Today is a dreary day, more fit for autumn than August. Today is a day to stay inside, watch black and white horror films, and get the ovens going for something delicious and comforting. Today is a day of cold feet. Today reminds me of Krakow, where we never saw the sky for all the thick clouds waiting to drop snow on our frozen little skulls. One night, one exceptionally cold and windy night, when we were lost in the city, we grouped together in the center square by the market hall and the Marian basilica. Above us from the belltowers a trumpeter sounded evening, and we were freezing, waiting for our hosts to find us.
We waited for about an hour, afraid to go inside in case they didn't find us at all.
This bleak story has a happier, warmer ending: when our hosts did find us, they brought us to a small artisanal chocolate factory with a cafe upstairs, where I drank an entire pot of tea prepared with fresh mint leaves, melting chocolate, and exceptionally rich cream. It was fortifying, a whole day's meal in one pot, and it warmed me straight through my insides to my fingertips. Today is a day vaguely like that.
Or else today is beautiful, wherever you are, but maybe you can tuck these recipes away for a wintry day when you might need them.
CHOCOLATE CRANBERRY BREAD PUDDING
Bread Cubes, about 2/3 loaf of Italian bread, or 6-8 slices pre-sliced bread ***STALE PREFERABLE***
2cups Milk
1/2cup Sugar
1/4cup Butter
1/4cup Raisins
1/4cup Dried Cranberry
1/4cup Chocolate Chips
1tsp Cinnamon
1tsp Nutmeg
2 eggs
Preheat oven to 350 F.
Tear up your bread. You don't want small pieces, like croutons, or else you'll have a soggy mess. This bread will act like a buttery, delectable sponge, so give it some substance and size. Lay it out in an 8x8" baking dish; you should have enough bread so that it lays in one flat layer, but when you shake the pan nothing is shuffled loose. I used a day-old loaf of Italian bread, because it was on hand, and its heartiness serves this autumnal recipe. Set your bread to the side.
In a medium-sized saucepan heat your milk and butter on medium flame. Stir continually until butter is melted and milk is hot, but don't allow to sit, stick, or bubble. Try the baby test: stick your finger in, or let a drop on your wrist, and if it's too hot for baby, it's perfect. Set that to the side also.
Now summon a large mixing bowl; whisk your sugar, eggs, cinnamon and nutmeg. Toss your bread, chocolate chips, raisins, and cranberries in until sticky and evenly coated. Next pour your milk and butter over the bread and stir; keep stirring until the bread has soaked up most of the mixture. Be gentle; you don't want to break down your bread cubes to pulp.
Lay out in your baking pan (ungreased). Bake forty-five minutes until golden and spongey. Serve warm. (With whipped cream. Or vanilla ice cream. Or another helping.)
CHOCOLATE TEA
1 Teabag Black Tea (Earl Grey, preferably)
1 Teabag Mint Tea
3tbls Cocoa Powder
2tbls Milk, Cream, or Half & Half
1 1/2tbls Sugar
Hot Water
Set your kettle on. At the base of your mug mix your pigments: that is, combine cream, baking cocoa, and sugar and stir. Microwave (yes, microwave) for 30 seconds on HIGH; mix again for a smoother gloop. This will allow the tea to mix smoothly, without cocoa-y clumps. Rest your tea bags in your mug as artfully as you like.
When your kettle calls (or your water bubbles, before boiling) pour over your chocolate mixture and tea bags, then stir. Let steep for 2-3 minutes, then toss those teabags, curl up, and enjoy.
...Mutilated monkey meat Little dirty birdy feet!
Sometimes I wonder if that song is actually a political statement.
And Happy Monday to us all!
These ten, eleven days since I last posted have been a week plus of pure experimentation and exploration, and they have been as fun and frustrating as any endeavor I've yet undertaken. My recently acquired cookbook, The Art of Polish Cooking, is a ripe stomping ground for ideas. It is also a completely unreliable guide into culinary adventures. What I've learned, fundamentally, is the "art" of Polish cooking, the "art" of any cooking, the "art" of anything is trying it out, getting it wrong, starting again, and doing it better.
Take one: blueberry pierogi. Between gathering the ingredients, kneading the dough, preparing the filling, forming each tiny pierogi, then boiling them in batches of a dozen, the entire process took six hours, and they came out... alright. Alright, but not perfect, and I was not entirely satisfied.
