Monthly Archives: October 2016

Hardware, Soft Crust

Posted on October 21, 2016 by | 1 comment

Painted in WaterlogueAlthough I like cooking over charcoal, the half-hour or so it takes to get the coals ready is often too long to wait–especially during the summer, when we frequently get home late in the evening. Her parents gave us a gas grill as a birthday gift. It isn’t one of those gigantic cook-for-an-army models with a footprint that would cover most of the deck; it’s a funky little number that looks like a flying saucer. Although it can be used on a picnic table, ours sits securely on its companion-model stand (which will fold to take very little garage space once the grilling season ends). It can be used with a small propane canister that connects directly to the intake valve, but her folks recommended we use it like they do–with a full-sized tank connected by an accessory hose (which, like the stand, was included in the birthday gift).

We love it. It heats quickly and evenly; the cast-iron grates are sturdy and easily cleaned; and the saucer’s “wings” are convenient for holding prep items.

But we’re not the only ones who are fond of it. For the second time since May, I went out to start dinner only to find that something had chewed a hole in the hose.

The big-box home centers in the area couldn’t help me, but I found a replacement hose made of stainless-steel mesh at a old-school hardware store. Helpful Hardware Guy said, “Yeah, we sell a lot of these. Something drips on the rubber hose, and a critter thinks it might be dinner.”  I’ll remember to wipe down the hose from now on, but even if I don’t, the metal mesh will give any prospective diners a toothache.

Since it was a sunny Saturday–unusually warm for mid-October–I used the now-functioning-again grill to make lunch. Grilling pizza is remarkably easy, and much faster than baking it in the indoor oven. I’ve had too many occasions where the pie won’t slide off the peel and makes a horrible mess in the oven. This one was perfect, with a crust that was both thin and delightfully chewy.

Helpful Hardware Guy Grilled Pizza

Stretch your favorite pizza dough into a thin more-or-less round. Brush the stretched dough with a little oil, put it oiled-side-down on the grate, close the lid and bake for about 2 minutes.  Remove it with tongs—it lifts right off without any sticking!—and brush the uncooked side with a little oil. Off the grill, turn over the crust. Put sauce, cheese, and any other desired toppings on the grilled side, and return it to the grill. Close the lid, and bake for about 5 minutes more.

Thanks to the Helpful Hardware Guy, we may not ever make pizza another way.

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Adaptation

Posted on October 20, 2016 by | 4 comments

Painted in WaterlogueAdaptation is a tricky business. What you change, or omit, when going from one medium to another may be the very thing that someone else loved about the original. What you add may be the ingredient that spoils the stew. Ask her sometime about the film versions of the Harry Potter stories. (But don’t do it if you don’t have time for a lengthy and passionate response.) Sometimes, though, the adaptation can surpass the original. Buffy the Vampire Slayer was a campy, silly film; the TV series of the same name is delightfully fun but deepens the metaphor of adolescence-is-like-living-on-the-mouth-of-hell. Sometimes both can co-exist admirably: Sholem Aleichem’s Tevye stories aren’t diminished by the existence of the musical Fiddler on the Roof—and although the stage version by necessity leaves out many details from the original and alters others, the result is a coherent and highly satisfying work of dramatic and musical literature.

She loves muffins. Well, not all muffins; she’s not indiscriminate. Her favorite is an orange-cranberry muffin from our local market. Muffin is perhaps the wrong word; they’re shaped like small loaves, and come in a package of six. I like them, too, but find them a little too sweet, and a little too moist. I don’t mean to say that they’re not properly baked, but that they almost fall apart when you slice them. And toasting? Don’t turn your back on the skillet; they’ll burn in a heartbeat. But she likes them a lot, so as the weekend approached I planned to pick up a package.

And then it was Saturday morning, and I hadn’t. And she wanted to get started right away making applesauce from the half-bushel we’d bought at an orchard last weekend.

I made us coffee and tea, and helped with the peeling and coring—and knew that I wasn’t going to be able to make orange-cranberry muffins, if only because we don’t have muffin tins. But we do have a loaf pan, and I know that it isn’t far from muffin to quick bread. So I compared a few recipes, thought about what I found lacking in the market’s cranberry-orange muffins, and set to work.

