You might hear someone sing

My family is not having the Christmas that you hear about in carols and television specials. I am typing this from California, where we were supposed to arrive next Tuesday for the holiday festivities, but instead I flew down six days early to help take care of my aunt, who is in the hospital. My mother is here, too, and my aunt’s two daughters, my cousins. My aunt came down with an acute illness, very fast and sudden and serious, but after more than a week in the hospital, she’s going to be alright. Today she even cracked a joke. I was so elated that I tried out a couple of bad puns, and she actually laughed at them. It was a good day. I’m glad to be here.





My mother and I spent the late afternoon sitting in squeaky, vinyl-covered chairs next to my aunt’s hospital bed, reading books while she napped. At one point, through the wall, I could hear an old man in the next room start to sing. The sound was muffled, and I couldn’t make out the words, and he was not what is commonly called a good singer. But he sang easily, cheerfully, the kind of slow, ambling song you might hear someone sing beside a campfire in an old western. He went on like that for maybe ten minutes. I hoped he would go on forever. For the past few days, I’d been wanting to write here, but I wasn’t sure what to say. Then I heard that man singing, and I thought, Well, there you go. This is what you write about. Exactly what’s happening.

Wade way in

November was nice, but what happened to it? Hi.

Our visit to the East Coast was good and long and involved a lot of sleeping and pizza research, the common themes of our days off since Delancey came along. I wrote a story about stuffing for this fine newspaper - you know that it’s not just for Thanksgiving, right? You can eat stuffing whenever you want - and now I’m working on a story for this fine magazine. But lately, my head is very full of Possible Future Book. I want you to know that I thought long and hard before I typed that last sentence. Because now it means that I can’t chicken out.

The idea of writing another book has been percolating for a while, but to be honest, I wasn’t ready. And to be even more honest, though I know approximately what the story is, I still don’t know what precise path that story will take. I’m the kind of person who has to write for a while, wade way in and splash around, before I can see where I’m going. (I write everything that way, including this blog post.) But I’m ready for that slog. I’m excited for it. Winter was made for projects, I think. So I’m going to write a book proposal and see what I’ve got. Who knows. But I wanted you to know what I’ve been up to, and what I’ll be up to for some time to come. Knowing you’re here makes me feel braver.




Knowing there’s a tin of butter cookies with cacao nibs on the kitchen counter makes me feel braver, too. You should try it.

I’ve been a little wary of posting this recipe, because it’s a close cousin of this one, and because it uses whole wheat, which we’ve been talking about a lot here recently, and I don’t want to beat you over the head with it. But the truth is, if you made those whole wheat chocolate chip cookies - and I know a lot of you did, you excellent people - you’ve probably got some whole wheat flour around, and maybe you might like another place to use it? Like the chocolate chip cookies before them, these butter cookies combine the flavor of whole wheat and chocolate, but in a more subtle, delicate, refined way. If the natural habitat of a chocolate chip cookie is a lunchbox, say, the natural habitat of these cookies is the saucer of a teacup. And they’re even quicker to make, which is noteworthy, because chocolate chip cookies aren’t exactly slow and laborious. They also make a handsome gift, if you can stay out of them.




This recipe comes from the brand-new book by Alice Medrich, she of so many great sweets, and I’ve already baked four batches of them. (Admittedly, two and a half of those were for an event to celebrate her book. Another half batch went into my mouth. And the last batch is for gifting, if they survive the weekend.) There’s a lot of talk these days about using whole grain flours for flavor as opposed to using them for reasons of health, and while the latter is certainly admirable, I’m on board for flavor. Let’s be clear about that. These cookies would probably be very nice with white flour, but what makes them work, really work, is the whole wheat flour. I fed them to my friend Olaiya, and she told me she would have never known that the flavor she was tasting was wheat. She thought it was some sort of warm, nutty mystery spice. Whole wheat flour is also a smart tweak, texture-wise: a sablé cookie should have a crumbly, pleasantly sandy feel - sable is French for “sand” - and the natural coarseness of whole wheat accentuates that. They crumble almost instantly, and then they start to melt, and the cacao nibs kick in with exactly the right amount of crunch. Would it be weird to say that these cookies feel nice between my teeth? I’m all for weird. They feel nice between my teeth.


Whole Wheat Sablés with Cacao Nibs
From Alice Medrich’s Chewy Gooey Crispy Crunchy Melt-in-Your-Mouth Cookies

This recipe is particularly quick to assemble if you get out a scale and use weight measurements. So quick! I used whole wheat pastry flour because I keep it around (for scones, mostly), but you can also use a mixture of regular whole wheat flour and white flour. And I don’t see any reason why you couldn’t substitute white whole wheat flour for the regular whole wheat, if you have it. Oh, and if you live in Seattle or nearby, try the cacao nibs from Theo. They’re the best I’ve had.

2 cups (9 oz.) whole wheat pastry flour, OR 1 cup (4.5 oz.) all-purpose flour plus 1 scant cup (4 oz.) whole wheat flour
14 Tbsp. (1 ¾ sticks) unsalted butter, softened
½ cup (3 ½ oz.) sugar
¼ tsp. salt
1 tsp. vanilla extract
1/3 cup (about 1 ¼ oz.) roasted cacao nibs

If using the two flours, combine them in a bowl, and mix with a whisk or fork.

In a medium bowl, with a large spoon or an electric mixer, beat the butter with the sugar, salt, and vanilla until smooth and creamy but not fluffy, about 1 minute (with the mixer). Scrape down the sides of the bowl with a spatula, and add the nibs. Beat briefly to incorporate. Add the flour, and mix until just incorporated. Scrap the dough into a mass and, if necessary, knead it a little with your hands to make sure that the flour is completely incorporated. Form the dough into a 12-by-2-inch log. Wrap and refrigerate for at least 2 hours, or overnight.

Set racks in the upper and lower thirds of the oven, and preheat the oven to 350°F. Line 2 cookie sheets with parchment paper.

Use a sharp knife to cut the cold dough log into ¼-inch-thick slices. Place the cookies at least 1 ½ inches apart on the prepared sheet pans.

Bake for 12 to 14 minutes, or until the cookies are light golden brown at the edges, rotating the pans from top to bottom and front to back halfway through the baking time. Cool the cookies for a minute on the pans, then transfer them (with or without their parchment) to a rack to cool completely. Repeat with remaining dough.

