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!

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.

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.

Time to Cook the Books a la Grecque

The latest book pick for Cook the Books, the Internet foodie book club that my friends Johanna of Food Junkie, Not Junk Food and Deb of Kahakai Kitchen started three years ago, is Patricia Volonakis Davis'  Harlot's Sauce: A Memoir of Food, Family, Love, Loss, and Greece (NY: Harper Davis Publishers 2008).  With Cook the Books, we have read many kinds of foodie non-fiction, novels, children's literature and biographies, and traveled the world reading about different culinary traditions, but we have never examined the wonderful food culture of Greece, so I was excited when Johanna picked this book for our current CTB selection.

Davis tells the story of her courtship and marriage to a Greek immigrant and the cultural clashes between her first generation Italian-American family and his. Eventually, she and Gregori and their son Nick move to Greece and her descriptions of her new life there were the most interesting part of the book for me. I enjoyed the translations of various Greek words and expressions ("She can make a donkey die!" means someone is stubborn beyond words) and loved her prose about about Greek Orthodox rituals, the complex dance of the biscotti and coffee at Greek funerals, and comparisons of American and Greek attitudes towards children, stray dogs, and education.

Though the word "Food" is given preeminence in the title of this book, there is not so much discussion of Greek cuisine as there are descriptions of how Davis' marriage weakens and ultimately unravels. And this is not what I thought the book would be about, so unfortunately, I would find my thoughts drifting away through yet another recitation of a marital argument or fight with a passive-aggressive in-law. I flipped ahead through many pages seeking out the nuggets about Greek culture seen through an American's eyes or about the love-hate relationship that first generation immigrant families have with US pop culture and societal freedoms.

My favorite character in the book is Patricia's mother, a chain-smoking philosopher, whom she unfortunately becomes estranged from after too many Gregori incidents.  I absolutely loved Mama Nancy's theory of comparative religion. When young Patricia came home from Catholic school one day and asked how one knows that their religion is "the right one", Mom replies:

 "All religions are the "right" religion, if they're right for the person following them. They all teach basically the same things: to love one another, be the best people we can be, to never deliberately harm someone else."

When her daughter asks why there are different religions, Mom's educational metaphor comes back: "The best way I can describe it is that it's like decorating a house. Some have furniture that might seem strange to you, but the people who live there are happy with it." (p. 81)


After my reading, I was inspired to filch a Greek cookbook from our bookstore shelves, Perfect Greek (London: Parragon, 2006) and perused many a delicious recipe for various mezze, sweets and salads, but ultimately I settled on a recipe for a tomatoey Greek Fisherman's Soup which I adapted to be much more stew-like and which made for a wonderfully fragrant meal served over rice. I'm glad I made a big pot of rice, because this concoction had terrific juices and we sopped up every bit at dinner.

Here's a Fish Stew fit for a Harlot or Fisherman or whomever shows up at your table:


Greek Fisherman's Stew (adapted from Perfect Greek)

2 frozen fillets of tilapia, thawed and cut into chunks (they will flake off in the cooking)
1 lb. frozen shrimp, thawed and shelled

1 onion, peeled and thinly sliced
4 stalks celery, thinly sliced
3 cloves garlic, peeled and sliced

3 Tbsp. olive oil
1/2 cup dry white wine
1 (14 oz.) can diced tomatoes and their juice
Peel of one orange
1 tsp. chopped fresh thyme
3 Tbsp. chopped Italian parsley
2 bay leaves
Salt and pepper to taste
Hot cooked rice

Heat olive oil in large soup pot. Add onion, celery and garlic and cook, stirring often, until softened, about five minutes. Add fish and shrimp and cook, stirring often, another 5-7 minutes, until shrimp are pink

Add white wine and tomatoes and bring to a boil. Add orange peel (I used a tangerine and squeezed in the juice too), thyme, parsley and bay leaves. Cook another 15 minutes at a simmer until seafood is thoroughly cooked and the fish has flaked up and into your wonderful stew juices.  Season with salt and pepper and serve over hot cooked rice. The citrus in the sauce really picks up the sweetness of the fish and shrimp.

Makes 4 dinner servings.

Johanna, our resident Athenian Cook the Book hostess, will be posting a roundup of all the blog entries about Harlot's Sauce after tomorrow's deadline, so hop on over to Cook the Books later this week to see all the posts. Our featured author, Patricia Volonakis Davis, will also be serving as our guest judge to select a winner from the blog entries so that should be entertaining reading as well.

**Next up on the Cook the Books reading list is John and Matt Lewis Thorne's collection of food essays "Outlaw Cook".  It's a fantastic book and I invite you all to join us in reading the book and then blogging up your thoughts and any Outlaw-inspired recipes.

Untangling my Chopsticks with Japanese Comfort Food in the New Year

Denizens of some lakeside and seaside communities like to dip into icy waters for a Polar Bear Plunge on New Year's Day, believing that it brings one good luck and fortune in the months ahead. For me, the alternative of a gentler dive into a great book about Japanese culture and cuisine has proven to be just the ticket for starting the New Year in our house.

After the delightful indulgences of the holiday season, I have been ready for some lighter, more delicate fare to balance things out and rereading Victoria Abbott Riccardi's "Untangling My Chopsticks: A Culinary Sojourn in Kyoto", (NY: Broadway Books, 2003) has been the perfect cup of (green) tea to start 2011 for the Crispy Cook.


This book is the current book selection for Cook the Books, the bimonthly foodie book club and I have the privilege of hosting the book discussion and roundup for this round, which ends January 28, 2011. We love to have new members join us in reading our selected book and then blogging and cooking up something inspired by our anointed book, so be sure to check the Cook the Books website for more details and to see the cool roundup of posts after our deadline.