I used dried cranberries soaked in orange juice; substituted whole-wheat flour for a quarter of the usual all-purpose; added a quarter-cup each of old-fashioned oats and walnuts; and increased the liquid by a third and the leaveners by half. And, at risk of making anyone think I was trying to turn muffins into health food, I made a glaze of orange juice and confectioner’s sugar.

Cranberry-Orange Loaf

Preheat oven to 425F. Grease and flour a loaf pan.

Zest
1 orange

In a measuring cup or small bowl, soak for about half an hour
1-1/2 cups dried cranberries
in
1 cup orange juice (start with the orange you just tested, and go from there).

Sift together:
1 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 cup whole wheat flour
4 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt

In another bowl, whisk together until light:
1/4 cup vegetable oil
1/4 cup sugar
Then add to that same bowl
1 egg
Mix until smooth.

Add the wet ingredients to the dry; stir just to combine. Add the cranberries, zest, along with
1/2 cup old-fashioned oats
1/2 cup chopped walnuts or pecans

Spread the batter into the prepared loaf pan and bake about 50 minutes, or until a skewer comes out clean. Cool for about 10 minutes, then turn the loaf out onto a cooling rack. 

If you want to gild the lily, mix together
1/4 cup confectioner’s sugar
1 tsp orange juice (add more, a few drops at a time, until just spreadable)

Spread the cooled loaf with the glaze. Or don’t, if you’re feeling noble.

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This bread is heartier than the muffins—denser, but not heavy, just not as light as boxed-mix cake. It’s not a replacement, not a home-cook’s duplication of a store-bought item; it’s an adaptation.

I prefer Lerner and Loewe’s My Fair Lady to Shaw’s Pygmalion, but that’s just me; if you like your Eliza Doolittle without songs, I won’t complain. If you want to debate with her the canon of Arthurian legend from Le Morte d’Arthur to Camelot, I won’t have much to add to the discussion, but I’ll happily serve coffee and tea while you do. And maybe muffins. Or perhaps an adaptation.

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Sweater-weather Breakfast

Posted on October 14, 2016 by | Leave a comment

Painted in Waterlogue

“You two like butter,” our next-door neighbor said, handing us a stack of recipes she’d torn from magazines. I’d say that seemed like an odd thing to say, but our neighbor has been described as “like the kooky neighbor from a sitcom.” It’s a pretty apt description. She pops in unexpectedly, often to vent about something that’s happened in her workday or with a story about her cat, then disappears just as fast. But she’s also a very faithful cat-sitter and a good friend. And she brings recipes.

They weren’t just recipes featuring butter, it turned out; they were recipes featuring brown butter. Tidying up papers around the dining room before starting a work-from-home day, she looked through the sheaf of pages and showed me one: Apple Cardamom Dutch Baby. “Could we make this on Saturday?” “Sure,” I said. “Or today.” (I had forgotten to start a pot of oatmeal last night, and didn’t have any better breakfast ideas.) She set up her work station and prepared for a conference call, and I got to work in the kitchen.

It took me a minute to find the cardamom. To be honest, it took me a minute to remember what cardamom is. I knew it wasn’t a kind of sweater, so it wouldn’t be in my closet. It was with the baking spices, of course. She’s organized the cupboards to keep the “cooking” spices separate from the “baking” spices, although in the case of cardamom it might well have been stored with the “mostly ignored” spices. The jar had a label from the market near the City House, so it surely wasn’t optimally fresh. Still, it smelled interesting, so I decided to use it.

While the butter browned-but-did-not-scorch, I assembled the rest of the ingredients and whisked together the batter; the baking time neatly coincided with the rest of her phone meeting.

Dutch Baby is one of those dishes that always looks great in recipes, but often disappoints me on the plate. The pancake comes out of the oven brilliantly inflated, but collapses in the seconds it takes to serve it, leaving a dense, too-sweet mass. This one was different. The brown butter brought toasty notes; the cardamom was tart and earthy; and the apples, soft but not mushy, gave the pancake more substance than a jelly-topped version would.

I don’t know how long our neighbor had been gathering the recipes, but I’m glad she brought them to us when she did. With the leaves starting to turn in our part of New England, the cool nights and crisp mornings, and the sweaters coming out of storage, it’s perfect brown butter time. It’s probably time to buy some fresh cardamom, too; we’ll be  be making this again.

