Monthly Archives: December 2007

Language of Baklava

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Why didn’t I hear about this book sooner? Language of Baklava by Diana Abu-Jaber is a must read for anyone who loves food or cooking and who understands how you feed the soul when you feed other people, how food helps you have roots and how food helps you wander among other cultures. (Of course now you should read all her other books, too. She has her own wonderful website here.)

I just finished reading it, and I find myself craving Middle Eastern food. She has sprinkled her favorite recipes throughout the book. Yesterday, I came home from our Publix with dried chick peas, which are soaking now (will I make hummus or falafel? I don’t know yet); bulgur (cracked wheat for Subsistence Tabbouleh) and long grain rice. I think today I’ll seek out ground lamb and use the wheat for kibbeh the way she describes it (“Cowboy Kibbeh” in the Bad American Girl chapter).

I would pass this book on to everyone I want to read it, which is what I normally do with books I love, but I can’t. It’s a cookbook, too, and I must have it in my cupboard.

Her novels include Arabian Jazz, Crescent and Original. I’ve got Crescent (Oooh! I just read that it is banned in Texas. I will have to make all my children read it.), which I will plunge into today, since it is New Year’s Eve and I’ll take the day and indulge myself, perhaps at the beach here in South Florida.

Language of Baklava

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Why didn’t I hear about this book sooner? Language of Baklava by Diana Abu-Jaber is a must read for anyone who loves food or cooking and who understands how you feed the soul when you feed other people, how food helps you have roots and how food helps you wander among other cultures. (Of course now you should read all her other books, too. She has her own wonderful website here.)

I just finished reading it, and I find myself craving Middle Eastern food. She has sprinkled her favorite recipes throughout the book. Yesterday, I came home from our Publix with dried chick peas, which are soaking now (will I make hummus or falafel? I don’t know yet); bulgur (cracked wheat for Subsistence Tabbouleh) and long grain rice. I think today I’ll seek out ground lamb and use the wheat for kibbeh the way she describes it (“Cowboy Kibbeh” in the Bad American Girl chapter).

I would pass this book on to everyone I want to read it, which is what I normally do with books I love, but I can’t. It’s a cookbook, too, and I must have it in my cupboard.

Her novels include Arabian Jazz, Crescent and Original. I’ve got Crescent (Oooh! I just read that it is banned in Texas. I will have to make all my children read it.), which I will plunge into today, since it is New Year’s Eve and I’ll take the day and indulge myself, perhaps at the beach here in South Florida.

Bread Like Sam’s

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After making pizza after pizza the other day, I browsed the same book, Carol Field’s Italian Baker, and found a recipe I made a lot for a little while..Pane Pugliese. This recipe reminds me of the bread you get at Sam’s Italian Market in Willow Grove, PA, a bit north of Philadelphia, near the PA Turnpike. Sam’s is an incredible Italian grocery in a suburban blank spot (my opinion only; we lived and liked it near there for six years…Sam’s was one thing that helped us like it) and the bread that place turned out: moist, dense, full of flavor. Flavorful, in fact.

So my penciled notes from way back when(date: 3/23/92. Sam was not even 4, Ian just 2 1/2, Bryn not even a thought) say, “Great texture, moist. Reminds me of Sam’s. Relatively easy, slightly messy (sticky).”

All true.

Like the pizza, I did have a strike…well, not a strike so much as a fire in the oven…With the first batch of bread yesterday. So here’s what happened: I use an oven thermometer. Oven was at 450. I put in the loaves, ran to pick Bryn up and got back to a…very toasty smell, shall we say? The oven thermometer was reading 550. The third loaf, the one that was on the lower rack? A blackened door stop. A large piece of charcoal. The parchment paper? Gone. I can only guess it self-combusted (oh, I know, nothing self about it!)…Luckily, the two loaves on the top shelf seemed okay…

The little loaves went fast. I had promised one to a friend, and the rest barely made appetizers for this family.

So today, I wanted more. I did only two loaves (same recipe, bigger loaves) and baked both on the top rack. All went well. But oddly enough, the oven was registering 550 when I took the loaves out. Weird, but worth watching.

