Godful Food...

I can't complain

2012-01-15T20:22:00.007+01:00

Good day, Dear Reader –

I trust January is being nice and gentle with you. And while I’m at it, I’d like to ask: What do you generally think of January? I personally find the year’s first month a reclusive egg. I own it is no fun to arrive on the spot intent to raise a few toasts to a new year and throw in a few tipsy jokes here and there only to find out that everybody has sobered up after the visit of the festive and jocund December and promised to go teetotal for the whole month. Thus far having found nobody around the bar, January makes a beeline for the kitchen…and, dash it, what is there to be seen? Lettuce and broccoli have taken up the diner’s plate. It’s quiet. Void of major festivities of its own, January does only so much as to grow cold and pass by in the wake of the past holidays.

My point is: January for me is just that month that comes when Christmas holidays are over. A rather daunting attitude, I hear you say. And I agree. I’m having a hard time letting go of good times. It is why our Christmas tree is still here, still sparkling, still perfuming our home. I’ve been like this since the daunt of me, begging my mother to hold on to the tree just one more day until my father would have to intervene with a shirty speech about how much the dry needles litter the living room’s floor, and how it is on his way to his chest of books, and how silly it is, holy spruce, to have not yet got rid of the Christmas tree by the end of January and that we’d better do it immediately. Upset, I’d strip the dear tree of the ornaments, taking down tinsel after tinsel, one shimmering string after another, knowing perfectly well that of course it was the time to throw it out, of course it was silly to keep it for so long. But in my view, for long as there was the Christmas tree, there was no emptiness. I am my own governor now, and so far the tree (this time mostly decorated with peppermint candy canes) is staying. Anthony says he doesn’t mind. And I’m glad. I’m filling the void.

Where am I going with this? Ah yes, I’ve been free from work the week that’s just worn off. I was going to make a few day trips around Holland, to get engaged in a shopping spree, to visit a few museums I haven’t yet been to. In one broad brush stroke, my plan was to be out and about, filling my January with excitement – and I couldn’t wait! Needless to say, I quite surprised myself that when my free week finally arrived, all I did, and wanted to do, was stay in. My initial standing was to plunge in the dark underwater of self-loathing: What a downer! What a pooper scooper! Humbug! Most likely I would. But I got distracted. Anthony got swept off by a beastly case of poisoning, the type that blows one flat out, and makes one think, That’s it. He was in bad, bad pain. We were both scared. My main tasks at the time were to make sure there is enough Gatorade in the fridge, it being the sole thing he could keep down, and to call an ambulance if the situation would spiral out of control, which, luckily, it didn’t.

I’m happy to say Anthony is OK now. The circumstances so transpired that we both stayed in. And actually, except his sickness, it was nice. We played Monopoly day in, day out; watched a lot of Pat & Mat and In Living Color (such a great show!). I did a lot of reading. And when Anthony finally felt hungry again, we ate chickpeas. I can’t complain about my week off. I don’t think so. And as long as our Christmas tree is still around, I will not complain about January.

Hot Chickpea Salad
Source: Simple French Food by Richard Olney

Composed of chickpeas, olive oil, vinegar and fresh herbs, this is one of the unfussiest salads I’ve ever made. All you’ve got to do is to plan slightly ahead – at least two hours for soaking the chickpeas and as much for cooking them -- and water and heat will take care of the rest.

I have a soft spot for chickpeas, but that, however, didn’t equip me with the knowledge that they are very sensitive to hard waters. To neutralize the effect, Richard Olney would soak his chickpeas in sifted wood ashes and rain water, to which a good pinch of bicarbonate of soda would be a fine substitute, he writes.

Rain waters and wood ashes or not, this is what you do. Rinse the chickpeas well after soaking, chuck in a pot, cover amply with water and throw in a carrot and/or celery stalk along with one onion studded with a few cloves and a sprig of thyme. Bring slowly to a boil, cover partially and cook into submission over a lazy simmer, salting the lot generously only towards the end of cooking time. Drain. Serve hot, accompanied by a fragrant olive oil – “The immediate explosion of perfume when good olive oil is added to any hot vegetable is always exciting” -- vinegar, salt and pepper and some finely-chopped fresh parsley. No measurements are required for this type of dish, your own taste being the essential pointer.

What astonishes

2011-12-20T12:47:00.007+01:00

I like remembering people through things they taught me. Take my good Italian friend Paola for example. Before moving to London, Paola worked at the bakery for a few years. I learnt a lot from her. First and foremost, she passed me the knowledge of macaron craftsmanship. Every Wednesday I make macarons at work now I think of Paola. The eye for a good meringue, the careful wrist movement, the assertive hold of a pastry bag, she was there with me as I was making wonky baby steps towards the skillfully made macaron. I’m thankful to her for this, thankful with capital T. What I’m also grateful to her for is that she showed me some special cookies one distant day in past.

Chocolate and sea salt, bound into union by brown sugar, butter and flour, all packed into the medallion of a cookie, sea salt chocolate sables (French-style shortbreads), man, they stole my heart. I made over one hundred and fifty of them for the personal use over the course of the last one and a half weeks, which screams out loud that these cookies are seriously good. Or that I’m losing my mind. A voice in my head tells it’s both.

If you are still figuring out what sweet species to include in your Christmas cookie tin, a place, as we all understand, notoriously known for being intolerant to the stale and tasteless, could I suggest you try these sea salt chocolate sables. Created, as I learnt, by the veritable French pastry chef Pierre Herme, he of the Isphahan macaron fame, among much, much else, these cookies are destined to deliver. I’d even say they are bound to surprise. Of course there is nothing surprising about the already classical combination of sea salt and chocolate, but that’s not what I mean anyway. What I’m driving at is the way the sweet (caramel-y from the brown sugar and bitter from the chocolate) and salty co-exist here. Upon the first bite, preceded by a clear and crisp snap!, it’s a sweet talk all over. The eater chews ever so slightly for a second or two, freeing the chocolate flavor from the cookie case all the while, and salty sticks its neck out from seemingly every sugary molecule in the sable. And at the end what astonishes the palate is not the fact that the confection is sweet and salty, but that it’s both at the same time. The impression lasts even if a stray salt crystal resides on this tooth or that for a little while.

Also to be noted: the said cookie is earnestly chocolate-rich. The richness doesn’t come from the overuse (is there such a thing anyway?) of chocolate. The latter is chaperoned by cacao powder and that is what makes the deep omnipresent chocolate flavor even more proper. In other words, the whole cookie, so wholesome and many-faceted at once, is the capital excitant for the palate. It’s small, but it plays big. I’m happy to have lost my heart, and mind, to it.

When it comes to keeper recipes, I’m a slow burner, I noticed. Paola made them a tough more than a year ago as one of her contributions to our mutual friend’s seventy-five people party that she and I had been asked to cook for. One cookie a pop was the idea, but I remember snatching a handful, surely leaving somebody cookie-less thereof. I know I should have been sorry or something, but honestly I was not. The cookie, as described above, was worth a sin or two. I’ve been thinking about that sable frequently ever since, but make it myself, well, I didn’t (am I lazy? forgetful? I don’t know!). I knew Paola left the recipe in a recipe folder at the bakery (the private party took place there), so before leaving in September I copied the recipe neatly with a view to make it imminently, which I didn’t get to do – until recently.

Despite having already made over a hundred and fifty (see the second paragraph above) for only the two of us, Anthony and myself, there are no intentions on my side to discontinue the process. I don’t see how I could, now that my mind got whisked away by the power of sea salt chocolate sable. Thank you, Paola!

Happy holidays, Dear Reader! Happy cooking, happy eating!

Pierre Herme’s Sea Salt Chocolate Sables

Adapted from Pierre Herme via a dear friend Paola
Yield: about 36 cookies

I can’t see how one could improve upon these darlings. They are great. A few minor things I changed are simply a matter of personal preference. One, instead of chopping chocolate into chip-size bits, I grind it (after some rough chopping). This way, the chocolate melts into everywhere in the cookie. Two, I also grind a fresh vanilla bean, which is, perhaps, just fussy, but I like the intense vanilla flavor the cookie sees from it.

And lastly, as cookies go, these are triply best when the dough rests amply in the fridge. Make the dough, form the logs, chill and bake the next day while replenishing the dough stash, if desired (which it will be). The recipe doubles beautifully.

175 g (6.2 oz) all-purpose flour
30 g (1 oz) best-quality unsweetened cacao powder, such as Valrhona ½ tsp baking powder
150 g (5.3 oz) butter, at room temperature
120 (4.2 oz) g light brown sugar
50 g (1.7 oz) sugar
½ tsp fluer de sel or ¼ tsp fine sea salt
½ tsp ground vanilla bean, or 1 tsp pure vanilla extract
150 g (5.3 oz) best-quality bittersweet chocolate, such as Valrhona, finely ground

1. In a medium bowl, sift together the flour, cacao powder and baking powder. Set aside.

2. Beat the butter at medium speed until soft and creamy. Add the sugars, fleur de sel and ground vanilla bean (or vanilla extract) and continue beating at medium speed for 1-2 minutes (do not let the butter get warm). Add the sifted dry ingredients and using your hands mix just until combined. The dough will look very crumbly and that’s fine. Work the dough as little as possible. Toss in the chocolate and quickly mix (again, you can use your hands) to incorporate.

3. Turn the dough out onto a clean and smooth work surface, and divide in half. Working with one half at a time, shape the dough into a rough 4-cm (1 ½-inch) thick log (to make sure there is no air channel in the log, flatten it once or twice and roll it up from one long side to the other; work fast to prevent the butterfat from melting). Wrap the logs in plastic wrap and refrigerate for a few hours, preferably overnight. (Wrapped airtight, the logs can be chilled for up to 3 days and frozen for up to 1 month.)

4. Pre-heat the oven to 175 C (350 F). Place a rack in the bottom third of the oven. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper.

5. With a sharp and thin-bladed knife, cut logs into 1-cm (1/2 -inch) thick slices. (If the cookies break, just squeeze the broken-off part back onto the cookie.) Place the cookies on the prepared sheets, leaving at least about 2-cm (about 1-inch) space between them. Bake for 12 minutes and only 1 sheet at a time. The cookies will not look done nor will they be firm, but that’s fine, that’s the way they roll. Let the cookies rest on the sheet until they are warm. Repeat with the second sheet of the cookies. Keep in an airtight container for up to 1 week.

It would look decent

2011-11-22T17:03:00.005+01:00

Dear Reader, hello –

How are things with you? I got a little bit distracted from here, as you can see. Since my temporary return to the bakery, I’ve been laboring there four consecutive days a week (as opposed to three days spread throughout the week before). Seeing that for most job-bound a working week would usually be comprised of five days, I feel I have no legitimate right to make a fuss now. I’d just say my only beef would be not to pass all my after-work hours in the vacuum of a deep slumber, which is what I’ve successfully been doing lately. I’m not a sloth, really. I’m rather confident my having to wake up for work before the birds – at 5 a.m. on a weekday, at 4 a.m. on weekends -- has a lot to do with my recent fondness of the pillow. Reader, I’d like to do much better than counting sheep before my usual bed time around 11 p.m, so I’m working on it. My latter-day strategy, of which I’m going to tell you in a jiffy, is working remarkably well. It keeps me from falling asleep soon after I get back from work in the late afternoon, which, in turn, raises my morale up a notch, which, in turn, makes me a better-ish person overall.

The afore-mentioned strategy is…cake-making. It’s brilliant. All this whisking, beating, and mixing have me skip around my kitchen area shooing hibernation away. Then it’s (usually) an hour wait for a cake to bake which has the same effect on me as a shot of inky espresso, only it’s milder and more considerate towards my heart rate. And of course it’s the eating of a cake itself that takes the edge off my tiredness completely. (Some irony: baking at work tires me, baking at home perks me up.)

I made my first cake when I was fourteen or fifteen of age (I was a late bloomer). It was an apple cake known in Russia as sharlotka (not to be confused with charlotte Russe). Growing up I was not really encouraged to cook. Reason being, tap water was a pleasant surprise rather than a 24/7 attribute in our household back then (brilliant post-Soviet reality). It’s well understood cooking goes hand-in-glove with washing up, but the latter in our situation was a rather dire endeavor to accomplish, what with the limited water stored in vats and buckets kept in the bathroom. In other words, no need for unnecessary whisking, whipping, and mixing, thank you very much. But I saw that cake on a Russian cooking show, and it seemed an easy one-bowl affair. All the domestic encumbrances be damned, I was so making it. The simplicity of the said confection laid in its use of all the ingredients in equal measure, the ingredients being flour, sugar, eggs and apples. You beat one part sugar with a few eggs, introduce one part flour to the mixture, and round the deal off by mixing in a few apples. The lot was baked in a frying pan, and regardless of one half of the cake going lopsided and the other burnt, my parents and I had a piece each with tea. We all agreed that theoretically it was a good no-nonsense cake, and that I shouldn’t be making it again.

Nigel Slater’s apple cake reminds me of my first baking affair, sharlotka. Similarly to the latter, it also calls for the equal quantities of the ingredients, only in addition to flour, eggs, sugar and apples it also cordially invites butter to the premises. Besides that, another difference is that nobody in their right mind would ever think of not making it again. You cream the butter with the sugar first, nudge the eggs in second, fold in the flour and baking powder third, and lastly, once the mixture is scraped in a baking tin, put spiced apples on top. At first you’ll most likely think that the cake batter is a dud, on the account of it being too thick, almost cookie dough thick. But go on notwithstanding -- the heat will take care of everything. The apples will surrender and sink in the batter, their juices trickling down and moisturizing the crumb. And the crumb, it will spring up a bit, carefully closing in around the apple pieces. The result is a loveable slim, tender, open-crumb apple cake that stays moist for a few days, no assistance of aluminum foil needed (as I accidentally discovered). It’s not overly sweet, with a quiet tart voice coming out from a little bit of lemon juice used with the apples. Last time I baked it I subbed whole wheat for plain flour. That is not necessary at all for the taste enhancement -- the cake is good as it is; I just think apple and whole wheat together make a fine autumn treat. In case if apple pies start to rub you the wrong way by now, give a chance to this apple cake. Some whipped cream on the side, it would look decent on your Thanksgiving table, that.

Happy Thanksgiving, Reader!

Nigel Slater’s Apple Cake

Adapted from The Kitchen Diaries
Yield: 8-10 servings

Slater calls the afore-mentioned sweetness English Apple Cake, but I’m not sure whether it’s because he uses local English apples for the recipe or because it’s originally an English recipe. I tend to think it’s the former, for the recipe is included in an entry christened A Basket of Apples. On the grounds that I’m not using the English fruit here and, generally, for the sake of clarity, I’ve taken to call this cake quite simply as Nigel Slater’s Apple Cake.

I don’t mind the apple-cinnamon flavor combination as such, but I personally prefer fresh vanilla as a spice for an apple. If cinnamon would be your choice, disregard my call for half a vanilla bean and use ½ tsp ground cinnamon instead, or use both, perhaps.

Slater uses a 24-cm square tin for this cake, but since I don’t own one I utilize a 24-cm round spring form here. It seems to work just fine too.

3 medium-size apples (I used Santana)
juice of ½ lemon
seeds from ½ vanilla bean
2 Tbsp demerara sugar
130 g (4.4 oz.) butter
130 g (4.4 oz) light brown sugar
2 large eggs
130 gr (4.4 oz) whole wheat flour
1 tsp baking powder
a little extra sugar (optional)

1. Pre-heat the oven to 180 degrees Celsius (355 degrees Fahrenheit). Place a rack in the lower third of the oven. Butter and flour a 24-cm (9 1/2-inch) baking spring form; shake off excess flour.

2. Cut the apple into small chunks, removing the cores as you proceed and dumping the fruit in a small bowl with the lemon juice. Add the vanilla bean seeds and demerara sugar and toss well. Set aside.

3. Sift the whole-weat flour and baking powder together, set aside. Beat the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add the eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. Fold the flour mix gently into the butter mixture (the mixture will be very thick). Scrape into the prepared baking form and smooth out. The cake mixture will be very shallow in the form. Put the spiced apples (together with the lemon juice, if you wish) on top of the cake mixture and scatter a little bit more demerara sugar, if desired.

4. Bake for 55-60 minutes. The centre should be firm and the edges should be nicely browning. Cool for 10 mins, still in the baking tin. Run a sharp knife around the cake and take off the side of the spring form. To remove the bottom of the spring form, you might want to run a long serrated knife under the cake. This cake is best eaten warm – reheat in a gentle oven before serving. Keeps well for two days.

There it was

2011-10-19T19:48:00.005+02:00

What is there to say about carrot cake? I don’t have much, except that it frequently makes me wonder why it’s so named if carrots can only be found through a magnifying glass. Some say it’s for the moisture that the carrots are drawn into the business, but I’m not into buying that. Plus, it’s always cinnamon or ginger or allspice or whatever that steals the show, or rather, takes the cake (note: I’m not anti-spices, I just find it rather confusing when carrot cake is pulled into gingerbread’s dress, that’s it). All in all, I like cake and I like carrots, but should I see a carrot cake in my vicinity, most surely I wouldn’t reach for it.

Not so long ago I attended one potluck party. Actually, it was a goodbye bash for me and a few of my colleagues at the bakery. I don’t quite know how to better explain this, so here goes nothing: a while ago I decided it is time for me to learn and try new things, so I quit my job this past September; got a collection of farewell gifts; remained unemployed for a few weeks; and as October started, came back for a tad longer, until this year’s end, to be precise. More about that in due time, for now there is another thing to tell. There in one corner of the long white-clad wooden table set with the edible provision sat one carrot cake -- and I was going to lay my hands on it. It wasn’t an impulse. I knew the cake would be there. I couldn’t wait to try it.

Months before the party, in truth, months before anybody would start talking about the party at all, I was given this recipe. I got it from Marijn. An official paper would describe Marijn as a retiree, but I don’t want to go down that route. I like to think of Marijn as a life volunteer. Having reached a certain age, she refuses to sit at home and do “nothing”. She would volunteer at the bakery every Wednesday for years making tartlet shells in numbers that on a given day would exceed a hundred, whisking lemon cream to the point you don’t remember you have arms and they can move, doing the dishes, grinding and sieving kilos of nuts, sorting out the macarons, and the like. We would be in that boat together, elbow to elbow. And despite being on the opposite sides of the age road, we sometimes called each other “sister”. One Wednesday past summer, Marijn came and gave me the recipe, a reaching gesture of her hand accompanied by the words, “This cake is so sticky, so full of carrot. It is so good – make it!”, or something very similar. I took a ruled piece of paper with the hand-written recipe, brought it home, studied the text very carefully, put it in a plastic sleeve, and forgot all about it. I don’t know what I was thinking, I don’t remember now. One thing is certain: I would not be writing about this carrot cake now if Marijn wouldn’t have brought it that evening, a farewell party for her too.

So there it was, resting on a glass cake stand, observing the ignorant me. It was impossible to see through the snowy cap of its cream cheese icing, but it looked different from the carrot cakes I’d seen before. It didn’t have the height or the volume of a normal, leavened, carrot cake. The one I was looking at was rather short, stubby almost. It didn’t seem cake-y at all. It didn’t taste cake-y either. Lugging no flour nor butter, the cake had only three vitals -- carrots, nuts and raisins. It was like a moist carrot granola bar, if there is such a thing, but only without the brick-like density of the latter. I think I want to say that the cake was nubbly, what with all those shreds of carrot and studs of nuts and raisins poking out from the cross section. In one swift brushstroke, it was what it’s called: carrot cake. It wasn’t a piece of beauty, but one bite had me like it quite a bit, so much so that I decided right there, almost a month too early, to make this sweetmeat for Anthony’s birthday, which I did this recent week.

I grated carrots; ground nuts; simmered raisins in some wine; beat egg yolks with lemon zest and sugar, and a dash of flour. I then whisked egg whites; combined the whole lot; and finally consigned it to the oven, waiting for it to emerge beautiful and graceful, ready to be coated with a sleek vanilla seeds-dotted cream cheese frosting. A few hours later, when the clocks were striking midnight, Anthony was Happy Birthday-ed with a manly piece of the confection. We had a friend visiting for a game night/pre-birthday drinks (hello, Charlie!), and with them two nibbling the cake all night long the said baked good was nearly gone by the early a.m. When I pulled out two remaining pieces from the fridge to be had with our late morning coffee, I was met with ferocious exclamations, Where is my cake? Why did you throw away Anthony’s cake? Yes, why did you throw away my birthday cake? My foot!

Nubbly Carrot Cake
Adapted from Marijn
Yield: 10-12 servings

Marijn’s recipe uses trail mix, the kind that contains four or five sorts of nuts and dark raisins. I prefer to choose for myself what nuts will go into the cake, so I use only two types – almond and walnut. I find dark raisins too sweet, which is why I sub white raisins for dark ones. I don’t grind them together with the nuts. I want the dried fruit plump and juicy, so I simmer the stuff in just enough white wine over lowest heat for about fifteen minutes. If there is any liquid left after that, I drain it.

Contrary to the original instructions, I didn’t add hot water to my cream cheese frosting, and I cut back the amount of sugar used. I also used fresh vanilla bean seeds in place of vanilla extract.

Lastly, don’t use a cake form smaller than 24- or 25-cm (9- or 10-inch) in diameter. This cake is meant to be short. There is just a smidge of flour, almost nothing to hold the stuff together, so if it’s tall it wouldn’t hold its own under the knife at all.

For the cake:
150 gr (5 oz) walnut, coarsely ground
150 gr (5 oz) almond, coarsely ground
200 gr (7 oz) coarsely grated peeled carrots
80 gr (2.8 oz) white raisins (see headnote)
zest of one medium lemon
120 gr (4 oz) sugar (divided use)
3 eggs, separated
50 gr (1.8 oz) flour

For the icing:
125 gr (4 oz) cream cheese
30 gr (1 oz) butter, softened
120 gr (4 oz) powdered sugar
seeds from ½ vanilla bean

1. Position a rack in the bottom third of the oven and preheat to 200 degrees Celsius (390 degrees Fahrenheit). Liberally butter a 25-cm round cake form. Flour and shake off any excesses.

2. In a large bowl, combine the nuts, carrots and raisins together.

3. In a medium bowl, rub the lemon zest into 60 gr sugar (use your fingertips), until the sugar is fragrant. Beat in the egg yolks until the mixture is pale. Mix in the flour. Add the egg-flour mixture to the carrot-nut mixture and stir well (the mixture will be thick and dry-ish, so use your hands, it’s faster).

4. In a separate bowl and at high speed, beat the egg whites to the consistency of shaving cream. Add the remaining 60 gr sugar, and continues beating until stiff peaks form, 2-3 minutes. Using a rubber spatula and working in two or three additions, carefully fold the egg whites into the carrot batter.

5. Pour in the prepared cake form and gently smooth out the surface. Slide into the oven and immediately turn to 150 degrees Celsius (300 degrees Fahrenheit). Bake until the cake starts to pull away from the sides of the form and a knife inserted in the center comes out clean, about 45-50 minutes. Let cool in the form for 10 minutes, after which turn out onto a rack to cool completely.

6. When the cake is cool, prepare the icing. In a medium bowl, beat the cream cheese, vanilla seeds, and the butter until smooth. Sift the powdered sugar, and beat on low speed until incorporated. If the sugar starts forming lumps, increase the speed and beat until smooth again. Spread the icing all over the top of the cake.

7. Store in the fridge, but bring to room temperature before serving.

It's not a drag

2011-09-16T13:03:00.007+02:00

After a long and thorough think I came to a conclusion that it’s time for me again to say something about potatoes. Frankly, the frequency with which blurbs about potatoes pop up here just goes to show that it wouldn’t be irrelevant at all if this site bore a different name, say, Potatoes&Company, or P&C for short. But Reader, hold on if you think are in for a drag. You are not. Today the potato is going Indian way, and, may I suggest, we all should tag along.

A question: does it happen to you, too, that some cookbook title brushes past your memory and your antenna goes up and you think, I would really like to have this book. But that fleeting moment arcs and goes off, and years already start flocking in a sizeable group, and suddenly something random reminds you about your old intentions, making you think, Holy spice, why don’t I yet own that book? In short, that is me and 5 Spices, 50 Dishes, a book of uncomplicated Indian recipes using only, as the name suggests, five accessible spices (in varying combination), a book I’ve been intending to acquire for four years, an absurd and unnecessary long wait that was over this past summer when exasperated with my own inaction I finally went to a book store to get the publication.

A sign of a promising cookbook, as we all would peacefully agree, is that its many pages get dog-eared or bookmarked by the selective hand of a reader. The book in question is one such thing, and it’s exciting. Besides, and I’m ready to admit that it is my thing, if at least one page of a book sports a potato recipe that doesn’t call for drowning them in cream or butter which this book has, I get excited some more. And when such recipe, after just one bite, makes me worried that it’s going to be particularly difficult to stop eating it, and when quite a few -- alright, three -- people, irrespectively of each other, say that “these potatoes are good”, I feel I’ve been given the green light to start talking.

There are dozens of ways to make a potato tasty. But of all the ways, I personally like best what Indian cuisine does to it, those exhilarating spices and the overall respect to the potato’s form – I have yet to find an Indian recipe that would mash the life out of a potato -- being the reasons. On a related note: it is rather remarkable what a restorative effect Indian cooking has on a cook (and those near one). In times of uncertainty and self-doubt, a wobbly soul should fire up the stove, pull out a cooking vessel, and get going: a whiff of turmeric, a trace of toasted black mustard seeds, a swatch of incendiary chili tickling the senses, the raucous sizzling of onions and potatoes. I feel good already.

Reader, commit to memory these simple steps. Toast black mustard seeds in well-heated oil. Add ground turmeric. Toss in sliced potatoes and onion. Round off with salt and cayenne. In ten minutes you will have got yourself squidgy, fragrant, oniony, spicy potatoes that will challenge your people skills, because, may I just say, lest you are stuck in company of another soul for dinner, these are not easy to share. Although originally titled Railway Potatoes, so named on account of the author’s, Ruta Kahate’s, childhood memories of her mother’s “travel food” prepared for the family train journeys hither and thither, the dish, in my opinion, should go into the world’s annals under the name Spicy Feel-Good Potatoes. It’s not a drag. It’s not a hoax. Believe me.

Railway Potatoes (Spicy Feel-Good Potatoes)
Adapted from 5 Spices, 50 Dishes by Ruta Kahate

Yield: 2 servings as a main course, or 4 as a side dish

700 gr (about 1 ½ pounds) medium red-skinned potatoes, scrubbed
60 ml (1/4 cup) non-fragrant vegetable oil
½ tsp black mustard seeds
¼ tsp ground turmeric
1 large yellow onion, halved and thinly sliced
½ to 1 tsp sea salt
¼ to ½ tsp cayenne
a generous handful of roughly chopped fresh coriander or flat-leaf parsley, for garnish

Quarter and cut the potatoes lengthwise into thin slices.

Over high heat, warm the oil in a wide skillet. When the oil starts to smoke, add the mustard seeds, and cover the pan. After the seeds stop sputtering, add the turmeric, and stir for a few seconds. Immediately dump in the onion, potatoes, cayenne, and salt. Stir well; cover. Turn the heat down to medium-low and cook until the spuds are tender, stirring occasionally, about 10 mins. Taste and add more salt, if needed. Mix in the fresh herb. Serve warm.

This is good

2011-08-23T13:19:00.007+02:00

“This double chocolate praline is so good. It tastes as if somebody who was eating only chocolate their whole life released their bowels, and what came out was made into the chocolate filling. So good. Are you guys travelling in Amsterdam for the first time?”

A burly, bold, bespectacled guy and his four female companions are seated in the furthest corner of the room, but I can hear his every American-accented word.

I am in a café. Its roomy interior comprised by dark wood panels and light brown watercolors on the walls, smooth and polished dark wooden floors, sturdy dark wooden furniture, sizeable windows and mirrors, and high ceilings are conducive to sitting still. This place has a feel of a railway station café, the kind one would find, I imagine, in a big city back in the dawn of the twentieth century, travelers poring over their newspapers, still crisp from the press and odorous of ink, and sipping on drinks in their wait for a train bound for the new and unknown, or, contrary, back to the familiar and predictable.

Given the early afternoon hour it’s still non-crowded inside. I’m here to write. Usually I write in the privacy of my home. There is no definite reason why. Maybe because the prime time to write for me is in the morning when my mind has not yet exhausted me with dubious worries and fears about the nascent day, so instead of going elsewhere in the early hours I choose to stay put and write in quiet. To write home is also convenient, because in case self-deprecating thoughts start bulldozing over me, I’m within an arm’s reach from a jar of Nutella, and, let me tell you, there is no such thought that a spoonful of the sweet, silky hazelnut spread cannot cover up for me, if only temporarily. But somehow today is different; I haven’t practiced writing in days and I wanted to venture out to start to again.

“How about some coffee before we go, guys?”, the man across the room addresses his acquaintances as a waiter dressed in black and white has come up to take their new order.

This person is annoying me. I suppress an urge to stand up and ask him out loud why on earth he is talking so raucously. Doesn’t he see I can’t focus because of him? Yeah, go and blame that guy; it’s his fault you can’t write, that’s right.

I’m thinking about what Molly Wizenberg said recently about her writing process (such a great post!). She compared it to entering the dark cave, “the cave where the story is”. To get there is a scary, even painful undertaking. Yet, tiptoeing around that cave will only make us lynch ourselves all along for avoiding it. There is no other way but in. Unlike Molly, I am not writing a book. Not yet. For me it’s not the story that is in the cave, it’s the writing practice itself. I’m terrified by it. I’m terrified by how vulnerable, almost naked writing makes me feel. I’m afraid to fail at it, to seem inadequate and worthless. Through turning my vitals inside out, it's teaching me to believe -- in myself and in the process.

