No Heartburn with a Nostalgic Eighties Gourmet Veggie Pasta

Earlier this year America lost a wonderful writer and filmmaker, Nora Ephron. I first encountered Ms. Ephron's writings through her collections of essays, like "Scribble, Scribble" and "Crazy Salad", books passed on to me by girlfriends whose passion for Ephron's humor and worldview became my own. 

When I subsequently read through "Heartburn", (NY: Alfred A. Knopf, 1983), her semi-autobiographical novel about chef Rachel Samstat, who loses her way during her second husband's adultery, I knew she would always be a part of my pantheon of favorite authors.

I was delighted when "Heartburn" became the featured selection of Cook the Books, a bimonthly foodie book club that I and three of my good blogger buddies co-host. Simona, of the blog, Briciole, is the host of this round of Cook the Books, and she has enlisted Laura Lippstone, a big Ephron fan and blogger at Planet Lippstone, to serve as guest judge of the posts that we all write featuring our book selection and the foods we cook up inspired by our reading. 

Dipping back into "Heartburn" was a nostalgic read: there was the nostalgia of seeing that great dust jacket art, the familiarity of sinking back into Ephron's words like having a cozy conversation with a great friend that one hasn't seen in a bunch of years, and nostalgia for the 1980s world that pervades its pages. Ephron describes Samstat's longing for the great produce sections of New York City supermarkets and gourmet shops that she left behind when she moved to Washington D.C. and that made me remember how arugula and twelve different kinds of peppers didn't used to be a common site at the average food store.

And then there was that passage that made me laugh out loud when I first read and reread it to my friends back in the early Eighties, and which I read and snorted through and reread to my husband now that we're in the 2000-teens.

"When I was in college, I had a list of what I wanted in a husband. A long list. I wanted a registered Democrat, a bridge player, a linguist with particular fluency in French, a subscriber to THE NEW REPUBLIC, a tennis player. I wanted a man who wasn’t bald, who wasn’t fat, who wasn’t covered with too much body hair. I wanted a man with long legs and a small ass and laugh wrinkles around the eyes. Then I grew up and settled for a low-grade lunatic who kept hamsters. At first I thought he was charming and eccentric. And then I didn’t. Then I wanted to kill him. Every time he got on a plane, I would imagine the plane crash, and the funeral, and what I would wear to the funeral and flirting at the funeral, and how soon I could start dating after the funeral.” (p.83)

My homage dish to Heartburn is one that celebrates the dazzling bounty of what the grocery store produce aisle features most any time of the year (alright, the locavore in me is conflicted about how great that bounty is in terms of carbon footprints). I made this great pasta dish after sniping the recipe from my cousin-in-law Diane, a fabulous cook. I added some cubed winter squash, because I have an abundance and threw in some diced tomatoes, too, cause I had some hanging around, but otherwise it's Diane's fantastic recipe. It's delicious and I can assure you that it won't give you Heartburn:

Diane's Eighties Gourmet Pasta

1 small eggplant, peeled and diced small
1 small Delicata squash (or other winter squash), peeled, seeded and cubed (about 1 cup)
1 each red and yellow bell pepper, diced small
1 red onion, peeled and diced
2 garlic cloves, peeled and sliced
3 plum tomatoes, medium chop
1/3 cup olive oil
1-1/2 tsp. kosher salt
1/2 tsp freshly ground pepper
1 lb. of your favorite small pasta shape (Diane uses orzo, I used GF rigatoni)

Pasta Dressing:

Juice of one lemon

1/3 cup olive oil
Kosher salt and pepper

4 scallions, minced (I used chives)
1/4 cup pine nuts, toasted (I used walnuts)
3/4 cup feta, diced (not crumbled)
1/2 cup fresh basil leaves, cut into julienne

Toss all of the vegetables in the first part above with garlic, 1/3 cup olive oil, salt and pepper on a cookie sheet. Coat thoroughly with oil and then roast in a 425 degree oven until browned, turning at least once with a spatula.

Cook pasta and drain. Toss with roasted vegetables. Mix dressing and pour over pasta and vegetables.

Gently toss in scallions, nuts, feta and basil. 

Serve at room temperature. Serves 6-8.

Diane says to try throwing in some cremini mushrooms, yellow and green squash or zucchini, if you want.

Simona will be rounding up all the delicious Hearburn blog posts back at the Cook the Books site after today's deadline, so be sure to stop by and see what everyone cooked up. And don't forget to join us in reading, cooking and blogging up our thoughts about "The Hunger Games", by Suzanne Collins, both book and film, for our next round of Cook the Books!

A Picnic Farewell to the Saratoga Racing Season

It was an impromptu gathering of friends to celebrate the end of summer and a chance to hang outside watching beautiful thoroughbred race horses thunder past us. Our venue was the historic Saratoga Springs Race Track. on Labor Day, the last day of the summer racing season. The racetrack offered free admission for that day, which was a nice bonus. Dan and I went early in the morning to claim a picnic table at The Top of the Stretch (where the horses make their last straightaway sprint to the finish line) by draping our tablecloth on a table near the fence. Next time I will leave the vase of zinnias home, which, though it was kind of a classy addition, invited pesky yellow jackets and wasps to our table.

Husband Dan used to go more often in his youth and we were astonished at how many years had passed since we had attended the races. Neither one of us is much of a gambler, but it is always a fun time because the people watching is superb. You'll see fashions aplenty from nattily dressed and hatted ladies strolling through the clubhouse to cigar-chomping OTB regulars perusing the racing papers with great intensity.

We arrived early and brought our picnic fare and feasted like kings. The weather cooperated with sunshine and not too much humidity, though when the track guys came around in their track misters, we did enjoy the spray of water on our faces turning like sunflowers in the light.

Our friends brought a splendid array of delicious foods. We ate some luscious lemony deviled eggs (I'll have my friend Ellen's recipe posted up soon), rice and pasta salads, gazpacho, cheeses, fruit, and other edibles, all packed up in various non-glass containers as per track rules). Then there was this luscious cold zucchini salad, inspired by one of Laurie Colwin's essays from her book "Home Cooking".

