It's All About the Food

The older I get, the fewer things I want. I am very, very lucky to have everything I need and much of what I want. With age also comes the knowledge that much of what I have I neither need nor want. Granted, much of the stuff isn't actually mine, and I have no real use for a two-foot high stack of ham radio magazines.

This made it difficult for my friends and family when I recently turned 40. What I really wanted was to take to dinner the people who had made the last 40 years so good. They very nicely let me, and we all had a wonderful, lovely time.

Some people weren't able to travel nearly 4,000 miles just to have dinner with. Instead, my beloved aunt Heide, who taught me to bake like a German during my internship in Stuttgart, mailed me a notebook of her baking recipes.

She divided the book into sweets, Christmas and savory baking. Old favorites like Schokoladekirschkuchen (chocolate almond cherry cake) are there, along with recipes I've wanted for years, like rhubarb cake and Swabian apple cake.

There are nearly fifty recipes in the book, many things I've had at Heide and Ernst's dining room table, or in their back yard next to the River Aich (more of a big stream), or in my aunt Emma's Stube, or in cousin Christel's garden. Not-so-sweet cakes with fresh or jarred fruit; spicy and nutty Christmas cookies; German quiches that make winter vegetables yummy. It is truly the best birthday present ever, representing decades of fond memories.

(I must qualify here -- it's the best birthday present that is a thing. I also received a surprise visit from a friend that is like a son. Both presents made me cry.)

I'll have to tell my produce store to keep some rhubarb and fresh currants for me.

One recipe I've meant to try for years is "Käsefüssle" which literally translates as cheesey feet, and will not surprise you is an idiom for stinky feet. They are a rich, flakey, cheesey foot-shaped "cookie" that makes a great appetizer. The recipe is very simple (combine, knead), and lots of fun for even small children to make. Obviously, you could make cheesey squares, or cheesey triangles, or cheesey strips if you don't have a foot-shaped cookie cutter.

Käsefüssle

1 2/3 c flour
1 tsp baking powder
pinch of salt
pinch of hot paprika
1 egg
9 Tbs butter (1 stick plus 1 Tbs), cold, cut into 18 pieces
7 oz gouda or emmental, finely shredded
1 egg yolk
2 Tbs sesame seeds or poppy seeds

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

In a stand mixer or with a hand mixer, mix all ingredients except yolk and seeds until it looks like crumbly, streusel topping. Turn onto counter and knead just until dough comes together into a uniform dough.

Alternately, by hand, knead all ingredients except yolk and seeds just until dough comes together into a uniform dough.

Roll out to 1/4-inch thick. Cut out using a foot-shaped cutter and lay on a parchment-lined cookie sheet. Brush with yolk and sprinkle with seeds. Re-roll scraps and cut out more feet. Bake 12 to 15 minutes until just a bit brown around the edges.

Posted by SusieJ at 09:12 PM | Permalink

Biscuits have mystified and intimidated me all of my Northern life. One needs a "delicate hand" we're told. Biscuits should be tender, flakey and impossibly tall. The ideal of Southern cooks can make biscuits without measuring, knowing only from the feel of the dough how much to add.

Even being born in the South is no guarantee of biscuit prowess; witness the scene in To Kill a Mockingbird when Scout complains of home ec class, and the rock-hard biscuits she made.

(I'd also like to say we'd never think of wasting good food on sartorial concerns.)

So, because the idea of carbs + fat for breakfast is appealing, I've been testing biscuit recipes with the help of two excellent baking references. The heavy cream biscuit recipe in Dorie Greenspan's Baking: From my Home to Yours are absolutely the easiest ever. No cutting butter, just mix, knead briefly, cut, and bake. For a fast breakfast, these are your biscuits. They are not, however, the best. Nick Malgieri's butter biscuits in How to Bake had better flakiness and lift than the Greenspan's cream or butter biscuits. But Greenspan used less flour and more butter for better flavor.

Each author had recipe variations, but none were really the perfect biscuit. One morning, desperate to use up a quart of buttermilk, I tried Greenspan's buttermilk variation, upping the baking powder to the two teaspoons that Malgieri used. (Why is buttermilk sold by the quart, when one only ever uses a cup before it goes bad, but heavy cream is sold by the half pint, when it keeps forever?) The biscuits were perfect, and the key is the buttermilk, which seems to tenderize the dough sufficiently to overcome any overkneading:

2 c flour
2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp baking soda
2 tsp sugar
1/2 tsp salt
6 Tbs butter, cut into pieces
3/4 c buttermilk

Preheat oven to 425 degrees.

Wisk together flour, baking powder, baking soda, sugar and salt. Cut in butter until pieces are very small, about pea-sized. As Greenspan points out, some pieces will be smaller. Mix in the buttermilk until the dough starts to hold together. Dump onto your kneading surface and knead gently until it begins to hold together; Malgieri recommends a fold-and-push technique that will create lots of layers. I find the buttermilk doesn't absorb all the flour in the bowl, so no extra flour is needed.

Roll to a half inch thick, and cut with a round, two-inch cutter (don't twist!). Bake on a cookie sheet for 12 to 15 minutes until golden brown.

An additional great thing about these is the lack of eggs. Not that I run out of eggs that often, but when I do, it throws a wrench in any weekend breakfast plans. And you can substitute whole milk for the buttermilk, and skip the baking soda; or substitute whole milk and add two teaspoons cider vinegar for the buttermilk.

Posted by SusieJ at 09:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I don't see why it should be so hard to find a good grocery store. And yet, most of the stores near my house are so dreadful I get a stress headache driving into the parking lot. My needs really are few:

• small — a small floorpan really can cut shopping time in half
• fresh produce and meat — not the buy it and use that night store from Center City
• close to home (on my way is impossible now that I only drive 3 1/2 miles a day)
• organic milk, and not hidden 15 feet from the regular milk
• no TVs in the store

Alright, I admit it, ideally I'd live in a little German village, where the produce store is across the street and the baker around the corner is my grandmother's step-brother's wife's nephew (no, really, he is kinda a cousin by two marriages). But I don't, and I'm stuck in the land of the supersize, and all I can do is thank my stars I don't live in Texas, where everything is even bigger. There once was a time when I loved to spend hours in the grocery, looking for odd ingredients and dreaming up menus to use them in. Now I have a toddler.

