Things owed

I suppose I owe you pita.

I’ve never owed anyone pita before. Money, sure. Favors, yes. But never pita. I’ll have to say, it’s not the worst kind of debt to have over your head. In fact, it’s actually quite nice. I’ve been running around lately, thinking every now and then about how I need to get on here and tell you about pita, and I’ve never once felt like hiding my checkbook, feigning forgetfulness, or say, screening your calls.


Pita is in the category of things that sound more impressive than they are difficult, like homemade pasta or figure eight knots or big pot blanching. Which, lucky for us, is the perfect combination in food. The oven does most of the work, combining the high heat and the moisture to make the steam that puffs up the pita.


I am human, though, and realize that pita is most common when it comes store-bought and plastic-wrapped. Also that, so long as you’re with me out on the east coast, heat waves and five hundred degree ovens don't make the best companions. I still think you should try this, at least once. (I’ve always been stubborn.) It’s really not so hard, and you’ll have pita to eat for weeks. Plus, you can add it to your list of things accomplished. For now, I can cross it off mine of things owed.


Whole Wheat Pita
(Adapted from epicurious.com)
2 1/2 teaspoons active dry yeast
1 teaspoon honey
1 1/4 cups warm water
2 cups bread flour or high-gluten flour, plus additional for kneading
1 cup whole-wheat flour
1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil
1 teaspoon salt
Cornmeal for sprinkling baking sheets

Stir together yeast, honey, and 1/2 cup warm water in a large bowl, then let stand until foamy. While yeast mixture stands, stir together flours in another bowl. Whisk 1/2 cup flour mixture into yeast mixture until smooth, then cover with plastic wrap and let stand at warm room temperature until doubled in bulk and bubbly, about 45 minutes. Stir in oil, salt, remaining 3/4 cup warm water, and remaining 2 1/2 cups flour mixture until a dough forms. (I used a stand mixer for this step.)

Turn out dough onto a floured surface and knead, working in just enough additional flour to keep dough from sticking, until dough is smooth and elastic, 8 to 10 minutes. Form dough into a ball and put in an oiled large bowl, turning to coat. Cover bowl with plastic wrap and let dough rise in draft-free place at warm room temperature until doubled in size, about 1 hour.

Punch down dough and cut into 8 pieces. Form each piece into a ball. Flatten 1 ball, then roll out into a 7-inch round on floured surface with a floured rolling pin. Transfer round to 1 of 2 baking sheets lightly sprinkled with cornmeal. Roll out the rest of the dough in the same manner. Loosely cover pitas with 2 clean kitchen towels and let stand at room temperature 30 minutes.

Set oven rack in lower third of oven and remove other racks. Preheat oven to 500°F. Transfer 4 pitas, 1 at a time, directly onto oven rack. Bake until just puffed and pale golden, about 2 minutes. Turn over with tongs and bake 1 minute more. Cool pitas on a cooling rack. Bake remaining 4 pitas in same manner.

The stars aligned

I have to speed over pita, just for today. This is much better.


Yesterday was what felt like the hottest day of the summer thus far, or at the very least, the stickiest. The humidity was so heavy you practically had to move it out of the way to walk through it, a curtain of muggy, damp, summer air.

I mention this only to help explain the fact that pasta with mushroom ragu was decidedly not what the weather called for last night. Salad would have been more fitting. Perhaps no food at all would have been better, and just really cold beer and freezer packs alternated with new ones as they thawed.


But it happened, as it sometimes does, that what was in the fridge came together in a mushroom ragu kind of way, or the stars aligned, or I really didn’t mind all the pasta kneading on such a hot day.

A customer at the restaurant the other day left a note on the back of their receipt thanking the server and complimenting the food. I am tempted to borrow from their own words about our kobe beef, for lack of a better way to describe this pasta. It was, as the man that sat at table twenty this weekend would say, downright transcendental. It is a rather dramatic description, yes, perhaps a little pretentious-sounding, but this time, really just spot on.


Try this. You’ll know what I mean. Pasta can be transcendental, probably unbeknownst to Thoreau. Something about it is incredibly complex-tasting, even though you can count the ingredients on two hands. I blame it on the red wine.

Fettuccine with Mushroom Ragù

The eggplant in this recipe really just helped to bulk up the sauce; feel free to use more if you want the flavor to be more pronounced. Also, whatever kind of mushrooms you have on hand will more than suffice. This is my favorite kind of recipe – it is one very easily thrown together, mostly by eye.