Anyway, this bread is every bit as good as I remember it. This is a loaf made with a “biga” or starter, which is what I think gives it its texture.

Every time I make bread, I wonder why I don’t do it more often. I own a Kitchenaid. The flour
costs pennies. And homemade bread? This is real food.


Bread Like Sam’s

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After making pizza after pizza the other day, I browsed the same book, Carol Field’s Italian Baker, and found a recipe I made a lot for a little while..Pane Pugliese. This recipe reminds me of the bread you get at Sam’s Italian Market in Willow Grove, PA, a bit north of Philadelphia, near the PA Turnpike. Sam’s is an incredible Italian grocery in a suburban blank spot (my opinion only; we lived and liked it near there for six years…Sam’s was one thing that helped us like it) and the bread that place turned out: moist, dense, full of flavor. Flavorful, in fact.

So my penciled notes from way back when(date: 3/23/92. Sam was not even 4, Ian just 2 1/2, Bryn not even a thought) say, “Great texture, moist. Reminds me of Sam’s. Relatively easy, slightly messy (sticky).”

All true.

Like the pizza, I did have a strike…well, not a strike so much as a fire in the oven…With the first batch of bread yesterday. So here’s what happened: I use an oven thermometer. Oven was at 450. I put in the loaves, ran to pick Bryn up and got back to a…very toasty smell, shall we say? The oven thermometer was reading 550. The third loaf, the one that was on the lower rack? A blackened door stop. A large piece of charcoal. The parchment paper? Gone. I can only guess it self-combusted (oh, I know, nothing self about it!)…Luckily, the two loaves on the top shelf seemed okay…

The little loaves went fast. I had promised one to a friend, and the rest barely made appetizers for this family.

So today, I wanted more. I did only two loaves (same recipe, bigger loaves) and baked both on the top rack. All went well. But oddly enough, the oven was registering 550 when I took the loaves out. Weird, but worth watching.

Anyway, this bread is every bit as good as I remember it. This is a loaf made with a “biga” or starter, which is what I think gives it its texture.

Every time I make bread, I wonder why I don’t do it more often. I own a Kitchenaid. The flour
costs pennies. And homemade bread? This is real food.


Making Pizza Round…And the mistakes it took to get there

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I have made my own pizza for years. It’s easy. But it’s never been pretty. Square, squiggly, pulled, pushed…shape just didn’t matter. Size did. Toppings did. Taste did. And my pizzas tasted great.

But now, part of my job as food editor for Florida Table is to do the food styling for photo shoots…well, for Florida Table AND for Boca Raton Magazine. If it has to do with food, they call me in.

Tomorrow they want a model eating/making/cutting pizza. My first instinct was to buy crusts, but then I knew they would look like cookie cutters. So I bought a couple of my family’s favorite pizzas–you know, for those times I am not around to coddle them with homemade pizza–which are Freschetta Brick Oven pizzas…but they are square. So I still had to figure out round on my own.

I made three recipes worth of dough.

That was the easy part…and the book, my favorite The Italian Baker by Carol Field, said this particular recipe (Pizza alla Siciliana) makes enough for one 15-inch pizza. Okay. My oven can cope with that…now could I make it round?

So I turned the first batch out. Patted it into a neat disc. Started rolling. I got a PERFECT circle. Trouble is, it was more like 19 inches across. It was definitely a LARGE pizza. I didn’t even know how I was going to get it from the counter to the oven.

I thought I’d try using the pizza peel and the back of a very flat cookie sheet. Brilliant, right? Wrong. The dough stretched, sagged, pulled and fell. Through the oven rack…

So I split the second batch into two pieces. I rolled a perfect, smaller circle. This circle I tried to move to a cookie sheet, but it lost all shape as I did it (that’s it below the over-sized monstrosity)…Strike two.

Then I spotted a huge ceramic platter that I’ve had for years. It was a gift from one of my best friends ever, Donna. It’s so big it doesn’t actually get pulled out that often. But now, it was just the ticket. I rolled out a third piece of dough (the second half of batch two). Perfect circle. Because this recipe is so wonderful, nothing sticks…I gently slid that circle onto the platter, then I made tiny adjustments so it was even all around.

And the platter even fit into the oven.

