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. 

But wait just a minute

Oh boy -- have I missed out on posting a single word in March! How did this happen? Who is to blame? There was no conspiracy plotted by the Russian government to interrupt my blogging -- I didn't have to transmit any information to Vladimir in exchange for the freedom to write about cakes and other deliciousness; nobody twisted my arms; I wasn't abducted by aliens. Nothing, really nothing prevented me from showing up duly with a new story, except only-God-knows-what. But wait just a minute...I'm not being quite truthful here.
Stay with me; I need to circle around to first tell you that I turned into a troubled sleeper lately, quite a novelty for me, for I considered myself something of a slumber natural. Tellingly, I’m not good at all to deal with insomnia calmly. When it rolls in, I swiftly get into a state and ventilate about a pending sleep deprivation, a subsequent slow performance at work, a possible bout of gut-wrenching depression that, in my book, always goes hand-in-hand with a substandard diet of candy (M&M’s), and so on, and so forth. All that makes me even more wound up to peacefully depart to bed, except, I discovered, if I watch TV. So staring into yet another wakeful night I felt free to subject my groggy eyes to the viewing of The Colbert Report programmed by the TV geniuses on repeat the whole night through, seeing me off into the next day’s wee hours. The gentle observer would dub the phenomenon as dumbness, but let me just tell I consider that time well spent, if only for one reason alone: through the Colbert Report I learnt about Behind the Beautiful Forevers by Katherine Boo, a book that I would give my every free waking hour for days that followed. And not just once, for after reaching the end I would turn to the first pages and start again. I’ve downed it three times, in a row.

I love reading. All those stories, fictional or non-, unfolding behind the freshly crisp or time-battered pages; the way the pages rustle, if new, and whisper, if old, under the gentle nudge of my fingers; the graceful prose stretching from word to word; the characters, real or imaginative, leaving a trace, however subtle or palpable, of themselves in my mind well after a book has been devoured.

There are dozens of cherished tomes on my book shelves, but there are very few that have gripped me, literally and beyond, the way Katherine Boo’s did. Hers, in large brush strokes, is a true account of the life in a Mumbai slum, the life, as it transpires, that is full of hope, of search for opportunity in the poignantly unequal urban India, as much as it is the life full of demise, physical, moral and emotional. For three years Boo followed the slum dwellers about their daily routines, documenting, patiently, non-judgementally, the tender and heart-breaking truths behind the walls of the Mumbai international airport, the walls that separate a slum from the luxurious hotels and the lives of the rich.

Irrespective of some parts that were too overwhelming to read, so much so that I had to put the book down for a while, it is not a grim story of the grisly reality. Showing the abject poverty, the festering hunger, the ambient corruption, all personalized, let’s just say it’s bound to quietly put many a thing into perspective for the reader, at least it did for me.

I think of Abdul, a scaredy-cat sixteen-years-old, squatting in front of his family hut, sorting out garbage that young, fearless ribby scavengers like Sunil had brought in from their charges along the Sahar Airport Road. He assigns plastic to one pile, aluminium scraps to another, getting ready to schlep it all to recyclers, providing therefore an income for his family of eleven. I think of Meena, a fifteen-year-old, living in, or rather, beaten into domestic submission, contemplating suicide. I think of young but late boys Kalu and Sanjay, and what had possibly gone through their minds before they died. I want to forget none of them; I won’t. I also think how often I forget what I’ve been blessed with – health, home, food, job – and how this book, how these youths, remind me not to.

Behind the Beautiful Forevers -- a must-read. Which is what I’ve been up the last three or so weeks. But wait just a minute...that’s not the single thing I repeatedly did back then. I also got to make -- huk! -- whole lemon tart.

The recipe comes from Melissa Clark’s In the Kitchen with a Good Appetite, a book of her essays and recipes originally written for her veritable NYT column. Although not entirely unimaginable as such, this whole lemon tart business surprised me quite a bit. You see, the lemon tart we make at Gebr. Niemeijer is the kind made with fresh lemon cream presiding over a toasty sweet pastry shell. Whisk that concoction of sugar, eggs and lemon juice over boiling water non-stop, come what may, for as long as it takes to get to the right temperature without complaining and/or sobbing, and you are not a rooky any more. That you can forego the shoulder strain to make a nice lemon tart did never occur to me before.

All you need to do, except fixing an almond tart shell, which itself is a cinch, is blend a couple peeled and deseeded lemons with sugar, mix that all up with eggs and melted butter, and blissfully send the band in a pre-baked tart shell to be cooked in the oven. No pain, no gain? I don’t think so. What you’ll get is a very fine lemon tart, fresh and tongue tickling, its flavour no lesser zealous than that of the tart with the airy, and punchy, and pompous stovetop lemon cream. The lemon flavour in this version is more subdued, and relaxed, velvety, even -- and with the pastry, rather than on it, if you know what I mean. I like it.