Apple Cardamom Dutch Baby
Adapted from a page torn from Martha Stewart Living magazine (sorry, the page didn’t have a date)

  • 4 tablespoons (1/2 stick) unsalted butter
  • 1/2 cup all-purpose flour
  • 3 large eggs
  • 2/3 cup milk
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • 1/2 teaspoon vanilla
  • 1/4 cup sugar
  • 1 teaspoon ground cardamom
  • 1 medium-sized crisp apple (Honeycrisp, Gala, Granny Smith–whatever you like, but something that won’t turn to mush)
  • Sour creme or plain yogurt for serving

Preheat the oven to 450F.

In a cast-iron skillet over medium heat, brown the butter–stirring occasionally, to make sure it doesn’t burn, and to make sure the bottom of the pan is coated. Remove from heat.

In a small bowl, stir together the sugar and cardamom.

Peel and core the apple, and slice about 1/8 inch thick.

Whisk the eggs until light and fluffy. (I used an immersion blender in a 1-quart plastic tub.) Add the salt, vanilla, and flour, and 1 tbsp of the cardamom sugar, and whisk to combine. (The batter will be thin.)

Lay the apple slices gently in the hot pan; pour the batter over the apples, then bake about 20 minutes until puffy and golden.

Sprinkle with the remaining sugar, cut into wedges, and serve immediately, garnished with a little sour creme or yogurt.

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What I Did for Cookies

Posted on October 12, 2016 by | Leave a comment

img_0121I’m working on a production A Chorus Line, the Pulitzer Prize-winning musical about dancers at an audition. Of course, there’s more to it than that; it’s really about what motivates performing artists in the face of the terrible odds against “success,” at least if “success” is defined as “getting hired.” The last scene of the show before the finale–when we learn which of the dancers is hired for the fictional musical–is a section called “Alternatives,” in which they answer the question, “What do you do when you can’t dance any more.” And finally, when the question is rephrased, “But what if today were the day you had to stop dancing. How would you feel?” the answer comes in the musical’s most well-known song, “What I Did for Love.”

Kiss today goodbye,
The sweetness and the sorrow…*

I’m no dancer, and not much of a singer, but I’ve admired A Chorus Line as long as I’ve known about it. I bought the original cast album as soon as it was released and practically wore out the grooves of the record. I bought the score as soon as it was available and played it ’til my fingers were raw. It was one of the shows I saw on my first trip to NYC.

Imagine how disappointed I was when, many years ago, I finally got a chance to music-direct a production and it was a terrible experience. I won’t dwell on why that experience was so sour, just to say that I needed more than a little convincing to take it on again.

You know the expression, “So far, so good”? Well, how about, “so far, so great”? The cast and staff adore each other. We’re a week and a half in, and it’s already a beautiful experience. Everyone is working tremendously hard to make this production the best it can be, and to enjoy the process. And it’s really working well.

Hey, wait–I’m supposed to be writing about food!

Last Thursday was my first full-evening vocal rehearsal. Those forces of nature in my cast had to Sit Still and Sing for three and a half hours while we worked our way through most of the ensemble music in the show. I wanted to do something nice for them and bring cookies, but ran out of baking time then. I made sure to leave time before yesterday’s rehearsal.

Cookies? you say. You brought cookies to people who have to wear leotards and tights in public? I’ve seen these folks work in rehearsal. It’s an incredibly aerobic show. They can stand to eat a cookie now and then.

There’s a bakery in the neighborhood near where the old City House was. Their chocolate chip walnut cookies are astonishingly good. They’re also pretty pricey. And it’s quite a trip from the Country House. But without too much trouble I found a recipe that’s produces cookies very, very close to the magical bakery’s product. Screwing my courage to the sticking place (after the Snickerdoodle Debacle), I pulled out the mixer, pre-heated the oven, and got to work.

“Gimme the ball, gimme the ball, gimme the ball,” sings a particularly energetic dancer in a song about adolescence. I thought of him as I worked on my cookies, with the direction “Roll the dough into large balls.” I think, at risk of heresy, that it is possible for a cookie to be too big. Maybe even for dancers. I made these much smaller–a little smaller than golf balls when they went into the oven. They came out perfectly. I packed them for the cast (leaving a supply for my fearless commuter to find upon her return from work), and headed off to rehearsal.

When the stage manager called a break, I set them out.