Ironically, though, non-writing is even worse. Last fall I used to work in my bakery five days a week, from Wednesday to Sunday, non-stop, Monday and Tuesday being recuperation days. Pledging to myself everyday that I would write after grueling working hours, I would go home only to find myself able to do one thing: to sleep. That undid me. I reached for Nutella more often than if I did when writing. That undid me too.

“One Irish coffee and four cappuccinos, please.”

Growing up I didn’t think I would want to write. Until the age of twenty four when I started this blog, I hadn’t touched writing. Turning to the ilk of Tolstoy, or Chekhov, or Shakespeare (in translation) as a teenager, I stood in awe of those mighty writers: Their works are great, they are Cyclopean. Feeling belittled by their genius, page after page, I was rock-solid sure one can’t be a writer unless one is like them. I am not a Tolstoy, or a Chekhov, or a Shakespeare. Nobody would ever give me permission to write. My good school friend used to dabble in writing, more for fun than anything, and secretly I felt jealous that she had the courage and audacity to reach for a pen. She could also bake some mean sponge cake since she was ten or something. I felt jealous of that as well.

If writing makes such an impact on you, this is where you belong then, said Anthony after I’d confided my fears to him. He also added that he feels the same about his graphic designs. But he also conceded that if a blank page on the computer screen wouldn’t scare him, he wouldn’t get excited about the creative process in the first place.

A new customer has come in. He is seated a few tables away to the left from me. Waiting for his order, he plunged deep into a newspaper, his hand perched upon his grey hair.

Why do I want to write? I like words. I like (telling) stories. Why do I write in English if it’s not my mother tongue? It’s an intellectual challenge. I like challenges. English doesn’t ground me in its strict grid. This is good. I like it too. Besides, maybe deep down I’m not quite content with being Russian and all that comes with it -- except my family, the brilliant short-story writer Anton Chekhov, and some food -- and I am just escaping. Perhaps that, too.

A waitress uploaded a tall glass of white wine and a platter of charcuterie, some cured meat rolled in a cigarette shape, some cut into rounds and fanned out, from her black tray onto the man’s table. Not turning his gaze from the newspaper, he is reaching for the glass first, and then for a thin medallion of sausage.

He doesn’t notice how the light pours into his wine the color of hay, making it sparkle like a crystal. He is not looking at his food. I am. And I am writing about it. I am writing because as Dayna Macy said in Ravenous: “sometimes there are promises you make to yourself that you have to keep, because if you didn’t, life would be too dispiriting”.

I hope you don't mind

2011-08-01T11:27:00.006+02:00

I hope you don’t mind to fall into sin now and eat a cookie, which is not just a cookie but the essence of butter. And I also hope you are not squeamish at all about butter, because if you are, it will be difficult for me to reel you in, but I’ll try anyway, because I think you’d like this cookie. It goes by the name of graham cracker, and although I’m very tempted to dub it whole wheat butter cookie, I’ll stick with its original name in the interest of clarity. I am ready to hawk this lovely graham cracker to you.

A foreword: graham cracker is an intellectual product of one Sylvester Graham (hence the name), a 19th-century public health-concerned Presbyterian minister from New Jersey who believed that eating bland foods encourages abstinence, and abstinence, in turn, perks up man’s health. The graham cracker as Reverend Graham conceived it was to be made with a coarsely ground type of whole wheat flour named after himself (graham flour), and it had to be bland, which, I suspect, would mean no butter. I feel that that pioneer graham cracker (named a cracker for its crispiness, not for savory qualities) was a sad thing to munch, which, probably, made it challenging to practice cheerfulness during mealtimes, as Reverend Graham advised.

My first sentient experience with graham cracker occurred only a year and a half ago. I recall it was an early morning and I was in a hurry for work. I was hungry, too. The idea of scavenging Anthony’s kitchen cupboard (that was before we moved in together) for breakfast food I could eat on the run quickly came to mind, and in a moment I was holding an open box of HoneyMaid grahams that took residence in the back of the cupboard. There were only two crackers left, so I happily snatched them and went about my business. Biting into the crispy rectangular every dozen hurried steps, I recognized a hefty, toasty taste of whole wheat and floral notes of honey. My taste buds picked up on some fat too. On my tongue those crackers felt like a thinly buttered cookie, a treat I used to make for myself as a kid slathering butter on plain store-bought tea cookies. I liked HoneyMaid grahams. I was looking forward to having more of them. In vain, though, for I later found out that those two I’d gobbled up were the last crumbs of a special-occasion care package Anthony had received from a friend who was visiting earlier back then. The pack contained foodstuff that is difficult to come by in the Netherlands and that Anthony misses the most. No more HoneyMaid grahams -- or any grahams, at that -- until God-knows-when?

Such was the bad news that I had to plan to make grahams myself. Unfortunately, or maybe not, a project for home-made graham crackers was never ventured -- until now. The canon of the graham recipes that came my way called for graham flour, and that is an obstacle I couldn’t handle. Graham flour is unheard of where I am, and I wasn’t ready to pay fortunes for across-the-pond shipments (wouldn’t that be costly?). I was deterred and back to ground zero. While seeking that one recipe that would warrant me a batch of crispy grahams despite my pantry limitations, I overlooked all along the fact that graham flour is whole-wheat flour. The former is coarser than the latter, and so what? Whole wheat is whole wheat, no matter the grinding. Some people did take that into account, and here I am picking up the fruits of their labor, gleeful and adamant to catch up with the endless months of involuntary restraint.

In her new cookbook Miette (a beautiful tome of scallop-edged, crisp pages carrying delicious recipes from elegant festive cakes to everyday cake-y concoctions to cookies to candy, among much else), Meg Ray, the chef and owner of the eponymous pastry shop in San Francisco, shares a recipe for grahams that foregoes graham in favor of regular whole-wheat flour. And that is not arbitrary. Ms Ray reveals that regular whole-wheat flour provides “a smooth, crisp, buttery cookie”, contrary to the uneven texture that graham flour yields. The recipe promised me a smooth, crisp, butter-rich, honey-flavored and cinnamon-laced graham cracker without graham flour! That’s the one. I scanned through the list of ingredients, and having determined I had them all, I immediately zipped into the kitchen ready for action. All what was required was cream butter, a big hunk of it, together with brown sugar and honey, and then turn the lot into a ball of dough by adding a mix of flours, all-purpose and whole-wheat, ground cinnamon, and salt to it.

I have felt free to double the amount of whole wheat flour, because I like the dense, nutty flavor it brings, and I feel that’s what a graham cracker needs to be about. One time I questioned the large quantity of butter, and having made the grahams with less of it, I found out that their flavor and crispiness were compromised. Skipping the butter is a poor taste, don’t do that. This graham cracker has the heart of a butter cookie, and that’s what makes it exceptional.

After mixing, the dough would be chilled briefly, rolled out, cut into scallop-edged rounds (give a break to regular squares and rectangles), and baked for about ten minutes. And as the crackers sweated in the oven, every corner of the apartment was getting filled with warm scents of freshly cut hay, spice, and dairy. Crisp, redolent of butter, with lingering notes of cinnamon and honey, good-looking, these grahams are moreish. To me, they are the ultimate graham crackers. Anthony dubbed them the “star cookies” (“They are more buttery than normal, way better than HoneyMaid!”), and between the two of us, the yield of twenty grahams lasts no longer than twenty four hours. Surely, Reverend Graham wouldn’t approve of such indulgence – until he tried one, perhaps.

Graham crackers, anyone?

[Ultimate] Graham Crackers

Adapted from Miette: Recipes from San Francisco’s Most Charming Pastry Shop by Meg Ray

Yield: about twenty 8-cm (3 ¼-inch) crackers

Since butter is the major flavor-maker in this recipe, go for the best one available. I use Lurpak®, justly famous Danish butter “made from cream and nothing else”. The type of honey you opt for will also determine the crackers’ final taste, so feel free to play with different varieties of honey -- from eucalyptus to rosemary to acacia, what have you – to see what sings for you.

I love these grahams with coffee as much as with fresh raspberries or blueberries – now that the season permits -- on top of each bite, the bright juiciness of the fruit cutting through the richness of the crackers just so.

150 gr (1 cup; 5 oz) all-purpose flour
100 gr (3/4 cup; 3 ½ oz) whole-wheat flour
¼ tsp table salt
heaped ¼ tsp ground cinnamon
180 gr (2/3 cup; 6 oz) unsalted butter, at room temperature
120 gr (firmly packed ½ cup; 4 oz) light brown sugar
35 gr (2 Tbsp) honey

1. In a medium bowl, sift together the flours, salt, and ground cinnamon. Set aside.

2. In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, combine the butter together with the brown sugar and honey, and beat until fluffy. (While bringing the butter to room temperature, make sure not to let it become too warm – otherwise the cookies will spread and flatten during baking.)

3. Add the dry ingredients to the butter mixture in three additions, beating just until combined after each addition. Divide the dough in half. Wrap each half tightly in plastic wrap and refrigerate for 30 mins before rolling, or up to 2 days.

4. Preheat the oven to 175 C (350 F). Line a large baking sheet with parchment paper.

5. Remove one half of the dough from the fridge. Unwrap and place between two sheets of plastic wrap or waxed paper. Roll out to a thickness of about 5-mm (1/4- inch). Using an 8-cm (3 ¼ -inch) round cookie cutter with a scalloped edge, cut out the graham crackers. Keep the dough scraps. Arrange the crackers about 1 cm (½-inch) apart on the prepared baking sheet. Bake until golden brown, 10 to 12 mins. Let cool on the baking sheet for about 5 mins (the crackers will be soft to the touch, but they’ll solidify when completely cooled). Transfer to a wire rack. The crackers should give a crisp snap once cooled.

6. Repeat with the other half of the dough. Bake more crackers on the cooled and freshly line baking sheet.

7. Gather up all the dough scraps (freeze briefly if they are too soft to work with), re-roll once, and bake as directed.

8. Store in an air-tight container for up to two weeks. I learnt that placing a clean piece of kitchen paper towel in a container with the cookies will absorb any moisture emanating from them, helping to keep the cookies crisp.

In retrospect

2011-07-11T10:55:00.006+02:00

Today I’d like to share with you a vanilla and lemon pound cake I made for my birthday that rapidly came and even more rapidly went a little bit over a week ago. To be accurate, I made the cake the day after my birthday, because my birthday was nothing as I’d planned. Now, in retrospect, I see that as a good thing to have had a calm, unfussy, non-obliging twenty-seventh birthday. But on the festive day itself I found it emotionally challenging, somewhat, to go with the flow, especially when the flow meant sprawling on a couch for the most part of the day, and watching the Travel Channel.

In a few brushstrokes: Anthony and I had an idea to start the day with a small picnic in a neighborhood park. Equipped with the two requisite birthday accessories – this cake and a bottle of champagne – we were going to pass early afternoon hours by alternating sweet nibbles with fizzy sips, shooting the breeze, and watching boats and ducks sailing up and down the nearby river. Later into the day the picnic was to be followed, according to the plan, by a celebratory meal in an Indonesian restaurant (well-executed Indonesian fare is presumably the best part of the Dutch cuisine, owing to Indonesia’s once being a colony of the Netherlands). On my birthday eve, I made a reservation, studied thoroughly the restaurant’s menu online conjuring up in my mind’s mouth the exotic tastes and flavors, told Anthony repeatedly how much he’d like the place and the food, and, overall, got hyped up about the day to come. And to be fully prepared, I even laid out all the imperishables for the vanilla and lemon pound cake on the kitchen counter before we’d head out for pre-birthday drinks.

This year my birthday fell on a Saturday, and so it seemed right to start toasting to the good and everything in the preceding Friday’s gloaming, stepping into the wee hours of my new year with a bright cocktail in my hand, you see. We went to our favorite visit-on-a-special-occasion cocktail bar and did a great job acquainting ourselves with a new summer menu – as well as reconnecting with our all-time favorite. I don’t know how to relay this with self-tact and dignity, but I’d had one too many. Was I thinking that the morning after -- the morning of my actual birthday -- my skull and its contents might be hurting so much I couldn’t possibly detach myself from a pillow for fear not to pass my soul from a headache? The cake, the picnic, the Indonesian meal – all thrown to the wind; lying deflated on a couch – what a shame, what a shame!

On the upside, though, I got to have a great pre-birthday that had started with a fresh chocolate pizza as a special sweet from Anthony, continued with long walks around sun-speckled town, and got magnified by some fine drinks. Why would I want to do almost the same the next day, doesn’t make any sense! Why not to make a restorative day in out of my birthday? I was talking myself into a better attitude, don’t you feel. And because actions speak louder than words, as we all know, I got up from the couch, cancelled the dinner reservation, and went online to order an expansive sushi take-out for two.

And the next day there was the cake: this fine vanilla and lemon pound cake. I’ve been wanting to make it since I came across the idea a moon or so ago. And although it’s not a usual birthday cake model – no layers, nor butter cream frosting – the sheer flavors of the concoction made me want to have it for my festive day. Originally the recipe is for either a lemon or an orange pound cake, but Dorie Greenspan, whose recipe this is, relays it’s also meant for “a wonderful vanilla cake”. I couldn’t pass on a chance to enjoy the heady vanilla and the refreshing, enticing lemon in one bite, so I combined the two, tweaked the recipe ever so slightly, and made what I’d planned long ago to be my birthday treat: a rich, incredibly, almost illegally, fragrant cake. Happy belated birthday to me!

Vanilla and Lemon Pound Cake

Adapted from Dorie Greenspan

Yield: serves 12

It is to a great advantage that this cake speaks well with coffee and tea, is extremely confident on its own, is happy to be utilized as a snack, and keeps a while. Just think, vanilla, lemon zest, and, shazam, rum together, seeped into the tightly-woven, moist crumb. You take a bite and it gives under your tongue with no objection. Vanilla, of course, rushes in first, followed by exciting lemon zest that has metamorphosed into some floral sensation, and then rum, which you don’t taste as much but feel. Please don’t disregard rum, nip out for a bottle if you have none! It’s worth it.

250 gr (2 cups) all-purpose flour
¾ tsp baking powder
¼ tsp table salt
300 gr (1 ½ cup) sugar
2 plump vanilla beans, seeds only
2 tsp lemon zest (one medium-large lemon)
5 large eggs, at room temperature
150 gr (2/3 cup) crème-fraiche or heavy cream, at room temperature (I used crème-fraiche)
30 gr (2 Tbsp) dark rum
110 gr (7 ½ Tbsp) unsalted butter, melted and cooled

1. Position a rack in the center of the oven and pre-heat the oven to 180 C (350 F). Butter a 22.5 x 12.5 x 7.5-cm (9 x 5 x 3-inch) loaf pan – I used a 22-cm (8 ½ -inch) springform – and put on a regular baking sheet (seeing that the baking time will be rather long, this is done to prevent the bottom of the cake from browning too soon). Set aside.

2. Sift together the flour and baking powder. Add the salt and mix well.

3. In a separate large bowl, combine the sugar with the vanilla seeds and lemon zest, and rub them together with your fingertips to infuse the sugar with the flavors. Beat in the eggs until the mixture looks pale and foamy. Add the crème fraiche (or heavy cream) and rum; mix well.

4. Using a rubber spatula, fold the flour mixture into the egg mixture in three additions. Pour in the butter, and stir just until incorporated. The batter can be rather runny, but that’s ok.

5. Immediately pour the batter into the prepared baking pan and send the baking sheet into the oven. Dorie Greenspan instructs to bake it for 1 hour and 25 or 30 minutes, but in my oven the cake was done after 1 hour. I’d say start keeping a close eye on it after the 30-minute mark, after which you might want to cover it loosely with a foil tent in case the top is browning too fast. The cake is done when a thin knife inserted in the center comes out clean. Let cool on a cooling rack for 10-15 mins before unmolding.

Willing to bet

2011-06-27T17:08:00.016+02:00

Reader, I’ll bet my bottom dollar that you don’t care much about cauliflower. Yes, cauliflower is probably what you can easily live without. Or let’s take it further: perhaps you even believe that cauliflower is among those things you are sure you’d be better off not knowing. Golly gee whiz, am I not assumptious? What do I know about what you detest?

As to me, I don’t recall I tried cauliflower as much as even once, either in my childhood or green teen years. The thing is, I always had dreadful feelings about cauliflower. In our country house garden, my grandmother used to grow it in a remote vegetable patch not too far from a latrine. There were lots of spiders in that patch too; they weaved their fluffy webs in the thick cauliflower plant leaves. I don’t like spiders. Cauliflower was dead for me.

Of course to say now that I haven’t stuck my fork at cauliflower since then would be an ugly lie. If you are one of the irreversible cauliflower haters, worry not – I’m not going to sing paeans to the wacky vegetable. I myself seem to remain an ambivalent cauliflower eater. I noticed that unless it’s stir-fried with an amalgam of my favorite Indian spices (turmeric, coriander, mustard seeds, to name but a few), turning therewith into a bomb of flavor, I don’t usually strive to eat it on its own, what with its rather mute taste and appearance. Offer it to me baked under a thick coating of cheese, and chances are high I might call you – sorry! -- a disgusting person. (I do not like baked cauliflower with cheese.) With that in mind, I surprised myself recently at how pleasant I found a dish which, in essence, is nothing more than briefly cooked cauliflower florets, chopped finely and bejeweled with toasted pine nuts, preserved lemon peel and fresh parsley, all splashed with lemon juice and olive oil, and salted and peppered. The dish is cauliflower ‘couscous’, ladies and gentlemen. And it’s tasty: fresh; slightly citrusy and pickle-y (preserved lemons), and toasty (pine nuts) in spots; and, overall, mild. I liked it.

After being solidly anchored to bed by flu for almost a week earlier this month and having at last recuperated, I found myself in some sort of a culinary limbo. I finally felt hungry for more than a bowl of dry cereal, but my mind’s mouth stayed persistently empty -- I didn’t know what I wanted. My usual standbys – eggplant stew, tomato curry, red lentil soup – failed to re-ignite me. Even chickpeas didn’t cut it for me, which made me particularly worried. If not chickpeas, what then? My imagination stalled, I randomly pulled an old issue of a Dutch food magazine from under a pile of books parked on the living room floor seeking inspiration in a language I barely understand but for recipes. Forcefully leafing through it, I came across a brief instruction for cauliflower ‘couscous’. And although I wasn’t quite sold on that recipe (raw cauliflower; not even a single sprig of fresh herb; too much lemon juice), the idea I loved. Upon my soul -- I felt some excitement! What an indigenous take on traditional ‘couscous’ as well as on cauliflower, don’t you think?

Who knew it would be cauliflower, the ‘curdle’ head, to snap me out of my post-flu blues and send me back to my kitchen eager again to try and tweak? It’s not going to be my vegetable of choice any time soon, but I would pay attention to it more often. Cauliflower has some aces up its sleeve. I’m willing to bet on it.

Cauliflower ‘couscous’

Yield: 4-6 servings

This is a minimalist recipe, basic, even. If you have a food processor, enlist its help to pulse the cauliflower. I don’t, so I chopped the stuff with a knife, which is, by far, the toughest part -- if you can call the chopping of cooked cauliflower tough, that is.

To my taste, preserved lemon peel is a show maker in this concoction. Its deep charged citrus-floral taste gives a fillip to the cauliflower, cuts through the vegetable’s grassiness. Beware not to overuse it though, otherwise the dish might taste bitter. If you can’t find preserved lemons – these can be found at a Middle Eastern grocery store – go with normal lemon zest instead. It’s not quite the same, but use enough salt and you’ll get to bring the light out of the whole lot.

I prefer cauliflower to be crisp-tender, but if you like it soft – go on and keep it longer on the fire. For this recipe, I’m using a large head of cauliflower, the one that would approximately amount to two and a half pounds. Tailor the seasonings to the size of cauliflower you have at hand – and to taste.

We had it on the side with pan-fried salmon, which we first cooled down to room temperature. That was good. Cold roasted chicken would be good too. Or roasted eggplant, if that is what you fancy.

1 large head cauliflower (about 2 ½ pounds or 1.2 kilo)
1 heaped tsp finely chopped preserved lemon peel (see Note below)
1 Tbsp lemon juice, or more to taste
2 Tbsp pine nuts, lightly toasted
3 Tbsp fresh flat-leaf parsley, finely chopped
fine sea salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste
3-4 Tbsp good-quality olive oil

1. Fill a medium pot with water, add a good pinch of sea salt and bring to a boil.

2. Remove any leaves and cut off the tough stem of the cauliflower. Lop off the cauliflower florets. Place in the pot and cook for 5 minutes. Drain and let cool. Discard the stalks and chop the florets finely. The final result should resemble couscous grains, but it’s OK if there are pea-size (or even larger) cauliflower beads left here and there. If you use a food processor, pulse the cauliflower briefly. Don’t over work – or the cauliflower will run juices.

3. In a large bowl, mix the chopped cauliflower together with the rest of the ingredients. Taste and adjust the seasoning. Serve at room temperature.

Note: Using a sharp knife, slice the peel off a preserved lemon. Remove any pith. Cut the peel into thin strips and dice the strips finely. To get 1 heaped tsp, you will need the peel of slightly less than half a preserved lemon.

It is principal

2011-06-06T14:00:00.008+02:00

Reader, would you agree that flu in summertime sounds like a joke? Would you also second me on that it really, really, really does not feel like one? Aw shucks! However unpleasant, I don’t mind a running nose, a swollen, scratchy throat, a cough that turns my lungs inside out as soon as they appear in winter, preferably in February, a time especially designated for crawling in bed and spending days – with occasional visits to the bathroom and the kitchen, in that particular order -- covered from the daylight-deprived world with a blanket, sweating the cold and all other miseries out.

The sun is unsuccessfully trying to stick its neck out through the shambolic rain-bearing clouds today. But even so, it’s still warm and agreeable out. No need for a jacket or even a scarf, both not a very unusual outerwear choice in Amsterdam in June. My spirit is willing to take a walk in the rain and listen to the drum-drum-drum of raindrops against my umbrella, to the tchhhh of car tires knifing at high speed through the rainwater pools, to the rustle of the tree leaves disturbed by the wind high above my head. But my body, sneezing and coughing in two-minute intervals, has given my spirit the double bird and refuses to budge. I stay home, pull the blinds close, and put on a turtleneck sweater because I’m running a fever and feeling cold, the irony not lost on me. It’s time to make Tom Yum Kai, Thai hot-and-sour chicken soup, I feel.

I got to know Tom Yum Kai by happenstance last fall. I do like Thai food, but I must admit I never tried the said soup, which is ubiquitous in any Thai restaurant, good and not so much, near and far. When Anthony and I go to our favorite Thai place, I turn into a ferocious noodle eater usually leaving soups out for suckers. Or rather, I used to. I fell rather sick past November, and the cold wouldn’t go away for weeks. I don’t remember where or from whom I heard that Tom Yum (‘sour soup’ in Thai) is believed to have immune-mending properties – and now that I think of it, how could it not with all those red chilies, ginger, and lime juice packed in it? – but I do remember that that evening we rushed out for a Thai meal for one reason only: Tom Yum. Lesson learnt -- I add a steaming bowl of hot, sour, and salty Tom Yum to the list, if not instead, of medicines to take when a need strikes. Over the time I also learnt I don’t have to go to a restaurant to get my chicken Tom Yum. There is no secret in making the soup, except that you have to trust your taste buds to balance out the bright, bold, and tongue-tickling flavors. Oh Thai flavors!

You begin by preparing a quick aromatic broth. Just throw some garlic, ginger, lemon grass and kaffir lime leaves in a pot of boiling water to infuse it with incredible, exhilarating flavors. After a minute or so, you add chunks of chicken breasts and let the lot boil for a handful of minutes. Next, plop in some mushrooms. After a couple of minutes, you remove the pot from the heat and stir in the requisite fish sauce (salty), lime juice (sour), and chilies (hot). Then you taste and adjust the seasoning to achieve the balance between the three. Taste and adjust some more, if needed. A sprinkle of fresh coriander and basil as a final touch and that is that.

My rendition of the soup is not authentic in a sense that I didn’t learn it from a ninety-nine year-old Thai grandmother who has been cooking it since age ten having watched her own mother making it day in-day out for the rest of the big family. Still, it is authentic to me in a way that I followed and trusted my senses to align those big flavors and bring them to harmony. Taste and tweak as you go. It is principal. That and to eat Tom Yam Kai when you are battling a cold, in winter or in summer, all the same.

Be well, Reader!

Tom Yum Kai (Thai hot-and-sour chicken soup)

Yield: 4 servings

A few things before you put a pot on the fire…First, in the event you can’t find fresh Kaffir lime leaves – these are usually available at an Asian, of course Thai in particular, supermarket -- use zest of two limes instead. Further on, commonly the plant root of choice in Tom Yum is galangal, a member of the ginger family that is not quite as rich and potent as ginger. Frankly, I think galangal’s flavor in Tom Yum gets lost behind those of lemon grass and garlic. For this reason, I prefer to use regular ginger for its fiery, peppery, confident punch. And finally, I like my chicken Tom Yum to be on the chunky rather than on the watery side, which is why I call forth a decent amount of chicken and mushrooms. Speaking of the latter, you could use shiitake mushrooms to keep in line with the Asian flair of the whole composition, but all those innumerous Tom Yums I tried sported champignons, their plump, slightly firm round buttons floating atop like buoys. I like cute champignons. I use them here.

1 L (4 cups) water or chicken stock
5 fresh Kaffir lime leaves
1 stalk lemon grass, cut into 4-cm (1.5-inch) pieces
3-cm (about 1-inch) long piece of ginger root, peeled and thinly sliced
2 large garlic cloves, thinly sliced
450 gr (15 oz) chicken breast, cut into 4-5-cm (1.5-2-inch) chunks
250-300 gr champignons (8-10 oz), intact if small, or halved or quartered if big
3-4 Tbsp lime juice, or to taste
4-5 Tbsp Thai fish sauce, or to taste
1 Tbsp chopped fresh red chili (with seeds), or to taste
Chili oil (optional)
2 Tbsp fresh coriander leaves, finely chopped
1 Tbsp fresh basil leaves, finely chopped

1. Over medium-high heat, bring water (or chicken stock) to a boil. Add the Kaffir lime leaves, lemon grass, ginger, and garlic, and cook for about 2 minutes to let the liquid infuse with flavors.

2. Dump in the chicken and the mushrooms, dial the heat down to medium-low, and cook uncovered for about 5-6 minutes. The chicken should be cooked through. Do not overcook.

3. Remove from the heat. Tip in the lime juice, fish sauce, and chilies. Taste and adjust the seasoning. Give it a few squirts of chili oil, if using. Let cool slightly, about 4-5 minutes, before adding the fresh herbs. Serve hot.

When it would be crazy not to

2011-05-27T11:56:00.018+02:00

I don’t know if it is appropriate to be talking about apple pie as we are rapidly approaching the junction of May and June, the time when apples and pies and apples in pies seem so irrelevant, so unrelated to what is happening right now as we talk: fresh local juicy stubbly deep-red strawberries galore, soon to be followed by the myriad of other berries, so long-awaited, so bright. All right, it is crazy to just think about apple pie at this point of year. Insane, even.

Yet, I made Russian apple pie twice past week, strawberries notwithstanding. I don’t know how to classify it.

I was randomly re-reading parts of A Year of Russian Feasts, by Catherine Cheremeteff Jones, and a chapter on Russian tea ceremony accompanied by a recipe for a yeast dough apple pie (a.k.a. apple pie, Russian style) got me to recall my maternal grandmother’s delicious apple pie that she would make for me as I was staying with her in our river-bank country house for a week at the beginning of each summer as I was a kid, years and years ago. But however tasty the pie was, I also recalled I wasn’t looking forward to it.

I guess for many a kid, to stay in the country side with their beloved grandmother would be nothing less than fun. Not for me, though. I was terrified of it.

My maternal grandmother, Aglaya, is a high blood pressure patient. Every day of the week I had to spend with her in the distant picturesque summer country side was marred by my fearing that she would suddenly expire from a heart attack – please, no! -- in the middle of the night, and I would be left in the scary nocturnal darkness not knowing what I would have to be doing to get help for her, for myself, or whatever (that wasn’t yet an era of mobile telecommunication). Oh, doesn’t it sound dramatic! But hey, I was a sensitive kid, and I guess you can say troubled too!

The first two or three days of that bonding week, as my mother usually thought it be, would almost always go easy, to my relief. My grandmother and I would prune and water the vegetable patches in our garden, go swimming in the river, pay visits to the remote neighbors or the unwatched gardens close by, drink tea with store-bought sweets, watch black and white TV, and play cards. But then on the fourth day – mysteriously, it would always happen on a Thursday -- my grandmother would wake up to a bad headache, high blood pressure starting building up. As the day progressed, the symptoms wouldn’t budge, even despite the large medicine in-take. By midnight, my grandmother wouldn’t stop her I’m dying-s. I felt morbid. (I’m sorry, but at the age of seven, eight, nine and ten I took those proclamations very, very, very literally.) There was one thing, the last frontier, believed to be able to help: vinegar (a lot of which would be poured onto a small towel that would be applied to feet). I was eager to go and bring a bottle of it from our kitchen downstairs. To get down to the kitchen meant I had to take the outdoor stairs and then go around a corner of the house to reach the arched heavy kitchen door. At night with nature making weird unnatural sounds, a trek of a mere couple dozen steps felt like going down into a deep dungeon. I was ready to do it for my grandmother. I was happy I could help. Often vinegar did the trick lessening the blood pressure. Eventually my grandmother would fall asleep. I would regularly come out from my room to see if she was breathing.

