Bottoms up

I planted about a half dozen plants back in late May, and I don’t know how to explain it, but they’re not dead yet.  It’s difficult to describe how much that satisfies me.  I am not a gardener by any stretch of anything, but I noticed the other morning, as I was puttering around (in a pair of old bagged-out maternity leggings and a tank top that I accidentally cut a giant hole in and can now only wear for puttering), watering the plants with my Hario coffee kettle (because I have no watering can, and because I keep forgetting to buy one, and because I am obviously a very, very classy person), that it gives me inordinate pleasure to watch plants grow.  I don’t think I’ll ever call myself a gardener, but I do like to garden.  I might keep at it.  At any rate, I was glad for that realization.  I think it’s good to keep track of what makes me happy.  I like to think that’s part of what I do on this site, and why I like to keep coming back here.

Which is to say: have you read this piece about summer, written by my friend Gemma?  I’ve been feeling nostalgic about the idea of summer lately, thinking about the kinds of summers I want June to have as a kid, and what Gemma wrote made my chest tight.

I’ve also been thinking about another summer story, from The New York Times.  I never managed to have a teenage summer romance, myself - probably because I never had a teenage romance, not in any season; boo hoo hoo - but in 1965, Joyce Wadler had a one, and it was great.

Speaking of memories, a really interesting piece (and useful tips!) about writing, memory, and how to hold onto ideas.

Similarly(-ish), on keeping a notebook in the digital age.

Once you’ve read all that, you might consider rewarding yourself with a watermelon, mint, and cider vinegar tonic.  I’ve been sitting on that recipe for more than a month now, waiting for our local watermelon season.  I will wait no more.

And speaking of drinks, I am thrilled (!) to announce, last but not least, that Brandon and I are writing a cocktail column over at Food52.  It’s called Craft Cocktails, and every other week, we’ll be sharing a new recipe from Essex.  I’ve long been an admirer of Food52, its smart recipes and good style and very good people, and we are totally, totally thrilled (!) to now play a small part in it.  (Cheers, Kenzi!) Our first recipe went up yesterday afternoon, and it’s for a Campari Shandy, our unofficial Summer Drink of 2013.

Happy weekend, and bottoms up.

A new reason

I just sat down, looked at the calendar, and noticed that it’s August 9th. June is eleven months old today. On Monday, Delancey will be four years old, and on Thursday, Essex will be one.  Is this what happens when you become a firm-and-fast adult? You’ve done enough stuff and crossed paths with enough people that at some point, each day comes with a birthday or anniversary? I mean, in addition to bills and tax deadlines and increasingly tight hamstrings? In other words: there’s always a new reason to eat cake, isn’t there?  Or drink wine?  Both?

I have a very cold bottle of riesling in the refrigerator. But there is no cake here, and that is because there is no oven.  We live in a 1958 house, brown enamel appliances and knotty pine cabinets and banana-colored formica and all, and a couple of weeks ago, the tiny, squeaky-doored Hotpoint oven up and died. No warning! Just when we had finally put aside our differences - you say you’re 400 degrees, I say you’re 350 - and reached an understanding!  There won’t be cash for a proper renovation for a while yet, so Brandon went out last week and found a cheap used oven to temporarily replace it. And now we’re waiting for the Sears guy to come install it, because if we did it ourselves, it would all end in a sudden flash of light and a cloud of smoke, and I do not mean to imply that there would be wizardry involved.

In the meantime, there is no cake, but there are apricots poached in riesling and vanilla bean. (Which were supposed to be baked in riesling and vanilla bean, but blah blah blah BLAH.)

It’s probably too late in the summer to talk about apricots? Let’s do it anyway. I’ve made these apricots three times already this year, and I’m not ready to stop. I just made them a fourth time tonight.  The recipe is a twist on two others: Nigel Slater’s Baked Apricots with Lemon Tea, from Tender, Volume II (also known as Ripe) and my friend Jess’s Sugared Apricots with Cardamom Pistachios. Nigel’s, if I may refer to him on a buddy-buddy first-name basis, calls for baking apricots in sweetened lemon verbena tea with star anise and a vanilla bean, and Jess’s calls for dredging them in sugar before baking them in white wine and serving them with cardamom-dusted pistachios. I took one recipe in each hand and banged them together, and ta da, I give you Soft Apricots with Riesling and Vanilla Bean.

