Masher
Corzetti
- by Laura, March 30, 2009
I made a lovely visit up to Providence, Rhode Island a few weeks ago. It’s a great small city with a lively old Italian neighborhood and lots of interesting people there doing great things with food. I trekked up there for the fun of doing a local television show about “the diversity of Italian food” (an impossibly huge topic) with Alan Constantino--owner of the great Venda Ravioli shop--and Mary Ann Esposito, the legendary host of PBS’s Ciao Italia of the longest running cooking show in America. It was great fun. We began with the old question “Is there such a thing as Italian food?” Before we knew it the time was up. I began to think I’d like to do a ten-hour documentary. Then maybe we’d go beyond scratching the surface.
Anyway, I wanted to bring Mary Ann a gift of something from Liguria of course. So I made corzetti--these round circles of pasta, which are like large coins, imprinted with a design-- essentailly a culinary woodcut. You need a special wooden carved stamp to make them. Here they are drying on my porch.
Corzetti are very typical of Liguria and also of Provence, France, which is not surprising as the two regions share a long culinary history
-1_thumb.jpg)
Masher
Kitchen Art - Glass
- by Nancy, March 23, 2009
“Presence and Absence” oil on panel, copyright Nancy Gail Ring 2009
Here is one of my new paintings. More to come . . .
see also: Kitchen Art
Not to be Forgotten
Brown Bread and a Trip to Ballycotton
- by Laura, March 17, 2009
Ballymaloe Brown Bread
3 3/4 cups whole meal (whole wheat) flour
1 1/2 cups (or more) warm water (around 100 to 115 degrees)
2 tablespoons black treacle (molasses)
2 teasp. salt
2 teaspoons dry active yeast (1 1/2 packages granular)
Mix flour with salt and warm it in a cool oven. (Here Myrtle is telling us to put it in the oven on the lowest possible setting. She wants the flour and bowl to be warm when you mix the bread.) Mix treacle with some of the warm water (about a half cup) in a small bowl and add the yeast. Grease a loaf tin and put it to warm, too. Also warm a clean tea towel. Look to see if the yeast is rising, it will take five minutes, approx and should have a frothy appearance on top. Stir it well and pour it with remaining water into the flour to make a wettish dough. (Myrtle says that “The dough should be just too wet to knead.” So you may need to add more water, or if it’s too liquid depending on the weather and brand of flour you’re using. Use judgmentto make sure it’s “just too wet too knead.") Put the mixture into the warm loaf pan and put this pan back in the same position as used previously to raise the yeast. Put the tea towel over the pan. (Or you may wish to use plastic wrap.) When it has risen by twice the original size, it is ready. Now bake it in a hot oven (450 F) for 35 to 45 minutes or until it looks nicely browned and sounds hollow when tapped. Remove and cool.
Adapted from The Ballymaloe Cookbook,
Myrtle Allen, 1984
I made my first trip to Ireland last September. I was quite taken with a number of things--the rocky coves by the ocean, the low-hanging sky, big bales of hay piled in fields and all the quirky bustle of Cork City. But way at the top of my list of favorites was brown bread. I found it everywhere, usually in a basket with other breads served at dinner, but also at breakfast, and in shops. The best of them were wholesome, slightly sweet, nutty, and moist. A wonderful staple of daily life. When my friend Elizabeth and I visited her cousin Bridget, I pointed to the brown bread she’d offered us with tea and asked, “Do you make this often?” She laughed at me and said something like “My husband would kill me if I didn’t.”