You start with a platter of fried zucchini.

I used three largish zucchini, which kept me stationed over a large cast-iron frying pan for a good while the day before. I breaded my zucchini with a mixture of brown rice flour and chickpea flour. They were moist enough after slicing to not require any eggy painting to make the flour adhere. After I drained and cooled these fried zucchini slices, I layered them with dabs of an 8 oz. log of goat cheese, chopped parsley and basil, and sliced bits of a 12 oz. jar of roasted red peppers. Salt and pepper went between the layers, they got a splash of olive oil and vinegar and that was a wonderful salad that was delicious at room temperature the next day and kept well under the hot temperatures during our al fresco track picnic.

Now, to focus more attention on Colwin's delightful book, Home Cooking, which is the featured selection for Cook the Books, the online foodie book club started by me, my buddy Deb of Kahakai Kitchen and my buddy Jo of Food Junkie, Not Junk Food. This book was published in 1988, and has been in my home library since shortly thereafter. Colwin was just a bewitching writer; she was witty, self-deprecating, passionate about the things she loved, and her descriptions of dinner parties (even the ones that went awry) are mouthwatering.

My favorite essay is entitled Kitchen Horrors, and I can read and reread this comic chapter and still chuckle out loud. There are so many disasters described in its pages, but none more hilarious than the strange English dessert Colwin attempted to make for an Easter dinner, called Suffolk Pond Pudding. It involved a sugar-encrusted lemon atop some butter and sugar, wrapped in a suet crust and then steamed in a kettle for FOUR HOURS. Well, that's enough description for me, and I certainly wouldn't want to have to ingest it, but Colwin sallied forth and when she produced her dessert, the comments on its appearances included suggestions that it looked like a baked hat and the Alien. The taste produced further editorial commentary: "This tastes like lemon-flavored bacon fat", "I'm sure it's wonderful, I mean, in England", and the straight-forward "This is awful". Ha!

Sadly, Colwin died at the tragically young age of 48 from a heart attack (her descriptions of her go-to comfort food, rosti, may have been a complicating factor), so there are not many other Colwin titles to read through, though there is a sequel to this book, More Home Cooking, to look forward to.

My zucchini salad was inspired by an essay in Home Cooking, entitled Red Peppers. In it, Colwin describes a favorite dish from an East Side restaurant that she didn't get to often enough. It involved layers of sauteed zucchini slices and pimento strips garnished with olive oil, fresh garlic and lemon juice, which sounds great too.

Deb is hosting this current round of Cook the Books, so be sure to check back at our book club website after the September 24th deadline to see Deb's roundup of all the Home Cooking posts.

Curried Zucchini Coins

It's that time of the garden year when bowls of cukes, zukes and tomatoes overtake the kitchen real estate. A really hot and dry July burned out my broccoli and greens, except for a hardy patch of escarole in some semi-shade, but our sun-loving vegetables are really enjoying this warm patch of weather.

I've been keeping up fairly well with the veggie bounty, making batches of pesto, zucchini bread and muffins, sauteed grated zucchini with basil and garlic, zucchini stewed with tomato and garlic, and other summer zuke standards in our repertoire, but then the other day I tried a few different spices with my zukes and husband Dan said that the recipe was a keeper. I tried it out again the next day and have to concur. Maybe you will too.

Curried Zucchini Coins

1 Tbsp. butter
1 Tbsp. olive oil
1 tsp. mild curry powder
1/2 tsp. celery salt
2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
1 small onion, peeled, halved and cut into thin rings (we grew purple onions this year)
6-7 small zucchini (about 1.5 - 2 inch diameter) topped, tailed and cut into thin coins

Melt butter in large skillet. Add olive oil and let it bubble up. Add in curry powder, celery salt, onions and garlic and cook, stirring constantly, for 1-2 minutes. Add in zucchini coins and cook over medium heat, stirring often, for 15 minutes, or until onions are soft and golden and the zucchini is floppy, but still has some bite. You don't want to overcook tender, young zucchini.

Please use small zucchini for this dish, as the bigger, older zucchini that one tends to overlook in the patch under the leaves will be too seedy and watery.

Makes 6-8 servings.

The curry, celery salt and sauteed onions lend such a nice earthy, mellow taste to this dish.

I am sending over a virtual plate of this delicious way to deal with zucchini abundance to Susan the Well-Seasoned Cook, who is hosting Weekend Herb Blogging this week. Weekend Herb Blogging is a long-standing weekly food blog event hosted by Haalo of Cook Almost Anything that celebrates edible plant ingredients.

How to Make Gluten Free Crumpets

It's October in the genteel city of Charleston, South Carolina, and tea shop owner Theodosia Browning is not only busy with her regular business, but there's an important catering job to plan and carry out with aplomb: the city's annual candlelight historic homes tour. Unfortunately, while the blackberry scones were a hit with the partygoers, Theodosia's tea gets a bad reputation when one of the guests is found to have dropped dead over his cup and saucer.

That's the set up for the first book in author Laura Childs' Tea Shop Mystery series, Death by Darjeeling, and the current selection of the online foodie book club Cook the Books. I am hosting this round of Cook the Books and am collecting submissions until July 30, 2012, after which time our guest judge, author Laura Childs herself, will be picking a winner to receive the coveted Cook the Books winner's badge and a copy of her latest Tea Shop mystery (#13), Agony in the Leaves. Cook the Books participants read the featured book, blog about it, and then cook up something inspired by their reading. New participants are always welcome, so feel free to stop by Cook the Books to find out more about the fun.

This is the quintessential cozy mystery, full of atmosphere, a fairly bloodless crime, quirky characters and then there's the interesting tidbits about tea making, tea varieties and the mouthwatering Indigo Tea Shop tea time treats!

For my Death by Darjeeling entry, I was inspired to make up a basket of crumpets. Now, before last week I couldn't tell you the difference between a crumpet and a trumpet, but after a little tea-soaked research (several cuppas in hand while I pored through my cookbook collection and looked online) it appears that the crumpet originated as very holey griddle cake that morphed into something a bit grander and yeastier on Victorian tea tables. They have been described as the love child of a pancake and an English muffin, with the main point being that there must be many, many airy pockets in the crumpet either on the top side or within, when split, that must be slathered with butter, jam, honey or golden syrup.

