yummy summer breakfast

One peach and one tomato, chopped; a bit of dried mint, crumbled; a drizzle of red-chile honey.

Omnivore cookie contest January 29

Omnivore books, at Church and Cesar Chavez, is having a cookie contest from 3 to 4 on Saturday, January 29, and you should come. The $5 cover gets you a taste of every cookie entered in the contest–including mine.

The Cookie of the Month Club will convene at my house around 1 that day to bake an improved version of Cooks Illustrated’s Chewy Chocolate Cookies from Jan/Feb 2009. Improved how? With the addition of cayenne, cinnamon, and dried cherries. I tested these earlier this week, and they were a big hit.

• 1/3 cup granulated sugar, plus 1/3 cup for coating
• 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 3/4 cup cocoa powder
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 3/8 tsp salt
• 1/4 tsp cayenne
• 1/8 tsp cinnamon
• 1/2 cup dark corn syrup
• 1 large egg white
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 12 tbsp (1 1/2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened
• 1/3 cup packed light brown sugar*
• 4 ounces dried cherries

*Cooks Illustrated specifies dark brown sugar. I happened to have light brown. It worked just as well.

Yields 16-20 large cookies.

Put racks in middle positions in the oven. Heat to 375 F. Grease two large cookie sheets. Place 1/3 cup granulated sugar in a shallow dish.

Sift together flour, cocoa powder, baking soda, salt, cayenne, and cinnamon in a bowl.

In another container, whisk together corn syrup, egg white, and vanilla.

Beat softened butter, brown sugar, and remaining 1/3 cup granulated sugar together until light and fluffy. Add corn syrup mixture, stirring until fully incorporated. Add flour mixture and dried cherries, mixing until just incorporated.

Chill dough 30 minutes. Divide chilled dough into 1 1/2-inch diameter balls. Coat in granulated sugar. Place on cookie sheets about 2 inches apart. Bake two sheets at a time, reversing position (top to bottom) halfway through baking. Bake until cookies are puffed and cracked and the edges have set but the centers are still soft (they will seem underdone), 10-11 minutes. Cool on sheet 5 minutes, then transfer to wire racks to cool to room temperature.

Besides Cooks Illustrated, credit is due to Michael, for his chocolate-cherry bread, and to John, for his early devotion to cayenne in things chocolate.

If these cookies win the day, the Cookie of the Month Club promises to plow the winnings (half of the door) back into sugar, butter, and more cookie research for you! And we’ll party afterward at my house regardless. So come on down to Omnivore on the 29th.

pear and tomato cheese

When Julie was over with her green tomatoes, we made pear and tomato cheese. Think something between a jam and a fruit leather.

The recipe is from Oded Schwarz’s Preserving, which is the first preserving book I ever bought and is full of pretty pictures and sometimes crazy notions. J-P and I made pear and tomato cheese for the first time about six years ago in Boston. It was delicious, but we did a lot of things wrong: we used whatever tomatoes came in our CSA, we made a double batch, we cooked it down in a stock pot rather than something with more surface area… It took more than seven hours of simmering to get it to the right consistency. We’ve been shy of it ever since, but finally got up the courage for another go this past Sunday.

Here’s how to do it right. Yields about 2.5 pounds, and that is plenty. Please don’t try a double batch.

• 2 lbs Roma tomatoes (really important to use a dry variety of tomato)
• 1.5 lbs pears
• .5 lbs apples
• 1 lemon
• 2 cups water
• granulated sugar
• 1 tsp ground coriander
• 1 tsp ground black pepper
• 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
• 1/4 tsp ground cloves

Coarsely chop tomatoes, pears, apple, and lemon. Put in pot with water and bring to a boil, then simmer about 30 minutes, until the fruit is mushy. Pass the mixture through a food mill or sieve. Measure the resulting puree and add 1.5 cups sugar for every 2 cups of puree. Put this mixture, with the spices, in a roasting pan or something with similar surface area that you can set over two burners. Return to a boil, then simmer forever (about 4 hours), stirring frequently. (We returned it to a stock pot after a couple of hours, out of fear of burning it.) It’s ready to be poured into oiled pans (we used two pie plates) when it plops/heaves rather than bubbles, and you can draw a clear line through it with your spoon. Let sit in the oiled pans for at least 24 hours, then turn out and coat with granulated sugar. Use a cold, clean knife (which you will clean frequently) to cut squares, which you will roll in more granulated sugar and store in tins between layers of waxed paper.

fried green tomatoes

Julie came over today to make, among other things, fried green tomatoes. We’ve had poor luck with batters for fried vegetables, but today we hit on something that really worked.

1. Dredge the tomato slices in flour (seasoned with salt, black pepper, and cayenne).
2. Dip the floured slices in a wash of egg, buttermilk, and the same seasonings.
3. Coat with coarse cornmeal and the same seasonings.
4. Fry in vegetable oil, drain on paper towels–the usual.

