Now you know

I have a confession to make. It probably seems like I live and breathe to cook, right? It probably seems like I never get tired of stirring and whisking and chopping, like I go to sleep at night spooning the refrigerator and wake up each morning to find a skillet under my pillow and a rainbow arcing gently, benevolently, over the stove. But the truth is, there are many days when I would rather do anything than cook. ANYTHING. Like, hit-myself-over-the-head-with-the-aforementioned-skillet anything. Anything.

Lately, I’ve been having a lot of those days. At first, I thought it was because of my recent run of bad recipes. It’s hard to feel terribly excited about spending time in the kitchen after you’ve botched a number of meals in a row. Remember that Great White song, “Once Bitten, Twice Shy?” I sort of feel like that. I am also so overdue for a haircut that I’m starting to look like the lead singer in that video. This can’t lead anywhere good, I fear, especially because I don’t have a pair of leather chaps to complete the look.

But really, I think my problem is even bigger than that. I think my problem is peanut butter. I lose all motivation when there is a jar of peanut butter around. Given an adequate supply of sandwich bread, I will eat peanut butter and jelly sandwiches indefinitely, to the near-complete exclusion of other foods. I might bake something sweet now and then - the occasional cookie or cake, maybe - but otherwise, it’s all peanut butter, all the time. I know this because it’s what my life has been like for approximately a month. I am a sick, sick woman. Now you know.


But Brandon, bless his optimistic heart, apparently believes that I am still capable of redemption, because he staged an intervention last week. He told me, quite simply, that I had to stop buying sandwich bread. I nodded solemnly. Not long after, I successfully made a salad. And yesterday, I made soup, a puréed broccoli soup with a lemony, chive-spiked sour cream to spoon on top. I feel better already. Good enough, even, to foresee another batch in my near future. And after that, I might get my hair cut.

The soup in question is something that I had once intended to include in the book, but I worried that it sounded too boring. I don’t know. Broccoli soup isn’t an easy sell. I had a friend try the recipe, and she loved it - so much so, she reported, that she had to stop herself from eating the lemon-chive sour cream by the spoonful - but still, I was worried. So I yanked it. I moved on. I made other soups, and I sort of forgot about it. But the other day, while leafing through some photographs from a couple of years ago, I found a shot of this soup, and I realized that I missed it. So yesterday, I made it again, and now I don’t know why I ever doubted it. It was delicious.

It’s a pretty quick, simple soup, as these things go. It was inspired by a couple of different recipes: one that I read somewhere for a fairly basic broccoli soup, and one that Brandon found in college, a recipe for a puréed broccoli soup with leek, served with an herbed sour cream. He tells me, incidentally, that it was the first soup he ever puréed. I don’t know how he remembers this kind of stuff. Obviously, the part of my brain that was made to store such things is filled with song lyrics by Great White.

Our joint version starts with some onion and leek and garlic softening in a pot, and then into that goes a decent amount of chopped broccoli, some stock, and the rind from a small piece of Parmesan cheese. It all simmers together for about twenty minutes, during which time you slice some scallions and chives and zest a small lemon. Then you take out a small bowl and stir the scallions and chives and lemon zest into some sour cream, along with a little lemon juice, grated Parmesan, and garlic. By this point, the broccoli should be tender, and the cheese rind should be soft and sticky, and the whole pot should smell fantastic, very savory and fragrant with Parmesan. You pull out the rind, purée the soup, stir in some of the sour cream mixture, and then you serve it with another spoonful of sour cream on top. It’s both mellow and bright, light and rich, soothing in parts and punchy in others, and, I think, ideal lunch material. It’s not peanut butter, but I almost don’t mind.

P.S. I built a little page to list my book signings, and if you haven’t yet seen it, click here. The book comes out next(!) Tuesday(!), and I’ll be at the University Book Store in Seattle that night.



Broccoli Soup with Lemon-Chive Cream

I like this “cream” best when made with sour cream, but I’ve also used plain whole-milk yogurt, and it’s very good that way too. If you do use yogurt, keep in mind that it has less fat than sour cream, so you’ll probably need to add some olive oil to balance the acidity of the lemon. (Or just use less lemon!) I also found that the yogurt-based “cream” needed a pinch of sugar to balance it.

Oh, and should you have some of the sour cream mixture left over, it makes a great dip for potato chips.