Read more »
Masher
One Badass Cookie, I mean, Irish Soda Bread - Happy St. Patrick’s Day
- by Nancy, March 15, 2009
One Badass Cookie is making a bread today in honor of St. Patrick’s Day. This comes from my mentor and fellow artist Eileen Neff, who visited friends in Ireland recently. She remembers the delicious smell and taste of this Irish Soda Bread comforting her as it baked in her friend, Susan Tiger’s wind-swept cottage during a storm so fierce the wind was forcing the rain that overflowed the roads to run uphill. A bread good enough to quell fear. That’s One Badass Bread. Since there’s a lot of controversy about Irish Soda Bread these days, I was thrilled to get this recipe, a community recipe from County Mayo that is the simple authentic type of soda bread and not the wonderful but sweet, butter-laden, raisin studded version we Americans mostly know. Such a find: fabulous homemade bread practically as good as the time-consuming yeast-risen kind in little more than an hour. Wow. For the recipe, the Badass baking tip of the week, the skinny on how buttermilk and baking soda make this bread rise like crazy and more photos, read on.
Masher
How To Make Prosciutto in Your Garage
- by Laura, March 13, 2009
Here. Want a taste of prosciutto?
Nancy and I took a photo field trip recently to visit my friend Lou who personally cures his own pig leg and turns it into prosciutto as good as anything I’ve had in Italy.
For those of you who have read my book or followed this blog, you know which Lou I’m talking about. Lou the mentor and pasta maker. Lou the cooking hero. Lou the nothing-is-too-hard-for-me-to-conquer in the kitchen--yes, that guy. Here we are in his garage. Though I prefer the term outbuilding because there are no cars here, only a smoker, meat dangling from the rafters, and carpentry projects…. Sort of like Appalachia. Or…. Saint Agata.
Ah Saint Agata.... Say hello to Lou’s cousin just outside Naples.
What’s she got over her head? Those are prosciutti, covered in netting to keep away flies. This photo was taken by Lou’s brother Joseph on their visit in the late 1990s to the emerald green village of his clan. I am certain the memory of this trip worked in Lou’s mind for years. If they could do it, why couldn’t he? He figured out how to make fresh sausage long ago, and then he taught himself to dry cured soprassata and capicola.
But prosciutto—that was his Everest.
Read more »
Masher
One Badass Cookie - French Butter Cookies
- by Nancy, March 07, 2009
This is my maternal grandmother, Rachel, circa 1960’s as you can tell from her “flip” and Nehru collar. She was one of the original Badass Cookies in my family. We called her Rae. She was a baker. I write that with a deep respect for her skill. Nowhere in her repertoire, however, was there a cooked egg yolk in a cookie dough, which I read recently in Cook’s Illustrated is the secret ingredient to achieving the coveted and fabulous sandy texture of French butter cookies, otherwise known as sablée (which means sandy in French by the way for those who are not fluent in the lingo. And that would include me, nu?) In all fairness, Rae didn’t bake any French cookies. We are Eastern European. Grandma taught us some Badass Rugelach and Babka (which I will get to in these Badass posts, promise!) but for sablée I had to go to pastry school in NYC, known at the time as Peter Kump’s but now known by its hip initials I.C.E. There I got my favorite recipe for sablée from the cookbook author and baker (again I write this word with a deep respect) Nick Malgieri who spearheaded Peter Kump’s back then. Those were good, but I still missed that particularly wonderful sandy mouthfeel of authentic French butter cookies, which I’d eaten in France as a teenager and like everyone else who has ever had them, never forgot. Could it be that Cook’s Illustrated had really and truly found the key to this incredible texture? I had to try it.
Masher
Are Your Tomatoes Picked By Slave Laborers?
- by Laura, February 26, 2009
I read an article in the last week that I can’t get off my mind, and obviously I’m not alone as the link is spreading among food bloggers. I’m going to add to the chorus.
This article was by Barry Estabrook in Gourmet about tomato pickers in Immokalee, Florida (tomato capital of America) who describes illegal immigrants come from Mexico or Central America a working 10 hour days and earning 45 cents for every 32 lb bucket of tomatoes they pick--jobs which most Americans simply won’t do. You can click on this slide show and get a glimpse.
Read more »
Masher
Onion, luminous flask
- by Laura, February 19, 2009
Nope. No photo here.
You see, my Nikon digital camera (only a couple years old) is shot to hell, and it’s really cramping my blogging style. But I’m getting annoyed at my dependence on the photo. As a writer I love words. Why aren’t they enough? Do readers always need the encouragement of the image, the entertainment? Well not today dear friends.
