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Thing of the Day - Last Dance with HoneyBell (Oranges, that is)

by Nancy, February 03, 2010

Most of you know how much I love these oranges. Look at the dripping juice. Clean, thirst-quenching flavor. And that color! It rivals the vermilion oil paint, so dear and rare, that I portion out in tiny dabs because it’s so strong and hard to harness in a composition. I mentioned in a previous post that my sweet family sends me these oranges every year as a gift. No, that last statement is not true entirely: honeybells are not oranges at all. They’re a hybrid of a tangerine and a grapefruit, grown by grafting to sour orange root stock. The mystery of their origin is debated here and there. Some say their history reaches back in part over 3000 years ago to Southeast Asia. Others report they were the grafting project of a creative Florida farmer in the 1940’s. They’re here on jellypress again because if you’d like to try them, there’s still time to order them but not much. Today the company that sells them, Cushman’s, sent me this link

How Much Do You Spend a Month on Food?

by Laura, February 01, 2010

I recently was talking to someone who raised an eyebrow at our grocery bill. I’ll confess it right here: about $1,000 a month, at least. Should I feel embarrassed of this? We cook and eat at home quite a lot (really a lot), not to mention that I’ve got three guys in the house and we live in the greater NYC area. To be honest, I’m not even sure if my $1,000 number is a completely accurate assessment--might it be more, like 1100? If it is I don’t want to know it. Let’s just say $1,000 a month.

I started looking into the cost of food just to see if this was so outrageous and if we were all a bunch of slothful greedy overeaters. I was surprised to discover

Not To Be Forgotten — Shepherd’s Pie

by Nancy, January 30, 2010

Here it is, One Badass Shepherd’s Pie. It all started, as jellypress readers know, when I announced my search for the kind of shepherd’s pie that a beloved nanny cooked for my family when I was a child. When I finally figured it out and brought it to a friend’s potluck 50th birthday party, party-goers were drawn to it like moths to porchlight and the entire pot’s contents was consumed in fifteen minutes flat, despite the availability of four other main dishes.

It wasn’t too hard, to be truthful as most shepherd’s pies are made basically the same way: meat, either lamb or beef, is seared, then vegetables and herbs are added followed by a spoonful of flour and deglazing with wine, broth, or worcestershire sauce (and sometimes all three) while potatoes are mashed with butter and milk which are then used to top the stew. The whole pot gets baked until the bottom is bubbly and the top is browned. All I had to do was cull the recipes until I grokked the basic pattern, then used the flavors I love in stews to concoct the one that I remembered from childhood. You can read the old recipes we dug up along the way.

I did make one unorthodox addition. Want to know what it is? Here’s the recipe:

One Badass Shepherd’s Pie
Note: The optional addition of celery root, though not traditional, adds a bright flavor to the mashed potatoes and the stew. Try it!

1 T. olive oil
2 pounds of boneless lamb stew meat, cut into one-inch pieces
1 large onion, chopped
4 cloves garlic, minced
3 stalks celery, chopped
5 carrots, peeled and sliced on the diagonal
1 pint mushrooms, cleaned and sliced
1 large shallot
salt and pepper to taste
1//2 t. dried thyme or 1 t. fresh thyme, chopped
1 T. all-purpose flour
1/2 cup red wine
1 cup beef broth, and more if necessary
1 T. tomato paste
1 T. worcestershire sauce
1 large celery root, peeled and cut into matchsticks (cut the root into slices, then stack them and slice into sticks) optional but recommended
6 medium yukon gold, or yellow baking potatoes (or your favorite potato for mashing)
4 T. sweet unsalted butter
1/2 cup or more milk (lowfat is fine, even skim, depending on how much fat you like in your mashed potatoes)
1/2 cup or more chicken stock
1 T. or more olive oil, enough to flavor potatoes
frozen or fresh peas, optional