For the soup:
1 Tbsp. unsalted butter
1 Tbsp. olive oil
2 medium leeks, white and tender green parts only, sliced
1 small yellow onion, coarsely chopped
3 cloves garlic, coarsely chopped
1 ½ lb. broccoli, both crowns and stems, trimmed and coarsely chopped
5 cups chicken or vegetable stock
1 rind (about 2 inches square) from a piece of Parmesan cheese
¾ tsp. kosher salt, or less if your broth is well salted

For the sour cream:
1 cup sour cream (not low-fat or nonfat)
2 scallions, white and pale green parts only, very thinly sliced
¼ cup minced chives
1 tsp. grated lemon zest
2 Tbsp. fresh lemon juice
½ cup finely grated Parmesan cheese
½ tsp. kosher salt
¼ tsp. pressed or minced garlic

In a small stockpot or Dutch oven, warm the butter and oil over medium heat. Add the leeks and onion, and cook, stirring occasionally, until they have softened and the onion is translucent, about 10 minutes. Add the garlic, and cook for one minute. Add the broccoli, stock, Parmesan rind, and salt, and stir to mix. Bring to a boil, reduce to a simmer, and cook, partially covered, until the broccoli is tender, about 20 minutes.

While the soup cooks, prepare the cream. In a medium bowl, stir together the sour cream, scallions, chives, lemon zest, lemon juice, grated Parmesan, salt, and garlic, mixing until fully combined. Taste, and adjust as necessary.

To finish the soup, remove the Parmesan rind. Using a blender and working in small batches – when puréeing hot liquids, never fill the blender more than one-third full – purée until very smooth. (Alternatively, purée it in the pot with an immersion blender.) Return the soup to the pot, add a few dollops of the cream mixture – I add about 1/3 cup – and stir to incorporate. Taste for seasoning, and adjust as necessary. If needed, rewarm the soup gently over low heat.

Serve the soup with a spoonful or two of the remaining cream on top.

Yield: 4-6 servings

A first-rate mess

On Saturday night, we covered the table with newspaper, dumped out a pile of Dungeness crabs, and made a first-rate mess.


My mother was in town for the long weekend. She’s a champion crab-leg sucker, so to celebrate her visit, we bought three large crabs, cracked and cleaned, and Ben came over, and Brandon put some Django Reinhardt on the stereo, and after a few minutes, the wine bottle was covered with smears of crab and bits of shell, and it was such a good night that, looking at this picture and knowing that the scene is over, balled up and packed into the trash can outside, I feel sort of on the verge of a sob. I also feel immensely relieved that my mother is now back in Oklahoma, where I can’t see her frown when she finds out that I have outed her as a crab-leg sucker.

If I didn’t have relatives in San Francisco, I might never have learned about Dungeness crab. In Oklahoma, we certainly didn’t have any. But in San Francisco, at my mother’s twin sister’s house, we sometimes ate it on Christmas Eve, with sourdough, green beans, white wine, and a roll of paper towels for napkins. When I was eighteen, I decided to go to college there, and though I wasn’t thinking specifically of improving my access to fresh Dungeness crab, the prospect didn’t hurt. Every now and then, I would go to see my aunt over weekends and holidays, and in the winter and early spring, when Dungeness crabs are in season, we would sometimes splurge on a couple for dinner. I liked the whole idea of them: their sweetly saline meat, the ritual of the newspaper on the table and the paper towels in our laps, the casual slurping and the communal mess, the way it all felt so California. I liked to think that, in eating them, I too was California, in a sense. Whatever I was, I wasn’t Oklahoma City anymore. Every time I would drive across the Golden Gate Bridge, I would feel close to squealing, thinking, I LIVE HERE! I never got tired of it.

But eventually I finished college, and I went back to Oklahoma. My father made the drive with me a few days after graduation, and I was so terrified by the thought of leaving San Francisco that I had heartburn for the entire trip. One afternoon, I remember, we pulled over at a rest stop in New Mexico and shared a slice of blackberry pie that we had bought earlier in the day, in Albuquerque. The wind was whipping my t-shirt around like mad, and my chest felt so tight and painful that I was sure, absolutely sure, that I was dying. Once we got to Oklahoma City, I knew, I would be diagnosed with some sort of rare, fatal condition and given only a few months to live, and everyone would take pity on me and send me back to San Francisco, where I would live out my final days in a Victorian with a view of the bay. It would be beautiful and tragic, not only because I was only 22 and had never had a real boyfriend, but also because I would probably die in the summertime, when Dungeness crabs are hard to come by.

But instead, the heartburn went away, and I didn’t die. I had a great summer. My hair was short and spiky, and I had a pink halter top. I met a guy in a grocery store and fell in love, and he made my chest feel tight in a much better way. That fall, I applied to graduate school. I wanted to go to UC Berkeley, but the only school that wanted me was the University of Washington. So I moved to Seattle, and it was here that, shortly after, I learned that Dungeness crabs were named for a town on the coast of Washington State, which is where they were first commercially harvested. Which means, I think, that I was actually supposed to be here, not in San Francisco, all along.