The giant Acmes with the blaring TVs and complete lack of white baking chocolate are right out. The giant Genuardi's which trades privacy for fake "discounts" is out. The two-acre Shop-N-Save is out. The giant Giant is out, despite the truth-in-advertising theme of its name.

There is a wonderful Shop-N-Bag (George's Dreshertown), which was "big" when it was first built in the 60s or 70s. Now it's quaint, but it has great produce, a huge dairy section including whole-milk and Greek yogurts, a fishmonger, two butchers — kosher and non, LeBus bread, and really perky checkers who always gave my toddler a "Thank you for shopping" sticker. No loyalty cards. Prices sane. Fresh food was fresh. Small enough to be in and out in half an hour with groceries for the week. On the way home, so I could shop every other day if I needed, and I often did. Problem? We switched day cares, and the shopping center was so good I almost considered keeping my extra forty minutes of commuting to still go there.

When I'm really strapped for time or patience, I go to O'Niell's in Keswick: absolutely tiny (two check-outs), but well-enough-stocked. I can be in and out in 20 minutes. They're so small that I count on only the basics, but an often pleasantly surprised at what they do have. If I had brand loyalty, I'd be screwed, but I only have square-footage loyalty. Parking is on-street with meters, but that keeps the riff-raff away.

Within walking distance of my mother is the Hatboro Deli, which is either the world's smallest hoagie shop with a grocery store attached, or the world's smallest grocery (one checker, four aisles) with an in-store hoagie shop. The hoagies are good, but the grocery is better. They carry lots of prepared foods, but also rib roasts and Crystal hot sauce (I couldn't find Crystal for over a year in the Philly area, and here it was half a mile from my mother the whole time). Plus cheap greeting cards, and I'm sure they'll be open on my mother's birthday.

I can stand Whole Foods and its ilk. (What ilk? They've bought them out.) They often have the odd things I want like vegan chocolate chips, dried pears and Spanish goat cheese. They're packed but the footprint is small enough that you never have far to fight your way through. Trader Joe's is just too damn crowded. And neither is open at the sensible hour of 7:30 am., so that I can beat the crowds.

For the truly exotic, it's H-Mart on Cheltenham Ave. and Rieker's in Fox Chase. H-Mart is a Northeast chain of Korean groceries, and carry lots of souteast Asian ingredients, and have a small housewares section I always must visit. (Every Asian grocery seems to have a housewares section.) Rieker's is the German delicatessen/butcher my grandmother shopped at. They still make their own sausages, and carry lots of seasonal delicacies.

There is produce store around the corner ... and down the mile-long hill: Peas in a Pod. Wonderful produce, with a big organic section. Pumpkins at Halloween. Local in season. Suppliers deliver every day. Cute little bushel baskets for shopping baskets. Fresh, whole-grain bread. Local eggs. Now, if only I can convince them to carry buttermilk and whole-milk yogurt.

Well, there you go. If you live near me and want an old-fashioned grocery with a good selection, you know where to go. And if I ever get amnesia and forget where I shop, it's right here.

Posted by SusieJ at 09:20 PM | Permalink

It might be all about the food, but heavens, I hate cooking on weeknights. Whenever I read someone berating the rest of us for not cooking nutritious, wholesome, organic, complex, three-course meals from scratch every night of the week, I seriously want to kidnap the writer and make them cook in my kitchen and on my schedule for a month.

When Food TV ran "Gordon Elliott's Door Knock Dinners," I always hoped he'd show up at my door and I could see what he would make of two frozen pounds of butter, some limp greenery, and half a can of cat food.

That was even before kid, with a set bedtime and extra time to pick up from daycare and a husband to get from the train station. I'm rarely home before 6:15 and we need to finish eating by 7.

You try making a pot roast in 15 minutes with a three-year-old.

But you know what's easy? Eggs are easy. Eggs are fast. Eggs are yummy, if you put enough cheese in them. Eggs are even gourmet if you call them omelet or frittata. I'm calling this frittata-like. Big advantage: most ingredients are things likely to be in the pantry — my pantry, at least, plus a Spanish goat's-milk cheese, which may be common in your pantry.

I used
three eggs
at a time, because that's how many fit in my six-inch cast-iron fry pan., which was heating on the stove. I whisked the eggs to a lovely froth with
a few tablespoons heavy cream
. (I've tried separating the eggs and folding in the beaten whites, but the result was too eggy and not cheesy enough.) I'd pre-heated my broiler to 400 degrees.

Then I added
three ounces carpricho de cabo (or manchego, or other goat's milk cheese) broken into bits
one roasted pepper, julienned
a four-inch length of dried chorizo, sliced very thinly
and poured it all into the hot fry pan.

When the bottom has cooked, put the pan under the broiler until the top is nicely browned and the eggs have cooked through. The eggs will puff nicely. Immediately show your audience, er, family, and invert onto a plate and eat.

Serves one to two.

Posted by SusieJ at 09:03 PM | Permalink

I'll admit it — I make up song parodies for my toddler son. They are badly sung, badly rhymed, with a strong theme of "mommy's going crazy now, so listen to the nice song." But he enjoys them.

Tonight's Grammy-winner was inspired by leftover Käsespätzle and the Village People (to the tune of "Macho Man"):

Spatze Spatze Man!
I've got to be, a Spatze Man!

My husband assures me that being there makes it no funnier.

However, the Käsespätzle were delicious. People — well, chefs and food wanks, not people — claim Spätzle are Alsatian or Swiss to make them sound upscale, but I'm telling you, this is southwest German peasant food.

Käsespätzle (German cheese-noodle casserole)

• 5 c flour (700g)
• 5 eggs
• 1 1/4 c water (275 ml)
• nutmeg to taste
• 8 ounces Emmental or Gruyere cheese, grated (225g)

Boil at least 5 quarts (5 liters) very heavily salted water. Butter a large casserole dish. Preheat your oven to 325 degrees (160 C).

