Small-town, 19th century France

I’m fantastic at procrastinating. Really, I’m one of the best. Like right now, I’m supposed to have my head buried deep inside Evelina, reading about seductive eighteenth century London, but instead I’m here, writing to you. I could also be reading about Dominican border frontiers, but that is beside the point.

The point is, that in the midst of putting things off, I was on track to missing apple season entirely. And that would have been a grave, grave mistake; summer may have all of the tomatoes, and the blueberries, and, well, all of the best produce – but fall has the apples, which aren’t to be missed. Luckily for me, in a battle of apples and scholarly history articles, apples always win, especially if they’re in tart form.



I felt like some sort of Alsatian housewife, save for the flowery-wallpapered kitchen and frilly apron while I made this, organizing my paper-thin apples in concentric circles over a layer of apricot preserves. All very small-town 19th century France, if you ask me. But daydreaming about being a boulanger on sunny Monday afternoons while baking apple galettes is actually quite a nice reprieve from books and papers and tests.



I was intimidated, I will admit, about the crust part of this endeavor. Crust making has always seemed to me a finicky, high maintenance sort of thing – wholly dependent on precision – like a chemistry experiment, but with flour and butter instead of Borax and Elmer’s glue. Plus, people can be downright picky about their crusts.

I once had a table at the restaurant order our apple tart for dessert, and after loving each previous course, pull me aside after they had finished most of the thing, to tell me each one of its shortcomings. It was a major disappointment, they told me, the crust was just all wrong. Now, aside from wondering where most of the tart had gone if it was really that bad, I wondered if they knew we had a French chef making the pastry back there in the kitchen, using his French pastry expertise, which includes being not at all shy with butter. In my mind, if you’re from France, you automatically have a way with pastry, probably by means of genetic predisposition.



Needless to say, if someone could complain about a frenchman’s pastry, I felt I had a very small shot at success. But since the pressures of my kitchen are much less than that of a four-star restaurant’s, and since someone figured out that all we baking-haters really need for good pastry is a food processor, I gave it a go.

Turns out, an apple galette is actually much simpler than you’d think. It certainly looks impressive, but that’s all a front: all it really takes is a food processor, a rolling pin, and a little patience with layering apples. And well, a frilly apron if you’re into that.



I’m not sure if mine would satisfy snobby restaurant patrons, but judging by how fast it got devoured in my house, I’d say I did pretty well. The crust was surprisingly flaky and buttery, and the apples turned a caramel brown while getting perfectly melty from their long, slow stint under the oven’s heat. Make this soon, before all the good apples are gone. Now that I have, I need to get back to Evelina.

Apple Galette
(Adapted from Bon Appetit)

1 3/4 cups all purpose flour
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 sticks chilled unsalted butter, cut into 1/2-inch cubes
2 tablespoons (or more) ice water

1 1/2 pounds orchard apples (the more tart the better), peeled, cored, cut into 1/8-inch-thick slices
4 tablespoons sugar, divided
2 teaspoons finely grated lemon peel
1/4 cup apricot preserves
Whole milk


If you want to feel super authentic, do this part with your hands. If, however, you’re like me, and crusts scare you, go with the food processor: blend flour and salt in processor. Add butter and pulse until mixture resembles coarse meal. Add ice water and blend just until dough begins to clump together, adding more ice water by teaspoonfuls if dough is dry. Gather dough into ball; flatten into disk. Wrap in plastic and chill 1 hour.

Roll out dough between sheets of parchment paper until it is about 1/8in. thick. Don’t be too fussy – it doesn’t have to be a perfect circle, the thickness just has to be even. Rustic is good, too. Peel off the top sheet of parchment. Using bottom sheet as aid, transfer dough on parchment to large unrimmed baking sheet. Chill 15 minutes.

While it’s chilling, preheat your oven to 450°F, and slice your apples. I used a mandoline for this part. Combine apple slices, 2 tablespoons sugar, and lemon peel in medium bowl; toss to blend, being careful not to break the fragile apples. Spread preserves over crust, leaving 1 1/2-inch plain border. Arrange apple slices in concentric circles atop preserves, overlapping slightly. Using parchment as aid, fold plain crust border up over apples, pinching any cracks in crust. Brush crust with milk. Sprinkle crust edges and apples with remaining 2 tablespoons sugar.