And…looking so sunny and bright, it would make a fitting Easter sweet, this whole lemon tart.

Happy Spring, Reader!

Whole Lemon Tart

Adapted from In the Kitchen with a Good Appetite, by Melissa Clark
Yield: 8-10 servings

There are two things in the original recipe that I did differently. First: I reversed the way the pastry dough is made. Instead of cutting the butter in the flour-egg mixture, I creamed the butter first, adding the rest of the ingredients – confectioners' (powdered) sugar, almonds, egg – one after another, flour being mixed in last, which is, actually, how I learnt to make sweet dough at work. Another reason being I don’t own a food processor to pulse the butter into the flour as Clark does.

Second: since the butter was so immoderately (to my taste) seeping out of the lemon filling, I dialled down the amount of butter in more than a half, and the recipe still worked like a charm.

Last: I like my lemon tart more sour than sweet, which is why I also decreased the amount of sugar here, but just a mite.

For the almond tart shell:

110 g (1 stick) unsalted butter, cold and cubed
40 g (1/3 cup) confectioners’ sugar
85 g (1/2 cup lightly packed) ground blanched almonds
Freshly grated zest of 1/2 lemon (I used zest of a whole lemon)
Pinch salt
1 large egg, lightly beaten
190 g (1 1/2 cups) all-purpose flour

For the lemon filling:

2 large lemons
220 g (1 cup plus 1 1/2 Tbsp) granulated sugar
17 g (2 Tbsp) cornstarch
Pinch salt
45 g (3 Tbsp) butter, melted
1 large egg
2 large egg yolks
1 Tbsp vanilla extract
Confectioners’ sugar, for dusting (optional)

1. In a medium bowl and using a hand-held electric mixer, beat the butter at medium speed until it starts to soften, about 1 minute. Add the confectioners’ sugar and beat until light and fluffy, 1-2 minutes. Mix in the ground almonds, salt and lemon zest; scrape down the sides of the bowl. Add the egg and beat until incorporated. Add the flour, and using your hands combine it with the rest of the mixture. Don’t knead or squeeze; the motion of your hands should resemble that of the claw in a teddy picker – grip, and release, grip, and release. This way you mix in the flour without working it too much. Stop when the dough – it will be crumbly – just comes together. Press into a disc, wrap in plastic, and refrigerate for 1 hour or overnight.

2. When ready to bake the tart, roll the dough out between two sheets of parchment paper into a circle 35-cm (14-inch) in diameter. Line a buttered 24-cm (9-inch) tart pan with the dough and refrigerate for 30 minutes.

3. Pre-heat the oven to 160 C (325 F). Line the tart shell with the parchment paper and fill with baking weights/beans/or copper coins. Bake until the tart shell is pale golden, 20-25 minutes. The tart shell can be baked up to 8 hours before filling.

4. To make the filling, grate the lemon zest and place it in the bowl of a blender (or that of a food processor). With a sharp knife, cut the tops and the bottoms off the lemons. Stand each lemon up and remove the white pith by following the curve of the fruit with the knife. (First time I did a clumsy job and left a few bits of the white pith here and there; as a result, the lemon filling tasted slightly bitter.) Cut the fruit into thin rounds and remove the seeds. Put the fruit in the blender and add the sugar, cornstarch, and salt. Blend until thoroughly combined. Scrape the mixture into a medium mixing bowl.

5. In a separate bowl, whisk together the melted butter, egg, egg yolks, and vanilla. Pour the egg-butter mixture into the lemon mixture and whisk to incorporate. Pour the lemon filling into the tart shell and bake until the top is bubbly and lightly browned, 30-45 minutes. Cool completely in the pan. Cover and refrigerate for up to 3 days. Before serving, dust with confectioners’ sugar, if desired.

On my own time again

  I’m squatting down in front of my oven, watching carrots roasting. They lie there, calmly, the tendrils of bubbling olive oil all around, surrendering to the heat, their orange gradually getting toned, their frame less unyielding. That heady and sweet smell of roasting carrot – a whiff so timid when the vegetable is raw, almost non-existent -- percolates the room, gently wafting through the air, through a haze in my head.
 
Today’s morning was a struggle with my alarm. I’ve never been the one to jump out of bed at the first command of my clock (ungodly hour, be damned!), but this time I felt especially resentful, muting the reminder again and again for almost an hour, denying time the right to rob me off my sleep. Finally I relent. I can’t not to – I’ll be late for work otherwise. I hastily get ready, foregoing breakfast (a crime!). I walk out the doorway, my heels knocking through the gelatinous early morning silence of the hallway, the loudest sound in the building so far. I assess my looks in the elevator mirror; maybe one more spray of perfume and a smear of a lipstick wouldn’t hurt. Angry gusts of wind make me gasp as I step outside; all my vitals cringe at the thought of cycling all the way to work -- twenty five minutes, give or take -- so I hop on my bike and pedal to the nearest tram station instead, the neurotic electric buzz of street lamps having a monopoly in the air at this hour.
 
