A Chicken In Every Granny Cart

I was a good 30-something daughter and went Upstate to visit my mother this weekend, therefore, there’s not much food in this post. But don’t despair! From what I can gather, you guys seem to like my pictures of pretty things and there’s lots of that in this post! So, without further ado, may I present some beautiful scenery from a blustery, wet, Upstate weekend.

My mom met me at the train station and we immediately went over to the place where she works, the Watervliet Shaker Heritage Society, as it was the first day of their annual Christmas Craft fair.

This is the meeting house.

There’s three doors on the front when there should be only two. The city of Albany owns this site and they originally removed the two wooden doors, which were the entrances for the Brothers and Sisters, and stuck the one in the middle there. They also clad the exterior in brick, which has thankfully been removed in a recent restoration which also put the original doors back.

An interior staircase. Aren’t the colors beautiful?

The creamery.

The barns. There’s turkeys and chickens and quail over there. They make a lot of noise.

This is the herb garden that my mom is in charge of. The Shakers used herbs to flavor their foods, but also as medicine. They were also the first people in America to sell packaged seeds. Prior to the Shakers, seeds were sold in bulk and often got moldy over the winter. There are many Shaker cookbooks available out there, grab one if you see one. Their recipes were wonderfully simple and soul satisfyingly good.

And here’s what you were really waiting for, right? Oxen!

The brown ones are Swiss browns, and the little black one, Kerry, is a heritage breed from Ireland that I’ve forgotten the name of.

And in case you didn’t know, oxen are always castrated males.

I can’t remember which of the brown oxen is which, but their names are Freighter and Liner, and for good reason, they are HUGE.

While both sects are Anabaptists, the Shakers differed from the Amish in their use of technology. The entire idea behind the Shaker religion was to become closer to God through perfection, good works and simplicity.

Thus, if an invention came around that made their lives simpler and more perfect the Shakers would adopt that.

I bring this up because over time these gorgeous guys were replaced with Studebakers and tractors.

Okay, let’s drag ourselves away from the oxen.

We had a lovely dinner with my step-sister and her family; lambchops, sautéed escarole and puréed butternut squash. The mixture of garlicky greens and sweet delicious squash is one I hope to recreate here this week.

Here’s my nephew. Doesn’t he look like he’s about to do something evil?

After some shopping and general carousing, it was time to head back downstate to my other home. It’s hard to decide which home is home anymore, so I guess it’s just best to think of them both as well, home!

The sky was amazing, so I took some pictures of my favorite river in the whole world through the train’s windows.

Those are the mountains where Rip Van Winkle took his famous nap off in the distance there.

Because of the end of Daylight Savings and the massive storm we’d had, the sunset was brearthtakingly gorgeous.

The colors got even more intense than this if you can believe it, but there wasn’t enough light for me to continue taking pictures, so I turned back to my book.

And what did I find when I finally got home? The boy had made soup. One of the most wonderful, tasty, most deliciously simple, healthy and perfectly amazing soups I’ve ever tasted.

It was a cauliflower and mustard greens soup flavored with ginger, tarragon and harissa. Doesn’t sound like it could possibly work does it? But oh by did it! It tasted simultaneously healthy and hearty, it’s the kind of soup the Shakers probably would have made, and it was exactly what I had been craving.

What a great weekend. It’s so good to go/be home.

Aka Squash Borscht.

Or Squash & Beet Bisque garnished with Kasha and Kielbasa (if you want to be fancy).

Our intention was to make a squash or pumpkin soup on Saturday, but we were inspired. There were three already roasted, ruby red beets languishing in the fridge, so it was decided that they had to be included as well (they were intended for a pasta sauce, maybe another day).

The soup was as tasty as it is gorgeous, but there was something missing, an earthy note. Maybe it needed some mushrooms, or mushroom powder, or some kind of spice. The only herb in there was sage.

Last night we reheated some and I flavored it with a tiny splash of sherry vinegar. That added a really authentic borscht-like flavor to the meal.

This is a really complex soup, regardless of whether or not it was missing an essential flavor, and very difficult to pair with wine. So my suggestion? Don’t.

