Mmm… Bière

Oh friends, have I got a treat to share with you.

I discovered a recipe this weekend that is so delicious, so sexy, so perfect, and yet so simple and rustic that it simply begs to be served at your very next dinner party, or for Christmas dinner, or for Saturday dinner. This is the kind of dish you can serve to your mother-in-law with absolutely no fear. You are guaranteed oohs and aahs, and that your guests will make happy little oinking noises while they’re sopping up the delicious sauce.

Have I piqued your interest? Are you just dying for me to tell you what this most perfect dish might be? Not just yet…

The Boy and I were doing some Western Orthodox Christmas shopping on Saturday at our favorite non-used bookstore when I spotted this gigantic, gorgeous volume, of rustic French cooking. We were having a glorious fall day. The weather was crisp and I was wearing my favorite scarf (the one that makes me feel like I’ve just gotten back from an assignment for National Geographic to Marrakesh to write the definitive work on camel’s milk cheese), NoLita wasn’t overrun by giddy European tourists taking advantage of their currency being worth two-times as much as the dollar, and we were planning to go out for an anniversary dinner that night, so there was no pressure to think about cooking.

But ever since I had put one toe out the door, all I could think about was cooking. It was so cool and delightful, the air was crystalline blue and held the promise of a chilly evening. I wanted to cook something warm and comforting, a dish as snuggly and delicious as my favorite cashmere sweater, so I promised myself that I’d bring it up only if I happened to think of something or happened to come across something.

And so, there i was thumbing through The Country Cooking of France while the Boy was nosing about in the serious literature when it jumped out at me.

Coq a la Bière.

The recipe sang to me of warmth and simplicity. I had to make it. So I called him over and asked if he’d like to stay in this evening rather than go out for a big fancy dinner, and then I sweetened the deal by promising to make mashed potatoes. It didn’t take long for him to agree.

I briefly contemplated buying the book, but I just couldn’t part with $50. I had a purse crisis recently and ended up dropping some serious dosh on a new bag. I felt the need to scrimp and so I tried my best to memorize the recipe, promising the book I’d come back for it on a more flush day.

We popped over to the Whole Foods on Houston Street to visit their new beer room. Serious suds people! They’ve got beers from around the world and lots of American microbrews too. Sure, they sell some beers that you can get at the very finest bodegas, like the Indian ones near 6th Street or heck, even my beloved Eagle Provisions, but what is exciting is that much like the good folk at Bierkraft, they sell growlers of locally brewed hoppy delicacies. I picked out a brown ale from France and a cider from Normandy, then we headed home.

I’d forgotten that cooking with beer is awesome. Unlike cooking with wine, where you can just recork the bottle and stash it in the fridge, once you open one of those fancy corked bottles of beer, well, there’s no way to save the fizz, so, well, you’ve got to drink the beer. Bummer, right?

I measured out my cup and a half of ale and then drank my half of the leftovers while pulling together dinner. It’s the easiest thing I’ve cooked in months. You brown the chicken, chop some vegetables and then let it stew for an hour or so. At the end you stir in a pat of butter, crème fraîche and brighten it up with a shot of vinegar.

The mashed potatoes were a happy accident. I took my eyes off the garlic for one minute, and when I turned back they were a nanosecond away from turning into tiny little lumps of char, so I threw in the lacinato kale (I never got my second salad) to stop that from happening. The resulting potatoes smelled a little like the very best of garlic bagels. The toasted garlic are delightful points of flavor amidst the silky purée made a little sour with crème fraîche.

The resulting meal is so French. It’s the food equivalent of that beautiful Parisian woman we all know, the one who can throw on a sweater, a skirt and a scarf and look more radiant and pulled together than I ever could, no matter how much time and money I had at my disposal. And, to top it all off, it’s so much simpler, and slightly more unusual, than its more famous cousin Coq au Vin. There’s no futzing about with cooking each vegetable separately, no marinating, no peeling pearl onions (does anyone enjoy that task?), and it may encourage you to go out and buy a nice bottle of gin.

