wasn't a picky eater as a child but I didn't like lasagna and grew to have a sort of hatred for ricotta cheese that I wasn't able to shake until a few years ago. For me lasagna = blobs of ricotta. But a friend of mine who is the brilliant chef at L'Orchio in New Haven made a lasagna for his daughter's birthday party that completely turned my heart around. It was cheesy and meaty and soft and so delicious. Around the same time, Gourmet ran an article about Mario Batali's lasagna bolognese, and I got hooked on the project, spending a lot of compulsive days trying to deconstruct and reconstruct this layered pasta dish. I combined aspects of Batali's recipe with my memory of Francesco's lasagna, and finally got it.

I have every confidence that this is actually the only way to eat lasagna. Yes, this is a complicated recipe, but it’s the absolute best. Yes, it takes a long time, but you can make massive amounts of the bolognese at once and freeze it. And yes, you can use dried pasta, but here's the recipe for fresh, just so you have it. Also, the fully constructed lasagna freezes very well-- but defrost it before cooking. And if you have a friend in childbirth, crisis or the throes of grief, this is the best drop-it-off-pan-of-frozen-love you can make for them. I cannot convince you of any good reason to spend half a day on this except this: I have made it and it has made me very happy. Is that not a sacramental meal?

Lasagna Bolognese

For bolognese (meat sauce):
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 pound mild Italian sausage meat
1 pound ground meat (beef, lamb, turkey, chicken or veal)
1 cup onion, finely diced
½ cup carrot, peeled and finely diced
½ cup celery, finely diced
1 tablespoons garlic, peeled and minced
½ cup wine (white, red, or vermouth)
1 cup milk
1 teaspoon kosher salt
½ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1 tablespoon Italian seasoning (or dried basil, oregano, or a combination)
1 28-ounce can of crushed tomatoes
¼ cup fresh Italian flat-leaf parsley, diced

For béchamel (roux-thickened white sauce):
2 tablespoons unsalted butter
3 level tablespoons all-purpose flour
2 cups whole milk
½ teaspoon kosher salt
pinch freshly grated nutmeg
8 ounces shredded mozzarella or 8 ounces ricotta

For fresh pasta:
½ cup (2.5 ounces) semolina flour
1 cup (5 ounces) all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon olive oil
2 eggs, beaten

To complete:
8-ounce can tomato sauce
¼-½ cup parmigano-reggiano, grated
Kosher salt and freshly ground pepper to taste

To make the bolognese, heat oil in a large stockpot over medium-high heat and sauté the sausage and ground meat, crumbing the meat as it cooks, until it is browned and cooked through. Add the onion, carrot and celery and toss to coat with the rendered fat in the pan. Sauté for ten minutes over medium heat, stirring occasionally. Add the garlic and cook for another 2 minutes. Add the wine and simmer until the liquid has reduced by about half, about 7-8 minutes. Add the milk, salt, pepper, Italian seasoning and toss together. Simmer about 5 minutes. Add the tomatoes and mix thoroughly. Reduce the heat to low and simmer (covered) for about 45 minutes, stirring occasionally. Stir in the parsley.

To make the béchamel, heat the butter over low heat in a saucepan. Add the flour and whisk to form a roux, or loose paste. Stream in the milk (cold milk is fine) and whisk until the milk is thickened. Bring the sauce to a simmer for about three minutes, whisking constantly, and season with salt and nutmeg. Whisk in your cheese of choice and cover the surface with a layer of plastic wrap until you are ready to use. Béchamel does not traditionally contain cheese, but adding the cheese at ths point makes layering the lasagna easier.

To make the pasta, mix the flours, oil and egg together until a shaggy ball develops. Knead the dough for five minutes. (This can also be done in a food processor.) Allow the dough to rest in a bowl, covered in plastic wrap, for about fifteen minutes. Divide the dough into three pieces and work each piece through a pasta machine to the thinness of the 6 setting. Cut the sheets into lengths that will fit in your casserole dish. Cook the sheets of pasta in boiling water, in batches of about 4 pieces, for 2 minutes.

To layer the lasagna, start with a bottom layer of one cup bolognese thinned with the can of tomato sauce. Then layer on the pasta, béchamel, and bolognese, seasoning each layer with salt and pepper to taste. Repeat until the casserole dish is filled. Sprinkle on the parmigiano-reggiano and bake in a 350 °F oven for 45 minutes.