Go really, really old school and drink like a Revolutionary. Get yourself a bottle of locally brewed apple cider. (In NYC you can get some at the Union Square Greenmarket from Eve’s Cidery).

Lightly sparkling, redolent of apples and utterly refreshing it’s the absolutely perfect foil to this slightly sweet and seasonal soup.

Head below the jump for the recipe for Squorscht!

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It’s so easy to be inspired by the autumnal weather we’re having here in New York.

Crisp, bright, crystalline blue, eye-popping oranges everywhere, deep velvety nights, opalescent moons. Ah, October.

Apparently it’s also really easy to be lazy.

I’ve been spending my days lolling about on the couch, toddling about the city and oversleeping on workdays.

My computer must feel the same way as he’s been really loathe to do anything. Process words? Upload photos?  I always get a weak little, “meh,” out of him as his chips start lazily grinding away.

So, apologies for this truncated post.

I’ll be back later this evening to explain what this bowl of liquid love consists of, but please, feel free to try and guess in the meantime!

Oh, and here’s a hint.

Oh, and I just realized according to the little stats counter over on the side of this page that I’ve crossed the 20,000 visitors mark. Thank you to everyone that’s stopped by!! You’ve made the last couple of months a total blast!

Toast & butter. Chocolate & peanut butter. Wine & cheese. Spaghetti & meatballs. Turkey & stuffing. Pork & apples. Steak & potatoes. Coffee & donuts.

There are countless perfect culinary combinations. Like Shaggy & Scooby, they stand alone as a classic duo, there’s no need for a third wheel like hyper-annoying Scrappy-doo.

And yet sometimes, a new twist on a classic actually works. Say, a new way of thinking about mac & cheese? Heresy you say? Allow me to explain.

First there was the simplest Mac & Cheese, and there were leftovers.

Then there was the the Rogue Sprout and his roasted vegetable brethren, and there were leftovers.

There wasn’t enough of either to make a meal, so the boy suggested combining them and heating them up together.

Culinary heresy? Mad dining genius? I’m going with the latter.

The mac got crustier, the vegetables got roastier and cheesier. Combined they felt as if they had taken one step above the simple comfort food plateau.
Do I think this combination will catch on?

Mac & cheese & roasted vegetables?

Nah. Too long, too complicated a name. Let’s just keep this one a secret amongst ourselves.

Now if only they’d done the same with Scrappy…

It was Sunday night. I was standing at the sink cleaning and halving Brussels sprouts when one went skittering out of my hand, landing with a surprisingly loud metallic thump in the sink. Without even thinking, I bellowed out “Sprrrrrrrooout Doooooooooooouwn!”

Before you go thinking I’m crazy, say it with me in your best pirate meets Patrick Stewart tenor, “Sprrrrrrrooout Doooooooooooouwn!”

See? Now isn’t that fun?

And what on earth was I making when I started thinking of my tiny cabbages as weeee scrrrrruvy currrrrrs?

Roasted vegetables, natch.

Brussels sprouts, parsnips, a second harvest of baby carrots, Northern Spy & Macoun apples, shallots and garlic roasted for two hours to a perfectly sweet & roasty bowl of fall; finished with a glug of the best Croatian extra virgin olive oil and a splash of aged balsamic vinegar, and served with hunks of Iacopo’s finest baguette (to sop up the pot liquer).

Thank you Maillard reaction for this delightful meal.

Just one note for you New Yorkers however.

We went to the Tompkins Square Greenmarket for our vegetables, but unfortunately there were no sprouts. So we trucked up Ave. A to the Key Foods for the sprouts. We grabbed four 10 oz. containers, went to the register only to find that each container cost $4 a piece! 40 ounces of sprouts equals roughly 2.5 lbs or, even more roughly, $6.40 per pound!!

So, New Yorkers, take my advice, if you’re craving sprouts, go to a Greenmarket anywhere in the City and buy them there for $2 per pound, pay the $4 round-trip subway fare, and yeah, you’ll still come out waaaaaay ahead. You have been warned.