These cookies are good on the first day, but they’re best with a little age, after at least a day or two. Store in an airtight container at room temperature for up to a month.

Yield: about 48 cookies

She got out a skillet

I should begin with a confession: I’m not in Thanksgiving mode yet. Who knows. It’s weird. This holiday sort of sneaks up, I’ve noticed, and then it’s quickly eclipsed by Christmas, which is sad, since Thanksgiving is our only national holiday devoted wholly to eating. This year, we’re heading to New Jersey to visit family, and I will almost certainly make cranberry chutney and probably a chocolate pecan pie, but it’s been hard to plan from a distance. Thanksgiving of 2010, I apologize. I’ll do better next year.

On the upside, I ate almost two pounds of carrots today.

I’m not sure why, but I keep thinking about my host mother. I haven’t seen her for ten years, but still, I think of her often, and when I’m not thinking of her leeks vinaigrette, I’m thinking of her carrots cooked in a skillet with onion and thyme. Corentine always cooked vegetables on the stovetop. It hadn’t occurred to me how accustomed I was to oven-roasting everything - broccoli, cauliflower, zucchini, eggplant, peppers, tomatoes, Brussels sprouts, rutabagas, carrots, everything - until I noticed that she only used the oven for cakes and tarts and the occasional quiche. When she wanted to cook a vegetable, she got out a skillet and warmed some oil in it, or she got out a saucepan and the steamer basket. I didn’t think much about it at the time, and when I cooked for myself in her kitchen, I continued to roast as usual - using the drip pan of her broiler pan, since she didn’t seem to have a baking sheet. But when I came home, when I no longer had the luxury of sitting at her table each night, I missed her vegetables, and in particular, those carrots.

I don’t think of this as a holiday dish, so it feels a little misleading to write about it only a few days before Thanksgiving. It’s not that it isn’t worthy of a holiday table; it’s just that, for Corentine, this was bare-bones, stupid-easy, everyday eating. She would serve these carrots next to a piece of fish, with a slice of quiche, or a roasted chicken that she picked up at the market. It’s what you make when you’ve got too many carrots in the crisper drawer and you need something for dinner. But it’s also the kind of food that, to me, is synonymous with French home cooking: simple and inexpensive, but also nuanced, a little elegant.

I don’t want to call these sauteed carrots, because those two words usually point toward a cloying end, likely tossed with salted butter and honey, so mushy that no actual chewing is required. When I talk about Corentine’s carrots, I call them skillet carrots, because it sounds nicer, and also because the skillet and its lid are the key elements here. These are not sauteed carrots: they’re sort of sauteed, sort of steamed, and sort of stewed. I watched Corentine cook carrots this way a number of times, and though I now can’t remember whether she used olive oil or safflower oil (her usual go-to), the basic gist is this. You warm a nice amount of oil in a large skillet, and then you soften sliced onions in it. Then you add sliced garlic, and a few minutes later, you add a lot of sliced carrots and some sprigs of fresh thyme and maybe a little more oil, and then you cover the pan with a lid and let things roll along until the carrots are tender. But that doesn’t quite capture it: what’s really happening under the lid, where you can’t see, is that the carrots and onions are mingling, stewing together, spending quality time, so that in the end, the onions are nearly caramelized and the carrots are almost rich, sticky with the onions’ natural sugars.

Corentine served the dish just like that, and you can, too, but I like to add a small amount of red wine vinegar at the very end, a subtle dose of acidity, enough to gently perk up the earthbound flavor of the carrots without adding any flavor of its own. Last night I ate these carrots with a couple of fried eggs and let the yolks scurry around and sauce them, which I highly recommend. Today I’m a little under the weather, so I ate them on their own tonight, two heaping plates’ worth, and I highly recommend that, too.

Happy Thanksgiving.


Skillet Carrots with Onions and Thyme

My host mother used regular orange carrots, but I like to use purple and yellow ones, too, when I can find them. They keep their color when cooked, so they make the dish especially handsome. Whatever carrots you use, make sure that they taste sweet in their raw state: a dull, bitter carrot cannot be fixed. I don’t bother to peel my carrots, but I do wash them well.

Also, for this recipe, I like to slice my onions from stem end to root end, like this, so that they keep their shape and integrity as they cook. When you slice onions the other way – across their equators, you could say – they tend to fall apart during cooking.

Olive oil
1 yellow onion, halved and sliced from root to stem, like this
Salt
2 large garlic cloves, thinly sliced
2 lb. carrots, sliced into ¼-inch-thick rounds
4 to 5 fresh thyme sprigs
½ tsp. red wine vinegar, or to taste

Warm a large skillet over medium-high heat. When it’s hot, add a good amount of olive oil, enough to film the bottom of the pan. Add the onions – they should sizzle – stir to coat with oil. Salt lightly. Cook, stirring frequently, until the onions are softened but not browned. Add the garlic, reduce the heat to medium, and cook for a few more minutes, until the garlic is fragrant. Add the carrots, thyme, and a couple of generous pinches of salt, and stir to mix. If the carrots look dry, add a little more oil to lightly coat them; this dish needs more oil than you might think. Cover the pan and continue to cook over medium heat, stirring occasionally, until the carrots are tender and the onions are very soft. (I never seem to pay attention to how long this takes, but I would guess that it takes somewhere between 10 and 20 minutes.) Remove the pan from the heat, and discard the thyme sprigs. Sprinkle the vinegar over the carrots. Stir gently to incorporate: the vinegar should subtly brighten the flavor of the carrots without being discernable itself. Add more vinegar, if needed, and salt to taste.

Serve hot.

Yield: 4 to 6 servings

I am sold

I know this cookie looks wholesome. Actually, I’ll raise you one and say that it verges on homely. But this cookie speaks to me, and what it says is, Hey, baaaabe-eh. In this voice.

Meet Kim Boyce’s whole wheat chocolate chip cookie. This might be my favorite chocolate chip cookie, which is an absolutely insane thing to say, because until about a week ago, I thought that title belonged, forever and ever, to the New York Times chocolate chip cookie. I don’t know what I think anymore. Let’s just call this my new favorite chocolate chip cookie and leave it at that.

