Morsels

It takes days for the tension of everyday life to drop away. Even here where there is mostly silence and acres of nothing and no one around us. Every night I’ve dreamed of work; meetings, proclamations, very involved, hushed conversations. But the country is seeping in. Today I drove down to the Shur-Fine market which is only 8 minutes away instead of the 20 it takes to get to the nearest Wegman’s. Shur-Fines is where you go when you need a quick quart of milk, or two rawhide bones for the dogs. Or…. the best mixes I have EVER had.  I remember Mom and I picked up one of these mixes on a whim when we were shopping for a few extras and such (this is that kind of place for me — basic, easy, close). We got the Gingerbread mix and made it up. Best ever. Today, I made sugar and spice cookies and they, too were tremendous. Here’s the link.  Order some of this. Seriously.

I drove the pick-up to the market in olive green Columbia pants, LL Bean Boots, Dennis’s Navy fleece. Yeah, I looked a mess. But everyone else did too! When you go to Heinen’s in Bay Village, there’s make-up and making sure your clothes aren’t on inside out or are even wrinkly for god’s sake. Here at the local Shur-Fine just about anything goes.

So, the fire is going, the dogs are sleeping. Dennis is playing chess on his i-touch. It’s a cozy family scene. Bless us everyone.

It is our anniversary today (happy us!) and we are up in soggy finger lakes house. I know it has been forever since I have posted but I did want to tell a funny story about yesterday and our marriage (as it relates to food of course) and also post the recipe for a wonderful souffle I made (if I do say so myself).

Here’s the story: we went shopping at Wegman’s yesterday. Some weekends we cart all our necessary food up and sometimes we (read I) are too disorganized to do anything more than make sure there is milk for coffee in the morning. So this weekend was a disorganized one and we needed food for our anniversary dinner. The idea in my brain and vetted with Dennis was duck breast with cherry sauce, rice pilaf and snap peas. Grand Marnier souffle for desert. Well, we get to Wegman’s which was more packed than I have ever seen it — I guess it’s the only thing to do around here when it is pouring rain? And they have no duck. Well one frozen one but it didn’t look like it was going to cooperate with being cooked for dinner in a few hours. So I grabbed a couple of little fresh cornish game hens and figured we’d be down with that.

Get to the check out line and as I lift them up to the conveyor belt thingy I show them to Dennis and say “here’s what I got instead of duck.” Poor guy’s face fell. “Oh,” he says. You see how sweet he is in the face of a disappointment? So I said, “you really wanted steak didn’t you?” and he nodded. So I sent him back to the meat department on his own to return the two little game hens and bring back a steak.

Now we all know what it is like to get to the check out line with all your variously gathered goods and realize that you forgot the sage, or garlic or whatever. The pressure IS ON. Luckily, we had the two slowest check out guys I have ever encountered. So Dennis was able to return with his steak. It was a three pound (at least) sirloin. Huge. All I could see when I looked at it was the slaughterhouse (sorry). I am eating meat again, yes but I am trying so hard to keep it to local and at least grass fed. Food is rumbling along the conveyor belt. He has just dodged about six women in carts and a couple of really old ones who seem to do a lot of standing in the middle of things all with this huge bloody steak in his hands. I looked at him and said. “Umm that’s a lot of steak. Mind if I go grab some smaller grass-fed ones I saw?” He shakes his head no. And now I’m the one running through the aisles past the very same women who are still standing around with the same piece of meat ( I mean I have the piece of meat and THEY are still standing around). I actually started laughing at the spectacle, which only made it more spectacular I guess. Anyway, got my little more appropriate steaks and phew! made it back.

So there you have it. Our daily negotations. Particular to us at that moment I suppose but really not at all. We are all (us marrieds and committeds) juggling daily details and back and forths. Sometimes more gracefully than others. It certainly helps to have a sense of humor and (thank you Dennis) patience.

And it also helps to make a souffle now and then. I took this from Bittman’s How to Cook Everything book and switched it up because we had no Grand Marnier. But we did have Amaretto and it was really, really good and really easy. Believe it or not, this was my first souffle. I am going to make more.

Not really. But a girl can’t help herself sometimes. The NYT food section is leading with a very nice piece about Whoopie Pies. Well, nice if you like to be reminded about them whenever possible. Not so nice if it feels that a favorite food is being coopted by Williams-Sonoma and that irritating Sex in the City bakery, Magnolia. The Whoopie Pie is so not trendy but it seems to have been dubbed so.