Now when I eat Dungeness crab, I feel very Seattle. Somehow, I never get tired of that either.


Dungeness crab doesn’t need much in the way of a recipe, but I can tell you that it, served with the roasted broccoli from this recipe (minus the shrimp, and use kosher salt, not regular, and don’t forget the finishing squeeze of lemon), a loaf of sourdough, and a bottle of some sort of crisp white wine, makes a dreamy mid-February meal. Just be sure to have a few layers of newspaper on the table, and some lobster picks and nutcrackers, for getting at the meat. If you want, you can also melt some butter - clarified, if you’re fancy - and set that out as a dip. Most importantly, don’t forget to put a couple of paper towels in your lap, or else you’ll have rivulets of crab juice running down your forearms and onto your pants. Actually, that’ll happen no matter what you do, but it’s nice to be able to sop it up occasionally. Otherwise, it gets sort of sticky. If you’re Ben, you’ll also spray crab juice all over the front of your shirt, but that’s a special case.

After dinner, after you’ve rolled up the newspaper and the crab shells inside it and wiped down the table, a batch of chocolate chip cookies becomes important, as does some port or Scotch. And after that, a good, long sleep.


About Dungeness crab

- The season for Dungeness crab runs from November or December through late spring. Many people say that the sweetest crabs are the ones available at the very beginning of the season, but the ones we ate last weekend were pretty delicious too.

- Buy your crab from a vendor you trust, and unless you’re going to go out on a boat and catch it yourself, it’s probably easiest to buy it cooked. (Some markets sell live crabs, but buying a live one is not a guarantee of quality.) Your fishmonger should be happy to clean and crack it for you, so when you get home, you only have to do a little work with a nutcracker to access the meat.

- Buy the crab on the day that you plan to eat it - it doesn’t keep well - and store it in the refrigerator until shortly before serving. I like to let mine sit out for about 20 minutes before eating, so that the meat isn’t too cold.

- If you don’t live on the West Coast (or in a city where fresh crab might be flown in daily), you can mail-order Dungeness crab from places like this. (That link goes to my favorite fish market in Seattle.)

- Dungeness crabs weigh from one to two pounds or so. We bought three big ones, and they amply fed four of us.

Ring the bells

February, February. I had forgotten how trying it can be.


I seem to have come down with a cold. I battled it for the better part of last week, and I thought I had won, but yesterday, it sneaked up and kicked me behind the knees, the way I do sometimes to Brandon when we’re in line at the grocery store, only I’m gentle and giggly about it, and this cold is neither. But I wanted to stop by here today anyway, because I have some good news for you. (And some butterscotch cookies! I made a recipe that worked! Ring the bells!)

The news is this. Those of you who lobbied for a book event in New York, take note: your wish has been granted. I will be at Idlewild Books on March 18 at 7:00 pm, and I am so, so excited to say that. I expect to see you all there. OR ELSE.

And now, the cookies.


If I didn’t have a sinusache, or a headache in my sinuses, or whatever the clinical term might be, I might have been able to take a better, less blurry photograph for you. But today was not the day for that. So please take my word for it: those are cookies, not lumpy pennies. They’re the butterscotch cookies from Judith Jones’s memoir The Tenth Muse. When I was reading it, this was the first recipe I dog-eared, even before the céleri rémoulade, and I don’t know why on earth it took me over a month to make the thing. I certainly won’t wait another month to make it again.

In the headnotes, Jones attributes this recipe to Schrafft’s, a restaurant in Manhattan where, as a child, she used to go for ice cream sodas or a sundae. (I particularly like her description on page 16: “I would sometimes go with a few classmates to Schrafft’s, one of the chain of genteel restaurants where the waitresses were all of Irish descent and dressed parlor-maid-style in black with a starched white apron and headpiece.” Parlor-maid-style! Headpieces! Hire me!) Apparently, whenever she went to Schrafft’s, she would leave with a dozen of their butterscotch cookies, her favorites at the time. But then Schrafft’s closed, and with it went the cookies. Years later, no doubt in a moment of spectacular brilliance, Jones asked James Beard if he remembered those butterscotch cookies, and he not only remembered them fondly, but he called the president of the company and asked for the recipe. I need a James Beard in my life.

