From now on

Our friend Ben was here last week. He arrived on Thursday, just in time for lunch, and flew out early Tuesday morning.  Even June misses him, I think.  She got into the habit of standing at the top of the basement stairs - our guest room is down there, a dungeon with red deep-pile carpet and faux wood paneling and an enormous oil furnace that’s as loud as a train - and yelling, Beh! Beh! Beh! until he came upstairs. We all agree that his trip was too short, but he did stay long enough to play a ukulele duet with Brandon, to get a kiss from June, to make me a Boulevardier and a great steak, to help us host a giant holiday party at Delancey and Essex for a chef friend and the staff of her four restaurants, and to eat the majority of a quart of sweet-hot spiced nuts that I made the night before he arrived.

I wasn’t planning to post about these nuts. I figured you’re probably all Christmas-baking-ed out, or maybe you already have a spiced nut recipe that you like, or, I don’t know, who really eats spiced nuts? This admission will no doubt mark me as an empty, soulless person, but I always thought of spiced nuts as the kind of holiday gift you don’t actually eat.  Right? No? You admire the packaging, and you’re touched that someone gave them to you, but you never actually feel moved to eat them?  I only made this recipe because I did my holiday baking this year with my niece Hillary, and she suggested it. Hillary is an excellent cook and eater, and I knew she wouldn’t lead me astray. So we made a double batch, and a week later, my half has been entirely eaten. From now on, I defer to Hillary.

Of course, because I didn’t plan to write about them, I only thought to photograph the nuts once they were almost gone, at a moment when I was eating a fistful of them out of a plastic storage container while standing next to the sink piled with dirty dishes, drinking an afternoon cup of PG Tips. Still, I hope you get the idea: they’re toasty and crunchy, coated with a crackly layer of caramelized sugar and spices and just enough salt to land them on the savory side of the fence, and though they’re intended to be eaten with a cocktail, they go with anything. PG Tips. Plain water. Boozed-up egg nog. Saliva. Between me and Ben - I’m not sure Brandon even got to taste them - we ate so much that I could only give them to a couple of friends before they disappeared.

The recipe comes from the bar at Gramercy Tavern. Hillary lived in New York until recently, and she had eaten them there and remembered how good they were. So she dug up the recipe online, and between my spice drawer and a trip to the store for nuts, we pulled together the ingredients.  The nuts are easy to make: you stir together sugar, salt, cumin, cinnamon, cayenne, ginger, black pepper, and nutmeg, and then you stir that mixture into a bowl of almonds, pecans, and cashews, along with a little simple syrup, a little oil, and the smallest amount of corn syrup. (Not to be confused with high-fructose corn syrup - though if you don’t want to use corn syrup at all, I’ll bet honey would be a fine substitute.) If you taste the spiced nuts in their raw state, you will probably not be pleased: they are much spicier before you bake them than after. (And if anyone can explain why that is so, I would be grateful.) They are spicy(!!!) spiced nuts. But once the spices toast and meld with the sugar and the mixture turns to caramel, the heat fades to a humming warmth, and the sugar and salt strike an amicable balance, and then, boom, they’re gone.


Gramercy Tavern Bar Nuts
Adapted from Mix Shake Stir, by Danny Meyer

This recipe uses two different kinds of salt. I don’t know why, although I’m guessing that the different salts coat the nuts differently? In any case, my kosher salt is Diamond Crystal brand, and that’s important to note, because it’s significantly less salty than Morton brand kosher salt. If you have Morton (or another brand), you’ll want to use much less than the 1 tablespoon this recipe calls for. I’d suggest about 1 ½ teaspoons.

Also, to make simple syrup, combine equal parts sugar and water in a small saucepan, bring to a simmer, stir until the sugar dissolves, and then take it off the heat and allow it to cool.  (To be honest, though, I didn’t allow mine to cool; I made it just before using and only cooled it for a few minutes.)

Last, the original version of this recipe uses volume measurements, and I forgot to convert them to weight measurements when I made it.  I know, I know; I usually give you both types of measurements, and I, myself, prefer weight. I am sad. Apologies.

1 cup raw almonds
3 tablespoons turbinado sugar
1 tablespoon kosher salt
1 ¼ teaspoons fine sea salt
2 ¼ teaspoons ground cumin
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon cayenne pepper
¾ teaspoon ground ginger
½ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
¼ teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg
2 cups pecan halves
1 ¼ cup cashews
¼ cup (2 fluid ounces) simple syrup (see headnote)
1 ½ teaspoons light corn syrup
1 tablespoon grapeseed oil, or another oil with a similarly high smoke point

Preheat the oven to 300˚F.

Spread the almonds on a rimmed baking sheet, and bake until lightly toasted and fragrant, about 10 minutes. Immediately transfer to a plate, and set aside to cool.