Never having been to France, I’ve never thought much about the classics of French cooking. But between this Coq a la Bière and the Sole à la Meunière and the utterly delicious cherry clafouti from over the summer, I’m beginning to think I really should go back to the beginning, start boning up on my classic French technique.

I’ve got the weekend to myself while the Boy is away celebrating Western Orthodox Christmas and Ratatouille up next in my queue. Who knows where inspiration will strike next!

And, check it out! Abby, the assistant Web editor over at OrganicGardening.com did an interview with me, and she posted it today on her blog Good N Planty! If you’ve ever wanted to learn even more about me and the Granny Cart, hop on over there, or just go over and support her NaBlaPoMo efforts! And be sure to check out all the gardening knowledge on their site, these people are experts! Thanks Abby, my mom will be so proud!

Head below the jump for the recipe for Coq a la Bière and Garlic Bagel Mashed Potatoes.

Sea Breeze

I’m in love.

The boy and I had a weekend of utterly ridiculous deliciousness and yet, even in the midst of all this gluttonous glory, I have a favorite.

I got it rolling with a pretzel croissant from City Bakery. If you’ve never had one of these, hie thee to W. 18th Street or book yourself a flight to New York, stat. Imagine, the most perfect, airy, light, fluffy croissant, glazed with butter and topped with sesame seeds and sea salt. They’re so awesome they have their own website.

But woman cannot live on pastry alone. There’s a bodega for every nationality in Bay Ridge. The Poles have one, as do the Ukranians. The Middle Eastern community has several and I’m sure there’s subtle differences between them that elude me. There’s one for the Koreans, many for the Greeks, plenty for the Italians and even one for the Irish.

The Mexicans have one, too, and on weekends the proprietress has taken to selling agua fresca and antojitos from a table on the sidewalk. This past weekend she just happened to be selling Puffy Tacos filled with delicious beans and cotija cheese. Yum.

Saturday dinner you know about, and if you’re a close reader, you know about Sunday lunch, too. Brooklynguy (what, you’ve never been to his blog? Go! Learn about wine!) was kind enough to alert me to the existence of a heretofore unknown barbecue joint existing within walking distance of chateau Granny Cart. We went, and, oh. my. god. That’s good ‘cue! The ribs are ridiculously good, and the pulled pork and smoked brisket ain’t shabby neither. And the portions? Huge! Prices? Totally reasonable.

We had so much leftover meat in our doggie bag that we walked (very, very necessary after a meal of that quality and quantity) to, yep, you guessed it, Eagle Provisions, to pick up a few cabbage salads to eat with the leftovers later in the week. Good stuff, good stuff.

The ‘cue put us both into pretty severe meat comas and kept us stuffed until well into the evening. It was very hard to think about eating again, but I had a dinner percolating at the back of my brain that simply needed to be let out. The first genesis of this dinner occurred to me one evening while I was trying to fall asleep. I get a lot of good ideas at this time (also in the shower, oddly enough), but tend to forget them. This one was so good it forced me to recall it.

It’s an embarrassingly simple, easy and very, very quick (under 30 minutes!) dinner to prepare, but there’s a key. All the ingredients must be absolutely fresh and utterly perfect.

The scallops should be pink, coral or milky white, not stark, blinding white. They should smell sweet, not fishy in the least.

The peas must be freshly shelled. Freshly shelled and frozen are okay (that’s what mine were) and very, very sweet.

The arugula must be fiercely snappy.

If your ingredients do not match these descriptions, dinner will still turn out good, this one’s a no brainer, but, perfection is it’s own reward and doing this one the right way will make you feel like you’ve channeled Thomas Keller.

It’s my new favorite meal ever. I’ve craved it every day this week. The buttery, perfect sweet scallops. The jewel-like peas. The intense yet cooling, herbaceous, spiky yet creamy mint Pistou. The pleasantly bitter arugula lithely wrapped around the nutty, comforting pasta.

It was so good I actually patted myself on the back and grinned like a teenager who’s just gotten her first kiss from her high school crush. I beamed and beamed and then gave myself a standing ovation at the table.

I love this dish.

And if you try it, I hope you love it too.