I first heard about this recipe from Luisa, and then Lecia mentioned it to me, too, and maybe Brian, and maybe you? However it got there, it’s been on my to-do list for a while, and last Friday, I decided that it was finally time to make a batch. So I did, and by Tuesday, I had decided that it was time for a second batch. That was barely 72 hours ago, but the last cookie disappeared shortly after lunch today. I did give about a third of the batch away, but still, I would like to state for the record that our household, which consists of two (2) people, put away roughly a dozen (12) cookies. I don’t know exactly what I expected from a whole wheat chocolate chip cookie, but I didn’t expect to want to eat it for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

On Wednesday, before they were all eaten, we had unseasonably good weather, and the whole house was washed in that crazy gold light that comes only in the fall, and even then only on exceptional days, and it gave me the opportunity to photograph these cookies for you in their natural state, which is to say, with halos on.

Take my word for it. You need to try a batch. They may be built on a foundation of whole wheat flour, but they’re not health food, so don’t get hung up on that. They’re everything that a proper chocolate chip cookie should be: tender and chewy in the middle, crisp at the edges, and very forthcoming with the chocolate. But what I like most is that, on top of all that, you also get the subtly nutty, naturally sweet-and-savory flavor of wheat. You know digestive biscuits? Imagine a cross between a chocolate chip cookie and a digestive biscuit. Do you read me? Am I the only American who hears the words digestive and biscuit and instantly needs a snack? I hope not. Because that’s the kind of flavor we’re talking about here. And that flavor, that benevolent wheaty flavor, not only tastes good, but it also performs a valuable service: it tames the sweetness and richness - that occasionally sweat-inducing intensity, if you will - that is the seldom spoken-about dark side of any chocolate chip cookie. Thank you, whole wheat. Thank you, Kim Boyce. In other words, I am sold.

Whole Wheat Chocolate Chip Cookies
Adapted from Good to the Grain, by Kim Boyce

Without really planning to, I’ve played around quite a lot with this recipe. I’ve only made it twice, but each time was in a different kitchen, with different ingredients and tools. Both times, the cookies came out beautifully. Here are some thoughts:

- A friend who had made this recipe suggested that I try making it with white whole wheat flour, so I bought a fresh bag and used it in my first batch. I loved the resulting flavor – lightly wheaty, almost bran-like – and I highly recommend it. For my second batch, I used a local brand of whole wheat flour, and it was plenty nice, but the wheat flavor was darker and heartier. If you’re after that digestive biscuit flavor, I would use white whole wheat flour.

- Because I am apparently getting ornery with age, I ignored Boyce’s advice to use cold butter. I honestly thought it was a typo, because I’ve always had a hard time creaming butter that’s even a little bit too cold. Instead, I used softened butter. (I left it at room temperature until it was still cool to the touch but took the imprint of a finger when I pressed it. Perfect for creaming.) It worked just fine, as you can see. But I’ve now done some poking around online and see that the recipe is indeed supposed to use cold butter, cubed for easier creaming. Oops! So, uh, never mind me. Do whatever you want.

- The original recipe calls for chopped bittersweet chocolate, and I tried it once that way and once with bittersweet chips. (I used Ghirardelli 60% chocolate in both cases.) I preferred the chopped chocolate because the pieces were smaller, so it gave the sense that there was more chocolate. But if you want to keep it quick and simple, chips will do the job.

- I made this dough once in a stand mixer and once with handheld electric beaters. The poor beaters had to labor a lot, and I wound up recruiting a sturdy spatula to help out, but it’s good to know that you can make do with whatever tools you have on hand.

- Boyce says that this dough is designed to be baked without chilling first. (This, I think, is linked to her use of cold butter. The cold butter likely keeps the dough cool and helps it spread less in the oven.) But I apparently am not only ornery; I also can’t follow directions. I scooped my dough, put it on a sheet pan, covered it with plastic wrap, and chilled it before baking. Some of the dough was chilled for about 1 hour, and some stayed in the fridge for two days. Chilling dough generally results in a thicker cookie, and mine were certainly nice and plump, which I like. So I recommend chilling the dough. And hey, I also noticed that the cookies that stayed in the fridge for two days were particularly flavorful. So “aging” the dough a bit isn’t a bad idea, either.

3 cups whole wheat flour (see note above)
1 ½ tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. baking soda
1 ½ tsp. kosher salt
2 sticks (8 oz.) unsalted butter, cut into ½-inch cubes (see note above)
1 cup lightly packed dark brown sugar
1 cup sugar
2 large eggs
1 tsp. vanilla extract
8 oz. bittersweet chocolate, roughly chopped into ¼- and ½-inch pieces, or bittersweet chips

Position racks in the upper and lower thirds of the oven, and preheat to 350°F. Line two baking sheets with parchment. (If you have no parchment, you can butter the sheets.)

Combine the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt in a medium bowl, and whisk to blend.

Put the butter and sugars in the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment. With the mixer on low speed, mix just until the butter and sugars are blended, about 2 minutes. Scrape down the sides of the bowl with a spatula. Add the eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition. Beat in the vanilla. Add the flour mixture to the bowl, and blend on low speed until the flour is just incorporated. Scrape down the sides and bottom of the bowl. Add the chocolate, and mix on low speed until evenly combined. (If you have no stand mixer, you can do all of this with handheld electric beaters and/or a large, sturdy spoon.) Scrape down the sides and bottom of the bowl, and then use your hands to turn and gently massage the dough, making sure all the flour is absorbed.

Scoop mounds of dough about 3 tablespoons in size onto the baking sheets, leaving about 3 inches between each cookie. (I was able to fit about 8 cookies on each sheet, staggering them in three rows.)

Bake the cookies for 16 to 20 minutes, rotating the sheets halfway through, until the cookies are evenly browned. Transfer the cookies, still on parchment, to a rack to cool. Repeat with remaining dough.

These cookies are very good while still warm from the oven, but I find that you can taste the wheat more – in a good way – once they’ve cooled.

Yield: about 20 cookies

Drop everything

A year or so ago, when we opened Delancey, I thought our lives were over and we would never see our friends again. Now that I type that out, it sounds like I was channeling Chicken Little, but my thinking wasn’t without reason: in the restaurant business, you work when other people play, and that complicates almost everything. But as it turns out, our friends are more flexible than I had given them credit for, and like us, a lot of them work odd hours. So over the past several months, we’ve begun to tweak our collective habits. I didn’t know this, but dinner parties don’t have to take place at dinnertime. You can also have them in the daytime. For example, last Sunday, our friends Sam and Meredith invited us over for what we used to call Game Night, and what we now call Game Day.