You may be wondering, why? Why blueberry pierogi, why Polish food at all? The answeris because while I was abroad, I spent a week in Poland for spring break, on something of an adventure with seven friends and classmates. We arrived in Warsaw on a Thursday night, and it was beautiful, but it was freezing. At the time, I couldn't really tell you what I was doing there. We wandered around the city lost and cold for the better part of three hours, until quite by accident we were found by our host. Our first meal in Poland consisted of chicken terryaki (I still don't understand entirely) and an assortment of sweet pierogi. Poland was something of a revelation toward my understanding of history and humanity, as well as my self and aspirations, and I began to realize this change around the table in my host family's dining room, eating blueberry pierogi off of fine china with a handful of who would become really good friends.
Blueberry pierogi, take two. The woman who compiled this recipe collection is something of a mystery, and so is her philosophy toward food. The results of her recipes are dead-ringers for taste; the first batch of pierogi tasted exactly like the pierogi we ate (devoured, demolished, destroyed) in Warsaw. The resulting texture of her recipes has been consistently off. The texture of the dough she detailed was plain old tough. With what was left of my ingredients, I started again, making changes both to the dough recipe and to the kneading process.
Recipe from The Art of Polish Cooking
Adjusted Recipe
So. Pretty significant changes from the get go, but the most drastic change I made was in the kneading. The second time around, I cheated. Well, I cheated according to pierogi purists out there. The first batch I kneaded by hand and by the time I'd rolled it and re-rolled it to cut and form the pierogi it was overworked and tough. This time, I let my food processor do the work. The result was stickier, softer, thinner, and more flexible, exactly as the dough ought to have been. The entire time I was thinking just how impressive those are who knead their dough by hand and get exactly their desired result. That is art, definitely and truly. For us novices, I think, the short cut is forgivable, and this batch of pierogi was a couple steps up in texture from the day before, while keeping that Warsaw taste.
Another common flaw (if you want to call it that; I do) in these recipes is there is no never mind toward mess. These recipes are extremely messy, as daunting as they are delicious. My next experiment was a savory dinner dish, my first ever attempted Hungarian goulash. We were told in Krakow that for traditional Polish eating, look for a 'milk bar'. A milk bar (and I've sometimes heard them called 'Soviet cafeterias', but I like the sound of milk bar more) looks like a smaller, scratch-and-dent Ikea cafeteria, the granddaddy of Ikea food, and also better, cheaper, and not processed or pre-frozen.
Listen. Do what you want in your own kitchen. But judge, judge harshly, any eatery that makes you pay a premium for pre-packaged frozen food. And don't give them your money. (We'll get to that in depth in the future.)
Our Krakow milk bar was a couple blocks from the center square, a quintessential hole in the wall, and on our very last night in the city I tried what was my first taste of goulash and also the milk bar's very last plate of it for the day. It was a victory and a delight, so of course I wanted to recreate it at home. I ended up spending a fortune on ingredients and making a colossal mess, only to discover at the end of the process that I'd succeeded in making stroganov, not goulash, the difference being cream sauce vs. broth. It was tasty, but it wasn't what I set out to do, so it left the aftertaste of failure (with the tang of melodrama).
That night I drowned my sorrows in Bull's Blood, a Hungarian wine and my very favorite of the reds. (In retrospect it was a very silly sorrow. That stroganov was a mighty fine dish.)
Yesterday was the most extravagant attempt, triumph, and failure thus far all at once. Inspired by a recent trip into what I can only call Little Poland (more on that to come), I set out to recreate my first milk bar delight: stuffed cabbage, or, golabki (sounds to me like it was named for the noise made when you drop a cabbage roll into the broth: GLUPki). The instructions given were kind of insane. They involved lifting and dropping a cabbage head into boiling water repeatedly; something of a metaphor, considering my bloggy nomen. It also called for peeling off piping hot cabbage leaves only to discover pools of boiling water in the cabbage pouring out over my fingers, baking at ridiculously high temperatures uncovered (the outer leaves burned; I had to peel them off), and then baking for another hour, this time shielded.
Now this is where it gets ridiculous, and you can tell I had boiled my own brains a little. The fanciest thing in my home kitchen, after the beautiful Ninja Blender and Food Processor (get ready for the story of how I made 'ground pork' with a ninja...) are the silicone oven mitts. They are like boxing gloves for cooks. They look and feel like flexible plastic, so imagine my confusion (that's not the word: moronity?) when I read in the recipe that I had to cover my baking dish. I looked at the Pyrex pan holding my brave little cabbage rolls, a pan that comes with a flexible, rubbery lid. Well, cabbage brain, if the pan is supposed to go in the oven, shouldn't the top also go in the oven?
Wrong. This is entirely wrong thinking. These lids are not silicone. They are plastic. And they melt at high temperatures.