The next day my grandmother would be on her feet again, preparing for my parents’ visit over the weekend. For me, it meant nothing else but joy: I would be going home soon. But besides the approaching weekend and the nearing this-year-I-don’t-have-to-do-it-anymore delirium, there was another thing for me to get pretty darn excited about: apple pie.

My grandmother has a thing with yeast dough. She is a yeast dough whisperer. If I remember rightly, never did I see a scale or at least one measuring cup in her vicinity when she would start the dough. All measurements were intuitive and always (!) worked. Of course, my childhood memories may not be crystal clear by now, but seriously! To see the dough risen and eager to crawl out from under the lid of a dented white pot was kind of arcane – and fun. My favorite part was to punch the dough down imagining I was a ghost buster at task of taming a cute monster. The sour-ish yeasty wisps emanating from it were full of promise of something good and safe and warm and lovely.

While the monster/dough was resting/rising, I’d get busy picking apples (an early summer sort) fallen from our apple tree and now lying idly on the shadowy ground. My grandmother would use them, cooked with sugar until just soft, for the filling. It was a simple apple pie. And it was tasty. Sweet apples, slightly tart at the heart, encased and relaxed between and into the two layers of the fragrant, a touch buttery, dough. Made with gusto, it was also a sign that my grandmother was doing ok again, and that she is a fighter.

I wanted to share my grandmother’s apple pie recipe with you today. I called her to ask for guidance. But she is an intuitive baker, and so it transpired she doesn’t need nor does she have the recipe. It’s why I resort to the one from A Year of Russian Feasts. Having made it twice by now, I’m happy to say the resulting pie is as good as the specimen from years gone, except that no drama and only dry active yeast is required.

All you need to do is to mix dry yeast with melted butter and a mix of lukewarm milk and water, add sugar, salt and flour, and knead it until the dough comes together and forms a ball. You then let it rest until it doubles in size, about an hour, give or take. Meanwhile, you cook tart baking-friendly apples with light brown sugar, for a deeper flavor, until they have released their juices. We tend to think that apples and cinnamon is a match, but try apples with fresh vanilla seeds. With them, an apple taste like its quintessential self. Should I be a Granny Smith in my next life, I’d spend it with vanilla seeds, I decided. Anyway, when the dough has puffed up and looks ready, form it into a ball and cut in half. Roll out the first half, place in a pie pan and send in the apples. Roll out the second half, slightly larger than the first, and cover the fruit. Pinch the dough edges together, brush the top with egg wash and bake until the pie is golden.

The pie is down-to-earth, and even basic, yet there is some simple magic going on in there, the moist fruit has bonded together with the dough, vanilla and yeasty aromas merged into one. And the butter, it’s quietly letting you know it’s there but that it’s not going to steal the show. As Cheremeteff Jones describes the pie: “a wonderfully delicate “apple sandwich”. Try it for yourself. If it seems – and it does! – insane to compel strawberries and the likes to wait, bookmark the recipe for the colder months then, when it would be crazy not to make it.

Russian-style apple pie
Adapted from A Year of Russian Feasts by Catherine Cheremeteff Jones
Yield: Serves 6-8

For the apple filling:
900 gr (2 pounds [about 5 large or 6 medium]), tart baking apples, such as Granny Smith, peeled, quartered, cored, and diced in big chunks
120 gr (4 oz) light brown sugar
seeds of one vanilla bean

Combine the apples, sugar and vanilla seeds in a large saucepan, and cook over medium heat, stirring occasionally, until the apples are soft and the apple juices have evaporated, about 10-15 mins. (Drain if the apples are soft but the liquid is still there.) Remove from the fire and let cool. (The filling can be made up to three days in advance; keep covered and refrigerated).

For the yeast dough:
8 gr (0.4 oz) active dry yeast
60 ml (1/4 cup) whole milk
60 ml (1/4 cup) water
30 gr (1 oz) sugar
1 large egg, beaten
120 gr (1 stick) unsalted butter, melted and still warm
310 gr unbleached all-purpose flour, plus more as needed
Egg wash (one more egg, beaten)
Light brown sugar for sprinkling, optional

1. Put the yeast in a large mixing bowl.

2. Heat the milk together with water until lukewarm. Add the milk mixture to the yeast and stir until the yeast has been dissolved. Add the sugar, salt, egg and butter (still warm!) and mix well until combined. Add half of the flour and using a mixer with the dough hook attachment work on low speed until combined. Add the remaining flour and mix until incorporated. Up the speed to medium and continue mixing for the next 4-5 minutes (scrape down the sides of the bowl after 2-minute mark), or until the dough is no longer sticky and forms a ball. If the dough remains sticky after 3 minutes of mixing, add more flour, 1 tablespoon (15 gr) at a time, until the dough comes together (the amount of extra flour needed can be between 1 to 3 tablespoons). Cover the bowl with plastic film and let the dough rise in a warm place for about 1 hour, or until doubled in size.

3. Pre-heat the oven to 175 C (350 F) and butter a 22- or 24-cm (9- or 9 ½-inch) pie plate.

4. Lightly flour a work surface. Take the dough and shape it into a ball. Cut the ball in two equal parts. With a rolling pin, roll out one part of the dough into a circle wide enough to fit into the prepared pie plate (if needed, continue to lightly flour the work surface and the dough to prevent sticking). Transfer the dough gently into the pie plate, and using your fingers, create an even 1-cm (1/2 inch) overhang. Place the apple filling evenly over the dough.

5. Flour the work surface again and roll out the second part of the dough into a circle slightly smaller in width than the first one. Carefully place it on top of the filling. Pinch and twist the edges of the dough together to seal them. Make sure to seal the wedges well, otherwise the top will disconnect while baking. Prick the top, cover with a clean dish towel, and let rise for 10 mins. Brush the top lightly with the egg wash. Sprinkle some light brown sugar (about 1 Tbsp or more), if using.

6. Bake for 30 mins, or until the top is golden brown. Let cool before unmolding. Wrapped up in plastic, the pie will keep at room temperature for up to three days.

Can't help it

2011-05-06T18:40:00.007+02:00

Minutes before sitting down and writing this story, it dawned on me that there is one thing I talk about time and again on this blog (and pretty much everywhere else, which makes me feel for those doomed to converse with me). The recurrent theme is: potatoes, a stamp in my Russian culinary ID. Did I tell you that potatoes are no secondary thing for a Russian? Did I tell you that yet? I’m sorry, can’t help it. So here goes again.

It is my grandparents’ custom to buy large quantities of potatoes in mid-fall (before their price would jump up later on) for the family to feed off in winter months. It all begins with multiple visits to local farmers’ markets to first select samples to test taste. A good spud has to meet the following criteria: it should not darken while cooking, and once boiled, it shouldn’t turn rubbery, but it can’t crumble too much under the pressure of a fork either, and most importantly, it has to taste creamy without any assistance of butter or dairy. Once a specimen capable of accomplishing the mission is found, my grandparents would load their white nearly thirty-years-old Soviet four-wheeler with sack after sack of un-scrubbed jacketed tubers.

Every other week for the next four or five months my grandfather would go to his garage basement to pick over the potato lot, or rather what gets left after the family starts to pack it away, for sprouts. Now there being fewer heads to feed – my uncle’s whole family of three moved to Moscow; I’m living abroad – and a new, less sturdier, almost flimsy car to load, the annual potato purchase grew smaller in size, but its importance is, and always will be, high. The household in winter is not complete if there are not enough potatoes in that dark garage basement.

We had the spuds simply boiled, pan-fried with onions, roasted with chicken; stewed with tomatoes and river fish; as a main or a side; for breakfast, lunch, and/or dinner; left over from a yesterday’s meal and freshly cooked. If I got sick and developed a bad cough, I didn’t have a chance to get away from having to stand over a pot with just cooked tubers and inhale the coming-out steam, my head covered with a towel to prevent the heat from escaping. The potato is believed to have particles with anti-inflammatory qualities and the steam to bear them in transit, was what my mother told me.

So I’ve had it a lot with potatoes, except that I didn’t have them cooked with sherry. Entirely by the way, I didn't have anything cooked with sherry. For one: there was no sherry around me in my formative years. The first libation "from the West" made its way to new Russia in early nineties and, if my memory serves me right, it was called brandy liquor. It came in dark-glass stubby bottles with a sail ship on the blue-sea label. I was uninterested to taste it then (and I'm not sure I would be now). My parents say it would never fail to give them a terrible headache, the best of possible bodily reactions to the drink.

Second of all, I think sherry falls into that category of fine drinks that one grows to appreciate with age. Also, I had to be old enough to stop believing that a sweet alcoholic substance such as the one in question should be reserved for an after-meal glass and not a pan of potatoes. But then again, it’s not your plain Jane pan of potatoes. In it, artichokes make an appearance as well. And the potatoes are those small springtime tubers that turn eminently fragrant in salted boiling water and whose thin skin crackles just so under your teeth giving way to the young creamy flesh underneath it.

The idea comes from the MORO East cookbook, a beautiful compilation of Eastern Mediterranean recipes by the owners of the acclaimed MORO restaurant in London, Sam and Sam Clark. Originally, the sampling in question goes by the name “artichokes and potatoes with oloroso sherry”. But I think the artichokes, though no lesser important to the accumulative taste of the ensemble, should, instead, come second in the title, for in my view the potatoes are the name of the game here. Hence what follows is "potatoes and artichokes with oloroso", the change is minor but imperative.

The actual substitute in the original is my use of marinated artichoke hearts in place of fresh ones, for which there are two reasons. One, artichokes in the Netherlands is not a local thistle. Which means I have to be prepared to live with a new dent in my wallet for months at hand if I wish to enjoy them fresh, imported, as is usually the case, from Italy. I don’t want to go down that road again. Two, I discovered that the sourness of the marinated artichokes is a perfect foil to the sweetness that comes with sherry. An additional bonus: a shorter cooking time.

You start by browning some onions. Once those are halfway to their color destination, you add the marinated artichokes, and let the duo cook together until the onions are golden and the artichokes develop a mild blush. Next goes a tiny bit of garlic, followed after a minute by sherry and water and fresh basil (MORO East uses mint, but I find basil mingles more successfully with the rest of the given ingredients). Finally, you nudge the cooked potatoes in the skillet, cover with a lid and let it all bubble for a while allowing the heat to leverage the unity between the subtle vegetables and the intense oloroso sherry. A few squirts of olive oil and more fresh basil at the end and you are ready for a delicious cheer on a plate. The caramelized onions and soft artichokes intermingle and soak up all that deep caramel flavor of the sherry, winding up to be sweet and sour all at once, making perfect companions for the mellowed plump spuds that got infused with the basil’s peppery herbal notes and nutty sherry, that same sherry. Oh, potatoes can get so lucky!

Potatoes and artichokes with oloroso sherry

Adapted from MORO East by Samantha and Samuel Clark

Serves 2 as a main or 4 as a side dish

This dish is an "all-year-rounder", considering you use the marinated artichokes. When new harvest tubers go off season, normal potatoes would be a bet just as good.

A word on sherry: while S. and S. Clark suggest medium oloroso sherry (“oloroso” means scented in Spanish) for this dish, I had delicious results with a dry oloroso variety as well. The bottom line is that regardless of what oloroso you get to use – it varies in types from dry to sweet – it should be good enough to be sipped on its own, as goes with any alcohol in cooking, you know.

500 gr (16.5 oz) new potatoes, scrubbed
4 good-quality (canned) marinated artichoke hearts, quartered
5 Tbsp olive oil
1 medium onion, thinly sliced
1 large garlic clove, thinly sliced
150 ml (1/2 cup plus 2 Tbsp) oloroso sherry
100 ml (1/3 cup plus 1 Tbsp) water
2 Tbsp roughly chopped fresh basil

1. Boil the potatoes in slightly salted water until tender; drain. When they are cool enough to handle, peel them and cut the large ones in half or in quarter.

2. Over medium fire, heat 3 Tbsp olive oil in a large skillet. When the oil is hot, stir in the onion and a pinch of salt, cut the heat back to medium-low and fry for 5-7 minutes, or until the onion is soft and starting to color.

3. Add the artichokes, and stirring occasionally, fry for another 3-5 minutes, or until the onion is golden and the artichokes take on golden hue.

4. Add the garlic and cook for 1 minute more. Pour in the sherry and water; add half the basil. Place the potatoes on top and sauté, uncovered, for the next 2-3 minutes. Stir, cover with a lid and continue cooking for another 4-5 minutes more.

5. Squirt with the remaining 2 Tbsp olive oil and sprinkle on with the rest of the basil. Serve warm or at room temperature.

They are good

2011-04-23T11:11:00.013+02:00

It wasn’t that long ago that the egg, a symbol of the Resurrection and such, was devilishly criticized. The line of argument was: the egg is so full of cholesterol, so full of rubbish. Just eat it and away you’ll pass, or something like that. Did the early Christians think about how unhealthy the egg is before adapting it as a token of Easter, prompting the billions of Easter-celebrating souls of every past and place into the egg blowout? Such idiots, those first Christians!

As a person who is very capable of going on the egg binge at and around festive Easter table – would you be that strong to not be tempted by an egg with stars brush-stroked all over it , sitting in the company of its brethren in an ornamental bowl seen from every corner of your studio apartment, the egg that’s eager to be cracked open, cleared from that prettied-up shell, dipped, starting from the top, into a mix of sea salt and freshly ground black pepper, and bitten into its glossy white and plump jiggly yolk? -- I’m chuffed to know that eggs will not quite kill me. Research shows that eggs are not as bad as they were thought to be. They are good. They are nutrient-rich. They are just angelic.

Egg whites are angelic, that is. Egg yolks be damned!

It’s not my intention to talk about the white-yolk split. Probably food scientists are right, and we should head their warnings and advice. Or maybe food scientists are misguided, and instead it’s best to listen to our bodies that know by default what we need and what we don’t. Personally, I’m for the golden-mean-approach to life in general and food in particular, except once-a-year celebrations such as Easter, Christmas, and my birthday, the bright days that, in my humble opinion, are meant to be observed by treating myself generously to foods I like, considering the season. (The list of those is extensive and thus shall go unreported on in this post.)

Anyway, it’s Easter, “air time” for whole good happy-chicken eggs and the usual Easter activities: the egg-decorating, the egg-hunting (optional), the egg-giving, and the egg-eating. This year I decided that I should somewhat diversify the latter and make something sweet with the egg at center stage. I figured out I should make meringues (egg whites – here we go!), known as early as in the seventeenth century under the names “Pets” or “white bisket bread”.

The other day I made this coffee cream. It was so ethereal and light (that is, as light as cream goes). And it knocked me off my feet and blew my mind away. I was supposed to use the coffee cream for an eponymous cake, but I couldn’t help sending spoonful by spoonful of it in my mouth from where it sneaked into my heart and is there to stay. And so the idea for meringues filled with coffee cream for Easter was sketched and off I went to try it out. After a fair amount of experimentation and testing, what emerged were pale beige, delicate, brittle, crunchy, with-a-slight-chew meringues filled with elegant fluffy coffee whipped cream. Eaten over a sink with one hand capped below your mouth to catch the crumbs, or on a plate with a fork to be good-mannered, it’s one word: delicious!

Meringue! What an untraditional thing to serve at Easter!, I hear my grandmothers say. It is a revered tradition in Russia to make kulich, cylindrical dome-shaped sweet yeasty bread, a symbol of Orthodox Easter.

As a kid, I would always stop by one of my grandmothers’ to watch her making kulich two or three days before the festive celebrations. I was fascinated by the mystery behind it. You can’t be in a bad mood to make it, and if you are, be prepared to see kulich dense and flat as a pancake when out from the oven. You can’t talk loudly next to where kulich is resting before baking, otherwise it will not rise. And once kulich is baked, you should place it, still in a tin, on a billowy pillow and cover with a clean ironed cotton sheet to let the holy bread cool off before unmolding it. So much revere, so much wonder! Only grandmothers can make kulich, I thought. They know so much, they are kind and patient and caring, and they like to speak in low voice.

I respect the traditions. I admire them. But I also want to learn the new and unorthodox for me, to find what speaks to me, to see where, in the end, I can and want to belong – and if I should avoid eating egg yolks.

Happy Easter, Happy Passover, Reader!

Coffee Cream Meringues

To me, these are so good just on its own.

For the meringues:
Adapted from Baking Illustrated
4 egg whites, at room temperature
185 gr (6.5 oz) granulated sugar
3 gr (0.1 oz) lemon juice

1. Pre-heat the oven to 100 C (212 F) and line a baking sheet with parchment paper. (Note: meringues baked at the given temperature will take on pale silky beige and that's fine; it matches well the subtle white-beige color of the coffee cream.)

2. In a clean bowl, combine the egg whites with the lemon juice and beat at medium-low until foamy, about 30 seconds. Increase the speed to medium-high and beat until the egg whites are white, voluminous and, as Baking Illustrated aptly describes, the consistency of shaving cream, about 90 seconds. In a gentle stream, add half of the sugar and beat, at high speed, until stiff peaks form, about 2-3 minutes.

3. Dial the speed down to the lowest, sprinkle in the other half of the sugar. Mix just until incorporated.

4. Using a dry soupspoon, immediately place nine heaping dollops of meringue, spacing them evenly, on the prepared baking sheet.

5. Bake for 1.5 hours or until the meringues look smooth, firm, dry, and shiny from the outside. Do not open the oven while baking; it will lead to the loss of heat and cause meringues to sink. Switch the oven off and leave the meringues in for another couple of hours to completely cool down.

6. Placed (once cool!) in an airtight container, the meringues will keep for up to two weeks, until ready to use.

For the coffee cream:
(inspired by Pierre Hermé via Dorie Greenspan)
200 gr (7 oz ) chilled heavy cream
10 gr (0.3 oz) granulated sugar
15 gr (0.5 oz) very strong freshly brewed coffee, cooled off

1. Stir the sugar and the coffee in the cream and beat until stiff peaks form. Do not overbeat, otherwise the cream will split.

2. Keep refrigerated and use within the next 24 hours. Before using, give it a gentle stir.

To assemble:

1. With a sharp serrated knife, cut each meringue in half lengthwise. Seeing how brittle meringues are, it is probably the trickiest part of the whole business. Here is how you do it: supporting a meringue shell in one hand without applying any force or pressure, start slowly cutting into it until its hollow top gives, usually a few moves with a knife are enough. Carefully remove the top (it’s ok if it shatters slightly, it’s easy to patch the bits together; the cream will hold the pieces just right), fill the bottom with a spoonful of the coffee cream (use a desert spoon), and place the top back. Repeat with the remaining meringues. Once assembled, the meringues should be served within the next 10-15 mins to prevent them from becoming soggy and soft.

This is my plan

2011-04-09T12:36:00.009+02:00

I’ve been wondering a lot why I’ve been tight on money these days. Would it be the purchase of a silk bed linen set or a designer coat that quadrupled my life costs recently? Surely it can’t be that, are you kidding me? It must be an emergent visit to a dentist and a planned consultation with an immigration lawyer last month that dehydrated this spender’s purse. It’s saddening for me to see my porte-monnaie cash-deprived. I’m wishing my wallet a speedy recovery.

Before that occurs, I’m going to cold-heartedly scrutinize my expenses. They are reckless, I find. Reckless because how else can one call the purchase of an unneeded, but not unwanted, kilo of 65% Valrhona chocolate for 13 euro (about 16 US dollars)? Half-witted expenses, trying to befriend high-price tags, getting so wrapped up in the extraneous.

It’s time I intervene.

Since food shopping is by far the most frequent one I do, I’ll eye where my cash goes at the market. This is my plan. We all know about the money-saving properties of legumes (peas, lentils, beans), these cheap standard-bearers of fine nutrition (fibre! antioxidants! folate! iron!), also known as “the poor man’s meat”? Indeed! So I’ve decided that for now there is no better chum for my buck than a good old legume!

If you commit any pieces that appear here to memory, you might remember my unconditional appreciation of the legume chickpea. That hasn’t changed, I swear. But it dawned on me lately that to be largely eating chickpeas is very much like wearing the same pair of beloved shoes every day while your shoe rack overflows with no lesser likeable footwear. Boring. Hence no chickpeas now.

The legume of my latter days is lens culinaris -- the lentil. No particular plan behind the choice. I simply came across the recipe for the Lebanese garlicky lentil salad in an old issue of Saveur; liked its effortlessness; and being amused by the amount of garlic called for -- twelve cloves! -- gave it a try. I only had to: 1) boil up some lentils; 2), sauté the garlic and, along with cumin, lemon juice and some fresh herb, add it to the cooked legumes. Wonder if twelve garlic cloves is a big lot? Yes, it is monstrous. But if the quantity of garlic is halved, the dish is just right: full-bodied earthy lentil matter filliped by tongue-tickling garlic and lemon and quietly supported by assertive cumin. Fresh parsley on top (Saveur suggests parsley and mint). No frills. All is clear and basic. Good for the body as well as for the wallet.

Reportedly, there is a tradition in Italy to eat lentils on New Year’s Eve as a token for a bigger income in the year to come, what with the lentils’ coin-reminiscent shape. I’m going to stick to the practice even though I’m not Italian and it’s currently nowhere near New Year’s Eve.

Salata Adas (Lebanese Garlicky Lentil Salad)

Adapted from Saveur, number 132, October 2010

I realize the salad is called garlicky for a reason, but I would also like to remember there are lentils in it too, which is not easy because of those twelve garlic cloves. The amount of lentils unchanged, the quantities of the rest of the components were adjusted to my liking. For example, I cut down on the olive oil too: I like my lentil/bean salads to be pleasantly moisturized by -- not swim in -- oil. Anyhow, feel free to play with the measurements: a dish that simple is good material for tweaking.

Saveur recommends to serve the salad with grilled sausages or roasted lamb. I have tried with neither. My way to devour the thing in question is to envelop it in a tortilla wrap thinly smeared with hummus in the middle. Anthony observes that that makes the salad a perfect work lunch: no need to tote a Tupperware® container -- a tortilla wrap keeps the lentils orderly in place.

1 cup green lentils (e.g. de Puy), picked over and rinsed

3-4 Tbsp extra-virgin olive oil

6 garlic cloves, minced

1 ½ Tbsp fresh lemon juice

½ tsp ground cumin

salt and freshly ground pepper, to taste

a generous handful of fresh flat-leaf parsley, chopped

1. In a medium pot, bring lentils and 3 cups water to a boil. (Choose lentils that hold their shape after cooking, the intact look of the lentils in the salad is no secondary fact to the appeal of the dish). Lower the heat and simmer until the lentils are tender, but not mushy, about 20-25 mins. Drain and set aside.

2. In a small skillet, heat 2 Tbsp olive oil. Throw in the garlic and sauté until fragrant, 2-3 mins. Do not let the garlic brown. (The original recipe has you do that for 7-8 mins. Isn’t it a bit too much? Of what use is the garlic teetering on the edge of a burn?) Remove from heat and whisk in the lemon juice, the cumin and the remaining 1 Tbsp olive oil. Pour over the lentils.

3. Add the parsley and season with salt and pepper to taste. Sprinkle with more olive oil and lemon juice before serving, if needed.

Serves 2 as a main course, or 4 as a side, or 6 if used in wraps

So far

2011-03-21T12:20:00.005+01:00

I noticed as a child that when the trees would still be clad in leaves in mid November, there would always be days when the ferocious wind would rise and ramble on and on, until the trees are denuded and the rugged leaves lie, defeated, on the ground. Nature does shake itself up to cleanse, rejuvenate and re-build itself. I tried to make sense of nature forces, minor or grand, like that.
But as a grown-up, accepting that nature can be so hurting requires more mental and emotional work on my part.

I’ve been pondering hard what I should say. Or what I should not. It has been acknowledged by many that it seems weird to write about food in the wake of the monstrosity that’s holding a grip over Japan these weeks.

Yet, I think one of the main reasons many of us choose to write about food is that we want to share. To share of something good, of something memorable, of something uniting, of something positive. All that is food to me. And I can’t think of any reason why one should stop writing about all that, especially now.

Peperonata, a thick delicious stew of sweet peppers and tomatoes. It is not going to save the world from its tragedies. No, don’t count on that. It will not help a human to stop the Earth plates from moving and colliding, or turn the beastly tsunami waves into harmless ripples, or stop the nuclear reactions at a moment’s notice. Those things are out of peperonata’s reach.

But it can do something for mankind nonetheless. It will cook itself into a sweet and sour bell- peppery-tomato-ey tasty sludge to make one’s mind get away from the misery and sadness and unanswerable questions, be that only for a short moment, and marvel at the priceless simplest things and be grateful for being able to continue to experience them alone and with the loved ones.

Take five sweet peppers: two red, as many yellow, and one green, for color. Deseed and dice them roughly. Chop up one onion, do the same with a few garlic cloves. Sauté the two in a large pot until fragrant, and then send the peppers together with some canned chopped tomatoes to join the gathering. Show the way to the pot to fresh parsley and basil. It goes without saying, salt and pepper should participate too. A few drops of Tabasco would make the whole gathering even more lively. Let the heat do its mingling job for about two hours.

I learned the recipe from Anthony. Upon request and by phone, Anthony’s mother provides him with the recipes he remembers to have enjoyed in the years passed. So far there are three of them, including the one for peperonata, all kept in a thin salad-green fabric-bound notebook. Regardless of the fact that Anthony’s mother hails from the Veneto region in Italy, there is not enough evidence to claim that peperonata is Veneto’s native. I guess it’s safe to say there are as many versions of it in Italy as there are those to cook it. So I’m going to skip any speculations about the original way to make the stuff and will only draw on one Italian mother’s knowledge, of which I am an indirect receiver.

Peperonata
Adapted from Anthony’s mother, Eugenia

The key to a deep flavor here is to let all the ingredients, including fresh herbs, simmer together for up to two hours. This peperonata should be thick, so you don’t want to add any more liquid: there will already be enough of it from the vegetables. Although technically it’s a stew, in this unrepentant household we dubbed it a (pasta) sauce. (Nigel Slater did the same, among much else.)

About serving: Anthony says that in her childhood his mother was used to have it with polenta or sausage (!), the Northern Italian style. We like it with penne or rigatoni. But independent, non-opinionated eaters can devour it with rice, potatoes, or, yes, pretty much on its own with a chunk, or two, of bread.

A few more bits: as stews go, peperonata tastes even better the next day, after all the flavors schmoozed and mingled. I know, I know, sweet peppers are not in season yet. Patch solution: organic “green-housed” ones, perhaps?

3 Tbsp olive oil
1 large white onion, roughly chopped
2 cloves garlic, roughly chopped
5 sweet ripe peppers, halved, seeded and diced
2*400 g (15 oz) canned peeled tomatoes, including juices
1/2 -2/3 cup fresh chopped parsley, finely chopped
6 fresh basil leaves, finely chopped
salt/pepper
a few generous drops of Tabasco, or to taste

1. In a large heavy saucepan, warm up the olive oil over medium heat. Dump in the onion and sauté until lightly brown, 5-7 mins. Here it may be argued that the onion should only take on a touch of golden, no browning. But doesn’t the browned onion mean more flavor? So no worries, brown the stuff.

2. Add the garlic and cook for another minute.

3. Throw in the peppers, follow with the tomatoes and the fresh herbs.

4. Bring to a simmer and bring the heat down to very low. Add salt, freshly ground pepper and Tabasco to taste. Cover halfway with a lid and cook for the next two hours. Make sure to stir every now and then to avoid scorching. Taste and adjust the seasoning if needed. Remember that salt extracts the vegetables’ aromas, so don’t be stingy with it (but don’t go rampant either).

Note: the quantity is enough for about 300 gr (10 oz) dried penne, which amounts to 4 moderate servings.

Cooking the beef nicely

2011-02-25T14:46:00.008+01:00

February, wait up! Wait up, I say!

Gentle Reader, my confusion knows no end. I gave up understanding why those 24 hours that we all know equal a day go rampant and unruly when all you need from them is that they walk beside you, steps measured and in accord with yours. But no. They are like a pack of hunting dogs, unstoppable in their pursuit of whatever. Oh lay, what would you do with this rushing time, so eager to leave you behind, so capable to speed up on and on. I've been thinking a lot about it lately. That and about meat – steak, in particular.

Let me explain.

I'm not a vegetarian. I like a beautifully cooked piece of meat (sustainably and humanely grown, of course) as much as a plate of chickpeas. Yet I scarcely got to eat meat. Mainly because I didn't know how to cook it without turning it into an unswallow-able substance -- sometimes charred, always dried-out. For a while I used to be sure that the cooking of meat is a men's domain. My logic rested on the bones of a fact that generally the man's usual food of choice is a sizzling steak and that, by extension, meant to me that men understand meat better than we women do. Cooking steak is a gender thing, I assumed. Until I made friends with men who, despite their taste devotion to meat, didn't exactly excel at making an edible steak themselves. That unscientific observation of mine triggered a desire in me to find out what it is to be held accountable for a botched steak.

I consider it my fortune to have a chef among Anthony’s and mine friends. It’s a double fortune that this chef friend of ours, Jan-Willem Teunis, is a member of the Irish Beef Club. Meat is no doubt taken seriously in this establishment and so in an effort to stop my steak jinx, I asked Jan-Willem to please teach me the basics of cooking the beef nicely.

