Behind the Recipe -- Jeri Quinzio

It's almost pudding time

My new book, Pudding: A Global History, will be out in September. It's part of Reaktion Books Edible Series.

 

But you can order it now - from your local bookstore or on-line.

Maraschino Cherry Cake

The June, 2012 issue of Ladies Home Journal has my article on the cake my family called "Maraschino Party Cake," because my mother always made it for our birthdays. Wish I'd made it my tradition as well.

Try the recipe in the Journal. It's an oldie, but clearly it's a keeper.

It's a bakery. It's a bistro. It's Pain D'Avignon

 

 

 
Walking through a bakery to enter a restaurant is a sensuous experience. The scent of freshly baked breads, rolls and bagels makes my taste buds burst into blossom.

Granted, this doesn’t happen often. The bakery/bistro combination is not a common one. But I had the experience several years ago in Montreal and again this past week when I was invited to a dinner at Pain D’Avignon in Hyannis, Mass.

The Montreal restaurant was run by famed baked James MacGuire, who is as amazing a chef as a bread baker. Sadly, that restaurant is now closed.

Pain D’Avignon, on the other hand, is open and thriving. By day, it’s a lively, bustling bakery and café. Since it’s located next to the airport in Hyannis, lots of people stop there on their way to Nantucket to stock up on breads and pastries for their vacations. Locals pick up breads and bagels in the morning and go back for sandwiches and pizza for lunch.

In the evening, the ambience changes completely. The tablecloths come out. The lights dim and candles are lit. The café/bakery becomes a French bistro, but one with the fresh and fragrant scent of bread in the air.

This is not your typical Cape Cod clams and chowder joint.
On the night I ate there, I started with a Champagne and blood orange cocktail and
wonderful crusty bread served with French butter and sea salt. If there’s a better way to begin a meal, I don’t know it.

Next I had an amazing beef tartare with a spicy cognac aioli. Ordinarily I don’t order beef tartare because it’s just too much plain raw meat for me. But this was a small portion, perfectly flavored with the aioli. I’m still thinking about it days later.

The menu changes to suit the market and the season, but if the gnocchi are offered when you go, order them. They are so light they’d float off the plate if it weren’t for a bit of sauce to hold them down.

I also had a flavorful beef stroganoff with mushrooms and house-made noodles. Each course was paired with a superb French wine including a great minerally chablis and an excellent Burgundy. As I’m writing this, it sounds like way too much food and drink, but the correct portion size and the complex flavors combined to make this a memorable meal rather than an overly huge and hearty one.

Dessert was a delicate frangipane and blackberry tart topped with a tiny scoop of vanilla ice cream. Heaven.

At the end of the meal, diners are given a loaf of bread to take home. It’s a wonderful touch, one that lets the pleasure of the evening spill over into the next morning’s breakfast.

Who is responsible for this impressive restaurant? Co-owners Vojin Vujosevic and Toma Stamenkovic came to this country from the former Yugoslavia and started out as a bread bakers. They built a reputation for their hand-crafted European breads and are celebrating their 20th anniversary in business this year. Everyone else here has an equally impressive and cosmopolitan backstory from executive chef Toby Hill to executive pastry chef Else Rhodes, from Cleberson Lemos, the master baker to general manager Mario Mariani.

Together they’ve brought European artisan breads and -  now  - a sophisticated French bistro to Cape Cod.

To see Else Rhodes make her awesome blackberry frangipane tarts, go to

http://how2heroes.com.

 

Grilled cheese at Real Eats

 

My article "A Toast to History" about a 14th-century version of the grilled cheese sandwich is up on the Real Eats site in the free Spring issue, cover shown above.

The magazine has terrific food news, articles, and recipes. You'll want to download the app - just 99 cents and worth every penny.

Go to -- http://nomadeditions.com/real-eats. Or Google Real Eats.

 

Saint Pat and soda bread

 


Saint Patrick’s Day is coming up. However, I refuse to drink green beer. I will not eat green mashed potatoes. For that matter, I’m not eating any green food that doesn’t start out that color naturally. 