While waiting for the water to boil, measure the flour and a bit of grated nutmeg into a large bowl, and make a well in the center. Crack the eggs into the center, and pour in the water. With a fork, mix the eggs and water together, then mix in the flour. You'll have a very stiff batter, but not a dough. If you have dough that you would like to put through a pasta maker, add a few tablespoons water. Mix until smoothish.

Spoon/plop a quarter of the batter into your Spätzle press, press into the rapidly boiling water, and boil until the noodles float. I prefer thinner noodles. If the noodles are thick, either add a tablespoon or two more water to the batter, or hold the press higher, so that gravity stretches the noodles more. My press is the kind that looks like a giant garlic press, not the kind that looks like a food grater with a sliding handle thing on it.

When the noodles float, fish them out with a large slotted spoon, or strainer, or pasta spoon, or whatever works. Spread noodles evenly on the bottom of the casserole, and sprinkle a quarter of the grated cheese over them. Pop the casserole into the oven.

Repeat the cooking of the noodles, and the sprinkling of the cheese three more times, until all the batter is cooked and all the cheese used. The cheese will melt nicely in the oven.

Posted by SusieJ at 08:19 PM | Permalink

Fourteen mini-loaves of Stollen chilling so that I can bake them after picking up my in-laws. They sit on the leftover beer and wine from the party: half a case hard cider, a case of beer, two cases of wine. A case plus of Yuengling is still out back. Soda is ... somewhere else.

Posted by SusieJ at 09:48 PM | Permalink

Since Thanksgiving, I've been working on what will be a big, longish project: updating the Advent calendar. It no longer links just to a recipe. Instead, each day offers a Christmas memory, a recipe, and a nifty link.

And yes, I did use Leslie Harpold's format for this.

I'm slowly realizing the insane amount of work I've set out for myself. Insane when you think I spend 5:00 to 5:30 getting my son from daycare, 5:30 to 7:00 cooking and eating dinner, then 7:00 to 8:30 getting my son ready and into bed.

If you have any cool holiday links, e-mail them to me at the address below. This will stop the panic attack that come from looking at my list of potential good links.

Well, I need to bake something, and we need to get the tangible Advent calendars out of storage.

Posted by SusieJ at 07:58 AM | Permalink

More and more, Thanksgiving has become a distraction -- nay, an impediment -- to my real goal for November: preparing for Christmas.

This may be my husband's favorite holiday, but my own feeling is must I? For various reasons -- four sets of parents, the only grandchild, an unwillingness to eat the same food every year -- we've hosted Thanksgiving since before we were married.

Thanksgiving was so early this year it completely blindsided me. One weekend I'm baking fruitcake, the next I'm making a grocery list over breakfast so that I can make cranberry sauce that afternoon.

On the pro side, the house will finally get a spring cleaning, the refrigerators are cleared out and cleaned, and I know it won't be the same menu as last year and the year before and the year before (if only because I change the side dishes). Our families are great, and we don't see them enough. Everyone enjoys themselves enough to return every year. It is a four-day weekend. And I control the menu.

As the child of divorced parents, I have few holiday traditions, since each holiday changed from year to year. The allure of Thanksgiving was always the chance to throw a big dinner party -- albeit with a mandatory turkey. Unfortunately, as I've found recipes that everyone likes and are easy enough to make and would disappoint someone if they were missing, the menu is starting to fossilize. I'm fighting back with two new side dishes, but it's hard when most of my thoughts turn to Nick Malgieri's cookbooks.

(I have an extra bag of cranberries, maybe I will make the cranberry-chocolate tart from November's Bon Appetit and shake up dessert. Wait, it calls for mascarpone cheese. Maybe not. Next year, the stuffing definitely gets a makeover.)

On the minus side, I'd planned to bake pfefferkuchen and lebkuchen, but spent the weekend cleaning. The only baking was corn muffins for breakfast, and pre-making and freezing crust for the pumpkin pie.

Maybe if I just brought three or four desserts, I could relinquish control of Thanksgiving. And I wouldn't have to clean.

Posted by SusieJ at 09:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

It's not Thanksgiving yet, but Halloween is long past and it's more than time for baking fruitcake. (I'm also half way done my holiday shopping, but no, I don't want to see any Christmas displays in the stores yet.)

The critical ingredient for fruitcake success or failure is candied citrus peel, what the British and Irish call mixed peel. This replaces the revolting mixed peel from the super market (which you can't buy now, anyhow). Real mixed peel is hard to find in America, but the good news is that home-made candied peel is easy, if time-consuming.

I don't have a set recipe yet, but the basic procedure is as follows:

Throughout the year, save and freeze intact lemon, orange, grapefruit, tangerine and clementine peels. Don't bother saving anything that's been zested.

Membrane can be easily cut away with a small, sharp knife. Cut the peels into quarters; that is, halve each half. Each quarter will have two pointy end. Holding the peel flat on a cutting board, make a quarter-inch cut into each point, keeping the knife blade parallel to the cutting board. Grab the bit of pith just cut away from the peel and pull gently; you may need to work your fingers under the pith and membrane to keep it in one piece. If only part of the membranes comes off, make a similar cut in the other point of the peel and pull off the pith. Most of the pith (the white part) will remain behind, and that's fine; this is only to remove what's left after, say, juicing a lemon.

Keep the peels in a gallon zipper bag with as much air squeezed out as possible. If the peels get freezer burnt, throw them out or compost them. When the bag is full or half full, there is enough peel to candy for yourself and any friends.

In a six-quart pot, boil the peels with enough water to cover them. When the water is boiling nicely, drain the peel. Repeat twice more. This step is supposed to eliminate the bitterness of the pith; I've not confirmed this, but it makes the kitchen smell nice. This step will take about 45 minutes.

The final step is to gently boil the peel in sugar syrup until all the syrup is absorbed. My friend who makes her own peel uses a medium syrup (3:2 ratio of sugar to water, that is 1 1/2 c. sugar to 1 c water) to cover; other recipes have a ratio of weight of the peel to weight of the sugar. Knowing I was running out of sugar, I used most of my remaining sugar, added water to make a medium syrup, boiled, then kept adding peel until it started to poke over the top of the syrup.

