chickpea/garbanzo, socca/panisse...

Somewhere, in an Elizabeth David book or maybe MFK Fisher, I read about an Italian/Provençal street food that is a chickpea-flour pancake..
I missed out on the real thing in my visits to both those places--back then, I had not known it existed--but I knew from the description that I would love it.

In the Silver Spoon cookbook--the Joy of Cooking-scale Italian food compendium translated and put out by Phaidon a few years ago--I found two recipes involving farinata: one, the pancake. Two, a chickpea flour polenta, cut into strips and fried. I decided to try the pancake. The batter is a lot of water--six cups--and quite a bit of oil, and some chickpea flour and salt.
I heated some olive oil in a cast iron skillet and swished a rosemary bough in it. I poured in as much of the batter as would fit and put it in the oven.

Eventually, it cooked down--the water evaporated--and it became deceptively eggy and custard-like--and, to this omnivore who lives in a vegetarian home, also reminiscent of chicken fat (though it was, of course, just flour and water and oil). Authentic? I have no way of knowing.

It was different, and not bad at all. We ate as much of it as we could--nearly half, I think. I must disclose that later, we both experienced indelicate digestion.

lavender + lime

Just a month ago, I started some paperwhite narcissus bulbs in two shallow bowls.

Their perfume, which I find mysterious and slightly challenging, is, I believe, responsible for this morning's similarly challenging biscotti flavor: lavender flowers with lime.

For months I have been dreaming of a crisp, dry, not-too-sweet biscuit to have with tea. I imagined that cornmeal would be involved, and bought some to have on hand. An aromatic seed would infuse the morsel. 

Eventually, I resolved to try the anise-almond biscotti recipe from Alice Waters' new Simple Food.

I have never been a huge fan of biscotti (the 1997 biscotti I remember from an early adolescent coffee house experience had a squiggle of icing piped on it, I recall...like mustard on a hot dog), but I have enjoyed those dry cellophane-wrapped Stella D'oro cookies from the supermarket. I suppose they remind me of my italian grandmother, whose heritage I did not recognize until years after her death. 

This biscotti recipe does not call for cornmeal, or butter...simply eggs and flour and sugar, with almond, aromatic seeds of choice, and a citrus zest. In the first batch, I replaced the anise with fennel, and added currants. Marvelous!

The second batch was conceived of and carried out by sea-faring Benji, and was lightly flavored with coriander and clementine zest.

Today, the third batch: it was a toss-up between anise seed, which I have by now procured, and delicate lavender blossoms, which caught my eye in the bulk spices aisle. Are they truly edible?

The sight and smell of them transport me back to the markets of Aix-en-Provence, where I arrived two years ago next week.

The lime just happened to be the only citrus in the house with a good firm skin. 

And so: when I mixed it up, the lavender blossoms remained lavender, and the lime zest was a nice green. By the time they are thrice-baked, these colors fade...but it is initially a striking combination.

sourdough starter

 

Some weeks ago, I was initiated into the world of sourdough. I have long been interested in it, and every year when blueberries and plums and grapes are around, I think about mixing up flour and water and those unwashed wild fruit and and allowing it to bubble and rise from the wild yeasts on the skins of the fruit. But I never have.

At last, my sourdough dreams were "jumpstartered" when a friend brought us some already-thriving starter in a jar. It came from far downeast, too, which pleased me...

So far we have used it twice, and we have much to learn about its mysterious ways. The bread we made last week was almost unpalatably sour, and lacked salt. We think we know what went wrong: too much time fermenting, not enough salt.... last night, though, we mixed up the sourdough hotcakes from Sandor Ellix Katz' Wild Fermentation, and they are good. 

Sourdough baking requires at least 8 hours of forethought, and I appreciate this change of pace though it is the thing that keeps me from practicing breadbaking regularly. 

The fact remains--good bread is extremely hard to come by. 

Years ago, I worked in a wonderful small bakery of the sort that should be in every neighborhood. Incomparable naturally leavened breads were made fresh each morning, and baguettes twice a day, along with buttery pastries. There were no wholesale accounts--it was all foot traffic-- and it was cash only. Prices were not inflated. The owner had trained at Acme Bread Company. It was a wonderful place that succumbed eventually to owner burn-out (in its place today is a bakery producing comparable-quality pastries--though they rather shamelessly use fresh berries and summer fruits in midwinter--but the current owners are not interested in making bread. I miss the old bakery to this day, but I feel certain that one day we will see more of that sort of place, when the bakers' secrets are more widely known and a whole class of dedicated craftsmen find their place. 

Pancakes

We've had a number of nice pancake-mornings recently. My dear companion, coming at it with fresh eyes (never a pancake-maker before this!) produced the fluffiest, softest ones I've ever enjoyed...and they were not made with buttermilk. 

When I lived alone, my own method for pancakes was haphazard, improvisational, and concerned with fiber and nutrition and economy of egg. One egg or none at all, a dash of leaven and salt, and a few loose handfuls of oat bran, cornmeal, pulverized nuts or whatever was on hand,  just held together with a slurry of milk and a bit of refined flour.  For company and special brunches I made proper pancakes  with real buttermilk, which still seems like a revelation. My mother introduced me to the wonders of buttermilk pancakes, but long after my childhood was over...when I was growing up we relied on dried buttermilk from a can! 