For me, Whoopies means that long happy walk from the house in Maine at the top of Murray Hill down our  steep dirt road to the paved road and the familiar cottages, past the frog pond and a ways beyond that to the Corner Store.  I’ve been making that trek for 40 years now I guess (certainly ever since I was deemed responsible enough not to fall into aforementioned pond on my way to the store). The store has changed hands and so have the cottages but it looks remarkably the same.

And even though the store is now manned by a couple who were caterers for Jimmy Buffet (I wonder what kind of brownie recipes they have?) there’s still a stacked of saran-wrapped Whoopies by the cash register. Just like always.

It’s nice to have a food that’s a surefire way to cheer up someone you love who’s just grumpy. For Christopher, I would proffer an ice-cold coke. Dennis? Hmmm. I know a Cadbury Egg — he gets so happy when Easter rolls around, knowing he will get one. Arthur? He’s the Whoopie guy.

There’s a recipe on the Times site but I don’t think I will make it. How do you make a sunny July morning with the boats in the cove all pointed into the wind? Or the feel of a long stalk of grass dipping into the frog pond just lightly so a frog (silly) thinks it is a bug and CHOMP makes a big bite and then it is you and the frog in a tiny tug of war and maybe if you are lucky this time the frog won’t notice that he is being pulled to shore. But he always does and leaps away. You sigh and sit back on your heels. There’s nothing quite so nice as a cool frog sitting in your cupped hand and you’ve missed your chance because every other frog in the little pond now knows that there’s a nasty plot afoot. But your consolation is just up the road.  The Corner Store is the promise of something nice at the end of your long walk. Funny, getting there still gives me the happy sense of accomplishment I had at nine. Simple pleasures….

Speaking of pleasure, we ate the short-ribs from Gourmet.com. They were  excellent. Quick, make them before the weather gets warm and it’s embarassing to crave braised meat dishes…

That’s right. I said Nutella Pies. I stole this from Chez Pim so I take little credit. But it’s a good enough idea so that it must be spread around — just as Nutella ought to be spread far and wide.

Make pie crust. Or, if you are like me, you will always have one of those prepared Pillsbury pie crusts in the fridge for emergencies because you never know. This is why my refrigerator is so alarming because I have a lot of just-in-cases in there. But that is another post.

This one is about promising Arthur I would teach him how to make Nutella pie and the two of us at the kitchen counter, Nutella jar in hand ready to tackle the task at hand. I stretched the dough out on a cookie sheet (preheated the oven to 375 degrees) and cut the dough into rounds using a glass — the way you cut a biscuit round. Then, we put a dollop of Nutella in the middle. Topped it with another round and then closed the whole using a fork so the tines made a nice pattern all around.

Popped them in the oven until they were the right color (10 minutes?). Pulled them out. Waited (that was the hardest part). And then ate them. They were definitely NOT on the no salty, no sweety diet. But a mom has to teach her boy culinary survival skills, right?

You could do this with any jam of course. But that seems more reasonable and healthier. There was something truly delightful about these. And they were all the better because Arthur gobbled down three.

And then they were gone.

This is what happens when life gets so crazy that I can’t find time to blog — I end up having too much to tell. On Wednesday, my mother-in-law Cindy showed up with, umm a maltese puppy for me. Now, those of you who know me realize what a non-starter a small dog should be for me. But, when Arthur the elder went off for high school I experienced cravings for a small dog that I could hold in my lap. Sounds silly in retrospect but it took a few weeks of introspective thinking to make the tie between growing boy and need for puppy. Anyway, when I found myself in tears because I was making the (almost) last sandwich for his lunch the other day, I decided that I just needed to acknowledge what I am feeling. Cindy had a litter of puppies and Dennis mentioned she might bring one for us to meet. Sophie arrived and she is funny and sweet and not yippy. And I miss her when I am away from her. So, a huge, huge thank you to Cindy who brought funny Sophie into our lives. She is sleeping against my knee right now.

This week also brought two strange deliveries: a copy of Lenotre’s Desserts and Pastries and Lenotre’s Ice Creams and Candies. Now… I have a guess who they are from but they just arrived on our front porch from Alibris and another online book store with no note. Still, I am pretty sure that Kinloch (that fine Uncle of mine) — or Mary, my aunt (who is also quite wonderful, btw) is/are the likeliest suspects. Here’s why. They make the most wonderful strawberry jam and it is from the Lenotre book on Ice Creams and Candies. And I was talking to them about it in France (the jam). Funny, I am so afraid of canning but I’ve been wanting to try it for years now. And then there’s that post about how bad a baker I am. But here’s the copy from the back inside flap of the Desserts and Pastries:

