14 cake: bake to basics

for the spring opening act of the great cake adventure, i wanted to dig my hands in. Like one wants to do with soil this time of year; mary mary quite contrary, how does your garden grow?

bypassing that ladies’ mag favorite – the dirt cake – as too literal, I went back to basics: buttermilk scone. Scone is not cake, you say? Keep an open mind. A tart is as she dresses, after all.

This is a lazy recipe: lazy sought and lazy made. Straight from google “buttermilk scones” to the Food Network to a neat line up of few ingredients, one big bowl and a wooden spoon. Voila –a scone is born!

heat your oven to 400° and line a baking sheet with parchment paper.

right into your big beloved bowl, sift together 3 cups flour (giving in to recipe deviation, i subbed in ¼ cup of almond meal), 2 teaspoons baking powder and ½ teaspoon baking soda. Dump in ¼ cup of sugar- half white, half light brown. Slice in a stick and a half of cold butter.

by hand, work the butter, flour and sugar together, smoodging the butter pats with the grains of sugar and flour between your fingertips. Smoodge is the official culinary term.  Sources typically say, “until it resembles course cornmeal.” In my humble opinion, going all the way to “cornmeal” stage undermines the layered flakiness of biscuits and the potentially luxe texture of this here scone.

if you agree, aim to create sheets of butter by rubbing the pats between your thumb and fingertips and occasionally mixing the lot with your hands.

toss in 1 teaspoon salt; tradition calls for fine table salt, Brooklyn foodie palate for salty bursts calls for coarse sea salt. Stir in 1 cup of buttermilk.

if you are making these for some fancy brunch then roll them out and cut them with a biscuit cutter or glass rim (may want a bit more flour). for quick homeliness, just scoop ice cream scoop sized wads of dough into your hands, pull them in half, place one half on the baking sheet and top it with the other, craggy side up.

bake for 10 minutes, drizzle with honey and bake for about 5 minutes more, until golden.

dress as you please.

with greek lemon yogurt, blackberries & basil

tagliatelle with mushroom sauce

a plate of pasta.

loves long simmering in mixed company

don’t you feel good already?  Imagine really toothsome pasta, lavish with but not overwhelmed by a subtle sauce.  It is too early in the season for tomatoes, but not for butter.  Butter, onion and mushrooms.

thus inspired, we ate tagliatelle with mushrooms on the fire escape.  Sitting on the chipped dark green iron, amidst the pots of verdant herbs and lettuces, holding green plates of golden yellow noodle nests with earthy brown mushrooms.  A gluttonous silence fell; the sun set.  We lifted the plates to our chins and twined the pasta on our forks, shamelessly plowing mushrooms into our mouths left gleaming with butter.

fresh, hand cut pasta cannot be hyperbolized.  It wants your time and attention then rewards you lavishly.

to make enough to generously (and, really, is there any other way?) feed two, measure out a heaping cup of flour in a large, heavy bowl—one that will be comfortable for the movements of kneading—and make a hollow in the center, like a volcano.  Most Italian cookbooks seem to have extensive discussions of flour, how it varies in glutinousness and absorbency and flavor.  Interesting and tasty information; worth investigating between the pages.  For now, know that unbleached all-purpose flour works well for pasta.

carefully break 4 cold eggs over your fingers to hold the yolk back, letting the whites fall into a large clean bowl and slipping the yolks into the hollow in the flour.  Those egg whites will keep in the fridge for breakfast, or they whip up lickety-split into meringues for dessert that will slowly bake in a low oven while you’re puttering in the kitchen.  Leave all the eggs to come to room temperature.  Do something else for an hour.

whisk the egg yolks into the flour bit by bit with a fork then stir the lot together with a wooden spoon.  Add a bit more flour or egg white as necessary for the dough to come together.  When your dough is pulling into a ball, flour your hands and kneed it against the walls of the bowl, adding more flour if needed.  Cradle the bowl and press into the dough with the heel of your hand, rolling it along the sides of the bowl.  Turn the dough and repeat.  Work the dough until it becomes elastic and satiny.  Pasta dough is a bit stiff, so kneading for 8 to 10 minutes can be a challenge but have faith.  Supposedly spinach pasta is softer and easier to work, and we plan to try spinach noodles for lasagna this week (stay tuned).  Let your ball of dough rest for an hour.