But barring that, a few butterscotch cookies is a fine substitute. They may be sort of homely, the brown paper bag of the cookie genre, but they more than make up for it in texture and flavor. They’re thin and crisp - almost wafer-like, thinner than they look in the photo above - with a fine, lacy edge and a freckling of crunchy pecans. The unbaked dough is relatively simple, sweetened with dark brown sugar and punched up with a decent amount of vanilla and salt, but it bakes up to something complex and sophisticated. The finished cookies are sweet but not too sweet, salty but not too much so, fragrant with whatever it is that makes butterscotch smell like butterscotch. I think it’s time for my next dose of antihistamine.

These cookies would be delicious, I imagine, with tea or coffee, or maybe as the bookends of an ice cream sandwich, with vanilla or coffee ice cream. For now, I’m eating them with my therapeutic cocktail of hot water with honey and lemon, and even that isn’t too bad.


Schrafft’s Butterscotch Cookies
Adapted from The Tenth Muse, by Judith Jones

The original recipe does not specify whether or not, or how much, to pack the brown sugar. I lightly packed mine, just enough to smooth the top, and it worked out nicely. Also, does anyone know what the nonfat dry milk does here? It must do something important, but I’m stumped.

Lastly, note that the flavor of these cookies takes some time to develop. I baked them last night, and they were good, but they were even more interesting by this morning. And they’re fantastic tonight.

1 ¾ cups all-purpose flour
½ tsp. baking soda
½ tsp. salt
14 Tbsp. (1 ¾ sticks) unsalted butter, at room temperature
1 ¼ cups dark brown sugar
1 large egg
2 Tbsp. nonfat dry milk
1 Tbsp. vanilla extract
1 cup finely chopped pecans

Preheat the oven to 375°. Grease two cookie sheets, or line them with silicone mats.

In a small bowl, whisk together the flour, baking soda, and salt.

In a medium bowl, cream the butter and sugar. (I used my stand mixer for this.) Add the egg, dry milk, and vanilla extract, and beat to incorporate. Add the dry ingredients, and beat to blend. Fold in the pecans by hand. Drop the batter by heaping tablespoonfuls onto the prepared baking sheets, leaving 2 inches between each mound. (I was able to fit about 10 or 11 cookies on each sheet.) With damp fingers, press each mound into a circle about 2 ½ to 3 inches in diameter. Bake for 8 to 10 minutes, or until lightly browned. Carefully scrape up the cookies with a spatula, and transfer them to a rack to cool. Repeat with remaining dough on cooled baking sheets.

Store cooled cookies in an airtight container at room temperature.

Yield: about 30 cookies

Candy is dandy

If I were Ogden Nash, I would have something very clever to say today. I’m sure of it. Maybe something like, candy is dandy, but this biscotti is not(-y). Yes?


Or candy is dandy, but I’m going to flush this biscotti down the potty? I think that might be it.

Or, ooh ooh, I’ve got one: Molly isn’t jolly, because this salad was pallid. ZING!


What a week it was. After the quiet glory of cabbage with hot sauce, it all went downhill.

I can’t remember what we ate on Monday night, which is not a good sign. And then on Wednesday, I made the most spectacularly tasteless soup to ever sit atop my stove. It was so bad that we wound up going out for pho instead, leaving the soup to sit in its pot and reflect on its wrongdoings until we threw it away the next morning. On Saturday, we ate the leftovers of the pho we bought on Wednesday and then tried to go buy cupcakes for dessert, only to find that Cupcake Royale was completely sold out. And yesterday, I spent the afternoon happily padding around the kitchen, making granola, trying a new biscotti recipe, and washing gai lan to sauté in olive oil and garlic and serve with sausage and polenta, only to find that the biscotti was bland, the gai lan was even more bland, and I was tempted to burst into tears in the middle of dinner, except that our friend Ben was with us. I’ve been trying to limit my crying fits to audiences of family, and sometimes strangers on the bus.

And then, this morning, I tried to make oat cakes from Home Baking. Judging by the photograph in the book, these oat cakes were supposed to resemble digestive biscuits, or something akin to Carr’s Wheatolos. (Does anyone else remember those?) I will never know for sure, however. The recipe said that the dough would come together to form a mass in the food processor, but instead, mine turned into oat-and-brown-sugar hummus. Pita chip, anyone?


I think this would be the part when I say, candy is dandy, but hummus is among us. (Sorry?)

Even the bag of recycling that sits in the corner wanted to scream.


All of which is to say that I have nothing for you today. I know, I know, and I’m sorry. But I can offer you a suggestion, and it is this: that you make this dish as soon as you possibly can. We made it for dinner the week before last, and it was so perfect that I’m still thinking about it. It was so perfect, in fact, that I won’t even try to make up a rhyme about it, and today, that is the highest praise I can give.