Repeat two more times. End result: three par-baked shells for a photo shoot. I am so proud. And the ruins? Topped with fire-roasted crushed tomatoes, fresh mozzarella, a touch of real Parmigiano-Reggiano and some fresh basil plucked from the patch of dirt in front of the condo: Can you say dinner?

And just for the record, let’s add learning to toss pizza crusts to my list of things to do in 2008.

Making Pizza Round…And the mistakes it took to get there

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I have made my own pizza for years. It’s easy. But it’s never been pretty. Square, squiggly, pulled, pushed…shape just didn’t matter. Size did. Toppings did. Taste did. And my pizzas tasted great.

But now, part of my job as food editor for Florida Table is to do the food styling for photo shoots…well, for Florida Table AND for Boca Raton Magazine. If it has to do with food, they call me in.

Tomorrow they want a model eating/making/cutting pizza. My first instinct was to buy crusts, but then I knew they would look like cookie cutters. So I bought a couple of my family’s favorite pizzas–you know, for those times I am not around to coddle them with homemade pizza–which are Freschetta Brick Oven pizzas…but they are square. So I still had to figure out round on my own.

I made three recipes worth of dough.

That was the easy part…and the book, my favorite The Italian Baker by Carol Field, said this particular recipe (Pizza alla Siciliana) makes enough for one 15-inch pizza. Okay. My oven can cope with that…now could I make it round?

So I turned the first batch out. Patted it into a neat disc. Started rolling. I got a PERFECT circle. Trouble is, it was more like 19 inches across. It was definitely a LARGE pizza. I didn’t even know how I was going to get it from the counter to the oven.

I thought I’d try using the pizza peel and the back of a very flat cookie sheet. Brilliant, right? Wrong. The dough stretched, sagged, pulled and fell. Through the oven rack…

So I split the second batch into two pieces. I rolled a perfect, smaller circle. This circle I tried to move to a cookie sheet, but it lost all shape as I did it (that’s it below the over-sized monstrosity)…Strike two.

Then I spotted a huge ceramic platter that I’ve had for years. It was a gift from one of my best friends ever, Donna. It’s so big it doesn’t actually get pulled out that often. But now, it was just the ticket. I rolled out a third piece of dough (the second half of batch two). Perfect circle. Because this recipe is so wonderful, nothing sticks…I gently slid that circle onto the platter, then I made tiny adjustments so it was even all around.

And the platter even fit into the oven.

Repeat two more times. End result: three par-baked shells for a photo shoot. I am so proud. And the ruins? Topped with fire-roasted crushed tomatoes, fresh mozzarella, a touch of real Parmigiano-Reggiano and some fresh basil plucked from the patch of dirt in front of the condo: Can you say dinner?

And just for the record, let’s add learning to toss pizza crusts to my list of things to do in 2008.

Christmas Baking, December 23, 2007

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I put it off as long as I could…I don’t know why, but it took until school vacation started for me to actually get around to baking…So I’ve baked up a storm in the past 48 hours.

Over the years, I’ve tried to pair down the list. I used to make scads of cookies…and truffles…and what I really love is to have a baking weekend, where I invite friends over, we ALL bake our three or four faves and then we have a real assortment..It’s a bakers’ cookie exchange, I guess. But here in Florida, I don’t know enough people still, so this time it was just me–with the occasional pop-in from my son, Ian, or daughter, Bryn, both of whom levied their own taste tests.

At any rate, my must haves this year–well every year–were toffee, Martha Stewart’s chocolate espresso shortbread wafers, Chocolate cookies with sea salt and classic shortbread. The sea salt cookies were a kind of a repeat..I made some last year–and lost the recipe. So I found this one…It’s good. My son’s friends say it’s great, but …well it will stay in the files, but I may look again (and btw, I substituted cocoa nibs for the walnuts, not being a really big fan of nuts in cookies).