I initially read this evocative book a couple of years ago for a Books About Food Reading Challenge, and here's my summary from that first reading:

"Untangling my Chopsticks" recounts the author's year spent in Kyoto, Japan, learning about the art of kaiseki. Kaiseki is the traditional and highly ritualized series of foods to accompany green tea ceremonies and involves a series of small dishes of exquisitely prepared and garnished foods.

Riccardi lands in Kyoto without much knowledge of Japanese culture or language, but is fortunate to have some friends of friends to stay with until she finds other lodging, enrolls in language classes and snags a coveted spot in a prestigious tea kaiseki school where there is an American ex-pat to help her navigate the new culinary and language challenges she faces.

The kaiseki banquets she studies sound exquisite; they evolved from Buddhist monastery traditions into highly formal social dining banquets in which tastings of thick and thin whipped green tea are interspersed with samples of the freshest, seasonal dishes, exquisitely garnished. She also provides interesting glimpses of Japanese home cooking and ordinary restaurant fare, and includes many recipes easily adapted to Western kitchens.

Though this book is but a glimpse into a highly complex Japanese culinary tradition, it was a mouthwatering introduction and I will be referring back to it when attempting my own forays into Japanese cooking."

I enjoyed my reread of Riccardi's book just as much, and found that I was bookmarking different pages the second time round. There is so much that is elegant and seasonal about this refined style of cuisine that I know I will be seeking out many times over.

I am a novice Japanese cook, so I thought I would start with the basics of preparing dashi, the kelp and bonito broth that is a mainstay in many Japanese dishes and then prepare a simple donburi, "Japan's quintessential comfort food", according to Riccardi. Donburi is a bowl of hot cooked rice topped with eggs and other proteins along with vegetables in a salty, sweet broth.


I made dashi according to Riccardi's recipe (page 48) which was very easy, once I had the correct ingredients: konbu, or dried giant kelp, brought just to the boiling point in a pot of water and then removed, and dried bonito flakes. I then used some of my dashi in a Shrimp and Egg Donburi and some as the stock for a slurpy bowl of rice noodles later that same week.

The donburi was a great dish for a wintry, overcast January day, with candles lit on the table and the woodstove crackling away. Our featured book notes that donburi restaurants pepper Japan and describes this dish thus:

"Scrumptious, healthy, and prepared in a flash, it redefined the meaning of fast food" (p. 21)

Certainly seems a better fast food alternative than a "special sauce" burger and fries on so many levels.


Shrimp and Egg Donburi (adapted from Riccardi's Chicken and Egg Rice Bowl recipe in "Untangling my Chopsticks")

4 cups hot cooked rice

1 cup dashi (I made homemade dashi which is super easy, but there are also canned and powdered dashi products available in Asian markets)

1/4 cup soy sauce (check to make sure this is wheat-free)
1-1/2 Tbsp. sugar
1 Tbsp. mirin (sweet rice wine)

4 eggs

1/2 lb. large shrimp, shelled and deveined (I used frozen shrimp)

3 Tbsp. snipped chives or scallions


Mix dashi, soy sauce, sugar and mirin in medium soup pot. Bring to a boil, then lower heat and simmer two minutes.

Break eggs into mixing bowl. Untangle your chopsticks and use them to beat eggs until blended. Chopsticks work surprisingly well at this.

Add shrimp to simmering broth. Pour eggs over the shrimp and then sprinkle on the chives. Let simmer without stirring , until shrimp turn pink. Gently stir up shrimp and eggs and cook another 1-2 minutes, until shrimp are completely cooked.

Divide hot cooked rice into four medium bowls. Pour shrimp-egg mixture and broth over rice in each bowl.

Slurp away!

This dish really calls for those big porcelain Chinese ladle spoons which I didn't have, so you can slurp up a good portion of rice, broth and egg/shrimp chunks.

Serves Four.

I will be trying this again soon with tofu cubes and sliced raw fish. Truly great fast food!

As hostess of this round of Cook the Books I have already received some great submissions based on "Untangling my Chopsticks" and look forward to seeing what the rest of the batch looks like. Be sure to stop back at the Cook the Books website for the roundup after January 28.

A Turkey Post Without a Bird

Anik See's evocative collection of travel essays, "A Taste for Adventure: A Culinary Odyssey Around the World" is the present selection for the Cook the Books Club, the bimonthly online book club where participating foodies read, review and cook from the featured book. I am the current hostess for this round centered on See's wonderful book, and was delighted to recommend the book to others.

"A Taste for Adventure" is lyrically written about the author's slow bicycle journeys through a number of exotic destinations in Asia, South America and the Middle East. Often See was alone, but on several of her sojourns she was accompanied by her boyfriend Doug, and in most every destination, she and he were welcomed to feasts, personalized tours, loaded down with local delicacies and pulled into kitchens and bedrooms for respite.



I enjoyed reading and then rereading the many bookmarked passages in See's book as her writing so vividly gave me a chance to tour remote corners of Patagonia, Georgia, Armenia, Malaysia, Iran and Argentina and several other delicious-sounding, breathtaking countries. She has a gift for making this Western-centric reader appreciate the shift when arriving in a foreign land and making sense of things. Here's her arresting, philosophical take on Thailand:

"Southeast Asia has a way of redefining things. The common misconception is that it makes you appreciate the "privilege" of being born into a western country and its potential for affluence. In fact, what Southeast Asia does is reveal the excesses of the West, of how we westerners have lost sight of the importance of simpler things in the quest for money and "meaningful" careers (as opposed to a meaningful existence), the need for a house or two or three, a car or two or three, and material possessions. Southeast Asia has a way of forcing you to define what is absolutely necessary for your survival and uncover the happiness that lies within a possessionless existence" (pp. 50-51 in my softcover copy).

