FOOD ON THE FOOD

Folks, It Ain’t Just Chocolate

Boy, was I doing some riveting reading over the weekend.  I’m so glad I chose to spend my kids’ entire nap time tucking into FDA Docket Number 2007P-0085: Adopt Regulations of General Applicability to all Food Standards that would Permit, within Stated Boundaries, Deviations from the Requirements of the Individual Food Standards of Identity.  Yeah, that was a good use of two hours.

This document has gotten a lot of press lately for the effect it might have on how we manufacture chocolate in this country.  Because, let’s face facts, chocolate is the single most important food group.  On any given day of my life, it might be the only one. 

This citizen’s petition, drawn up by the good “citizens” that comprise the Chocolate Manufacturer’s Association (CMA) and the Grocery Manufacturer’s Association (GMA), among a long list of other industry groups, hopes the FDA will relax its standards for how it defines certain foods while still keeping the same name. 

Each type of chocolate has its own definition, but the current requirements for milk chocolate are: at least 10% chocolate liquor, at least 12% milk ingredients, cocoa butter, and sugar.  If this petition were accepted, chocolate and all foods with strict definitions could be subject to “suitable substitutions.”  And we all know what that means: cheaper ingredients.  And who determines what’s suitable?  Perhaps, the same good folks who brought us Olestra. 

Lowering standards would translate into hydrogenated vegetable oils being substituted for cocoa butter.  For sweeteners, the sky would be the limit, but I’m going to take a wild stab in the dark at corn syrup.  And the chocolate liquor could be replaced with, oh, I don’t know, something else brown.  Sign me up for CMA’s Chocolate-of-the-Month Club.

But even more disturbing than the chocolate side of it (and that freaks me out more than you can possibly know) is the fact that all packaged foods would be at risk.  Even things like cheese.  It’s everything that is represented by the following groups and their subsidiaries: the American Frozen Food Institute, the American Meat Institute, the International Dairy Foods Association, the Food Products Association, the Juice Products Association, the National Fisheries Institute, the National Meat Canners Association, the North American Millers’ Association, and the Snack Food Association.  In other words, almost everything in the supermarket.

There might be some legitimate points in this petition somewhere, but I couldn’t really find them through all the intentional vagueness.  In essence, the whole thing read like this:

Hey, you.  FDA.  We know you’re too busy with clinical trials of the various erection medications flooding the market.  Do you really want to spend your time worrying about dumb old food standards?  Are you sure you want us to bother you with every single stupid labeling or ingredient change we want to make?  You don’t, do you?  Okay then.  Don’t worry, we’ll take care of EVERYTHING.

Thanks, GMA.  You’re a peach.  So, I guess that means I’ll have more anal leakage to look forward to.

The FDA has extended its comment period through June 25.  In the meantime, I’m thinking of drawing up a citizen’s petition of my own.

Nine Lives are Too Many

Ever since news of the pet food contamination came out, my husband has been very edgy.  I told him not to worry — I thought everything would be fine.  Still, as a precaution, he rushed to the pet store and filled his cart with bags and cans of every different brand of cat food he could find, including dog food, and has been encouraging the cats to make their own sundaes.

They’re still alive.  In fact, they’re happier than ever.  My husband’s pissed.

Cookbook Friday: Italian Pie Crust

This is the wedding photo of my grandmother Dora’s younger sister, Dava Barbaresi, taken sometime in the early 1940’s.  Dora [Barbaresi] Donroe was her maid-of-honor.  Dava’s husband, Eddie Apuzzo, and Dora’s husband, Freddie Donroe, were best friends.  On the far right is my great grandfather, George Barbaresi.  On the far left, I’m not sure, but it looks like maybe a brother of Eddie’s.  The young men, as well as Freddie, were getting ready to ship out with the military, headed for Europe during World War II.

Dava was the baker in the family.  She used this pie crust for her famous rice and Italian cream pies.  The crust, I was told by Dava’s daughter, Roseann, is temperamental, and no one in the family has been able to master it.  After my first attempt, it was clear that I hadn’t mastered it, either.  Unless Dava’s technique happened to involve causing the dough to fall apart into a million pieces and then pressing them into the pie dish in a perturbed fashion.  Could that have been it? 

So, I’ve taken some liberties to make the recipe easier to work with.  My apologies in advance for inserting a food processor into an otherwise vintage recipe.  Also, under normal circumstances, you want to handle your pie dough as little as possible so the gluten doesn’t develop and cause the crust to toughen up.  But, in this case, I found that gently kneading the dough really helps the eggs to incorporate and allows just enough gluten to develop to hold everything together.  It also improved the texture, making the finished crust flakier.

Anyway, it meets my specs as far as crusts go, but I’ll need someone else in the family to try this and see if the crust tastes the way you remember it.  The rice pie filling is coming up next week and, by god, if you do decide to try it, make sure your wills are in order.

Italian Sweet Crust

This spiced crust is like a cross between your typical pie crust and a soft sugar cookie.  Dava used it for her rice pie and Italian cream pie.

3 cups flour
¾ cup sugar
3 tsp. baking powder
¼ tsp. salt
¼ tsp. nutmeg
¼ tsp. cinnamon
¾ cup shortening, cut into medium hunks
2 eggs
2 tsp. vanilla

By hand: In a large bowl, mix flour, sugar, baking powder, salt, and spices.  Cut in shortening.

In a food processor: Mix together flour, sugar, baking powder, salt, and spices.  Add shortening and, using the on/off turns, pulse 10-12 times until the shortening pieces are the size of peas.  Dump mixture into a bowl.

Make a well in the ingredients, and add eggs and vanilla.  Fluff until eggs are incorporated.  Knead gently until dough is smooth. If you’re worried you overdid it, just wrap in plastic wrap and set in the refrigerator for a half hour to relax the gluten.  Dough will be soft.  Cut into three parts.  Roll as a pie crust. 

