Two weeks ago, my Chief Recipe Taster and I adopted a puppy. Rory is a three-month old Australian cattle dog mix who loves belly rubs and playing fetch. She adores pouncing on toys and getting peanut butter out of Kongs. Oh, and did I mention? She also excels at trying my patience.
I thought I knew what getting a puppy would entail. I was prepared for sleepless nights and extensive “sit” training. I was less prepared for a being who vacillates between puppy-like sweetness and adolescent-like disobedience and sucks up every minute of my time. Overnight, we went from largely deciding for ourselves how to spend our off-work hours to orienting our schedules around Rory. It’s largely been a fun and worthwhile adjustment, but an adjustment nonetheless.
With less time to spend in the kitchen, I find myself turning to that can be patient, like bread. Bread is perfect for this period; after a bit of activity I can let the dough rest, play with our pup, and return to it later. Unless you flagrantly abuse the dough by not letting it proof long enough or far too much, it is forgiving—a few minutes under or over shouldn’t hurt. This recipe uses both sourdough starter and yeast as leavening agents, so you pretty much can’t fail, while milk, butter, and eggs lend a pillowy texture. The rolls are the perfect accompaniment to fall soups and stews, and would be a welcome addition to your Thanksgiving table, too. They’re a bread that extends you patience while you exercise your own.
Sourdough Pumpkin Rolls with Sage and Browned Butter
Source: I Thought There Would Be Free Food
Makes 16 rolls
Active time: ~60 minutes; total time: ~4 hours
Ingredients:
115 grams milk, any percent
3 grams active dry yeast
40 grams brown sugar
60 grams butter
15 grams finely minced sage
100 grams ripe sourdough starter
2 egg yolks, lightly beaten
145 grams pumpkin puree (NOT pumpkin pie filling)
300 grams all-purpose flour
150 grams whole-wheat flour
10 grams table salt
1 egg yolk mixed with a little water, for egg wash (optional)
Directions:
Warm the milk in the microwave or on the stove until it’s just above room temperature—it should feel warm to the touch, not hot.
Add the yeast and brown sugar to a large bowl. Add the milk when it is warm, and stir to combine. Let the yeast proof for ~10 minutes.
While the yeast is proofing, brown the butter. Place the butter in a small skillet and heat over medium-low. Once the butter has melted, increase the heat to medium. Swirl the pan regularly or stir it with a spatula to ensure that the butter browns evenly. Once the butter is studded with little brown bits and smells toasty and delicious, take the skillet off the heat and stir in the sage. Set aside and let cool slightly.
Once the yeast has proofed, add the sourdough starter, egg yolks, pumpkin puree, and brown butter-sage mixture to the bowl and stir to combine.
Add the flours and salt to the bowl and mix with your hand or a spatula. Using your hands, work the dough into a mass and then knead until the dough is smooth, ~10 minutes. If needed, add splashes of milk or flour to achieve the right consistency.
Place the dough in a greased bowl, cover, and let rise until puffy and almost doubled in size. This will likely take at least 90 minutes, depending on the temperature of your kitchen.
When the dough has doubled, knock it down gently and turn out onto a lightly floured workspace.
Divide the dough into 16 pieces. From here, you can roll each piece into a rope at least 18 inches long and form them into knots using these instructions, or simply shape them into balls. Either way, set the formed rolls on a parchment-covered baking sheet, cover loosely with a light towel or plastic wrap, and let rise until puffy, at least 60 minutes.
Towards the end of the proofing period, position a rack in the middle of your oven and preheat it to 350°F.
Once the rolls have proofed, gently brush each roll with the egg wash mixture. Bake the rolls for 17-20 minutes, until lightly golden brown. Serve warm.
Candles and cutting carnage during the first-anniversary photo shoot
A few days ago, this little blog of mine turned 1. I had a celebratory post all planned out; I’d been developing a cake recipe for weeks, thinking about what I would write, and had the accompanying photographs framed out in my head. But when I went to translate vision into reality, reality hit hard. The cake just would not behave—or maybe it was me who wasn’t behaving. I cut too far into one of the layers when I tried to level it, and didn’t get the amount of frosting between layers the same. The next day, when I went to photograph the cake, none of the slices I cut were as perfect as I wanted them to be, perhaps, ahem, because my Chief Recipe Taster and I just couldn’t wait to taste-test the confection and had cut into it the day before. By the time I got around to staging, the light in the corner of our flat where I take my photos wasn’t quite as good as I’d hoped, and none of the photos were, either (exhibit A, the least-bad photo which features some of the cutting carnage in the background). Nothing turned out how I’d planned.