Gently boil the peel, stirring occasionally. The syrup should bubble, but not much. The peel requires more and more stirring and attention as the water evaporates and the sugar is absorbed.

In the end, the peel will be very translucent and most (all?) of the sugar will be absorbed. This will take three to four hours.

Allow to cool, dice if desired, and freeze.

Or, you'll be planting tulip bulbs in the garden with your son, leaving your husband to watch the peel, and he'll fall asleep. The peel will scorch and you'll spend the next day fishing peel out of very thick sugar syrup, cutting the blackened bits off, and dicing peel.

You see why I don't have a recipe yet — you have to order those tulip bulbs in May!

Posted by SusieJ at 10:01 PM | Permalink

This vacation, I'm planning a party for my fortieth birthday (and gardening). This means web surfing to sites for rent ($300 during the week, $1450 Friday night, $2000 Saturday or Sunday) and caterers.

Most of the caterers I've looked at have hired a professional design team. This is good in theory, but in practice it's like eating larks' tounges — novelty for novelty's sake.

So, caterers, from a professional web programmer and a potential customer, don't do this:

• Flash intro: I could not care less how much you paid the design firm for your site; I just want to find what you serve and what you charge.
• Flash or Java or JavaScript site: Bye-bye! There's too many other caterers for me to slog through some crappy custom interface.
• Links to links to links: If I click "photos," most likely I want to see photos of your work, not read three paragraphs telling me to click a link that will take me to your mac.com home page. I won't.
• Generic domain name: Searching for Ryan Rogan Catering and finding only links to "bestcateringexample.com" and bridal sites means I'll think you don't have a web site, even if you shelled out a lot of money for bestcateringexample.com. Spring for ryanrogancatering.com (or .info, or .net or whatever).
• Generic contact e-mail: Info@mycatering.com is one thing, info@partyspace.com is useless.

It would be really nice if you:

• Included sample menus: I don't care that everyone on staff has the same last name; what do you make?
• Listed prices: I love my family, but I'm not paying as much for my birthday as I did for my wedding. Let's not waste each other's time.
• Listed facilities you are on the allowed list of caterers (and facilities, it would be nice if you listed allowed caterers, plus links to their web sites) and their charges.

Posted by SusieJ at 10:10 PM | Permalink

They need me.

If only I were perky.

Also, Alton Brown has as much respect for molecular gastronomy as I do. Heh.

Posted by SusieJ at 09:29 PM | Permalink

What's better than doughnuts for dinner?

Posted by SusieJ at 10:08 PM | Permalink

Whenever I see one of those top-ten, must-have lists, I first check whether the publisher has an affiliate deal to sell those items, then I check to see who's advertising that month.

This one from Chow.com is particularly irksome. The title is "Essentials for the Home Baker: Baking supplies that won't collect dust" which should be the titles of two different articles: one for what you really do need, the other unnecessary but extremely useful tools. Let's rebut, shall we?

Stand mixer: This line sums it up: "many professional chefs prefer the durable, though expensive, Hobart." Professional chefs need a stand mixer. My mother's stand mixer collected dust for decades, in preference to the quick to grab, easy to clean hand-held. Is a mixer essential for baking? Yes, unless you want or have the arms of a stevedore, but a hand-held is just as effective.

Non-stick mats: Essential? No. Useful and a better value for frequent bakers? Yes. A good value for the new baker? No; buy a roll of parchment paper instead.

Digital scale: Why? Did the country finally convert to metric? If you are baking from a professional cookbook (or like to do math in your head), sure, but if you are baking from The Joy of Cooking, stick with your measuring cups and spoons.

Grater/zester: Darn useful. So many recipes call for some sort of citrus zest, and a zester is very, very handy. A box grater will also zest, but its difficult to get all the zest out of the holes. I'll give them this one.

Pastry bag: "Handy for piping meringue, icing, and pate a choux ..." Handy is not the same as essential. I've decorated wedding cakes without a pastry bag (hello fresh flowers!), used spoons to form meringue cookies, and would rather buy an eclair than make one.

Candy thermometer: Essential only for frying or making candy. If you use an electric skillet to heat the oil for frying, not essential even then. If you don't deep-fry or make candy, well ...

French rolling pin: A rolling pin without handles, which is also my preference, but generations of woman baked just fine with American-style pins. The rolling pin is necessary, but the style just isn't.

Kitchen timer: This is a given. The digital version shown isn't necessary though.

Stick blender: "Use it for fruit sorbets, sauces, and soups." What part of that list is baking? This is just plain wrong.

Kitchen blowtorch: Are you making creme brulee? Do you have a broiler? How about a torch from Home Depot? Then you can fix that leaky pipe, too.

"We don't mean to imply that these items are all you'll ever need. In fact, we might add a pastry scraper, a set of prep bowls, and round cutters (for cookies, biscuits, and plating)." All those items are too inexpensive and plain to be on this list.

This is a list for, to be blunt, poseurs. The people in high school who told you your favorite bands aren't really punk, or hip-hop, or whatever. People too busy talking about whatever it was to actually do it. These people discovered cooking and baking, and are dead set on having the correct, professional-quality accessories.

Me? I'm going to bake the cake layers of a strawberry shortcake. Maybe I'll whisk the egg whites by hand.

Posted by SusieJ at 02:21 PM | Permalink

After a sickly and tiring December, I'm happy to find myself excited about a few things.

Baking: From My Home to Yours, by Dorie Greenspan. At first read, it looks like Greenspan has written a definitive tome for the home baker, from breakfast through dessert. After perusing it on the train, I had to stop at the grocery for sour cream and lemons for her lemon-poppy seed muffins. There's also a pear tart to try with leftover pears. It's a very personal book with lots of food pr0n.

What to Drink with What You Eat, by Andrew Dornenburg, Karen Page, and Michael Sofronski. This was my anniversary present to Jorj, and, as with any book gift he receives, he's had to pry it from my fingers to get a chance to read it. Orangette recommended it, and it looks like a great way to explore wine and spirits.

Lebkuchen. I successfully baked Renate's Pfefferkuchen, and am still hoping for another go at Elisenlebkuchen, now that I think I understand where my technique failed.

