Fennel and citrus salad and a new book by Beatrice Peltre

Putting chocolate behind us, (hey! Valentine’s day was just last week, did you forget already?) I’m looking forward to some serious palate cleansing. I’ve had this salad on my mind for weeks, and now that citrus season is in full swing, I finally got around to making it.

My craving for this salad was brought to a head during a recent book signing I attended for La Tartine Gourmande, the new book by beloved blogger Béatrice Peltre. I have been fortunate to get to know Béa a little—we both write for the Boston Globe and also share a favorite local woodsy walking place. Let me tell you, she is as lovely as her gorgeous, colorful photographs. In fact, if you are a blogger and an aspiring food photographer, you must add this book to your library. I literally lay awake most of the night after I brought the book home. Looking at the light-filled, drool-worthy pictures of her food, I was in turn acutely excited and inspired and then suicidally discouraged as a would-be photographer. No, I am not bi-polar, but that’s what happens when something really exhilarating comes along.

Béatrice Peltre has a Matisse-like sense of color and pattern that make you happy just looking at her photos. Her recipes are original, healthy, and reliable. In short: they work! They are imaginative! She brings her French sensibility to her recipes and a distinctive individuality to her style. You will certainly find many things you will want to cook to lift your spirits inside the cover. And even if you never cook anything from her book (which would be a terrible waste) you will certainly be cheered by the summery brightness on every page. One of the best ways to learn photography is to really study (and perhaps even copy as an exercise) photos you like. You can find her book here.

Chocolate pudding cake recipe: an easy Valentine’s Day dessert and a chocolate roundup

I tried to find out about the history of this old-fashioned dessert the old-fashioned way: online. (I bet you thought I went to the library, the one with the extensive section on the history of chocolate desserts.) According to unreliable internet sources, this chocolate cake that makes its own fudge sauce was invented in the early 1920s by Emelyn Battersby Hartridge when she was a student at Vassar College.

Okay, I got pretty excited that someone from my alma mater invented a dessert. Vassar students are a pretty brainy bunch, so you would expect that they would be out there inventing some genius scientific breakthrough device instead of fudge. But let’s put it in perspective. Chocolate is important, too. How could those smart-aleck inventors get through their experiments without their afternoon dose? We all need chocolate. Even those of us who squeaked by with a degree in French, and then went on to study French pastry. Perhaps it was not what my parents envisioned as they were paying the tuition bills. (Heads up, college boy, don’t even THINK of doing something like that.) The point is, chocolate is essential, especially on Valentine’s Day.

Frankly, I don’t really buy it that Emelyn could have invented this one in her dorm room. I’ve seen the dorm rooms. They’re kind of cool in an old-fashioned, Victorian way. In fact, the dorm Emelyn lived in was Victorian.  The rooms definitely didn’t have ovens. Never mind. Just make it. It is incredibly easy to do, and if the dorm rooms did have ovens, it would make sense that this chocolate pudding cake could have been invented in one.

And another thing. Emelyn would be scratching her head from the great beyond if you told her that her recipe is also vegan.

Chocolate pudding cake

Serves 4

When you bake this pudding, the cake part rises to the top, leaving a fudgey sauce that sinks to the bottom. The pudding puffs and bubbles in the oven and then sinks as it cools. Not to worry. The little crater in the center begs to be filled with vanilla ice cream, a mandatory addition to tame the intensity of the chocolate.  You may bake the pudding a few hours ahead of time and warm it in the microwave for 15 to 20 seconds. If you are making this for your valentine, save the extra desserts to celebrate twice, or spread the love and have a Valentine’s Day family dinner.

TOPPING:

1/4 cup sugar

1/4 cup Dutch-process unsweetened cocoa powder

In a small bowl, mix sugar and cocoa together until blended.

CAKE:

1 1/2 ounces (1 1/2 squares) unsweetened chocolate

2 tablespoons unsalted butter

1/2 cup flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

1/8 teaspoon salt

1/4 teaspoon cinnamon

1/2 cup sugar

1/4 cup milk

1/2 teaspoon finely grated orange rind

1 teaspoon vanilla

3/4 cup water

1 pint vanilla ice cream

1. Heat the oven to 375 degrees.

2. Melt the chocolate and butter in a heatproof bowl over hot but not boiling water. Alternatively, heat at 50 percent power in the microwave at 30 second intervals, stirring between each interval, until melted.