While the almonds toast, make the spice mix. Combine the sugar, salts, cumin, cinnamon, cayenne, ginger, black pepper, and nutmeg in a small bowl. Stir to mix.

Reduce the oven temperature to 275˚F.  Line a rimmed baking sheet with parchment paper.

In a large bowl, combine the almonds, pecans, and cashews. Toss to mix. Add the simple syrup, corn syrup, and grapeseed oil, and stir to coat the nuts. Add the spice mix, and toss gently until the nuts are evenly coated.  Spread on the prepared baking sheet.  Bake until the spice mixture is caramelized and the nuts are toasted, about 25-40 minutes. To check for doneness, take a few nuts out of the oven and let cool for a few minutes; if done, they should be dry to the touch.

Cool completely; then store in an airtight container. (The original recipe says that the nuts should keep at room temperature for a week, but I’d guess that they’ll keep longer than that.  Two weeks, easy.)

Yield: about 4 cups

Their good work

Hello again! If I don’t write a post tonight, I will have to do my real work, which is to read the final proofs of Delancey before it goes to print, and that is a terrifying prospect. So!  La la laaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

As it happens, combing through files of old film photos is also a great way to avoid work - and I can use the photos here! Behold: somewhat ancient photos that have nothing at all to do with this post!

But more to the point: as I wrapped some Christmas presents the other evening, I found myself thinking about how much I enjoy the gift guides that crop up online every December. I can easily feel overwhelmed by exhortations to BUY STUFF!!!, but I always appreciate helpful ideas and good things shared by people I trust. To that end, I sort of want to share my own small guide, something I’ve never done before.  Is it too late for a gift guide?  Maybe you’ve already checked off your entire list?  In case you haven’t, what follows is a selection of the things I am most excited about this year, many of them handmade - and some even made here in Seattle, by friends of ours. I hope you’ll find it useful. This time of year makes me feel very lucky to know so many creative, enterprising people, both in Seattle and through the Internet, and I feel even luckier to have this space to share their good work.

- A couple of months ago, I started taking pottery classes at Pottery Northwest, which I highly (highly!) recommend, and I noticed that some of the potters there were wearing fantastic aprons, Japanese-style aprons that criss-cross in the back and have nice, big pockets in front.  I asked one of them about hers, and she told me that she’d bought it on Etsy, from a company called Kanso Aprons. I came home and immediately ordered one in black denim, and I’ve worn it almost constantly since. (If you think I exaggerate, ask my spouse. I am INTO this apron.) It’s easy to put on - it slips over your head; no ties - and can be thrown in the washing machine with everything else, and it doesn’t pull at the back of your neck the way other aprons do.

- Over Thanksgiving, we visited my cousin Jason and his family in Tahoe, and Jason got me hooked on using an Aeropress to make coffee.  Now, listen: I have plenty of good ways to make coffee at home - a Chemex, a little pour-over dripper, even an old espresso machine that Brandon gave me a couple of years ago - but these days, I often find myself making coffee verrrrrry early in the morning, and with only one arm (while holding a certain June with the other), and I need it to be easy. Aeropress is easy. I love Aeropress. I find it more consistent, and more consistently delicious, than Chemex or pour-over. And if I try (and fail) to make a drinkable espresso one more time with a baby on my hip, one of us is going to cry. Actually, both of us.

- Our dearly dreadlocked friend Rachel Marshall makes the best ginger beer on Earth, and she’s just begun selling it online and shipping nationally. (!)  Rachel was once a server at Delancey, and before her ginger beer went huge, she used to make it in the Delancey kitchen on days when we were closed, using just fresh ginger, fresh lemons, organic sugar, and water.  It’s bright, lemony, not too sweet, and spicy enough to clear your sinuses, and I LOVE IT.

- Our friend Ricardo makes beautiful sea salt from water that he hand-harvests (!) from Strait of Juan de Fuca, off the west side of Whidbey Island. His salt, which he sells under the name Admiralty Salt, has a pure, clean flavor and is delicate and flaky the way Maldon salt is. Ricardo used to cook at Delancey, and we’re proud to use his salt. You can buy it by contacting him through the Admiralty Salt website.

- Our friend Megan makes Marge Granola, the best granola I know of. My favorite flavor is the Original, with pecans and cranberries, but you can’t go wrong with any of them.  And the packaging is nice enough to make a pretty gift. (Word up, Our Man Sam!) I gave Marge granola to a number of people on my list last year.

- June’s favorite book is currently Rah, Rah, Radishes, which was a first-birthday gift from the Amster-Burtons. Whenever she sees it, she says, "Rrrr rrrr ruh," and I take that as a strong endorsement. I should, however, warn you that, after reading this book only once, you will spend the rest of your life with "Rah, rah, radishes, red and white / Carrots are calling. Take a bite!" stuck in your head.