I start my day at work with a thick, almost syrupy, espresso, a usual ritual. Caffeine reaches my bloodstream a handful of minutes later, and I start feeling a rush, the high from the espresso. The beeping of the ovens and the clanking of the pots and whisks don’t vex me anymore. I’m alert and wakeful, and get on with starting baguette dough, making brownies and fruit pies, first things on my agenda. My back aches, a nerve got pinched in the recesses of my spine during my sleep. I probably should reserve my energy and go about my day at a slower clip, but I must not. Everything has to be done fast; the dough, the butter, the oven, they are intolerant to how one feels. I proceed. I fold butter squares into large yeasty dough pieces to make croissants, four batches in total. By the time I’m done with that it’s nearly mid-morning. My stomach rumbles full on. I’m ravenous, but it’s still a couple hours before a lunch break, the full fifteen minutes carved out for a hurried Serrano ham sandwich. Before that happens, I take another espresso, and another one, in the hope it’ll curb my hunger. And it does just that. But I don’t drink enough water, and soon after light-headedness creeps in. It’s time to do the last roll out of the croissant dough; every piece seems to weigh a ton. When the caffeine grip loosens up, fog sets in my head. It takes more focus to stay focused. I have to measure equal triangles in the dough to be rolled up in croissants, but my hand is rickety, and the triangles come out erratic, one is way too big, another rather small. I keep thinking of what’s for dinner tonight.
 
I restore to my feet from my squatting stance and slice an onion into thin rings. I throw them in with the carrots, rinse red lentils and arrange spices I need – smoked Spanish paprika and cayenne – next to the stove. The aroma of roasting onion gentles me back into comfort. I’m glad to be home, on my own time again. Anthony is napping on the couch; instead of chatting with him I turn to a book, getting pleasantly lost in lyrical words, sentences, in somebody else’s world. A buzzer comes off, the vegetables must be ready. And they are: the carrots have softened, the onion browned.
In under half an hour roasted carrot and red lentil soup will be ready. All I have to do now is to cut the carrots in bite-sized chunks, consign them to a pot, along with the onion rings, a pinch of cayenne and smoked paprika, the lentils and some stock. As the soup softly bubbles away, I turn back to reading, patiently waiting for the heat to transform the lot into a welcoming and delicious – smoky, spicy, nubbly, sweet – mess. 

Roasted Carrot and Red Lentil Soup

Source: The Wednesday Chef

Yield: 4-6 servings, depending how hungry you are
 
3/4 kilo (1 1/2 pounds) carrots, peeled
5 Tbsp olive oil
1 tsp salt
Freshly ground black pepper, to taste
1 medium onion, thinly sliced
3/4 tsp Aleppo pepper (I skipped this – had none)
1/4 tsp cayenne pepper, or to taste
1/8 tsp smoked Spanish paprika*
200 g (1 cup) red lentils, picked over and rinsed
1 1/4 L (5 cups) chicken or vegetable stock, or water
Fresh parsley for garnish (optional)

1. Warm up the oven to 200 degrees C (400 degrees F). Put the carrots in a roasting pan or on a baking sheet covered with parchment paper and toss with 3 Tbsp olive oil. Sprinkle over the salt and some freshly ground black pepper; roast for 20 minutes. Turn the carrots (use a pair of kitchen tongs for the task – convenient and not finger-scorching), throw in the onion and roast for another 15 minutes, until the carrots and soft and visibly toned. When carrots are cool enough to handle, cut them in bite-sized chunks, or use a fork or a knife as leverage if you can’t wait.

2. In a medium pot, heat 2 Tbsp olive oil. Add the carrots and the onion, together with the cayenne and paprika (and the Aleppo pepper, if using). Cook, stirring, for 1 minute. Add the lentils, the stock or water, and bring to a simmer. Cover and cook, stirring every now and then to avoid scorching, for about 20-25 minutes, until the lentils are mushy. Taste and adjust the seasoning. Serve hot, garnished with finely chopped fresh parsley (if using).

*In Amsterdam, smoked Spanish paprika is available, for instance, from Hollandaluz, a Spanish delicatessen at Haarlemmerstraat 71.