Truth be told, this incident pretty much sums up my first year of food blogging: I’ve tried a lot and then needed to try again. Most times this trying has been the result of something in the recipe not turning out as I hoped for (we ate that Savory Pumpkin Pie about five times before I was completely satisfied with it). But other times, the trying and failing was the result of events outside of my control. The advent of the pandemic and its effects on the world; the murders of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, and so many other BIPOC folks in the U.S. and around the world; environmental degradation; the death of RBG and the run-up to this election: so much has happened this year and I, like so many others, have struggled to keep pace. At times, everything going on made me think of giving up blogging—who needs to read about cake or Michigan strawberries when disease and inequality are rampant and seem to grow worse every day? What, I have wondered frequently this year, is the point?
Sometimes I stopped writing to wrestle with this question—there was quite a long pause between the “Orange You Glad This Isn’t a COVID Pun?” cocktail and Buckwheat Crepes with Sautéed Leeks and Fried Eggs—but in the end, two things always drew me back. The first is one that many of us who spend our days hunched over computers may recognize: the simple joy of creating something with my hands, something physical if temporal. It doesn’t matter if I’m shredding zucchini for muffins or chopping eggplant for ragout, knowing that there will be some tangible outcome is satisfying in and of itself.
The second is a bit different. You see, I believe that baking and cooking, the act of preparing food, is a subtle act of resistance and a demonstration of hope. After all, despite my fears about the state of the world, would I really keep creating if I didn’t believe in a future? Even on the days when I’m deeply afraid of what that future might look like, why else would I create a celebration cake but for the fact that something right now is worth celebrating, that something in the future might be worth celebrating?
So I keep coming up with recipe ideas, keep testing them obsessively, keep photographing them and returning to my little corner of the Internet to write about them. I do it even though I don’t have many followers. I do it as an act and as an affirmation, and really, I think that that is enough.
Makes one 6-inch, three-layer cake; one 8-inch, two-layer cake; or one 9×13, single-layer cake
Active time: ~90 minutes; total time ~3 hours
Notes:
The frosting recipe makes enough to “naked” frost a three-tier, six-inch layer cake. If you prefer to frost the cake all the way around, you may want to double the recipe.
Many of the ingredients in this recipe need to be at “room temperature.” This should be ~70°F, or when you can just press an indent into the butter and the eggs don’t feel chilly to the touch.
Cake Ingredients:
1 14.3 ounce-bag Oreos
1 stick room-temperature butter
1/3 cup room-temperature coconut oil
1 generous cup white sugar
1 1/4 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
4 room-temperature egg whites
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon almond extract
2 cups cake flour
1 cup room-temperature buttermilk
Frosting Ingredients
3 large egg whites
1/2 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup white sugar
1/8 teaspoon cream of tartar
2 sticks room-temperature butter
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
Directions:
Position a rack in the middle of your oven before preheating it to 350°F.
Prepare your cake tins. Grease them well, with either cooking spray or butter (if using butter, don’t forget to flour them, too) and line the bottoms with parchment paper.
Crush or roughly chop the Oreos so that they’re a mix of sizes. Divide them into two bowls, one for the cake and one for the frosting.
Make the cake: Add the butter, coconut oil, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, and salt to large bowl or that of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment. Beat the ingredients with a hand mixer or stand mixer set to medium speed until they are light and fluffy, approximately 5 minutes. Add the egg whites one at a time and beat well to combine after each. Beat in the vanilla and almond extracts.
Add half of the flour, then mix on low to combine. Add half of the buttermilk and, again, mix to combine. Repeat with the remaining flour and buttermilk. Gently but thoroughly, fold the Oreos into the batter.
Divide the batter evenly between the cake tins. Gently smooth the tops with a spatula before transferring them to the oven.
Bake the cakes for about 40 minutes, or until they are pale gold on the top and a cake tester inserted into the middle of each cake comes out with just a few crumbs clinging to it.
