Mast Brothers dark chocolate with sea salt bar

You may be looking at this chocolate bar and thinking, "Well, that doesn't look all that attractive to me. That wrapper does't look like a jaunty shirt worn by Ralph Lauren on his sailboat." And to you I say, "That's because I tore through three-quarters of the bar before I stopped to take a photo. Of course it looks bedraggled now."



There is a LOT of sea salt in here, and it works great. It reminds me of what I like about dark chocolate pretzels. A great salty-sweet combo.

BOTTOM LINE: Mast Brothers does it again!

Russ and Daughters Cafe

Our beloved Russ and Daughters has recently opened a cafe, so naturally I went to check it out and order all the chocolatey things on the menu.

The cafe is really lovely, all clean and white decor, delicious bagels and challah. It feels very soothing. It is also super-crowded, probably because it is still so new. I managed to secure a table by showing up for brunch around 3:45 in the afternoon. Feel free to employ this technique.

Elyse got an egg cream:



Classic U-Bet syrup, milk, soda. I tasted a sip and it was chocolatey. I can't say any more than that because I don't like fizzy beverages. It cost $7.

We also split a chocolate babka french toast:



UM, what can I say about this. It was freaking delicious. I used the word "perfect" while I was eating it. It's the perfect crispy-soft texture. No gross eggy bits. Just warm, moist, somehow slightly crispy on the outside, very chocolatey bread product. Emily theorized that maybe they didn't fully bake the babka, and that's how it stayed so moist when they french toasted it. It's a good theory. All I can say for sure is that I loved it.

Unfortunately, it costs $10. Before tax and tip. And then there's that previously mentioned long wait for a table, most of the time. After brunch someone asked me if it had been "worth it," and I found this a hard question to answer. It was expensive, for a small piece of chocolate french toast. But can you really put a price on perfection?

BOTTOM LINE: Definitely go to Russ & Daughters Cafe. Ideally, go on someone else's dime.

Brief ice cream round-up: Coolhaus and Arte del Gelato

It's after Memorial Day, which means we are in full-on ice-cream-every-day-until-October mode. A quick recap of some of the ice creams we're eating:

First, Coolhaus ice cream sandwiches.



This particular one is dirty mint chip ice cream between double chocolate cookies. Coolhaus is a food truck, and it has more adventurous flavors you can try (like Peanut Butter Cap'n Crunch cookies, and Fried Chicken and Waffles ice cream). And they have more chocolatey flavor combinations, as we have eaten previously. But this one hit the spot. Fresh mint, chewy chocolatey cookie, and I am happy.

Next up, L'Arte Del Gelato. Continuing in my mint-and-chocolate flavor combination craze, this is a scoop of mint chip gelato with a scoop of Valrhona chocolate gelato. I got it from the L'Arte del Gelato stand on the Highline.



It's okay. I mean, if you're nearby, and you're in the mood for gelato, definitely eat it. But I have to agree with David: I've eaten L'Arte del Gelato a number of times and have never been blown away. There is gelato in this city that I would journey to eat--L'Albero dei Gelati, for example--but L'Arte del Gelato is not one of them.

BOTTOM LINE: Thank goodness it is ice cream season at last. I mean, I was eating a lot of ice cream even when it wasn't ice cream season. But at least now that feels more culturally desirable.

Convivium Osteria

Apparently, we are on a desserts that taste like Lara Bars kick, because this chocolate, fig, and walnut cake (called a "frustingolo") from Convivium Osteria in Park Slope also tasted like a Lara Bar.

BOTTOM LINE: There was a flourless chocolate cake option. This is what I get for trying to branch out from flourless chocolate cake.

Morgenstern Finest Ice Cream

One month ago, I read about Morgenstern's Finest Ice Cream and got really excited. Now, there are a lot of marvelous places in this city to get ice cream. Ample Hills, Brooklyn Ice Cream Factory, Blue Marble--and that's without even having to think about it. So why, you wonder, would I get so excited about this new ice cream venue?

Because Morgenstern's menu listed the following:

CHOCOLATE DELUXE
Chocolate every way.
Chocolate frozen.
Chocolate whipped.
Chocolate crunch.
Chocolate baked.
It's over.

This so-called Chocolate Deluxe is priced at $15, but I will pay big bucks in order to keep you informed about important chocolate news. Plus, that's some really good menu copy.

So I gathered together a number of friends. And last night we went to Morgenstern's, to try this Chocolate Deluxe and see if it was, as promised, "over." And here's what happened:

They didn't have it.

The woman who worked there assured me that it wasn't that they had run out for the day. It's that the Chocolate Deluxe actually does not exist. The chef is still in the process of creating it. At some point presumably it will exist, since it is promised on the menu. But she could not tell me when.

Folks, go to Brooklyn Farmacy, go to Emack and Bolio, go to Sundaes and Cones. There is so much good ice cream in New York City. Don't waste your time on a place that promises chocolate they cannot deliver.

BOTTOM LINE: You're right, Morgenstern's: It's over.

Franklin Park bourbon milkshake

Franklin Park is everything a bar should be. They have pub trivia and a reading series. They have a lovely outdoor area. They have dancing and DJs on weekend nights. Most of all, they have bourbon milkshakes.



As you may recall from my foray into chocolate whiskey, I am intrigued by mixing chocolate and alcohol. Franklin Park's bourbon milkshake is the best way I've found to do this.

It definitely tastes bourbon-y, so if you don't like that, just get a non-alcoholic milkshake here (which they also make).

Pro tip: if you're putting bourbon in there, make sure to stir up your drink frequently. Otherwise all the bourbon will sink to the bottom and you will drink about nine ounces of plain chocolate shake, followed by about two ounces of brown-colored bourbon. If you mix it together, it will melt your ice cream, but will make for a pleasant chocolate-bourbon mixture throughout. I learned this the hard way.

BOTTOM LINE: A truly delightful drink for a summer day.

Morgenstern's Finest Ice Cream

After my deeply disappointing experience at Morgenstern's Finest Ice Cream, I was ready to go to an ice cream parlor that never disappoints: Brooklyn Farmacy & Soda Fountain.



Farmacy is basically everything I look for in a restaurant experience. It's a charming atmosphere, they play 50s music on the stereo, and they offer delicious sundaes.



Unlike a place like Ample Hills or Odd Fellows, Farmacy does not have lots of ice cream flavors, or very experimental flavors. They offer about a half dozen flavors made by Adirondack Creamery, which are made with fresh, hormone-free ingredients.

The ice cream is very good on its own, but since this is an old-fashioned soda shoppe, you'd be a fool not to dress it up in a milkshake or a float or (duh) a sundae.



The one on the left is vanilla ice cream with caramel sauce and Farmacy's homemade peanut butter. The one on the right, obviously, is mine. It's a scoop of chocolate ice cream and a scoop of mint chocolate chip ice cream with hot fudge, whipped cream, and cookie crumbles from Farmacy's fresh-baked cookies.

BOTTOM LINE: Not my favorite standalone ice cream in the city, but unquestionably my favorite place in the city to eat an ice cream sundae.

Whole Wheat Chocolate Chip Cookies

I know this cookie looks wholesome. Actually, I’ll raise you one and say that it verges on homely. But this cookie speaks to me, and what it says is, Hey, baaaabe-eh. In this voice.

Meet Kim Boyce’s whole wheat chocolate chip cookie. This might be my favorite chocolate chip cookie, which is an absolutely insane thing to say, because until about a week ago, I thought that title belonged, forever and ever, to the New York Times chocolate chip cookie. I don’t know what I think anymore. Let’s just call this my new favorite chocolate chip cookie and leave it at that.

