Bergamot Orange

Bergamot Orange Has Migrated

2012-02-08T10:11:00.000-08:00

I've moved. Not from Africa, heavens no, but to a nice little site all of my own. Please join me and Follow me there. We'll continue our updates about a life from Africa.

Preserved Lemons

2012-02-04T06:22:00.000-08:00

Every little Mom and Pop provisions shop around Tunis carries a few staples that a mother could send her 11 year old to fetch as she’s making dinner and realizes she’s missing a key ingredient. There will always be canned tomatoes, tuna, a big variety of pasta and couscous for a little store, eggs, butter, and a few cheeses, olive oil, a variety of cured olives, and preserved lemons. When I moved here, I intended to be all about using preserved lemon, but, as with the olives, while the store-bought ones are nicely flavored, I wonder how they have been prepared and handled. How many times has the brine been reused? Thinking about that puts me off a little. Preserving my own olives turned out to not be so hard. Preserving lemons takes just a few minutes to get started and about a month till you’re in the gold.

My teaching partner and I have a shared hobby around the study and discovery of salt. It began when we developed a unit to teach our students about the impact of salt on the entire history of the world, an ambitious unit. In the process of our study, we both became energized on the subject. Richard gave me one of the most beautiful gifts I think I’ve ever received: a copy of Mark Bitterman’s impassioned “manifesto” (his subtitle) on the subject of salt, titled Salted, along with a small collection of about 16 of the earth’s rarest salts. Becoming educated about salt is going to be an ongoing pursuit and Richard and I are going to meet up in Portland this summer to visit Mark’s specialty shop, rather his temple to salt, to continue that process.

Following is the recipe for preserved lemons from Salted which yields about 1 quart.

Ingredients

8 large lemons, scrubbed clean

About 3 cups rock sea salt (This is my modification. Mark calls for sel gris and maybe after I visit his store next summer I will be able to indulge in such a quantity of specialty salt, but for today, it will be nice-enough Tunisian sea salt.)

8 juniper berries (optional)

Fresh lemon juice, as needed

Process

Cut the tips off the ends of the lemons. Cut each lemon into quarters lengthwise leaving them attached at one end. Pack the lemons with a much salt as they will hold. Insert one juniper berry into each lemon.

Put the lemons in a sterilized wide-mouth quart-size jar, packing them in as tightly as possible. As you push the lemons into the jar, some juice will be squeezed from them. When the jar is full, the juice should cover the lemons; if it doesn’t, add fresh lemon juice.

Seal the jar and set aside for 3-4 weeks, until the lemon rinds become soft, shaking the jar every day to keep the salt well distributed. The lemons should be covered with juice at all times; add more as needed. Rinse the lemons before using.

What the heck do you use preserved lemons for?

Fair question. I have to say that this is a condiment you have to just try and discover the quality it gives to dishes. It is not brightly lemony. It does taste deeply of lemon, but without the tart edge. It bears a saltiness, but you rinse it before use so the salt is in good balance. Once you try it in a few dishes, I wager you will start to crave the flavor depth it can provide. Here are some suggestions from my favorite food magazine, Cuisine, which is published in New Zealand.

● In small quantities, preserved lemons add a little zing to tapenades as well as a refreshing flavor to couscous, lentil or quinoa salads. The liquid from the jar can also be used in dressings.

● Preserved lemons transform yoghurt or mayonnaise to be used as a dressing and, finely chopped, add flavor to a tomato and cilantro salsa to accompany fish.

● Add a dressing of extra virgin olive oil and finely chopped preserved lemon peel to cooked, warmed lentils or beans along with plenty of watercress or arugula. Serve with crumbled feta or as an accompaniment for grilled lamb.

● Make a flavored butter by adding finely chopped preserved lemon, garlic and chives to softened butter. Spread under a chicken skin before roasting or serve atop a piece of fried fish.

● Finish a seafood risotto with finely chopped preserved lemon or add to a gremolata, along with finely chopped parsley and garlic, to finish a braise of beef or lamb.

● Add slivers of preserved lemons to vegetables before roasting. Or blanch and sauté broccoli or cauliflower in olive oil with garlic then add slivers of preserved lemon and some pitted olives.

● Make a tagine of lamb or chicken by browning the meat then adding chopped onions, garlic, slivers of preserved lemons, cumin seeds, a few chopped tomatoes, fresh cilantro and a little stock or water. Preserved lemons will also enliven all kinds of other casseroles.

Brown Sugar Pavlova with Strawberries

2012-02-02T10:44:00.000-08:00

I went to our large produce market last weekend not because I needed anything different from what my corner produce stand has, but because I wanted the convenience of fish and produce in the same location. Remember last weekend’s fish fest? I was perfectly happy striving along with my fennel, potatoes, peppers, artichokes, lemons and herbs. There is so much more I need to do with just these selections. But, I went to the big market and look what they had: vine ripened, and some cute and tart unripened, tomatoes, Romanesco broccoli, which on its own could be a reason to move to Italy, and Narcissus, which are such a spring harbinger, but boy do they stink up the house. I’m finally ready to admit that.

We have had a dribble of strawberries already, but being a seasoned Tunisian resident, I’ve lived here over a whole year now, I didn’t bite on the first buzz-bomb strawberry that caught my eye. No, I know we will still have some strawberries in May and I remember making strawberry jam in March last year, so I was waiting. I come from a strawberry-fulfilled county in Washington State. I know, however, that the first strawberries you see in June are from California and taste like sheetrock. You have to wait until the local berries are almost spoiled before you can get the really good ones. Don’t get me started on the year my county was practically dumping strawberries into dumpsters they had such a bumper crop and our local Trader Joe’s had a pyramid of California strawberries in their store. I didn't go in that store for about two years after that.

We live by local harvests here. Can you imagine something so pure and wonderful? When you see strawberries in the market, you can buy them and they will be sweet and full of the tastes of earth and sunshine. I still can’t believe it.

I am a big-time strawberry shortcake devotee, but only if every ingredient is homemade and real. For these gentle, hand-raised strawberries, I made a special, but wholesome, pavlova, bearing the warm flavor of brown sugar. The pavlova layers were a little crisp and chewy on the outside and marshmallowy on the inside. Piled with layers of whipped crème fraiche, and strawberries, it was a winter delight, especially as it was pouring rain outside.

Brown Sugar Pavlova with Strawberries

adapted from Gourmet Grilling, 2011

For Meringue

Confectioners' sugar for dusting

1 cup superfine granulated sugar

1/2 cup packed light brown sugar

1 1/2 Tbsp cornstarch

1 1/2 tsp pure vanilla extract

2 tsp. distilled white vinegar

3/4 cup egg whites (5-6 large eggs) at room temperature for 30 minutes

For Berries

2 1/2 lb strawberries, trimmed and quartered

2 Tbsp granulated sugar

For Cream

1 1/3 cup creme fraiche

Make Meringue

Preheat oven to 275 degrees F, rack in middle. Lightly butter 3 (8-inch) round cake pans and line with rounds of parchment paper. Dust sides of pans with confectioners' sugar, knocking out excess.

Pulse superfine sugar, brown sugar, and cornstarch in a food processor until well combined.

Stir together vanilla and vinegar in a small bowl.

Beat egg whites with a pinch of salt , using an electric mixer at medium speed until they hold soft peaks. Increase speed to medium-high and add sugar mixture 1 tablespoon at a time. After all sugar has been added, beat 1 minute more. Add vinegar mixture, then beat at high speed until meringue is glossy and holds stiff peaks, about 5 minutes. Spoon meringue into pans (about 2 1/2 cups per pan) and smooth tops.

Bake until meringues have a crisp crust and feel dry to the touch, about 1 hour (insides will still be moist and marshmallow-like).

Turn oven off and prop door open slightly, using a wooden spoon if necessary. Cool meringues in oven 1 hour.

Run knife along sides of cake pans and carefully turn meringues out of pans. Carefully peel off parchment (meringues will be fragile and may crack further). Carefully turn right side up.

Toss berries with sugar and let stand at room temperature until ready to use (up to 1 hour).

Assemble Dessert

Beat creme fraiche using an electric mixer until it just holds soft peaks. Put 1 meringue on a serving plate and spread 1/3 of whipped cream over it. Spoon 1/3 of fruit (with juice) over top. Repeat layering with remaining meringues, cream, and fruit.

Red Snapper Chowder

2012-01-30T10:00:00.000-08:00

The soup worked. I was kind of stressed about it. After I made such a dramatic point about the fish stock with my glassy-eyed John Dory photo, I knew some people wanted to know how the actual soup came off. And to tell you the truth, I had to really think about it. It has been a couple of years now since I’ve had the pleasure of a serving of the snapper chowder at Stock Market in Granville Island Market. I actually scrolled through the reviews of the restaurant looking for descriptors and found a few helpful ones. In the end though, I had to go deeply into my taste memory and what I clearly remembered is as follows: It was a little chunky. It had a base flavor of oysters and bay leaves. There was a ton of celery with some actual stringy bits that didn’t puree out. And it was completely nondairy. Here is how I built the soup to go with the stock.

Ingredients

1 ½ - 2 yellow onions, chopped

A bundle of celery about 3” in diameter, including leaves, chopped

3 carrots, chopped

1 medium zucchini, chopped

1-2 leeks, chopped

3-5 bay leaves

1 potato, peeled and cubed

2 liters fish stock

¼ cup Arborio rice

2-3 fish fillets, diced into ½ inch cubes

Sea salt and freshly ground pepper, to taste

Sauté all of the vegetables, except the potato, in olive oil until soft, but not browned. Cook the potato in a small saucepan, with a little water, until tender. Puree vegetables in a food processor or with an emersion blender. Leave it a little chunky. Add solids to fish stock and heat.

Stir in Arborio rice and simmer until rice is soft.

Add the fish to the heated stock and simmer, without boiling, until fish is cooked, but tender.

Season with salt and pepper.

Serves 8-10

The Rosemary, Scallion Focaccia Bread is a David Tanis reprint. I have already written about it at Dinner at Diane’s. It's always great, but remember, you have to start it one day ahead of when you want to eat it.

Fish Stock

2012-01-27T11:00:00.000-08:00

If I could do anything I want to this weekend… anything at all, I would go to Vancouver for the day and wander around Granville Island Market. This False Creekside maze is the creative, culinary hub of the city that is still my standard as the greatest city in the world. Sydney? Barcelona? Munich? They’re all great, but you cannot beat that fresh, west, native feeling of Vancouver, which at the same time is Manhattan hip and San Francisco grounded. With all of the big bounty of the Frazier Valley and the Pacific Ocean at hand, Granville Market serves as a food terminal moving it all along to kitchens and tables. There’s the produce, strawberries stacked in almost 12-inch high pyramids, and the seafood, the cheeses and pastas and almost every beautiful food item you could desire. So I dawdle through the sectors of the market, totally wide-eyed, my mind spinning with the options of the meals I could cook. And suddenly, I’m starving. Hunger comes upon me instantaneously and I have to eat that second. I always go to the same place; it’s called The Stock Market. This is a kiosk that sells vacuum-packed liters of their made-fresh-daily soups, fresh soup stocks, pasta sauces, dressings, and pestos. You know, this is where you really need to start your shopping and then work backward, picking up meat, or pasta, or vegetables to complete the dish. But how does this help my hunger issue? They sell containers of their daily soup topped with a big hunk of Rosemary focaccia bread and they always seem to have my favorite: red snapper chowder. I never considered that anyone else in the world had noticed the red snapper chowder at The Stock Market on Granville Island, but me, yet when I researched it, there seems to be an entire cult following for this soup.

I found a beautiful St. Pierre, which is a Mediterranean species of John Dory, at a local market this week. I'll admit that he's not the most handsome fish, but I knew when I saw it that the post-fillet carcass of this fish was bound for fish soup stock, which is what is absolutely required if you’re going to make any kind of fish soup. This formula will fill a 1-gallon stock pot. The ingredient amounts are suggestions to give you an idea of the proportions so you can, of course, adjust them.

Fish Stock

Ingredients: All well-washed and chopped in large pieces

Onions, 2 large

Celery, 3 stalks, including lots of leaves

Leeks, 1 large or 2-3 small

Carrots, 2-3 large

Fresh garlic, 1 clove, peeled and smashed

Fresh parsley, about 1 cup

Thyme, 6 healthy sprigs

Bay leaves, 3-5

Cloves, 2

Black peppercorns, 20 whole

Sea salt , a little for now. You can adjust the salt in your finished dish.

Non-oily white fish bones (halibut, cod, red snapper or sole), rinsed and kept in large pieces

Cover with filtered water and low-simmer for 45 minutes to an hour.

When cool, strain the stock and compost the solids. Freeze or use the stock in soups, sauces, and braises.

I plan to follow through with the snapper chowder and Rosemary focaccia bread this weekend and if all goes well, I'll post it here. Otherwise, I've got a gold mine of stock in my freezer for my next endeavor.

Grilled Caesar Salad

2012-01-23T10:46:00.000-08:00

You know that January night when you come home from work and say, “Wait a minute, isn’t the sun usually down by now?” There is some lingering daylight hanging over the backyard and the long-shrouded barbecue is giving you a nod. We’re a month past solstice and at a minute per day, it amounts to something.

I wanted so much to make this grilled Caesar salad last summer, but in Tunisia, Romaine lettuce is a winter crop, not summer. It is perfect and abundant now so tonight, we have a great opportunity to bring some summer into our winter work week.

I use non-stick aluminum foil on the grill. With some planning, I can cycle through the entire meal with one set of foil. I started with leeks wrapped in pancetta and drizzled with excellent olive oil. Wrapping vegatables in pancetta and grilling them is one of my go-to food preparations. I do an entire bundle of vegetables at once and then put them in scrambled eggs for breakfast during the rest of the week.

Next, I toasted bread, tossed in the leeky, salty olive oil. This is basically Texas Toast. Funny thing, my dad is from Texas and everything great in our house, when I was growing up, was from Texas. I actually thought that Texas Toast was my dad's invention until about 3 months ago when I heard my Canadian friend, Paul, mention Texas Toast to his sons in the context of not having a toaster yet because their shipment hadn't yet arrived.

Finally, you put the Romaine lettuce on the grill and leave it only until it develops grill marks. Grilling it in whole heads is extra beautiful, but mine came apart on its own.

Dressing:

2 flat anchovy fillets, drained and chopped

2 small garlic cloves, chopped

1/2 cup extra-virgin olive oil

1 large egg

2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice, or to taste

Artisinal salt (I used Himalayan pink salt)

Freshly ground pepper
Blend all ingredients until emulsified. Adjust amounts to taste.

We bought these eggs, individually, yesterday in the Tunisian countryside. I carried them home in a plastic bag. I felt like I was playing a party game on the way home, trying not to break the eggs. I won!

Toss the greens with the dressing, to taste. Coursely chop the leeks and pancetta and place on top. Dust with freshly grated Parmesan and pepper.

It doesn't just taste like a summer salad. It's a little bit roasted, a little bit wilted. It suits winter.

Greens Soup

2012-01-21T00:50:00.000-08:00

This recipe is the follow up to the vegetarian stock that I previously posted. As I wrote there, I planned to make a soup of greens that I heard described on The Splendid Table (NPR). Anna Thomas was the guest and she just published a new cookbook: Eating Well. From listening to the interview, I believe that Anna’s definition of eating well means eating whole foods, extracting as much of the foods’ flavor and nutrition as culinarily possible and I definitely agree.

If you’ve got the vegetarian stock already packed away in your freezer, this can come together after work. If you need to start from stock, then this is a weekend project, but worth it.

I won’t summarize the recipe first, but I do need to comment on the onions. Anna made a big point about caramelizing those onions to what may seem like an absurd degree. Her rule of thumb was when you think you’ve overcooked them, go another ½ hour. The bit of water you sprinkle over them once they’ve browned, and lidding the pan, keeps them from burning and steams them a little. I almost had caramelized onion paste when I finished and that’s probably about right.

This is not a bright, springy type of green soup. Recall all of the browning of vegetables that has occurred both in the making of the stock and in the soup. Additionally, the Arborio rice base you create before cooking the greens sets a nutty, warm palette. You will need to finish it with good salt and fresh lemon juice to bring up some pop. I also especially enjoyed the lingering heat of the cayenne and don't think that drizzle of olive oil is optional. Buy the grassiest, first-cold-pressed olive oil you can find and top it off with just a touch.