1. Heat the olive oil in a large soup pot (preferably an ovenproof one) over medium-high heat. Add the meat and let it brown on all sides, stirring, about 5 - 6 minutes. Add the onion, garlic, celery, carrots, mushrooms, shallot and salt and pepper to taste, and thyme. Cook, stirring occasionally, until the vegetables begin to soften, about 10 minutes.
2. Add the flour and stir to combine. Let the mixture cook until it thickens and reduces, and the flour and meat juices begin to brown on the bottom of the pot. Don’t let it burn, but do let the flour and juices brown, stirring and scraping the bottom as needed. This is where the dark color and flavor of the gravy will begin to develop. When the juices reduce until the bottom of the pot has brown bits of flour and reduced sauce clinging to it, deglaze the pot with the wine, broth, tomato paste and worcestershire sauce. Scrape the bottom of the pot once the liquids are in there to incorporate all the brown bits on the bottom of the pot. Cover the pot, turn the heat to low, and let the stew cook about 15 minutes more, adding more broth as necessary to keep the mixture moistened. It should be the consistency of stew - liquid but not thin and soupy. Taste and adjust seasoning with salt and pepper.
3. Meanwhile, steam the potatoes and the celery root in a covered double boiler or covered in the microwave oven until they are tender when pierced with a fork. Set aside about 1 cup of the celery root to add to the stew. In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with a whisk or in a bowl with a masher, mash the potatoes and remaining celery root together, adding the butter, milk, chicken stock and olive oil until the potatoes are the consistency of buttercream frosting - able to hold their shape but not too thick and dry. The proportion of broth, oil, milk and butter in the potatoes is really up to you. For more healthful mash, add more broth and olive oil and use skim milk. Season with salt and pepper if desired. Press through a food mill if you have one and desire smooth mashed potatoes. Otherwise they will be chunky.
4. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Transfer the stew to an ovenproof container, add the reserved celery root, and the peas if using, and top it with the mashed potatoes, spreading the potatoes evenly with a spatula. Bake for 20 minutes until the stew is bubbly and the potatoes are browned. Serve immediately.

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One Badass Cookie — Scottish Shortbread

by Nancy, January 26, 2010

Scotch Shortbread
One pound flour, one-half pound butter, six ounces sugar. Work all together on a board. When thoroughly mixed, press with the hand into cakes one half-inch thick; cut into shapes and bake in a slow oven.
The Neighborhood Cookbook
By The Council Of Jewish Women
Portland, Or. [Press Of Bushong & Co.] 1914.

Rarely does the first recipe I try for a certain type of cookie get the honor of being dubbed One Badass Cookie. (What’s a Badass Cookie? Click here.) Especially a cookie like this one that I remember from childhood and that has a taste memory tangled up with emotions and history, and in particular the emotion of love; in this case, for a beloved Scottish nanny who made quite the impression on me growing up. In any case, the recipe above was the first one I received. The scent of it baking made me think it was possibly the one. Warm from the oven, I pretty much knew it was,

but when it cooled into a rich bar with an intense, head-filling flavor and a substantial crunch but no toughness, I knew for sure. I ate three of them immediately, and then packed the rest up to share with friends not because I’m so generous, but because if they remained in the house, I would have had to eat them all right then and there. Absolutely irresistible. Siren-song irresistible. That’s a warning. In any case, taste testers the next morning confirmed what I already knew — this is The One.

I would be delinquent in my duty as a baker however if I did not tell you that the historic recipe above is full of holes, the kind that only a baker with a combined memory of generations of bakers can fill in. To reach into that legacy, bequeathed to me by a legion of cookie mavens, and get the secrets that make it work along with an updated version (or should I say translation of old-recipe-ese), read on.

What you have basically is a recipe that requires the baker to fill in the details, particularly about types of ingredients, their temperatures, and their handling. An unspoken rule for the freshest, high quality ingredients always applies, as does working by hand when possible since most old baking recipes were made that way. I have a kitchen-aid mixer but I would not use it for this because I saw my Scottish nanny make it by hand and I know that the signature crunch of shortbread is partly a result of a judicious amount of hand-kneading to touch, just enough to give it the right structure, but not so much as to make the dough tough. And more importantly, if you mix by machine you will miss the singular pleasure of having this dough in your hands. The aroma is beautiful and the feel of it is quite lovely — a fragrant, floury, buttery mix that awakens an internal sense of earth and sky and sun and all that’s good that comes from it. Once you make it a few times you will know the texture the dough must have: pliable and firm but with no glue-y feel. If the dough becomes glue-like you have worked it too much. If it is mostly falling apart and dry, you have not worked it enough. Have a go at it and enjoy.

One Badass Scottish Shortbread
adapted from The Neighborhood Cookbook, 1914.
Note: The original recipe instructions and ingredients appear at left in italics, and the update is in parenthesis at right. Also this recipe is weighed, not measured, for accuracy. Invest in a good kitchen scale if you don’t already have one. They are kitchen workhorses that more than pay for themselves over time.)