Bake for 20 minutes, and then reduce oven temperature to 375°F and continue baking until crust is golden, about 25 minutes longer. When you take it out, slide a long thin knife between parchment and galette to make sure it won’t stick later on. Let cool a bit, and then cut into wedges and serve warm or at room temperature.

Dream world

I guess I’m finally ready to talk about it.

It’s been a week of pure denial around here, a full-on textbook display of grief’s notorious first stage. And while I could certainly forge on in my denial-ridden dream world – the one in which, some day, I am a Gourmet contributor, I feel it’s probably best for my mental health that I face this thing head on.

Gourmet is gone. Well, almost. It has one issue left, and then it’s no more. After 68 years. Sixty. Eight.

Gourmet’s tragic demise has been talked about endlessly; people all over the internet are speculating about why it fell, and even having little rivalries over it. Which, to me, all feels kind of like a tease, because there is really no point.



It did make me think, though, of that meeting I had this summer with an editor from Bon Appetit (lucky, lucky Bon Appetit). Remember the sensational magazine editor I mentioned meeting? She was Pat Brown, a former Bon Appetit and Cuisine editor who is perhaps the most inspiring, firecracker-of-a-woman I have ever met. We talked about her personal relationships with Julia Child and Ruth Reichl, among others, but mostly, we talked about how I wanted to do what she did one day, and how I should get there.

I remember her story about how she got started at magazines, just a short while after she had moved to New York; “You’re just going to love the city, you know,” she’d keep leaning over to say, in between bites of her French marketplate. While working at a rent-paying job, she was sitting in a diner one morning, and idly chatting with a man, who asked her what she really wanted to do with her life. Bluntly, she told the man that really, she wanted to work at the New Yorker. A little while later, partly by the good graces of connections, she really was.



I don’t doubt that she would have gotten there eventually without the help of this man. (Seriously, meet her, and you’ll know what I mean.) But her story makes me think of being at the right place at the right time. And in a larger sense, it makes me wonder if this generation is really even the right time for print media anymore. I hope, hope, hope it is, but when things like Gourmet happen, it makes everyone a little uneasy. (Or, it makes the food nerds a little uneasy; I suppose I can’t speak for everyone.)

Anyway, this is all just to say that Pat Brown’s reality of how she got started is actually my dream. I want to meet a magazine man in a diner, too. Of course, I’d be just as happy without the serendipity, and just with working my way up. But I can always dream it – and rest assured I always will – but I want it, by the time I’m old enough, to be my reality too.

Officially up and running

It seems that I've had my head buried in books too long to notice that fall has officially arrived. All of the sudden, the temperature warrants sweaters and most of the leaves are turning that cozy, familiar mix of orange and yellow. I happen to love fall, with its colorful leaves and its colder weather, partly because summer heat gets tiring, and partly because my overgrown collection of scarves has been abandoned for far too long come October. I also happen to love scarves. I'm glad I realized it's here before it was too late, and I missed out on all of the good things about fall, especially the apples.

But, since I've been nose-deep in piles of books lately, instead of much better things like tarte tatins and hot apple cider laced with cinnamon, I have not made it to an orchard yet. Soon, though, fingers crossed.

Speaking of books, today I wanted to tell you about one of my all time favorites. It was the very first food related gift I ever got, and it was given to me not too long ago. Of course, an Easy Bake oven was the object of my affection for many years and I'm sure made it onto the Christmas list more than once, but much to my chagrin, my parents never thought it would be a worthwhile investment. They gave me a Barbie car instead, in which I rode in style, with my hair blowing as much as hair can blow in 2 mph winds, far away from my culinary aspirations.