The best we can hope for

Monday.

I would take any day over Monday. Any day. Even my seventeenth birthday, which was a very disappointing day. The only way I might be convinced to change my mind is if Mondays, as a rule, took place in a quiet room with white walls and a wood floor and muted sunlight, a large armchair, a stack of first-rate books, a fudgy brownie, and a small black-and-white dog who sits beside you in the armchair, curled up like a trussed pot roast. But that is not my Monday.


I did, however, have a good lunch today, which was a decent trade. Sometimes I think a good lunch is the best we can hope for.


What you see up there, in the wok, is green cabbage stir-fried until it caramelizes at the edges, tossed with sambal oelek and soy sauce. I call it Cabbage with Hot Sauce. It doesn’t look like much to speak of, I know, and I’m sorry about that. But if you eat it alongside some toast and cheddar, or a fried egg, one with a nice, saucy yolk, you won’t think twice. I hope.

We’ve been eating cabbage this way for a while, but it’s such a plain, off-the-cuff method - hardly even a recipe, really - that until yesterday, it never occurred to me to mention it here. I guess it’s a little like the chickpea salad that way, although more feisty in flavor. Brandon came up with the idea a few years ago, when he was still living in New York. I was visiting him, and we had bought a green cabbage for some recipe that I now can’t remember, and after making whatever it was, half of the cabbage was still sitting in the crisper drawer. So one day, for a late breakfast, Brandon fished it out, sliced it into thin ribbons, and chucked it into a hot wok with a dribble of oil, a spoonful of hot sauce, and some soy sauce for seasoning. We ate it with hummus and pita, or maybe it was cheddar and some bread. I can’t remember. But it was delicious - spicy and earthy and a little sweet from the fire under the wok - and the next day, when I flew back to Seattle, I took the leftovers in a to-go container that we found in his housemate’s cabinet, along with a bagel and cream cheese from Absolute Bagels. It sounds like an iffy combination, but somehow it was spectacular, both hot and soothing, salty and sweet, and I was both so happy and so desperately sad to leave, and sometimes, when I sit very still and let my mind go to the places where it goes when I don’t stop it, I miss those days so much.


But luckily, I did marry him, and now I can have that cabbage any time, so it’s okay. It’s also nice that he has hands that photograph well, and that he doesn’t strangle me with them when I stand up in the middle of lunch and scream, “WAIT! DON’T MOVE. Where’s my camera? I’ve got to climb up on the chair....”

Anyway, so now the cabbage is yours. That’s what I’m trying to say. It’s not dinner party material, particularly, but if you have a soft spot for cabbage, and if you have some hot sauce rolling around in your refrigerator door, it is a very fine way to put them to use. We ate it for lunch yesterday, with fried eggs from the farmers’ market, and it was so simple and right that I decided that you needed to know about it. And the leftovers today, with a couple pieces of toast and some slices of sharp white cheddar, something rich and cooling, made me feel all the more certain.

Have a good week, everyone.


Cabbage with Hot Sauce

This is more of a method than a recipe, so the quantities I’ve listed below are only approximate. Just taste as you go, and tweak to your liking. It’s hard to mess this up, as long as you get some color on the cabbage.

When choosing an oil for this, be sure to choose one with a high smoke point, the safest bet for high-heat cooking. We usually use canola oil, because I keep it around for making granola, but we have also used peanut oil and grapeseed oil. (Or, if you’re the type to have lard lying around - ooh la la - you could use that. It has a high smoke point too.) To learn more about high-temperature oils and fats, click over here or here.

½ head green cabbage, quartered and sliced into ¼-inch-thick ribbons
½ medium fennel bulb, thinly sliced (optional)
Canola oil, or another oil with a similarly high smoke point
¼ tsp. to 1 tsp. sambal oelek, to taste
Soy sauce, to taste
Salt, to taste (optional)

Place a wok over high heat. Let it heat thoroughly; it should even smell hot. Working quickly, pour in a glug of oil* and then immediately add the cabbage and the fennel, if using. Stir briefly to coat with oil, and then leave it alone for a minute or so, to allow the vegetables to begin to take on some color. Then add sambal oelek to taste, and stir again. (If you have a hood over your stove, turn on the fan! The hot sauce gives off spicy fumes.) Continue to cook until the vegetables are browned in spots and wilted. It won’t take long. Then add a glug of soy sauce, and stir well again. Taste, and season with more soy sauce or salt as needed.

Serve hot or warm.