Old recipe:
1 pound flour (update: 1 pound all-purpose unbleached flour)
one-half pound butter: (update: 2 sticks (1/2 pound) unsalted sweet butter, softened slightly to room temperature but not warm and greasy. This is very important. If the butter is too cold or too hot the recipe will not work. Be diligent about checking the butter until it is malleable but still cool and not shiny.)
six ounces sugar (update: 6 ounces of granulated white sugar.)

Method:
1. Work all together on a board. (update: This means combining all the ingredients at once in a large bowl or on a wooden pastry board. I find a bowl easier because it prevents spillage. Squeeze the dough through your fingers, taking fistfuls at a time. Press the dough into the bottom of the bowl trying to get all of it to stick together. Keep doing this until the dough holds together and picks up the remainder of any dry crumbs in the bottom of the bowl. It will not all come completely together but it will mostly adhere.)
2. When thoroughly mixed, press with the hand into cakes one half-inch thick; cut into shapes. (update: This means pressing the dough into disks, the kind you would roll out flat for cutting with cookie cutters. Alternatively, you can press the mixture into a 9” x 13” pan, flatten it by placing a piece of plastic wrap on top and smoothing over it until it is flat and even, then score it with a sharp knife into bars. This is what I did.)
3. Bake in a slow oven. (update: Bake at 300 degrees F. until the dough is light golden and cooked through, about 30 - 45 minutes. Turn the dough half-way through the baking time to prevent uneven browning. While the cookies are still hot from the oven, use a sharp paring knife to cut through the scored lines. Remove the cookies from the pan with a spatula and cool on a wire rack. Store in an airtight container.)

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Pizza in NJ

by Laura, January 25, 2010

Photo by Jason Perlow

I was never one of those pizza-crazed people. First of all, I’m a female always worried about keeping the calorie count down. Secondly, there’s just so much bad pizza around. And thirdly, pizza is a survival tactic for me as a working mom,--you could say I’ve abused it too much to love it.

But when NJ Monthly magazine asked me if I wanted to write a story on the “soul of New Jersey pizza,”

I said yes because well, there are a lot harder ways to earn a buck, but also this was one assignment where I could take the kids along.

Among my first stops: The writing of Ed Levine: (Pizza: A Slice of Heaven) and his “Slice/Serious Eats” website (Serious Eats).

In addition to learning (with fascination) all about the depth of pizza--ingredients, history, techniques, and endless discussions about ovens and heat--I was amazed to hear again and again how emotional--almost whacky--people get about the subject, particularly about the pizza places of their youth. I concluded that pizza in NJ is very much about memory. There are so many joints here where the pizza is really just okay, but people tell you it’s awesome. Why? Well the reason is that it brings back memories. And the pizzamakers--particularly at old beloved taverns--take great pride in never changing a thing to cater to this nostalgia and sense of the past. I listened with respect and duly noted all this, as an anthropologist might because, well, I wasn’t like that myself. And I continued to drive around doing my research discovering wonderful out-of-the-way places like Santillo’s (take-out only) in Elizabeth and Grimaldi’s in the back-end of Hoboken.

A big source for my story was one of my Dad’s best friends, Mike D’Amico, who is a lifelong New Jersey Italian American and ardent pizzalogist. He sent me in the right direction. And he reminded me of Pizzatown USA in Elmwood Park--still decorated in its original 1958 decor, covered from top to bottom with American flags and red white and blue. It has become a rather grim stretch of highway since 1958, but Uncle Sam is still up on the roof offering you a pie, ever reassuring the 1950s postwar population that Mussolini is really dead, and Italians can be trusted. How to describe the inside? Bizarre. Totally cool. A bit of a dump.... All of the above. I hadn’t been there in years.

When I took my family one November night, the pizza was ready in six minutes. It came out of the oven, bubbling and oozing on the platter—a beautiful thing. Thin crust, crunchy, light on the cheese and full of tomato sauce.

The only place to sit was at a communal bench with another family. We settled down, and I stole a sip of my son’s birch beer. Then a strange thing happened. Some archeological layers shifted in my brain.... Suddenly, I could see my Dad in the 1970s, slamming the door of his pick up truck, walking up the cement path to our house, past green lawn and maple tree. Pizzatown box in hand, a white bag of zepoles balanced on top. The sight of pizza in that childhood life, back then in the era when mothers cooked every night, offered a small burst of joy. Proust knew what he was talking about with those madeleine’s. And if you were here with me I’d say that for you with a serious NJ accent.