using as many mushrooms of as many sorts as you have, pick the stems off and wipe their caps gently clean with a cloth.  Slice the caps and set aside.  We had a generous 2 cups cremini and maitake.  Peel and quarter a small onion, slice it fine.  Heat a heavy skillet over high heat, and once it is hot turn the heat down.  Add a chunk of butter and puddle of olive oil, heat and add the onions.  When the onions begin to sizzle and soften add the mushrooms.  Stir and toss and cook over high heat for 5 minutes or so.  Sprinkle with salt and fresh pepper.  Turn the heat down and cook slowly, stirring occasionally, for an hour.  This takes some care to carry off without scorching, so add more butter as you go and maybe a swig of white wine.  The surprisingly long cook time is a revelation in flavor, and a tip from Marcella Hazan’s Master Class in Marcella Says…

dramatic mushrooms

the untamed, bosky quality that draws you to [mushrooms’] flavor emerges with very long, slow cooking after they have completely shed their vegetal waters….  Cook mushrooms slowly in olive oil for at least an hour, longer if you are making a large amount, until they are gelatinously soft.  Hover over the pan, and when your nose picks up a scent reminiscent of a dark, leaf strewn forest floor, the mushrooms are done.

she also recommends butter-based sauces for fresh pastas, whose texture is glossed over by oil.  The loving handling of the dough, tugged and pulled, gently roughens the surface, which swells luxuriantly with a coating of hot butter.

returning to your pasta, separate the ball into two or three parts, whatever is manageable for your work space.  Lightly flour a clean counter or tabletop.  Flatten the dough into a disk then roll it out, moving from the center to the edge, turning the disk a quarter turn every few passes.  When it is as wide as works, lengthen the sheet by rolling towards and away from you without turning the dough.  As you work, stretch the dough on the rolling pin or, in my case, empty juice jar.  Starting at the end farthest from you, roll the edge over the pin towards you and hold down the sheet resting on the counter and gently pull, rolling the pin towards you.  Work the dough on the pin by moving your hands away from each other from the center out towards the edges, tugging the dough along.  Let the sheet fall over the side of your work surface and hang.  The dough can be worked so thin you can read newsprint through it.  If the dough seems too fragile then thicker pasta is still delicious.  Let this sheet rest while you roll out the next sheet.

to cut noodles, dust a rested sheet of dough with flour and roll it into a loose log about 3 inches wide.  With a sharp knife, slice across the roll to make ribbons in whatever noodle width suites you.  Ours were slightly wider than traditional tagliatelle which is slightly wider than fettuccine.  Unroll the slices and spread your noodles out on dry cloths to dry.

bring a big pot of water to boil; salt it generously.  Gently hand your noodles into the rolling water.  Stir them a few times and cook for about 6 minutes, until al dente.  Try one, you’ll know.  Drain and toss with butter, salt and fresh pepper.  Serve immediately in shallow bowls or plates topped by the mushrooms.

spring soufflé

eggs

those joyous ladies, Irma & Marion, in their 1953 edition of the New Joy of Cooking, call the soufflé the “misunderstood woman of the culinary world,” and go on to give brisk and efficient instructions along with 26 recipes for variations on the foundation.  Unfortunately, these include “Jiffy Soufflé with Canned Soup” and lead straight into to ring molds.  Le sigh.

thirty years later, American whole foods home-cooking gurus Nikki & David Goldbeck would agree that, “despite the French name and elegant reputation,” the soufflé is simple, useful, delicate, and tempting.  Even, apparently, if you put wheat germ in it.

like many French dishes that have soared into the gastronomic stratosphere, seemingly out of reach for us mere culinary mortals, the soufflé is humble in origin.  Basic foodstuffs handled with thoughtful love.  Our new friend monsieur Louis Diat exclaims:

soufflés have for so long been associated with haute cuisine that many people, unfortunately, never attempt to make them.  Expensive, they say, and difficult to make.  Quel dommage! It’s a pity—because neither fact is true.

soufflé is no more complicated or decadent than an omelet; it just has fabulous architecture.  A homey, table-scaled rendering of the flying buttresses of Notre Dame.  Baked “the French way,” it delivers a comforting, custardy center whether savory or sweet.  Although luscious, it is only inappropriately rich in taste or cost if you make it so.  Mundanely, it is a graceful vehicle for leftovers.  The only real trouble with making soufflés is the process seems to invariably dirty a lot of dishes, and i dislike washing dishes very much.

much of the magic is in the egg whites, but some of it is in the pan: a medium straight-edge casserole will hold a 5 egg soufflé and be plenty puffy.  To coax the thing even loaftier, use a smaller pan lined with a collar of parchment paper.  Butter and lightly coat your pan with breadcrumbs, cornmeal, grated hard cheese or some combination.  We used Panko breadcrumbs for this soufflé.  Heat your oven to 375°.

