A peculiar month

Advisory note: this post contains verbal images of a spitfire cat lady and a butt-naked roller-skater (of an unidentifiable age). If you have an impressionable and sensitive mind, read on anyway -- there will be dark chocolate almond butter cups as well.

February has been a peculiar month. First, I angered a cat lady. I'll call her Olivia here, since I don't want to anger her some more by disclosing her real name without a permission, not that I think she reads my blog or something. Technically Olivia is a bag lady, with a noticeable preference for pink garments, winter headwear year round, and sweat pants tucked into the knee-length socks that from a distance look like a pair of galife breeches. I know her from my work where she is a fixture, in that she comes in every morning at a quarter past eight, puts down her two neatly-packed standard-size suparmarket bags next to the cupboard, and depending on the day, goes back out or sits down for a cup of coffee and a knitting session. She's been doing so for more than four years, although earlier she used to say she would go to the countryside after the baby's been born. She never explained whose baby it was or when it was due, and she doesn't mention her plans to move anymore. French, English, and Dutch are in her full command (really), and if you ask her she will tell you a lot about cats. It is is why we call her Olivia the Cat Lady. That and because of a lasting bond she formed with our bakery cat, Marie, who is sadly no longer there on the grounds of being outlawed, which hasn't detered Olivia from bringing her gifts of wrapped Kleenex and canned cat food up to this day. Miaow.

For the most part, I think Olivia is angelic. Except a rare moment earlier this month when she asked me if I knew the meaning of my name. I should have lied and said yes, because I never want to see, never again, Olivia angry. Not bacause I think anger is a cell-killer, but because she looks evil when angry. And evil Olivia the Cat Lady looks like this: she turns around to face the subject, porches her arms on her sides, tilts her face downwards, and looking up from under the gray eyebrows, pierces you with the eyes that a minute ago were blue and now steely. As her eyebrows raise into two carets, her chin moves forward to expose a couple stray teeth, and her tongue, finding no dental objection, slithers out mid-word while she says, in high tones: "You should know what your name means. It's not making me happy now." For a second her face looked like it was pulling itself apart, upwards and down-, and I got worried that a hand might thrust out of her throat to strangle me. I like Olivia non-angry better. (She later told me it's a flower, but I'm not sure about that.  Anyway, we are good now.)

Next, I got smacked in my face. By a drunkard. With a rose.  Things like this ordinarily happen on a Saturday morning, around 5 a.m. That's when the party goers take to the streets and fill up the roads, sidewalks and bike lanes in their search of the right way, mingling thereby with those driven outwards at such an hour by the call of their professional duties. I myself stopped on a few occassions to tell the appreciative lost how to get to the Central Station, for example. Turns out I was testing my luck all those times by breaking the unspoken rule of the sober: ignore the heavily drunk. But, one lives to learn -- or in my case, one gets smacked to learn. When this scrawny teenager, balancing precariously on the sidewalk ledge, waved at me to inquire if he could ask me something  I had no misgivings to stop and hear him out. He had a rose-holding friend with him, equally drunk, but the opposite of scrawny. It transpired that they simply needed a cigarette. I simply had none. Which simply explains the smack. But still...

One more: a butt-naked roller-skater. I was on my bike carving my way to work (again!) through a dark, early weekday morning when my path converged with his. Oy! Because I wasn't expecting to see anybody's rear end exposed in the middle of a road in the city centre, despite it being Amsterdam, and because he was still a block away from me, I gave the roller-skater the benefit of the doubt and attributed his well-outlined tooshes to, you know, a pair of Spandex. Closer, and the truth was revealing. Besides the roller skates, his whole getup was compounded of a swimming cap, a pair of goggles (in the dark!), and a pair of sunburnt-red thongs. When I caught up with him, he slowed down to give me the right of way, and not looking back off I went. I later heard the man is sort of a local celebrity, roller-skating the streets butt-naked for years. From what I saw he is probably in his upper fifties or lower sixties, but what do I know? The fact that I saw him only now makes me think that Amsterdam is finally opening up its true gems for me. And if so, who knows what I can see next...

And one more: dark chocolate almond butter cups. This is from the department of good finds. Taking no longer than ten minutes to make and a bit more to set, they help February to go off with a bang. Themselves they are here to stay. The confection is purely what it is: dark chocolate that crisps up to enwrap in a frilly cup a blob of good almond butter. The latter is only slightly reinforced by honey and powdered sugar to hold its shape, but I also crushed up an amaretti cookie (a surplus from last Christmas) and grated half a tonka bean (I got a few from a friend, years ago now) to go in the lot, for good measure. A minute pinch of sea salt on top, and one tiny cup cinches you good and thorough. The best part for me? The way the thin layer of chilled chocolate cracks under my teeth and gives way to the filling inside, which in itself is a mini playground for the tongue, what with the cookie nibs and pieces and an occasional shard of almond, all in one knob. Try to resist. I should constantly have one handy to appease Olivia the Cat Lady if she loses her cool on me again, but these cups are best eaten cold, so I probably won't.

Dark Chocolate Almond Butter Cups

Adapted from The Sprouted Kitchen
Yield: 12 mini-cups

First few times I made these, I invariably had a good bit of chocolate left over (a perfect thing to spread a hunk of fresh baguette with, by the way). Could be the paper forms I use are smaller, but forcing more chocolate into the cups to use it all up only made the top thicker than the bottom, which I didn't like. I reduced the amount of chocolate altogether.

An amaretti cookie (store-bought) is not a must here, but I highly recommend it for the crunch. Give it a couple good bashings, but be careful to not pulverize it. Tonka bean is completely optional, although it imparts such an interesting flavor, a cross between vanilla and almonds and cinnamon...

If you have a mini-muffin tin, use it to help the cups hold their shape. But without the tin everything works out just as well. I use baking cups 35-mm (1.4-inch) in diameter.

And, these little things are really at their best cold. Their chocolate encasing cracks just so when chilled, such a joy!