The toffee I did twice. I never am satisfied with the texture. I followed a Martha recipe and cooked it to soft crack stage, just the way she said, but it’s too sticky for me. So I did a second batch, same exact ingredients from Martha, but cooked it to 300 degrees, hard crack. That’s the batch that is cooling in the photo, so I haven’t tested it yet…One year, I’ll only make one batch. (And I guess this is the entry that states definitively that I am a Martha fan. What can I say, but I admire her work and her recipes…)

The shortbread is the recipe I got from Marcie Barker, whom I worked for and with at Union Square Cafe in NYC…two decades ago (gulp). It is the simplest and the best recipe I have ever made. I decorated it with pearl sugar, because I’ve moved that box of pearl sugar from Louisville to Florida apartment number one to Florida apartment number two. Use it already.

The coffee espresso wafers are my favorite of the bunch. Such a grown up cookie. And for a long time, the kids didn’t like these, so there were always enough for me. You mix in the espresso ground coffee (the beans, not the liquid). Again, it’s about the texture: it just melts in your mouth, but has this deep, dark rich flavor.

The chocolate sea salt cookies satisfy my penchant for all things sweet/salty, which I know is not everyone’s cup of tea, but man, it sure is mine. Check out the recipe links, and here is Marcie Barker’s Shortbread:

1 pound butter
1 cup sugar
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
1/2 teaspoon salt
4 cups flour

Heat oven to 250 degrees. Mix the butter, sugar and vanilla together. Add salt and flour. Pat into one big layer on a cookie sheet, making it about 1/2-inch thick. (If you want to press sprinkles or pearl sugar into the shortbread, do it now.) Bake 60 to 75 minutes. Let cool slightly and cut into pieces.

Christmas Baking, December 23, 2007

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I put it off as long as I could…I don’t know why, but it took until school vacation started for me to actually get around to baking…So I’ve baked up a storm in the past 48 hours.

Over the years, I’ve tried to pair down the list. I used to make scads of cookies…and truffles…and what I really love is to have a baking weekend, where I invite friends over, we ALL bake our three or four faves and then we have a real assortment..It’s a bakers’ cookie exchange, I guess. But here in Florida, I don’t know enough people still, so this time it was just me–with the occasional pop-in from my son, Ian, or daughter, Bryn, both of whom levied their own taste tests.

At any rate, my must haves this year–well every year–were toffee, Martha Stewart’s chocolate espresso shortbread wafers, Chocolate cookies with sea salt and classic shortbread. The sea salt cookies were a kind of a repeat..I made some last year–and lost the recipe. So I found this one…It’s good. My son’s friends say it’s great, but …well it will stay in the files, but I may look again (and btw, I substituted cocoa nibs for the walnuts, not being a really big fan of nuts in cookies).

The toffee I did twice. I never am satisfied with the texture. I followed a Martha recipe and cooked it to soft crack stage, just the way she said, but it’s too sticky for me. So I did a second batch, same exact ingredients from Martha, but cooked it to 300 degrees, hard crack. That’s the batch that is cooling in the photo, so I haven’t tested it yet…One year, I’ll only make one batch. (And I guess this is the entry that states definitively that I am a Martha fan. What can I say, but I admire her work and her recipes…)

The shortbread is the recipe I got from Marcie Barker, whom I worked for and with at Union Square Cafe in NYC…two decades ago (gulp). It is the simplest and the best recipe I have ever made. I decorated it with pearl sugar, because I’ve moved that box of pearl sugar from Louisville to Florida apartment number one to Florida apartment number two. Use it already.

The coffee espresso wafers are my favorite of the bunch. Such a grown up cookie. And for a long time, the kids didn’t like these, so there were always enough for me. You mix in the espresso ground coffee (the beans, not the liquid). Again, it’s about the texture: it just melts in your mouth, but has this deep, dark rich flavor.

The chocolate sea salt cookies satisfy my penchant for all things sweet/salty, which I know is not everyone’s cup of tea, but man, it sure is mine. Check out the recipe links, and here is Marcie Barker’s Shortbread:

1 pound butter
1 cup sugar
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
1/2 teaspoon salt
4 cups flour

Heat oven to 250 degrees. Mix the butter, sugar and vanilla together. Add salt and flour. Pat into one big layer on a cookie sheet, making it about 1/2-inch thick. (If you want to press sprinkles or pearl sugar into the shortbread, do it now.) Bake 60 to 75 minutes. Let cool slightly and cut into pieces.