The soup is an excellent team player. Just on its own, it might be a little heavy. I had it once alongside a sparkling salad of fennel, parsley, and cranberries, with a citrus dressing, and they were perfect mates. We all went home that night and dreamed of dancing vegetables. I had it a second time with a brunch of potato/gruyere quiche and blood orange juice and couldn’t imagine a more delicious combination than that. Make it up, pack in the greens, and pair it up with just about anything.

Basic Green Soup

From Eating Well, by Anna Thomas

Yield: 8 servings

Ingredients

2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil

2 large yellow onions, chopped

1 teaspoon salt, divided

2 tablespoons, plus 3 cups, water, divided

1/4 cup arborio rice

1 bunch green chard (about 1 pound)

14 cups gently packed spinach (about 12 ounces), tough stems trimmed

4 cups vegetable broth

Big pinch of cayenne pepper

1 tablespoon lemon juice, or more to taste

Drizzle of first, cold-pressed olive oil

Instructions

1. Heat 2 tablespoons oil in a large skillet over high heat. Add onions and 1/4 teaspoon salt; cook, stirring frequently, until the onions begin to brown, about 5 minutes. Reduce the heat to low, add 2 tablespoons water and cover. Cook, stirring frequently until the pan cools down, and then occasionally, always covering the pan again, until the onions are greatly reduced and have a deep caramel color, 25-30 minutes.

2. Meanwhile, combine the remaining 3 cups water and 3/4 teaspoon salt in a soup pot or Dutch oven; add rice. Bring to a boil. Reduce heat to maintain a simmer, cover and cook for 15 minutes. Trim the white ribs out of the chard (save for another use, such as stir-fry or another soup). Coarsely chop the chard greens and spinach.

3. When the rice has cooked for 15 minutes, stir in the chard greens. Return to a simmer; cover and cook for 10 minutes. When the onions are caramelized, stir a little of the simmering liquid into them; add them to the rice along with the spinach, broth, and cayenne. Return to a simmer, cover and cook, stirring once, until the spinach is tender, but still bright green, about 5 minutes more.

4. Puree the soup in the pot with an immersion blender until perfectly smooth or in a regular blender in batches (return it to the pot). Stir in 1 tablespoon lemon juice. Taste and add more lemon juice, if desired. Garnish each bowl of soup with a drizzle of olive oil.

It Begins with the Stock

2012-01-17T12:39:00.000-08:00

I make chicken stock regularly. This ritual has been a staple in my life for years and though I have wished for the idea of vegetarian stock, a vegetarian stock that is my soul mate, I have yet to discover one that satisfies me. I have tried many: organic store bought, concoctions involving brewer’s yeast, but I’m sorry to say that they have, for the most part, come out tasting strongly of a strange, particular ingredient or else… dish water. Usually, when a recipe calls for vegetable stock I substitute homemade chicken stock.

I love The Splendid Table on NPR. I feel happy in the radio presence of Lynne Rossetto Kasper, the host. She is wise, yet so fresh with food. She is also constantly affirming of all the guests on her show, taking a sincere interest in their culinary discoveries and implying that she is eager to learn from them, too. Even Amy Sedaris.

I am on a trajectory this week to make a greens soup that was described by a guest on The Splendid Table, Anna Thomas, who wrote a book called Eating Well. I am going to save her greens soup recipe for a few days because I first need to make a deeply flavored vegetable stock. I turned to the experience of Lynne Rossetto Kasper on this. She has a recipe for a Hearty Vegetable Broth. Her words, “There is nothing weak-kneed about this vegetable broth. It’s big flavors hold their own in any dish…”

If you are used to tossing a bunch of raw ingredients in a pot, covering them with water, and walking away to let them simmer when you make stock, you may find this is a little more complicated. To bring up the sugars in all of the vegetables, you cook them down until they are brown and beginning to stick to the pan. You then deglaze the pan with white wine and let that cook off. Finally, you add the cooked vegetables to some fresh ones, cover it all with water, and simmer it for a couple of hours. This process, along with a large portion of sautéed mushrooms, gives the stock depth that I think rivals a beef stock.

Hearty Vegetable Broth

Lynne Rossetto Kasper, The Splendid Table, NPR

Ingredients:

2 tablespoons fruity extra-virgin olive oil

2 large carrots, coursely chopped

2 large stalks celery with leaves, coursely chopped

4 medium onions, coursely chopped

1/2 pound fresh mushrooms, coursely chopped

3 large cloves garlic, crushed

1 tablespoon dry basil or marjoram

2/3 cup dry white wine

6 large romaine lettuce leaves, coursely chopped

1 large ripe fresh tomato, chopped, or 2 canned plum tomatoes, crushed

A pinch freshly grated nutmeg

About 4 to 5 quarts of water

1. Heat the oil in a 12-inch saute pan or skillet (not non-stick) over medium-high heat. Add the carrot, celery, onion, and mushrooms. Cook, stirring frequently with a wooden spatula, until the onions are golden brown, about 10 minutes. Stir in the garlic and basil and cook a few seconds more.

Vegetables caramelizing and beginning to stick to the pan

2. Add the wine and stir, scraping up any brown glaze in the pan, until most of the liquid has evaporated. Transfer to an 8-quart stock pot. Add the romaine, tomatoes, nutmeg, and enough water to cover the solids by 3 to 4 inches. Bring to a gentle bubble, partially cover, and simmer slowly for about 90 minutes.

Deglazing the pan with white wine

Simmering stock

3. Strain the broth into a large bowl, pressing down on the solids to extract as much flavor as possible. Cool and chill. Skim off any solidified oil from broth's surface. Refrigerate or freeze in 1 quart portions or in ice-cube trays.

I felt like I was making an Asian soup with the lettuce and the mushrooms. The broth has a complex, yet natural flavor and this is only the stock. On to the greens soup.

Sticky Date Pudding

2012-01-14T06:44:00.000-08:00

Me dates ‘ave gone soft. If that isn’t a constant concern for cooks. We buy dates by the hank here. They’re still on the stem and bundled together, almost like a skein of yarn, and they taste like caramels.

But they are dusty when you bring them home and need a rinsing. Usually they dry right out and have an ongoing shelf life, but this particular batch isn’t drying so well and they have gotten a bit sticky. So naturally, I thought of making another (also see Whole Orange Cake) Australian housewives' staple dessert: sticky date pudding. You do know that a pudding is nothing more than a cake in British/Australian speak, so don’t let it intimidate you.

I first fell in love with this cake at a little Australian café in KATHMANDU, of all places. The restaurant was opened by an Australian couple who were trying to adopt a Nepali child. This turned out to be one complete genre of expat we frequently met in Nepal. Others were Buddhist students, missionaries, ancient hippies, mountaineers, and entrepreneurs, along with diplomats and aid workers. As the adoption process lingered on, this family decided to save the wear and tear on their family and just move to Kathmandu and open a restaurant, what they knew how to do. The name of the restaurant was The Red Dingo. I remembered this by association as it was right around the corner from another expat favorite, a Mex-Nepali restaurant called Lazy Gringo. What made that restaurant Mex-Nepali you ask? I guess it was mostly because all of the cheese they used was yak cheese, but there were other indicators, too. The Red Dingo, however, was quite un-Nepali which made it fun to visit now and then. Inside the ceiling to floor glass windows were black and white tiles, a blackboard with the daily menu, and lipstick red leather sofas and chairs where you could sit with several friends and pretend that you were being very urban and First World.

They always had sticky date pudding on the dessert menu. I know myself well enough by this time in life to understand how completely I am lured in by caramel sauce. Is anyone else defenseless against a sauce of butter, sugar, and cream? I thought so. The caramel sauce poured all over the date-studded cake causes the whole thing to just melt together.

Sticky Date Pudding

Serves 8

Ingredients

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Sticky date pudding

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1 1/2 c. pitted dates, chopped

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 1/2 cups boiling water

1/2 c. butter, softened

1 cup brown sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

2 eggs

1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour, sifted

1 1/2 tsp. baking powder

1/2 tsp. salt

Caramel sauce

1 cup brown sugar

3/4 c. thickened cream or creme fraiche

1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

1/4 c. butter

Method

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Grease and line the base of an 8-inch springform cake pan.

Place dates and baking soda into a bowl. Pour over boiling water. Allow to stand for 20 minutes.

Using an electric mixer, beat butter, sugar and vanilla until pale and creamy. Add eggs, 1 at a time, beating well
after each addition. Using a large metal spoon, fold through date mixture and flour until well combined.

Spoon mixture into prepared cake pan. Bake for 30 minutes or until a skewer inserted into the center
comes out clean. When cool enough to handle, place plate under cake. Open springform pan side and remove it
.

Make sauce:
Combine all ingredients in a saucepan over medium heat. Cook, stirring often, until sauce comes to
the boil. Reduce heat to medium-low. Simmer for 2 minutes.

Pierce pudding all over with a skewer or large-tined fork. Pour 1/2 cup of warm sauce over warm pudding. Let
stand for at least 10 minutes before cutting into wedges.
Serve with remaining warm sauce.

Finished cake swimming in caramel sauce. I love the air hole indicating the sauce is soaking way inside.

Next time your dates go soft (not an idiom) you know just what you can do with them.

Between the Pear and Cheese

2012-01-10T11:15:00.000-08:00

I love putting French phrases into Google translator to see what I get. The super literal translation, messing around with the syntax, sometimes puts words in a slightly more poignant order and makes me take them more poetically. Take for instance this French starter recipe I found this week. Obviously, it is a lovely stack of pear/cheese/pear etc, but isn’t that title just begging for an ellipses? Are you already filling in the blank for what comes between the pear and the cheese? Literally? Metaphorically?

I’ve been playing around with a magazine this week that is the French equivalence of Bon Appetit. It is called a table. I’ve learned so much translating recipes, making predictions about what I think is called for and then sometimes getting surprised. For example, many recipes call for 1 c. a café de ________ or 1 c. a soupe ____________. Even though it didn’t exactly make sense for the recipe I was fairly assured that I was going to be using a coffee infusion and some other sort of liquid solution. It turns out that the first one is a teaspoon and the second is a tablespoon. That’s all. Now, isn’t that surprising and nonintuitive?

This recipe says almost everything with the photo. It is simply a strata of pear and cheese that has been sprinkled with lemon juice and dusted with a cracked pepper mixture. It comes together more deliciously than the short list of ingredients suggests. If you want to make it more substantial, place it on a bed of greens that have been tossed with olive oil and lemon juice, salt and pepper. For the full winter detox meal, follow the salad with a bowl of my favorite lentil soup.

6 small pears

200 grams of any delicious cheese

½ lemon, juiced

Mixed peppercorns, cracked

1. Peel pears, leaving stem. Core them from below. Sprinkle all sides of pears with a few drops of lemon juice. Cut into 4 pieces each (see photo). If bottom doesn’t sit flat, trim it straight across.

2. Thinly slice the cheese, preparing about 5 slices per serving. Encourage some rough edges.

3. Arrange on a plate.

4. Sprinkle with cracked pepper.

6 servings

Winter Preserves Pork Ribs

2012-01-08T09:59:00.000-08:00

There is a reason why humans invented the preservation methods of drying, candying, smoking, freezing, and keeping foods in airtight jars. Of course, we all know it was to extend the life of foods a little beyond the growing season and to prevent starvation during the dormant months. The other motivation was to keep foods so they could be transported from an entirely foreign climate which would allow people to enjoy pineapples, and cloves, and even herring when they had no way of harvesting those foods themselves.

When I travel, I am always picking up interesting dried herbs and spices, dried fruit, potted meats, and fruit preserves. It is a luxurious feeling to know I have exotic hard spices or a glistening jar of preserves in the pantry, but sometimes, those “special” items get passed over when I am cooking because they require a little bit of imagination or preparation such as toasting and grinding. Also, it is true that people just don’t eat so many jams and jellies as they used to even though we still love the idea of them. Rather than waiting for the odd piece of receptive toast, this type of recipe is a great way to use those gems.

My intent today was to use a good quantity of my pantry items with pork ribs as the vehicle. The recipe is then easily adaptable to your own pantry. If you think of your basic barbecue sauce you usually take a base like tomatoes, contrast it with mustard and vinegar, and then add a few spices for flavor. With that formula in mind, I made ribs that were akin to the sticky Chinese style, without replicating that icon.

Spice Mix

2 tsp. fresh ginger, minced

5 cloves garlic, minced

2 shallots, minced or 1 tbsp. dried

Artisinal salt to taste

Grind the following in a spice grinder:

½ tsp. each of cardamom, cloves, dried peppers, cinnamon, Sichuan pepper, yellow mustard seeds, black mustard seeds, and star anise (I also added a Tunisian specialty of dried bitter orange blossoms. If you want the extra orange essence, you can add some orange zest.)

Mix all spice ingredients together.

Marinade

½ cup black sesame paste

½ cup orange or lemon marmelade

1/3 cup tomato vinegar or ketchup

1/3 cup soy sauce

Stir spice mix into marinade ingredients.

Dice 1 large onion. In a deep baking dish, layer chopped onions and rib sections that have been covered on both sides with the marinade mixture. Intersperse so the onions touch all sides of the pork. Pour 1 cup water around the side of the meat. Cover dish tightly with aluminum foil and bake at 300 degrees for two to three hours or until the meat is completely tender. Uncover for the last 30 minutes to reduce the liquid and caramelize the meat. If the cooking liquid is still watery, remove the meat and reduce the liquid in a saucepan on the stovetop until it thickens.

In a small foil pan or open topped foil packet (approx.. 6” square), combine ½ cup black or green tea, ½ cup dry rice, and ¼ cup brown sugar. Place in the bottom of a barbecue with a lid. Heat barbecue to medium heat. When tea mixture begins to smoke, add ribs for approximately 15 minutes or until they have taken on a subtle smoky flavor. Remove ribs to a platter. When cool, discard tea packet.

Spicy, bright, sweet, smoky. Very nice for a winter Sunday supper. What's in your pantry?

Pretty Pictures

2012-01-06T00:51:00.000-08:00

I’m trying hard to stop taking pictures of pretty things (Thanks Karen for ruining that for me). On my last day of European vacation I am almost prettied out, anyway. There was so much to take in and I did and I also photographed most of it. I’m full and happy and ready to go home and live simply and work hard again. That’s the point of a vacation right? To make you crave the routine you were previously fatigued with living. I love that we live in close proximity to Europe, but that we go home to the pared down existence of Tunis. It feels like a good life balance.

Allan and I are driving our final bit of French countryside as we approach Paris for our flight out tomorrow. We are going over things that we thought were a success from the trip or cautions we would have for another time. Here is our list of what we learned.

Packing

Pack lightly! For a three-week winter trip you can get by with the following:

· 3 pairs of jeans

· 3-5 long sleeved cotton shirts (some of mine were turtlenecks)

· One black turtleneck sweater

· One zippered, hooded fleece sweatshirt

· 1 pair of sweatpants

· Slippers

· Underwear (no more than 5 pairs)

· Socks (no more than 5 pairs, one wool)

· Down jacket that can layer over other items

· Hat and gloves

· One pair of sturdy, comfortable boots

· Don’t bring a hair dryer

· Buy toiletries as you need them at a grocery store or pharmacy

· Ski gear, optional

Laundry

This is a nightmare. Compounding the complication that most places don’t have clothes dryers is the fact that the wash cycle alone takes a minimum of 1.5 hours. I advise that you look for every possibility to run a load and then try to dry them wherever you can. Radiators are your best ally. When you run out of washing machine options you can hand wash everything (even jeans) and they will eventually get dry.

Beverages

Everything to drink is expensive. An espresso can be as much as 8 Euros, a bottle of wine starts at 25, and even water is around 3 Euros. Bring a French press coffee maker and ground coffee to make coffee in your room, buy wine and beer in grocery stores, and refill your own water bottle with perfectly drinkable tap water.

Food

Try everything, especially the regional specialties. You don’t have to eat a sit down meal at a restaurant to eat well. Some of the best foods are perfect for take-away like breads, charcuterie, and cheeses. There are also easily available traiteurs who sell food designed to take home and put in the oven or microwave.