150 g (5 oz) dark chocolate (70 % cocoa solids)
150 g (5 oz) organic almond butter
2 Tbsp honey
1 Tbsp powdered sugar
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1/4 tsp table salt
1 amaretti cookie, crushed (optional)
Tonka bean, a few generous gratings (optional)
Fleur de sel, for topping

Break the chocolate into small pieces and let melt in a small bowl set over a pot of simmering water (the bottom of the bowl shouldn't touch the water). Stir to make sure it's completely melted and smooth.

In a small bowl, mix the almond butter together with the honey, powdered sugar, vanilla extract, salt, and amaretti cookie and tonka bean (if using). The filling should be firm enough to roll into a ball. Depending how smooth or runny your almond butter is, you might want to add a bit more honey and powdered sugar to seize the filling up.

Place the liners on a large and flat (!) plate or in a mini-muffin tin. Working with one liner at a time, poor in a teaspoon of chocolate on the bottom. Tilt and twist around so that the chocolate coats at least one-third of the sides of the liner. Repeat with the remaining cups. Scoop out a teaspoon of the filling, roll it gently between your palms into a ball, give it a slight press-down and put in the middle of the cup. Repeat. Poor another teaspoon of the chocolate over the almond butter ball, and tilt and twist around so the chocolate covers the filling completely. Repeat with the remaining cups. Sprinkle a tiny pinch of fleur de sel on top of each one and send off in the fridge to set.

Keep in a container, covered and chilled. The cups will stay good for up to a week.

Hundreds of them

I'm twenty-eight and so far I've given a ton of thought to the matter of what foodstuff I just wouldn't feel comfortable without. I wouldn't align such meditation with the ubiquitous desert island or doomsday scenarios, no. It's more of a benign pondering about a bite of what I, a serious and devoted eater, would be happy to have on any given day, come what may. In general terms, I can't do without fruit. But: there is fruit and then there is fruit, by which I mean there is fruit and there are...apples. One, two, three apples a day -- that's for me. Of course, of course I wouldn't collapse on the floor in tears if there is none, oh no, I wouldn't, especially if there are slurpy, oil-coated fried noodles around, or spicy chana punjabi, or cake, yes.  Yet, should one thing be stripped off my plate for good, please, for fruit's sake, may it not be apples.

But look, don't think I'm so noble. My views don't stand unwavered. Every summer I run away with the circus of fresh berries and stone fruits thoroughly trimming my old allegiances to the bone. It surely is joy to frolic in the sun with the summer's ruby-cheeked and gentle offsprings, and it would make me such a big liar to say I would never not do it -- I'm not so prudent (who is?). But even then, ask me what my all-time favorite is, and apples I'll say. But wait, it's not because I'm so healthy either. I don't find it outrageous at all to start my day with a slab of one cake and to finish with another. Not to take away from the nutritional value of cake, but you know what I mean.

My fondness for apples -- beyond their crunch, and the way their skin splits open under my teeth, and their sweet and tart flesh, and how they quench my thirst  -- may have something to do with longing. Ivan Bunin wrote about such kind of longing in his Antonov Apples. I was fifteen to read the story for the first time. I didn't pick up much on Bunin's nostalgia for the times of land-owners and their peasants, but I did smell from the pages that honey and befallen leaves and ripe apples in the thinning autumnal Russian countryside, and that longing of his, not the ideological kind but the physical pulling in the gut, was somehow -- through the obsolete words, and the barking of a stray dog below my windows, and the air around me heavy with the smoke and the scent of decaying leaves -- also mine. Mine, because I, too, longed.

There had been a year earlier when my grandparents' apple trees bore the unexpected bounty of late harvest fruit, and so a lot of it was stored in wooden crates for winter. My cousins and I got a couple of crates each. Every day while my fruit stash lasted I popped out onto my parents' balcony where the crates sat to pick up a few apples, each not larger than a tennis ball, in the morning and a few at night. Those that hadn't yet become wizened and started to smell of a cheap cider were as crisp as air on clear and frosty days and had a vague scent of tea roses. I devoured hundreds of them, already reaching for the next while only a few bites into the first. As if I knew that I should -- what if next year the apple trees wouldn't bear fruit at all, or the year after my grandparents would sell their dacha. As if devouring those apples meant to devour the barking of a dog at dawn, the cotton fog lifting slowly off the ground, the image of my grandfather trying to knock the fruit off the brunches with his cane, the soft and quiet sun...

I don't mean to say that every apple I hold now sends me down memory lane and into that place where a continuous anticipation for, and apprehension of, the moments to come competes with a constant longing for the moments that passed. That would be overwhelming. But eating an untoward amount of apples appeared to be somewhat habit-forming for me -- I'm glad things didn't go down the aversion road -- which is fine with me seeing my predilection for cake three times, or more, a day (see above).

Apple and Spelt Muffins

Yield: 12 muffins

These are my favorite muffins. To communicate how much I like them, let me tell you this: if nobody ever invented cake (again, see above), I would never complain to spend the rest of my life with only these muffins around. That's how much.

A few years ago I teamed up with a food photographer to do a project together. We brainstormed and agreed to play around spelt, now that it's reliving its former glory here in Holland. My task was to develop a number of recipes utilizing the grain in its various forms, and I wouldn't be myself, you understand, if I didn't do something with apples. The project didn't sell, but it was a good experience for me anyway. Last week I unearthed this one recipe and tinkered with it some more, and whoa, fully loaded with spelt flour, apples (!), spices, citrus, and oats, these muffins, nutty, and wholesome, and fragrant, and moreish, knocked me off my feet.

Often baked goods with spelt flour have a dry reputation, and I had a fear that completely foregoing conventional wheat flour this time around could put my muffins at great risk, but I shouldn't have worried so much. A few tweaks here and there -- largely, pairing baking powder with baking soda and using vegetable oil in place of butter -- and these little darlings revealed the interior that's tender and moist, and most importantly, it stays so. If you let it to, that is. 

I noticed at my health food store that spelt flour comes in two forms: refined and whole-grain. So you know, for this recipe I used the refined type.