I found a recipe for Gluten-Free crumpets in the 2006 edition of the Glens Falls Regional Celiac Support Group cookbook "Tried and True Recipes", and with a little adjustment here and there, I made a very satisfactory batch of these fluffy little tea accompaniments. Just look at those gorgeous little air pockets above! These crumpets were so good straight out of the oven, split and served up with softened butter and some homemade strawberry jam, but they were just as good the next day when we toasted them and used them for sandwich buns.


Gluten Free Crumpets

1 cup warm water
1 Tbsp. dry yeast
1 tsp. sugar

Vegetable shortening

1/2 cup chickpea flour (also known as besan)
1/2 cup cornstarch
1/2 cup tapioca starch
1 tsp. xanthan gum
1/2 tsp. salt
1-1/2 tsp. Egg Replacer (found at most health food stores)

1 Tbsp. sugar
2 tsp. poppyseed
1 egg, at room temperature, lightly beaten
3 Tbsp. melted butter
1/2 tsp. white vinegar

Mix warm water, yeast and 1 tsp. sugar together and let stand in warm place until foamy, about 5-10 minutes.

Grease 6 egg rings or English muffin rings (I bought egg rings with the handles above pretty cheaply at a restaurant supply store, but you could also make your own from carefully cutting and filing down the rough edges of some small, 3 inch diameter, tin cans, like the ones you buy tuna fish, pineapple rings or clams in). Place greased rings on a baking parchment-lined baking sheet.

Whisk together chickpea flour, cornstarch, tapioca starch, xanthan gum, salt and egg replacer until well blended. If your chickpea flour comes out of the bag in small clumps, make sure to run it through a sieve first to make sure the flours will blend smoothly).

In a large mixing bowl, blend together 1Tbsp. sugar, egg, melted butter, vinegar, poppyseed and yeast-water. Beat in 1/3 of the dry ingredients and beat until smooth. Add in another third and then blend and repeat until dough is silky. It will be a bit moist, but then when you divide it and pour it into the greased rings, they will contain the dough and give it its shape when it rises and bakes.

Cover dough in the rings with, what else, a tea towel, and let it rise in a warm place, until the batter doubles (30-45 minutes).

Preheat oven to 375 degrees F.  Bake your crumpets for 18-20 minutes or until browned on top and crumpets have pulled away slightly from their metal girdles.

Makes 6 large crumpets. May be eaten hot or cold. Store in airtight container once cooled.

Having a spot of tea (lemon balm from the garden) with these crumpets on the side made for such a civilized afternoon break; almost as good as a Hobbit's Second Breakfast. And this project made for good excuse to break out some underutilized linens and doilies to make our tea break even more enjoyable.


One thing about crumpets. There appears to be some very naughty British slang usage for the term tea and crumpets, something Theodosia and Company would not likely approve of, so be forewarned, my fellow Americans, before you start spouting off about how much you are looking forward to eating these in bed or something else potentially embarrassing.

I hope you will join my booking and cooking friends in reading Death by Darjeeling (I've devoured books no. 2 and 3 in the series already and am savoring the thought of diving into no. 4 later this week) and joining us at Cook the Books. I will post the roundup of all the posts for this book selection shortly after the July 30 deadline over at the CTB website, so be sure to pop on by for a spot of tea and some good reading.

The United States of Radish Leaves, I Mean Arugula, for Cook the Books Club

It's Cook the Books time once again and for this round of the online foodie book club, our host Johanna of Food Junkie, Not Junk Food picked a great book: The United States of Arugula: How We Became a Gourmet Nation, by David Kamp. It's a very funny, well-researched look at how American cuisine came of age in the 20th century and he shares numerous anecdotes, foot notes and social history to show all the players that have influenced the American way of cooking, eating and dining out.

Kamp pays particular attention to the troika that are most well known for getting American food out of the canned, processed, instant, Jello-ed doldrums of the post World War II era: Julia Child, Craig Claiborne and James Beard, though there are many gossipy accounts of the minor players that had a hand in it too. I liked Kamp's descriptions of the kitchen hijinks at Chez Panisse, with doyenne Alice Waters lustily ripping through lovers and chefs with great rapidity and the story of Mexican food goddess Diana Kennedy tossing a young, creepily intense Rick Bayless out of her car after he stalked her down in Mexico and pestered her relentlessly with questions when she was having a bit of a crisis during the building of her home.

I really enjoyed reading through this book and it has earned a permanent place in my home library, where it will reread and consulted with a great deal of relish, I'm sure.

For the Cook the Books club, participants not only read and discuss the book selection, but then we get creative in the kitchen to come up with a dish that is inspired by our reading. I had hopes of picking some arugula from plants that went to seed last year, and picked a bunch to saute with olive oil and garlic and then incorporate in some sort of delicious pasta sauce. Fresh arugula is a wonderful, peppery green, but it is meltingly soft and delicious when cooked, a technique which I first tried in this terrific recipe by Mario Batali for an earlier round of Cook the Books.

I went out to the ol' Crispy Garden and picked a mess of arugula leaves. They tasted a little spicy, but they were much, much hairier than the arugula I remembered. I rinsed them off and spun them dry and they were much harder to get clean of dirt specks than the arugula I remembered. All those hairs kept trapping little dirt bits. I looked closer.

D'oh!  This wasn't arugula. These were volunteers from a red radish plant that went to seed and I let flourish in my autumn 2011 garden, thinking it would attract nice flying pollinators to my garden. Luckily, all was not lost, because I remembered reading somewhere that radish leaves were edible and actually made a good soup. I checked it out with my cookbooks and true enough, radish leaves are edible and so I cooked them up with a bit of garlic and olive oil and they were peppery, if not meltingly soft like the arugula. They had tougher stems and a more forthright peppery taste. Spring tonic and all.

This my contribution to this round of Cook the Books. I am delighted that Johanna was able to secure Mr. Kamp himself as our book club judge so you can check back at the CTB website to see the roundup and what our esteemed author thinks about our literary and culinary comments about his work at this link. 