Accommodations

We were super lucky to stay at our friends’ apartment for several days of our trip, but for our time in Munich, we pitched a vacation exchange proposition and got a bite. We don’t have to completely turn over our home to do this. We’ve got guest rooms and will be happy to give our host a return few nights in our home. These two apartments really helped us get off the Euros ticker for a few nights.

I use the website TripAdvisor a lot. I try to find rooms for around 80 Euros in a good location with free WiFi. I have found that spending more money than this doesn’t necessarily get us a better room. I much prefer a spare but clean room with simple supplies to a faux-fancy hotel with gross carpet and one of those slick, floral, germ catching bedspreads. We also took another look at B & Bs after many years of eschewing that option (I don’t know why, now). Paris can be notoriously expensive and the rooms tiny. Since we had a car, we stayed in a village near Versailles for a couple of nights and another in a village near Charles de Gualle airport. For the same or less money than a cheap hotel, these B & Bs were just as convenient, but multiple times more enjoyable than the expensive airport hotels.

Souvenirs

Here is something that I honestly experienced. At the end of the day, I got a similar amount of satisfaction from looking at the pictures I had taken that day and thinking about what I might do with them as I would get from laying out a bagful of purchases. There were some things I knew I wanted, like a few pieces of Polish pottery, but I didn’t need a lifetime supply, just a couple. I do treat myself to some useful items, generally for the kitchen. I bought some molds, a bain marie, and a ceramic baking dish and when I use them, I will remember Versailles, the Alps, and the Bourgogne region where I purchased them. We also buy food souvenirs that we go right ahead and eat and share with our friends as soon as we return. We buy that stuff at a local grocery store, not specialty stores. We both have a lot of fun discovering products available in various cities and leave with treasures like dehydrated shallots, marzipan, and of course some local wines that we transport in wine diapers to hopefully prevent one of them from breaking in a bag and ruining every thing in it.

Transportation

We were back and forth about riding the train versus renting a car. Once we priced out the train for five adults and thought about the additional inconvenience of packing around our bags and getting from train stations to hotels, it didn’t weigh out.

The first car we were issued couldn’t even hold 5 people with a bag each so they brought us a Citroen minivan. It was comfortable enough for us and we thought that was all we had to be concerned about. On our drive from Prague to Krakow we had to cross mountain passes with icy roads and we realized that this wasn’t a winter-ready vehicle. We had it inspected by the Citroen dealer in Krakow and he told us we had bald summer tires. The rental agency wouldn’t do anything to improve the safety of that car because they said we weren’t authorized to go to Poland. We had no choice but to creep all the way back to Paris, where they did exchange the car for a four-wheel drive that could safely take us to the Alps.

We learned a lesson from this to check about areas that are excluded from service when we make the reservation and to check the tires when we pick up the car. We were protected with dry, clear roads all the way back, but it could have been a bad situation.

One more consideration about driving is that there are frequent tolls throughout Europe. They seem to be worth it as the roads are excellent with frequent rest stops, but I would estimate that we spent around 150 Euros on tolls in three weeks.

Our final and perhaps most emphatic recommendation is get a car with GPS. We are sure we saved ourselves a full day of getting lost and wandering around aimlessly. There were places we drove right to (B and Bs in dark villages, city apartments) that would have been difficult to ever find. GPS can save a lot of wear and tear on your relationships and you need all of that you can preserve on an extensive car trip.

Now, it’s back to Tunis and our routines, there. What I’m most looking forward to? My bed with 600 thread count sheets, our own washing machine, getting back to some organizing and simplifying both at home and at work, and finally, learning. I’ve got a lot I want to learn this year and I will try to write it up and share it along the way. Thanks for reading.

Civilized Skiing

2012-01-03T09:49:00.000-08:00

I like skiing and I can still do it. This is good news. Yesterday, after my first day of skiing in several years, I hated it. Yesterday looked like this, which looks quaint for a Christmas card, but I can tell you it provided zero visibility on the ski slope.

My entire day was defense against icy speed and bumps that I couldn’t see coming. I also feared I was paying the price for about three weeks now without going to the gym and an almost steady diet of charcuterie and fromage. And there was also a lot of bread.

I really wondered if I had waited too long, let my skills go, and skiing was a lost sport to me. This made me sad because Allan and I have long harbored visions of ourselves being those lean, Norwegian-type retirees you always see at ski resorts. These are not tourists. They are locals who have, over their lifetimes, developed a deeply artistic and all-business style of skiing. They are really about interacting with the mountain. You see them shooshing down the slope below you from the chairlift and it’s like they just started at the top of the mountain, pointed their skis downhill, and then danced in an unbroken rhythm to the music in their heads. Pure ballet. Then you see them in the lodge at lunch, not eating the burger and fries, but their own tuna sandwich on whole wheat bread (surely homemade) and an apple. Then it’s right back to why they are there: working those slopes. When I woke up this morning, not excruciatingly sore in every molecule of my body and there was also a bright blue sky, I took these as signs from God that I should give it another solid attempt.

The thing about skiing is that it requires you to focus 3 to 10 feet ahead, pick a path, and then try to ski it with strength and hopefully some style. For that reason, it is very meditative and mind-clearing. You just can’t think about anything but the moment. I will admit that I linked together a few admirable sequences. Predictably, there were also awkward moments, but nothing face splatting… today.

Allan said, “ You will love skiing in the Alps. It’s so civilized.” He had taken a student group from Singapore skiing in Verbier years ago and told me about how you can ski for kilometers and then come upon a little hut where you can have a beautiful lunch and rest before heading on your way. We found such a hut today. The proprietor is this handsome gray-haired man.

The menu of the day was salmon a la fondue with four vegetables: roasted endive, roasted potatoes, stuffed tomato, and salad.

Then people sat around sunning on the terrace before strapping on the skis and getting in a couple more hours of ski runs.

That’s not exactly the elegant Norwegian model, but it was really civilized

New Year's Day in the Alps

2012-01-01T09:33:00.000-08:00

After a switchbacking drive into the mountains, Allan and I are at Alpes d'Huez. It is a ski resort that was recommended by a teacher at our school who takes students on ski trips here so it has a dormitory vibe. I kind of like that. It’s basic and our breakfast, dinner, room, and ski gear are all included. All we have to do is eat, ski, sleep, think, and talk.

It is always a transition for us after we have been with our sons for a period of time. We want to maximize every second with them and we have such a full time, but then they are suddenly gone and we look at each other and think, well, it’s you and me again. You can almost audibly hear a down-shifting between us. We don’t need to make dinner plans for four, keep the group entertained, or laugh at all of the jokes. We can be spontaneous and even quiet if we want to.

You hear about couples who get into troubled waters when their kids leave home. I can understand why. People change more than they think they will as the years go by. You’ve heard the warning that if you want to know what your spouse will be like, just look at his or her parents. I think when I reached 40 or 45 and I didn’t seem to be exactly like either of my parents, I thought I had broken the mold. But then 50 came and I see mannerisms creeping up on both Allan and me that are inbred. Some things we are aware of and some we aren’t. They aren’t all bad, but it might take quite a lot of determination to avoid others. It might get interesting.

Yet, when we have some demand-free time to just exist together, we get back into our friends element. I still really like being with Allan. He’s funny, kind, smart, and athletic. I don’t see us hitting the marriage wall and my advice to friends who are in the thick of child-raising is to tend your relationship with your mate. You’re going to need someone you like being with when your kids get on an airplane and leave one day.

We need a segue here. It’s New Year’s Day and it has been many years since I haven’t been on my Lummi Island farm for this day. It might be my favorite day of the year. Our best friends come out and we have our Polar Bear swim in Rosario Strait, then it’s up to the hot tub and a highly caloric feast.

Last year, I made French food: bouillabaisse, fondue, and couer a la crème. This was just weeks before I started photographing every bite I ate for a possible blog entry so I don’t have photos of the food. I only have one of the kids who we made eat outside because the house is small, it was a beautiful day (although cold), and they are really noisy. This explains why they look sad and seized up.

Today I had a fondue lunch with just my husband in the Alps. I definitely never saw that coming a year ago.

I miss my friends, our farm, and our kids, but being here with Allan is just fine, too.

Paris for a Day

2011-12-30T14:28:00.000-08:00

If l had my way
I'd just … wander
Down the Champs Elysées

(Joni Mitchell, Free Man in Paris)

I sang this about 100 times today. We had so much fun. After the hundreds of kilometers we’ve logged across the heartland of Europe over the past two weeks, we felt like we made some kind of triumphal reentry into Paris yesterday, where we began. We know each other a lot better now and have a bunch of great, shared memories.

Today was a celebration of our time together, and of Paris, and winter. We started at our groovy B & B about 20 km outside of Paris. I haven't stayed in a B & B since the early 90s. This really took me back and made we wonder why I stopped seeking them out.

The morning was spent gaining a little perspective at the Versailles grounds. I love formal gardens in winter when you can see all of their structure and design.

The afternoon was dedicated to the Eifel Tower and the Arc de Triomphe, finished with the wished for wander down the Champs Elysees. It was a little cold and a little drizzly, but never so much that it dampened the day.

We finished the day with a supper of bread, cheeses, salami, and pate in Le Sucrerie’s living room, before retiring to big fluffy beds upstairs.

Boys go home early tomorrow morning and I can say we’ve lived every minute to the fullest. Great young men. Fantastic company.

Relying on the Kindness of Strangers

2011-12-27T13:27:00.000-08:00

We have had some gracious hospitality on this trip from friends (Thank you again and again Greens and also Rops.). It has been really fun to see how they are living their European lives and so nice to stay at the Green home and eat at the Rops table. What we didn’t at all anticipate, however, is the unreserved help from people we don’t even know. It began soon after we crossed the border into Germany. At about the only restaurant open in Freidrichsberg on Boxing Day, the uncomfortable proprietors went and fetched their young adult son when they realized we spoke mostly English. Their son was so cute, much like ours, and gave us a charades walk through the menu so we could order something, sometimes flapping his hands to help him think of a word or making very literal translations like "The pig meat is covered with wheat". We took his suggestion for his favorite menu item and it was excellent: their house schnitzel. So sweet. Lots of warm goodbyes from his family when we left.

We are trying to travel through Europe as economically as we can and so we asked a friend who teaches at an international school in Germany if anyone on his staff would be interested in a vacation home exchange. This would involve a place in Germany for a few days in exchange for a vacation in mild Tunis. A single woman immediately responded to the request even before she knew there was an exchange offer on the table. She was happy to have five people she doesn’t know stay in her beautiful apartment in Munich while she is away on Christmas vacation. Absolutely unbelievable. I hope so much that she takes us up on our end of the offer, brings along a friend, and gives us a chance to say thanks in person and return this whole-hearted gesture.

When our study of the train schedule and ticketing options went from 5 minutes to 10 to 15, an engaging woman wearing big white sunglasses came to our assistance. She had worked in Florida for six years and recognized our type. With her help, we successfully purchased our tickets from the vending machine and then she went ahead and walked us to the station so we could visit for a few more minutes. She gave us several gut busting laughs enroute and then she said goodbye, shaking each of our hands, and left us to our day.

Finally, we have only kind things to say about the staff at the Pasing Klinikum where we took our Jordan (Steelquists, he’s our Jordan for the time being) to finally deal with the possible parasite he has been carrying around for about 12 days. Shy receptionists rushed off to get coworkers who spoke some English to help us. A bilingual doctor got accurate information and some tests to diagnose the problem and get some antibiotics started. Everyone on duty pitched in to serve the Americans and we got the treatment we needed.

This all reminds me of the quote from the Bible about being kind to strangers. In that quote, the strangers are made out to be the angels, but in our case, it’s the other way around.

Christmas Where You Find It

2011-12-25T22:45:00.000-08:00

I haven’t tried yet to completely explain myself about Christmas. I go along as the butt of jokes my sons make about how we don’t celebrate Christmas. It’s not true, entirely, but it might look that way to most people and maybe to them. The best way I can say it is that over the past few years, I’ve lost my tolerance for contriving Christmas. I didn’t say I grew to hate Christmas. Even as Thanksgiving approaches I start feeling the giddy joy of the Christmas season. I look forward to gatherings with friends and family, relishing the preparation of special foods. I get thrilled at the first sightings of Christmas trees and snow, the playing of favorite recordings of songs and movies. That’s all normal, right?

All through the advent season I get stopped dead in my tracks at found Christmas beauty. It can be the simple interplay between a bare branch with white berries against a foggy fence post, a performance of a piece of traditional music, a gathering of friends and family that comes together so perfectly you know you just “had Christmas”. There is was. It happened right there. I have a lot of Christmas in December. It happens upon me almost daily and I’m really full, and reflective, and happy.

The problem, and this is only from the perspective of Christmas traditionalists, is Christmas Day. This is the part about losing my tolerance. For the most part, I don’t want any of the “stuff” of Christmas Day: the big tree gift exchange, massive family gatherings where there are awkward expectations and too much of everything. None of that feels to me like an apt conclusion to a really lovely few weeks of advent.

So I guess we have a fairly austere Christmas Day. While we know families all over the world are tearing into mountains of wrapped packages, we get up and enjoy the morning, cooking a good breakfast and eating together. My sons say that we clean the house for Christmas. We do tidy up because having the house clean and simple enough to really enjoy the ambiance of a tree, or some outdoor branches, or lit candles is what sets it up. We often have a walk, and then we cook a lovely dinner. There is one more nonnegotiable: we listen to choral music. Getting lost in the mysterious complexity of choral performances, whether modern or The Messiah, takes my mind in many directions as I appreciate our beautiful surroundings, the good people who envelope us, and the pleasure of working and making. Keeping Christmas a little austere feels very full to me.

So I bravely follow my intuition with this. Every year I get a little criticism. People may think I am depriving my children of Christmas traditions, but I hope I am actually modeling to them to see a lot of Christmas at many moments and to deeply appreciate what we already have, along with pondering the ongoing mysteries of Christmas Day.

Better for Being in Poland

2011-12-23T13:32:00.000-08:00

Krakow was cold, cold, cold. It’s so hard to remember what cold really feels like until you’re in it again and then it comes back to you. You have to cover every patch of exposed skin. You must stay completely dry. Much as I encouraged my sons to consider proper winter footwear before meeting us here, one of them showed up with simple canvas shoes. Just a few hours of walking on the cobblestone streets in slushy snow and he was suffering. We rescued him with some emergency boots and wool socks, but we all began to appreciate the harsh conditions of a Polish winter.

We entered the Birkenau concentration camp this morning in a thick fog and couldn’t see where we were until the arched brick wall with the train track leading in was right in front of us. We were the only ones there at 8:00 AM and made the first tracks in the snow, tromping from barrack to barrack. Still the fog was so heavy we could only see a step at a time and we heard dogs barking and gunshots in the distance as if a soundtrack was being played to unnecessarily add to the atmosphere. Following those long train tracks to their terminus, we stood at the well-documented spot where they were unloaded and the fates of millions of lives were decided with a hand motion.

I never knew if I was capable of visiting Auschwitz. At least 20 years ago, I stopped watching Holocaust movies and reading books on the topic because I just couldn’t bear the inevitable any more. There would be the dear elderly character with wire-rimmed glasses who you adored, but knew terrible things were in store for. The middle of the story would be filled with the chaos and fear of the train loading and unloading, followed by the separation of families. Finally, there would be the gradual deaths of everyone you were pulling for and the hopeless feeling of loss at the end. I knew the plot and I just couldn't watch it reenacted one more time.

Twisted mound of wire-rimmed glasses

I walked into these infamous sites today and as I suspected, I did cry when I saw the case of gnarled wire-rimmed glasses and the room of baby clothes and shoes. I saw photos of the very real victims, Jews from Poland, but also Hungary and almost every other part of Europe. Additionally, there were also thousands of non-Jewish Poles, and Gypsies, and Russians. There were a lot more people than I realized who were considered undesirable and were murdered there by the thousands. I listened, spellbound, to our tour guide, Symon, who had also needlessly lost an uncle in that camp. He led us through the story of Auschwitz, helping us connect with the humans, but also working on some answers to the enormous question, why? He actually answered that question in a basic way right at the beginning. They were Jews and Hitler was obsessed with hatred for them. He also needed a scapegoat on whom to blame the dire economic state in Germany. There actually wasn’t one grand beaurocratic plan for the mass extermination of Jews except to gradually eliminate their rights in Nazi-occupied cities throughout Europe and then transport them to labor camps in several locations. They were just truly work camps for the first two years, but then the extermination steam-rolled and in just over a year, over a million Jews were killed. Again, you play the why game. Why didn't Polish villagers try to do something? Answer: they had all been relocated and it was SS soldiers and their families living in the nearby villages. Why did the Jews go along? Why didn't they resist? Answer: Their choices were narrowed further and further until their only chance of survival was to cooperate and make the best possible conditions for themselves within the camps. Why didn't more of them escape? Answer: The SS were ruthless. If you resisted you were punished through the torture or death of those you most loved.