When the cakes are done, remove them from the oven. Let them cool in the tins for a bit before turning them out onto a wire cooling rack, removing the parchment rounds from their bottoms, and turning them right-side up again. After they cool completely—which will take at least an hour—you can frost them or wrap them well in plastic wrap and frost them the next day.
Make the frosting: Set a medium saucepan filled with about 2 inches of water to simmer. While the water is heating, whisk egg whites, salt, and sugar in a medium heat-proof bowl. Set the bowl over the saucepan and cook until the sugar has dissolved and the egg whites are warm—you can test this by dipping a spatula in the mixture and carefully running a finger through it.
Once the egg whites are warm and sugar dissolved, transfer them to the bowl of a standing mixer. Using the whisk attachment, mix the egg white-sugar syrup on low speed until foamy. Add the cream of tartar and increase the speed to medium-high; beat until you get stiff, glossy peaks. This will take ~10 minutes.
With the mixer on medium-low, add the butter, two tablespoons at a time, beating well to incorporate after each addition.
After you’ve added all of the butter, beat in the vanilla. Reduce the mixer speed to low and add the Oreos; mix to combine. Your frosting should look smooth and creamy; if it appears curdled or too loose, the temperature may be off; see here for a trouble-shooting guide.
Keep the buttercream at room temperature, covered with plastic wrap, if you’re planning to frost your cake soon; otherwise, it can keep in the refrigerator for several days. If you do chill it, bring the frosting to room temperature and whip it in your stand mixer before using.
Frost the cake: Use a sharp, serrated knife to carefully level your cake layers (scraps = baker’s reward). Place one layer on a serving platter and top with a healthy dollop of frosting; use a butter knife or off-set spatula to spread the frosting around the cake, working from the middle out. Repeat with additional cake layers. I like to let my cake sit for at least an hour before cutting into it, to ensure that the layers and frosting have time to meld together.
For someone who has spent the past two months bemoaning the
swirling heat vortex that is DC in the summer, you would think I’d have been
thrilled to see the food blogosphere explode into a panoply of apple-studded,
pumpkin-spiced foods on September 1. But no: now that it’s cool enough you can
go outside without instantly breaking into a sweat, I’m ready for summer 2.0.
Thankfully, the produce stands around here agree with me.
Sure, apples are starting to take up some real estate, but there are still
plenty of peaches and our CSA bag arrives stuffed with zucchini each week. I
appreciate zucchini for what it is: the tofu of the vegetable world. It plays
well with others ingredients and takes on whatever flavors and characteristics
you might want it to. This recipe plays with zucchini on two levels, first liberating
it from the cloyingly sweet quick breads you tend to see and then pairing it
with an old favorite, feta, as often seen in dishes from around the Mediterranean.
The result is a savory muffin that goes well with other late-summer produce
like eggplant, red peppers, and tomatoes. They’re good enough to make you want
to pause your fall fare and hold onto the last of summer for a bit longer.
Zucchini-Feta Muffins
Source: I Thought There Would Be Free Food
Makes 12 muffins
Active time: ~25 minutes; total time ~55 minutes
Ingredients:
1 medium zucchini, ~10 ounces or 292 grams
~4.5 ounces feta
1 cup whole wheat flour
1 cup all-purpose flour
1 cup cornmeal
1 tablespoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon ground black pepper
2 eggs
1 scant cup milk
1/3 cup vegetable oil
Directions:
Preheat oven to 350°F and grease a 12-cup muffin tin.
Trim the ends off of your zucchini and then
grate it using a box grater, large-holed microplane, or food processor. Working
with a handful of zucchini at a time and standing over your kitchen sink,
squeeze the zucchini in your fists until most of the liquid has run out. Repeat
with the remaining handfuls, then set all of the zucchini aside.
Crumble the feta into small chunks no larger
than a pencil eraser. You should have about one cup. Set aside.
Mix together the flours, cornmeal, baking
powder, salt, and black pepper in a large bowl.
Whisk together the eggs, milk, and vegetable oil
in a medium bowl.
Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients
and fold to combine them. When the ingredients are mostly combined, add the
zucchini and feta. Fold them into the batter until they are well distributed.
Divide the muffin batter evenly amongst the cups.
Bake for ~30 minutes, until lightly browned. Enjoy warm or toasted with a pat
of butter.
D.C. has been hot and steamy for months now, which means
that you have to be either dedicated or crazy to devote yourself to perfecting
a roast potato recipe. I am a bit of both, which helps explain why I’ve roasted
more than 10 pounds of spuds in the past few weeks.