Nancy frequently tells me that modern photography and digital life overwhelm us visually--but we don’t really see or think because the images are pre-defined and closed. There is no place for the human to enter. She’s spoken to me a lot about the open-ness of Pierre Bonnard’s exhibit currently at the Met in New York . I hope Nancy will share some of her insights on this amazing show with so many food images. Painting is a tonic for modern life.
For the same reasons, literature is too--with its open gestures and suggestions, the room it leaves us for imagination. That’s why today, I’m posting Pablo Neruda’s poem “Ode to an Onion.”
I dare you to read it aloud (in English or, even better, the original Spanish, which follows). And then I challenge you--any of you out there--to send a photo of an onion that rivals this. Here goes:
Ode to an Onion
Onion,
luminous flask,
your beauty formed
petal by petal,
crystal scales expanded you
and in the secrecy of the dark earth
your belly grew round with dew.
Not to be Forgotten
Green Granny’s Leftovers
- by Laura, February 19, 2009
Bread Pudding
A nice pudding may be made of bits of bread. They should be crumbled and soaked in milk over night. In the morning, beat up three eggs with it, add a little salt, tie it up in a bag, or in a pan that will exclude every drop of water, and boil it little more than an hour. No pudding should be put into the pot, till the water boils. Bread prepared int he same way makes good plum-puddings. Milk enough to make it quite soft; four eggs; a little cinnamon; a spoonfu of rose-water, or lemon-brandy, if you have it; a tea-cupful of molasses, or sugar to your taste, if you prefer it; a few dry, clean raisins, sprinkled in, and stirred up thoroughly, is all that is necessary. It should bake or boil two hours.
--The American Frugal Housewife
Dedicated to Those Who Are Not Ashamed of Economy
By Mrs. Child,
Twelfth edition, Boston, 1833
Frugality is the buzz word these days. So I’m sharing a recipe from my favorite frugal housewife of all time, Lydia Maria Child. (For modernized version of this recipe, follow the jump.) She was a novelist and abolitionist, but she wrote cookbooks to pay the bills. She came to her power during the “New Republic,” when Americans believed they’d need to be thrifty and virtuous to survive as a new nation. Lydia offers ideas for using up heart and lungs of cow, pigsfeet, tripe, and all the rest of those budget cuts. To pull off these dishes required some skillful cooking, good techniques, and often the use of herbs from the garden or wine. Lydia was also a fabulous gardener, pickle-er, and philosopher. She believed women should be educated. But she didn’t want them to let good food go to waste. What’s interesting is that her real passion was the abolition of slavery. And when she wrote about it, she was blacklisted and fired from her magazine job. Society at that time was more interested in its women being frugal--fussing with leftover scraps--than being vocal about issues like equality.
Well all those battles were long ago fought. And the ideas of frugality were ultimately swept aside and then brought back again--during wars and depressions--as needed--times such as now.
In the food world of recent years, the basic M.O. of our cooking “teachers,” —and by this I mean celeb chefs, food writers, and food show hosts—has been to tell us we must use the VERY best quality ingredients we can possibly find--whether imported porcini from Italy or the sweetest grass fed lamb. In this way, doing good shopping (say at the farmer’s market or Whole Foods) sure enough leads to a delicious dish. The only problem is that sometimes I think this is not really cooking, but shopping. Consider the simplest meal--wild salmon at seventeen bucks a pound, and, say, organic greens steamed and tossed with sea salt and expensive olive oil… roasted yukon gold potatoes with rosemary.... You don’t need to do much to these ingredients to create a good meal for four. You just need to plunk down about $27 bucks at Whole Foods. This adds up for a family.
But most people have limited and merely average ingredients. You need a lot more skill to turn ordinary materials into a good meal. Herein are the TRUE COOKS, in my opinion. And all the more if you can pull it off 6 or 7 nights a week. But of course this sort of ordinary cooking has been less interesting during the last couple decades when we simply buy instead.