I don’t like corned beef and cabbage, and I don’t have to eat it.

I’m not wearing a silly leprechaun hat or lurid green tee shirt. I will never sport a button that says “Kiss me I’m Irish.”

I don’t want to go to a parade or a bar on St. Patrick’s day when, as a friend of mine used to say, “The amateur drinkers are out.”

I’m not buying green carnations either.

But since my mother’s side of the family came from Ireland, I do want to honor the day and my heritage in my own way. Here’s my plan.

First I’ll make my famous (in my own mind) Irish soda bread. Then I’ll set out a pot of tea, a couple of slices of the bread and a bit of butter. And then I’ll curl up with George Bernard Shaw, or Edna O’Brien, or Benjamin Black, or any one of the other great writers who were born on that small island.

After that, perhaps a wee drop of Jameson. Sláinte!

Irish Soda Bread

3 cups unbleached all purpose flour
1 cup whole wheat flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 tablespoon caraway seeds
1 teaspoon pumpkin pie spice
(or a combination of cinnamon, nutmeg and allspice)
1 teaspoon salt
2 eggs, lightly beaten
1 1/3 cups buttermilk
1/4 cup of melted butter
1 cup of raisins and/or currants

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Combine the flours, sugar, baking soda, caraway seeds,  pumpkin pie spice, and salt in a bowl. Mix the rest of the ingredients together and add to the dry ingredients. Mix together. You’ll have a moist, sticky batter.

Turn it out onto a floured board and knead until it’s smooth. Divide it in half and shape each half into a round of, roughly, eight inches. With a sharp knife, score the tops of each into quarters. Put them on a parchment-lined baking sheet and bake for about 45 minutes.
The bread should sound hollow when you tap it on the bottom.

Let the breads cool a bit before you slice them.

Fiber, probiotics, and ice cream

People often ask me why I bother to make ice cream when it’s so easy to buy it. First of all, I don’t always make my own ice cream. Sometimes I buy it.  But often I want to have a flavor I don’t see at supermarkets or even ice cream shops. Like lemon, or coffee with chocolate-covered espresso beans, or some such. So I make my own.

But the best reason to make ice cream is this – you know what’s in it. That’s not always true when you buy it.

I’m diligent about reading the ingredient listing on ice cream cartons now because I recently read a trade magazine article on ice cream additives. I learned that when manufacturers want to modify “the sweetener system,” as the article put it, they have to make up for the bulk lost when sugar is replaced by aspartame or sucralose. So they add fiber. However,the article warned, the amount has to be carefully calibrated because adding too much fiber may cause diarrhea or flatulence. Not exactly what you expect from a dish of chocolate chip.

Manufacturers are also adding probiotics to ice cream because they believe consumers are eager to consume probiotics. Apparently they are not so eager that they will simply eat real, plain yogurt – as opposed to those sweet, fruity dessert-style yogurts that have all the benefits stripped away. Manufacturers believe that consumers want their probiotics in the form of ice cream.

So thanks to food chemists, we can eat ice cream and get fiber and probiotics and artificial sweeteners. I thought ice cream was supposed to be a treat rather than a treatment.

I’d rather get fiber from roasted broccoli with olive oil and Aleppo pepper or lentils simmered with some merguez sausage. I’d rather get my probiotics from yogurt mixed with fresh clementine segments and chopped pecans. I’d rather get my “sweetener system” from cane sugar.

When I make my own ice cream, I flavor it with a real vanilla bean or chocolate. I add fresh fruit or warm spices like cinnamon or nutmeg. I use real cream and milk. And I sweeten it with sugar. Just enough sugar. Here’s a recipe I especially like.

Coffee with chocolate-covered espresso beans

2 cups whole milk
1 cup heavy cream
1/3 cup finely ground espresso or dark roast coffee
5 egg yolks
1/2 cup sugar
1/2  cup chocolate-covered espresso beans

Combine milk and cream in saucepan and warm over low heat. Add the ground coffee, stir and heat until it’s about to simmer. Shut off heat, cover and let the mixture steep for half an hour or so. Give it a stir from time to time.