Even before attempting, I knew that the path to a mean steak is through the right temperature. Yes, I knew that already. What I wasn’t aware of was the way the heat should get through the meat. This has to happen slowly – and in short intervals.

Here is how to achieve it. The first thing to do is pre-heat the oven to 220 C. Second, bring the piece of sirloin, filet mignon, what have you to room temperature. This step is important, for if the meat is put in the heated pan too cold or frozen, the temperature of the pan will drop. When your beef cut of choice is good to go, the next step will be to “seal” the future steak (to give it color) by cooking it in a thoroughly pre-heated frying pan to which a few generous glugs of olive oil were added. When the oil turns transparent and thin, you add the meat and let it frizzle on each side, broad and narrow, until it takes on deep golden brown hue. As a finishing touch at this stage, throw in a knob of butter, for flavor. While you pour the liquid (use a soup spoon) that accumulates in the pan over the meat, you could take a quick moment to reflect upon the loud sizzling relationship that you see between heat, fat and muscle. The whole step takes no longer than about three or four minutes. At this moment, the steak is rare.

Next, place the meat in a vessel fit for the oven – a casserole dish, or a stainless steel tray, or a small cast-iron pan -- and leave it to rest for a couple of minutes in a warm place (if you used cast-iron pan for the searing, don’t use the same one now: at this point you don’t want the meat to continue cooking, which it will from the heat of the pan). This is done to let the meat relax first before the successive bouts of heat.

Finally, you send the steak in the oven. Two minutes in, four minutes out. Two minutes in, four minutes out. Two minutes in, four minutes out. Two minutes in, four minutes out. Alternating the cooking and resting times ensures that the heat won’t get in the beef faster than needed and that the meat stays soft and juicy throughout. Feel your steak now: if it springs back the way the flesh between your thumb and index finger does when poked, the steak is medium rare. If you want it medium or well-done, continue cooking it in said intervals up to seven or eight times. My last steak was done medium-well already after the fifth time in the oven. Be watchful and careful here, is all I’m saying. Poke the meat as you go, it shouldn’t feel shoe-sole-like to the touch. But of course you know that. Some salt and pepper and a small pour of fragrant olive oil over the finished steak – and you are in business now.

One of the things I find admirable about food is that once you’ve had a meal you thoroughly enjoyed, with dear friends or all by yourself, it is able to envelop and seal the fleeting moment into a cherished memory, a memory of laughs shared, of bites relished, of knowledge passed on.

I took the bait

2011-01-14T13:43:00.009+01:00

It is my impression that if one learns where I come from (Russia), vodka is what most likely will spring to the inquirer’s mind. One might even take it further as to try to ask me if my mother fed me vodka as a child. Just so if you are questioning the latter, let me tell you that a couple of years ago, at the start of my studies in Amsterdam, a Dutch lecturer of English wondered out loud in class if Russian parents tend to nourish their babies with vodka. How is that for tact?

As you might have guessed, this was what’d been gnawing at me profusely. It is unfortunate, I thought, that the prejudices and stereotypes overrule the real state of affairs regarding the drinking habits of Russians. Please, don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying that the abusive consumption of vodka by Russians is a thing unheard of in and out of the country. What I’m driving at is that there are millions of Russians who do not substitute their daily intake of water with vodka, or other alcoholic beverages if at that.

The cultural shame prompted by the foul stereotypes did very little for me to think of vodka as a fine drink. In my eyes, vodka was a villain and I wanted to avoid it, point. Holy smoke, I did pretty well on that front. Take this: my first contact with vodka occurred just a year ago in a cocktail bar here in Amsterdam where Anthony and I, overtaken by curiosity to try interesting items on the menu, laid our lips on vanilla vodka, a drink mistakenly imagined (emphasis on mistakenly) by us as a sweet concoction of something syrupy and vanilla-y fortified by vodka. Turned out it’s wise to ask your bartender about what constitutes your cocktail as it is generally clever to shoot a few questions over the bar before ordering. What we learnt empirically was that vanilla vodka, at least in the version we tried, is as savory as savory can be: plain vodka mixed with a touch of pure vanilla extract. No sugar, nothing sweet. Woof!

But shame is on me for digressing…

To be able to tread on the treacherous ice of stereotypes, I figured I should equip myself with some protective knowledge to stand my ground when confronting an occasional vodka remark. I was glad to learn that my country of origin does not seem to be the leader in the field of producing the booze in question. Check this out: the production of vodka -- wheat, rye, potato, rice, cane sugar, grape, younameit type -- fastened the globe all around, from Canada to Vietnam. You get my drift? Theoretically not only Russians are prone to the excessive vodka intake, is my point.

I’m sorry – does all that sound somewhat fired up? I guess I must learn that ultimately it’s up to me to decide how to deal with the stereotypes. I can’t force one to change their opinion, that’s no news to me. What I can do is loosen up my attitude. I either can flip the lid trying to verbalize my objections, or alternatively I can lean back on my couch, my feet on an ottoman, and enjoy the fact that vodka exists in the first place. You see, without vodka there would be no Moscow Mule. And without Moscow Mule…I don’t know what we all would do without it.

Ladies and gentlemen, please meet Moscow Mule: an elegant cocktail of vodka, fresh lime juice, ginger beer, and ice. My endless thanks for the original creation go to a trio of Americans: John G. Martin, John A. Morgan, and Rudolf Kunett, each of whom was involved in spirits production or distribution. The three friends gathered up one day in New York’s Chatham hotel in 1941 and, fuelled up by a few drinks and hors d'oeuvre, got overtaken by an adventurous genius. Some ginger beer, some vodka, some fresh lime juice, and voila, served on the rocks, the first Moscow mule made its appearance. The first part of the cocktail’s name – Moscow – is a wink towards the land of vodka. But there are no mules in Moscow, as if you had to ask. It’s named so because of its inebriating properties: it kicks like a mule, as it were.

The photo above is a home-made Moscow Mule. Photography of thatkind is what I make when my vision gets thoroughly fogged by an immodest amount of alcohol and my hands wobbly from the excitement to rush out on the balcony to watch the loud, noisy, mind-splitting, sky-unzipping, glorious New Year’s fireworks.

Speaking of New Year’s, Anthony and I, having had a blast over the Christmas dinners at friends’, decided to spend the New Year’s in the setting of our home – I don’t recall my mentioning that past November we again moved houses; it’s a high-rise and we are on the eighth floor with nothing above our roof but the endless sky -- where we enjoyed the society of a bottle of vodka that yielded innumerous, for the two of us, Moscow Mules. Delicious!

My very special thank you goes to a mixologist from a local speakeasy-style cocktail bar, Door 74. His name is Timo and in my eyes he is a true alchemic: he turns ordinary spirits into cocktails which are nothing less than gold. One day early December last year, Anthony and I got seated at the bar in Door 74 ready to watch Timo in action, which is – I’m sure – akin to observing a three Michelin-star chef at work. A new season cocktail menu had just gone into effect. There were many drinks I tried and liked. But none of them I liked as much as Moscow Mule. I didn’t have any knowledge about the cocktail before, but the ingredients (other than vodka) listed in the description and the name piqued my curiosity. I took the bait.

One Moscow Mule for me, please!

Dressed in a sleek black three-piece suit, with a tie-clip in the shape of a sword, Timo nodded his approval and took a copper mug from the fridge. Cubes of ice twice the size of a standard game die made their way into the vessel. The juice of half a lime was squeezed into the mug, into which Timo poured some vodka and finally ginger beer just enough to top it all up. A few stirs later and I was given a drink – zestful, zingy, refreshing, spicy stuff -- that would change my relationship with vodka for good.

Next time I’m asked what my parents gave me as a child, I’d non-hesitantly say, “Oh I wish they’d have given me Moscow Mules!”

Moscow Mule
Inspired by Timo Janse

Despite the simplicity of this drink, there are a few things that can detour you from a well-balanced result. First: ice. It’s important to use it, a lot and preferably in big cubes (big cubes melt slower). Our first home-made Moscow Mules were without any, which made them taste “rough”, as if the individual components of the cocktail didn’t want to agree to play in a team, each trying to be more distinctive than the other. The ice, as impossible at it sounds, brings all of them together.

Second: ginger beer. It should be pronouncedly sweet to even out the non-sweet-at-all lime and vodka, and spicy to perk things up. Old Jamaica ginger beer is the name of the game.

Third: glass. Originally Moscow mule was to be served in copper mugs; one of the inventors of the beverage owned a copperware business. But these babies are quite costly. So if you don’t own one, it’s not the end of the world. Use a tall glass instead. Just be aware you might want to adjust the measurements depending on the size of your glass. Basically, you mix one part vodka with one part fresh lime juice. The amounts I give below are fit for a 300-ml (10-oz) tall glass.

And finally, it’s imperative that vodka you use for this concoction is on the smooth end of vodka spectrum. If you can, use a high-end vodka brand with a smooth taste, such as Ketel One or Grey Goose.

Serves 1
ice cubes
20 ml (0.75 fl. oz) vodka, such as Ketel One
juice of half a lime
ginger beer, such as Old Jamaica

Fill a tall glass with ice. Add vodka. Take a half of lime and if you don’t have a professional squeezing tool that bartenders use, take a strong pair of salad tongs and squeeze the lime to its fullest. Chuck the squeezed lime into the glass. Top it off with ginger beer; stir well. Enjoy responsibly!

A good friend

2010-12-28T14:13:00.003+01:00

Between my work and Christmas dinners, now is the time that I check in to wish you, Dear Reader, a happy holiday season!

May 2011 be a good friend to you!

I'll be back shortly with a beverage.

The way I see it

2010-11-30T12:58:00.008+01:00

There comes a time in every person’s life when they totally refuse to accept the dark side of their highly dignified self and wish for a theory to justify their less than a self-flattering behavior. Almost always there is no such thing and an individual just ought to suck it up and admit to being an ass every once in a while (and hopefully not any frequenter).

Not entirely by design, yet not by accident either -- I get greedy for food that I like. Because I couldn’t find any theory to justly explain why I act the way I do, I had to make up my own behavioral theorem. I named it a favorite dish theory (FDT) and it goes something like this. Upon finding his/her favorite dish, a human undergoes two stages of behavior. The initial stage is mostly anti-social and can last at least for the first few days after an individual discovered the recipe. During these days, one is prone to cancel long-awaited appointments, is unable to strike a coherent conversation, develops an appetite that cannot be quelled if the dish isn’t there, and, most importantly, refuses to think about sharing the dish with anybody. The latter can progress to the extent that one is even willing to pick up quibbles with their significant other -- I don’t like your voice when you say my name, don’t talk to me! -- to temporarily ensure a solitary eating experience for one to enjoy the food one so mind-wrecking-ly fell for. Friendships and relationships are running a risk of rupture.

It is only after one starts to want to talk non-stop about the dish with others that the second phase begins. It is, quite contrary to the earlier days, marked by an obsessive wish to share. One now wants to cook the dish for everyone. Friendships and relationships get mended; their shredded parts are sewn together by the food which had torn them before.

The way I see it, the FDT is a brilliant thing. It has this golden property: it saves face for me. Now nobody has rights to think of me as a greedy selfish pig. The FDT explains my bad manners nicely.

Two weeks ago I ran into this recipe for chickpeas in date masala. Since then I’ve been referring people who came in direct contact with my kitchen table to my theory (better than the overrated saying sorry for being inconsiderate).

Chickpeas…I get emotionally scarred when I don’t have a meal that involves chickpeas at least twice a week. That’s surprising, somewhat, seeing that I properly acquainted myself with the beans in question just two years ago, soon after I’d move to Amsterdam (in Russian cuisine, chickpeas are scarcely used). But anyway…I don’t cringe to eat them canned straight from a tin, the lid pulled up and curved. Briefly sautéed with caramelized onions, chickpeas don’t seem to bore me. In the society of mellowed by heat fatty chorizo, the chickpeas win my rambling heart time and again. But no matter how much I like those combinations, they don’t trigger my ill manners. What does, however, is chickpeas dishes of Indian heritage/influence. Those spices, that heat…aww!

I can see I may come off a little bit kooky here, what with my admiration for this edible legume. You ask what’s so good about it. To me, the chickpea is bestowed with a mild taste and decent flavor, it is the most neutral-tasting bean I know of. They accept exotic flavors gladly and with grace, is what I’m saying. Which, after a circuitous roundabout, brings us to the discussion of the afore-mentioned adorable chickpeas in data masala.

No yogurt or tomato sauce goes into making of this dish. It’s solely about chickpeas and spices. To make the stuff, one is required to interchange two actions by the stove; roughly it is heating and adding. First you heat up some vegetable oil and then you add a chopped onion. You cook it until the onion becomes soft and browns up a bit. After that some garlic and tomato paste are added. A minute or so after, chopped dates, cumin, cardamom, cayenne and black peppers dive in. Lastly, some chickpeas along with a splash of water are added. It’s all heated up again. Now it is ready eat. How easy is that?

Taste-wise, it’s simultaneously sweet (dates) and savory (cumin), the two tastes bridged by the ethereal cardamom, which itself is at once sweet and savory, and when you think you’ve got it all, there is also a swoosh of heat (chilies) catching up with your taste buds, rushing from the tip of your tongue all the way down the throat. Besides the glorious chickpeas that soak all that up, the dates, after swelling from heat and a bit of water, also turn into chewy capsules of taste that can be best described with one word – savourysweet. Cook it, try it, eat it.

Something tells me I should courteously finish off this post by saying see you later and stuff, but I’ll skip that. I’m in a hurry to my kitchen for another helping of the chickpeas in date masala. Why should I care to be polite when I have my favourite dish theory to excuse the moments when I am not?

Chickpeas in Date Masala
Adapted from the New York Times

The original recipe uses star anise (or alternatively, ground anise) as a finishing tough to the dish. Personally I am not a big admirer of anise’s licorice flavor, so I pass on it. I suspect it might make the resulting taste of the chickpeas and dates three-dimensional (not just savourysweet), nevertheless I’m out. But if you are unlike me, I suggest you include it, who knows, it may be mind-numbingly good.

3 * 400-grams (15-ounce) canned chickpeas
2 black cardamom pods (I used green ones)
1/3 cup non-fragrant vegetable oil
1 large yellow onion, finely chopped
6 cloves garlic, minced
2 ½ Tbsp tomato paste
9 dried dates, potted and roughly chopped
4 tsp ground cumin
2 tsp table salt
1 tsp ground cayenne (you can use fresh chili instead), or to taste
1 tsp freshly ground black pepper, or to taste
2 whole star anise, or 1/3 tsp ground (optionally)

1. Drain and rinse the chickpeas under cold water. Set aside in a bowl.

2. Using a knife, crack the cardamom pods. Discard the shells. Using a mortar and pestle or a coffee grinder, crash or grind the seeds. Set aside.

3. In a medium pot, warm the oil over medium-high heat. Add the onion – it should sizzle – and cook for 8-10 mins until it has softened and starts to brown. Stir in the garlic and cook for another minute. Dial the fire back to medium and add the tomato paste. Add the cardamom, dates, cumin, salt, cayenne, black pepper, anise (if using) and cook, stirring often, for 2-3 mins.

4. Add the chickpeas and ½ cup or a little bit more of water, just enough to make them less than dry. Warm up the mixture, stirring occasionally, to let the flavors incorporated. Remove from heat. Serve warm. (I ate the stuff plain on its own, but it is not a bad idea at all to accompany it with rice, or flat bread.)

5. Enjoy!

It makes me overwhelmed

2010-10-13T12:49:00.008+02:00

A while ago I chanced upon a blog post in which its author gave an inspirational account of her stay in Amsterdam. Seeing that I live in Amsterdam, I didn’t intend to seek out travel stories about Amsterdam, just so you know, but as I saw the title – There was Amsterdam – I thought it would be ignorant of me to pass it up, especially if posted on a food blog as delicious as Sweet Amandine. So I dived into the story curious to learn about what my adopted city showed to Jess (the Sweet Amandine’s creator) and her husband, Eli, during their stay in Amsterdam this past August. I don’t think it makes any sense for me to retell the whole story here. Please read the original, it’s a treat. For our purposes, what I want to tell now is that there was a moment in the story that gripped me quite tight. Right there, in the spot between the eighth and the thirteenth paragraphs my heart came to a screeching halt, did some crazy summersault, and tumbled on with excitement all the way towards the final full stop of There was Amsterdam. And all that is because Jess talks about the bakery. My bakery! As I was re-reading the post in question, I couldn’t help but repeat to myself how bizarre this felt to hear somebody else tell their story about the bakery. Usually I talk. Now I listened.

Since I read Jess’s post, I’ve been thinking a lot about my own story – but not about the bakery. I’ve been thinking about my story in the bakery. About how I started off – and what I am gradually becoming. It wouldn’t be honest to say that it was my initial goal to work in the bakery. I considered myself a loyal customer, the type that wouldn’t mind to cycle forty minutes one way in the rain just to get, say, a loaf of fresh baguette. I admired Issa and Marco, the two brothers Niemeijer, for making that excellent food that like a magnet would attract me no matter what; for creating and running a place that instantly becomes everybody’s favourite haunt. I enjoyed the role of an observer, I guess I could say that, coming in a few times a week to say hello and offer my thanks in my deconstructed Dutch (and then to giggle awkwardly when they replied back in fluent Dutch). I weaved my social life around that place: I brought my then dates and a couple of good friends for lunch there, all at respective times, should you ask. I didn’t intend to apply for a job there, though. Until I found myself, as a then student, in need for a part-time job – badly.

The circumstances conspired in such a way that there was a vacancy in the bakery back then. I took the job. I started off as a dish-washer. It was a touch more than a year ago. Although doing the dishes was my priority, I couldn’t help but poking my nose into the bakery’s activities. I was open with Issa, a baker, and Marco, a chef, about my plans to be a professional food-writer, the one with a hands-on approach, as I reasoned. As a starting point -- and I already touched upon it here -- I was shown how to make tartlets. I had to learn to beat the bejesus out of the tartlet dough (pate sucre) to soften it; to remember the steps of rolling it out with the

dough sheeter; and finally, to get the trick of molding the rounds of the cut-out dough into tartlet shells fast -- very fast. If I’d take my time to do that, the dough would then become sticky, very difficult to handle. At the beginning it felt like a military camp, somewhat. Instead of doing push-ups and sit-downs, I’d make tartlets with a timer counting away precious minutes beside me. One day, I remember, it was suggested I make approximately sixty to eighty tartlets in no longer than fifteen minutes. I think I did the “tartlets boot camp” well. To make tartlets fast is no problem anymore. To make them swiftly is relaxing now.

After I’d made myself comfortable around tartlets, I moved on to learn the making of a tarte Tatin. The most challenging part was to arrange thin apple slices in a way so that they, still standing on their curved ends, would overlap each other neatly.

To be clear: it’s not that difficult of a task. But there is a catch. If you don’t use enough apple slices, once baked they will shrink and reveal the dough underneath, the way the hair on the head can thin out and show the skin (ouch!). Conclusion: it’s important to use a good amount of apple slices, say, three apples’ worth per pie, to make sure that a Tatin looks as close to immaculate as possible. Warning: tucking in the apple slices next to, and in between, each other in a careful fashion requires some time, from five to seven minutes, I found. This is a potential material for trouble, because it’s a general policy here that you shouldn’t spend too much time on one thing, otherwise you create sort of a jam in your own work flow.

After about six months in the dish-washing job, getting a hands-on approach only occasionally depending how many dishes I had to do at a given moment, I thought I should carve out some time that I would spend solely on working in the bakery. Could I possibly get an apprenticeship, I asked. This past February I became a baker’s apprentice.

The writing of this post doesn’t come easy to me. For one, because there are so many things I want to tell. It makes me overwhelmed. It feels like my brains are a pot of boiling water, thoughts being the bubbles. Should I mention how I learnt to make that crème au citron that requires the non-stop ten-minute whisking? How could I not mention croissants and the challenge that comes with making them? On days when we are fast enough as to not let the butter start melting into the dough (a tall order when working next to the piping-hot ovens) before baking, the croissants puff up so beautifully in the oven that all those layers of dough, being risen by the steams from the melting butter (that’s why the butter should not melt any time earlier) make you want to stand by the oven, ignoring all the hiatus that may be all around, clasp your hands and murmur, wow, they can rise that high! If it so happens that you absolutely have to bite into such a wonder, you incidentally drop one on the floor. In this event, it can’t be served to customers. The floor is clean, so you knew what you were doing – you got yourself admittedly the best croissant Amsterdam can offer.

In September it came time for me to get myself acquainted with the bread dough. The order in which the ingredients are added can vary depending on the bread, but normally you mix flour with water and sourdough, let the mixture rest, then add salt, mix it all again, and, equally divided on the scales, put it in plastic boxes for a rise. Nothing incomprehensible or undoable. Except that the dough is heavy. Very heavy. Miss Paola – my fellow woman baker, my friend! -- metaphorically compared the process of taking the dough out from the mixing machines to the “pulling an overweight kid, who strapped themselves in velcro just to make sure you can't move them from the playground”.

Reader, I would go on like this for hours, hopping from one thing to tell to another. But generally speaking, as I think about the way I made it in the bakery starting, basically, from scratch, I feel proud. It’s not oh-look-what-I-can-do kind of pride; it’s pride that silently sits in the corners of my mind waiting to be called in every now and then to remind me not to be so harsh on myself on the occasions when, for example, a bowl of chocolate ganache incidentally slips from my hands and lands on the floor, chocolate ricocheting in all directions and covering pretty much everything in the radius of three meters, including that dough sheeter that Issa has to use for the rolling out the croissant dough, like, now; and my face, in such a way that I look like a Moulin Rouge girl, what with the artificial moles around my lips and on my cheeks.

Of course all my achievements, past and present, come with a price. Working in the bakery five days a week now, starting earlier than the sunrise, is exhausting-- just as much as it is rewarding. Daily baking/preparations programme is intense, with no wing room, so to speak. So it is no exaggeration to say that the only moment of rest we have during the day is a fifteen-minute lunch break, which is almost always punctuated by the oven’s beeping, which means it is time, right now in the middle of a recess, to take whatever was baking out of the oven. As you can imagine, this way a so much needed break flies past us unnoticeably.

Yet, that exhaustion also comes with an incentive. It is the realization that the bread and pastries we make in the bakery can be a source of happiness for many. It fills you with contentment and makes you “hit the floor with your ass”, as Charlie, one of our bakers, says, meaning that it makes you happy. Only being French, Charlie has a difficulty pronouncing the initial “h”, making it sound like “eat the floor with your ass”! Either way, it sounds very appropriate, I find!

I would love to

2010-09-02T20:05:00.006+02:00

Dear Reader, my drama with that chocolate cake (remember?) is over.

As a foreword, let me tell you that I made the cake ten times within the past fourteen days, which means the cake was seen in my kitchen almost daily for the last couple of weeks. I would love to explain the cake’s frequent appearance by its exceptional taste, so exceptional that each time the sweet thing was gone sooner than I could bring it to the table. Oh how much I would love to say that all that is true. But brother, it’s not! This cake, it was unruly. It drove me crazy. It exhausted my patience. I’m not exactly happy to relay all this, but nine times out of ten I flipped it the finger and furiously sent it into a trash bin. Why I kept making the stuff was that I can be stubborn -- if I want to. And I love chocolate cake. Plus, I believed a Moosewood restaurant cookbook that said that this six-minute chocolate cake is “an economical, low cholesterol, delicious dark cake that goes into the oven in 6 minutes with no mixing bowl to clean, because the batter is mixed directly in the baking pan”. I want to think that somebody somewhere did as the recipe has them to -- and loved the results. Me, I only made my trash bin full.

The only thing that I can agree with is that the cake is “low in cholesterol”. True -- no eggs, no butter, just vegetable oil. I would think twice before nodding in agreement about the creation being “economical”, as the recipe advertises. Good-quality cocoa powder (you need it for the batter) is not entirely inexpensive, right? The same goes for chocolate (you need it for the glazing). So calling the cake “economical” is not fully accurate, I noticed. As to the deliciousness of the cake, well, the past few weeks I spent nearly all my free time looking for it, that deliciousness. I found it not.

Like I mentioned, the recipe comes from a book by the Moosewood restaurant collective Moosewood restaurant cooks at home whose primarily focus lays on the food that’s fast and easy to make, and above all, the food that’s natural (Moosewood restaurant is a natural foods eating establishment).

(I borrowed the book from my baker boss Issa Niemeijer who is a vegetarian. When it came time for me to return it and I hadn’t yet copied said chocolate cake recipe, I hastily made a picture of it. I couldn’t wait to make this cake.)

I feel I should say now that I made it a point not to deviate from the original recipe too much. The cake was intended to be simple and quick. Its main ingredient is unsweetened cocoa powder, no chocolate in the batter. An innocent observer could now notice that I could have used chocolate ganache or chocolate chips in addition to the cocoa powder to try to make the cake close to being heart-rate accelerating, but I chose not to. If I did, it would not be that “economical, low cholesterol, delicious dark cake” any more, was my reasoning. I didn’t want to complicate anything about the stuff. I just hoped it’d be delicious. Alas, it never tasted as much to me. Reader, I don’t want to come off as a Negative Nancy around here, what with all the complaining and everything. The cake wasn’t bad. But it didn’t cut it for me, either.

As I said, I didn’t inject the cake with the ganache and whatnot. Yet, in my desperation, I kept adding things to it -- such as lemon syrup which I’d spoon over the cake before covering it with chocolate glaze -- trying to make the cake flavorful and interesting, attempting to create a bomb of flavor out of it. But now as I think of it I can see I kept forcing this cake to be what it’s not. In a few brushstrokes, it’s an easy cocoa-based cake whose attraction may be hidden deep down its nude simplicity. On its own, cocoa can never be as rich in flavor as chocolate, but I didn’t want to see it then. I had my grand expectations which would never match what this cake is all about: decency. Instead of accepting it, I was getting continuously upset: it’s not what I want it to be, it’s not what I want it to be, it’s not what I want it to be. Finally, I figured it’s better if I stop looking for something that’s not there. I’m not going to make this cake anymore.

Yet, I’ll post the recipe. Maybe somebody will get to make it, and will love it, and will tell me that I am crazy to “dis-love” it.

Six-Minute Chocolate Cake
Adapted from Moosewood restaurant cooks at home by Moosewood collective

Despite it being said in the book that the cake batter “can be mixed directly in the baking pan”, I’d recommend you don’t do that. It’s not entirely convenient to try to mix the batter in a square cake form; a good amount of flour can be left unincorporated in the corners of such pan. Of course if you are using a round baking pan, that’s not a problem anymore. Yet, it’s better to first mix the wet ingredients together in a separate bowl, this way you will not over-mix the batter adding wet ingredients one by one. For those reasons, it’s better to use two separate bowls – one for dry and another for wet mix. Which, I agree, is at odds with the original idea for the cake preparation to be only six-minutes long. Still, a few more bowls notwithstanding, it’s fast to whip up.

Dry mix
1 ½ cup unbleached all-purpose flour
½ cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1 tsp baking powder
½ tsp salt

Wet mix
1 cup buttermilk
1 cup light brown sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
½ cup non-fragrant vegetable oil

Bittersweet chocolate glaze
½ pound (250 grams) good-quality bittersweet chocolate
¾ cup warm milk

Preheat the oven to 165 C (365 F). Butter a 8-inch square or 9-inch round cake form.

In a medium bowl, sift together the flour and salt; mix well. Continue sifting in the baking powder and cocoa powder. Mix again.

In another medium bowl, whisk together the buttermilk, sugar, and vanilla extract. Whisk in the oil. With a spatula, stir the wet mix into the dry mix just until incorporated.

Pour in the prepared cake form and bake for 40-50 mins, or until a toothpick inserted in the center of a cake comes out clean. Let cool for 15 mins. Take out from the cake form and put on a wire rack.

While the cake is cooling down, prepare the chocolate glaze. Melt the chocolate in a heatproof bowl set over a pan with boiling water. Once the chocolate is melted, stir in the warm milk. Spoon the glaze over the cooled cake. Refrigerate for at least 30 minutes before serving (as you can see from the photo, I didn’t wait that long.)

It's way better

2010-08-01T22:24:00.007+02:00

I talked about this six-minute chocolate cake last time, or more accurately, I briefly mentioned how I successfully burnt it (the thing is called six-minute chocolate cake, because as the recipe says, it takes just as much for the cake batter to be prepared).

Today I made said cake again, this time having avoided any calamities, and I don’t quite know what to think of the stuff. This cake, it tasted funny. Weird, even. Anthony even thinks “it’s not pleasant to chew on”. Isn’t it plain awkward? I feel some serious recipe tweaking must be done. I want this cake to be fine.

That means no cake today. Again. But I didn’t come empty-handed either. I brought you some summer roasted vegetables. It’s not exactly an alternative to chocolate cake, I realize that, but I figured you would agree it’s way better to have seriously enjoyable roasted vegetables than “unpleasant to chew on” chocolate cake on your plate. Ideally, both should be fine, I hear you, but sometimes, when I’m in my own kitchen, tired, I’m just capable of doing one right thing at a time. But please, don’t let me digress; it’s important that I tell you about this roasted vegetables business.

I’m confident you’ll like it. Anthony did, and although he strongly disagrees, he is one fussy eater: “I am not really a fan of spelt flour”, was his response to my making carrot muffins with spelt flour three times in a row; or “I want things to have taste”, was a reaction I got after I’d served lentils cooked in vegetable stock -- how’s that for flavor? -- for dinner.