3. Whisk the flour, baking powder, salt, and cinnamon together in another bowl.

4. Stir the sugar, milk, orange rind, and vanilla into the bowl of melted butter and chocolate, until blended. Stir in the flour mixture, until blended. Divide the batter evenly among four (7- or 8-ounce) ramekins, using about 1/4 cup batter for each.

5. Sprinkle 3 tablespoons of the topping evenly over each ramekin. Pour 3 tablespoons water on top, and set the ramekins on a baking sheet. Bake for 25 minutes, or until top bubbles and puffs. Let rest for10 minutes. Serve while warm topped with a scoop of vanilla ice cream.

More chocolate recipes from this blog you might want to explore:

Chocolate whiskey truffles

Grab the menfolk early on Sunday: pear focaccia for breakfast

To see a gallery of photos from this post, click on the picture

I have made a lot of bread in my life. Thousands of loaves. I’m not kidding. Back in the days of yore, when I was relegated to the bakery, since ‘women can’t be line cooks’ (more on that saga some other time), I made forty to sixty loaves of bread a week. It adds up. Apparently, women could go down to the basement and tool around with less important tasks, such as tending to the staff of life and making French pastries (at least there was a beautiful view of a mountain stream from the window down there.) Hey, I also did all the bookkeeping, bill paying, scheduling, menu planning, and a whole lot of etcetera. Baking bread and pastry were kind of enjoyable sidelines.

Our “country kitchen” roadside restaurant produced loaves for sandwiches and toast and also offered them for sale to our customers at the front of the restaurant. These were old-fashioned American-style country loaves. There was no artisanal anything back then, and that included European style crusty loaves. Daniel Leader was at the forefront of the artisanal bread baking movement with his Bread Alone bakery down the road in Boiceville, New York, but that was later. You might have been able to find a sad, flabby baguette (not yet labeled as such, just “French bread”) in a market, but it was a gloomy day when you had to eat such a specimen with good wine and food made with care. Meanwhile, our customers were treated to “artisanal” vegetables grown in our large garden (in summer), local eggs, and homemade yogurt made from local milk, and our own version of artisanal bread.  In other words, we were hippies.

As the restaurant expanded year by year with more seating and better food, the background music was always our beautiful, wholesome bread—sesame whole wheat, “country” white, golden corn meal, sweet, eggy anise seed loaves, and onion dill bread. God help me, but if you ask me to make, smell, or eat any part of a loaf of onion dill bread ever, ever again, I’m not sure I can be responsible for my actions. But oh, how the customers loved their C.O.D. (cottage cheese onion dill). Enough about that.

We mixed the loaves in a bowl that would easily accommodate a family with small children. It had an enormous dough hook, which complained and whined insistently as it kneaded the dough. I developed strong biceps hauling that dough out of the bowl, flopping it onto the counter, and shaping it into loaves and rolls.

Maine shrimp and homemade cocktail sauce: a Northern winter delicacy

So, what delights of the season can you eat in mid-winter? In New England: nothing. Now that we finally have winter—hey, no complaints here about its lazy entrance—with snow and solidly frozen ground settling in, it’s time to step down to the root cellar for more celeriac and turnips, oh joy. But wait. I don’t have a root cellar. Carrots, parsnips, sweet potatoes, bolstered by kale and barley? Their novelty wears off by early December. With no trips to warmer climes in sight, we Northerners need a little boost of something special to tide us over until spring.

Enter the Maine shrimp. These tiny, delicate crustaceans are in season roughly from late December to early March, and they are well worth seeking out right now. This year’s season will be shorter and leaner than other years, making their consumption even sweeter. I toyed with making a Thai-inspired soup with rice noodles and plenty of chilies and ginger and lemon grass, but soup by the bucketful is already on the menu five days a week. It takes a while to peel enough of these babies to make a substantial pile of them to add to soup…. maybe another day, soon.

For the first shrimp of the season (which has been delayed as it is) I want to cook them in the Yankee spirit: plain and simple. Make a flavorful broth, throw in the shrimp for a nano-second, plunk them in ice water and voila! A feast! The super bowl members of the family should be elated to have a heap of these alongside the traditional chips and guacamole.

