cooking

A Marathon Cooking Session with a Shrimp and Fennel Risotto Recipe

by

Fennel_bulb
I cook an extreme amount of food. When I'm standing in the kitchen and my feet are aching, I wonder why I get involved in making so many dishes. On the day after, looking at a steaming bowl of leftovers for lunch, I have a an inkling why. I love to eat, and I'd rather not face a night of take-out or an afternoon of Midtown lunch specials. I want fresh and delicious food, and I can only afford it by making it for myself.

I find cooking for my family extremely hectic. I'm usually rushing through a recipe hoping to stave off a melt-down, either on the part of Santa Maria or on the part of one of the kids. It's rarely relaxing. Yesterday was different. Santa Maria took the kids to the Brooklyn Museum and I had a couple of hours to myself in the kitchen.

We were on a good roll when it came to taking care of domestic tasks yesterday. Santa Maria and I knocked off the weekly shop, did some laundry, and made chicken soup, all before noon. We were feeling good when we were shopping, and in those cases, the shopping list tends to grow. Waiting to pay, Santa Maria came up with all kinds of things she'd like to have for dinner–fresh salsa and guacamole, included. She ran off to get cilantro and a ripe avocado.

We settled on having an old favorite for dinner: shrimp-and-fennel risotto. The recipe is adapted from "Gourmet Everyday," a great cookbook the sadly closed magazine published a few years ago. All the recipes in it are fast, and most are delicious. This risotto is a perfect example.

When we got home, I realized that I had planned a different dinner for that evening, coq au vin. I had a chicken in the back of the refrigerator that needed to be cooked. Its sell-by date was Monday, and I could tell just from opening the refrigerator that it would barely make it that long.

We were having the chicken soup for lunch, though, and that was enough chicken for one day for me. The old chicken would have to wait.

When Santa Maria went out with the children in the afternoon, I got to work in the kitchen. I started chopping onions and fennel for the risotto. I started to prep the items for the coq au vin, which I would make the following morning before taking Nina to school and going to work. Time is short in the morning these days, and I would have to have all the prep work done in order to finish the dish and get Nina out the door on time.

Also, I wanted to make my weekly quinoa salad, so that meant more and more chopping and roasting. And I wanted to serve roasted cauliflower to the kids upon their return from the museum. And I wanted to chop the onion and the tomato and to wash and chop the cilantro for the fresh salsa and guacamole. In the midst of this frenzy, I suddenly wondered what other men do with their free time on a Sunday. Isn't there something called the NFL? Aren't there college bowl games at this time of year? Who knows? You can't eat them, can you?

Santa Maria and the kids came back from the museum (where, in the photo exhibition of rock and roll stars, Nina saw a singer mooning the camera and has since learned this vital and sophomoric skill herself), and we started eating. We all downed the cauliflower. Santa Maria whipped up the guacamole and homemade salsa, and melted the cheddar cheese on the organic corn chips.  I defrosted a bit of black beans for the children, who I figured would not eat the risotto. Nina tried it, but she didn't like it.

I can't imagine why she didn't like the risotto. It's a marvelous dish, and quite beautiful. The shrimp is pink and the fennel fronds are green. The rice is white and creamy. The fennel lends it a distinctive licorice flavor and the shrimp, when cut up my special way, are curly and tender and filling. The dish itself is low in fat, if you make it my way with just olive oil. The trick to the shrimp is to slice each one down its back into two long pieces. I usually don't have time to do this when the kids are around, but yesterday, I had the opportunity. When the shrimp are cooked at the end of the dish, they wind themselves up into little corkscrews. They are delightful. I thought so this afternoon when eating the leftovers for lunch. The nice thing about the way I cook, upping the proportions substantially, is that I have leftovers from my leftovers. I'll be eating some of it tomorrow for lunch again. I don't mind. It's that good.

Shrimp and Fennel Risotto
  • 1 onion, diced
  • 1 or more heads fennel, cored and diced, fronds reserved.
  • 1 T. Olive Oil
  • 1 cup Arborio or other short-grained rice
  • 1/2 cup or more white wine
  • 1 cup chicken stock
  • 4 or more cups of hot water
  • 1 lb. medium shrimp, peeled, deveined, and sliced lengthwise into two long pieces

Salt the shrimp by layering them in a bowl and putting 1/2 t. salt on them. Put another layer of shrimp on top of that and salt them as well. Continue until all the shrimp are salted. This step can be done as the shrimp are sliced into two pieces.