Funny, but initially I made these roasted vegetables for myself. I thought I would have a dinner alone the other day, so I dived into What we eat when we eat alone and found the recipe there. Even not a recipe, an idea, really. You take your favorite summer vegetables, say, eggplant, zucchini, young potatoes, young carrots, beets, if that’s what you're into, and bell peppers; toss in some aromatics such as onion and garlic; season the lot, and send it in the oven for less than thirty minutes. It is recommended that you also use a handful or two of cherry tomatoes; they’ll release their juices and get caramelized and bind together whatever vegetable material you use.

The result is rewarding, only when I made the thing I didn’t get to eat it alone. In fact, I didn’t get to eat it at all (just a few bites). Anthony wolfed down my roasted vegetables -- faster than I could take any actions, such as grabbing a fork, pushing him aside, and eating everything myself. Which made me roast another batch, and a batch more after that: “I could eat it every day and not get bored of it, the stuff is so flavorful!”. Fine, I got it.

Summer roasted vegetables

Adapted from What we eat when we eat alone by Deborah Madison and Patrick McFarlin

Like I said, there is barely a recipe. The amounts, as well as types, of vegetables are certainly not written in stone, just make sure to use seasonal produce. I also found that finely chopped green celery leaves, in addition to you fresh herbs of choice or just on its own, deepens the collective flavor of the roasted vegetables even more. It’s like a belt to a cascading evening gown: with it, the dress, or rather a woman in it, looks even finer. Ah yes, and don’t be a scrooge with salt; it helps to open up the vegetable flavor.

1 medium eggplant, cut into cubes
2 large carrots, peeled and sliced into ¼-inch rounds
½ head garlic, cloves separated and peeled
1 bell pepper, cut into strips or cubed
1 large yellow onion, peeled, cut into wedges with the root ends attached
1 handful of cherry tomatoes, stems removed
olive oil
salt/pepper
chopped fresh herbs (one or a combination of a few) such as rosemary, oregano, parsley, thyme, chives or/and chopped green celery leaves

1. Lightly salt the eggplant and let sit in a colander to drain. Preheat the oven to 200 degrees C (400 degrees F). Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.

2. While the oven is warming up, wash and cut the rest of the vegetables. Put them in a bowl.

3. When the oven is ready, rinse the eggplant and roughly dry it off with a paper towel. Add the eggplant to the other vegetables. Add enough olive oil to moisten; season with salt and freshly ground pepper. (You can also add a pinch each of dried oregano and/or thyme, if desired.)

4. Spread the vegetables out onto a prepared baking sheet, making sure to give the vegetables enough space so that they don’t crowd each other. Put in the center of the oven and roast for 25 minutes, or until the vegetables take on color in places and become tender. Turn them a few times while cooking. Remove and let cool a little bit.

5. Transfer into a small bowl (or a food container); add fresh herbs and a splash of olive oil; mix. Taste and adjust the seasoning if needed. Equally delicious warm or at room temperature.

Yield: 1 big meal for one, 2 light meals for two, or 4 side-dish servings

This is how it works

2010-07-22T16:43:00.005+02:00

This is how it works: as a student, here is a student accommodation for you. Finished your studies? Congratulations! Now go and find another place to live then, oh yes, and good luck!

In other words, my two-year rental agreement for a shared student apartment expired last week, by which time I had to find myself a new home in Amsterdam. And so July 15th was moving day for me. Actually, that’s not true, because it was moving day for me – and Anthony.

I think it’s now an appropriate moment to mention that Anthony and I, well, we are buddies. I mean, we are together. Our story, it didn’t begin with fireworks. We both agree that the day we met was not exactly a memorable experience, except that we had quite a spectacular cloud-like sardine mousse on rye bread as a starter at dinner in a restaurant where we went. Later, we started hanging out regularly enough for me to make Anthony feel sick at the sight of toasted buckwheat grains (when I get to know somebody unfamiliar with Russian cuisine, I stuff them with buckwheat porridge a fair amount!). We became close friends. And I wanted to keep it that way, no relationship drama for me, thank you. And so it was -- until I went to Russia for a month. It’s probably a cliché to say, but distance does help to filter through the mental trash and see what’s important. It appeared to me then that I want to stick by Anthony’s side. Now I tell him every night to unplug all the electrical devices before going to bed because I believe that the electricity field all those gadgets create messes up with my sleep and he tells me to go and see a psychiatrist because I seem to have a plugged-in device phobia. I let him know he is an idiot; he informs me about my being stupid. We are buddies.

So we moved in to a new place. It’s small, but it has an oven, a Jacuzzi bath, and a DVD-player. And a tailless cat, Flash. We can stay here until the owner has come back from her travels, which will be sometime in late fall. And what’s also great is that I’m now only ten-minute bike ride from the bakery, as opposed to an hour one before. There is a café below us, and a spacious attic up a few stairs where the cat can chill out when she is stressed.

Today I was going to not only tell you all that. I was also going to make a six-minute chocolate cake for you, to give us all a treat. Unfortunately, that didn’t go as planned.

I, a baker’s apprentice, kept the cake in the oven for too long which gave it a taste of, in Anthony’s words, “burnt toast with chocolate flavor”. And if that wasn’t upsetting enough, I accidentally knocked the stuff off the kitchen counter. Golly gee whiz and a bucket of hog wash!

I’m sorry. I’ll do better next time.

It is finally here

2010-07-08T21:55:00.003+02:00

I was waiting for a day when I can throw my arms in the air and cry out loud, “I’m finished with my master’s thesis! Oh boy, am I done with it! Oh holy blessed mother!”. It took what seemed like forever for this day to come.

But it is finally here, this day!

I will not sound original if I say it is never an easy deal to write a thesis. With my on-going apprenticeship in the bakery, it certainly was no feast for me. The pressure to meet my deadlines was high, 24/7. Mood swings were constant. Tiredness and fretting were my next-door neighbors. Binging on chocolate, peanut butter and strawberry jam on graham crackers was…well, you get my drift. Ideally, I would have almost all summer to finish my thesis, but because my supervisor was leaving her job earlier, I had to hurry up and get this job done within two months. Craaaaazy!

But in the murkiest moments when I could not squeeze a single thought out off my brains and would sit at my desk, staring at a yellow post-it duck-taped to the wall that said, “Write your thesis in bite-size chunks, everyday!”, sobbing and mindlessly chewing on something sweet or other (see above), even then I still saw a glimpse of hope that I could do it. The way forward was the only way, so I toiled, and toiled, and toiled again. And now that I did finish it (holy woman!), I feel accomplished. Proud, even. And happy because now I realize I can hang out here with you and not feel guilty about doing things other than working on my thesis.

What did I write about, you might ask. Being a student of English metaphor, I chose to write about how the use of metaphor varies from one genre of food-writing to another, in particular, I looked at recipes and first-person stories about food. Not to go too deep in this theoretical abracadabra, let me just say I found metaphor in both. A (not so) funny thing is that while I was busy with writing about all that, I somehow went astray in my kitchen. I became – gulp -- disinterested in cooking. I had canned chickpeas -- with fresh herbs or curry powder or tahini or just plain out of a tin can -- almost every day for the last couple of months. And although I knew that this apathy was temporary, it made me grumpy and touchy. It made me feel “unrooted”. It felt like lights were on with nobody home. But what added up to my daily frustrations the most was that I didn’t, or rather could not, get to write a single story to share with you for months. I missed you, Reader.

I’m glad to be back.

Something

2010-06-22T19:59:00.001+02:00

You might think I am undisciplined and disorganized. Or you might be tempted to believe I totally do not care. Or maybe you’ve gone even further as to be wondering if I am still alive. I mean, this absence of mine should be explained somehow, right?

Dear Reader, wonder no longer. I’ve got the answer for you: my Master thesis. It will soon be over, this non-stop mind-grinding. But until then, please bear with me. I will be back soon. I need to.

"Quality baked goods for festival people"

2010-05-06T22:43:00.008+02:00

Last year, I beefed about what madness, at least from a sober pedestrian’s perspective, Amsterdam becomes on April 30th – Queen’s Day – when seemingly everybody in Holland pours out onto the narrow cobbled streets of this tiny city with seemingly one purpose -- input and output of all things alcohol. I don’t imagine what I would do this year for Queen’s Day if Anthony, a bright-minded man with a habit to burn spinach gratins and some other dishes, didn’t come up with an idea to set up a stand for Queen’s Day and sell, quote, “quality baked goods to festival people”.

It’s a good thing that Queen’s Day is the only day around here when one does not need official permission to go out and sell things after one’s own heart. As long as you don’t sell animals, weapons, works of art, or perishable goods, you are most welcome, says the City Hall of Amsterdam, to try your luck in commerce on said day. Somehow we reasoned that it’d be more of a social event filled with fun than an earnest business endeavor. We were not exactly right. The whole thing would actually call for proper thinking.

We started brainstorming what to make for Queen’s day weeks before the event. Besides ten calls Anthony had to make to his carpenter friend to ask, and then to remind, if he could please get us some rickety table we’d later set our goods on, our “business plan” included multiple visits to a kitchen equipment store where we’d get needed baking forms, bowls, electronic scales and a hand-mixer. It was in that crammed shop with old dark wooden cracking floors that Anthony saw this man-shaped cookie cutter and got a brainwave -- to make, quote, “men-shaped cookies covered in orange icing to look like the Dutch Nation football team”.

Dutch national colour is orange, so it was imperative to make something orange-y on Queen’s Day. Next, we agreed that we should also make cocoa brownies (because they are always a crowd pleaser and such an easy-peasy thing to make), white wine cake (because it is my favourite!), and orange marmalade cake (because it has orange in it, which, we thought, would appeal to Dutch). For a while, I also got obsessed with what tablecloth to use for the table. I wanted a checkered tablecloth of mild colour, something like light blue. Anthony disagreed. We should look festive and bright, he insisted.

We got a red checkered tablecloth in the end.

Another thing to think of was a place where to set up our stand. What location would make us stand out from the crowd? A small arching bridge, a few meters off a main artery clogged with human traffic, seemed to be just fine.

Anthony, being a graphic designer, also developed clasps for cookie bags with Godful Food logo on them. Tons of effort, time and energy -- plus, a bit of our money -- was put in the “quality baked goods for festival people” campaign, is all I’m driving at.

I should as well tell that I don’t own the oven, still. Neither does Anthony. So we took over the kitchen at Rene’s. Rene is a very, very, very patient person; he is a friend of Anthony. Actually, Rene is a saint of patience. He did not mind us baking non-stop for two days in a row before Queen’s Day. He didn’t say a word about how uncomfortably hot it became in his small-enough-for-one-person studio apartment after we’d told him not to open the windows because of the flies. Sipping on cold dark Belgian beers, he just jokingly referred to this whole bonanza as “a sweating bakeshop”.

As to the oven, it was a microwave contraption with a function of the convection oven. And in that oven, from the inside slightly bigger than two shoe boxes put together, Anthony baked four hundred and thirty five man-shaped cookies that he’d later have to ice in orange.

In that oven, I baked five white wine cakes, one after another; four batches of brownies, one after another (eighty brownies in total); and one orange marmalade cake. Funny, how little, in comparison to the rest, of that orange marmalade cake we made. Its orange-ness seemed fitting for Queen’s Day. It was unusually delicious, zingy, moist, and bright. For some reason, we didn't see it as a best-seller.

We were very wrong. Please stay with me; I will get back to that in a minute.

Before, I just want to tell you what a disaster our “quality-baked-goods-for-festival-people” enterprise turned to be. On the Queen’s Day eve, the weather made a U-turn. It started raining, pouring even. And it did not stop until late afternoon the next day. And who would want to buy sweets which one could not even see because they were all wrapped up in foil to protect them from soaking? I’ve got the answer for you: n.o.b.o.d.y.

A few hours into rain, Anthony got, quote, "a brilliant idea" to wrap the brownies and the slices of the cakes in plastic film individually. This way “we could showcase what we’d got”.

After what seemed like a century, we got our first customers: two Italian ladies. They went for two pieces of orange marmalade cake. The ice was broken. For a moment, though. We couldn’t know those Italian women would be our only customers well until late afternoon. Not that there were no people on the streets to buy our sweets. It was just that those who were passing by weren’t interested. Plain as that. It being Amsterdam, people kept asking us if we were selling hash brownies and everything. Having learned that no, it was normal sweets, they sniffed and walked away.

It kept drizzling on and off. I was wearing a woollen dress, body warmer and raincoat; Anthony had on a flimsy orange t-shirt and hoody. Both of us were cold. My back and my feet hurt from standing for hours. At some point, I remember, I even wanted to pack everything back and leave. We should stick out and be patient, Anthony insistently suggested, his teeth chattering. But me, I could take everything with thin tolerance by the time. Anthony gave me a few of his orange cookies to cheer me up. I squashed the cookies. I did that on purpose. Knowing how much effort he had put into baking and icing each one of them, on the spur of the moment I figured that to squash a few would be a fireproof way to upset him. I became bitter.

Around 1 pm the sun broke out through the thick layer of clouds the colour of quick mercury. Boats loaded with people wearing orange and drinking something strong or other had filled up the canals’ waters. Some boats even had a dj playing live onboard. Everybody was waist-length deep in fun. Sadly, I didn’t feel jovial. I told Anthony as much, put my sunglasses on to hide betraying tears, turned and went away. I folded.

The rest of the day I spent sipping hot Earl Grey with lavender and nibbling on white wine cake I’d kept for us. I felt ashamed to go back. In a way, I let Anthony down. I gave up on our plans. I failed, I kept thinking.

In about an hour after I’d left, Anthony gave me a call -- he was still talking to me, blimey! -- to say that there was this young Italian couple who bought a piece each of orange marmalade cake, white wine cake, and a brownie; and that after a while the guy came for more orange marmalade cake. We had a repeat customer, I was told. “Think for a moment how amazing that someone, at a citywide fest like Queen’s Day, took the time and effort to weave back though all that madness just to get another piece of your orange marmalade cake! You should be immensely proud of that”, said Anthony.

Although it pains me that I didn’t see that guy’s face, it’s still better that way. I think it will do for me to simply know that there is somebody who loved what we’d made and showed that in deed. No matter how bumpy the road, it is the people you travel with -- those you know for long and those who are there just for a moment -- that make it less hurtful, less uncomfortable to keep going.

(Anthony spelled "marmalade" wrong!)

Orange Marmalade Cake

Adapted from Molly Wizenberg

Like I said, it was the cake we had the least of for sale. We had even less after I’d had one piece as my lunch, standing there in the drizzle. I even wished, in secret, it wouldn’t sell at all. I wanted to keep it for myself (I am a fox!). But it so happened it was a hit. That Italian guy, our repeat customer, said that he had “to have another piece of this orange marmalade cake. It is the best”. I don't know if that was what the quy really said, or Anthony exaggerated a little. But anyway...The cake is truly something else. Imbued with fragrant orange and lemon and toasted almond, all moistened by olive oil, it does really taste of summer -- a great thing to have on a rainy day, on any day! It probably explains why it sold well on that gloomy Queen’s Day. That and the fact that it is undeniably delicious.

1 medium orange
1 small to medium lemon
180 gr (6 oz) coarsely ground almonds
110 gr (1 cup) all-purpose flour
1 Tbsp baking powder
4 large eggs, at room temperature
½ tsp sea salt
340 gr (1 ½ cups) sugar
2/3 cups olive oil
Powdered sugar for serving (optional)

1) Preheat the oven to 180 C (350 F).

2) Put the orange and lemon in a saucepan and cover with water. Bring to a boil, cover. Reduce the heat to medium-low and simmer until the fruit is soft, about 30 mins. Drain and let cool.

3) Spread the ground almonds on a clean baking sheet and toast until the almonds slightly take on colour. I learnt that it is a way more convenient to toast already ground almonds; whole almonds become quite oily once toasted, which makes them much messier to grind.

4) Once the fruit is cool, deseed the orange. Cut the lemon in half and scoop out the pulp and seeds. Discard. Put the deseeded orange and lemon rind in a food processor, or a blender, and pulse until finely ground, almost like a puree. Set aside.

5) In a small bowl, sift the flour and the baking powder. Whisk.

6) In a medium bowl, combine the eggs and the salt. Beat until foamy. Keeping beating, add in the sugar. Add the citrus, almonds, and olive oil, and beat on low speed after each addition. Finally, add the flour and with a spatula, or a wooden spoon, mix it in until just incorporated. It’s ok if there are streaks of flour; they will dissipate while baking.

7) Pour the batter in a buttered 9-inch round springform pan; an 8*8-inch square baking pan will work here too. Bake for about one hour, or until a toothpick plunged into the center immerges clean. If the top of the cake browns too soon, cover it with aluminum foil and continue baking until ready. Cool the cake before unmolding.

8) Serve, if you wish, with the dusting of powdered sugar on top.

Earnestly speechless

2010-04-02T23:27:00.004+02:00

Before Easter celebrations roll in, please, let me tell you real, real, real quick about this simple, simple, simple dish that would do no less than be a graceful side to meat, poultry, and even fish, should that be your main! Like I just said, the dish is awfully simple. But what you also should know, and consider this your fortune, is that it is utterly delicious. So much so that every time I dig my fork in it, I want to fling my room window open and scream, scream, scream my excitement out at the people on the street, because I swear I get so thrilled about the stuff by every mouthful that I want everybody in the world to know what I know. And it is this: fried potatoes with coriander, cumin and spring onions are terrifyingly awesome together. So much so that it makes me earnestly speechless – even voiceless. And that, as you can see, clashes with my plans to scream. I don’t quite know what I’m going to do, except that I am going to eat those potatoes as much as I can. And if possible, I am going to eat only those potatoes. Come Easter there will be no exception. I’m sure.

At this point I think I should tell you that I am, by default, no stranger to a good potato. The reason is that I am Russian. Consider this for a moment: In the year 2007, Russia, the e-site potato2008.org tells us, was ranked second among the world top ten potato producers. The same potato2008.org says that in potato consumption, Russians “took silver” as well. I personally can testify to that. I grew up in a family where potatoes were bought in sackfuls every fall to last us through the winter months. Up to this day, the tradition, of which my grandparents are in charge, is still running.

Since my childhood up until a few years ago, fried potatoes with onions was the most frequent dish to appear on my plate. I was so familiarized with the stuff that at some point it became impossible for me to get excited about a good potato at all, is what I’m saying. Impossible until I tried the recipe for Lebanese fried potatoes with coriander from the MORO East book last week, that is. Since then, all I want is to scream from, and with, excitement.

Happy Easter, Dear Reader!

Fried potatoes with coriander (cilantro)

Adapted from MORO East by Samantha and Samuel Clark

Serves 4 as a side dish or 2 as a main course

1 (about 2 pounds) kg potatoes, peeled and washed
2 garlic cloves, finely chopped
½ tsp ground cumin
10 spring onions, thinly sliced
Large bunch of coriander (around 50 grams), finely chopped (stalks included)
8 Tbsp (120 ml) olive oil
Salt and pepper to taste

1) Cut the potatoes in half and place them in a large pot. Cover with cold water, add salt and bring to a boil. Cook for about 15-20 mins, or until the potatoes are tender, but not mushy. Drain and let cool until they are comfortably warm to handle.

2) Cut the potatoes in chunks. Gently toss with the cumin, garlic, half the spring onions and half the coriander, making sure not to break the potatoes. Add salt and pepper to taste.

3) In a wide non-stick skillet, heat the olive oil over a medium flame. Add the potatoes and fry on one side until these are golden and a bit crispy, about 10 mins. Turn them over with a wooden spoon, taking care not to break them, and fry until the other side is also golden. Transfer to a large serving bowl and combine with the remaining coriander and spring onions. Adjust the seasonings.

I behave accordingly

2010-02-25T22:25:00.010+01:00

Dear Reader, I have a bit of news to share!

Those of you who’ve been hanging around here for quite a while (oh lovelies!) must know that since last August

I’ve been working in – it would be absolutely safe to say – the best French bakery in Amsterdam, Gebroeder Niemeijer, as a dishwasher assisting occasionally in tasks like tartlets forming or tartlet dough making.

I don’t think I told you but for the last few months of 2009, I even used to start my working Sundays in the bakery at 6:30 in the morning. I was meant to help a young French baker, Arnaud, with early-morning routines until the service in the adjacent breakfast/lunch room would start, after which I’d proceed with the dishes until 6 in the evening. It was a magnificent experience to be in the warmth of the bakery under the veil of pre-dawn winter darkness creating something yeasty and buttery while the rest of the world was still sound asleep. It is a fulfilling feeling to see the results of your labour, almost always backbreaking, on people’s plates.

So the news is that since early February I am known not only as a dishwasher who helps in the bakery, but also as a baker’s apprentice. Issa, our master baker, is teaching me the art of pastry making.

At this point I’m in the process of mastering crème au citron (lemon curd), among a few other things. In particular, I’m learning the ways how to feverishly whisk it 10 minutes straight and NOT to scream from the numb pain in my right arm.

Let me just repeat: I am a baker’s apprentice. Respect.

That said, were I now writing about another dessert, I’m sure you’d consider a smack in my face. Who am I kidding, another story – what, sixth in a row? -- about something sweet and I’d happily slap myself, as well.

To avoid any self-abuse, I was thus going to tell you about kale gratin today. I thought it would make for a juicy story. Namely, about how an American guy named Anthony (thirty of age) knew a zilch about a vegetable called kale until I invited myself to his kitchen the other day bringing along a pound of stemmed and chopped curly kale to make an eponymous gratin dish.

Anthony is a keeper of a spinach gratin recipe that he learnt from his Italian mother. Three out of the four eaters for whom he made the dish loved it. Only I did not. Which made me infuriated to the eleventh power. Spinach knows how much I wanted to love it though. Yet, these heavyweights, butter and cream, did not allow me to.

With kale in season now, the thought of kale gratin seemed agreeable. I asked Anthony to sub kale for spinach, cut down a tiny bit on cream and butter, and make the gratin again. Anthony did as he was told, except that he charred the lot. What emerged from the oven were the kale ashes. And so the story of kale gratin was buried. Aw shucks! My gumption plummeted. I went back home, starving.

In my makeshift pantry (originally, a cupboard) that can barely accommodate three cans of

Kusmi Tea, two bags of flour, six small glass jars with various grains, and a few more other items, there is always a room for a jumbo jar of creamy peanut butter. (Dutch are ardent peanut butter eaters. I joined the ranks.) Starving, I was tempted to have mouthfuls of the stuff for dinner. But I’m almost twenty-six, so I expect from myself to behave accordingly. I chopped up and browned some onions and garlic, along with fresh ginger; added diced carrots and vegetable stock; brought it all to a boil and then simmered all that until the carrots were soft; and finally stirred in some peanut butter before pureeing the pot's contents.

Yes, I made carrot and peanut butter soup.

Did you know how lovable these two are together?? L.O.V.E.A.B.L.E.

Broad shoulders of peanut butter and a wasp-like waistline of carrots…This velvety bright soup has its own yin and yang of flavours – assertive and delicate, savoury and sweet, earthy and warm. It’s soothing. It’s relaxing. It’s a perfect fare to even out, say, sugar level imbalances that might still be ailing you after I so blatantly subjected you to one dessert after another for months in a row. But there is more to come, you know. So never shall it be said I am stuffing you with sweets without offering you something nourishing in between!

Carrot and Peanut Butter Soup
Serves 4

1 Tbsp olive oil
1 medium yellow onion, roughly chopped
1 tsp minced garlic
1 tsp minced ginger
Cayenne pepper
Salt
6 cups vegetable stock or water
4 cups diced carrots
2 laurel leaves
5 sprigs fresh cilantro or flat-leaf parsley (for cooking you will only need finely chopped stems; save the leaves for garnishing)
¼ cup peanut butter

1. In a large pot, heat 1 Tbsp olive oil over medium fire. Add the onions and cook until browned, about 4 minutes. Add the garlic and ginger. Throw in a pinch of salt and cayenne each. Cook for another minute.

2. Dump in the carrots and pour in the stock or water. Add the laurel leaves and the cilantro stems. Bring to boil. Reduce to simmer and cook until the carrots are soft, about 20 mins. Remove from the heat. Discard the laurel leaves.

3. Stir in the peanut butter. Mix well.

4. Using a blender, puree the soup. Hot liquids expand in volume, so work in batches, 2 or 3 cups at a time. If the soup is too thick, thin it out with more veg stock or water (start with 1/4 cup).

5. Taste and add more cayenne or salt, if needed.

6. Garnish with fresh cilantro or parsley leaves. Serve hot.

A synonym for health

2010-01-26T20:51:00.010+01:00

One year zipped past, but I haven’t got any cleverer than I was in the january of 2009 when I, just like now, went to Russia wearing a flimsy woolen coat, hoping that it would solely protect me against perky way-below-zero frosts and merry snowfalls.

Oh silly, silly me!

Up there is a preamble to say that last fourteen days I spent in tight embrace of a nasty cold and its bosom friend -- misery. Not too much of a good time, you understand. Especially so, when more than ever do I now need my brains crystal clear. The whole January I have been tackling a task that requires a condition of an undiluted mental concentration on my part – I had to write three academic essays before February dawns. But no, the universe thought I’d have a time of my life penning those with my mind in thick haze and my nose dripping like a leaking faucet (sorry!). It was no fun, is what I want to say.

So with all that freezing, sneezing, shivering and coughing, I found myself obsessively hankering for oatmeal raisin cookies too. Isn’t oats a synonym for health? See?

Could there be anything easier on earth than to make oatmeal raisin cookies? You only need to schlep-schlep-schlep in the kitchen to cream some butter with some sugar; to beat in some egg; to fold in some flour, oats and raisins; and to mix all that well to form the cookie dough which you’d then scoop out onto the baking dish and send into the oven for fifteen minutes. Simple?

Not so.

The problem is that I chose the wrong recipe which, as I learnt, is better suited for a dustbin than for anything else. It was no fun to make oatmeal cookies that would look as bad as I felt. It wasn’t oatmeal raisin cookies. It was oatmeal raisin spookies. I even can’t call it that, because there was so little oatmeal in the dough that the only place where you could find some was in the recipe’s title.

Terrified, but not defeated, I took the recipe and tweaked it as I pleased, which included reducing the sugar level; upping the oats contents; swapping all—purpose flour for oat flour (we are talking health here, no?); and shaking a firm no to the original instruction to add water to the flour. It took me three batches in total to bring these poor souls to their normal cozy, pretty selves: chewy in the pale center, crisp around the slightly tanned edges, sweet enough to please but not to cloy, and most importantly, cold- and stress-eliminating. And isn’t it what we want from a cookie?

Oatmeal Raisin Cookies

Adapted from Yuliya Vysotskaya, a russian cookbook author

Yields 8-10

100gr (1/2 cup) butter, softened
100 gr (½ cup) light brown sugar
1 Tbsp vanilla sugar
1 medium egg, at room temperature
100 gr oat flour (which you can easily make by grinding oat flakes in a coffee grinder)
100 gr (3/4 cup) raisins
70 gr (1 cup) quick oats (not steel cut!)

1. Preheat the oven to 180 C (350 F) and cover a baking sheet with parchment paper.

2. In a large bowl – you will only need one bowl for this recipe; isn’t it sweet? -- beat the butter until creamy. Add the sugars; keep beating until fluffy. Beat in the egg.

3. Sift in the oat flour; stir. Fold in the raisins and oats and mix well. The dough will be sticky.

4. Using a tablespoon, scoop out the dough onto the prepared baking sheet. Bake for 15-20 mins; the cookies should be golden brown at the edges and pale in the center. Transfer to a wire rack and let cool. Upon exiting the oven, the cookies will be somewhat soft until fully cooled.

For cake's sake!!

2010-01-12T08:20:00.006+01:00

Sugar, I need a break from you. You are sweet and I like you to insanity. But familiarity breeds contempt, remember? So stay away from me. Not for too long though, for a while. See you very soon. Maybe tomorrow.

Holy baking powder, why only now do I see that for the past two and a half months I’ve been feverishly writing about nothing else but desserts? From this, you would think all I’ve been eating is sweets, no?

Well, yes. Sort of. Cake here, pie there, nothing much, really. But recently instead of basking in pleasure, I found myself cringe at the sight of yet another, however lip-smackingly delicious, dessert. A ‘sugarization’ syndrome, let me tell you. An awful, hair-splitting thing, that. For cake’s sake, mouth-watering desserts should be revered, not pulled a face at! So I decided I should un-sugar myself before getting loaded up again. As soon as I’m finished with this beggar, that is.

I have my priorities, don’t you know.

In other news, two years ago today I started Godful Food. Or Godful Food started me. I don’t know. I’ll try to avoid overwhelming sentimentality here, so I’ll just say oh boy, does this little blog means loads to me. Foremost, because it, quite simply, brings you, Dear Reader, into my life!

It also teaches me to share. Take this Napoleon cake, for example. Under different circumstances, I have no doubts I’d lock myself in a room, pull up the window curtains and toss the stuff down – all by myself. Instead, I hasten to log on Godful Food and share my treasures with you. True, I may stumble along the way and turn the cake into a mess, metaphorically speaking or not. Or I may turn up too late so nobody wants a dessert any more. No matter what, you keep coming back, making this place feel like home to me. Thank you, folks!

Now, I’m not going to have to deal with this Napoleon myself. Reader, please, be my ally! It has come time that this thing, this delicious bastard, finally knows where it belongs -- on our dessert plates.

Forks up, friends!

On a curious note: they say Napoleon cake, French by origin, is so named not after the French emperor Napoleon Bonaparte, but after Naples, a city in Italy. Whichever, Napoleon is just one of the many nicks of the mille-feuille, the puff pastry with the vanilla cream.