- I learned about TableTopics (Family Edition) from my friend Lecia, and I like it so much that I’m giving it to two families on my list this year.

- Once, while visiting a friend who was living in London, I bought a small white enamel saucepan at Labour and Wait, and even though it really is very small and is technically intended, I think, for warming milk, I use it nearly every day, for everything.  I use to to cook small amounts of pasta or frozen peas for June. I use it to warm soup for my lunch.  I use it to brown butter, because the white enamel surface allows me to easily gauge the butter’s color. It might be my favorite single piece of cooking equipment. And the other day, I saw one exactly like it (except pale blue, not white) at Provisions, Food52’s online shop. Wahooooo! Here it is, what they are calling a blue enamel porridge pot. Whatever you call it, it’s great.

- Last but not least, this year I’m giving a number of gift certificates to favorite restaurants, mostly small, independently owned places, the kind that I like best.  I like the idea of giving someone an experience, and who doesn’t want a nice meal out, one that’s already (at least partially) paid for? So far, our family and friends are getting gift certificates to Contigo, State Bird Provisions, Buvette, and Dirt Candy. (I should also add that Delancey and Essex now have a brand-new, fancy-schmancy, letterpressed gift certificate. Again, word up, Sam! And Lisa!)

And with that, I think I’m finished spoiling all of my holiday surprises.  I hope you’re having a great weekend.

Approximately a soup

First: RING THE BELLS! I HAVE A NEW CAMERA! Here at Wizenberg-Pettit World Headquarters, we are excited. And grabby.

Second: we are also into soup, apparently, which is why I’m going to tell you about yet another, our third soup in a row. I am so, so sorry.

This particular soup, however, is only approximately a soup. I don’t know that I would have even thought to call it a soup, actually, except for the fact that its author, the wonderful, recently departed Marcella Hazan, called it that. She called it Rice and Smothered Cabbage Soup. To me, it’s closer to a risotto, a risotto that starts with an entire head of Savoy cabbage, shredded and cooked very gently in plenty of olive oil, until it gives up the fight and goes sweet and tender and limp as a rag. (I am simile-impaired tonight. Limp as... the arm of a sleeping person? Limp as... soft as... a pile of silk ribbon? Ribbon that you can cook with rice and broth and then eat?) This soup exemplifies one of the best lessons I’ve learned from Italian food: namely, that cooking vegetables for a long time, until they fall apart, or nearly fall apart - what we non-Italians might wrongly call overcooking vegetables - works like no other method to draw out their intrinsic sweetness and deepest, fullest flavor. (Another good example of this is my friend Francis’s eggplant pasta sauce, which, if you haven’t yet made, do.)

I first learned about this recipe almost six years ago, from Luisa, who posted it on her site.  I made it not long after, and I considered writing about it here, but I figured that was probably redundant.  So I quietly kept making it and not telling you about it.  I made it most recently last Saturday night, after a day spent traveling home from our family Thanksgiving celebration (accidentally leaving behind our stroller on the steps of my cousin’s house in California! Losing our off-site airport parking stub! Craning our necks to find our car as the kind, young shuttle driver made loop after loop after loop around the lot!), and Brandon and I sat on the living room floor after June went to bed and ate big bowls of it in front of our first fire of the season, and when we both went back for seconds, I thought, The people need to know.

You can’t really tell that it’s a soup up there under that small mountain of grated Parmesan, but that’s for the best, because it’s not the most handsome soup around. The cabbage is cooked for almost two hours, long enough that its color comes to approximate that of a canned pea. But. You take that cabbage and cook it some more, now with broth and rice. (This part only takes about twenty minutes, so if you made the cabbage ahead of time (it freezes well), it’s almost an instant dinner. Instant-ish.) And when the rice is tender and the soup is thick and steaming and has a bolstering, reassuring look about it, you stir in some butter and Parmesan, and then, if you live in our house, you eat it with more Parmesan on top.


Rice and Smothered Cabbage Soup
Adapted slightly from Marcella Hazan’s Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking

This soup is very thick, but not quite as thick as risotto.  You could, in theory, eat it with a fork, but you’ll want to use a spoon.

I should also add that I didn’t make my broth from scratch.  I used Better Than Bouillon Organic Chicken Base, my store-bought standby.