Winter appetites: “Spanish” onion soup recipe (with vegetarian option)

Winter ushers in predatory cravings: brawny flavors, thick, meaty stews, hunkering-down kind of food. Even the ‘that’s-so-seventies’ favorite, French onion soup, gets the juices flowing. No time for thin and delicate broths, no siree. I want the melty-cheesey goodness of that seventies’ cliché by the bowlful.

But after a solid month of feasting, one glance in the mirror speaks to me in no uncertain terms: I am not (and was never) the slender Alpine girl who eats dairy products with abandon and then rises at dawn to check on the cows in the barn. That’s the kind of life that supports the diet I am craving. City living does not. Sigh. But I found an alternative. In a book.

If you want to learn anything about cooking by using a book, take a copy of the Zuni Café Cookbook to bed. It will only take a few minutes before you will discover something you want to jump up and cook, right then and there, in the middle of the night. (And if that doesn’t do it, try reading Gabrielle Hamilton’s memoir Blood, Bones and Butter. But I digress, more on that in another post.) Luckily for us, the publishers of Judy Rodger’s book allowed her the space to write outrageously seductive recipes, and uncharacteristically for publishing houses, in great detail. A lot of them. And that my friends, is how you become a good cook. Details!

Winter vegetable pie recipe: a humble New Year’s feast

This recipe was published in the Boston Globe on 12/28/11  

The winter cometh. Finally. Not that I doubted it for a minute. But each day that passed without snow and freezing temperatures made me want to dance a little jig. If only I had the energy. Because though Christmas comes but once a year, and it is quite wonderful, it is also exhausting, is it not? I have been doing my darndest to stay in balance, to keep from eating and drinking just a tad too much of all that’s on offer: cookies and fruitcake and wine and Christmas dinner. So far, I’m not especially winning that battle. Now I want to eat something plain and simple. I am grateful to be staying home on New Year’s Eve to do just about nothing—maybe we’ll go out to a movie, and maybe we won’t. And maybe I’ll make a small version of this vegetable pie.

For the past fourteen years—I think it has been fourteen, but I lost count—I have gone to a friend’s house party in the mountains on New Year’s Eve. The house is a cavernous Adirondack style lodge on a lake designed by my friend to evoke the feeling of her childhood summers, but I reckon it is much grander in scale than the original. In any case, it accommodates a crowd, and we guests are appreciative of her efforts, since we are the beneficiaries, after all.

It started when our kids were little. We’d tuck them into bed after their mini feast of chicken nuggets (hey, they're Kaye's homemade and I’m not in charge of the menu here, I’m a guest!) and a snowman cake made from chocolate wafers and vanilla whipped cream. Once their cherubic eyes were shut fast, we’d start with a bit of champagne and caviar by the fire before we’d sit down to a feast of our own.

On the day of the Evening, a few of us brave the snow and ice, driving past tumbledown stone walls and the lovely woods (dark and deep) to keep our promises at the Hannaford supermarket. What can we forage from our list to fill the splendid table on this last night of the year?

Meanwhile, on this same day, the kids play games, indoors and out. And though they now tower over us, they still scream down snowy hills on giant Frisbees. Meanwhile again, the womenfolk who are so inclined cook and bake and work their fingers to the bone. Because now we have to feed not only ourselves, but those giants we spawned. And more than a few of their friends. Oh how naïve we were. By the time they’re in college they’re eating and drinking us under the table. You just can’t prepare yourself for that.

Buckwheat pancakes recipe (with a gluten-free option)

I first met buckwheat pancakes through my dear old friend Aunt Jemima. But her buckwheat mix was ditched somewhere along the line. So was her mammy-minstrel-kerchief-apron image when she got her makeover in 1989. Her character was played by real life Nancy Green, who appeared next to ‘the world’s largest flour barrel’ at the Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893. Her slogan: “I’se in town, honey!” Seriously? Let’s just say, change takes a long time.

The French can have their crepes and the Russians their blini. Don’t get me wrong. What’s not to love about a thin, small buckwheat crepe with caviar and sour cream? But the French and Russians are not acquainted with Aunt Jemima. The old-fashioned pancakes my dad used to flip on Sunday mornings are not in that repertoire. Without our favorite Auntie’s blend, you’ll have to turn to Bob’s Red Mill or Arrowhead Mills. Or you could make your own.

