Monday, February 8th, 2010
During a recent drawer de-cluttering I discovered a packet of recipe cards from the phase of my cooking life known as Early Marriage or Bride in the Kitchen. Highlights of the period included many failed Hollandaise attempts, way too many sauces based on canned soups and an astonishingly awful shrimp dish that called for four cloves of garlic which I interpreted as four clusters/heads of garlic.
J — whose mother had advised him to encourage my cooking efforts by eating whatever I set in front of him — actually broke out in a sweat about halfway through his portion, all the while assuring me, “No, I wouldn’t say it’s too garlic-y.”
One recipe I rediscovered, however, is definitely share-worthy: a citrusy banana sherbet. It came from an elderly woman in Dallas who acted as if divulging her long-held-secret recipe was a very big deal. Usually if you dig a little into the background of these “treasured family recipes” from the 1940s and 50s you’ll find they originated on the back of a sugar box or within the pages of The Betty Crocker Cookbook. Whatever its beginnings, this sherbet makes a very nice ending to a late-winter meal.
Banana Sherbet
Combine and boil: for a few minutes:
3 TB. grated orange rind
3 cups sugar
3 cups water
1/4 tsp salt
Chill the resulting syrup.
Add the juice of 3 oranges and 3 lemons plus 2 large (or 3 small) bananas, mashed.
Freeze in an ice cream freezer.
[Margin Note: technically this is closer to a sorbet than a sherbet, as the latter usually has milk or cream in it--but the recipe card, in the Dallas dowager's hand, calls it a sherbet and who am I to dispute it? In truth, the mashed banana does give it a creamy texture.]
By Casey Ellis, . Filed under Uncategorized | No Comments »
Monday, February 1st, 2010
We were in the lounge at Alain Chapel’s restaurant in Mionnay, France — perusing the menu while sipping champagne and nibbling on piping hot, exquisitely crisp fried whitebait — when another couple asked to join us. “So damned glad to hear someone speaking English,” the husband boomed.
He plucked the last tiny fish from the linen-lined plate and then shouted to a waiter on the other side of the room: “Gar-kon! Gar-kon! We need more of those fried guppies!”
I dared not make eye contact with my spouse, who, I knew, was debating whether to kill our new acquaintance, for his boorishness, or me, for agreeing to let this “owner of all the Burger Kings in New Hampshire” join us.
Those remain in my memory as the Platonic ideal of la petite friture, although a portion I had at J Sheeky in London last September came pretty close on the excellence scale. Recently I found a package of small smelts at an Asian market and decided to haul out my little deep-fryer.
I followed the procedure from Pepin’s Chez Jacques:
[Fortunately these were already completely cleaned, so I didn't have to "push the guts out of the little hole in the lower part of the belly."]
For about a pound of friture, mix 1 TB. flour into 1 cup milk. Add a little salt and pepper. Add the fish, mix well, then lift out. Immediately coat them in plenty of all purpose flour. (Do this right before frying.) Heat enough canola or peanut oil to measure 2-inches in a large skillet to 375-400-degrees. Fry the fishfor 3-4 minutes, moving the fish around with a skimmer, until they are deep brown and very crisp. Drain immediately, sprinkle with fine salt and serve with lemon wedges. I also spiked some mayonnaise with sea salt, crushed garlic and grated Meyer lemon zest as a dipping sauce.
Very cold, dry champagne is the perfect accompaniment. Fast-food restaurant owners? Not so much.
By Casey Ellis, . Filed under Uncategorized | 3 Comments »
Tuesday, January 19th, 2010
Warning: braggadocio ahead:
I have organized my cookbooks. All [I'm not telling the number] of them. This is one of three cabinet/shelf sections just off my kitchen and I know exactly which cookbook is in every one of them. Far more important, I can locate recipes in most of them with just the click of a few computer keys. It’s a miracle — a miracle wrought by a saintly new website called Eat Your Books.
I have tried and discarded scores of recipe organization systems over the years. Printed ones from magazines, newspapers and websites are easy; they reside in plastic sleeves contained in clearly labeled 3-ring binders. It’s the cookbook recipes — tried and un-tried –that proved to be an unruly, heathen mob.
No longer. At least not for the cookbooks indexed on EYB–which includes a large portion of my collection, with more being added to their list every week.
I can search by recipe name; I can search by author; I can search by ingredient. (The other day I typed in “pomegranate molasses” and found a great new squab recipe.)
I’m an obnoxiously zealous convert, out to preach of this site’s wonders, while offering up prayers that anyone who owns more than three or four cookbooks joins and guarantees EYB’s success and longevity.
