Maurice Sendak’s Chicken Soup with Rice and Mickey’s Hot Milk Cake

10 Thursday May 2012

Posted by in Dessert, Kids' Books, Pastry, Savory, Soup

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This past November I was reading Maurice Sendak’s In the Night Kitchen to the little boys I babysit for and was struck by what an incredibly odd book it is. My parents used to read it to me before bed as a kid and I was always fascinated by the drawings—a scruffy, naked boy falling into a ten-foot bottle of milk, or getting stirred into hot cake batter by a group of swarthy chefs and emerging in a cake-batter-suit that looks much like Max’s pajamas in Where the Wild Things are. But I had never really paid much attention to the words until I was reading it a few months ago.

The book is about a little boy named Mickey who dreams that he falls out of his bed into the world of “the night kitchen”—a  secret, nighttime place where all the pastries in the world are created while the rest of us sleep (a place that is all too real and much less magical to any of us who have ever worked an overnight baking shift). The book is incoherent and nonsensical in a way that is reminiscent of those first few moments after you wake up and are trying to explain your dream to someone but it keeps slipping away from you and making less sense with every passing second. One gets the sense that Sendak had this very dream at some point and In the Night Kitchen is his way of trying to convey it.

 In the Night Kitchen remains, to this day, one of the most controversial children’s books ever published—it is challenged and banned year after year for a variety of reasons. Some take offense to Mickey’s seemingly unnecessary nudity, some to the “phallic” milk bottle and any manner of milky substances that make the boy’s nudity seem less pure, some even hint at a possible World War II sub-story, calling attention to the chefs’ “Hitler-esque” mustaches and their attempt to bake Mickey in a cake.

There is no question that Sendak was a complicated man. He grew up in Brooklyn, poor, Jewish, sickly and aware that he was gay from a young age. His childhood in the late 20’s and 30’s was haunted by war, economic collapse and seemingly endless violence against children—the kidnapping of the Lindeburgh baby was particularly disturbing to young Maurice and factors in to a few of his books over the years. His stories are full of nightmares–children are always vulnerable and threatened by danger, adults are either looming over and suffocating his characters or have disappeared completely. His characters are obstinate and often downright bratty, they defy their parents’ directions and end up hurtling into danger and adventure, only to end up– much to everyone’s relief– back in their own beds again.

Growing up I loved Sendak’s books this very reason. Parents fear so much that their children will be terrified, disturbed, shaken up by something they read or see or hear, but this is an absolutely integral and necessary part of childhood. Children are fascinated by anything unknown or mildly dangerous. The boys I babysit for are forever asking me to re-read any line of a story that is slightly mysterious or creepy, and when the book is done will talk forever and pepper me with questions about that one scene—“Do you think that robber has a mom?” “Are witches ever kids or are they born old?” “One time I think I saw a goblin in a swamp at my grandma’s house in North Carolina!” These stories—the ones that get your brain working and your heart pumping—are the ones that make you realize the power of the written word, that make you fall in love with reading. They are the ones you remember most vividly when you’re grown.

When I was home over Christmas I was determined to find my old copy of In the Night Kitchen. After reading it to Max and Arlo the month before I was having visions of Sendak’s drawings framed around my kitchen. My sisters and I went searching around the attic and ended up pulling out all of the books our parents used to read to us as kids. With them splayed all over the bed we looked for hours, pausing to read particularly memorable books like The Elephant and the Bad Baby, Louhi Witch of North Farm, and The Tall Book of Make Believe (which, much to my surprise, now sells on Ebay for $600…). Hidden amongst all the books was a tiny, pocket-sized copy of Sendak’s Chicken Soup with Rice, a charming, month-by-month ode to one of the world’s most comforting foods. Carole King wrote a song for the book, using Sendak’s rhymes as lyrics, and my mom used to sing it whenever she made her famous chicken and rice soup (which thankfully was pretty often).

Recently I read an interview with Sendak in which he talked about a particularly memorable fan letter exchange, and it’s stuck with me for a long time.

 “Once a little boy sent me a charming card with a little drawing on it. I loved it. I answer all my children’s letters — sometimes very hastily — but this one I lingered over. I sent him a card and I drew a picture of a Wild Thing on it. I wrote, “Dear Jim: I loved your card.” Then I got a letter back from his mother and she said, “Jim loved your card so much he ate it.” That to me was one of the highest compliments I’ve ever received. He didn’t care that it was an original Maurice Sendak drawing or anything. He saw it, he loved it, he ate it.”  

The experience of loving something—particularly a book or a book’s illustration—so much that you actually want to ingest it is very near and dear to my heart, as it is essentially what I’m attempting to do here, only in a much more appetizing way.  It is a sentiment that Sendak himself conveys in Where the Wild Things Are, with the wild things threatening Max “Please don’t go—we’ll eat you up—we love you so!”

When Sendak passed away on Tuesday the world lost a brilliant and sensitive soul, a man who pushed our imagination to new limits and made the world a more magical and mysterious place. Wherever you are, Maurice, I hope that when you arrived there you found your supper was waiting for you, and that it was still hot.

Maurice Sendak’s Chicken Soup with Rice and Mickey’s Hot Milk Cake

Chicken Soup with Rice–Serves 10-12

This is the soup my mom always made us growing up, it is incredibly simple and comforting and a great basic soup that you can easily dress up however you want.

Ingredients:

  • 1 4 lb roasting chicken
  • 2 large white onions, peeled and halved
  • 10 carrots, peeled
  • 8 celery stalks
  • 5 garlic cloves, crushed
  • 1 quart chicken stock
  • salt and pepper to taste
  • long-grain white rice
  • salt and pepper to taste

Directions: 

Rinse your chicken and pull out any offal that may be stored inside the body cavity. Put it in a 20 quart pot along with your onions, celery, carrots garlic and chicken stock and cover with water until pot is filled about two inches from the top. Cover and let simmer over medium-low heat for an hour and a half to two hours. At this point, strain your broth through a fine-mesh strainer, and dump the clean broth back into the soup pot. Discard the celery stalks, onions, and garlic and place chicken and carrots onto your cutting board. Dice the carrots and throw them back in the pot. Once the chicken is cool enough to touch, pick the meat off of the carcass, using a knife or your fingers to get it into manageably-sized pieces. Put the chicken back into the soup and taste for seasoning, adding salt and pepper as needed. Let the whole mixture simmer on low for another 30 minutes. While the soup is simmering, cook your rice according to the package instructions. Make sure you cook the rice separately before adding it to the soup, cooking the rice in the hot broth will give your broth a glutinous texture, foggy appearance and icky taste. Season with fresh herbs (parsley, dill or thyme) and enjoy!

Mickey’s Hot Milk Cake

Makes 15 mini-cakes or 1 13×9 inch cake

Hot Milk Cake is a traditional southern cake that is somewhere between a pound and angel food cake in texture, it has a moist dense crumb but is also somehow light and fluffy–doesn’t seem possible, right? The most important steps in making this cake are 1) make sure you whip your eggs for at least 10 minutes before adding anything to them and 2) don’t be afraid to heat your milk within an inch of burning, it’s the scalded milk that gives the cake its unique flavor.

Ingredients:

  • 4 eggs
  • 2 cups superfine sugar
  • 1 tsp vanilla
  • 2 1/4 cup cake flour
  • 2 1/4 teaspoons baking powder
  • pinch of salt
  • 10 Tablespoons unsalted butter
  • powdered sugar for dusting

Directions:

In a mixer fitted with a whisk attachment whip your eggs on medium-high speed for at least 10 minutes, or until they are thick and light yellow. Slowly add your superfine sugar and continue to beat until the mixture is light and fluffy (Superfine sugar is relatively easy to find, but if you can’t find it simply put regular granulated sugar into a food processor or spice-grinder and pulse until it is the consistency of fine sand. This may seem like a pain but it makes a big difference in your cake’s texture, as it’s easier for the eggs to soak it all up).