½ a large eggplant, finely diced
3 large cloves garlic, minced
1/2 cup chopped onion
8 oz mushrooms finely chopped
2 tablespoons tomato paste
1 tablespoon black olive tapenade, or mined black olives
1/3 (or thereabouts) cup dry red wine
1 tablespoon minced fresh oregano
12 ounces fresh fettuccine

Sweat garlic and onion in olive oil until translucent. Add mushrooms and eggplant and cook over medium heat until they wilt and give up their juices. Don’t let juices evaporate. Stir in tomato paste and tapenade. Add wine, cook briefly, then season with oregano, salt and pepper. Remove from heat.

Bring a pot of salted water to a boil, add fettuccine, stir to separate strands and cook about 3 minutes. Transfer fettuccine to skillet. Add just a bit of olive oil to the noodles. Gently fold ingredients together over low heat until mushroom mixture has reheated and is evenly mixed with fettuccine. Top with grated pecorino if you’d like (you should like, it makes it much better).

A little nostalgia for you

Being home coaxes out the nostalgia in me. Looking for something in my old room or on the family computer becomes an exercise in distraction, a trip down 21st century memory lane as I click through scores and scores of old pictures, ultimately forgetting what led me to my room or the computer in the first place.

I don’t have a recipe today, but I do have a little nostalgia for you. Consider it photographic sustenance, to tide you over. Remember way back when, when I first started this thing? I was tripping over words, attempting grand mission statements for this blog, and I told you about this one picture, perfectly illustrative of my own pickiness as a little girl. I came across that picture recently.


There I am. Since, I have realized that food is much more than a lunch-box filler, sandwiched between two pieces of white bread, but I did know a few things in those days. Chiefly, that the only proper way to show your appreciation for a good peanut butter sandwich is to have pieces of it left behind on your face afterward. Also, that the only thing better than a good meal is a good nap immediately following a good meal.

I believe in eating with purpose, and with food on your face for good measure, if that’s what does it for you. Perhaps part of me is still that awkward eight year-old, with an irrational fondness for pb&j and a secret love for purple pajamas. This picture reminds me of those things, of youth, of starting this little space, and so I wanted to share it with you.

Note: stay tuned for Greek food. I have been churning out pita in my kitchen (even though the heat here has rarely felt the need to dip below ninety), an action which, to be sure, is a certain kind of martyrdom in the name of Mediterranean flatbread.

The best kind of people

I have decided that cheese farmers are the best kind of people that exist.

They are the hospitable, warm, grandmothers of society; apron-clad, hands slightly dusted with flour, explaining that their house is your house and insisting that no normal person refuses another wedge of camembert. They are peaceful. They are cheese-loving. They are some kind of ambitious marker for good will and humanity. Is that too far?


Really, though. If all of you are still buying your cheese from the grocery store and not driving to farms and inviting yourself into cheese houses, you are sorely missing out.

My latest victim was Beltane farm, a mostly goat cheese maker out in Lebanon, Connecticut. To be fair to myself, this was an open house, though I did linger probably a bit too long around the samples table.



The weather was perfect. There were copious amounts of cheese, and a bakery just down the road. There were baby goats. And, as if props to some kind of flawlessly tranquil farm-life scene, there were even kids playing on a rope swing near a pond.


I feel a bit bad about enticing you to this farm, since the last of Beltane’s spring tastings have lapsed. You can still get their cheese though; they do sell at a number of local farmer’s markets. Or, if you’re anything like me, you might just show up anyway.



Note: By this point you may be growing tired of my reportage on cheese farms. I make no apologies, because, well, it’s cheese, but I will say that next time I’ll try to tell you about something mostly unrelated to cheese. But only mostly, that’s the best you’re going to get.

And today, you get:

Cake. Who doesn’t like cake? This one has borderline unreasonable amounts of chocolate ganache, which if you're looking in my book, makes for a good dessert. And anyway, who likes reasonable cakes? Reasonable cakes, it seems to me, are a paradoxical thing, much like nourishing celery or salty sugar or milk powder.


Onward, then, with our unreasonable cake-making. (My original intention was for this to be read with one arm gallantly raised in the air, William Wallace style. While riding a Scottish draft horse and with your face pained white and blue, if you really wanted to make the sell. I realize, though, that some of you may be much less prone than I am to corny movie references spun around for the purposes of baking. I will forgive you for keeping your arm down.)


Anyway, see? I am not abandoning you. I’m bringing you chocolate cake. Unapologetically rich, intense, chocolate cake. Which is the best kind. Now, go! Bake! Bake!



Chocolate Raspberry Layer Cake
(Adapted from Bon Appetit)

Nonstick vegetable oil spray
2 cups unbleached all purpose flour
1 3/4 cups sugar
3/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
2 teaspoons baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 cup water
3/4 cup buttermilk
3/4 cup vegetable oil
3 large eggs


18 oz bittersweet chocolate (do not exceed 61% cacao), chopped
2 1/4 cups heavy whipping cream
6 tablespoons seedless raspberry jam, stirred to loosen, divided
fresh raspberries to garnish
Powdered sugar to garnish

For cake:
Position racks in top and bottom third of oven; preheat to 350°F. Coat two 9-inch cake pans nonstick spray. Line bottoms with parchment paper rounds; spray rounds.