The buttermilk (left over from the picnic chicken of a while back) added a nice tang to the tomatoes’ sweetness, and the coarse grind of the cornmeal gave good crunch, though it did mean that we had to change the oil after each batch.

piggy peach risotto

Not even vaguely Tex-Mex, but still what we had for dinner last night. J-P decided to try the peach-and-pancetta version of this watermelon-and-pancetta risotto recipe that Eric Asimov posted in the Diners’ Journal a few weeks ago. It was good, but next time we will salt the rice as it cooks (we relied on the pancetta for salt this time), use more basil, and use a stronger stock (we used the powdered veggie broth we usually use for risotto, but a good chicken stock is clearly the way to go here). The flavorful bits were very flavorful and quite nice together, but the risotto itself lacked a little oomph.

Momo’s chicken soup

PJ’s “small and beautiful”* celery soup from a couple of weeks ago made me want my grandmother’s similarly delicate and unassuming chicken soup.

Yields about 3 quarts

Phase 1

• 1/2 pound chicken scraps (backs, necks, wingtips, whatever)
• water to cover
• salt to taste

Put the chicken scraps in a stockpot with water to cover and salt to taste. Bring to a boil, then reduce to a simmer and cook, covered, for 30 minutes.

Phase 2

• 1 medium potato, chopped large
• 1/2 yellow onion, chopped large
• 5 medium cloves garlic, quartered
• 3 small stalks celery, chopped large
• 1 medium jalapeño (seeded and deveined if that’s your thing; I don’t), chopped large**
• 1/2 pound bone-in, proper cuts of chicken (I prefer legs and thighs); remove skins and excess fat (there’s already plenty in there)***
• juice of half a medium lime
• more salt
• a generous dash ground cumin
• lots of fresh ground black pepper
• about 3 cups more water

While Phase 1 is simmering, prepare the ingredients for Phase 2. Skim the gunk off the top, then add everything on the list above. Return to a simmer and let cook, covered, until the freshly added chicken is done (another 20-30 minutes).

Phase 3

• 1 ear corn, hacked into rounds that will just fit on a soup spoon to be nibbled at****
• 1 double handful cilantro*****
• maybe some more salt, pepper, cumin and/or lime juice, to taste

Fish the chicken out of the soup and put in the ingredients listed above, returning to a covered simmer for while you shred the proper chicken parts. Discard the bones and the chicken scraps from Phase 1. Return the shredded chicken to the pot for 5 minutes or so, and you’re done.

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* Small and beautiful, as opposed to aiming for the TV chef goal of “bigass flavor.”

** My grandmother has ulcers and has been told not to eat spicy foods, but at least one chile always makes it in. When I asked her to describe what she put in this soup, the jalapeño was an afterthought. “Oh, and a pepper.” For flavor, of course.

*** I used boneless this time and relearned the important lesson that it cooks too fast and gets rubbery. Bone-in is the way to go. Can’t get it falling-off-the-bone tender without a bone to fall off of.

**** I may help my diners by shredding the chicken before serving (my grandmother certainly doesn’t), but the rounds of corn are non-negotiable. Nibbling them is half the fun. (For a non-summer version of this soup, just leave the corn out.)

***** Every time I rake a fork through a handful of parsley or cilantro to get the leaves off the stalks, I think of John Kraemer, who taught me that quick and easy technique.

Southwestern-style heap of veg

To use up the leftover filling from the corn and tomato tart earlier this week, I added okra, three tomatoes, another jalapeño, more salt, a little cumin, and three cloves of garlic, minced and browned in olive oil. I covered the whole thing and let it simmer for about 20 minutes–just enough time for most of the goo to leak out of the okra and into the sauce, but not long enough to ruin its crunch. Very easy, very tasty.

corn and tomato tart

Last night, J-P and I swapped chores: he did the overdue laundry, I made a fancy dinner.

I got the recipe online a few years ago, probably after looking at yet another week’s delivery of CSA corn and tomatoes with a mixture of delight and despair. I’ve made it enough times at this point that it didn’t matter last night that I couldn’t find my printed recipe and couldn’t be bothered with looking it up online again. Here’s what I did:

• Before work, take a bag of pie crust scraps from the freezer and put them in the fridge to thaw.
• After work, roll out enough dough to form a 9-inch or so round.
• Put the rolled dough back in the fridge; the rest goes back in the freezer.
• Heat the oven to 350 F.
• Heat some olive oil in a large pan.
• Slice 3/4 of a large yellow onion, chop half a yellow bell pepper, and chop one small jalapeño.
• Cook those in the olive oil with some salt until they are soft and sweet.
• Slice the kernels off three ears of corn.
• Add the corn to the pan and cook briefly, then let vegetables cool.
• Slice one medium-large tomato.
• Grate some cheese in the gruyère range. Last night I used an idiazabal.
• Beat an egg with a little salt. (Are those veggies cooled yet?)
• Dust a flat cookie sheet (no sides–I turn mine over for this) with cornmeal.
• Put the crust on the cookie sheet.
• Pile the corn-onion-pepper mixture (as much as you can fit) in the middle of the crust, leaving an inch or so bare around the edge. (Reserve the rest of the filling, or make less in the first place.)
• Put tomato slices on top and sprinkle with cheese.
• Pinch up the edges of the crust, then brush exposed crust with egg and sprinkle with cornmeal.
• Bake about 40 minutes.
• Top with fresh black pepper and serve.