The SS made a game of systematic dehumanization, humiliation, and terrorization. The Nazis had effectively sealed all levels of society in the region in terror. It was effective and pervasive. These were simple people and they all had to make the best choices they could given their own circumstances and information.

By the end of the tour, I had a much better mental structure to which I could attach my emotions. I feel now like I can take another look at some of the films and literature and rather than wait for the foregone ending, I can study them for what they say along the themes of power and choice.

Taking in Prague

2011-12-21T12:18:00.000-08:00

I feel like I’ve come for Christmas to the place that invented it. The most elemental images of the season: chestnuts roasting on an open fire, trees in city squares, trimmed with simple bows (more tree than decoration), chapels, and sleigh bells. You, yourself, feel like you are inside of an ideal Christmas village, walking, bundled, with friends. You are spontaneously singing, laughing, and stopping, frequently, for a hot drink (did someone say gluhwein?) to warm the hands and insides. For as hard as we try to conjure that spirit in most other parts of the world, it is just happening here in Prague.

Angelic gift wrappers in the Swarovski store window.

When people tell you you’re going to visit one of the most beautiful cities in the world, it’s hard to know how to think of it. There are a lot of types of beautiful and some things in life that are said to be beautiful don’t feel that appealing because they’re not relatable. And this is what I would say makes Prague truly beautiful. It is almost visually perfect and yet you explore it in small, intimate vignettes. You can’t often see very far ahead and so you simply cross a bridge and enjoy being there, not trying to get on to what you see ahead. You round a corner, pass through a gate and then there is an exquisite church or castle and it’s all you see of Prague for that moment so you can pause and really take that in. Prague makes you take your time and expect surprises.

After a day of wandering and amazing, thawing and rechilling, it is so, so nice to come home to our friends’ apartment, where the Wi-Fi and the water pressure are strong. The washing machine is efficient. We drop off in cozy beds, surrounded by the artifacts of their family, thinking of them and imagining how it feels to be them, living in Prague. And we wish they were here.

Tamales

2011-12-16T23:07:00.000-08:00

Oh, how quickly a week goes by. The boys have been here nearly that long and we’ve done all we could. There was a caroling party with mulled wine by the outdoor fireplace, chill-out time to watch old favorite movies or play at the beach, and a big-bang, Mexican feast birthday dinner.

For festive occasions, I often plan to make homemade tamales. It is probably partly because I know I can put on a huge pot of pinto beans, braise some falling-off -the bone meats, and simply add a really tasty cooked salsa and a salad and I’ve got the meal. Then, it’s the little tamale packages that make it special and just a couple per person adds enough of the corny side dish to bring the whole plate of flavors together.

When you make tamales, you have to enlist an assembly-line of recruits. This is double fun, however, because as you facilitate and begin to steam them off, you get to enjoy all of the hilarious conversation amongst the filler, wrapper, tiers.

Many, many years ago, I bought a cookbook called The Kingston Hotel Cafe Cookbook. The subtitle of the book free-spirited recipes to warm the soul is accurate to the type of recipes within: inventive takes on comfort foods.

From Judith Weinstock I learned two things about making tamales. First, for the liquid, use a puree of milk and whole kernel corn to give the tamales some fresh kernel liveliness. And second, use butter instead of lard. Lard alone might be the reason many people don’t attempt tamales. Just use butter instead of lard. Consequently, this also makes the tamales appealing to vegetarians.

I don’t have my Kingston Hotel Café Cookbook at hand, but I’ve adapted a standard tamale recipe and have had great results. Making the dough is the main deal. From there, you can fill them with the smallest amounts of whatever you have that is delicious: cheese (my favorite is actually goat’s cheese), cooked meat, or roasted vegetables. You can make up your own fiery salsa (I prefer a cooked one) or even buy an artisan-quality premade jar. The main point is to get your storytellers around your kitchen counter where tamales will fly.

Ingredients

1 bag of dried corn husks

4 cups masa harina

1 tablespoon baking powder

2 teaspoons salt

4 cups milk

2 cups whole corn (canned and drained, frozen, or fresh from the cob)

1 cup butter, softened

Directions

Go through the dried cornhusks, separate them and discard the silk, be careful since the husks are fragile when dry. Soak them in a sink filled with warm water for 30 minutes to soften.

In the bowl of a mixer, combine the masa harina, baking powder, and salt. Add softened butter and incorporate well.

In a blender, puree the milk and whole corn kernels. Add to the masa and beat until the dough has a spongy texture.

Rinse, drain , and dry the corn husks. Set them out on a sheet pan covered by a damp towel along with the bowl of masa dough and your filling. Start with the largest husks because they are easier to roll. Lay the husk flat on the countertop with the smooth side up and the narrow end facing you. Spread a thin, even layer of masa over the surface of the husk with a tablespoon dipped in water. Do not use too much! Add about a tablespoon of the filling in the center of the masa. Fold the narrow end up to the center then fold both sides together to enclose the filling. The sticky masa will form a seal. Alternatively, you can roll it like a cigar and tie the ends with string.

Stand the tamales up in a large steamer or colander with the pinched end up. Load the steamer into a large pot filled with 2-inches of water. The water should not touch the tamales. Lay a damp cloth over the tamales and cover with lid. Keep the water at a low boil, checking periodically to make sure the water doesn't boil away. Steam the tamales for 20 minutes to an hour, depending on size. The tamales are done when the inside pulls away from the husk. The tamale should be soft, firm, and not mushy.
To serve, unfold the husk and spoon about a tablespoon of salsa on top.

This concludes the home cooking segment of my blog for the year. I now switch into travelogue mode where you can expect to read about Christmas markets and opera houses in Germany, castles in Prague, and my quest for the best darn pierogi in Poland. Lots of fun to come.

Triple-Ginger Cookies

2011-12-11T05:56:00.000-08:00

Star anise is a nice change from the cloves, ginger, and cinnamon of the season. Plus, it's so pretty.

The blog 101 Cookbooks is beautiful and I love to see what’s going on there, but it’s like stepping into a very private world. The author strives for a level of purity, both with ingredients and in technique, that makes regular recipes seem a little silly and undisciplined. It’s esoteric which precisely means it is intended for a small audience (though her readership is huge). It might not be for everyone, but it is a nice Zen place to go to now and then. Like at the finale of a cookie bake-a-thon. These cookies require some chopping, grinding, and grating, but they are nice ingredients to hang out with and the final cookie is a delight. You will find the recipe on her blog.

And now, I have to run to the airport. Seriously. Through sheer force of bakery, I willed my sons home. Let the fun begin!

Dried Fruit Cookies

2011-12-11T05:45:00.000-08:00

I already know before I make this that it will be the last one left on the cookie tray. It sounds suspiciously like fruitcake and implies more character development than celebration. Why persist? Well, I like dried fruit when it’s real (not that candied cherry stuff) and we have a great selection of dried fruit in Tunis year-around. But it was the markets in Nice (France) that really inspired me. There, I saw authentically dried and candied fruit of every variety and stall after stall had them arrayed in their jewel-like glory. It made me really want to work with them in some way. So can we please consider these cookies to be French and “oh so Provence” and not just another attempt by me to slip 70s hippie food into unsuspecting lives?

I also really liked that this is a log cookie that you cut and bake. This way, you can bake them up hot and fresh for the moment and who can resist warm cookies?

Joking aside, these cookies have none of the disjointed texture and flavors, not to mention the unfoods, of annoying fruitcakes. These cookies are buttery and the fruits each have delicious flavors which are enhanced by the dough. These might actually get snatched off the tray first thing.

Dried Fruit Cookies, adapted from Ina Garten

Ingredients

1/2 pound dried pears
1/4 pound raisins
2 ounces dried Montmorency cherries, coarsely chopped
2 ounces dried apricots, coarsely chopped
1 tablespoon honey
2 tablespoons dry sherry
1 tablespoon freshly squeezed lemon juice
6 ounces chopped pecans
Kosher salt
1/2 pound (2 sticks) unsalted butter, at room temperature
1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
1/2 cup superfine sugar
1/3 cup light brown sugar, firmly packed
1 extra-large egg
2 2/3 cups all-purpose flour

Directions

Snip off the hard stems of the figs with scissors or a small knife and coarsely chop the figs. In a medium bowl, combine the figs, raisins, cherries, apricots, honey, sherry, lemon juice, pecans, and a pinch of salt. Cover with plastic wrap and allow to sit overnight at room temperature.

In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, cream the butter, cloves, superfine sugar, and brown sugar on medium speed until smooth, about 3 minutes. With the mixer on low speed, add the egg and mix until incorporated. With the mixer still on low, slowly add the flour and 1/4 teaspoon salt just until combined. Don't overmix! Add the fruits and nuts, including any liquid in the bowl.

Divide the dough in half and place each half on the long edge of a 12 by 18-inch piece of parchment or waxed paper. Roll each half into a log, 1 1/2 to 1 3/4-inch thick, making an 18-inch-long roll. Refrigerate the dough for several hours, or until firm.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

With a small, sharp knife, cut the logs into 1/2-inch-thick slices. Place the slices 1/2-inch apart on ungreased sheet pans and bake for 15 to 20 minutes, until lightly golden.

Brown paper packages tied up with string. A favorite thing, indeed.

Sesame Seed Cookies

2011-12-10T12:22:00.000-08:00

Do you like tahini? Many years ago now (well, I was still in the morning sickness stage with my Gabe, who is 22), we had breakfast with some of our best friends, the Bryants, at a little hippie café in Seattle. I ordered Tahitian Toast with a glass of freshly squeezed grapefruit juice. I think I expected it was going to involve pineapple in some form, but it was two thick, moist slices of French toast with a slathering of tahini in the middle, like a French toast sandwich. With maple syrup drizzled over the top and the tart citrus juice on the side, I fell in love with the bitter nuttiness of tahini and sesame seeds, in general. I always have French toast with tahini now and freshly squeezed citrus when I can get it, which these days is pretty often.

Sesame seeds are next in the ingredient line-up (see Cookies Till They Come) and I didn’t want to hide them. I wanted them to be toasted and slightly bitter in a crispy cookie. This recipe is by Martha Stewart.

Sesame Seed Cookies

Martha Stewart Living, October 2000 http://www.marthastewart.com/353559/sesame-seed-cookies

Yield 48

Ingredients

o 1 cup all-purpose flour

o 1/2 teaspoon salt

o 1/2 teaspoon baking soda

o 8 tablespoons (1 stick) unsalted butter, room temperature

o 1 cup packed light-brown sugar

o 1 large egg

o 1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

o 1 cup hulled sesame seeds, toasted

Directions

Heat oven to 350 degrees. Line four baking sheets with parchment paper, and set aside. Sift together flour, salt, and baking soda, and set aside.
In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, cream butter and sugar on medium speed until light and fluffy. Add egg and vanilla, and beat until combined. Add reserved flour mixture, and beat until combined. Add toasted sesame seeds, and beat until incorporated.
Using a spoon, drop cookie batter, about 1 tablespoon at a time, onto prepared baking sheets, allowing at least 2 inches between cookies for spreading.
Bake until golden, 6 to 8 minutes. Remove from oven, and cool on a wire rack.

These are a little chewier than crisp. They are simple, but the flavor is fantastic: buttery, toasty, bitter and the seeds crunch in little bursts in your mouth. I would always prefer these now to peanut butter cookies.

Chewy Chocolate, Oatmeal, Coconut Cookies

2011-12-10T10:25:00.000-08:00

Cookies are cool because they are absolutely ingredient driven. Whether it’s the pure simplicity of a butter or sugar cookie or the lumpy texture of a chocolate chunk, you know what you are going to be tasting. This is unless the cookie has a silly name, like a Lu Lu or something, but I don’t think I eat any of those cookies. Well, I do eat Tam Tams from Australia when I can so that’s not true. My insight into Islamic cookies so far is that they are exquisitely beautiful and also delicious (ingredient driven, too), but have unsettling body part references like Fatimah’s Fingers. Mmm.

Go back to Cookies Till They Come to catch the storyline and understand where we are. If you’ve read along, you will recall that one of the ingredients I bought in bulk this week was coconut. For this cookie, I certainly did consider an upfront coconut feature, like macaroons, but I feared that basing all of the cookies on a nut or dried fruit might make them all seem like Middle Eastern treats, which is nice, but doesn’t necessarily say Merry Christmas. Chocolate and oatmeal are what we need to make everyone feel at home. The coconut just snuggles right along side.

Chewy Chocolate, Oatmeal, Coconut Cookies

Ingredients

1 cup butter, softened

1 1/4 cups packed brown sugar

1/2 cup white sugar

2 eggs

2 tablespoons milk

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

3 cups rolled oats

2 cups semisweet chocolate chips

1 cup chopped walnuts (optional)

1 cup shredded coconut

Directions

Preheat oven to 375 degrees F (190 degrees C).

In a large bowl, cream together the butter, brown sugar and white sugar until smooth. Beat in the eggs one at a time, then stir in the milk and vanilla. Combine the flour, baking soda and salt; stir into the sugar mixture until well blended. Stir in the oats, chocolate chips. walnuts and coconut until evenly distributed. Drop by rounded tablespoons onto ungreased cookie sheet.

Bake 10 to 12 minutes in the preheated oven for a chewy cookie or 14 minutes for a firmer cookie.

Cool for 1 minute on the cookie sheet and then remove to wire rack. Cool completely and then store in tightly sealed container.

Cookies Till They Come

2011-12-10T09:17:00.000-08:00

My boys are coming. My boys are coming. It’s Saturday morning and we were up late at our staff Christmas party last night, but I sprang out of bed with the call to prayer at sunrise. We have that auditory time regulator here in Tunisia. I love it.

I’m Tabitha Tittlemouse today. Oh gosh, I love The Tale of Mrs. Tittlemouse and her fastidiousness over every tiny detail, every tittle. How about this line from the Wikipedia synopsis: Mrs. Tittlemouse fears she "shall go distracted" as a result of the turmoil and takes refuge in the nut-cellar. You know where to look for me if I need a little time out this week, though all that’s in our cellar is wine, no nuts.

There’s so much I want to do: make up heavenly beds for jet-lagged boys to sink into, prep the basics of some midweek feasts so we can have friends over to enjoy the season and visit with the guys, and make cookies. I think that this is going to be my nervous distraction for the next 24 hours, minus sleep, while I’m picturing them at every stage of their journey.

I can’t just pick any cookie recipe and pull it off, here. I looked at Bon Appetit’s 31 days of cookies and I can get many of those ingredients here, but often there is just one missing ingredient, like corn syrup, that makes me think they won’t come out right without it. As with all things in Tunisia, it’s best to begin with what we’ve got. There is actually a treasure trove of special ingredients available at the moment. A local store had bulk-packaged quantities of the following this week: hulled pistachios, shredded (unsweetened) coconut, dried apricots and hulled, toasted sesame seeds. Added to that are some plump golden raisins and dried pears I bought in Nice and finally, some dried Montmorency cherries gifted to me by Shelly. And I have ginger. My friends and I are always so concerned that we can’t get ginger here that we buy it in large amounts every time we see it. It turns out that ginger has been available recently, both fresh and dried, like the stuff you see in the Chinese apothecary shops in China towns, and I now have all of the forms required to make a triple- ginger cookie, one of my very favorites.

Because I knew it would occupy the most oven time, I began with biscotti. Cranberry/pistachio biscotti must be ubiquitous. Recipes kept popping up all over. My one unavailable ingredient in this recipe was almond extract and I do think it would have been a fine addition.