Sift your cake flour, baking powder and a pinch of salt together. Switch the whisk to the paddle attachment and with the mixer running slowly add dry ingredients to wet. Meanwhile put milk, butter and vanilla in a saucepan and heat until butter melts and mixture is nearly boiling (but not boiling!). Slowly pour milk into batter and beat until just incorporated. Pour into greased cake pan and bake at 350 for about 30 minutes (15 if you’re making mini cakes like I did) or until tester comes out clean. Invert onto cooling rack. When cooled, dust with powdered sugar and serve.

Where the Red Fern Grows Skillet Cornbread with Honey-Butter

30 Monday Apr 2012

Posted by in Pastry, Kids' Books, Young Adult Novels, Savory, Wilson Rawls

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The other day my friend, Dan, was giving me a ride home and we stumbled onto the topic of our childhood dogs. Dan had just gotten a tattoo on his arm–a big red heart with “Bertha,” the name of his childhood basset hound, written inside of it. I talked about Henry, my miniature dachshund and constant companion from the time I was seven until right before I left for college. Henry loved to eat crayons–he was even able to remove the paper wrapper in order to just consume the wax.

Me and Henry, 1993

At first we blamed my little sister for all the missing crayons, but then Henry started to poop the most beautiful, colorful jewels of poop all over the yard. They were speckled all colors of the rainbow, neon pinks and greens, oranges and purples–just gorgeous poops. They were so beautiful it took everything I had to convince my best friend that they weren’t candy and she couldn’t eat them.

pre-cleaned, pre-seasoned skillet

My sisters and I would walk around the yard, pointing to the little piles and matching them to their crayon names; “Burnt Sienna!” “Carnation Pink!” “Screamin’ Green!” ”Wild Watermelon!” A week before I left for college Henry died. He was never sick, he never seized or got tumors–he just came in from playing in the yard one day, curled up on the rug in front of the fire and died. He looked very small and very peaceful.

Dan and my conversation turned from childhood dogs to the book Where the Red Fern Grows–a book that had greatly moved both of us dog-lovers as kids. I remember checking it off on one of those Scholastic book fair packets they used to pass out once a year in elementary school (was there anything more exciting than those colorful, book-filled, whisper-thin packets?). I was always a sucker for any books that looked slightly spooky or packed with adventure and I remember distinctly the third grade book fair in which I picked up The Indian in the Cupboard, Wait Til Helen Comes, and Where the Red Fern Grows all based on their promising-looking covers.

Where the Red Fern Grows is the story of a farm boy named Billy who desperately wants  his very own pair of coonhounds. When his father tells him that they are too expensive Billy works to earn the money to buy them on his own–selling bait and fruit to local fishermen. He eventually earns the money and buys a girl and boy coonhound, whom he names Little Ann and Old Dan. The story follows the trio’s adventures–fighting mountain lions, camping out in caves, and cutting down enormous trees all in the name of catching raccoons. Old Dan is eventually killed by a mountain lion and Little Ann dies a few days later of a broken heart. A red fern, which according to Native American legend can only be planted by an angel, sprouts on top of their gravesite.

After talking about the book for a little while–how it was one of the first books to ever make us cry–I said I needed to re-read it, as I had a vague sense that there was a great food scene in it. “Cornbread.” Dan said, “There’s lots of cornbread.” Whenever I come across someone who has a really solid memory of a food scene in a novel, especially one from childhood that they haven’t read in years, it thrills me. I went home that night and re-read Where the Red Fern Grows and sure enough there was cornbread everywhere. Billy stuffs it in his rucksack to go camping, he sells the stale chunks of it as bait to the fishermen, he makes salt pork sandwiches between its crumbly layers and eats it with jarred peaches, fried potatoes, fresh huckleberry cobbler, honey and butter.

The farm-freshness of everything in Billy’s meals was dazzling to me as a kid, it was the same reason I found the eating scenes in The Little House on the Prairie so bewitching. It was books like these that had me searching my backyard for edible berry bushes, mushrooms and roots before sitting down at night to a meal of Weaver chicken nuggets and canned fruit cocktail (No complaints, mom, it was delicious).

Mama opened a jar of huckleberries and made a large cobbler. Papa went to the smokehouse and came back with a hickory-cured ham. We sat down to a feast of the ham, huge plates of fried potatoes, ham gravy, hot corn bread, fresh butter, and wild bee honey.

Billy’s Skillet Cornbread with Honey-Butter

Makes one 8-inch skillet

Ingredients:

  • 1 1/4 cup yellow cornmeal
  • 3/4 cups AP flour
  • 1/8 cup sugar (If you’re a Yankee, like me, and used to sweet cornbread you might want to up the sugar to 1/4 cup, although the seriousness of this cornbread mixed with the honey-butter was pretty divine)
  • 2 teaspoon baking powder
  • 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
  • 1 cup buttermilk
  • 1/3 cup whole milk
  • 1/4 cup butter, melted
  • 1/4 cup shortening, melted (plus extra for greasing skillet)
  • 2 eggs beaten
  • 1-2 pieces of salt pork, bacon or ham (optional–frying one of these up in the skillet and pouring the batter over the grease adds a delicious smokiness to your bread and greases your skillet)

Directions:

If you don’t have a cast-iron skillet you can bake this in a cake pan or baking dish, but I do recommend doing it in a skillet, it adds a great crispness and flavor. If you are unsure of how to season your skillet there is a great tutorial here (although I think that rather than putting it in the oven at 200 degrees for 3 hours you can do 275 for about an hour and a half-two hours). You’ll probably want to do this the day before, it’s time-consuming.

Once your skillet is seasoned, put your oven to 375 and melt your butter and shortening in the skillet. Pour melted butter and shortening into a dish and rub the remaining grease around the skillet with a paper towel, being sure to coat the sides. Put the skillet in the oven while you prepare the rest of the ingredients.

Sift together all your dry ingredients then add buttermilk, milk, beaten eggs and melted butter/ shortening mixture. Mix until incorporated, being careful not to over-mix, it’s okay if it’s just a little bit lumpy. Take your skillet out of the oven and if you have a piece of salt pork, bacon or ham, fry it up in the skillet leaving the grease in the pan. If you don’t, add a little but more butter or shortening and spread it around the pan. Pour your batter into the pan and bake at 375 for about 20 minutes, or until a tester comes out clean.

For the honey-butter simply add about 1/4 cup of honey and a pinch of salt to 1/3 cup of softened butter and whip until emulsified. Allow it to set up and marry in the fridge a little bit before spreading on hot cornbread.

To Kill A Mockingbird Lane Cake

18 Wednesday Apr 2012

Posted by in Dessert, Harper Lee, Pastry, Young Adult Novels

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When I was nine-years-old my dad took to calling me “Scout.” I was fiercely tom-boyish, with a mushroom-cut, slightly buck teeth, and a such a good throwing arm it made my dad laugh and say “Mercy!”. I wore the same pair of overalls with a “Baseball is Life” t-shirt almost every day and my knees and hands were constantly bruised and dirty.

That fall, my best friends and I discovered what we were sure was a haunted house in the neighborhood. We visited it every day after school, peeking in the windows and leaving messages on notebook paper in invisible ink on the porch. Back at Christie or Meg’s house we would listen to Green Day’s “Dookie” on repeat and paint our nails with turquoise Hard Candy nail polish and talk for hours about what we were sure we had seen behind those yellowing lace curtains. At night, when my dad got home from work, he would ruffle my hair and say “Hey, Scout! Did you see Boo Radley today?”.

Around that time my dad left his worn-out copy of To Kill a Mockingbird on my pillow. The connection that I felt to Scout, with her mischievous, rough-and-tumble exterior and deeply empathetic interior, remains to this day one of the most intense I’ve ever had. I fell so deeply in love with the quiet and fiercely moral Jem that I scribbled his name in my notebook on more than one occasion and wished that he was as real as I felt he was.

