Sourtooth

the Ponsford life

2009-10-16T09:48:00.005-05:00

I love this picture of Lewie, even though it's blurry. Lewie Dewandler, who lives on the Ponsford prairie and has been parching our wild rice for years (and is one of most bullshit-slingingest, tender-hearted characters I've ever met) broke his foot this summer and can't do the heavy lifting and stoking that parching requires--but also can't stay away from the parching shed. I said, you're sitting pretty close to that fire. Then the barrel rolled back toward him on that track by his elbow and he leaned over and kissed the oily, sticky, hot wingnut.

His son and daughter-in-law parched our rice this year, the same way Lewie has always done it, the best way: over a wood fire. (This wasn't ours. We had only three bags, or 135 pounds, which is a lot for us but just fringe for them.)

Here's Aaron's dad, just before he almost tipped the canoe. He and our friend Jim riced the creek below the house this year and in just three strenuous, hot 2-hour sessions, they had the batch.

I love fresh-rice day, when we bring home the finished rice that was gathered in the "front yard." Indian creek: you can't swim in it, but you can eat it.

Like every year, I cook the rice very simply when we first get it, to get a sense of the batch. I posted the recipe for simple wood-parched wild rice with thyme and garlic in the Enterprise this week:

http://www.parkrapidsenterprise.com/event/article/id/20242/

But back to Dewandler's place. A wild-rice parching mecca and a toddler's paradise, the rolling farmyard is full of wandering dirty dogs and clumps of weathered half-broken toys, all cooler than the ones Hank has at home. Lewie's grandkids run around on their own mini-four-wheelers, and Hank commandeered one right away. Poor kid, living in the country and no four-wheeler to call his own.

Serena reclaimed hers with a wordless point.

He understood exactly. And grieved for hours afterward.

the bread baker's apprentice . . .

2009-10-08T10:15:00.001-05:00

makes flour pictures

and learns a new word: tacky.
All of this eats up an hour and usually requires a shirt change, but even if his help slows me down, I'm not in a hurry. When it comes to bread, time is flavor.

I've a big devotee of leisurely bread--sourdough, levain, poolish--but not necessarily a regular practitioner. I mean, it's tough to get into sourdough! You have to be either driven by professional discipline or consuming passion, both of which require scads of time. Even for me, a food-obsessed ex-chef, it requires time I sometimes do not have.

So I came up with this bread that I can start right away in the morning and finish by dinnertime, and it comes together so easily that even us slow-waking people of the world can assemble it before they have that first rousing cup of coffee in hand. The key was to come up with a ratio of cold buttermilk to hot water which, when added together to the yeast and molasses, create an ideal blood-warm temperature for proofing the yeast. So you don't have to take the temperature of the water or worry about burning your yeast with scalding water, which is what I usually do when I'm not totally on top of it. I must have come up with this method in the late afternoon.

The bread itself is a great daily loaf: mostly rye, so it stays moist and soft for days, with a deep dark caramelized crust that tastes like sweetened, toffee barley--if there were such a thing. Anyway, a big slice of it with a little cheese on top lasts me until noon (and beyond) and it tastes wholesome without being wholesome. Less hippie co-op, more Berlin.

Here's the finished loaf

and more of the little bread-baker, working on his pinch-and-fling technique for dusting the board:

For the recipe (and more blah-blah about rye bread) go to my local newspaper column: http://www.parkrapidsenterprise.com/event/article/id/20019/group/entertainment/

pickled plum trajectory

2009-09-24T14:43:00.002-05:00

Here's our plum tree at the bottom of the hill, bent nearly in two from the weight of the plums. They're small this year but profuse.

I cooked them initially in a sugar syrup spiked with lots of vinegar and a pungent bag of cloves and crushed cinnamon sticks. The recipe I followed, a very old french one, called for 30 cloves but I added only 12 or so. In the words of Thomas, the Austrian sous chef at the Danube restaurant in NYC: "too many cloves tastes like too much Christmas." So true, dude.

But I followed the rest of the recipe to the letter. It's a classic fruit confit, or preserve, as we say in English. Boil the syrup, skim it, add the plums and bring to a boil. Remove plums with a skimmer and reboil the syrup to concentrate it. Add the plums back in and leave to steep. Repeat two more times before canning it.

The long slow soaking in the increasingly heavy sugar syrup causes the fruit to absorb the sugar and gradually turn denser and sweeter and almost candied. It's like an exchange between the fruit and the syrup: the fruit absorbs sugar, the syrup takes on the flavor of the fruit. Eventually, they achieve a similar sugar density, which is what makes them safe to keep for a long time.

Ah geez, is this making any sense? It's kind of technical. But all any of us need to know is that this three-day process makes the plums taste really, really good, almost lush: softer but denser . . . sweeter but still tart around the pit.

Sometime this winter I have to make a pate (maybe a coarse one, with duck) so that I can serve these alongside. I wait patiently for the duck hunters who troll our creek in the wee hours on Saturday mornings to feel bad about disturbing our weekend sleep and lob us a duck. In the meantime, I'm going to serve the plums with a lemon pound cake tomorrow for my cooking class. Here's that recipe.

Lemon Yogurt Pound Cake with Pickled Plums

Cake adapted from an old Saveur Magazine

3 sticks butter, plus more for the pan, at room temperature

3 cups flour, plus more for the pan

1 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon fine salt

3/4 cup whole milk yogurt

1/4 cup fresh lemon juice

1 teaspoon pure almond extract

1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

1 teaspoon pure lemon extract

3 cups sugar

6 large eggs, at room temperature

Lemon Syrup:

1/3 cup fresh lemon juice

1/3 cup sugar

Heat oven to 325°. Generously grease a light-colored 10" tube pan with butter. Add 2 tbsp. flour; turn the pan to coat it evenly with flour, tap out any excess, and set aside. (The inside of the pan should be smoothly and evenly coated with butter and flour, with no clumps or gaps.)

Using a sieve set over a bowl, sift together remaining flour, baking powder, and salt. Repeat 2 more times. In a measuring vessel with a pourable spout, combine yogurt and lemon juice and the almond, lemon, and vanilla extracts. In the bowl of a standing mixer fitted with a paddle, cream butter at medium-low speed until light and fluffy, about 2 minutes. Gradually add sugar, 1⁄4 cup at a time, scraping down the sides of the bowl with a rubber spatula, and beat until satiny smooth, about 3 minutes.

Add 1 egg at a time to the butter mixture, beating for 15 seconds before adding another, and scraping down the bowl after each addition. Reduce the mixer speed to low and alternately add the flour and milk mixtures in 3 batches, beginning and ending with the flour. Scrape down sides of the bowl; beat just until the batter is smooth and silky but no more.

Scrape batter into prepared pan and firmly tap on a counter to allow batter to settle evenly. Bake until light golden and a toothpick inserted in center of cake comes out moist but clean, about 1 hour and 15 minutes. Let cake cool in pan on a rack for 30 minutes. Invert cake onto rack.

For the glaze, combine the sugar and lemon juice in a small pan over low heat and cook, stirring, until the sugar melts. Brush the warm syrup on the cake, in two additions, until all of the syrup has been absorbed.

Slice the cake and serve with pickled plums (and whipped cream, if you like).