The challenge for my Cook the Books post ended up trying to narrow down the particular geographic locale that I would research further. I was partial to See's description of Georgia, and the "fierce pride", contradictions of romanticism and economic desperation, high spirits, romance and chivalry and chauvinism all entwined. See was wisely accompanied by Doug on this route, which begins as they wheel their bikes out of the customs checkpoint and are embraced, kissed and laden with apples, jam and vodka by a complete stranger. At every Georgian pitstop the pair are forcefully bestowed with eggplants, exuberant greetings, more vodka, joyful, hours-long impromptu feasts, tearful departures, homemade wine, watermelons, and many, many more glasses of homemade wine.

Ultimately, I decided to dip an exploratory cooking spoon into the cuisine of Turkey, described so tantalizingly in See's book as "multidimensional, coy and luring, steamy, seductive, like nothing I have ever tasted and certainly like nothing I had ever expected" (p 96). I found some excellent introductions to Turkish cuisine at this website and then visited quite a while over at Binnur's Turkish Cookbook, where I decided to try my hand at Guvecte Mantarli Pilav, a toothsome mushroom and rice pilaf topped with a snowy cap of cooked grated potato and egg yolks. The two starches might seem a bit much combined together, but this made a great main dish supper for our family, who tucked into it before I was able to snap the requisite food porn photo. Darn!



This was a great recipe, thank you Binnur! I made it with sliced baby portabella mushrooms and it was hearty and homey on a cold January evening. Even my dill-phobic daughters scarfed it up with gusto and I would recommend it to anyone interested in an introductory recipe to help explore Turkish cooking. It was an accessible-sounding casserole, sort of a riff on vegetarian shepherd's pie, but the spice and flavor combinations were just different enough to make it an exotic dish for our table.

Be sure to check back in at Cook the Books after our January 22 deadline to see the roundup of blog posts, book reviews and book-inspired recipes for our "Taste of Adventure". Until then...

Pastry-Wrapped Brie, Gluten-Free? Mais, Oui!

Francophilia reigns in our house. I took French lessons from junior high through my college years and revel in the sensuous sound of the French language whenever we visit Montreal or hear French Canadian visitors here in upstate New York. Dan and I honeymooned in Quebec City and my two daughters have picked French as their second language. Someday, I hope to cross the pond for an extended visit, but until then, armchair travels with books will have to suffice.

Peter Mayle's "French Lessons: Adventures with Knife, Fork, and Corkscrew" is the current book pick for Cook the Books, the virtual book club for foodies, and like Mayle's other books about his adopted home, the writing captures his bemused impressions of the French landscape, the food, and the people. The Provence books capture life as an expat Englishman trying to adapt to a life where one's central priorities and the pace of life itself are quite different. And historic home renovations are not accomplished in a day, a month, a year, perhaps several years.



"French Lessons" is entirely about the French preoccupation with one's meals and the various food festivals that Mayle explores throughout France. We travel to many regions to celebrate frog legs, truffles, snails, spa cuisine, the sublime chickens of Bresse, Livarot cheese and other delights, and in my favorite chapter, "A Connoisseur's Marathon", are treated to the spectacle of the Marathon du Medoc, a long-distance road race in which 8,000 participants run 26 miles through the vineyards of Bordeaux. Only one quarter of the runners aspire to seriousness in the race (though the winner receives his/her weight in wine); the others are there to have fun, clad in crazy, cross-dressing costumes, and helping themselves to superior wines and gourmet snacks at civilized refreshment stations along the race course.

It is these kinds of vivid scenes, and Mayle's genial, self-deprecating sense of humor that made the book such an enjoyable read. Mayle describes his joy in reading a used book treasure that his wife bought him, "L'Escargot Comestible", in researching his upcoming snail festival sojourn:

"The text was scholarly in tone, and there were no unnecessary typographical flourishes. In other words, it was a serious piece of work, designed to inform students and breeders of the mollusk, rather than entertain snail diletantes like me. But serious work though it was, a Frenchman had written it. And so, inevitably, there was a recipe section".

I read "French Lessons" last month and it inspired me to attend two local food festivals in our area, Bennington's Garlic Festival and the Washington County Cheese Tour. After all that luscious cheese sampling, I wanted to try my hand at baking some pastry-wrapped Brie for a savory appetizer course for the mister and me one romantic day when both girls were out with their friends. Doing so when gluten is not your enemy is easy enough. Wrap one piece of store-bought Brie in some thawed store-bought puff pastry, heat it all up in the oven and then attack the gooey result with gusto. Alas, the gluten-free diner must approach this simple culinary project with the perusing of many wheatless pastry recipes and then attempt to cover their cheese without the whole crumbling, flopping over and sticking to rolling pins and countertops.

Surprisingly, I couldn't find a recipe online or in my arsenal of cookbooks for a gluten-free pastry-wrapped Brie. Clearly, there are unchartered waters here.

It was easy enough to find a luscious wedge of herb-infused Brie at the supermarket, but the pastry, which would have to be flaky when cooked and not outlandishly hard to maneuver around my cheese when raw, was a stumper. Eventually, I came upon this recipe on a cooking message board which seemed like a good launching point, though the pastry recipe was intended to house an appalling amalgam of kidney beans, maple syrup and raisins. I had a bag of white bean flour in my pantry and have made some garbanzo bean pie pastry in the past with success, so I set to it, with some tweaking here and there. Most notably, the pastry recipe called for 3/4 cup of cold water, which would have made an unworkable slurry rather than a good, workable crust, so that must be a misprint.