I started bugging my mom relentlessly to find a recipe for Miss Maudie’s famous lane cake, a cake, Scout says, “so loaded with shinny it made me tight” (211). I had no idea what this meant but the words alone sounded good enough to eat and I was certain it was the best cake on earth. These days, with the internet, it takes less than three seconds to find any recipe you could ever imagine, but back in 1995 it would have required much more effort and I soon forgot all about Miss Maudie’s cake.

A relic of my six-year-old self hanging in my kitchen.

Years later, two years ago to be exact, I was working as a baker at a Southern comfort-food restaurant in Brooklyn. One day, looking at the prep list, I saw “BAKE/ASSEMBLE LANE CAKE” written in large bold Sharpee. I nearly fainted with joy. “A lane cake?!” I said, “Like Miss Maudie’s?!” No one knew what I was talking about so I set about making the sky-high confection with its thick layers of impossibly airy white cake and intoxicating gooey filling. The cake was everything I dreamt it would be and more.

This year is the 50th anniversary of the Oscar-winning film adaptation of To Kill a Mockingbird, and just last week (April 13) was the birthday of the late great Edna Lewis, who brought this cake alive in her iconic “The Gift of Southern Cooking.” Celebrate both of these wonderful events and make this cake!

Miss Maudie’s Lane Cake

Makes 1 9-inch 3-layer cake

Adapted from Edna Lewis and Scott Peacock

Ingredients:

  • 3 1/2 cups cake four
  • 2 teaspoons baking soda
  • 2 teaspoons cream of tartar
  • 1/4 teaspoon salt
  • 8 oz (2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened
  • 1 cup room temperature half-and half (whole milk will work too)
  • 1 teaspoon good vanilla extract
  • whites of 8 large eggs, room temp (reserve your yolks for the filling!)
  • 2 cups sugar

Directions:

Cream butter in a mixer fit with a paddle attachment and slowly add sugar. In a separate bowl mix together flour, cream of tartar, baking soda and salt and run through a sifter two to three times (I know it’s a pain but I’m convinced it makes a difference). Add the vanilla to the milk. Alternate adding your sifted dry ingredients and the milk to the butter mixture in about three batches. Mix until well-combined being careful not to over-mix. Remove this batter from the mixing bowl and set it aside. Clean out your mixing bowl and put the whites into the mixer. Whip with whisk attachment until soft peaks form. Add about a cup of the whites to the very thick batter and mix it to make it looser, then continue to add the whites, carefully folding them in until completely combined. Pour batter into three well-greased 9-inch nonstick cake pans (you can line it with greased parchment paper if you don’t have a non-stick pan but if you do have one I found it was unnecessary with this batter). Don’t worry if it looks like your cake pans aren’t full enough, this cake rises a lot. Bake at 325 degrees for about 25 minutes, or until tester comes out clean. Invert onto cooling racks.

Filling Ingredients:

  • 1 1/2 sticks of unsalted butter, melted and cooled
  • Yolks of 12 large eggs
  • 1 1/2 cups of sugar
  • 1 1/2 cups chopped pecans
  • 1 1/2 cups dried cherries chopped (traditionally raisins are used, you can use any dried fruit you prefer)
  • 1 1/2 cup sweetened coconut flakes
  • 1/2 cup bourbon
  • 1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla
  • 1/4 teaspoon salt

Directions:

Melt butter and set aside to cool. In a separate saucepan mix together egg yolks and sugar (don’t do this step too much in advance, if yolks and sugar sit together for too long they do a funny thing called “burning” and create these icky strands of protein). Once your butter is cooled add it to the yolk/sugar mixture and over medium low heat cook the mixture, whisking constantly until the mixture is thick enough to coat the back of a spoon (this took about 7 minutes for me). Mix in the coconut, pecans and cherries and cook for a minute or two more until all of the dry ingredients are well-coated with the yolks. Remove from the heat and add your bourbon, vanilla and salt. Stir to combine and let cool to room temperature before spreading on your cooled cakes.

Stabilized Cinnamon Whipped Cream

  • 16 ounces cold whipping cream
  • 1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
  • Seeds of 1 vanilla bean
  • 1/2 teaspoon vanilla
  • 2 teaspoons (1 packet) powdered unflavored gelatin, softened in 2 Tablespoons water
  • powdered sugar to taste
Directions:
Soften your gelatin in water. Begin whipping the cream with the cinnamon, vanilla and powdered sugar (tasting it to see if it’s the right sweetness for you). While the cream whipped heat your softened gelatin, either in the microwave or a saucepan, until it is liquid. With the whisk still going, slowly add the liquid gelatin into the whipping cream and continue to whip until still peaks form. I frosted this cake yesterday in a 90 degree kitchen and the whipped cream held up almost perfectly–what’s left in the fridge is still fully stable and didn’t melt.

Assembly:

Once your cake layers are fully cooled place the bottom layer on your cake stand. Scoop 1/3 of the filling onto the cake–continue this process on the remaining 2 layers. Frost with whipped cream frosting and serve.

Adrienne Rich Onion Galette

10 Tuesday Apr 2012

Posted by in Adrienne Rich, Pastry, Poetry, Savory

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For my twenty-second birthday my older sister’s best friend gave me a copy of Adrienne Rich’s The Fact of a Doorframe. I’d heard of Rich often throughout my years studying literature but I had never actually sat down with any of her work. I tucked the book up on my “must-read” shelf and there it sat for the next two and a half years.

Then, one sweltering June night I was twenty-four and terribly heartbroken and feeling adrift and lonely and scared and looking up to my bookshelf for comfort I saw The Fact of a Doorframe staring back at me. Not even bothering to move to the couch I continued to read, cover to cover, until my bottom was asleep in my desk chair and my breathing was finally regular.

I found immense comfort and strength in Rich’s ability to change her life completely, reinvent herself absolutely, and still remain exactly who she had always been at her core. My copy of The Fact of a Doorframe is littered with red colored pencil markings, arrows, circles, exclamations from that night, and “Peeling Onions” still sits, hand-written on a piece of graph paper on my refrigerator.

Only to have a grief
equal to all these tears!

There’s not a sob in my chest.
Dry-hearted as Peer Gynt

I pare away, no hero,
merely a cook.

Crying was labor, once
when I’d good cause.
Walking, I felt my eyes like wounds
raw in my head,
so postal-clerks, I thought, must stare.
A dog’s look, a cat’s, burnt to my brain—
yet all that stayed
stuff in my lungs like smog.

These old tears in the chopping-bowl.

I am a notorious onion-cryer

When I found out, a little over a week ago that Adrienne Rich had died, I was shocked at how immediately and how deeply I felt her loss. The only way I know how to deal with loss is to cook and eat, so this onion galette is my ode to Adrienne Rich and I hope it brings comfort to all of you.

Caramelized and Spring Onion Galette

Serves 5-6

Black Pepper Pate Brisee (tart crust)

Ingredients:

  • 1 1/4 cups all purpose flour
  • 1/2 teaspoon sugar
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • 1/2 teaspoon freshly cracked black pepper
  • 8 Tablespoons (1 stick) unsalted butter, cubed and frozen or very very cold
  • 4 Tablespoons ice water

Directions:

Put all of your dry ingredients into a food processor and pulse two or three times to get everything mixed around. Then take your frozen butter and add half of it to the dry mix. Pulse about 5-6 times then add the remaining butter. Pulse 6-10 more times, or until the butter chunks are a little bigger than pea-sized. Add 2 tablespoons of ice water and pulse 2-3 times then add 2 more and repeat. You should still have large chunks of butter and they should be uniform throughout the flour. Squeeze a small amount in your hand–if it stays together it’s ready, if it crumbles apart you need to add more ice water. Turn out onto a clean surface and gently bring it together into a ball, being careful not to touch it too much. Once it’s in a ball, wrap it tightly and refrigerate for 1-2 hours.