Pickled Plums

From The Good Cook: Preserving, by Time Life Books, Richard Olney, Editor

Makes about 6 pints

4 pounds slightly underripe plums, each pricked in server places with a needle
8 cups sugar
1 cup water
2 ½ cups vinegar (white or apple cider)
5 cinnamon sticks, broken into small pieces
20 whole cloves

Make a spice bag by placing the cinnamon and cloves in the center of a clean square of cheesecloth, tying up the four corners into a bundle. In a large saucepot, bring the sugar and water to a boil over high heat and cook for about 10 minutes to make a clear syrup. Add the vinegar and the spice bag and boil for five minutes more.

Add the plums and bring the mixture to a boil over medium heat; to avoid breaking the fruit do not boil it hard. Skim.

Remove the fruit from the syrup with a skimmer, then boil the syrup over high heat for five minutes.

Remove from the heat, return the plums to the syrup and allow the mixture to coo. Refrigerate for 24 hours.

The next day, bring the mixture to a boil, remove the plums, boil the syrup for five minutes, return the plums to the pan and let the mixture cool. Let stand another 24 hours. Put the plums into pint jars, cover and process for 20 minutes in a boiling water bath. Store for at least six weeks before using.

Brooklyn kitchen . . .

2009-09-16T11:49:00.002-05:00

I'm sorry, but you just can't compete with this. The beauty of cooking here is almost too much sometimes.

Washing tomatoes in my enamel sink.

Dishes are a chore, but the view helps. Even the rogue horseradish on the right, which I can't eradicate from my flower bed, has a certain sturdy elegance.

Shelling beans.

Roma tomato sauce and yellow cherry tomato coulis.

The second coming of favas.

street corn

2009-09-03T15:33:00.000-05:00

I'm holding back a messy pile of recipes and photos that will someday be blog entries--surely, once the garden frosts and wipes out all my looming projects (tomatoes to can, baby eggplants to cook, turnips to pick, etc.).

In the meantime, I'll link to my weekly column in the Park Rapids Enterprise. This week, corn and a few corn recipes. Do try the maple bacon. It's so good that I curse myself for introducing such a fattening, addictive thing into the repertoire.

http://www.parkrapidsenterprise.com/event/article/id/19559/

three guys cleaning fish

2009-09-03T15:19:00.001-05:00

They look happy, don't they? They should, after coming home with a bucket of bluegills.

It should be a crime to deep-fry such fresh fish. I've been reading a lot of Japanese cookbooks this summer, so I knew right away what I wanted to try, a recipe simply called "salt-broiled fish."

After the boys gutted and scaled them, I rubbed the fish all over with a generous amount of kosher salt and then let them sit and perspire for half an hour. I then blotted them and skewered them, two through the gut, just handles really.

Aaron built a licking-hot oak fire and we grilled them quickly and served them with ponzu sauce (soy, mirin, ginger, lime juice, a piece of kombu, really easy to make). There was a little picking and engineering to be done at the table, but once you lifted the backbone off the first side, it was all-clear easy eating.

weekly column

2009-08-07T15:01:00.003-05:00

The food column I write for my local paper, the Park Rapids Enterprise, is now online so that those who don't subscribe to the Enterprise (and you have to ask yourself, why don't you?) may read it. I highly recommend the Enterprise, especially for you Midwestern expats. Nothing I've ever read on the subway has earned me as many curious looks from my over-the-shoulder-reading neighbors as the front page of the Enterprise. Pics of high school royalty are especially odd to them.

This week I wrote about kimchi, a personal passion and a private pig-out food for me. Here's a picture taken after I first packed it into the crock:

and here it is, 8 days later:

As my dad would say, "it's loverly." And the kimchi fried rice, which I just made for lunch, is a must-try.

wild raspberries

2009-07-30T09:11:00.004-05:00

I'm a shameless dork when it comes to picking wild raspberries. That's me in the hooded net shirt. After the year that I came running back to the house with half a bucket of true beauties (the raspberries were comically huge that year, and the deerflies were uncommonly vicious . . .) and a maze of throbbing pink welts dotting my shoulders, my body shaking from the shock of that many deerfly bites all at once, I finally got smart.

Anyway, I'm too busy cooking to write this week! Raspberries, haricots vert and cucumbers all need picking. Kimchi and creme de cassis (made with black currants) are bubbling away in the pantry. Fermented pickles, cherry tomato confit and preserved eggplant are in the hopper. And I need to start freezing raspberries in earnest. I love them dropped into lightly-whole-wheat pancakes.

But here's a quick recipe, if you find some nice raspberries: I dropped some onto my pie crust scraps, sprinkled them with sugar and baked at 400 until lightly golden. So delicious. Hank crushed them in his mouth, proclaiming it "good red tandy." Raspberries=red candy.

And then I had to make pannacotta, because I like a neutral custard with the intense wild berries. I made this one with half-cream/half-yogurt and a touch of honey for flavor, and then sprinkled all of it with Thomas Keller's chocolate walnut dentelle. The crunch is crucial. I'll post the recipe after it appears in next week's Star Tribune.

Here it is:

YOGURT PANNA COTTA

Serves 8.

• 11/2 tsp. gelatin

• 1 tbsp. cold water

• 11/2 c. cream

• 1 tsp. vanilla extract

• 2 strips lemon peel

• 1/3 c. sugar

• 2 tbsp. honey

• 11/2 c. whole milk yogurt

• 2 c. wild raspberries

• 2 tbsp. powdered sugar

Directions

Mix the gelatin with cold water in a small bowl and let sit for 5 minutes.

Heat the cream with the vanilla extract, lemon peel, sugar and honey until steamy. Turn off the heat and let steep until warm.

Whisk the gelatin into the warm cream until dissolved. Add the yogurt and stir until smooth. Pass the custard mixture through a fine mesh sieve into a large liquid measuring cup. Divide the mixture among 8 small custard cups and refrigerate until set, about 4 hours.

Pick through the wild raspberries, discarding bits of leaf and stem. Wash briefly only if they appear dirty.

Pick out 2/3 cup of the least beautiful or softest raspberries, and mix in a bowl with the powdered sugar, smashing with a fork until puréed. Let sit 20 minutes, and pass the mixture through a fine mesh sieve set over the bowl of remaining raspberries. Discard seeds and mix the raspberries and sauce together gently.

To unmold the panna cotta: Run a thin knife around the circumference of the custard to loosen it, and dip the bottoms of the custard cups into hot water. Turn the cup upside down in the middle of a shallow bowl or plate and remove the cup. If the custard doesn't come out, dip it again into the hot water. Serve with the raspberries and sauce.

Truth in Advertising, Highway 10

2009-06-16T09:53:00.004-05:00

My husband has a recurring worry that sets in between the moment he orders and before his food comes. He fears that his plate will arrive with a meager portion and that he won't get enough to eat. Ever since I told him that Jorg (my boss at the german diner I cooked at when I was younger) would gauge portion size by peering out the little window above the line and checking out the size of the customer--large guys got two pieces of schnitzel, diminuitive ladies one small one--he frets that someone in the kitchen will underestimate his hunger. Across the table I'm often worrying that the portion will be huge and I'm going to eat too much, but I know that many other people share his anxiety. They must, because Keith's Kettle, a restaurant on Highway 10, markets to them.

I think the sign is saying, you're going to get enough to eat here. On the drive from Minneapolis/St. Paul to Two Inlets I've passed Keith hundreds of times, maybe a thousand. His face has become both more reassuring and slightly more alarming over time. It's nice to calm the people and let them know they'll be well-fed, but let's not glamorize it, Keith.