The original recipe calls for a crust from a softer dough that contains cornmeal, but using what I had with a tactical dusting of cornmeal gave a pleasantly crunchy result. The original lacks peppers but has basil; we had peppers and lacked basil. The change gave just the tiniest hint of bite, not enough to mess with the tart’s otherwise delicate flavor.

The inside bottom crust came out a little damp from the huge pile of vegetables I put on top. Next time, I will poke holes in the bottom (it also inflated a bit), brush it with egg before adding the filling, and put a layer of tomato slices in the bottom before adding the corn-onion mixture.

Note that the filling is very loose and won’t hold together when the tart is cut. I don’t find it a problem, but if you do, I can think of two fixes. One, use less filling and hope the cheese on top acts as a binder. Two, add some beaten egg to the filling.

a very San Francisco summer dinner

Hot, nourishing celery soup to ward off the chilly blue fog, next to a BLT with amazingly sweet-tart, in-season tomato (not to mention free range bacon).

The celery soup recipe comes from PJ, who requested my calabacitas* recipe. For a celery soup that “tastes small and beautiful,” you will need:

• cooking fat
• a head of celery
• a large yellow onion
• salt
• herbs that you enjoy (to borrow Gwen’s phrase; tonight they were thyme and garlic chives)
• two medium starchy potatoes
• pepper
• zest of 1-2 lemons
• six cups water

Heat the fat and get the onion and celery softening in it with some salt. Let that cook, stirring occasionally, while you prep the other ingredients. Add the potatoes, herbs, pepper, lemon zest, and water, along with some more salt. Bring to a boil, then reduce to a simmer and keep it there, covered, until the potatoes are done (another 20 minutes or so). Puree, adjust salt and pepper, and serve.

To puree, we use the immersion blender that Kelli, whom we will love forever, gave us. It replaced our 2-cup food processor for the purpose, and even a couple of years on, it still surprises us how easy the immersion blender is.

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* PJ reports that her father’s family, who called summer squash cymlings, made something similar to calabacitas. The American Heritage Dictionary says that cymling is an alteration of simnel, which is a type of marzipan-covered cake served in Britain at Easter. I assume the association is through the shape of the patty pan squash, which kind of looks like a little cake.

simnel

cymlings

calabacitas: Spanish for “a tremendous amount of chopping”

Or Spanish for “making it up as you go.” (Actually, Spanish for “little squashes.” As opposed to big ones, calabazas, which are pumpkins, winter squash, and so on.)

Recipe by request. Yield: enough for an army (4 as a main, 8 as a side); witness this photo of half the yield left in the pan.

Ingredients

• cooking fat
• 2 large onions
• peppers, bell and hot (here, 1 large red bell, a handful of pickled jalapeos, and some red pepper flakes)
• 6 small summer squash (in this case crooknecks between 4 and 7 inches)
• 4 large ears corn
• herbs (here, a small bunch of garlic chives and the leaves off two big sprigs of basil; you can substitute oregano, cilantro, regular chives, cloves of garlic)
• salt
• black pepper
• cumin
• cream, milk, or water

Dice everything small (it helps to have two people working on this). Cut the kernels off the ears of corn. Heat the fat, then add the onions and any fresh peppers, plus some salt, to cook, stirring occasionally, until the onions start to go translucent. Add the squash and some salt and cook, stirring occasionally, another 5 minutes of so. Add any pickled or dried peppers, herbs, spices, more salt, and the corn, stirring to incorporate. Pour in enough cream (or milk, or water) to moisten thoroughly, but don’t make it soupy. Reduce heat, cover, and simmer 5 minutes or so. If the liquid is more watery than saucy when you take the lid off, remove most of the solids and cook the sauce down. (Last night we didn’t bother, partly because the sauce was reasonably thick, partly because there was just so many vegetable in the pan.)

Smoke-dried tomatoes from Boggy Creek Farm in Texas (Austin and Milam County) are an excellent addition. If you’re going to make this dish vegan, I’d go so far as to say they’re a necessity.

We finished with individual blueberry pies from Natalie of Bike Basket Pies and chocolate ice cream from Bi Rite.