Here’s the story in full: NJ Monthly. http://njmonthly.com/articles/restaurants/searching-for-the-soul-of-jersey-pizza.html

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Calling All Recipe Detectives — The Search for One Badass Scottish Shortbread Part 2

by Nancy, January 24, 2010

Food has long been baked in coals or under heated rocks, steamed inside animal stomachs and leaves, boiled in rockpots by heated stones, and so forth. An oven could be as simple as a hole in the ground, or a covering of heated stones. However, improved textures and flavours may not have been the reason fire was first controlled.
---A History of Cooks and Cooking, Michael Symons

This old range is for sale.

Read more »

Being short on time, I’m going to be conducting my search for One Badass Shortbread by degrees (okay, pun intended, as you’ll soon realize.) Laura found a recipe for me to start with. My first obstacle though was finding out what was meant by a “slow” oven. Quickly hopping onto Food Timeline and doing a search for oven temperatures, I found so much information that I realized I will ultimately have to, gulp, guess (if you know anything about the scientific, accurately-measuring baker’s mind, you will intuit why this is so difficult for me.

And if you’re a baker too, you’re probably having a little sympathetic anxiety right about now.) In one old recipe, a slow oven is defined in parenthesis as being 325 degrees F. In another, however, a “moderately slow” oven is defined as 325 degrees F too. Scanning other recipes, I found even more disparity. Quick moderate? 325 degrees. Moderately slow in a different recipe than the first I mentioned? 350. Notes in the text specify slow ovens for drying out pastry and moderately hot for baking the center of the mixture by degrees (pun unacknowledged, BTW.) If you can help, send info to me by using the comments link under the title above. In the meantime, watch here for my, um, interpretations of open-ended suggestions for oven temperatures. You can quote me on that.

Want to see my final favorite recipe for Scottish Shortbread right now? Click here.

What is a Badass Cookie? Click here.

see also: Calling All Recipe Detectives — The Search for One Badass Scottish Shortbread

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Thing of the Day - Food or Art?

by Nancy, January 21, 2010

There are presently more than 850 million people who do not have enough food to eat and 2.7 billion people living on less than $2 a day. Over the past 50 years, food aid has been one of the principal resources deployed in the effort to end hunger, and a number of donor countries, the United States prominent among them, have channeled billions of dollars’ worth of food to developing countries.
From the food aid website Bread for the World

The Wedding Feast, Sandro Botticelli, about 1567
Yesterday I was watching Food Network’s Food Challenge on TV while I ran on the treadmill. In this episode, titled “Rock & Roll,” according to info on Food Network’s website, “five pastry chefs compete for $10,000 in their mission to create the ultimate sugar showpiece that not only demonstrates a musical theme but is also capable of movement (rocking and rolling).
Read more »

The competition lasts seven hours and the contestants will face three judges.” I finished running before the show ended so I didn’t see the winner, but I couldn’t help thinking of the kind of food sculptures that have been made by chefs for centuries either for holidays - like the Mexican Day of the Dead sugar sculptures that originated in the fifteenth century, or for rituals such as wedding feasts. This quote from the Metropolitan Museum’s website information about weddings in the Italian Renaissance is especially amusing:

“The humanist Filippo Beroaldo reported that the 1487 wedding of Lucrezia d’Este and Giovanni Bentivoglio in Bologna featured giant sugar sculptures of castles, ships, people, and animals, and a flaming wheel of fireworks that accidentally ignited some of the wedding guests.”

While the Food Network chefs weren’t setting anyone on fire, I couldn’t help noticing
that the sculptures they were making, though of electric guitars and not castles or ships, were still elaborate representations in edible form of things from real life, however imaginatively arranged. It doesn’t seem that the art of making edible art has come very far in a few centuries and I wonder what is the hold on our imaginations of a craft that imitates life in food. Perhaps it is just a human attraction to magic and tricks and things that fool the eye in everything from trompe-lieol painting to t-shirts that are painted to look like they have three dimensional objects on top of them.