And just so as you all don’t think I’m the only one that personifies her sprouts, check out “An Inconsolable Sprout” for some more fun with cruciferous vegetables. I’ve never met Erielle before, so I can’t personally vouch for her sanity, but I do love her “voice,” it seems perfectly sane to me.

And what of the leftovers? More on them later this week.

I have one true love.

No, not him (but close).

It’s pasta. My life is littered with memories of the pasta I ate.

There was the mac & cheese I ate just before breaking my arm in third grade; the great ziti war of ‘88; the egg noodle, cabbage and kielbasa casserole that my grandmother used to make me that I’m still trying to recreate from memory, and the black & white angel hair pasta served with a sauce of olive oil, golden garlic and sage in Germany that changed the way I ate forever.

Living on my own, I would probably eat pasta for dinner every night. Plain with butter or olive oil, or fancy with complex sauces, I’d be just fine. Asian noodles, Eastern European noodles, Mediterranean noodles, American noodles, I’m an equal opportunity pasta eater, I see no sense in discriminating against one type or the other, ever. They’re all equally delicious.

So it’s been a wee bit of a cross to bear to be living with a man who when I suggest pasta for dinner goes, “Eh, I could take it or leave it.” So sometimes I have to do what women have been doing for millenia, take the bull by the horns and force noodles upon him.

But here’s the strange part. What’s one of his favorite meals of all time? Boxed mac & cheese with frozen peas. Not that I object, because after a really stressful day, it is a pretty sweet little dinner. But, he claims that the boxed stuff is better than homemade. Now that I cannot accept.

Recently I was home sick and craving my favorite guilty, sick-day comforting meal; elbow pasta with lots of butter and chunky salsa, but realised I had no pasta in the house. I felt awful, but I was simultaneously bored, so while I was at the market, I decided that I was going to make mac & cheese for dinner and surprise the boy.

It was a brilliant, simple rendition of a classic (as befitted a sick-day). Both cheesy and crusty, decadent yet comforting. I had initially intended to serve this with the truffle salt, but, the combination of the two cheese created such an intense, all consuming taste and feel of umammi in the mouth, it was completely unnecessary

And did the boy like it? Oh yes, and even more the second day, but more on that later in the week.

Head below the jump for Simple, Sick-Day Mac & Cheese.

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Truffle-Scented Mushroom Risotto

Lest you think we ate nothing all weekend but turkey sandwiches while waiting for some lethargic beans to get their beanie little butts in gear and cook, I’m here to waylay your concerns. In fact on Saturday night, while I was making the stock, we ate like Tuscan nobles.

Truffle-scented-mushroom-risotto-eating-Tuscan-nobles to be exact.

No, I haven’t suddenly become independently wealthy, I just finally took a piece of advice offered months ago and bought myself some truffle salt at Kalustyan’s. This salt is pure truffle goodness. It bears no resemblance to the weak, oftentimes sickly, truffle flavor offered up by truffle oils and carries a headier aroma than a bottled truffle purée.

This stuff is pure gold.

If you love truffles, get some for yourself for a birthday present, or an anniversary present, or heck, just because it’s Wednesday and you’ve lived through the first half of another painful week at work. Concoct whatever silly reason you need to and treat yourself. You can thank me later…

But I digress. To showcase my new culinary treasure I wanted a gentle, yet earthy, blank slate upon which it could feel free to romp in all its truffley glory. I decided upon a very simple risotto with garlic, white wine, olive oil and a wee glug of porcini & truffle scented olive oil I got a while ago (for some reason the porcini balances the truffle aroma and makes it far more palatable to my sniffer) and finished with some butter. In a separate pan I sautéed some crimini mushrooms with garlic, olive oil, white wine and parsley until silky smooth and slightly caramelized.

Instead of integrating the two I served the mushrooms over the risotto garnished with the precious grains of truffle salt. It was tempting to use more than just a pinch or two, but the aroma was so pure and strong it proved completely unnecessary.

And what next for my new favorite chloride? Maybe some simple scrambled eggs (because eggs love truffles). Or maybe an Austrian knoblauchcremesuppe? But what I’d really love to make is a classic baked macaroni & cheese. Yeah. I think that’s it!