Makes enough dough for two 10-inch rice pies plus lattice, or one 10-inch Italian cream pie with a top crust (plus an extra crust you can freeze).

Dava [Barbaresi] Catone
Hamden, Connecticut
1921-1998

Next Recipe: Sweet Rice Pie

     (Previous Recipe: Cappellettis)

Garden Update

Some of you probably assume that I gave up on this gardening project before I even started.  But, I didn’t.  And here’s the proof.

One raised garden bed constructed by yours truly.  Okay, fine, I had to ask my neighbor to saw the boards.  But, the rest of it was all me.  Well, except that the four-year-old feels he should be recognized for diligently carrying each screw over to me, one at a time, without dropping most of them.  Also, Husband thinks that the sandbox he later constructed to the left of the bed deserves a shout out.  What is this?  The Oscars?

The raised bed is now nearly filled with a 2-2-1-1 mixture of sand, topsoil, peat moss, and composted cow manure.  This recipe courtesy of the 20-Minute Vegetable Gardener by Tom Christopher and Marty Asher, which I dubbed my gardening bible after reading the title.  I was disappointed to discover that they meant 20 minutes of work per day, not 20 minutes total for the season.  And that, sometimes, you have to do a week’s worth of work all in one day.  So, I think, in all fairness, the title should be revised to read, 20-Minute Vegetable Gardening for Suckers, or, more accurately, the $200 Vegetable Gardener.

As expected, four-year-olds are really intrigued by the concept of “cow poop” in a garden, and like to say it over and over again while digging in the dirt.  This gave him tremendous focus.  I highly recommend renting one or two small children instead of a rototiller.  They are remarkably efficient and usually much cheaper. 

Seeds are supposedly on the way.  Hurry up, little seeds.  The novelty started to wear off after I hoisted the 15th bag of cow poop up the 20 stairs to my yard.

Honeybee Sighting

Last month, some idiot wrote that she had never, EVER seen a honeybee in the Boston area in her life.  So, of course, two showed up in my backyard over the weekend just to spite me.  To prove, once and for all, that I am the worst fact-checker ever.  Here’s the photographic evidence.

At least, I assume that's a honeybee on those grape hyacinths.  I know it's not a bumblebee or yellow jacket (if it were a yellow jacket, it would have stung me in the face as I tried to snap its photo), and that just about exhausts my bee knowledge.  So, I’m happy to report that I know of at least two honeybees that are available for pollination services in the Greater Boston area. 

But, they’re not going to come cheap.

Fresh Eggs from Drumlin Farm

Have you ever tried to carry a screaming, punching 26-lb. toddler in one arm and a dozen eggs in the other, all while the preschooler has attached himself firmly to your left leg and your car is waaaay the hell over there, practically in the next town?  If so, then you can appreciate how happy I was to arrive home with these little beauties intact.

What I’ve Learned from my Google Hits

I get a surprising number of hits from the following Google searches:

Organic MSG

Originally mentioned in this post as a farcical product, there indeed seems to be a huge untapped demand.  Somebody really ought to get cracking on this.  You’ll make a killing.

Road Kill Cookbooks

Recipe ideas for a delectable roadside buffet have crossed my mind once or twice, and I guess I’m not the only one.  It turns out that road kill cookbooks do exist.  Unfortunately, I am not the author of one.  For you Googlers who land here by accident, what you might want is the Original Road Kill Cookbook by Buck Peterson.  Then, there's Bruce Carlson's helpful series of road kill cookbooks broken down by state, just in case the ingredients you come across in South Dakota are vastly different from those in, say,  Arkansas.  Sadly, there isn't yet one for Massachusetts.  And I'll be damned if I'm going to settle for mediocre substitutions. 

MILF

Thanks to one of my loyal readers who innocently commented on this particular post, I recently had a Saudi Arabian stop by to check on the possibility of some MILF action.  I said I needed to do a background check.  I haven’t heard back.

Glazed Doughnut

Cakey.  Delicious.  Preferably chocolate.  You know the ones I’m talking about.  But, apparently, this means something entirely different in pornographer-ese (you'll have to do your own research).  I’ve stopped blogging about them with my usual exuberance.

My education continues.

Culinary School Was a Waste of Money

Last week, I had the most delicious chocolate mousse pie.  A gift from my dad!

It was his third and best attempt.  He brought the whole pie over in a cooler with a bag of frozen cappellettis from Nonni.  I was psyched.  Chocolate mousse pie AND cappellettis?  Turns out, he was only using the bag of cappellettis as an ice pack, and he said he needed them back.  Curse you, father.  (In the end, he gave those to me, too.  This blog has been working out great in situations like this.)

We wasted no time cutting into the mousse pie.  I was slightly pissed off to realize that it was, frankly, better than mine.  Really.  He said mine was lighter, but his was plenty light and, more importantly, his was chocolatier.  Guess what wins out in my book?  So, I think we’re going to have to arrange some sort of chocolate mousse pie exchange program so that he makes one for me if I make one for him. 

Anyway, in my haste to wrap up the pie and get it into the refrigerator before my kids started using my sharing lecture against me, I forgot to take a picture like I promised.  I had already stuck toothpicks into it like a porcupine to keep the plastic wrap from pulling off valuable whipped cream.  Then, I ate it all.  I’m a bad blogger and a bad daughter.

By the way, I don’t mean to withhold the recipe, it's just that it's part of the family cookbook.  I got it from my beloved cousin, Karla, after she wowed everyone at a family reunion with it a few years ago.  So, you’ll just have to wait.  Unless, of course, you can con my dad into making one for you.

Cookbook Friday: Cappellettis

This is my grandmother, Dora [Barbaresi] Donroe, beaming with what must be her first child, Margaret Ann, in 1942.  The U.S. had been at war with Japan and Germany since the bombing of Pearl Harbor the year before.