As an artist, I have a real problem with art that is made of food not intended for eating when so many on this earth are starving, but if the product is truly edible, then I can accept it as a reasonable thing to do. The most points in the Food Challenge competition is given for artistry, even over other attributes like difficulty. Our culture obviously values imagination, but much of the commercial food sculpture of today is only imaginative in its arrangement of objects while the objects themselves are photographically reproduced, rehashing basically the same strategy over and over. A counterpoint to this are fine artists who use food as a vehicle for communicating ideas about life and art. Janine Antoni comes to mind with her 1993 performative chocolate and soap sculpture “Lick and Lather” that deals with the love/hate relationship we have with our own image. And what does a shiny sugar electric guitar that garners ten thou in prize money say about us? I’m not sure I know for certain. But it’s interesting to ponder.

Janine Antoni, Lick and Lather, chocolate and soap, 1993

see also: Thing of the Day — Tino Sehgal

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How to Find an Old Recipe

by Laura, January 19, 2010

You meet some people who are lucky. They are born to stable families that remain intact. Their parents live long healthy lives. Mom and grandma were wonderful cooks. There was always enough to eat, as well as lots of love and attention. They get handed down great family recipes, and for the rest of their lives food brings beautiful memories and associations.

This is very nice. And you know, sometimes it even really happens.

Read more »

But most people are not so lucky. And the past is rarely so good.

Grandparents die young. Lots of mothers don’t care at all about cooking. And in the U.S.--because we are such a mobile fast moving culture--it is easy to loose all the threads of your personal history with one or two generations. Lots of people learn to cook as adults.

And so when people come to me and ask how they can find family recipes that are lost forever because someone died or they had no close relatives who were cooks, I say there is no reason to give up. Everyone has some kind of culinary heritage--even if it is one of hunger or great simplicity. You may not get the exact thing your grandmother made. But so what. You can come close.

I have lots of tips--from calling extraneous relatives, to going to the place your family came from. But one of them is to go to old cookbooks of the era that interests you. This is increasingly possible with online cookbook collections.

Certainly one of the best online sources for early American cookbooks food history is the Feeding America Project that was started at the Michigan State University’s Library and Museum, led by the wonderful Jan Longone. On Feeding America, you’ll find 75 important American cookbooks available page by page online. This particular collection is better than most because you can search by recipe. So for example, if you’re looking for sweet potato pie, you’ll find 8 recipes that appeared from 1869 to the beginning of the twentieth century. These cookbooks range from poor to wealthy authors. Go try it. Click “Search the Collection.” Have fun.

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Thing of the Day — Tino Sehgal

by Nancy, January 18, 2010

Inside this temple of objects, I refocus attention to human relations.

Tino Sehgal in response to an interviewer asking him where his intention lies as an artist who shows objectless, undocumented live pieces in museums and galleries.
As quoted in the New York Times Magazine
Sunday, January 17, 2010
“Art That Leaves Behind No Trace” by Arthur Lubow

Laura and I talked once about how we can spend days making meals - her homemade ravioli, my pies - and then it is consumed in minutes. It’s not that cooks and bakers resent the eaters who adore us and our food, it’s just something that points to the ephemeral nature of domestic arts. We cook, and the food is eaten. We clean and the house gets dirty again. Much of domestic work - what is traditionally known as “women’s work” - is unseen and unpaid, in essence, invisible except for brief moments. It was with this in mind that I read this article about the work of artist Tino Sehgal in yesterday’s Sunday New York Times Magazine. Sehgal’s work is meant to leave no trace. It is made from human beings who inhabit a space, interacting with viewers. I saw Sehgal’s “This Situation” when it was at the Marian Goodman Gallery in NYC. I remember thinking that it was brilliant how Sehgal brought up questions about the traditional manner of making art in the form of objects, among other issues. His work is not even documented because he does not believe in filling the world with more objects when there are already so many. Which is not to say that the work is not sold. This is where the controversy comes in. How are fine artists to survive if they are not allowed to make money without their motives being suspect? Is he a P.T. Barnum with a gimmick, as one of my artist friends thinks? Or is he a visionary who sees beyond materiality to the essence of experience and has the courage to provoke a necessary dialogue?