1 batch Smothered Cabbage (see below)
2 cups (475 ml) chicken or beef broth
1 cup (235 ml) water, and maybe more
2/3 cup (about 135 grams) Arborio rice
2 Tbsp. (28 grams) unsalted butter
About 1/3 cup (roughly 1 heaping handful) freshly grated Parmesan cheese, plus more for serving
Kosher salt
Freshly ground lack pepper

In a good-size pot (about 4 quarts), combine the cabbage, the broth, and 1 cup of water, and bring to a boil over medium-high heat. Stir in the rice, and then lower the heat so that the soup bubbles at a slow but steady simmer. Cook uncovered, stirring occasionally, until the rice is tender but firm to the bite, about 20 minutes. If you find that the soup is becoming too thick, add a little water. The soup should be pretty dense, but there should still be some liquid.

When the rice is done, turn off the heat, and stir in the butter and the grated Parmesan. Taste, and correct for salt. Serve with black pepper and more Parmesan.

Yield: 4 to 6 servings - and try to save some for later, because these leftovers make a lunch worth looking forward to.

***

Smothered Cabbage, Venetian Style
Adapted very slightly from Marcella Hazan’s Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking

1 small yellow onion, chopped
½ cup (120 ml) olive oil
1 (~2-pound / 1 kg) Savoy or green cabbage, quartered, cored, and very thinly sliced
2 or 3 large garlic cloves, chopped
Kosher salt
Freshly ground black pepper
1 Tbsp. white or red wine vinegar

Put the onion and olive oil in a Dutch oven (or another pot of approximately the same size), and set over medium heat. Cook and stir until the onion is pale gold, and then add the garlic. Continue cooking until the garlic is fragrant and looks cooked through, a few minutes, and then add the sliced cabbage. Stir a few times to coat the cabbage with oil; then continue to cook until it’s wilted. Add a couple of generous pinches of salt, a grind or two of pepper, and the vinegar. Stir to mix, and then cover the pan and reduce the heat to the lowest setting. Cook, stirring occasionally, for at least 1.5 hours, or until the cabbage is very, very tender. If the pan seems dry at any point, you can add a tablespoon or two of water. When the cabbage is done, taste for salt, and season as needed.

This cabbage can be made a few days ahead of the soup, if needed, and it also freezes nicely.

Please consider

So, how bored will you be if we talk about soup again? Ham Bone, Greens, and Bean Soup? I didn’t set out to write about this one - I made it mostly as a vehicle for a ham bone that I put in our freezer last April, forgot, and then triumphantly unearthed the week before last - but June liked it so much that she did her special high chair "dance," swaying from side to side and grunting, so I changed my mind. Swaying and grunting: strong praise from young June E. A. Pettit! (Also, Swaying and Grunting: what I will call my debut album when I launch my third career as a down-and-out country singer.)

I know that it’s almost Thanksgiving, and that I’m supposed to be talking about cranberries or what to eat with your turkey, and that you and I both have planes to catch and grocery lists to write, but please consider filing away this recipe for the future, a future after the holidays, when you may find yourself with a couple of free hours and a defrosted ham bone that was once lost beneath some frozen bananas. This soup is for a day like that, a cold day when soup is what a person wants to eat, a nice ordinary day. June and I shared a bowl of it one Sunday night, and I ate another bowl while I did payroll on Monday afternoon, and it was so good, so right for right now, that I considered hoarding the rest of the batch. But because no expense is too great for the opportunity to watch June "dance," I let her have it.

The recipe for this soup comes from Melissa Clark and her wonderful book Cook This Now. I was flipping through it recently, and I don’t know what it is, but every recipe she writes sounds fantastic. She’s... bewitching. That’s the word for it.  I read one of her recipe titles, any one of her recipe titles, and I come to a few minutes later, standing in front of the refrigerator. Buckwheat Pancakes with Sliced Peaches and Cardamom Cream Syrup! I don’t like anything but maple syrup on my pancakes - the truth, revealed - but because of Melissa, I will make that damned cardamom cream syrup. And Seared Wild Salmon with Brown Butter Cucumbers!   Fragrant Lentil Rice Soup with Spinach and Crispy Onions!  Ham Bone, Greens, and Bean Soup!!!!!!  My tea this morning might have been stronger than I thought.

This soup is one of those full-meal-in-one-bowl numbers, thick with beans, carrots, celery, onion, cabbage, and kale, with big flavor from the ham bone and some bacon fat.  (You start the recipe by cooking chopped bacon, which you then scoop out and reserve for a garnish while you cook the vegetables in the fat.  As you can imagine, the bacon fat contributes a nice, meaty richness. But if you’d rather skip the bacon step for some reason, I’ll bet you could use olive oil or butter. I should also mention that I forgot to use the bacon garnish and didn’t miss it, possibly because the bacon fat and ham bone were so flavorful.)  The beans wind up tender and creamy, and the broth is sweet and smoky and deeply hammy, but the best part might be the cabbage, which softens until it nearly melts.  I ate mine with a dash of hot sauce, because pork likes a little vinegary heat. If you find yourself with a ham bone, you know what to do.