I can't complain

Good day, Dear Reader –

I trust January is being nice and gentle with you. And while I’m at it, I’d like to ask: What do you generally think of January? I personally find the year’s first month a reclusive egg. I own it is no fun to arrive on the spot intent to raise a few toasts to a new year and throw in a few tipsy jokes here and there only to find out that everybody has sobered up after the visit of the festive and jocund December and promised to go teetotal for the whole month. Thus far having found nobody around the bar, January makes a beeline for the kitchen…and, dash it, what is there to be seen? Lettuce and broccoli have taken up the diner’s plate. It’s quiet. Void of major festivities of its own, January does only so much as to grow cold and pass by in the wake of the past holidays.

My point is: January for me is just that month that comes when Christmas holidays are over. A rather daunting attitude, I hear you say. And I agree. I’m having a hard time letting go of good times. It is why our Christmas tree is still here, still sparkling, still perfuming our home. I’ve been like this since the daunt of me, begging my mother to hold on to the tree just one more day until my father would have to intervene with a shirty speech about how much the dry needles litter the living room’s floor, and how it is on his way to his chest of books, and how silly it is, holy spruce, to have not yet got rid of the Christmas tree by the end of January and that we’d better do it immediately. Upset, I’d strip the dear tree of the ornaments, taking down tinsel after tinsel, one shimmering string after another, knowing perfectly well that of course it was the time to throw it out, of course it was silly to keep it for so long. But in my view, for long as there was the Christmas tree, there was no emptiness. I am my own governor now, and so far the tree (this time mostly decorated with peppermint candy canes) is staying. Anthony says he doesn’t mind. And I’m glad. I’m filling the void.

Where am I going with this? Ah yes, I’ve been free from work the week that’s just worn off. I was going to make a few day trips around Holland, to get engaged in a shopping spree, to visit a few museums I haven’t yet been to. In one broad brush stroke, my plan was to be out and about, filling my January with excitement – and I couldn’t wait! Needless to say, I quite surprised myself that when my free week finally arrived, all I did, and wanted to do, was stay in. My initial standing was to plunge in the dark underwater of self-loathing: What a downer! What a pooper scooper! Humbug! Most likely I would. But I got distracted. Anthony got swept off by a beastly case of poisoning, the type that blows one flat out, and makes one think, That’s it. He was in bad, bad pain. We were both scared. My main tasks at the time were to make sure there is enough Gatorade in the fridge, it being the sole thing he could keep down, and to call an ambulance if the situation would spiral out of control, which, luckily, it didn’t.

I’m happy to say Anthony is OK now. The circumstances so transpired that we both stayed in. And actually, except his sickness, it was nice. We played Monopoly day in, day out; watched a lot of Pat & Mat and In Living Color (such a great show!). I did a lot of reading. And when Anthony finally felt hungry again, we ate chickpeas. I can’t complain about my week off. I don’t think so. And as long as our Christmas tree is still around, I will not complain about January.

Hot Chickpea Salad
Source: Simple French Food by Richard Olney

Composed of chickpeas, olive oil, vinegar and fresh herbs, this is one of the unfussiest salads I’ve ever made. All you’ve got to do is to plan slightly ahead – at least two hours for soaking the chickpeas and as much for cooking them -- and water and heat will take care of the rest.

I have a soft spot for chickpeas, but that, however, didn’t equip me with the knowledge that they are very sensitive to hard waters. To neutralize the effect, Richard Olney would soak his chickpeas in sifted wood ashes and rain water, to which a good pinch of bicarbonate of soda would be a fine substitute, he writes.

Rain waters and wood ashes or not, this is what you do. Rinse the chickpeas well after soaking, chuck in a pot, cover amply with water and throw in a carrot and/or celery stalk along with one onion studded with a few cloves and a sprig of thyme. Bring slowly to a boil, cover partially and cook into submission over a lazy simmer, salting the lot generously only towards the end of cooking time. Drain. Serve hot, accompanied by a fragrant olive oil – “The immediate explosion of perfume when good olive oil is added to any hot vegetable is always exciting” -- vinegar, salt and pepper and some finely-chopped fresh parsley. No measurements are required for this type of dish, your own taste being the essential pointer.

What astonishes

I like remembering people through things they taught me. Take my good Italian friend Paola for example. Before moving to London, Paola worked at the bakery for a few years. I learnt a lot from her. First and foremost, she passed me the knowledge of macaron craftsmanship. Every Wednesday I make macarons at work now I think of Paola. The eye for a good meringue, the careful wrist movement, the assertive hold of a pastry bag, she was there with me as I was making wonky baby steps towards the skillfully made macaron. I’m thankful to her for this, thankful with capital T. What I’m also grateful to her for is that she showed me some special cookies one distant day in past.

Chocolate and sea salt, bound into union by brown sugar, butter and flour, all packed into the medallion of a cookie, sea salt chocolate sables (French-style shortbreads), man, they stole my heart. I made over one hundred and fifty of them for the personal use over the course of the last one and a half weeks, which screams out loud that these cookies are seriously good. Or that I’m losing my mind. A voice in my head tells it’s both.