Head below the jump for the recipes for Scallops & Peas in Brown Butter with Pistou de Menthe and Strozzapretti alla Rughetta.

The Wurst Is Yet To Come

I’ve been thinking about sausages a lot lately.

I blame Luisa. She invited me to a blogger dinner at my favorite East Village Ukranian joint, Veselka, last week in honor of Shuna who was in town. The conversation was bright and lively and though carried out while munching on pierogis and kielbasa (Polish sausage), it inevitably turned to ice cream. For this I blame David and his book. He’s turned a world of rational women into ice cream obsessed zombies.

It seems Luisa has been aching for an ice cream maker for this very reason. The always amusing and astute Deb said that rather than buying an ice cream maker she should buy a Kitchen Aid stand mixer and get the ice cream making attachment. Finally, not being one to lust after homemade ice cream (except for this stuff), I saw my entry into this conversation. “Oh, and if you have a stand mixer you can also get the meat grinder attachment and make sausages!” I interjected. Luisa turned to me, laughing, and said something to the effect of, “Ann, if anyone at this table is the one to make sausages, it’s not me, it’s you!” I had to admit, she had a point.

And so, I blame Luisa for my current sausage obsession.

But wait, no, not just Luisa, also Salman Rushdie.

I was sitting on the train reading Fury, heading to the Greenmarket. There’s a wonderful scene where a hapless young gentleman offers a woman his sausage, to which she sharply retorts, “Oh, but there are some animals I simply never eat.”

You see, simply by the accident of their shape, sausages are a funny, embarrassing food; the subject of many jokes, double entendres and awkward moments.

Once I went to my favorite Polish grocery, Eagle Provisions in the South Slope, to buy kielbasa. There were some smaller sausages I had never seen before, so I asked the disarmingly handsome man behind the counter what they were. He said something completely unintelligible to me, and then leaned across the counter in a secretive, sly, conspiratorial way, and whispered, “In my village, we call them little penises. Would you like to try one?” I blushed from the top of my head to my very tiniest toe and stammered something that I think could have been interpreted as yes or no, then he winked at me and said, “Why not I just slip you one?” I think it was at that point that I stumbled backwards, grasped for my package of kielbasa, tripped over a little old lady and nearly took out the entire display of spices.

I had been sent off to the market on Saturday with only one specific instruction: buy baby carrots and whatever else I could find suitable for roasting. The weekend was going to be relatively cool and therefore suitable for culinary activities involving the oven. I found the carrots and gorgeous multi-colored beets, went nutsy buying lettuces and grabbed some other staples before I realized I was very nearly out of money.

But I had sausages on the brain. I needed to buy some bangers.

I approached one stand where a woman was fretting over whether or not the sausages contained wheat gluten. When did gluten intolerance become the new lactose intolerance? Unfortunately for me and my sausage cravings, the proprietor indulged her (most likely) made up concern and launched into a long winded diatribe about how he wasn’t sure what was in his sausages because the FDA won’t let him grind his own and then sell them. Yawn.

So I wandered further up the market to Flying Pigs Farms where I asked the guy what he could sell me for $8. “Anything!” he said. Ah, music to my ears. I settled on herb sausages which are a most magical fate for any pig.

Porky, fatty and herby, the sausages didn’t hide from the roasted vege. Although I felt there was one odd, off-note to the dish the boy was over the moon. He’d been craving a meal like this for months and was heartily satisfied. I was just happy I could stop obsessing over sausages. I was beginning to feel like a walking Freudian slip.

Head below the jump for the recipe for Bangers, Beets & Baby Carrots.

From The Back Of My Pantry: Sausages And Sparrows

Editor’s Note: Greetings all! The big move is underway, and the eating hasn’t been pretty (meaning, there’s no way I’m going to share some of the bizarre food we’ve been eating in an effort to clean up fridge and pantry), so I’ve decided to dig way, waaay into the back of The Granny Cart pantry and resurrect some old, seasonal posts from the early days.

Here, we have my attempt at recreating my Aunt’s amazing spätzle. A take-home container of these delicious German dumplings was hands down my favorite Christmas gift this year. I hope you enjoy them as much as I do.

