Ruth Reichl's Blog, page 41

Summer Morning Muffins

Fresh Corn Muffins

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. 

Cut the kernels from an ear of corn (you should have between half a cup and a cup of kernels).

Whisk a half cup of stoneground cornmeal with a half cup of flour, 3 tablespoons of sugar, 1 1/2 teaspoons of baking powder, 1/4 teaspoon of baking soda, and a healthy dash of salt. 

Measure a half cup of well-shaken buttermilk into a measuring cup, add an egg and stir well. Add half a stick of melted butter. Gently mix into the flour mixture, and then quickly stir in the corn kernels.

Spoon the batter into a very well-greased 6 muffin tin.  

Bake until the tops are golden and a cake tester comes out clean; this should be 20 to 25 minutes.

These are especially wonderful eaten warm, with butter just melting into the crevices. 

Summer’s Most Essential Condiment

Salsa Verde

Clifton Fadiman once called cheese “milk’s leap to immortality.”  I think of salsa verde as parsley’s bid for lasting fame. Here the little sprig, rarely more than a disposable decoration, has its shining moment. Put this salsa on steak and watch it sing. Serve it with raw tomatoes, with grilled eggplant, or on a plate of scrambled eggs. A single spoonful has the kick and crunch to bring a summer meal together, and this time of year I always have some sitting in my fridge, ready to rescue a dull meal.

One important note: This is the time to use the finest olive oil in your cupboard, because ordinary oil will have a negative impact. I particularly like the bright flavor of virgin Tuscan oils here; their prickly bite adds an interesting note.

1 bunch flatleaf Italian parsley

2 shallots

red wine vinegar

¼ cup capers, rinsed and soaked

3 cloves of garlic

½ cup toasted almonds, roughly chopped

half a lemon

high quality extra-virgin olive oil 

salt

pepper

Wash  your parsley and pick the leaves until you accumulate a small mountain on your cutting board. In the words of Fergus Henderson, “discipline” your parsley by running your knife repeatedly through the pile. You want a fine chop, but be careful not to mash. Set aside.

Peel and chop your shallots extremely fine and cover with red wine vinegar. Drain and chop your capers. Peel and mince the garlic. Cut your lemon in half. Mise-en-place complete: prepare to assemble!

Beginning with your parsley, add half of the shallots, half the capers, all the garlic and almonds, and toss. Taste the mixture for salt and acid, and continue to add shallots and capers accordingly, bearing in mind that the capers will significantly raise the salt-content.

Douse the entire salsa in olive oil, stirring it into a shimmering green pool, and adjust the seasoning with a squeeze of lemon to brighten the flavors, salt and pepper if necessary. Some like it soupier - I prefer mine more rustic,

It's ready to eat now, but it will be even better tomorrow, when the the flavors have had a chance to get better acquainted. 

Makes approximately 1 cup.

The Last Sour Cherry Tart this Summer

Sour cherry season is coming to an end, but I've still got some in my refrigerator.  I want to make something spectacular with the final fruits, and it's going to be a tart.

Most sour cherry recipes are too sweet, which ruins the unique flavor of this elusive fruit. I've finally worked out a recipe that I think is pretty perfect.  Another bonus: unlike so many pastries, this one is better when it’s had a little time to itself, and it tastes better on day two (provided it actually lasts that long). 

 

Crostata Crust

 Working with pastry dough is difficult in the heat of summer. And this one, because it's so soft, is extremely challenging. But unlike regular pie dough, this cookie-like pastry is very forgiving, refusing to get tough, no matter how much you handle it. When it gets too soft, simply put it back in the refrigerator for five minutes to let it cool off. It will become much more accommodating. 

Mix a stick and a half of soft butter with a third cup of sugar in a stand mixer until fluffy.  

Break an egg into a small dish; reserve a bit to wash the pastry later, and add the rest of the egg to the butter. Toss in a teaspoon of vanilla.

Grate the rind of one lemon into 2 and a quarter cups of flour. Add a pinch of salt and slowly add to the butter/egg mixture until it just comes together.  Divide into two disks, wrap in wax paper, and put in the refrigerator to chill for half an hour.

 

Sour Cherry Filling

Meanwhile, make the cherry filling by removing the pits from 2 pints of fresh sour cherries; you should have 4 cups once the pits are removed.  (You could also use 4 cups of frozen pitted sour cherries; do not defrost before using.)