Cappellettis are among the top three all-time favorite family recipes, along with crescia and passatellis.  Pronounced “cop-LETS” in the dialect Nonni spoke, these are meat-filled tortellini shaped like little hats (that’s what the name means in Italian) and served in chicken soup.

Nonni still makes these filled pastas by the thousands, despite the rheumatoid arthritis that has permanently bent her fingers.  She freezes them in big bags and sends them home with me (if I play my cards right) or my dad (if I don’t) along with containers of homemade soup.  Her youngest son, Eddie, now in his fifties, has a standing order for shipments of cappellettis and crescia to be sent to him from Connecticut to Washington State several times a year.  Although the prognosis for pork traveling through the U.S. postal system is grim at best, he still lives to tell a happy tale.

 

Cappellettis

I recently revised this recipe (12/10) to make half the filling and double the pasta so you end up with about the right amount of each.  That recipe can be found here.

For the filling:
3 Tbsp. oil
2 lb. ground lean pork
½ cup breadcrumbs
1 cup grated Parmesan cheese (or more)
2 eggs
Pinch of nutmeg
Salt and black pepper to taste

For the dough:
2 cups flour
1 egg (sometimes 2)

Heat the oil in a large pot over medium heat.  Brown pork until cooked through.  Remove pan from heat and mix in breadcrumbs, cheese, eggs, nutmeg, salt, and pepper.  Mixture should be thick enough to hold together.  If too wet, add more breadcrumbs and/or cheese.  Let cool while making dough.

In a large bowl, add flour and make a well in the middle.  Crack egg in the center and stir with a fork, gradually scraping in the flour from the perimeter to incorporate.  When it gets too thick to stir, turn out onto flour board and knead, adding more flour if necessary. Roll into a cylinder and cut into 2-inch pieces.  Put in a lightly oiled bowl and cover to keep from drying out.

Set up pasta machine with rollers open to the widest setting.  Run one piece of pasta through the machine.  Decrease the number by one and run the pasta through again.  Continue decreasing the space between rollers until the pasta is so thin, you can almost see your fingers through it.

Working quickly, place rolled-out pasta on lightly floured surface and cut into 1½-inch squares using a sharp knife.  Place one teaspoon of filling in the center of a square and fold into a triangle, corner to corner, pressing on the edges to seal.  Bring the two pointy corners toward each other, overlapping slightly, and press to join.  They should sit flat like the little hats they are.  Lay them in a single layer on a rimmed cookie sheet and cover while filling the rest of the pasta squares.  Repeat until all the pasta is used, freezing the pans of completed cappellettis as soon as they are filled.  Once the pasta has frozen, you can transfer them to plastic freezer bags.  Any remaining filling can be stored in the freezer for future use.

To serve, bring homemade chicken soup to a boil.  Add frozen cappellettis (don’t defrost them), stirring occasionally.  Let soup come back up to a boil, then turn down heat to a gentle simmer.  Cook until al dente (fully cooked but still firm) about 7 minutes. 

Dora [Barbaresi] Donroe
New Haven, Connecticut
1918 –

Nonni's freshly made cappellettis.  Photo by Trish Barker.

Next Recipe: Italian Pie Crust

     (Previous Recipe: Sausages and Peppers)

Eat Local Challenge: A Multi-Step Process

So, here’s how I break it down:

Step 1.  Define a radius.

In other words, how local are we talking here?  Die-hard localvores seem to favor the scant 100-mile radius.  But when you live on the coast, that hardly seems fair.  About 40% of my radius would then be squandered by useless ocean.  Nothing good to eat in there.  So, I’m leaning toward a 200-mile radius to even things out.  Or whatever-mile radius includes all of Vermont.  So, maybe…250?  Seem fair?  I hope so, because I just signed up for milk delivery (glass bottles!!) from Crescent Ridge Dairy, which gets its milk from the tippity-top of the Green Mountain State.

Step 2: Plant garden. 

Apparently, I have to get cracking on this.  The sun is supposed to come out this weekend, so I need to get some seeds into the ground ASAP.  Also need to figure out what to grow.  And buy the seeds.  And get dirt.  Actually, the sun was out earlier today and the squirrels were having spring flings in every possible area of the yard.  I kept having to pull down the shades, yelling, “Get a room.”  I hope they get it all out of their system by the weekend.  I don’t want the children wasting valuable planting time asking questions.

But, just in case my garden doesn’t grow, or it does grow but the only remaining groundhog on the premises chomps everything to the ground, I’ve joined a local CSA.  That’s community-supported agriculture, which basically means you pay a farm to give you stuff direct (my hip Cambridge friends turned me on to this, only they do actual farm work in exchange). 

Turns out, there are quite a lot of farms in Massachusetts that do this.  I chose Drumlin Farm because it’s only 20 minutes away, we go there for walks quite a bit anyway, and farm work is optional.  They're not certified organic, but they practice sustainable agriculture.  Also, they keep some livestock, and I figured that if I experienced a severe red meat deficiency, I could always sneak in there for some “optional farm work” and it wouldn't be considered cheating.

This isn’t so much a question as a thinking-out-loud.

Step 3:  Establish the rules.

I don’t cheat in board games, but I cannot be trusted around food.  There are just too many chocolate honey-dipped loopholes, if you know what I mean.  So, the rules need to be well established ahead of time so that I don't get branded a cheater.  Because I will cheat.  I just want to be up front about it.

Here are the things I'm unclear about when it comes to local products.  Obviously, produce should be locally grown, but what about other things?  Does the fish have to be hooked in Boston Harbor, or is just having a Cape Cod vacation home enough?  Does meat have to be locally raised or just locally processed (I’m thinking specifically of my beloved DePasquale’s sausages since I doubt they use local pork)?  Also, Teddie’s peanut butter is manufactured in Everett, but I have yet to see a single peanut farm in the vicinity.  Same with amber waves of grain.  I’m pretty sure my kids won’t survive peanut butter sandwich withdrawal, so I may have to draw up a few clauses.

