Indication of greatness

There I was, writing you last week’s post, talking wistfully about high oven heat and the wonders it works on root vegetables, and then, without warning or permission, I went ahead and took a wildly sentimental turn.


That doesn’t seem quite fair.

Lucky for you, I find that one of the best things to do after such emotional matters is eat to bread pudding. Well, make it. Then eat it.


I made this a little while back, and then two days after that, I made it again. Which normally isn’t saying much, but if you know me, you know that in matters of making new recipes, to repeat one is to be missing out on another, newer one, entirely. There are just too many things out there I have yet to try.


So take that as an indication of this recipe’s greatness, and then try not to pay much mind to the amounts of egg yolks and cream. It is bread pudding, after all. If it helps, you can blame it all on me – things just got a little too heavy, and sad, and well, the only sensible cure at this juncture is a cream-laden savory bread pudding. Totally understandable.

I will gladly take the blame.

Mushroom Bread Pudding
Adapted from epicurious.com

1 loaf crusty country-style white bread
1/4 cup olive oil
4 teaspoons chopped fresh thyme
1 large garlic clove, minced

6 tablespoons butter
1 pound assorted fresh mushrooms, thinly sliced
1 1/2 cups finely chopped onion
1 1/2 cups thinly sliced celery
1 cup finely chopped green bell pepper
1/3 cup chopped fresh parsley

3 1/2 cups heavy whipping cream
8 large eggs
2 teaspoons salt
1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1/3 cup finely grated Parmesan cheese

Preheat oven to 375°F.

Butter 13x9x2-inch glass baking dish. Cut bottom crust and short ends off bread and discard, or use for toast. Cut remaining bread with crust into 1-inch cubes (about 10 cups loosely packed). Place cubes in very large bowl. Add oil, thyme, and garlic; toss to coat. Spread cubes out on large rimmed baking sheet and season with salt and pepper. Bake until golden and slightly crunchy, stirring occasionally, about 20 minutes, depending on your oven. Return toasted bread cubes to same very large bowl.

Melt butter in large skillet over medium-high heat. Add mushrooms, onion, celery, and bell pepper. Sauté until soft and juices have evaporated, about 15 minutes. Add sautéed vegetables and parsley to bread cubes and lightly mix.

Whisk heavy cream, eggs, salt, and ground pepper in large bowl. Mix custard into bread and vegetables. Transfer stuffing to prepared dish. Sprinkle cheese over.

Bake stuffing at 350, uncovered, until set and top is golden, about 1 hour. Let stand 15 minutes before serving.

A lot

A lot has been going on around here, in the kingdom of Rue le Sel (and hereby referred to as such), and that’s besides the whole birth of Christ ordeal and the slurry of presents that come alongside.

So (belated) Merry Christmas to all of you, readers, I hope your stockings were stuffed to satisfaction - but really, (really), I’ve been meaning to introduce you to someone, a little man that has taken up the majority of my time and sleep for the past week and has been more than welcome to do so all along. This little man:


His name is Luke and he’s a mut just like the rest of us, loves to eat, and loves even more to sleep curled up in the nook of your lap while you sit on the couch. He will live up to being a cool hand one of these days, just as soon as he acquires some appropriate-sized legs and a bit more coordination. Just you wait.

Introductions over with, I wanted to give you a short list of some of my favorite things over the past few weeks. (Other than Luke. Sorry.) In no particular order, these things have made me very appreciative. Now you can be appreciative too:

1. High Oven Heat

I can’t recall ever having thanked an appliance for correctly doing what it is hardwired to do, but I’ve decided that all needs to change. Cranked up to four hundred, four twenty five, it turns out the most delicious vegetables, just this side of burnt, coddled into carmelization. It makes it look as though those carrots on the Christmas table were a morning-long labor, when really, the oven deserves all the credit.


2. Arizona Dreaming

The spice. It’s made by Penzeys, and if you don’t have one near you, order it online. Soon. Smoky from paprika, spicy from ancho chile, this blend is good on mostly everything, but especially good on those roasted carrots I was just talking about. Seriously, if there was one lesson learned this Christmas dinner, it’s that high heat plus Arizona dreaming plus carrots equals a recipe in itself.