These days, I find it a little funny to watch
Read more »
Artist's Notebook
Chocolate and the Art of Tiernan Alexander
- by Nancy, February 05, 2009
“Chocolate Pot” ceramic, copyright 2008 Tiernan Alexander.
Photo credit: Tiernan Alexander.
Brrr, it’s definitely hot chocolate time in the east. Here is a beautiful contemporary interpretation of a traditional Mayan chocolate pot, the kind once used to serve hot chocolate, by my friend the ceramic artist Tiernan Alexander. I love the way Tiernan has referenced the aged surface and gourd-shaped bodies of ancient chocolate pots without copying them. The deliberate imperfections in her vessel are almost painterly and eloquently evoke a sense of history and the passage of time. I caught up with Tiernan recently for an interview and asked her about why she made the pot and her interest in ancient hot chocolate vessels. And got her favorite old recipe for hot chocolate.
Jellypress: Tiernan, what made you want to reinterpret an ancient chocolate pot?
TA: Chocolate had an incredible history in Central and South America. There are ritual and traditional pots made from ceramics, coconut shells, wood, and gourds. These days you see the gourd shaped pots used mostly with South American Yerba Mate tea, but I have also seen the little gourd pots and dippers used at chocolate and atole stands in the streets. (Atole is a cornflour based drink that is often combined with chocolate into a thick hot drink called Champurrada.)
Jellypress: You told us that you took the above photo at a spring festival where they were serving a fruit drink, but that in winter, hot chocolate is served in a similar way. Tell us more about your experience buying hot chocolate and how they serve it.
Masher
Under the Orange Tree with my Sister
- by Laura, February 04, 2009
I went to Florida last weekend to visit my parents who moved there a year ago. My mom had recently had a hip operation, and it was hard on them both, so I went hoping to bring some cheer. We had a lot of laughs, but on the last day it was hard to say goodbye.
The weather was about 60 degrees, and the climate and quality of sunlight was astounding to me arriving from New Jersey, where we’ve had the coldest winter I can remember in a long time and so much snow. This tree is in the backyard of my sister Lisa and her husband Kayhan. They live near my parents. One of my favorite moments of the weekend was stopping by their wonderful house (with two palm trees bent together in the shape of a heart out front--I kid you not) and finding their orange tree in full bloom in the back. I’ve visited before, but never this time of year when the citrus are in season. Here are Lisa and I together.
Notice my hand clutching a bag. I came home with my suitcase filled with these oranges and a bunch of Meyer lemons too. They blew me away--full of flavor and juice, full of brightness. Thank you Lisa and Kayhan!
Masher
Thing of the Day - Nancy’s Art Featured in the Montclair Times
- by Nancy, January 30, 2009
If you haven’t had time yet to see my art exhibit including lots of jellypress art at Orbis Bistro in Montclair, there’s still time, and you can read all about it here.
Not to be Forgotten
My First Sea Urchin
- by Laura, January 26, 2009
I’ve never been one for the “look-at-all-the-fabulous-food-I-get-to-eat” approach to food writing. Many of my lunches are quick affairs--a melted cheese or salad eaten hastily at the kitchen counter. I’m a working girl and the deadlines call me back to my office.
However, somehow my life took an interesting twist recently when Lou brought me into the circle of the lunch club. It’s a quiet under-the-radar group that meets very occasionally. Perhaps I’ll reveal more in time. Or perhaps not. (I’m worried, in fact, that even this post may jeopardize my good standing.) It occurs during the off hours of a certain beautiful restaurant in town, hosted by a beautiful chef and attended by some wonderful cooks who bring gifts. Okay, that’s all I’m saying. Except that recently, at one of these lunches, I had the good fortune to taste my very first sea urchin.
Those who, like I, have lived their lives in sad ignorance of the sea urchin can see in the photo above that it is a spiny creature. Beneath those porcupinelike bristles is a shellfish, and you have to crack through underneath and then use a spoon to scoop out just a tiny sweet dollop of meat, which in this case (should I tell you this?--oh, okay) is the sex organs.