I first heard about this recipe from Luisa, and then Lecia mentioned it to me, too, and maybe Brian, and maybe you? However it got there, it’s been on my to-do list for a while, and last Friday, I decided that it was finally time to make a batch. So I did, and by Tuesday, I had decided that it was time for a second batch. That was barely 72 hours ago, but the last cookie disappeared shortly after lunch today. I did give about a third of the batch away, but still, I would like to state for the record that our household, which consists of two (2) people, put away roughly a dozen (12) cookies. I don’t know exactly what I expected from a whole wheat chocolate chip cookie, but I didn’t expect to want to eat it for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

On Wednesday, before they were all eaten, we had unseasonably good weather, and the whole house was washed in that crazy gold light that comes only in the fall, and even then only on exceptional days, and it gave me the opportunity to photograph these cookies for you in their natural state, which is to say, with halos on.

Take my word for it. You need to try a batch. They may be built on a foundation of whole wheat flour, but they’re not health food, so don’t get hung up on that. They’re everything that a proper chocolate chip cookie should be: tender and chewy in the middle, crisp at the edges, and very forthcoming with the chocolate. But what I like most is that, on top of all that, you also get the subtly nutty, naturally sweet-and-savory flavor of wheat. You know digestive biscuits? Imagine a cross between a chocolate chip cookie and a digestive biscuit. Do you read me? Am I the only American who hears the words digestive and biscuit and instantly needs a snack? I hope not. Because that’s the kind of flavor we’re talking about here. And that flavor, that benevolent wheaty flavor, not only tastes good, but it also performs a valuable service: it tames the sweetness and richness - that occasionally sweat-inducing intensity, if you will - that is the seldom spoken-about dark side of any chocolate chip cookie. Thank you, whole wheat. Thank you, Kim Boyce. In other words, I am sold.

Whole Wheat Chocolate Chip Cookies
Adapted from Good to the Grain, by Kim Boyce

Without really planning to, I’ve played around quite a lot with this recipe. I’ve only made it twice, but each time was in a different kitchen, with different ingredients and tools. Both times, the cookies came out beautifully. Here are some thoughts:

- A friend who had made this recipe suggested that I try making it with white whole wheat flour, so I bought a fresh bag and used it in my first batch. I loved the resulting flavor – lightly wheaty, almost bran-like – and I highly recommend it. For my second batch, I used a local brand of whole wheat flour, and it was plenty nice, but the wheat flavor was darker and heartier. If you’re after that digestive biscuit flavor, I would use white whole wheat flour.

- Because I am apparently getting ornery with age, I ignored Boyce’s advice to use cold butter. I honestly thought it was a typo, because I’ve always had a hard time creaming butter that’s even a little bit too cold. Instead, I used softened butter. (I left it at room temperature until it was still cool to the touch but took the imprint of a finger when I pressed it. Perfect for creaming.) It worked just fine, as you can see. But I’ve now done some poking around online and see that the recipe is indeed supposed to use cold butter, cubed for easier creaming. Oops! So, uh, never mind me. Do whatever you want.

- The original recipe calls for chopped bittersweet chocolate, and I tried it once that way and once with bittersweet chips. (I used Ghirardelli 60% chocolate in both cases.) I preferred the chopped chocolate because the pieces were smaller, so it gave the sense that there was more chocolate. But if you want to keep it quick and simple, chips will do the job.

- I made this dough once in a stand mixer and once with handheld electric beaters. The poor beaters had to labor a lot, and I wound up recruiting a sturdy spatula to help out, but it’s good to know that you can make do with whatever tools you have on hand.

- Boyce says that this dough is designed to be baked without chilling first. (This, I think, is linked to her use of cold butter. The cold butter likely keeps the dough cool and helps it spread less in the oven.) But I apparently am not only ornery; I also can’t follow directions. I scooped my dough, put it on a sheet pan, covered it with plastic wrap, and chilled it before baking. Some of the dough was chilled for about 1 hour, and some stayed in the fridge for two days. Chilling dough generally results in a thicker cookie, and mine were certainly nice and plump, which I like. So I recommend chilling the dough. And hey, I also noticed that the cookies that stayed in the fridge for two days were particularly flavorful. So “aging” the dough a bit isn’t a bad idea, either.

3 cups whole wheat flour (see note above)
1 ½ tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. baking soda
1 ½ tsp. kosher salt
2 sticks (8 oz.) unsalted butter, cut into ½-inch cubes (see note above)
1 cup lightly packed dark brown sugar
1 cup sugar
2 large eggs
1 tsp. vanilla extract
8 oz. bittersweet chocolate, roughly chopped into ¼- and ½-inch pieces, or bittersweet chips

Position racks in the upper and lower thirds of the oven, and preheat to 350°F. Line two baking sheets with parchment. (If you have no parchment, you can butter the sheets.)

Combine the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt in a medium bowl, and whisk to blend.

Put the butter and sugars in the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment. With the mixer on low speed, mix just until the butter and sugars are blended, about 2 minutes. Scrape down the sides of the bowl with a spatula. Add the eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition. Beat in the vanilla. Add the flour mixture to the bowl, and blend on low speed until the flour is just incorporated. Scrape down the sides and bottom of the bowl. Add the chocolate, and mix on low speed until evenly combined. (If you have no stand mixer, you can do all of this with handheld electric beaters and/or a large, sturdy spoon.) Scrape down the sides and bottom of the bowl, and then use your hands to turn and gently massage the dough, making sure all the flour is absorbed.

Scoop mounds of dough about 3 tablespoons in size onto the baking sheets, leaving about 3 inches between each cookie. (I was able to fit about 8 cookies on each sheet, staggering them in three rows.)

Bake the cookies for 16 to 20 minutes, rotating the sheets halfway through, until the cookies are evenly browned. Transfer the cookies, still on parchment, to a rack to cool. Repeat with remaining dough.

These cookies are very good while still warm from the oven, but I find that you can taste the wheat more – in a good way – once they’ve cooled.

Yield: about 20 cookies

Split Pea Soup with Country Ham

2010 didn’t exit quietly, and the last month of it was a royal mess. But my aunt is okay now - even heading back to work! The rewards of health! - and for that, we’re relieved. I’m home again and excited for a new year, for the return of plain, normal, everyday life. I love plain, normal, everyday life. The laundry, the occasional clean sheets, the morning coffee that I never brew right, the dog asleep on the couch, the arrival of the mail, the mail carrier who hates the dog, the restaurant, the work, the split pea soup.

Few things are uglier than split pea soup, but that is alright with me. I’ve been on something of a split pea binge for the past month. (Am I the first person in the world to write the words split, pea, and binge in sequence? If so, I assume I will also be the last.) I’d made split pea soup a few times in years past, and once I even made an exotic version involving miso, but until this past fall, I hadn’t found one I felt loyal to. Now that I have, I am celebrating by eating a totally immoderate amount of it. By the way, if the idea of a split pea binge doesn’t ring your bell, I can also recommend a Reese’s Peanut Butter Trees binge. ‘Tis the season, -ish. Hard to go wrong, either way.

Split pea soup is a straightforward thing, and it hardly needs a recipe. Whether it includes ham or not, the process is mostly the same: get some aromatics going in a pot, add split peas and your liquid of choice, and cook until the peas soften, soften some more, and finally settle to a pleasing mush. But I learned my recipe, or the bones of it, from my friend Winnie, and though it looks plain on paper, it really does the job.