Sweet memories: cranberry fruit jellies (pate de fruits)

I’d like to wax nostalgic and sentimental in this post, but really? There just isn’t time. I learned to make the jellies pictured here from my dear old friend and mentor, Eugene Bernard. (You can read about him in the post I wrote last Christmas, and read the recipe for his to-die-for whiskey truffles. I won’t blame you if you make them instead. But I warn you; they are a bit of a project.) On the other hand, fruit jellies (pate de fruits) are easy peasy. They are so very French and so very beautiful, n’est-ce pas? You cannot be a die-hard perfectionist if you make them at home because, without commercial apple pectin, they need to be coddled a bit after they are made. No biggie. You can still make them ahead—oops, too late for that. Anyway, for future reference, they will last at least a month in the refrigerator in one large piece. You just need to serve them rather soon after you cut them and roll them in sugar. (See recipe for further ‘splainin’)

The choice of fruit—cranberries—is a bit unusual for fruit jellies. And the texture is a bit chunky, too. Most fruits are strained and smoothed before they are turned into jellies, and their appearance is more uniform and precisely cut. Listen up, all you overachievers who thrall to pressure, tension and anxiety at the very last minute: Bernard’s tweak on these jellies: dip them in chocolate. Now that is a bit of a project, too. Still….

If you are going to dip them, technically, the chocolate should be tempered so it will stay shiny and beautiful when it sets up. When chocolate (which you always buy in the tempered state) melts, the cocoa butter separates out and rises to the surface. It leaves streaks and makes the finish dull when it hardens. The remedy is to “temper” it by introducing some unmelted, tempered chocolate in small quantities. Those little bad-tempered molecules that have gone awry in the melting process sit up and realign like good little soldiers when they meet their tempered fellow molecules. Never mind. We don’t have time for that. Sprinkled with a little cocoa powder and fit into cute little candy papers, the jellies look fine. And boy, they are good. Take them to a friend or add a little happiness to your own holiday dessert table.

Yin-yang merrily on high/peas on earth: keeping it real with vegetarian split pea soup

I guess the title of this post tells you a lot about where I’ve been lately. That is: in search of equilibrium while caffeine and sugar-induced songs run amok incessantly through my head. Somebody help. Please.

Traveling, missing routines, eating out and eating lots and lots of sugar (remind me not to do a baking story anytime soon) were the underpinnings of the out-of-controlness in this week full of highs and lows. But let’s cut to the chase. To the rescue: down-home food. Namely, the mundane but ever comforting split pea soup. Luckily, I made a big pot of it before the madness took hold and stashed portion size bowls of it in the freezer for emergencies. So, do as I did. Make this soup and when you come home from shopping, or when you have a baking day or just when you do what you need to do for the holidays, heat up a bowl or two, bake a few Parmesan crisps, pull out some really good Polish bread, put on some festive music and come down to earth with a bowl of soup. Yin-yang merrily on high.

Technically, I don’t think split peas are particularly yang—I’m no expert on the subject—but they are definitely a fine counterbalance to the sweets of the season. This vegetarian version has the unusual addition of parsnips. Sweet and some say, cloying, parsnips on their own are a bit hard to take, but with all the other vegetables they add a certain je-ne-sais-quoi, which is pretty exciting for such a humble soup. And if you are not of the vegetarian persuasion, go ahead and throw in a ham hock or two. 

Hold the fruitcake: chocolate fruit and nut bars (for energy)

This entry was previously posted at the Magazine of Yoga.

Confession: I like fruitcake. Not the cake of my childhood, chock full of artificially colored and flavored glacéed cherries, orange peel and citron. That cake arrived in mid-December in a pretty tin (think of the postmen, lugging those weighty parcels from door to door during the holidays!) Usually the gift was from a business associate of my father’s, because, as everyone knows, friends don’t give friends fruitcake. We never did use it as a doorstop, but unwrapped it and set it out on a plate where it remained untouched for the duration of the season, a marvel of neon. Attempts to foist it upon unsuspecting visitors were rebuffed. The only real useable part of the gift was the tin. We saved it to hold the cookies we made every year.