Leaves, Leaving

2008-10-22T06:07:00.002-04:00

The end will come and down we will fall
To be nestled beneath winter’s while pall.
But before we wave surrender’s white flag
And greet the darkness, piled into a bag.
A blast, surprising, colors extending
From treeline to sky, red and brown blending.
Nature, the diva, bleeds the aria song
Distracting from what will come before long:
Skeletal sticks, unfleshed and bare.
Before passing away everyone should prepare
One last performance to dazzle the crowd

Before beauty is overtaken by the shroud.

EAT THIS NOW: Herbs

2008-10-20T18:06:00.005-04:00

Pesto comes from the Italian verb to crush, and basically describes anything crushed into a paste. So Chimmichurri, the fantastic Argentinian herb paste, and Pistou, the french garlic-parsley-lemon paste stirred into soup, are also kinds of pesto. (Applying an Italian word to something in the cuisine of Spanish- or French-speaking kitchen raises interesting cross-cultural linguistic issues for another post.) Too often, pesto is associated with its most popular variation: basil pesto with parmigiano, pine nuts and olive oil.

When I was putting away my herb garden this fall, I had all sorts of leftover leafy and woody herbs: marjoram, oregano, parsley, thyme, rosemary, mint and of course, parsley and basil. So I threw them all together with the typical basil pesto ingredients and made the best pesto I've ever had: a complex and interesting combination lightened with lemon zest and smoothed out with just enough olive oil to bring it together. It's a great way to celebrate the end of the garden and freezes beautifully (try ice cube trays for small portions) in case you want to reminisce about July in January.

This makes me think that pesto is much more of a loose and flexible recipe that is endlessly adaptable. Swap walnuts for pine nuts? Sure. Swap cilantro for all the herbs and lime juice and zest for the lemon? Great stirred into rice to make it instantly Mexican flavored. Is tapenade pesto? It doesn't have any herbs, but it is a crushed paste. What about Ancho mole? Hm...

Pesto
1 cup packed herbs, mostly leafy, stems removed
1/2 teaspoon raw garlic, minced
juice 1/2 lemon (1 teaspoon of zest optional)
1/4 cup olive oil
2 tablespoons grated parmigiano-reggiano
2 tablespoons toasted pine nuts
1 teaspoon kosher salt

On the topic of leftover herbs, I'll also give you some of my favorite herb butter recipes. Green herbs that aren't at the peak of freshness can be preserved in the fat of the butter, extending their shelf life by a few weeks. A pat of this flavored butter is an instant sauce for steaks, fish, chicken, pasta, eggs, you name it. Compound butters are also excellent on bread and baked potatoes.

Beurre à la maître d'hotel: lemon parsley butter
1 cup room temperature unsalted butter (2 sticks)
¼ cup fresh lemon juice
6 tablespoons chopped parsley
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
Chop the parsley very find and mix it into the butter along with the lemon juice, salt and pepper.

Beurre de fines herbes: herb butter
1 cup room temperature unsalted butter (2 sticks)
½ cup tarragon, chives, or a mixture of fresh herbs
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
Chop the herbs very fine and mix with the butter, salt and pepper.

Beurre d'ail: garlic butter
1 cup room temperature unsalted butter (2 sticks)
1 head garlic
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
Rub the unpeeled head of garlic with olive oil and roast in a 350 degree oven for 30 minutes or until the cloves are soft. Allow the garlic to cool and squeeze the soft roasted garlic out of the skins. Mix with the butter and season with salt and pepper.

Beurre Marchand de Vins: red wine and shallot butter
1 cup room temperature unsalted butter (2 sticks)
2 cup red wine
¼ cup shallot, minced
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
Cook the red wine and shallot over a medium high flame until it is reduced to1/2 c (4 ounces). Allow it to cool completely to room temperature and then mix it into the butter with salt and pepper.

All compound butter can be rolled into logs and stored in plastic wrap in the refrigerator for a few weeks. They will last longer if frozen. These are the classic French combinations, but try chipotles packed in adobo sauce on cornbread or flank steak, for example. You can try any flavor combination you can think of—the sky is the limit!