My Napoleon is called Russian for a reason (we always seem to want to have everything our way). Basically, Napoleon is made of three layers of puff pastry jacketed in two layers of vanilla cream, just as befitted the tradition. Russians figured it’s better to make ten or even more puff pastry layers, each blessed with the custard cream. Like I said, being so labour-intensive –and, by extension, swear-words inducing -- this one is meant for big days, like Christmas, or birthday, or blog’s anniversary, no less.

Russian Napoleon Cake

(my family recipe)

Serves 16-18

For the pastry

4 cups (500gr) all-purpose flour, sifted
3 ½ stick (400 gr) butter, cut in ½ inch (apprx. 1 cm) dices
½ cup (125 ml) crème fraiche, cold
½ cup (125 ml) ice cold water
1 large egg
a pinch of salt

For the custard cream

4 cups (1 L) whole milk
2 large eggs
2 cups (400 gr) sugar
5 Tbsp (40 gr) all-purpose flour
2 sticks (250 gr) butter, cut in small pieces
1 Tbsp pure vanilla extract

To make the pastry:

1. In a large stainless-steel bowl, and using two sharp paring knives, cut the butter into the flour. The mixture should look pebbly, and lumps of butter should not be larger than a pea.

2. In a small bowl, beat the egg and the salt together. Add the crème fraiche, followed by the water; mix well.

3. Pour the crème fraiche mixture, ½ cup at a time, into the flour-butter mixture. Mix until just combined. Tap the dough out onto a floured surface and knead the dough until elastic and smooth (don’t overwork the dough!).

4. Divide the dough into 10 parts. Form balls. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate for 2 hours, or preferably overnight.

5. Preheat the oven to 425 F (220 C).

6. Take the dough out of the fridge, one ball at a time (the butter that’s in the dough should not melt before it goes in the oven, otherwise you won’t get flaky pastry at the end). On a well-floured working surface, roll out each ball into a thin – as thin as you can -- circle, about 10 inch (24 cm) wide. Roll the dough circle onto a lightly-floured rolling pin, and then unroll it carefully on a baking sheet, covered with parchment paper. Prick with a fork and put in the oven for about 3-5 mins, or until the dough gets lightly golden. Remove from the oven and put aside.

7. Repeat with the remaining balls of dough.

8. Bake the last circle a bit longer than the rest -- until it turns brown. Later you’ll use it, crumbled, for decorating the cake.

To make the custard cream:

1. In a medium non-stick pan, bring half of the milk (1/2 L or 500 ml) to a boil over a low flame.

2. In the meantime, beat the eggs and the sugar together. Add the flour and whisk until the flour is fully incorporated (there should be no lumps left). Pour another half of the milk; stir well.

3. Starting with 1 cup at a time, slowly add the flour mixture into the boiling milk. Working on low heat, stir constantly to avoid burning of the milk. Keep stirring until the mixture becomes thick. Take off the heat. Let cool.

4. When the mixture is still warm enough to make the butter melt, add the butter and the vanilla extract. Stir well until fully dissolved. Let cool completely.

To assemble:

1. Using the back of a soup spoon, spread a ladleful of the cream evenly on every crust, except for the brown one.

2. After every two or three layers, press gently on the cake to make the cream moisturize the crusts.

3. Crush the brown crust by running it over with the rolling pin. Sprinkle the crumbs over the top and the sides of the cake. (You can also use ground walnuts for this).

4. If your Napoleon has uneven edges, you can easily fix it by cutting them off with a sharp knife. (Although I prefer my Napoleon rustic, with all its ruggedness).

5. Let stand for a couple hours. The cake keeps beautifully in the fridge for up to one week.

Readying myself

2010-01-07T06:13:00.000+01:00

For some, Christmas and New Year’s holidays have become a glowing memory by now. For some others, a festive table is still set, and a blood sugar level keeps increasing by the day. I’m writing this from Russia (visiting my family), knee-lengths in candies and baked goods, readying myself for yet another massive intake of all things sweet. Say I’m sick I won’t. It’s Orthodox Christmas around here today, after all.

[However surprising or confusing or both, but Christmas in Russia is celebrated on January 7th. Don’t blame the vicar (hello, Anthony!), blame the old Julian calendar.]

They say kutya (KOO-TYA) -- porridge made of wheat or rice grains (symbols of immortality) and honey (a token of happiness) – is an iconic Russian Christmas dish. I can’t attest to that, because in my family, it’s not Christmas without a Napoleon – many-layered cake enrobed in vanilla-scented custard cream, a symbol of my happiness.

Flaky, moist and tender, it’s the-heart-takes-a-lift-to-heaven good. It’s worth every swearing word (on Christmas Eve!) you may hiss while rolling out the gossamer sheets of dough, one by one, ten in total. Insane. Delicious.

The recipe I’ll post soon, I promise. Right now I’m rushing to my grandmother’s for a festive family gathering. But before I go, please take a piece, Dear Reader. It’s for you!

Happy, Happy Holidays!

2009-12-24T19:24:00.001+01:00

Here is to more, friends!!

One bold, stout imperative

2009-12-21T11:36:00.000+01:00

Dear Reader, I don’t think I ever got as daring as to dictate to you what to do, but today, be warned, I’ll toss one bold, stout imperative around here. In fact, I’ll start with it.

My apologies for being so demanding, but you must make this hot chocolate. Like, now. Why must you, you wonder? For one, it’s impressively delicious. Two, Christmas is almost here, at our table, so start feasting we should. And most of all, because you’ll love it. Oh yes, you will.

Just make it, would you? Please.

I’ve always dreamt of having hot chocolate that would be more than just squares of chocolate drowned in hot milk. For a few years I drifted from one recipe to another in hope to find the one, which I finally found last week, seated snugly in a book The Secrets of Baking by Sherry Yard.

What gives this hot chocolate its distinguishing mark is ganache, unquestionably the heart of the beverage in question. So while you make the ganache – you take one part dark chocolate, which you finely chop and put in a heatproof bowl, and one part cream, which you boil, then pour over the chocolate, and stir gently, for two minutes, until the chocolate is married into the cream – let me also tell you, real quick, about my trip to Brussels last week. (Holy chocolate bar, it seems only fitting to talk about chocolate and Brussels, the world’s chocolate capital, all at once.)

Not so long ago, we, Anthony and I, two 'frenemies', figured it would be a good idea to take a two-day break from our respective duties to go to Brussels for no reason other than to eat, Brussels-style. Among the chocolate and macarons by Pierre Marcolini...

...and the Liege waffles, hot, right from the griddle (to be gobbled up on the city’s hilly cobbled streets),

our expedition also included a dinner at a local, one-hundred-and-four years old eating establishment, the restaurant Vincent specializing in fish and meat/poultry fare with hearty and heartful Belgian flair.

There I had my ‘revelation’ in the form of black pepper sauce. It was a diamond crowning a piece of fillet mignon, moist and rosy in the middle and flawlessly browned from the outside. It wouldn’t be a crazy thing to say that that sauce resembled me of peppery chocolate, not a single whisper of sweetness, God forbid – rather, a deep, savoury voice of cocoa beans. Goodness me, that sauce, I would kill for it.

Besides stirring a black papper sauce-maniac in me, Brussels made me feel nostalgic and heart-tickled.

Nostalgic, because grey clouds in Brussels are comforting and soothing, they didn’t rush from one corner of the sky to another like grey mice in a church. Instead, they resembled, in my mind, that smoky grey thick woolen blanket I got from my grandmother as a Christmas present when I was a kid, eternity ago.

Heart-tickled, even heart-stung, because I was already missing this city, its Christmas lights, its streets that bear food names, its air saturated with sweet wafts escaping the street waffle stands way before we even caught a train to take us to Brussels.

But I’m glad I’m not alone in this boat. Anthony confides he is missing Brussels too, in particular, its beers which God knows how many he managed to smuggle back to Amsterdam.

It was a nourishing trip. A Christmas gift to ourselves.

Now take whole milk and heavy cream, and bring to a boil. Add cocoa powder; whisk. Fold in the ganache you’ve just made; stir. That’s it. The way to elation has never been so short. Isn’t it amazing how something so decadent and luxurious is so elementary to make? I’m unfailingly astonished, too.

Merry Christmas, Dear Reader!

And thank you for being there, on the other side of the screen, so to speak, reading my stories and tasting with me all along -- I’m raising this steaming cup of chocolate to you!

Sherry Yard’s Hot Chocolate

Adapted from The Secrets of Baking: Simple Techniques for Sophisticated Desserts by Sherry Yard

Yields five 8-ounces (250 ml) cups

2 cups (500 ml) whole milk

½ cup (125 ml) cream
2 Tbsp unsweetened cocoa powder
8 ounces (250 gr) bittersweet dark chocolate (the best you can get) 1 cup (250 ml) cream
½ tsp vanilla extract (optional)

1. Make the ganache. Grind or finely chop the chocolate; big pieces will fail to melt. Put the chocolate in a medium bowl. Over medium heat, bring the cream to a boil in a small saucepan. Immediately pour the cream over the chocolate. Tap the bowl – this will help the chocolate to settle into the cream. Let sit for 1 min. With a rubber spatula, start stirring slowly, working carefully to avoid adding too much air to the ganache. Keep stirring until all the chocolate is melted, 2 minutes. Sherry says the ganache may look like it’s ready after 1 minute of continuous stirring, but don’t get tricked, she warns, and keep going to ensure a proper emulsification (the emulsification combines the fat in chocolate with the water in cream, a process the result of which, like I said before, is sanity-killing, silky, glossy ganache). Once done, set the bowl aside.

2. Bring the milk and cream to a boil in the same saucepan you used for boiling the cream for the ganache. Add the cocoa powder and whisk thoroughly to blend. Remove from the heat and fold in the ganache. Let sit for 1 min. Then stir until well combined, about 4 mins. Add the vanilla extract (if using), and stir once again.

3. Serve while hot.

4. This drink, writes Sherry, keeps well, covered, in the fridge for up to 2 (!!) weeks. Just reheat it briefly before serving, although I don’t know who is in their right mind would ever stay away from it for as much as two weeks, gosh!

Addresses

Vincent

Rue des Dominicains, 8-10

Pierre Marcolini

Rue des Minimes, 1

Serious measures

2009-12-03T23:08:00.003+01:00

I always believed that pie-eating should be a friendship-binding, not a friendship-mudding, experience. I now realize I was deeply, deeply misguided. Past Thanksgiving showed me that dessert time can be – to quote my friend Anthony the Thinker, a pecan-pie aficionado -- ‘a dog-eat-dog environment where one must react in a micro-instance. It’s like the dog fighting in Top Gun’. True. True. True. Every crumb is going to be fought over.

This is what happened. You make a pecan pie with bourbon and chocolate for a quiet Thanksgiving gathering with friends, and the pie turns out so nicely that the speed at which it is devoured makes you realize that if you don’t take serious measures to procure yourself a piece, nay, a chunk soon enough before the whole thing disappears, you may end up staring at an empty pie plate. So when one of the eaters announces, mouth full and all, that he is going to take a piece to work the next day, you, weirdo, get barbarous, and greedy, and crazy -- you say no. Don’t touch my pie, for if you do -- the consequences will be formidable. I’ll poke you in your ribs, I’ll let you know you are garbage, you are an animal.
I’m exaggerating here, but not really.

Frankly, it’s hard to remain friendly to your dearest and nearest in the vicinity of this beggar, this bourbon pecan pie. Please, don’t get me wrong, cooking and eating with friends is a number 1 route to contentment, I know that. And yet, and yet…there are moments when solitary eating is a must. Just imagine: you gingerly cut a piece of that bourbon pecan treasure, gingerly because the crust is so fragile your heart thumps at the thought you can ruin the pie. Phew, you don’t. You successfully crown with it your plate, and the plates of those around you, those who eye the pie like birds of prey. You take a dessert fork and drown it in the toffee-like filling color of amber, even darker, with speckles of melted chocolate and shards of pecan here and there. You – everybody -- take a bite. Silence. Your tongue rolls in silkiness and sweetness of the filling that gives away its rich, and buttery, and bright, and slightly bourbon-y taste. Warmth. Somebody says this is the best pecan pie they’ve had so far. You fret a little bit over the pie crust, it looks somewhat messy, you say. Oh but the taste...the taste is really, really good. That’s why your heart sinks when you think of sharing the rest. That’s why you turn into a pooper. You want the leftovers all to yourself, so you scribble down your ‘no’ on a piece of buttered paper to tell to a potential pie-snatcher to back off when you are not there to watch.

Apparently, some people can’t read. The pie is gone. You curse flamboyantly, and rejoice at the same time. Heck, people loved what you baked, people wanted more. Smashing.

Pecan Pie with Bourbon and Chocolate (a.k.a. Hoosier Pie)

Adapted from A Homemade Life by Molly Wizenberg

I chose this recipe for past Thanksgiving dinner for a number of reasons. First, I wanted something fancy but not fussy. Second, I was itching to apply to practice my newly-born skills of pie-crust making that I’m learning in the bakery. Finally, it’s all about bourbon. I don’t know how about you, but if the recipe calls for that, I’m all sold. Hands down.

The recipe is unquestionably a keeper, be it Thanksgiving, Christmas or just a winter-cursed Monday. Next time I’ll only skip chocolate (oh the horror!). The reason behind is that chocolate’s soprano steals the show, it somewhat shoos the pecans and the bourbon offstage. It, even the bittersweet kind, makes the filling a tad too sweet to my taste, although Anthony, among the others, begged to differ. Better skip it. Rather, up the amount of bourbon, just a bit, to achieve a more homogeneous flavor. Whichever way you prefer, boldly sweet or politely so, just make this pie. Please. You are going to love it. You are going to fight for it.

And before I finally move to the recipe, a few nibbles of science. When I assist in the bakery, I keep a close eye on what my crafty colleagues do. So here is what I learnt: when making a piecrust, cold butter, as well as ice-cold water, is a must. This way the piecrust, once baked, will be tender and flaky. The butter has to melt in the oven, not earlier, since only this way the water from the butter will create steam. The steam, in turn will rise pushing the dough and thus creating tiny pockets of air in it. What will emerge from the oven will be flaky pastry.

Also – rather than using food processor to cut the butter into the flour (another reason to use the cold butter, or else you won’t be able to cut it in), give preference to two paring knives. It will help you to have a better control over the procedure, and also it’s fun. You might look like a maniac, but who cares when the flakiness of pastry is at stake.

Phew, now the recipe…

For the crust:

1 ½ cups unbleached all-purpose flour
1 Tbsp confectioner’s sugar
¾ tsp salt
1 stick plus 1 Tsp (4 ½ ounces, or 120 grams) cold unsalted butter, cut into cubes
4 Tbsp ice-cold water, plus more if necessary
¾ tsp apple cider vinegar (this will seize the development of gluten)

For the filling:

4 Tbsp butter (2 ounces, or 56 grams)
1 cup confectioner’s sugar
3 large eggs
¾ cup light corn syrup
1 tsp vanilla extract
¼ tsp salt
2 Tbsp bourbon (good enough to drink on its own)
½ cup bittersweet chocolate chips
1 cup pecans

1. Into a large stainless bowl, sift together the flour, sugar and salt. Whisk well to mix. Add the butter and cut it into the flour, making brisk criss-cross movements with two knives. The mixture should look sandy; there shouldn't be bits of butter larger than a pea.

2. In a small bowl, combine the ice water and vinegar. Sprinkle the water over the dough, and fold it in with a rubber spatula. This way the dough will get moisturized without being overworked. If the dough is dry – it should hold together if you squeeze it – add more water, start with 1 tsp at a time. It’s better to have dough that’s a bit too wet than too dry – dry dough is difficult to roll; it can tear.

3. Remove the dough from the bowl, form a ball, flatten it into a 1 ½ inches (about 3.5 cm) disk and wrap it up in plastic film. Chill for at least 1 hour. (The dough will keep for up to 3-4 days in the fridge and for up to 3-4 weeks in the freezer).

4. Bring the dough out of the fridge 10-15 mins before rolling out (the dough should soften – not get warm! -- a little bit).

5. Preheat the oven to 375 F (190 C).

6. Roll the dough into a circle, it should be wide enough to fit a 9- or 9 ½ inch (24cm) pie plate. Drape the dough over the pie plate, lift up the edges and tuck them gently into the creases of the pan. Press carefully to make the dough hold to the sides of the pan. Put the prepared pie plate back in the fridge while you are busy with the filling.

7. In a medium bowl, cream the butter and sugar. When the mixture looks creamy and the sugar is fully incorporated, add the eggs one at a time, beating thoroughly after each addition. Add the corn syrup, vanilla and salt. Beat well. Add the bourbon and beat again. At this point, the batter should look pale yellow and be thin.
8. Remove the pie plate from the fridge, sprinkle chocolate chips and pecans evenly over the base of the crust. Pour in the batter. Bake for 35 to 45 mins, checking every 5 mins after 30 mins of baking time have passed. The pie is done when the edges are firm and caramelized, the top is deep brown, and the center seems almost set (it might jiggle a little bit, though). Transfer the pie to a wire rack to cool.

9. For serving, whipped cream on the side will not hurt.

Tradition

2009-11-26T12:38:00.000+01:00

Being a soviet kid, and then a post-soviet adolescent, it wasn’t in my culture to celebrate Thanksgiving. It is, however, now. The tradition, unfortunately, is not practiced in the Netherlands -- bad, but curable. What you do is nudge a few Americans living in Amsterdam to pay tribute to their motherland. So tonight I’m rushing to Anthony’s where together with his roommate, Eric, and Eric’s Italian girlfriend, Giovanna, we are going to celebrate Thanksgiving. We’ll light the candles, set the table -- there will be turkey, cranberry sauce, spinach casserole, buckwheat kasha, mashed potatoes with Parmesan, and to crown it all, a pecan pie with bourbon, about which I’ll write soon – and give our American-Italian-Russian thanks.

Happy Thanksgiving, dear all !!!

Believe it or not

2009-11-05T22:13:00.002+01:00

Looks like I might have fallen off the earth, right?

And while that’s not the case, it must, however, be told that time, this savage beast, fell on me and chewed holes in my fiber. I mean, how else, Dear Reader, could I explain the fact that I haven’t coughed up a word here for more than a month? The thought of it makes me sick, literally.

What was I doing then, you might, I hope, ask.

Studies-wise, I was, and am, feverishly grinding up the gristle of linguistics. Academic articles on metaphor have solidly taken up residence on my desk and bed table. My brains? They are afflicted too! Academic essay writing, Power Point presentations and all that jazz are my religion now.

As to my job in the bakery, on this front things are in full throttle too. I can do the dishes and tartlets real fast now. A week ago I rejoiced over my small personal achievement: Issa, our master baker, taught me how to make pate sucree, an event that marked my evolution from a tartlet molder into an occasional tartlet-dough maker, occasional because I can only lend my helping hands in the bakery in between or after I tackle newly-formed mountains of dishes. Besides, every week I’m learning new, more interesting ways to cut my fingers or to bruise my limbs. My latest finding is that you can easily traumatize yourself with a plastic dough scraper (don’t ask). But the accomplishment I’m most proud of is that I made friends with a bunch of exceptionally fine, fine people from the bakery.

One of whom is one French girl named Maud. She took pride in dirtying every single bowl while preparing stuff for baking, to keep me busy, as she explained when I gave her furious glances of appreciation. Yet, I can’t complain. She fed me macaroons, and croissants, and financiers. Oh yes, Maud and I we hit it off all right from my very first day in the bakery. A few weeks ago Maud left back for France and now we are all very sad. Me, I am not sad. I am sorrowful.

But I’m here not to whine. Instead, I’m going to tell you about white wine cake. Before Maud and her boyfriend Jean-michel (a fine Dutch guy with a French name!) bid adieu to Holland, I hurried up to invite myself over to their place for dinner. I knew well that I would be served delectable food. What I did not expect was that I would be exposed to five (!!!) cakes for dessert alone. “I didn’t know what to choose, so I made five”, revealed Maud. That left me breathless with admiration and awe, but only for a second. What followed was an orgy of dessert eating: chocolate cake, tarte Tatin, two charlottes, and ...white wine cake.

Later that day I, over-desserted all right, would be coming back to Amsterdam and it’d be there, on a night train with just a few sleepy passengers lullaby-ed by the late hour, that I’d realize I’d found a new friend whose name was white wine cake. It’s simple, it’s sweet, it’s spirited. If you think it’s tipsy from wine, it is not, not a bit. It’s sober and means business: It pumps you up and makes you smile.

When the mist is thick and you feel somewhat reluctant to poke your head out there and do whatever you should, call for white wine cake first. You take eggs and separate them, then you mix the yolks with sugar and white wine; afterwards, you add vanilla, whose fragrance will make you feel warm and homey. Then you fold in flour, along with baking powder, and mix everything well. Oil, for moisture, goes in next. Last parade the egg whites to which you added a pinch of salt earlier and which you whipped up before adding. All this you pour in a buttered cake pan (or a loaf pan, why not?) and send in the oven. After 30-40 minutes white wine cake will be ready.

And I’ll tell you what, the moment you slice and put a sun-coloured piece on your plate, say, the one with tiny flowers around the rim, the clouds will part, believe it or not, reminding you to never give up, stop fretting, and be always grateful – for the friends, for the cake, for everything.

I’m happy I’m here today. I missed you, Dear Reader!

And before I round off, I should also say that since I’m oven-less, this time my cravings for baking were enabled by a philanthropic soul, Anthony. Who is Anthony, you may be wondering. Anthony is, quite simply, my brother in arms: He stoically tolerated me in his kitchen as I baked, and sometimes burnt, this white wine cake, which I did four times within two past weeks. In real life, Anthony is an American Amsterdammer doing graphic design, at leisure an outstanding thinker, for only outstanding thinkers can list activities such as ‘idiot ignoring’ and ‘weekend enjoying’ among their favourtie pastimes. So thank you, Anthony!

White Wine Cake

Adapted from Maud Chalons

Head note: when you choose white wine, go for the one with fruity and floral aromas -- basically, the more fragrant the wine, the richer in flavour the cake.

3 medium eggs, at room temperature
1/4 tsp salt
1 cup (200 gr) light brown sugar

2/3 cup (160 ml) white wine, at room temperature

2/3 cup (160 ml) non-fragrant oil such as sunflower oil

1 Tbsp vanilla sugar (or 1 tsp vanilla extract)
1 3/4 cup (200 gr) unbleached all-purpose flour, sifted
1 Tsb baking powder

1) Pre-heat the oven to 180 C (350 F).

2) Separate the eggs. Add the salt to the egg whites.

3) In a large bowl, beat the yolks with half amount of the sugar. Whisk in half amount of white wine and mix well. Add the remaining half of sugar plus vanilla sugar (or vanilla extract) and mix very well again. Proceed with the remaining amount of white wine; mix whole-heartedly. Pour in the oil; stir until fully-incorporated.

4) In another bowl, whisk the flour and the baking powder together. Pour the white wine mixture into the flour mixture and mix just until the flour is incorporated. Don’t overmix; it’s ok if there are some lumps in the batter, they’ll dissipate during baking.

4) Whip the egg whites until stiff. Using a rubber spatula, gently fold them in the batter. Pour in a buttered 9-inch round cake pan (I think it's not a crime to use a standard-sized, 9 by 5 inches, loaf pan) and bake for 30-40 mins, or until a toothpick inserted in the centre comes out clean. Remove from the oven and let cool for 10-15 mins.

This cake is delicious plain, but I find that a piece of fruit, say, a juicy pear or a crunchy crispy-skinned apple, is not wrong here at all. Not a bit.

Mischievous...delicious thing

2009-09-17T22:46:00.000+02:00

Artichoke, you are a mischievous, mischievous thing! I thought you were sanely priced, so I ordered 1.5 kilo of your thorny buds, to the vegetable’s man enthusiasm that I hadn’t witnessed before. I didn’t quite get why he insisted to know if I was absolutely sure I wanted that much. Little did I know, artichoke, that my wallet would have to divorce from 22.50 euro to pay, I’ll repeat, for 1.5 kilo of yourself. Now tell me why would you wear the wrong-price tag (3 euro/1 kilo) the other day? No really, that’s what I call cheating, artichoke. You’ve got to know your manners are disgraceful.

Also, I hear you thought I wouldn’t spend thirty minutes bent over a kitchen sink denuding you from your tough outer layers, your tight suits of armour. I feel upset you underestimate me so, artichoke, because I didn’t take a short cut to trim you, not at all. And get this: I even didn’t shriek with horror after I found the skin on my fingers had taken on the colour of your purple leaves. And that, artichoke, is what nice people call grace and all.

Actually, I don’t hold any grudges against you, artichoke. It’s nearly impossible to, for you are a delicious, delicious snob. Curious what I made with you? I’ll tell you – Artichokes Provencal braise (recipe by Mark Bittman, if you want to know).

I sent you, artichoke, in a hot pan, together with garlic, black olives and tomatoes, where you spent twenty minutes or so mellowing under a lid, relaxing. You may not know, artichoke, but this is how deliciousness tastes (hear me out, that’s important!): halves of garlic, deeply caramelized, almost like candies, sweet and sticky; creamy, tamed by heat black olives; tiny tomatoes, collapsed in a juicy mess; and of course, you, artichoke, soft, silky, faintly sweet, mysterious.

In short, there is no better foil to enjoy September days, now misty, now crystal clear but already crisp, than to have sun on the plate, for that’s what this dish is – sun and warmth and, again, deliciousness. To think, artichokes are in season again (early autumn), so why not?

Artichokes Provencal braise

Adapted from Mark Bittman

Yields: 4 first-course servings or as a main for 2 people

Dear Reader, I think you will agree that pleasure doesn’t have to cost fortunes. So: just don’t buy purple artichokes (unless you feel like splurging), that’s all. Those are painfully expensive, is what I learnt. Ideally, try to find decent, green-coloured artichokes; these chaps, I reckon, won’t cheat you, price-wise, that is. On second thought, frozen artichoke hearts will also do the great job here; this way you even won’t have to spend ages trimming away their layers, which also can be treacherous (see above).

20-25 small artichokes, trimmed
5 large garlic cloves, halved
1 cup black (preferably Kalamata) olives, pitted
1 tsp salt
8 ounces (250 gr) mini tomatoes
1/3 cup water
2 Tbsp olive oil for cooking
Flat-leaf parsley for garnishing

1. Break off tough outer leaves of the artichokes (if you work with purple artichokes, you may want to wear rubber gloves – purple artichoke can colour your fingers). With a sharp paring knife, cut off the dark green parts of the stem and trim the base; pare away the top of the artichokes to about 1 inch (2.5 cm) above the base.

2. Over medium heat, warm 2 Tbsp olive oil in a large non-stick pan. Add the artichokes, along with the garlic cloves. Cook for about 5-7 mins, turning the artichokes over -- use tongs for this -- as they start to brown, after first 3-4 mins or so.

3. Add the olives, salt, and tomatoes. Shake the pan slightly to mix. Pour the water, cover, and cook over medium heat for about 20-25 mins, or until the artichokes are very tender. To check for doneness, insert the tip of a knife into an artichoke; it’s ready when the knife doesn’t meet any resistance. (If the liquid is evaporated and the artichokes aren’t done yet, add more water – a couple tablespoons at a time).

4. Garnish with flat-leaf parsley and serve.

‘This, and half a loaf of bread, what a lunch!’ says Mr. Bittman. Indeed!

I can also add it tastes great the next day too, cold, right out of the fridge. There, I said it.

Contradictions, or maybe not

2009-09-03T21:54:00.000+02:00

Dear Reader, hello!

I’ve got lots to tell you, and to show too, so please pull up an armchair, yes, the one you see in the corner next to a crackling fireplace -- it gets chillier by the day over here, you know – help yourself to a chocolate tartlet, or a scone, or a brioche – don’t be shy, take as much as you want – and let’s chat. Or better yet, I’ll talk and you enjoy the buttery pastries, while a scratched gramophone that in my grandmother’s youth was bubbling up with life is now rasping Edit Piaf’s La Vie en Rose.

All right, where shall I start? Ah yes, in Song of Himself, Walt Whitman wrote: ‘Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself. (I am large, I contain multitudes)’. Clearly, he and I we didn’t know each other, but if we did, Walt Whitman would certainly say as much about me, because I always contradict myself. Or maybe not. I don’t know. Anyway, contradictory or not, here is what I do as of lately: I am doing my Master’s programme in English Metaphor with a selective course in Visual Arts and The American Poet, aim to become a professional food-writer, and work part-time in one of my beloved French bakeries in Amsterdam, Gebroeders Niemeijer, as a dishwasher. The last part requires a detailed explanation, I feel, so here goes…

There was a fleeting moment when I thought I wanted to study hospitality (although I had already discovered my enormous love for food by then, my desire to write about food and to study English to write about food better was not yet pronounced.) So after completing my Bachelor degree in linguistics I applied to a hotel school in the Netherlands. Entrance requirements were tough, but I got admitted --with one condition though. I had to gain some working experience in hospitality industry before the studies would begin. I had six months, from August 2007 to January 2008, to accomplish the mission. That is how I found myself working as a server in a restaurant of a well-known five-star hotel in Moscow (I spent a year in Moscow before finally moving to Amsterdam). I only lasted for three months, which nonetheless seemed like ten centuries to me.