Heat the chicken stock and the water until boiling and then turn down to a low simmer.

Sauté the onion in the oil until soft.

Add the fennel and continue to cook until soft.

Add the rice and stir to coat each grain with oil.

Add the wine and cook and stir until the wine is absorbed.

Add a ladle of stock to the rice and stir.

Stir (on and off) until the stock is absorbed.

Repeat the last two steps until the rice is almost cooked. If you need more liquid, just add hot water to the stock mixture. The rice should be tender but still firm in the center.

Stir in fennel fronds and the shrimp and cook a few minutes until they are opaque and pink. Add salt and freshly ground pepper to taste.

Serve immediately.

Note: you can make this with butter if you prefer a richer taste.

Planning and Food Shopping Tips from the Trenches

by

Washing_parlsely
My late father had many colorful expressions at his disposal. He wasn't a man who swore a lot (at least not around the children), and he had a great faculty with language (he was a litigator). One the things he used to say when something wasn't going his way was, "I need this like I need a hole in my head."

That expression came to mind tonight when I came home. I have a number of recent and unexpected stresses in my life right now. One is a career-related project that I'm very excited about and will fully describe in the near future. As thrilling as this project is, it does take up a lot of brain power. The other stress is related to my living situation, and it remains in my best interest not to detail it here. Suffice it to say that I need it like I need a hole in my head.

I've been so distracted that I can barely cook. Usually, I do the menu planning and grocery buying, but this week Santa Maria volunteered to take on this task. She's doing her best to pick up much of the domestic labor as I throw myself into this new work project of mine, but she is also subject to the same living-situation stress as I am.

When I plan a menu, I try to think three or four steps ahead, and I'm proud of one of my more recent tricks that helps me balance work, play, parenting, cooking, and shopping. For a long time, I've been frustrated by the way fresh herbs spoil before you can use them up. Take parsley, for example. How many times have you thrown out three-quarters of a limp head a week after using a pinch to gussy up a dish? Parsley is on my mind lately because it is a key ingredient in the weekly quinoa-and-sweet-potato salad I make for Santa Maria's lunch.

Due to the recent distractions, I forgot to put parsley on the shopping list last weekend. But I was still able to make the quinoa salad because of the trick I've learned. As soon as a head of parsley comes into the house, I wash it well and dry it thoroughly in the salad spinner. It will then keep in the refrigerator for up to two weeks.

I'm very grateful that Santa Maria is helping out with the shopping and planning. Her menu for this week included mushroom risotto. Delightful, I thought. It was something I could put together tonight while the kids were playing before bedtime. I'm not of the persuasion that risotto needs to be stirred constantly. It's not necessary. I'm not a great chef, just a great eater. Though if you ate my food, you might quibble with that self-deprecating description. I can cook very well, and love to do it.

Tonight, though, I was stymied. I couldn't find any mushrooms in the house. I asked Santa Maria where the dried porcini were, or if we had any at all. "I don't know," she replied. "How could you not know, if you put the dish on the menu for the week," I snapped. 

"Porcini mushrooms are a staple." she said. "They should be in the house, like salt, Mr. Stay-at-Stove-Dad."

On to plan B, which was no plan. I found a head of cauliflower and Santa Maria offered to roast it. That was very nice of her, as it got me out of the kitchen. I was starting to feel angry because I wasn't going to have a delicious dinner. I sat with the kids while they played, and if ever there was an antidote to anger it's in their joyful laughter.

I snacked on some baby carrots, and gave my blood-sugar a boost. Pinta trotted around eating what she called a pequeño carrot, and I relaxed. There was left over asparagus from the kids' dinner, and I found some frozen empanadas to round out my dinner. A filling meal, but not one with any real culinary satisfaction.

One of my favorite artists, Prince, uses my father's expression in a slightly different context. It's not one of his better songs, but somehow it seems fitting. Santa Maria suggested it.