Here’s the gist: take seven or eight fresh apricots, cut them in half, and press their cut sides into a saucer of sugar. It doesn’t take much - just a couple of tablespoons, and you could use even less, if you prefer. Then arrange the apricot halves in a baking dish if you’re baking them, or in a skillet if you’re poaching them, and tuck a split vanilla bean in there, too. Pour in a good splash of riesling. Then slide them into a hot oven, or set them over a low flame, and let them stay there until their color deepens to the orange of a very good egg yolk, their flesh gets velvety, and if you pick one up in your hand, it feels heavy, slack, almost jiggly, like a slightly tired water balloon. You could eat them warm, but I like them very cold, with a spoonful of their winey syrup.

I first made apricots this way last summer, and though I didn’t write down the method or bookmark the recipes, when this summer came around, I remembered it, sort of, and after a couple of go-rounds and tweaks, I feel confident about sharing it. I think it might be my absolute favorite thing to do with apricots, which is saying a lot, but I’m going to go ahead and write that down before I second-guess it. Either way, I’m posting this not only for you, but also to record the method for myself, so that next summer, I’ll be able to find it without scratching my head. And then maybe I’ll be able to make it five or six times, instead of only four.

P.S.  This will simultaneously destroy you and rebuild you (via Youngna Park).  Thank god for radio.
P.P.S. Ask, and ye shall receive:

Soft Apricots with Riesling and Vanilla Bean

You could use any sweet-ish white wine here, though I particularly love the flavor of apricots with an off-dry riesling. (I’ve been using Memaloose 2012 Idiot’s Grace Riesling.) I’ve also used Dolin Blanc vermouth and Cocchi Americano, and both have yielded great results. You’re also welcome to try a drier white wine, or a rosé, and if you do, please report back.

2 tablespoons (24 grams) sugar
7 or 8 apricots (450 grams, or 1 pound), halved and pitted
1 vanilla bean, split and seeds scraped free
1/2 cup riesling

Preheat the oven to 425 degrees.

Measure the sugar into a saucer or a small plate. Press the apricot halves, cut side down, into the sugar: each one should wind up with a nice sugar crust on one side. Arrange the apricots, skin side down, in a baking dish that will comfortably hold them all in a single layer. Scrape the vanilla seeds into the baking dish - don’t worry if they clump - and wiggle the vanilla bean down between the apricots. Pour the riesling into the dish, taking care to pour it between the apricots, so that you don’t wash away the sugar.

Bake for about 30 minutes, or until the apricots are tender. [Alternatively, you can do this all on the stove, placing the apricots in a large skillet with a lid and cooking them very gently over very low heat, covered, for 35 to 40 minutes.] Sometimes they start to fall apart, and that’s okay, but I like them best when they maintain their shape and barely resist the fork. Allow them to cool, and then carefully layer them in a jar, and pour the syrupy juices over the top. Chill thoroughly.  They’re best eaten icy cold, and as long as they’re covered in syrup, they’ll keep for more than a week.

Serve the apricots with a drizzle of their vanilla-flecked syrup, or with a scoop of ice cream (salted caramel is very good) or a spoonful of plain yogurt.

Yield: many tiny snacks or breakfasts, or dessert for 4 people

Nine

I am typing this post from the back office at Delancey, where I’m holed up, working on a deadline, while Brandon and Co. prepare a five-course meal for forty-five in celebration of a gorgeous new book. Deadline: I will destroy you. In more ways than one.



But I had to take a break to pop into this space, and to send up a cheer - if you can, in fact, hear me from back here behind the Essex walk-in - that it has been nine years today since this site was born. Nine! I was a delinquent graduate student then, giddy to be creating a space to write about things other than Michel Foucault and discourse analysis and anything described by the word liminal, and if you had told me what would happen in the nine years to come, I would have told you to stop teasing, that it was cruel. NINE years! I said to Brandon the other day that, oddly, I still feel like the same person I was that summer, when I was twenty-five and newly single and energetic and very eager to bake cakes, listening to a lot of Ted Leo and living in an apartment that overlooked a grocery store parking lot. Will I always feel like that person? I hope I will. I also hope that I will always feel as grateful as I do today, when I think about what has happened, and who has happened, in the last almost-decade.