Ok, let's do it.

260 g (9 oz) spelt flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground cardamom
60 g (2 oz) rolled oats
1/4 teaspoon table salt
130 g (4.5 oz) sugar
zest of 1 medium lemon
zest of 1 lime
2 large eggs
80 ml (1/3 cup) buttermilk
80 ml  (1/3 cup) non-fragrant vegetable oil
300 g (10 oz) peeled and coarsely grated apples (from about 2 1/2 medium apples, such as Elstar)

Warm the oven to 180 C (350 F) and oil a 12-pocket muffin tin.

Sieve together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and spices. In a blender or a clean coffee grinder, coarsely grate the oats. Add to the flour, along with the salt, and mix well.

In a separate mixing bowl, rub the citrus zest into the sugar. Break in the eggs and beat on high speed for two minutes. Mix in the buttermilk and oil.

Incorporate the flour mixture into the egg and sugar mixture. The lot will appear to be somewhat dry, but fear not. Fold in the apples; their juices will bring in more moisture.

Scoop the batter into the muffin tin, a good 1/4 cup per pocket. Bake for 20-25 minutes, or until the muffins look nice and dark-golden brown. Let cool in the tin for 5 minutes, then twist each one out and remove on a wire rack to cool completely. Stored in an airtight container, these muffins keep well for up to two days, but they are at their best a couple hours after baking. (Storage tip: to prevent the muffin tops from getting 'sweaty' from the emanating moisture, place a piece of paper towel together with the muffins in the container.)

That moment

Dear Reader, I so hope you had a loving Christmas and a lot of good food to go with it. Did you? I made a ham roast with maple syrup bacon crust, there was a lot of it, and it was nice. I didn't know a girl can eat a multi-pound ham joint practically by herself. Anthony caught a stomach bug and spent Christmas Eve squarely sick, poor thing, so I had to do all the eating. No complaints. But quick, quick, 2012 is nearly out of the door, it goes so fast, I can barely believe it, not enough time for a lengthy talk now, no way, the boom-booms of early fireworks can already be heard all over the city. And what did I do with these twelve short months? Well, yes, I finally went to see my family after a hundred, no, two and a half years of apart-ness; I put strawberries in my spaghetti; I got married. There was a crayon of every color in the box, the darkest one included. But digress shall I now not, need to keep it brief, yes sir.

I was on my bicycle pedaling hurriedly to work the other day -- I think Thursday after Christmas that was -- at an ungodly hour of 6 a.m. I dodged however little traffic there was on the roads at the time, whooshing past red-eyed traffic lights like rules are not for me. Running a light at one intersection, I noticed something that caught me in my tracks. The yellow round face of the moon hung so low it seemed to be resting in the crooked arms of the barren trees. The Rijksmuseum's spikes glistened in the inky sky in the distance, the whole building all of a sudden looking like a castle. The soft, golden lights strewn around a towering pine tree ahead of me swayed gently in the wind. I go the same route almost every day, yet I never saw anything like it before. The darkness, the moon, the lights, the trees, all seemed so out of this world for a second, as if an illustration from a fairy tale book came to life -- or I felt like I was in the book. Every year a child in me expects to see a glimpse of magic at Christmas and New Year's, and that moment, in the middle of a city, was that. It enchanted me. It's been days since then, and I'm still thinking about that view and about that feeling. Where am I driving at? Here: I wish us all for the nascent year a swath of breathtaking moments in life's everyday-ness. That and time and insight to notice them all.

Happy New Year, Dear Reader. Happy 2013.

As for today's recipe, well, it's a soup, but a very good soup, worth to be talked about on New Year's Eve. 

 

Roast Pumpkin Soup with Cinnamon

Adapted from Moro East, by Sam and Sam Clark

Yield: (small) 4 servings

It's a little firework of a soup, in that it's exciting and familiar at the same time. There is pumpkin that you roast first to lay upon it more flavor. Then, there are spices: cinnamon and dried chili. And then, there is a whole lot of fresh cilantro (coriander). In between, there are deeply caramelized onions and a swatch of garlic. The ingredients and flavors are all usual kitchen dwellers, but together and in the form of a soup they speak an exotic dialect.

I use much less cinnamon than prescribed in the original, because, in my humble opinion, you don't need as much as half a teaspoon of cinnamon in your soup.
 

I like it served plain, maybe with a sprinkling of toasted pine nuts and a scattering of more fresh cilantro, but you can up the game and drown a dollop of good-quality Greek yogurt (thinned with a bit of milk) in your bowl. Go ahead, suit yourself.

600 g (1 1/3 pounds) peeled and seeded pumpkin or squash (equivalent to about 1 kg/2 pounds unprepared pumpkin), cut into 3-cm (1-inch) cubes
6 Tbsp olive oil
1 medium onion, halved and thinly sliced
2 garlic cloves, thinly sliced
1/8 tsp fresh ground cinnamon
a pinch of crushed dried chili
1 medium potato (about 150 g or 1/3 pound), peeled and cut into 2-cm (1-inch) cubes
1 1/4 L (5 cups) vegetable or chicken stock, preferably hot
1 medium bunch (about 30 g/1 ounce) of fresh cilantro, coarsely chopped (stems and all)
Fresh lemon juice, to taste
Salt and pepper, to taste

Warm the oven to 200 C (390 F).

Toss the pumpkin with 2 tablespoons of the olive oil, a healthy pinch of salt and some black pepper, and spread it out in a roasting tin. Roast for about 20-30 minutes, until very soft and starting to color. Remove out of the oven and set aside.

Heat the remaining 4 tablespoons of the olive oil in a large saucepan over medium-low heat. Add the onion and a pinch of salt; cook for about 15 minutes, stirring occasionally, until the onion begins to turn nice and golden. If the onion browns too fast, scale the heat down a notch. Add the garlic, cinnamon and chili, and fry for another minute to release their flavor. Add the roasted pumpkin, the potato and the stock, and bring to a gentle simmer. Cook for about 20 minutes or until the potato is soft. Remove from the heat and throw in the cilantro.