3. Family Heirlooms

This may sound trite, but hear me out. I remember looking at my grandmother’s silver when I was a girl. After the Doxology was sung, I would glance at it from the kid’s table, rickety and near the hutch, at Thanksgiving. It was pretty at best, but I imagined it completely useless. Later, holding an eighteenth century sterling coffee pot - five generations old - in my hands, I realize that functionality is not the point. I imagine how it held coffee after dinner all those years ago, and how now, to have it is not to hold coffee or afternoon tea, but to hold a small piece of history on your shelf, to continue in a small, sterling silver way, some kind of family lineage.


The holidays and their meals always make this lineage clearer, a glaring, twelve-place-setting reminder to be appreciative. The carrots and the spices play their part, too, helping guide generations to the same table, if not in person, than in the song sung immediately before the meal.

Mother Bear and brussels sprouts

So I got this email the other day, from Pete. It had an attached document, “motherbearmenu” - presumably a menu, presumably of a restaurant named Mother Bear. The body of the email was simple, concise:

Check it.

The menu read like a Southern gastropub, heavy on the pork. It sounded awesome. I was beginning to wonder why I had never heard of this place before, when I reached the end. *We apologize but our stereo is broken and cannot be turned down,* highlighted in bold, finished up the menu. It was a tip-off.


It’s not a real restaurant. It should be, but it’s not. Well, yet, if we’re all lucky (and hungry and in need of pork fat popcorn, which everyone, always, should be).


This is all to say that I completely forgot to tell you about something I made a few weeks ago, something that made it onto motherbearmenu: brussels sprouts, these amazing, amazing little brussels sprouts, transcendent in a way you never thought something with fish sauce could be.

They’re a Dave Chang original, altered a bit by my own lack of red Thai chiles and Indian puffed rice and shichimi togarashi. Make them now. If you wait, who knows, you could see them on a menu near you sometime in the distant future.



Roasted Brussels Sprouts
Adapted from Dave Chang

For brussels sprouts
2 pounds Brussels sprouts, trimmed and halved lengthwise
3 tablespoons canola oil
2 tablespoons unsalted butter

For dressing
1/4 cup Asian fish sauce
1/4 cup water
1/4 cup sugar
3 tablespoons finely chopped mint
1 garlic clove, minced
1 (1 1/2-inch) fresh green chile, thinly sliced crosswise, including seeds

Preheat oven to 450°F with rack in upper third. Toss Brussels sprouts with oil, then arrange, cut sides down, in a 17- by 12-inch shallow baking pan. Roast, without turning, until outer leaves are tender and very dark brown, 25-35 minutes. Add butter and toss to coat.

While the brussels sprouts are roasting, stir together all dressing ingredients until sugar has dissolved.

Put Brussels sprouts in a serving bowl, then toss with just enough dressing to coat. Serve remaining dressing on the side.

Every mother's recipe box

Somewhere within every mother’s recipe box, or within the mind’s memorized equivalent of such, there is a recipe for split pea soup. It’s there, in the familiar repertoire, the regular rotation of recipes: split peas, onions, carrots, stock, and the unmistakable, iconic ham hock. A few things made me wary of this creation as a child, but none more than that large, meaty, bone-in piece of ham, waiting to be boiled all together in a melting pot of pale, yellow green. The name wasn’t the easiest to swallow, either: ham hocks. My horse, a loving companion and very much alive in the back yard, had hocks. This association was unsettling.


Texturally, the soup was a nightmare. Entirely too viscous (as compared to my familiar Cambell’s chicken noodle), muddy, slightly grainy. To pour it into a bowl was to make a sound vaguely similar to mud squishing beneath your feet, or moving sludge, or on a bad day, both. The color on its own, a green paled and yellowed as if with age, was never encouraging. I could never understand the particular way this soup was able to endure generations, the culinary heirloom of (in my opinion) far too many families.

I made a lentil soup the other day that bared too close a resemblance to the split pea soup of years past. You almost feel bad for the legumes; cooked up into a fragrant soup, with warm spices and coconut milk, they yield what is perhaps one of the ugliest dinners of all time. It certainly does not give the best first impression.


This soup is actually quite good, especially in cold weather, with its warm spices and a bit of heat, tempered and made creamy by a good dose of coconut milk. It’s even better with an egg on top - as most things are. It fails miserably on the beauty contest front, but if I’ve learned anything from this, it’s that you can’t, in good conscience, judge a soup by it’s color.

Lentil Soup with Coconut Milk

A few notes: the amount of red pepper flakes listed here is what I used, but it can really be to taste – if you like a little more heat, adjust what I used. Also, the recipe that this is adapted from called for French green lentils. I used red lentils, because that is all I had, and it came out great (the color just suffered a bit).