I wish I had at the time laughed it off, made a clever little pun about being unable to handle the heat so get the heck out of the kitchen, scraped the plastic off, and plowed forward. Instead I freaked out a lot, left the melty glob on the stove top, and went to sulk. Quite by accident, I stumbled across the old Harvard Commencement Speech given by J.K. Rowling about the benefits of failure (on the DIY blog of an old classmate, no less). Nerd that I am, I have watched it before (several times) but it didn't seem ever as appropriate as that moment to spend twenty minutes putting what amounts to a lost lid into perspective.
My point in all of this is not really about cooking, or the less than helpful instructions of an old cookbook, or misguided attempts to bake plastic in an oven, but my real adventures in The Art of Polish Cooking. I can't really say why Polish except that it calls me, in a way no other cuisine ever has. I can't even say why cooking; in fact, I am never so frustrated, cross, and unpleasant to be around as when I am working in a kitchen, so I have no idea why I enjoy it so much. I can, however, say why "art".
Every failure in art is a triumph. Every botch makes you better. Every attempt, even those misguided, only turns you to something greater if greater is in fact what you want.
So this week I hope to share some recipes, along with some perfected attempts, but for now I leave you with two excellent commencement speeches by two excellent writers, and hope that no one raises the question, What does this have to do with cooking at all.
Happy Monday, indeed!
J. K. R. speaking at Harvard, 2008
Neil Gaiman speaking at University of the Arts, 2012 (hometown represent!)
So I'm in a bit of a cookbook craze, meaning I just intentionally acquired a new cookbook. I'm really not a cookbook person. Maybe I've been spoiled by the internet, by stream-lined and easy to search recipe files with pretty pictures that I can print and toss and forget about. Maybe it's because cookbooks generally reflect the personality of the cook, their attitude towards cooking and towards food, and it seems I don't often agree with those attitudes. Every so often, though, a particular cookbook will strike me.
We're talking every couple of years.
Before I break out recipes from my *fancy new cookbook* (read: Polish cookbook from the late 60's, I am SO PSYCHED), I'm going to share what is currently my favorite cookbook find to date. Seriously, I have made this recipe so many times I could do it in my sleep (also, it is incredibly easy). I don't think I've tested a single other recipe from this cookbook (an entire folio devoted to wraps, how lovely and hip), but for no other reason than these wraps it is one of the few and favorites in my cookbook collection.
SOUTHWEST BURRITO JOES
(I have no idea what they're "officially" called anymore. They're asked for by name as 'sloppy joe wraps.' Let's file them under delicious. Do note, the original recipe has been adapted to suit the picky members of this household who for reasons stemming from pure insanity will not touch onions. It otherwise may well have evolved over time.)
INGREDIENTS
2c Rice, cooked
1lb Ground Beef
12oz Chili Sauce
2tbsp White Distilled Vinegar
1tbsp Worcestershire Sauce
1 1/2tbsp Ground Cumin
1tsp Garlic Powder
1tsp Onion Powder
1tsp Salt
1tsp Pepper
1/2tsp Chili Powder
4-6 12" Flour Tortillas, for wraps
So some tips on rice cooking. It's a 1:2 cup ratio rice to water, and works best with whole and even numbers (that is, stick to 1:2 or 2:4, not 1.5:3). In a saucepan or pot pour water over the rice and stir a bit so it's not immediately a clump on the bottom, then cover and place over average heat. It'll come to a boil quickly; when it does, drop the flame to as low as it can possibly go (the lowest of low flames) and let cook for twenty minutes. After twenty minutes, remove from flame, 'fluff' with fork, and you're good to go.
Setting your rice to the side, break up your beef (that phrase has a lot of potential: YO, BREAK UP YOUR BEEF) in a skillet or frying pan and brown, as if you were cooking meat for tacos. Once browned, drain beef fat. I do this less for any semblence of health consciousness than for a better, less sloppy texture; replace on burner and adjust flame to medium-low. Add your chili sauce, one tablespoon of vinegar, and Worcestershire sauce and stir for an even, wonderful, gloppy coat. Next add your dry ingredients and remaining tablespoon of vinegar and stir about until it's evenly seasoned. Turn off your heat and mix in your rice until it's a beautiful conglomerate of saucy meaty wonder.
Seriously, how easy was that? I challenge anyone to think up an excuse to buy canned sloppy joe mix. Gross. This form is a little less sloppy than your typical Manwich, so you can serve it a number of ways: maybe a taco salad or with chips and salsa or, as we typically do, a la burrito.