I’m feeling pretty confident about the produce side of it during September, it being harvest time and all.  It’s everything else I’m worried about.  I’m going to have to map out the food groups, I think.  Also, can somebody please tell me how to cope with a lack of local citrus fruits?  Any and all input is welcome starting…now.

Eat Local Challenge: HELP

I know that the Eat Local Challenge isn’t officially until September, but anyone who knows me knows that I don’t like change.  Unanticipated change, rapid change, loose change that ends up as three tons of pennies in the bottom of your purse.  Don’t like it.

So, I need to start early and ramp up the change so that it doesn’t seem like change at all.  Sort of like how I weaned myself off of whole milk over a period of 10 years.  I’m still about this close to falling off the 1% wagon.  And please don’t even mention the S word in my presence (No, not “shit.”  “Skim.”  Shit is way better.  Dad, I know you can agree with me on this one.).

It’s not like I eat 100% imported food and that’s what makes this challenge seem like such a stretch.  I get a lot of produce locally in the summertime, but, mostly, I just don’t pay attention.  I buy what seems good and don’t give a crap where it came from.  Except that lately it seems like the local stuff is better and, I don’t know, maybe there’s some kind of correlation.

Anyway, now I’m committed (Husband to insert joke here) and I’m looking for a little advice.  Some of you people are veterans, and even though you probably live in California so I can’t copy your answers word-for-word, a note tossed across the classroom behind the teacher’s back is always appreciated.  Doesn’t even have to be hand-written.

My questions come tomorrow, so please stand by.  Don’t comment today.  I mean it, I already have them written, so don’t ruin it by giving me all the answers today.  What?  I’m not posting them today because, if you must know, I don’t have a post for tomorrow.  And I’m pretty sure I’m not going to feel like writing one, either.  Okay?  Geez, can’t I slack off around here for one goddamned minute?

Is Domino’s Hiring?

It’s been raining for four days straight now.  Between that and the fact that I didn't win the Marathon, I needed a little pick-me-up.  Husband forwarded me this clip from yesterday’s Red Sox game against the Angels, and it did the trick.  You don’t have to be a sports lover to appreciate this guy’s pitching style.  Pay attention to the replays and commentary after the break.

You don’t see pizza delivery like that every day.  And I don’t know what everyone’s complaining about, because that’s about as close to the pie-hole as you can reasonably expect from someone who’s not in the majors.  Some people are never satisfied.

A New Low for Thermometers

As I was perusing the archives of the Devil’s Food Dictionary, my favorite primary source for fact-checking the lies on my web site, I was reminded of author Barry Foy’s definition of tuna.  Here’s an excerpt: “Excellent raw, cooked in any way, or canned, this sleek, majestic, powerful animal is so delicious that we have decided not to waste any of it on future generations.”

That’s pretty funny, I thought.  Which reminded me that I was hungry.  And that I could really go for some sea bass.  But, I wasn’t sure what the status of current fish stocks are.  Supplies of sea bass were dwindling some years back, but is it okay to eat them, again?  What about now? 

Now?

So, I had this idea to help people like me keep tabs on their favorite (i.e., most delicious) creatures.  A giant thermometer, like in fundraisers, where the mercury rises feverishly as supplies run low.  It seems counterintuitive, at first.  But, see, as stocks begin disappearing, demand naturally skyrockets.  And with the mercury soaring, you would then feel the overwhelming urge to rush to your nearest restaurant to get your final, forbidden taste of the food in question before it’s taken off menus for good.  And if you time it just right, you could be the one responsible for the final DING-DING-DING and subsequent explosion of confetti that accompanies the extinction announcement.

For example, according to my market research (i.e., the BBC’s spectacular Blue Planet series), there are amazing species of fish and fishlike eel things in the depths that no one’s even heard of, never mind tasted.  This would barely register at the bottom of the thermometer.  However, for something like cheetah burgers, the mercury would shoot up and hover just shy of joyful dinging, with statisticians at the ready to compile a McDonald’s-like tabulation of the total patties served.

Kind of like this:

Or would that be in poor taste?

It’s a Marathon, Not a Sprint

Something about Marathon Monday always thrills me.  I’ve loved the Boston Marathon ever since I was a kid.  The cheering.  The silver superhero capes you get to wear when you finish.  The pre-race carbo-loading, and, I imagine, the post-race ice-cream-sundae-loading.  It all looks good to a 12-year-old.

Now that I’m older, I’m barely any wiser, but I do know that the running part’s no picnic.  Especially the 26 miles part of the running part.  How do these people do it?  And, why?  The only explanation I can think of is that they’ve all lost their minds at the same time, and they’re trying to catch up to them.

The nor’easter that is currently trying its best to knock over trees onto our house ought to make this the best marathon ever.  The 50 mph wind gusts may yield the most interesting times in marathon history.  The 3 to 5 inches of rain in the forecast will certainly help with hydration.  And the wind chill, estimated at fricking freezing, means no fear of heat stroke. 

Can the Kenyans still win under these conditions?  I know I’ll be glued to the TV in my nice, dry living room to find out.

Cookbook Friday: Sausage and Peppers

So, back to my grandmother.  We left off with Dora Barbaresi marrying Freddie Donroe in 1940.  This picture was taken two years later on the Fourth of July of 1942.  Nonni, visibly pregnant, is sitting with her niece, Terese [Bontempo] Cirasuolo, and nephew, Gerry Piccolo, who are enjoying some tasty raisins.  Speaking of picnic food, which I hope to be enjoying in the near future, here’s an Italian standard that’s easy, portable, and lip-smacking good.