With a handheld mixer or in a food processor, blitz the soup until smooth. Check for seasoning and adjust to taste. You may want to add a tiny spritz of fresh lemon juice to the lot to brighten things up a bit.

Where you may be now

Dear Grandmother Glanya, my gentle babushka --

Never in my life I wrote you a letter before, and now that it's been three months since you are gone I can't help it. I still can't accept the fact that you are no more. There are many things I want to tell you now, but nothing is more important than this: I love you. Hard to tell what's gnawing at me more now: the fact that I didn't tell you as much when you were there to hear it or that I'll never, not in this lifetime, be able to again. I was thousands of miles away when you left. You went so quickly. That time when I hugged you goodbye this May, I should have hugged you more, I should have said I love you. After my mother called to tell me you'd left, I went out onto my balcony and looked up at the sky. It was dusky and the air was smoky, fluffy clouds unhurriedly drifting across the lavender sky. I watched planes ascending, and a few bird flocks heading somewhere far. I kept thinking, looking, even, where amidst all those clouds and birds and planes you may be now, the images getting distorted and blurry from tears.

You ended but I have yet to visit your grave. And your home. It must be so empty of you there now. Before, you would be in your kitchen hunching over your flower pots or shredding cabbage for your signature sauerkraut with redcurrant berries, or in your living room reorganizing your limitless cache of medicine or reading a history book with a magnifying glass, stating loudly it's not working but turning page after page after page. Today, no one there. Your winter coat and a couple dresses must be hanging purposelessly in your wardrobe, sharing spare space with this summer's jams and jars of pickles (you and your canned goods!). I can't believe you are gone. I know you are, yet in some sort of a haze I sometimes secretly dial your number to see that maybe, just maybe, you would pick up and ask when I would come to visit and I would loudly say that I would come soon, please wait for me.

I've told Anthony so many stories about you. His favorite is that about your two names. He finds it incredulous that when for some reason you had to renew your passport in your mid-thirties, a consulate clerk told you she didn't know of such name as Aglaya and so she typed in Alla instead. You said you didn't want to waste more time to re-new your renewed passport and carried on -- so nonchalant! -- with Aglaya, or Glanya, for us and Alla for everybody else. And everybody else it was. I recall running errands with you. It seemed that every other passer-by was somebody you knew, a former colleague, a friend, a friend of a friend, an old neighbor. You stopped for a hello, how's life? with everyone.

It snowed here today. Winter holidays are coming up. I miss the way we used to celebrate. Annually, we would have you over at my parents' place for New Year's, and come Christmas, January 7th, we would all go to you for a flamboyant meal. Even these years when you grew weaker and weaker to cook, the table still moaned under all that food: herring, boiled potatoes, shashlik (cooked on an upright grill set up right on the table!), chicken tabaka, pickled wild mushrooms, salad olivier, napoleon cake, and so much more. I loved it all, except for what had mayonnaise and sour cream, but your fresh cabbage salad was the best thing in the world for me. You turned that tight-lipped cabbage so juicy, and you could cut it into paper-thin shreds even with the dullest of knives. Utterly delectable. At the table I always chose a seat closest to that glass bowl, the one with tiny spikes on the outside, you used to pile the salad into. A week later, on the eve of Old New Year, my mother and I would come over, and the three of us would spend the night forecasting our fortune. We each burnt a piece of paper on an upended saucer, and after the flame had ceased we had to make out what exactly the shadow from the paper's silhouette resembled. I remember the shadow often looked like a standing bear, but I don't recall what it meant. Or candle wax, we would hold a lit candle over a bowl of cold water to see what shape molten wax will form into. Mostly it would coil into bizarre abstractions, but occasionally we could see a tea cup, an open book or a horse. One time we tried the cards -- they said you would live to see your ninetieth. Grandma, you came only six years short.
                                                       
                                                 ---
                

My Grandmother's Fresh Cabbage Salad with Carrot and Apple
Yield: 4-6 servings

1/2 small to medium white cabbage, outer leaves and core removed
1/2 tsp table salt
1/2 medium carrot, coarsely grated
1 medium to large apple (such as Jonagold or Golden Delicious), peeled, cored and coarsely grated
1 tsp apple cider vinegar
2 Tbsp olive oil
freshly ground black pepper, to taste
a small handful of finely chopped fresh dill

Slice the cabbage as thin as you can. Place in a large bowl, add the salt and mix by hand for a minute, kneading and crushing the cabbage to release the juices. Add the rest of the ingredients and mix well. Adjust the seasoning, if needed, and serve.

Simple as that

Dear Reader -- I'm back, and if there is a question here about what I've been up to (and against), here is what: I got married (first and hopefully the one and only time), made a ton of rugelach cookies (first and surely not the last time), went to Brussels (for two and a half days), and fought the worst strep throat/tonsillitis I ever had a misfortune to know (for more than two weeks). In between all that, I hung out with my in-laws who'd stayed with us for a month, daily making them watch BBC's Antiques Road Trip and Eggheads, and cooking spicy potatoes and chickpeas to burn their gentle palates.

So, yes, I got married and can officially call Anthony my spouse, and unofficially, my ex-boyfriend. The wedding day had two highlights: first being the civil ceremony itself, an event compounded of a registrar's joke-filled speech about us, some of it borrowed from my last post -- I choked when I heard the butterfly-and-snail bit -- and an act of uncorking a massive bottle of champagne right there in the marriage hall, a move usually allowed only outside of the civil building, to bookend our marital registration; and second being an expeditious chase after a tram where Anthony's mother had left her purse on our way downtown for dinner. Owing to my lovely witnesses who successfully executed the tram interception, the purse in question was recovered -- as was everybody's pulse. It was a good day, warm, sunny, and free-flowing, and the fact that it was a Monday just added to the nonchalance of this whole marriage enterprise.