Later in life I discovered that I am, in fact, one of the eight people on the planet who loves fruitcake, and by this I mean the cake now in fashion, made with unadulterated dried fruits, homemade candied peel and freshly roasted nuts. That fruitcake, baked and diligently doused for weeks in advance with doses of brandy, then wrapped in liquor-soaked cheesecloth in a tightly closed tin before its dénouement on Christmas Eve, is a labor of love. A labor few of us have time to undertake. And sadly, a labor that only a few recipients will ever appreciate.

Still, in the spirit of fruitcake, I am going to make these chocolate fruit and nut bars and give them to my friends. Because, despite past fruitcake experiences, I still believe in homemade gifts of food during the holidays. The tricky part is getting it right. The gift must be special. I mean, fabulous! The gift must be wrapped as beautifully as a gift from Neiman Marcus.  Most importantly, the gift must be appropriate to the recipient. We are bombarded by “treats” at this time of year, all well and good, but not for your friend who has been struggling with her weight, or cannot eat gluten, or has other dietary restrictions. One size may not fit all. Just because I like something (e.g., fruitcake!) doesn’t mean it will please my friend. And to top it off, it must be pleasurable to make and give. And that means preparation and packaging of such a gift must not make you feel over-extended or cranky.

As an antidote to Black Friday, Cyber Monday and all other commercial urges of the season, I highly recommend making these bars. While it may not be a one-size-fits-all affair, you can bet that almost everyone likes chocolate. Now that we know how good it is for you, it is a guilt-free pleasure, too. Add some toasted nuts, a little maple syrup and a little salt, and you could consider these babies healthy enough for snacks to bring along on errand expeditions (in moderation.) Good luck with that. Moderation poses a bit of problem, because once you start eating these bars it’s hard to stop. For that reason, I recommend wrapping them immediately, preferably individually, in festive little cellophane bags tied with sparkly ribbons, so it will take a little more effort and thought to get at them.

Find the recipe at The Magazine of Yoga and happy holiday giving!

The morning after the morning after: going cold turkey with some really good rye bread

By now, you’ve probably decided upon your Thanksgiving menu (turkey, anyone?) and are Googling like crazy, or if you are old-fashioned, leafing through your favorite cookbooks, in pursuit of that one elusive, last-minute dish that will break with tradition. I am, per usual, behind. I am going to decide on the final details when I pick up my turkey on Wednesday.

In the meantime, I’m planning for remorse.

Because, no matter how good my intentions, I know I will be feeling it on Friday morning as I stare down the surviving slices of pumpkin pie on the kitchen counter. Before a sip of coffee crosses my lips, I know I will debate whether or not to get it over with and eat that pie for breakfast. What the hell. We all know that Friday will be a junior version of Thursday, with re-warmed mashed potatoes and gravy, or turkey sandwiches slathered in cranberry sauce and topped with stuffing, yes-siree. Never mind. By Saturday, I’ll be more or less back on track, making stock and soup and eating turkey sandwiches for a few more days on razor thin slices of the Polish rye bread I am going to tell you about in a minute. Razor thin slices of bread seem downright virtuous after prior dietary indiscretions.

I had two prompts that propelled me into bread-baking mode before I even started thinking about a Thanksgiving menu. One was a conversation a few weeks ago with an acquaintance, who happens to be Polish, about the bread of that country: loaves full of grainy, seedy, earthy, healthy goodness; loaves with dense and moist interiors and crisp, noble crusts that inspire sighs and longing; loaves that I have never been able to find here. My friend promised a recipe. She returned the very next day with some fresh yeast and a piece of paper in hand. Her daughter elaborated on the finer points—back and forth from Polish to English—and the pair of them gave me the address of a website to consult—written in Polish, but available in English with a tap on the Google translation button.

Let the (Thanksgiving) games begin: roasted squash two ways

It took a while, but now I’m in full thrall of the charm of winter vegetables. It started with beautiful carnival squash snagging my attention at the market. But they would be lonely without their buddy, the butternut, which is what I was after in the first place, since everyone knows how easy it is to cut up and roast a butternut squash. What everyone doesn’t know, especially you folks who buy it already peeled and diced (cheaters!) is that the skin of the butternut squash is not all that tough and can be eaten. Also, you cheaters should know, it lasts a much longer time in your fridge in its natural state, in case you do not get around to using it right away.