 

Sausage and Peppers

The secret is in the sausage.  Get the most authentic Italian sausages you can find.  I love the ones from DePasquale’s in Nonantum, MA, which you can buy from their tiny little shop on Watertown St. or at Russo’s.  I throw a couple of spicy ones in with the sweet to keep things interesting.

2 Tbsp. olive oil
2 onions, sliced thinly
3 green bell peppers, thickly sliced
1 red bell pepper, thickly sliced
2 lbs. sweet Italian sausages, links separated, pricked
6 Italian sub rolls

Preheat oven to 350°F.  In a large baking dish, add oil, onions, peppers, and whole sausages.  Cover with foil and bake until sausages are cooked through and peppers are soft, between 1 and 1½ hours, depending on the thickness of the peppers.  Serve in sub rolls.

Dora [Barbaresi] Donroe
New Haven, Connecticut
1918 -

 

Next Recipe: Cappellettis

     (Previous Recipe: Crescia)

Ask the Pseudo-Chef: Chicken-Lickin' Good

Dear Pseudo-Chef,

So, what's the deal with OXO cubes?  Are they okay to use?  Because I love them!  I know real chefs make their own broth, but it sounds like a terrible bother, quite frankly, especially for someone who doesn't have a lot of scraps lying around.  And canned stuff is expensive.  So, really, is it so terrible to use the cubes?  – Sunny, Canada

For what it’s worth, my thought on the matter is this.  It’s only terrible to use bouillon cubes if you think they make your food taste like crap.  If dinner tastes fine, then there’s nothing wrong with using them.

Listen, we’re all busy.  We have to draw the line somewhere.  I draw the line at peeling chestnuts and blanching almonds.  I’m not doing it.  You may draw the line somewhere else.  I always have something on the verge of rotting in my refrigerator and/or succumbing to frostbite in my freezer.  For me, making broth (or stock, since I use bones) makes sense.  Plus, in my line of work, I’m usually in the vicinity of my kitchen.  This isn’t necessarily the case if you work in sanitation.

As far as flavor is concerned, I find homemade stock to be subtler, more aromatic, less salty, and more chickeny in a fresh chicken kind of way than broth from bouillon cubes or cans.  Another thing is that many cubes contain oodles of salt and/or MSG which, granted, are quite tasty, but I like to be the one in charge of the salt and MSG shakers.  I’ve never tried your particular brand, though.  I will say that Swanson makes a low-sodium chicken broth in a box that, to me, tastes much better than the bouillon cubes I’ve used. 

If you’re up for an experiment, the next time you roast a chicken or somebody else you know does, grab the carcass and stick it in your purse.  Bag it up tight, date it, and throw it in the freezer.  Forget about it for a couple of months.  Then, on a rainy day when you’re bored, throw it in your largest pot (need I say without the bag?) and cover with water.  While it’s heating up, clean out your crisper.  Just use what you have.  Maybe a handful each of carrots, celery, onions, herbs like parsley and thyme (dried herbs, like bay leaves, in small quantities are fine), a couple of garlic cloves.  Don’t bother to peel them.  Just chop them in half and throw them in.  Maybe toss in a few peppercorns.  And any leftover white wine you might have in the fridge (I know, what are the odds of that?). 

Bring everything to a boil and then spoon off the frothy stuff at the top.  Simmer for a couple of hours while you tend to your other important rainy day business like, I don’t know, eBay?  Porn?  What's your pleasure?  Then strain it into a large bowl.  Pour it into several medium-sized plastic containers, label, date, and freeze.  The next time you make soup, sauces, or risotto, defrost a container and use it.  If you don’t detect a noticeable difference in the flavor of your dishes, then don’t bother making homemade broth ever again.  Nobody has to know.  If nothing else, your kitchen smelled good while you were trapped inside, and you cleared out some space in the fridge. 

However, if you do notice an overwhelming increase in deliciousness, well then I’ve ruined you forever.

Ask the Pseudo-Chef: Ice, Ice, Baby

Dear Pseudo-Chef,

My question is about demi-glace (you know, that $35 jar of beef concentrate that you use a little of, and then keep in the fridge door to get moldy).  Since it is so highly coveted and (perhaps) rarely used, do you have any recommendations for storing or saving this item?  I thought about storing it in an ice cube tray (sealed in a freezer Ziploc, of course)...this has worked with Worcestershire for Bloody Marys!  – Carey, CT

This is exactly what to do.  Demi-glace is definitely freezable as it's just a concentrated version of stock.  Ice cube trays should work great.  I’ve used them to portion homemade baby food for the kids, then popped the cubes out into freezer bags once they were frozen solid so I could get the trays back into circulation.  I've considered doing that with tomato paste, too, since I never use a whole can.  But, instead, it rots.

Just between you and me, demi-glace definitely qualifies as something that crosses some kind of line with me and I refuse to make it.  The idea of taking that huge pot of stock I just made and cooking it down until its contents fit neatly into a shot glass just makes me crazy.  Sure, it’s extra, super delicious, but it's only going to get me drunk for two hours, tops.  If I’m making a pot of stock, I want to nurse it for at least a week.

As for homemade Bloody Marys, well, that just proves your awesomeness.  Word to your mother.

V is for Vegetable, Victory

Well, it’s decided.  I’m starting a victory garden.  Victory over what, I’m not sure.  Laziness, I guess.  And, hopefully, my perpetual black thumb.

My previous gardening experience is as follows.  A few anemic pots of herbs.  A flowerbed full of flowers that never bloom (or weeds that never bloom, not sure).  And a nearly grassless yard that will soon be overtaken by encroaching ferns.  (However, I just discovered that the ferns might be the edible kind, which, if true, means I’ll have a lifetime supply of fiddleheads and much less to curse about.)

Last year, I tried growing strawberries in pots.  I dutifully plucked off all the budding fruits to encourage more robust growth the following season.  An exercise in short-term loss for long-term gain, I was told.  Then, I proceeded to kill the plants sometime before the gain part.  Now, I’ve learned my lesson.  Let the strawberries grow.  Two strawberries are better than none.