Evolution of Burrito
The above is a silly little diagram of my burrito rolling method. The trick is portion control; over stuff your burrito and you will have a very sloppy burrito joe. Also, unless you have a fancy Chipotle-style tortilla steamer (in which case, I hate you be my best friend), you're best off microwaving your tortilla on HIGH for thirty seconds, just to get things all loosey goosey.
As depicted, at the bottom of the tortilla about an inch and a half from the edge plop about a half a cup (slightly smaller than a fistful) of 'joe (har har, cuppa joe) and, if you fancy, a blob of sour cream. Fold the long sides of your tortilla over each other, then fold the bottom edge up, kind of like you're wrapping a delicious Tex-Mex present. Fold the "pocket" up maybe two or three times until it's wrapped up nicely and then tuck the ends in. Voila! Burrito magic.
So one day while Chef Batman and I were having a coffee chat, she says to me, "One thing I learned in Whole Foods (she was a chef there for several years) and sometimes make at home is chocolate avocado mousse."
Holy moley. She set me up like it was going to be some kind of insider kitchen secret, or a dry-charming life-changing revelation, and rightly so. I thought the world had opened up and I was going to Nirvana. I had to try this. Following her tip, I started to look for recipes on the Internet. Alas, I found only disappointment and Giada de Laurentiis (unorthodox food searches on the Internet often end this way).
Don't get me wrong, I love clever cooking. A challenge, a reinvention, a breath of fresh air, and yes, anything with avocado: I'm down with that. But clever for clever's sake gets on my nerves, and none of the chocolate-avocado mousse recipes I found were really chocolate avocado mousse. Instead, they were 'this looks like pudding but guess what THERE'S AVOCADO IN HERE aren't we cute and low-calorie chic'. No. You're a snob. Eat some damn pudding.
I wanted to make to make this mousse in a way that incorporated the avocado so it wasn't just a pretentious faux-pudding. Avocado can be an awesome dessert on its own (avocado bubble tea anyone?), it doesn't just have to be a protein supplement. And chocolate, as we know from authentic Mexican cooking, doesn't have to be dessert. So in the name of inverting the designated purposes of vegetables and chocolate alike, here is the gluten-free, dairy-free, really easy, really tasty, really rhyme-y...
HOLY MOLE CHOC-GUAC
Because who doesn't love desserts that can pass for Cancun spa facials?
INGREDIENTS
2 Ripe Avocados
1/2c Honey
FOR THE 'MOLE'
3tbls Cocoa Powder
2tsp Instant Coffee
1tsp Cinnamon
1/2tsp Nutmeg
1/2tsp Allspice
1/2tsp Ground Clove
To start off, choose wisely your avocados. Three easy ways to know you've got a good avocado on your hands are:
Hold it. (You can definitely do this in the grocery store before you buy it. ) If it feels like holding a baseball, it's not ripe. If it disintegrates, it's too ripe. If it has just a little give but it's still firm, snatch that ish up. You can definitely do this in the grocery store before you buy it.
On the narrow end there's a little nib; brush it with your thumb. If it comes off easy, it's ripe. The skin beneath it should be pale greeny-yellow, a lot like the avocado meat. If it's brown or purply, it's over ripe or rotting. You may feel some apprehension doing this in the grocery store, but it doesn't injure the avocado and maybe someone else will appreciate you doing the work for them.
Scoop it. (You'll probably have to wait til you get back to the kitchen to do this.) Once you cut it open and start to scoop out the meat, your spoon should slide along the skin like butter. If the meat slips right out, it's perfect.
My avocados were just a little under ripe; the selection wasn't all too great, and I did pick up a third that could be used for a cannon ball. But since we're going to whip these into submission, a smidge under ripe is just fine. As for cutting: with the knife held length wise to the avocado, slice all the way to the pit. A little resistance is a good sign, but it should be pretty smooth. Turn the avocado until it's cut all the way around, separate the halves, and voila. With my under ripe 'cados, I had to scoop the pits out with a spoon. With a perfect avocado, if you tap the knife into the pit (using a little force, don't be a ninny) it will lift out on the blade and you'll feel like one fly cook.
Now. Down to chocolate.
Mix your dry ingredients in a little bowl. In another slightly less little bowl, break up your scooped-out avocados with a fork, then transfer the beautiful mash into your food processor (if you have an immersion blender or even a hand-held cake mixer, you could likely get away with that) and whir those babies around just to get them started. Pour your honey into the little well formed around the blades, then add your dry mole-spices. Process/blend/immerse until smooth and luxe and delicious.
Donezo. Boom-shacka-lacka.