The experiment ended up a success (though the pumpkin pie I made with the remainder of my crust tasted a little too beany) and I would even have been proud to share a bite with Mayle himself. Here's how to make:

Baked Brie in a Savory Gluten-Free Pastry Crust

1 (1/2 lb.) wedge of Brie (I used President's double creme Herb Brie)

1-1/2 cups white bean flour
1/4 cup cornstarch
1 Tbsp. cornmeal
1 tsp. baking powder
3/4 tsp. salt

6 Tbsp. shortening (I used Butter-Flavored Crisco)

1 egg, separated
1/4 cup cold water


Let Brie sit, unwrapped, at room temperature, while you make your pastry.

Mix together white bean flour, cornstarch, cornmeal, baking powder and salt in mixing bowl. Cut in shortening with pastry blender until it resembles coarse crumbs. Mix together egg white and water. Add enough water to pastry mix to make it a smooth, workable dough. You may not need to add all this liquid.

Preheat oven to 375 degrees F.

Maneuver pastry into a ball and then squash it down between two sheets of plastic wrap. Parchment paper will not do, as the dough will stick to it and cause inappropriate amounts of cursing in the kitchen.

Roll dough out to about 1/4 inch thickness in a roughly rectangular shape. Peel off top layer of plastic wrap and then play your wedge of Brie, top side down, over your pastry. Wrap your cheese in the pastry, pressing down the seams to make your pastry case as hole-free as possible.

(I found that this pastry was very workable, kind of like working with fondant or that old childhood standby, Play Doh. The heat from your hands makes the pastry seams come together very easily and the one advantage that this pastry has over regular wheat flour pastry, is that you can work it over and over without the dough becoming tough. Without the tough strands of gluten, you can keep handling your doughy mistakes over a long period of time. The dough smells very strongly of raw beans when raw, but it will change to a much pleasanter aroma when baked.)

Grease a glass pie pan with some extra shortening and then flop your pastry-wrapped cheese right-side up in your pan. Again, the dough is eminently pliable, so you can adorn it with fancy pastry scraps. I gave my Brie a pastry boutonniere for a little extra Gallic elegance.

Whisk up your remaining egg yolk and brush over the top of your pastry. You are now ready to bake your Brie!



Bake your production at 375 degrees F. for 15-20 minutes, or until pastry is golden brown and melting Brie has popped the seams of its pastry shell.

Makes 4-6 appetizer servings.

We ate this for Second Breakfast on a rainy mid-morning, but I imagine that this luscious cheese experiment would be wonderful as a romantic meal paired with grapes, pears and a bottle of lusty red wine.

Note: This makes enough pastry to wrap 3 wedges of Brie. I used the remainder of my pastry to make a 9 inch pastry shell for a pumpkin pie (the crust edges burned so next time I would cover the rim with foil), but I would imagine one could freeze the remainder into pastry logs to freeze and roll out another day.



Please join in the fun when our current Cook the Books hostess, Jo of Food Junkie, Not Junk Food, rounds up the blog posts about "French Lessons" and the foods we cook up inspired by our reading. The deadline to do so is November 8th, and then it will be my turn to host this fun, bimonthly biblio-foodie fiesta. Anyone can participate in Cook the Books as long as they read the selected book and blog about it and some edible inspiration.

Cook the Books Club Feast for The Last Chinese Chef

Our current book selection for the Cook the Books foodie book club is Nicole Mones' novel "The Last Chinese Chef". I devoured this lyrically-written story in two sittings, and went back several times to savor the various passages I had festooned with bookmarks. It was a love story of many dimensions: between a man and a woman, between father and son, uncles and nephew, between old passions and new ones.

Mones introduced me to many things about Chinese culture. She weaves many concepts about cooking and history into her story of Maggie, a food journalist and recent widow, who comes to China to interview Sam, an American-born chef and son of classically-trained Chinese chef who escaped during the height of the Cultural Revolution. I learned that the imperial style of cooking, where chefs had to spend many years learning all manner of complicated dishes and regional specialties, was banned after the Communists took power. This was considered to be an elitist practice, though Sam points out that anyone (any male, at least) with talent could rise to become a famous and respected chef, a "weird democratic aspect of feudal China".

The novel's narrative is seasoned with snippets of a book on imperial Chinese cuisine, "The Last Chinese Chef", purportedly written by Sam's paternal grandfather, who was sold as a boy by his impoverished Beijing family to become a kitchen boy in the palace kitchen of Empress Dowager Ci Xi. These pieces give vivid glimpses of the vast Forbidden City kitchens and teams of chefs churning out tidbits for the royal court as well as nuggets of wisdom about the medicinal properties of different foods: "For someone grieving, cook with chives, ginger, coriander, and rosemary. Theirs is the pungent flavor, which draws grief up and out of the body and releases it into the air".

Deb of Kahakai Kitchen, the current Cook the Books host, enlisted the author herself, Nicole Mones to serve as the guest judge of this round of blog posts and our esteemed author also graciously provided a list of Chinese recipes and photos on her website to further educate and tempt us. The bean jellies look absolutely wonderful and I wanted to find the time to scout out the mung bean starch but unfortunately, August has proven to be a busier month than most and I couldn't carve out a food expedition to the south.



In my ruminations about what to prepare for my culinary homage to Mones' fantastic book, I kept thinking about Sam and his three loving taskmaster "uncles", Jiang, Tan and Xie. I envisioned Sam patiently teaching me how to prepare various Chinese dishes, and then having the uncle chefs and food scholars scrutinize them. I imagined they would throw many of them back at me or swish their ghost hands through the air to cuff me on the back of the head, so I was not anxious to try out anything too complicated or which involved ingredients which I didn't already have on hand or was comfortable preparing.