This objectless art composed of living beings seems to say, “Here I am. Soon I will be gone. Be present here in this moment with me - don’t take pictures, don’t videotape it, just be here - or you’ll miss it.” Isn’t this so much what life is about? This also brought up my own feelings about my chosen form of making art - painting. I do believe in paintings since the conversation that artists are having in paint seems hardly finished, and because paintings communicate something about human experience that I find simply cannot be expressed for me any other way. I have a deep longing and love for paintings that is intrinsic to my being. On the other hand, Sehgal has a point, and he has begun a fascinating dialogue. I’m not about to kick all the object-makers out of the room and stop painting myself, but I like having him at the party too. I hope he - and his pieces - keep talking. Sehgal’s work will be on view at the Guggenheim Museum January 29th - March 10th.

see also: Thing of the Day — Chardin

Masher

Out My Kitchen Window

by Nancy, January 17, 2010

Tuesday afternoon, Dr. Louise Ivers, an infectious disease specialist at Harvard Medical School, was at a meeting of the World Food Program in a United Nations building in Port-au-Prince when the earthquake hit. She escaped to the building’s driveway unharmed. Within minutes of her arrival 350 injured Haitians gathered in her driveway, looking for medical help.

Ivers was the only doctor.

“The only doc”
Posted: 10:21 AM ET
January 17, 2010
By Elizabeth Cohen
CNN Medical Senior Correspondent

Dr. Ivers with a Haitian patient, Staff photo Rose Lincoln/Harvard News Office
The tragic circumstances of the earthquake in Haiti has been on our minds lately and this powerful story of 48 hours in the life of one doctor who is trying to make a difference there touched me deeply. I want to share it with you. You can read the full article here. As I was reading it, I couldn’t help thinking that while I am researching the history of cookies for jellypress, these things are going on around me. Laura asked an important question in her previous post. What is our responsibility to the world as writers and artists? In the day to day business of raising a child, working for survival, keeping house, and making art, it’s natural for me to narrow my focus, keep my eyes down, usually focused on a kitchen counter where I am chopping herbs on a cutting board or mixing my palette in my studio for a painting. The beauty and security of these simple things can’t be ignored because they bring joy, and as Laura pointed out, speak to that which endures in the face of hardships. I can’t help asking myself however if I take enough time to look out my kitchen window at the broader horizon.
Read more »

Sometimes it just seems that there is this huge gap between the private and public spheres. In this painting, below, by Berthe Morisot, the division is marked by a balustrade. The world has changed a lot since she painted it. Women have since left home and made their way in the world. I wonder if we need to jump that balustrade more often. Posting more links here to current events suddenly seems urgent. Not instead of recipes, art and food history, but along with them. Sometimes I don’t know what is the best course of action to directly impact the problems around us. Perhaps awareness is the first step.

Berthe Morisot, On the Balcony, 1872
If you’d like to make a difference tomorrow, January 18th, and live near Montclair, NJ, you can attend a benefit concert for the Haiti Earthquake Relief Effort from 7 - 10pm at the Unitarian Universalist Congregation, 67 Church Street, Montclair, New Jersey, where the concert of Jazz House Kids will be free but with voluntary donations taken at the door. 100% of proceeds will go to Doctors Without Borders and The American Red Cross.

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More on Scottish Shortbread

by Nancy, January 16, 2010

To Make Short Bread
Take a peck of Flour, put three lb of Butter in amoung a little water, and let it melt, pout it in amoung your Flour, put in a Mutchkin of good Barm; when it is wrought divide it in three parts, roll out you cakes longer then broad, and gather from the sides with your Finger, cut down the Middle and job it on Top, then send it to the oven.
Mrs. McLintock’s Receipts for Cookery and Pastry-Work, 1736, available in reproduction.

The Milk Maid, Johannes Vermeer, 1858-60
In The Art and Mystery of Food, there is a comprehensive treatment on Scottish shortbread. Read it here. Laura found it while digging for authentic Scottish shortbread recipes and lore. The recipe included, above, intrigued me since I am hellbent on finding a recipe to post in my next One Badass Cookie column for the kind of shortbread I mentioned in the previous post. I was most surprised to see “barm” included - a kind of yeasty leavener made from ale. Yeast? In cookies? Ah, but shortbread, it seems, were not originally the cookies we call shortbread today.

A closer look at Laura’s sources point to the fact that like most old recipes, the origins of shortbread are deeply embedded in a way of life: the milk maids of fourteenth to seventeenth century Europe. Where there were dairy cows, there was cheese and butter. And in 1736, the year of the first documented Scottish cookbook Laura found, the word, short, in combination with the word, bread, or cake, was used as a verb rather than a noun. To “short” bread or cake, was in fact, to make it friable or full of what the English came to call “shortening,” in other words, to give it a tender crumb unlike the chewy, sturdy breads made before fat became a popular addition. And the word bread meant just that - bread, yeast risen, soft and sometimes full of citrus peel, spice and nuts - and not plain cookies.