How does it feel to be married? I've been asked that dozens of times by now, and the thing is, I still don't know what to answer. Despite a certain anxiety I had days prior to the event, being married for me doesn't feel any different than before, and I mean it in a good, in fact, the best way possible. Now when I look at Anthony I don't see a HUSBAND looping over his forehead; I look at Anthony and I see Anthony, a big-hearted and smart goofball with a penchant for socks and a taste for cakes leavened with chocolate and buttercream, my best and dear friend, the man I love. People marry for different reasons; I got married because I didn't have any reason not to, simple as that. Again, I mean it in the best way imaginable, so please don't get me wrong.

Anthony and I, we got the first hold of each other a good three years ago through a dating website, 'dating', may I add, referring only to the site, not to our, at least not for me, intentions. I was looking for somebody to help me eat the surplus of food I made regularly, so I thought to post a little profile telling as much. There were a few responses, each of them leading to a date which I would invariably flee from, because, as I said, I wasn't looking to date but merely to eat in a good company. Anthony was the single one to comprehend it. Our first get-together was anything but romantic, which I so liked. We had a delicious meal at a restaurant (where three years later we would come back to have our wedding dinner), talking with our mouths full -- that cloud-like sardine mousse on rye bread was really something else -- and unceremoniously interrupting each other all the time. We became solid friends before we became anything else, and by the time it felt right to be more there was nothing unknown about one another left to be unmasked later on the way, which is why, I'm sure, when I look at Anthony now after we have married, I see Anthony I've known all this time, no alteration. So, how does it feel to be married? The same, I'd say, as it feels to love somebody day in, day out.

Next, cookies. You see that part about a ton of rugelach? I made them as favors for our guests (thirty, give or take) at the post-wedding drink we had at a pub a few weeks after the ceremony. Wait, did I just say I made them? I am a liar: Anthony did. Wait, I started: I mixed flour with butter and cream cheese to make the dough; then I kneaded and divided it in numerous pieces to chill; then I rolled each piece into a feather-thin circle and cut it like a pie into wedges; then I filled the wedges with a mixture of cinnamon, sugar, prunes, and walnuts; then I rolled the wedges up; then I baked them. It's after the sixtieth cookie that I lost my cool and Anthony had to finish the other thirty, bringing the tally up to ninety to make sure everybody gets enough (three cookies a pop or something) and, by extension, living up to the old adage that any New Yorker worth his salt should know how to make rugelach, a traditional Jewish sweet, part cookie and part pastry, a staple in New York -- and Russia. It's the only confection my mother, never a home-baker, made when the inspiration to fire up the oven hit her. It happened a mere few times, when she was a decade or so younger, and although she is certain now she couldn't have possibly made rugelach, I'm positive she did because I remember being infatuated with it -- an irregular heartbeat, a Cheshire cat smile, all at the thought about one buttery, flaky, cinnamon-y, crescent-shaped rugelach. I thought it would make sense to make a wedding favor that would in one way or another relate to both Anthony (see a part about being a New Yorker and such) and me. Besides, turning out not overly sweet, it appeared to be a proper pair for a beer as much as for a coffee, a right pull for a party in a pub, don't you know.

Rugelach
Adapted from Chewy, Gooey, Crispy, Crunchy Melt-In-Your-Mouth Cookies by Alice Medrich
Yield: 48 cookies

I had a trouble with larger pieces of walnuts and prunes spilling out of the rugelach during assembling, so instead of finely chopping those two I briefly pulse the whole filling in a blender to break up its any larger bits. I stick with prunes here, but any dried fruit can be called forth for the business (the original recipe uses currants, for example). 

Ideally, you are supposed to roll out the dough to a circle of 30 centimeters (12 inches) in diameter here, but frankly, it's somewhat bothersome in that the dough gets way too thin and sticky (even after some more time in the fridge). I stop at 25 centimeters (10 inches).

For the dough
315 g (11.25 oz) unbleached all-purpose flour
2 Tbsp sugar
1/4 tsp salt, plus more for sprinkling
225 g (8 oz) unsalted butter, cold
225 g (8 oz) cream cheese, cold

For the filling
2 Tbsp white sugar
100 g (3.5 oz) brown sugar
100 g (3.5 oz) walnuts, chopped
1 tsp ground cinnamon
70 g (2.5 oz) pitted prunes, chopped

For the glaze (optional):
1 small egg, beaten

To make the dough: Combine the flour, sugar, and 1/4 salt in a mixing bowl; whisk briefly to distribute the ingredients. Cut the butter into chunks and add them to the bowl. Using a hand-held or stand mixer, mix on low speed until most of the mixture looks like very coarse bread crumbs with a few larger pieces of butter the size of hazelnuts. Cut the cream cheese into small cubes and add them to the bowl. Mix on medium-low speed till the whole lot is damp and shaggy looking and holds together when pressed with your fingers, 30-60 seconds. Turn the dough onto the clean work surface, scraping the bowl. Lightly knead two or three times to incorporate any stray pieces. There should be large streaks of cream cheese.

Divide the dough into four pieces. Flatten each piece into a patty about 10 centimeters (4 inches) in diameter. Wrap and refrigerate until firm, at least two hours and up to three days.

Adjust an oven rack to the lower-middle position and heat the oven to 175 C (350 F).

To make the filling: Combine the sugars, cinnamon, walnuts, and prunes and briefly pulse in a blender or food processor to a fine consistency. Working with one round at a time, remove the dough from the fridge and, if necessary, let it stand at room temperature until pliable but not too soft. Roll into a 25-cm (10-inch) circle between sheets of wax paper. Peel the top sheet of wax paper from the dough and place it on the counter or a cutting board. Flip the dough over onto the paper and carefully peel off the second sheet. Sprinkle a quarter of the filling over the dough, pat down gently with your fingers, and then sprinkle with a tiny pinch of salt. Cut the dough like a pie into twelve equal wedges, and roll each wedge into a crescent shape. Place the crescents on a lined baking sheet 3 1/2 centimeters (1 1/2 inches) apart. If at any time the dough becomes too soft to work with, place it back in the fridge to firm up.