So I was quite surprised when my dear breakfast-maker whipped up the most basic pancakes imaginable: a bit of white flour, a few teaspoons of sugar, a dash of salt, two eggs, some melted butter and the right quantity of milk... we were short some of the flour, as it turned out. These simple pancakes turned out wonderfully fluffy and light, quite indulgent-tasting and unlike the coarse "flapjacks" I used to scarf down alone each morning.

Re-issue: on Oyster Stew

In December 2004, I published this essay in an early incarnation of New Gastronomer. I came across it just now and find it interesting to review, three long years later. At the time, I was living in an untidy, vermin-infested apartment with other art students, and felt quite unsure of how to proceed.  Shortly thereafter, I made the stew as an accompaniment (alongside fruitcake) to my infamous final art school critique, a bitter session which led to my withdrawal from that institution. Everything happens for a reason!

Oyster Stew
I am surprised and a little ashamed that I started this community before ever having read MFK Fisher. Or at least--I am surprised that I had not read MFK fisher before starting this community. Or something. Fascinated though I was by Alice Waters, I confess now that I was scarcely aware of Fisher's legacy until just a month or two ago. So I have been reading up.

Last night I was reading from An Alphabet for Gourmets, beginning with A is for Dining Alone. She states, "There are few people alive with whom I care to pray, sleep, dance, sing, or share my bread and wine." and so, in the absence of those few people--and with her difficulty garnering invitations to dinner due to her reputation as a cook and a person knowledgable about food--she prefers to dine alone. 
But it is not easy to cook for oneself always. So for a while she was resigned to "hit-or-miss dinners" of "tinned soups, boxed biscuits amd an occasional egg." 
It was this line I was thinking of when I found myself at Stop-N-Shop on the way home this evening. I generally avoid those kinds of places, as I am increasingly unnerved by the shiny, bloated produce and have little use for anything else they sell. But I was on my way home from a visit with G. in our studio during which we ate cheese (a sharp cheddar) and crackers (carr's water crackers) and drank an Ommegang ale I am fond of. We both became pleasantly hazy from the ale and I wanted to doze off in my chair--it was an extremely pleasant evening.

Later, at the supermarket, the aisles of "tinned" goods intrigued me. I got a few cans of tomatoes, because they are occasionally called for. And then...I saw the oysters.

I bought a can of oysters and a quart of milk and two small boiling onions, although the recipe for oyster stew on the back of the can called for celery, not onion--my squeamishness about the produce section prevented me from it, and somehow the dry papery skins of onions make me feel better about them even if I do not trust their provenance. Then I came home and consulted Consider the Oyster for another recipe, to compare the two. I found no mention of tinned oysters, of course, but proceeded in this way:

cook one small onion, minced, in two tablespoons of butter, until the onion is tender. sprinkle in some celery seed if you have it. tip 1 tin of oysters and their liquor into the pot and cook until oysters just begin to curl. Add two cups of milk. when it is hot, season with sherry, salt and pepper. Serve hot.

It was enjoyable. I was suspicious of the canned oysters themselves--the bellies were hard and a greenish color, sometimes--but the broth was delicious.

Popovers

Popovers from our new (old) cast-iron pans:

Served with some of last summer's strawberry-mulberry jam:

unlikely origins

We found our way to Russo's in the afternoon--an agreeable place to shop when the farmer's markets shut down.

We were motivated to go in part because we realized that we use enough olive oil now to warrant buying a large can (I used to be more restrained with it, and was terrified of having a large unused quantity go rancid--I have experienced rancid cooking oils in other people's homes, and am alert to it). In any case, I have been using plenty of EVOO recently, understanding that a time may soon come when it is unavailable or prohibitively expensive to transport here from Italy or California (and when this happens...I suppose we'll start using lard more, right? Or duck fat....)

A side note: I am half-waiting for Eliot Coleman to figure out a way to trick olives and lemons into growing in the Northeast, as he has done with my favorite, the artichoke! (What a revelation it was to find those at the Blue Hill co-op last summer. We enjoyed them on the deck of our friend Ben's home Chamois, in the middle of the bay, whisking up a mayonnaise while underway!)

What did we manage for dinner?

I chopped up part of a napa cabbage, and grated a black radish over it, and dressed it with lemon and oil....

casually hacking up a napa cabbage in this way reminds me of my visit to Suméne, France. I stayed with Sophie, an aerobics and dance instructor. She had part of a napa cabbage on her counter, and a large plastic bowl containing what was left from the last time she had had part of the cabbage, and for our quick  dinner before aerobic pour les veilles dammes  she just added a little fresh cabbage to the old and tossed it together. I think she may have added some kind of dressing, but I can't remember what it was. The whole scenario struck me as vaguely squalid and possibly depressed, but maybe just French--I could not decide. It didn't matter, as I was prepared to be influenced. And actually the salad was quite refreshing. in any case, it was this experience introduced me to the tender and mild napa!