Behold the Winnie in her natural habitat. She’s one of the finest, most intuitive cooks I know: even when she’s cooking from a recipe, she hardly looks at it. She just knows what to do. Though she lives on the other side of the continent, I was lucky enough to get to cook with her several times in 2010, and to learn a few things in the process. For instance, I learned that one should never be without a stash of Allan Benton’s country ham, the backbone of this split pea soup and, now, the newest staple of my kitchen. I would have taken a picture of it for you, but I used my last package a week ago. 2011 is off to a rough start.

Until Winnie let me in on the not-so-secret secret, I used to be daunted by the idea of trying to get a hold of proper country ham: the southern kind, slow cured and naturally smoked, fragrant and salty and thoroughly hammy. I thought you had to buy a whole leg - and maybe from some producers, you do. But Allan Benton sells his in vacuum-packed slices that are perfect for chucking into a soup pot or frying in a skillet, saucing with apple cider, and then sandwiching in a biscuit. Whatever you like. Sometimes I open the fridge, pull out a package, and just sniff at it. It’s so smoky - in the true wood-smoke way, not that trumped-up liquid smoke way - that you can smell it even through the plastic. Now you know how I spend my free time.

Winnie’s split pea soup, as she taught it to me, begins with a slice of Benton’s ham, which you fry in a soup pot with a little olive oil. When it’s golden on both sides and the bottom of the pan has a few nice, browned bits stuck to it, you add some chopped carrot and onion and sweat them for ten minutes or so, and then you add split peas and water. There’s no need for stock here; the ham flavor is so generous that it fills the pot. Then you forget about it for at least an hour, and likely two. And then you set the table, and because it’s January and dark outside and you happen to have bought some candles at the store, you light one or two or three, and dinner is ready.


Inspired by Winnie Yang

Until recently, I didn’t know that the age of dried legumes made a difference in their cooking time, but it does. If your dried split peas are fairly fresh, they will take less time to cook than those that have sat on the grocery store shelf for a while. In any case, cook them until they completely break down. If yours are on the older side, you may need to start with a little more water than I call for below, since the cooking time will be on the long side.

Olive oil
1 slice (~4 ounces) Benton’s hickory smoked country ham, or similar
1 large onion or leek, finely diced
2 medium carrots, finely diced
2 cups dried split peas
8 cups water, plus more as needed
Salt, to taste
Apple cider vinegar, to taste

In a soup pot or Dutch oven, warm a little olive oil over medium high heat. Add the ham, and cook, turning once, until golden brown on both sides. Add the leek and carrot, and cook, stirring occasionally, until tender but not browned, about 10 minutes. (If the pan seems dry when you add the vegetables, add oil as needed.) Add the split peas and 8 cups of water. Bring to a boil; then reduce the heat and simmer gently, stirring regularly to prevent scorching, for 90 minutes to 2 hours, or until the peas have completely broken down and the soup has a creamy texture. This amount of water makes for a fairly thick soup; if you like yours thinner, add more water until it reaches your desired texture. The slice of ham should break apart as it cooks, but if necessary, use a couple of forks to tear it into smaller pieces. Taste the soup, and salt as needed. If the flavor is a little dull, add a splash or two of apple cider vinegar; you shouldn’t taste the vinegar in the soup, but it should subtly wake up the flavor.

Serve hot.

Yield: about six servings

Marion Cunningham’s Fresh Ginger Muffins

Okay. This year, I’ve decided, is going to be the year of The Breakfast Book. I’m allergic to resolutions, so let’s not use that word. Let’s just say that if I do nothing else in 2011, I would like to spend more time with one of the worthiest books on my shelf, one that has never done me wrong, one authored by she of the famous yeasted waffle, the esteemed Ms. Marion Cunningham. There is no one I trust more on the matter of breakfast. There is also no one else that I know of who has managed to wedge a treatise on manners into a chapter on quick breads. Witness a selection from “Breakfast Table Civility and Deportment” (page 53):

3. Clean fingernails, please.
5. Sit up straight and try to be cheerful.
7. Because everyone is defenseless at breakfast, there should be no contentiousness or crossness.
13. And don’t answer questions in a saucy manner.

I’m hoping to master #13 within the year.

This is Marion Cunningham’s fresh ginger muffin, the best muffin I have made in memory. Possibly ever. I like muffins, but often, I wind up leaving half of the batch on the counter, uneaten, until they’re stiff and dry and I throw them away. I’m more of a scone person than a muffin person. However. I will tell you that in the less than 48 hours since I made a batch of said ginger muffins, eight of them are gone, and of those, only one was not eaten by me. If you give me another hour, a ninth might disappear.

I’ve never seen another ginger muffin, cake, cookie, or other sweet that uses the method this one does. It starts with a knob of fresh ginger root with the skin on, a perplexing and maybe even off-putting detail that, it turns out, works very well.




You mince the ginger in a food processor, and I think this is why you want that skin: without it, the ginger would probably fall apart when confronted with a whirring steel blade. The skin helps the ginger to hold its integrity, so that it reduces to small, discrete bits, not something with the consistency of a smoothie. Then you take those bits and put them in a skillet with an equal measure of sugar. The sugar melts to syrup, and warmed in that syrup, the ginger cooks just enough to lose its sting. Then you take it off the heat, add lemon zest and a little more sugar, and there it is: a lot of flavor in a small, ugly, turmeric-colored heap, ready for mixing into a bowl of batter - which, in this case, is sagely moistened with buttermilk.

The resulting muffins are tender and pale yellow and look a little like cornbread. Mine wound up with humps like madeleines, which is weird, because I’ve never been able to consistently make madeleines with humps like that. Totally unfair. Anyway, the crumb is damp and sturdy but not heavy, and if you eat them while they’re warm, you’ll find that the top has a lacy edge that gives with a crackle. That’s nice.



And then the flavor comes: that quiet, breathy, slow-building heat of fresh ginger root - more a feeling than a flavor, almost. If you eat three muffins in an afternoon, as I did yesterday, you may actually experience a burning sensation at the back of your throat, which I tell you not as a warning, but because it’s awesome. Also: I didn’t notice any obvious ginger skin as I ate, in case you wondered. I imagine it’s good fiber for the digestive tract, if you don’t mind thinking of it that way.

Having now eaten these for breakfast and dessert, I’m thinking they might make a great cupcake - maybe with lemon cream cheese frosting? If you try it, please report.

Marion Cunningham’s Fresh Ginger Muffins
Adapted from The Breakfast Book

A word of warning: before beginning, take care to wash the ginger root well, checking its crevices and wrinkles for dirt.

One (~3-ounce) piece of unpeeled ginger root
¾ cup plus 3 Tbsp. sugar
2 Tbsp. grated lemon zest
8 Tbsp. (1 stick) unsalted butter, at room temperature
2 large eggs
1 cup buttermilk
2 cups all-purpose flour
½ tsp. salt
¾ tsp. baking soda

Preheat the oven to 375°F. Grease a muffin tin.

Cut the unpeeled ginger root into large chunks. If you have a food processor, process the ginger until it is in tiny pieces; alternatively, mince by hand. Measure out ¼ cup – or a little more, if you like. It’s better to have too much than too little. Put the ginger and ¼ cup sugar in a small skillet and cook over medium heat, stirring, until the sugar has melted and the mixture is hot. Don’t walk away from the pan: this takes only a couple of minutes. Set aside to cool.

In a small bowl, whisk together the lemon zest and 3 tablespoons of sugar. Add to the ginger mixture.

Put the butter in the bowl of a stand mixer (or, a mixing bowl, if you plan to use handheld beaters or mix by hand). Beat the butter for a second or two, then add the remaining ½ cup sugar, and beat until smooth. Add the eggs, and beat well. Add the buttermilk, and beat until blended. Add the flour, salt, and baking soda, and beat just until smooth. Add the ginger-lemon mixture, and beat to mix well. Spoon the batter into the prepared muffin tin. Bake for 18 to 20 minutes, or until a tester comes out clean. Serve warm.