“Although Gaston Lenotre is a professional chef, the recipes he selected for this book are perfectly suited for the home baker. In fact, many of the recipes in this book are surprisingly easy to prepare. Lenotre asked his daughter, Sylvie Gilles-Nave,…to test all the recipes herself. They worked perfectly for her and they should for you. ”

Wow. Ok. So here’s the deal. I’m going to Maine at the end of the week to visit my parents and I’m thinking there might be an opportunity to try out at least one of these “easy” recipes. Maybe even make some jam? Mom used to make a lot of jam so she would be a very good partner in crime. There are also loads of recipes for fruit jellies (we had some tremendous rosewater jellies when we were in Paris) — so that might be fun. Anyway, mystery cookbook gifter people THANK YOU and I will embark on some (hopefully) tasty culinary adventures shortly. And if I mess them up? Well… I guess I will have to face that disgrace when or if it occurs. And, of course now that I’ve publicly guessed who I think the culprits are I’m somewhat concerned that I might be wrong?

My latest “adventure”? Have to back up to Wednesday, I think, when we at cleveland.com hosted a lunch for some local food bloggers to invite them to post in a public food blog we are creating, called Food Groups. We had a lively discussion and I think we will be launching soon, which is exciting because there are some good local bloggers and the food scene here continues to get more and more interesting. In any case, Linda Griffith who hosts our food forum and, along with her husband Fred has authored many cookbooks was there and I told her about my chanterelle haul from the weekend. She leaned toward me and in a conspiratorial whisper said I should look into sauteing them with some peaches because it “brings out their peachy flavor”. It sounded sort of strange but then I googled chanterelles, peaches and came up with this suggestion:

Saute thinly sliced shallot, chanterelles and peach together. Finish with port wine. So I did that and served them with pork chops and they were absolutely delightful. While we had ours with the pork chops, Arthur stirred his into some Quinoa that I had made for him.. so it is also versatile. I could see stirring it into brown rice as well. Here’s the recipe. I wouldn’t make this with any other mushroom other than chanterelles, I don’t think. Maybe, maybe oyster mushrooms because they have a very light flavor.

Meanwhile, and back to LeNotre.. here is a nice post about searching (it seems all of) Paris for the perfect cup of hot chocolate. Check out the pictures of the little macaroons. It’s enough to make you want to try making some….

It has been too hot here (as I hear it is on the coast of Maine, where mom and dad are; Pittsburgh, where my brother is; Cleveland, where Arthur is). So, I have been slow. Heat and I do not do well together. I would much, much rather be braving the cold, my layers and scarves and I working it together.

It has also been too humid. I think Dennis said 80% humidity. On the way home from town, you could see the humidity cloying to the hills. And here, a bit cooler, but still the air was thick. I sat on the front porch and read a terrific graphic novel called Blankets.

I really couldn’t put it down. The boys (all three of them, Christopher, his friend Stuart and my Dennis) were out shooting at targets in the woods. So there was the occasional POP POP POP and the rustle of a robin in the nearby tree eating a red berry. Then the rain came. First as a cooler wind, then its own rat a tat on the roof and finally, the water on the pond woke up. Pocked and alive. So Chloe-dog and I walked into it. And I was back in my maine summers where the warm rain was a wonderful romp. Now, of course, if it rains I am on my way to work or between meetings and there are nice shoes and dresses to contend with. Not to mention the hair. But today, the rain was a way to cool off and the dog and I ran into it, taking shelter under the trees when it got too fierce, walking by the pond when it lightened a bit. I saw a tiny frog sitting on a lily pad. He didn’t mind the rain at all. And, naturally, neither did we.

Here’s what we had for dinner tonight: Chicken Marbella (from the ubiquitous and enlightening 80’s cookbook, The Silver Palate) and a green bean and tomato salad with fried shallots and Lundberg mixed wild rice blend. The chicken was an old and really good standby that I used to make for crowds back in the day. The salad is an adaptation of one I found on a Portland, Maine blog called Speakeasy. More rain in the form of storms and a cooling trend tonight. I can’t wait.

There are those little baking cliches out there… easy as pie, it was cake (i.e., easy), cakewalk (ditto). Well, I am here to say it’s all lies, lies I tell you. I am not a baker-type by choice and temperament. I don’t like precise measurements, preferring to add a dash here and a sprinkle there. I don’t sift. I don’t do the whole knife-levelling thing when I measure out my dry ingredients.