My quest began when my chief recipe taster and I were visiting
my in-laws. We were planning a simple dinner of grilled salmon and asparagus, and
I decided to roast some potatoes to round out the meal. Easy, right? It didn’t
seem like the type of thing I needed a recipe for; I just tossed the taters
with some oil and salt and put them in a hot oven. But that approach only got
me so far. Although the potatoes did brown nicely, they were dry and didn’t
have much flavor. I wanted more—non-dry potato centers; dark-brown crusts; and
flavor that complimented rather than whispered or shouted.
The Internet quickly led me to a method that is apparently common
knowledge in England:
the key to perfect potatoes is to boil them before roasting. After boiling,
many recipes called for you to rough up the potatoes—usually by shaking them in
a bowl—to encourage a bit of starchiness that then crisps up nicely with the
help of heat and a lot of oil. The boiling method got me closer to my goal, but
most recipes I tried used too much oil, weren’t that much crispier, and still
didn’t have the flavor I was looking for. Instead, I cut the oil in my recipe
and borrowed a flavor-boosting trick from J. Kenji López-Alt: sauté garlic
and rosemary in olive oil, then strain them out and use the infused oil to roast
the potatoes; once the potatoes are done, toss them with the garlic and
rosemary. (This method keeps you from burning the garlic in the oven, which
would happen if you were to cook the garlic and potatoes together.)
Pounds of potatoes and weeks later, I finally had a recipe
good enough to impress my in-laws, easy
enough for a weeknight, and certainly worth the devotion.
Roasted Potatoes with
Garlic and Rosemary
Source: Inspired by J. Kenji López-Alt via Serious
Eats
Active time: ~30 minutes; total time: ~60 minutes
Serves 3–4 people
Ingredients:
1 1/2 pounds potatoes (I’ve used red potatoes
and fingerlings with success)
2 generous tablespoons olive oil
3–4 medium garlic cloves
Fresh rosemary, enough for 1 generous tablespoon
when finely minced
Salt & pepper, to taste
Directions:
Finely mince the garlic and the rosemary; set both
aside.
Give the potatoes a good scrubbing. If your
potatoes are small, about golf ball size, cut them in half; quarter them if
they’re larger.
Precook the potatoes. You can either put them in
a microwave-safe bowl and microwave them for ~7 minutes, stirring once or
twice, or boil them in a pot of salted water. Either way, they’re done when you
insert a cake tester (or the tip of a sharp knife) into the thickest part of
the potato and it meets with little resistance.
While the potatoes are cooking, preheat your oven
to 450°F.
Heat the olive oil, garlic, and rosemary in a
small skillet over medium heat. Cook, stirring occasionally, until the garlic starts
to brown. Don’t let it go too far—in fact, you might want to stop just before
you think the garlic is done. Remove the skillet from the heat and immediately
strain the garlic and rosemary out of the oil. Set the garlic and rosemary
aside.
Toss the potatoes with the flavored olive oil and
a hefty amount of salt (more if you microwaved the potatoes, less if you boiled
them in salted water).
Place the potatoes, cut-side down, on a cookie
sheet and put it into the oven. Roast the potatoes for at least 15 minutes
without moving them. After that, stir the potatoes occasionally, until they are
golden brown.
Tip the potatoes into a bowl and add the
reserved garlic and rosemary. Toss well to combine and serve immediately.
On our way home from visiting family several weeks ago, my
Chief Recipe Taster and I went on a bit of a pilgrimage to one of our favorite
places: Stateline Blueberries,
a blueberry farm just a few miles from Lake Michigan. Despite having widely
different childhoods, my Chief Recipe Taster and I both grew up eating
blueberries grown on the shores of Lake Michigan, and to this day will swear
until we’re, err, blue in the face that there are no better blueberries in the
country. They’re so good, in fact, that we may or may not have bought 30 pounds
and may or may not have arrived home with several pounds less than that.