Filling

  • 3 medium red onions
  • 3 Tablespoons olive oil
  • 3 Tablespoons butter
  • 1 sprig fresh thyme
  • 1 Tablespoon good balsamic vinegar
  • 1 bundle (5-6) spring onions
  • 4 ounces goat cheese (or any cheese you like–gruyere or feta would be great)
  • salt and pepper to taste

Directions:

Melt your butter and 2 tablespoons of olive oil in a heavy-bottomed pan. Thinly slice your red onions (try not to cry) and put them into the pan with thyme, sprinkle with salt and cook over medium-low heat until soft–about 7-10 minutes, stirring often. If you feel like it’s getting too dry you can add a little bit of water to the pan. Once the onions are soft, turn the heat down to low and let the onions cook, covered, for 30-40 more minutes, stirring occasionally. After 30-40 minutes add balsamic vinegar and stir to coat. Allow to cook for about 10 more minutes.

Put your spring onions in a pan with the remaining tablespoon of olive oil and quickly sautee them, tossing them the whole time. This should only take about 3 minutes–they should be wilted but still crunchy.

Remove your tart dough from the fridge. With the wrapping still on, work the dough a little bit in your hands to get it to soften up, then remove it from the plastic and turn it onto a clean, well-floured surface. Roll to about 1/4 inch thickness and place on a cooking sheet lined with parchment paper. Spread caramelized onions in the middle and crumble cheese on top. Take your spring onions and arrange them over the onions and cheese, then fold the edges of the dough up around the filling. If you are more fastidious than I am you can cut the dough so that its edges are cleaner to give the galette a more precise look. Cook at 400 for about 40 minutes or until crust is golden brown. Slice and serve warm.

Kim Roasted Vegetables with Yellow Curry Sauce

03 Tuesday Apr 2012

Posted by in Rudyard Kipling, Savory

≈ 14 Comments

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In my roughly twenty-three years of reading there are three books that I have hated enough to actually throw across the room. One was Longitude by Dava Sobel–really, of all the exciting, inspiring, relevant books you could assign to teenagers for school-wide assigned summer reading WHY would you choose this? The other was A Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley which I was assigned my junior year of high school. I was going through a serious Shakespeare phase (see also: know-it-all phase) and I found this re-imagining of King Lear tawdry and badly done. The third was Kim, a novel by Rudyard Kipling that I was assigned my Junior year of college and the novel that I willingly chose to re-read for today’s post.

I read Kim in my nineteenth century British novel class–a class I had been trying desperately to get into since my freshman year of college but which always closed before I could claim a spot. I imagined that this class would be the best I ever took because I would finally be assigned Victorian novels–my most favorite kind–maybe we would even spend weeks studying gothic romances, obscure female authors, mystery novels! I could hardly contain my excitement.

Instead, I had a professor who only wanted to study post-colonial literature written by men, which certainly has its merits but was not was I was expecting. I was profoundly disappointed, and the apex of this disappointment came when I tried to read Kim. I grew up loving The Jungle Book so I thought that maybe Kim wouldn’t be so bad. I was sorely mistaken (it seems the theme of this post is “never get your hopes up ever about anything”).

Kim is the story of a little boy named Kimball O’Hara. Kim is the son of an Irish soldier and poor white mother–both of whom have died and left him under the care of an opium-smoking “half-caste” woman in India. Kim is woefully neglected by his caretaker and is constantly escaping the house to find food elsewhere. The food scenes in Kim are, in my opinion, its only saving grace. While Kipling’s feelings of racial superiority and belief that India deserved to be colonized by the British is made clear from the novel’s beginning, a true and genuine respect for and love of Indian food can be seen in Kim’s food descriptions.

Kim is eventually discovered by his father’s regimental chaplain who recognizes his ability to blend in seamlessly and ”borrow right-and left-handedly from all the customs of the country he knew and loved” (121) and thinks it could be useful as a military espionage tool. Kim is called “Little Friend of All the World” because  ”no white man knows this land as thou knowest” (139) and Kipling’s descriptions of him eating Indian cuisine are a way of furthering this notion–Kim is quite literally ingesting Indian culture.

‘But my yogi is not a cow,’ said Kim, gravely, making a hole with his fingers in the top of the mound. ‘A little curry is good, and a fried cake and a morsel of conserve would please him, I think.”It is a hole as big as thy head,’ said the woman fretfully. But she filled it, none the less, with good, steaming vegetable curry, clapped a dried cake atop, and a morsel of clarified butter on the cake, dabbed a lump of sour tamarind conserve at the side; and Kim looked at the load lovingly. (22-23)

As disappointed and frustrated as I was by Kim I did gain one thing from reading it–an undying love of vegetable curry. I had never had a taste for curry until I read this book and found my mouth-watering at every curry description. For the two weeks we studied the novel I would leave class and go straight to Curry Kitchen to do my homework in front of steaming bowls of nav rattan curry or bharta.

Recently, my cousin’s fiance, Pete who works for his family’s spice company, brought me back some incredible curry powders from his trip to India. Smelling them I was immediately brought back to that period of time five years ago, reading Kim and living off of Curry Kitchen dinner specials.

A craving for curry that strong has to be solved immediately with whatever one has in her fridge, so the dish I made is by no means a traditional Indian vegetable curry, but it cured my craving and was delicious nonetheless. Sub whatever vegetables you want in place of the ones I used (although I will say that this mix was really well-rounded in terms of texture and flavor). You can also use raisins or any other dried fruit in place of dried cranberries and whatever kind of rice you like most.

Kim Roasted Vegetables with Yellow Curry Sauce

Serves 4-5

Ingredients:

For the Roasted Vegetables:

  • 3 medium-sized red beets
  • 2 red peppers
  • 2 fennel bulbs
  • 1 dozen baby carrots
  • 1 medium white onions
  • 3 heads of baby bok choy
  • 2 cups snow peas
  • 4 sprigs thyme
  • 3 cloves garlic
  • lots of olive oil
  • salt and pepper to taste

Directions:

To roast the beets: first remove the leaves and wash them thoroughly to remove any dirt and debris.  Cut off a large piece of tinfoil and lay the beets out on them. Rub them in olive oil, cover with salt and pepper, add thyme sprigs and 3 cloves of garlic (smashed with the palm of your hand). Make a pouch with the tinfoil around the beets and put them on a sheet pan. Roast at 375 for about 45 minutes or until a fork can easily puncture the skin. You can peel the skin off by rubbing it with a clean dish towel.

The peppers, onion, carrots, and fennel I just washed, trimmed, cut, covered in olive oil salt and pepper and roasted at 375 for about 25-30 minutes, checking them at regular intervals to toss and rotate. The bok choi and snap peas I cooked in a wok with olive oil, tossing them vigorously for only about a minute so they were cooked but still crispy.

Curry Sauce

  • 4 Tablespoons butter
  • 1 large white onion, diced
  • 1 tablespoon fresh grated ginger
  • 1 Tablespoon minced garlic
  • 2 Tablespoons yellow curry powder
  • 2 Tablespoons all-purpose flour
  • 2 cups chicken broth
  • 1 Tablespoon brown sugar
  • 1 1/2 cups diced tomatoes

 Directions:

Melt butter in skillet, add diced onions and cook until soft and translucent. Add minced garlic and fresh ginger and cook for another minute or so. Put chicken broth in a separate pan to heat up. Lower heat and add curry powder to onions and mix until it coats everything in the pan. Add flour and stir to make a paste. Slowly add warmed chicken broth to curry onion mixture, whisking constantly as the mixture thickens–about 5-7 minutes. Add brown sugar and diced tomatoes and allow to cook on medium low heat for another 10-12 minutes. Once the mixture was cool enough I put it in a blender and blended it until smooth (this is optional if you don’t mind a chunky sauce).