Yield: 12 muffins

Oatmeal Popovers

Well. The good news is that I’m making headway in my book proposal. I was working on it at a cafe on Saturday afternoon, and I could actually see it taking shape, right there in front of me. I love that feeling. I was absolutely elated. I lost all sense of time. I was in it up to my eyebrows. And I must have looked it, too, because as I was packing up to leave, the girl sitting next to me commented politely that I must have gotten some very good work done, because I was staring at my computer so intensely. And I decided that from now on, I should work only in the privacy of my home, so no one else has to witness that.

And that’s the good news. The bad news is, I’m tired. Did you know that I have a neighbor who, though at home all day, waits until night to do his gardening and outdoor home improvement projects? As I type this, my poor, stressed-out dog has his nose pressed to the window, watching our neighbor stroll the length of his yard, surveying the territory with a flashlight of such size and power that it could double as a fine searchlight. Living next to this is one of many things that can make a person tired.




I hope you people were serious when you said you were excited about the prospect of more breakfast recipes in 2011. Because I have another one for you. Yes, already. I’m going to try to limit it to one a month from now on, but what can you do? I woke up the other morning, realized I had the ingredients for a batch of oatmeal popovers, and the next thing I knew, they were made.



As with last week’s fresh ginger muffins, this recipe - or at least the ingredients part of it - comes to us from Ms. Marion Cunningham and The Breakfast Book. It’s a very subtle riff on a classic popover, one that includes a fistful of rolled oats that you’ve coarsely ground in the food processor. Her headnotes explain that she uses the oatmeal for additional texture, and I can attest that the result is really lovely: a little heartier, a scant degree more substantial, than an ordinary popover. But I would add that the oats bring some flavor too, which I like very much. It’s a quiet flavor, one you only notice if you look for it, but it’s there. Ordinary popovers can sometimes taste too eggy, but the oats counter that, giving the flavor some depth and grounding. It felt fiddly to haul out the food processor first thing in the morning, before I’d even put on real clothes, but I was glad I did. Actually, I might grind extra oats next time, so they’re ready whenever I want them.

I have to admit, though, that I did make some adjustments to the method. Ms. Cunningham starts her popovers in a cold oven, but that sort of terrifies me. I have an electric oven, and the only time that I tried the cold-oven popover method, the lower heating element scorched my popovers in the process of preheating. I am not a nice person when my breakfast gets ruined. Maybe it was a fluke, but I don’t use the cold-oven popover method anymore. I start my popovers in a hot oven, and I also preheat the pan before I pour in the batter, which gives them an extra boost. The method that I like best is detailed nicely in the book The New Best Recipe, and so that’s what I’ve written below. Basically, you get Marion Cunningham’s concept and ingredients, with The New Best Recipe’s method. I hope she’ll forgive me for taking such liberties.


Oatmeal Popovers
Adapted from The Breakfast Book and The New Best Recipe

I’ve made these popovers twice now, and I find that they don’t rise quite as exuberantly high as normal (oatmeal-less) popovers. But they’re still perfectly airy on the inside, and the oil in the cups of the pan make the outer edges nice and crisp.

Oh, and Marion Cunningham says that the combination of oatmeal and marmalade is very good. She’s right.

2 large eggs
1 cup whole milk
¾ cup all-purpose flour
1/3 cup rolled oats, coarsely ground in a food process or blender
½ tsp. salt
1 Tbsp. unsalted butter, melted
1 Tbsp. vegetable oil, for the pan
Orange marmalade, for serving (optional)

In a large bowl – ideally one with a pour spout, if you have it – whisk the eggs and milk until well combined, about 20 seconds. Whisk the flour, oats, and salt in a separate bowl, and add to the egg mixture. Stir with a wooden spoon or spatula just until the flour is incorporated. The mixture will still be lumpy. Add the melted butter, and whisk until the batter is smooth, about 30 seconds. Set aside at room temperature for 30 minutes. (This gives the gluten time to relax and brings the chilled ingredients closer to room temperature, so that the batter isn’t quite so cold when it goes into the oven.)

While the batter rests, put ½ teaspoon oil into each cup of a popover pan. Adjust the oven rack to the lowest position, place the popover pan in the oven, and preheat to 450° F. After the batter has rested, remove the hot pan from the oven and, working quickly, distribute the batter evenly among the 6 cups of the pan. (If your bowl doesn’t have a spout, you might want to transfer it to a vessel that does; it’ll allow you to work much more quickly.) Return the pan to the oven. Bake for 20 minutes - and DO NOT open the oven door. Lower the heat to 350° F, and bake until evenly golden brown, about 15 minutes more. Remove the popovers from the pan and cool for 2 to 3 minutes before eating.

Yield: 6 popovers

Note: If you don’t have a popover pan, you can use a regular muffin tin. Don’t use all 12 cups, though; use only the 10 outer cups. You’ll need extra oil to grease them.

Nigel Slater’s Apple Crumble

In the days since we last spoke, I’ve flown to Oklahoma and back. I’ve introduced my mother to 24. I’ve made Cafe Lago meatballs with my mother, braised a pan of endive and serrano ham with my mother, and put away a couple of Negronis, also with my mother. I’ve baked a coffee cake using a tin of baking powder from my mother’s cabinet that, you know, it turns out, expired in 2006. I’ve thrown away a coffee cake. I’ve filed and paid our 2010 income taxes! I’ve had a toothache! I’ve sent off my book proposal! I’m using a lot of exclamation points!

And because of this second-to-last item, because you’ve been such cheerful, cheering, much-needed companions in Book Proposal Land, I baked you an apple crumble. Then I ate about a quarter of it - chewing only on the left side of my mouth, of course, because I’m almost sure I’m having a root canal on the right side later this week.



This recipe comes from Nigel Slater, whose latest book, Tender, Volume II: A Cook’s Guide to the Fruit Garden, has been living on my kitchen table since Christmas. We’ve been eating breakfast together. I drink my coffee; Nigel gets worked up about apples:

A baked apple, its skin split, the top half rising like a beret, is best achieved with an acidic variety. The list includes Golden Noble, Kentish Fillbasket, Emneth Early, Monarch, Charlotte, Newton Wonder, Lord Derby and the Carlisle and Keswick Codlins. Most of these I have met at some point in my cooking life; others, such as Edward VII and the Eynsham Dumpling, I have never seen on sale, let alone poured custard over. Then, of course, there are the seedlings: Bramley, Dumelow’s and Pott’s. If you are in Cornwall with nothing much to do on an October afternoon, you might like to go in search of the Colloggett Pippin. You will be in with a good chance if you pronounce it Clogget and are within sight of the Tamar. The Cornish have a habit of shortening place names the way children shorten those of their best friends.

I love him. I also like his apple crumble quite a bit. The world does not need another apple crumble recipe, as he notes, but this one does something interesting, and it’s worth noting. After you toss the apple pieces with sugar and lemon juice, you don’t just chuck them into the baking dish. You put them in a hot skillet with some butter, and you leave them alone there for a while, longer than you’d think, until they’re golden in patches and glazed in their own caramelized juices. It reminds me of the first step in making a tarte Tatin, only you’re not letting them go nearly that far. Just far enough to make them smell like some fantastic hybrid of toffee and hot cider. WAIT. Think about that. Toffee and hot cider, as one. Does that exist? World, make this happen for me.