Peppermint white hot chocolate: The basic recipe seems solid, Penzey's supplied a big bag of dried mint (can't find a source for peppermint essence or oil), we've lot's of candy canes lying around: it's time to experiment.

Basic kitchen set up: I've written more, and might finally get this addition to Baking 101 up before the Spring.

XML, XSLT & CSS: If we ever find my copy of Jeny Tennison's Beginning XSLT 2.0 (really a reference for beginners through experts), I may be able to easily generate all manner of indexes for the site: by region or origin! Cookie-type! Dietary restriction! Meantime, I'm categorizing the recipes and tweaking the layout because I can.

Posted by SusieJ at 04:04 PM | Permalink

With Saucy out of commission (over a year and I still mourn), I'll take it upon myself to review a few of November's periodic offerings.

BBC Good Food: It's regularly featured in my fabulous local magazine store (Avril 50) but my innate frugalness keeps me from buying it. I couldn't resist the November issue, featuring do-ahead recipes for Christmas (Christmas cake, Christmas pudding). I might not be able to resist future issues now that I've had my first taste. Published by the BBC, it's heavy on BBC celebrity chefs and programs. However, it had three articles on weeknight meals, two articles with each five unusual but appetizing recipes featuring a specific ingredient (walnuts in one case, frozen puff pastry in another), a high percentage of vegetarian recipes, a one-page "what's fresh now" article, a five-person readers' tasting panel, and, of course, some early Christmas recipes. American publishers take note: steal some ideas!

Saveur: Seeing the cover, I knew immediately Saveur had changed editors. Last Thanksgiving issue, Coleman Andrews proudly wrote that the magazine had never featured a turkey on the cover in nearly ten years of publishing. This trend came to a screeching end with this Thanksgiving's issue, featuring not only a turkey as the cover shot but "four fine ways to cook it." The other regular features are preserved -- for how long? -- but I'd already noticed a decline in the essay writing in October's issue; it had become more a travelogue of what-I-saw and what-I-ate than real storytelling, reaction and even analysis. In November, they return to the storytelling, but also include that idiotic, fake, $250 cookie recipe.

Bon Appetit: This month must be both a blessing and curse for the editors of cooking magazines. They know the subject, but they've done it so often. (This is why I resist any traditions in our own meal; I want a meal that is still fun to cook.) Bon Appetit has managed some small updates to the traditional, with an article on dishes to bring so that the hostess can avoid another green bean casserole. The make-it/buy-it meal is a needed modernization of the usual Thaksgiving Four Ways! coverage. BA also features a dinner party featuring pork tenderloin, cookies from Dorie Greenspan's new book, olives, and interviews with Amy Sedaris and Candice Bergan. The recipes didn't make me want to cook like BBC Good Food did, although the roasted cauliflower recipe is quite good (had it with steak one night). The "Food & Entertainment Awards" seem thrown in from nowhere. I miss Jinx and Jefferson Morgan, but they still have the Menu Guide, alternate menus featuring the recipes in the issue; someone needs to tell them that anyone with a full-time job not in food service will not be making "Cranberry Granita with Orange Whipped Cream" for a weeknight dinner.

Cooks Illustrated: With it's focus on the traditional, Cook's tackles green bean casserole. They also find yet another method for cooking turkey (salt-roasted), coq au vin and penne alla vodka. The back page features varieties of oysters, but they all look the same to me, wiggly, squishy things on ugly shells. This isn't an issue that tempts me to cook everything in its pages, but the pots de creme were inviting enough to be considered for our bi-weekly cooking with friends night (I got sane and made steak instead). I may even get to the multi-grain pancakes and arugula salad. More likely, I'll buy the recommended knife sharpener to replace my ceramic rods. And it should have been "Olive Oil World Cup." (One thing that aggravates me is that web site access is available only to web site subscribers, and for a limited time to magazine subscribers.)

Posted by SusieJ at 11:20 AM | Permalink

... with my farmer's market.

I work in West Philly, oh, sorry, University City, and one of the benefits is the University of Pennsylvania trying to make it a hip college town in the middle of an un-hip city. Lunchtime Wednesdays, there is a two-stall farmer's market outside the student bookstore (and the Cosi coffee shop and Urban Outfitter's flagship store) at 36th and Walnut streets for the organic yuppie crowd.

It's a big improvement over buying use-it-today produce from the back of a truck under the railroad tracks on Market Street.

You wouldn't think two stalls would be enough, but, first, these are big stalls, six or eight folding tables each, and secondly, one of them is Mennonite, and they sell almost everything: vegetables, fresh basil, some fruits, cakes, shoo-fly pie. It's fresh and cheap and full of flavor. They come in from Lancaster, so the produce ripens as God intended: in the ground or on the tree.

The other stall sells fruit and heirloom tomatoes. The fruit is exquisite: juicy and full of flavor. Their blueberries tasted like blueberries, not sour, blue orbs. Even weeks after, eating plain cereal gave me a physical longing for fresh blueberries. I'll never buy supermarket berries again.

The tomatoes sent my husband into raptures. Flavor! Texture! Worthy of being eaten with only pinch of salt. The stall owner was giving away extra tomatoes; this is the first year he'd planted tomatoes and was astounded at the yield -- and he doesn't even like tomatoes.

Whole Foods and other organic supermarkets can't compete with the farmer's markets. The produce may be organic, but it's all too often flown from far away, and bred for making the trip, not tasting delicious once it arrives. (Having recently flown six and a half hours to Charles De Gaulle Airport, I have a lot of sympathy for any peach making a similar journey and hold it no ill will for not being at its best on arrival, because I desperately needed at least a shower on my own arrival, and more appropriately a good, stiff breakfast.) I'm not sure how I'll survive the winter without good produce. I may need to learn to can next summer and fall.

Posted by SusieJ at 10:17 AM | Permalink

It seems I gave myself another baking obsession in May; you'd think Christmas would be enough.

The month was just end-to-end baking. First, my co-baker Elise and I each made four cakes/breads for a 40-person baby shower. Weeks before the shower I was baking and freezing a cake a weekend: Jewish apple, chocolate-almond-cherry cake, and chocolate roll; and a new summer stand-by: strawberry short cake (bake one 9" spongecake, cut into two layers, whip 1 1/2 to 2 c heavy cream with a dash of vanilla and 3 Tb. sugar, slice a pint of strawberries, leaving the really nice ones whole for the top, macerate berries in a bit of sugar, assemble in layers).