Before that, I tried my hand with blueberry bushes.  I planted three because my oldest son has loved blueberries since birth, and I had images of him frolicking in the yard, plucking the tiny fruits at will.  According to their tags, blueberry bushes require acidic soil.  I had no idea what kind of soil we had, but I did have some leftover litmus paper from junior high, so I mixed up a batch of mud and kind of pushed the papers into it.  Instead of blue or red, the papers turned a muddy shade of brown.  I didn’t know what that meant since I couldn’t find my mood ring decoder.  But, since my hands weren’t burning from digging around in the dirt, I took that to mean a severe lack of acid. 

The garden store said to add sulfur to the soil.  After reading the instructions, which made no sense, I dumped a whole bunch of the little sulfur beads onto the ground and prayed for rain.  Because my husband hadn’t yet introduced me to the wonders of irrigation (What do you mean I have to water the plants.  They’re outside.  Isn’t that what nature’s for?). 

Turns out, blueberries love sulfur.  They grew.  They even put out a few berries, to which the birds helped themselves before I could sprint up the hill to pick them.  Then our rock walls toppled on top of all three bushes.  Apparently, rock walls don’t like acidic soil.  Needless to say, there’s been very little blueberry-related frolicking going on.

But despite my litany of past failures, I’m still going to give this vegetable garden thing a go.  You can’t eat any more local than that.  When the going gets tough, I'll have my constant fear of low blood sugar to spur me on (well, at least until I get low blood sugar).  But, perhaps most importantly, I have child labor.  And, this year, I’m not afraid to use it.

Road Kill Prophecies

It was cold today.  Yesterday, too.  Which reminds me, what does it mean when, in the vicinity of Groundhog Day, instead of seeing his shadow or not seeing his shadow, the resident groundhog gets hit by a car? 

Does it mean no more spring, ever?

Ode to a Cadbury Crème Egg

Oh, delicious orb of fondant goo,
How you bewitch me each and every year.
Though the clucking rabbit that claims to lay you
Still confuses me,
No matter: A chocolate egg is still a chocolate egg.

Lesser chocolatiers may have you filled
With peanut butter, or caramel, or Snickers,
But of thee I ask, where’s the albumin?  What of the faux yolk?
Nay, there’s only one true crème egg.
The one with the crème.

Heed not the haters,
For they are stupid idiots that don’t know what’s good.
No one can deny your rightful place nestled within Easter wicker
Among foil-covered chocolate rabbits, Peeps, jellybeans,
And those delicious malted milk speckled egg thingies.

Cookbook Friday: Crescia

This is Gerry Barbaresi, brother of Dora Barbaresi (my Nonni).  He was the youngest of the seven, and arrived on the scene in 1927 (the original family portrait was taken two years before he was born).  I have no idea when this particular shot was taken, but I’m going to say 1940 just to keep my fragile chronology intact. 

Gerry was the only son and the only one of his siblings to be able to go to college.  There, he met his future wife, Regina Lipowski.  Growing up in a household full of Italian women, Gerry was also the only one who married a non-Italian (he was no fool).  After graduation, he started working as a teacher and eventually worked his way up to Superintendent of Schools in New Haven and, later, New Fairfield, CT.

Gerry was well known for his sharp wit.  He loved crescia, the traditional Easter bread from the Marches region of Italy where his parents were born.  Nonni often made crescia for him, and she remembers Gerry giving his wife a hard time when it came to sharing his beloved loaves.  He used to say to Regina, “My sister made this for me.  You let your sister make you crescia.”  Regina didn’t have any sisters.  She was an only child.  Of Polish immigrants.  “Go ask your sister to do it,” he would say.  “My sister will do it for me, your sister will do it for you.”

Gerry passed away in 1998.  Regina still lives in the New Haven area where she, Nonni, my dad, my boys, the Easter Bunny, and I hope to all get together this weekend.  I’ll be bringing crescia.  I promise to share.

 

Crescia

Nonni’s recipe for this Parmesan pepper bread makes five loaves.  If this seems like a ridiculous amount of bread, then I’ve failed to express how much the people in my family love it.  You can cut the recipe in half, or store the extra loaves in the freezer wrapped in foil inside an airtight freezer bag.

7 cups flour
6 cups grated Parmesan cheese
½ lb. fresh yeast*
1 Tbsp. black pepper
13 eggs
1 stick butter, melted
¾ cup oil

Preheat oven to 300°F.    Grease 5 medium loaf pans.

In the largest bowl you can find (or a stockpot), mix together flour, cheese, and black pepper.  With your fingers, crumble yeast as finely as you can and mix.  In a large bowl, beat eggs with butter and oil.  Make a well in the center of the dry ingredients and add the wet ingredients.  Stir together until well mixed, but do not knead.  Cover and let rise for 1 hour at room temperature.  Divide dough into pans and bake for 45 minutes to an hour.

*A note about yeast: I know a half-pound of yeast seems like a mistake, but it’s not.  I must have asked Nonni more than a dozen times to check this figure before I tested the recipe.  Usually, by the 14th conversation, I’ve gotten the straight story.  Sure enough, the recipe works as written.  The best and most cost-effective thing to do is get fresh yeast from your local bakery, which is what Nonni does and what I, in turn, did.  It comes in 1 pound bricks, which you can ask them to cut in half, and they might charge you anywhere from $1 to $4.  If you’re smart, you’ll ask for a few cannoli on the side.  Everyone wins.