Car Cake, Car Cake, Car Cake

2009-05-24T16:55:00.006-05:00

I really geeked out on this. And by the end of the night I had somehow reeled Aaron into the action, too. He was wishing he had a few chisels in the house (to notch windows or some such craziness) but he did pretty well with the knife. We were going for a muscle car, but it ended up looking more like a Chrysler K-Car, no?

Underneath, it's a lemon pound cake, about three layers for the road and three for the car, cemented together with lemony cream cheese frosting. I topped it with homemade marshmallow fondant (super easy to make, and very fake-tasting, but the kids loved it), tinted black for the road and (obviously) blue for the car. Chopped walnuts mixed with brown sugar for the gravel.

But Hank didn't really care what it tasted like. We had to hold him back from the "Car Cake! Car Cake! Car Cake!" His little arms and legs were swinging.

Here's a nice one of Aaron's grill and headlights.

Brotchen fur den Arbeiter am Berlin

2009-05-10T23:32:00.015-05:00

When I worked at the Schwarzwald Inn on Main Street in Park Rapids (it's a German-inflected American Diner) we had a section on the menu called Sandwiches fur den Arbeiters (or something, excuse my German, but sandwiches for the worker), hot sandwiches that involved stacking clods of roast pork or beef--or three hamburger patties--between squishy white bread, cutting the sandwich on the diagonal, spreading out the points, dropping a ball of mashed potatoes in now yawning space in the middle and covering the entire thing--to the plate's golden border--with tanned, leatherish gravy.

Now, most of the food in Berlin was far better than anything at the Schwarzwald, but I picked up on some sort of German guiding principle that made this hot beef possible in the first place.

In the mornings we ate these enormous sandwiches.

I couldn't keep up that pace if I lived there, but I woke up every morning thinking about that awesome pumpkinseed bread (kurbiskernol brotchen). I never finished them. Now I know where the German side of my family gets their idea of a serving. Germany is a country full of food-pushers, feeders, pushy women like my Grandma Dion who heave new hills of unwanted food onto your plate when you turn your head.

At Galleries Lafayette food court, I found these--the most adorable sausages I've ever seen. I just had to buy them for Aaron, though I probably ate more than he did. They were tangy, like soppressata. Some are rolled in dried herbs, others in black pepper and some in pecorino cheese.

Now, my half-eaten piece of rhubarb meringue cake. It was lovely (crisp on the bottom and everything below the marshmallowy sugar cloud was brilliantly unsweet) but again, it suffered from a portion control problem. I kind of felt like the incredible shrinking woman over there . . . all the food just kept getting bigger.

I felt like a tool taking a picture of my breakfast sandwich, but whatever. I took better stock of the whole food experience as I pored over German cookbooks at the wonderful Dussman (like a more upscale Barnes and Noble). I realized that every time I go to Germany I realign my culinary sights, or widen them, to include humbler ingredients. Like, "oh yeah . . . a good potato with flaxseed oil. So nice."

The thing I like about German food (good German food, I mean, and it's not ubiquitous over there) is that they give their plain jane ingredients higher aspirations. Potato salad, for example, can be inspired, with just the right amount of vinegar and perfect miniature cubes of bacon ; bitter greens get an artful and generous sling of tangy dressing and they never crush the greens; they make about 30 different kinds of pancakes, some flat and flappy, some soaring, some cumulous . . . but in general, it's generous cooking, and honest, and I believe that those are two qualities that any important cuisine requires. In some ways, German food is a lot like Midwestern food: there's a big fat bland lid sitting on top of this sincere, vibrant, fresh food culture. It takes just a little jostling to shake it loose. And even though it's a very generous cuisine, the good stuff always shows a certain sense of restraint.

The Famous Pearson's Salted Nut Roll

2009-05-06T10:49:00.018-05:00

Extreme frugality, coupled with a real respect for industrial food, has led us to this cultural cul-de-sac: here in the rural Midwest, we like to make our own candy bars.

As city people are dropping cash to replicate the cucina povera dishes of Tuscan grandmothers (such as panzanella—stale bread salad—and spaghetti cacio e pepe--pasta with pecorino), out in the Midwestern countryside we make replicas of store-bought treats: bar cookies that taste just like a snickers bar or, even better, a mars bar; sticky cakes meant to summon up taste memories of heath bars; our own minature reese’s peanut butter cups. On the savory side, we make homemade mini meatballs in light tomato sauce that tastes like spaghettios (Okay, I confess: that one’s probably mine alone). I have neighbors who preserve their own alaska-caught salmon and boast that it tastes “as good as from the store.” And probably better, I want to say, but hold my tongue.

On the other hand, maybe it’s not just thrift but the distance you live from town that spurs you to make your own candy bars. What if you're marooned out in the woods, or snowed in, and you're craving something decadent and junky? Believe me, you'll figure out a way to get it.

Last week I was craving a Pearson’s Salted Nut Roll, that wonderful candy bar made right in St. Paul on West 7th Street, but I didn’t want to drive the five miles to the Two Inlets Country Store to get one. So I sifted through some internet recipes and most called for marshmallows, which I didn’t have. In the back of my pantry I found a stowaway jar of Marshmallow Fluff, long past its prime, if that's even possible. (It tasted fine.) And then for the caramel I melted down all of my mom’s homemade caramels left over from Christmas. (You could use those caramels in little wrappers). I made a snake of marshmallow fluff nougat, covered it in melted caramel, rolled the thing in peanuts, and presto, I had what I wanted. Unlike the salmon that was “just as good” as the canned stuff at the store, this one was better than anything I could buy.

In fact, it was a temptress. After a few days of Aaron and I taking secret turns whittling small chunks off of the nut roll, I walked into the pantry, sure it was all gone by now, to find just the end nubbin wrapped in about an acre of crumpled plastic wrap. Clearly, he was hiding the last of it from me, but as I lobbed it into my mouth I felt no guilt. I can always make another nut roll. Or maybe next time I'll attempt a Whatchamacallit, a candy bar that I love unconditionally.

pearson’s salted nutroll

makes 2 nutrolls

1 cup marshmallow fluff
1 1/2 cup (more or less) confectioner’s sugar
2 cups salted roasted peanuts, lightly crushed
10 ounces caramels, homemade or store-bought

Melt the caramels in a saucepot over low heat.

Beat the sugar into the marshmallow fluff gradually, until it becomes so stiff that mixing is difficult. Turn it out onto a workspace heavily coated with confectioner’s sugar and knead in the rest of the sugar, until it becomes stiff and pliable. Roll into two logs.

Butter the centers of two rectangles (approximately 9 x 13 inches) of parchment paper. Spoon a layer of caramel down the center, in a rectangular shape. Sprinkle with the nuts. Set the sugar roll in the center. (The caramel should be larger.) Cover the roll with more caramel and sprinkle heavily with crushed peanuts, pressing into the caramel.

Immediately slide the roll onto a plate and chill in the refrigerator. Repeat with the second roll.

To serve, trim the excess nuts and caramel and slice into portions. If the roll has flattened, gather the paper around the candy and roll until cylindrical; chill again.

Wrap extra tightly in plastic wrap and store at room temperature. (In a secret place, if necessary.)

slower-than-slow cooking

2009-04-01T17:23:00.010-05:00

artichokes in prosciutto vinaigrette

My article about sous vide cooking (poaching in plastic cryovac bags) came out today in the Minneapolis StarTribune. The recipes I developed for it (artichokes with prosciutto vinaigrette, tender chicken in toasted hazelnut oil and toffeed pears in-a-jar) turned out pretty well. I think they give due props to this awesome method which encourages fruits and vegetables to give up their strongest, most private flavor compounds and meat to collapse to spoon-tenderness.