(In our world, Sam and Meredith are famous for their good ideas.)




The plan was to play a game called Agricola.




But we wound up with too many people for that, so we broke off into groups: Team Agricola, Team Settlers of Catan, Team Bananagrams, and the wishful Team Naptime, which was quickly disbanded when it was noted that sleeping is not a sanctioned Game Day activity. I played six rounds of Bananagrams and won none. My new life goal is to win once, only once, at Bananagrams. I don’t ask for a lot.




On the upside, we also ate some cheese, and we drank a little beer. Meredith roasted dates. Olaiya steamed mussels in white wine.




And most important for today’s purposes, my friend Keena taught me to make a spectacular gazpacho, which is big news, because I don’t usually like gazpacho. It often tastes flat and tinny, like canned tomato juice, and on a particularly unfortunate day, it can resemble a regrettable attempt at salsa. Keena’s is neither. It’s smooth and almost creamy, an opaque shade of orange, with a whiff of olive oil and a kick of sherry vinegar. The only sad part of this story is that I was so busy getting destroyed at Bananagrams that I downed it before I thought to take a picture.




I’m on the road this week, and my Internet connection is so slow that getting this thing posted has aged me by about a year, but I wanted to say hi. That, and that you should drop everything and make this gazpacho, before the good tomatoes and peppers are gone. It’s going to be a long, hard winter of tubers and crucifers. This is our last hurrah.

Keena’s gazpacho starts with olive oil, which you put in a blender and whip at high speed. It’s an unusual step, and it’s the key, I think, to this recipe. It gives the soup its light, nearly velvety texture, as though you’d sneaked in a dash of cream. When the olive oil thickens and begins to froth, you add garlic, sweet peppers, cucumber, and a combination of yellow and red tomatoes, and then you let it rip along on high for a while longer, until the mixture is smooth enough to be sipped from a glass, if you’re a gazpacho-sipping kind of person. If not, you can spoon it from a bowl. Either way, you’ll want to splash some sherry vinegar into the blender before you serve it, because that’s the spark that gets it glowing.

Keena’s Gazpacho

My friend Keena learned to make this gazpacho from her sister-in-law Margot. But I still call it Keena’s Gazpacho, because she’s put her own twist on it. Here are some notes to consider before you start:

- Keena uses heirloom tomatoes for their flavor and color, and at a minimum, she uses at least one yellow tomato, so that the finished gazpacho has a beautiful orange color. She tells me that when she tried making the recipe with only red tomatoes, it worked fine, but the taste seemed a little flatter and the color was less pretty. Her sister-in-law once made it using all Green Zebra heirloom tomatoes and a yellow pepper instead of a red one, and the resulting gazpacho was a pretty shade of green. Whatever tomatoes she uses, Keena makes this gazpacho in a 7-cup blender, and the size of the blender determines how many tomatoes you can use. She uses as many as will fit in her blender jar.

- Keena likes her gazpacho smooth and sippable, but her sister-in-law garnishes it with diced cucumber and bell peppers, so that it’s a little chunky. You can do whatever you want.

3 - 5 medium to large tomatoes, ideally yellow and red (see note above)
3 Tbsp. olive oil
1 - 2 garlic cloves
½ of a green bell pepper, seeded and chopped
½ of a medium to large cucumber, peeled, seeded, and chopped
½ to ¾ of a red bell pepper, seeded and chopped
2 - 3 Tbsp. sherry vinegar
Salt to taste

Bring a saucepan of water to a boil. Score an “X” into the bottom of each tomato, and then blanch them until the skin begins to peel back around the “X.” Remove from the water, cool them until they’re not too hot to handle, and then peel. Remove and discard the stems, and cut out the rough spot where the stem attaches. Chop coarsely.

Put the olive oil in a blender, and blend on high speed until frothy. Add the garlic, and process briefly. Add the bell peppers, cucumber, a couple pinches of salt, and as many tomatoes as will fit comfortably into your blender. Process on high speed for a while, stopping the blender from time to time to scrape down the sides of the jar and mush around the ingredients as needed to allow the blender to run smoothly. (The mixture will be fairly thick until the tomatoes are pureed.) Let the blender go as long as you can stand the noise; the longer it goes, the better it will taste and the creamier it will be. Add 2 tablespoons of the sherry vinegar, and process to incorporate. Taste, and add vinegar and salt as needed.

Chill thoroughly before serving.

Yield: about 6 servings

Now here, now there

I have two half brothers who live on the East Coast, and when I was a kid, if they came home for the holidays, they would bring a Styrofoam cooler of oysters. My father would get out his knife and shucking glove and lean against the kitchen counter, flicking grit and shells into the sink as he went, and they would all stand around, eating and sighing, making the noises that people make when they eat oysters.




I don’t know how old I was that night, but I think I must have been about six. I stood next to my father while he shucked, and he leaned down and gave me an oyster, a fat one, an enormous one, amoeba-like, dripping with brine. I have no memory of eating it. I must have forgotten on purpose. But I do know that I ate it, approximately, if nearly choking can be considered eating, and that it took me 25 years to eat another.

Twenty-five years. Twenty-five years! When I get freaked out about something, I get freaked out. Like, a-quarter-of-a-century-long-freak-out freaked out. The look of an oyster, the texture, the choking thing: I was alright with the idea of never eating a second.




But around this time last year, we had a cook at Delancey who wanted to play around with oysters, and so Brandon went to the Sunday market and bought some kumamotos from Taylor Shellfish. At lunch that day, this cook made a mignonette, and then he shucked three oysters and put them on a plate. Then he dared me. I was tempted to punch him in the face. I was not pleased. I did what I do when I am presented with something that scares the crap out of me. I picked up an oyster, stared at it, and felt like I was going to cry.




I made everyone look away, and then I ate it. Only one, and it was tiny, but I ate it. I chewed and everything. I didn’t die. And when I swallowed, the flavor rang around my mouth the way the ringing of a bell ricochets inside a cathedral, now here, now there, and it did that for maybe ten seconds, now here, now there, before it dissipated. It tasted like seawater and melon and wet rocks. I didn’t even hate it. I almost liked it.