Yield: 2-4 servings, depending on what else you’re having

* Be sure to have a lid nearby, or some baking soda, since hot oil always runs a risk of flaring up.

Calls for cake

On a Sunday afternoon in January, it is very important to bake an apple cake.


Especially if the sun is shining, which it doesn’t often do in Seattle, and if you can open the front door for an hour or two and your dog can sit on the stoop without his tiny, ridiculous Polarfleece coat, which is a minor miracle, because he is a major sissy about cold weather. And especially if the apple cake in question is this one, with a rich, buttery base that crisps lightly at the edges, a layer of fanned-out apples, and a thin cinnamon glaze that puffs ever so gently as it bakes.


Actually, now that I’m typing this, I don’t know whether to call this thing a cake or a tart. It has elements of both, but it isn’t decisively either. The recipe comes from my friend Judy Amster, and I’m not sure what she would call it. One day last November, I ran into her at the home of her son, my friend Matthew Amster-Burton, and she pressed a folded piece of paper into my hand, explaining simply that it was the recipe for an apple dessert, and that I would love it. When Judy says that kind of thing, I listen. She has not only an encyclopedic knowledge of food, but also the most enormous cookbook collection I have ever seen. She has the kind of cookbook collection that, in some people, causes spontaneous weeping. This particular recipe, she explained, came not from her bookshelves, but from a friend of a friend in Canada, who originally got it from a Canadian magazine. It was delicious, she promised. It took me two months to find the time to try it, but I listened. I listened, Judy. I know what’s good for me.

But, yes, back to its name. How about an apple tart cake? It’s a little confusing, but it’s fitting. I like it. You can call it whatever you want, frankly. The recipe Judy gave me, printed from an e-mail, had no title at all. Instead, it began matter-of-factly with the command, “use a springform cake thingo, butter and flour it.” I love that. That’s all I needed to know, really.


The ingredients for this dessert are basic pantry staples, but I’d never made a recipe quite like it before. The base - the cake-like part - is assembled in the food processor, a mixture of sugar, flour, baking powder, butter, vanilla, and egg that you pulse until it resembles cornmeal. You dump that into your buttered, floured springform cake thingo, and you spread it evenly across the bottom. Then, atop that, you arrange thin slices of apple - preferably a tart kind, like Granny Smith - in a circular pattern, like a frilly French tart. Then you bake it for a little while, during which the apples start to soften and go fragrant, and the cake-like base begins to firm. Then you pull it from the oven and spoon over it a topping of melted butter, sugar, cinnamon, and egg. It looks very runny and completely wrong, but when you return it to the oven, it slowly sets, puffing just a little bit, forming an opaque, burnished glaze on top of the apples.

We ate it last night, while we watched Jaws on DVD, and that Judy, she was so right. The base was nubbly and chewy and moist, but along the very bottom and the outer edges, it crisped like the edge of an oatmeal cookie. The apples on top were soft and juicy, and the cinnamon topping lay over it all like a thin blanket, maybe cashmere with satin trim, binding the whole thing under the warmth of cinnamon. I loved it. And today, when I had another slice after lunch, it was even better. It had mellowed overnight, relaxing its sweetness and letting the apple flavor come to the fore. I was hoping to save some for a special inauguration-watching breakfast tomorrow - a new president definitely, definitely, calls for cake - but I just ate the last pieces after dinner, so I guess that won’t be happening. Unless I get up early to bake another one. Which I might.


P.S. Hey, speaking of the inauguration, I’m looking into the possibility of going to Washington, DC, on my book tour in March, and I need your help. I need to know how many of you might come to an event there, if I did do one. It would likely be held in the evening during the week of March 16, at one of my brother’s restaurants: DC Coast, Ten Penh, Ceiba, or Acadiana. DC will probably be my only East Coast stop, so if you think you might want to come, leave a comment here, and please don’t be shy. It would be so nice to meet you.

P.P.S. The DC event has now been confirmed! You people are the greatest. Click over here for more information.



Apple Tart Cake
Adapted from Judy Amster’s friend

For this cake, it is particularly important that your oven temperature is accurate. If it runs too hot, the base of the cake could burn before the apples are fully cooked, and the topping, too, could burn before it has time to set.

Also, if your apples aren’t terribly tart, you might consider reducing the sugar in the base a little bit, down from 1 cup to maybe, say, ¾ cup.