Midst of this came Mother's Day, always held here as the neutral territory. I have brunch, which is just an excuse for everyone to drink Mimosas. The menu included scones and bread pudding (which fulfills my lifelong need for baked French toast).

To fill up the remaining spare time, I took an introductory cake decorating class at my local craft center. Alert readers will notice that almost all cakes on this site require no frosting. Even the wedding cakes I've done have been barely decorated (fresh flowers are solution here).

But I'd always wanted to do this, and Elise, Marsha and I talked about taking the intermediate class at Fantes this Summer or Fall.

Thus, Monday nights found me baking and icing cake between 8:30 and 10:30. I needed a fast recipe. I needed a chocolate recipe (I have standards here). I needed a recipe with ingredients to hand (admittedly I have a lot to hand -- vegan egg substitute, anyone?). The sheer length of the recipes in Death by Chocolate and Baking with Julia was daunting. German cakes are not meant to be iced. Mixes are just out of the question. I needed American cake from scratch. I needed Betty Crocker.

And there was "Black Midnight Cake," which called for all-purpose flour (not even cake flour!), eggs, water, sugar, vanilla, and, er, shortening. But no chocolate to melt, no sour cream or buttermilk (we have it, it's just of voting age). Dump the ingredients, mix and bake.

And it was bland.

So I tweaked.

And Easy Chocolate Layer Cake was born. Still everything you should have in your cabinet. Still very much mix it and go. But now with flavor!

The class was fun. We were three students: myself, and a mother and her 11-year-old son, Ian. They were there because they "love cake." Ian was just nifty! We squeezed out borders, wrote our names, piped headless clowns, and learned ... The Rose, the famous Wilton rose. Sometimes the course materials took themselves too seriously.

Now I've got a lot of time to kill until the fall, when we can take our next class. I have some plans for cool icing effects for my husband's birthday. But when we're drinking shiraz and watching Doctor Who, I surf the web for toys related to my latest obsession.

The Sugarcraft site offers the current Wilton student books (usually availble only by taking a class), along with older books from the 80s and 70s. Well, this was just too good to pass up! Not so much for the techniques, which are unchanged, but for the projects, typography, and illustration, all the things that make James Lilek's Gallery of Regrettable Food the fascinating car wreck it is. Garfield! Yellow cakes with orange flowers! Care Bears! Brown roses! Suddenly, I hear music ... "Come and knock on our door! We've been waiting for you! ..."

Posted by SusieJ at 10:51 PM | Permalink

Spring has long sprung, and a foodie's mind turns to asparagus and mesclun. For a foodie with a garden, the mind turns to tomatoes, basil and crop rotation.

My gardening success has been limited to herbs in pots and rhubarb. The tomato and pepper plants are leggy, the lettuces bolt shortly after sprouting, and even the mint -- a plant with the motto "we are mint; you will be assimilated" -- died after a few years. Rhubarb's success is due to its liking poor soil and low light, conditions affecting most of our yard.

My grandmother had a beautiful vegetable garden, growing her own cucumbers for the bread and butter pickles she canned, plus green beans, carrots, radishes, zucchini, eggplant, and tomatoes, of course. My grandfather built her a cold frame (a miniature greenhouse) for lettuces and seedlings. Her rhubarb was three feet wide; my own is barely two feet wide after nearly ten years. In February, she started all her plants from seeds, putting the tiny little pots under special grow lights in the spare bedroom, then transplanting them in mid-May. She weeded daily. She waged psychological war on squirrels and bunnies with a rubber snake. Come fall, she canned, canned, canned.

Every year, I dream of fresh herbs, tomatoes, peppers and lettuces, all grown organically (I'm too lazy for pesticides), fresher than the local farmer's market, available when needed, and not wrinkling in the fridge. Most years I buy seeds, which will languish, unplanted, in their paper envelopes until June, when I throw them haphazardly and guiltily into hastily prepared soil.

This is exactly the losing strategy it seems.

This year I'm getting smarter, and have skipped the seeds altogether; admittedly, I was too distracted in January to even order them. The garden will also move from the shady side yard (good only for rhubarb and asparagus -- hey!) to the front yard, free of overgrown boxwood since 2003!

There will be herbs like basil, thyme, chives, mint and rosemary. There must be tomatoes, both larger slicing tomatoes and small cherry or pear tomatoes. Bell peppers are always yummy in summer. Perhaps a yellow squash or zuchini, which are so good grilled. The garden catalogs offer more varieties of radish than the small globes in the grocery store. Kohlrabi is one of the first vegetables I truly liked, but it's hard to find in a grocery store. Strawberries would be good with the rhubarb! And maybe the lettuces would do well in the front yard with more sun ...

Once again, my eyes are bigger than my garden and my enthusiasm for weeding. Eventually it all gets to the point where you can't tell the tomatoes from the stinkweed. I'll have to whittle the list down to herbs, tomatoes and one other vegetable:

• Mint, my favorite summer herb
• Basil, the other favorite summer herb
• Thyme
• Rosemary
• Chives, for potato salad
• Big, red tomatoes
• Pear tomatoes
• Bell peppers

Everything else will just have to come from the farmer's markets. Until next year's gardening season ...

Posted by SusieJ at 10:19 PM | Permalink

It's almost Ash Wednesday, time for Mardis Gras, Fat Tuesday, Pancake Day and Doughnut Day.

Although most of America -- or at least my part of it -- has now heard of Doughnut Day, such was not the case in my youth. Twenty years ago, no-one outside my family ate doughnuts for dinner, and not square, deep-fried doughnuts either. Doughnuts were round with holes, eaten with coffee at breakfast and covered in glaze, icing or powdered sugar.

But my grandmother, her cousins and her siblings made doughnuts for Fasnachttag. We aren't Catholic, so she wasn't using up the oil to prepare for Lenten fasting. Instead, the Lutherans living in mainly Catholic southern Germany (the Black Forest, Swabia and Bavaria) see no reason to forgo a good party because of minor religious differences. Although Philadelphia doesn't have parades and costume parties in the week leading up to Ash Wednesday, we had doughnuts Tuesday night.