I don’t know about you, but I’m one of those shoppers who becomes overly inspired at the market by all the good stuff I imagine I can make when I get home, but find I am just a little less enthused when I actually get there. Shopping is debilitating, isn’t it? Anyway, produce often languishes in my refrigerator. I KNOW this is not an uncommon problem, so ‘fess up. And buy squash that hasn’t been meddled with. (Organic if you can find it, and well scrubbed.)

Now I admit, I learned that squash skin is edible by watching a Jamie Oliver cooking show (I’m keeping up so you don’t have to). An unscientific survey, conducted by me, revealed that many British cooks do not bother to peel their butternut squash. If you are going to mash or puree it, you might want to peel it first —I bet Jamie doesn’t—but otherwise, it’s quite good in its natural state, and it adds a little more (unmentionable) fiber to the dish. But it’s a losing battle. By all accounts, most Thanksgiving menus are completely fiber-free, unless you count that lonely overcooked green bean on your plate from Great Aunt Margaret’s casserole.

The holiday balancing act: an apple tart that’s off the butter chart

Vegan apple tart with a whole wheat crust

This post was originally published at the Magazine of Yoga


Out there in Consumerland, aka Target, where one must venture forth for toilet paper, laundry soap, and other mundane necessities of life, I spotted signs pointing to impending anxiety. As I added the bags of Halloween candy to my cart, I averted my eyes at the sight of snow globes and ornaments. The holidays are coming! The holidays are coming! Just the thought of the approaching madness of the season made me break into a cold sweat. I vowed to stay out of the stores until January, but I know that won’t be entirely possible. (I forgot the Kleenex.)

Still, I realized it is time to start planning to ward off the stress that will inevitably arise if my mind is not in pre-emptive mode. So I am making my list and checking it twice. I’ll start the list with all the crazy stuff I think I should do in the next month or two. Then I’ll give it a go over and cross off at least half of it. Wow, that’s efficient. Only a few days into November, and look how much I’ve accomplished!


You are probably going to be reading a lot about how to manage holiday stress. Those articles will be mixed in with special projects and recipes to brighten the season, as in, more ideas for stuff you can do to drive yourself nuts. While managing your stress.


Not to be a Scrooge or anything, but wake me when it’s over.

At the bitter(sweet) end of summer: eggplant casserole

Yes, I do realize it is fall, but I am not listening. I am not ready to embrace squash and pumpkins. Why? I missed summer. I didn’t feel the sand between my toes, or even put on a bathing suit (which for most of us ladies is always a blessing). It just turned out that way. I’d explain, but frankly, it is not that interesting.

As a result of all the stuff I’m not bothering to bore you with,  I realized I needed to get OUT. Somewhere. Anywhere. Away.

Being a procrastinator has its upside. You avoid the crowds.

Betwixt and between: a tomato soup to span the seasons

Standing at the farmers’ market the other day, I wasn’t sure which way to look. Peaches or pumpkins? Corn or delicata squash? Tomatoes or sweet potatoes? The weather last week was telling me to look back at summer, but the week before? A decided nip in the air.

That’s the thing about change. Barring environmental and personal catastrophes, change rarely happens overnight. Conditions sway back and forth, sometimes too wildly for our comfort, until phew! Everything settles down. For a while.

And then it starts all over again.

The fastest track for learning the lessons of change is to invite a child into your home. I don’t mean for the afternoon, but you know, as a baby. Then watch him grow up and watch yourself swing this way and that to keep up, thinking you’ve nailed it one minute and turning around and realizing, the situation has moved on. Your toddler no longer fusses about getting dressed in the morning because he now refuses to go to preschool. There was a moment of peace and a feeling of accomplishment somewhere in the middle of that. Boy, did you feel like at last you were on top of it. Not.

Nothing is static. We might wish for a Groundhog Day existence because it feels safe and comfortable, but if that’s what we want, why not go sit on a bench in Miami right now and get it over with? Everyone, everyone, has times when they must weather slings and arrows. Everyone endures painful times, times of not knowing. 

During carefree times we forget. Years can go by with few bumps in the road, and then…along comes a recession or who knows what, to make us wring our hands. That’s when we need to pay attention to the little moments: the cup of tea or bowl of warm soup on a chilly afternoon, like sweet little islands in a turbulent sea.