The restaurant was high-end, yet I liked nothing about the place. To begin with, I disliked the atmosphere in the kitchen. Expensive food was cooked by people who for the most part seemed to be completely indifferent about what they were doing. It was cold in the kitchen, despite inferno temperatures emanating from the stoves and ovens. In the dining area, the mood was as chilly. Servers competed against one another for tips alone (unlike me, a few people wanted to work for food) and diners were all too snobbish. I felt disappointed; the place had discouraging vibes. As I got back home after exhausting early morning or late night shifts, my feet swollen and aching, I cried. I cried not because of tiredness, but because of poignant frustration about the whole experience. It was a vanity fair. It was soulless.

Eventually I quit, both my gig as a server and my registration in the hotel school. (The admission costs were increased to a level I couldn’t afford, which, as I think now, was only for the better since I am much happier hitting the books in metaphor, visual arts, etc, and aspiring to make food-writing my profession.)

In other words, I vowed I would never want to work in a restaurant kitchen again -- once bitten, twice shy. Since mid-August 2009 I’m in the professional food industry again, this time as a dish-washer. (Do I really contradict myself? Yes, I really do contradict myself, but what the heck.)

Gebroeders (‘Brothers’) Niemeijer is an artisan French bakery with an adjacent breakfast-/lunchroom. It was my first discovery soon after I arrived in Amsterdam a year ago.
Simple, homely, nourishing food, be it a steaming plate of savoury potato soup with Roquefort cheese; or a fresh, breathing with warmth baguette enrobing sweet, dripping with juices rings of chorizo, young green salad leaves and pickled something and sitting on a worn, slightly dented plate with tiny flowers around the rim seemed to tell me about the heartfelt warmth and passion of people who prepared it.

I didn’t know the cooks in person, yet through the food I was enjoying, I felt taken care of. I fell for the place, its food and people including. Hell, on one of my visits I even found myself thinking that if need be I would love to work here, helping out in the bakery, doing the dishes, whatever. The need presented itself in the form of a thinning wallet of mine – we students always seem to be on a cash diet , -- so I wrote the two brothers an e-mail in which I said as much (not about my wallet, but about my infatuation with the their place). A few days later I got an e-mail from Marco, one of the siblings, in which he asked me to come over for a chat. The rest you already know. Like I said, I’ve taken on a stint of a dish washer. I work from Friday to Sunday which means my weekends are my workdays, but I don’t mind. I do tons of dishes, and by the end of the day my feet feel woolen, my back rigid, my pale-pink nail polish crumbled, yet I don’t half mind that either. I think I feel so non-perplexed about the physical inconveniences because of my moments in the bakery. Last Sunday, for example, I pounded on a thick piece of pate sucree (sweetened short pastry) right from the fridge to soften it before rolling it out in an automatic dough sheeter, after which I was shown how to form tartlets. Simply put, you cut circles out of the dough, which you then garnish into oiled tartlet moulds. All this should be done at a lightning speed, because when warm, pate sucree is a royal pain to work -- it gets sticky and too brittle. I, of course, work at a snail pace. I take my time to form a perfect tartlet. Issa, the baking brother, says I should be doing this much faster. So I’m now learning by practice how to make flawless tartlets in no time which, well, takes time. As I said, by the end of the day, my back hurts, but my hands smell of butter, and vanilla, and lemon zest. I feel elated.

The fact that I get to snack on pistachio, mocca, walnut and chocolate macarons, and on financiers with deeply caramelized tops does help as well to combat bodily exertion. Moreover, after the bakery’s closing time I can take as much pastry or bread left unsold as I please.

And please myself I do – I bring boxes of fresh pastries back home. Once in solitude, I unpack the goodness, smell and grin at it, hedonistic smile on my face and a fiery glow (glow can be fiery, I like to imagine) in my eyes. Finally, I eat up the stuff. Moderation? Not lately. Not when a couple of puffy brioches seductively provoke in my mind visions of soft, grassy butter and fruit jam atop each piece.

But note this, Dear Reader: I may sin throughout the day, what with the rich, flaky croissants and all, but come next morning, and I am a virtuous individual again. I have granola for breakfast. And I’ll tell you what, this granola, drowned, if you are a top hedonist, in silky Greek yoghurt, or in milk, if you are a hedonist in moderation, is in fact no less luxurious than all those French pastries altogether. Ok, I’m exaggerating, but still you should believe me it’s very, very good. Actually, this one is the best granola I’ve ever had so far. Luke, this curry man, can attest to this testimony of mine since he ate the first batch I’d made in his kitchen faster than it would take a jet set to fly from, say, Amsterdam to Amsterdam South, which is a fraction of a couple seconds I believe . Deliciousness in question is Granola with Maple Syrup and Olive Oil by Nekisia Davis of Early Bird Foods.

True, the olive oil is somewhat unorthodox in the realm of breakfast cereals, yet it’s fully legitimate here. It lends the granola this savoury strut which, along with sweet flair of maple syrup, wakes up the whole mix and elevates it to a new taste level. Also, this granola doesn’t get lumpy: the oat and coconut flakes, as well as the nuts, are toasted to golden-brown perfection without being glued to each other. And when you push your hand through the cooled down mix and let it sift through your fingers, as you would a handful of silver dollars, it makes this soft rustling sound, like a whisper. In order to have such euphoria for breakfast, just make sure, say, in the evening before, to mix old-fashioned oats, raw pumpkin and sunflower seeds, coconut chips, pecans and a modicum of salt, and combine it all with olive oil, maple syrup and sugar. Into the preheated oven the whole mixture then goes where it sits for about 45 minutes or so, until it’s fragrant and toasted. If I were asked to compare granolas to clothes (what turn of mind somebody should be in to want me to do that, I don’t know), I would say it’s tasteful, elegant and sophisticated (must be the combination of savoury full-bodied olive oil with maple syrup), just like a small classic black dress that every woman should have in her possession. As is the latter, this granola is a must to have too. Later into the day, it is obligatory for us all to enjoy the tartlets imbued with silky chocolate ganache or crowded with toasted gems of buttery walnuts.

(I now think I’m not actually that contradictory. All I do – braving English linguistic science, studying poetry and visual arts, rounding off my internship in the Time Out Amsterdam magazine, and working as a dish-washer – is in fact to become a better food-writer.)

Finally...Granola with Olive Oil and Maple Syrup

Adapted from Nekisia Davis via Martha Stewart

The recipe has you use ½ cup packed light-brown sugar, but I suggest you start with 2 Tbsp sugar first (given that there is already a healthy amount of pure maple syrup in the mix), taste and add more if needed. I found my granola was sweet all right with just 2 Tsp sugar, but then again that is how I wish for my granola – not too sweet.

3 cups old-fashioned rolled oats
1 cup raw pumpkin seeds, hulled
1 cup raw sunflower seeds, hulled
1 cup coconut chips, or coconut flakes
1 1/4 cup raw pecans, coarsely chopped
3/4 cup pure maple syrup
1/2 cup fragrant extra-virgin olive oil
1/2 cup packed light-brown sugar
Coarse salt

1. Preheat oven to 300 degrees F (150 degress C).

2. In a large bowl, combine the oats, pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds, coconut, pecans, syrup, olive oil, sugar, and 1 teaspoon salt. Spread the mixture in an even layer on a rimmed baking sheet. Transfer to the oven and bake, stirring every 10 mins to ensure even browning, until granola is toasted, about 45 minutes. Doneness can be tested by breaking an oat flake (just be sure not to burn your fingers): if it breaks easily with a subtle crisp sound, the granola is done, even when it still may feel a bit soft; the mix will crisp as it cools.

3. Remove granola from the oven and season with more salt to taste (I think this step can be optional). Let cool. The granola can be stored in an airtight container for up to 1 month (although I can hardly imagine somebody may have that ferrous willpower).

Yields approximately 7 cups

Entirely at peace

2009-08-14T12:10:00.002+02:00

I am a girl entirely at peace now. At least for a while, until a surge of desire to bake strikes again, and like a junkie I will have to anxiously wring my hands while craving for my next fix, and nervously count down the days when I could possibly take over somebody’s else kitchen again. This is how it works for me. Baking is meditation as well as addiction.

This time the initial plan was to make a few recipes -- for granola and Scottish scones -- at Luke’s, but like I wrote, I had a suspicion I wouldn’t stop there. Blimey, I was correct.

Luke is a banana buff. He loves the fruit and always keeps a bunch of them on a large, oval, mosaic-patterned plate on his kitchen countertop. Yet it so happens that sometimes he does not take a proper care of them, which would be eating them before they expire. We all know that the best way to reanimate a dying banana is to put it to use in a baked something or other. A great cook as he is, Luke is not much of a baker. As soon as I cast my shadow over his doorway and saw something that formerly looked like a glowing tropical fruit with dignity long-lost, the first task I applied myself to was, perhaps somewhat predictably, to bake banana bread.

I am proud to report that the mission was accomplished ‘with gusto’, as Luke the enabler of my baking dreams, said. I made Molly Wizenberg’s banana-coconut bread with rum.

The whole enterprise was not easy I must confide. While preparing the batter, I had to combat an army of fat stinging wasps who didn’t seem to be bothered by the mere fact that the kitchen was actually mine for the weekend.

There were many of them and I was scared. No kidding. A good thing that the recipe called for booze; I had the swift intelligence to use that not only for the batter. A few sips and things seemed less dreadful. I even didn’t cry when I saw the final product turn out somewhat flat. I now blame it on this self-rising flour (in place of all-purpose one) as well as on an oblong baking dish (instead of a standard loaf pan) I wound up using; both were my only options. But never mind, because despite its being deflated, this banana bread tasted and smelled supreme. Its soft, moist and coconut-laced crumb was a home for a scent so heady that it felt like there were a million of ripest bananas inside. To me, it smelled like Opium of the banana world. To eat it unashamedly in excesses was the only way to pay respect to the goodness. Which Luke and I did.

Then we walked. And while strolling through fields with grazing cows, we ate Italian gelato.

What you see in the picture right down there are scoops of hazelnut and pistachio gelato on the right, and banana and raspberry on the left.

When at home and awaiting for another batch of baked something or other, we played video games, watched movies and ate Luke’s home-made curry. After which we walked again. And ate more ice-cream, natch.

Then there were scones. Sweet Jesus, they were viciously good. In fact, these guys were the highlight of my baking work-out past weekend. Seeing that it was my first ever attempt at scones making -- there is no excuse why I spent previous twenty four years of my life without scones in the first place -- I can’t express my delirium enough about the fantastic results I reaped, courtesy of Molly and her recipe for Scottish scones with lemon and ginger (should you own Molly’s book, A homemade life, -- and you really should; it is a truly beautiful personal account of food, but most importantly of life itself! -- the recipe is on page 174).

I made the scones in question on Sunday morning and they were gone sooner than they reached the table. Plus, just a handful of minutes was required for whipping them up. Basically, what I did was rub butter in flour, fold in sugar and chopped crystallized ginger along with lemon zest, stir gently to incorporate and then pour in egg-milk mixture. After which I kneaded batter until it just came together, patted it in into a circle that I then cut into wedges.

After having hopped around them in elation, I sent them lovingly into a pre-heated oven for a mere 10-15 mins.

Reaching over a kitchen counter, Luke ate three pale-golden, puffy wedges right after I’d pulled them out of the oven. I went for two, one after another. The rest disappeared within a few successive hours.

All I can say now is that in my opinion, Sunday mornings are made for shameless affairs with baked goods named scones.

These particular species they don’t shout ‘butter’ or ‘sweetness’ or even ‘lemon-ness’ at you. Instead, they talk in low, subtle voice of mysterious ginger and lemon zest punctuated with sugar just enough so as to allow for a sweet layer of something or other atop. They are the scones of soft and tender crumb jacketed in a thin and rugged, ever so crispy outer layer. Once in your mouth, they fall apart, or I’d even say melt lazily, making you crave for more. They are both tantalizers and satisfiers, these simple scones.

As Molly writes: ‘They are pretty perfect in general'.

They undoubtedly are.

But soon it came Monday with its misty morning.

Daring sun beams sneaked in through the milky haze every now and then, falling on the hay-colored floor and cutting board, and granite kitchen countertop.

I packed my belongings including a huge box of home-made granola -- I’ll get to that in one of my next posts -- as well as the memories, and left back to Amsterdam, to my (temporarily) oven-less life.

Scottish Scones with Ginger and Lemon

Adapted from A Homemade Life, by Molly Wizenberg

Yield: 8 scones

2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
2 tsp baking powder
½ tsp salt
4 Tbsp (approx. 60 gr) cold unsalted butter, cut into small cubes
3 Tsp light brown sugar
2 tsp grated lemon zest (from apprx. 2 medium lemons)
¼ cup finely chopped crystallized ginger
1/2 cup milk, plus more for glazing
1 large egg

Preheat the oven to 425 degrees F (apprx. 220 degrees C)

In a large bowl, sift the flour, baking powder and salt, whisk and add the butter. Using your fingers, rub the butter into the flour mixture until it looks pebbly. Add the sugar, ginger and lemon zest. Whisk to combine.

In another bowl, beat the egg with the milk, using a fork. Pour the egg mixture into the dry ingredients and stir gently to incorporate. Don’t overmix. With your hands, form the dough into a rough bulk and turn it onto a lightly floured countertop. Knead it until it holds together. That’s ok if there is some unincorporated flour left. Pat the dough into a circle and cut it into 8 edges.

Position the wedges on a baking sheet layered with parchment paper. Using a pastry brush or a small piece of cotton wool, brush the tops of the wedges with the milk (2-3 Tsp) to glaze. Bake for 10-15 mins, or until pale golden. Let cool for a few minutes. Serve warm plain or with butter or jam or even both.

Baking bonanza

2009-08-07T09:54:00.000+02:00

I don’t own an oven.

But my good friend Luke, the man of many curries, does. So today I am packing my suitcase and going to the city of Nijmegen where Luke and his oven are. I should also mention that it is now a knocking-out heat wave in Holland, and that I will have to spend two and a half hours of my life today on a train down to Nijmegen, and that instead of tons of clothes I’ll be carrying eggs, butter, flour, oats, nuts, oils and various sweeteners in my suitcase the colour of boudreaux.

I anticipate a weekend of baking bonanza. As of now I plan to make two granola recipes and a few for Scottish scones. But I think I won’t stop there. In the haze of heat I’ll bake a hell lot of goods in the oven that does not belong to me. Nobody should stay in my way.

I am crazed.

Stay tuned, Dear Reader! More to come.

P.S. For those of you who asked (thank you, friends!) about my thesis, here is the latest news. I had to make a few changes with a view to increase my chances for a better grade, as advised by my professor. I was working on that this whole week, and a handful of minutes ago I re-submitted my paper. To celebrate this, I ate a bowlful of rosy-cheeked apricots and green-bottled in colour, plump, sweet plums.

If sunshine had a taste

2009-08-03T14:39:00.000+02:00

While crossing the t’s and dotting the i’s in my premaster thesis that I submitted today with the hope that my professor will finally approve it, I realized that many don’t get it why I chose to do my Master’s in English Linguistics in not exactly an English-speaking country – the Netherlands. To be honest, I still don’t get it myself. Nay, actually I do. I mean, I know what brought me to the country some four years ago in the first place -- I needed to resolve an unresolved relationship with my Dutch ex-boyfriend. That of course I did not do; some men are just cowards. Instead, I found solace in the beauty of Amsterdam and talked myself into coming back, preferably quite soon, not because of somebody but because of me. I got enamored with Amsterdam. And despite the fact that I was not sure this is really my city (there is Paris I haven’t yet been to, after all), I wanted to be an Amsterdammer. And since English, my old flame, had always held my heart, I decided I should start from there and pursue my Master degree in English Linguistics in Amsterdam.

But first was a break-up. Although I think I can call it the break-up, my, so far, the most painful heart-wreck.

I met Nikolai (a Dutchman with Slavic heritage) online --please, don’t roll your eyes; I was nineteen and naïve -- in the year 2002. During the next two years I would mistakenly believe that we had something what others call relationship. Would I so much as doubt him when he even asked my parents for my hand during the one and only time he was visiting me in my hometown in Russia, back in crisp and blue-skyed September, 2003? I didn’t smell any lies, not unlike my mother, though, who sensed a brewing hoax, and did not hesitate to inform me on her suspicions with a dedicated regularity, which drove me up the wall, although deep in my heart I knew she was right (I just didn’t have the crust to admit it to myself.The reason for all the doubts was that soon after Nikolai had gone back home, his telephone calls became as rare as rain in desert, and generally, every promise he’d make he’d easily break. The misery lasted until the August of 2004 when one windy afternoon I called to simply say hello and in return got dumped -- on the phone.

I knew long before that to be a dumpee is no fun. What I learnt this time was that to be a dumpee by phone is hell. The whole situation seemed to me unbelievable, as if I watched a waiter spitting in my presence on my sunny side-up, for instance. It just didn’t make sense. So after thirty minutes of telephone agony, I made a hell of an effort over myself as to finally hang up, my face purple from tears, anger and pain. The memories of what I did afterwards, besides crying, crying and crying, are blurry now, yet two things I do remember.

First, soon after I stopped howling like a wolf (in a week or so), I figured I should somehow go to the Netherlands to have Nikolai for a final word. That was a classic ‘easier said than done’ scenario, since I couldn’t afford to just nonchalantly hop a plane to Amsterdam or whatever. (That I would do one year later by participating in the Au-pair student programme in the Netherlands.)
Second, I emerged in the kitchen and made my mother’s eggplant ragout, or stew, something reminiscent of ratatouille, and yet not quite like it. In retrospect, I don’t think I intended to make this eggplant stew per se; I wasn’t in the mood for pretty much anything. Not even for chocolate ice-cream, my all-out mood booster. Yet I felt like chopping and dicing (one of the post break-up syndromes, I believe). And since there were those shiny globes of eggplants on the kitchen countertop, I jumped at the idea to turn them into the eggplant ragout. Seriously, it was the dish that comforted me while I was grappling with the rough waters of the break-up. I made batch after batch of it. As I stood by the countertop chopping onions, mincing garlic, grating carrots, dicing shiny red bell peppers along with glossy dark-purple eggplants, I felt all right. I felt still. I even smiled at the sight, sound and smell of the onion and garlic dancing in a skillet in a pool of heated olive oil, joined then by the army of the fragrant, vigorously chopped and diced, seasonal vegetables that eventually would mingle into something so infinitely delicious and simple, something that would taste even better on the second or even the third day making me aware that in certain circumstances time indeed works wonders.

I wouldn’t meet Nikolai during my first year-long stay in the Netherlands; like I said, some men they chicken out so easily, even when it’s only about closure. But that’s the deep past now, so be it.

Over the last two weeks I’ve been tirelessly making my mother’s eggplant stew again. No break-up involved this time. Today I, quite simply, value this dish for its miraculous capacity to remind me, at least over the summer months, that the sun is always shining, even behind the now-curly, now-thick clouds that are aplenty over here, in Amsterdam.

And if sunshine had any taste, in my world it would be that of the eggplant stew.

Russian eggplant stew (one of the many variations)

Although eggplant stew and its variations are thoroughly enjoyed in Russia throughout the summer months, there is no distinctive Russian name for this dish. It would be fait to say that Provencal ratatouille or Sicilian caponata are European cousins of this Russian eggplant stew in question. Unlike the former two, though, the latter also contains carrot as main ingredient. In the herbs department, fresh dill or flat-leaf parsley or both were what my mother would swear by when seasoning her eggplant stew. Served with boiled potatoes and more fresh dill for sprinkling, it was – and still is – my summer comfort food. Simple, smile-inducing and mysterious.

Yields 4 servings

1 large eggplant, diced
1 tsp fine sea salt
1 medium yellow onion, roughly chopped
2 large cloves garlic, minced
1 medium red pepper, cored, seeded and diced
1 medium carrot, grated
5 plum tomatoes, seeded and chopped OR one 14 oz. (400g) can whole peeled tomatoes, mashed and juices reserved
1 tsp ground coriander
Freshly ground black pepper to taste
½ cup or more finely chopped fresh dill leaves (or flat-leaf parsley or basil; no matter what herb you go for, just use a lot)
Olive oil

Put the eggplant in a colander and sprinkle with the salt (1 tsp). Toss well and set aside. (Salt will soften the eggplant and also rid it of its internal moisture.)

In the meantime, heat 2 Tsp olive oil in a large deep skillet over medium flame. Dump in the onion, and cook, stirring often, until soft but not browned, 4-5 mins. Add the garlic, bell pepper and carrot and keep cooking, stirring occasionally, until the vegetables soften, about 5-6 mins; they will slightly reduce in volume. Add the tomatoes, along with the reserved juices (I used canned tomatoes), and stir to combine. Add the eggplant -- you don’t have to rinse it, which is handy because this way you won’t have to need to salt the dish again -- black pepper and ground coriander. Stir well to incorporate. Reduce the heat to medium-low, cover and cook until everything is tender, about 15 to 20 minutes. Remove the skillet from the heat. Taste, and adjust the seasonings if necessary. Fold in the fresh dill (or other herbs of your choice).

Serve as spread on toast, side dish to meat, over boiled potatoes, in pasta, with greens. Possibilities are endless; joy is yours, Dear Reader.

My mushroom scheme

2009-07-19T16:49:00.000+02:00

Dear Reader, hello!

I know, just a week ago I pathetically announced I’m going to take a short break from blogging, but life always throws in something new and unexpected, so here I am again. In a big need to confess if at that. So if you don’t mind, I’ll cut to the chase, since I am really supposed to be writing and even already finishing my premaster thesis. (I didn’t mention earlier, did I, that I’m writing about humour in the US presidential debates 2008 – my professor chose those as the database for his students’ various research works; the professor is American. Also, I’m the only one in a group of eight students of English linguistics who expressed a wish to write about humour; the rest, misguided minds, are writing about metaphors and other language-related matters.)

Dear Reader, before I go on, could you please take a closer look at the photograph above? You see those small browned chanterelles in it, together with crisp and fragrant (fried in olive oil with garlic) potato chunks? Good, because those mushrooms, uncooked, straight from the farmer’s market, were supposed to be an edible gift, ribboned carefully in a brown bag and all, for my friend Nico who had his birthday last week. Yet, instead of giving the mushrooms away, I ate them on my own. Needless to say, I did not, eventually, make it up to the birthday party: I called up to say I’d got a cold. First prize for wits, please.

I don’t know what to think of myself, really. Is it a premaster thesis-writing hysteria that took over me? Should I have thought twice before deciding to write on humour – turned out the stuff isn’t even remotely hilarious? Or am I becoming one of those people who are eager to trade dear friendships, and, you wait, family ties for good food? I am confused to no end.

At least, the woodsy chanterelles with lemon thyme and potatoes were delicious. The lemon thyme with its elusive citrucy whisper virtually put a spell on the potatoes as well as the mushrooms binding both with a complex and satisfying flavor, not the mention the savoury frolicking garlic that set back the sweetness of the puffy potatoes and the earthiness of the bright and spright chanterelles.

That said, you know what happens when the realization of committed something, can I say so, sinks in the next day, as your mind is cleared off the yesterday’s vagueness and you’ve got to face the consequences of your earlier misdeeds -- you get ablaze with remorse. To blow that out, you should approach the ‘out of sight, out of mind’ approach. Which I found genuinely helpful in my case. I mean, I could not continue relishing the stolen-from-my-unaware-of-the-crime-friend mushrooms shamelessly plating them up, however adoringly, making eye contact with them and pretending that nothing had happened. So the next day I enveloped the scoops of sautéed chanterelles with potato in dough pockets, sent them to a pot of salted boiling water for a few minutes, and in return got parcels of vareniki . And I’ll tell you what, once I forked one varenik after another with its juicy-creamy mushroom-potato filling into my mouth, not a glimpse of any remorse was to be seen anywhere in my world…not even remotely. What a person I am.

I should tell you now that vareniki are the Ukrainian take on dumplings. Irrespective of their origins, however, these boiled doughy pockets happily stuffed with various fillings, savoury or sweet, are a beloved, revered food all over Russia as well. (When it comes to food, this Ukrainian-Russian division is gnawing at my heart; in days of yore (and I don’t mean the Soviet Union) it was one country with the communal cuisine where it wouldn’t be politically incorrect to say vareniki are Russian too. Oh well!)

Literally, varenik means a ‘boiled bit’ (from Russian, or Ukrainian, verb varit’, ‘to boil’, or the adjective varenyi, ‘boiled’). Legend has it that vareniki are offspring of the middle-eastern dyushvara, soup with petite dumplings filled with ground lamp and fresh herbs. But unlike the latter, Russain, ok, Ukrainian vareniki can as well be satiated with sweet, not only savoury, fillings such as cherries or strawberries. Speaking of which, I swore to myself more times than I can remember to make vareniki with cherries, my darling berries. Every Saturday past June I brought pounds and pounds of cherries from the market. And every Saturday they’d tiptoe in my mouth sooner than I’d roll out the dough for them.

Were it not for my ‘chanterelles crime’, I think the idea of making vareniki, even savoury, would still be a pipe dream for me. Doesn’t that give me a legitimate reason to be somewhat proud for my mushroom scheme?

A few technicalities…Various recipes have you use milk, egg and even butter to make the dough softer. However, both of my grandmothers, irrespective of each other, swear by buttermilk – cold, right from the fridge. This way, I was instructed, the dough will be soft and elastic which will prevent the dumplings in question from opening up in choppy, boiling water. Because I found myself in a situation where mushrooms were involved, I used them as a filling, sautéed with onions, garlic and lemon thyme (my newly discovered love!). Were I less sinful, I’d be free to use any other kind of stuffing – from sauerkraut to offals, from fruit to buckwheat porridge, as befit Russian and Ukrainian traditions. Enjoy the freedom of imposition, Dear Reader!

Vareniki with mushrooms, potatoes and caramelized onion

Yields about 12 medium-sized vareniki

For the filling:
1 medium onion, roughly chopped
2 cloves garlic, pressed
1 cup mushrooms (I used chanterelles, but any mushrooms will be fine), trimmed and finely chopped
1 large potato, boiled and mashed
A generous pinch of salt
Olive oil for cooking
½ cup fresh dill, finely chopped
3-4 fresh lemon thyme sprigs

For the dough:
2 ¼ cups all-purpose white flour
1 cup cold buttermilk
1/4 tsp salt

1. Sift the flour into a large bowl. Add the salt. Make a well in the centre and pour the buttermilk. Using a wooden spoon, start mixing the flour, working towards the centre. Once the buttermilk in incorporated, tip the dough out onto a generously-floured surface and knead the dough by hand into a ball. If it’s too sticky, add more flour, starting with ¼ cup at a time. Make sure you don’t over-knead the dough. Also, Don’t worry if the dough will be a bit thick. Wrap it and set aside to rest for 30 mins.

2. In the meantime, prepare the filling. In a large skillet, brown the onion over medium heat, 4-5 mins. Add the garlic and cook for another minute. Stir in the mushrooms, season to taste. Saute the mushroom until they start to brown and there is no excess liquid in the skillet, 5-8mins. Fold in the fresh lemon thyme leaves and take off the heat.

3. When the mushrooms are cooking, boil up the potato in a small pot, until soft and even mushy. Drain and mash.

4. In a small bowl, combine the mushroom mixture with the mashed potato and fresh dill. Taste and adjust the seasoning if needed. Don’t be shy with salt; it will breathe in more flavour in the vegetables mixture. Make sure there are no excess liquids in the filling or, when cooked, vareniki will be soggy.
5. Thoroughly flour the work surface and form the dough into a thick log. Cut the log into pieces of equal size; I made 12. Using a well-floured rolling pin, roll each piece into a thin disk, about 1/8’’ (0.3cm). I used a coffee mug to form neat disks, about 2 inches (5 cm) in diameter.
6. Place a teaspoon of the filling onto each disk. Gently fold in the dough around the filling forming a crescent-shaped dumpling. Gently but reassuringly pinch the edges. Make sure the filling is well-sealed. Place the dumpling on a large floured plate. In the same manner, proceed with the rest of the dough pieces until you’ve run out of filling. (I should also tell that you may have more dough than needed. I did, so I froze my dough leftovers for subsequent uses.)

7. Over medium heat, bring a large pot of salted water to a boil. Working with 5-6 dumplings at a time, carefully put them in boiling water. Don’t crowd them. Take care that they don’t stick to the bottom of the pot nor touch each other. Once vareniki float to the surface, cook for another 3-4 minutes. Remove with a slotted spoon. Sprinkle with olive oil or softened butter to prevent vareniki from sticking to each other. Repeat with remaining dumplings.

8. Serve with caramelized onions and fresh dill, with sour cream alongside. Serve hot. But they are as good at room temperature too.

I look forward

2009-07-12T12:23:00.000+02:00

Last summer when I still worked in Moscow, I had a Scottish colleague named Alistair. During our breaks for lunch, we exchanged bits and pieces of everyday wisdom with each other. Or rather, Alistair taught me those, while I gave him eggplants, zucchinis, and gooseberries from the market. When the weather was merciless outside –tearful and windy – we, looking out of the office window, entertained ourselves with what seemed an Eng -Rus dialect (a hybrid of English and Russian). Offski homeski meant ‘time to go home’, offski gymski - ‘off to gym’, offski pubski…you get the idea. Language-wise, we didn’t restrain ourselves from mixing in more exotic words. When referring to an unpleasant person passing us, Alistair would use a Chinese phrase – he worked in Honk Kong before arriving in Moscow – that loosely translated as ‘crazy woman’. He might have used the same phrase even if the unpleasant somebody was male, but I don’t remember that now. What I memorized, however, was his Zen-like advice to me, in pure English: ‘To have a happy life, you should look forward to your dinner’.