So yes, you take those lightly caramelized apples, and you put them in your baking dish, and then comes the topping and the baking. The usual. My finished crumble would not win a beauty pageant, or even bring home the sash for third runner-up, but that’s not the point of crumbles, is it? Did I miss something? It looks like a crumble. But it certainly tastes nice.



In fact, the resemblance to tarte Tatin doesn’t end with the method. There’s a little tarte Tatin to the flavor, too, the way the soft, sticky, long-cooked apples taste under all that rubble of topping, all that butter. I’m going to hang onto this method. I might think about using more apples next time - once baked, the apple-to-topping ratio is about 1:1, and I prefer 2:1 - but that’s just fussing.


Nigel Slater’s Apple Crumble
Adapted from Tender, Volume II: A Cook’s Guide to the Fruit Garden

For my crumble, I wanted a mixture of apples: some that would fall apart, and some that would hold their shape. But all I could find today was the latter, so that’s what I went with. I used two Braeburns and two Arkansas Blacks. The amount of sugar called for in the filling worked nicely with my apples, but if you’re using sweeter varieties, you might want to cut back. Also, it’s probably a good idea to taste the apples after they’ve cooked in the skillet, before you bake them; that way, you can add more lemon or sugar, if needed. I get the sense that Mr. Slater wants us to use our intuition.

Also, about sugar: the original recipe calls for golden caster sugar, which is a challenge to find here. I don’t think it’s a dealbreaker to use standard granulated sugar instead. Or you could substitute a mixture of superfine sugar (also known as baker’s sugar) and brown sugar, maybe? I had some unrefined sugar in the pantry, so I used that, and it worked fine.

One last thing: the original is written only in grams, but I’ve added volume measurements, so you can do it either way. But if you’ve got a scale, pull it out. Much less fiddly than using measuring cups and spoons.

For the filling:
4 medium (850 grams) apples
Half a lemon
1/3 cup (75 grams) sugar
2 Tbsp. (30 grams) unsalted butter

For the topping:
7 Tbsp. (95 grams) cold unsalted butter
1 ¼ cup (150 grams) all-purpose flour
3 ½ Tbsp. (45 grams) sugar

Preheat the oven to 350°F.

Peel and core the apples, cut them into rough 1-inch chunks, and toss them with the juice of the lemon half and the sugar.

Warm a skillet over medium-high heat. Add the butter, and when it stops foaming, dump in the apples and their juices. Nudge the apples around so that they lie in a single layer, and then leave them alone for a while. The juices will thicken to a syrup that coats the fruit, and the fruit should get golden in patches. Stir gently once or twice, cooking until the apples have a little color. (This may take longer than you’d expect.) They should smell sensational.

Turn the apples and any caramelly juices out of the skillet into a baking dish. (I used an oval gratin dish that measures about 10 inches long and 7 inches wide, though you would be fine with a dish that’s even a little smaller.) If there are any sticky bits left in the skillet, add a squeeze of lemon juice and/or a splash of water, and stir until they dissolve. Add to the apples.

To make the topping, put the butter and the flour in a medium bowl, and rub the butter into the flour with your fingertips until the mixture looks like fine breadcrumbs. (Alternatively, you could do this in a food processor.) Stir in the sugar. Drizzle in a tablespoon of water, and shake the bowl back and forth until some of the mixture sticks together in gravel-sized lumps. This way, you get some parts of the topping that are sandy and others that are gravelly or pebbly. Distribute the topping evenly over the apples. Bake for 45 minutes to 1 hour, or until pale golden. Serve warm or at room temperature.

Yield: 4 servings

Cream Biscuits

Lately we’ve had a lot of friends passing through, lots of changes of sheets on the guest bed. Sam has been around a bit. Ben, our friend who moved here a couple of years ago but was quickly wooed away by work, is doing a short-term gig nearby and comes around on his days off. And Ryan, who also lived here briefly and was wooed away, is flying in tonight for a visit. The bourbon in the bottle is two fingers lower than it was last week, and the apartment feels nice, lived-in. Most days, days when we don’t have house guests, I spend long stretches of time alone, working. I like the quiet. I don’t need a lot of company. But then someone comes into town, or maybe only across town, with a pint of Coffee Heath Bar Crunch and the first season of Mad Men, and we squeeze on the couch with the dog who growls because we’ve stolen his spot, and we all know to ignore him because we’ve heard it before, we’ve done this before, many times, and then I realize how much I’ve missed my friends. They wake me up from wherever I’ve been.


This was the scene on Sunday morning, and that’s Ben’s leg there, and the edge of his napkin, after what I believe can only be called a biscuit feed. Ben’s wife Bonnie is out of frame, and Brandon, I believe, had retired to the couch by this point. You will note that there are no biscuits in sight, and that is because we ate them. But you know what biscuits look like. You don’t need a picture.

I don’t think there’s anything I like cooking quite as much as breakfast for house guests. Because if they’re sleeping in our house, we’re obviously fond of them, and who better to cook for than the people you’re fond of? Especially at the start of the day, when everyone is still a little soft, before any crap gets in the way. You can hear them coming up the stairs from the guest room-slash-dungeon in the basement, trying to be quiet, and then the shower turns on, and while it runs, you can sneak out of bed and into the kitchen and grind the coffee, boil the water, get started. You might even remember that you bought some very foxy tangelos, real supermodels, stems and leaves still attached, and decide to put them in a bowl on the table. Tangelos go with biscuits. Biscuits go with raspberry jam and a giant vat of honey.



The biscuits on the table on Sunday were Marion Cunningham’s, of course, because that’s how I’m doing things this year. This woman is teaching me so much! Like that cream biscuits are virtually impossible to mess up. Impossible! Even if you, like me, become convinced that you messed up the recipe and want to throw away the dough without even baking it and your husband and house guests have to talk you down by promising to eat said biscuits, no matter how bad they are. Which they aren’t. They’re outstanding.

Cunningham says that these biscuits belong in your permanent recipe file, and she is right about that. I’ve tried a lot of biscuit recipes, and this is my new go-to, easy. It is not for those seeking a light breakfast - the amount of cream and butter is, shall we say, festive - but it feels light going down, if that makes any difference. And it’s an epic biscuit: perfectly salted, tender-crumbed, so flaky that you can pull it apart in fine, lacy sheets.

I can say all of this, and I’m actually pretty sure I didn’t even make them quite right. I don’t think I used enough cream - the amount called for is a range - and so my dough felt tough and heavy, and by the time I started to worry, I had already worked it too much to go back and add more cream. The biscuits looked puny going into the oven. Very sad, flat, unpromising pucks. But then! In the heat of the oven, they puffed to about three times their original height, and maybe even four. Yeow. What I’m trying to say is, you can’t screw this up. No one can screw this up. And first thing in the morning, that - that, and the company of a few favorite faces - might be the most a person can hope for.


Cream Biscuits
Adapted from The Breakfast Book, by Marion Cunningham

These are terrific with jam or, of course, honey.

2 cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp. table salt
1 Tbsp. baking powder
2 tsp. sugar
1 to 1 ½ cups heavy cream
5 Tbsp. unsalted butter, melted

Preheat the oven to 425°F. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper. (If you don’t have parchment, leave it as it is, ungreased. The parchment is just for easy cleanup.)

Combine the flour, salt, baking powder, and sugar in a mixing bowl, and stir with a fork to blend. Slowly add 1 cup of the cream, stirring. Gather the dough together gently: when it holds together and feels tender, it’s ready to knead. If it feels shaggy and pieces are dry, slowly add enough cream to make the dough hold together.

