News from the Swamp

Don't you just want to slurp that?

We're melting here. The words melt out of my brain before I have a chance to type them onto my melting keyboard. There's only one defense, one last bulwark before insanity sets in. Ice cream sandwiches. On Monday, when I was feeling a bit more mobile, I bought some tiny sugar plums from the Union Square Greenmarket. A few days later, having made short work of my caramel ice cream welcome home present for Matt, I adapted another David Lebovitz recipe to suit my sweet sweet plums. The recipe was for plum ice cream, but since I used whole milk instead of cream, I think it teeters on the edge of being plum sherbet. Either way, it is sharp and fantastically pink, with the help of a little splash of ginjinja. Because the plums were so sweet, I reduced the sugar called for by about one third.

 

The oatmeal cookies are also a David Lebovitz recipe, made without the raisins he recommends to better showcase the plums. I had qualms about turning on the oven but the recipe was so quick and the pairing so perfect that I didn't regret it. So pink!

Next up, vanilla/mixed pepper ice cream, with my brand new huge squashy Ugandan vanilla beans. Now, diving back into the cool lake bottom.

Simple Food Ginger Snaps

The next step in my Gingerbread Odyssey is a tour through the gingerbread or ginger cookies in my ever-growing cookbook collection. These days I almost have more cookbooks than I know what to do with, and certainly more than I really know well. I'm very excited to use the my gingerbread explorations as an opportunity to better know some of the more obscure or underused. I also plan to use this as an opportunity for mini-reviews.
That said, my first attempt was from a new favorite, the already broken-spined The Art of Simple Food. This elegant new book from Alice Waters is full of straightforward, readable recipes for what Waters at least considers basic preparations. It's as approachable as most of the Chez Panisse cookbooks can be intimidating, and I use it all the time. Desserts are not the book's strong point, but it covers Waters' basics, including the gingersnap recipe also featured in my favorite children's cookbook and fantasia, Fanny at Chez Panisse. I would hazard a guess that these cookies made or make frequent appearances at the restaurant, as they are also the recipe that David Lebovitz, a former Chez Panisse dessert chef, chose to feature in his book review for Simple Food.
The snaps were good, not great. Next time I would up the spice and possibly make the dough a little dryer, it was difficult to work with. At first, I tried rolling out the dough, but that was so difficult that I did my second batch as a freezer roll, and had better success. These aren't the holy grail of cookies, but there is one thing that they do very well indeed, so well that it's pointed out everywhere that the recipe appears, and that is...
Ice cream sandwiches. I adapted David Lebovitz's passion fruit ice cream recipe to a mango-lemon version, and tried a new method for filling the sandwiches. Usually I just scoop a spoonful onto the bottom cookie, press on the top, and wrap tightly in plastic wrap. That method is a little messy, and doesn't create the precise little sandwiches I prefer (yes, I'm all Martha about my ice cream sandwiches). This time I poured the soft ice cream onto waxed paper in a 3/4 inch layer in a pan, and cut out circles with a biscuit cutter once it had hardened, and this was successful enough that it will be my new go-to method. And they were delicious, best after defrosting for ten minutes or so.

Ginger Snaps
From The Art of Simple Food: Notes, Lessons, and Recipes from a Delicious Revolution (Clarkson Potter) by Alice Waters, adapted from David Lebovitz's adaptations.

• 2 cups (280 g) flour
• 1½ teaspoons baking soda
• ½ teaspoon salt
• 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
• 1½ teaspoons ground ginger
• ½ teaspoon ground black pepper
• 11 tablespoons (150 g) butter, salted or unsalted, at room temperature
• 2/3 cup (130 g) sugar
• ½ teaspoon vanilla extract
• ¼ cup (80 g) mild-flavored molasses* (sometimes called 'light' molasses)
• 1 large egg, at room temperature

1. Stir together the dry ingredients.

2. Beat the butter just until soft and fluffy. Add the sugar and continue to beat until smooth.

3. Stir in the vanilla, molasses and egg.

4. Mix in the dry ingredients gradually until the dough is smooth.

5. Divide the dough in two equal portions and roll each on a lightly-floured surface until each is about 2-inches (5cm) around. Don't worry if they're not perfect; you can neaten them up in a second.

6. Wrap each in plastic wrap then roll them lightly on the counter to smooth them out. Refrigerate, or better yet, freeze the cookie logs until firm.

7. To bake, preheat the oven to 350F (180C) and line two baking sheets with parchment paper or silicone baking mats.

8. Slice cookie dough into 1/4-inch (a scant 1 cm) rounds with a sharp knife. Dip one side and press firmly in a bowl of coarse sugar if you want (you can also use granulated sugar instead), and place sugar-side up on baking sheet, evenly-spaced apart. Leave a couple of inches, about 5 cm, between cookies since they'll spread while baking.