If you are still figuring out what sweet species to include in your Christmas cookie tin, a place, as we all understand, notoriously known for being intolerant to the stale and tasteless, could I suggest you try these sea salt chocolate sables. Created, as I learnt, by the veritable French pastry chef Pierre Herme, he of the Isphahan macaron fame, among much, much else, these cookies are destined to deliver. I’d even say they are bound to surprise. Of course there is nothing surprising about the already classical combination of sea salt and chocolate, but that’s not what I mean anyway. What I’m driving at is the way the sweet (caramel-y from the brown sugar and bitter from the chocolate) and salty co-exist here. Upon the first bite, preceded by a clear and crisp snap!, it’s a sweet talk all over. The eater chews ever so slightly for a second or two, freeing the chocolate flavor from the cookie case all the while, and salty sticks its neck out from seemingly every sugary molecule in the sable. And at the end what astonishes the palate is not the fact that the confection is sweet and salty, but that it’s both at the same time. The impression lasts even if a stray salt crystal resides on this tooth or that for a little while.
 
Also to be noted: the said cookie is rife with chocolate. But doesn’t come from the use of chocolate alone. The latter is chaperoned by cacao powder and that is what makes the deep omnipresent chocolate flavor even more proper. In other words, the whole cookie, so wholesome and many-faceted at once, is the capital excitant for the palate. It’s small, but it plays big. I’m happy to have lost my heart, and mind, to it.When it comes to keeper recipes, I’m a slow burner, I noticed. Paola made them a tough more than a year ago as one of her contributions to our mutual friend’s seventy-five people party that she and I had been asked to cook for. One cookie a pop was the idea, but I remember snatching a handful, surely leaving somebody cookie-less thereof. I know I should have been sorry or something, but honestly I was not. The cookie, as described above, was worth a sin or two. I’ve been thinking about that sable frequently ever since, but make it myself, well, I didn’t (am I lazy? forgetful? I don’t know!). I knew Paola left the recipe in a recipe folder at the bakery (the private party took place there), so before leaving in September I copied the recipe neatly with a view to make it imminently, which I didn’t get to do – until recently.

Despite having already made over a hundred and fifty (see the second paragraph above) for only the two of us, Anthony and myself, there are no intentions on my side to discontinue the process. I don’t see how I could, now that my mind got whisked away by the power of sea salt chocolate sable. Thank you, Paola!

Happy holidays, Dear Reader! Happy cooking, happy eating!

Pierre Herme’s Sea Salt Chocolate Sables

Adapted from Pierre Herme via a dear friend Paola

Yield: about 36 cookies

I can’t see how one could improve upon these darlings. They are great. A few minor things I changed are simply a matter of personal preference. One, instead of chopping chocolate into chip-size bits, I grind it (after some rough chopping). This way, the chocolate melts into everywhere in the cookie. Two, I also grind a fresh vanilla bean, which is, perhaps, just fussy, but I like the intense vanilla flavor the cookie sees from it.

And lastly, as cookies go, these are triply best when the dough rests amply in the fridge. Make the dough, form the logs, chill and bake the next day while replenishing the dough stash, if desired (which it will be). The recipe doubles beautifully.

175 g (6.2 oz) all-purpose flour

30 g (1 oz) best-quality unsweetened cocoa powder, such as Valrhona

½ tsp baking powder

150 g (5.3 oz) butter, at room temperature

120 (4.2 oz) g light brown sugar

50 g (1.7 oz) sugar

½ tsp fluer de sel or ¼ tsp fine sea salt

½ tsp ground vanilla bean, or 1 tsp pure vanilla extract

150 g (5.3 oz) best-quality bittersweet chocolate, such as Valrhona, finely ground

1. In a medium bowl, sift together the flour, cocoa powder and baking powder. Set aside.

2. Beat the butter at medium speed until soft and creamy. Add the sugars, fleur de sel and ground vanilla bean (or vanilla extract) and continue beating at medium speed for 1-2 minutes (do not let the butter get warm). Add the sifted dry ingredients and using your hands mix just until combined. The dough will look very crumbly and that’s fine. Work the dough as little as possible. Toss in the chocolate and quickly mix (again, you can use your hands) to incorporate.

3. Turn the dough out onto a clean and smooth work surface, and divide in half. Working with one half at a time, shape the dough into a rough 4-cm (1 ½-inch) thick log (to make sure there is no air channel in the log, flatten it once or twice and roll it up from one long side to the other; work fast to prevent the butterfat from melting). Wrap the logs in plastic wrap and refrigerate for a few hours, preferably overnight. (Wrapped airtight, the logs can be chilled for up to 3 days and frozen for up to 1 month.)