Now, I look forward to dinner on a daily basis. And to breakfast. And to lunch. This whole business should sum up to a very happy life in my world, I reckon; however, the blues are visiting me these days. A gentleman named Lukas Bragg, my good friend and, generally, quite an insightful person, supposed it may be a post-birthday syndrome (PBS). I think it’s because he is jealous that I enjoyed zee pizzas without him. But anyway…My mother likes to say that only idiots smile non-stop and that it is fine to sob as well. By way of deduction, I think I am not an idiot, which already makes me happier. Not to forget this breakfast-lunch-and-dinner thing.

When the sky over Amsterdam is crying out its bowels and the wind is howling like a homeless dog, I find it somewhat difficult to persuade the blues to please get out of my room. Instead, I take heart and an umbrella, and trek to a bakery – offski bakerski, as Alistair the Scotsman would say -- to get chausson aux pommes, or pirozhok s yablokom, as I used to know it in Russia.

I should tell you now that since I was a kid I have always had a certain fondness for the words pirozhok, ‘turnover’, and bulochnik, ‘baker’. (I like to believe Russian bulochnik derives from French boulanger.) Not that there was a professional bulochnik in my family as I was growing up, or that I ate pirozhki (‘turnovers’) for breakfast, lunch or dinner, which, come to think of it, would not hurt a bit. Alas, neither was the case. It’s just that I always heard a chanting melody in those words, an underlying message that said, ‘Rain or no, a moustached, chubby bulochnik makes his pirozhki every day at the darkest hour before the dawn to put a smile on people’s faces later in the day, to reassure children and adults alike that no matter what, there he is, the bulochnik, to guard a centuries-old tradition of layering the fragrant, yeasty dough with rich and silky butter; rolling and folding it; doing his own magic with it every day; and, by extension, soothing people's souls’. And while such bulochnik and his pirozhki are there, I imagined, the world is safe, and fed.

Here in Amsterdam, pirozhki s yablokom (literally, ‘turnovers with apple’) are unknown, yet their fancier French counterparts chausson aux pommes took residence in a few of the local bakeries, and I consider it good manners that I pay my visits to them regularly. These chausson aux pommes and I, we developed strong camaraderie between each other. There is nothing, absolutely nothing more smile-inducing than slightly salty, buttery and flaky pocket of puff pastry that looks like a lacy-edged, glossy purse, filled with now-sweet, now-tart, perfumed-with-cinnamon applesauce/compote that, once the shattery pastry is bitten into, drips on my chin and clothes, distracting me from my worries. The wind still howled outside, and the blues were somewhere there, waiting to catch up with me. But I didn’t half mind. Actually, I did not mind at all. I looked forward to my next pirozhok s yablokom, my chausson aux pommes.

Lastly, it seems I will have to be going to take a short break from posting on my blog. There are too many things going on at the moment: I’m writing my premaster thesis that is due by Aug 3, which means that I have only two weeks left (aaaaa!) before I have to submit the whole thing. Plus, I’m doing my summer internship in editorial of the Time Out Amsterdam magazine(yay!!) which also requires my devotion and, to be honest, claims my energy as much as the thesis.

I hope you understand, My Dear Reader.

I look forward to seeing you soon again. And this, truly, makes me happy!

Enjoy your summer, friends!

*If in Amsterdam, you can find almost perfect chaussons aux pommes -- my only wish they were a touch tarter -- at Vlaamsch Broodhuis, Haarlemmerstraat 108 and other locations (http://www.vlaamschbroodhuys.nl/). Just so you know, chaussons aux pommes are appelkoeken in Dutch.

Not ashamed

2009-07-06T20:25:00.000+02:00

Friends, last Thursday, July 2nd, I turned twenty-five (25!). This was my first grand anniversary. The next one, I was told, is usually celebrated at the age of fifty, and then seventy-five. Then, if determined, diligent and persistent enough, one hits the road to centenary. But let’s not go that far. Not yet. As of today, my mileage is only a quarter-century. To praise the occasion, there was lots of chocolate chip gelato in the afternoon; as much wine and pizza shared with my friends Cortney and Martijn, and Katharina at radiant sunset; and giggle after giggle after giggle in between. Besides, as all grand anniversaries go, mine was full of reminiscing of times bygone and tastes forgotten. Then, between hearty laughs and numerous ‘cheers!’, there was sadness. And even tears, the ones that mischievously wet your eyes when your parents call you to congratulate their daughter with her first ‘big’ birthday, and you try to sound frolicking and cheerful telling them about your plans for the evening (like I said, wine and pizza) while the treacherous tears drop-drop-drop along your cheeks as if beads of water dripping from a thawing icicle. And despite the black, ink-ish stains of mascara all over my face (the performance like that I usually reserve for the end of the day, not for the nascent morning), I kind of liked those tears. I welcomed them. In my world, they were the heralds of the end of the cold war I silently announced to myself years ago.

I’ll tell you the fable. In my thirteenth summer, I decided that to be Russian was not actually so nice. There was nothing to be proud of, I’m sure you’d hear me say so at the time. My current understanding is that it had something to do with the dark communist past, the way a newly-born post-soviet Russia was portrayed in the western media as a country where wild, pigeon-footed bears tumbled along city streets, not to mention villages and small towns; where people drank vodka as if it were pure water and even fed it to babies; where mafia governs the authorities; and some such stuff. Nobody in my family, nobody I knew, was anything of those things. Yet it did not prevent me from feeling uber-guilty for crimes others had made (there is always the black sheep in the family, you know). I was a hyper-sensitive adolescent, so no wonder that after hearing such stories from the western travelers I developed a deep national shame soon enough. I made sure everybody in my surroundings knew my then newly-acquired wisdom according to which being Russian equaled being inferior. I informed my school mates, my parents, all my extended family members, even my neighbours about the situation. I was relentless. I can’t stress enough how much I would cringe when asked where I hail from. I can’t be certain, but I sometimes think some mass murderers would not feel as guilty about their bloody misdeeds as I felt about my country of origin. Since I turned twelve, the national blame was gnawing on me for the successive thirteen years.

A slow change was set in motion last fall. I arrived in Amsterdam to do my master studies in English Linguistics. In Amsterdam, I bought a book of short stories by Chekhov, one of the most prominent Russian authors of the 19th century onwards. The book was in English. (Did I tell you that irony and I, we live next-door to each other?) From it, I didn’t find the answers to the questions who’s guilty and what to do. Rather, the beauty and meaningfulness of Chekov’s word and his insights into Russian life, and the fact that Chekhov and I, we both, although centuries apart, were born in Rostov oblast, he in Taganrog, I in Shakhty, got me thinking, ‘Wow, I come from a country of this man… Blimey, I come from Russia.’

And then there is food.

In Russian South, sour cherries, sun-drenched and plump, are in season now. Them I miss painfully, since as I was growing up, I developed a habit of eating the goodness straight from a tree -- my family used to own a small country house with a tiny garden/orchard -- and spitting the cherry pits in air. From summer to summer, the ritual was sacred. In Amsterdam, I can afford these cherries only by the pound, or even less. I buy them now not so much for eating (5 euro per pound is just crazy) as for my yearning to remember the sunny days in the country house on the bank of the river Don, my grandmother’s pleasantly tart turnovers with sour cherries, eaten piping hot, at a wooden table with a plastic poppy-patterned tablecloth on the veranda…Talk about Proustian memory flashbacks.

More than the cherries, I miss my parents. In times long gone, they would bend over my bed early in the morning on my birthday, holding a plateful of dewy straw- and rasp berries, red currants and, you guessed it right, sour cherries, along with a bunch of meadow chamomiles from a market, and congratulate me, still sleepy. I, of course, would at first make a scene, pretending to be angry for being awaken at such an ungodly hour, but then, as soon as I’d recall it was my birthday, I’d show a sunny disposition and accept the birthday gifts. Oh memories!

All this is to say that I finally got it: for me, Russia isn’t anymore a piece of land, or a political regime. It’s solely my memories – of my childhood; of my father and mother, and my extended family; of people whose gardens I polluted with cherry pits…

So today, as somebody – and abroad, there is always such somebody -- addresses to me their dislikes of present Russian politicians or of past communist regime, I say, Sorry, can’t help it. I am not responsible for those. If you want to speak about Chekhov, or about Russian food, or about ordinary Russians, I am at your service. For the rest, direct your quarries elsewhere. Yes, I would say as much. Like I said, I am relentless.

With that, I think I’m going to have a bowl of sour cherries now.

[My Dear Reader, please take my apologies for not offering you any recipe today; I am still recovering after my birthday pizza marathon. Four of us – Cortney, Martijn, Katharina, and I -- we had five pizzas in a space of one sunny evening, on a bench by the best Italian pizzeria in Amsterdam. For those of you who may be interested, the place is called da Portare Via, which is on Leliegracht 34. Before I forget, did I tell you I burnt my tongue when dealing with pizza number five, Quattro Formaggi, the one with four smelly cheeses atop? Cheese, it seems, is going to be the story of my life.]

My shot at Bella Vita

2009-06-26T21:54:00.001+02:00

Dear Reader, I feel awkward to say this but my cheese craze continues. In fact, it’s speeding up exponentially, just like a breaks-broken car racing down the hill. If you read my post about my inclination to compare highly aromatic cheeses to different parts of human flesh – and praise both, if at that – you should then know this: I now eat cheese with flowers.

Last Saturday, I brought home a small bunch of mismatched garden roses – a mix of pale pinks and deep-velvety reds -- from the herb man in the green market, put the flowers in a former soup jar (my way of recycling!), positioned this creative installation on my hay-coloured desk and spent the first four days after the purchase looking at the roses fondly, taking an occasional sniff, poking them regularly and, generally, admiring them. But then, by the end of a particularly unproductive day, when all I did was sit at the desk, studying the walls and a number of solid Ikea objects that my room is meticulously furnished with, I found myself staring at the flowers with the eyes of an affectionate omnivore rather than a dreamy admirer. It was about dinnertime, so the idea of incorporating rose petals in a restorative meal slammed my mind awake all right.

An army of Russian grandmothers make jam from rose petals; rose is essential to Moroccan cuisine; all of which is to say that decidedly nothing was wrong about my wish to nibble on the morsels, as I thought. What I did not expect to be doing was relish the fragrant petals with odorous…Gorgonzola Dolce (a younger version of otherwise sharp and assertive Gorgonzola). To the viewer in me, the cheese offered a humble spectacle of sight: ivory colour with pale, almost diaphanous blue veins. It breathed with creaminess and smelt mildly of the moisture of a grotto. Subtly sweet, faintly pink, delicately perfumed rose petals were only too natural for the Gorgonzola Dolce, I told myself. I was right.

The moments when I forget to breathe are rare, and it was one such time. The sensation was simultaneously tongue-tickling and soothing. The alien to each other tastes and fragrances – the one from gentle and perfumed rose, the other from aromatic Gorgonzola Dolce – befriended one another on a piece of baguette with ilusive notes of vanilla and mingled seamlessly to create the flavor so ambrosial that my head started to spin.

The sun was sliding towards the horizon throwing a gauzy veil of golden light over Amsterdam. No longer was the day unproductive. Instead, it became the day of rose petals and Gorgonzola Dolce. It was my shot at bella vita.

My Dear Reader, what follows is not a recipe but only a few insistent suggestions. There won’t be better time for giving in to the floral bonanza like now when the (wild) pesticide-free roses are in abundance in the farmer’s markets, or maybe even in your own garden. I’d recommend roses of light colours -- they are sweeter and more subtle in flavor. As to the cheese, any creamy, soft-ripened variety such as Brie, Camembert, Gorgonzola Dolce (see above), and even young goat cheese will taste sublime in this pairing. And lastly, although it is tempting to toast baguette, cut in thin rounds, before spreading it with the cheese, it is better to restrain doing so, because when toasted, the flavor of the bread’s crust will be too intense to let you appreciate the etherial flavours of the cheese and rose petals together. Anyway, you just try. You should.

Pressured state of mind

2009-06-16T21:33:00.002+02:00

Past days saw me under pressure – I was busy orchestrating a Russian-themed dinner for my friends Cortney and Martijn. She is Australian, he is Dutch, together they are a vibrant married couple who love to spend their weekends lazing in hammocks, tossing around a frisbee and blowcarting -- that is, when the local weather is the bee’s knees, which is not a frequent occasion, but anyway…What I was trying to say is that last time as we met, I was asked to give a floor about traditional Russian dishes; the ambiance was fitting and inspiring, what with the silky scoops of chocolate and hazelnut praline gelatos and strong crowblack espressos we were relishing. Did I ever mention that home-made gelato loosens my tongue so I blurt things out without giving them much thought in the first place? Because this is exactly what happened: three bites into the cool goodness, and I was claiming to be capable of making borscht, an Eastern European soup starring beetroots, tomatoes and cabbage as main ingredients. At first sight, you’d say this is no big deal to cook that. But this is only at first sight, Dear Reader. Borscht as an (almost) Russian national dish is so lionized and high-standardized that the likelihood of my cooking it not exactly the right way was monstrously high.

On a historical note: Borscht, to the astonishment of many, is not Russian born-and-bred (is it appropriate to say so about food?); originally it’s Ukrainian, yet somewhere along the line borsht crossed a few borders, took many nationalities and became an iconic dish almost in every Slavic country. So by my borscht I mean a Russian variety which, besides beetroots, cabbage and tomatoes, also includes potatoes. Although I remember I once ate Ukrainian borsht with potatoes in it too, from which we can only deduce things are seriously complicated. Potatoes or no, tomatoes are indispensable here (fresh, canned or as a paste), otherwise you can’t call it borscht, but only a beetroot soup. In addition to all that, I learnt that borsht as a topic for conversation is explosive enough to undermine long-lasting marriages and to cause heated family disputes. When I called my mother to ask for the borscht ABC’s, my father chipped in with a stingy remark:

‘Anya, don’t listen to your mother – she can’t cook it properly’.

‘You are an ungrateful pig’, my mother, a woman of verbal dexterity, fired back.

Did I need to hear that? No.

To revert to the present day, I found myself in a situation that can only be described as tricky. And to be honest, that would be a mild description.

It is not a self-flattering confession, Dear Reader, but I am willing to go that far as to say that when I am expected to deliver something palatable and delicious, I usually fail. Fail hard, miserably and irreversibly, that is. Hence this pressure lately. Luckily for me, not necessarily for them, though, but neither Cortney nor Martijn had tasted any Russian dish before. Although the expectations were high, none of them would know if the final product was bastardized, or botched. I made the call that I would do my skillfullest in the kitchen, and come what may.

I’m not sure if I told you but not always do I show grace under pressure. In other words, I don’t seem focused enough to watch my mouth when my mind is preoccupied with things as important as a list of ingredients for borscht. Take this as an instance: I needed chicken bones to make my own chicken stock for the soup – traditionally it is the beef stock that’s used in this dish, but I am not yet well-versed to scout for a marrow bone in the Dutch butcher’s; they don’t happen to have any when I am there and canned stock as a possible substitution is a slash at tradition -- so I headed off to the meat man and told him I need kitchen bones. The butcher did not seem to get it. I kept expressing my wish for kitchen bones.

At first the elderly man smiled, then his brows furrowed, finally he gave me a startled look, his mouth half-open and eyes wide as saucepans. It took me a while to figure out what caused the man such a stir. I apologized for the slips of my tongue, paraphrased ‘kitchen’ into ‘chicken’, and still did not get any – apparently chicken bones were a rare commodity over the weekend. I gasped with horror and felt my heart was in my mouth. This had to stop – I mean my pressured state of mind. I bought for myself a bottle of red.

Dear Reader, this is stunning how simple things turn out to be after a mere glass of libation. I felt there was nothing I could not do in my kitchenette. Everything seemed to be a breeze, even the fact that I had to sink low as to ask my guests to bring along their plates and cutlery for dinner did not rob me of my dignity. How would you do that without a boozy fillip, I wonder?

Past Monday was the Big Tasting Day. Cortney and Martijn arrived loaded with the requisite tableware, and a few bottles of wine for good measure -- monday nights are meant for tipsy-ness.

But I digress, I digress...

I gently warmed up the borscht, toasted the bread, clinked some more pots and pans in the kitchenette, and finally introduced my guests to the anticipated dish served in mismatched soup bowls.

‘It smells gorgeous’, was the first culinary compliment of the evening.

The borscht was delicious and opulent, a smidge sweet and earthy from the beetroot and somewhat nutty from the relaxed, cooked cabbage; savoury and a touch acidic from the tomato paste and vinegar; fragrant from the spices and herbs; with a zip from the spunky aromatic garlic; packed with potato chunks and cabbage ribbons; rusty red in colour. I feel ashamed to have impugned my own ability to not bastardize it, because I absolutely did not. And this is even after I ended up using vegetable stock as the base for the soup. I can only imagine how unbelievably good it will taste with something reminiscent of meat in it.

That said, I am going to call my parents now to see if things are all right.

Borscht (one of the many varieties)
1.5 L beef stock (you can substitute it for chicken or vegetable stock)
1 large beetroot, peeled and grated
1 medium carrot, peeled and grated
1 medium yellow onion, roughly chopped
2-3 cloves garlic, pressed
2 medium potatoes, cubed
¼ head small green cabbage, finely shredded
1 bouquet garni
2 bay leaves
1 whole onion, studded with 2 cloves
Olive oil for cooking
1 Tbsp red wine vinegar
2 tsp sugar
2 Tbsp tomato paste
Salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste

1 cup finely chopped fresh dill and flat-leaf parsley (you may also use chives or green parts of spring onions)

The order in which the vegetables parade in a simmering stock is crucial, for each vegetable has their own cooking time.

What you do first is sauté – use a large skillet -- the beetroot in 1 Tbsp olive oil along with the red wine vinegar, sugar and tomato paste (1 Tbsp), until soft (3-5 mins). Add ¼ cup water and keep cooking until all water is evaporated, another 3-4 mins. Set aside.

In the same skillet, sweat the onion, carrot and tomato paste (1 Tbsp) in another 1 Tsp olive oil. When the vegetables are soft, add ¼ cup water and like with the beetroot cook until the water is evaporated. Set aside.

In a large saucepan, bring the stock to a gentle simmer. Add the bouquet garni, bay leaves and whole onion to invigorate the stock with more aromatics. Fold in potatoes and cabbage, cook for 15 mins, or until soft, but not mushy. Add the beetroot and the carrot mixture and simmer for another 10 mins. Discard the whole onion, bouquet garni and bay leaves. Salt and pepper to taste.

2 minutes before the end of cooking time, add the garlic. The chopped herbs go in at the last minute.

Serve warm with a dollop of sour cream and more dill for garnish.

Borscht is always richer in taste the next day, so you may want to cook it in advance to enjoy the medley of textures and aromas.

I don't have a problem

2009-06-07T22:05:00.000+02:00

Dear Reader, before we go any further -- so far, in fact, that you may be tempted to advise I consult a psychiatrist -- let me just say that what follows is not an indication of any sort of mental disorder on my part. What you’ll be reading about in a moment is simply a small collection of my food-related life observations that were hoarded by my stealthy mind at one time or another. It has come time I thread those with words and make them readable. Somewhat.

Besides, blowing a raspberry at the author is prohibited.

Now, down to business.

Many years ago I had a small talk which, were I more angelic, I would forget. (But that did not happen, as you may guess.) I was twenty at the time, doing a BA in linguistics in my hometown university in Russia. The summer exams were dealt with, so I spent lots of time listening to my female friends’ love stories and, if asked, dispensing free and objective love advice (I myself did not have much experience in the field, but that did not hinder my enthusiasm to consult on the matter). One sweltering mid-June afternoon found me slurpily consuming a waffle scone of melting chocolate ice-cream on a long walk with one of my then classmates, a girl of my age but of a much greater love-life experience. It may have been the heat that addled her sense of self-censorship, I can’t say now, but, as we strolled along a narrow, curvy street fringed with chestnut trees on either side, the sun shining through their leaves relentlessly, she thoroughly showered me with the nuances of her eventful sexual life. I’ll tell you what, she did not spare me the gory details.

‘He [the girl’s then boyfriend] told me dreamily that my navel smells like cheese’, she revealed one such snippet. A minute ago a thought of licking my ice-cream bode well but now I could not even think of finishing my treat, dammit.

I opined that such comparison insulted my love for cheese at the time. I recall I even threw in the words like ‘humankind’, ‘humanity’, ‘dignity’, ‘restrain’ and ‘freedom from imposition’, and seasoned our conversation with a slew of exclamatory I-beg-your-pardon’s. I sounded thunderously impressive.
If I say I was going to banish the memory of the occasion from my mind, it would be an inexcusable, consummate lie. Better if I’ll tell you the truth: the memory of it became engravable.

Years passed. With them passed away my pretence of being puritanical. When, the other day, I flipped open my notebook where I document my cheese-tasting (among other foods, of course) experiences and impressions, I noticed with a start that almost every aromatic cheese I described featured ‘smells of the aroused human flesh’ characteristic, along with conventional ‘pungent’, ‘nutty’, ‘creamy’ and the like. Err.

I thought I had a problem, the evidence for which was well-documented and thus irrefutable. I shared my concerns with friends; they thought me fun. Then, I resolved to books, to one book by Isabel Allende, in particular. Aphrodite. In it, the author reflects on her fifty-years’ worth of relationship with food and eroticism (would you listen if I, the girl of a crazed mind, say I whole-heartedly recommend it?). But apart from the hilariously informative and instructive (there are recipes in the book) contents, it was the fore-word that set my mind at peace:

"Her breath is like honey spiced with cloves,

Her mouth delicious as a ripened mango.

To press kisses on her skin is to taste the lotus,

The deep cave of her navel hides a store of spices.

What pleasure lies beyond, the tongue knows,

But cannot speak of it."
(Srngarakarika Kumaradadatta, twelfth century)

See that bit about the navel? Almost like the infamous ‘your navel smells like cheese’, no? Anyway, I reasoned out that if one Srngarakarika Kumaradadatta likened bodily smells to food items as early as in the twelfth century, I, with my cheese-notes, should feel at ease, especially since it is the year 2009 outside. In other words, I concluded I don’t have any problem. And I am inclined to keep thinking so, regardless of the fact that there are three types of cheese -- I’m not giving away the names; don’t want to make you rebel against them -- resting on my desk and oozing their aromas of ‘ the aroused human flesh’. One smells of sweaty arm pits (Dear Reader, please don’t wince, I am talking about sweaty that borders on sweet and grassy, nothing repulsive, really), another of navel, the third of thighs.

Here is something else I wish to relay. Through my own experience I learnt that smelly cheese is a perfect attitude-tester. I observed that a relationship is doomed if, among other things, I avoid the pleasure of eating aromatic aged diary when on a romantic date. Needless to say, things may look promising, I find, when a pungent cheese-crackly bread-wine trio is the first thing I wish when asked out for dinner.

It feels better now to have revealed the truth that impregnated me for months. Nay, for years.

P.S. In case you're wondering, the photo above is supposed to attend to my passionate discussion of cheese today, in the gloaming of now-rainy, now-foggy June 7th of 2009, in Amsterdam.

No excuses for bliss

2009-05-31T12:06:00.000+02:00

Today is my mother’s birthday, so I figured I would make chocolate truffles for her. Sadly, she will not actually have them, me with my sweet truffles being in Amsterdam, she in Russia. That means that I will be eating the truffles -- all fifty three of them; so many the recipe yielded -- by myself (God help me!), with the help of a few contributors, perhaps. But treat my mother I did anyway. I put the truffles in a bowl, photographed them, then wired the pictures to my dear mama over the internet, and followed-up with a congratulatory phone call, all twenty minutes of which I spent describing in a miniscule detail how the truffles tasted and what I did to make them. My mother said she appreciated the gesture. She is so gracious.

Why chocolate truffles, you may think. Well, why not? The kitchenette in my shared apartment is so ideally imperfect for any confectionary making that an attempt to be coaxing chocolate truffles out from it sounded like an excellent idea to me. I like challenges, along with a view of sinkful of bowls and other kitchen utensils sinfully, shamelessly covered with, dark, silky, melted chocolate. (As the added bonus, I also learnt that to leave greasy from butter finger prints on metallic surfaces such as a fridge door is fun and therapeutic.) Plus, it is my mother’s birthday, you understand. And while at it, I am a big pro in using other people’s birthdays for the sake of culinary, or more appropriate, eating experiences.

For instance, last year today, I marched my birthday mother, my father and my uncle with his wife into the finest bakery in Moscow Volkonsky (co-owned by Erik Kaiser, one of a few best bread makers in the world based in Paris) to have a festive dinner of pastries alone. As you can imagine, I had to speak harsh to each participant of the event to persuade them to not even think of ruining my plans, according to which everybody would have golden croissants, buttery sables, and delicate meringues for dinner that night. Eventually, my mother even forgot for a while how old she became at the time; sweets are better than diamonds in alleviating women’s troubles. She wound up feeling absolutely exhilarated, what with her successive orders of sleek coffee éclairs and more fluffy vanilla meringues; the latter I accidentally ruined with my elbows when frantically making pictures of decorative Provencal tableware that rested on the wooden shelves next to our table.

We had to order more meringues. It felt like falling down a rabbit-hole into a dream world, the one where deserts are served for each course of the meal. Actually, right at this very minute I am on my way to my new dream world, the realm of fifty-three chocolate truffles I feel honoured to eat for my mother. She said she fully supports me in my journey. That's all I needed to hear.

The first impression my mind unleashed after tasting the confection was this: COOL CHOCOLATE BREEZE. (I told my mother that too). It may not be the best chocolate truffle to make a worldly appearance, I know, given that mine were made by a dilettante (me) to a traditional, old-school recipe that has you use only dark chocolate, cream and butter (on which I went a bit too heavy -- lack of kitchen-scales over here), and cocoa powder for coating. But a pure love they are nonetheless. Love that mantles your every taste bud with cool, silky wave of the pleasantly bitter dark chocolate soothed by the grassy, meadow-y butter and thick cream; love that makes you numb and utterly anti-social – to savour the lingering, slightly acid aftertaste of the chocolate truffle is more important, I find, than to deliver mumbling utterances in between the bites. And the way the cocoa powder mischievously dusts your lips so you are forced to lick it off with the tip of your tongue, smacking your lips with gratitude and appreciation as you go -- isn’t it fun? Finally, even one whiff of this pure chocolate decadence is worth your every bead of sweat over melting, whisking, and rolling. In fact, this is all to say, Dear Reader, that you have absolutely no excuses to not make these chocolate truffles, unless you’ve already got a batch or two!! If not, I beseech you do.

French-style chocolate truffles

Adapted from videojug.com

Frankly, the idea to make these did not manifest itself out of the blue, nor did I dream it up (unlike this dish, for instance). I first had to introduce myself to a few dozens of various chocolate truffles, the ones resident in the local pastry shops, before I, irrespective of my own will, gingerly dared to consult Google on how to make chocolate truffles. What I found, or rather, what I was passed down was this video clip at videojug.com, which I estimated as a rather straightforward presentation for emerging chocolate truffle makers such as myself. So the recipe that follows is basically a transcribed version of the filmed performance, although I altered it as I saw fit. One such example, I did not add water to the chocolate (I don’t understand why they would) when melting it; I folded the butter soon after I did the cream, as opposed to the original recipe that instructs you first let the ganache cool and only then incorporate the butter (again, not exactly clear why).

Also, as far as there are only four ingredients, it is only too important that they are of the best quality, or the final product may not be as exciting. And if you ask me, forgettable chocolate truffles can split your otherwise good life asunder, and this is a no-no by all means.

Lastly, I advise that you serve these truffles chilled – the sensation of chilled chocolate softly melting on your tongue is unbeatable. Cartainly, they are still good at room temperature, although not as exciting. In the video clip, they suggest you serve them with coffee or champagne. I am, however, not sure about this. Champagne is not the best complement to the chocolate in general (the red wine is!); and as to the coffee, I haven’t tried it yet, but as opposites go, a steaming cup would be fairly attractive with the cold truffles indeed. In all honesty, however, I think a piece of seasonal fruit will be the best chocolate supporter in this case.

(The recipe yields 50-60 bite-sized truffles)

250 gr dark bittersweet chocolate (not less than 70% cacao content) 165 ml cream, at room temperature
35 gr unsalted butter, at room temperature
80 gr (1/3-1/2 cup) dark cocoa powder (unsweetened!) such as Valrhona 100%

1 L water

First, prepare the bain marie, a heating technique for melting chocolate. In a medium pan, bring the water to a bare simmer; do not let the water boil at any point. While the water is heating, roughly chop the chocolate and put it in a smaller pan which you will then put in the pan with the water, so make sure it fits but does not touch the water!

Once the water is simmering, put the smaller pan into the medium one and melt chocolate, stirring constantly, about 8 mins. When melted, carefully add the cream. Using a whisk, combine well. Fold in the butter and whisk gently to fully incorporate the butter. The final mixture is ganache. It should look glossy. Turn off the heat, and remove the pan with the ganache. Set aside to cool.

Pour the ganache in a medium bowl. Cover with cling film (but only after the ganache is completely cooled) and refrigerate, for 6-8 hours or until the ganache is very firm. I tamed mine in the fridge overnight.

Put the cacao powder in a small wide bowl.

Scoop the chilled ganache with a tsp and using your hands, shape each scoop into petite chocolate balls. For a tidier process, you may use a melon baller, I believe. Yet I must tell that having the chilled chocolate ganache in your palms is thoroughly therapeutic, if only slightly messy! Roll each truffle – be generous -- in cacao powder and place them in a medium serving bowl. Keep in a fridge and serve chilled.

P.S. Witty Julie of Oeufs Mayo thought

Godful Food worth the Lovely blog award.

Thank you, or rather, merci, Julie!