And then I thought of the late Barbara Tropp. Last year, I got a copy of her "China Moon Cookbook", which features "homestyle" recipes from her 1980s San Francisco restaurant. Tropp was a New Jersey native and Rhodes Scholar, who went to Taiwan to study Chinese literature. While living with various host families, she was swept into a world of shopping for the freshest ingredients at local markets, cooking them up in her hosts' kitchens and then eating them slowly, all together at the table. When she returned to the United States, her literary studies became a secondary passion to the culinary arts. As she states in the China Moon Cookbook preface "What other activity in the sphere of human pleasure makes our dwellings aromatic and brings friends and family to our table? If we value these aspects of our lives, then we cook. If we savor the food we prepare and the environment in which it is presented, then we dine."



Like the fictional Sam, Tropp was American born and also of Jewish heritage, so that sealed the deal. Chef Tropp would also be at my side with Sam while I prepared my feast for my family and the imagined trio of Uncle critics.

I didn't want to copy out recipes from Tropp's wonderful "The China Moon Cookbook" without permission, so I limited myself to cooking up recipes that have already been circulated on the Internet. Hopefully, they will give you a feel for her delightful cooking style and set you off in search of your own copy to explore further. It is a fun cookbook to read, with many sidebars and Tropp's entertaining introductions to each dish. If you enjoy the invigorating format of the Silver Palate cookbooks, you will enjoy reading this cookbook all the way through, almost like a piece of fiction.

Further preparations involved renting Ang Lee's fantastic foodie film, "Eat Drink Man Woman" about a retired Taiwanese master chef who cooks up magnificent Sunday feasts for his three adult daughters, and taking a virtual tour of Hangzhou, which is where Sam and Maggie travel to in "The Last Chinese Chef" when they visit ailing Third Uncle Xie. After seeing the beautiful lake, the sweeping foliage, and rather a lot of photos of what the students at this website ate, I was determined to make the accompanying recipe for Fried Shrimp in Longjing Tea, which I prefer by its more poetic name of Dragon Well Shrimp.

Alas, the cornstarch coating on my crustaceans blackened from my inexpert wokking techniques and they looked more like "Dragged Up from the Bottom of the Well Shrimp". Despite the disgusted clacking from Sam's Three Uncles, I did not throw them to the kitchen hound and start afresh, but rather, soldiered on with my Shrimp dish, which, while it tasted delicate enough, was bathed in an unappetizing grey sludge sauce.

Previously, I had also conjured up a batch of China Moon Chili-Orange Oil. This recipe is one of many that Tropp has for homemade condiments and seasonings that are used in many of her recipes. The combination of citrus and heat is very heady, even if you do not have "shockingly pungent" red chili flakes in your pantry (mine are "of a certain age" and made my imaginary Tropp exclaim that they were instead "shockingly dusty". The Uncles agreed). I have to also make her Roasted Szechwan Pepper-Salt someday, but that will involve a trip down to one of Albany's Asian markets once my busy summer season is over.



The soaping and scrubbing of the oranges beforehand makes it much easier to peel thinner segments of zest from the fruit. I decided to make a half portion of this flavored oil since it was my first go at it, but it was so delicious that now I wish I had gone ahead for the full Monty. The little bits of minced orange zest and garlic dance in the sizzling oil and get a mellow taste that is wonderful drizzled over string beans and noodles. Inspired by Tropp's recipes for Paris Noodles and Chili-Orange Cold Noodles (two more reasons to buy a copy of this cookbook)I made up a batch of cold rice noodles dressed with this luscious oil and mixed with slivered garden vegetables of various rainbow hues. The result was sublime on a steamy summer night: cold slippery noodles and crunchy veggies in an aromatic dressing.



Here's my recipe for a beautiful Asian-style summer noodle salad:

Rainbow Vegetable-Noodle Salad with Chili-Orange Oil

1 (10 oz.) pkg. rice vermicelli

2-1/2 tsp. Chili Orange Oil
1 Tbsp. "goop" from bottom of Chili Orange Oil jar
2 Tbsp. soy sauce
2 Tbsp. rice vinegar
1 tsp. kosher salt
1 Tbsp. brown sugar

2 carrots, peeled and shredded on box grater
3 Tbsp. snipped chives
1 large daikon radish, peeled and cut into matchsticks
1 large Japanese cucumber (we grow Suyo Longs), cut into matchsticks
1 cup red cabbage, sliced thin
2 plum tomatoes, seeded and chopped
2 Tbsp. black sesame seeds

Cook vermicelli until al dente. Drain and rinse with cold water. Set aside.

Make a dressing out of chili orange oil, goop, soy sauce, rice vinegar, salt and brown sugar. Mix well and set aside.

Toss remaining ingredients together. Add in noodles and mix well. Dress with reserved dressing and mix well. Cover and chill at least 1-2 hours before serving.

Serves 6.

Another of Tropp's wonderful recipes can also be found here, for her Strange Flavor Eggplant. It is a wonderful mix of salty, sweet, spicy and smoky flavors mingled together that was served as an appetizer at her restaurant on garlic toasts garnished with scallion rings. For our gluten-free version, I toasted slices of a GF baguette (purchased from Saratoga Gluten-Free Goods at the Gansevoort Farmers Market) and then slathered them with this eggplant goodness, topped with some snipped chives. I can happily tell you that leftover Strange Flavor Eggplant is glorious mixed with cold pasta.