measure out 1 ¼ cups of whole milk and set it atop the stove to warm.  Separate 5 cold eggs: the yolks go in a small bowl and the whites in a much larger bowl and quite clean, because they will double in volume later and any grease will debilitate maximum loft.

melt 3 tablespoons of butter over low heat in a heavy sauce pan.  Whisk in scant 3 tablespoons of all-purpose flour; and cook, whisking, until the roux turns golden brown.  Grate in fresh nutmeg, a pinch of cayenne pepper and some salt.  Slowly whisk in the milk.  Continue whisking and just simmer, cooking until the béchamel reduces to 1 cup.  Turn off the heat; leave to cool.

onion

heat a sauté pan over a medium flame.  When the pan is hot, add a pat of butter.  Peel and chop half an onion and add to the pan.  Peel and finely chop a carrot and add to the sautéing onion.  Chop half a clean Portobello mushroom head; slice the other half and set aside.   Add the small mushroom pieces to the pan, stirring well.  Salt and pepper, adding a little more butter if necessary.  Cook until the onions and carrots are soft but not browned then set aside in a bowl, scrapping the pan well.  Toss in the slices of mushroom and sauté for about 3 minutes, turning frequently with a fork.

snap the heads off a bunch of asparagus, reserving the stalks for some other use (like sautéing lightly with red pepper flakes then storing in olive oil and lemon juice for salad).  Remove the mushrooms to the casserole dish and replace them with the asparagus, with a splash of lemon if you like and a little salt and pepper.  Cook just briefly and scatter over the mushrooms.

whisk a tablespoon or so of the just warm white sauce into the egg yolks then a bit more sauce.  Pour the tempered yolks into the saucepan and whisk thoroughly.  Stir in the chopped vegetables, and grate in a ¼ or so of Parmesan cheese.

whip the egg whites until stiff peaks form, glossy but not dry.  This is one of the few times i break out the electric beater; it really angers my forearm to get to stiff peaks by hand, though it is not impossible.  If you have a kitchen friend, you can take turns.

fold about a fourth of the stiff whites into the sauce until thoroughly combined.  Gently fold in the remainder, no more than a third at a time.  To fold, use a spatula to cut through then beneath and lift the batter over and around the egg whites.  Patiently combine the two without deflating the whites.  Carefully turn the whole mess into the casserole dish.  Run your finger along the inside edge of the pan to create a groove an inch down.

bake for 25 minutes to half an hour, which will make for a firmer soufflé.  The one thing all accounts of soufflé making seem to agree on is the maxim: you wait for the soufflé; the soufflé does not wait for you.  Like all dreamy things, that spun scaffolding only holds its grand form a brief time.  And that divine, luxuriant center is at its best oven to table to dish.  Serve with excellent bread, a sourdough French is ideal of course.  Include a bright, herby salad.

the leftovers are likewise delicious, as many fallen things are.

soupe bonne femme avec faggot

“Many recipes call for a faggot.”   — Louis Diat

mais oui—everything is tastier with a dash of faggotry!  I’m not talking buggery— although many of us could use a soupcon of that too, survey says up to half of gay men never do it up the butt anyway — but the joie de vivre, the je ne sais quoi of a fabulous queen.  In the radical muffin kitchen, cooking gusto evokes a certain make-do and then some learned at the hip of sassy men who could out stomp me in their platform shoes and draw suitors to them through the din of crowded bars with their eyes.   Certainly, a femme is better with a faggot.

this is perhaps not what monsieur Diat had in mind.  No, the French born chef was the head at the New York Ritz-Carlton kitchens, where he not only trained many chefs in the U.S. but also made it his life’s work to translate French cooking techniques into English.  In Gourmet’s Basic French Cooking: Techniques of French Cuisine, published for the first time in 1961, he includes among Tricks of the Chef:

Faggot Many recipes call for a faggot.  To make a faggot, cut a stalk of celery in 2 pieces 3 or 4 inches long.  In the curve of one piece, tuck a few sprigs of parsley, folding in the ends, lay on this a bay leaf, and sprinkle with a little thyme.  If the recipe does not include carrots, a small piece of carrot is sometimes tucked in with the parsley.  Place the other piece of celery on top very firmly and secure the faggot by winding a long piece of string closely around it.  Unless you assemble a faggot firmly and bind it tightly with plenty of string, it is apt to roll apart during the cooking.