Half fill a large bowl or saucepan with ice or ice water and set aside.

In another saucepan, whisk egg yolks and sugar until thick and pale. Strain the coffee mixture carefully to get rid of the coffee grounds, then rewarm it. Stir it very gradually
into the egg mixture. When it’s all incorporated, cook over low heat, stirring constantly, until it thickens enough to coat the spoon. Do not let it boil.

Place the pan of coffee custard in the bowl with the ice or ice water and continue to stir until it cools.

Cover with plastic wrap pressed against the surface so it doesn’t form a skin on top. Chill for at least 12 hours.

Put the coffee beans in a zip-lock bag and smack with a rolling pin or a heavy bottle until they’re chopped up. Set aside.

Churn the ice cream mixture in your machine, following manufacturer’s instructions. When it’s almost ready, mix in the chopped chocolate-covered coffee beans. Store tightly covered in freezer until ready to serve. Makes one quart.

 

S'mores and Sylvester Graham

I recently saw someone making a gooey dessert that involved heaping chocolate, nuts, and gobs of caramel on top of graham crackers. It’s a wonder Sylvester Graham didn’t come back from the dead to rage against such a thing.

If you don’t know much about Sylvester Graham, you’re not alone. Almost forgotten today, he was The health food guru in the early 19th century. Graham railed against highly processed, commercially made white bread and promoted the consumption of home-baked bread, made with whole wheat flour. He was also a passionate vegetarian. So far, so unremarkable, especially today.

But passionate is the key word. Graham lectured and wrote about the need for
everyone to abstain not only from white bread and meat, but also from spicy foods like pepper, ginger, and cinnamon. His regimen banned alcohol, most dairy foods, coffee, tea, and what he considered excessive sexual activity. His lectures on the dangers of sex were so explicit that some women in the audience fainted.

He liked some things – cold showers, hard mattresses, exercise. This was not a fun guy. Even Ralph Waldo Emerson, not exactly a sybarite, called Graham the “poet of bran and pumpkins.” The tough regimen didn’t do him much good since he was just 57 when he died.

Ironically, graham crackers were among the first crackers used to make ice cream sandwiches. He would have been appalled. He also would have hated the idea of cinnamon graham crackers, never mind graham cracker pie crusts. But s’mores would have been the most upsetting to him, combining as they do soft, sweet white marshmallows and chocolate candy with sugary crackers bearing his name.

S’mores are said to have been invented by Girl Scouts when they toasted marshmallows over their camp fires and then squished them between Hershey-bar-topped crackers.
The hot marshmallow melts the chocolate, softens the crackers, and makes everyone want some more. Try saying some more with a mouthful of marshmallow, chocolate, and graham crackers and you’ll understand why they’re called s’mores.

In winter, lacking a camp fire, I like to substitute ice cream, preferably hazelnut, for the toasted marshmallows. I toast the graham crackers briefly for warmth and sometimes I  spread some Nutella on them instead of a chocolate bar.

If you really want to infuriate the spirit of  Sylvester Graham, use those oh-so-spicy cinnamon graham crackers.

You can have some multi-grain bread and water tomorrow.


 Photo by Evan-Amos

 
 

A bicicletta, please. But hold the bicycle.

I love that cocktails are so popular now.  I love experimenting with new and different ones when I go out. I think bartenders being creative with ingredients like cilantro, beet juice, St. Germain, cynar, and cachaça is exciting.
 
I’ve thrown out the sticky bottle of Angustura bitters in the back of my kitchen cabinet now that freshly flavorful versions – rhubarb, orange, and such – are being made.
 
That’s all good. What isn’t is having to stock up on dozens of different ingredients to make those new drinks at home. And using most of the ingredients only once or twice.