Melt 3 tablespoons of butter in a large skillet.  Add the cherries, a half cup of sugar and the juice of half a lemon and stir gently, just until the liquids come to a boil. Don’t cook them too long or the cherries will start to fall apart.

Make a slurry of 3 tablespoons of cornstarch with 3 tablespoons of cold water and stir it into the boiling cherries. Cook for about 2 minutes, stirring, just until the mixture becomes clear and thick.  Allow to cool.

 

Putting it all Together

Preheat the oven to 375 and put a baking sheet on the middle shelf. 

Remove the pastry disks from the refrigerator.  Roll out the first one, between two sheets of plastic wrap, to a round about twelve inches in diameter.  This is the tricky part: invert it into a 9 inch fluted tart pan, preferably one with high sides.  It will probably tear; don’t worry, just patch it all up and put it back into the refrigerator.

Roll out the second disk in the same manner, put it onto a baking sheet (still on the plastic wrap), remove the top sheet of plastic and cut this into 8 or 10 strips, about an inch wide.  Put the baking sheet into the refrigerator to chill for a few minutes. 

Remove the tart shell and the strips from the refrigerator.  Pour the cherry filling into the tart shell. Now make a lattice of the strips on the top, criss-crossing them diagonally.  Don’t worry if they’re not perfect; no matter what you do, the tart’s going to look lovely when it emerges from the oven.  Brush the strips with the remaining beaten egg, sprinkle with sugar and put into the oven on the baking sheet.  (You need the sheet to keep cherry juices from spilling onto the oven floor.)  Bake for about 45 minutes, until golden.

Cool for an hour, on a rack, before removing the side of the tart pan. 

Eat gratefully, knowing that fresh sour cherries are a short-lived summer treat.

 

Blues for a Summer Day

Blueberry Galette

It’s blueberry season here in the Berkshires, and the berries are fantastic this year. At first I just ate them by the handful, stopping to scoop up a few whenever I passed through the kitchen.

But once I’d gotten over my initial infatuation - local blueberries! - I began wanting to do something more impressive with this beautiful fruit.

My feeling about blueberries is that you don’t want to do too much. Blueberry muffins are swell. So are blueberry pies.  But my favorite blueberry confection is this simple galette: the easy crust makes a very fine frame for their wonderfully robust flavor. What you end up with is juicy berries in a crisp, buttery crust.

For the pastry:

 1 cup flour

a pinch of salt

a pinch of sugar

6 tablespoons butter, cold and chopped into cubes

4-5 tablespoons ice water

For the filling:

2-3 cups blueberries, rinsed and stemmed

½ lemon juice & zest

3 teaspoons sugar

1 egg for the egg wash

Make the pastry by putting the flour into a bowl with the salt and sugar and cutting the butter in with a pastry cutter. (If you don’t have one, and you like to bake, I’d advise indulging in this simple tool. There’s something so satisfying about the way it works that you’ll wonder why you ever used two knives or your food processor.) Then add the ice water, tablespoon by tablespoon, stirring with a fork and taking care to not overwork the dough. It should just come together and not be too wet or sticky. Wrap in wax paper and transfer to the refrigerator to chill for 45 minutes.

Meanwhile wash the blueberries and toss them with lemon juice, zest, and sugar.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

Roll the dough out on a floured surface to approximately ¼ inch thickness and transfer to a baking sheet. You could put this back into the refrigerator for a brief cooling off period, but it’s not completely necessary.

When you’re ready to bake your galette, make a small mound of the mildly macerated blueberries at the center of the pastry, leaving enough of a border to fold the pastry over the edges. Like a crostata, perfection is not the goal here - the rougher the better. Paint the outer crust with an egg wash and sprinkle with sugar. Bake for 35-40 minutes or until the crust is nicely browned and the blueberries begin to break apart in the middle. Allow to cool to room temperature and serve with ice cream or yogurt.

A Surprising Little Tidbit

How to Stuff an Apricot

My friend Peter Biskind's book on Orson Welles has just been published, and we celebrated with a book party last night. Sixty people. It's been a while since I catered a cocktail party, and I'd forgotten how fussy and time consuming hors d’oeuvres can be.  I felt like a jeweler, as if I had spent days creating tiny little edible tidbits.