3 tablespoons unsalted butter
1 large yellow onion, finely chopped
2 large garlic cloves, minced or pressed
1 tsp fresh thyme leaves
6 cups vegetable stock
1 ½ cups lentils, picked over for stones and other debris
¼ teaspoon red pepper flakes
½ teaspoon ground cinnamon
¼ teaspoon ground cloves
A pinch of nutmeg
A few grinds of black pepper
1 ¼ cups coconut milk
¼ tsp. fine sea salt, plus more to taste

In a soup pot, warm the butter over medium-high heat. Add the onion and cook, stirring occasionally, until it is translucent. Turn the heat down to medium, and add the garlic, thyme, and the rest of the spices. Cook, stirring frequently, until the onion is lightly browned and very soft.

Add the stock and the lentils, bring to a simmer, and cook for 20-25 minutes, or until the lentils are soft and tender.

Add the coconut milk, and salt and pepper, and stir well. Cook for about 10 minutes more. Taste, and adjust the salt as necessary. Serve warm and with a fried egg (awesome but not necessary).

The whole, sentimental enchilada

Hi there. I doubt most of you are on your computers today, with things like turkeys and simmering cranberries occupying most of your free moments, but in case you are:


Happy Thanksgiving to you. May your turkeys be perfectly brined and your potatoes perfectly mashed.

I've always been a bit of an introvert when it comes to matters sentimental. Going around the table and saying what you're thankful for in perfect turn always seemed to me, as a child, akin to brute punishment.


But, since the day beckons for it, at a very fundamental level, I will say that I'm thankful for being able to cook for going on four days now. In a row. I've been eyeballs-deep in piles of mushrooms, onions, cubed and toasted bread for days, and it's been glorious.

So, then, I'm thankful for that. I'm thankful for a day devoted simply and only to food. (If you're me, you will cleverly stretch this one day over the course of a week, organizing and participating in, at minimum, three different dinners.) I'm also thankful that pictures involving ceramic dishes with potato gratin can be semi-seductive. They deserve that.


And cake. Who isn't thankful for cake? If you're in need of a last minute Thanksgiving dessert, give this one a try. It's not pie, but traditionalism is a bore anyway. I baked it last week for a friend's going away party, and it was eaten so fast I never got a picture of it. It's that good.

I apologize to those Thanksgiving purists, those of you who would have me saying I'm thankful for love, and life, and faith, and that whole, sentimental enchilada. For now, I've done my part; I've gone around the metaphorical table. Plus, I'm giving you cake.

Over and out. Have a lovely day, readers.

Spiced Pumpkin Layer Cake
Adapted from Bon Appetit

Cake
3 cups all purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 tablespoon ground cinnamon
2 teaspoons ginger (I used fresh, but you could substitute ground)
1 3/4 teaspoons ground allspice
1 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 cups sugar
1 cup (packed) golden brown sugar
1 cup canola oil
4 large eggs
1 15 ounce can pure pumpkin
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
1 tablespoon grated orange peel
3/4 cup raisins
3/4 cup sweetened flaked coconut plus additional for garnish

Frosting
1 8 ounce package cream cheese, room temperature
10 tablespoons unsalted butter, room temperature
1 tablespoon grated orange peel
1 teaspoon vanilla extract or vanilla paste
3 cups powdered sugar

Position rack in center of oven and preheat to 350°F. Butter two 9-inch-diameter cake pans with 1 1/2-inch-high sides. Dust pans with flour. Sift 3 cups flour and next 7 ingredients into medium bowl.

Using electric mixer, beat both sugars and oil in large bowl until combined (mixture will look grainy). For this step, I was without my mixer, and did everything by hand. Your arms will burn, but it will work just fine.

Add eggs 1 at a time, beating until well blended after each addition. Add pumpkin, vanilla, and orange peel; beat until well blended. Add flour mixture; beat just until incorporated. Stir in raisins and 3/4 cup coconut. Divide batter between prepared pans. Smooth tops.

Bake cakes until tester inserted into center comes out clean, about 45 minutes. Cool cakes completely in pans on rack. Run knife around cakes to loosen. Invert cakes onto racks. Turn cakes over, rounded side up. At this point, you can trim the tops of the cake with a serrated knife if you like. I left mine just the way they were, for a slightly more "rustic" cake.