My grandmother paid lip service to a balanced meal, serving noodle soup as a first course. Frankly, I think she picked something that wouldn't be too filling (like vegetable soup) and would leave room for doughnuts. Or maybe my grandfather objected to anything heartier than noodle soup. After the soup, she would bring out a platter of doughnuts as big as my little hand, fried just before Mom and I arrived.

Fasching is all about being wild and crazy, releasing steam in a stratified, rigid society. When you're seven, nothing seems wilder than having doughnuts for dinner.

And best of all.

Best of all.

One year I swear my birthday was on Fasnachttag.

That's right, one year I had doughnuts for dinner on my birthday.

Half the time Fasnachttag is within a week of my birthday -- close enough for me to have an extra doughnut and call it a birthday doughnut. But the best year it was on my actual birthday.

You would think that I've been making doughnuts since moving out on my own half a lifetime ago, or at least since my grandmother passed away. Not so. I rarely fried anything and had never gotten the recipe from my grandmother.

Two years ago, a German exchange student lived with us for ten months. It was time to make the doughnuts. It was time, not because he was from the Karneval-celebrating regions (Switzerland, south Germany and Cologne), but because he wasn't. The boy had missed seventeen years of week-long parties, the least I could do was make him doughnuts.

The first batch was edible. Anything coated in sugar isn't that bad, and that's the best that can be said for them. The second batch showed improvement, and the third batch was just right -- me and Goldilocks there.

I skipped last year, being too busy with a newborn.

This year I would not miss my doughnuts. Out came the Schwäbisch cookbook and the toddler was shooed into the living room with his father. Mid-way through, I realized I'd run out of eggs. I never run out of eggs. A drive to the convience store. The lights are on but the system is down. On to the next convience store, and I can return with the world's most expensive eggs. By this time the yeast has proofed for an hour, and the toddler is having a meltdown and needs to go to bed. The dough is kneaded, the toddler is put to bed, and I can start frying doughnuts.

Let's just say a year off did nothing for my doughnut skills. The dough was over-kneaded and had too much flour, making the doughnuts resemble fried bread dough. I fry in my wok and over-heated the oil, so the doughnuts cooked in seconds flat and rushed passed golden straight to brown. And bland, because I'd forgotten the salt.

Yet I ate them.

A second try for co-workers who had bought a small electric fryer and planned to christen it with a "fry-day" of batter-dipped Twinkies, Oreos, Thin Mints and other sugar bombs. This time the dough was just right, giving me one up on Miss Goldilocks.

And now, dear reader, I will explain the secret of the Fasnacht to you.

Technically, these are called Fasnachtsküchle, but in my pigden German they were always just Fasnachts. (Fasnacht is the night before the fast, and is spelled with a second t, Fastnacht, everywhere but Swaben and Switzerland.)

• 3 1/4 to 3 1/2 c. flour
• 1 c. milk, warmed
• 1/4 c. sugar
• 1 tsp. yeast (half a package)
• 1 tsp. salt
• 2 eggs
• 6 Tb. butter

Dipping sugar

• 1/3 c. sugar
• 1/4 to 1/2 tsp. cinnamon (optional)

Measure 3 1/4 c. flour into a large (3 quart) bowl, and make a "well" in the flour. Just a hole, not all the way down to the bottom of the bowl. Pour some of the warmed milk into the well, about 1/4 c. Don't sweat being particulary accurate. Add in about 1 Tb. of the sugar and all the yeast. Mix the milk, sugar, yeast and a little bit of the surrounding flour into a batter.

Now, let it sit for half an hour. Keep the remaining milk covered and warm; I leave it on an electric burner turned to warm.

This is how all German recipes make yeast breads. Make a well in the flour, mix a little liquid, etc. It's called a Vorteig, a pre-dough. It proofs the yeast (that is, proves the yeast works -- very important when you buy yeast from a store that sells mostly Cheetos to college students). Years ago, before modern instant yeasts, this steps was also important to remove the dead yeast cells encapsulating a core of living cells; not strictly necessary in these days of instant yeast, but this is all about tradition.

Just before the half hour is up, melt the butter, then combine it with the remaining milk and sugar, the two eggs, beaten, and the salt. Mix this into the proofed yeast, and mix in the remaining flour. If the dough looks wet and gloopy, add up to a quarter cup flour more. However, you want a soft dough that isn't dry, unless you want fried bread dough rather than doughnuts.

Turn the dough out onto a floured work surface and knead just until the dough is smooth, no more than a dozen times. This is not the time for an upper body work out; that's foccaccia. The dough should be soft, sticking just a bit to the heel of your hand. Put it into a bowl (about quart-size), cover and put into a warm room for half an hour.

This is a good time to do the dishes. Of course, in my house, any time is good for the dishes, they always seem to be there.

After half an hour, the dough with not have doubled in size. This is OK. Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured work surface and roll out to be about 3/8 to 1/2 inch thick. (When I made these directions, I measured the thickness, but measuring the height and width would have been better.) Using a pizza or pastry cutter (mine's plastic and says "Guiseppe's" on it -- best pizza in Bucks County), cut the dough into strips about three fingers wide. Cut each strip into rectangles about the size of the palm of your hand, or into squares, or diamonds. Or skip the strips and cut them into circles with a drinking glass, and cut the holes out with a shot glass, like my grandmother did when I complained that doughnuts are round, not square. Cut out all the doughnuts before frying.

Right now you can stop and freeze the doughnuts to fry them later. This will almost stop the yeast completely, but won't kill it. Place doughnuts onto a sheet of wax paper on a plate or baking sheet (plate is easier to transport); doughnuts should not touch each other. When the wax paper is covered, put down another sheet, etc. Cover with a last sheet of wax paper, then tinfoil and freeze.

In a wide soup bowl or on a plate, mix 1/3 c. sugar with cinnamon. Stir until cinnamon coats the sugar. There should be just enough cinnamon to give a hint to the final doughnut.