And despite that and in the face of my known procilivities (or lack of such), and, in the face of the hottest day of the year here up in the finger lakes house, I decided that I really needed to make a dessert with blueberries. Honestly, what I had tucked away in one of my food memory pockets was this: a long ago visit to the Union County Fair in Maine, which takes place every August. Follow the link and you will see, almost twenty years on, that the traditional blueberry festival still takes place. You will also note that at a certain point there is the traditional feeding of the masses, which they call “commence feeding wild blueberry dessert”. This year, it will take place on August 22nd, at ll am. Be there…

We were there, must have been the early 70’s? Back then the fair was squarely an agricultural and food event. You could walk along and admire the beautiful dairy cows, their coats brushed to perfection, their great brown eyes watching us all in a kindly, detached way. The funny goats with floppy ears and constantly searching noses. etc and etc. Then there was the blueberry tent. And honestly, all I remember is going to the 4H stand and getting a bowl of warm blueberry compote on a homemade biscuit. There may have been some icecream involved. What a revelation. Up until then, my fair food experiences were limited to cotton candy, and maybe a caramel apple. But this, this was warm and just perfect. I remember stopping, standing and carefully eating. Remember, I was maybe 12 so stopping to do anything was rare. And if you are at all concerned with the vision of relishing a warm dessert in August in the middle of the day. Fear not. This is maine afterall and I remember that it was foggy and cool. In fact, the blueberry dessert sort of made up for the fact that it was unseasonably cool.

Since then, I’m sorry to say, we have gone back to the Union Fair and it has changed significantly. Lots of arcade games and, I think, my parents called them “greasers” but what they meant was that the crowd had no interest in the sweet dairy cows who are still there, tucked behind the rows of loud arcade games and the blaring music.

So it was up to me, yesterday to search out an appropriate blueberry homage and instead of simply recreating that very simple dessert which I totally could have managed. I chose to make Lemon Scented Pound Cake, the recipe found on the website of bnbfinder from an inn at Brooksville, Maine. I chose it because I have a boatload of Lemon Verbena growing up here and it seemed to me that the citrusy-herbal tang of it would go well with blueberries. Sure enough, someone else has come up with the idea.

This post is getting long so I will try not to go into all the gory details. Suffice it so say, that since I never bake and certainly would never think to do so up here (!) I do not have an electric mixer. Try getting your butter light and creamy with a wooden spoon. Also, I didn’t realize that the little chopper blade on the end of my cuisinart hand blender (an excellent device which comes with a whisk that I thought might work) was so sharp. We had a little, private first-aid moment, me and the blender. It’s now in disgrace somewhere in the bowels of a cabinet. And, when I separated all those eggs? (six) I thought that it was nice that I now had some egg whites for a lighter-than-usual omelet the next morning. Wrong. It really helps to read a recipe all the way through, you know? Because, there I was spreading the, I thought, finished batter into the loaf pan and thinking how very heavy it was and wasn’t that interesting? Then I circled back to the recipe to check baking times once again and noticed that I was supposed to be whipping those egg whites into a nice frothy concoction and then folding them into the batter. It’s 85 degrees in the kitchen and I am standing over my glass bowl furiously whisking the egg whites into something resembling sea foam. In the end, I mixed the whole thing up and was glad there was no one there who knew just how terribly I was messing up.

It actually tasted quite nice but it certainly didn’t have the. shall we say, crumb to it that my Aunt Mary’s Pound Cake does. That recipe I will post as soon as I retrieve it from ohio. And the verbena simple syrup that goes in it is actually worth making all by its lonesome. I took a bit and added it to some mint-iced tea that I had made and sipped at it as I nursed my poor cut finger and it calmed my nerves enough to remind myself that there are some things best left to others (i.e. baking or anything resembling it)

Ok. So the Fabulous trip to NYC, complete with dinner reservations at Abboccato, a very good Italian restaurant on w 55th with a razor clam pasta that I still remember months later (and was planning on having tonight), is delayed. Our midday flight has been cancelled and we land in La Guardia at 9 pm. So… still staying at the Waldorf, still going to the Induction Ceremonies, etc. But I am pretty irritated. And we are just surrounded by snow, huge swooping drifts. I really need to get with the program and post pictures. Maybe that will be a project. Though they would have nothing to do with food.

Unless, of course, I actually try to make Snow Ice Cream. I just might. It’s pretty much like making lemonade out of lemons, right? Though mom just informed me that when she made snow ice cream her Dr. father told her that she couldn’t eat it or else she would get strep throat.

Is it pathetic that I am writing about my three favorite cakes just days before my birthday? It’s not meant to be. Actually, I much prefer (for myself) birthday pie — blueberry pie, to be exact, ordered from Helen’s Pies in Maine (I know, such a hypocrite, right? Talk about carbon footprint). But, birthdays do generally bring to mind cake, and to my mind, mostly chocolate cake. However, there are some in this family who demand a white layer cake for their birthdays so I’ve included one of those as well.