Cook rice according to package directions (I used jasmine rice). Heap vegetables on top of rice, cover in curry sauce and sprinkle with dried cranberries.

Mary Oliver Mushroom Risotto

26 Monday Mar 2012

Posted by in Mary Oliver, Poetry, Savory

≈ 20 Comments

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Last week I read an article about a species of mushroom discovered in the Amazon by a group of Yale students which happily survives eating plastic in oxygen-free environments. Leave it to mother nature to solve the problem of landfills when we humans can’t. Ever since reading the article I’ve had mushrooms on the brain (no, not like that), so when the girls from Oona-verse contacted me to ask if I would cook them a contemporary poem I knew exactly what poem I would cook. Mary Oliver is known for her naturalistic poetry, and her poem “Mushrooms” is one of my very favorites. If you weren’t already a mushroom lover this poem will be enough to get your mouth watering for them–even her descriptions of poisonous mushrooms are irresistible.

I ended up leaving out the dried porcinis, they were too overpowering

Mushrooms 

Rain, and then

the cool pursed

lips of the wind

draw them

out of the ground -

red and yellow skulls

pummeling upward

through leaves,

through grasses,

through sand; astonishing

in their suddenness,

their quietude,

their wetness, they appear

on fall mornings, some

balancing in the earth

on one hoof

packed with poison,

others billowing

chunkily, and delicious -

those who know

walk out to gather, choosing

the benign from flocks

of glitterers, sorcerers,

russulas,

panther caps,

shark-white death angels

in their town veils

looking innocent as sugar

but full of paralysis:

to eat

is to stagger down

fast as mushrooms themselves

when they are done being perfect

and overnight

slide back under the shining

fields of rain.

Hon Shemejis

Chanterelles

Wild mushrooms are all over the market right now, which made cooking this poem even more exciting. Risotto is a wonderful way to let their delicious flavors sing, it is rich and decadent and comforting and full of creamy, woody mushroom flavor. I used Hon Shimeji, Chanterelle, Hedgehog and Maitake mushrooms but feel free to use any that you enjoy most.

Maitake

Wild Mushroom Risotto

Makes about 5 servings

Ingredients:

  • 1/4 lb each: Hon Shimeji, Hedgehog, Chanterelle and Maitake mushrooms or whatever wild mushrooms you prefer
  • 1 stick + 2Tablespoons butter
  • 4 cloves garlic
  • 1 bunch thyme
  • olive oil for sauteing (about 2/3 cup total)
  • 1 medium onion
  • 2 cups arborio rice
  • 8 cups hot chicken broth (64 oz)
  • 2 cups dry white wine
  • 1/2 cup grated parmesan cheese plus more for serving
  • salt and pepper to taste

Directions:

First, sautee the mushrooms. I did this in two batches because I have a small sautee pan, but also because different kinds of mushrooms will have different cooking times, so cooking them all together can be tricky. I cooked the hedgehogs and the chanterelles together because they are similar in size and water content. Same goes for the maitakes and hon shemejis. Add a half stick of butter to your pan with about 1/8 cup olive oil and cook until butter is melted. Add two cloves of garlic, crushed, and about 5 sprigs of thyme, then add your mushrooms and cook, salting to taste, until golden brown. Repeat this with your second batch of mushrooms, but first drain the oil out of the pan and refresh it.

Set your mushrooms aside and chop your onion in a medium dice. Toss the onions in a large pot coated with olive oil and cook over medium heat until translucent. While the onions are cooking heat up your chicken broth in a separate pan. Once the onions are translucent and soft, add your risotto rice and toast about 2 minutes. Add white wine to rice and onions and cook, stirring often until wine is absorbed. Begin adding your hot chicken broth in batches and stir frequently until each batch is absorbed. When there is only a little liquid left to be absorbed add in your cooked mushrooms and continue to cook until all the liquid is absorbed and the rice is soft but slightly al dente. Add remaining 2 Tablespoons of butter and 1/2 cup grated cheese and stir until incorporated. Serve immediately with extra parmesan. To take this risotto up a notch, put a soft poached or blistered egg on top.

The Bell Jar Crab-Stuffed Avocados

23 Friday Mar 2012

Posted by in Savory, Sylvia Plath

≈ 28 Comments

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The house I grew up in outside of Boston is directly across the street from Sylivia Plath’s childhood home. I remember one day when I was in fourth grade, up to my ears in The Golden Compass and Redwall and full of dreams of someday being a writer, my mom  casually told me that a very famous writer had grown up in the house across the street. I was incredulous—“a very famous, female writer lived in the house I can see from my bedroom window and you never told me?” This was, of course, before the days of Google, when every intimate detail of a person’s life couldn’t be accessed with the click of a button, so that afternoon I rode my bike to the library.

I asked the librarian where I could find Sylvia Plath’s poems and she looked at me in a concerned way but led me to the stacks where I spent hours on the floor, enveloped in that old book smell (my favorite) and trying to make sense out of just one line of Plath’s poetry. I left the library that evening with a vague sense of dread that I would never be happy again once I turned ten and more curious about Plath than ever. I spent the next decade staring out the window at the white house across the street and attempting to read Plath’s poetry but it wasn’t until my Junior year of high school, when my favorite English teacher gave me The Bell Jar, that I found Plath accessible for the first time.

In this semi-autobiographical novel, which Plath published under the pen-name “Victoria Lucas” in 1963, a young girl named Esther Greenwood travels to New York City for a summer internship at Ladies’ Day magazine. Esther ultimately has to leave New York after having a mental breakdown and the novel subsequently follows her descent into mental illness, as she attempts suicide on multiple occasions, is put in an asylum and receives treatment from various doctors (including electroshock therapy and insulin injections). Plath eases you into Esther’s degeneration with such subtlety that it takes a moment to realize that she has truly and completely lost her mind. The novel is bleak, there is absolutely no denying that, but Esther is so likable (in my opinion anyway, I’ve heard others say different) and her voice is so unique that you keep reading it because you are rooting for her and rooted to her.  The novel ends on a tentatively hopeful note, with Esther entering a conference with her doctors who will determine if she is well enough to leave the hospital.

When Esther first arrives in New York, before everything begins to fall apart for her, she goes to a luncheon for Ladies’ Day. It was this passage about Esther’s relationship to food that made me fall in love with her right away—I love a girl who isn’t shy about pigging out at an elegant affair. Surrounded by girls too timid and dainty to eat Esther begins to load up her plate, stating that she had “discovered, after a lot of apprehension about what spoons to use, that if you do something incorrect at a table with a certain arrogance, as if you knew perfectly well you were doing it properly, you can get away with it and nobody will think you are bad-mannered or poorly brought up. They will think you are original and very witty” (27). With this philosophy in her back pocket Esther approaches the food at the luncheon fearlessly.

“Under cover of the clinking water goblets and silverware and bone china, I paved my plate with chicken slices. Then I covered the chicken slices with caviar thickly as if I were spreading peanut butter on a piece of bread. Then I picked up the chicken slices in my fingers one by one, rolled them so the caviar wouldn’t ooze off and ate them” (27).When she finishes that she moves on and “tackle[s] the avocado and crabmeat salad.” Here she veers off into a food memory of her grandfather, who was the head waiter at a country club in town and used to sneak fancy treats home for her.