As you know, these aspirations returned in full force once I started working at the Still River Café. Soon after my inner food nerd had begun to develop, Pete gave me Thomas Keller's The French Laundry Cookbook for Christmas that year. And although the Easy Bake will always have a special place in my heart, this gift was a few steps up, you could say, from the pink plastic oven of Christmas past. The inscription on the title page began “For my aspiring chef.” Best. Present. Ever. (Besides the pasta maker, and the Wusthof knife, and…)

This book is truly amazing, and if you don't own it yet, I suggest you pick yourself up a copy before I hoard them all to give as presents. It's worth the splurge, I promise. It's as much a piece of art as it is a cookbook; I often pick it back up just to look through all of the photos. For the longest time, I was afraid to put in on the counter. This is the kind of book so pretty that you want to put it in a frame instead of next to a bubbling pot on the stove. But that would be a mistake. A big, big mistake, because there is so much to learn in there, like how to make French-Laundry-perfect pasta.



This is all a very round about way of saying that the pasta maker is officially up and running. I'm sorry, I know, I could have just led with that.

I made the pasta dough a few days ago, mostly as a dry run. I practiced kneading, rolling, and cutting fresh pasta, and I'm quite certain that it might be my new favorite thing to make if I have a whole afternoon to burn, or a paper to procrastinate. And get this: according to Thomas Keller, you can't over-knead pasta dough. I'm not lying. It says in his book, almost verbatim, that when you think you're done kneading, go for another ten minutes. If that doesn't get you excited about making pasta, then I don't know what will.

I made a really quick shrimp scampi with the noodles I had rolled out, and for a first time go, I thought I did a pretty bang-up job. Unfortunately, it didn't make it into a picture, both because I was too hungry and my arms were too tired from all the kneading. But, I can tell you, the pasta was eggy, tender, and right on the verge of still being elastic - exactly what you want to eat on a chilly, fall night while wearing a big, burly sweater. Actually, if that doesn't get you excited about making pasta, then I don't know what will.




Pasta Dough
(Ripped straight, and not adapted, from The French Laundry Cookbook. Because messing with Thomas Keller's recipes would be pretty close to sacrilege, in my religion.)

1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
6 large egg yolks
1 large egg
1 teaspoons olive oil
1 tablespoon milk

Mound the flour on a clean surface and make a well in the center with edges tall enough to hold the egg mixture without spilling.

Combine all other ingredients and pour into the well. Use your fingers to break up the eggs a bit, and begin to stir the mixture, slowly incorporating the flour from the edges. Be careful not to let the eggs spill from the well, and also be careful to incorporate the flour slowly enough so it won't get lumpy. Occasionally push the flour using your hands, all the while continuing the circular stirring motion with your fingers.

When the dough gets too tight to keep stirring with your fingers, start cutting the remaining flour into the dough. When most of the flour has been incorporated, it will look shaggy but hold together. At this point, begin kneading by pushing it forward with the heels of your hands. Form it back into a ball, and knead again. Repeat this process until dough is no longer shaggy.

Let dough rest while you clean your work surface. Sprinkle some flour down, and begin to knead again, in the same motion, until dough becomes almost silky. When you think you're done, go for another ten minutes. (!) The dough is ready with it passes the pull test: it should want to snap back into place when you pull a section of it. Double-wrap in plastic wrap and let it rest at least 30 minutes before rolling it out.

Baking haters

Hi again, so soon.

I'm just doing some last pleasure reading before the crunch of the week sets in again, and while I was perusing some other food blogs I like, I came across this.

I think I might need to try this to see if it really stands up to her claim. After all, I am one of those baking haters, remember?

Anyway, if any one of you tries it before I do, be sure to let me know if it's as easy as she says. I, naturally, am skeptical. Plums are probably out by now, but apples? I'm off to bed (I have a guilty pleasure of 10:30 bedtimes), but I will be back soon, with stories of pasta I hope.

Night.

Busy spells

Sighs are definitely in order. Big, yawning, from-the-core sighs have been happening around here a lot lately. There’s just so much going on. I find, too, that if you take three times longer than normal to inhale and exhale one breath, you get to slow down for just a moment – think, reorganize, maybe remember to tie a shoe, all the things that you forgot to do while you were running around like a crazy person. Or in some cases, while your brain was running like a crazy person.