The pulled pork sliders on mini buns were a big hit. So were the BLT tomatoes, but then they always are.  You hollow out cherry tomatoes (a stupid lot of work, but fine if you have willing friends to help), and then fill them up with a mixture of mayonnaise, crisped bacon cut into little pieces and chopped romaine lettuce. They’re ridiculously addictive.  

Pickled shrimp were fresh, beautiful and very welcome since I made them a day ahead of time. I made the salmon rillettes a day ahead too. (I poached a large filet of wild sockeye salmon and mixed it with smoked salmon, capers, cognac, shallots, parsley and a bit of butter, then packed it all into a terrine to let the flavors marry.) Heaped onto croutons it was gorgeous. People gobbled up tiny sandwiches of rare cold beef tenderloin with horseradish cream. But the surprise of the night was something I haven't made in years: goat cheese and pistachio-stuffed apricots. They were beautiful. Astoundingly delicious. And very small.

I was so busy assembling food and getting it out of the kitchen that I forgot to take pictures. So you'll have to imagine how pretty the apricots were. But here’s how you make them.

Soak half a pound of dried California apricots in a small amount (about half a cup) of fresh orange juice for about half an hour, then drain on paper towels.

Let 6 to 8 ounces of fresh, soft goat cheese come to room temperature.  Meanwhile, shell enough pistachios to make about half a cup. Grind half of them very finely in a spice grinder and coarsely chop the other half. Mix the coarsely chopped nuts in with the goat cheese and spoon that into the apricot halves.  

Sprinkle each apricot with a lovely dusting of bright green ground pistachios. If you have any pistachios left over, put one on top of each little filled apricot. The result was so delicious I found it hard to keep from eating them all myself.

One caveat: if all you can find are Turkish apricots, don't bother. They are sadly lacking in flavor.

 

 

 

Another Wonderful Thing

Much as I love my local farmers’ market, every time I go to the Bay Area I’m consumed with farmers’ market envy. Out there it’s a year-round way of life. And sometimes, well, you just get too busy to make it there in time, and you arrive to discover that everything you wanted has already been snapped up. So I was thrilled to see that Good Eggs, a San Francisco-based start up has finally hit eastern shores. The online farmers’ market connects consumers and producers through their simple, inviting site.

You assemble your basket - the lovely photos are paired with charming stories of the farms and artisan producers - then make your way to a local outpost to pick it up. Best of all: they deliver. (So far New York deliveries are restricted to North Brooklyn, but I’m hoping they’ll expand their reach.) It’s a bit like a tailor-made CSA.
Object of desire, at the moment: nettles from Blooming Hill farm. Nettle gnocchi are definitely in my future.

 

Things I Love

Fennel Pollen

  

 

I wish you could smell the fragrance of this gorgeous yelllow-green pollen, which is filling the air as I sit here.  This jar's not new - it's been sitting in my spice cupboard for more than a year - but the scent is so powerful and fresh I can easily imagine myself onto a Tuscan hillside, with fennel spilling down the mountainside around me.

Fennel pollen, with its warm anise aroma, is a wonderful addition to a spice cupboard; it has an untamed wildness that improves so many dishes. Dust it onto chicken as it goes into the oven, or onto lamb chops just before serving. Sprinkle it into a pasta sauce to make it brighter. Fennel pollen loves goat cheese, it goes gorgeously with a bit of orange zest, and it's a great addition to an olive oil pound cake. It tames broccoli rabe, too, adding a sweet sultry note to the bitter greens. 

 

 

 

A Quick Fast Dinner for a Sultry Night

It's so hot tonight, and a friend just walked in with some green garlic she pulled from her garden. I love green garlic, love it's sweet, slightly sticky nature. Looking at the beautiful bulbs with their faint lavender hue, I suddenly remember that I have a small stash of wax-wrapped bottarga (dried mullet roe) hidden in the refrigerator. 

And suddenly the perfect meal materializes. 

Bottarga is a bit like uni, a rich burnt-orange roe with a seductive texture. But where uni is soft as custard, bottarga has a dense, chewy intensity. Shave it into little curls and it has one texture; grate it into crumbs it has another.  So why not both?

Spaghetti with Bottarga and Bread Crumbs

Boil a large pot of water for pasta.

While a pound of pasta cooks, gently saute a couple cloves of thinly sliced garlic and a fat pinch of crushed red peppers in about a half cup of good olive oil just until it becomes fragrant.