So this season, I’m sticking to one aperitif. One that calls for just two ingredients – Prosecco and Campari. Yes, it’s like a Campari and soda, but tastier and more fun. Called a bicicletta, it looks cheery and holiday-ish. It’s red. It’s bubbly. Its taste edges

 

toward bitter without going over the line. It’s perfect.


You can make a bicicletta with a dry, still white wine – I like Vermentino but you can use Pinot Grigio, too. You can add a splash of club soda. You can serve it on the rocks. But straight up with Prosecco gives the drink a holiday sparkle.

I was introduced to the drink when I was in Sardinia, where pretty much every meal except breakfast started off with a bicicletta.

Where did it get its name? The story goes that old men used to gather at the bar/cafe and drink biciclette in the late afternoon. When it was time for supper, they got on their bicycles and rode tipsily home, weaving from one side of the road to the other. (Happily, there was no traffic in these small villages.) So the drink took its name from the tipsy bicycle rides.

Whether or not the story is true, serving biciclette kicks off holiday get-togethers in style. Just don’t let your guests ride their bicycles right afterward.

Of course, you can make biciclette in any kind of glass. But since it’s the holiday season, why not use festive champagne flutes. Just pour a shot of Campari into the glass and fill with Prosecco. Add a twist of lemon peel as a garnish, if you like.

Happy holidays!
 

Turning into Halloween pumpkins

 


 
On October 31 in Ireland, people used to hollow out turnips and potatoes, put candles in them, and place them in their windows to light the way home for the souls of the dead. When Irish immigrants came to the US in the nineteenth century, they did the same – with the larger local pumpkins.

By the middle of the century, Americans were celebrating Halloween with parties, bobbing for apples, and dressing up in costumes.

Halloween became a kids’ holiday after World War II when sugar rationing ended, and candy was available again. On the night itself, little kids dressed up in simple costumes walked around their neighborhoods looking for treats and threatening tricks. The role of grown-ups was to accompany kids too young to go out on their own. Or to stay home and dole out candy to the ghouls and goblins on their doorsteps, while pretending to be scared of the little monsters.

Now Halloween is a holiday for adults.

Halloween pop-up stores sell costumes for every age, size, and fantasy. You can buy decorations guaranteed to transform your home into the spookiest of haunted houses. Pumpkin carving kits are changing the face of jack-o’-lanterns. Bakeries and supermarkets feature cupcakes that look like bats, witches, or spiders. Halloween magazines are filled with recipes for ghoulish treats and blood-curdling cocktails for your party. And it’s not just one night anymore. Halloween is celebrated all weekend long. That’s why it’s second only to Christmas in its impact on the economy.

If you’re hopping on the Halloween bandwagon but you’d rather have something less    creepy and more tasty than gummy worms, I’ve got the perfect non-scary dessert for you – pumpkin ice cream.

By the way, it’s great for Thanksgiving, too.

 


Pumpkin ice cream


1 cup canned, unsweetened pumpkin purée
3 cups heavy cream
2/3 cup white sugar
1/3 cup brown sugar 
1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
1/2  teaspoon freshly ground nutmeg
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
Pinch salt
1 teaspoon vanilla extract or 1 tablespoon of Grand Marnier

Combine pumpkin purée and cream in a saucepan over medium heat and stir until thoroughly mixed. Combine sugars with spices, then stir into pumpkin mixture. Simmer, stirring until sugars dissolve. Remove from heat, add salt and vanilla or Grand Marnier and let cool.
 
When it’s cool, cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate until thoroughly chilled, preferably overnight.

Churn in your ice cream machine, following manufacturer’s instructions. Store tightly covered in freezer until ready to serve. Makes one quart. – Ice Cream: The Ultimate Cold Comfort, Jeri Quinzio.

 
If you must, serve it with some candy corn sprinkled on top.
 



Image from Wikipedia by Jackins

Ice Cream. The very first time.

 

 

          I don't remember when I first tasted ice cream. I seem to have always known and loved it. It was never
           new and different like, say,  escargot or tequila.