Heat canola or peanut oil to 350 to 375 degrees. An electric frypan would be really good for this. If you are frying without benefit of a self-calibrating appliance (say, frying in your wok), make sure the thermometer is calibrated: boil some water. Does the thermometer read 212 degrees? No? Time for a new one.

Gently slide in a few doughnuts; not so many that the oil is crowded. Cook until golden brown, flip and cook the other side to golden. If the oil is not too hot, this should take at least two minutes a side.

Drain on paper towels and cool enough to handle.

Drop each doughnut into the cinnamon sugar, and coat.

Eat immediately or within 24 hours. If you can't eat them immediately, and will be able to fry them when you can eat them, freeze the dough before frying.

Alles Gutes!

Posted by SusieJ at 06:59 PM | Permalink

Anyone who enjoys food should visit New Orleans at least once. From low cuisine to haute, the crescent city has it all.

The first year I visited New Orleans I also visited Las Vegas. Vegas was OK, but New Orleans was fantastic. People live in New Orleans. Sure, people live in Vegas too, but Vegas is for tourists. In New Orleans, all the cool stuff -- the great food, the parties, the shops, the music -- is for the locals, who are more than happy to share with tourists. There might be areas so touristy a local wouldn't be caught dead, but even in the French Quarter there are fantastic restaurants glossed over by the guidebooks.

Mother's isn't in the French Quarter; it's on the other side of Canal St., and is just fantastic. It serves cafeteria style, a sort of "home cooking." In this case, "home cooking" means Cajun.

A German once said to me, "America has no Esskultur," no eating culture, no cuisine. She was thinking of McDonald's, which I'll admit is pretty culturally null. Even if she had thought of all the fantastic cuisines to be found in American cities, she could have rightly pointed out that these are cuisines from outside the country, from Asia, Europe, Africa and South America. But that misses the great strength of American culture: the blending we do. Today this food fact of life is called "fusion," but it's really food evolution: making what you know with what you have, even if it's not "authentic," and creating something new and better.

New Orleans is the first example of American fusion that comes to my mind. Settled by the French from France and Canada, captured by the Spanish, re-captured by the French, then sold to the young American government, it is and has been for centuries a hodgepodge of cultures from Europe, Africa and America. Whatever else may result from the mingling of cultures, the food is always the better for it.

Two years after my first visit, I went back with my husband and our exchange student to show off another side of American culture and life. We stayed in a bed and breakfast in the Garden District, rode the trolley into town, toured the Audobon Zoo, a swamp in Slidell, and a plantation outside Baton Rouge. Best of all, we ate. We ate po boys, crawfish, beignets, oysters, catfish, and I forget what all. We had breakfast in diners and on Jackson Square. We had coffee in cafes down little alleys. We had dinner one night at Lilette, whose chef/owner was deservedly named one of the best new chefs by Food and Wine magazine; a small wedding party was celebrating in the back of the restaurant. I have wanted to return to New Orleans because it seems such a shame to eat at Lillette only once.

Food is an export business for New Orleans. My own cubpoards house hot sauces, Zatarains rices, Cafe du Monde Beignet mix and two cookbooks of Louisiana cuisine. I'll make the last of the beignets and coffee with chicory for a German visitor in September; I'll show her our photos and talk about how America assimilates cultures. How it can be better than Europe, in that you need drive only a few blocks in many cities to experience a bit of foreign cultures (and yet you can fly thousands of miles and still eat the same fries as home). I'll wonder when I'll be able to get more mix, or better yet, set in the Cafe due Monde again.

I want to see New Orleans and the Gulf Coast rebuilt. I want to return for the food, the music, the people, the shopping, the culture that is so American yet so unlike Philadelphia. If New Orleans rebuilds I'll be down there as soon as I can to spend my tourist dollars and do my part to help rebuild.

My opinion is not built on careful weighing of the costs of rebuilding vs the cost of relocating nearly half a million people. (And that is just New Orleans alone. That doesn't include the surrounding parrishes and the Mississippi and Alabama coasts.) Economically, the country will spend billions either rebuilding New Orleans and Mississippi, or relocating and finding employment for everyone.

Culturally, I don't think we can afford not to rebuild New Orleans. New York City and Los Angeles epitomize America for many. New Orleans exemplifies that very American mix of cultures. Its food shows us what America should strive for: a unified whole that is greater than the sum of its parts.

Posted by SusieJ at 12:18 PM | Permalink

My earliest cooking memory is of my mother making dinner, with the small black and white TV playing PBS in the corner of the counter. On the TV was Julia Child, of course. My mother was the "Wild Woman of Warminster"; she made fondue and seafood newburg; we ate Chinese takeout; her friends were vegetarians and drove Beetles. And yes, this was certainly due to the influence of Mastering the Art of French Cooking and The French Chef.

Today, August 13, I feel like a favorite aunt has died. Child's influence on my cooking is certainly not as direct as on this woman; I am one of the great many home cooks and bakers who caught and kept her enthusiasm

There were many reasons for the rise of foodie culture in the 70s, but Julia Child did much to bring foodie-ism to the people, and bring the cooking show to TV. She wasn't the first TV chef, only the first successful TV chef. The French Chef didn't gloss over a topic, cramming a three-course dinner into a half hour. Like my other favorite TV chefs, she explored each dish in depth, giving the beginner a good foundation, and enough detail for the expert. Her shows of the 80s expanded somewhat to the menu format, but by Baking with Julia, she had returned to doing one thing well per show. Baking with Julia provided the cake and icing recipe for my friend Suzanne's wedding cake. It's a book for the baker who knows the basics and is confident with them. It is not an exhaustive collection -- no cheesecake -- but it is an extensive one.

Perhaps most impressive is that Child didn't start cooking until her 30s, and published her first cookbook at 49. She was 51 when her show first appeared, and continued working into her late 80s. Visitors to her kitchen -- now stored in the Smithsonian Museum -- remark upon how normal it is, with few "professional grade" appliances. She preached the value of skill throughout her career, and practiced what she preached.

Thanks to the marvels of television and the printing press, she'll always be with us.

Guten Appetit Julia!

Posted by SusieJ at 12:23 PM | Permalink