Place the dough on a lightly floured board and knead for 1 minute. (You don’t want to overwork it.) Pat the dough into a square about ½ inch thick. Cut into 12 squares. Brush each with melted butter so that all sides are coated. Place the biscuits 2 inches apart on the baking sheet. Bake for about 15 minutes, or until lightly browned. Serve hot.

Yield: 12 biscuits

Butter-Glazed Radishes

Quick! It’s almost Thursday, but if you act fast, you can still have a Week to Remember:

Step 1: On your day off, clean the apartment you just moved out of. Don’t forget to grab that last load of laundry from the dryer, the way I almost did. And when you sweep the basement, be sure to accidentally dump the entire contents of the dust pan into the bag of clean laundry from the dryer, the way Brandon did.

Step 2: Go back to your new home. Feel both triumphant and defeated. Take a shower. Apply a bathrobe. Drink two glasses of cheap prosecco with Campari and a squeeze of orange. Now: try to make it to the dinner table without falling down. Not because of the prosecco, but because you put Pledge on the dining room table the other day, and when you did, there was apparently a substantial amount of fallout, leaving the floor with the traction properties of black ice. Feel your way along the wall until you reach the bedroom. Sleep.

Step 3: Unpack boxes. While you do so, have an idea: you can remove those cobwebs from the ceiling by Swiffering it! Begin immediately. Stop after three minutes, put away the Swiffer, get a chair to stand on, and begin removing cottony Swiffer bits from your ceiling. Unpack more boxes.

Step 4: Repeat the unpacking boxes part of Step 3. Continue for two days - or more, as needed.

Step 5: Avoid unpacking, Swiffering, Pledging, or doing anything else you are supposed to be doing. Stare into the middle distance. Steam an artichoke and eat it with an unconscionable amount of mayonnaise. Come to around three in the afternoon, and notice that life has provided you with a large north-facing window and yet another cloudy Seattle afternoon - in other words, your favorite situation for picture-taking. Get out some radishes, and have your way with them.



And when you’ve gotten that out of your system, make Molly Stevens’s butter-glazed radishes for dinner. And roast a chicken to go with it, if you have one. (I didn’t, but I would have, if I did.) And there’s your Week to Remember, especially if you skip Steps 1 through 4.

This radish recipe comes from the book All About Braising, which I love. I’ve written about it at least a couple of times, if not a few. I’ve had this particular recipe bookmarked since the first time I flipped through the book, years ago now. Until I saw it, I had never thought to eat radishes cooked - and to be honest, I couldn’t really imagine it, since they feel so right in their raw state, so peppery and crisp. But Molly Stevens has never led me astray, and I don’t see how the union of butter and radishes could ever be bad, so when the first spring radishes started cropping up at the market, I decided it was time to give it a try.



As braises go, this one is very quick. You’re not dealing with short ribs or brisket here. The radishes spend almost as much time soaking in a bowl of water beforehand - to loosen any trapped dirt - as they do cooking. They get only a brief simmer in butter and stock, and then you reduce the liquid to a glaze that coats them. You can use any kind or color of radish you want, but if you use red ones, there’s a nice side effect: they give some of their color to the cooking liquid, which goes rosy, and they themselves wind up the color of cotton candy. Very handsome, dignified cotton candy.



At first bite, I wasn’t entirely sold. The flavor of cooked radishes doesn’t announce itself with trumpets and cannons. It’s sweet, almost, and very delicate. It’s quiet. It sort of reminded me of a Sunday lunch I had to go to once with my parents, as a kid. We were at the home of some family friends, and they made blanquette de veau. It was supposed to be very chic and fancy, but I’d never eaten anything like it, and to me, it looked and tasted approximately like paste. I remember leaning on my mother’s shoulder, whispering in her ear, moaning about the “old-people food.” Of course, that’s not fair - to the veal or the radishes. But the first impressions were similar. It’s not that cooked radishes are old-people food, but on first taste, you could mistake them for bland. But! If you hang out a little longer, if you taste a second one and a third, you’ll find a lot of flavor there, low and earthy and resonant. It’ll surprise you. The butter is there, too, giving them some heft, and then there’s the texture, creamy and dense, like well-cooked cauliflower. Does that sound off-putting? I like well-cooked cauliflower. Maybe think in the direction of a potato instead? A particularly light, smooth-textured potato? Only more interesting, because it’s a radish. A butter-glazed radish. Happy spring, finally.


Butter-Glazed Radishes
Adapted from All About Braising, by Molly Stevens

I think these radishes would make an ideal side dish for roasted chicken, but you could serve them with almost anything: fish, pork, probably even a fried egg.

1 lb. small radishes (2 to 2 ½ dozen)
2 Tbsp. unsalted butter
1/3 cup chicken stock, or water
Large pinch of sugar
Coarse salt
Freshly ground black pepper

Trim the roots from the radishes, and pare off the greens, leaving ¼ to ½ inch of the stems. (This is mostly for looks, and for the slight flavor the stems bring, but if you want, you can completely trim away the greens.) Soak the radishes in cold water for about 15 minutes to loosen any dirt trapped in the stems. Drain and scrub the radishes. If any are more than 1 inch in diameter, halve them.

Put the radishes in a medium (10-inch) skillet. The skillet should hold them in a single layer. Add the butter, stock or water, sugar, and salt and pepper to taste. Bring to a simmer over medium heat; then cover, reduce the heat to maintain a gentle simmer, and cook until the radishes are tender, 18 to 25 minutes. You should be able to easily pierce them with a small knife.

Remove the lid, shake the pan to roll the radishes around, and continue to simmer until the liquid reduces to a glaze and coats the radishes, another 5 to 10 minutes. (You may need to increase the heat under the pan.) Taste for seasoning. Serve warm.

Yield: 4 servings

Almond Cake

I think I might have told you about my father’s friend Michael. Sometime in the early ‘90s, Burg was on his way out of the grocery store, and being something of a car buff, he stopped to check out a Citroën in the parking lot. While he stood there with his grocery bags, the owner of the car came along - or maybe the owner was in the car; these details are long gone - and he turned out to be a man named Michael. They struck up a conversation, and something must have clicked, because for years after that, they were best friends. Michael was a native New Yorker, a former cab driver-slash-writer turned small business owner, intense and inquisitive and superhumanly well read. He and my dad would meet up on the weekends to a walk around the neighborhood and talk, and then one of them would make lunch, and they would talk some more. Burg must have told him that I liked to write, because the first time we met, Michael asked to see my poems - that’s what I was into then - and he told me about Adrienne Rich and her Diving into the Wreck, which wound up being the first book of poetry that felt like it spoke directly to me, 14-year-old me, just-starting-to-figure-stuff-out me.


I just realized that the way I’m talking makes it sound as though Michael is dead. I’m happy to report that he’s not. But I guess because Burg is, I tend to write about everything around him in the past tense. I should work on that.

In any case, Michael was - and is - a very good cook, and he and his wife Becky would have us over sometimes for dinner. In retrospect, I’m sort of surprised that they included me, seeing as I was a teenage punk at that point, but they did. And in some ways, I remember their cooking more vividly than my own parents’. Michael once put a whole chicken in a roasting pan, scattered a drained can of hominy around it, dumped a can of Coca Cola on top, and parked it in the oven until the juices were dark and caramelly, and though I have an uneasy relationship with superlatives, I have no problem declaring it the best chicken I’ve ever eaten. Michael now claims not to remember how he made it - or even that he made it - and despite a number of tries, I’ve never been able to produce anything remotely like it. He could also make a platter of hard-boiled eggs with wedges of tomato and sweet onion - a sort of composed salad, dressed only with olive oil and salt - taste exceptional, like no egg, tomato, or onion since. The same goes for his boiled yucca. Boiled yucca! And Becky, for her part, made a perfect almond cake: a damp-crumbed, camel-colored loaf that, though she insisted it was easy and absolutely no big deal, I still think about all the time.