Avocados are my favorite fruit. Every Sunday my grandfather used to bring me an avocado pear hidden at the bottom of his briefcase under six soiled shirts and the Sunday comics. He taught me how to eat avocados by melting grape jelly and french dressing together in a saucepan and filling the cup of the pear with the garnet sauce. I felt homesick for that sauce. The crabmeat tasted bland in comparison. (28)

 Almost immediately after the luncheon Esther and all the other girls get violently ill with food poisoning. Laying in bed after days of sickness Esther has “a vision of the celestially white kitchens of Ladies’ Day stretching into infinity. I saw avocado pear after avocado pear being stuffed with crabmeat and mayonnaise and photographed under brilliant lights. I saw the delicate, pink-mottled claw meat poking seductively through its blanket of mayonnaise and the bland yellow year cup with its rim of alligator-green cradling the whole mess.” (48)

There is something wonderfully kitschy and 1960’s about a crabmeat-stuffed avocado. It is perfect for this time of year when picnic-season is fast approaching and produce is getting brighter and fresher (can you tell it’s 73 degrees in Brooklyn?). I omitted the mayo from this crab salad and mixed it with fresh herbs, mango, grape tomatoes, red onion and fresh lime juice. Despite the heaviness of The Bell Jar this dish is beautifully light and so simple to make. So pack the crab salad up in some Tupperware, take a few ripe avocados and a blanket with you and get to the park!

Bell Jar Crab-Stuffed Avocados

Makes 12 stuffed avocado halves 

Ingredients:

  • 1 lb crab meat
  • 1 small bunch fresh cilantro
  • 1 small bunch flat-leaf parsley
  • 1/2 small red onion
  • 1 ripe mango
  • 1/2 package grape tomatoes
  • Juice of 3 medium limes
  • 2 Tablespoons Olive oil
  • 1 Tablespoon Champagne vinegar (optional–I like extra acid)
  • Salt and pepper to taste
  • 6 ripe avocados

Directions:

Drain crabmeat well and pick through to make sure there are no shells or cartilage then toss in a bowl. Chop red onion into a small dice, along with mango, cilantro and parsley and add to the crab meat. Slice grape tomatoes in half and mix in. Juice two limes over the salad and mix until well-combined. Add salt and pepper to taste. Slice avocados in half, remove pits and pile crab salad into the center. Because there is no mayo or mustard  the salad may not stay perfectly scooped but that’s okay. Serve with hot sauce and crisp white wine or margaritas.

Hunger Games Cherry Pistachio Baked Alaska

06 Tuesday Mar 2012

Posted by in Dessert, Pastry, Suzanne Collins, Young Adult Novels

≈ 30 Comments

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From the minute I picked up The Hunger Games I knew I was going to love it. Say whatever disparaging things you want about YA novels, (we all know I’m not opposed to them) anything that gets teenagers excited about reading is fine by me. Who knows, maybe Twilight will be a gateway drug for Stoker’s Dracula or Shelley’s Frankenstein, maybe The Hunger Games will give way to Orwell’s 1984 or Burgess’ A Clockwork Orange–a nerd can dream. I felt a lot less embarrassed about reading The Hunger Games in public than I did about Twilight (Even though when I told my friend that he said “You shouldn’t). Collins’ ideas are original and unsettling in a way that most young adult novel plots aren’t. Unlike Bella, Katniss is strong, feisty, clear-headed, dynamic, lovable–a female lead that I would feel good about my (hypothetical possible-future) daughter identifying with. Beyond that, The Hunger Games is filled with food.

After her father dies in a mine explosion, her mother takes to her bed and it becomes Katniss’ sole responsibility to keep herself, her mother and her little sister, Prim alive. “The woods became our savior” she says, “each day I went a bit farther into its arms. It was slow-going at first, but I was determined to feed us. I stole eggs from nests, caught fish in nets, sometimes managed to shoot a squirrel or rabbit for stew, and gathered the various plants that sprung up beneath my feet” (51).

Having almost died of starvation on multiple occasions, Katniss is hyper-focused on and appreciative of any food that comes her way and because of this the reader is treated to incredibly detailed and mouth-watering food descriptions often throughout the novel. Only eight pages in, Katniss and Gale are eating still-warm bakery bread with homemade goat’s milk cheese and tart berries, the description of which is enough to make you light-headed–and you wonder why I liked this book?

When Katniss is taken to the Capital before The Hunger Games begin she encounters food she has only ever dreamt of.  There are: ”Eggs, ham, piles of fried potatoes. A tureen of fruit…The basket of rolls they set before me would keep my family going for a week. There’s an elegant glass of orange juice…A cup of coffee…A rich cup of something I’ve never seen. ‘They call it hot chocolate,’ says Peeta. ‘It’s good.’ I take a sip of the hot, sweet, creamy liquid and a shudder runs through me” (54)

Later, there is “chicken and chunks of orange cooked in a creamy sauce laid on a bed of pearly white grain, tiny green peas and onions, rolls shaped like flowers and for dessert, a pudding the color of honey” (55). There is “goose liver and puffy bread,” (75), “Mushroom soup, bitter greens with tomatoes the size of peas, rare roast beef sliced as thin as paper, noodles in a green sauce, cheese that melts on your tongue served with sweet blue grapes” (76)

When my friends, Emily and India told me that a friend of ours was having a Hunger Games themed birthday party (yes, we are all in our mid-twenties) and that they were in charge of bringing the cake we all started brainstorming ideas. India pointed me to the passage in which Katniss is brought a beautiful cake and it is set on fire right in front of her.

I try to focus on the talk, which has turned to our interview costumes, when a girl sets a gorgeous looking cake on the table and deftly lights it. It blazes up and then the flames flicker around the edges awhile until it finally goes out. I have a moment of doubt “What makes it burn? Is it alcohol?” (77)

Add food-coloring if you want your ice creams this vibrant

The only cake that I know of that is covered in warm alcohol and set on fire is a baked Alaska–the most elegant, fanciest dessert I had ever seen as a ten-year-old. At first I wanted the inside to be a blackberry sorbet because of all of the references to blackberries throughout the novel, but then I decided that any cake served in the capital where “All the colors seem artificial, the pinks too deep, the greens too bright…like the flat round disks of hard candy we can never afford to buy at the tiny sweet shop in District 12” (59) had to be ridiculously flamboyant and brightly colored. I decided on the brightest pink cherry ice cream and the most electric pastel green pistachio. Homemade chocolate pound cake serves as a base and chocolate wafers serve as a crispy barrier between ice cream flavors.

The great thing about this dessert is that, while everything here is homemade, you can easily use boxed cake and store-bought ice cream to make this infinitely simpler–the only thing that has to be homemade is the meringue. Any variety of ice cream and cake flavors can be subbed in, you can add fruit purees, nuts, cookies, go wild! Just be patient. I was very impatient and didn’t believe the directions that told me to let each layer freeze before adding another layer. Try to be more patient than I was if you want clean separate lines. Another caveat: Don’t light this cake on fire unless you are ready to be absolutely terrified. Seriously, alcohol fires are scary as heck. I saw my life/all wooden kitchen flash before my very eyes for a solid two minutes. Put the cake in a 500 degree oven for a browned meringue with less heartburn.

Hunger Games Baked Alaska 

Ingredients:

  • 1 quart cherry ice cream (recipe follows)
  • 1 quart pistachio ice cream (recipe follows)
  • 1 box chocolate wafer cookies, ground
  • 1 9inch chocolate pound cake (recipe follows)
  • Meringue (recipe follows)
  • 1 nip of any alcohol 40-60 proof (i used brandy)

Chocolate Pound Cake: 

  • ¾ cup softened butter
  • 1 ½ cups sugar
  • 3 eggs
  • 1 Teaspoon vanilla extract
  • 1 Teaspoon instant espresso dissolved in 1/8 cup of hot water
  • ½ cup buttermilk
  • 1 cup AP flour
  • ¼ cup + 1 Tablespoon good quality unsweetened cocoa powder
  • ¼ teaspoon baking powder
  • ½ teaspoon salt
  • Directions:

Add dry together and set aside. Cream butter with sugar until light and fluffy. Add eggs and beat until incorporated. Add vanilla. Alternate adding the dry with the buttermilk and espresso water. Beat until fully mixed and smooth. Pour into a 9 inch round greased or non-stick cake pan and bake at 325 for about 35-40 minutes, or until tester comes out clean. Invert the cake onto a cooling rack and set aside to cool while you assemble the rest of your baked alaska.