The history of cookies as we know them is really the history of ovens. “Think about a wood burning oven and imagine baking cookies,” Laura told me, “It just doesn’t work opening the door every 12 minutes, right? It was done, but it really was not a practical part of every day life.” Unpredictable open hearths were used until the Civil War by all but the wealthy, and the development of trustworthy ovens was slow. 1910’s gas ovens gradually replaced coal, wood, and petroleum versions, followed by 1930’s electric ranges, both precipitating cookie recipe explosions. World War II’s rationing derailed bakers temporarily, but afterward, armed with abundant butter and sugar, bakers enjoyed a sky’s-the-limit enthusiasm for cookie invention that has yet to abate.

Old recipes for short cakes and breads were made with ground oatmeal or rice flour. Notches in the dough symbolized the sun’s rays, and most of the early recipes yield cakes or breads that are round, and cut into triangles to serve. While the round shape is sometimes still specified in modern recipes, by the mid-nineteenth century the yeast and add-ins like nuts were gone, and our present-day shortbread cookies were conceived.

see also: Calling All Recipe Detectives — The Search for One Badass Scottish Shortbread

Masher

Calling All Recipe Detectives — The Search for One Badass Scottish Shortbread

by Nancy, January 15, 2010

I emailed Laura telling her that I wanted to find a shortbread recipe like the one I had as a child but that I had regretfully never learned to make. We’re all flawed. I was only eight years old, and didn’t fully appreciate the Scottish born nanny (and her handed-down recipes) who came to take care of us when my mother accompanied my father on business trips once or twice a year. She stayed briefly, a week or two at most. Her name was Mrs. Wanser. She was one of those story-book type of characters, bigger than life, who lives on in memory. The bow-legs in their lace-up old lady shoes. The no-nonsense apron worn always and everywhere. The perfect accent. White bun. A gap-toothed smile and pink, flaring nostrils that conjured visions of miles of open, airy farmland and hard work. Her habit of calling us “brother” and “sister” instead of by our names, titles she insisted were as necessary as mother and father to convey respect. Certainly she treated us with more of it than we afforded her. We’d hide from her on the basement stairs, giggling uncontrollably as she called and called us. I have no idea now why it was so funny. We’d already driven off the other nannies. There were four of us, plus pets. You can imagine. She irked us with her old-fashioned rules of early bedtimes and mealtimes, cleaning to the point of obsession and bed sheets tucked in hospital corners so tight we had to struggle to get our feet under the blankets at night, but she was the one who stayed, gently and persistently teaching us grace and forgiveness with her shortbread and shepherd’s pie. I didn’t know this then of course. My mother impressed upon me her worth. Eventually I understood. When Mrs. Wanser gave me a pair of onyx earrings for my sixteenth birthday and I lost one when I wore them to the prom, I was heartbroken. It was all I had of her. When she died, I grieved.

Her shortbread I long for most. It was buttery but not greasy, with a velvet-smooth touch to the surface, and broke off in brick-like chunks from a honey-golden slab that was scored with lines for portioning. It had the kind of thought-erasing flavor notes that flooded your head from back to front. She made it from scratch of course, mixing it with her knobby, arthritic hands in a ceramic bowl on her lap. It worked up into a pliable dough that she patted into a rectangle, scored and baked slowly. Her shepherd’s pie had a blanket of mashed potatoes on it three inches thick over a deep brown mix of meat and vegetables. But I’ll get to that in another post. For now, I only want to find a shortbread that can conjure the taste memory I have of the one I loved then. If you can help, send a recipe to me. And check back soon for more on Scottish shortbread. Laura has been digging in old cookbooks online for the kind of recipes that Mrs. Wanser might have used herself as a young woman, and the things she found are fascinating and surprising, from the meaning of the word to its origins and ingredients. In the meantime I’m going to start with this recipe from The Historic American Cookbook Project. I’ll post the results soon.

Want to see my final favorite recipe for Scottish Shortbread right now? Click here.

see also: Calling All Gingerbread Detectives

Masher

More Thoughts on Catastrophe

by Laura, January 13, 2010

Irene Nemirovsky
I have often asked myself how I can write about pasta and and matters of food while there are so many desperate and pressing issues in the world and people are suffering. I ask myself, as a writer what is my responsibility? I think about this all the time and struggle for resolution. Today the news of Haiti’s earthquake raises the issue again along with the guilt of being safe while other people suffer so horribly. My heart goes out to the people of Haiti who have suffered so terribly for so long.

