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.

I'm sold already

What have we got here? Let's see...First on the list: brownies (oh priorities!).

A mistake, as we all know it, is something that one hasn't done correctly. Nearly all mistakes don't serve a kitchen’s interests, mistakes like, you know, burnt meat, unrisen cakes, curdled creams, and other improbable things. Luckily, though, there remains that scarce percentage of things done to food incorrectly that elevate the final result to greatness, or, modesty forbidding, close to it. Case in point: the resident brownies at Gebroeders Niemeijer, they would not have seen the light of the day and thronged the local hungry if an error hadn't crept in -- and stayed.

A couple years ago I was put in charge of improving a brownie recipe that would warrant a sweet that, upon the first bite, would have to do nothing lesser than turn haters (of brownies) into lovers (of brownies), or, at the very least, be something to write home about. Now, we live in the world full of brownies. There are the ones that squarely sit in the well-behaved, composed cake department, and others that find themselves on the opposite end of the trail, in the fudge field, and yet some others that tie the two worlds together and are at once like a moist cake and a luscious chocolate pudding or a mousse. I fancied our brownie to be that bridge, and so I set about figuring out what measures to take to this end. The only catch was that the recipe I'd been given to tweak -- it was trying to make brownies more cake-y than anything -- already called for the whole pound of premium dark chocolate (a must in any case), engulfed in a good amount of butter and eggs, which made me feel that simply upping the numbers wouldn't really meet the goal.

You know what did? A memory lapse. Re-trying the recipe over a few days led me to think I'd remembered the correct quantities alright, and so I gave myself a permission to make it by heart one fine morning. I melted this much butter and blended it with that much chocolate; whisked this many eggs with that much sugar; and sieved that much flour. All mentioned parties were combined and assigned to the oven, having later produced thin melt-in-your-mouth brownies, rich and creamy, holding their luxurious selves together just so, just barely enough. Many a taster was impressed -- and so was I. But my amusement was also stemming from the fact that I didn't have a clue what I'd done differently this time. Only hours further down the road, my brains going in reverse trying to re-live the past day, it finally dawned on me...the flour. I unknowingly decreased its amount from three digits to two, thus having used four times less flour than usual! Reader, I've never before relayed all this to anybody at work, except for my ex-colleague, a French guy, Arnaud, whom this cheeky brownie converted into a ferocious brownie eater, which, as he said, he didn't expect of himself, I normally don't like browniez. So I let him in on the mystery. Other than that, until now nobody knew of the little mistake/trick.

Unfortunately, I can't post the said recipe here. I'm contractually bound to keep my lips zipped, you see. But!  All that hullabaloo is not at all for no reason. Which is that I recently came across a very, very similar recipe in Alice Medrich's Chewy Gooey Crispy Crunchy Melt-In-Your-Mouth Cookies. This woman and her New Bittersweet Brownies (such is the name), they are after my own heart. It transpires to be a norm now, in comparison to the decades of the past, to use more chocolate and less flour, as Medrich reveals. Holy egg, I incidentally tapped into some modern cosmic brownie spirit! I didn't expect that of myself.

In other developments, tomorrow I'm flying to Russia for two weeks to visit my family. I haven't seen them -- weekly Skype sessions don't count -- for two and a half years. First the dishwasher and then the apprentice wages, all served to delay my trip for, well, a long while. But not just that. Having completed my Master's, I stumbled in some sort of after-graduation depression. My studies were giving me cover from all these worrying questions parents are sometimes so prone to throw at you, such as What's now?, When are you going to look for a real job?, What, do you want to write? What does that mean?, and so forth. So naturally once I was done with my thesis I felt very unprotected. And so I got to eat my discomfort. Which made me put on weight. Which made me want to avoid letting my parents see me. A vicious circle good and proper. But I'm doing better now. I'm looking forward to finally seeing my parents in person again. I'm ready to face their questions; they mean no harm. I'm also looking forward to sitting down at my grandmother's kitchen table and enjoying her stew of river fish with onions, potatoes and tomatoes, chatting the time away.

I may not have all the answers yet, but I might make it up for that with these brownies, not too greasy, not too sweet, cake-y around the edges, with a glossy thin-paper crust and a heart of a soufflé. I'm sold already.

New Bittersweet Brownies
Source: Chewy Gooey Crispy Crunchy Melt-In-Your-Mouth Cookies, by Alice Medrich
Yield: 16 smaller or 12 larger brownies

225 g (8 ounces) premium bittersweet chocolate (70 % cacao), coarsely chopped

90 g (3 ounces) butter, cut into several pieces

3 eggs

200 g (7 ounces) sugar

Scant 1/4 tsp salt

1 tsp pure vanilla extract

50 g (1.75 ounces) unbleached all-purpose flour

1       1. Place a rack in the lower third of the oven and pre-heat the oven to 175 C (350 F). Line a 20-cm (8-inch) square baking pan across the bottom and all the way up two opposite sides with parchment paper.

2       2. Put the chocolate and butter in a medium heatproof bowl position directly in a wide skillet of barely simmering water. Stir frequently until the mixture is melted; it should be smooth and quite warm. Set aside. In a separate medium bowl, with an electric mixer on high speed, beat the eggs, sugar, salt and vanilla until the eggs and thick and light colored, about 2 minutes. Whisk the warm chocolate into the egg mixture. With a spatula, carefully fold in the flour.

3      3. Scrape the batter into the lined pan and spread evenly. Bake for 25-30 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the centre comes out free of raw mixture stuck to it. If you want these brownies really gooey, bake them for 20 minutes instead. Leave to cool in the pan on a rack for at least an hour. Lift the edges of the parchment liner and remove to a cutting board. Use a long sharp knife to cut into 16 squares. Keep in an airtight container for up to 3 days.