To bake: Brush the tops and the sides of the rugelach with the beaten egg (optional). Bake for about 20-25 minutes, until the cookies are light golden brown at the edges. Cool the rugelach completely before storing. Repeat with the remaining pieces of dough. Best on the day they are baked, rugelach remain delicious, kept in an airtight container, for up to five days.

Cakes, brooms, and grooms

Come what may, there is rarely a week over here without something sweet or other parrading or, depending on the results, tumbling out of the oven. A snug home-made sweet on the counter is a thing to look forward to any day, sun or rain, everybody knows that. Among all the sweet tooth-pacifiers out there, cookies -- heed these, would you? -- are usually my first choice. An average-sized batch yields a dozen or two of perfect foot soldiers ready to snap to it, one by one, at the click of my fingers. Well taken care of, they can stay in my command for days lending support and cheer whenever needed. I like cookies a lot for that, granting, of course, they taste good too. But however willing, one can't be sustained by cookies alone; one also needs cake. I know I do. There is a Russian proverb that says one can get sick of cake, but never of bread. Total hooey, if you ask me. Cake is a godsend. But unlike cookies that can so easily be stashed away strictly for personal use, cakes are meant to share, it's what you are expected to do as you set your foot in the kitchen to make one, especially if you live with someone else. In which case you are also supposed to inquire what kind of cake that other person would like, perhaps not every time, but at least every so often. I never do and time after time bake cakes I like -- this apple cake, or that marmelade cake, or now, thanks to this book, various other fruit cakes -- reckoning Anthony will like them too. Not surprising then it is that he never does: Your cakes are awful, there is no chocolate or buttercream in them. I hate your cakes. That's interesting, because I actually like to think my cakes are not so bad, but surely, surely tastes differ, and surely, surely I should be more considerate of other people's likes when I expect them to enjoy cake with me.

Today I made chocolate chip hazelnut cake with chocolate cinnamon buttercream (again Nigel Slater), and seeing that half of it is gone in less than half a day and I had only a sliver, I think I made a good cake. Put it in your pipe and smoke it, Anthony! Well, besides my addressing a certain person's stance towards some confections of mine, there is another motive for such luscious and celebratory sweet. Dear Reader, Anthony and I are getting married, on Monday September 17th!  (We may lean towards differents cakes, but we both agree that Mondays are great.) Nobody here is pregnant, stay calm. I know it sounds like such short notice. Such short notice, in fact, that it is tempting to think something is off. But nothing is, except, maybe, the way I deal with change. When things change around me, I am, always have been, the last to wrap my head around them, and so such is my nature to wait till the very last moment to peep a word and regard an occasion. I guess it's because when talked about loud, change, even the best kind, makes me feel vulnerable, as if I'm in the nude in a room full of properly-clad people, and I really, really don't like that feeling.

A touch more than a year ago Anthony gifted me with a pendant in the form of a snail and a butterfly hovering above, both in a circle. This is us, he said and seeing a question on my face, added, You are beautiful and I am slow and we are together. Do you want to marry me? I do. I like, very much so, the idea of getting married to Anthony, my best friend, my 'broom'! A short while ago I was filling in a form for witness details and in the field 'relationship' I wrote down, referring to Anthony's parents, 'the father and mother of the broom'. And now I keep calling him that, Anthony the Broom, secretly hoping that the Dutch civil servants who will issue our marriage certificate will not correct 'broom' to 'groom'. There is a concern on Anthony's side that if I repeat the joke too much, which I do, it will wear off too soon, but really I can't help it. I laugh a lot around him and I don't want that to change.

So: the cake. From the looks of it, one can get an inclination the sweet, composed of a moist sponge cake mainlined with toasted hazelnuts and chocolate nibs and a toothsome chocolate cream on top, is rich and cloying. I thought it would be, but I was mistaken. Despite all that butter (half pound) and sugar (half pound) and eggs (four) and chocolate that went into the cake, the latter stays miraculously light. To take that in can be rather disconcerting: as Anthony admitted, he feared for a moment that under that luscious frosting there sits something dry and prudent. No, no, and no. All is good about this cake. To say the least, perfumed with just a wiff of cinnamon the chocolate buttercream, not a distant cousin to ganache, cocoons each biteful of the moist, nutty sponge on your tongue with such care and affection that would similar interaction take place in a different context one might feel a little embarrassed to watch, if you know what I mean. The cake is to celebrate -- and for celebrations.

Chocolate Chip Hazelnut Cake with Chocolate Cinnamon Buttercream
Adapted from Ripe: A Cook in the Orchard by Nigel Slater
Yield: 10 to 12 (or more) servings

To be honest, I had a concern about the amount of the chocolate buttercream the recipe yields (a lot) and thought for an instance to replace, next time around, a recommended 20-cm (8-inch) cake pan with a larger one, to give such rich icing a bigger wingspan, so to say, but I'll tell you what -- I shall not replace a thing. It is not accidental, such quanity. Spread over the cake's top evenly (not like what I did in the picture above), it is this very thickness of the cream that lends a luscious and pleasant mouthfeel to each and every bite. With the cream in its place, I wasn't sure about how and where to better keep the whole composition, though. Refrigation turned the cream as well as the sponge underneath into rock, and after reaching room temperature again, the cream somehow took on a grainy quality. In doubts, I rapidly asked Nigel Slater for his advice and he suggested to keep it 'in a cool place, covered by a bowl or in a cake tin'. No fridge.

One more tidbit: with no golden bake's sugar in sight, I used conventional white sugar in its stead.

Ah, and remember to use ground cinnamon that is not too old.

For the cake

250 g (8 oz) butter
250 g (8 oz) white granulated sugar
75 g (2.5 oz) shelled hazelnuts
120 g (4 oz) good-quality dark chocolate
4 large eggs
125 g (4 oz) self-rising flour
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
4 tsp strong espresso

For the spiced chocolate buttercream

250 g (8 oz) dark chocoalte (70% cocoa)
125 g butter (4 oz)
a knifepoint of ground cinnamon

Warm the oven to 180 C (350 F). Line the bottom of a 20-cm (8-inch) deep springform cake pan with parchment paper and set aside. Toast the hazelnuts in a dry pan over medium heat, then rub them in a clean kitchen towl until almost all the skins have come off. Grind the nuts to a coarse powder, not as fine as almond meal but finer than they would be if chopped by hand. Cut up the chocolate fine enough for it to resemble coarse gravel; if chopped too roughly, the chocolate bits will just sink to the bottom of the cake batter. Sift the flour in a separate bowl.