9. Bake for 10-14 minutes, rotating the baking sheets midway during baking, until deep-golden brown. The cookies will puff up a bit while baking, then settle down when they're done. Bake on the lower end of the range for softer cookies, and more for snappier ones (I'd suggest going for snappy if you want ice cream sandwiches), depending on your oven.

10. Let the cookies cool two minutes, then remove them with a spatula and transfer them to a cooling rack.


Mango Ice Cream
Adapted from The Perfect Scoop, by David Lebovitz

• 1/2 cup mango puree (put mango in food processor, whir...)
  
• 1 cup heavy cream (I subbed some with milk)
  
• 6 Tbl whole milk (I used skim)
  
• 7 Tblsp. sugar
• pinch of salt
• 3 large egg yolks
• orange zest (meyer lemon) or lemon oil

Mix mango and 1/2 the cream, set aside.
Warm milk, sugar, salt, remaining cream in saucepan, whisk the yolks in nearby bowl. Add a bit of warm milk to eggs to temper, whisk eggs into warm milk, heat until custard coats the back of a spoon. Stir custard into remaining cream/mango mix, add zest. Chill and put in ice cream freezer.

The Reluctant Foodie: Sticky Toffee Pudding

Photo courtesy of Sarah Bishop-Stone. Note Moosewood Cookbook display stand.

Most of my friends are at least semi-foodies--they work in the restaurant industry, they love to cook and talk about restaurants, or they just live in New York, which pretty much qualifies regardless of other factors. The yearly gift exchanges put on by my theater company tend to resemble bridal showers, with all manner of woks and wine glasses and serving bowls and cake stands being passed back and forth. We did have one half-holdout, though, a girl who demanded that her pyrex casserole dishes be accompanied by some big earrings, at least.

While I'm sure she maintains a similar gift-related stance, I think we've finally won Miriam entirely over to the dark side.* Not only did she just admit to watching an NYTimes video about beets, she has baked at least four times in the last month. "People were just so excited to get the cookies," she said, at which I nodded sagely and pointed out that this was a largeish part of my motivation. I'm happy to say that she's taken inspiration from this blog, and two out of four have been World Peace Cookies and Salted Oatmeal Cookies.

For her birthday, Miriam attempted her most ambitious project to date, Sticky Toffee Pudding, and requested to detail her triumph in a guest post. Here she is:

"I spent Passover of 2006 in London, visiting my then-boyfriend's family, which favored lengthy and delicious meals, and kept a fairly loose version of kosher-for-Passover. One day, at a riverside inn an hour outside the city, whose location had something to do with "The Wind in the Willows," I ordered a sticky toffee pudding for dessert, thinking that "pudding" was a safe bet for something flourless. It wasn't until I was halfway through with one of the most extreme desserts I've ever had that I even realized that what I was eating had clearly been leavened and baked, and by that point I was too engrossed to care.

When we got home, Katya was convinced to make a sticky toffee pudding for us, and since then I've had it in the back of my mind as something complicated but not completely impossible to make at home--so my 29th birthday seemed like the right occasion to try. The dates and molasses required advance planning (cf. the delis in New Haven don't sell any food), and I had to sub in half-and-half for one of the cups of cream (there seemed to be one 8-oz carton of heavy cream in all Connecticut), but it was delightful and impressive for my birthday guests. This recipe is something I would never have attempted a year ago.

I hereby give you my adaptation of David Lebovitz's recipe for sticky toffee pudding, with the following notes: 1) half-and-half worked just fine in the toffee sauce, 2) I used regular dark brown sugar and no ginger, 3) I would make extra sauce next time, since I ran out of it before I ran out of pudding, and 4) I was initially worried because the sauce didn't seem to be thickening in the pan, the way he describes, but once I took it off the heat it thickened right up. Definitely serve warm and with vanilla ice cream." - Miriam

Sticky Toffee Pudding
Adapted from David Lebovitz
Adapted in turn from Sweet! (Da Capo) by Mani Niall

For the toffee sauce:
2 cups (500ml) heavy cream
1/2 cup (120g) demerara or muscovado sugar (or another dark brown sugar)
2 1/2 tablespoons golden syrup or molasses
pinch of salt

For the pudding:
6 ounces (180g) pitted dates, snipped or chopped
1 cup (250ml) water
1 teaspoon baking soda
optional: 1/3 cup (40g) candied ginger, chopped
1 1/4 cups (175g) flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon fine sea salt
4 tablespoons (55g) unsalted butter
3/4 cup (150g) granulated sugar
2 large eggs, at room temperature
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1. Preheat the oven to 350F (190C) and butter an 8 1/2-inch baking dish.