Next round of Cook the Books will feature the first book in Laura Child's great Teashop mystery series, Death by Darjeeling, which will end on July 30th. Feel free to join in the fun by seeking out this book and then reading it and cooking up something inspired by it. Until then....

Adventures in Lickable Wallpaper with Roald Dahl and Charlie Bucket

It is time to Cook the Books once again with the best darn tootin' online foodie book club, and this time round we are reading that childhood classic, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl. I have seen a couple of different illustrated versions of this book but I think Quentin Blake's artwork invokes the playful spirit of Dahl's words just right.

 I zipped through all of Dahl's juvenile novels as a youngster and freshly enjoying reading them aloud to my daughters when they were small. We all especially loved The Twits, his book about a thoroughly obnoxious, smelly man and wife who get their comeuppance from the children, monkeys and birds they torment.

It was a pleasure to dip in again with little Charlie Bucket and his sprightly Grandpa Joe as they explore the wonders of Willy Wonka's amazing Chocolate Factory with a bunch of rotten kids and their equally revolting parents. The kids represent several vices:  Augustus Gloop is a glutton, Mike Teavee embodies rudeness and lack of imagination (he watches TV all day long), Veruca Salt is the eptitome of the spoiled brat (and veruca means wart, I just found out, ha!) and Violet Beauregarde is pushy.  I would recommend this witty book to anyone looking for a wacky, slightly sardonic romp, old and young alike.

With Cook the Books, we read our selected book and then come up with some kind of dish inspired by our reading. The book is full of all kinds of fantastical sweets, but I was most taken with Wonka's description of his Lickable Wallpaper for Nurseries:

"Lovely stuff, lickable wallpaper!" cried Mr. Wonka, rushing past. "It has pictures of fruits on it - bananas, apples, oranges, grapes, pineapples, strawberries, and snozzberries..."

"Snozzberries?" said Mike Teavee.

 "Don't interrupt!" said Mr. Wonka. "The wallpaper has pictures of all these fruits printed on it, and when you lick the picture of a banana, it tastes of banana. When you lick a strawberry, it tastes of strawberry. And when you lick a snozzberry, it tastes just exactly like a snozzberry..."

"But what does a snozzberry taste like?"

"You're mumbling again," said Mr. Wonka. "Speak louder next time. On we go! Hurry up!" (pp.104-105 of my copy)

 I'm not sure what I think a snozzberry would taste like. I keep seeing an extra "h" in there and thinking "schnozz-berry" and that conjures up awful suggestions of nose boogers. So I wasn't going to go the snozzberry route.

However, I also possess another wonderful book, Roald Dahl's Revolting Recipes (by Felicity Dahl and Josie Fison), which is a cookbook that brings to life many of the wild foods discussed in Dahl's oeuvre (with the bonus of featuring Quentin Blake as illustrator again). There is a beautiful rendition of lickable wallpaper there made with an apple-gelatin puree, which, after being rolled out and dried, is like a sticky sort of fruit leather that can be decorated with various fruits and edible garnishes.
 

Continuing on with my exploration of lickable wallpaper, I found a web link to a BBC show featuring chef Heston Blumenthal and his creation of a Chocolate Factory Feast in which celebrity guests got to lick up some tomato soup and prawn cocktail flavored wallpaper. That was getting more interesting to me, though I do have some hygienic concerns.

First, unless you tear off the sheets of this lickable wallpaper or have some sort of crazy conveyor belt to keep fresh spots of wallpaper available for new lickers, there will be sodden, bacteria-laden patches that someone else may inadvertently plant their lips on. I just keep thinking of petri dishes or flypaper.

Then I thought about licking wallpaper and then tearing off a strip to eat. I thought about those homemade flyers that have strips at the bottom with people's phone numbers to rip off, and then that got me thinking about making edible wallpaper using nori, those sheets of roasted seaweed that one uses to roll sushi. With some inspiration from these Internet recipes: here and here, I set off to experiment with some toasted nori as my lickable wallpaper base.

Nori is certainly handsome enough to hang as edible wallpaper on its own, but I thought about painting it with all sorts of condiments from the inexhaustible supply that festoons my larder and fridge and then toasting it to a crackling, CRISPY-edged goodness. I get these bags of Japanese seaweed snacks at Albany's Asian markets and they are so addictive. They come in Tom Yum, Tomato, Wasabi, Spicy Squid and Plain Salt flavors and I am hooked.

Surrounded by a counter full of sauces, seeds and spices, I set to work on my

Lickable Nori Wallpaper Snacks:

First, I preheated my oven to 250 degrees F. Then I painted, drizzled or sprinkled on my nori wallpaper adornments and baked each batch for ten minutes.

Experiment One: I mixed a little Thai green curry paste with soy sauce and painted that on two pieces of nori. One also got a sprinkle of sesame seeds.  Result: Too salty, though I was pleased to see that the sesame seeds adhered to the nori after baking.

Experiment Two: I beat up an egg white and brushed it on two pieces of nori. One was sprinkled with Five-Spice Powder and the other was dusted with Smoked Paprika. Verdict: Good adhesion of spices, both flavors good.

Experiment Three: Some leftover pesto spread on one sheet of nori. Some chili-garlic-black bean paste spread on the other. Verdict: Both tasted good, but they result in soggy nori centers.

Experiment Four: Drops of liquid smoke on one sheet of nori and splash of hot pepper sauce on another. Both spritzed with Dr. Bragg's Liquid Aminos (it's like soy sauce in a spray bottle, very handy). Verdict: Liquid Smoke nori is inedible. Hot pepper sauce version okay.



Experiment Five: Two sheets of nori brushed with egg white and sprinkled with sesame seeds. Quick shot of Dr. Bragg's to serve as fixative. Verdict: Best tasting and looking version. Not too salty, but pleasantly so.