I dried the cranberries in my food dehydrator on Lummi Island when I was home in October. They took an extremely long time to dry. For about 24 hours, they were just hot, plump, berries not looking like they were getting any more shriveled. So I started poking them and squeezing air out and finally some of them dried out and some didn’t so much. I tossed them in a Ziploc anyway and brought them back here, keeping them in the freezer. These are the end of them.

Once baked, sliced, and then oven dried, the pistachios in the cookies become deliciously nutty and the little bit of tart cranberry creates a bright accent. I’m not even going to dip them in chocolate because I really like the vanilla/nut balance as it is.

Cranberry Pistachio Biscotti

Ingredients

1/4 cup light olive oil

3/4 cup white sugar

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

1/2 teaspoon almond extract

2 eggs

1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour

1/4 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 cup dried cranberries

1 1/2 cups pistachio nuts

Directions

Preheat the oven to 300 degrees F (150 degrees C).

In a large bowl, mix together oil and sugar until well blended. Mix in the vanilla and almond extracts, then beat in

the eggs. Combine flour, salt, and baking powder; gradually stir into egg mixture. Mix in cranberries and nuts by

hand.

Divide dough in half. Form two logs (12x2 inches) on a cookie sheet that has been lined with parchment paper.

Dough may be sticky; wet hands with cool water to handle dough more easily.

Bake for 35 minutes in the preheated oven, or until logs are light brown. Remove from oven, and set aside to cool

for 10 minutes. Reduce oven heat to 275 degrees F (135 degrees C).

Cut logs on diagonal into 3/4 inch thick slices. Lay on sides on parchment covered cookie sheet. Bake

approximately 8 to 10 minutes, or until dry; cool.

So that’s the first cookie and I am planning on a line up of five in the next 24 hours. I just gave the boys a wake up Skype call and they are officially underway.

I’ll keep posting as I bake (is this fun?). You can bake along with me if you’re inclined.

Mediterranean-Style Cracked Olives

2011-12-03T06:07:00.000-08:00

A few weeks ago, I began a project of home-curing olives. Step 1 was to crack each one with a meat mallet and then soak them in water, drained daily, until they reached a palatable level of bitterness. Part of the art of olive making, I discovered, is finding the perfect stage at which to stop the water bath. I tasted an olive on day 8 and spat it into the sink. Too bitter, still. Then I tasted one on day 10 and uh oh, it tasted a little watery to me, a little washed out which I read can happen. I quickly drained them at that moment and decided to go ahead with the brine to see what would happen. For approximately 2 kgs. of fresh olives, I used the following formula for the brine:

1 liter of cool water

1/3 cup rock sea salt (or Kosher salt)

1/4 cup white wine vinegar

Make a solution of these ingredients and pour over olives that have been packed into sterilized containers. It is at this point that you can also add herbs and other seasonings. I added whole garlic cloves, cuttings of fresh rosemary, and pink peppercorns. If lemons were ready yet, I would have added a few bits of those. The olives can be kept, covered, in the refrigerator, for around six months.

I think I’m OK with the washed out issue. Once they were out of water and into a brine, the flavor came back up and they taste really good to me. I’m sure the flavor will continue to develop complexity the longer they marinate in the brine. Next time, I might simply slice each olive rather than smash them. Most of the olives are in tact, but some of them have broken pieces that make my jars look a little bit cloudy. For a first attempt, I’m happy and I also know how these olives were handled and stored so I have confidence in their sanitation.

Henri Matisse and the Olive Forest

2011-11-26T08:06:00.000-08:00

We've had tastes of Nice urban life, and the seaside. Today, we had some blissful time to marinate in Provence which means olives, oranges, lavender and country life. We went to the Matisse museum which is a renovated country French chateau that is now very much in the heart of suburbia. So many of his sketches and paintings focus on simple subjects: the form of a common woman, a still life of fruit. I love the colors he pulls in to his paintings as they are the colors I find naturally work their way into the beige background of my life on the Mediterranean.

The spire you see in some of the photos is a Franciscan chapel on the property.

I forget how inspiring and energizing it can be to walk through beautifully designed and manicured urban parks. This 19th century structure is surrounded on one side by an olive forest and the other side by rustically designed French kitchen gardens. That means that most of what is growing on this property is edible. I want to remember to mix pansies and calendulas with chard and kale.

This enclosed herb garden is a perfect place to come and sit in the sun on a Saturday morning with preschoolers.
Next time I come to Provence, I hope to go straight to the country to soak in the sun, earth, Mediterranean plant life and the colors.

Menton, Monte-Carlo, Monaco

2011-11-25T11:15:00.000-08:00

Here’s what’s different about the Mediterranean from the French side. First of all, the coastline is long and uninterrupted. When you’re out all day, you don’t just catch glimpses of it, the shoreline is protected from development and you can view it with the expanse of a wide-angle lens most of the time. Second, it looks like the ocean right after God made it. It is baby blue, and effervescent, and perfectly clean. I was trying to capture that essence and I think the heading photo got some of it.

We figured out the local train line today, which always makes us feel like self-sufficient travelers.

We went to the last town on the line that is still in France: Menton.

Here, we had a picnic at the beach and watched retirees taking morning swims, riding bicycles, playing tennis, running and then meeting each other at seaside cafes for an express.

Clay courts

It's November and this is Europe. The water is not actually warm.

This would be a fabulous place to spend retirement days, living a healthy life between sea and ski. I could certainly embrace it as long as my own dear friends came along to share it with me. I’m saving those days for them and my family.

Almost exactly two years ago, our friend Bryan had a James Bond themed 50^th birthday party in Kathmandu. Allan and I weren’t the most cleverly dressed, but we did win the “Most Likely to Actually go to Monte-Carlo” award. These friends already knew that we were moving to the Mediterranean so it was a hedged bet. Now, two years later, we have fulfilled the prediction. It was a little hard to get the whole sense of Monaco/Monte-Carlo. These twin cities in the Monaco principality are practically chiseled into the steep, rocky hillside. You have to go up one hillside and around a small mountain to get to the other one and you can’t really see it all at once. You end up taking elevators and escalators through the inside of a mountain and then you emerge … somewhere, look around and try to determine where you would try to go next if you reentered the mountain transit system. Here are little peeks into hillside lives.

It was clear, however, where the marina was. It was down. This picture does not do any justice to the yachts we saw.

Allan estimated that we were looking at probably 50 yachts in the Monte-Carlo marina of 150 feet or more in length. It was actually a little weird. I don’t mean that to sound particularly judgmental, but to just see that much wealth in one place is like seeing a Martian landing. It’s unfamiliar and otherworldly. We for sure saw the 1% of the world today.

Thanksgiving on the French Riviera

2011-11-24T06:36:00.000-08:00

Can you imagine writing those five words? I never could either. I did not grow up thinking I would travel anywhere in my life, didn’t really even think about it. Funny reality now is that the French Riviera is a whole lot closer than going to Grandma’s house for Thanksgiving, though not necessarily sweeter.

Thursday morning, we caught a 9:00 AM flight and were in Nice for lunch.

I really did not have any preconceived expectation of what Nice would be. As I trolled the Internet for an affordable boutique hotel, I became more and more concerned that Nice was a typical beachfront resort town, completely overused by northern Europeans. The hotel rooms looked a little sweaty, faded, and expensive.

What I’ve encountered in Nice so far is a crisp, clean, underpopulated city. The city clearly values its natural beauty, preserving miles and miles of beachfront promenade, framed by the snow-capped French Alps in the background. The air is chilly enough to wear leather coats and boots, but when you sit in the sun at a café for lunch, you can shed your coat and sit comfortably in your sleeveless dress. And there are many, many fit, suntanned retirees (almost all walking French Bulldogs) who generally keep the prices down in a town. I really like it here; I can feel myself already falling in love. By the way, after hours and hours of Internet searching, it turns out I chose a wonderful boutique hotel: It is La Villa Nice Promenade (11 Rue Saint Philippe). Perfectly located near the Promenade, but quietly tucked away off the busy street, it is clean and simple, but has a decorative flair. Best yet, it is under $100. 00 US per night.

This is the only turkey we saw today.

The best gelato in Nice, according to Kaye Syrah. I’ll have to go back when it’s not siesta time.

An old carousel in the central park.

A couple having lunch under a laden, rectangular orange tree. I know it’s anal, but I love French gardening.

Turkey Deconstructed

2011-11-21T11:19:00.000-08:00

As I said, we’re not going to be home for Thanksgiving Day this year. But I’m still sentimental about turkeys, even though I already made an early Thanksgiving dinner with my boys when I was home on Lummi Island in October. I do highly recommend that butter and wine shrouded turkey we made.

But when you live overseas, your options are limited both by the availability of turkey and by the size of your oven. We are fortunate in Tunisia that turkeys were introduced here as a Peace Corps initiative decades ago and they are available year-around.

For preparation methods, this is a good time to consult the wisdom of American star chefs who live abroad and one of my favorites is David Tanis. He is the head chef for six months of the year at Chez Panisse, in Berkeley, and then lives a French life for the other six.

I don’t have a small oven here. I was fortunate to inherit an imported GE Profile, regulation American size. It is a completely common oven in the US, but here, it is a prize and I do love it. More the norm, though, is a small oven that can’t hold anything of much breadth.

David Tanis had this problem and writes about a fortuitous French communication error that ended up leading to one of his best Thanksgiving meals ever.

Americans Abroad

One year, I was the one making Thanksgiving dinner in Paris, and for this particular meal, it seemed as if we had every expat in town descend on our little Paris apartment on the rue St. Jacques. There were going to be about forty-five of us in all. So I went to my neighborhood butcher, Charcellet, to get my turkey. They have really good turkeys in France—small but tasty—and Parisians know about la fete americaine. I told the butcher that I wanted him to take the breasts off, take the legs off, and save me all the bones. I told him I needed three birds, see you tomorrow, au revoir.

I came back the next day and he showed me what he’d done; instead of cutting off the legs and breasts, he had deboned the whole turkeys, as only a master butcher can do. I marveled. It turned out to be a brilliant solution because we have the tiniest oven in the world. At first the birds were flat as roadkill, but I put salt and pepper all over them, smeared the insides with garlic and thyme and sage in great quantity, molded them back into a bird shape, and tied them with string to keep them compact.

Long story short, I found that three compact little re-formed turkeys would fit side by side in one roasting pan. When they came out of the oven, I had perfectly cooked roast turkeys with not a speck of unusable anything! And the cooking time was only an hour and a half.

Our friends said it was the best turkey they’d ever had in their lives. You could slice through the body as if it were a galantine—all meat and no stuffing. And this technique applies to every bird in the world. All you need is a good butcher or a lot of patience. Simpler by far is the recipe for the deconstructed bird that follows.

Roasted and Braised Turkey with Gravy

I always prefer to cook a smaller turkey. The secret to great flavor is to season the turkey overnight so begin this process the day before. You can make the broth a day ahead, too.

Have the butcher remove the legs with the thighs attached, cut off the wings, and cut the boneless breast in 2 pieces. While you’re at it, ask him to chop up the carcass for your stock. You’ll be going home with 2 whole legs with thighs, 2 wings, the skin-on breast in 2 pieces and a bag of bones. Make sure to get the giblets, too.

For the turkey

One 12- to 14-pound turkey, cut into six parts (as above)

Salt and pepper

1 bunch sage leaves, chopped

1 small bunch thyme, leaves stripped and chopped

6 garlic cloves, smashed to a paste with a little salt

2 tablespoons olive oil

For the broth

3 pounds turkey carcass and bones (or other poultry bones)

1 large onion, peeled, halved, and stuck with 1 clove

1 carrot, peeled and chopped

1 celery stalk, chopped

2 bay leaves

2 or 3 slices dried porcini mushroom

About 6 quarts water

For the braise

3 tablespoons butter

2 large onions, chopped

Salt and pepper

3 tablespoons all-purpose flour

1 tablespoons tomato paste

1 cup dry red wine

Parsley or watercress sprigs

Put all the turkey pieces out on a big cutting board and season well on both sides with salt and pepper.

Mix the sage, thyme, and garlic in a small bowl and add the olive oil. Spoon the seasoning mixture over the meat and smear it in well. Put the legs and wings in a container, cover, and refrigerate. Wrap the breasts in plastic and refrigerate.

To make the broth, preheat the oven to 400’F. Put the turkey carcass and bones, onion, carrot, celery, and bay leaves in a roasting pan and into the oven. Roast for about 30 minutes, stirring occasionally, until everything is nicely browned.

Transfer the browned vegetables and bones to a big soup pot. Splash a little water into the roasting pan to dissolve any tasty bits left in the pan, and put into the pot. Add the dried mushroom and water and bring to a boil. Skim off the scum, turn the heat down to a simmer, and let it cook slowly for 1 ½ to 2 hours.

Strain the broth through a sieve. You should have about 5 quarts of turkey broth. Cool, then refrigerate; when ready to use, skim off the fat that has risen to the surface.

To make the braise, preheat the oven to 400’ F. Put the legs and wings in a large roasting pan, with enough room so they’re not crowded. Put the pan in the oven and let the parts roast while you prepare the braising liquid.

In a large skillet over medium heat, melt the butter. Add the onions and season them with salt and pepper. Let them cook gently, stirring occasionally, until softened, about 10 minutes. Turn up the heat and let the onions color a little bit.

With a wooden spoon, stir in the flour and tomato paste and mix well. Add the red wine and 2 cups of the turkey broth and bring to a simmer, stirring as the sauce thickens. Gradually stir in 2 more cups of broth.

Remove the pan of legs and wings from the oven. They should be nicely golden, but not too dark. Pour the braising liquid over the legs. Cover the pan tightly with foil and return to the oven. Reduce the heat to 350’ F and let it go for about 1 ½ hours, or until the legs are tender when tested with a fork. Transfer the legs and wings to a cutting board and let them cool slightly.

Strain the braising liquid through a fine-mesh sieve into a saucepan, skimming off any fat tat rises. This will be your gravy. Taste the sauce for seasonings and texture. If it’s too thin, reduce it a bit over medium heat until it reaches a consistency you like. Set aside. (The braise can be done hours ahead or the day before and refrigerated.)

When the turkey parts are cool enough to handle, remove the let meat from the bones in large pieces and tear the meat from the wings. Cut the meat into rough slices and put in a baking dish. Cover and hold at cool room temperature.

Remove the breasts from the refrigerator and let them come to room temperature. The breasts will take only about a half hour to roast, so they can be started up to an hour before dinner in a 375’ F oven. Put them in a shallow roasting pan, skin side up, and into the over. Check at 30 minutes—you want an internal temperature of 140’F (The temperature will continue to rise as they rest.) Let them rest on a platter, loosely covered, for 15 to 30 minutes before carving.

Shortly before serving, reheat the dark meat in the oven for 10 to 15 minute, until heated through. Reheat the gravy and put it in a serving bowl.

Slice the turkey breasts on an angle, not too thickly. Arrange the turkey on a warm platter and garnish with parsley or watercress.

(Tanis, David. 2010. Heart of the Artichoke. New York, Artisan.)

This is going out to all of my expatriate friends all over the world. Happy Thanksgiving with the families you've pulled around you.

Whole Orange Cake

2011-11-20T06:56:00.000-08:00

          Thanksgiving is coming up this week, but we won't be at home for Thanksgiving Day. Having Thursday and the connecting Friday off from work creates an irresistible draw to do some regional traveling. I'll tell you later in the week where we will be. Never-the-less, I feel like doing some festive cooking.
          We are just on the cusp of orange season. I won't add them to the What's in Season list yet because they're still a tinge green and a tiny bit sour, comparatively, but the scent of oranges does conjure the holidays, in my mind.
          I've been waiting a few weeks to try this whole orange cake. It seems to be an Australian country wives' recipe, but I had to do so much converting that this recipe is mine now. If you want to check the original or if you prefer metric measurements, here is the link. Otherwise, you should just trust me. I am very much in the mood for a cake with the marmalade-like brightness this cake implies. Ground almonds will temper that mood enough. Then, it will be soaked in an orange rind and dessert wine syrup.
          We stock our wine cellar at a winery not far from Hammamet called Domaine Atlas. Pictured below is the actual Bredy wheelbarrow of wine cases we bought the last time we were there. Mind you, we entertain a lot. Each time we are there, we stick in a few bottles of their dessert wine which comes in clear, unlabeled bottles. The Australian recipe calls for botrytis-style dessert wine. Botrytis is really a controlled decomposition process which is why it is fondly referred to as "noble rot". I don't know how noble our local product is, but it is suitable for sipping and cooking.