Cut the butter into small pieces and put it along with the sugar into the bowl of an electric mixer, then beat until light and fluffy. In the meantime, break the eggs into a small bowl and beat them lightly. Slowly add them to the butter and sugar, beating continuously -- it's ok if the micture curdles slightly. Stop the mixer. Tip in half the ground nuts and half the flour, beat briefly and at a slow speed, then stop the mixer again, add the rest of the nuts and flour, together with the chopped chocolate and cinnamon, and mix till just incorporated. Taking care not to knock the air from the batter, gently fold in the espresso. Scoop the whole lot into the prepared cake pan. Smooth the top and bake for 35-45 minutes. If during the last ten minutes the cake colors too fast, cover it loosely with foil. Remove the cake from the oven and check doneness with a skewer/toothpick/sharp knife -- there shoule be no uncooked cake batter clinging to it. Leave the cake to cool for a little while in its pan, then turn out onto a cooling rack and peel off the parchment paper from its sides and bottom.

To make the chocolate buttercream, break the chocolate into small pieces and let melt in a small bowl set over a pot of simmering water (the bottom of the bowl shouldn't touch the water). Leave to melt, wirh minium stirring, add the butter, cut into small chunks, and the cinnamon. Stir until the butter has melted, then immediately remove from the fire. Leave to cool until the mixture is thick enough to spread. Evenly cover the top of the cake with the chocolate cream, decorate as you wish, and leave for an hour or so before cutting. Serve in thin slices. Store, covered by a bowl, in a cool place (don't refrigerate). The cake will keep for 3-4 days.

A good feeling

Last time we talked I couldn't stop mouthing off about how fruit is my siren, how all I can do is eating it fresh, except that I would also like to cook with it more, somewhat. To this end, I told you, I had taken some measures, that being I'd got myself one special book -- Nigel Slater's Ripe: A Cook in the Orchard. (Ten Speed Press, 2012). When I heard Jess mention it once, I was on the edge of my seat. When Jess spoke fondly of it twice, wheels got turning. I got the book weeks ago and not a day has passed by since that I wouldn't lose myself in its pages. 

I think Nigel Slater is a magician. For most of us an apple, for example, tastes like, um, an apple, right? We can tell if it's sweet or sour, no problem there, and with some effort we could even decipher scents of grass or honey in the apple bite. But Nigel Slater sees beyond that. He tastes this apple and senses it has the flavors of strawberry, walnut and nail polish(!!); in that apple he picks up the notes of nutmeg, aniseed or pineapple. Isn't it pretty spectacular? He is also a romantic, that Nigel Slater. Just check this out: "Cherries bring with them a certain frivolity, a carefree joy like hearing the far-off laughter of a child at play. Their appearance, in deepest summer, comes when life is often at its most untroubled. A bag of cherries is a bag of happiness" (p.171). Or this: "I catch my breath and stand quite motionless; a moment of quiet excitement. I feel as if there is a butterfly in my chest. There, two feet away, is the first catkin of spring, already heavy with yellow pollen and dangling like a lamb's tail from a bare, brittle twig" (p.315). Beautiful, isn't it? The book is filled with such gracefulness and delicacy to the fullest.

Aside being instructive and educative, cookbooks for me are kitchen windows into somebody else's story and culture. Through recipes and stories of others I get to know what's there. And while filling my head with information and treble inspiration all right, Nigel Slater's sentient and observant writing does something else: it makes me want to never stop paying attention to what's here, right around me. I want to see for myself what shade of yellow is canary yellow, to walk through a monastery orchard, to find a sea rock and remind myself what hue it is exactly, to hear that noise that comes from the corners of my mouth as I bite into a fresh and juicy peach...You see what I mean? I think it's special when a (cook)book inspirits you to look at where you are right now. Ripe does that in tenfold.

To say that each one of three hundred plus seasonal recipes this beautiful tome holds would yield blog-worthy results wouldn't be a far-fetched statement, not at all. But I had to start somewhere, and because I'm not impartial to it I started with tabbouleh. 

                                                                                                       

                                                          ***

I was twenty-one and edging into my final year of college when, figuring out what I should be soon doing with my degree in English linguistics, I took a gap year and enrolled into the Au-pair program. For various reasons, I ended up in the Netherlands (the Hague), and for the year to come I was to take care of a lovely six-year-old girl in a single-parent family (a working mother). That year was supposed to be my coming of age of sorts, meaning not only that I was going to be completely on my own in a place far away from everything and everyone familiar, but also that I was now responsible for somebody else. That surely had to make me more mature, stronger, wiser, something, anything. That surely had to, and on some level it did, except only when I would step into my host family's kitchen, you know, to cook myself a meal. One day not too long after my arrival I thought to braise for my lunch white cabbage in tomato broth, with charred onions, laurel and all that, something I really liked, something that said home to me. I was standing by the kitchen stove stirring the cabbage when the mother walked in, her heels knocking urgent staccato on the black tiled floor, to say, her arm over her nose: It's shocking you can eat something like this; it smells foul. Did she just imply I eat shit? Lost for words on my side, I sheepishly smiled and kept stirring my food, deeply embarrassed and strangely hurt. Forward the tape and you'll see that other time over breakfast when I sat down with my plate of pan-fried potatoes leftover from the night before and her I can't believe you are eating this firing at me again, only now reaching somewhere deeper and making me feel so completely out of place.