P.S. Yesterday, Brandon and I shared a bunch of tips for making mashed potatoes over at Food52. Hop to it! And while you’re there, check out the other Thanksgiving tips, too, from Rose Levy Beranbaum, Adam Rapoport, and Andrew Knowlton. Pretty great.
P.P.S. If you need a Thanksgiving cocktail idea, how about, ahem, a Nardini Spritz?


Ham Bone, Greens, and Bean Soup
Adapted very slightly from Melissa Clark’s Cook This Now

What makes this soup different from one that uses, say, ham hocks, is that the marrow in the ham bone melts into the soup, bringing extra richness and body. So if you have a ham bone, use it! You will be rewarded. If not, a ham hock will also be good. My ham bone fit easily into the pot I used, but Melissa Clark suggests that, in general, you ask your butcher to cut it in half or thirds for you, so that it’s guaranteed to fit and also has some marrow exposed.

As for beans, you could probably use any light-colored bean you like. I had a bag of Rancho Gordo’s yellow eye beans in the cupboard, so I used those. (Rancho Gordo beans make a great holiday present, by the way.)  Also, I find that adding a little salt when I soak dried beans makes them turn out better when I cook them, and here’s a video from America’s Test Kitchen that explains why.  I don’t tend to use the full amount of salt that’s called for in the video, but I have, and it worked beautifully.  (I don’t use that much because I tend to forget to rinse the beans after soaking, and then I wind up with salty beans. Using less salt still seems to help, and then there’s no need to rinse.)

1 cup (175 grams) dried pinto beans, or another bean you like
4 strips bacon, cut into ½-inch pieces
3 large carrots, diced
2 celery stalks, diced
1 large yellow onion, diced
3 garlic cloves, finely chopped
1 ham bone (about 1 ¼ lb. / 565 grams)
1 bay leaf
2 teaspoons kosher salt, or to taste
½ head (about ¾ lb. / 340 grams) green cabbage, cored and thinly sliced
1 bunch kale (about ½ lb. / 225 grams), stems removed and leaves chopped into bite-size pieces
Freshly ground black pepper, for serving
Hot sauce, for serving

Twelve to 24 hours before you plan to start the soup, put the beans in a bowl and cover with plenty of cold water. Add a generous pinch of salt. Set aside at room temperature. (Or, if you don’t have that much time, you can instead use a quick-soak method: put the beans, lots of cold water, and a generous pinch of salt in a pot, bring it to a boil, turn off the heat, cover the pot, and let stand for 1 hour. Drain, and then proceed with the recipe.)

Warm a large (about 5-quart) pot over medium-high heat. Add the bacon, and cook until crisp, about 5 to 7 minutes. Remove the bacon with a slotted spoon to a paper towel-lined plate, and save for garnishing the soup. Add the carrots, celery, and onion to the bacon fat in the pan. Cook, stirring, until softened, about 5 minutes. Add the garlic, and cook for 1 minute more.

Put the ham bone and bay leaf into the pot, and add 8 cups water and 2 teaspoons kosher salt. Bring the mixture to a boil over high heat; then add the beans, reduce the heat to medium-low, and simmer for 30 minutes. Stir in the cabbage and simmer for 30 minutes more. At this point, fish out a bean and taste it: it should be nearly done. If it’s still pretty firm, let the soup simmer a bit longer before continuing. Then stir in the kale and simmer until the kale is soft but still bright green, about 15 minutes. Remove the ham bone and bay leaf. If you’d like, you can pull the meat from the ham bone, chop it up, and stir it back into the soup.

Serve with freshly ground black pepper and a dash of hot sauce, and more salt, if needed. (Oh, and crumbled bacon, if you want.)

Yield: 6 to 8 servings

But the soup

Would you look at that! While trying, and failing, to start this post about squash soup, I accidentally ate an entire chocolate chip cookie dough ball from the Delancey walk-in!

Let’s get right to it.

I’ve been wanting to tell you about this soup for more than a week now, but a certain crazy-haired dancing maniac of a young person is getting a molar, or something, and has been waking up veeeerrrrrry early and then spending a large portion of the day crawl-running around the house/park/bathtub/Delancey, panting, grunting, and generally looking and acting a lot like Animal. After she goes to bed, I make myself a drink, warm up some soup, open a book, close the book, and sleep like a dead person.

But the soup! Right. A number of years ago, through this site, I got to know someone named Lisa.  She began as a reader and occasional commenter, and because she’s a very, very good writer, her comments always stood out. Over time, I started to feel like I knew her, and I hope the feeling is mutual.  We’ve never met in person, but we’ve kept in touch in various ways, and she now has her own site, which is where, a couple of weeks ago, I found this recipe for a winter squash soup with curry and coconut milk. I’m sure you already have a standby winter squash soup - I already had two - but this one grabbed me right away: not only does it involve squash, curry, and coconut milk, but it also calls for maple syrup, fish sauce, Sriracha, and lime.