Dora [Barbaresi] Donroe
New Haven, Connecticut
1918 –

Next Recipe: Sausages and Peppers

     (Previous Recipe: Clam Sauce)

Ask the Pseudo-Chef: Easter Pork Query

Dear Pseudo-Chef,

Why does my ham taste like ass? – Neighbor Husband, MA

Um, can you be more specific? – Pseudo-Chef

We were recently told, "you can't ruin a ham".  Always ones for a challenge, we proved them wrong.  While it may be impossible to ruin a cooked ham, ruining a fresh ham is easy!  So how DO you prepare a fresh ham? – Neighbor Wife, MA

Okay.  Your question was ringing some faint bells, but I could barely make out the melody through all the other ringing in my ears, so I had to call in reinforcements.  I found www.ham.com to be remarkably not helpful (especially the lettuce and grape sections).  But once I expanded my search parameters, I found that there is, indeed, a significant difference between a cooked ham and fresh ham, and it goes beyond the obvious distinction between cooked and raw. 

The ham we traditionally associate with Easter is cured pork.  The act of covering the ham with salt (or injecting it with brine) and letting it sit for a long, long time, not to mention the optional smoking process, changes the flavor and texture of the meat, and gives you that distinctive hammy goodness that we all (more or less) know and love.  Most cured hams these days are already precooked and just require a reheat that still takes frickin’ forever.  I can’t imagine how long the really good uncooked country hams take.  Probably about as long as your average resurrection.

A fresh ham is simply uncured, uncooked pork.  In other words, the end product will be like a really big pork roast.  You can prepare it like a regular ham, but it’s still going to taste like plain old pork. 

Was the ass flavor you experienced actually unanticipated porkiness when you expected hamtasticness?  Because I got thrown for a loop one time when I was served sweet potato fries when I thought they were just regular French fries.  I thought something was seriously wrong with those fries (rotten potatoes? rancid oil?), but it turns out I’m just dumb.  Once I recalibrated my expectations, deliciousness followed.

Natalie Runyan, butcher of John Dewar in Newton, MA, says that it actually is possible to make a fresh ham taste good (remembering Rule #1 that it’s not going to taste like ham).  She cooks hers covered at 325°F for 3½ hours, and then uncovered for another hour (170°F is the interior temperature you're aiming for).  According to Runyan, some people score the skin and put fresh pineapple and orange slices on top, but I think this just perpetuates the misconception that it’s going to taste like ham.  It’s not.  Let’s go another way.  Alternatively, she says, you can scatter garlic and onions all around it like a pork roast.  Now, we’re talking.  Here’s another simple recipe that may or may not be good.

So, here’s my advice.  If you want your ham to taste like ham, just buy a cured ham.  However, if you like the occasional piece of ass, now is as good a time as any to experiment with your very first fresh ham. 

And Speaking of Birthdays

My dad recently celebrated one.  We won’t go into the specifics of his age, but according to my calculations, it would be somewhere in the ballpark of the seventies.  Right, Dad?

Anyway, his cake of choice is chocolate mousse cake.  Not the kind with a thin layer of chocolate mousse sandwiched between two slabs of chocolate cake, but the kind with chocolate mousse sandwiched between even more mousse.  I make it for his birthday, and then, for the remaining 364 days of the year, I get to listen to him complain about how long it’s been since he’s had a chocolate mousse cake.  So I nearly went into shock when he asked for the recipe. 

I was immediately suspicious.  Was he planning to start a rival blog with all the same recipes interspersed with embarrassing pictures and factoids from my awkward adolescence?  Because he damn sure wasn’t actually going to make the cake.  Was he?

Yes, he was.  So smitten by chocolate moussiness was he that he was willing, at least temporarily, to shed his unapologetic bachelor ways to don a frilly apron instead.  I could hardly believe my ears.  But I had to change my tune from incredulousness to supportiveness pretty quickly because this was my ticket to some peace and quiet for a change.  So, I sprinted up the stairs to print out the recipe. 

When I returned:

Dad: The only thing is, I don’t have a cake pan.

Me: Here, take mine.  Take all of them.

Dad: Okay...

Me: Do you need spatulas, too?

(Later, over the phone.)

Dad: And what does it mean to fold the chocolate into the whipped cream?

Me: blah, blah, blah, blabbity blah…blah, blah, blah.

(It doesn’t matter what I said here because it made no sense to me or anyone else.  There’s no way to explain good folding technique over the phone, especially to a scientist.  I tried using sundial analogies, orbiting planet terminology, nothing was getting through.  So, I gave up and said gently stir.  Just try to keep the cream whipped.)

Dad: Okay.  But, I don’t have an electric mixer, so I’ll just use the blender.

Me: Wait a minute.  Hold the phone.  You can’t use a blender.

Dad: Why?

Me: Because you’ll overwhip the cream.  You’ll get butter.

Dad: Well, I’m not buying a mixer.

Me: They cost like $20.

Dad: But then I’d have to leave the house and spend money, both at the same time. I didn’t semi-retire so I could go on wild shopping sprees like some kind of a girl (he didn’t actually say this, but I know what he was thinking).

Me: You could use a whisk?

Dad: Forget it.  I’m using a blender.

Me: All righty.  Have fun with that.

To make a long story still too long, he didn’t end up with butter, but judging by the volume of the whipped cream, there wasn’t nearly enough air in there.  He said there were stiff peaks, but I don’t think he knew what I meant.  Compared to what?  The original unwhipped cream?  What was supposed to be a three-inch high cake was maybe an inch high.  In case you’ve ever wondered, don’t use a blender to whip cream.

Still, it was a valiant first attempt.  I thought I’d lose him at the cookie crumb crust.  He powered through and the cake was edible.  For his second attempt, he did finally decide to spring for the mixer after coming to the realization that an Andrew Jackson was a small price to pay for a lifetime supply of chocolate mousse.  Armed with the proper technology, he was rewarded with a two-inch-high cake.  Go, Dad!  I have high hopes that once we work on his folding technique, he’ll find himself with a soaring velveteen chocolate mousse worthy of a guest appearance on my very prestigious blog.

Next stop, baklava.