When all the components of my Mones and Tropp inspired Chinese banquet came together, we dined on:

Strange Flavor Eggplant on Toasted Baguettes

Rainbow Vegetable-Noodle Salad with Chili-Orange Oil

Steamed Rice

Sliced, Chilled Suyo Long Cucumbers

Dragon Well Shrimp (liberated from its grey sludge gravy for photo op)

Steamed Red Noodle Beans (despite their yard-long length, they remain tender if picked before they get too bulgy)



I hope that this blog post has inspired you to seek out Nicole Mones' wonderful novel "The Last Chinese Chef". I certainly enjoyed reading it and learning more about Chinese food and culture. Please join us back at Cook the Books after August 28th for a roundup of all the posts which Deb will be organizing.

And please do join us for our next biblio-culinary adventure. Jo from Food Junkie, Not Junk Food will be the host and has selected Peter Mayles' book "French Lessons: Adventures with Knife, Fork and Corkscrew". There's no other requirement to join us other than to read the book (buy a copy or borrow one from a friend or library), cook up something inspired by your reading and then blog about it. If you don't have a blog, Jo would be happy to have you as a guest blogger.

Let's Cook the Books with Some Parkin in Honor of Elizabeth Goudge

A spot of tea and a spicy bite of parkin, an oat-laden gingerbread from England's Yorkshire country made our windy and cool (some might say parky) summer afternoon extra special. I made this English tea-time treat in celebration of Elizabeth Goudge's well-loved juvenile fantasy book, "The Little White Horse". This book is the current book selection for Cook the Books, the online foodie book club that was started last year by me and my bibliophilic blogger friends Johanna of Food Junkie, Not Junk Food and Deb of Kahakai Kitchen.

For each bimonthly round of Cook the Books we have chosen a book to read and then ruminate upon for culinary and bloggity inspiration. We have previously read and blogged about Sicilian cuisine for Lily Prior's novel "La Cucina", explored Middle Eastern food for Diana Abu-Jaber's delicious memoir "The Language of Baklava", and cooked up delights for bad boy chef Anthony Bourdain's book "Kitchen Confidential".



It was my turn to host Cook the Books again and so I thought to change things up a bit. Goudge's book, "The Little White Horse", is our first foray into the world of juvenile literature and fantasy and I found it to be a delightful escape into a world of coziness and comfort. Goudge's writing reminded me of my youthful devouring of George Macdonald's Curdie series and of reading C.S. Lewis' wonderful Narnia series as an older reader. Having similarly swallowed the Harry Potter series whole in reading them to my children (and reading ahead) I can see where author J.K. Rowling drew inspiration from Goudge's book, self-described by Rowling as one of her childhood favorites, for the mouthwatering Hogwarts feast scenes and tremendously sensual descriptions of train carts full of a vast array of Wizard sweets. I had thought that these feast scenes and colorful, descriptive character names were straight out of Charles Dickens' canon, but after reading "The Little White Horse", I sensed the inspiration from this jewel of a novel and imagined the young J.K. snuggled up with it, reading and re-reading it during wintry Scottish blizzards.

The litany of English baked goods which emanated from Moonacre Manor's castle kitchen was what most intrigued me about Goudge's book. I enjoying researching fairy cakes, rock cakes, syllabub, and other tea-time treats. I decided to make a Saffron Cake, the culinary history of which is amply described in this blog post. I had some saffron in the spice cupboard which was fairly well aged from having been purchased for some special recipe of distant memory, as well as some leftover rosewater from another kitchen experiment, so I thought I would take a stab at this recipe for Golden Saffron Cake.



Alas, in my attempts to convert this recipe to a gluten-free version and in perhaps having elderly saffron threads, my Golden Saffron Cake, though rather smart looking, turned out to be medicinal tasting and in my husband's words, like something that had been stashed away in Aunt Tilda's drawer of undergarments, next to the packet of moth balls. I don't even want to think about an elder Auntie's niceties when I'm noshing away. Or at all, for that matter. The cake had a lovely crumb, but it was inedible, and its golden remainder was handed over to our trusty kitchen hound, Martha, for disposal. So back to the Crispy Kitchen I went to figure out something else for the Cook the Books post.

End of the school year madness got in the way, however. With two active teenagers around, there were music concerts to attend, softball and soccer games to squire the young 'uns to, academic awards ceremonies (not to boast (too much) but those Jag girls are brains, don't you know), sports banquets, gardens to plant, etc., etc. So my culinary artistry was stymied by various time constraints, so I do beg everyone's pardon who was waiting for the Cook the Books hostess to get with it and post already.

At last I found some unencumbered hours to spend by my oven, and decided to whip up some parkin. Parkin is a chewy gingerbread traditionally made in England's North Country with oats and plenty of ground ginger, then stashed away to ripen until it is sticky and moist. Again, I had to make my Parkin gluten-free, so I made a few adjustments to this recipe, and we enjoyed a square of parkin recently with a nice cuppa and a dollop of buttercream to fuel us up for an afternoon of yard work.



Here's my adaptation of a hearty Yorkshire Parkin recipe:

2-1/4 sticks butter, room temperature
1 cup packed dark brown sugar
1/2 cup molasses
1/2 cup corn syrup (golden syrup is most traditional)

4 cups gluten-free flour (I used a mixture of sorghum, brown rice and leftover packaged GF flour mix)
1 tsp. baking soda
1 Tbsp. ground ginger
3 cups gluten-free rolled oats, whizzed in food processor until coarsely ground
1 tsp. xanthan gum

3 eggs, beaten

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

Grease a 9 x 12 glass baking dish with shortening or butter.

In saucepan, heat together butter, brown sugar, molasses and corn syrup until butter is melted and sugar grains are smooth.

Stir together flour, baking soda, ginger, ground oats and xanthan gum. Add in melted butter-syrup mixture and stir until thoroughly mixed.