Cherry Ice Cream

Adapted from David Lebovitz 

Makes about 1 Quart

  • 1 jar amarena cherries, drained, juice reserved (if it’s summer and you can get fresh cherries, do! Sup jarred cherries for a pound of fresh ones, stemmed and pitted. Add 2 Tablespoons of sugar and cook them in a saucepan until they are soft and the juices are seeping out, drain and reserve the juice)
  • 1 cup whole milk
  • 3/4 cup granulated sugar
  • 2 cups heavy cream
  • pinch of salt
  • seeds and pod of 1 vanilla bean
  • 6 large egg yolks

In a medium saucepan heat milk, cream, vanilla beans, vanilla pod and 1/2 cup of the sugar until almost boiling–steam will be rising from the surface and small bubbles forming around the rim. Whisk yolks and remaining 1/4 cup sugar together in a bowl. Whisking constantly, slowly add hot cream mixture to yolks until totally mixed together. Return to saucepan and heat over medium-low heat, whisking constantly until your thermometer reaches 82 degrees Celsius. Strain through a fine-mesh strainer into a container and immediately set over an ice bath. Stir until cool. Once completely cool add custard to your ice cream maker and churn according to manufacturers instructions. Once almost churned add cherries and reserved juices and continue to churn. Put in freezer overnight to churn.

Pistachio Ice Cream

  • 1/2 cup unsalted, shelled pistachios
  • 1/2 cup sugar
  • 1 cup whole milk
  • 1 1/2 cups heavy cream
  • 6 large egg yolks
  • 1/2 teaspoon almond extract

Directions

Grind pistachios and 1/4 cup sugar in food-processor until finely ground but not butter-like and set aside. Follow exact same directions for cherry ice cream, adding pistachios and almond extract into the ice cream maker at the end, just like you did with the cherries and cherry juice.

Assembly Directions:

Line a metal bowl (I used my Kitchenaid bowl) with plastic wrap. Pack cherry ice cream into the bowl, smoothing the top and let freeze for 30 minutes. Once set, pack crushed cookies on top in a smooth layer and let set again for 30 minutes. Pack pistachio ice cream in a smooth final layer and let the whole thing freeze at least 6 hours, or overnight if you can stand it. Place pound cake on cake stand and invert bowl on top of the cake. You may have to wait a few seconds for the ice cream to loosen and fall out, but it will. Once it does, remove the plastic and place back in the freezer. While the cake is setting make the meringue.

Meringue:

  • Egg whites of 8 large eggs
  • 1 cup sugar
  • Pinch of cream of tartar

Directions:

In the bowl of a mixer fitted with the whisk attachment whisk eggs and cream of tartar until foamy, slowly add sugar and whip until glossy and stiff peaks form. Spread meringue all over the ice cream and cake in a thick layer, making it thicker around the top until it is completely covered. Use the back of a spoon to make decorative peaks all over. Let this freeze for at least two hours. When you’re ready to serve it put it in a 500 degree oven until browned (5-7 minutes). If you absolutely must light it on fire, heat the nip of alcohol in a sauce pan until warm (don’t boil) and pour over the cake. Quickly, while alcohol is still warm, light it with a long match and stand the heck back! Seriously. The savages I served this to devoured it so quickly (I blame the wine) that I couldn’t get a picture of the inside, but I think even Effie Trinket would have approved.

Not to be a nag, but I do want to remind you all that The Homies Best Recipe Blog competition is still going strong until Friday at 3 PM. Yummy Books made it to the finals because of all of you and I need your help more than ever now! To be one of the only bloggers up there without a television show, cookbook, or even advertising feels pretty amazing. Help out the little guy! Vote Yummy Books!

If you already made an account to vote in round one voting is super easy, just log in at Apartment Therapy and cast your vote! If you haven’t made an account yet:

  • Head over here and enter your email address to create a login–I promise no spam will come your way and Apartment Therapy is a great site, you won’t regret having an account.
  • Once you have an account go here and right beneath the six blog names it will say “sign in.” After you’ve signed in there will be “vote” bubbles next to the names.
  • Vote for Yummy Books!!!

Lord of the Flies Pig’s Head Terrine

03 Saturday Mar 2012

Posted by in Savory, William Golding, Young Adult Novels

≈ 19 Comments

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When I was very young–probably seven–the 1963 version of Lord of the Flies was being played on television one night. It was Christmastime and I was next to my mom and dad on the couch when my dad, flipping through the channels, stumbled across it and stopped. For the next three hours I sat still as stone, horrified, terrified by what I was watching, but too shy to tell my parents. Laying in bed that night trying to sleep, the image of the fly-covered pig’s head, a stake stuck right into its neck, kept going through my tiny stressed-out brain.

It’s not as though I had never seen a pig’s head before. My grandfather (and his father before him) owned and ran a butcher shop in Boston, and I grew up surrounded and un-phased by meat and offal and blood, but there was something about this pig’s head that really disturbed me. That night, and for a few nights following it, I slept on the floor of my parents’ bedroom.

Sara and Ben

Years later, I was assigned the novel in my eighth grade English class and was shaken up all over again by Golding’s account of a group of young English boy’s stranded on an uninhabited island after a plane wreck. At first, the boys adhere to the laws of social order they have been raised with—calling meetings, electing leaders, dividing labor–but as the novel progresses this order quickly crumbles and the reader watches as “The world, that understandable and lawful world…[slips] away.”

Golding strands this specific group—boys between the ages of six and twelve years old—because they are particularly susceptible to shedding societal constraints and returning to their primordial selves. In showing us how quickly this group plunges into chaos he challenges the notion that humans are inherently “civilized.”

When the boys first land on the island their civilized English manners and habits are still deeply ingrained within them. Faced with the prospect of having to kill a pig because the boys are all hungry Jack is unable to follow through “because of the enormity of the knife descending and cutting into living flesh; because of the unbearable blood” (30). Only two chapters later, however, Jack slits a pig’s throat and comes back to the camp proud with “knowledge that they had outwitted a living thing, imposed their will upon it, taken away its life like a long satisfying drink” (70).

This beast clogged more daisy razors than me and my sisters combined

When the “littluns” start to worry that there is a beast lurking around the island panic spreads throughout the camp and Jack decides to take the head from the pig they killed and present it as an offering to appease the beast. The pig’s head, which they call “the Lord of the Flies” comes to represent chaos and disorder, savagery and the instinctual brutality of human nature (Beelzebub, literally translated is “the lord of the flies”). The image is so powerful, both in film and in writing, that even now, having de-faced countless pig’s heads in various restaurants, I still think about The Lord of the Flies every single time I do it.

The truth is, pigs’ heads are absolutely delicious if you are willing to take the time to prepare them the right way. It seems intimidating but it’s much easier than you would expect. Most local butcher shops will have pig heads and if they don’t have one on hand I’m sure they will be happy to special order you one. For my pig’s head I went over to The Meat Hook, where I’ve been apprenticing off and on since the winter of 2010. If you live in Brooklyn or near Brooklyn or you’re visiting Brooklyn come here. There are no better butcher shops or butchers out there (Don’t worry, Papa, this wouldn’t be the case if Salett’s was still open).

Lord of the Flies Pig’s Head Terrine

Ingredients:

  • 1 pig’s head
  • 1 bottle of dry white wine
  • 3 large shallots
  • 1 large head of garlic
  • a handful of black peppercorns
  • 1 bunch fresh thyme
  • 1 bunch fresh tarragon
  • 2 bay leaves
  • 1 tablespoon smooth dijon mustard
  • 2 tablespoons champagne vinegar
  • 1 bunch fresh parsley
  • 1 bunch fresh chives
  • 1 bunch fresh chervil

Directions:

First, make sure you have a very very sharp knife and a steel to sharpen it throughout the de-facing process. Rinse any noticeably dirty spots of off your pig’s head under the faucet, then get a disposable razor (or a couple depending on how hairy your pig’s head still is) and shave off any excessive hair–some heads come with barely any hair, some come with more. First, cut off the pig’s ears and set them aside. Next remove the snout by cutting around the base of the nose and sliding your knife along the bone underneath.