You get a 30-day free trial; then there’s a fee. I tried it for less than 30 minutes before I bought a lifetime membership. Go ahead: eat your cookbooks.
By Casey Ellis, . Filed under Uncategorized | 3 Comments »
Wednesday, January 13th, 2010
Pear-Rosemary Pizza, originally uploaded by caseyell.
but actually a pizza — in fact, a sublime dessert pizza served by a friend at the end of a wonderful Italian dinner.
Sweet Rosemary-Pear Pizza
Pastry:
1.5 cups all-purpose flour
generous 1/4 tsp salt
1.5 tsp. sugar
1 stick (4oz) cold, unsalted butter, cut into chunks
1 large egg. beaten
2-3 TB. cold water
Topping:
4 firm-ripe Bosc pears
1/2 lemon
shredded zest of 1 large orange
1 TB fresh basil leaves, chopped
1 tsp. fresh rosemary leaves, chopped fine
1 tsp. ground cinnamon
1/4 tsp ground black pepper
1/2 cup sugar
2 TB extra-virgin olive oil
For the pastry: combine the dry ingredients in a food processor. Cut in the butter with rapid pulses until the size of peas. Add the egg and 2 Tb. water. Pulse just til the dough clumps. If the dough seems dry, blend in a bit more water.
Oil a 14-16″ pizza pan. [MN: Our host used a nifty pan pierced all over with small holes, which produced a wonderfully crisp crust] Roll out the dough on a floured board to an extremely thin 17″ round. Place on the pan, but don’t trim the excess–fold it over toward the center. Refrigerate 30 minutes to overnight.
Set an oven rack in lowest position and preheat oven to 500-degrees. Take dough from fridge. Peel, core, halve and stem the pears. Slice vertically into 1/2-inch wide wedges. Moisten with a little lemon juice. Fold back the dough so it hangs over pan edge. Arrange the pear slices in an overlapping spiral on the dough, starting right at the rim. Sprinle with orange zest, basil, rosemary, cinnamon, pepper, sugar and oil. [MN: Don't you dare skip the pepper. It adds a wonderful accent] Flip the overhanging crust up and pleat over the outer edge of the pears.
Bake 20-25 minutes, or til the pears are speckled golden brown and the crust is crisp (Cover the crust’s rim with foil if it browns too quickly.)
Serve hot/warm/room temp and, as you munch, send grateful thoughts to Lynn Rossetto Kasper, who shared this recipe in her wonderful The Italian Country Table.
photo.jpg
I made a great little galette for two using this same herb-y, peppery pear filling and pate brisee for the crust (changing only the final olive oil topping to melted butter). My campaign to bake — and eat– more galettes continues.
By Casey Ellis, . Filed under Uncategorized | No Comments »
Sunday, January 3rd, 2010
Margin Notes is embarking on a galette-making festival. A tart is my favorite dessert and a galette my favorite form of tart: — easy to shape and with a generous ratio of crust to filling.
Last night’s galette featured paper-thin slices of Pink Pearl apples spiked with a small handful of boozy cherries. (next time I make it I’ll use a bigger handful) For the crust I used a recipe from the new The Craft of Baking” by Karen DeMasco — and I was delighted with the result.–crisp, yet tender.
I don’t post recipes from new cookbooks, but the recipe was close to the ones from Flo Braker and Dorie Greenspan I usually use .
And to whoever wrote recently that new-crop apples don’t really need to be peeled for tarts, I send many thanks.
As I polish off the last of this galette, I’m surrounded by a mini-mountain of cookbooks so I can plot galettes both sweet and savory to come.
By Casey Ellis, . Filed under Uncategorized | 3 Comments »
Thursday, December 24th, 2009
now if dorie would drop by with some world peace cookies and nigella would bring clementine cake..
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Sunday, December 13th, 2009
In case you weren’t reading this blog in 2007, or if you were but have forgotten about this seasonal treat, I’m going to link to my own ancient post. Heaven forfend that you go through the holidays without these marvelous little morsels..
By Casey Ellis, . Filed under Uncategorized | 1 Comment »
Monday, November 23rd, 2009
cook Thanksgiving dinner this year, I’m going to spend Thursday just lounging around tending to my knitting.
Happy Holidays, All.
By Casey Ellis, . Filed under Uncategorized | 2 Comments »
Wednesday, November 18th, 2009
Snicker if you will, but J and I recently booked the “date night special” at Cavallo Point — the gorgeous resort housed at the foot of the Golden Gate bridge, its historic buildings once the officers quarters for Fort Baker.