I haven't cooked with sous vide in a few years, but working on this story reminded me why I should return to it now and then. Cooking in plastic bags sounds weird, but it's the equivalent of turning it up to 11, and doing it at home feels totally rock-star. I'm thinking now of what I can pick in the garden this summer and throw in a bag: fresh shell beans and cippollini onions, and plums from front yard with honey, and maybe spring chicken in cream . . . num.

Check it out, and then get a food saver and play away. (I LOVE mine, maybe too much, and have cryovacked everything loose in the kitchen: wild rice, beans, loose cinnamon sticks . . . it all looks so neat and compact.)

http://www.startribune.com/lifestyle/taste/42262542.html?elr=KArks7PYDiaK7DUqEiaDUiD3aPc:_Yyc:aULPQL7PQLanchO7DiUr

P.S. the artichokes can easily be made vegetarian. In fact, in the summertime I'd probably go this route. Just omit the bacon and prosciutto and add finely chopped black (nicoise!) olives to the final sauce.

Gary's Pizza, Main Street, Park Rapids

2009-03-19T15:30:00.016-05:00

Every region in this country has its own style of pizza. Loyalty to your own regional pizza is cemented in early childhood, during time spent communing with the dough. Have you ever watched a 4 year-old eat a piece of pizza? It's like a scientific exploration. She's lifting cheese, inspecting, licking sauce, chewing it fast, chewing it slow, running her tongue along the dips and hills of the crust. No matter how much your taste buds have since come to learn about authentic sicilian or neopolitan pie, they never forget the taste and texture of your childhood pizza.

I was raised on classic Midwestern pizza. (Yes, there is such a thing.) Big, round pizzas that were cut into a small grid of equal squares (with teeny triangle corners that we used to fight over), with crusts so thin and crispy and lacking leavening that it was almost like a cracker-crust.

These pizza shops, the locus of most birthday parties I threw or attended before age 10, were always named after some uninspired-sounding guy, maybe someone who had tried out a few other jobs before finding this one: Gary’s Pizza, Dave’s Pizza, Sammy’s Pizza. Most shared worn, thin carpeting and bright lighting and a towering chainsaw sculpture of a rotund pizza-chef guarding the door--thickly, garishly painted, usually with a hook of a drinker’s nose--the kind of spooky sculpture that both attracts and terrifies a kid of 7.

But judging from the careful and consistent way they assembled each pie, these guys had found their calling: the edges of the crust shattered from crispness when cut into squares while the cheese, pock-marked with caramelized spots, snapped back into place. The cheese was good enough, "real" at least, but not so good as to pull your attention away from the crackling crust or the spicy, burnt-orange layer of sauce. The thinness was deceptive. The small pieces, too numerous to count, went down easy.

The beauty of this kind of crust came to me much later, after I'd sampled and knew many different pizza styles: Chicago, "authentic" Italian, Brooklyn, Swiss. The Swiss tarte flambee or Flammkuchen was a lot like the Midwestern pizza I knew. The crust had a bit more elasticity than Gary’s. Actually, it was a lot like Dave’s Extra Thin, but with different toppings: a pool of heavy cream, slivers of onion, thin twig-cut pieces of ham and a scattering of aged parmesan. Clearly, they baked it in a raging hot oven; the edges and the bottom grew black blisters and the cream wore the tell-tale brown caps of high blistering heat.

We sat in the damp air of Basel, Switzerland and looked out at a gray courtyard trafficked with ducking people dodging the rain. No one here thought to help us out by cutting our pizza into postage-stamp sized squares like Gary did, so we had to tear the fiery thing into hand-sized pieces ourselves. We ate our ragged scraps of hot, floppy pizza, quickly ordered another, thought of home and of guys like Gary and Dave and their now long-gone pizza places. We considered how things might have been different for them if they had harbored a few more pretensions.

How Midwestern of them not to.

Midwestern Cracker-Crust Pizza with Basel-Style Toppings

Crust:
3 cups + 2 Tablespoons flour
1 teaspoon instant yeast
1 teaspoon sugar
1 teaspoon salt
1 ¼ cup warm water
3 Tablespoons olive oil
rested 4 hours at room temperature

toppings:
4 Tablespoons cream cheese, room temperature
4 Tablespoons grated parmesan cheese + more for garnish
6 to 7 Tablespoons cream (could be milk)
pinch salt
few grinds pepper
ham, cut into thin strips
very thinly sliced arcs of sweet yellow onion
drizzle of olive oil
few grinds black pepper

Combine the yeast, sugar and 1/4 cup warm water in a small bowl, mix and leave until the yeast blooms and puffs, about 10 minutes. Pour into a mixing bowl with the rest of the tepid water, whisk, and gradually add the rest of the flour, salt, and olive oil. Turn out onto a clean surface and knead by hand for 10 minutes, or until smooth and supple. Place in an oiled bowl, cover the dough with plastic wrap and leave to rise for 4 hours at room temperature (or up to 36 hours, refrigerated; you could make this a few days ahead if you want.)

To make the cream topping, mix together the cream cheese, cream and parmesan cheese until smooth.

When you're ready to make pizza, preheat your oven as high as it goes. Yes, as high as it goes, 550 if you can. Pizza ovens average about 800 degrees, so that's nothing.

Divide the dough into about 8 portions and roll into balls. Cover with a towel. Roll very thinly with a rolling pin, about 3 at a time. (I've found that I can get it thinner if I don't use any flour on the counter.)

Preheat two heavy cookie sheets in the oven and then carefully lift them out onto the stove. Put circles of rolled-out dough on each, stretching in the air to keep it from retracting (it will want to shrink). Brush with olive oil, then with with the cream cheese mixture, then the ham, onions, parmesan cheese, black pepper and finally, a drizzle of olive oil. Bake at 550 until blistered and golden brown, about 8 minutes. Serve immediately, cut into tiny squares if you like.

Note: to make the crust even more cracker-crusty, reduce the yeast to 1/4 teaspoon. I like the blooming holes and such that I get from 1 teaspoon yeast, but 1/4 teaspoon IS more authentically midwestern. I guess I've gotten fancy.

Another thing: I've found that the longer I keep age the dough in the refrigerator (24 hours or so) the better the pizza. I've kept it as long as 3 days.

holiday detox

2009-01-11T08:34:00.011-06:00

For the first time in years it seems like I might have actually bulked up over the holidays. My rear view flashes the message that I ate a few more cookies than I made.

In response, I just finished a week of asian-only food (with a breakfast exception, mostly because I'm not sure that hot, fishy soup is my day-breaker of choice).

As diets go, and I'm a lifelong hater, this one is pretty tempting. And I swear I feel lighter already, like I've shrugged off the northern-european butter yoke (or the yolk-yoke!) hanging around my shoulders.

I testify that the following menu doesn't claim to be authentic or loyal to any single asian cuisine. Having cooked in a Chinese restaurant for a year (it's a long story) I know chinese food pretty well, but it's not my favorite asian cuisine. When I'm drooling over flavors I'm usually thinking more about Vietnamese food, or Thai . . . more about lemongrass and chili than gloppy oyster sauce.

But mostly I make it up as I go along, roping together dishes for a single meal that break rules, traverse seas and mock traditions but taste pretty awesome together.