If you wish to be fancy, top with a little whipped cream or chopped nuts (walnuts or pistachios would be tasty) or chocolate shavings. Serve immediately, or save in the fridge for two or three days (air-tight container, peeps), or eat it all out of the processor with a spoon. I'm not going to tell anyone. Cin Cin!
This recipe started with my old Italian neighbor, who grew up in one rowhome with sixteen brothers and sisters (maybe not all at once) and to this day dyes her hair shining copper-red. She makes it with pepperoni. She gave the basic recipe to my mother, who has since never bought a damned jar of spaghetti sauce, and makes it with sweet Italian sausage. I stole it from her, and made it just a little weird.
1c Ground Beef
6oz Can Black Olives (drained)
6oz Jar Spanish Olives (drained)
8oz Can Tomato Paste
29oz Can Tomato Puree
6-7 Garlic Cloves (minced)
2-3 Carrots, thinly sliced
1tbsp Parsley Flakes
1/2tbsp Red Pepper Flakes
2tsp Salt
2tsp Black Pepper
1tbsp Olive Oil
I don't like to peel my carrots. I don't like to peel anything. So long as your carrots are washed sufficiently (and by that I mean rinsed so there's no visible guck, and then a little bit more if you're touchy) and you cut off the nib and the stem end, there's no reason any bit of a carrot should go to waste. Wash and slice your carrots into thin coins, about the size and thickness of a dime, penny, or quarter, depending on the circumference of the carrot.
Today, we are particularly interested in the anatomy and treatment of carrots. Moving on.
Drain your olives, mince (get them nice and mixed up, they aren't shy), and set to the side. Mince your garlic; feel free to use a food processor, remembering to 'PULSE' in twitchy, nervous jabs. You want dainty, sticky little bits; you do not want aioli.
In a medium to large pot with a lid (if you can't find a lid, a large plate will do) saute your minced garlic, 1 teaspoon of salt, 1 teaspoon of pepper, and your parsley in the tablespoon of oil on medium-high heat for 30, I sa-I said THIRTY seconds, giving it a good stir. The 30 second rule was passed along by my Sicilian friend's mother, and you never, ever doubt Faith. The instant those thirty seconds are up, dump your cup of ground beef (when I say 'cup', I mean a lump the rough size of a fist) and start breaking it up with your spoon. You want it to brown, but you don't want it to clump, so poke away at the meat until you've got an even layer of non-clump beef, nicely browned.
After sufficient browning, pile your minced olives, black and green, on top. Mix the olives in until the meat, olives, and garlic are all one multicolored mush. The great thing about this bolognese is that when it's finished, texture-wised you can't tell the meat from the vegetables; they all melt on your tongue. That's Strega Nona stuff. It's pure dead magic. Throw your carrots in after that, then pour your first can of tomato puree and stir it in.
I say first because you are now going to take that can (trust me, I know what I'm doing, are you going to doubt a 70 year old Italian woman's recipe?) and fill it with water, just ordinary tap water, pour that in, and stir til it blends nicely. Then open your tomato paste, spoon every last plop of that gunk into the pot, then repeat: fill with water, smush it around in the can to get any remaining scrape of paste, pour into the pot, and stir. You want this all to blend evenly; at each moment in the pot your spoon should touch every ingredient at once. Throw in your remaining salt, pepper, and red pepper flakes. Raise your flame a fraction of a hair and bring that puppy to a boil.
And when it boils, bring it down to the lowest possible flame. Stir periodically so that nothing sticks to the bottom. This is the tricky part: set your lid on the pot so that there is a thin, sliver-crescent 'vent' for steam, but it is still mostly covered. Then, let simmer for an hour and forty five minutes.
You heard me. Get comfy. Don't you dare take that thing off the flame. (Just remember to stir it, so it neither sticks nor burns.)
Pasta night is a routine battle in my house because I (spoilt brat I may be) refuse to pair my gravy with anything ever except spaghetti. There's something about spaghetti; it is the pasta king. However, this meaty bolognese works just as well with macaroni, ziti, penne, rigatoni, any hearty, exceptionally Italian sounding pasta. (I say farfalle as well, but I've nearly been boxed in the ears by Old Boston Chef, who insists that bow ties are too delicate for meat sauce. She also calls it 'sauce.' Take as you will.)
An hour and forty five minutes later, you have a rich, sweet, kicky, zesty, melty, otherwise delicious bolognese, and my sweet (and spicy) old neighbor's recipe lives on through yet another wacky incarnation, just in time for tomorrow's Sunday dinner. Cin cin!
