In the New Kitchen

Over the past several weeks, we've been moving. We moved about a mile but it may as well have been across the country.

I'm bad at moving. Really bad. My husband? Really good. He's a labeler (his Brother P-Touch is a prized possession,) box organizer, plan-ahead guy. I'm of the "just think how nice it will be, where should the KitchenAid mixer go and where should we hang the copper pots?" variety...before I've even packed a box. Not "unpacked" ..."packed".

But we made it. I did, anyway. He's still recovering.

My favorite room in the new house is, of course, the kitchen. My sweet friend Annie cooked in this kitchen for ten years and it is filled with her essence: roasted chickens and potatoes, apple tarts, panna cotta, farmers' market breakfasts, beautiful holiday meals, afternoon tea, and the smell of sweet butter melting into the countless pastries and pies she and her daughters made here. Annie also moved about a mile away into a house with another beautiful kitchen. It's big and it's downright dreamy. I've warned her that I'll be descending upon it to wreak havoc and I'm told I'm most welcome.

But oh to unpack into a big, clean palette. Drawers and shelves and cupboards all waiting to be filled with the things that, for me, are at the core of feeling at home. Spoons and apple slicers and pancake molds and knives and big pots. Jams, plum sauce, rice, pasta, olive oil and vinegars. And, at least for the next week or so, they'll all be in their proper places.

I can hear the sounds of meals to come and it fills me with joy.

Thank you, Annie, for your kitchen. I will fill it with warm meals and love.

A Bowl of Apples

Today it's all about apple tart. Actually it's a galette: no pan, free-form dough, oval or round. 

 I'm a believer. I adhere to the 3-2-1 formula. 3 parts flour (1 1/2 cups); 2 parts butter (2 (TWO) cubes); 1/2 cup ice water. Totally freaks out the butter police but man does it make a great pie crust. Never fails. 

I've fallen in love with the Mutsu apple. Tart, sweet, holds its shape. Braeburn's nice but Mutsu has a little something that nestles into that buttery crust and delivers. And they're big. I cradle those green jewels in my elbow and peel them, smelling the beautiful aroma of tart apples as the skin is peeled away. Sometimes (always) I get a whole lot more flesh than I intend to while peeling. I do, therefore, buy a lot of apples. 

                             

Roll, pound a little and flatten the dough into a circle on a cookie sheet. Slice apples thinly and lay to rest in a circular pattern. Takes 2-3 apples depending upon your peeling talent. (I usually need 3, thanks.)

Add a little sugar (brown), cinnamon (fresh if you have it), tiny bit of cardomom, some lemon zest and a few more dots of butter (!) Pungent apple slices, sweet brown sugar, spices and buttery crust. What could go wrong?

Fold the crust over galette-style and bake at 350 for 30- 40 minutes (crust needs to be brown, apples tender and sweet.) 

Easy as pie. But better. 

Soup is Life

I'm thinking about soup. Probably because I'm making it. It's a beautiful October day and we've officially launched the "season of soups and stews" as an old friend used to say. 

Here's what I like about soup - at least the soups I make. They're a perfect reflection of life's basic patterns. There's the order/chaos/order continuum. You can go by the book or you can make it up as you go along (guess which category I fall into.) You can choose to blend or stand alone. And like many of the great foods in life, soup is at its most beautiful while it's raw.

I like to make vegetable soup. As I mentioned in an earlier post, I was (quite literally) born to chop. And it's cathartic to wield a large, sharp knife as long as the only flesh you encounter is that of an onion or a zucchini. Vegetable soup is the epitome of make-it-up-as-you-go-along. 

Pictured here are today's ingredients. Yes, that is a JAR of pesto you see. I'm topping the soup with pesto once it's in the bowls and I actually ran out of garlic - very rare. I happened to have this jar of back-up pesto hanging around - extremely rare. 

Other than that, you have your basics: leeks, shallots, cippolini, garlic, carrots, rutabaga, zucchini, tomatoes, beans and pasta. Full disclosure: cooked carrots make my throat constrict. When I was a little girl I would wedge myself between my mother and the stove and try to negotiate for a raw carrot instead of a cooked one, to no avail. She is not one to be held hostage by a carrot. 

But I can handle them in soup, sort of.

So you chop and you toss; you think or you don't think at all; you get everything into the pot, you cover it with a lid and you wait. Simple as that.

Chaos contained. Comfort on the horizon. Isn't that the rhythm of life?

Vegetable Soup (Un)Recipe

4 cloves garlic

3 leeks

1 sweet onion (yellow or cippolini)

2 large shallots

2-3 each yellow squash and zucchini

2 rutabega (rutabegas? rutabege?)