Today, as it happens, is also our sixth wedding anniversary. And this morning I started planning a party - just a small one, mostly family and carrot cake and nothing remotely Pinterest-worthy - in celebration of June’s first birthday, which is coming up soon. It’s been a big day today, and also a happily ordinary one: a baby, a babysitter who showed up with new barrettes for the baby, a dog with an injured tail, a lot of work to do, a visit with a good friend, a lot of great food.





I took the pictures in this post on July 9 at Skagit River Ranch, where Brandon and his team spent the day cooking a dinner for Outstanding in the Field.  I am so proud of Brandon - that he was asked to do it, that he and his sous chef Ricardo "Regulator" Valdes made the most insane brisket I have ever eaten, that they managed to douse the flames when the smoker caught on fire with all of the pork inside, that the pork was perfect anyway, that he didn’t fall asleep on the long drive home. I somehow took no pictures of him that day, but he was there. Let the record show.

I started this blog for myself, because I needed it.  But because of it, I got a Brandon, and then a Delancey, and then an Essex, and this back office that I’m sitting in, and a June, and days like today, and nights like the one in these pictures - and along the way, you’ve been here, too.  Thank you.  I’m so glad for all of it.  And before I get any sappier tonight, I’m heading home to bed.

See you back here in a couple of days.

A rare benefit

I’ve started this post four different times now, on five different days. I’m already tired of it, and I still haven’t figured out how to start. Does that ever happen to you? Do you do what I do and take a "break" to raid the walk-in at Delancey for chocolate chip cookie dough? Do you tell yourself, What harm could it really do if I listened to Freedom '90 again? Do you ever wonder if you’ve missed your chance to be a dancer in a Janet Jackson video? Shall we start this thing already?

First, I want to tell you that I was elated by your response to Delancey. Totally elated. Ecstatic. Even slightly stoned. I’m still coming down from it. Thank you so very, very much. And HURRY UP, MAY OF 2014!

Now, speaking of Delancey: when I was cleaning up the office there a couple of weeks ago, I found a large container of shredded, unsweetened coconut.  We’d been using it to make macaroons that were served with a key lime mousse, but the mousse was no longer on the menu, and the coconut wasn’t flagged for another use, or not yet.  So I took it home - a rare benefit of being the unfortunate person charged with maintaining the office!  I WIN THIS TIME - and made something with it that we liked so much, and ate so quickly, that I made it again less than a week later.  The recipe I’m talking about comes from Heidi Swanson’s wonderful Super Natural Every Day, a title that has recently joined the select group of favorite cookbooks that I keep on top of our refrigerator. It’s called a macaroon tart.

(For the record, June did not eat any, but she wished she could.)

What we have here, or what we had before we ate it all, is a buttery crust that tastes and crunches a little like shortbread, topped with hunks of soft summer fruit and a blanket of chewy macaroon. Heidi’s original recipe calls for studding the tart with blackberries, but I had some beautiful apricots on the counter, so I used them instead. I also threw in a few raspberries, but I preferred the apricots.  I loved the apricots. In fact, I want to call this an Apricot Macaroon Tart.  I think I will. And while I’m in the business of making bold statements, I should say that I also took liberties with the crust. I hope Heidi will still call me a friend. Her recipe calls for white whole wheat flour, but my niece Hillary is living with us this summer, and she’s gluten-intolerant, so I gathered up my courage and tried making a gluten-free version of the crust. I used a mixture of buckwheat, brown rice, and tapioca flours, and though I don’t know what the tart would taste like as Heidi intended it, I liked the toasty, nutty flavor of the buckwheat so much that I now can’t imagine the tart without it. Apricot, coconut, butter, buckwheat. I’m in.

Happy weekend.