I feel strongly that summer
fruits should be enjoyed as nature intended them—ripe and raw—so I was loath to
cook with any of our berries, even to make dessert. But I did make an exception
for one thing: a pretty much foolproof blueberry tart. You blitz the tart dough
together in a food processor and then pat it into a pan, no rolling required,
and it takes only a few minutes to bake. While the tart shell is cooling, you
cook some of your blueberries until they’re a bit jammy and then fold in handfuls
more. Scatter a few fresh blueberries on top, let the whole thing cool for a
few minutes, and you’re done. The butter in the tart shell and a bit of lemon
zest heighten the flavor of the berries, rather than obfuscate it. Add a scoop
of vanilla ice cream on top and you have summer dessert perfection, even if you
didn’t get your blueberries from the Lake Michigan shores.
~5 1/2–6 cups fresh blueberries, rinsed and
drained
2 tablespoons cornstarch
2 teaspoons lemon zest
3 tablespoons lemon juice
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
Directions:
Make the
tart shell: Put the flour, sugar, salt, and butter in the bowl of food
processor and process until the dough forms large clumps. This will take more
than a few pulses; keep going, and you’ll hear and see a change in the way the
dough comes together. That’s your cue to stop processing.
Transfer the dough into a 9-inch tart pan with a
removable bottom. Working from the center out, firmly press the dough down and
up the sides of the pan. Try to get it even, but don’t fuss if you can’t; just
make sure all of the pan is covered by dough.
Prick the dough with a fork and then put the
tart shell in your freezer for at least 15 minutes.
While the tart shell is chilling, center a rack
in the middle of your oven and preheat it to 375°F. When the tart shell is ready, place it in the oven and
bake it for 20–25 minutes, or until it’s golden. Let the shell cool while you
make the filling.
Make the filling: Place 1 1/2 cups of
blueberries and 1/4 cup water in a medium saucepan and bring the mixture to a
boil over high heat. Reduce the heat and simmer the berries until they begin
breaking down, 3–4 minutes.
While
the berries are cooking, mix together the cornstarch and 2 tablespoons of
water; add this to the berries in your saucepan and stir well to combine.
Add
the lemon zest and juice, sugar, and salt to your saucepan, stirring well before
increasing the heat to high and bringing the mixture to a boil. Once it boils,
reduce the heat and simmer the mixture, stirring all the while, until it begins
to thicken—this shouldn’t take more than a minute.
Take
the pan off the heat and add 3 1/2 cups of berries. Stir well to combine, then
pour the berry mixture into the tart shell. Smooth the berries with a spatula,
if needed, and then scatter on as many fresh blueberries as you’d like. Let the
tart cool in your refrigerator for at least 30 minutes before slicing and
serving.
I am a city girl through and through, but during the summer the suburbs sing a one-note siren song that has nothing to do with escaping the teeming masses or the asphalt-aggravated heat and everything to do with grilling. Where I live, apartment buildings are not allowed to have grills, no matter how petite, and every summer that regulation fills me with wistfulness for my misspent Midwestern youth, when grilling was the default cooking method from March to October.
Since I’m unwilling, at least for now, to trade the privileges of city living for suburbia—or the country, despite my occasional Green Acres-style fantasies—summer turns into one long “how little can we turn on the oven” competition. (Answer: not quite as little as I would like.) The season is a steady parade of dishes that require minimal cooking, one that could quickly get tedious if not for condiments like this cilantro-jalapeno pesto. It takes no more than 10 minutes to put together, and can be put to a myriad of uses: scrambled into eggs, an accompaniment to broiled fish, or our favorite—slathered onto whole-wheat ciabatta and loaded up with roasted veggies. If you’re lucky enough to have a grill, this pesto is still your friend; it goes equally well on virtually anything that comes off of a grill, no suburbs required.
Trim the bottom 1″ of stems off your
parsley and cilantro and discard. Roughly chop the rest of the herbs, stems and
all, and put them in the bowl of your food processor.
Trim the root ends off of the green onions, and
the top 1″ or so off the top. Roughly chop the onions and add them to the
food processor bowl.
Finally, chop the stem end off of the jalapeno(s).
De-seed them, if you prefer less heat, or just roughly chop them and add them
to the food processor.
Add the cashews and a drizzle of olive oil to the
food processor, then process until you get a paste. Stop, scrape down the bowl,
and add salt to taste. Process again, adding a bit more oil if needed to make
the contents into a paste.
Use immediately or refrigerate until ready to
eat.
A few weeks ago, my Chief Recipe Taster and I decamped from our
small city flat to visit my family in the house and the state where I grew up.