1 cup granulated sugar
1 cup all-purpose flour
1 tsp. baking powder
5 Tbsp. cold unsalted butter, cut into a few pieces
1 tsp. vanilla extract
1 large egg, lightly beaten
3 large Granny Smith apples, peeled, cored, and sliced very thinly

For topping:
3 Tbsp. granulated sugar
3 Tbsp. unsalted butter, melted and cooled slightly
1 tsp. ground cinnamon
1 large egg

Preheat oven to 350°. Butter and flour a 9-inch springform pan.

In the bowl of a food processor fitted with the steel blade attachment, combine the sugar, flour, and baking powder. Pulse to mix. Add the butter, and pulse until no large lumps remain. Add the vanilla and the egg, and blend well, until it resembles cornmeal. Dump it into the prepared springform pan. Nudge it around with your fingertips to distribute it evenly, and then gently press it along the bottom of the pan. You’re not trying to really tamp it down; you just want to compact it a little. At the edges, let it curve up ever so slightly, like a tart shell with a very low, subtle rim. Arrange the apple slices over the base in a tight circular pattern. It may seem as though you have too many apple slices to fit, but keep going. Really squeeze them in. Slide the pan into the oven, and bake for 45 minutes.

Meanwhile, make the topping. Combine the ingredients in a small bowl, and whisk to blend well. After the cake has baked for 45 minutes, remove it from the oven, and spoon the topping evenly over it. Bake for another 25 minutes or so, until the topping looks set. Transfer the pan to a wire rack, and cool for 20 minutes. Then run a thin knife around the edge to release any areas that may have stuck, and remove the sides of the pan. Cool completely before serving.

Note: This cake is even better on the second day. So if you can, make it a day ahead: just wrap it in plastic wrap and leave it at room temperature until you’re ready to eat it. We ate ours plain, but I think it would be great with vanilla ice cream.

Yield: about 8 servings

Squirrel it away

I’ve been thinking for days, days, about what to call this dish.


It’s not that somebody else didn’t already name it, because they did. It’s called Cream of Scallop Soup, and I found the recipe in Gourmet a month or two ago, although I can’t remember which issue it came from, exactly. (I don’t have room to save magazines in their entirety - only chosen pages - and the page that includes this recipe has no issue date.) Cream of Scallop Soup is a perfectly reasonable name, but it’s boring. Also, when I hear it, I envision, unfortunately, raw scallops and cream whirring in a blender. I probably shouldn’t have told you that, should I? Either way, this dish deserves a more special name. It deserves a name that reflects how stunningly lovely, how drop-your-spoon-in-shock delicious, it is.

So, what could we call it instead? Maybe we should try a French translation. Most things sound better in French, I think. (Except my name, which winds up sounding like Moe Lee.) How about Crème de coquilles Saint-Jacques? Or, fancier, Coquilles Saint-Jacques dans leur bouillon a la crème fraîche? Maybe too fancy. How about Poached Scallops in Crème Fraîche Broth? Or Scallops ‘n Cream? It could be like Cookies ‘n Cream. Only different.

Whatever we choose to call it, I suggest that you bookmark this recipe right now - or go tear it out of your own copy of Gourmet - and squirrel it away for a festive occasion. It might be a little bit extravagant, both flavor-wise and money-wise, for an everyday dish, especially during these post-holiday weeks, but I wanted to go ahead and write about it, because it is so, so good. And also because Olaiya and Ben, two of our friends who ate it with us on New Year’s Eve, have requested the recipe, and I mean to deliver.


Our New Year’s Eve dinner was a potluck, and this dish was my main contribution, aside from a pan of brownies for dessert. (There was also, of course, the céleri rémoulade, and a grated carrot salad, but Brandon did most of the labor on those.) Olaiya had requested seafood, and I happened to have this recipe lying at the top of my file, so I took it as a sign. I hadn’t made it before, but the list of ingredients made my mouth water: sea scallops and crème fraîche, fish stock and white wine, shallots, thyme, and egg yolks. The recipe also had a very fine pedigree, having been adapted, the magazine noted, from brothers Jean and Pierre Troisgros of the famed restaurant Troisgros in Roanne, France. I don’t usually like to make dishes for the first time when there are lots of other diners involved, but the worst that could happen, I figured, was that it might turn out terribly and we would be forced to skip straight to the brownies, which would be fine with me anyway.

So I got some fish bones and made the required fish stock. It was my first go at fish stock, but it went swimmingly. (Sorry. Couldn’t resist.) Then I went out and splurged, since it was New Year’s Eve, on some stunningly gorgeous fresh scallops. And then we gathered the ingredients and went to Olaiya’s, where I had such a nice time with everyone and the champagne and the céleri rémoulade and the flash on my camera that, when the time came for our main course, I proceeded to cook the absolute crap out of those innocent scallops. They were tough and rubbery and so, so sad. I was even sadder. But we had to at least try the finished dish, I decided, and so I marched on, dividing them among our soup bowls and dousing them with their creamy broth, a fragrant amalgam of the stock and some crème fraîche, scented with shallot and thyme and thickened ever so slightly with egg yolk.