Take as much bottarga as you can afford (classic recipes call for 6 ounces for a pound of spaghetti, but bottarga’s so expensive, and so powerful, I tend to use about half that much) and shave half of it into thin, delicate curls. Grate the rest.

When the pasta is just al dente, drain and toss it with the olive oil mixture and some finely chopped Italian parsley.  Toss in the bottarga, along with the zest of one lemon and a good handful of homemade bread crumbs and serve. 

This is rich; it will serve, 6 as a smaller first course.

 

Wedding Menu Modern

Francis Lam and Chrisine Gaspar were married last night, in the most moving wedding ceremony I've ever attended.  We gathered on a New York rooftop for the vows, and their love for each other shone so brightly that I'm pretty sure the skyline grew momentarily blurred for all of us.

Afterward we trooped downstairs for a menu prepared by some of America's most celebrated chefs. The food was wonderful, but what really struck me was that looking back, say fifty years from now, this menu will speak volumes about how we were eating in 2013.

This dish, by Grant Achatz, Dave Beran and Eric Rivera, was the first to hit the table:

It's grilled octopus with cauliflower. Doesn't look like much, but it danced joyfully about in the mouth, a little waltz of flavor and texture.

This was the second:

Swiss Chard with chocolate and Chinese black bean, it was fresh and utterly surprising.  

 

Next came this:

"Oyster salad" it featured salsify, which is sometimes known as "oyster plant" because the cream-colored root has a flavor so surprisingly saline you could be convinced that it came from the sea. 

We went on to braised seaweed with tofu and pumpkin, another little dance of textures, and brocoli rabe with dried tomato and lemon, a refreshingly bitter mouthful.  That was followed by quinoa with mushrooms and chickpeas, courtesy of Andrew Carmellini and Zach Dunham.

I imagine you're getting the theme: the food was walking along a vegetarian path, with a few deviations (extraordinary roast pigs and ducks from Yi Lee).

The menu offers a remarkable snapshot of the way America is eating at the moment. It's not just that the food reflects the differing backgrounds of the bride and groom - his Chinese ancestry, her Portuguese - but also how many of the guests eschew meat and worry about gluten. The result was a menu that was ethnically diverse, primarily plant based, borrowed from many cultures - and utterly original.

There was nothing traditional about the service either: it was done Chinese take-out style, a raft of little white boxes arriving on the tables with each course.  This dish, my favorite, was the exception: it came in little plastic tubs.

Danny Bowien's pea shoots were in a pumpkin broth so deliciously intense that, despite the weather (it was 90 degrees outside),  I couldn't stop eating it. I also loved the schmaltz rice he and Angela Dimayuga made;  it looked innocent, but the rice was laced with chicken fat, sparked with lime and zinged with little rounds of radish.  

The wedding cake?  Surely you weren't expecting a multi-tiered white confection with a tiny bride and groom on top.  What we got were more little white cartons, each containing a salted chocolate buckwheat cookie (gluten-free) nestled beneath the perfect culinary marriage of China and Portugal: rich, flaky, utterly classic egg custard tarts, the dim sum that arrived in China via Macau, courtesy of the Portuguese.

Leaving we were each handed another little white take-out container.  This is what it held:

Pimento cheese from Chef Ashley Christensen. It made a fantastic breakfast.

Merry marriage Francis and Christine: may your life together be as delicious as the wedding feast.

 

 

My Father the Designer

       A show of my father's book designs opens at Columbia University on Monday, at the Rare Book and Manuscript Library. During the last few years of his life Dad spent weekends going through his library, annotating the thousands of books he had designed (his career started in 1926 and he was still working on the day he died in 1980).  He put down everything he could remember about the design decisions, the author's reactions... anything that came to mind.  


       The cards have been digitized now, so you can read about Gertrude Stein's response when he put her photograph right on the cover of the book (not the jacket). I believe that was the first time photo offset printing was used in that way.  You can find out Kurt Vonnegut's reaction to Dad's design for Cat's Cradle (Dad loved that book),  and how he took litle scraps of notes from Marshall McLuhan's to design The Mechanical Bride. And, of course, there's Ulysses.


      Although Dad designed both the book and the jacket early in his career, it continues to be his most famous design.

      My father was a modest man; he revered authors and writing, and thought of himself as "a mere craftsman."  But I think he'd be very proud of this show.  Curator Martha Scotford has done a remarkable job.  Wandering through the books, I just kept thinking how much I miss him.