Last year I read the beautiful unfinished novel by Irene Nemirovsky “Suite Francaise,” published 65 years after her death. A Russian Jewish novelist living in France when the Germans were marching in during World War II. As the campaign against Jews became clear, she understood she would soon die. Before she was taken away she did two things: 1) arrange for her two daughters to be hidden and saved (they were) and 2) furiously write as fast as she could her ultimate novel. It was to be a thousand pages long in several parts, yet she only finished a fraction of it before being taken to Auschwitz. The events of the novel--documenting what she was witnessing as the Germans arrived--are incredibly sad and raise all the questions of human weakness and tragedy. And yet her act of art, her act of writing on the brink of death was enormously optimistic. She was a beautiful writer.

During this time, she kept notes where she mulled on her plans for this opus novel of hers. She didn’t want to create a work that would be solely about the tragedies of World War II because she knew that ten years after the war, people wouldn’t want to think of the horrors any more. What would endure and still matter in 2052, she asked, while writing in her notebook in the woods, waiting for her death. And she answered herself:

“What lives on:

1. Our human day-to-day lives
2. Art
3. God.”

I am so taken that someone amidst catastrophe and on the brink of death would understand that “our ordinary day-to-day lives” matter. I suppose that when women write or paint about domestic life, they are addressing this enduring part of what it means to be human, and in this fact something deeply true. And this helps me justify what I do. Sometimes this in itself is art, and sometimes even a step toward what I imagine to be god. Still my questions remain not entirely resolved.

In the meantime what else is there to do but try to help those who suffer?

If you’d like to help the victims of the quake, text “HAITI” to 90999 to donate $10 to Red Cross relief efforts in Haiti.

Unicef has also appealed urgently for emergency assistance. Visit this link to help.

You can also help immediately by donating to the Red Cross to assist the relief effort. Contribute online here, or

Or, you can donate $10 to be charged to your cell phone bill by texting “HAITI” to “90999.”

Masher

Dining Room Table On The Garden

by Nancy, January 12, 2010

Pierre Bonnard, Dining Room Table On the Garden, 1934-35
Pierre Bonnard, painter, lover of poetry, did most of the work emblematic of his mature style in his late fifties. It was during this time period that he moved with his wife, Marthe, whom you can barely see on the margins of the painting above if you look closely, to their house in the countryside of France. Out of the city, away from the noise and blur, he could contemplate the quiet domestic scenes flooded with color and light that fascinated him. I’ve been thinking a lot about color and light in my own paintings, coming to the conclusion lately that it is light and an unusual use of color - one that invites a poetic reading rather than a literal one - that most interests me. I’ve been looking at color everywhere, not only in painting, but in life all around me.

This tart I find particularly glorious. Look at the deep blue and gold and rose of those baked berries. There’s nothing else quite like that.

This is what I was thinking about when I painted this picture of the purple beans I grew in my backyard one summer. As I continue painting I would like to paint my emotional response to my subject; the essence of the thing and not the thing itself. It’s a process that I’ve only begun. Bonnard is quoted as saying that he wanted to portray the moment of walking into a room for the first time. If you turn from your computer and look behind you into your life, what do you see? A dining room table, a freshly baked tart, a handful of beans? Or is it the quality of the light and the colors it illuminates that will remain in memory long after everything else is gone?

Masher

Sunday Morning

by Nancy, January 10, 2010

It’s a sunny Sunday morning, cold and bright. The furnace turned itself off in the middle of the night so I padded downstairs bundled up in a sweatshirt on top of p.j.’s and thick socks. Max was still sleeping. Bits of flour and dough were still on the table from the night before.

We made cinnamon buns from a recipe called “Overnight Sticky Buns” on Cooks Illustrated. I quietly got them out and put them near the radiator to warm once I got the furnace started again. Made a pot of coffee. Read email. Perused lists of grants for artists online. Trolled for a recipe for split pea soup for tonight’s dinner. Put the buns on the pizza stone to bake. Marked the pea soup recipe I chose finally with the green satin ribbon attached to my cookbook.

All I had to say was “Warm cinnamon buns,” and Max was down the stairs and at the kitchen counter in a moment. Good mornng.

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