But first, the family standby, Simone Beck’s Gateau au Chocolat: Le Diabolo. Simone Beck, or Simca, as she was more familiarly called, was Julia Child’s partner in the Art of Mastering French Cooking. Poor Simca, she was by all accounts a brilliant but very demanding and difficult partner and bitter at the end over the fact that Julia’s great, grand personality swallowed up the American airwaves the minute she took to television. Simca’s book, Simca’s Cuisine is a really wonderful, slightly old-fashioned cookbook full of recipes ordered in chapters titled “a chic little lunch” or “an earthy dinner for high-spirited friends”. The latter is made up of Coquille St Jacques (scallops in their shells), Cassoulet, a salad of cold asparagus or endives in mustard vinaigrette, a cheese plate and Dark Cherries in custard with meringue, flamed with rum. High-spirited indeed.

But I digress. Her cake is a dense, moist practically flourless cake and it was our special cake for most anything when I was growing up. And plenty is the time when I’ve been on the phone with mom or my sister, one or the other of us reciting what we’re planning to cook for our (high-spirited) friends, the recitation of the dishes a short story we are telling one another, when the conclusion inevitably is… “and for dessert, I’m making Simca’s cake.”

The next is Richard Sax’s Cloud Cake. In his write-up of it he says that the flourless cake is “crammed with chocolate (use only the best) and rich with butter and will fall slightly as it cools. the center is filled with softly whipped cream and sprinkled with cocoa powder — intensity, then relief, in each bite.” There are several things I love about this passage. First, the fact the cake is meant to fall — you don’t even have to worry about whether it will or won’t and then you get to fill up the little chocolate crater with whipped cream. Then, his description of tasting the cake, “intensity, then relief” as if the utter chocolateness of the whole thing is just too much to bear and we are forced to soothe our over-stimulated palates with whipped cream. Poor us.

A quick note about Richard Sax. I am not a baker (way too much precision and opportunity for failure) but his book, Classic Home Desserts, is one I turn to for unfussy, flavorful solutions. This book was Sax’s dream book, ten years in the writing and it is really wonderful. It was also his last book. He died (young) soon after it was published.

The last cake is Sax’s 1-2-3-4 cake, a classic and easy yellow layer cake that makes regular appearances at each of my boys’ birthday dinners. Which reminds me…. the last time I made this was Arthur’s 18th birthday and he discovered me weeping over the pans, mournfully tapping the layers onto the cake plate. I was pretty sure it was the last birthday cake I would make him since he’s off to college next year. He scoffed. Little does he know. Oh well, maybe it will become a welcome home cake instead.

ok… update. I wrote this yesterday in the calm afternoon, with the innocent expectation that all would go well in the land of dessert. But, I didn’t factor in a blizzard in Northern Maine and the fact that Helen’s Pies is in a very rural area. It’s kind of a ritual around my birthday. Every year, Dennis-husband stresses more about the arrival of the lobsters and pie from Maine than any other part of the birthday. He told me today that he wouldn’t relax until the lobsters had actually made it through the “wintry mix” and settled all nice and fed-ex like on our front porch. He realized today that he hadn’t heard from Helen of the Pies and gave them a call. Turns out they are having a blizzard and the pies can’t get here until later in the week, which doesn’t actually cut it so to speak. Dennis plaintively asked if he could pay extra and have them drive my nice blueberry pie to a local UPS store and ship it directly. The woman on the other end of the phone paused. “Have you ever been to Machias?” Dennis allowed as he really hadn’t. “Well” she said “we are in a pretty rural place and we don’t have those. Just the fed ex man who comes twice a week and that’s about all.” I suppose if Dennis had been feeling combative he might have pointed that the fed ex guy doesn’t make it twice a week, else my pie would be wending its way here. Must be a doozy of a blizzard (three z’s in one sentence …nice).

So, no pie. But.. Christopher and Dennis are making… Cloud Cake (yay!). More to come.

It’s is cold, cold outside. The wind is blowing upwards of 40 mph and the temperature gauge outside my kitchen window says it is 15 degrees. Brrrrr. Only thing to be done is make Aunt Mary’s Molasses Cookies. These are absolutely delicious with just the right amount of spice and kick and sweetness. Mom brought us some over christmas and told me that my Aunt Mary had made them when they were all staying down in the house on Virginia Beach (my mother’s old childhood haunt). Mary had made up the dough, rolled it icebox cookie style and would make up a small batch for the restrained cookie munching group. I love to think of them all, mom, dad, Aunt Mary and my Uncle Kinloch sitting on the porch, listening to the waves and each other’s happy crunches. Making these cookies today is my way of driving February far far away.