I’m not going to tell you that I am a reformed person, or that I pop oysters like jelly beans. I’m still working on that. Last spring, the first time I was faced with a dozen oysters, a whole dozen to myself, I felt like ducking under the table and making a run for it. I was forced to resort to something like Lamaze breathing techniques, a full-body aaaah-hooooooooo, to get me from oyster to oyster. Sometimes I still do. But it’s getting easier. And it’s worth it to me, because there is no other flavor like it, anywhere. I’m glad I learned that, that I let myself learn it.

A couple of weeks ago, when we had friends in town, I took them to our neighborhood oyster bar, a place called the Walrus and the Carpenter, where I took most of these pictures. We ate oysters from the Effingham Inlet, on the west coast of Vancouver Island. Ben had never had them before, and when he tasted his first, he yelled OH MY GOD, and I’m almost certain, almost, that he would have done that even if he hadn’t been drinking a cocktail called the Mustache Ride. It was that kind of oyster.




I met a man on a plane once, and we got talking about food. This guy had a Texas accent and the stature of a former football player, but his mother was a tiny Italian woman, he told me, holding his hands about a foot apart to show me how tall she was. We talked about Seattle restaurants, about where he took his wife for their wedding anniversary, about our dogs, about his kids. He has a son in his early twenties, and this son is away at college, but sometimes when they’re together, he told me, they go out for oysters. They’ll suck down four or five dozen, he said, grinning, and they’ll drink some beers, just the two of them, and a couple of hours will go by, and it’s just great, he said. And then he grinned even wider, thinking about it, and he sort of hopped around in his seat, and his face got pink, and he started to giggle. The man giggled.




I get it now. And I’m glad for that.

Because there was a bag of plums

I took this picture on an excellent afternoon.


It was a Saturday. I had just met a deadline that I had been dreading. I was immensely relieved. Two of our best friends were in town for a visit, two friends who moved here a couple of years ago and became sort of like family, but then they found jobs and gigs in other cities, so they moved away. But they were in town on this particular day, and we had stayed up late the night before, and the night before that, and now it was late afternoon. Bonnie had a concert, and Ben was driving her to rehearsal, and Brandon was at the restaurant, and I was home alone. Because there was a bag of plums on the counter, and because it was the second day of October, I decided to bake a plum tart. The house was warm from sunlight and the oven preheating, and I put on a dress that I won’t get to wear again until June, and while the tart baked, I sat down at the kitchen table, turned to my left, and took that picture.



The next day, we ate plum tart for breakfast.



I miss my friends. Even though they ate most of the tart before I could take its picture.



Bastards.

The good news is, at least this thing is easy to make, and to make over again. It’s the easiest, quickest tart recipe I can think of, and I’m not just saying that because I made it four days ago and it’s on my mind. The recipe comes from the esteemed Alice Medrich, from her book Pure Desserts, and she calls it a rustic plum tart. I’m tempted to call it a plum tart cake, because it’s a little like both and that’s how I am, but you can decide. Mix up some flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt, and then work in a beaten egg and some butter until you wind up with something like yellow sand. Press that lightly into a tart or cake pan, whichever you want, and then arrange some plain cut-up plums on top, and less than an hour later, it’s on. The plums soften into pockets of loosely contained jam, and the crust puffs up around them, tender-crumbed in the middle like a coarse cake and crunchy at the edges. I can imagine it with whipped cream after dinner, but mostly, I think of it as a nice thing to eat in the afternoon, with something hot to drink. And in the morning, with coffee, it also makes a totally reasonable stand-in for buttered-and-jammed toast. Especially if the company is right.

Rustic Plum Tart
From Pure Dessert, by Alice Medrich

Contrast is what makes this tart work: the crust is quite sweet, and the plums should be quite tart. Look for plums that are both sweet and tangy, especially the ones that make you pucker a little when you bite into the flesh closest to the skin. I’ve made this tart with some unnamed red-skinned, yellow-fleshed plums that I found at the farmers market, and also with Flavor King pluots. Medrich recommends Santa Rosa, Friar, Laroda, and Elephant Heart plums, and she advises against the small, oblong plums often called Italian prune plums. They’re not tangy enough.

Also, I make the dough for this tart in a food processor, but you can make it by hand, so I’m including instructions for both. The food processor makes it especially quick and tidy, but either way is easy.

Finally, for the tart dough, you don’t want ice cold, rock-hard, straight-from-the-fridge butter. You want it to be a little softer than that, but not as soft as it gets at room temperature. You want it to be firm, as it is when it’s pleasantly cool.

1 cup all-purpose flour
¾ cup sugar
½ tsp. baking powder
1/8 tsp. salt
1 large egg, lightly whisked
3 Tbsp. unsalted butter, firm but not hard, cut into a few pieces
4 to 6 juicy, flavorful plums

Set a rack in the lower third of the oven, and preheat the oven to 375°F. Generously butter a 9 ½-inch tart pan with a removable bottom – or, barring that, a 9-inch springform pan also works nicely.

To make the dough by hand, mix the flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt together in a medium bowl. Add the egg and butter, and use a pastry blender, a large fork, or a couple of knives to cut the mixture together, as though you were making pie dough. The dough is ready when it resembles a rough mass of damp yellow sand with no dry flour showing.

To make the dough in a food processor, combine the flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt in the bowl of a food processor, and pulse to mix. Add the egg and butter, and pulse just until the mixture resembles damp yellow sand and is beginning to clump around the blade.

Press the dough gently but evenly over the bottom but not up the sides of the pan. You’re not trying to pack it down; you’re just lightly tamping it.

If the plums are very small (under 2 inches in diameter), cut them in half and remove the pits. Cut larger plums into quarters or sixths, removing the pits. Leaving a margin of ½ inch around the edge of the pan, arrange halved plums cut side up over the dough, with a little space between each one. Arrange wedges skin side up – they look nice that way after baking – and press them lightly into the dough, so that they won’t turn onto their sides in the oven.

Bake until the pastry is puffed, deep golden brown at the edges, and a lighter shade of golden brown in the center, about 50 to 55* minutes. Transfer to a rack to cool for 10 minutes. Then loosen and remove the rim of the pan, and cool further. Serve warm or at room temperature.

Note: This tart keeps at room temperature for a few days, but its texture is best on the first day.

* UPDATED on November 3, 2010: A number of readers have reported that 50 to 55 minutes was too long in their ovens, and that their tarts were burnt. To be on the safe side, set your timer for 35 to 40 minutes, and keep an eye on it.

Yield: 6 to 8 servings

A quiet soup

That was not the week I planned to have. Whoa.