“There are cookies on the table!” someone noted with glee.

“Why are there cookies?” someone asked.

“Why are there not always cookies?” someone responded, with her mouth full.

“Who brought the cookies?”

Someone pointed to me. I got a round of applause. I took a little bow and blew a kiss to my well-loved cast.

The box was empty about two minutes later. Break ended, and we went back to work on a complicated scene.

There will be hard times to come. This play is hard work. There will be challenges. Frustration. Disaster. But, together, we will work through it all, and care for each other. Sometimes with kind words, sometimes with a quick shoulder-rub or a hug, sometimes with cookies. In the best sense, this is community theatre–not because the actors aren’t getting paid, but because we are a community.

I try not to think too much about what I’ll do on the day I can’t make music any more.

Maybe I’ll bake.

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*This performance of “What I Did for Love” was sung by the cast of this year’s Tony- and Pulitzer Prize-winning musical Hamilton. It’s as pure and honest a performance of the song as I’ve ever heard.

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Don’t Fritter, Don’t Waffle, and Definitely Don’t Disappoint

Posted on October 5, 2016 by | Leave a comment

Painted in Waterlogue

I used to joke that if I wanted to change careers, I could become an interior decorator for extremely patient clients. I could look at every towel rack in a three-county area before choosing one. Sometimes I have a problem being decisive.

I love lasagne. But I hardly ever order it in a restaurant, because I’m always disappointed. It never comes out of the kitchen the way I think it ought to. I’m looking for thick, sturdy layers of noodles and fillings and cheese—the important word being sturdy. I expect it to have the structural integrity of a slice of cake, not a messy plate of pasta.

Similarly, I love apple fritters. Or, at least, I love the idea of apple fritters. Chopped apples, held together by a little dough, fried and lightly glazed. On those rare occasions I go to the donut shop, I choose one, thinking, this will be great! And better than just a donut. What do I get? A pile of glaze-covered dough, in which you’d need a geiger counter to find the apples. Or, if I’m lucky, a gloppy spoonful of canned apple pie filling.

I have no problem with a nice glazed donut. I like apple pie (though I’d prefer the filling not come from a can). But that’s not what I’m looking for.

This, however, is.

Apple Decisive
(no waffling, no frittering)

Pre-heat a waffle iron and coat lightly with non-stick spray.
Set a cooling rack over a section of the newspaper you weren’t going to read anyway.

Combine in a large bowl:
2 cups all-purpose flour
1/3 cup sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon salt

Combine in a small bowl:
1 cup milk
1 egg, beaten
1 teaspoon vanilla

Make a well in the dry ingredients and stir in the wet, mixing just enough to combine, then fold in
3 cups chopped apples
(That seems like a lot, but apple is the star; pastry is the supporting player.)

Spoon the mixture, which will be thick and chunky, into the waffle iron and bake until golden brown and immensely fragrant. Remove each Decisive to the rack.

Mix in a small bowl:
4 tablespoons confectioners sugar
1-1/2 teaspoons apple cider (a few drops more, as needed)

If you want the glaze to set up, beautiful and shiny, wait ’til the Decisives are cool to apply it. We chose not to wait that long.

It is possible that the lasagne I’ve been getting in restaurants is exactly as it is meant to be, and the stuff I make is the casserole of a Philistine. It is possible that a Fritter is supposed to be a fried lump of dough faintly smelling of apple. I don’t care.

It might take a while for me to pick a towel rack, but when it comes to Sunday breakfast, I’m being decisive.

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Don’t Laugh. Don’t Even Snicker(doodle).

Posted on October 3, 2016 by | 1 comment

“I need to bake cookies on Wednesday night,” she said. “And maybe a cake.”

We’ve been hooked on The Great British Baking Show (or …Bake-Off, as it is known everywhere but in America), and it has improved both the quality and quantity of our baked goods, but need seemed rather strong a word. I asked for clarification. She explained that she was going to interview a bunch of young people on Thursday, and thought bringing some treats might make them a little less nervous about telling their stories.

Cookies. And maybe a cake. On Wednesday night, when she wouldn’t arrive until well after 7. Before catching an early train on Thursday. It just seemed impractical to leave the work for her. Especially when I’ve been working from home lately.