Going “home” is always mostly wonderful and a little bit difficult. Wonderful:
spending time with my family and enjoying the sublime beauty that is Michigan
in the summer. Difficult: seeing the city and state I grew up in seem to get a
bit poorer every time I visit; wrestling with the same tangle of love for the
place/deep desire to GTFO and see something new that I’ve wrestled with since
childhood.
“Home” might be emotionally complicated, but it’s worth it,
food-wise. In many ways, Michigan is still an agricultural state, and you see
that most in the summer when the farm stands are full of crisp-tender,
pencil-thin asparagus, spring onions, and lettuces. And the strawberries! We
happily picked and ate them by the handful, but I wanted something more,
something that took a few of the ingredients I grew up with and turned them
into something more than the sum of their parts.
That’s where this cake was born, a moistly decadent, almond paste-enriched batter that wraps around berries made even more flavorful by a brief stint in the oven. If that description doesn’t tantalize you, perhaps the fact that this cake requires almost no effort will—the batter is made entirely in the food processor. It’s quintessential summer effortlessness, but good enough to merit turning on your oven. Emotions notwithstanding, what could be simpler?
Strawberry-Almond Cake
Source: I Thought There Would Be Free Food
Makes one 8-inch round cake, serving ~8 people
Active time: ~20 minutes; total time: ~50 minutes
1/2 cup sugar
4 ounces almond paste
1 1/2 cups flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup milk
1/4 cup oil
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 large egg
1 cup strawberries, washed, hulled, and halved or quartered, if very large
Slivered almonds, to garnish
Directions:
Position a rack in the middle of your oven, then preheat it to 375°F. While you’re at it, butter and flour—or otherwise grease—an 8-inch cake plate or springform pan. This is also an excellent time to do a little mise-en-place, so get out and measure all of your other ingredients.
Cube the almond paste and add it, along with the sugar, to the bowl of a food processor. Process the paste and sugar until the paste is finely ground.
Add the dry ingredients—flour, baking powder, and salt—to the food processor and pulse to combine.
Add the wet ingredients—milk, oil, vanilla extract, and egg—and pulse until well combined. If the batter is very thick, you can add a little extra milk, one tablespoon at a time, until the batter is just thin enough to spread easily.
Scrape the batter into the prepared cake plate. Dot with strawberries and then scatter on the almonds.
Slide the cake into the oven and bake for about 30 minutes, or until the top of the cake is lightly browned and a cake tester inserted in the middle comes out with just a few crumbs clinging to it. Serve plain, or gild the lily with a dollop of fresh whipped cream or scoop of vanilla ice cream.
I have a great fondness for the recipes that come printed on the back of packages. The cornbread recipe on the back of Quaker cornmeal? That was the first thing I ever baked, and despite having tried about 15 other varieties, it’s still my favorite. Ditto the peanut cookie recipe printed on JIF jars, even though I no longer eat JIF, and the oatmeal raisin cookies on the inside of oat canisters. I’ve made these recipes dozens of times, and they’ve always turned out perfectly. They’re the type of recipe that you can count on, whether you’re tired or crabby or only giving the project 37 percent of your attention. In my opinion, that’s because these recipes are the makers’ chance to provide you with an accident- and idiot-proof way to prepare something delicious with their product, and food manufacturers are smart enough to not mess that up.
Which is why I knew exactly what to do after panic-buying some buckwheat flour at the grocery back in March. There was no other flour on the shelves, I was running low at home, and that combination was stupefying enough that I felt compelled to buy buckwheat and chickpea flours, neither of which I had ever used.
Back home, my Chief Recipe Taster questioned precisely what I would do with said flours. I didn’t actually know myself, but a surreptitious glance at the package allowed me to save face. “I’ll make buckwheat crepes,” I said, attempting to hide my great fear of crepes, one of those things that have heretofore seemed too fussy to bother making myself. But I’d bought the buckwheat, which meant I had to use it, so a few weeks ago I embarked on a crepe-making adventure and was astonished to find that they’re dead easy. I served them with butter-sautéed leeks, the hardest part of which is cleaning the leeks, and eggs fried in the same pan as the crepes, once those were done, and if we hadn’t have had to do the dishes afterword, I’d have thought we were in a restaurant. I’ve made them numerous times since then, and they have yet to fail me. It’s a recipe that proves the rule: you can’t beat the recipe on the back of the box.