STOVETOP BLACKBOARD: Apple desserts

2008-10-16T06:31:00.030-04:00

I can’t remember where I first read about it (Dorie Greenspan, maybe), but the idea of freezing an unbaked homemade fruit pie and then baking it, undefrosted, in a screaming hot oven until bubbly and crisp seemed like a miracle I needed to see to believe. I imagined myself coming home to continue an enjoyable night with a few friends, stealing away a second to pop the frozen pie into the oven, and delighting a houseful of pie-loving people an hour later with effortless apple cinnamon goodness. I am very seduced by these sorts of invisible-effort-visible-result entertaining illusions. Sure, I could just buy one from Sara Lee or whichever agra business mega corporate conglomerate machine makes one out of preservatives and artificial coloring, but I like to make and bake my own. Call me old fashioned, see if I care.

So I had to know how it was done. Turns out, putting the pie in the freezer for a few days (weeks, maybe) had no adverse effect on the pie at all. Before I began this project, I knew that it’s actually better to refrigerate the completed, unbaked, pie for at least an hour before baking to allow the pastry to settle and rest and to avoid shrinking as it bakes. And the freezer time accomplished this beautifully, and split the work time between making and baking. Just make sure you really overdo it on the plastic wrap so air doesn’t give the pie freezerburn. And use a metal or tin pie plate (freezing cold glass + really hot oven = broken glass). I am so excited to try this with Michigan blueberries next summer and to feast on a pie in the fall when the blueberries are well out of season!

All of these recipes are gems of the make-it-now-save-for-later dessert category, and each in different ways. So after a windfall like the harvest of last weekend, I can work the apples into frosty preparations that can be steadily appreciated throughout the year. Like the pie, the apple crisps, frozen in individual ramekins and baked as needed, are warm and comforting desserts to have on hand any time. In addition to being incredibly easy to make, they also offer the aroma of apple and cinnamon (who doesn't love that?). Cinnamon ice cream is the perfect compliment to any of these recipes and will keep for a very long time in the freezer. The baked apple muffins, can be defrosted one or two at a time before bedtime and will make the perfect breakfast on a crisp fall morning.

Caramel Apple Pie

For pie crust (for double crust pie):
14 tablespoons all unsalted butter (optional: replace 5-6 tablespoons of the butter with cream cheese or vegetable shortening)
11.5 ounces all-purpose flour
pinch of salt
1/4 teaspoon baking powder
5-6 tablepoons water (for a little tang, replace 2 tablespoon water with cold orange juice, apple cider or apple cider vinegar)

To make the crust, whisk the flour, salt and baking powder in a bowl to combine. Working quickly, use your fingers or a pastry cutter to mix the flour into the butter until the butter is in flaky pieces throughout and the dough is starting to come together (it will be crumbly). Add the water one tablespoon at a time and blend gently, just until most of the dry flour has been incorporated into the dough ball. Alternatively, use a food processor to pulse the butter into the flour. The bits of butter will still be slightly visible. Wrap in plastic and chill for 40 minutes.

Pie Filling:
3 pounds apples—peeled, cored and cut into ¼ inch slices
Juice and zest of half of one lemon
½ teaspoon kosher salt
½ cup organic cane sugar
2 tablespoons unsalted butter
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 tablespoon cornstarch

To make the filling, toss the apples with the lemon zest and juice, salt and sugar and allow the apples to soften and release a lot of juice, which will take about 45 minutes. This process of room temperature "cooking", releasing liquid from fruit with a bit of salt, is called masceration. Roll the refrigerated pie dough and place it, carefully, in the pie pan, allowing the excess to hang over the side. Roll out the top crust in preparation.

To make the caramel filling, strain the apples through a colander and catch the liquid in a saucepan. Simmer the liquid with the butter until reduced by half. Toss the apples with the cornstarch, cinnamon and nutmeg and place in the bottom crust. Pour the caramel over the apple filling. Roll out the top crust and carefully place over the pie filling. Fold the top crust under the bottom crust.

Crimp the prepared edge with the tines of a fork or by squeezing your fingertips into the dough to make a peaked edge. Wrap lightly. Freeze 1 hour until set. Caterer's wrap. Freeze thoroughly (days, weeks, a month). Egg wash (brush with a thoroughly beaten egg with a pastry brush) and slit (cut slits in the crust with a very sharp knife) before baking on pizza stone in 450°F oven for about 75 minutes, or until the filling of the pie begins to bubble out of the slits and the crust becomes golden brown and beautiful.