Soupe Bonne Femme is simply potato leek soup, although all the following “bonne femme” recipes in his magnum opus seem to be “with mushrooms” and how this all relates remains a mystery to me.   The soup would probably be delicious with mushrooms, but as it is or rich with cream, Soupe Bonne Femme is perfect fare for blustery March weather.

scrub clean 4-5 potatoes.  chop them and put them aside in a bowl of cold water.  Slice the greens and roots from 4 medium-small leeks, clean them well in cold running water.  Dice the white part of the leek along with 1 small onion and a few peeled garlic cloves.  Melt a tablespoon or so of butter in a big, heavy pot, add the leeks, onions and garlic, and cook until soft but not brown, stirring occasionally with a wooden spoon.

drain the potatoes and stir them into the leeks, turning to coat with butter; cook for about 5 minutes.  Pour in 4 cups of hot water or stock.  Assemble and bind a faggot of celery, carrot, parsley and thyme.  Add this to the soup pot along with a dash of salt and pepper.  Bring to a boil, lower the heat and simmer for ½ an hour to 45 minutes or until the potatoes are beginning to fall apart.

serve as is or…stir in another tablespoon of butter  and 2 cups of whole milk or 1 cup of cream.  If you add the cream or milk, be sure not to return to a boil but only gently reheat.  In the alternative, to go entirely vegan, cook all the veggies in olive oil.

art is good for everyone – go see some

at the coffee shop, under the watch of the statue of liberty chained outside in the grey, inside, ‘gypsy woman’ plays its tail end, repeating and repeating the phrase, fade out. I eat the frosting, yellow as my legal pad and lemony, off the edge of the wrapper. There’s fine lime green sugar glitter on the naked cake. The art is beautiful, fantastic.

Three pieces are made with compiled circular stacks of scrap paper. Topical relief maps of circumscribed, decontextualized, sliced pieces of images and ideas: tickets; documents; receipts; doodles; magazine pages; reports; letters.

In the centre of the wall display, a huge sweeping carp in fierce black etching on pink glass.

She has a lily pad green, jelly belly green head, and is orange & fuchsia with turquoise spots along the body, with feather-like, frond-like tail and fins. She begins at the tip of the tail at the halfway point up the left-hand side of the frame then curves along down into the corner along the bottom edge and up the right-hand side with the tip of the fin curving up over her head, curving in filigree delicacy at the halfway point of the top silver edge. She has stars and butterflies in her body. Glamour fish taking up the entire frame.

To her right: light boxes. Wooden frames backlighting monochromatic canvases in cerulean, kelly, and canary.

Then—the piece de résistance of wit—ink drawings of radical animal pairings. A grizzly bear embraces a great white along her great belly, and says: I love you Eloise. A shriek mouthed baboon, braced on her hands with her ass in the air, faces a motley pack of beasts, including a bear, jackrabbit, mongoose, and great heron. She says, I am woman enough for all of you. The bawdy mongoose and penguin you have to see for yourself.

The man beside me is happily doing a crossword. It’s gloomy out, he excuses himself over the phone. I am disgusted with CNN, he adds.

It is just the same story over and over again, you wait for something new to come on and it never does. Pause. I hate that show. All they do is talk about what they are going to show you.

The shop’s paper guide to this art show, Brooklyn Art Movement, identifies the papers in the constructed art as recycled bills and the titles: Debt Consolidation, United States of Debt, and Original Debt (I think then the shape of this piece is an apple).

The Fish: Sexual Freedom. She’s made with spray paint over marks in glass made by Edder Muniz. One of the women working described him as the beautiful guy with dreds who comes in all the time. He’s so beautiful that if he was a woman he’d still be beautiful.

The light boxes are titled Enthusiasm, Shoji, and Tokonama. They are by Julie Renee Williams. She also has a richly pink one—Naked Faith. Naked faith was tucked around the corner.

The bawdy beasties are by Mike Freiheit.

The whole collection –the other woman at the counter says—not to be obvious, but it is so Spring, with all these colors.

And light & wit. Amen.

spring peeping

This video was snagged from Daily Burlesque, where these peeps keep company with the original clip of Jessica Rabbit and a write-up on blasphamey and burlesque posted in time for the resurrection of the Lord.

I did, by the way, go to a church last Sunday. Where, I kid you not, the minister took a smoke break before the sermon. Better him smoking than me, when crossing the threshold. There were excellent hats, interactive babies, and I like the Easter story because sister Mary Mags is a leading character.