Ultimately, this experiment with lickable, edible wallpaper proved that the simplest adornments proved the best. Just a simple spritz of Dr. Bragg's or a painting of beaten egg white and a sprinkling of sesame seeds made the CRISPIEST, tastiest toasted nori snacks, though for visual beauty, I must say I fancy the nori with chili, garlic, and black bean paste. And while I thought about making my family line up to the kitchen wall to chomp off a portion of these nori snacks, I ended up snipping them into strips with kitchen shears and offering them up a bit more elegantly.

Though I sped through a full ten-sheet pack of nori, this would be a splendid way to use up leftover nori sheets after a bout of sushi-making.

Our Cook the Books hostess for this round, Deb of Kahakai Kitchen, will be back after the March 26 deadline to post a roundup of all the great dishes. You still have time to join in the fun, or you could wait until the next round of Cook the Books when we will be reading "The United States of Arugula" by David Kamp.

Cooking Vanessa's Beans at Frankie's Place

Reading Frankie's Place: A Love Story, by Jim Sterba (NY: Grove Press, 2003) makes you feel like you are visiting friends at their summer camp on Maine's Mount Desert island. Sterba's book is an atmospheric account of his courtship of, marriage to and many felicitous summers spent with fellow author Frances "Frankie" FitzGerald.  Sterba is a former NY Times and Wall Street Journal foreign correspondent and FitzGerald is a Pulitzer Prize winning nonfiction writer, both of whom found love later in their busy, globe-hopping lives.

The book revolves around the slower pace of summers spent at Frankie's place, a family-and mosquito-shared cabin in the woods near the shore. It might be summer, but there is still a schedule to adhere to: Frankie is an advocate of morning dips in Maine's icy waters, calisthenics and excessively long hikes, which Sterba loving refers to as FitzGerald Survival School. There is also much writing to be done (Frankie likes a manual typewriter for that task), reading, sailing, mushroom hunting, mussel gathering and other foraging/shopping for provisions.

There's also an amusing chapter about the author's search for WASPs (White Anglo-Saxon Protestants) on this island historically populated with many of these folks. He researches the subject at the library, at a private swimming club, and in other prowlings around the village of Northeast Harbor. They elude him, particularly the wily subspecies, the High WASP, until a chat with a friend clues him in to the fact that he married one. Oh.

Punctuating all the prose is Sterba's recipes - offered in somewhat slapdash prose style, with plenty of room for variations according to what the pair might have rustled up from the ocean, container garden or woods. I have festooned my copy of the book with lots of bookmarks to hold my place for various recipes, but one dish called out to me immediately. Sterba describes a warm bean salad that he first tried at a friend's wedding. He pestered the caterer like a good newspaperman until she gave up her secrets and so I offer to you my own adapted version that made us all very full and happy at Chez Crispy Cook.

Vanessa's Beans (or Frankie's n' Beans)
 -adapted from a recipe in Jim Sterba's Frankie's Place: A Love Story

1 (l lb.) bag dried small white navy beans (I used red kidney beans)

2 Tbsp. olive oil
1 quartered onion
3 cloves peeled garlic
2 bay leaves

Other aromatics of your choice (I threw in celery trimmings, carrot peels, onion skins, and parsley stems from my soup stock stash in the freezer). Sterba recommends sliced ginger, bacon, rosemary and thyme branches)
2 cups vegetable broth

2 Tbsp. red wine vinegar
Juice of 1/2 lemon
1/4 cup olive oil
1 cup chopped fresh herbs (I used parsley and chives)

1 cup chopped red and yellow bell peppers (I used the trimmings from chopping up pepper squares to grill on skewers during our first spring barbeque)

Salt and pepper to taste

The night before, cover beans with cold water and let sit out at room temperature to soak overnight. Change water 2-3 times.

The next day, drain beans and place in a large, heavy soup pot with 2 Tbsp. olive oil, onion, garlic, bay leaves and vegetable broth. I added in the soup trimmings as noted above to further enrich my bean broth. Bring to a boil and then simmer along merrily until beans are to desired softness (about 1-1/2 hours).

Drain off and reserve bean broth. Let beans cool a bit, and then fish out all the large bits of veggie detritus (onion skins, celery stubs, parsley stems, bay leaves, carrot peels, herb branches). The garlic should have become quite soft so you can just "moosh" that in, to use a favorite Sterba cooking term.

Mix up a vinaigrette with 1/4 cup olive oil, lemon juice, fresh herbs, and peppers. Add in some of the reserved bean broth (about 1/2 cup). Let stand for 20 minutes, stirring occasionally. Gently dress the beans and season with salt and pepper to taste.

Serve warm or at room temperature.

Vanessa's Beans are some good frugal eating and I even have leftover bean broth to use in other recipes (I'm thinking about some pasta fazool later on). I have sampled and made many other bean salads, but I think the key here is that the beans are warm and infused with so many aromatic flavorings in their cooking liquid that they really melt in your mouth. 

One serving of this lovely dish is being sent over to my friend Simona at Briciole for her semi-annual Novel Food event, where you will find lots of other interesting posts about various books and the recipes inspired by them after her March 18 deadline. 

A second serving of Vanessa's Beans is being sent to another blogger compadre, Heather of Girlichef, who is guest hosting My Legume Love Affair #45. This monthly blog event celebrates legumes in all their glory and is the brainchild of Susan the Well Seasoned Cook.

Cooking Along with our Local Gluten-Free Celebrity Chef, Elizabeth Barbone and a Giveaway

I first met Upstate New York's own Gluten Free cooking diva Elizabeth Barbone at a celiac support group meeting back in 2007 when I first feeling my (gluten-free) oats as a GF cook. She was a guest speaker at our meeting, and she bedazzled me with her cool purple Kitchen Aid mixer, the cookies and cupcakes she made for us to sample and her lively presentation.

 
I bought a copy of her "Easy Gluten-Free Baking" cookbook on the spot and took it home to pore over and cook from. She kindly allowed me to reprint her recipe for Lemon Bars in a subsequent post, which are a pitch perfect combination of sweet and tart flavors over a buttery crust base.  I use that baking cookbook often, as it contains a lot of baking standards, from Pumpkin Bread to Brownies, and a few unusual recipes (Garlic Muffins, Hummingbird Cake) that are fun to try. Barbone's recipes don't make you crawl from market to health food store to food co-op tracking down oddball ingredients to make her recipes and her instructions are precise and have worked for me every time.