Apricot Macaroon Tart
Adapted from Heidi Swanson’s Super Natural Every Day

A word (or many words) about flour: using Shauna’s 40/60 ratio for gluten-free baking, I whisked up a batch of all-purpose flour mix from 100 grams of buckwheat flour, 100 grams of brown rice flour, and 300 grams of tapioca flour.  (I then used 170 grams of this mixture in the recipe.)  I have no idea how well this mix of flours would work in other recipes, and I probably did everything wrong, but it worked nicely here, yielding a crust with a crunchy, slightly nubbly texture and great buckwheaty flavor.  The one thing that I will say, however, is that the crust wept a not-insignificant amount of butter onto the sheet pan.  I have to assume that this had something to do with the mix of flours I used, and their properties? Anyway, I doubt that the original recipe, as Heidi conceived it, has a butter-weeping problem.  In any case, consider yourself alerted. If your crust leaks a little butter onto the sheet pan, don’t worry.  That’s why the sheet pan is there.

And one more word about flour: even if you do eat gluten, as I do, you really should consider using some buckwheat flour. The next time I make this tart, I might try using a mixture of buckwheat flour and standard all-purpose flour - maybe one-third buckwheat and two-thirds all-purpose?  Not that white whole wheat flour or whole wheat pastry flour are not interesting enough, but I really love what buckwheat brings to this crust.

Oh, and if you find yourself without pistachios and are contemplating a trip to the grocery store: don’t worry about it.  I’ve forgotten to add the pistachios both times that I’ve made this tart, and though I imagine it would be prettier and maybe a little, little bit tastier with them, it’s wonderful without.

Finally, if you live in Seattle, I strongly recommend the apricots from Bill’s Fruits, a stand toward the Ballard Inn end of the Ballard Farmers’ Market.

For the crust:
1 ½ cups (170 g) white whole wheat flour, whole wheat pastry flour, or a mixture of flours (see above)
¾ cup (60 g) unsweetened finely shredded coconut
½ cup (100 g) sugar
½ tsp. fine sea salt
10 tablespoons (140 g) unsalted butter, melted and cooled slightly

For the filling:
2 cups (140 g) unsweetened finely shredded coconut
1/3 cup (70 grams) sugar
Pinch of fine sea salt
4 large egg whites
8 ounces (225 g) fresh apricots, pitted and quartered
1/3 cup (45 g) pistachios, chopped

Preheat the oven to 350°F. Butter a 9-inch round removable-bottom tart pan, and set it on a rimmed sheet pan.

To make the crust, combine the flour, coconut, sugar, and salt in a medium bowl. Stir to mix. Stir in the butter, and mix until the dough no longer looks dusty and all flour is absorbed. Press the mixture evenly into the bottom of the prepared pan: it should form a solid, flat layer. Bake for 15 minutes, or until barely golden. Remove from the oven, and set aside to cool for a few minutes.

While the crust bakes, prepare the filling. Combine the coconut, sugar, and salt in a medium bowl. Stir to mix. Add the egg whites, and mix until well combined. When the crust is baked, evenly distribute the apricots over it. Drop dollops of the filling over the fruit, using your fingers to nudge it into the spaces in between.

Bake for 20 to 30 minutes, until the peaks of the filling are deeply golden. Cool completely before topping with pistachios, slicing, and serving.

Yield: 8 to 12 slices, depending on how much you like dessert.

This thing is on

Maybe you will remember a day, more than two years ago now, when I announced that I was writing a new book, and that, if all went according to plan, it would be out in the spring of 2013?  And then maybe you will also remember that nothing went according to plan, in ways that were hard and good-but-hard and then great and really, really great, and here we are, with no book, in July of 2013. Maybe you will join me, then, in heaving a giant sigh of relief - more than that: a great wind, a hurricane-force gust - that Delancey is not only done, donedonedone, but that it now has a cover.  A cover!  This thing is ON.

I will tell you something: the process of arriving at a book cover is, as an author, somewhat harrowing. First, you write a book. You do this by huddling over your computer for a while, alternately feeling like a Nobel laureate and something lower than a bacterium, eating a lot of peanut butter (on bread, on toast, on a spoon) and making mental lists of what you wish you were doing instead of writing. When you can’t stand your manuscript anymore but can’t think of anything else to do with it, you send it to your editor, and she edits it and sends it back, and then you revise it, and you repeat these last steps a couple more times - or three, in my latest case. Then your book goes to a copyeditor for fine-tuning, and you crack open a beer and start doing all that stuff you had wanted to do back when you were lashed to the desk, writing, and then, just when you’re starting to relax and think about filling up the kiddie pool and sitting in it all evening, you get an e-mail from your editor with a proposed cover attached.  Dun dun dun dunnnnnnn.

