French Fridays with Dorie: December Round-Up

Since it's January, it does seem like a good time to clear the decks on the December cooking from Around My French Table (did everyone remember that I was in that cooking group--I did). Back in November I decided that I wasn't going to let cooking clubs take over my blog quite as aggressively as they have my life, and thus I would only do monthly roundups of my French Fridays with Dorie cooking. Somehow that seems to have translated into losing most of the pictures, so this round-up will be mostly text-based, an overview for the curious.


There were five recipes for the month, of which I made four. The butter-glazed carrots will have to wait, but not too long, if I know the carrot fiend with whom I live.

Sweet and Spicy Cocktail Nuts, page 18 -- Made 'em last night.

Photo by Matt Korahais

An egg white, a little sugar, some spice (more and bolder next time), some salt, and as some people in the blogosphere say, causing me to giggle hysterically every time--"Walla!" You know how Bush mentioned the internets and now they're called that? Yeah, unfortunately it's like that. Voila!

I covered the bowl, ate one, and then went back and uncovered it for another. This may go badly. Also, note the lovely bowl, courtesy of Stacey.

My Go-to Beef Daube, pages 244 and 245 -- I bought beef for you, Dorie, and I never buy beef. I made stew for you, Dorie, and I love making stew. My version was a bit quick and dirty, but it was eaten. Stew rarely goes astray. I found it a little acidic for my palate, which is odd given that I eat unripe fruit and suck lemons. But there you have it.


Leek and Potato Soup, pages 66 and 67 -- My Christmas weekend dinner, breakfast, lunch, snack... Somehow, Matt never got any, nor any chance to photograph. I had it all. I made the basic recipe, garnished it with parmesan croutons (from SCRATCHbread's country parma loaves). Then I added more potatoes, because it was like a delicious warm milk. I think perhaps a potato weight would have been helpful. But then I've been whining about the fact that this book doesn't have weights in general, so chalk me up for a whiner and move on. The soup was great.

Photo by Matt Korahais.

Speculoos, pages 406 and 407 - Not my favorites, only in that they were like yet unlike the fiercely spiced, barely sweet gingerbread that I crave. No fault of the cookies themselves, which I had great fun shaping in many shapes. I have a great many cookie cutters and they don't get put through their paces enough.

Photo by Matt Korahais.

Looking forward to another month with this book, which is more than the sum of its parts, making these recipes.

French Fridays with Dorie: November Round-Up

Remember French Fridays with Dorie? I'm still cooking from Around My French Table, but I decided that instead of a weekly post it would make more sense for me to do a monthly round-up. The rules of the group are very low-key, and this past month the recipes could be made in any order. I made three of the four selections (and will probably still make the fourth, eventually).

The first recipe of the month, Roast Chicken for Les Paresseux (the lazy folks), was a chicken roasted breast down in a dutch oven, surrounded by root vegetables and garlic. The chicken, which was never turned, rested on a large piece of sourdough, which was meant to absorb all the chicken juices and become crispy and delicious. It was delicious, but because I thoughtlessly put the tough slice crust down, I missed out on the golden bottom, and nearly cracked a tooth trying to chew it all. Still, delicious. Next best was the garlic, and it was all gone pretty quickly.

One of the forum posters mentioned that she had made stock with the chicken carcass right in the roasting pan, a genius idea that yielded a rich, browned stock, which we ate last night with some frozen Udon noodles and pork dumpling filling meatballs.

It seems like we're working our way through the classics first, and nothing is more classic than Pomme Dauphinois. My version used slightly lower-fat dairy products and so was a little juicier than it could have been, more like potatoes floating in the sauce. It was garlicky and good.

The last recipe I made for the month was one of those that looks really good, has great things in it, and never really gets eaten. It just didn't tempt me, somehow, although I was looking forward to it, and I didn't sell it well to the rest of the household.
Maybe another time, Pumpkin Flans with Gorgonzola (it was Chevre) and Walnuts.  Looking forward to next month's recipes, as I continue to dip into the book at my own pleasure.

French Fridays with Dorie: Hachis Parmentier and my Beef Block

AKA post number one million about how much I love DiPaola Turkey Farm.

Hachis Parmentier, the French answer to the English shepherd's or cottage pie. Usually made with boiled (simmered! simmered! shouts John Thorne in my head) beef and sausage and vegetables, and freshly mashed potatoes, but seeing that it's a down-home, peasant dish, I felt free to adapt it to what was in the house.

Perhaps because I wasn't raised cooking it, or because of all the problems inherent in buying 'good' meat, I have issues buying beef. I'd like to say I don't easily eat that high on the food chain, both literal and metaphorical. Beef has a kind of weight that birds just don't seem to in the American food imagination, and it kind of scares me most of the time. I don't like to buy it, though I'll happily eat it if it's served.