Sadly, I broke this good thing I had going--irrevocably--by making a batch of chocolate chip cookies today. But here are a few memories from last week's delicious detox:

clear chicken soup with rice noodles, hmong herbs and lime

I found these herbs in a bundle at the all-hmong farmer's market in St. Paul (an amazing place . . .). I think there's a variation of basil in there and vietnamese mint for sure, but as for the wider leaf with the deep serrations I have no clue. Any thoughts welcome.

vietnamese pork egg roll salad (over rice noodles, with a traditional vietnamese nuoc mam sauce)

thai "dry curry" with panang curry paste, egg plant and asian greens; steamed sticky rice; papaya salad

chicken ginger noodle (my own personal concoction: chicken, cabbage, julienned ginger, scallions, all finely shredded and stir-fried with par-boiled mung bean noodles . . . topped with crushed peanuts. The saucing is simple: soy, a spoonful of chinese chili bean paste (toban djan), chicken stock and sesame oil. It's a tonic I've been making for years.)

summer rolls with thin slices of leftover roast pork, cilantro, carrot, daikon, mung bean noodles and chinese chives . . . with authentic hoisin sauce, made with chicken livers instead of peanut butter. (Do try! This thick, sweet brown sauce now makes sense!)

korean short rib bul-go-ki salad
This salad is another that figures pretty heavily in my rotation. My closest friend from cooking school made this barbecued beef for me, a traditional korean dish, and then I turned it into a salad with a punchy lime dressing which has now become our perfect middle-of-the-week re-charging dinner.

korean short rib bul-go-ki salad

serves 4

Barbecued Beef
2 pounds beef short ribs
3 Tablespoons sugar
4 Tablespoons soy sauce
1 Tablespoon grated fresh ginger
1 Tablespoon sesame oil
1 teaspoon sesame seeds
1/4 teaspoon salt
10 turns black pepper

Dressing
1 teaspoon grated ginger
1 clove garlic, grated
6 Tablespoons fresh lime juice, from 4 limes
2 Tablespoons sesame oil
3 teaspoons sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 Tablespoons soy sauce

Salad
1 package mung bean noodles (sai-fun)
1/4 head of green cabbage, thinly sliced
2 large carrots, peeled and julienned
1 cucumber, peeled and julienned
handful of cilantro, roughly chopped
1/3 cup toasted peanuts, crushed (optional)

Cut the beef off the bone and trim of silverskin and excess fat. Cut in half and then slice thinly, about 1/4-inch thick, across the grain. Place in a bowl and toss with the remaining marinade ingredients. Marinate up to 1 hour at room temperature.

Whisk together all the ingredients for the dressing.

Bring a 2-quart pot of water to a boil and add the mung bean noodles. Simmer 5 minutes, or until just tender to the bite. Drain and rinse very briefly with cold water. Leave to steam until cool. They will be sticky.

To cook the beef, heat a cast-iron grill pan (or cast-iron skillet) over medium-high heat until a drop of water sizzles rapidly.

Transfer the beef to a paper-towel-lined plate to remove excess marinade. Grill the beef quickly on both sides until cooked through and charred in spots.

To assemble, pile a clump of noodles in the center of the plate. Top generously with cabbage, carrots, cucumbers. Lay some pieces of beef on top and drizzle with a few spoonfuls of dressing. Top with cilantro and peanuts and serve.

My Little Sugar Shack

2008-12-20T10:06:00.004-06:00

This week I spent two evenings hunched over my kitchen counter, my face ravaged with concentration wrinkles, my throat sore from forgetting to drink water, making this gingerbread house.

It turned out pretty well, but the heavy snowfall on the roof was not a creative decision but a necessity: the royal icing, which acts as glue, filled a lot of holes.

I realized that making one of these doesn't require so much an affinity for fine pastry work as it does a skill for construction. I bet that any carpenter could make a better one. I had some problems gluing the walls together (which side to which side again?) and I now know that I should have made larger roof panels to allow for overhanging eaves on either side.

I went a little far with the real sugar windows, but they're so beautiful when the sun shines through them. Besides, that's the part I remember Gretel nibbling on. Once I got the sugar caramelizing, I thought I might as well make a pond, too. I tinted it blue-gray for winter ice.

And I was glad that I saved the plastic figurines from my deer hunting opener cupcakes to populate the yard. In my mind, the yellow gumdrops are path lights. The cracked door beckons Hansel and Gretel to come inside . . .

Any country house worth its salt has a ready rifle leaning by the door. And a wood pile (cinnamon sticks).

I couldn't have done it without my makeshift pastry bags. Rifling through every cooking tool box I had didn't yield the pastry bags that I know I have, somewhere, so I had to improvise. I pushed the coupler to the corner of the plastic quart bag, secured it, cut the tip and then fitted a tip onto it. Pretty slick. I was able to change the tips on all my colors.

Speaking of, I surprised myself by mixing colors that were so "Christmas at South Beach"--aqua and coral--but then after looking at my old Hansel and Gretel Golden book from childhood I realize that I replicated it pretty well. Subconsciously, I suppose.

How pretty is that?

Pa got a Hare!

2008-12-17T19:16:00.008-06:00

Forgive the weather fixation, but it's my first winter here in 10 years and this recent blizzard affected every moment of our lives last weekend, and every meal.

First of all, we were snowed in--literally.

The white stuff had a dense, almost creamy texture and it stuck to everything it hit. The shapes of the things in our yard softened as the snow blurred their edges; the chair sitting by the fire pit grew a foot of white shag pile before its seat finally disappeared. The party that was summer is totally over. This was the view from my front door:

Our half-mile-long driveway was impassable, so we were stuck here for 3 days. We knew it was coming so I stocked up on all the staples (butter, bread and beer chief among them), but nonetheless the dramatics of the storm launched a Little House on the Prairie fantasy, circa The Long Winter. This book, maybe the dreariest of series, chronicles the winter they moved from the Big Woods to some town (Lake Pepin, maybe?) to weather a relentless tirade of blizzards with their usual cheer. (It's a more brutal Little House. The props they use for toys are shabbier and sadder. And Laura bloodies up her little girl hands twisting straw into knots to feed into the fire, but her efforts do keep them from freezing.)

At some point I think that Pa walks through the door with icicles hanging from his eyebrows carrying a rabbit by its two feet. And this is the image that inspired our central dinner of the storm: braised rabbit, italian-stovetop-style, with soft polenta.

I bought a rabbit from a local farmer's market a few months ago and it sat in the freezer waiting for a special two- or three-person occasion. (A rabbit won't feed four, in my experience, although we did have leftovers.)

I removed the legs and frontquarters and then carved out the tenderloins and loins, too. I like to to cook the loins and kidneys very slowly in rosemary brown butter like we did at Danube: we cooked them over very low heat, rolled them around in the pan until they felt firm to the touch and picked up a soft coat of speckled butterfat.

I don't often like kidneys--they taste vaguely acidic, and the likeliest cause of that flavor isn't one I like to consider--but rabbit kidneys taste different: clean, a touch liverish but not much, and pleasantly salty.

I trimmed up the thin flaps of belly, almost as thin as I imagine rabbit ears to be. I seasoned them with salt and pepper, rolled the miniscule but not to be wasted strip of tenderloin inside it and secured it with a toothpick. I was pretty sure the tenderloin would overcook while the belly remained tough, but these two scraps fit together so nicely I gave it a go.