Included was a four-course dinner at Murray Circle, the resort’s restaurant, a night in a charming room and breakfast the next morning. With the exception of a long-delayed third course that then included barely cooked, much less: “confit”-ed fennel, the dinner was wonderful and my “Southern breakfast” the next morning –soft-scrambled eggs, great bacon, sublime cheese grits and the best biscuits I’ve ever tasted, North or South–was sublime.
I didn’t garner any recipes, although I’m hopeful of obtaining both the biscuit and cheese grits secrets, but I made a few notes of ideas for my own kitchen:
*Instead of adding persimmon wedges to a mixed green salad, make the persimmon the star–arrange several medium-thick slices on a rectangular plate and garnish with micro-greens and a sprinkling of crumbled goat cheese. Drizzle with a champagne vinaigrette.
*Pair a piece of grilled fish with a parsnip puree and add some textural contrast by deep-frying a few paper-thin slices of parsnip to top the puree.
*Garnish a rectangular slice of pear tart with ultra-thin slices of pecorino cheese, standing upright like little sails.
*Accompany a scoop of fresh apple sorbet with small cubes of fennel-seed- flecked pound cake, sauteed in butter as though they were croutons.
Until I can deliver the restaurant’s biscuit recipe, here’s one I love from the late, great Jim Beard.
Cream Biscuits
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp. salt
1 TB. double-acting baking powder
2 tsp. granulated sugar
3/4 to 1 cup heavy cream
melted butter
Sift the dry ingredients together and fold in the heavy cream until it makes a soft dough that can be easily handled. Turn out on a floured board , knead for about one minute and then pat to a thickness of about 1/2 to 3/4 inch. Cut in rounds or squares dip in melted butter and arrange on a buttered baking sheet. Bake in a preheated 435-degree oven for 15-18 minutes and serve very hot. Makes about 12 biscuits, says Beard. Depends on the size of your cutter, says I.
In my ancient, autographed copy of “Beard on Bread” is a margin note written in now-faded green ink: “Very good!” I usually dislike exclamation points, but still agree with that long-ago reaction.
By Casey Ellis, . Filed under Uncategorized | 5 Comments »
Sunday, August 23rd, 2009
After watching the delightful Julie and Julia I felt compelled to cook something from my battered 1968 edition of Mastering.
Cassoulet may seem like a strange choice for an August dinner party but I figured it would be cold and foggy at the beach house and that even if it wasn’t, my guests still would appreciate this most seductive of dishes.
It wasn’t; they did.
Cassoulet is so robust a dish that Julia suggests following it only with fruit — but, be honest, aren’t you a tad disappointed when you attend a dinner party and dessert turns out to be the equivalent of one-perfect-peach?
Instead I made a granita from the lemon verbena in my garden and paired it with the marvelous madeleines I learned to make from Flo Braker.
Following a Julia recipe with one from Flo had a certain resonance for me: Julia was a huge fan of Flo’s baking, even listing Flo’s first baking book as one of her 10 favorite cookbooks.
Flo and I were such Julia fans that we quoted her constantly, sometimes in less-than-Meryl-Streep-level imitations. One day the phone rang at Flo’s and when she answered a voice boomed, “This is Julia Child.”
Flo told me later that she came perilously close to saying, “Casey, I really don’t have time to kid around right now.” Fortunately she didn’t as Julia was calling to invite her to give baking classes in the famous Cambridge kitchen.
I don’t know if Flo included this recipe in her classes that week, but it remains for me the way to achieve madeleines I’d serve proudly to Julia, Julie, Norma or Meryl.
Flo Braker’s Madeleines
These are genuine genoise madeleines, far more delicious than those little pound -cake-style imposters.
2 eggs, room temperature
1/3 cup vanilla sugar
1/2 cup sifted flour
1/4 cup melted, clarified butter (measured after clarifying; you’ll need to start with at least 1/3 cup)
Grease and flour molds for two dozen madeleines. Preheat oven to 400-degrees and place racks near the bottom of the oven. It’s best to make this batter in a small mixing bowl.; it makes incorporation of the ingredients much easier, more thorough and quicker.
Beat the eggs with an electric mixer until thick and yellow; slowly add the sugar, beating until the mixture is thick and pale. Fold in the flour all at once and then fold in the butter, working quickly.
Fill each mold with a generous tablespoon of batter. Bake for about 10 minutes, although I start checking at 7-8 minutes. The little cakes are done when they spring back when lightly touched and are well-browned around the edges.
Remove the cakes from the molds immediately and cool on a rack. Serve sprinkled with powdered sugar.
By Casey Ellis, . Filed under Uncategorized | 3 Comments »
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