Before I wrote my first book, and before we opened Delancey and Essex, I was briefly a book publicist at a university publishing house. We mostly published scholarly monographs, the kind you would use in a graduate school course, and my job was primarily to drum up reviews and other media attention for them - not an easy task, and one at which I did not excel - but one tiny part of my job was also to weigh in on potential covers for our books. This usually involved me and my colleagues in the marketing department staring at a wall of mock-ups, our chins in our hands, trying to figure out which cover a) best fit the book in question, b) would be legible online when reduced to the size of a thumbnail, and c) would appeal to readers and, most importantly, sell.  Striking that balance was a tricky proposition, and that was even before the author, who would have her own very strong opinion, was consulted. Now, as the author in that equation, I feel slightly queasy when I think about the negotiations and the back-and-forth that go into producing a book cover. I try not to think about it - kiddie pool kiddie pool kiddie pool - until I have to.

So it was with trepidation that I opened the e-mail from my editor with "Delancey jpegs" in the subject line, and with relief that I saw the cover up there, the one with the photo of the exterior of Delancey, warm and glowy, chalkboard in the window, people on the bar stools, chipped paint on the facade and ugly doorknob and all.  I had no idea what kind of cover this book would get, but this one feels exactly right.  Delancey is not really a cookbook, though it does contain twenty recipes, and it’s not really a book about opening a restaurant, per se, although it is.  It’s a book about a man with a big idea and a woman (hi!) who wasn’t entirely sold on that idea, a book about learning to work with yeast, fire, heavy machinery, and each other.  It’s a book about muddling through, figuring it out, eating a lot of pizza, making the most of what we got.  And though there were many moments when I wished the book would just write itself and leave me out of it and hurry up, I can now say that I’m glad the writing took as long as it did, that it was interrupted the way it was, that I was granted time to live the story and tell it in a way that feels honest and complete. I am now so excited, and totally terrified, to share it with you.  Of course, it won’t be released until next May, but after all this time, that’s nothing. Nothing! Right? (RIGHT.)

Thanks, always, for being here.

Update: In the days since I posted this, I have learned that the photograph on the cover was taken by a fellow blogger who came to Delancey as a result of reading my first book and this blog. Incredible! I love that. Thank you, Conni, for taking such a beautiful shot, and for letting us use it.

June 28

Friday!  Yessssssss.

It’s just after noon, and I’m sitting in Essex, my “office” by day, with an imposing to-do list. But before I put on my blinders and get down to it, I wanted to stop by and share a few things that I enjoyed this week. It’s going to be hot (84 degrees! Sunny! HOTTTTT!) in Seattle this weekend, and weekends aren’t really our weekends, living as we do in Restaurant Land, but I have plans nonetheless to get new tires and a rack for my bike, so I can start riding to the office next week. (My last real bike ride was at 19 weeks pregnant and a very bad idea.) In any case, I hope you’ve got a great weekend ahead.

I’ve mentioned Kate Christensen’s writing before, but in case you’re not yet reading her work, please allow me to direct you to this post, which feels so... so... right. I can’t wait for her new book.

A short and funny but useful flower tutorial on the World’s End Farm blog.  I will never be known for flower arranging - ha ha ha please - but I would kill to see things, just for a second, the way Sarah does.

This post of Ganda’s took my breath away.

I want to drink this immediately.

This photo of Katie’s pointed my way to this spectacular-looking cake, and now that strawberry season has arrived in the Pacific Northwest, it’s finally time to try it.

An important piece about women, ambition, and power.  I think it’ll be on my mind for a while.

And last but not least, we’re teaming up with Book Larder to host a dinner in celebration of the new cookbook from the geniuses behind Franny’s!  July 29!  Tickets are available now!  I can’t wait.

Cheers.

Told you so

Every so often, I encounter a recipe that makes me want to forgo the usual niceties of a post - the introduction, the story, the conclusion, the delicate foreplay - because that would only slow you down, when what you should really do is grab your shoes and make a list and run to the grocery store and throw some money at the cashier and run back home and make this immediately and I mean it, go, right now, DO IT.