!

I now have three standby winter squash soups.

Of course, the best part - at least in this particular stage of my life - is that I can prep it quickly, bang it all in a pot, cover it, and let it ride alone for half an hour while I recover from parenting Animal. And it only improves over subsequent meals, as soups do.

Happy weekend.


Winter Squash Soup with Curry and Coconut Milk
Adapted from Lisa Moussalli and Better Homes and Gardens

I’ve made this soup twice now, once with kabocha squash and once with butternut. I slightly preferred the flavor of the kabocha, but I liked the texture of the butternut soup. (I also appreciate the fact that butternuts are easier to peel. I would rather throw a kabocha out the window than peel it.) You could use any winter squash, really - though if yours isn’t especially sweet, you might want an additional tablespoon of sweetener. And for the record, you don’t have to use maple syrup; you could try regular sugar, or brown sugar. In any case, taste and adjust as needed before serving.

Oh, and I’ll bet this recipe would doubly nicely.

2 to 3 tablespoons olive oil
1 medium or large yellow onion, chopped
3 or 4 large garlic cloves, minced
1 tablespoon curry powder
1 winter squash (about 2 pounds / 500 g), peeled and cut into 1-inch cubes
1 (14-ounce) can unsweetened coconut milk
2 cups (475 ml) chicken or vegetable broth
1 tablespoon maple syrup
1 tablespoon Asian fish sauce
1 teaspoon Sriracha or other Asian chile sauce
Juicy wedges of lime, for serving

Warm the oil in a Dutch oven (or other approximately 5-quart pot) over medium heat. Add the onions, and cook, stirring, until they begin to soften, about 5 minutes. Add the garlic, and cook for another 1 to 2 minutes. Stir in the curry powder, and cook for 1 minute more. Add the squash, coconut milk, broth, maple syrup, fish sauce, and Sriracha, and stir well. Raise the heat to bring to a boil; then reduce the heat and simmer, covered, until the squash is soft, about 30 to 40 minutes.

Using an immersion blender (or a regular blender), puree the soup until smooth and velvety. Taste for salt and sweetness, and adjust if necessary. (I don’t find that this soup needs any additional salt – it gets a lot from the fish sauce – but you may disagree.) Ladle the soup into big bowls, add a generous squeeze of lime to each, and serve hot.

Yield: about four servings

The days are twice as long

This time last week, I was in a wood stove-heated cottage with no Internet, no telephone, and no television, reading my sixth New Yorker of the day. I am fully caught up with The New Yorker. (!) (!!)  Those words may never again be assembled in that order by me, or by anyone, ever.

Actually, I should already switch tenses: I was caught up with The New Yorker. Briefly. Past tense.

Last week, I had the pleasure of spending two nights at Hedgebrook, a nonprofit retreat for women writers, located on Whidbey Island. It’s an incredible place: just six one-room cabins, a cottage, a farmhouse, a garden, and a couple of woodsheds on 48 acres, dedicated solely giving women the time, space, and quiet to write, free of charge. (!) (!!) At the end of each day, at 5:30 pm, the six or seven writers in residence gather in the farmhouse kitchen to share a meal cooked for them by one of Hedgebrook’s chefs, with ingredients largely harvested from the garden. And afterward, they each take their flashlight and a basket of breakfast makings and lunch and walk back to their cabins in the trees, and no one disturbs them, or comes looking for them, or asks anything of them, and definitely, definitely no one there needs a diaper change or wakes up crying in the middle of the night, and this superlative quiet continues until 5:30 pm the next day, when the writers meet for dinner again, walk home with their baskets again, etc. etc. etc. (!!!)  I try not to use the word magic too often, not unless the topic is actual magic, magical magic. But Hedgebrook has it.

This fall, Hedgebrook is celebrating its 25th birthday, and it has also just released a cookbook of recipes served at the farmhouse table, and because of that, I was offered a stay there, to experience it. I don’t usually do PR stuff; it’s not what I like to write about. But I had heard about Hedgebrook years ago from a photographer friend of my mom’s, and I had thought about applying to be a writer in residence someday, but I was too intimidated to do it. So boarding the ferry for Whidbey Island, I was giddy, electric. It took a full day for my insides to stop vibrating.