A week ago yesterday, I went to bed like I do every night. I read “Shouts & Murmurs” in the New Yorker and wondered, as usual, why it wasn’t very funny. I set my glasses on top of the stack of books on my bedside table and then retrieved them when they fell, as usual, and slid behind the table. I felt pretty normal - which is to say, I didn’t feel abnormal. Until I woke up at 3:30 in the morning, feeling nauseous, and spent the next four days on the couch, trying to get down a glass of Gatorade. You know you’re very sick when even a nature documentary about the deep oceans - a nature documentary narrated by Sir David Attenborough, whom you adore, and whose voice is a known soporific - feels like too much for your fragile senses. I was very sick. I have now returned to the land of the living, and that’s all I want to say about that. Anyone for soup?



A red lentil soup, namely, from a new cookbook by Melissa Clark? It’s what I’ve been living on for three days now. Melissa Clark writes the terrific column “A Good Appetite” in the New York Times, and I’ve never made a recipe of hers that I didn’t like. She knows what’s what. A version of this soup first ran in her column almost three years ago, and I remember reading about it then, though it took me until this week to try it. I was looking for something soothing to eat, and her book was nearby, so I opened it to the table of contents, and right away, I saw it: Red Lentil Soup with Lemon. It looked reassuringly simple, without a lot of flash or spice - only cumin, black pepper, a little cayenne, lemon, and a restrained garnish of olive oil. And then I remembered that my friend Winnie had mentioned that same recipe to me a few months ago, in the spring, after a long winter of making soup. She said that it was one of her standbys, that it got everything right, and that it called for a dab of tomato paste, a dab that was brilliant and made it sing. Now that I’ve made it, I have to agree.



I only wish I had thought to put chopped cilantro on top before I took this picture. I also wish I had not drizzled the olive oil in a shape reminiscent of a snake closing in on seven unsuspecting mice. At any rate, make this soup.

I’ve made a lot of lentil soups - including one that will be in my column in Bon Appétit in December, so keep an eye out - but I’ve never made a specimen quite like this. Most lentil soups fall into one of two categories: Highly Spiced, or Not Spiced (sometimes called Bland). This one sits happily in the middle. It manages to be both mellow and full of flavor. The cumin chips in nicely, and the lemon helps close the deal, but it’s still a quiet soup, delicate and refined, every note in its place. I can’t say for sure how it works, but I think Winnie was right: tomato paste is the key. Clark ingeniously cooks it in with the onions and garlic, so it sizzles and intensifies and goes sweet-smelling, and though you can’t pick out its flavor in the finished soup, it lends some umami to the mix. All told, it’s the kind of thing you might want to pair with a few crackers and some aged cheddar, the type that crumbles when you slice it. It also screams for a beer. It says October.



Red Lentil Soup with Lemon
Adapted slightly from In the Kitchen with a Good Appetite, by Melissa Clark

I had some Aleppo pepper in the spice drawer, and I decided to use it in place of the cayenne. It’s not as spicy, but it brings a lot of fragrance, and it was a good match for the flavors of this soup. So if you’ve got it, use it.

I should note, too, that I forgot to stir the cilantro into the soup, and instead I used it as a garnish. I liked the look of it, though I might try stirring it in next time, since that’s what Melissa Clark intended.

4 Tbsp. olive oil, plus additional good oil for drizzling
2 large yellow onions, chopped
4 garlic cloves, minced or pressed
2 Tbsp. tomato paste
2 tsp. ground cumin
½ tsp. kosher salt, or more to taste
A few grinds of freshly ground black pepper
Pinch of cayenne or Aleppo pepper, or more to taste
2 quarts chicken or vegetable broth
2 cups red lentils, picked through for stones and debris
2 large carrots, peeled and diced
Juice of 1 lemon, or more to taste
1/3 cup chopped fresh cilantro

In a large pot, warm the oil over medium-high heat until hot and shimmering. Add the onions and garlic and cook until golden, about 4 minutes. Stir in the tomato paste, cumin, salt, pepper, and cayenne, and cook for 2 minutes longer. Add the broth, 2 cups water, the lentils, and the carrots. Bring to a simmer, then partially cover the pot and reduce the heat to maintain a gentle simmer. Continue to cook until the lentils are soft, about 30 minutes. Taste, and add more salt if necessary. Using an immersion or regular blender, puree about half of the soup. It should still be somewhat chunky, not completely smooth. Reheat if necessary, then stir in the lemon juice and cilantro. Serve the soup drizzled with good olive oil and dusted very lightly with cayenne, if desired.

Yield: 6 to 8 servings

We tell stories

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about words, and about the way we tell stories. Today, I wanted to share some of the things that have been making me think.



I started listening to Radiolab as a way to pass the time while I walk the dog, because he needs a lot of walking, and now I listen because I’m crazy for it. It’s part science, part philosophy, and part sound editing wizardry, but mostly, it’s good storytelling. Jad Abumrad and Robert Krulwich, its hosts, spin the kind of stories that lure you away to somewhere else, and when you drop back into yourself, you realize that you’ve been staring into space, grinning like a dope, through the entire show.



I’m particularly fond of Animal Minds, Words, Oops, the love story of Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan that begins at approximately 14:45 of This Is Your Brain on Love, and Musical Language. If you’re short on time, start with this last, and listen to only the first five minutes. I was so tickled by it, and tickled really is the word to use, that I laughed out loud on the sidewalk in front of a stranger’s house, me and the dog and some crows.




There’s also a video that goes with Words, and after you listen, you should watch it. They go together so well.



The video made me think of my friend Brian’s blog. Brian is a great observer of everyday life, and he records those observations in photographs, which he then stitches together in a way that, whether he means to or not, quietly tells a story. If you don’t already know his work, you might start here. It’s a story I could spend a lot of time in.

Have a great day.

Before you know it

Somewhere, a woman named Corentine is serving leeks vinaigrette for dinner. It’s been ten years, but I know it.


Corentine was my host mother in Paris, the year that I was 21 and studying abroad. She had the most magnificent name I had ever heard and something a little Jane Birkin, just a little, about her looks. Whenever someone asks me how I learned to cook or how I got into food, I usually credit my parents, but I should also credit Corentine. She and I didn’t have a lot in common, but food was enough, and we seized it. I ate at her table for six months, and she taught me what she thought I should know. She taught me how to eat cheese, how to make vinaigrette from scratch, and how to shell and snap the head from a whole cooked shrimp. She also taught me how to peel an apple in one long, curling, ribbon-like strip, which, it turns out, I still cannot actually do. Perhaps most importantly, she taught me that a plain butter cake with pears, served on a very cold night, can feel like some kind of miracle. She also taught me about leeks. Poireaux, she said.