Sift flour, sugar, cocoa powder, baking soda, and salt into large bowl. Whisk to blend and form well in center. Whisk 1 cup water, buttermilk, oil, and eggs in medium bowl until combined, and then pour this into the well you've made in the dry ingredients. Whisk just until blended. Divide cake batter between prepared pans.

Bake cakes until tester inserted into center comes out clean, about 30 minutes. (If cakes form domes, place kitchen towel atop hot cakes, then press gently with palm of hand to level.) Cool completely in pans on cooling racks.

For chocolate ganache and raspberry topping:
Place chopped chocolate in medium bowl. Bring cream just to boil in heavy medium saucepan. Once it has almost reached a boil, pour the cream over the chocolate. Let stand 1 minute, then stir until ganache is melted and smooth. Transfer 1 1/4 cups of your ganache to a small bowl, and cover and refrigerate until ganache is thick enough to spread. (It will take about 1 hour.) Let remaining ganache stand at room temperature to cool until barely lukewarm.

Place rack inside rimmed baking sheet. Carefully run knife around pan edges to release cakes. Invert 1 cake layer onto cardboard round or bottom of 9-inch-diameter tart pan with removable bottom. Peel off parchment paper. Place cake layer on round on prepared rack. Spread 3 tablespoons jam over top. Spoon chilled ganache over, then spread evenly.

Invert second cake layer onto another cardboard round or tart pan bottom. Peel off parchment paper. Carefully slide cake off round and onto frosted cake layer on rack. Spread remaining 3 tablespoons raspberry jam over top of second cake layer. Pour half of the barely lukewarm ganache over cake, spreading over sides to cover. Freeze until ganache sets, about 30 minutes. (The freezing and removing will get a bit annoying, but it is worth it: you need the ganache to set so you'll end up with a smooth outer layer.)

Pour remaining ganache over cake, allowing to drip down sides and spreading over sides if needed for even coverage and to smooth edges. Freeze to set ganache, about 30 minutes. The cake can be moved to the fridge if you aren't ready for it, and brought back down to room temperature before serving. Arrange your raspberries on the top before you serve as well.

Vermont Shepherd

As a preface, I would like to say that though it may appear this way, today is not a continuation of last post’s pity party. Really, it’s not. Appearances can be deceiving. Didn’t anyone ever tell you that? It’s true, you know.


The pity here has packed up and moved out and restlessness has taken its place, suitcase and all. (The amp-carrying gig is still in the application process, which is to say somewhere distant and in the unforeseeable future.) It is a restless party around here these days. Restless parties, in case you’d like to know, involve a type of visceral wanderlust, and tend to happen on the tail end of excessive bread-baking. They involve relatively unplanned road trips to Vermont. And cheese, they involve cheese, precisely half way between your house and your destination of Burlington.


I’ve found that reliably, cheese makes everything better. Especially when it’s Vermont Shepherd cheese. And when you pass their farm at exactly lunchtime and the people there have a batch of fresh ricotta going as you awkwardly let yourself into their cheese house, well, it just gets better than better.


The farm was exactly what you’d expect from rural Vermont: skinny dirt roads, sweeping pastures and stonewalls, more sheep than people visible to the passerby. It was the kind of place, hospitable and with a familiar smell, that made you feel as though you were visiting an old family friend: your mother’s aunt perhaps, someone you had never met yourself but felt a vague connection to.

The farm is in Putney. Which, if you think about it, sounds happy and docile and sheep-like all on its own. If you’re in the neighborhood (or if you, like me, are restless and are in need of a road trip), I highly suggest you go.


If you’re lucky, you’ll run into David Major and Joe Sawyer, and they’ll be making a fresh batch of ricotta. If your luck continues further, they’ll give you directions to the Cave. You’ll then drive there, a place that resembles a dwelling straight out of Tolkien: there is red door built right into the middle of a stonewall exterior. There you’ll meet Tanya, brining and flipping the cheeses as she does twice a week, and she’ll tell you which cheese is good for picnics and with what beer.


Completely convinced and won over by these people and their farm, you’ll buy cheese. You’ll go back to the cheese house to check on the progress of the ricotta, and David Major will scoop some, finished only minutes before you got there, right into a container for you to take home. Your mouth will water. Eaten with bread and apples and your fingers as utensils, the ricotta will make at once the most sophisticated and the most humble road trip snack you’ve ever had.