In addition to maintaining her GlutenFreeBaking website, giving GF cooking classes and demonstrations, and writing a weekly Gluten Free Tuesday column at Serious Eats, Elizabeth has been working on her second cookbook, "How to Cook Gluten-Free: Over 150 Recipes That Really Work", (Lake Isle Press, $27.95) which will be published later this month. Elizabeth sent me an email to ask if I'd join some other bloggers in a Cook Along event featuring several of the recipes from this new book and my immediate response was a high-pitched yipping that startled my sweet Martha dog awake from her guard position snoozing at my feet.

I was able to make three out of the four recipes she sent along and each one was great. I first tried out an Avocado and Grapefruit Salad with Citrus Vinaigrette and that was very tasty. I used a Pomelo, a grapefruit cousin, as I had one-half languishing from a recent Asian market field trip and that worked out really well. The Pomelo is both a bit less juicy and less sweet than a Red Grapefruit, as called for in Barbone's recipe. This was a really refreshing salad and we made it twice more when avocados were on sale at our supermarket.

I was intrigued by the next recipe I tried, Elizabeth's No-Rise Pizza Crust recipe. Dan is usually the Pizza Maker in our house, as he has the patience for yeasty, slow food items, but since this recipe didn't call for yeast and the need for allowing the dough to rise, I forged ahead. The dough was easy to assemble and work with. I rolled it out and patted into the rectangle shape called for in the recipe and then slathered on mozzarella, Parmesan, sauteed garlic and broccoli and some spices to make a White Broccoli Pizza.

As noted in Elizabeth's recipe text, this crust can stand up to a lot of toppings, and that was certainly true as our slices buckled but didn't break under all that cheesy goodness. The crust didn't get as CRISPY as I would have liked, even baking the pizza on a heated pizza stone, so I think next time I will divide the dough in half and make two thinner, smaller pizzas. I love the ease of this recipe for busy weeknight dining, though. You can't beat slapping some pizza dough together and baking it up what my grandpa used to call a "Hot Pie", within 45 minutes.

The final recipe I took out for a test drive was our favorite, Powdered Sugar Doughnut Muffins. These little mini muffins are nicely spiced with nutmeg and then rolled in powdered sugar while they are still warm. They are fantastic little sweet bites, paired with a tall glass of cold milk. Plus they are extremely cute.

Elizabeth will be rounding up the other posts in this Cook Along to celebrate the publication of her new cookbook, so check over at her website, GlutenFreeBaking.com later to see what other people cooked up.

I am also pleased as punch to be able to offer a giveaway of a copy of Elizabeth's new cookbook to one of my Crispy Cook readers. To enter this giveaway, leave a comment below telling me about something great and gluten-free that you have recently made. You can get a second entry in this giveaway by stopping by the new Crispy Cook facebook page and liking it and then telling me that you did so in another comment. I will pick a random winner after the deadline of March 21, 2012, midnight Eastern Standard Time. This giveaway is limited to U.S. residents.

Good luck with the giveaway!

Disclaimer: I received some advance recipes from Elizabeth Barbone's new cookbook and an opportunity to offer one copy of the cookbook to one of my readers from the publisher. However, I was not obligated to post about these recipes or the cookbook and my comments about them are completely my own.

The Anna Roundup: Cabbage Soup, Pampushky, Pierogi and and a Giveaway, From Belarus with Love

As noted here in my post last month, my creative mother, Carol Marie Davis, recently published a book about her maternal grandmother, Anna: Heart of a Peasant.

It tells the story of our intrepid ancestor as she made a new life for herself in America after being banished by her family in her small village in Belarus. Anna's story is not a tragedy, however. She emigrated to a new home that she cherished, married, raised a family of her own, and nourished and healed them with vegetables and herbs grown in her garden. There are some beautiful illustrations and even a few heirloom recipes at the back of the book

As a surprise Christmas present for my mom, I sent copies of her book to five of my blogger friends from Cook the Books, our online foodie book club, to read and review, and they very kindly obliged with great posts about the book as well as their forays into some pretty tasty Russian cooking.

My Australian expat buddy Alicia blogs in England at Foodycat. Alicia is always an adventurer in the kitchen and like our heroine Anna, is expert at putting up the garden harvest. Her Anna post led to a glorious pot of borscht studded with chunks of vegetables and short ribs, accompanied by some pampushky, a sort of savory doughnut rolled in garlic and salt. Where's my spork!

Traveling halfway around the globe, we find ourselves next in Hawaii at Claudia's blog, Honey from Rock. Claudia felt a bit of kinship with Anna and her gardening, preserving, wine-making ways, and notes "Peasants rule!" She took up the challenge of making Potato and Cheese Pierogis and they came out quite splendidly, bathed in a little emerald green parsley butter.

Heather the Girlichef is a blogging dynamo with a big heart and a great writing style. She immediately said yes when I approached her about reviewing this book and her phrase about resonating with Anna's "hands in the earth growing food" is just beautiful prose. Heather set about making a pot of Garlicky Chicken Soup and reports that this foodie medicine may have warded off a few colds that were brewing around her home.

The rest of our book reviewing band fell in love with Anna's Cabbage Soup, though all three pots of soup came out quite differently:

Simona of Briciole, is an Italian-born California resident, and used Savoy Cabbage and home grown Red Russian Kale (how appropriate) topped with a dollop of homemade kefir in her rendition of this hearty vegetable soup. Simona writes that she may be inspired to start recording some of her father's many stories and I can enthusiastically second this idea! Perhaps we will have another interesting memoir to read soon?.....

My Cook the Books co-founder and co-host, the effervescent Deb of Kahakai Kitchen in Honolulu, also tried out a cabbage soup recipe a la Anna, though her version was a little less sugary, a little more lemony and enhanced with a scoop of brown rice. Deb may also be providing us with some future recipes and/or memories of her Scandinavian immigrant forbears at her blog. I sure hope so!