Sausages And Sparrows. Originally posted March 27, 2006.

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My aunt will be so proud. She will also be relieved… I taught myself how to make spätzle yesterday.

My aunt, the daughter of German immigrants, has been making her brand of spätzle for family gatherings for longer than I can remember. In the weeks leading up to, say, Easter, I’ll call my mother, “Are we going to Syracuse? Is Aunt L going to be making spätzle??” over, and over and over, even now that I’m old enough that I really should know better.

Aunt L’s spätzle are different than any other I’ve tried at any German or Austrian restaurant anywhere in the world. Hers are much thicker, closer to a dumpling and less a little sparrow (and no, I don’t mean this kind of sparrow) and more like a gorgeous, fat goose. Also, as a bow to my family’s obsession with garlic, she browns them off in oil and garlic until they’re golden and crispy. To me, they are the picture of culinary perfection. I truly believe I could eat her spätzle every day for the rest of my life.

For my first attempt, I think my spätzle turned out pretty well. Mine were smaller, but they had the same chewy, toothsome feeling as my aunts. When I make them again (and I will make them again!) I will use fewer eggs, maybe 2 whole eggs and 2 yolks, plus more milk and even a little more flour. Then again, maybe I’ll hold off until Easter, when I’ll badger Aunt L into making hers for me again, you know, as research…

I served my spätzle with kielbasa (we’re a melting pot of Eastern European culinary traditions my family is…) and sauerkraut all braised with caramelized onions and dry vermouth. The kielbasa was much different than what I’m used to. I was inspired to try some local sausage from the East Village institution, Kurowycky Meat Market, which was unfortunate, because well, to be frank (heh), I didn’t like their kovbasa at all. It was nicely spiced and full of large chunks of meat but had a strange, gamey smell/flavor that I just couldn’t get past. I’m a little sad really. I thought maybe, finally, I’d find a more convenient local source for my kielbasa fix, but alas, I’ll have to keep making that trip to Eagle Provisions in Brooklyn. It’s a sacrifice I’m willing to make.

Recipes for both dishes below the break.

Sausages And Sparrows

My aunt will be so proud. She will also be relieved… I taught myself how to make spätzle yesterday.

My aunt, the daughter of German immigrants, has been making her brand of spätzle for family gatherings for longer than I can remember. In the weeks leading up to, say, Easter, I’ll call my mother, “Are we going to Syracuse? Is Aunt L going to be making spätzle??” over, and over and over, even now that I’m old enough that I really should know better.

Aunt L’s spätzle are different than any other I’ve tried at any German or Austrian restaurant anywhere in the world. Hers are much thicker, closer to a dumpling and less a little sparrow (and no, I don’t mean this kind of sparrow) and more like a gorgeous, fat goose. Also, as a bow to my family’s obsession with garlic, she browns them off in oil and garlic until they’re golden and crispy. To me, they are the picture of culinary perfection. I truly believe I could eat her spätzle every day for the rest of my life.

For my first attempt, I think my spätzle turned out pretty well. Mine were smaller, but they had the same chewy, toothsome feeling as my aunts. When I make them again (and I will make them again!) I will use fewer eggs, maybe 2 whole eggs and 2 yolks, plus more milk and even a little more flour. Then again, maybe I’ll hold off until Easter, when I’ll badger Aunt L into making hers for me again, you know, as research…

I served my spätzle with kielbasa (we’re a melting pot of Eastern European culinary traditions my family is…) and sauerkraut all braised with caramelized onions and dry vermouth. The kielbasa was much different than what I’m used to. I was inspired to try some local sausage from the East Village institution, Kurowycky Meat Market, which was unfortunate, because well, to be frank (heh), I didn’t like their kovbasa at all. It was nicely spiced and full of large chunks of meat but had a strange, gamey smell/flavor that I just couldn’t get past. I’m a little sad really. I thought maybe, finally, I’d find a more convenient local source for my kielbasa fix, but alas, I’ll have to keep making that trip to Eagle Provisions in Brooklyn. It’s a sacrifice I’m willing to make.

Recipes for both dishes below the break.