Cooking from Blogs

I’ve been in a tremendous cooking rut lately.  Part of it is that I’m lazy.  Another part is that my magazine subscriptions have all run out at the same time, and I miss them.  But, apparently, not enough to renew them. 

I’ve always liked getting a preview of the month ahead, especially when the upcoming month promises actual produce.  Now, in addition to never knowing what day it is, I’m a little fuzzy on the seasons, too.  Windows don’t help.  We went from warm, spring weather to snowstorms to warm weather again.  Make up your mind!  I’m seasonally affected, so I take it personally when the weather screws me over like that.  Now, judging from the rain, we’re back to spring.  The snow is almost gone, and I’ve been cooking from blogs.  Here’s what I’ve enjoyed in case you missed them:

Cream of Asparagus Soup from Lucullian Delights: This little bowl of spring is thickened with rice instead of cream.  Three out of four members of the household loved it.  The four-year-old passed because he didn’t want to be a cannibal.

Mujadara from Orangette: This hearty Middle Eastern rice and lentil dish was lunch all last week.  My dad refused to partake, lumping it in with all the other “girly” recipes he thinks I make.  I’d like to drop him off in a bad neighborhood in Syria and have him make that girly comment again.

Spinach with Garbanzos from Lobstersquad: Two words: garlic and cumin.  And tomatoes.  Okay, three words.  Well, plus the spinach and chickpeas, which makes…whatever number of words, it doesn’t matter.  It’s just ridiculously good.  I can’t bring myself to make spinach any other way.

Birthday Cake and Gratuitous Red Sox References

I made a birthday cake over the weekend.  This is a big deal.  Even my kids don’t get homemade birthday cakes and here’s why.

When I was a little girl, I remember my mom going to great pains to make birthday cakes for my sister and I.  By most reasonable standards, they were whimsical and delicious.  Birthdays were one of the only times I was allowed to have sugar, so I should have been grateful.  Instead, I was pissed.  The cake didn’t look at all like the ones at the grocery store, or the ones at every other birthday party I attended.  I felt cheated.

(What a little shit.)

Now, that I’m a mom, I’m familiar with the desire to surround my children with only the best that life has to offer, even if I only end up indulging them in a wee percentage.  So, naturally, for those special times, I turn to our local grocery store for the celebratory confection, or, if they say they love me better than daddy, I’ll go to a real bakery.  This proves how much I love them back because, surely, what I wanted as a kid is exactly the same as what they want.

This will backfire on me someday, I’m sure, when one or more kids call me from their college dorm to say they flunked biology and it’s all because I didn’t love them enough to bake homemade birthday cakes when they were little.  And that I can make it up to them by making one RIGHT NOW and, by the way, can I do their laundry while I’m at it.  But, in the meantime, I’ve saved myself a lot of aggravation.

I do make homemade birthday cakes for my husband, however.  It may be the only nice thing I do for him all year, so I try to make it count.  He always requests a carrot cake.  I just assumed it would be the same this year, but he threw me a Wakefield knuckleball last week by requesting a yellow cake with chocolate frosting.  Why, I demanded to know?  I already have the carrots picked out.  What about the cream cheese frosting I was planning to lick right out of the bowl while you weren’t looking.  In other words, I responded to his crazy-assed pitch as if I were Jason Varitek.

But I’m anything if not flexible, so after trying to talk him out of it several times, I finally realized that the word he said before frosting was chocolate.  And there ain’t nothing wrong with that word. 

Here’s the cake.

And here’s the frosting recipe.  It’s fudgy and delicious.  Lent is almost over for you devout types who gave up chocolate, so file it away for a week.  My husband gave up baseball, so he’s in luck, too (though, maybe not judging from the score of today's season opener).  Happy birthday, Husband.  You can just call me Mirabelli from now on, since you’ll be married to the TV, anyway.

Chocolate Frosting

I’ve taken the liberty of doubling the recipe since the barely-enough approach doesn’t cut it for me.  If you can’t live it up on your birthday, I don’t know when you can.

6 oz. bittersweet chocolate (I used Síríus Icelandic chocolate because I saw it in the store and wondered what it tasted like.  It tastes like chocolate.)
6 Tbsp. salted butter
6 cups confectioner’s sugar
2 tsp. vanilla extract
¾ cup milk

In a double boiler* over simmering water, melt chocolate with the butter, stirring often.  Remove from heat and cool for 5 minutes.  In a stand mixer fitted with a whisk attachment, blend confectioner’s sugar with the chocolate mixture at low speed.  When it resembles chalky beads, add the vanilla and blend.  Pour the milk, about a tablespoon at a time, blending well after each addition at medium speed.  Once it reaches a spreadable consistency (add more milk if necessary), beat at medium-high until fluffy.  Frost cake right away as it firms up in about 20 minutes.

*If you don’t have a double boiler, don’t sweat it.    Fill a small pot with an inch of water and bring to a simmer.  Set a large bowl on top of the pot for the butter and chocolate, preferably one that can rest comfortably up there while you stir.  Also, did you know you can melt chocolate in the microwave?  You totally can.  Just use low power in 20-second increments, stirring in between, until the butter and chocolate are melted.

Source: Adapted from Lynn Kearney of the Food Network Kitchens.  Original recipe here.

Recently Overheard

At a restaurant, after trying to decide between a pasta or a salad appetizer:

Husband: I’m not going to suffer through a salad on my birthday.

Over lunch during his weekly visit:

Dad: Your blog’s getting kind of boring.  I noticed you haven’t mentioned anything about me, lately.  You know, people aren’t reading your blog for the recipes.

Also, I made asparagus soup last week, and the resident 4-year-old referred to it as “American Soup.”  I like the name, and, in fact, never feel more American than I do while eating asparagus soup.  Still, I’m not going to push for a name change since it might cause some confusion with the other “American Soup.”  The one often served cold in the hillside grottos of Afghanistan.