When I was in college, they moved away. They had never seemed at home in Oklahoma, and they live in France now. And of course, here I am in Seattle. I don’t see them often, but the last time I did, Brandon was with me. The four of us went to dinner at a restaurant that turned out to be terrible, but getting there, we took a nice walk. It was a long walk, and we wound up in pairs, Michael with Brandon and Becky with me. The guys were a few strides ahead, and I could tell that they were deep in conversation, and at one point, I saw Michael lean in and loop his arm through Brandon’s, grinning, cackling conspiratorially, the way he always did when he was talking to Burg. And not long after, it occurred to me that meeting Michael might be the closest Brandon ever gets to meeting my father, and vice versa.




We’ve had a lot of out-of-town visitors in the past few weeks. First came Brandon’s parents, then a friend from New York, and then, last weekend, my mom. I haven’t been doing a lot of memorable cooking - not unless you count the soup I made last Thursday, which was memorable in the sense that it was virtually indistinguishable from pond water. But one night, I wanted to make us a nice dinner, and I had a new dessert recipe that I wanted to try, a type of souffle flavored with almond paste. I went to the store to pick up the ingredients, and when I got home and started unpacking the grocery bags, I noticed that the back of the almond paste box had a recipe for an almond cake. I once asked Becky where she got her cake recipe, and though I don’t really remember what she told me, as I stood there last week with the box of Odense brand almond paste in my hand, I suddenly felt very, very sure that it came from the back of that box. So I scrapped the souffle plans and switched to cake, and that night, with Brandon’s dad and our friend Sam, we tried it. It was okay. The almond flavor tasted muted somehow, lacking in salt. I sent the leftovers home with Sam, and as further evidence of how only-okay the cake was, I should tell you that the last half of it showed up at Delancey four days later, when Sam tried to pawn it off on the cooks.

But you haven’t read this far to hear about an only-okay cake, and actually, a lot of you probably haven’t even read this far, so if you have, this is the part where I thank you. And tell you to go preheat the oven and get out a springform pan, because by now, you probably need reinforcements.

The cake you should make is not the recipe on the back of the Odense almond paste box, but rather the recipe that follows, the one I should have made in the first place. It comes from Amanda Hesser’s Cooking for Mr. Latte, and I am certainly not the first person, nor the last, to sing its praises. It is a lot better than okay. I first heard about the recipe years ago, maybe when Adam made it, but I remembered it only after putting the Odense cake in the oven. The truth is, it bears a resemblance to the Odense recipe - the basic ingredients (butter, flour, baking soda, and almond paste) are used in the exact same quantities - but Hesser’s recipe uses a proper amount of salt, and some sour cream, and almond extract. What you get is a big, sturdy cake with enormous flavor and fragrance. I don’t know what’s going on in there, but the texture is incredible: so tender and tightly woven that it slices with no crumbs, but also pleasingly chewy. Its only flaw is that it caves in the middle as it cools, but that’s just how it is. It’s still fine to look at. Of course, it’s not exactly like Becky’s cake; hers baked in a loaf pan, for one thing, and I don’t remember it caving. But making it made me think of her, and of Michael, and it made me get out Diving into the Wreck (which doesn’t speak to me now the way it did when I was 14, but that’s probably for the best), and it made me want to write this down for you, which also means writing it down for me.


P.S. Annnnnd now that I wrote all this, I went back in my archives and found that I did indeed write about Michael and Becky years ago, more than six years ago, with a different almond cake recipe that I had since completely forgotten about. Going to go curl up and die now. Goodnight. (But I do think today’s almond cake is better, and it uses more standard ingredients, which is nice.)


Almond Cake
Adapted from Amanda Hesser’s Cooking for Mr. Latte, and from her mother-in-law, Elizabeth

It would be tough to improve upon this cake, but next time, I might cut the almond extract back to ½ teaspoon, rather than 1 teaspoon. I love almond extract, but sometimes it leaves an aftertaste.

2 sticks (8 oz.) unsalted butter, at room temperature
1 cup sour cream, at room temperature
1 tsp. baking soda
2 cups all-purpose flour
½ tsp. salt
1 ½ cups sugar
1 (7-ounce) tube almond paste, cut into small pieces
4 egg yolks, at room temperature
1 tsp. pure almond extract
Powdered sugar, for serving (optional)

Preheat the oven to 350°F. Butter (or spray with cooking spray) the sides and bottom of a 9-inch springform pan. The line the sides and bottom with parchment paper, and butter (or spray) the paper. In a small bowl, mix together sour cream and baking soda. In another bowl, whisk together the flour and salt.

In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, beat the butter and sugar until fluffy. Add the almond paste a few pieces at a time, and beat on medium speed for 8 minutes. (Yes, this seems like a long time, but do it. The mixture will get gorgeously fluffy.) Beat in the egg yolks one at a time, and mix until incorporated. (If it looks curdled, don’t worry.) Beat in the almond extract and the sour cream mixture. Reduce mixer speed to low, and gradually add the flour mixture, beating just until combined. Using a rubber spatula, fold the batter a couple of times to make sure there’s no unincorporated flour lurking around.

Scrape the batter into the prepared pan, and spread it evenly with the rubber spatula. Bake for about 1 hour: the cake is done when you press the top and it returns to its shape, and also when it shrinks from the sides of the pan. Transfer to a cooling rack, and cool the cake in its pan.

When ready to serve, sift powdered sugar over the top, if you like.

Yield: about 10 servings

Russian Egg and Mushroom Salad

Let’s get it out of the way right now: this egg salad, the one we’re going to talk about today, is not a beautiful egg salad. There will be no sexy pictures of this egg salad. There will not even be vaguely winsome pictures of this egg salad. There will be no pictures at all of this egg salad. But it has other things going for it, like the way it tastes, and if push comes to shove, you can always eat it in the dark.



A couple of weeks ago, I got an e-mail from a new friend, telling me about this egg salad. She’d found the recipe in the April issue of Saveur, the sandwich issue, where it was featured in a spread about salad sandwiches. (Photograph included! Avert your eyes!) I had already read the magazine and put it away without noticing the recipe, and to be honest, even if I had noticed it, I don’t know that I would have given it a second thought: Russian egg and mushroom salad, it was called, with dill and caramelized onions. Apparently, I am prone to provincialism in my egg saladry, because I had never heard of an egg salad like that. I grew up under the roof of a man who loved egg salad and made it nearly every Saturday, but the farthest he ever ventured from the home territory of egg, mayo, mustard, and salt was an occasional visit to the curry powder jar. I couldn’t grasp the idea of egg salad with mushrooms and caramelized onions. That mental trick that a lot of us cooks do, the one where we read a list of ingredients and then conjure up, in our mind’s mouth, what the resulting flavor might be - well, the trick didn’t work on this salad. But Sarah had called the recipe a keeper, and she even used double exclamation points(!!), and so, without really understanding what I was making, I was excited to make it. I put some eggs on to boil.



This is not a recipe with a long, involved origin story. The story of this recipe is, in short: I made it. I ate it. I made it again. I ate it again. And when I started thinking about making it a third time, I wrote to Sarah to ask if I could tell you about it - if for no other reason than to believe that we might not be the only two people in the world wanting to eat this much egg salad.