My First Time Baking: A Recipe for Pear Upside-Down Cake

by

Pear_upside_down_cake
I don’t have many memories of my mother baking, which is not to say she didn’t do it ever. Though as Santa Maria says, who could blame her if she didn’t—she had five kids to care for.  I recall her making Christmas cookies with my sisters, and she successfully passed the female baking baton off to them. I owe most of my memories of baked goods, including snickerdoodles, butterscotch brownies, and lemon-meringue pie, to my sisters.

 

My mother stuck to making Irish soda bread, and someday I’ll share the recipe (as soon as I get her permission). She makes a new world version with less butter, and no caraway seeds (she was the eldest daughter in a family with five daughters and one son, my delightful uncle John. As a boy, John didn’t like caraway seeds so no one else got to eat them either).

One thing I do remember my mother making is pineapple upside-down cake, which was a syrupy and sweet dentist’s nightmare. If I close my eyes, I can still see the caramelized yellow cubes of fruit and taste the brown gooey bits of sugar. I loved it.

On Wednesday last week, Mark Bittman wrote in the New York Times about a variation on the pineapple upside-down cake, using maple syrup and pears instead of plain sugar and the Hawaiian fruit. I love pears and I was enticed to consider making it.

Santa Maria is correct in thinking that my mom was too busy to bake when I was young. Her mom, Jane, is a relentless baker even at eight-six years old—she has pies and cookies in the freezer every time we go to visit—but she only had two children. My mother was busy making school lunches, breakfasts, and dinners seven days a week. Seven days a week! We hardly ever ate out, and I’ve never once had a frozen dinner. She did an astonishing job.

I’m tired from cooking for just two kids, and I serve them frozen fish sticks three times a week. I basically want for my children what I had growing up—home-cooked meals and a balanced diet.

 

On his video about making the cake, Bittman talks about how little patience he has for the details of baking. Santa Maria is not known for her patience, but she is a seasoned baker with very particular tastes. She took one look at his recipe and made a few adjustments. I defer to her in all dessert-related matters, and, the truth is, I didn’t feel confident. I was happy to have her guidance. (She threw out the maple syrup, which she said she didn’t like the taste of in baked goods, and she twiddled with a few of the other proportions. She typically reduces the amount of sugar by at least a third.)

Cooking is easy for me because I’ve mastered a few basic techniques and I stick to them. I can take on new recipes fairly confident about how they’ll turn out because I’ll pick ones that build on these basic skills. Baking is another question. I’ve never been interested in doing it because I’ve been preoccupied with my needs and not my desires. I need to eat, and I need to eat well. Not too much sugar, and more daily calories than a high school football lineman would consume in a day. That takes a lot of work.

But as I’ve gotten better at managing the day-to-day cooking (and as my metabolism has slowed a bit), I’m starting to think about my desires. A slice of cake after dinner sounded mighty good.

 

I enlisted the help of Nina and Pinta, although once my eldest heard that there were pears in the cake, she said that she would only help make it if she didn’t have to eat it. She hates fruit that much. She is a fruitophobe.

I got the process underway by gathering all the ingredients. I put the kids in the kitchen with the laptop and let them watch Bittman’s video over and over. Pinta kept saying “upside-down cake.”

Soon, it was time to cream the butter and the sugar. I squatted on the floor of our kitchen with Nina at my side. I had the mixer going in my right hand.  A stick of butter stood rigid across the bottle of the steel mixing bowl. Sugar was sprinkled about. The blades of the mixer dug into the butter, and started throwing off curled clumps. The more I pushed into the butter, the more the hand mixer protested. Nina was crouched next to me. She thought it looked like popcorn. She liked the way the curled bits of butter were jumping all over. I was concerned they’d jump out of the bowl. It felt like a humbling process, but that’s just because I hadn’t done it before, and I wasn’t confident that I was doing it correctly. It certainly didn’t look like I was doing it right.

Santa Maria said that she would have let the butter soften up. I wish she had told me that earlier, I thought. Pinta had been playing with the stick of butter and I took it away from her because she was softening it up. I could have let her play to her heart’s content.

Santa Maria taught me about combining the dry ingredients with the wet ones, and soon enough we had a cake. She adores a pear tart dessert at our favorite local restaurant, Al di La. It has chocolate in it, so, at the last minute, she stuck some pieces of dark chocolate in one corner of the batter.

Nina asked if the work was done, and then said she was going to lie down (she’d been running a fever all day). I started to make dinner—our seafood feast.