But in earlier eras when some people tasted ice cream for the first time, they found it repellent, abhorrent, and just way too cold. Difficult as it may be for us to believe, some spat it out.

The English, in particular, seem to have had trouble adjusting to the idea of eating a frozen treat. Of course, since ice was a rare commodity in eighteenth century, most had never experienced that degree of cold in their mouths. It was, to say the least, unsettling.

In Frances Burney’s novel, Cecilia, published in 1782, a character called Mr. Briggs describes his first taste of ice cream: 

"…a great lump of sweetmeat; found it as cold as a stone, all froze in my mouth like ice; made me jump again, and brought the tears in my eyes; forced to spit it out; believe it was nothing but a snowball, just set up for shew, and covered over with a little sugar. Pretty way to spend money!"


An English naval officer attending an elegant dinner in Italy at the beginning of the nineteenth century was served ice cream molded and tinted to resemble a peach. Thinking it was the actual fruit, he took a bite and was astounded by its coldness. He spit it out,  exclaiming “A painted snowball, by God!” He was so upset that he had to be stopped from throwing the painted snowball at one of the servants.

As late as 1851, Henry Mayhew described the experience of people who tried the ice cream sold on the streets of London for the first time:

"The Smithfield [Market] man sold them in very small glasses, which he merely dipped into a vessel at his feet, and so filled them with cream. The consumers had to use their fingers instead of a spoon, and no few seemed puzzled how to eat their ice, and were grievously troubled by its getting among their teeth. I heard one drover mutter that he felt ‘as if it had snowed in his belly!’"

At least he didn’t spit it out.

 



 

White whiskey or vodka?

How much have our drinking habits changed since the ‘70s?

I was recently given a copy of the 1972 edition of The Bartender’s Guide by Patrick Gavin Duffy, revised and enlarged by James Beard.


The book was first published in 1940. I don’t know how much updating James Beard did because drinks that I would have thought long-forgotten by the ‘70s are still featured. I’ve never heard of many of them.

Fixes, which are undefined, are made with sugar, water, and your choice of gin, brandy, rum, or whiskey. They’re served in “small tumblers with shaved ice.”

Daisies are described as “overgrown cocktails.”

Fizzes merit seven full pages. I’ve had a gin fizz, but never heard of an Irish Fizz, or a Morning Glory Fizz or a Rose in June Fizz.  Smashes are defined as “nothing more than junior-size Juleps.”
                                                                Gin Fizz

Then there are all sorts of Sangarees, Scaffas, Smashes, and Shrubs. There are also Slings, but no Arrows.

But it’s the vodka section that truly shows just how different today’s drinking habits are. It takes up less than two pages and lists just 12 cocktails. By way of comparison, the gin section is 54 pages long and includes more than 400 cocktails.

Vodka didn’t get to this country until after Prohibition ended and it wasn’t drunk much until an enterprising Smirnoff salesman dubbed it “White whiskey” and claimed it had no taste or smell.

Its popularity was helped by the Smirnoff slogan, “It leaves you breathless." Although the ads didn’t come out and say it, the idea was that unlike gin, vodka wouldn’t reveal that you’d been drinking. Your boss wouldn’t smell it on your breath when you came back to the office after a three vodka martini lunch. Up until then, martinis were made with gin.  

The first popular vodka drink was the Moscow Mule, a mix of vodka, ginger beer (sometimes ginger ale is substituted), and lime. It isn’t even in Beard’s book.

The Screwdriver is, but it’s called a “Golden Screw or Golden Spike.” There’s a Bloody Mary, but no Black or White Russian, no Cape Codder, no Sea  Breeze, no Vodka Gimlet. Definitely no Cosmopolitan but the “Blue Monday or Caucasian” comes close.
I’d skip the vegetable extract.

        The Blue Monday or Caucasian

        3/4 Vodka
        1/4 Contreau
        1 dash Blue Vegetable Extract (coloring)

        Stir well with ice and strain into glass. Coloring may be omitted.