I braised the rabbit very slowly with 2 slices bacon, a handful of dried porcini, many cubes of carrot, onion and celery, a touch of tomato paste, a splash of marsala wine, a bay leaf or two, a branch of rosemary and clove of garlic--pantry odds and ends under an italian umbrella. I sat the pan on my diffuser to keep the heat low and after burbling for just one hour the rabbit tested tender. I covered it tightly and let the meat sit for 45 minutes to rest and reabsorb the flavors and moisture from the sauce. (A key step for cooking rabbit. I remember Bouley doing this, though he would rest his up to 2 hours and I didn't have the patience for that this time.)

(How funny--I'm cooking the most common creature in the woods, the animal that literally kept the pioneers alive, and my only references to it come from fine dining experience.)

I cooked the polenta in milk (with two whole cloves garlic and a bay leaf) and threw in a handful of cracked wheat in the beginning--for texture and nutrition, too. When it swelled as much as I thought possible, I grated in a chunk of aged cheddar and stirred in some olive oil and a hunk of butter.

The rabbit was terrific. Even Hank, Mr. Picky these days, shoveled it in with his spade of a spoon. But the rolled belly/tenderloin surprised me: both were totally tender and looked amazing to boot. (In the photo, the white sliced meat is the loin, the leg is tucked underneath, the belly roll is propped on the side, and the kidney is that mushroom-looking thing on the polenta.)

Some may have their assumptions, but I did not make Aaron pretend that he had bagged the rabbit. However, it did taste richer, and we dissembled it more slowly, because of the blizzard up against the door.

A Platinum Pudding

2008-12-05T22:07:00.016-06:00

I suppose that after years of living in a landscape that looks like this day after day all the winter long, one might find comfort, a certain monochromatic synchronicity, a peace, in a bowl of pure white pudding.

I still don't know if it's for me (this pudding or this winter here in Minnesota) but I'm coming around to its charms. I've taken on the task of returning the annual Rommegrot to its more authentic roots, and in the process, I've eaten many bowls of this ivory mush.

I'm not much a fan of all-white food. I like acidity, punch, big flavors. These things are usually yellow, red or green. And meat, of course, which runs from brown to pink.

Before I married into a Scandinavian family I had heard of the famed blandness of their holiday meals, but nothing prepared me for the all-white table. To be fair, some of the dishes wore sepia-colored dapplings, like the brown spheres dotting the lefse and the shake of cinnamon scattered on the rommegrot, but for the most part everything was pale--eleganlty pale: Skinned white potatoes mashed with milk; steamed lutefisk bearing a dribble of melted butter; meatballs in cream gravy; lefse and butter; white rolls; yifte, a whipped-cream-topped trifle that hid its wild cranberry interior from view, striking me as so very Lutheran; and rommegrot, a warm cinnamon-flecked cream pudding. It tasted as it looked: plain, good, comforting and, like your friend who hasn't had a date in a long time, in desperate need of some spice.

Nonetheless each dish, when isolated from the platinum madness, has its own appeal. I do love the rommegrot, especially when made with thick farm cream and splashed with plenty of butter and strong vietnamese cinnamon--which is how I made it the other day:

The technique is unlike anything I've ever encountered: you reduce the cream by about a quarter, then sift over flour and cook until you have a sandy, thick lump--kind of like the beginning of roux. As it simmers, the butterfat leaches out of the flour mixture and pools on top. You scoop it off and reserve it for ladling on top when it's finished. Then you whisk in milk until it resembles a thick pudding, and season with a little sugar and a pinch of salt. (By the way, I love the translation from the Norwegian that the computer came up with for one recipe I saw today: "Smak with salt." I may have to start saying that.) Cook for another couple of minutes to rid it of all flour taste, then pour into a bowl, top with the reserved butter and sprinkle with cinnamon and sugar.

Rommegrot falls in the tradition of other rich desserts which reduce cream from an already life-threatening richness to an alarmingly thick, and fattening, custard: dulce de leche, English clotted cream, Indian kulfi. The difference is, those cultures tend to eat those things by the spoonful, not the bowlful. But they're generally not in the insulation business, as we are in the far north. Here, we need some serious protection against the cold. Best to start on the inside.

Another snowy vista to illustrate the point. This, the view from my house, a frozen-over Indian Creek. The tufts of grass are wild rice and the speck in the distance is my husband skating.

LUNCH: leek-potato soup with chive oil

2008-11-21T14:17:00.006-06:00

The leeks were the last fresh thing I pulled up from my garden two weeks ago, and I vowed then to do it earlier next year because my hands were caked with wet black dirt and sluggish from the cold. (The cooling trend didn't reverse: It's 1 degree F. today.)

For lunch today I wanted to use them up, but frankly I'm a little sick of leeks in vinaigrette, and potato-leek gratin, and potato-leek soup.

In a gush of mad creativity, I thought "what about leek-potato soup?" It sounds like a brainstorm you'd hear from a three-year-old, but when pushed to its limits, and with the addition of some of the chive oil I made and froze in September, this soup managed to squeeze one more facet out of plain old potato soup. It tastes profoundly of fresh leek (the chive oil really helps) and more like summer than winter, which is a welcome change.

(dirty garden fingerlings)

Just after adding the potatoes to the stockpot, a little northern drama arose. Aaron had said that he was going to go to the little pond to skate and I said, Okay, okay, not thinking much of it, busy editing something and thinking of soup. After an hour passed, I called his cell, which went to message. I started to get scared, envisioning him falling through the newly-frozen ice. (We've only had a week of low temperatures--how thick could it be?) I'll just add the chicken stock, I thought and put the soup on the diffuser on low. Wait, but it would be so much better with garlic. I grabbed a couple and then had a moment of self-scathing doubt: "you're adding garlic to the soup when he could be freezing from hypothermia?"

What happened next tells the story of my obsession better than anything I could ever write.

I whacked one clove out of its skin, found my micrograter in the big drawer in record speed, grated it quickly into the pot, added the stock and threw on my boots and hat and coat and ran out the door. Grabbing a 2 x 8 from where it leaned up against the wood pile (in case I'd have to pull him out from the shore), I jammed the dirty board against the upholstery of my car and took off down the road, turning off onto the trail to the little field which is scarred with frozen ruts. I ran down to the pond, finding him happily circling around our little private skating pond.

He was cold when we got back, though, and appreciated the soup. Slurping it down, he told me that the pond's only 3 feet deep in the center. Good to know.

Leek-Potato Soup with Chive Oil

4 ounces bacon (4 thick slices), diced
4 Tablespoons butter
1 pound leeks (3 large)
1 pound potatoes, such as fingerling or yukon gold, peeled and diced
1 clove garlic, grated finely or pressed
2 1/2 cups chicken stock
1 cup water
1/2 teaspoon dried thyme, crushed
1 bay leaf
3/4 teaspoon salt
15 turns ground black pepper
2 1/2 cups milk (some half-n-half or cream would make it richer)
1/3 cup chive oil (recipe below)

Trim the bottom and top of the leek, leaving 3 inches at the top from where it begins to split off. Cut them in half and split them lengthwise. Run each half under running water, pulling back the leaves, to remove all dirt. Place face-down on paper towels, and then dice into small squares.

Cook the bacon in a stockpot until lightly crisp and remove. Add the butter, leeks and some salt and pepper. Cook until wilted and bright green.

Add the potato, seasoning with more salt and pepper and cook until beginning to soften. Add the garlic and cook one more minute. Add the chicken stock, water, thyme and bay leaf and simmer for 1 hour, or until the vegetables are tender.