Finally, there's my version of Anna's Cabbbage Soup from the recent archives of The Crispy Cook. Like Deb, I cut down on the sugar, lessened the cooking time (I like my "kapusti", or cabbage, more al dente) and made up a pot of love at my own little dacha.

Thanks to all my wonderful friends who helped celebrate the publication of my mother's new book. I offer you my heartfelt thanks and am glad that you enjoyed Anna's stories and recipes. My mom has been excitedly reading all your posts and even stirred herself to learn how to leave comments on your awesome blogs, no mean feat!

Giveaway Announcement: 

To keep the book party going, I will be offering a copy of Anna: Heart of a Peasant to one of you now. Just leave a comment below (for an extra entry LIKE The Crispy Cook on Facebook ) and leave a comment below telling me about your action, and I'll  randomly pick a winner and send out a copy of my mom's book to you, anywhere in the world. I will pick a random winner from the comments below after a deadline of Feb. 29, 2012.

And for all you readers who can't get enough cabbage soup, please feel free to join us at Cook the Books as we read and cook from Roald Dahl's classic Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Deb of Kahakai Kitchen is the host for this round, in which we find our central character, Charlie Bucket, staving off hunger with his family in a cold house with meals of cabbage soup, boiled potatoes and bread with margarine (on a good payday!) before Charlie wins the lucky Golden Ticket in a bar of chocolate that allows him to tour this fabulous Willy Wonka candy factory.  Cook the Books submissions are due March 25, 2012 and you can find out all about how to join in the fun with our book club regulars over at the Cook the Books website.

Creamy Black Bean Soup with Roasted Fennel

Certain members of the Crispy household  have been having some tender tummies and medically-authorized restricted diets as of late. This has presented a bit of a challenge to the Crispy Cook, who, in addition to having the gluten-free diet to consider, has had to produce low-acid, low-fat , tomato, onion and garlic-free meals. I have even had to bone up on the liquid diet in preparation for one of us to have some medical tests.

Now, we love us our spice, alliums, acids and fats in our family, so this is new territory for me. I've been consulting my cookbook library in an effort to keep everybody happy and healthy during this new food adventure. While some of  us would be perfectly content sucking down Italian ices and popsicles 24/7, this is hardly a nutritious diet, so I've been constantly referring to the list of approved vegetables, fruits and seasonings, to try to come up with restorative and satisfying edibles.

There is good news that more and more, you can find grocery coupons for healthier foods. Enter this tasty cup of black bean soup. Not the most photogenic of potages, but this batch was so yummy, I will be making it again when we are back to eating our regular menu. It is soothing, full of vitamins and is pleasantly sweet. Though most other black bean soup recipes feature lots of spice, this variety is flavorful in a botanical, herbaceous kind of way.

The home run ingredient was roasted fennel. I chopped up a large bulb of fennel, feathery fronds, chunky stems and all, doused it with 1 Tbsp. of olive oil and a pinch of salt in a covered ceramic baking dish, and then baked it at 375 degrees F for 20 minutes. Then I uncovered the baking dish and roasted it another 10 minutes to let it brown up. We ate some of that as a side dish for our supper and then the next day was dedicated to a liquid diet, so I decided to add the leftovers in with some sauteed carrots and celery to a simple vegetarian black bean soup and the fennel joined with the fresh taste of its celery cousin and the whole thing was really sublime.

Black Bean Soup with Roasted Fennel

2 cups dried black beans, soaked in water to cover for several hours
(you could also use 2 (14 oz.) cans of cooked black beans, undrained)

1 large bulb fennel, roasted (see above)

1 Tbsp. olive oil
2 carrots, peeled and finely chopped
3 stalks celery, finely chopped

5 cups vegetable stock

Salt to taste

Drain beans and cover with fresh water. Bring to a boil and lower heat to simmer. Cook until softened, about 45 minutes.

Meanwhile, in another large pot heat olive oil. Add carrots and celery and cook, stirring occasionally, until softened, about 7 minutes. Add roasted fennel and vegetable stock and bring to boil. Cover and simmer while beans finish cooking.

Add cooked black beans to the soup pot. Stir together to blend and add salt to taste. I then stuck in my immersion blender to puree the soup. You could eat it like that or go further and strain out any vegetable bits if you are on a liquid diet, like we were this past week.

Serve hot. Makes 8 servings.

I am going to send a cup of this luscious black bean soup over to my blogger buddy Deb of Kahakai Kitchen, for her weekly Souper Sunday roundup and another cup over to Sweet Artichoke who is this month's host for My Legume Love Affair, a blog event created by Susan the Well-Seasoned Cook. Disclaimer: I received compensation for adding the link to the third paragraph of this post.

Pop on Over

Trying to make popovers proved to be a difficult challenge for me for this month's Gluten Free Ratio Rally baking project. Despite the fact that these allegedly tall, crusty and pockety muffiny things are made from only a few simple ingredients, (milk, eggs, flour, butter, a little salt and some xanthan gum), my popovers were flop-overs.

The two batches of popovers I made were edible, but they certainly didn't resemble the gloriously puffy popovers I aspired to on the cover of Nicole Hunn's great GF cookbook, Gluten Free on a Shoestring. Now that is a popover!

What I got from my experiments were sunken in the middle, height-challenged flopovers, though I switched around flours and baking cups. I don't own popover tins, but having read in several different cookbooks that popovers can theoretically rise to majestic heights in regular muffin tins, ramekins or even coffee mugs, I tried all three ways. Sadly, something was amiss with my flop-overs.

My first batch was based on Hunn's basic popover recipe, though the first time around I used equal parts potato starch and white rice flour instead of the 1 cup of all-purpose gluten-free flour called for by Hunn because I thought that might make for a really light popover that would rise and rise and rise.

This is what I got from that first batch:

 They were nice and brown and CRISPY on the outside and somewhat moist and pudding-like on the bottom, but they were definitely concave in the middle. We ate them hot with blackberry jam and enjoyed them, but they needed improvement.

Flop-over batch #2 were baked with a half and half mixture of Bob's Red Mill all-purpose gluten-free flour and corn flour (with 1/2 tsp. celery seed for added flavor) for a savory and corny tasting popover. Again, edible, but decidedly concave rather than convex in the middle. Hmmm.