Stir in beaten eggs and blend thoroughly.

Pour into prepared baking dish.

Bake 45 minutes or until toothpick inserted in center of pan comes out clean.

Cool completely in pan before serving. Ideally, parkin can be aged at room temperature in a closed tin least three days to one week before consuming, so that it has a chance to ripen and soften.

Makes about 15 squares of parkin.

I am delighted to report that Deborah Gaudin, of the British Elizabeth Goudge Society, will be judging the submissions for this round of Cook the Books after the June 26 deadline and can't wait to see what everyone has come up with. Be sure to check back at the Cook the Books blog to see our roundup of tasty "Little White Horse" inspirations.

Cook the Books: The Little White Horse Interpreted by a Guest Blogger

The current book selection for the foodie book club, Cook the Books, is "The Little White Horse", by Elizabeth Goudge, a charming juvenile fantasy classic first published in 1946. This round of Cook the Books is being hosted by yours truly and I'll be accepting entries in which readers have cooked up something inspired by reading this book by the deadline of June 26, 2009. Anyone can join in the fun; there's no need to do anything other than read the book and cook up something delicious.

You don't even need to be a blogger to join our little group, as proven below by Bettina, an Australian food and book lover, who kindly asked me to post her toothsome Cook the Books submission below. She recreates a homey and satisfying meal as laid out by the kitchen staff at Moonacre Manor for the arrival of our young heroine, Maria, and her governess, Miss Heliotrope:



Bettina says:

"My CTB offering from The Little White Horse is the arrival meal. I have experienced travelling through the dark to an uncertain destination and found a warm welcome and a delicious meal waiting for me. There are other aspects of the book that resonate - including my part Cavalier King Charles Spaniel dogs and my quarter-Cornish ancestry husband who planted salmon pink geraniums in the garden and gave me a pearl necklace.

I first read TLWH in 1966 and re-read it regularly: literary comfort food.
We had home made crusty bread, hot onion soup, delicious stew, baked apples in a silver dish, honey, organic butter and a bottle of claret. Maria and Miss Heliotrope arrive at Moonacre Manor in late winter. It is not quite the end of autumn (fall) in Queensland so I made some adjustments due to seasonal availability. I used chicken instead of rabbit for the stew - using an English recipe for Gamekeeper's Casserole. Chestnut trees don't grow here, so I served Italian chestnut honey instead. Mulled claret seemed like a waste of good French wine and we enjoyed it without mulling.

I wanted to reflect the English-ness of the story and wasn't sure about how to make an English onion soup. After some research, I used leeks and onions with sage leaves and left out the floating crouton with melted cheese of the French version. I comforted myself with the thought that, despite the English pastoral of the story, there are definite French influences in the Old Parson and the descendants of Monsieur Coq de Noir.

Finally, TLWH always mentions the food served to the animals - a detail my two dogs approve of completely. I can report that they had the chicken wings, shared a slice of the bread with stew juices, finished off the apple cores and then retired to the sofa to digest the meal just like Wiggins."

Thank you Bettina, for a cozy, dreamy meal inspired by your reading. I look forward to reading the other entries submitted for this round of Cook the Books.

Cook the Books: A Vegetable Navarin Inspired by Kitchen Confidential

The third book selection for the bimonthly foodie book club, Cook the Books, is Anthony Bourdain's dishy, entertaining and often over-the-top memoir, Kitchen Confidential". Jo in Athens, Greece, the blogger extraordinaire at Food Junkie, not Junk Food, is the current hostess in the lineup that includes yours truly, and Deb the adventurous foodie at Kahakai Kitchen in Honolulu. Jo picked a great book to "sink our teeth into" and one which I had read several years back and enjoyed as much again on the second reading.

Kitchen Confidential inspired a mini publishing boom among other restaurant chefs and food industry types, and I have read many, but Bourdain's vivid prose and no hold's barred writing style makes him the king of the kitchen confessional. He has written a couple of foodie/Mafioso novels, but it's his non-fiction that is the most striking. I have a review of his book, Nasty Bits, Hooves and Snouts over at the Book Trout if you want to sample more of his essays about various cuisines, food trends and restaurants.

For Cook the Books, readers are asked to come up with a blog post and dish inspired by the current book pick. There were many luscious French and Italian foods which Bourdain describes in Kitchen Confidential which I thought about making, including a CRISPY grilled whole fish, and I also toyed with the idea of actually making a luscious brunch spread that didn't just consist of chopped up bits of leftovers from the weekend dinner rush, but ultimately, I found that a passing reference to the complicated garnishes for a lamb navarin that clog up Bourdain's "meez" (mise en place) to be the impetus for my Cook the Books dish.

Since the Crispy Husband shies away from eating meat, making him one of "the enemy of everything good and decent in the human spirit, and an affront to all I stand for, the pure enjoyment of food" (Bourdain's meat-crazed, provocative definition of a vegetarian), I searched out a Vegetable Navarin recipe. I found an elegant Spring Vegetable Navarin here, but without fresh fava beans (just planted some in the Crispy Garden this week!)and other baby spring vegetables available in the local markets yet, I tweaked the recipe a bit to make do with what was in the larder.

A navarin is a French culinary term for a stew that traditionally incorporates lamb, herbs, potatoes and spring vegetables. The object is to infuse the stew with all the flavors, colors and textures of the produce without overcooking them, so it was a fun project to attempt during a luxuriously unhurried weekend afternoon. The result was quite delicious and I would even have offered a soup plateful up to Monsieur Bourdain if he had shown up at my door. I think he might even have liked it, meatlessness notwithstanding.