2 15 oz cans cannellini beans

1 28 oz. can whole peeled tomatoes (I prefer Muir Glen; WF didn't have in stock)

1/2 lb. pasta of choice. (I like small shells or orechiette)

2-3 generous sprigs fresh thyme

Red pepper flakes to taste, about 1/8 t but you can inch it up if you want more kick

A generous splash of white wine (equivalent to a swig straight from the bottle if you were on a picnic and had forgotten the cups. That has never happened to me.)

Prepare the pasta but take it out 2 minutes before the box indicates.

(it'll continue to cook in the soup)

Carefully wash the leeks. Cut and reserve the white part only.

Chop in 1/2 inch discs.

Peel and chop onions, shallots and garlic.

Melt 2-3 T butter or olive oil or a combination of both in a large stock pan.

Add the leek, onion, shallot, garlic mixture.

Allow to cook gently on medium heat for a minute or two, then add pepper flakes, thyme and

swig of wine (for soup, not you, but nobody's looking.) Stir and continue cooking until soft. 

Add carrots and stir for a minute or two more.

Add chicken broth.

Add rutabega, zucchini and cannellini beans.

Note: I like to add a splash of sherry vinegar at this point. Umami.

Cover and simmer for 1/2 hour. Add tomatoes. (I learned this trick from Martha: before pouring the tomatoes into the soup, take scissors and go at them in the can. Easier than stabbing at them with a spoon once they're in the soup.)

Simmer for another half hour or until vegetables feel tender. 

Salt and pepper to taste.

Add pasta and turn to low. Simmer for 5 minutes and either serve immediately or take off heat until ready to serve.

Spoon it into bowls and top with a dollop of pesto (definitely fresh is best; 

that jarred stuff I used today will do in a pinch, but it's certainly not the same.)

I like it with a little cheese sprinkled on top and a hunk of herb focaccia on the side.

The Uglier the Better

We have a birthday cake in our family that defies all logic. It's called the Hawaiian Lady – a recipe handed

down by my maternal grandmother Irene – and using my finely tuned math skills I'd estimate that it has graced at least 250 birthday celebrations. It's chocolate, it's sweet, and it's ugly. The uglier the better is the way I look at it. Most of my other family members who bake it manage to make it look pretty good. But my version is a misshapen jewel in a bad prom dress and I couldn't be more proud.

The original recipe for Hawaiian Lady is written in Irene's signature style: no spelling out how the ingredients should be assembled, sometimes no quantities at all. A teaspoon of baking soda dissolved in milk is just that. You just use the logical amount of milk. The dry ingredients go together and then you blend them into the wet. Oh. And add a dash of vanilla. 350. How long?! Until it's done.

Works for me. Even if it doesn't look like it. 

Even in the exact science of baking, whose masters I revere, I've had some incredible success stories. Like the lemon coconut cupcakes that were in the oven before I realized I'd forgotten the coconut and was stuffing the flakes into the heating, congealing dough. Turned out just fine. Or the Peach/Raspberry scones that had been all shaped and in the oven for about five minutes when I saw the small pyrex bowl of baking powder sitting on the counter. Opened the oven, eyeballed the ratios and worked it in. They were delicious. Or the cheese souffle that I decided didn't have enough butter and cheese around the rim as it started to rise. Light, fluffy and divine.

Imperfection is a virtue. Improvisation is a joy. And I'm with Irene. You really do know how to do it. Get in there and fly.

Cooking Single-Handed: Adventures in the Kitchen

With the depressing demise of Gourmet, there's been a great deal of chatter about the plebes vs. the patricians among the cooking classes. 

I happen to be a lot of both.

There are plenty of take-out curry nights around our house, but there are also nights to be remembered: chicken cacciatore (my husband's favorite), onion frittata, lamb chops, pesto, ratatouille with spring vegetables, skirt steak, pork chops, baby potatoes roasted until they taste like candy...I could go on but there's plenty of food porn out there already.

Still, I've been thinking. As the food lovers'  world continues to shift, maybe there's an opening for me to fulfill my longtime dream of having a one-handed cooking show.

I was born with one hand and wore a prosthesis until I was 35. The thing was amazing in the kitchen. It had a hook on the end and I could use it for all sorts of cooking-related activities: plunge it in pasta water and stir; shake the roasting pan around pot-holder-free; grab hot potatoes and toss them on the counter; flip a chop on the barbecue with built-in tongs.

I do miss it sometimes, but I took it off one day and have been adapting my kitchen practices quite enthusiastically ever since. There are a lot of advantages to having one hand in the kitchen. You don't have to do the knuckle thing when you chop (what more could go wrong?!); a totally accessible elbow is perfect for pounding and rolling dough; pizza tossing is a breeze; sweeping cutting surfaces couldn't be easier.  I've never met a chicken I couldn't carve, a cake I couldn't frost (actually, that's debatable) or a lattice pie crust I couldn't thread.

It's not about the challenge. It's truly about the joy (of cooking). I'd like to share the wealth. Next up: Hawaiian Lady Chocolate Cake. The Uglier the Betty-er.