4. Pre-heat the oven to 175 C (350 F). Place a rack in the bottom third of the oven. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper.

5. With a sharp and thin-bladed knife, cut logs into 1-cm (1/2 -inch) thick slices. (If the cookies break, just squeeze the broken-off part back onto the cookie.) Place the cookies on the prepared sheets, leaving at least about 2-cm (about 1-inch) space between them. Bake for 12 minutes and only 1 sheet at a time. The cookies will not look done nor will they be firm, but that’s fine, that’s the way they roll. Let the cookies rest on the sheet until they are warm. Repeat with the second sheet of the cookies. Keep in an airtight container for up to 1 week.

It would look decent

Dear Reader, hello –

How are things with you? I got a little bit distracted from here, as you can see. Since my temporary return to the bakery, I’ve been laboring there four consecutive days a week (as opposed to three days spread throughout the week before). Seeing that for most job-bound a working week would usually be comprised of five days, I feel I have no legitimate right to make a fuss now. I’d just say my only beef would be not to pass all my after-work hours in the vacuum of a deep slumber, which is what I’ve successfully been doing lately. I’m not a sloth, really. I’m rather confident my having to wake up for work before the birds – at 5 a.m. on a weekday, at 4 a.m. on weekends -- has a lot to do with my recent fondness of the pillow. Reader, I’d like to do much better than counting sheep before my usual bed time around 11 p.m, so I’m working on it. My latter-day strategy, of which I’m going to tell you in a jiffy, is working remarkably well. It keeps me from falling asleep soon after I get back from work in the late afternoon, which, in turn, raises my morale up a notch, which, in turn, makes me a better-ish person overall.

The afore-mentioned strategy is…cake-making. It’s brilliant. All this whisking, beating, and mixing have me skip around my kitchen area shooing hibernation away. Then it’s (usually) an hour wait for a cake to bake which has the same effect on me as a shot of inky espresso, only it’s milder and more considerate towards my heart rate. And of course it’s the eating of a cake itself that takes the edge off my tiredness completely. (Some irony: baking at work tires me, baking at home perks me up.)

I made my first cake when I was fourteen or fifteen of age (I was a late bloomer). It was an apple cake known in Russia as sharlotka (not to be confused with charlotte Russe). Growing up I was not really encouraged to cook. Reason being, tap water was a pleasant surprise rather than a 24/7 attribute in our household back then (brilliant post-Soviet reality). It’s well understood cooking goes hand-in-glove with washing up, but the latter in our situation was a rather dire endeavor to accomplish, what with the limited water stored in vats and buckets kept in the bathroom. In other words, no need for unnecessary whisking, whipping, and mixing, thank you very much. But I saw that cake on a Russian cooking show, and it seemed an easy one-bowl affair. All the domestic encumbrances be damned, I was so making it. The simplicity of the said confection laid in its use of all the ingredients in equal measure, the ingredients being flour, sugar, eggs and apples. You beat one part sugar with a few eggs, introduce one part flour to the mixture, and round the deal off by mixing in a few apples. The lot was baked in a frying pan, and regardless of one half of the cake going lopsided and the other burnt, my parents and I had a piece each with tea. We all agreed that theoretically it was a good no-nonsense cake, and that I shouldn’t be making it again.

Nigel Slater’s apple cake reminds me of my first baking affair, sharlotka. Similarly to the latter, it also calls for the equal quantities of the ingredients, only in addition to flour, eggs, sugar and apples it also cordially invites butter to the premises. Besides that, another difference is that nobody in their right mind would ever think of not making it again. You cream the butter with the sugar first, nudge the eggs in second, fold in the flour and baking powder third, and lastly, once the mixture is scraped in a baking tin, put spiced apples on top. At first you’ll most likely think that the cake batter is a dud, on the account of it being too thick, almost cookie dough thick. But go on notwithstanding -- the heat will take care of everything. The apples will surrender and sink in the batter, their juices trickling down and moisturizing the crumb. And the crumb, it will spring up a bit, carefully closing in around the apple pieces. The result is a loveable slim, tender, open-crumb apple cake that stays moist for a few days, no assistance of aluminum foil needed (as I accidentally discovered). It’s not overly sweet, with a quiet tart voice coming out from a little bit of lemon juice used with the apples. Last time I baked it I subbed whole wheat for plain flour. That is not necessary at all for the taste enhancement -- the cake is good as it is; I just think apple and whole wheat together make a fine autumn treat. In case if apple pies start to rub you the wrong way by now, give a chance to this apple cake. Some whipped cream on the side, it would look decent on your Thanksgiving table, that.

Happy Thanksgiving, Reader!