When I took this photograph, I had in mind one of those magazine set ups like oranges + almonds + dessert wine using actual plus signs, but I don't know how to do all that so the key ingredients are just all there mingling in a group.

Whole Orange & Almond Cake with Dessert Wine Syrup

Ingredients (serves 8)

3 large oranges

Melted butter (to grease pan)

5 eggs

1 1/2 cups caster sugar

2 cups almond meal

1/2 cup all-purpose flour

1 tsp. baking powder
1/4 tsp. salt

1 1/2 cups dessert wine
1 tsp. thyme, lavender buds, or Herbes de Provence (optional)

Double cream, to serve

Method

1. Place 2 oranges in a large saucepan and cover with cold water. Bring to the boil over high heat. Drain. Return oranges to the pan and repeat process (this will reduce the bitterness of the peel). Return oranges to the pan once again and cover with cold water. Bring to the boil over high heat. Reduce heat to medium-low and simmer, adding more water when necessary to keep oranges covered, for 1 hour or until oranges are very tender. Drain. Set aside for 2 hours or until cooled to room temperature.

2. Preheat oven to 325' F. Brush a round 8 inch cake pan with melted butter to lightly grease. Line the base with parchment paper. Cut oranges into quarters. Remove the white cores and any seeds. Place in the bowl of a food processor and process until smooth.

3. Use an electric beater to whisk the eggs and 1 cup of the sugar in a large bowl until thick and pale. Stir in the orange puree. Add the almond meal, flour and baking powder, and stir until just combined. Pour into the prepared pan and use the back of a spoon to smooth the surface. Bake in preheated oven for 1 1/4 hours or until a skewer inserted into the center comes out clean. Set aside for 5 minutes to cool slightly.

4. Meanwhile, use a zester to remove the rind from the remaining orange. Juice the orange and place in a medium saucepan along with the rind, wine, remaining sugar and herbs. Place over low heat and cook, stirring, for 2 minutes or until sugar dissolves. Increase heat to high and bring to a boil. Cook, without stirring, for 2-3 minutes or until syrup thickens slightly. Remove from heat.

5. Turn cake onto a wire rack over a baking tray. Spoon the hot syrup over the warm cake. Set aside for 30 minutes to cool. Cut cake into wedges and place on serving plates. Drizzle with any remaining syrup and serve with double cream, if desired.

Chanterelle Risotto

2011-11-14T13:08:00.000-08:00

          Oh, these chanterelles. What a surprise they were at the market yesterday. When we lived in Bellingham, we used to go into the woods on Mt. Baker and forage for them in the fall, but we never got a batch this bounteous. I'm estimating they cost about $4.00 per pound here, but I might not find them again this year. That's how it goes here: Grab them when you see them.
          As we were drooling over them as they lay drying on their kitchen towel, our friend Shelly asked what we were going to do with them and actually, we hadn't decided yet. She suggested risotto, which was a great idea because we already had everything to make it so we could pull it off on a Monday night.
          I adapted a recipe by Tyler Florence for Porcini and Chanterelle Risotto, but used a decadent whole pound of straight chanterelles.

Chanterelle Risotto

Ingredients

1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil

1/4 cup unsalted butter

2 shallots, minced

1 pound fresh chanterelle mushrooms, stemmed and sliced

3 sprigs fresh thyme, leaves only
1 fresh bay leaf
2 cups white wine
Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
2 cups arborio rice
6 cups chicken stock
2 tablespoons fresh parsley, minced
1/2 cup Parmesan

Directions

Warm a wide large heavy-bottomed pan over a medium-low flame. Add 2 tablespoons olive oil and 2 tablespoons butter and melt together. Add shallots and cook for 2 minutes, or until translucent, and then toss the mushrooms, thyme, and bay leaf into the pan. Cook for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally, until the mushrooms have released their moisture and begin to turn golden brown.

Pour 1 cup of the wine into the pan, and bring the liquid to a simmer, allowing the wine to evaporate. Continue cooking until the mushrooms are dry, about 5 to 7 minutes. Season with sea salt and freshly ground black pepper. Remove mushrooms from the pan and set aside. Discard the bay leaf.

Reduce the flame to low, and add the remaining butter and oil to the pan and melt. Stir in the rice and coat with the oil until the kernels are shiny, about 3 to 5 minutes. Pour in the remaining 1 cup of white wine and let evaporate.

Add the chicken broth, 1 ladle at a time, allowing the rice to absorb the liquid. Do not add too quickly so as to prevent the kernels from exploding. Stir over a gentle flame until each ladle of the liquid is absorbed. Repeat until most of the broth is incorporated and the risotto rice is al dente, about 25 minutes.

Fold the mushrooms back into the rice and season with salt, pepper and parsley. Stir in the Parmesan and serve immediately.

To make a completely honest disclosure, I've gotta tell you that my husband is the primary risotto maker in our family. It's one of his specialties and I was mostly his sous chef.

Home Cured Olives, Part I

2011-11-13T21:33:00.000-08:00

So you know we actually live in Tunisia where I have heard it is against the law to cut down an olive tree. I wasn't planning to anyway, but it definitely indicates an attachment and commitment to the tree. Of course, we can buy a large variety of commercially-cured olives here, year-around, but I have wondered what would be involved in curing them myself. You can buy fresh olives this time of year for as little as 1 dinar (about 70 cents) for 1 kg. so aside from the waste involved in a failed attempt, it's not an expensive exploration. I bought 2 kgs. of these beautes yesterday at the market.

Since this process technically falls under the heading of preserving food, I got some good advice so I don't end up growing something undesirable, like bacteria. I figured the University of California, Department of Agriculture and Resources would have this researched. They have a 26 page e-booklet called Olives: Safe Methods for Home Pickling.
I wanted to get the very long process started and think more about the brine in a few days so I chose the method for Mediterranean Cracked Olives. One begins by cracking the olives, but not the pits, with a mallet or rolling pin and submerging them in a water bath, changing the water twice daily, for at least 10 days or until enough of the bitterness has been removed.

This was a nifty suggestion for keeping the olives submerged. It is simply a Ziploc bag filled with water.

You can already see the oil floating to the top. I'll let you know what I've got in 10 days.

Raf Raf Tomato Sauce

2011-11-07T12:00:00.000-08:00

After about a week of daily rain and nearly hurricane force winds, everything calmed this weekend and for our Monday off of work for the Aid holiday it was like a summer day (in a place like the Northwest where it's pleasantly hot in the summer).
We took a driving trip into the countryside to the northern coastal towns of Raf Raf and Ghar El Melh. The farms were like manicured gardens: intensely planted and the soil was rich and nurtured.

These towns are sleepy little fishing villages with a big history as posts of the pirates during the Ottoman occupation of the 17th century.

It was really quiet today, just some fishermen painting their boats and lots and lots of nice looking young men walking around and doing foolish stunts on motorbikes. I think the young men in this country need more to do. Maybe a lot of people are afraid that is true.
When I saw this roadside farmer's stand I yelled STOP! Look at this marketing idea, putting all of the produce into small buckets and displaying them on multi-leveled, multi-colored baskets. You actually buy the produce by the bucket. We bought two buckets of tomatoes, one of onions, one of peppers, and one of limes.

Upon returning home, we immediately rolled up our sleeves and began processing tomatoes. The blog, Saving the Season, was very helpful in giving me a little sequence for getting them safely into jars. We simply par boiled them in batches, chilled them on ice (until the ice ran out), peeled and chopped them, smashed and cooked them, and then put them into sterilized jars. I sort of thought they would fill more jars than this, but then this is 1 1/4 gallons of processed tomatoes and that is a lot.

The final step is a 45 minute water bath and then the reward of every home canner: the pop, pop, pop of the lids assuring her that the contents will be safe from botulism until she chooses to eat those tomatoes.

Birthday Braise

2011-11-06T13:57:00.000-08:00

It's Allan's birthday. We have a long succession of November birthday parties together. It turns out to be a nice time for a party. The weather is cool, but not yet frigid and some warm and filling foods taste very good.

We had 12 great friends over and lucked out with a warmer than recent evening, a lovely night sky, and no wind. We pulled the garden tables close to the barbecue and kept a fire going all evening.
The main dish was Cranberry Short-Rib Stew. This was, again, from the stew/beer pairings section of the October 2011 edition of Sunset Magazine. The recommended beer was Deschutes Brewery Black Butte Porter. There were a lot of smokey and bright flavors in this stew that might not have been immediately recognizable, like chocolate, cranberries. ginger, and orange zest. After cooking a couple of hours, the meat was tender enough, but the stock was still a little watery. I uncovered the dish and continued to bake it for about 2 more hours which served to caramelize all of the complexities.


I couldn't buy meat on bones at our butcher so I bought meat and bones.

After browning, but before braising. See recipe for finished dish photo.

Since we are officially off pumpkin. I omitted the addition of pumpkin in the stew, but it still needed some color. Instead, I roasted some of our vibrant, almost red carrots. I drizzled them with olive oil and seasoned them with herbes de provence, Himalayan pink salt, and pepper. They needed to roast for at least 2 hours to get completely tender and a little caramelized. As a finishing touch, I drizzled them with some passion fruit vinegar, which set them off nicely.

Think you already have the perfect mashed potato sequence? Bon Appetit has a process that might give you some new thoughts about it. You start with large cubed potatoes that you cook in salted water. When they are fork tender, you drain them and turn them out onto a baking sheet to cool and dry for about 15 minutes.

Then, you force the potatoes through a ricer or food mill, along with 1/2 cup of chilled butter.

Heat milk, cream, bay leaves, fresh thyme or rosemary, and pepper corns on the stove. Allow to steep about 20 minutes and then strain. Reheat milk mixture. Pour over potatoes as you stir. I used the dough hook on my Kitchen Aid mixer.

This may be the biggest tip of the recipe: at this point you can hold the potatoes in fluffy condition if you do the following. Number one, cover the potatoes with plastic wrap directly touching them. Number two, keep them in a bowl over, but not touching, simmering water.

I kept them for over an hour and they turned out great.

And because I said I would, here is the link to the chocolate peanut butter cake at Smitten Kitchen. Yes, it is a great recipe.

Eight Cups of Pumpkin- Do It!

2011-11-05T11:12:00.000-07:00

Oh my goodness, I have to put some distance between this entry and that leftover pumpkin picture on my last entry. This may need to be a very long piece. My Saturday morning mantra: I will not compost that pumpkin, I will not compost that pumpkin. Step #1 then, break it down. Very few recipes call for huge hunks of pumpkin and as I already made clear, my husband doesn’t really like straight pumpkin anyway so it all has to be converted to puree. Easy enough to do. It now equals eight cups. By day’s end, I will have used every last plop of the stuff and we will have some ready-made food in our freezer. I just have to focus and get it done.

1 Cup

Pumpkin Waffles
This is a recipe from Smitten Kitchen. It didn't use a ton of pumpkin, but as waffles go, the recipe incorporated quite a lot of real food. This is the local flour I buy most often.

I think it works well as whole wheat pastry flour.

Let's be honest, waffles can be a hassle due to the various bowls for wet ingredients, dry ingredients, and then the egg white whipping. I'm really not trying to show off here, but I'm just going to say that having two mixing bowls for your Kitchen Aid mixer is slick. This 220 voltage model I bought to bring to Tunisia just came with two bowls or I would never have made that choice. For this sort of preparation and for double batches that would overwhelm one bowl, it's so convenient.

Now, we have about 10 individually frozen waffles in the freezer.

4 Cups
This recipe is the winner of the most pumpkin use award. The base recipe is my Homecoming Muffins, simply substituting pumpkin for the grated vegetables. I intentionally underbaked them because I wanted them to be custardy, almost like bread pudding. It worked. We have a dozen muffins and two small loaves of bread in the freezer.

3 Cups
Black Bean Pumpkin Soup
This is also from Smitten Kitchen. Hey, she's been in my shoes. The recipe actually called for over 4 cups of puree and I only had three. Good problem. I didn't have any black beans, but I had a little package of tiny beans/peas I bought last spring in Umbria. I don't know what they all are, but some of them are black eyed peas. They have such an earthy flavor. They actually kind of taste like dirt, but most people don't think that is a nice taste so I'll stick with earthy. I had to cook them before I could assemble the soup.

And there it is. 2 quarts of soup in the freezer. Turns out I misread the soup recipe and it was 4 1/2 cups of beans it called for and only 1 1/2 cups of pumpkin so at the end of the day, I still had 1 1/2 cups of puree left. But I've got some nice items in my frozen pantry and I can sleep well tonight knowing I gave it my best shot.

Pumpkin Cashew Cheese Dip

2011-11-04T11:28:00.000-07:00

Remember that ginormous pumpkin I stuffed and baked last Sunday? Wow, that was a lot of pumpkin. After the dinner guests took their small slivers (My husband: "No pumpkin for me, I'll just have some stuffing.") and I gave a huge hunk to our hostess, I still took this much home.

We ate the stuffing with a chicken dish on Monday and I cut, peeled, and refrigerated the rest of the pumpkin. Then I got really busy and couldn't cook much for a couple of nights. Finally, on Thursday, I needed to bring an appetizer to my book club and found a recipe for something called cashew cheese. This is actually a vegan recipe that contains absolutely no dairy and is foundationally built upon pumpkin. Yea, that's good for me.
I couldn't find raw cashews in Tunis, but I had blanched almonds and gave those a try. I don't know what cashew cheese is meant to taste like, but this made an interesting pumpkin spice flavored dip, slightly sweet, with a little kicky heat from some cayenne. Served with baguette slices brushed with olive oil and rosemary, slices of fresh apples, and some real cheese, it was nice. The almonds didn't completely break down so my dip had some chopped nuts that needed further chewing, It was fine.

This is REAL cheese my friend, Lauren, just brought from The Hague.

The first new lemon of the season.

Nut Confections

2011-11-03T22:32:00.000-07:00

My friend, Susan, picked up these fantastic, as in "of one's fantasy", nut confections here in Tunis. As a bonus, they are also delicious, though I wasn't brave enough to bite into the pineapple.

Rethink Candied Yams!

2011-11-02T11:35:00.000-07:00

Why is it so challenging sometimes to just try a completely new recipe? I consider myself to be an adventurous eater, but then I’m sometimes surprised at the recipes I just don’t try. What is the worst that can happen? I did try this, though, and I was rewarded. I’ve been a little off cauliflower since I moved from Kathmandu where I think I ate cauliflower every single day for five years. Yet I tried this and loved it. We had it with crispy, caramelized roast chicken and baked potatoes with bacon, chives, and crème fraiche. The salty, peppery, slightly sweet, nutty combination was a great companion to the meal. I think it could work the same for a roast turkey. Consider it.

Roasted Cauliflower with Date Syrup

from Bon Appetit, October 2011, pg. 24

1 head of cauliflower (about 2 lbs.) cored and broken into flowerets

2 Tbsp olive oil, plus more for drizzling

Sea Salt and freshly ground pepper

¼ cup tahini

2 Tbsp. (or more) date syrup, maple syrup, or honey

2 tsp. (or more) lemon juice

Sea salt

Preheat oven to 400 to 500 degrees. Place cauliflower, olive oil, and salt and pepper in a plastic storage bag and shake to coat. Roast, until browned and tender, about 30 minutes.

Transfer to a mixing bowl. Drizzle with tahini, syrup or honey, and lemon juice. Adjust seasoning with the addition of salt and pepper. Turn out to a serving plate and drizzle with more olive oil and lemon juice, if desired.

Pumpkin Stuffed with Everything Good

2011-10-30T09:30:00.000-07:00

Do you think it’s fun having a Halloween birthday or are childhood birthday memories overshadowed by memories of tummy aches from birthday cake and then too much Halloween candy? And is your birthday party always dress-up?

Today is our friend Paula’s birthday. Yes, there will be cake, but we’re also having lots of good adult food featuring a stuffed, baked pumpkin, recipe by Dorie Greenspan. The title of this piece is actually the title Dorie gave to the recipe. Let’s see if you agree with the “everything good” list:

Good quality French bread
2-3 types of good cheese
Garlic
Crispy bacon
Cream
Fresh chives and thyme

Any quibbles?