I’d never thought about leeks before. I’m sure I grew up eating them in things, and certainly in potato leek soup, but I’d never paid attention. I’d certainly never eaten them the way she served them: on their own, as poireaux vinaigrette, steamed to a degree of doneness best described as pleasantly comatose and then sent out on a platter, towing a gravy boat of vinaigrette closely behind. She had two little boys, ages seven and nine, or maybe nine and eleven, I can’t remember, and they used to fight over the sweet white part closest to the root. I couldn’t believe that they actually seemed to know something about vegetable anatomy, much less cared enough to call dibs. I couldn’t believe how much I liked those leeks.



Behold: a mess of leeks vinaigrette, with emphasis on mess. (Corentine’s plating was much neater - as, for the record, was her hair.) I can’t believe it’s taken me this long to write about this dish. In the abstract, and particularly said aloud, its name sounds like some sort of unusual plumbing problem, but leeks vinaigrette is a classic, a very common first course in French kitchens. You’ve probably heard of it. Maybe you’ve tried it. It’s one of those concepts that slips quietly into your repertoire, and before you know it, ten years have gone by, and you’ve forgotten the ages of the sons of the woman who taught it to you, and you’re about to turn 32, not 22, and still, you’re making that dish. I’m still making leeks vinaigrette. Sometimes as often as once a week.

Leeks are harvested year-round in some places, but I usually think of them as a cooler weather vegetable. (In the summer, if the temperature gets too hot, they can wind up with thick, woody cores.) They showed up at the farmers’ market here a few weeks ago, and I pounced on them. They’re still young and skinny, about the same diameter as a bottle cap, and they’re very sweet, which makes them ideal for simple preparations like leeks vinaigrette. We put them on the menu for our family dinner at Delancey on August 31, and with the help of our friend Olaiya, who was cooking with us that night, we tried something a little different.



Usually I would just steam the leeks, blot them to get rid of excess water, and then lay them out on a plate and drizzle them with dressing, à la Corentine. But this time, we decided to boil them in big pots of salted water, both to cook them faster - we had 40 people to feed - and to infuse them with some seasoning. Then, while they were still hot, we tossed them with a good amount of vinaigrette, hoping that they would absorb it as they cooled. Rather than tasting like plain leeks topped with vinaigrette - which tastes fine; don’t get me wrong - these tasted like a third, even finer thing: leeks fused with vinaigrette, leeksandvinaigrette, rich and saucy. We served them warm, topped with a little more vinaigrette, chopped hard-boiled egg, and chopped bacon, and it was so good, so properly early fall-like, that I made it again yesterday. Only without the egg and bacon, because I got lazy. Either way, I think you’ll like it.


Leeks vinaigrette

I’ve written this recipe with wiggle room on the quantities of vinegar and mustard, and you should feel free to tweak it to your liking. It’s hard to go wrong, and anyway, your vinegars, oils, and leeks may taste different from mine. Whatever you do, it’s important to use a good, strong mustard for this dressing. I like the brands Edmond Fallot, Roland Extra Strong, and Beaufor. Keep in mind, too, that once a jar of mustard has been opened, it slowly loses its potency, so if you’ve had your jar for a while, you might want to invest in a new one.

2 to 3 Tbsp. white wine vinegar
1 to 2 tsp. Dijon mustard
¼ tsp. salt, or more to taste
6 Tbsp. olive oil
1 small to medium shallot, minced
2 lb. small leeks (about 7 or 8)

Optional garnishes:
Finely chopped bacon
Finely chopped hard-boiled egg

In a small bowl, whisk together 2 tablespoons white wine vinegar, 1 teaspoon mustard, and salt. Gradually whisk in the olive oil, mixing until emulsified. Taste. This dressing should be fairly bright, and the mustard flavor should come through, but not too powerfully. Adjust as needed with vinegar, mustard, and/or salt. When you’re happy with it, add the shallots, whisking to blend. Set aside. Be sure to taste it again later, just before tossing it with the leeks, so that if necessary, you can adjust it according to their flavor.

Lay a clean kitchen towel on the counter near the stove. Bring a large pot of water to a boil, and salt it well. It should taste like sea water.

While the water comes to a boil, prepare the leeks. Trim away the hair-like roots, but take care not too cut in too far; you want the leek to stay intact. Cut off and discard the dark green leafy parts, leaving just the white and pale green stalk. Starting about 1 inch from the root end, so as to keep the white part intact, cut lengthwise down the middle of the leek. (If you were to splay the cut leek open, it should look like a stubby Y.) Wash the leeks well under running water, flushing any dirt from between the layers. Boil until they are very, very tender and yield easily to a knife. Their color will become muted, and they may be falling apart a little. That’s okay. To be sure they’re done, taste one: it should taste sweet, with no trace of raw flavor. The amount of time that this will take depends on their size, but it will probably take longer than you think. Ten minutes is a good bet.

Draining the leeks as well as you can, transfer them to the kitchen towel on the counter. Blot and press them dry. (Don’t burn yourself!) While they’re still hot, put them in a bowl, and toss them with a generous amount of the dressing. Allow to cool at least slightly before serving.

Serve warm or at room temperature, with more dressing spooned on top and a pinch or two of salt. If you want to make it a little fancier, garnish with bacon and/or chopped egg.

Yield: 3 to 4 servings (as a side dish or first course)

What this summer felt like

Labor Day sneaked up on us.



We fell asleep last night with the windows open, and this morning, there was a chill in the house. I know I’m not supposed to say it, but I think something is changing.



When I think about this summer, these are the pictures I want to think about. They’re what this summer felt like.



I’ve taken a lot of ferry rides.



I’ve eaten a lot of melon. I’ve eaten a lot of strawberries.



I’ve eaten fried chicken and lemon icebox cake and zucchini. I’ve been eaten by a lot of mosquitos.



I’m ready.

Happy Labor Day.

But then

I can’t believe we haven’t talked about berry cobbler yet. August 27, and we haven’t talked about berry cobbler. I’ve got to fix that.