One such recipe is Conchiglie with Yogurt, Peas, and Chile, from the stunning book Jerusalem, by Yotam Ottolenghi and Sami Tamimi. Even June is all over it.

The only problem is that I made it for a late dinner a few nights ago, when the sun was already well into setting - which is really and truly very late, here in my northern city - and it was too dark to take a picture. Today I tried to take a picture of the photograph in the cookbook, but that didn’t pan out either.

(Yeah, yeah, my child owns a pair of elastic-waist jeggings.  In my defense, they were hand-me-downs.)

In any case, you can picture it yourself. First, you zizz some Greek yogurt, olive oil, peas, and garlic in a food processor until the mixture is an even shade of pale green. Then you heat a pot of water and boil some pasta in it, and while that’s going, you warm some pine nuts and chile flakes in a skillet filmed with olive oil until the nuts are golden and the oil is red, and you also heat some more peas in a little bowl of water scooped from the pasta pot.  When the pasta is ready, you drain it and fold it together with the yogurt sauce, the now-warm peas, some torn basil leaves, and some crumbled feta.  The hot pasta heats and loosens the sauce, and the overall effect is creamy but not heavy in the least, bright where you hit a basil leaf or a pea, salty where you hit a lump of feta. You scoop it into a bowl, spoon over some pine nuts and the chile oil, which brings that kind of low, creeping heat that makes your lips tingle, and as I scraped my bowl and went back to the kitchen for seconds, I decided it was the best thing I’ve made in a long, long time. (The best savory thing, I should clarify. Nothing compares to cake. Who do you think I am?)

Yesterday afternoon, June and I went to our friend Lecia’s house for a visit and an early dinner, and while we were sitting around on the floor, talking and catching up and watching June torment the family cats, Lecia mentioned that, the previous night, she’d made what she thought might be the best pasta she’d ever had.

“It has yogurt, and peas. I think you’d like it,” she said. “Have you heard of the book Jerusalem?” (!!!)

I told you so.


Pasta with Yogurt, Peas, and Chile
Adapted slightly from Jerusalem, by Yotam Ottolenghi and Sami Tamimi

The original version of this recipe calls for conchiglie, or shell-shaped pasta, but you could use any small pasta shape you like: orecchiette, penne, farfalle, and so on.

If you have some exotic type of dried chile, like Urfa chile, Aleppo chile, or Kirmizi biber, you lucky lucky dog, this is a great place to use it. If not, you can use regular red pepper flakes. I happened to have some Aleppo chile, and though it was ground, not in flakes, and probably a few years old, it worked beautifully. Oh, and if you’re worried about the amount of heat, consider starting with a little less of the chile than what is called for - or just don’t put much chile oil on your pasta.

2 ½ cups (500 g) whole-milk Greek yogurt
2/3 cup (150 ml) olive oil
2 medium cloves garlic, crushed or pressed
1 pound (500 g) fresh or thawed frozen peas
Kosher salt
1 pound (500 g) pasta shapes of your liking
Scant ½ cup (60 g) pine nuts
2 teaspoons Turkish or Syrian chile flakes, or red pepper flakes
1 2/3 cups (40 g) basil leaves, coarsely torn
8 ounces (240 g) feta cheese, coarsely crumbled

In the bowl of a food processor, combine the yogurt, 6 tablespoons (90 ml) of the olive oil, the garlic, and 2/3 cup (100 g) of the peas. Process to a uniform pale green sauce, and transfer to a large mixing bowl.

Bring a large pot of water to a boil, and salt it until tastes like pleasantly salty seawater. Add the pasta, and cook until it is al dente. While the pasta cooks, warm the remaining olive oil in a small frying pan over medium heat. Add the pine nuts and chile flakes, and cook for 4 minutes, or until the pine nuts are golden and the oil is deep red. Also, warm the remaining peas in some boiling water (you could scoop out a bit of the pasta water for this); then drain.

Drain the cooked pasta into a colander, and shake it well to get rid of excess water that may have settled into the pasta’s crevices. Add the pasta gradually to the yogurt sauce; adding it all at once may cause the yogurt to separate. Add the warm peas, the basil, feta, and 1 teaspoon kosher salt. Toss gently. Serve immediately, with pine nuts and chile oil spooned over each serving.

Yield: about 6 servings