If you make this, and you should, you should have a friend who’s handy in the kitchen help you. I had my Mr. What’s Next at my right hand or it would have taken me much longer to assemble this. The thing that really slowed me down was hand-cubing at least 12 cups of fairly tough crusted bread without cutting a finger… again.

The skin is green, but the flesh is electric orange.

The other part that is always a little physical is cutting into a whole, large pumpkin without severing an appendage. Allan did that part. Feared medical emergencies aside, this is a really nice comfort dish, perfect for today as it has been raining torrentially since about midnight last night. And that would be the great part about having a Halloween birthday. Atmosphere.

By the way, KS is planning to serve this at her Thanksgiving feast this year so if you are lucky enough to get one of those golden tickets, act surprised.

New Favorite Thing

2011-10-29T09:53:00.000-07:00

          Here is something I picked up when I was in the US as basically a novelty item. To be totally truthful, I really liked the jar and I assumed whatever tomato vinegar was could be replaced with many other mixtures if I didn't like it.
          Continuing with my process of eating our way through the refrigerator/freezer, I began with a package of ground beef whose celophane wrap had been punctured. Mmmm, salivating already? The vegetable bin produced some nice brown onions, limp spring onions, garlic, and some green/yellowing cilantro. Undaunted, I composted the spring onions, browned the meat, sauteed the onions and garlic and put it back together. Plain. I then added a couple of teaspoons of smoky paprika chipotle seasoning I had brought over on a previous trip. Now we were getting somewhere, but it was a little heavy. Try a few shakes of this new tomato vinegar and wow, we've got zip! It's got the kick of ketchup without the sugar and goo. We then had a Friday night dinner that was worthy of two each of the white corn tortillas I had smuggled back in my suitcase. And the cilantro stood up just fine, too.
          But I don't know how to get any more or how to make it myself (she whined).

Tex-Med Stew

2011-10-28T07:00:00.000-07:00

This is a really fabulous stew recipe found in the pages of Sunset magazine, October 2011. It has the comforting base of a delicious chicken soup with Latin spicing, but then takes a surprising twist with the addition of briny olives and a little citrus. Since I am spoiled for choice of olives here in Tunisia, I chose our tiniest black olives that have been cured with red chilies and chunks of preserved lemon. The lemony, salty, heat this blend contributed made the soup, in my opinion. The recipe calls for pimiento-stuffed green olives and some orange zest and that would be good too, but not as good. Sorry.

This soup was in a section of the magazine featuring beer pairings. For my friend P, they suggested Gordon Biersch Blonde Bock with this soup. Anything you can get your hands on in Prague?

If you’re within driving distance of my house in Tunis and want me to spot you ½ cup of quinoa, just let me know. I’ve got lots.

Chicken, Quinoa, and Green-Olive Stew

4 cups homemade chicken stock

2 lbs. boned, skinned chicken thighs

2 Tbs. extra-virgin olive oil

1 large white onion, finely chopped

½ tsp. salt

1 tsp. each: ground cumin, ground coriander, and dried oregano (preferably Mexican)

3 garlic cloves, minced

½ tsp. each: ancho chile powder and cayenne

1 cup chopped ripe plum tomatoes (about 2 large) or fire-roasted diced canned tomatoes

2 tsp. orange zest

½ cup quinoa

1 cup cooked chickpeas (garbanzos), rinsed if canned

1 cup pimiento-stuffed small green olives

1. Bring broth to a simmer in a large, heavy-bottomed pot over medium-high heat. Add chicken and lower heat to a simmer. Cook chicken, covered, 15-20 minutes or until cooked through; transfer to a plate. Pour broth into a large bowl and set aside. Wipe out pot.

2. Add oil, onion, and salt to pot and cook over medium heat until onion softens and is starting to brown, about 10 minutes.

3. Stir in cumin, coriander, oregano, and garlic; cook 2 minutes. Add ancho chile powder, cayenne, chopped tomatoes, reserved broth, orange zest, and quinoa. Reduce heat and simmer, covered, until a white ring appears around each quinoa seed, 10-15 minutes. Meanwhile, shred chicken.

4. Add shredded chicken, chickpeas, and olives and heat through.

Serves 4-6

Homecoming Muffins

2011-10-27T11:26:00.000-07:00

I’m home in Tunis and happy to be here. I’m happy to be anywhere really that’s not an airplane, but really happy that it’s here. I’m so, so blessed to have two homes that I love.

Settling back in, I begin with an inventory of the kitchen. Our fridge broke the day before I left for the US and poor Allan had his hands full with transferring everything into a much less capacious model. He got everything generally in the right place, but efficiency wise, it is not a workable chilled pantry yet.

It seemed like a good idea to me that rather than spend a bunch of time organizing the food we should just use up a lot of the food and then reorganize as we restock. I wanted to make some ultra healthy muffins anyway, like a meal in a paper cup, so here was was my opportunity. I like this recipe because it allows me to use up 2 cups of shredded vegetables (4 because I doubled it) and also some muesli we needed to finish.

Makes about 12 muffins

Ingredients

1 cup all-purpose flour

1/2 cup whole-wheat flour

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon cinnamon

1 1/2 teaspoons crystallized ginger, finely chopped

1/4 teaspoon ground cloves

1/4 teaspoon salt

2/3 cup muesli

2 large eggs

3/4 cup packed brown sugar

1/2 cup oil (safflower, canola, or olive)

2 cups (firmly packed) grated vegetables (zucchini, carrots, or beets)--use largest holes on box grater

1/2 cup raisins (optional)

Procedure

Preheat the oven to 350°.

In a small bowl, combine the flour, baking soda, spices, and muesli. Whisk well to blend.

In a mixing bowl beat the eggs, sugar and oil for 2 to 3 minutes or until very smooth. Add the grated vegetables and beat just until smooth. Add the dry ingredients and optional raisins and beat until completely moistened.

Scrape the batter into greased and floured (or paper cup-lined) muffin tins, filling each cup 3/4 full. Bake 20-25 minutes, until cake tester inserted in center comes out clean. Cool in the pan on a rack for 5 minutes. Unmold onto the rack. Cool completely and wrap airtight.

Mr. Ho's/ Hoe’s Buns

2011-10-24T11:35:00.000-07:00

Several times I have been up at night, jet-lagged as the rest of my family sleeps, and I have thought how nice it would be to make a pan of cinnamon rolls for them to wake up to. But I’ve never had a trustworthy recipe at hand or the where-with-all to do any research and the moment passed.

I have some really happy memories related to cinnamon rolls. When I was a girl, my mom used to buy some packaged cinnamon rolls, the kind you whack on the counter to open. You just had to pull the preformed dough from the package, bake them off in a pan, and then drizzle the hot rolls with the provided frosting packet. Even a girl of 8 or 9 could successfully make these. I can picture one summer afternoon thunderstorm that drove my dad in from the field. We all sat in front of the enormous picture window in our kitchen, watching the storm, and eating the warm buns while my parents had coffee.

I also, more recently, remember a disgusting cinnamon roll that I bought at a Cinnabon in the Abu Dhabi airport at about 1:00 AM. It wasn’t even food, it was just a lump of every form of caloric trickery man has yet discovered. I ate some of it and then truly thought I was going to throw up. What had I expected? Mother’s love, I guess, but it didn’t exist at Cinnabon.

A recent edition of the Singapore American School’s alumni magazine, SAS Journeys, printed a recipe for a cinnamon bun that does bring me happy associations. The American school had an excellent cafeteria run by the famous Ho/Hoe brothers (I think that one of them may spell his name Ho and the other Hoe so take your pick). They made many delicious short order Asian dishes and a few expat favorites like roast turkey and cinnamon rolls. I remember eating these, on occasion, on a super thin paper plate with a rickety plastic fork that could hardly take on these chewy, gooey masses. They were good, though, and when I examined the recipe, I thought, Good on you, Mr. Ho/Hoe. They’re actually pretty healthy, if you were going to eat a cinnamon roll anyway.

I’ll print the recipe as it came and then I will make some comments.

Ingredients

Buns

3 cups flour

½ cup whoemeal flour

1 ½ cups water

1 Tbs yeast

¼ cup olive oil

½ cup sugar

2 eggs

1 tsp. salt

Cinnamon Sugar

5 Tbs sugar

2 tsp. cinnamon

Frosting

4 Tbs butter

2 cups powdered sugar

1 tsp. vanilla

¼ cup milk

Directions

1. Combine half the flour, whole meal flour, water, and yeast in a mixer and stir into dough for 5 minutes. Let the dough rest for 30 minutes.

2. Add the remaining dough ingredients (olive oil, sugar, eggs, and salt) into the dough mixture. Stir about 10 minutes or until dough is smooth.

3. Knead the dough and form into a ball. Cover with a cloth and let dough rise for 45 minutes.

4. On a lightly floured surface, roll dough into a 2.5 inch thick rectangle. Sprinkle with cinnamon sugar.

5. Cut dough into 1.5 inch wide strips. Roll each strip into 3-inch circles and place in baking pan with space between buns.

6. Let buns rise for 45 minutes.

7. Bake at 375 degrees F for 15 minutes. Remove cinnamon buns from oven and cool completely.

8. Whip frosting ingredients together until smooth, adding small amounts of extra milk as necessary to make a spreadable consistency. Frost cooled cinnamon buns.

Yield: Makes about 20 buns

Comments

Step 2: I needed to add significantly more flour than this to form a ball. I was careful to maintain the stickiest dough I thought I could still work with.

Step 3: You want to create dough that is as soft as a baby’s bottom. Rather than leave it to rise on a countertop covered by a towel, I oiled a bowl with olive oil, rolled the dough around in the oil and let it rise, covered by plastic wrap, in a warm place.

Step 4: I think the 2.5 inch thick rectangle is a misprint. Roll the dough, as evenly as possible, into a 12” x 14” rectangle. Notice there is no butter bath slathered onto the dough before sprinkling the cinnamon/sugar mixture. You could add it here if you want to, but the absence of the butter makes these rolls distinctive.

Step 5: This is an interesting way to go about forming the rolls. I used my usual method of rolling the dough and filling into a consistently thick log and then cut it at 1.5 inch intervals. I gently pressed each roll in the pan and they were touching slightly at this point. By the way, butter the pan first!

Step 7: The chewy texture of this dough trades on two things: the ultra-soft olive oil dough and slight under-baking. Start with the recommended 15-minute bake. Take the pan out of the oven and pry one roll out. If the dough is still gooey, you’ve got to give them another five minutes and then try it again. The color will only have a hue of brown.

Yield: My batch made 12-15 rolls

Birthday Brunch and Mummified Turkey

2011-10-23T20:11:00.000-07:00

Glorious, sunny day on Lummi Island. Our dearest friends, Dan and Sue, along with their son, Jordan, came over on the ferry for brunch at the Beach Store Cafe. We're making plans for when Jordan comes to Tunis with Gabe and Anton in December and we all go to Europe for a couple of weeks. I think we decided on a pretty good trip concept today. Danny is turning 50 this week and what a great treat to be here to give him a huge hug in person.

Gabe really wanted to make an early Thanksgiving meal together. He and Anton are technically dual Canadian/American citizens so we can say we're splitting the difference between the Canadian/American Thanksgivings. Actually, we don't even need an excuse.
We tried a process from the November Martha Stewart. It was a totally new way to cook a turkey for me, but I think it was an excellent method and kind of fun and creepy wrapping the turkey in a shroud. Here's how it went:
1. Melt two sticks of butter in a bowl and mix with 2 cups dry white wine.
2. Wash turkey inside and out. Remove giblets and pat dry.
3. Rub bird with 4 tablespoons softened butter and generously salt and pepper inside and out.
4. Soak a sheet of cheesecloth in the butter/wine mixture. Remove, squeezing gently into bowl; reserve butter mixture.

5. Wrap soaked cheesecloth around the turkey, breast side up.

6. Roast for 30 minutes at 425 degrees.

7. Reduce heat to 350 degrees and baste every 30 minutes with more butter/wine mixture.
8. When butter/wine mixture is finished, remove cheesecloth and discard. Continue roasting until juices run clear and internal temperature reaches 180 degrees F.

9. Remove from oven and tent with foil to allow juices to settle in the bird before serving.

More on Pumpkin Beer

2011-10-23T08:47:00.000-07:00

My friend, Patrick, wanted to know more about the pumpkin beer I mentioned in my last post. This is brewed by Buffalo Bill's Brewery. The label says it is bottled and brewed by Independent Brewers United in Seattle, Portland, and Berkeley for Buffalo Bill's Brewery in Hayward CA. So what would you call that, a 2/3 Northwest micro-brew? Have a look at Patrick's blog to see what he has been sipping in Prague and Munich this month.

Pumpkins Are a Girl Thing?

2011-10-21T12:50:00.000-07:00

Whatcom County could not have put on a more welcoming face for me to return to last week. Bright, crisp, autumn days, brilliantly colored tree leaves, townspeople living intentional, artful days, and everywhere, everywhere piles of pumpkins. No longer are there just the huge orange carving pumpkins, but now there are choices of artisanal whites and crimson oranges.

My plane landed one week ago at midnight and on the way home, my sons and I stopped in at our local Haggen store, open 24 hours, to pick up some kind of snack. Turned out to be the remnants of that day’s sushi operation, which was just fine. A cursory sweep through the store brought me to the check-out stand, arms loaded with the sushi, a six-pack of pumpkin microbrew beer, a pumpkin scented candle, and a Martha Stewart magazine that was screaming pumpkin everything. I felt incredibly happy.

The week has been nonstop familiarity bliss. I do love this city and I haven’t been here in the fall for over 15 years. That must explain why all of my sensory memories are around me and my two darling preschoolers enjoying walks and other rambling outings, seasonal cooking projects, and fall gardening. I am magnetically attracted to the garden shops this week, longing to spend a Saturday cleaning the beds for winter and planting a few new edibles: fruit or nut trees or perhaps some grapes, and definitely some bulbs. I resisted, but it was difficult.

Gabe and I were at Starbucks yesterday morning, early, and heard the woman behind us blurt out this order, “I’ll have a nonfat, decaf, pumpkin latte (I think there were several more directives, but I can’t even think what they would be) and a pumpkin scone.” As we walked out of the store I commented that her order was just basically pumpkin vehicles. She didn’t even want the caffeine in the coffee. Gabe then unloaded the observation he had previously kept to himself which was that women are crazy about pumpkins. He claims that from the first day that October hits, every woman he sees oozes with pumpkin loving mania, stringing up little jack-o-lantern lights in her work space, keeping a constant pumpkin drink at hand, making cute orange cookies and cupcakes. He felt almost suffocated by it and later in the day his brother agreed.

Now I know that there are men who also love pumpkins, particularly if they grow them or especially if the carving of them involves the use of power tools. But to take a little goo out of this autumnal blog there will be no gratuitous pictures of pumpkins, just the beginnings of some blustery weather on a Lummi Island afternoon. But I'm wondering, is it possible to die of pumpkin candle asphyxiation in a poorly ventilated room?

What Do I Want to Say?

2011-10-09T00:36:00.000-07:00

I teach writing to children and I tell them that one of the ways we get new learning in life is through writing. I know that to be true for myself. It’s challenging for me to explain to 5^th graders how they will learn as they write because we always think of writing as an output and not an intake. But I know as they write more they will start to experience it. Often, you learn what it is you want to say by writing about it.

What do I want to say today? I’m going home to Washington State in a week, which makes my mind and emotions race a little. If you don’t know me yet, I live and work in Tunis, Tunisia and if you have read my postings, you may have noticed that I write about my present or my far past, my beautiful childhood on a farm in Southern Colorado, but I only write about life on our farm on Lummi Island in Washington State when I’m there. It’s because I need to have a temporary block on that attachment when I’m in Tunisia. My sweet friend S and I talked about that this past week. She is able to keep the Northwest world active in her life when she is overseas, checking newspapers, magazines, and blogs. Not me. I read about other things, but that is all too tender for me. Now, I’m suddenly going at a time out of sequence (not an official holiday) and I’m letting myself imagine exquisite things like autumn: waking up in a chilly house and making a fire in the fireplace, some windy, rainy, soggy-leaf-blowing weather. I’m relishing running errands in our dear town of Bellingham that I know every corner of. Mostly though, I’m thinking of going to meet with my doctor, which is why I’m going: for a little procedure. This doctor’s office has hand sanitizer pumps every five feet and sometimes the receptionist will slip and call me “Hon” even though she's maybe 20 years younger than me. Maybe best of all is that he speaks English and I can have an in-depth conversation with him about my health and what we are going to do and I think I can trust him to handle it. That sense of assurance and sterility are things I really want right now.