Nigel Slater’s Apple Cake

Adapted from The Kitchen Diaries
Yield: 8-10 servings

Slater calls the afore-mentioned sweetness English Apple Cake, but I’m not sure whether it’s because he uses local English apples for the recipe or because it’s originally an English recipe. I tend to think it’s the former, for the recipe is included in an entry christened A Basket of Apples. On the grounds that I’m not using the English fruit here and, generally, for the sake of clarity, I’ve taken to call this cake quite simply as Nigel Slater’s Apple Cake.

I don’t mind the apple-cinnamon flavor combination as such, but I personally prefer fresh vanilla as a spice for an apple. If cinnamon would be your choice, disregard my call for half a vanilla bean and use ½ tsp ground cinnamon instead, or use both, perhaps.

Slater uses a 24-cm square tin for this cake, but since I don’t own one I utilize a 24-cm round spring form here. It seems to work just fine too.

3 medium-size apples (I used Santana)
juice of ½ lemon
seeds from ½ vanilla bean
2 Tbsp demerara sugar
130 g (4.4 oz.) butter
130 g (4.4 oz) light brown sugar
2 large eggs
130 gr (4.4 oz) whole wheat flour
1 tsp baking powder
a little extra sugar (optional)

1. Pre-heat the oven to 180 degrees Celsius (355 degrees Fahrenheit). Place a rack in the lower third of the oven. Butter and flour a 24-cm (9 1/2-inch) baking spring form; shake off excess flour.

2. Cut the apple into small chunks, removing the cores as you proceed and dumping the fruit in a small bowl with the lemon juice. Add the vanilla bean seeds and demerara sugar and toss well. Set aside.

3. Sift the whole-weat flour and baking powder together, set aside. Beat the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add the eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. Fold the flour mix gently into the butter mixture (the mixture will be very thick). Scrape into the prepared baking form and smooth out. The cake mixture will be very shallow in the form. Put the spiced apples (together with the lemon juice, if you wish) on top of the cake mixture and scatter a little bit more demerara sugar, if desired.

4. Bake for 55-60 minutes. The centre should be firm and the edges should be nicely browning. Cool for 10 mins, still in the baking tin. Run a sharp knife around the cake and take off the side of the spring form. To remove the bottom of the spring form, you might want to run a long serrated knife under the cake. This cake is best eaten warm – reheat in a gentle oven before serving. Keeps well for two days.

There it was

What is there to say about carrot cake? I don’t have much, except that it frequently makes me wonder why it’s so named if carrots can only be found through a magnifying glass. Some say it’s for the moisture that the carrots are drawn into the business, but I’m not into buying that. Plus, it’s always cinnamon or ginger or allspice or whatever that steals the show, or rather, takes the cake (note: I’m not anti-spices, I just find it rather confusing when carrot cake is pulled into gingerbread’s dress, that’s it). All in all, I like cake and I like carrots, but should I see a carrot cake in my vicinity, most surely I wouldn’t reach for it.

Not so long ago I attended one potluck party. Actually, it was a goodbye bash for me and a few of my colleagues at the bakery. I don’t quite know how to better explain this, so here goes nothing: a while ago I decided it is time for me to learn and try new things, so I quit my job this past September; got a collection of farewell gifts; remained unemployed for a few weeks; and as October started, came back for a tad longer, until this year’s end, to be precise. More about that in due time, for now there is another thing to tell. There in one corner of the long white-clad wooden table set with the edible provision sat one carrot cake -- and I was going to lay my hands on it. It wasn’t an impulse. I knew the cake would be there. I couldn’t wait to try it.

Months before the party, in truth, months before anybody would start talking about the party at all, I was given this recipe. I got it from Marijn. An official paper would describe Marijn as a retiree, but I don’t want to go down that route. I like to think of Marijn as a life volunteer. Having reached a certain age, she refuses to sit at home and do “nothing”. She would volunteer at the bakery every Wednesday for years making tartlet shells in numbers that on a given day would exceed a hundred, whisking lemon cream to the point you don’t remember you have arms and they can move, doing the dishes, grinding and sieving kilos of nuts, sorting out the macarons, and the like. We would be in that boat together, elbow to elbow. And despite being on the opposite sides of the age road, we sometimes called each other “sister”. One Wednesday past summer, Marijn came and gave me the recipe, a reaching gesture of her hand accompanied by the words, “This cake is so sticky, so full of carrot. It is so good – make it!”, or something very similar. I took a ruled piece of paper with the hand-written recipe, brought it home, studied the text very carefully, put it in a plastic sleeve, and forgot all about it. I don’t know what I was thinking, I don’t remember now. One thing is certain: I would not be writing about this carrot cake now if Marijn wouldn’t have brought it that evening, a farewell party for her too.