Apple crisp:

Pinching cold butter into the flour and oat mixture would make tht topping more flaky and granola-like, but melted butter makes the topping more like crumb cake-like.

3 pounds apples, peeled and cut into 1/4 inch slices
juice and zest of 1/2 lemon
1/4 teaspoon kosher salt
2 tablespoons sugar (brown or white)
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
Topping:
½ cup organic cane sugar
1 ½ cups (7.5) ounces all-purpose flour
¾ cup old fashioned rolled oats
12 tablespoons unsalted sticks butter (1 ½ sticks), melted
1 teaspoon cinnamon
½ teaspoon nutmeg

Preheat the oven to 350°F. In a 9-inch x 9-inch baking pan, toss the apples with the lemon zest and juice, salt, sugar, cinnamon and nutmeg and allow the apples to soften and release a little juice, which will take about fifteen minutes. Alternatively, you could also toss the apples in a large bowl and then tranfer them to the baking dish. Perhaps you love doing extra dishes. That's your prerogative. Meanwhile, make the topping. Fold the sugar, flour, oats, cinnamon and nutmeg into the melted butter until completely incorporated. Drop the batter by hand (in little clumps) onto the apples until the top of the apples are covered with the crisp topping. Bake for 30-40 minutes or until the apple filling begins to bubble out of the slightly browned and puffed crisp topping. Serve warm.

Apple Cinnamon Muffins

This recipe is inspired by this beautiful natural phenomemon, pictured on the left: the apple tanline. As we were walking around the orchard we noticed that the apples were only red on the skin that faced west, baked by the sun even before they were picked.

1 very large apple or 2 small apples, peeled and diced
2 tablespoons thick dairy product (sour cream or creme fraiche or ricotta or heavy cream or yogurt or cream cheese, whatever)
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 eggs
almost 2 cups (9.5 ounces) all-purpose unbleached flour
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg or ground ginger
1 stick unsalted butter (at room temperature)
1 cup white or brown sugar
1 cup walnuts or pecans (optional)
Preheat the oven to 350°F. Mix together the first four ingredients in a small bowl and set aside. Whisk the flour, salt and baking soda together in a small bowl and set aside. Cream the butter and sugar on medium-high speed for about five minutes, or until pale yellow and doubled in volume. Add the wet ingredients and mix for another 1 minute at medium speed (try not to turn the apples into total mush). Gradually, add the flour mixture into the batter with a large spoon, a bit at a time, at low speed. With a spatula, fold in the walnuts by hand, scraping the bottom of the bowl to make sure all ingredients are very well incorporated. Pour into 12 cup standard muffin pan (reliably non-stick or lined with paper liners) and bake for 25 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the center of each muffin comes out clean. The batter can also be poured in a loaf pan and baked for about 50-60 minutes. Cool thoroughly before storing or freezing.

Domestic paradise (a haiku)

2008-10-15T06:29:00.006-04:00

No floors to sweep or
Chores around their garden home.
Sounds very tempting...

Eating in Eden

2008-10-14T06:04:00.009-04:00

If I could weigh 200 pounds and not explode, I would fill myself out with one food: doughnuts. Everyone has that list of “oh, if I only could” foods. These are indulgent foods that have unfortunate consequences, but are so delicious they’re almost worth it. I’m not talking about delicacies like caviar, truffles or foie gras. I’m talking about the foods we crave that we know are no good: things that are sweet or fried, or, both. I’m admitting my doughnut temptation.

On our recent trip up the Hudson to New Paltz, NY, we were on a mission for a few things: a cute orchard to hand-pick all different sorts of apples with a farm stand where we could buy some cider and some apple cider doughnuts. Jenkins and Lueken Orchard satisfied our first two requests, but they were out of doughnuts, so the journey through the Edenic Hudson Valley continued. On our way back to the NY State Thruway, we practically smelled them from the road. I made my way to the bakery corner of WallKill View Farm Market and ordered half a dozen hot freshly cinnamon-sugared doughnuts in a steamy waxed paper bag. The only reason I had the self-control to snap this picture was that they were actually too hot to eat.