Using electric mixer, beat cream cheese and butter in large bowl until smooth. Beat in orange peel and vanilla. Add powdered sugar in 3 additions, beating just until frosting is smooth after each addition (do not overbeat or frosting may become too soft to spread).

The recipe calls for the frosting to be divided in two parts, and spread just in between the cake layers and on the top. I found that there was more than enough to do the sides as well, so that's what I did. This part is up to you. Sprinkle with remaining coconut and serve.

The tomato's version of black tie

This stuff is all over the internet.

I’ve been reading about it for a while. I read about it here, and then here, and then I saw it here. It’s like the internet’s version of the food world’s foam. It’s everywhere, on everything, with reckless abandon.


Up until now, I had really never intended to talk about tomato sauce on this site. My experience with the stuff was limited to quick dinners and staff meals at the restaurant where I work. Pasta with red sauce, as it is so vaguely referred to as, tasted, to me, as bland as the name suggested. It was strictly fuel, which is a tragic, tragic way to approach dinner.

Since this sauce quite literally stirred the blog world, it seemed worth a try. Even if it was reminiscent of my pre-work meal, at the very least the name – tomato sauce with onion and butter – was a vast improvement on plain red sauce. Plus, I had all of the ingredients, all three of them. So there was that.


It was, in a word, genius. Which I suppose is not news at all, since people have been reporting just that, just about everywhere for a while now.

With just three ingredients, you wouldn’t really expect much from this sauce. Its simplicity is one of its best attributes, though; the lack of spice, or much of anything else, really allows the tomatoes to sit up and sing. This sauce is canned tomatoes in their absolute best incarnation, all dressed up, the tomato's version of black tie.


The main theory proved, yet again? That butter, in all of its glory, makes everything better. Well, that half of a stick of it makes tomato sauce better. It acts to soften, round out the whole sauce, calming the tomato’s acidity while giving it a bit more depth. The kind of depth hardly worthy of a title like red sauce.

Tomato Sauce with Onion and Butter
Adapted from Every blog, ever.

If you haven’t been making this for years already, you should start now. Marcella Hazan, apparently, really knows her tomatoes. Also, I found that this sauce makes about enough for three servings (or four small ones); I used about ¾ of a pound of pasta.

2 cups whole, peeled, canned plum tomatoes, chopped, with their juices (about one 28-oz. can)
5 tablespoons unsalted butter
1 medium yellow onion, peeled and cut in half
Salt, to taste

Combine the tomatoes, their juices, the butter, and the onion halves in a medium saucepan. Add a pinch or two of salt. Place over medium heat and bring to a simmer.

Cook, uncovered, at a steady simmer over medium low heat for about 45 minutes, or until some of the liquid has reduced and a nice, thickened sauce has started to form. Stir occasionally, mashing any large pieces of tomato with the back of a wooden spoon. Salt as needed, and remove the onion halves, before you serve.

Radishes, and no known theme

This shall be random. Preemptive apologies.

I tried to think of a slightly cohesive way of tying together all of my thoughts this morning, but it’s just not in the cards. Not today. Or, really, this week.


This morning, I ate a handful of cereal, drank a cup of coffee. Went back for some cucumber slices. Read a few pages of The Fountainhead, jumped in the shower, washed a coffee mug, turned the sofa cushions.

You can see what I mean.


So today, you get more pictures of Europe. French breakfast radishes from the Raspail farmer’s market in Paris, some of the biggest sand dunes in Europe, Katherin. (This could be anywhere, yes, but it’s not, it’s Bordeaux. This one fits, at least in this tangent.)


You get announcements, about me, and my new job at a wine bar. This is important to you, of course, because now I’ll be able to tell you about great wines, my palate willing, and maybe even ones with more pronounced fruit, or black fruit, or red fruit, or no fruit at all. (I’m still learning.)


You also get table-building. Every night after work, I come home to something different: a new wall color in the kitchen, IKEA putting its Swedish touches on the living room, a puppy mural. Last night it was a table, built in the living room and taking up residence in the kitchen. It’s a beautiful table, beautiful and tall; it looks almost like a gangly adolescent boy, skinny and tall, still unsure of it’s legs.


In keeping with my completely unsystematic week, I went to Whole Foods the other day and ransacked their bulk aisles. I came home with a bag of what looked like bird seed deconstructed, in no particular order: red lentils, navy beans, quinoa, and what may or may not be wheat germ. Suggestions on what to do with this would be greatly appreciated. Clearly I need to get myself back on track. Arbitrarily, and with wheat germ, is no way to cook.