Head below the jump for the recipe for Truffle-Scented Mushroom Risotto.

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What started off with the very best of intentions turned into a three day epic of foraging, bean soaking, stock making and soup steeping that made Ben-Hur look like a movie about a puppy.

One evening last week, my attention was caught by the weather report for the weekend. It was going to be cooler, autumnal, soup weather. So I said to the boy, “You should make one of your soups this weekend!” The boy, if I have not mentioned it before, is a genius soup maker (soupier?).

A few years ago for Christmas his mother gave him an immersion blender and her master recipe for puréed vegetable soups. Since then, it’s been one soupy masterpiece after another. So you can imagine my surprise when he said, “Yeah, I’d love to make something with greens, and maybe beans.” To which I replied, “Oh, like a spinach purée or something?” “No, more like a chunky soup.”

Now, please join us for a play, a tragi-comedy, if you will, in three acts.

Act 1: The Foraging.

Scene: The living room, Saturday morning. Sun streaming in through two east-facing windows. Our heroes sip tea.

The Boy: So, can you think of any place that might have really good dried beans?

Me: Dried beans? You want to use dried beans?

The Boy: Yeah, we’ve got time to soak them, why not?

End.

I had talked him into making a stock out of, as I put it, “pig parts,” so it seemed only fair that he got his wish of having really high quality dried beans. So after a brunch of excellent Mexican foodwhere we basically sat next to the Hobbit and his girlfriend, we headed up to Kalustyan’s.

Now, it’s a darn good thing this was my first ever trip to this Mecca of all things spices, herbs and condiments, because, well, I have a condiment addiction, and if I had been making regular trips to this head-spinningly amazing store over the 8 years or so that I’ve lived in New York, well, I’d probably have died in some sort of condiment avalanche à la the legendary Collyer brothersby now. If you live in NYC and you read this blog and you haven’t made it to Kalustyan’s yet, please, go this weekend. It’s essential. And it’s not just Indian sub-continental goods, we got some Ajvar and the world’s most sinfully delicious truffle salt (more on that in a day or two).

But I digress. We settled on two kinds of beans; Borlotti and European Solider Beans (and a few other things), paid, and headed for the Greenmarket where I chose a Buffalo knuckle and some ham hocks for the base of our soup and the boy went leafy greens crazy.

Act 2: The Soaking & The Stocking.

Scene: The living room, Saturday afternoon. A rosy light glows at the edges of two east-facing windows. Our heroes sip tea.

The Boy: So, you know, we don’t have to go to Queens tonight.

Me: No? Are you sure?

The Boy: Yeah, we should go eat there when it can be an all day thing.

Me: Okay, then I’ll start the stock!

End.

The plan had been to provision, come home, soak the beans, have a cuppa, and then head back out, to Queens, for dinner at the Kabab Café. Have I even mentioned that the boy has a massive addiction to North African, Arabian, Levantine and Middle Eastern cuisines? Well, he does. It’s beyond an addiction, in fact, I might call it a mania. But it’s a good one. Aside from my unnatural aversion to felafel, it’s one I whole heartedly endorse.

But I digress. The beans were happily soaking on top of the fridge, right next to Sprout, and the newly acquired Mrs. Ticking Hen, as I popped my soup joints into a stock pot and covered them with cold water. I wanted a pure, meaty flavor to my stock, so I used no vegetables. No herbs. No nothing. Just meat. I’m sure some French chef will come and kill me in my sleep for this sin against mirepoix, but I really don’t care, because I was right and they were wrong.

This stock was not just a soup base. It was an elixir. I super chilled it and stashed it in the fridge. The next evening, there it was, under a layer of pure fat, perfectly jellied pure essence of meat. There’s nothing more amazing.

Act 3, Scene 1: The Steeping.

Scene: The living room, Sunday evening. A luminescent full moon can be seen through east-facing windows. Our heroes sip a 2002 Cotes-du-Rhone Villages.

The Boy: I’m worried about the beans. They just don’t seem to want to cook.