I climbed into the passenger seat for the drive back into the city and admired our little feast before it was ravenously consumed. They were perfectly fried—with a little give, soft like supple skin—and the sugar was still audibly crunchy. With an Eve-like invitation, I handed a warm doughnut to Scott, my Adam, and he ate with me. And after just one bite, I knew this was the best doughnut I’d ever taste. It was too perfect, too warm, too just right to ever be topped by another. I’d throw it all away to relive that moment of pleasure again and again. I was tempted, I gave in, and I’d do it again. An apple could never seduce me, but an apple cider doughnut? Damn. The fall makes sense to me all of a sudden.

Yes, I love doughnuts but I think I know when to resist. I believe people are happiest when they are at the table, keeping the feast and being merry. But there are people out there who consume food in ways that seems so unnatural. I didn’t know about food addictions and Overeaters Anonymous until I ministered to an addict. Fundamentally, disordered eating is about the simplicity of stuffing an emotional void with food and the seductive desire to feel filled triumphing over the desire to feel healthy. When I worked as a hospital chaplain, the experience that affected me on the deepest level was a summer-long patient who was recovering from gastric bypass surgery. He was 800 pounds.

He explained that food is the worst addiction of all because of the advertising serpent, constantly bombarding the addict with imagery of easily attainable unhealthy foods. I have never looked at a pizza commercial, or an obese person, the same way again. The food addict cannot quit the addiction cold turkey; the human body must eat. So whereas an alcoholic can give it up and start counting the days of his or her new life, the food addict must find a way to control portions or he or she will die. And for so many people, the serpent wins. It’s not gluttony, it’s just the inability to believe they will ever feel good if they stop.

Is the legacy, the taint, of the fall human nature’s inherent disobedience or lack of self-control? Is original sin a craving for power or a craving for what is forbidden? And can that ever be washed away? Thankfully, the food narrative continues East of Eden and beyond, into more comforting imagery where food brings people together, makes them appreciate and trust God and understand their blessedness. It’s just one more reason not to isolate Genesis account from the rest of Scripture.

Scripture contradicts itself in many ways, but maybe someone out there can help me with this: why does food (from the tree of knowledge of good and evil in the garden of Eden) symbolize the first disobedience and then later in the New Testament, Jesus uses food (in the form of bread and wine) to symbolize our salvation? Biblical food symbolizes temptation and salvation, which seems so divergent: one destroys relationship with God, the other restores it. Could this have been the intention of the scriptural narrative?

The biblical use of food seems to allow for multiple, and fluctuating, symbolic meanings: starving, feasting, fasting, feeding, all tending toward the promise of the messianic banquet, the feast of heaven where hunger and lack will be no more. From out of the garden to our eventual return to it, perhaps. Like water, the diverse biblical symbolism of food can seem to suffer so much overuse it falls into meaninglessness, but actually, I think it just proves that these big symbols can carry infinite interpretations. So not contradictory, just limitlessly contextualized. Diverse, but not divergent, maybe.

EAT THIS NOW: Applesauce

2008-10-13T05:46:00.000-04:00

Every Columbus Day weekend, my family would head up to Thompson Farm in Wisconsin to fill the car with pumpkins. Classically conditioned from these experiences, I had to head upstate last this past weekend, leaving the Big Apple to pick some big apples (and pumpkins) in the Hudson Valley. Observably changing with every northward mile: leaves, pace, attitude.

My objective this week is to make a pile of blog entries from a pile of hand-picked apples. We’ve got Empires from the Empire State, the classic Macintosh, striated Galas and Fujis for eating out of hand, (huge!) Golden Delicious for baking, deep purplish red Macouns and Winesaps for, well I don’t know what yet, and my Mom’s favorite, Northern Spy, for Grandma Alice’s pink applesauce.

Yellowish-tan pre-packaged Mott’s applesauce cups were anathema in my childhood. My Mom made homemade pink applesauce the same way her mother made it, by grinding red skin-on apples with a Foley food mill (or, better yet, getting a kid to do it) and then mixing the pink-tinged applesauce with a bit of cinnamon and maybe some sugar. It was then carefully spooned into canning jars and put up on the shelf until called upon to accompany pork chops or to feed to a hungry (and lucky) infant.

As I was grinding away on the food mill, I was transformed to my younger self, little arms racing the crank handle around and around, wanting to stop but wanting to finish the batch of apples more. I am sure applesauce was the first food I ever cooked and probably ever ate, the genesis of the cook and food lover I am today. It’s so very fitting that this recipe makes a pink applesauce, to remind me of the chain of women from which it comes (I’m the latest incarnation of four sequential generations of Alices).