The recipe is as simple as you might guess. You cook some roughly chopped mushrooms in a skillet until they smell good enough that you’re forced to make a piece of toast to tide you over while you stand there, stirring. Then you scrape them into a bowl, put the skillet back on the heat, and lightly caramelize some roughly chopped onions in it. (Don’t worry if you lose track of time while you’re eating your toast and the onions brown too quickly; mine did, and still, the salad rose above.) Then you add the onions to the bowl, along with some chopped egg and fresh dill, and you dress it with a bright, quickly whisked-up sauce of mayonnaise, Dijon mustard, and lemon juice - a sauce that, should you have extra, makes a bang-up dip for asparagus. Then you pile it on a(nother) piece of toast while the whole mixture is still a little warm, and you put a napkin in your lap, because what’s about to happen deserves some ceremony. And then you have lunch.


ccc
Adapted from Saveur, and from Anya von Bremzen’s Please to the Table: The Russian Cookbook

The original recipe called for white button mushrooms, but because I like crimini mushrooms more, that’s what I chose. And for the mayonnaise, I used Best Foods (also sold as Hellmann’s). Homemade would be terrific, but there’s nothing wrong with Best Foods.

Also: the flavor of this salad really deepens with time, so consider making it a day (or even two) before you want to eat it.

5 Tbsp. canola oil
1 lb. mushrooms, roughly chopped (see note, above)
½ medium yellow onion, roughly chopped
1/3 cup finely chopped fresh dill
4 hard-boiled eggs, roughly chopped
¾ cup mayonnaise
2 Tbsp. Dijon mustard
1 Tbsp. fresh lemon juice
Kosher salt
Freshly ground black pepper

Heat 3 tablespoons of the oil in a 10” or 12” skillet over medium-high heat, and add the mushrooms. (If they don’t all fit in the pan at once, let the first panful wilt down a bit, and then add the rest. It’ll work out fine.) Cook, stirring often, until lighly browned, 14-16 minutes. Transfer to a large bowl, and set aside. Wipe out the skillet.

Heat the remaining oil in the skillet over medium-high heat, and add the onion. Cook, stirring often, until the onions begin to soften; then reduce the heat to low and continue to cook until lightly caramelized, 10-15 minutes. Transfer to the bowl with the mushrooms. Add the dill and eggs, and stir to mix.

In a small bowl, whisk together the mayonnaise, mustard, and lemon juice. Add a couple of spoonfuls to the mushroom mixture, and toss until evenly combined. Taste, and add more dressing as needed. (All in all, I used only about two-thirds of the dressing.) Season with salt and pepper. Depending on how deeply browned the onions are, you might also want an extra squeeze of lemon.

Pile on lightly toasted bread – preferably sourdough rye, if you’ve got some – and serve open-faced.

Yield: about 2 cups

Kimchi Fried Rice

Listen, I know it’s a holiday weekend. Most of you are probably outside, grilling or picnicking or generally engaged in some form of early-summer eating. In fact, as I type this, I can hear my neighbors on their deck, shaking a bag of charcoal briquettes, talking about Neil Diamond. But what I would like to tell them (aside from, HAVE MERCY! NO NEIL DIAMOND TONIGHT!), and you, too, is this: do your future self a favor and go inside and cook a pot of rice.




Also, do whatever you have to do to get some Napa cabbage kimchi. Come midweek, your efforts will be rewarded.


I can’t believe it’s taken me this long to get around to writing about kimchi fried rice. I learned how to make it more than a year ago, in early 2010, when my friend Matthew and I taped the first episode of our podcast, Spilled Milk. The topic of the show that day was fried eggs, and Matthew made this rice to serve with them, to sop up the yolks. (We tape at Matthew’s place, almost always over lunch.) In the 17 or so months since, I’ve probably made kimchi fried rice close to 17 times. I know that fried rice is supposed to be about using up leftover rice, but I don’t let that slow me down: I now make rice for the sole purpose of making kimchi fried rice. Did it just the other day. And seeing as this blog is the place where I put my best stuff, I thought it was time to finally record it here, to file it as a Keeper.

I am not any kind of expert on fried rice, and I don’t think Matthew thinks of himself that way, either - though he’s welcome to correct me, if he does. But I’ve eaten kimchi fried rice in a couple of restaurants in the past few months, and the version that Matthew taught me is still my favorite. It begins with bacon, which you cook slowly, so that it gives off a nice amount of fat - that fat is important in fried rice - and then you add some chopped Napa cabbage kimchi (the riper, the better). When the kimchi is hot and beginning to look a little wilty at the edges, you add cooked rice, preferably a day or two old, the rice you’re going to make today. And into that, a few minutes later, you stir a little sesame oil and butter. Kimchi and butter are crazy for each other. It’s really spectacular, what happens to the sharp funk and sting of fermented cabbage when it shakes the smoothing hand of butter. Spectacular. So you’ve got that, plus the fragrant sesame oil, the bacon, and the rice, and a bowl, and it’s hard to imagine needing anything else, ever, in the entire universe - except maybe some sesame seeds and sliced scallions, for garnish.



And a fried egg! Right. Almost forgot that part.


Kimchi Fried Rice
Adapted from Kye Soon Hong, Matthew Amster-Burton, and Spilled Milk

I pick up kimchi whenever I’m near a Korean market or Uwajimaya, but Ballard Market, my neighborhood grocery store, also carries it. They sell a couple of different brands, but I usually buy Island Spring. It’s made about half an hour away, on Vashon Island, and it has good flavor and heat. Matthew, however, makes his own kimchi, and it’s fantastic. Maybe he’ll teach me how someday. David Lebovitz also has a recipe for it.

As for rice, the best type for this recipe is Calrose, a medium-grain, Japanese-style white rice from California. But I’ve also used Thai jasmine rice, which is nice - though when you fry it, it tends to stick aggressively to the pan. Whatever you use, cook it a day or two ahead, cool it, and chill it. If possible, allow it to come to room temperature before frying.

About the pan: if you have a well-seasoned wok, use it. Or, if you’re stuck with just a heavy skillet and an electric range, as I am, that’s okay. I use my largest cast-iron pan. It’s nicely seasoned, but the rice still sticks a bit. It’s annoying, but not annoying enough to keep me from making fried rice. (Just put some hot water in the pan when you’re finished, soak briefly, and the stuck rice will come right out.) One word of warning: I wouldn’t use a nonstick pan. The coating isn’t safe for use over high heat.

Oh, and if I were you, I might fry two eggs per person. But it’s really up to you.

4 strips bacon, cut crosswise into ½-inch pieces
2 cups Napa cabbage kimchi (see above), diced
4 cups cooked rice (see above)
1 Tbsp. unsalted butter, plus more for frying eggs
2 tsp. sesame oil
Salt
Sesame seeds, for garnish
Sliced scallions or sweet spring onions, for garnish
Eggs, for frying

Put the bacon in a large skillet or wok, and place over medium heat. (I find that by starting the bacon in a cold skillet, I can get it to render more fat than it does when I start it in a hot skillet, and that’s helpful for this recipe.) Cook, stirring occasionally, until the bacon is cooked through but still tender. Add the kimchi, and cook for several minutes, until the kimchi is hot and maybe even beginning to brown in spots.

When the kimchi looks right, raise the heat to high, and add the rice, stirring well. Cook, stirring occasionally, for several minutes, until the rice is hot and beginning to brown. (If the rice is wanting to stick to the pan, it’s going to be hard to brown it properly, but don’t worry. Just make sure it’s nice and hot. It’ll still taste very good.)

Meanwhile, in another skillet, warm some butter and fry as many eggs as you’d like, seasoning with salt to taste.

When the rice is ready, stir in the butter and sesame oil, and season with salt to taste. Divide between two or three bowls, and top each with a fried egg or two. Garnish with sesame seeds and scallions.

Yield: 2 generous or 3 moderate servings