Now, take a look at your pig’s head from the back, where the head would have connected to the neck. You will see lots of dark knotty glands. Remove and discard all the glands you see. If you see some glands that look light pinkish in color and are soft and smooth save these–these are the sweetbreads. This head didn’t have any sweetbreads on it otherwise I would have taken some pictures for you. Once the obvious glands and sweetbreads are removed fold the jowls out and use your finger to feel where the jaw and cheek bones start.

Once you locate the cheek bone set your knife against it and run your knife along it, keeping it flush against the bone to remove as much meat as possible. Keep pulling with your free hand to create tension so that the jowl pulls away from the bone more easily. Continue with this process, following the bone until half of the face is pulled away. Slice the one half off and set it aside, then repeat this process with the opposite side of the face.

Reach your hand inside of the mouth and push the tongue backwards, you will see it start coming out of the back of the neck. Cut it loose and set it aside. Now take your two pieces of face meat and start cleaning it up. Clean off any gristly bits and glands. There will be a layer of lightly colored glands along the jowl, you can tell these are glands because they are bubbly while the meat is smooth and streaky.

Place all of your cleaned meat, tongue and ears into a deep roasting pan. Go back over the skull with your knife to clean off any bits of meat you might have missed. Set your oven to 275 degrees fahrenheit.  Pour the white wine over your meat and cover the rest of it with water. Quarter your head of garlic and all of your shallots and toss them in with the peppercorns, bay leaves, thyme and tarragon. Cover pan in foil and put in the oven at  275 for three and a half to four hours.

to the left is meat, to the right, where my fingers are pointing, is the layer of glands.

Once the meat is cooked remove it from the oven and strain off the liquid into a medium saucepan. Allow the meat to sit until it is cool enough to touch.  Over medium heat reduce the liquid to a little less than half and set aside. Using your fingers to distinguish between the meat and the fat and skin, pick out all of the meat and place it in a bowl. Cut the ears, snout and tongue into thin strips (peel the membrane off of the tongue first) and toss in with the meat.

Chop up your chervil, chives and parsley and mix them in with your meat. Add dijon and vinegar and mix until incorporated. Line any vessel of your choosing with a double layer of plastic wrap and lay the meat out evenly on the bottom.   Pour the reduced liquid on top of the meat, cover in plastic and allow to set in the fridge for at least six hours.

 I chose to pack the meat into a loaf pan so that I could slice and serve it as a head cheese, but some people like to spread it out in a thin layer so they can cut circles out of it, egg wash it, bread it and fry it. You can serve it over dressed greens, or with grainy mustard, or pickled onions, or slice it paper thin and put it on a sandwich with all of those things.

On a much lighter and less gory note, I’m thrilled to announce that earlier this week this little blog was nominated for Best Recipe Blog over on Thekitchn.com and thanks to you guys I made it through round 1 of voting! I am so excited and humbled to be among some of the top food-bloggers out there. The competition is stiff and I need your help again! Voting ends March 9th at 3pm. If you already made an account to vote in round one voting is super easy, just log in at Apartment Therapy and cast your vote! If you haven’t made an account yet:

  • Head over here and enter your email address to create a login–I promise no spam will come your way and Apartment Therapy is a great site, you won’t regret having an account.
  • Once you have an account go here and right beneath the six blog names it will say “sign in.” After you’ve signed in there will be “vote” bubbles next to the names.
  • Vote for Yummy Books!!!

Thank you everyone for all of your amazing support, it means the world to me. Now go cook some pig’s head!

Rebecca Lemon Angel Food Cake

14 Tuesday Feb 2012

Posted by in Daphne Du Maurier, Dessert, Pastry, Young Adult Novels

≈ 15 Comments

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When I was fifteen I got my heart broken for the first time. I was already an overly-emotional and fragile teenager (really, who isn’t at fifteen?) but this heartbreak had me positively melancholy. After weeks of sulking around the house, skipping school and crying at any good-natured joke my dad aimed my way, I arrived home one day to find a copy of Daphne Du Maurier’s Rebecca sitting on my pillow. My mom had placed it there hoping it would distract me from my total devastation, and distract me it certainly did.

From the minute I picked up that lavender and pink paperback with loopy cursive scrawled across it and read “Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again” I was hooked.  I spent hours in my room reading, so wrapped up I forgot for the first time in my life to eat.  When I emerged from my room days later I was so gaunt and spindly that my grandmother gasped when she saw me. There is something sustaining and even filling about du Maurier’s writing, and it isn’t just because her novels are filled with food. There is a richness about her language that is decadent and thick and sinfully good.

The descriptions of food in Rebecca are both mouth watering and visceral, as the narrator moves from a “dry, unappetizing plate of ham and tongue that somebody had sent back to the cold buffet half-an-hour before as badly carved,” to thick slices of bread with butter, “cucumber and watercress sandwiches”, and “bowls of fresh raspberries and peaches.” The tea scenes at Manderly are the most elaborate and tempting, with “dripping crumpets…Tiny crisp wedges of toast, and piping hot, flaky scones. Sandwiches of unknown nature, mysteriously flavoured and quite delectable, and that very special gingerbread. Angel cake, that melted in the mouth, and his rather stodgier companion bursting with peel and raisins” (pg. 8). Last week, with Valentine’s Day approaching, I started scouring my bookshelves for the best romantic literature and stumbled across my copy of Rebecca. As I was re-reading I noticed that angel cake is mentioned at least three times in different tea scenes throughout the novel. Angel food cake is a perfect Valentine’s Day dessert. It is quick, simple and impressive, not to mention easy enough on the waistline that you’ll still fit into that little something later on.

Your egg whites should hold up like this when they're ready

I used cake flour and superfine sugar to make this cake really melt-in-your-mouth light. Cake flour is easy to find, but if you can’t find superfine sugar just put regular granulated sugar into a food processor and pulse until it’s the texture of fine sand. It’s worth the effort I promise!

Rebecca‘s Lemon Angel Food Cake

Makes 1 10-inch cake (should serve about 8 people)

Ingredients:

  • 2 cups sifted superfine sugar, divided (set aside extra for strawberries and whipped cream)
  • 1 1/3 cups sifted cake flour (not self-rising)
  • 1 1/2 cups egg whites, at room temperature (about 11 eggs)
  • 3/4 teaspoon kosher salt
  • 1 1/2 teaspoons cream of tartar
  • 3/4 teaspoon good vanilla extract
  • zest of 1 and a half lemons
  • 1 carton strawberries
  • 16 ounces heavy whipping cream

Directions:

Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees. Slice strawberries and place in a bowl, toss in sugar and set aside in the fridge.

Sift flour and 1/2 cup of sugar together and set aside (if you have the patience to sift this mixture 3 or 4 times do it, it makes a difference). Separate eggs and add 1 1/2 cups of whites to the bowl of a mixture fitted with the whip attachment. Add cream of tartar and salt and whip on high speed until thick (1-2 minutes). While whites are whipping zest your lemons. Once the whites are foamy and thick add the lemon zest, vanilla, and remaining 1 1/2 cups of sugar and continue to whip on high until you have stiff, glossy peaks. Fold flour sugar mixture into whites gently until fully incorporated.

Scoop batter into un-greased 10-inch angel food cake pan (do not grease the pan, it will keep the batter from rising) and bake at 350 for 40-50 minutes. Remove cake from the oven and allow to cool with pan turned upside-down–this keeps the cake from sinking while it cools. Once cake is almost cool, whip your heavy cream, adding sugar and/or vanilla extract to taste. Slice cooled cake and top with freshly whipped cream and strawberries.

Happy Valentine’s Day, everyone!

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