For example, the other night I’m pretty sure I dreamt I was involved in some sort of Russian Revolution, 1905 or 1917 I can’t be sure, but I led it, right alongside Marcus Garvey. I happen, coincidentally, to be taking two history courses: Europe in the 20th Century, and Black Experience in the Americas.

Just yesterday, I was given a pop quiz in my British Renaissance lit class, which asked me to dutifully produce the names of the four versions of the Bible we had read the night before. In response, I started sweating, and my mind jumped forward about two hundred years to Absalom and Achitophel – something being covered not in that class, but my British Restoration class. All I could produce was a measly “King James Version;” it was certainly not one of my best pop quiz performances.



When political movements on different continents begin to converge, the lines between centuries begin to blur, and you’re dreaming out the history of interwar Europe, it’s never a good thing. My mind is brimming with revolutionaries and Reichtags and Calvinists and satirists, and at this point, sighing helps a little.

Risotto also helps. During weeks like these, I want dinner to be something comforting, yet easy to make. Risotto is just that. Its preparation is relatively mindless, which is good in times like these, because by the time dinner rolls around, my mind gets plain recalcitrant. But even better is the fact that the end product is pretty darn good, and it’s made even more so with a poached egg on top. And all that stirring can be downright therapeutic.



I made it on Tuesday, when my mind was already at max capacity with things to remember, and the end of the week wasn’t yet in sight. Risotto, combined with a healthy dose of deep, sigh-like breathing is now my go-to treatment for busy spells. I might even say that I would suffer through weeks like this again and again, as long as there’s a big batch of risotto waiting for me somewhere near Tuesday.


Butternut Squash and Leek Risotto

3-4 tablespoons olive oil
2 cups Arborio rice
About 4 cups stock, preferably homemade
½ cup white wine
½ large white onion, roughly chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 leeks, light green and white parts only, chopped
1/3 to ½ cup butternut squash, peeled and very finely diced
Large handful grated Parmesan cheese


Put stock in a saucepan and heat it on low. Keep it warmed on the stovetop near your risotto pot.

Heat olive oil in the bottom of a large pot over medium heat. Add onions, garlic, leeks and squash, and sweat for about 15 minutes. Everything should be softened and becoming translucent, but not browned.

Add the rice, and let it toast for a minute or so; stir it to incorporate it with the vegetables and the oil. Pour in a healthy glug of white wine, and stir until this is absorbed. Add ½ cup of the warmed stock, and stir until absorbed. From here on out, add and re-add the liquid in ½ cup intervals, stirring throughout. This process should take about 25-30 minutes. When you’re nearing the end of your stock, start tasting the risotto to check for doneness. It should be just barely al dente. Warm more stock if necessary.

At the very end, add in your cheese, and season with salt and pepper to taste. If you want to be rich about it, or particularly artery-clogging, finish it with a few tablespoons of butter. Serve warm.

This can be refrigerated and it keeps well for a few days; I like to make a big batch so I can reheat it later on.

Note: Though I was tormented in my youth for having hairier-than-average arms, the arms in the second picture are not my own. I had a helper, who was male, and who is decidedly hairier than I am. Just thought I'd clear that up. Clearly, I have a complex.

Waxing sentimental

Now, I usually don’t talk about these sorts of things, but I swear, this has relevance to food: this past week marks the vague point in time that would constitute three years together for Pete and me. (Three! Years!)

Anyway, we never quite know how to go about celebrating, if at all (Carve our initials somewhere? Make a toast?), but we figured, as of late, that we were completely missing out. You see, other couples wax sentimental at least once a year, and shower each other with presents. It didn’t seem fair. We wanted to be showered with presents, too. So we decided, rather unromantically, that we would give it a go – this whole celebrating anniversaries thing.

I say unromantically, but I guess I mean nonchalantly. Our decision-making process made me very happy, and it may have even made my knees a little weak. It’s just our “hey, wanna do presents this year? should we set a price limit?” probably wasn’t the most conventional way to go about deciding. It was wonderfully awkward but entirely comfortable at the same time, much like our relationship is.