So there it was, resting on a glass cake stand, observing the ignorant me. It was impossible to see through the snowy cap of its cream cheese icing, but it looked different from the carrot cakes I’d seen before. It didn’t have the height or the volume of a normal, leavened, carrot cake. The one I was looking at was rather short, stubby almost. It didn’t seem cake-y at all. It didn’t taste cake-y either. Lugging no flour nor butter, the cake had only three vitals -- carrots, nuts and raisins. It was like a moist carrot granola bar, if there is such a thing, but only without the brick-like density of the latter. I think I want to say that the cake was nubbly, what with all those shreds of carrot and studs of nuts and raisins poking out from the cross section. In one swift brushstroke, it was what it’s called: carrot cake. It wasn’t a piece of beauty, but one bite had me like it quite a bit, so much so that I decided right there, almost a month too early, to make this sweetmeat for Anthony’s birthday, which I did this recent week.

I grated carrots; ground nuts; simmered raisins in some wine; beat egg yolks with lemon zest and sugar, and a dash of flour. I then whisked egg whites; combined the whole lot; and finally consigned it to the oven, waiting for it to emerge beautiful and graceful, ready to be coated with a sleek vanilla seeds-dotted cream cheese frosting. A few hours later, when the clocks were striking midnight, Anthony was Happy Birthday-ed with a manly piece of the confection. We had a friend visiting for a game night/pre-birthday drinks (hello, Charlie!), and with them two nibbling the cake all night long the said baked good was nearly gone by the early a.m. When I pulled out two remaining pieces from the fridge to be had with our late morning coffee, I was met with ferocious exclamations, Where is my cake? Why did you throw away Anthony’s cake? Yes, why did you throw away my birthday cake? My foot!

Nubbly Carrot Cake
Adapted from Marijn
Yield: 10-12 servings

Marijn’s recipe uses trail mix, the kind that contains four or five sorts of nuts and dark raisins. I prefer to choose for myself what nuts will go into the cake, so I use only two types – almond and walnut. I find dark raisins too sweet, which is why I sub white raisins for dark ones. I don’t grind them together with the nuts. I want the dried fruit plump and juicy, so I simmer the stuff in just enough white wine over lowest heat for about fifteen minutes. If there is any liquid left after that, I drain it.

Contrary to the original instructions, I didn’t add hot water to my cream cheese frosting, and I cut back the amount of sugar used. I also used fresh vanilla bean seeds in place of vanilla extract.

Lastly, don’t use a cake form smaller than 24- or 25-cm (9- or 10-inch) in diameter. This cake is meant to be short. There is just a smidge of flour, almost nothing to hold the stuff together, so if it’s tall it wouldn’t hold its own under the knife at all.

For the cake:
150 gr (5 oz) walnut, coarsely ground
150 gr (5 oz) almond, coarsely ground
200 gr (7 oz) coarsely grated peeled carrots
80 gr (2.8 oz) white raisins (see headnote)
zest of one medium lemon
120 gr (4 oz) sugar (divided use)
3 eggs, separated
50 gr (1.8 oz) flour

For the icing:
125 gr (4 oz) cream cheese
30 gr (1 oz) butter, softened
120 gr (4 oz) powdered sugar
seeds from ½ vanilla bean

1. Position a rack in the bottom third of the oven and preheat to 200 degrees Celsius (390 degrees Fahrenheit). Liberally butter a 25-cm round cake form. Flour and shake off any excesses.

2. In a large bowl, combine the nuts, carrots and raisins together.

3. In a medium bowl, rub the lemon zest into 60 gr sugar (use your fingertips), until the sugar is fragrant. Beat in the egg yolks until the mixture is pale. Mix in the flour. Add the egg-flour mixture to the carrot-nut mixture and stir well (the mixture will be thick and dry-ish, so use your hands, it’s faster).

4. In a separate bowl and at high speed, beat the egg whites to the consistency of shaving cream. Add the remaining 60 gr sugar, and continues beating until stiff peaks form, 2-3 minutes. Using a rubber spatula and working in two or three additions, carefully fold the egg whites into the carrot batter.


5. Pour in the prepared cake form and gently smooth out the surface. Slide into the oven and immediately turn to 150 degrees Celsius (300 degrees Fahrenheit). Bake until the cake starts to pull away from the sides of the form and a knife inserted in the center comes out clean, about 45-50 minutes. Let cool in the form for 10 minutes, after which turn out onto a rack to cool completely.


6. When the cake is cool, prepare the icing. In a medium bowl, beat the cream cheese, vanilla seeds, and the butter until smooth. Sift the powdered sugar, and beat on low speed until incorporated. If the sugar starts forming lumps, increase the speed and beat until smooth again. Spread the icing all over the top of the cake.


7. Store in the fridge, but bring to room temperature before serving.