For a long time, I didn’t get terribly excited about cobbler. I think you’re either a cobbler person or a crisp person, the same way that you’re either a cake person or a pie person. My mother is a crisp person, and that’s what I grew up eating. I can be swayed by crumbles as well, mostly because they’re often indistinguishable from crisps, and also because crumble is such a nice word for a dessert. It sounds exactly like it tastes. (On a side note: did you know that French speakers pronounce it crum-bell? It’s awesome. I’m pretty sure Crum Bell is related to Tinker Bell, only she dresses a lot frumpier.) But more generally, in the matter of cobbler versus crisp, I lean consistently in the direction of crisp. It’s hard to beat anything involving streusel.

But then.


I met my friend Hannah a few years ago, and one day not long after, one completely normal day that was not even remotely near my birthday or any other holiday or special occasion, she gave me a copy of Chez Panisse Desserts. It was a first-edition copy, no less, a hardcover with the original Wayne Thiebaud jacket! I still feel a little faint when I think about it. Hannah didn’t know this at the time, but I had learned about Wayne Thiebaud in high school, and I loved his work so much that I bought a Wayne Thiebaud calendar and a Wayne Thiebaud day planner and spent most of a semester attempting to imitate him, outlining the objects in my paintings with thick, brightly colored strokes, and as a result, making a lot of regrettable artwork that now resides in a landfill somewhere. I loved Wayne Thiebaud. I loved this cookbook.

It had been her grandmother’s, Hannah told me. When Hannah was a kid, she used to spend weekends at her grandmother’s house. Sometimes she would try on her grandmother’s jewelry, and sometimes they would sit on the couch together, Hannah’s head on her grandmother’s lap, watching Julia Child, or Doctor Who, or golf. Hannah tells me that her grandmother would scratch her back as long as she wanted without ever complaining, which, as everybody knows, is the universal sign of a first-rate person. Sometimes the two of them would cook together. Hannah’s grandmother would stand her up at the kitchen counter on an upturned two-gallon bucket and let her help to measure, pour, and stir. Her grandmother had a huge collection of cookbooks, and I think Hannah would like me to put special emphasis on the adjective huge. It was huuuuuge. A few years ago, her grandmother began getting rid of some of her possessions, making her life a little smaller, and she told Hannah that she should take some of the cookbooks. Hannah went through the titles and, naturally, took home a stack of Julia Child books. She also spotted Chez Panisse Desserts, and she thought I might be able to do some good with it. So she took it home, and then she gave it to me. I keep it on the shelf next to the stove, and whenever I see it, I think of Hannah’s grandmother. I will probably never meet her, but I like to think that we know each other now somehow, that we’re connected in some small way. I wonder if she is a cobbler person or a crisp person.



A couple of weeks ago, I had a surplus of berries lying around and felt like baking. I pulled out Chez Panisse Desserts. I opened it up to the berry chapter, and the first recipe was for a simple cobbler. I guess I could have kept looking, poking around for a crisp or a cake or something else, but this cobbler sounded right. It sounded honest, not at all flashy, just a biscuit-like dough enriched with butter and cream, baked over sugared berries. There were no unusual flavorings or spices or flours or grains. I liked that. I liked that it was confident in its simplicity. So I tried it.

I know there are a million recipes out there for cobbler, and that what the world probably wants is some kind of new and different spin on the concept, but that’s not what this recipe is about. It doesn’t reinvent anything, and it’s not going to tie your shoes for you. That’s not what it’s meant to do. It’s meant to be an excellent cobbler, and it is. The topping is both light and rich, the way a good biscuit should be, and the fruit is only gently sweetened, its juices barely bound up with a spoonful of flour. It gets everything right. You could serve it warm with a splash of cold cream, or you could eat it warm with nothing, and the next day, you can stand at the counter and eat it from the pan, the way I did. In return, it made a cobbler person of me.


***

Quick housekeeping:
This Tuesday night, August 31, we’re cooking a "family dinner" at Delancey. It’s a multi-course, family-style, prix-fixe meal with matching wines, and there are still a few seats left! You can find more information and buy a ticket at Brown Paper Tickets. We’d love to cook for you.

***


Berry Cobbler
Adapted from Chez Panisse Desserts, by Lindsey R. Shere

Lindsey Shere was Chez Panisse’s original pastry chef, and I love her style. She approaches even the simplest desserts with elegance and great precision. This cobbler is a good example of that.

The original version of this recipe calls for boysenberries, blueberries, and raspberries. I make it with roughly 3 cups of blueberries and 1½ cups of raspberries, and I love the flavor that results. I think I’ll be sticking with that combination for a while, although I might be tempted to work in some blackberries. The only berries that don’t work so nicely here are strawberries. The texture gets weird: spongy and slimy, a little reminiscent of a jellyfish. Oh, and if you’re using frozen berries, I recommend thawing them at least partially, or else they take a little longer to cook.

For fruit:
4½ cups berries of your choice, fresh or frozen
1/3 cup sugar
1 to 1½ Tbsp. all-purpose flour

For cobbler dough:
1½ cups all-purpose flour
3/8 tsp. table salt
1½ Tbsp. sugar
2¼ tsp. baking powder
6 Tbsp. cold unsalted butter
¾ cup whipping cream

Preheat the oven to 375°F.

Toss the berries with the sugar and flour. Use the larger amount of flour if the berries are very juicy. Set aside.

In a medium bowl, combine the dry ingredients for the cobbler dough. Using your fingers or a pastry blender, cut in the butter until the mixture looks like coarse cornmeal. Add the cream and mix lightly, until the dry ingredients are just moistened. [You can prepare the dry ingredients and butter up to a few days ahead, storing it in the refrigerator. The cream should not be added until you’re ready to bake.]

Put the berry mixture into a 1½-quart baking dish. Scoop up lumps of dough and form into rough patties, 2 to 2½ inches in diameter and about ½ inch thick. I find that the dough is a little sticky, so it helps to moisten my hands with a little water. Arrange the dough patties on top of the berries. Bake for 35 to 40 minutes, or until the topping is set and lightly browned and the berry juices bubble thickly around the edges of the dish.

Serve warm, with cream to pour over.

Note: This cobbler keeps well at room temperature for about two days. (I don’t like to refrigerate it, because the texture of the topping changes.) Rewarm it gently, if you want, before serving.

Yield: 4 to 6 servings