Nonetheless, we took it upon ourselves to be greedy this year. For most couples this means jewelry, maybe some flowers, definitely cutesy cards. For us, it means a two-hour drive for one meal, pasta makers, and microbrewery newsletters. (Pasta! Makers!)

Last week we drove the long haul to Cambridge and tried Hungry Mother for dinner. It was fantastic, I would highly recommend it. I would also highly recommend making your boyfriend do the driving. Almost more importantly, as I just mentioned, Pete is getting me a pasta maker!!! I cannot wait. I’m sure I’ll be off to a messy start marked by lopsided ravioli and other pasta mishaps, but we all have to begin somewhere, right? Soon enough I hope, as time tends to fly with these things, I’ll be coming up on three years with my pasta maker, and by then, I’ll be a pro.


**Man, am I going to get in trouble for this picture. If it comes down in the near future, you'll know why.

Homage to the egg

It's so good to be back. My taste buds are finally back in working order, but let me tell you, I was scared there for a minute. I find that when you're sick, you spend more time thinking about what you wish you could be eating. It's not totally abnormal for me to daydream about food, but I was even more taunted this past week. You think about food, and cooking, and then you start fantasizing about food actually having feelings. Weird, I know. Lately, I’ve been feeling sorry for the egg.

It’s always been so trusty, so constant: the ever-humble, adaptable source of protein. It has a way of always making it into the fridge, and sitting there politely, in its brown carton, never asking for anything. But eggs always seem to get lost in the shuffle, overlooked as mere add-ins to a cake or a meatloaf or a dough. The egg seldom gets to play the lead, and when it does, it’s usually not a memorable performance.



What I mean is, scrambled eggs are usually what I try not to fall back on, as tempting as they are, being so cheap and so quick. There are times, yes, when cheap and quick is all I could ever want, but the egg can do so much better than that, and in not much more time. I feel like we owe it to the egg; it deserves a better vehicle than we’ve been giving it all these years. It deserves a tricked out vehicle, you might say, one with leeks and Gruyere.



Last night, I paid homage to eggs with a heartbreakingly simple frittata. A frittata is lighter and simpler than a quiche, and is what you make if you lack the pastry know how of crust-making and feel sacrilegious buying one pre-made. Made with just eggs, vegetables, a splash of milk and a scant handful of cheese, a frittata really lets the egg shine.



Leeks and Gruyere would be the obvious choice if you’re feeling chic and French, I suppose, but you could substitute with any vegetable and semi-hard cheese. I once made a caramelized onion and goat cheese one that worked beautifully. It takes only about ten minutes to do (longer if you’re melting leeks, but isn’t being time consuming the French way?), and you end up with what I like to think of as a gussied up omelet, or at least its grown-up cousin. Either way, it’s something to look forward to making, not to dread falling back on: it’s all egg, all on its own, and it’s delicious.


Leek and Gruyere Frittata

10 eggs
A splash of milk
1-2 tablespoons butter
½ teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon white pepper
1 large leek, white and pale green parts only, washed and chopped
1 cup shredded Gruyere cheese, plus a little extra for sprinkling

Melting the leeks is the only real cooking you have to do here: melt the butter in a skillet, and toss in the chopped leeks. Sweat them for about five minutes, and when they’ve started to soften, add enough water just to cover them. Simmer on medium high until most of the water has evaporated, and leeks are very soft. This should take about ten minutes, but taste as you go along: they should be feel “melted,” or rather, they should almost melt in your mouth. Add more water as necessary.

Preheat broiler. Melt remaining butter in a heavy cast iron skillet heat to medium. Crack eggs into bowl with milk, and whisk to break up yolks. Incorporate leeks and cheese, and transfer to the skillet. Let the egg mixture cook slowly for about five minutes, or until the sides and the top are mostly set. Sprinkle remaining cheese on the top, and transfer to the top rack of the oven.

Be careful with this part: it only needs about a minute or two under the broiler, and it cooks fast. When the cheese has melted and the top looks brown and bubbly, it’s done. Serve warm or at room temperature.