And then there was ketchup. I liked to have it with everything, you see. Or better, I just liked to have it. A true fact: brain freeze from my necking heavily refrigerated ketchup straight from a bottle wasn't a foreign thing to me. So when my host mother said I've never seen anybody eating so much ketchup before, during a family meal, the words catching me in 'crime' as I was reaching for the stuff, to squirt some on rice, I recall, it just got me. And when I was repeatedly told it's plain stupid not to eat after 6pm, it got me even more, because I was twenty-one and stubborn and weight conscious and no-food-after 6pm was my thing then. It's then when I should have said something back, something like a friendly Your comments make me feel uncomfortable, to speak up for myself, for my bottle of ketchup, for my cabbage. Too fast to fold, I said nothing. Instead, I got into a habit of hiding what and when I would eat (yes sir, bad behavior). Which, given my sentiments, for the next eight months meant I would tiptoe down into the kitchen for breakfast (Weetabix, I got besotted by you!) and race against the clock to have dinner before everybody else, lunch being a dash in the neurotic sentence of my every day. In such developments, hunger soon got to thunderously and ceaselessly rumble in my every cell. And the irony is that I couldn't be any hungrier than then, what with all those wonderful, delicious, beautiful foods I hadn't known of before right under my nose at the farmer's markets (my first taste of avocado and leeks (!) and 'organic') and deli stores and ethnic supermarkets and pastry shops.

In the thick of it, I didn't see at all how things were spinning out of control. It pleased my eyes to see how much I thinned down (from eighty-five to forty-five kilos in less than six months), but I didn't pay much mind to how anxious of a weight gain I became (one apple, and I would be off to a gym, burning 'the fat'); how my hair started to suddenly falling out; how hungry indeed and drenched in fatigue I felt all the time. It was a shock when my host mother sat me down to say she is going to take me to a doctor to test me for anorexia, because she is afraid I'm hurting myself and need help, her face creased with concern. I'm not diseased, I cried, I need no doctor, no help, you are mistaken, no, I don't throw up my meals (I really didn't!), please everybody just leave me alone.

I so often wish none of that ever took place. I wish I didn't cause so much hurt and anxiety to my parents. Smashed to smithereens by what they saw -- a yellow-skinned skeleton; no exaggeration, that -- they stood there at the arrival gates frozen first, but coming to tears by the minute, my mother loudly and my father quietly so. What did you do to yourself, Anya? To which I just kept repeating, What's the big deal? I'm fine. The first weeks after I'd returned, my father, a man of a few words, didn't say much else on the subject; he only kept buying me bundles of bananas. I wish I hadn't scared my host mother like that. I wish I hadn't done such damage to myself. I hate to have been afflicted with an eating disorder. It absolutely sucks. They say anorexia never completely goes away, but I really don't know. It's been six years since then, and I want to think I'm through. Hey, I earn my keeps these days making pastries, eating my way through butter-loaded this or sugar-crammed that almost every day; how is that for a proof? Although, it hadn't quite been the battle with weight that sent me into a tailspin in the first place. My biggest problem of all had been the battle with self-confidence. It's my hidebound insecurity that had been standing squarely athwart on my way, taking good care I remain impressionable, and self-conscious, and that I listen really good to what others have to say about me. I'm wondering how much longer I'm going to battle that, though.

Towards the end of my stay, I went on a 24-hour trip to Brussels. The weather that summer day was chili-hot, uncomfortable. I was walking around town, shopping, and la la la, soaking in that beautiful city's air (rich in waffle scent), and the next thing I knew I was feeling weird, clammy. The feeling was that I had to eat something, all my bullshit notwithstanding. I made a pit stop at a nearby health food bar where I ordered smoked salmon tabbouleh. Strewn with raisins and cumin seeds, it was fresh, earthy and nutty. It was comforting and welcome. I loved it, for it was tasty. But what's more, I loved it because for a split, split, split second, the first time in so long, I didn't see food as a cunning agent of weight. It was a good feeling.

      

                                                            ***

Peach and Mint Tabbouleh

Adapted from Ripe: A Cook in the Orchard by Nigel Slater

Yield: 4-6 servings

The charm of this dish is in a relationship between sweet and juicy fruitiness and zippy spiciness. One comes from the peaches, as you could have inferred; the other from the red chili. Theirs is not a tug-of-war game, because despite the obvious contrast there is no opposition: the chili just makes each mouthful sassier or something.

I am a person who can consume raw onion (thinly sliced) as a remedy for cold, which is just to say I am not an onion objector in no way or form. But I feel quite strongly against adding the onion to a dish if I want to keep it for later, what with the onion flavor becoming too pungent and unruly with time, its pleasant bite turning into the jaw clasp. Unless there are plans to finish the whole lot right away, add the onions only before serving, or skip them altogether, which I did.

I'm also a person who would like to be able to eat chillies, even the most fiery ones, by the handful. Alas, the nature didn't cut me fit enough for the job. But I still try and add extra chillies, seeds intact, whenever I can. Here I used two bird's eye chillies, instead of one, and left the seeds in, instead of out.

And a few more things...One, I cut down the amount of bulgur, the only reason being I like this tabbouleh better with the peach upfront, not the grain. Two: you absolutely need to get your hands on ripe peaches. It should give to your gentle touch but not be mushy. Yes, stay away from the mushy business. 

120 g (4 ounces) bulgur (I used medium-coarse type)

4 ripe peaches

1 or 2 hot red chillies, deseeded (or not)

6 bushy sprigs of mint, leaves only

2 large handfuls of cilantro leaves

2 large handfusl of parsley leaves

juice of 1 medium lemon

2 Tbsp olive oil

Salt, pepper

Put the bulgur in a bowl and pour just enough boiling water to cover; put a lid or a plate over the bowl to prevent the bulgur from drying and set aside.

Slice the peaches in half, remove the pits, dice the flesh and put in a mixing bowl. Finely chop the chili, coarsely chop the mint, cilantro and parsley, and add to the peaches. Add the lemon juice, olive oil, and salt and pepper. You will need a good grinding of both to balance the whole thing out.

Fluff up the bulgur with a fork and crumble into the peaches. Serve at room temperature. On its own, or with roasted or poached chicken, or fish, even.