I won’t have time to take in my larger family or American attachments. If I could, I would go down to Colorado and have a few great days visiting with my parents who in their early 80s are still having adventures and definitely keeping a sense of humor. I really miss them. I didn’t get enough time with them last summer and I’m carrying that loss throughout this year. I wish I could also see all of my siblings. After we suddenly lost our brother over a year ago, I see more clearly the place we’ve had in each other’s lives and I think we may become closer and not more distant as we age. My mom and dad are down working on our farm, getting it ready to plant according to the direction of the federal government in a farm subsidy plan. I know that some of it will be in alfalfa and some will be in wild flowers, which I hope is an attempt to help rejuvenate the honeybee population in the world. My brothers who live in Colorado have been coming down on their weekends to work beside my dad and I am envious. I wish I could go, too. My brother Erik took this picture last weekend.

This could have been a picture of my dad 50 years ago. He loves to do challenging work, still, and I think he might believe that this program could just be the way that he and my mom can keep the farm for our family. It would be wonderful if it happens that way, but we all want them to get what they need from it.

Did I figure out what I want to say? I guess I’m not brave enough to actually point out some of my fears about how much longer these people and places will be there for me to see. By the time I have a lifestyle where I can have some choices about my time, they might be gone. I know I will have regrets and I don’t know what to do about that. But again, I can’t go right now and I just hope everything can stay in place until I can get back there the next time.

An Outing to Douga

2011-10-02T12:42:00.000-07:00

We really needed to get out of our routine this weekend, get into the countryside, feel some earth and rocks. Douga was the perfect destination. Theoretically less than 2 hours southwest of Tunis, Douga is a significant ancient archaeological site. I say theoretically because we can never seem to find our way out of Tunis to the A-3 highway that leads straight to this ruin. We even called two friends before leaving, one a life-long resident of Tunis, and both of them were sketchy about the directions. So once again, we inched our way along the map, trying to decide if the phonetic Arabic names on signs might be the Engish spelled names on the map. It was all good, however. We had a tank full of gas and a wonderful picnic lunch and it didn’t exactly matter if we ever actually got there or not.

Did you catch the “once again”? Ya, this isn’t our first attempt at Douga. We tried it a little over a year ago when our sons were visiting from the US. We had the day off of school because of the Aid holiday and decided to make the daytrip to Douga. It never crossed our minds that the site would be closed for the holiday, which it was, but after the many hours of backroad sidewinding it took us to get there, we weren’t leaving without at least a little peek. The four of us scaled a sandstone hillside and had about 30 seconds of a view of the remarkably well-preserved theater when a guard blew a whistle at us and began chase. We ran like middle-schoolers back down the hillside to our car and screeched away. And that was our memory of Douga.

It’s a good thing we didn’t see the entirety of this site during that preliminary glimpse or we would have been too depressed. This is a large ruin with many intriguing carvings, sculptures, and mosaics. The most impressive part, however, are the soaring pillars framing the spectacular Tunisian farmlands. All day, our breath was taken away by the rich soiled fields in various states of cultivation all over the countryside. “The breadbasket of the Roman civilization” is not hyperbole. Tunisia is blessed with ongoing plots of farmland and they know well how to sustain it and get perfect yields from it.

So it was a healing day. We got reconnected with our host country, with the land that grows our healthy food, and enjoyed some warm fall sunshine. After seven hours of driving… do the math… we were finally getting back into town when Kaye Syrah called to spontaneously invite us to a home cooked dinner. Great life, right?

The Blessed Event

2011-10-02T10:04:00.000-07:00

We were rushing out our front gate Saturday morning when our gardener caught us and exclaimed, in his way, petite tortoise! Whaaa?? Remember my posting Tortoise Ranch where I speculated what might come of our indigenous gramps tortoise meeting the cute, younger girl we introduced? Well, babies have appeared. We don't know exactly how many we have yet. We think they have just emerged from their egg sacs, still bearing the evidence of their embryonic relationship to that nutritious capsule.

They are so tiny.

Allan can't stop poking through the mature aloa plant where they have made their habitat trying to assess how many we have. So far, we have seen only two at any one time and we can't know yet if we're seeing the same two or different combinations. I am hoping it is two. Two sounds like a responsible number. Allan is hoping for more like ten. I'm not sure why. So here they are: our first tortoise family photo.

Don't they look happy?

Les Frites

2011-09-29T22:29:00.000-07:00

We recently discovered how to make a pretty good French fry. It wasn’t an explicit goal. I usually don’t go looking for ways to deep fry any foods, less because of the health detractions and more because they make a mess out of my pans and stove top. But one Saturday, my husband wanted to try the beef from a different butcher at the market and I thought I would give our favorite steak au poivre a try. Dorie Greenspan has a nice recipe in Around My French Table with the accompanying recipe for the requisite accompanying frites. When I read it through, it sounded doable and the result was very satisfying. Here’s how it goes:

1. Wash potatoes and pat dry. We leave the skins on, but if you peel them, wash and dry them at that point.

2. Slice into French fry slices. The thinner the slices, the crispier the French-fry. If you like a more tender potato inside, make them thicker.

3. Fry potatoes in peanut or canola oil at fairly high heat just until they are blanched, meaning softened on the inside, but not yet browned. Keep batches small so as not to crowd the pan. Drain on paper towels. Save your oil. Cool the blanched potatoes or even put them in the refrigerator to finish at a later time.

4. Finally, fry the cooled potatoes again at high heat until browned to your liking.

5. Season with an excellent quality salt, like fleur de sel. Since the salt will sit on top of the food, this is a time to use the best salt you can find.

Awakening the Appetite

2011-09-17T04:29:00.000-07:00

Nothing tastes particularly good. Unmemorable food experiences from the past week blur in my mind with me numbly putting hand to mouth, chewing, swallowing, and walking away. My two breakfast eggs were eaten, more like inserted into my mouth, while dressing for work. They were followed by multi-vitamins, which tasted no different from the eggs. My blasé lunch salad was eaten on my feet while supervising children. Salad eaten- back to work. Dinner with Allan has consisted of a couple of elemental ingredients: bread/ham or bread/eggs and when the bread ran out, and our shop was closed for the day, we were saved by some take away foods from our charcuterie.

I can’t decide what to eat. I think I’m partially suffering from decision fatigue, written about by my wise counsel Kaye Syrah. With the start of school, my creative juices are just about tapped out by the time I get home. Mostly though, I know that I’m lovesick. Love is so surprisingly visceral and when our boys left for the US on Tuesday, back to university, the oxygen left our house and an actual physical ache overcame my body, like the way you feel for several days after you’ve had the flu: tender, tired, no appetite.

We went to the market this morning because we need food. We got basics: carrots, zucchini, onions. The produce looked fine, but didn’t really give me any thoughts. Then I tracked back to the fresh herb sellers I had passed at the entrance. I stood for a moment and let the mint and dill and cilantro smells actually enter my senses and my memory.

Then I knew what I wanted: Ranch Dressing. Yep. But Ranch Dressing is a gateway food and it can lead to salad, and baked potatoes, and steak, and some Latin inspired foods, too. Then I’m on an appetite path again and Allan and I will have a nice dinner tonight while we remember how we live when it’s just the two of us.

Fresh Herb Ranch Dressing

2 cup mayonnaise

1 cup crème fraiche

1tsp. minced fresh chives

1tsp. minced fresh parsley

1tsp. minced fresh dill

½ tsp. minced garlic

½ tsp. minced onion

¼ tsp. sea salt

¼ tsp. freshly ground black pepper

Lemon juice to taste

Blend all ingredients in a sealable bowl. Refrigerate for at least 30 minutes. Adjust ingredients as desired. Halve all ingredients for a smaller batch.

More Fun with Canning Jars

2011-09-11T10:26:00.000-07:00

This was fun to do for a dinner party this weekend. These are a couple of a dozen individual cheesecakes baked in various canning jars.

They are real cheese cakes, containing not just cream cheese, but ½ pound of Neufchatel along with crème fraiche. The topping is roasted nectarines with some lemon basil and thyme for an herby infusion.

For those of us no longer living in graham cracker land, this brand of cookies made an acceptable substitute.

You should take into account, if you make these, that you and your guests will be eating a storage container full of rich dessert, but most of the guests were able to make peace with it.

I won’t even pretend to rewrite this recipe. It is from the blog Chez Pim and she has nicely broken down the steps in the recipe to walk you through it.

Simply Onions

2011-09-11T00:29:00.000-07:00

This seasonal food lifestyle continues to point out the naïve spots in my thinking about food production. I am fully prepared for greens, and citrus, and artichokes to come and go, but I guess I did always think that onions were perennial. Well guess what? There is also an onion season, when they are fantastic, and then there is an off-season when they are dodgy or completely unavailable. Now is the season and they are firm and potent.

I am a little nutty about collecting canning jars right now. I used precious suitcase space to bring some back from the US this summer and when I was in Florence last weekend and saw an amazing selection at a grocery store, I filled our insulated wine bags with empty jars instead of the wine I had been instructed to purchase. Look how cute they are? Just dream of what could be put away in the baby food and milk bottle sizes. I do.

Canning and preserving food is a hip topic in the food world these days. Here’s an inspiring blog: Saving the Season, with a soon to be published book. I read this and then think, yes, I’m going to the market right this minute and I’m going to spend the rest of the day processing whatever looks great. But then we don’t actually need to stock up our pantry like we’re “preppers” and I might like to do one or two other things in a day besides canning food. I think I’m more in line with the Italian style of when you are already cooking and you’ve got some extra, pop it into a jar or two to have again in the not too far off future.

Giorgio Locatelli recommends putting some of these onions in jars as a future flavor cache. The directions are my paraphrase.

Balsamic Onions

1. Peel a batch of tiny onions, leaving the stem intact.

2. Combine equal parts sherry vinegar and white wine (begin with 250 ml of each and adjust if you need more to cover your onions).

3. Add onions and parboil until just tender.

4. Strain onions from liquid, allow to cool at room temperature and remove the outer layer.

5. In a heavy bottomed pan, large enough to hold the onions. Add onions, sprinkle with enough brown sugar to get some on all of the onions and then gently toss over medium heat until the sugar melts, caramelizes slightly, and covers the onions.

6. Add balsamic vinegar to cover the onions and simmer briefly.

7. The onions are ready to eat at this point or you can put them in sterilized jars, making sure to cover all onions with vinegar. Cap the jars with sealable lids and process in a water bath. When jars have cooled, make sure the lid is fully sealed before putting them in on a dark shelf for storage. If a jar isn’t sealed, either reprocess with a new lid or put in the refrigerator to eat within two weeks. The flavor will improve with time, but eat within 6 months.

Teacher's New Year’s Resolution, Part 2

2011-08-30T08:28:00.001-07:00

I’m still motivated by these last days before beginning the school year to set some improvement goals. Cleaning out, reducing, and simplifying are fundamental. Setting some agreements about how things will be acquired in the months to come is another good conversation I am having with myself and with my family. But my goodness, why the introspection? I suffered this morning from a profound failing that goes against my moral structure. Do you remember the tour of the Frip over a week ago showcasing extra large photos of produce at what I said were cheaper prices than one can get at other markets in town? Well, maybe I was feeling a little desperate about the difficult access to stores at the moment and wanted to have lots of food on hand or maybe I just got greedy, but we bought way too many vegetables right as I was going into a busy week where I didn’t have much time to cook. The result was that this morning, I had to contribute multiple bags and heads of vegetables to our compost bin and to the tortoises. I really hate behaving like that.

Following my recent pattern of making personal life applications from other cultures’ religions, I was thinking about the High Holiday of Rosh Hashanah that is ending today. I’m no expert in Judaism, but being the beginning of the Jewish new year, I thought there was a component that addressed trying to live a better life in the next year. Isn’t that the symbolism behind eating an apple dipped in honey, to live a sweeter life? In fact, when I did a little reading I found the following quote: “We leave our old shortcomings behind us, thus starting the new year with a clean slate.” (Do I really need to cite this?) But see, everyone needs to have some atonement for failings and the opportunity to “do better”. So once again, I am making a commitment to not buy too many vegetables that I potentially won’t have time to process and cook.

This might be a bad segue, but I would like to contribute something redeeming from this posting besides a vegetal confession so I turn to bagels. While the bagel was invented in Eastern Europe, when Jews migrated to the United States in the 1800s, some of them brought a strong craving for the bagels they had left behind and were instrumental in establishing them in American cuisine. I have spent the past two days nurturing a small batch of bagels at my house and they turned out pretty great. The recipe is not hard, but because of the crucial slow fermentation stage, you have to begin making them the day before you want to eat them. If you don’t allow for the overnight rise in the refrigerator, you will basically have bread bagels rather than the chewy kind you are hankering for. This is from The Bread Baker’s Apprentice by Peter Reinhart.

Sponge

1 teaspoon instant yeast

4 cups unbleached high-gluten or bread flour

2 ½ cups water, at room temperature

To make the sponge, stir the yeast into the flour in a 4-quart mixing bowl. Add the water, whisking or stirring only until it forms a smooth, sticky batter (like pancake batter). Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and leave at room temperature for approximately 2 hours, or until the mixture becomes very foamy and bubbly. It should swell to nearly double in size and collapse when the bowl is tapped on the countertop.

Dough

½ teaspoon instant yeast

3 ¾ cups unbleached high-gluten or bread flour

2 ¾ teaspoons salt

2 teaspoons malt powder or

1 tablespoon dark or light malt syrup, honey, or brown sugar

To make the dough, in the same mixing bowl (or in the bowl of an electric mixer),

add the additional yeast to the sponge and stir. Then add 3 cups of the flour and

all of the salt and malt. Stir (or mix on low speed with the dough hook) until the

ingredients form a ball, slowly working in the remaining ¾ cup flour to stiffen the

dough.

Transfer the dough to the counter and knead for at least 10 minutes (or for 6

minutes by machine). The dough should be firm, stiffer than French bread

dough, but still pliable and smooth. There should be no raw flour- all the

ingredients should be hydrated. The dough should pass the windowpane test and

of water and continue kneading. If the dough seems tacky or sticky, add more

flour to achieve the stiffness required. The kneaded dough should feel satiny and

pliable but not be tacky.

Immediately divide the dough into 4 ½ -ounce pieces for standard bagels. or

smaller if desired. Form the pieces into rolls.

Cover the rolls with a damp towel and allow them to rest for approximately 20

minutes.

Line 2 sheet pans with baking parchment and mist lightly with spray oil. Poke a

finger through the center of the ball of dough and stretch the dough into a bagel

shape.

Place each of the shaped pieces 2 inches apart on the pans. Mist or brush the

bagels very lightly with oil and cover each pan with plastic wrap. Let the pans sit

at room temperature for about 20 minutes.

Put the bagels, on pans, in the refrigerator until the next day.

The following day

Preheat the oven to 500 degrees F with the two racks set in the

middle of the oven. Bring a large, wide pot of water to boil and add 1 tablespoon

baking soda.

Remove the bagels from the refrigerator and gently drop about three bagel at a

time into the water. After 1 minute, flip them over and boil for another minute. If

you like very chewy bagels, you can extend the boiling to 2 minutes per side.

While the bagels are boiling, sprinkle the same parchment-lined sheet pans with

cornmeal or semolina flour. If you want to top the bagels with seeds or salt, do so

as soon as they come out of the water.

When all the bagels have been boiled, place the pans on the 2 middle shelves in

the oven. Bake for approximately 5 minutes, then rotate the pans, switching

shelves and giving the pans a 180-degree rotation. After the rotation, lower the

oven setting to 450 degrees F and continue baking for about 5 minutes or until the

bagels turn light golden brown. You may bake them darker if you prefer.

Remove the pans from the oven and let the bagels cool on a rack for 15 minutes

or longer before serving.

The Bread Baker’s Apprentice is the modern, classic work on how to make the kind of breads we are all constantly craving. If you’re interested in developing a little bread baking discipline, it is well worth the purchase.