So, what should I do differently? Place them in a cold oven rather than a preheated oven as some cookbooks suggest? Bake for a longer time or at a higher temperature? Go ahead and splurge on real popover tins? I am open to suggestions.

I am going to keep at it, because I love the idea of an airy, crisp popover, and I am really looking forward to seeing what my fellow Ratio Rally-ers have come up with. Mrs. R. of Honey from Flinty Rocks will have links to a variety of sweet, savory and spicy popovers back at her blog so be sure to join me in hopping over there to see what successful gluten-free popover baking is all about.

In Which I Become an Outlaw Cook with John Thorne

Running a used bookstore for the last fifteen years has educated me about which books are treasured, or perhaps guarded is a better word, by their owners and hardly ever relinquished back into the market. I rarely get any books in the shop about blacksmithing, stained glass or rare coins; such classics as To Kill a Mockingbird, Catch-22, The Cat in the Hat and Gone with the Wind don't show up to be traded; and works by a select group of authors and illustrators like Shirley Jackson, W.H. Auden, Edward Gorey, Kurt Vonnegut, Tasha Tudor and Philip K. Dick are seldom brought to our doors.

Add food writer John Thorne's books to this elite list. I was first made aware of his work many years ago by my bibliophilic friend Myra, who asked me to keep an eye out for Thorne's books. After at least a decade, I had yet to find any such titles in my shop or out book hunting, until one day when I was on a holiday in Great Barrington, Massachusetts at Yellow House Books, and spied a copy of  Outlaw Cook (NY: Farrar, Straus, Giroux: 1992), a collection of food essays written with his wife Matt Lewis Thorne. I snapped it up and devoured it with great pleasure over the next several weeks and am waiting to savor another of his books, Mouth Wide Open, which is at the top of my bedside room reading pile.

Now I know why Thorne's books never show up in the shop. They are to be savored and reread, bookmarked and propped open on the kitchen counter, and reread again. I chose Outlaw Cook for the current round of Cook the Books, the online foodie book club started by me, and two lovely blogger friends: Deb of Kahakai Kitchen in Hawaii and Johanna of Food Junkie, Not Junk Food in Greece.  For this bimonthly blog event, participants are asked to read our chosen book, blog about it and cook something up that is inspired by our reading. Anyone can join the "regulars" in this book club by posting and then leaving a comment at the Cook the Books site. The deadline for this round is January 23, 2012, and I am delighted that our featured author, John Thorne, will be reviewing the submitted posts and picking a winner to receive the coveted CTB winner's badge.

Thorne's prose is an interesting mixture of the erudite and the commonplace. One will learn much about a lot of different subjects, and need to look up many things along the way, but the writing is simple and direct and full of great quotes and turns of phrase. There are many intriguing essays in the book which explore different dishes and cultural traditions, some autobiographical asides, reviews of cookbooks and examinations of food personalities. Outlaw Cook devotes many pages to bread baking and outdoor hearths and there's a gloriously evocative chapter on Russians' love affair with mushrooms.

I really like Thorne's approach to trying out a new recipe or ingredient. Once something strikes his fancy, he's on an adventure to study it and make it his own. He reads about it extensively, cooks up many variations and then presents the reader with his findings. Whether it's hunting for the perfect meatball, simple pasta dishes, black beans and rice, pea soup or the best thing to do with a bounty of summer raspberries, there's lots of research and development in the Thorne kitchen and library and plenty of references offered up for further exploration.

As an avid member of the Order of the Stinking Rose, I was particularly entranced by the essay on garlic soup. I've made creamy, decadently rich garlic soups and delicate garlic and rice soups, and thought that covered much of the culinary territory on that subject. Not so fast, says Thorne, with his musings on various Mediterranean permutations of garlicky broths. There's the paprika and saffron-laced Sopa de Ajo of Spain, France's Soupe a l'Ail Bonne Femme studded with potato and tomato, herb-redolent Aigo Bouido from Provence and even a cold Garlic and Walnut Soup with Fresh Goat Cheese.  Most of these soups require a crusty piece of toasted bread sunk at the bottom of the soup bowl, and since my gluten-free breadbaking production neither produces quantity nor quality (witness the hockey puck "fluffy bun"example in the photo below), I turned to my trusty recipe card file for a breadless garlic soup recipe instead.

 
My garlic soup recipe is of origin unknown, most likely copied out of a cookbook borrowed from the public library during my foodie youth, but I tinkered with it enough to confidently call it my own adaptation. It's a very herb-redolent broth, perfect for bolstering the winter-ravaged immune system  and imparting a warm glow after a day battling the wind and cold. Just be sure to share it with those around you, since "...garlic is the ravisher, dominating those who would eat it, and then crowing that subjugation to the world through the body's every pore." (p. 120)


Herb and Garlic Soup

1 head garlic, separated into cloves
2 quarts water
2 tsp. salt

2 whole cloves
1/4 tsp. dried sage, crumbled
1/2 tsp. dried thyme, crumbled
1 bay leaf
2 Tbsp. parsley, chopped coarsely

2 egg yolks
3 Tbsp. olive oil

Grated Parmesan

Bring water and salt to a boil and drop in garlic cloves. Boil 1 minute, then fish out garlic and peel. Cut off root tip and cut into chunks. Throw it back into the simmering pot with the herbs and spices.

Bring to a boil again and then lower heat and simmer 30 minutes. Strain soup to remove herbs and then pour broth back into pot. Finely mash the cooked garlic and put back into the soup pot. Bring to a low simmer.

Beat egg yolks with olive oil and add to the soup pot. Gently simmer for 2-3 minutes to let simmer and thicken. Add salt and pepper to taste and serve hot with a sprinkling of cheese on top.

Makes 4-6 servings.

I'll have a roundup of all the Cook the Books posts about Outlaw Cook after the January 23 deadline, so be sure to stop back to see all the submissions. Next up for our book club is Roald Dahl's childhood classic, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, which will be hosted by Deb during February/March. Happy reading and eating!