I stayed in a cottage called Meadowhouse, which is apparently the same place where Gloria Steinem stays when she goes to Hedgebrook. (!!!!)  Most writers stay at Hedgebrook for two to six weeks. I was there for 48 hours. The time seemed so short that it almost hurt to look at the clock. I spent the first day resisting the urge to make a to-do list and launch into it at breakneck speed. (Shower in the same shower that Gloria Steinem showered in: CHECK! Pee in the same toilet that Gloria Steinem peed in: CHECK! Prod log in wood stove with same wrought iron poker thing that Gloria Steinem prodded log with: CHECK!) But having nothing to do but take care of myself and do my work - whatever that meant, because no one would be keeping score - the hours felt slow, expansive, extra, as though I had gone through a portal and come out in a universe where the days are twice as long.

I learned how to build a fire in my wood stove, and how to keep it burning. I read eight New Yorkers and started Madame Bovary. I took a walk in the woods on the property and another down to the beach. I listened to an owl. I ate two slices of butter cake filled with raspberries. I had two dinners and easy conversation with six other women writers. I slept in. I took pictures. I was temporarily blinded by euphoria and a ray of sunlight and walked into a blackberry bush. I went out to the woodshed and brought in more firewood. I thought about what I might write next, whenever I feel ready to write another book.

Every year, to mark Delancey’s birthday, we donate the evening’s sales to a cause we believe in, and next year, I announced to Brandon, we’re going to give them to Hedgebrook. There aren’t many (any?) other places where a woman can go to be nurtured this way, given food and shelter and supportive peers and space to do creative work, without an exchange of money and regardless of her means. I hope Hedgebrook is still around in another 25 years, and for a long time after that.


Denise’s Fruit-Filled Butter Cake
Adapted from Hedgebrook Cookbook

Denise Barr, one of the cooks at Hedgebrook, served this cake at the first dinner of my stay.  She used fresh raspberries from the garden, and it was so good - simple, buttery, with a damp, nubbly, almost muffin-like crumb - that I dog-eared the recipe later that night. The cookbook calls it a Rhubarb Cake, but you could probably make it with any soft fruit, and when I tasted it, before I saw the recipe in the cookbook, it struck me first as a wonderful butter cake. I hope Denise won’t mind that I tweaked the name. When I made it at home, I thawed out a batch of rhubarb compote that I made last summer and spooned it into the batter, and it was terrific.

1 ½ cup (210 grams) all-purpose flour
3 teaspoons baking powder
¼ teaspoon fine sea salt or table salt
½ cup (120 ml) whole milk
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 stick (113 grams) unsalted butter, at room temperature
1 cup (200 grams) sugar
3 large eggs
2 ½ cups diced rhubarb, blueberries, or raspberries, or 1 batch Dana Cree’s rhubarb compote
2 tablespoons instant tapioca (if using fresh rhubarb or berries)

Preheat the oven to 350°F. Butter and flour an 8-inch square cake pan.

In a small bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, and salt. Pour the milk into a measuring cup or small bowl, and add the vanilla extract. Set aside.


In the bowl of a stand mixer (or with a handheld mixer in a large bowl), beat the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Scrape down the sides of the bowl with a rubber spatula, and then add the eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition. With the mixer on low speed, add the flour mixture and the milk mixture in three doses each, alternating dry and wet. Mix until just combined; then use the rubber spatula to give the batter a brief final mix, to make sure the flour is absorbed.

If you’re using fresh rhubarb or berries, stir the fruit with the tapioca in a small bowl.

Scoop about half of the batter into the prepared cake pan, and spread it across the bottom. Scatter the fruit evenly over the batter – or, if you’re using rhubarb compote, dollop spoonfuls of it evenly over the batter. Do not press the fruit down. Top with the rest of the batter. Don’t worry if the batter doesn’t fully cover the fruit: it will puff and move a bit as it bakes.

Bake for 35 to 40 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Cool before slicing into squares and serving.

Note: This cake is best on the day that it’s made, but wrapped tightly and stored at room temperature, it should be fine for at least a couple of days.

It made an impression

I had to get a new computer last week, one of few life events with the power to make a person feel both elated and completely bankrupt. After I brought it home, while I waited for my blood pressure to stabilize, I combed through the files that had been on my old computer and happened to find a document that I had forgotten, a recipe for a brown sugar clafoutis with pears. BROWN SUGAR CLAFOUTIS! WITH PEARS! I made the clafoutis last week, and again yesterday, and then I hustled over here to tell you about it with an oddly colored iPhone photo of my leftovers.

I had clafoutis for the first time when I was 23. It came to the table in a skillet the size of a salad plate, and where it met the pan, it rose up like an aspiring souffle. It made an impression.

I was working in France that year, teaching English in a public school outside of Paris. It was a very part-time gig with very part-time pay, and most nights, I cooked at home, in the studio apartment I rented in the 11th arrondissement, on a two-burner stove in an alcove between my bed and the front door. My landlord and his wife, who lived next door, told me that they played a game of guessing what I was cooking each night (tomato soup? ratatouille? bizarrely spiced packaged tofu burgers from Naturalia, the health food store?), based on the smells that filtered through the wall between our apartments. But when I was out in the neighborhood, I liked to read the menus of restaurants I passed, and I kept a list of the ones that looked good, for when friends or family came to visit.