My friend Katherin and I left Vermont Shepherd with our hands full of cheese, our cameras full of pictures, and with a new favorite place in Putney, Vermont. It’s the kind of town, the kind of farm, where people still trust each other enough to ask that you pay for your cheese before you go, but in a bucket on a shelf in an unlocked shed. More importantly though, the cheese is just that good. Make the trip.



A hearty thank you to all of the people at Vermont Shepherd, who kept themselves composed even when they saw two girls, in a car with Connecticut plates, poking around their farm. You made our intrusion feel welcome.

Challah and catching up

Oh, dear. We have some catching up to do.

First, and foremost: I am a college graduate. What? Yes. Sometimes I have to remind myself of this. This, and the fact that I have time, that in the grand scheme of things, as they say, I still have a lot of learning (and cooking, and baking) ahead of me. Plus, I read a Times article about a man reflecting on how beneficial taking time off after college was, about how he spent time post graduation following Pink Floyd around. So there is always that, too. I can carry amps.


Second: In the midst of finals week, my computer, bless its little hard drive, decided that it had taken just about as much as it could take. Come to think of it, we were feeling pretty much the same in those days, my computer and I. Only it, being technology and decidedly inhuman (no matter how much I do depend on it), had the easy out of crashing.


Third: We all made it out alive. Me, my computer and I safely got through the end of the school year and started a new summer. And I learned (here’s where you come in) that in the event of pity parties, it seems imperative to invite bread. Seeduction and challah, to be specific, best if baked in quick secession. Turns out a good dose of yeast, eggs, and getting elbow deep in flour can get you through just about anything. Who knew?


Unimaginably, campfires and wine were not doing the trick. Mojitos, even in their botched form (which we came to call mojito-inspired cocktails aka drinks with a semblance of mint) weren’t doing it. Wielding around the kitchen, though, tearing through bags of flour faster than sanity should allow, turned out to be the secret.

For the hour that this bakes your kitchen will smell like a bakery. It will be comforting. You’ll forget about looming career decisions, and transitional periods, and the fallback occupation of being an amp-carrying groupie. And the only decision you’ll have to make is whether to use butter or jam on the piece that you'll tear off, still warm, right out of the oven. It’s fantastically therapeutic, I promise you.


I realize I’m choosing now, when June is fast approaching and the weather is finally turning, to tell you to turn on your oven. So it goes. You’ll be happy you did.

Challah (Egg Bread)

Adapted from Smitten Kitchen

Note: I’m going to be honest here. I couldn’t figure out the braiding for the life of me. At the end of the day, I ended up winging it: folding here, criss-crossing there, arranging it so it at least slightly resembled a braid. Then I made them into round loaves, which are much more forgiving. I’m going to provide you with the directions I was given, and maybe you’re less braid-challenged than I am, but at the very least, don’t be intimidated. Mine turned out just fine. Also, any of the risings can be done in the fridge (I slowed mine down and left it in overnight); just make sure you bring the dough back to room temperature before you work with it again.

1 ½ tablespoons active dry yeast
1 tablespoon plus ½ cup sugar
½ cup olive or vegetable oil, plus more for greasing the bowl
5 large eggs
1 tablespoon salt
8 cups all-purpose flour
Poppy or sesame seeds for sprinkling.

In a large bowl, dissolve yeast and 1 tablespoon sugar in 1 3/4 cups lukewarm water. Whisk oil into yeast, then beat in 4 eggs, one at a time, with remaining sugar and salt. Gradually add flour. When dough holds together, it is ready for kneading. (I used a mixer for this step, and it had to work pretty hard, but I was able to do it.)

Turn dough onto a floured surface and knead until smooth, about ten or so turns. Clean out bowl and grease it, then return dough to bowl. Cover with plastic wrap, and let rise in a warm place for 1 hour. Punch down dough, cover and let rise again in a warm place for another half-hour. (After this, I stuck mine in the fridge and returned to it the next morning.)

To make a 6-braid challah, either straight or circular, take half the dough and form it into 6 balls. With your hands, roll each ball into a strand about 12 inches long and 1 1/2 inches wide. Place the 6 in a row, parallel to one another. Pinch the tops of the strands together. Move the outside right strand over 2 strands. Then take the second strand from the left and move it to the far right. Take the outside left strand and move it over 2. Move second strand from the right over to the far left. Start over with the outside right strand. Continue this until all strands are braided. For a straight loaf, tuck ends underneath. For a circular loaf, twist into a circle, pinching ends together. Make a second loaf the same way. Place braided loaves on a greased cookie sheet.

Beat remaining egg and brush it on loaves. Let rise another hour. Preheat oven to 375 and brush loaves again. Sprinkle bread with seeds, if using. Bake in middle of oven for 30 to 40 minutes, or until golden. Cool loaves on rack.