Buckwheat Crepes with Sautéed Leeks and Fried Eggs
Source: Pereg and I Thought There Would Be Free Food
Makes: ~8 crepes and serves ~4 people
Active time: 60 minutes; total time: 120 minutes
Note: This is my favorite way to enjoy these crepes, but they’re also very good with sautéed spinach; Gruyere and thinly sliced ham and apples; or spread with peanut butter and jelly.
Crepe Ingredients:
2 eggs
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 cup milk
3/4 cup buckwheat flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
Sautéed Leeks Ingredients:
~2¼ pounds (1,000 grams) leeks
1 generous tablespoon butter
Salt, to taste
Eggs, for serving
Directions:
Make the crepe batter: Vigorously whisk together the eggs and olive oil until the mixture is smooth and largely homogenous. Add the milk and whisk to combine.
Add the buckwheat flour and salt, and whisk until you have a thin, smooth batter. It should be much thinner than pancake batter. Cover the batter and refrigerate it for at least one hour, or up to overnight.
Prepare the leeks: While the batter is resting, remove the top few inches of green from the leeks, as well as the root ends. Remove any leathery or papery outer skins from the leeks and either discard them or stick them in your freezer scrap bag to make vegetable broth later.
Halve the remaining leeks lengthwise, then rinse them thoroughly in cold water. Let them drain in a colander for a few minutes before chopping them width-wise into ¼”-thick sections.
Heat a skillet over medium heat. Once it’s hot, add the butter and let it melt before adding the leeks. Sauté them gently until softened, ~10-15 minutes, adding salt to taste.
Make the crepes: While the leeks are sautéing, set a crepe pan or large non-stick skillet over medium-high heat. When the skillet is hot, add a tablespoon or so of olive oil, swirling to coat the pan. The oil should be hot and liquid, but not smoking.
Working quickly, add ~¼-⅓ cup of crepe batter to the pan and swirl it to spread the batter into a thin circle. Let the crepe cook until the top is firm and not tacky to the touch, and the underside is golden brown. Slide the crepe out of the pan and set aside. Repeat with the remaining batter.
Check in on the leeks—they should be soft, but not browned or dry. If needed, add a little water to keep them from sticking. Once soft, turn off the heat and let them sit until you’ve finished with the crepes.
When the crepes are done, heat a hefty glug of olive oil in the pan. When it’s hot, crack in as many eggs as you would like and as your skillet can hold, and fry them to your desired viscosity.
To serve, spread a crepe with some leeks and top with a fried egg.
I try not to speak in sweeping generalizations, but here comes a whopper of one: In bars, there are only two types of people. Cocktail people, and everyone else. By “cocktail people” I mean those who can saunter up to the bar, engage in an at least semi-literate conversation about the merits of different spirits in different drinks, and order something with a modicum of suaveness and certainty. Then there’s everyone else, and I’ll be the first to put myself in this camp; look for me in a bar and you’ll find me staring at the drink menu or blankly at the wall of offerings, unsure of what to order.
I blame the cocktails, really. At least in my experience, they’re invariably expensive, complicated, and one-note, always a little too sweet for my liking. They seem like something that any reasonably intelligent person should be able to knock together, but so many of them, particularly nowadays, seem to require a degree in chemistry to read and create, as well as a trust fund to buy all of the ingredients. In the face of all of that, wine seems a heck of a lot simpler.
But my candied citrus peel experiments left me with a lot of orangey simple syrup, and if I’m not the type of person to toss my orange peels in a bin, you’d better believe I’m not the type of person to pour perfectly good simple syrup down the drain. Given that there aren’t a lot of other options for simple syrup, my choice seemed obvious: devise a cocktail that required fewer ingredients than I have fingers.
And so the “Orange You Glad This Isn’t a COVID Pun” was born, thus completing a recipe trifecta: make the Braised Chickpeas with Tomatoes, Orange, and Rosemary; save the orange peels to make Candied Citrus Peel; and save the syrup to make this cocktail. You can make it with rum, which lends a light tropical note and goes down very smoothly, or bourbon, which is a bit kickier, and my preference. Either way, it’s a cocktail that should please you, whichever type of person you are.
Orange You Glad This Isn’t a COVID Pun?