My dad came in mid-May - this was 2002 - about two weeks before my work contract was up. Some days, we went to museums and walked around, but on the days when I was working, we would meet up later, for a drink and dinner. He was always waiting for me on the terrace of one of the cafes on Place de la Bastille, waving his book of crossword puzzles to catch my eye, wearing the khaki fly fisherman’s vest that he wore everywhere, even in Paris. We would order glasses of white wine and eat salted peanuts and try to eavesdrop on other patrons, and then we would go somewhere for dinner.

The clafoutis came midway through his stay, at a restaurant called Le Repaire de Cartouche. I had wanted to eat there for months. It was in my neighborhood, a small split-level bistro trimmed in dark wood and faded murals. I had made a reservation for eight o’clock, and we were seated in the upper room. By local standards, we were eating early, and the place was barely awake. The dining room was otherwise populated only by an elderly couple in the corner. The waiter set down a ceramic pot of rillettes and a basket of warm bread, and we ordered a carafe of wine. We both ordered fish, and then we decided to share a rhubarb clafoutis.

I had read about clafoutis in a cookbook, and I knew that it was from south-central France, a cross between a baked pancake, a flan, and a soufflé, usually dotted with cherries. It’s not fancy, and it’s not really restaurant food. It’s grandmother cooking, a dish you serve not to impress people, but to feed them. But here it was on the menu of a bistro in Paris, so we ordered it.

It goes without saying that it was beautiful, the way the custard rose at the edges and rumpled back onto itself. We tore into it. It was creamy but light, the rhubarb stewed nearly to jam.  My father scooted his chair closer to the table, and I don’t think we spoke at all while we ate it, not until the server came to clear away our plates.

I’ve made a lot of clafoutis in the years since, some of them pretty bad. The basic ingredients are milk, eggs, sugar, flour, and fruit, but depending on the proportions, clafoutis can wind up bland, too sweet, or with the textural appeal of a rubber band. Even among the good ones, there are different styles: some are cakey, while others lean closer to custard. I like mine in the custardy vein, with just enough flour to bind the batter.  Actually, you could call the recipe that follows a Brown Sugar Baked Custard with Pears. I started to, but it screwed up my story about the rhubarb clafoutis, so clafoutis it is. You do whatever you want.

Clafoutis seems to have been designed for summer fruit: berries and cherries and sliced stone fruits, anything soft and juicy. In late spring, stewed rhubarb is nice. But I also like to make it in the cold months, with pears. I’ve written before about a clafoutis recipe, and for a while, that was my usual one. It was sweetened with regular granulated sugar, as most are. But a few years ago, I tried an experiment: I had bought a giant bag of brown sugar on sale, and I decided to use it in a clafoutis. Whizzed in the blender, the batter turned the color of coffee with milk, and as it baked, the kitchen smelled like butterscotch. The custard was firm but silky, a texture I want to call squidgy, and had a darker, caramelly sweetness that felt particularly right with pears. It’s nice warm, but if I were you, I’d try to wait until it’s cold - I mean really cold, fridge-cold.  I like it best the morning after it’s baked, actually, as a dessert after breakfast. And now you know all my secrets.

Happy week.

P.S. Go drink a New York Sour.



Brown Sugar Clafoutis with Pears

I use golden brown sugar here, because it’s what I usually have, but if you have dark brown sugar, go ahead and try it. And then let me know how it is.  Also, I know this seems like a lot of sugar, but trust me.

Butter, for greasing the pan
About 2 teaspoons granulated sugar, for dusting the pan
1 large (about 225 to 285 grams, or 8 to 10 ounces) ripe pear
1 ¼ cups (295 ml) whole milk
1 cup (155 g) brown sugar
4 large eggs
1 ½ tsp. vanilla extract
1/8 tsp. fine sea salt or table salt
½ cup (70 grams) all-purpose flour

Preheat the oven to 375°F. Butter a 9 ½-inch pie plate and dust it lightly with granulated sugar. Shake out any excess.

Peel and core the pear, and slice it thinly. (I cut mine into 12 to 14 slices.) Arrange them on the bottom of the prepared pan.

In the jar of a blender, combine the milk through flour. Blend on high speed for 1 minute (stopping once, if needed, to scrape down any flour that may stick to the sides of the jar). Pour the batter over the pears.

Bake until the custard is puffed and golden brown and a tester inserted into the center comes out clean, 30 to 35 minutes. Cool on a wire rack. The custard will deflate a little as it cools.

Serve at room temperature or - my preference - chilled.

Yield: 6 servings