Smash roughly with a potato masher, leaving some coarse chunks of potato. Add the milk and remaining salt and pepper to taste. Keep the heat below a simmer at this point to prevent the milk from curdling. Stir in 1/4 cup of chive oil. Serve immediately, with bacon and the remaining chive oil for garnish.

Chive Oil

1 1/4 cups thinly sliced fresh chives
1/2 cup canola oil
1/4 teaspoon salt

(Unless you have a high-speed vita-mix blender, slicing the chives is crucial. Put long lengths in there and you'll be rewarded with a mixture that looks like chewed-up grass. It won't ever puree. I speak, sadly, from experience.)

Put the chives in the blender and add the salt and a drizzle of oil. Blend on high, continuing to drizzle in oil until you have a fine puree. Don't strain. Pour out into a metal bowl set inside a bowl of ice water. Stir continually until cold. Store in the refrigerator, or portion into freezer bags and freeze up to 1 year.

Get Your Ducks in a Row

2008-11-20T11:17:00.009-06:00

Here it is, Midwestern Bounty. Or, Food for the Hard Times, which may be coming our way.

Aaron's Grandma Irene saved this picture to give to me. It was taken in the basement of her house in Grand Island, Nebraska, probably circa the 1970's. You can almost feel the coolness of the basement and the insistent, bright heat trying to muscle its way in through the window. Not everyone knows this, but it can be ungodly hot in the middle plains states in September.

But the thing that strikes me about the photo, after the sheer volume of jars and all the hard work it took to fill them, is the inevitable homogeneity of the winter table. After all, this is a family of three we're talking about here. That's a lot of applesauce! Daily applesauce, I'd say. And twice-weekly carrots.

Crunchier By the Day

2008-11-12T12:49:00.022-06:00

Living up here in the middle of the woods, all hippied-out, shuttling between garden and pantry, I feel like I should be making more granola. I love my mother in law’s granola when I’m at her house: the almost burnt peanuts, the way the darkened clumps bleed into the milk and turn it beige.

But I’m never happy with the granola I try to make at home. It’s never as sweet nor as crisp as it should be, never quite good enough to make me forsake my daily fried egg and toast.

A friend brought up a bag of special granola a few weeks ago, from a boutique-y food shop in Minneapolis. It was pretty good, if a little finely crumbled—like a bagful of dregs—but it had a curious richness to it. The ingredients on the back listed the expected—oats, honey, maple, flax, sunflower, etc . . .—and then the unexpected: peanut butter. Could you add a paste like that to granola? Wouldn’t that ruin its crunch?

Turns out, the peanut butter tenderizes it and it holds onto its crunch, too. I tried it a few days ago, and it’s fantastic. I woke up too early, as usual, and as I tried to lose the needy baby clinging to my ankles, whining and pulling at my pajama pants, I finally pulled him up to sit on my hip and thought of something to make that would make both of us happy. Peanut butter granola.

I hadn’t even wiped the sleep out of my eyes (or out of his) so following a recipe was beyond me. I plopped a hefty spoonful of peanut butter in a bowl, added honey and water, and whisked until smooth. Rifling through the spice shelf, I found the ground cinnamon. For crispness I needed oil, so I added a stream of canola oil and whisked until it emulsified. Then, (putting the baby down to play with some Tupperware) I dumped in about 3 cups of oats. Spanish peanuts were the only type of nut I had, so in they went. So did the last of the bag of dried coconut in the fridge. Once mixed together, I spread it all out thinly on a baking sheet and baked it at 375 degrees until it was crisp and brown. I like dried fruit in my granola, but not over-caramelized, hardened bits of dried fruit, so I stirred some dried currants into the warm granola after I pulled it from the oven.

Now I’m pretty sure I used a lot more peanut butter than the granola I was emulating, due to a sleepy lack of judgment. But the peanut butter flavor is wonderful. And it has an odd effect of tenderizing the granola, making it more like crumble topping or streusel than granola. Regular granola tends to stick in the baby’s craw, and he makes that terrifying choking face, but this stuff he loves and can eat easily.

This all begs the question: what about adding tahini? Or almond or cashew butter? Like a good little homesteader, I'm headed to the co-op.

Peanut Butter Granola

1/2 cup smooth peanut butter (I'm a fan of Skippy Natural)
1/2 cup light honey
1/4 cup water
1/2 cup canola oil
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
3 1/2 cups instant oatmeal (regular okay)
2/3 cup dried coconut (optional)
1 cup spanish peanuts
3/4 cup dried currants or raisins

Preheat oven to 375 degrees F.
Whisk the peanut butter, honey, water, salt and cinnamon in a bowl until smooth. Whisk in the canola oil in a stream until emulsified.
Mix in the oatmeal, coconut and peanuts.
Pour out onto two heavy cookie sheets, spreading evenly. (I line mine with either a silpat or parchment for easier clean-up.)
Bake at 375 for 30 to 40 minutes, or until dark golden brown.
Twice during baking I pull the sheets out and spoon the edges into the centers, then redistribute. This keeps the edges from burning. If some edges do burn, I spoon them out and put them into a bowl for my husband, who actually likes it that way, to snack on. (He's an old-maid popcorn lover, too.)

Buckcakes

2008-11-11T13:14:00.010-06:00

As the sound of a distant gun shot recedes from hearing, I am reminded again that we are living through the fourth day of Minnesota firearms deer opener. We keep our fingers crossed: The baby wears a bright orange hat, when he's not yanking it down in frustration.

Signs of the season are everywhere: big trucks, their drivers seemingly gripped by buck fever (hopefully not by beer) make three point turns right in the middle of the highway; you can spot discarded hunting orange knit hats crumpled in the crease of nearly every dashboard; and more literally, the dead deer strapped to roof racks pile up at the Two Inlets Country Store. The hunky iron scale sitting outside the store wears dots of blood.

But there are sweeter notes to this deer hunting thing. Yesterday I passed my neighbor's 13-year old daughter as she stood on the road at the top of the creek bank, drowning in a men's small orange camo jacket. She held her oversized rifle safely, hands at 10 and 2. We exchanged a few words, a few laughs, she shifted from foot to foot, and she seemed under the completely normal spell of middle-school bashfulness. I left daydreaming about how it would dissipate when it came time for her to pull the trigger, and about the resoluteness she'd need to put her knife to its warm belly and the lack of squeamishness she'd need to yank out its guts.

I guess sweetness needs to be tempered. And no one around here seems to see the incongruity of baked goods that commemorate a mass execution. Deer cookies are everywhere, their heavily frosted faces looking suspiciously like Bullwinkle to me. Hank savored his "co-coo" the other day fully, identifying the eyes before chomping them.

Today the Menahga Bakery, a tiny but warm-blooded coffee house at the front of a cavernous but cozy old-fashioned bakery, featured deer and gun cupcakes. They also sell finnish flatbreads and cardamom breads and danishes of all sorts to a faithful crowd--mostly finns from the area, but also some interlopers and locals like us who drive 20 miles out of our way just to swing through Menahga for a little sweet.

Like a couple of leisurely retired people we hemmed and hawed over our choices, as if these were the last doughnuts we'd ever eat. In a last-minute change of heart I went back to basics, picking out the cupcakes and a plain cake doughnut. Aaron chose a cream-filled, chocolate-glazed raised doughnut. I fished mine out of the box when we got in the car and it was still WARM and the nooks still held droplets of fat. I made the right choice, but now the cupcakes are starting to call me.