And so the week begins, appropriately, with the simplest food of all, applesauce, and with thoughts of what we pass down from generation to generation, through our hand-picked apples.

Grandma Alice’s Pink Applesauce
Makes about six cups
½ peck (about four pounds or ten apples) Northern Spy, washed, skin-on, uncored, quartered
2 tablespoons organic cane sugar
½ teaspoon ground cinnamon

Cover the apples with water in a stockpot and bring to a boil. Boil for about five minutes, or until the apples have softened and the skins begin to split off the fruit. Drain the apples and pass them through a food mill in batches. Mix the applesauce with the sugar and cinnamon to taste. If the applesauce is very watery, simmer over medium heat until reduced.

A Foley Food Mill grinds food through small holes and does not allow skins (apple, potato, you get the idea) through the holes, thus making it the perfect tool for applesauce and mashed potatoes. It can handle a large quantity at once and is the perfect non-mechanical tool for kids to use. Even if you only pull it out for Columbus Day weekend applesauce and Thanksgiving mashed potatoes, it is so worth the $25. Also great for jacking out those big batches of baby food to be divided, frozen and consumed as needed.

STOVETOP BLACKBOARD: Caramelized Onion

2008-10-09T06:19:00.011-04:00

If this were going to be a long post, it would explain the many uses of caramelized onions, their concentrated taste and the magic of transforming a simple ingredient into a complex flavor. But I cannot write a long post about how to cook caramelized onions; the process is just too simple. It's a dead easy recipe, if you can even use that word, and requires two things: sliced onions and a little heat. I once saw a recipe for caramelized onions that had six ingredients-- sugar and salt and red wine and God only knows what else—heresy! All you need is a big yellow or white onion cut into a pile of 1/8-inch slices. (Red onion will turn purplish brown and should be avoided for aesthetic reasons.) I use a non-stick skillet with maybe a tablespoon of olive oil if I'm feeling insecure, but even that isn't necessary.

The most important ingredients are time and patience. Thomas Keller uses a diffuser to make the temperature very, very low and allows the onions to caramelize for hours on end until they are perfectly deep brown and soft. As is typical with most of what he suggests, I agree, but I use the lowest temperature on the range instead of a diffuser. Every ten minutes or so, I toss the onions around, arranging them to maximize contact with the skillet surface as the pile gets smaller and smaller. On average, the onion will lose about 75% of its volume (a 12-ounce onion will yield 4 ounces of caramelized onion). The caramelization happens, of course, from the sugars inside the onion coming to the surface and cooking as the onion slowly loses its juice. This is one of the best food miracles to observe. Richness comes from simplicity, unsuspected depth is revealed, sweetness is pulled from a sharp ingredient. Amen to onions.

For some of the best food (and theological) writing I've ever come across, check out p. 10-21 of of The Supper of the Lamb for Fr. Robert Farrar Capon's comparison between the layers of an onion and the creation of the world. It is a wonderfully creative counter-argument to offer even the most recalcitrant atheist. Highly recommended; a book that's changed my life.

To transform your pile of caramelized onions into French onion soup, deglaze the pan with a good amount of red wine or sweet vermouth, reducing it to about ¼ cup. Add stock (homemade and unsalted, any kind, and enough to make it, well, soupy). Toss in herbs and spices to taste: fresh thyme leaves, freshly ground black pepper and kosher or sea salt. Simmer until the flavors lose their individuality. Meanwhile, toast some stale bread cubes tossed olive oil in a 400 degree oven until browned and crispy and place one the bottom of each deep soup bowl or individual crock. Ladle in the soup, cover with slices of Gruyère (or any other type of swiss cheese like Emmentaler) or even mozzarella. Slide the bowls under the broiler, watching carefully, until the cheese gets slightly brown.

To make vegetable stock, caramelize onions with sliced fennel, thinly sliced carrot (I suggest using a vegetable peeler) and celery until well browned. Deglaze with white wine and add the contents of the skillet to a stockpot. Add water, garlic, a bay leaf, herbs, crushed peppercorns, mushrooms (or just mushroom stems) and perhaps a bit of tomato paste or some leftover tomatoes (for color if for no other reason). Simmer at least one hour but not more than three, over very low heat and strain. Discard the solids and use the vegetable stock as you would any other type of stock. Perfect for vegetarians, vegans and those Fridays-in-lent risotto dinners.