Source: I Thought There Would Be Free Food
Makes 2 cocktails
Total time: 5 minutes
Ingredients:
2 ounces bourbon or rum
2 ounces orange juice
1 ounce simple syrup
Lemon juice, to taste (I like my cocktails quite tart, and use about 1/2 ounce)
A few dashes bitters
Ice
Candied citrus peel, to garnish
Directions:
Combine all ingredients except candied peel in a cocktail shaker. Shake for 10–15 seconds, or until your cocktail shaker feels appropriately chilled.
Strain into glasses, garnish, and drink immediately.
I try to eat only what’s in season, but occasionally find
myself undone by beautiful produce. This has happened not once, but twice, in
recent weeks. The first time, I was undone by a cardboard box heaped with
mandarins, their still-attached stems and leaves an tantalizingly glossy green;
the second time, by a pyramid of plump cara cara oranges. In both cases, I was
powerless to resist and subsequently glad that I didn’t—seasonality be darned,
those citrus fruits were outstanding; juicy and succulent with the perfect
amount of tang.
But each time I peeled a fruit and went to pitch the rind
into the bin, I hesitated. Really, it was guilt—it seemed like one type of
environmental sin to buy fruit out of season, and another one to chuck part of
it away, and my conscience simply couldn’t take it. So I saved the peels,
letting them accumulate in my refrigerator while I decided what to do with
them. The idea, when it came, felt a little bit audacious and a little bit
obvious: why not candy the peels? I spend weeks searching for candied peel
every Christmas to make fruitcake, and perhaps that annual scavenger hunt made
me think that candied peel would be difficult to make. But no! Like many of the
other things I like to make from scratch (bread, granola, pesto), all it takes
to make candied peel is a bit of time.
Some recipes call for you to cut up your preferred citrus
fruit—clementines, grapefruits, lemons, oranges—in order to harvest their
peels. This is certainly an option, but I opted to save the peels from our
regular consumption over the course of a week or two, collecting them in a
covered dish in the fridge. A few might dry out a bit, but in my experience
they don’t spoil quickly. When you’ve accumulated a fair number, let your
preference for bitterness and your available time guide your next steps. If you
don’t like bitter things, cut away with the pith; if you’re low on time or your
pith-peeling skills need work, skip it. Blanch the peels at least twice—more if
you don’t like bitterness—then boil them in a sugar syrup. Strain off and
reserve the syrup for cocktails, let the peel dry a bit, then bake with it,
freeze it, or eat it as we do, straight out of the jar. I think it tastes
delicious, but maybe that’s just the imagined flavor of absolution for eating
out-of-season fruit.
Candied Citrus Peel
Sources: I Thought There Would Be Free Food
Makes as much as you like
Active time: ~ 1 hour; total time: ~4 hours
Ingredients:
Accumulated citrus peels, any variety—I’ve used
clementines, grapefruit, mandarins, and several varieties of oranges
Water
White sugar
Directions:
If you want your citrus peels to be less bitter,
use a very sharp knife to carefully cut away and discard as much of the white
pith as possible without slicing into the peel.
Slice the peel into your desired width; the ones
in the photo above are about 1/4-inch wide, but I’ve also done them thicker or
thinner—it’s your choice.
Put the sliced peel into a heavy-bottomed saucepan
and add just enough water to cover. Set the pot on the stove over medium-high
heat and bring to a vigorous boil, then drain. (You can keep this
citrus-flavored water to make tea with, if desired). Repeat the blanching and
draining process once more.
Use a kitchen scale to weigh the amount of peel
you have. Add it back to your saucepan along with the same weight of sugar and
water. For example, if you have 300 grams of orange peels, combine them with
300 grams of white sugar and 300 grams of water.
Set the saucepan over medium heat. Let it come
to a boil, and then reduce the heat to low and simmer the peel until it is
soft—it shouldn’t be mushy, but still have a bit of toothsomeness—and nearly
translucent.
Drain the syrup from the peel, reserving the
syrup for later use (recipe coming next week). Set the peel on a wire rack to
dry until it is just tacky, which may take several hours.
At this point you can toss the citrus peel with
additional white sugar. If the peel isn’t dry enough, the sugar will absorb
into it; if it’s too dry, the sugar won’t stick. It’s a fine balance.
Whether you sugar the peel a second time or not,
I prefer to store my citrus peel in a glass jar in the refrigerator. It also
freezes well for several months.