I took a late-morning break and looked around the kitchen. I figured I’d start with the cake. I was not thinking about the fact that she dislikes baking cookies and I should have left the cake for her; really, I was thinking I could get a cake into the oven and while it baked I’d sort out the cookie situation.

We had apples and ginger, so a recipe I found in the New York Times seemed like a good place to start with the cake. I might have misread it, or maybe my apples were larger than the ones the recipe was expecting, because it came out very apple-filled. Nothing wrong with that; it took a little longer to bake than the recipe said, but it looked fine and smelled better.

Time for cookies. I was pretty sure nuts were off-limits, considering the possibility of allergies; and I knew we didn’t have any chocolate chips. And I didn’t have forever. Sugar cookies? No, too dull. Snickerdoodles. Lovely, soft cinnamon-covered beauties. The cinnamon would go nicely with the spices in the apple cake. I followed the recipe precisely.  I checked the oven thermometer twice. I put 8 perfect little dough balls  on a half-sheet pan, put the pan in the oven, and set the timer for 5 minutes–half of the allotted baking time, after which the pan was to be rotated. I opened the oven door and found to my dismay that all the cookies had melted together.

Whoops. 8 must have been too many.

I scraped off the pan, washed and dried it and let it cool, took the dough out of the refrigerator and tried a batch of 6. And they pooled together, too. Maybe 4? and on the insulated cookie sheets? Another glob.

It should be noted that these cookies tasted great. They just had no structural integrity. I saved what I could of them, even tried cutting perfect circles of them with a biscuit cutter, but they just wouldn’t hold shape. I was not going to send misshapen, crumbly cookies to work with her.

I tried again the next morning, with a recipe from her favorite cookbook. Why didn’t I think of that in the first place? Because, as it turned out, it didn’t matter. They melted together, too. I don’t know what was going wrong, but I was surely glad that I was home alone and the cat doesn’t mind hearing a little cussing from time to time.

By the end of batch number 2, I had a big container full of Tasty But Ugly Snickerdoodles, and I had run out of time. Unless she really wanted to stay up late on Wednesday night, trying again, store-bought would have to do. She dropped me at home to start making dinner while she went to the market.

After dinner, she sliced and packaged the cake. Whatever I did, it was wonderfully moist and spectacularly ginger-y. I did not steal a piece to find this out; my sample was from one of the scraps. The cake was a hit with the older kids, she reported on Thursday night, and the little ones loved sprinkle-covered sugar cookies. Good enough for me.

On Sunday, we had tickets to see a production of the musical Hairspray that friends of ours were doing—at the same theatre where, a year ago May, she asked if I might like to marry her. We planned to pack a picnic, as usual, but the week got away from us and there wasn’t much time left. “What say we order a pizza from the Awesome Shop, and pick it up on the way?” She agreed readily. We had a quick text-message exchange with the couple who were joining us for the show—no anchovies, no garlic—and decided what to do about dessert. I did not have the emotional fortitude to try another batch of snickerdoodles, and I wasn’t going to take the bin of broken ones…

But I could use them to make a pie crust.

And I did.

Chocolate-Marscapone-Cherry Pie with Don’t Even Snicker-doodle Crust

For the crust
Crumble failed snickerdoodles in the food processor until you have at least 2 cups; pour into a large bowl.
Add 1/3 stick melted butter (no need to add sugar). Stir to combine.
Press moistened crumbs into a 9-inch pie pan, leaving at least a 1-inch high rim.
Bake until golden brown; cool completely before filling.

Filling, adapted from Bake or Break
Melt 8 oz. chocolate, chopped (I used 3/4 dark, 1/4 milk). (I did it in the microwave on low power, stirring ever 30 seconds or so). Cool the chocolate slightly.
While the chocolate cools, whip in a stand mixer 8 oz. marscapone cheese, softened.
Add the cooled chocolate and 2 tbsp cherry preserves to the cheese; stir to combine.
Spoon the filling into the cooled pie crust and chill for 2 hours.
Serve with whipped cream. If you’re at home, this should be home-whipped, and topped with shaved chocolate. If you’re going on a picnic, don’t make your self crazy: pick up a can at the market on the way.
Accept compliments graciously. And enjoy the show.
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We hear that Bake Off is changing networks, and losing its two charming hosts and the more delightful of its two judges. Ah, well. We’ll still bake.

 

 

 

 

 

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