We sat down to eat it, and everything went silent. No one spoke for at least a minute. If you have ever experienced such a phenomenon, you will know that it can mean only one of two things: a) that your dining companions are completely speechless with ecstasy, or b) that they cannot talk because they are desperately preoccupied with finding a place to spit out the food that they are chewing. I feared the worst. But then Ben raised his head, smiled, and slowly, solemnly, pronounced my name, which, in his personal dining language, means that everything is well.

Actually, it was better than well. The overcooked scallops may have had less textural appeal than a pencil eraser, but the rest of the dish was supple, silky, completely spectacular. The broth itself was complex and aromatic, rich but not the least bit heavy, a sequence of flavors that opened with the brightness of wine and lemon and closed with the sweetness of cream. I don’t know any better way to describe it than to say that it seemed impeccably French, which is to say that it tasted harmonious and refined and very Old World fancy, as though it should be presented by a waiter in a tuxedo with flawless posture and a perfectly waxed mustache. I made it again tonight, just to be sure that it was as good as I remembered - only the best for you - and with properly(!) cooked scallops, it most certainly was. I am not a great fan of Mondays, but if they all ended this way, I might change my mind.

And speaking of great things, thank you so much for your enthusiasm about the book cover. It blew me away. Really. After two years of relatively solitary work on this book, it’s hard not to be nervous, I have to admit, about beginning to share it. Thank you for making it feel a little bit less scary, and a lot more fun.



Cream of Scallop Soup
Adapted from Gourmet and The Nouvelle Cuisine of Jean & Pierre Troisgros

Be sure to read through this entire recipe before you start. Once you begin, you’ll want to move quickly, or else the scallops will get cold. For a very sophisticated dish, it’s fairly quick and simple to pull together, especially if you make the white fish stock (which is also fairly quick and simple) ahead of time. I made my stock the day before, and when it came time to make dinner, all I had to do was retrieve it from the fridge.

Oh, and about sources: Trader Joe’s sells fantastic frozen scallops for $10.99 a pound, which is a great price. The package is labeled Wild Japanese Scallops, I believe. They were just as tasty as the more expensive ones from the Sea of Cortez that I bought on New Year’s Eve. Also, for the fish stock: to get bones, call your local fish market. If you give them a day’s notice, they should be happy to set aside some bones for you. I called my old faithful, Wild Salmon Seafood Market, and they gave me all kinds of halibut bones and scraps, free of charge.

¾ lb. sea scallops, tough ligament removed from side of each if attached
Salt
1 cup white fish stock
½ cup dry white wine
1 small shallot, chopped
1 thyme sprig
¾ cup crème fraîche
2 large egg yolks
Black pepper
2 Tbsp. finely chopped chives

Rinse the scallops, and then pat them dry. Quarter them, and season them with 1/8 tsp. salt.

In a heavy medium saucepan, combine the stock, wine, shallot, thyme, and ½ tsp. salt. Bring to a boil over medium-high heat, cover, and boil for 5 minutes. Strain through a fine-mesh sieve into a bowl, pressing on the solids before discarding them. Return the liquid to the saucepan. Bring it to a boil, then stir in the scallops and simmer, covered, stirring occasionally, until the scallops are just cooked through, about 2 minutes. (Do not overcook. If anything, leave them rare; they will continue to cook after you remove them from the heat.) Remove the scallops with a slotted spoon, and keep them warm, covered. Reserve the cooking liquid in the saucepan.

Meanwhile, put the crème fraîche in a small saucepan, and bring it to a simmer over medium-low to medium heat. Simmer until it reduces slightly, about 3 minutes. Add it to the cooking liquid in the medium saucepan, stir well, and simmer together for another 3 minutes.

In a small bowl, whisk together the egg yolks, ¼ cup of the crème fraîche-cooking liquid mixture, and ¼ tsp. pepper. Add half of the remaining crème fraîche mixture to the yolk mixture in a slow stream, whisking constantly. Then pour it all back into the medium saucepan, whisking. Cook over very low heat, whisking, until just slightly thickened, about 1 minute. Do not boil. Remove from the heat, taste for seasoning, and salt as needed.

Divide the scallops among 4 small soup bowls, and then ladle the soup on top. Sprinkle with chives. Serve immediately.

Yield: 4 servings