Ranchero Sauce

2008-10-12T20:56:00.006-05:00

When I was pregnant I had to have huevos rancheros every single weekend for brunch. My husband Aaron grew more than a little tired of it, especially because the place I liked them best in Brooklyn was no larger than our bedroom, which was also typical of Brooklyn: super small. I didn’t even care if they sat us at the table crammed under the heating duct. (Though he did). I was swaying in my chair, big belly bopping, just waitin’ for my huevos rancheros. (When you're pregnant and stone sober and can't even drink coffee, the focus of brunch changes. It's the little thrills, the spicy kicks, that matter.) The fried eggs and pinto beans and fried chorizo are great, but ornamental. It’s the sauce I adore: smoky and just a bit spicy, tangy with vinegar but rich from reducing.

You can’t buy this stuff--not in Brooklyn that I know of, and certainly not in northern Minnesota. So now when the tomatoes are ripe I always make and preserve a few jars, so that when the Saturday morning craving comes along, I can just flip one open. Huevos rancheros lickety-split.

The sauce also makes an awesome marinade/cooking medium for pork shoulder or butt. Score the pork deeply with a knife, rub it with salt and pepper and then add the ranchero sauce (about 1 pint for a 4-pound roast), massaging it into the meat. Marinate overnight. Place in a roaster, add a little water to the bottom of the pot, cover and slow-bake for 4 to 5 hours at 275 degrees, until a fork sinks in softly. Lift the meat to a platter and pour the sauce into a bowl. Degrease the sauce, shred the pork into chunks and mix it into the sauce. Great with soft tortillas, on sopes, or in a sandwich with avocado and cilantro.

And if you want to make huevos rancheros, heat some ranchero sauce in a small saucepan and serve with fried eggs, freshly-heated tortillas, fresh salsa, beans and lots of chopped cilantro. (Chorizo optional.)

Ranchero Sauce, Chiapas-Style

(Mine is a corruption of Diana Kennedy's sauce for Chiapas Pork)

Yields 4 1/2 pints

13 pounds ripe tomatoes, peeled and seeded
12 cloves garlic
7 dried chiles (mixed bag of piquillo, guajillo, and ancho, heavy on the guajillo)
1 small onion, cut in half
1 teaspoon ground chipotle (or add 1 dried or canned chipotle to the above)
1 red jalepeno (or cayenne to taste)
3 1/2 teaspoons salt
1 Tablespoon sugar
2 Tablespoons white wine vinear
¼ teaspoon cumin seeds
1 clove
1 cinnamon stick

Remove the tops and most of the seeds from the dried chiles. Place them in a small bowl and cover with boiling water. Let steep until cool.

Toast garlic cloves, in their skins, in a dry cast iron skillet over medium heat until brown in spots. Cool and peel.

Toast the cumin and clove in the skillet until fragrant. Mash in a mortar until fine (or use a spice grinder).

Heat a film of canola in the same skillet and quickly brown the onion on both sides.

Place the chilies, spice mix, garlic and onions and a few tomatoes in the blender. Blend on high until smooth, and push through a sieve into a large pot, pushing on the sieve with the back of a ladle to extract liquid. Place the pulp back in the blender for another go-around. Top with tomatoes and blend at top speed until smooth. Strain again, this time discarding the pulp.

Blend the rest of the tomatoes until smooth, pouring them into the pot without straining. Add the salt and sugar and cinnamon stick and cook at a simmer for about 1 hour, or until the sauce thickens and no longer separates.

Ladle the sauce into sterilized glass jars, top with sterilized lids and process 15 minutes in a boiling water bath for pints, 10 minutes for half-pints, 20 minutes for quarts.

Trendy Thrift

2008-10-12T19:56:00.009-05:00

I’m filling the canning cupboard, but slowly. The horrifying financial news of the week has rekindled a fire underneath me and suddenly, canning isn’t a throwback any longer. It’s a contemporary necessity. The wolf is at the door, knocking loudly, and the threat of being just a little bit hungry is real (okay, maybe we won't literally starve, but certainly we'll hunger for extravagant tastes, expensive wines, and the fat ribeyes of yore). Thrift, which has been so out of vogue for my twenties and my early thirties, just became cool.

But let’s be honest: I haven’t exactly heard on the news that there’s been a run on canning jars. All that canning merchandise--the flats of jars and pectin, paraffin and Fruit Fresh--continues to sit forlornly on supermarket shelves. It is possibly the most ignored section of the store.

Sometimes, if I’m feeling down, I walk into the pantry, hold open the doors between my outstretched arms and take stock of the inventory, catalogued in the muted colors of the vegetable rainbow: buff–pink applesauce, the color of my childhood cockapoo; midnight-blue wild blueberry preserves, and the chokecherry syrup almost the same color but cast with a bright purple glow; ruddy plum sauce; foggy, brined dill pickles that look as if they've been sitting for years in an abandoned storefront window. I look at them and shift them around, replacing the front row with the prettiest jars. It reminds me of the way that I rifle through my old jewelry, caught up in a spacy trip to the past, the fruits inside the glass as vivid and shiny and commemorative as my old semi-precious stones and cheap, hideous pendants.

Shaggy Manes . . .

2008-09-29T17:01:00.007-05:00

are the most phenomenal wild mushrooms that I've eaten here. We don't have chanterelles or porcinis, but we have morels and we have Shaggy Manes, which have a stronger, more seductive fragrance than morels, the strength of a truffle and the texture of oyster mushrooms. Really.

I spotted them in the ditch as we were driving and even at 55 miles an hour their pure-white, rounded protruding tops caught my eye.

(By the way, spotting mushrooms isn't about scanning the ground for a certain color or shape. I've come to think that it's about attuning your eye to spot moisture, something succulent--and possibly edible--on the forest floor. If you think about moisture, you will be able to scan over all the dry leaves and needles until you spot moist lichens, then patches of bare ground, and finally, mushrooms.)

Shaggy manes rise up and disintegrate with astonishing speed. I swear I could have watched them pop from the ground if I'd had the time. Here's a link to an amazing time lapse video of just that phenomenon.

http://blog.mycology.cornell.edu/?p=91

(This from Cornell's Mushroom Blog. I think I've found a new favorite website.)

Once picked, they begin to dissolve, edges first, into black goo. The youngest, tightest mushrooms fared the best and lasted a full day. They are the most fragile mushrooms I've ever worked with, and now I know why they're not more widely known. Shaggy manes are private treasures. If you find them, pick them and eat them immediately. In these, nature gives us a direct, gluttonous order that we ought not to ignore.

Cleaning them was amusing. They were pretty clean underneath, so I figured I just needed to brush off the surface dirt and give them a quick rinse. I used a vegetable brush, working gently from top to bottom until they were sleek, clean and comb-marked. I was combing their shaggy manes! This cracked me up, so I took a picture:

Then I sliced them in half, heated some butter in my cast-iron pan until it started to brown, added 1 minced clove of garlic and some minced fresh rosemary and then the mushrooms. I cooked them at high heat until the liquid began to reduce, then deglazed with a couple of tablespoons of chicken stock and a tablespoon of marsala wine. I let that boil a bit, then swirled in a pat of butter.

We ate the shaggy mane ragout with some of the wild rice that Aaron harvested from the creek (our first meal from the new batch of freshly parched rice . . .) and a quick stir-fry of garden zucchini and tomato. Aaron started a fire and we sat by the wood stove and consumed a simple, but absolutely perfect, tribute to the last week of September in northern Minnesota. This meal hit us, in the best possible way, right in the gut--and I don't think it was the wine which, although it came from the local over-priced liquor store, was surprisingly alright.