But really--just think of it as a cousin of the oyster. It has the salty fresh liquor of the sea. A great delicacy nowadays, though Lou tells me he ate them as a kid in Queens when his family had little money and his Italian mother was accustomed to using all aspects of fish that other people threw away. I’ve been looking around for a Chinese recipe for sea urchin, or a Japanese recipe. Something old. No luck so far.
Anyway, it’s been more than a week since my first encounter with the first sea urchin. I took its body home and have been letting it dry out on the porch. I keep wondering why it made such a big impression on me. My childhood had very little of the natural world, except our visits to the ocean at the New Jersey shore, where we were always happy in the salt and sand and bright light reflecting off the water, and I wonder if that’s why I love the taste of all things of the ocean? In her “A Book of Middle Eastern Food” (1970), I think Claudia Roden captures this feeling of humans coming to the sea and its creatures with a sense of joy. Just beautiful.
“Hunting for ritza (sea urchins) is a favourite pastime in Alexandria. It is a pleasure to swim out to the rocks, dive into the sea and discover hosts of dark purple and black, spiky jewel-like balls clinging fast to the rocks, a triumph to wrench them away, and a delight to cut a piece off the top, squeeze a little lemon over the soft, salmon-coloured flesh, scoop it out with some bread, and savour the subtle iodized taste, lulled by the rhythm of the sea.”
Masher
Nancy’s Solo Art Exhibit
- by Nancy, January 19, 2009
Say congrats, because I’m having a show of my artwork, including lots of the pieces that grace Jellypress. Here’s a photo of me standing in front of the original banner painting hanging in the exhibit. Pretty exciting. And this exhibit is especially delicious because you can see all my kitchen and food-themed pieces as well as eat some wonderful food. It’s at one of my favorite restaurants in New Jersey, Orbis Bistro at 128 Watchung Avenue, Montclair. The exhibit will up for a month, January 20th through February 20th, and you can see it Tuesday through Sunday evenings (call for rez 973-746-7641) and enjoy some fabulous food too. It’s run by an accomplished and highly talented chef, Nancy Caballes - yep, two Nancys, double the fun. Laura introduced me to Nancy, and it was a real meeting of the minds.
Here’s the warm dining room (it’s got fabulous floor to ceiling windows) at Orbis with some of my work hanging. Orbis Bistro opened in December 1998 in a storefront at the corner of Watchung Avenue and North Fullerton in Montclair. Nancy confessed a love of cupcakes to me, and so of course I had to bake some for her. Check ‘em out - my tried and true Silver Palate Cookbook carrot cake recipe baked as cupcakes with Martha Stewart mascarpone frosting:
When I gave them to Nancy she literally jumped up and down with joy shouting “Cupcakes! Cupcakes! Cupcakes!” My sentiments exactly. We saved some room for them after we lunched on some of Nancy C’s over-the-top delicious Panko bread crumb coated chicken cutlets and green salad.
Orbis is worth the trip whether you’re near or far. So come on out, brave the cold, see some art, splurge on a painting or drawing to take home if you’re so inclined or simply enjoy the beautiful atmosphere of food like art — and art of food.
Masher
My Kitchen Door
- by Nancy, January 16, 2009
Here is a new painting I did of the door that leads into my kitchen from the back yard. Portal. Boundary. The painting has such a sense of place that I often feel it looks more like the kitchen door than the real door. It’s the entry we use most in our house. If you are family or friend, if you belong here, you’re coming in the back straight into the kitchen. That’s the place, after all, where we live.
To find out about Laura's search for a long lost family recipe, click [
A James Beard Award winning book that tells a history of American women through food, recipes, and remembrances. Recipes and illustrations from prehistory to the present day.
Laura's memoir about a search for a recipe, happiness, and mythic Italy--with many unexpected adventures along the way.
In this culinary memoir, Nancy Ring combines funny and poignant stories of love and work with warm remembrances of a family that celebrates food with gusto and cherishes memories with passion...