In this case, the meats became boneless turkey thighs and turkey sausage (from DiPaola, where else? I love you DiPaola Turkey Farm). The pototoes were recycled from a batch of roasted fingerlings that made it to a Sunday dinner table too late to tempt overloaded appetites. I mashed them up skins and all and made it work. Sprinkled with some mixed cheese, it was just the kind of food that Matt often asks to have in the refrigerator, a heat and eat, hearty dish, that didn't last long.

Lucky Knish

In the cold and exhaustion of the week before Christmas, Matt and I took advantage of an unexpected drive down to Midwood, in pursuit of the perfect knish. Sure, I won't say we didn't also visit Di Fara (and score the last pizza of the evening before they locked the doors), but our real mission was entirely knish-based. We didn't have to pursue them too long, because our friend and new neighbor Russ, who also drove the getaway car, knew exactly where to look. I honestly don't remember the name of the store, or I'd share (Russ?), but in their kind of sorrowing, surly way, they were making and selling the hands-down best knishes I've ever had. We arrived near the end of the tray, so we took what we could get, which was potato and spinach. The spinach was good, but the potato was better. Since potato knishes are the vanilla ice cream of the knish world, the pure form by which quality is judged, and this was the best potato knish I'd ever had, I have to conclude that these were the best knishes in the world. They also had an unusual volcanic shape.

It was a really, really good knish. (Who am I kidding, they were really really good knish-es, plural. I would not buy just one knish). All the same, even though Yonah Shimmels' are dry and Sahadis' sour, I'm not going to trek to Midwood every time I want a reasonable knish. Before I'd even finished my last knish breakfast, I was planning to make my own.

Jew food is a little like that. While a complicated Indian or Chinese dish usually makes me resolve to return to the restaurant as often as possible, Jewish food is usually simpler, with fewer elements and simpler methods, and given the right ingredients and palate (I was born to it), I can usually make a kasha varnishkes or matzo ball soup as good as any restaurant's. It's not a judgment, it's just a simpler style of cooking. A knish, after all, is basically mashed potatoes in a pie crust, a relative of the pasty and the pot pie.

And yet, I'd never attempted it before. It took the world's best knishes to fuel my need, and the long dark days between Christmas and New Year to yield the time. And New Year is the time to eat round foods and dumplings, for luck and prosperity, in many traditions. In mine, we now eat knishes.

I figured that it would take a few tries to find a good recipe. My online searches (uncharacteristically) yielded ambiguous results, so I went to the library and flipped through Claudia Rodin and Joan Nathan. Many of the featured knish recipes went the flaky route, using prepackaged puff pastry or filo sheets. I finally located one that looked a little more like what I was after in Joan Nathan's book The Jewish Holiday Kitchen.

My first attempts were surprisingly good, maybe not Midwood knish good, but as good as any others I've ever had, and better than many. Slightly underseasoned, maybe, but Jews oversalt, self included.
Like any filled dumpling, the recipe begs to be played with, so play away:

Heidi Wortzel's Knishes
adapted from The Jewish Holiday Table, by Joan Nathan

Pastry:
(I halved Nathan's quantities, as her recipe makes a party's worth and more-the quantities below will still make a sizable tray)

• 2 cups flour
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 11 Tbsp butter or margarine
• 5-7 Tblsp ice water 
• 1 egg yolk

Cut butter/shortening into flour and salt. Add ice water and blend to make a lump of dough. Knead briefly to blend the butter. Refrigerate dough for one hour or overnight.

When ready to fill, heat oven to 425. Roll the dough into a long rectangle about 1 inch round. Cut the rectangle into 1 inch pieces (or vary the sizes according to inclination, and roll pieces out into thin rounds. Fill the rounds with the filling and twist the dough up like a dumpling to close. Dough will not entirely cover the top of the knishes. Brush knishes with egg yolk mixed with 1 Tblsp water.

Bake for 20 minutes, or until golden brown.

Potato Filling:
(use your imagination here)

• Potatoes, peeled and cubed.
• 1/5 Tblsp butter or chicken fat
• 1/5 Tblsp oil
• 1 large onion, chopped
• salt to taste
• cracked pepper to taste
• 1 egg, lightly beaten 

Boil the potatoes until tender. Drain.

While potatoes boil, fry onions to golden brown but not quite crisp.

Mash the potatoes until smooth. Stir in the onions, pepper, salt. Taste for seasoning. Stir in the egg.

Nigella-Inspired Potato Vegetable Pies

Hopefully, recession cooking is creative cooking, ways to make what you have on hand delicious and interesting. What I had on hand last night was a large selection of root vegetables, some leftovers, and Nigella Lawson's How to be a Domestic Goddess, an uneven but appealing early addition to my cookbook collection that has been overdue for a revisitation. What Nigella had in mind for me last night was comforting and just classically British-little filled pies.

I adapted her crust by subbing in neufchatel for some of the abundant butter (cream cheese makes every dough better), and then improvised a refrigerator filling: potatoes (yukon gold and purple), turnips, kale, peas, carrot, salt, a little butter, a lot of buttermilk, scallion tips, a little minced garlic, onion powder, leftover braised cabbage, salt pepper. I cooked anything hard until it was less hard, and then mooshed it all together and added a lot of Parmesan cheese, filled little pies, and baked them. The buttermilk was a great substitute for the usual bechamel-like sauce in a pot pie, which this basically was.