2. Make the toffee sauce-bring the cream, demerara or turbinado sugar, golden syrup (or molasses) and salt to a boil in a medium saucepan, stirring often.

3. Lower heat and simmer, stirring constantly for about 5 minutes, until the mixture is thick and coats the spoon. Pour half the sauce into the prepared baking dish and place the mold in the freezer, and reserve the other half for serving.

4. To make the pudding, in a medium saucepan, heat the dates and water. Once the water begins to boil, remove from heat and stir in the baking soda. Add the ginger, if using, then set aside, but keep it slightly warm.

5. In a small bowl, sift together the flour, baking powder, and salt.

6. In the bowl of a standing electric mixer, or by hand, heat the butter and granulated sugar until light and fluffy. Gradually beat in the eggs, then the vanilla. (Don't be alarmed if the mixture looks a bit curdled.)

7. Stir in half of the flour mixture, then the date mixture, then add the remaining flour mixture until just mixed. Don't overbeat the batter.

8. Scrape the batter into the prepared baking dish and bake for 50 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out with moist crumbs attached.

9. Remove the pudding from the oven, and let cool slightly before serving.

Serving: Spoon portions of the cake into serving bowls and douse with additional warm toffee sauce. Whipped cream or vanilla ice cream are good accompaniments, although I enjoy it just as it is.

Note: To make the pudding in advance, bake the cake without the toffee in the bottom. Let cool, then cover until close to serving time. Poke the cake about fifteen times with a chopstick. Distribute half of the sauce over the top, as shown in the photo, cover with foil, then re-warm in a 300F (150C) oven, for 30 minutes.

*To be clear, Miriam has always cooked, and loved food, she just lacked grocery stores and all cooking implements for a little while there, and so the obsession couldn't take hold with the same rigor.

Family Winter Holiday Macarons

Happy Chanukah!
Or as my friend Stacey would say, Happy Family Winter Holiday!

I love Chanukah, and have already had two latke parties to go to, which is a very good thing. Fried potatoes are excellent. Chanukah is also a great time to remember that one man's religious extremist terrorist is another man's Maccabee. (The way most people tell it, the Maccabees were fighting for their own right to religious expression, which had been outlawed, rather than trying to impose on others, but the point is historically dicey.) Just makes you think.

But when I think, I like to think about light. And miracles. Two years ago on Chanukah, crushed and lonely, I bested my better judgment and called Matt and asked him to tell me again about his theory of the third night. He believes that there is a tipping point for miracles, the moment when the miracle hits the mind, when it starts to dawn on everyone that this is more than just some high quality oil or a really good rainbow. He was surprised to hear from me (maybe) but he told me all he could, and when I asked, promised to round out the religious instruction with a multi-borough Christmas tree tour.

Somewhere in the cold wind and rain and snow of that winter, another miracle happened, and we found ourselves able to find each other again. Christmas and New Year are special times for us--fraught with darkness and fear and light and miracles.

This year, I'm leaving town for both holidays, flying on Christmas day to see my little sister in Uganda, where it's hot and modest. I won't be back until mid-January. Part of the trip anxiety, or just my wish to cram everything in, has been an immodest amount of cooking and baking. (I have to leave Matt well-fed, don't I? Actually, I know he's looking forward to a little unsupervised time to get to know the kitchen.)

I made lasagne and spanikopita, braised ribs and roasted chicken, and produced a large number of cookies. There were world peace cookies and there were NY Times chocolate chip cookies, and then there were these:
These are gingerbread macarons, from Tartelette. Macarons are notoriously temperamental to make, and the proper hard shell with a little fuzzy 'foot' on the bottom can be hit or miss. In fact, the first time I made this recipe, which mixes ginger, cinnamon, cloves and nutmeg into the dry ingredients, the taste was great but the shape was a flop. (No disrespect to Tartelette, I have a feeling my conversions were off.)

I re-made the recipe the following morning using the recipe I've had best results with, David Lebovitz's. I just omitted the chocolate powder and didn't replace it, helping the dough to remain a little wetter. These held their perfect shape and I filled them with gingerbread buttercream. I brought them to one of the aforementioned latke parties and one guy fell for both kinds, exclaiming over and over that they were different, but he liked both.

Today, I mixed it up a little, and made plain nutmeg macarons with a filling made of cream, chestnut jam from Chile (thanks Miriam), and the leftover gingerbread buttercream. Here they are:
They look just like little UFOs, don't they?
The filling was great, and as a bonus, they are gluten-free, so I can give them to my aunt.

I love sweet things in my mouth and sweet things in my life. These are the dark days of the year, but I feel very lucky and well lit.