Me: Just jack up the heat and clap the lid on.

End.

Yeah, that didn’t work.

The boy started the chopping and browning sometime before 5pm. We estimate the stock and beans hit the pot at just about 5pm. By 8.30pm the beans were still crunchy. Like, bite them and they split into two halves like a peanut crunchy. This was bad.

So, what do two somewhat sane people do when their beans just won’t cook and it’s getting late and tummies are rumbling? Well, they eat turkey sandwiches with their fancy French wine.

It wasn’t so bad. The sandwiches were better than acceptable, and there was Masterpiece Theater’s deliciously bawdy version of Cassanova (complete with cheeky Ali G reference) to keep me very happy while we allowed the soup to continue bubbling merrily away.

By 10.30pm we’d learned that the love of Cassanova’s life was still alive and that the beans were still crunchy. It was time to give up for the night and go to bed.

Act 3, Scene 2: The Steeping.

Scene: The living room, Monday evening. A pearly, slightly-less-full moon can be seen through the humid haze hovering outside two east-facing windows. Our heroes sip a 2004 Jean-Paul Brun Beaujolais.

Me (on the phone to my mother):Oh! Mom! I just got the thumbs up! Our persnickity pulses have finally given up the ghost! I’ve got to go!

End.

Yes, I did say that. Persnickity pulses. Sometimes I think my love for alliteration goes just a wee bit too far. But we’re not here to talk about grammar, we’re here to celebrate the fact that the soup was finally done. The borlotti beans were definitely done, in fact, most of them had almost completely disappeared into the stock. The greens were sublime, as were the bits of ham hock, that the boy described as tasting, “kind of like the pork they serve at Momofuku,” (possibly the highest praise possible for a “pig part”).

But, some of those damn European Solider Beans were still a bit mealy, almost like the flesh of an oven-baked potato. We decided that was okay however since many sources described them as having a “potato-like flavor and texture.”

In the end, after much trial and effort, the soup was amazing.

So, what to take away from this epic?

Buffalo knuckles + ham hocks = crazy delicious stock.

Kalustyan’s makes my head hurt, in the good way.

The boy is still the Nobel laureate of soups in my eyes, but solider beans are stupid.

I will never try to cook two types of beans at the same time ever again. No bean integration. Keep the beans segregated! Yes, this experience has turned me into a beanist.

But at least the soup was delicious!

It’s as easy as stashing some caramelized onions in your fridge!

When the stress of the day and the chilliness of the weather combine to form a powerful pasta hankerin’, just pull the onions out and heat them up in about 1/2 cup of white wine, a pinch of cayenne pepper (thanks Deb!), and a splash of sherry vinegar (not balsamic).

Serve over your favorite pasta under a wee drift of grated Parmesan cheese and a healthy dose of freshly ground pepper.

Simple, satisfying and tasty. It doesn’t get much easier than this.

And, uh, yeah, that is two sizes of pasta (papardelle and angel hair) you see in those photos.

I’ve been remiss in keeping my larder in good shape these days. The weather’s been too nice!

R.W. Apple Jr. died yesterday. He was an incredible writer and a giant among journalists. If you haven’t read any of his works on food or the world, check out his archive at The Times. Apparently he was still working, even while on his deathbed. The Times published a story of his yesterday on the 10 restaurants worth getting on a plane for.

While I’ve never been to any of these restaurants, I did get on a plane because of an article Mr. Apple wrote.
When I was in 10th grade my mother and I went to Italy. One evening we stood with our feet in the Adriatic and I asked her what those lights were across the water and she said the Dalmatian Coast. My young brain, slightly fuzzy from a glass of wine and a sip of grappa, enjoyed this thought of spotted dogs frolicking in the Adriatic’s clear, foamy surf. That day I swore I would go there and see it, and then I promptly forgot.

It was reading this article on the glories of Dubrovnik two years ago that reminded me of the promise my teenage self had made to my 30-something self, and so a mania was born. I finally got to go this past May and everything Mr. Apple said was true.

I will miss getting travel advice from him, but at least there’s his massive archive to keep me busy.