They were nothing special, but they were good and simple and easy to take for lunch. Thanks, Nigella. I think this book is still amusing me, so look out for a few more Nigella recipes in the near future.

Odds and Ends

Uganda was wonderful, but we couldn't stay forever.It's good to be home, cold and stressful, but good. I missed Matt terribly, and missed my city and my kitchen and my life. Being on vacation, at the mercy of others for food and transport and all the small decisions of the day to day, can be exhausting. I've been too busy and broke since getting home to truly cook at the mad level I had reached before leaving, but I've been enjoying re-acquainting myself with little shared kingdom, cooking simple food, packing my lunch...My local food isn't quite so local, but isn't it beautiful?
What you can't see in the photo above is the joyful sight of Matt helpless with laughter listening to a radio comedian riff on Joe Biden and the mid-Atlantic states in general.
While it looked like this out, I've been making spicy soup, braised chicken with mushrooms, and other warm comfort foods. And of course, what would life be like without a few fun things.
Yogurt cake again...I could eat one every day. This one was a particular success, with local organic cranberries and Chilean chestnut marmalade that Miriam brought back this summer.
These I made on my second night back, inspired by Martha Stewart's cupcake focused February issue. It's the Bart's chocolate coffee cake, my standby, with swiss meringue buttercream. As the year begins in earnest, I really want to make sure that I take care of us through food this year, which means fun things and harder things, like reducing portions and being reasonable with meats. I've always preferred adding foods in (vegetables, whole grains) to taking things out (sugar, chocolate, fruit juice), but I want to be careful in a non-obsessive way, to live well and live long, so this year may see some changes.

18-Alarm Roast Chicken

I used to say that I was a baker first. Although I knew how to cook some things, my expertise was generally in areas where butter and sugar get creamed. Over the last few years, though, I've become a more interested, and thus a more confident cook. These days, I still make mistakes, and it's not as intuitive for me as baking, but I'm pretty good at cooking things I like to eat.

Part of this growth has been a piecemeal mastery of basic techniques--stockmaking, bean soaking, braising, and roasting chickens. For a long time, I avoided cooking meat because of the vegetarian roommates. Even when I did cook it it, I opted for pre-cut chicken pieces, usually boneless, for quick cooking. Thinking back, most of my specialties from a few years ago involve stirfrying chicken breast. These days, one of my favorite things to do to build technique is roast a chicken.

I like local, organic chickens, so I can't afford them often, but I get so much fun out of each one. I buy it, I think about it, I smell it cooking, I pick it dry, I make stock...the entertainment rewards equal the eating, which makes the occasional splurge very worth it.

Another recent splurge, the Zuni Cafe Cookbook, just paid off big time as chef-author Judy Rogers doubled my entertainment dividends and helped me to cook the hands-down best roast chicken of my life.

Rogers' mantra is "pre-salt." Everything from fish to vegetables gets a little time to absorb salt and flavor, and to firm up. She goes deep into the science of it, but suffice it to say, I'm hooked. I salted the little chicken 24 hours ahead, and got home at 9:30 Tuesday night looking forward to cooking it. First, though, I had to leave it out for an hour to achieve room temperature. Then I plunked it in a preheated cast-iron pan and stuck in in a 475 degree oven.

It roasted beautifully, crisping up, turning warm caramel brown, shedding clear sweet fat. The method was perfect. So perfect. There was just one problem. All that high heat and spattering fat set off my smoke alarm over and over and over again. By the end of the process, every window in the house was open, a fan had been dug out of the closet, and Matt was positioned under the damn beeper with a broom handle, justifiably worried that the neighbors would hate us forever. (It was 11:30 at that time, and our upstairs neighbor is a classroom teacher.)

But it was all worth it. It was the best chicken I have ever roasted. I'm going to do it again soon.
The only thing I forgot to do was to get a good picture. As you can see from Matt's shots above, photo-taking took second place to tearing off drumsticks like starving wolves and stuffing my face. I even pan-roasted some oyster mushrooms with the drippings. Salty, but so good.
Speaking of simple techniques, the Zuni cookbook also yielded perfect mashed potatoes for a dinner the previous Sunday. Apparently the trick to mashed potatoes is to add fat (like melted butter) in first so that it coats the potatoes and then they don't just absorb all the milk. Also, any additions should be as hot as possible. Judy Rogers says that her mashed potatoes (with buttermilk) are one of the few kinds of potato dish that survive well as leftovers. I tried this out two days later with some chicken breast and the potatoes in the microwave. They were lighter and fluffier than on the first day. Judy Rogers is seriously impressive. And I can't wait to roast another 18-alarm chicken, though I am seriously considering cleaning out the oven first. Or maybe just inviting the neighbors for dinner.