Spring Vegetable Navarin

6 medium turnips, stem and root tip trimmed off and cut into six or eight wedges

2 cups fresh string beans, trimmed and cut into 1 inch lengths

Butter

3 shallots, peeled and diced

3 cups vegetable broth

1-1/2 lbs. red potatoes, cut into six or eight wedges

1 cup baby carrots, cut into 1/2 inch chunks

3 fat leeks, trimmed and washed carefully to remove silt, then cut into 2 inch strips

1-1/2 cups frozen petit pois

4 Tbsp. snipped fresh chives
2 Tbsp. Italian parsley, finely chopped
Salt and pepper to taste


++++Be prepared to wash a lot of cooking vessels for this luscious dish, but it's worth it!+++++++

Bring 3 cups of lightly salted water to a boil in a medium saucepot. Place steamer basket full of cut up turnips and bring back to a boil. Cover and steam until tender, about 10 minutes.

Remove steamer basket and dump turnips into a colander. Rinse with cold water and let drain and cool.

Place steamer basket back in saucepot and add string beans. Bring to a second boil and cover and steam 5 minutes, or until crisp-tender.

Remove steamer basket and dump beans into colander. Rinse with cold water to stop cooking and let drain and cool with the turnips.

Heat 3 Tbsp. butter in large, heavy-bottomed saucepot. Add shallots and saute until lightly browned, stirring often, about 8-10 minutes. Add vegetable broth and potatoes. Bring to a boil, cover and reduce heat to a simmer. Simmer 8-10 minutes.

Add carrots and leeks and simmer, covered, until carrots and potatoes are tender, about 10 minutes.

Add in steamed turnips and string beans, frozen petit pois, and salt and pepper to taste. Cook, uncovered, another 5-10 minutes, or until all vegetables are tender and broth is slightly reduced. Add in chives and parsley, reserving some to garnish each serving. Add an additional tablespoon or two of butter, if broth is not rich enough. Optional garnish of dried cow hoof (available in better pet food stores) for carnivorous rock star writer guests.

Be sure to check back at the Cook the Books blog to see the roundup of all the blog posts, book reviews and cool recipes that Jo will be putting together for us after the April 25th deadline.

Cook the Books Club: The Language of Baklava

The Language of Baklava. And Muhammara. And Rosewater. And Lemony, Garlicky Hummus. It's all found in the second book pick from the new foodie book club, Cook the Books. Our current host, Deb of Kahakai Kitchen, picked this marvelous memoir by Diana Abu-Jaber, about her childhood growing up in icy Syracuse, New York in an extended Arab family, headed by her father Bud (Ghassan) and his gaggle of brothers.

I inhaled this book, and plan on rereading it soon, both to consult it for the recipes and to relive some of the poignantly funny scenes that the ever-observant young Diana noted between her lively dad and her various relatives, teachers, and neighbors. You can read my fuller review of this wonderful book ("The Language of Baklava: A Memoir, by Diana Abu-Jaber, NY:Pantheon, 2005) on my book blog, The Book Trout, here.

Each chapter in the book is followed by a wonderful Arab recipe and this inspired me to seek out Claudia Roden's great cookbook "The New Book of Middle Eastern Food" from my local library so I could learn more about this cuisine and try out some new dishes. I lingered over this 500+ page cookbook and decided to make the following feast:

A pot of Mint Tea
Magical Muhummara
Labneh Balls
Stuffed Grape Leaves and Oil-Cured Olives over Lettuce
Sesame-Rosemary Crackers
Steamed Rice
Fava Beans

The Mint Tea was brewed by steeping dried mint from my summer garden, the Fava Beans and Stuffed Grape Leaves came from cans from the "Gourmet" section of the grocery store, but I found a bit of kitchen time to whip up another batch of very tasty Sesame-Rosemary Crackers that I experimented with earlier.



The Magical Muhammara recipe is a real winner and it is straight from the pages of "The Language of Baklava". If you don't have a copy of this wonderful book (and if you are a foodie or bibliomane, you should!), then you can go to the Saveur website to get Abu-Jaber's savory recipe for this spicy, complex-flavored dip made from toasted walnuts, pomegranate juice, roasted red peppers and other delights. I've made it twice now, and my husband has wolfed it down appreciatively. We're planning to bring it to some great cook/friends this weekend during the Superbowl festivities (Go Steelers!) and I have no doubt it will be a hit. It's easy to make (and easy to make gluten-free with GF crumbs) and tastes exotic and decadently good. Magical even.



The Labneh Balls were somewhat of a Crispy Cook experiment. Roden's cookbook notes that labneh, or yogurt cheese, can be rolled into balls and rolled in spices and drizzled with olive oil for a delightful appetizer. I had made yogurt cheese, or labneh, before, which is also easy. You just need time to let plain yogurt, mixed with a little salt, drain at least overnight to remove the moisture and make the yogurt into a creamy, spreadable cheese. Because I have some frisky, dairy-loving cats around, I made my labneh in the refrigerator, with a coffee filter-lined sieve poised over a bowl. This recipe gives more specifics, but I basically just rolled the finished labneh in chopped Italian parsley, toasted sesame seeds and smoked paprika, and then drizzled it with some extra-virgin olive oil. The labneh balls went well with the homemade crackers, too.



We feasted well that evening and plan to keep all these wonderful foods in our Crispy Cook repertoire (although the fava beans tasted a bit, well, dusty. Perhaps fresh favas are more sumptuous). I can recommend "The Language of Baklava" to anyone who enjoys an interesting biography, book about food or humorous writing. Ms. Abu-Jaber has promised to stop by and review all the Cook the Books posts after Deb posts the roundup (after the Feb. 15 deadline) so be sure to check back then to see what we all cooked up.