After the cake was in the oven, the kitchen started to smell very nice. It smelled like a cake was baking. Is there a kinder, more nurturing scent out there? 

 

We all loved the caramelized pears on top, but Santa Maria thought the chocolate was too bitter. Next time she would make it with semi-sweet chocolate. Nina didn’t eat any because she was too sick. Pinta had so much that her stomach ached. I downed two pieces and enjoyed every bite. Then I got a headache from the sugar.

Later that night I had to barricade Santa Maria from the kitchen because she was sneaking leftovers. She’s powerless over sweets and I knew drastic action needed to be taken. I quickly called up a dear friend who lives nearby to offer her some (she said that we were laughing so much on the phone that she thought there was alcohol in the cake) and then I left some more on the doorstep of our downstairs neighbors. They texted me the next day to say they found it upon coming home after a few drinks and that it was a pleasant surprise. They said they loved the Guinea Pig role.  

Not a bad outcome for my first cake, though to give credit where credit is due, it was a success because of Santa Maria, who helped to make it, like all the good and sweet things in my life, possible.

 

Adapted from Mark Bittman, whose original recipe is here.

 

 

Santa Maria’s Pear Upside-Down Cake

 

  • 11 Tablespoons butter
  • ¼ Cup packed brown sugar
  • 3 pears, peeled, cored, and thinly sliced
  • 2/3 cups granulated sugar
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla
  • 2 eggs
  • 1 ½ cups flour
  • 1 ½ teaspoons baking powder
  • ¼ teaspoon salt
  • ½ cup milk
  • optional: 1/3 cup (2 oz.) semi-sweet chocolate pieces (broken from a bar into whatever size you prefer)

 

Heat oven to 350 degrees.

 

Melt three tablespoons butter in a small pan over medium heat.

Add brown sugar and cook, stirring, until sugar dissolves.

Bring to a boil and cook for two minutes.

Remove from heat and pour the mixture into a 9 ½ -inch baking pan.

Arrange the pear slices in the sugar mixture as you see fit.

In a mixing bowl, beat the remaining butter (one stick) and the sugar with a mixer until it is light and fluffy.

Add the vanilla and eggs and mix until smooth.

 

In a separate bowl, combine the flour, baking powder, and salt.

Combine the wet (butter) and dry (flour) mixtures in three batches with the milk. And mix until barely combined. Do not over mix. Lumps are okay.

Carefully spread the cake batter on top of the pears using a spatula.

Bake in oven about 45 minutes, until top is golden. A thin sharp knife stuck in the cake should come out clean.

Let the cake sit for five minutes.

Run a knife around the edge of the cake pan.

Put a plate on top of the cake and carefully flip it so the plate is on the bottom and the pan is on top.

Serve warm or at room temperature.

 

Note: Fold chocolate pieces into the batter before baking for a slightly richer cake.

There’s BPA In My Daughter’s Soup?

by

Bisphenol_A
On Sunday, The New York Times disrupted my menu planning.
One of the key things that I’ve relied upon to get me through the week is
Progresso’s canned lentil soup. I feel like I might sound like a housewife in
the fifties by saying this, but it felt to me like a miracle food. My daughter
Nina is crazy for it, and it’s very healthy (aside, perhaps, from its sodium
content).

Whenever I heard Nina say it was her favorite food, my heart
both sunk and soared. I was sad that she didn’t favor one of my home-cooked
meals, but I was delighted that she found such a nutritious dish so tasty.

Now, I learn, according to Nicholas D. Kristof , it is
nearly poison. The issue is Bisphenol A, or BPA, a synthetic estrogen that is
common in certain plastics and that has the nasty potential to disrupt
developing endocrine systems.  BPA
is not in the soup when they make it, but it is in the epoxy used to line the
cans. It then leaches into the food.

The science on this isn’t conclusive. Something called the
Business & Media Institute calls Kristof’s article scare mongering. But
then again, they led another story with “Somewhere in our office are old bumper
stickers proclaiming: “Proud Member of the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy.”

No matter what the pundits say, when it comes to kids just a
hint of danger is enough to change behavior. So for the time being, we’re
dropping the soup from our weekly rotation. I’m going to miss it, as is Nina.

What I'd really like is a statistical analysis of the risks of BPA versus the benefits of getting the out-of-season nutrients that canning provide. As someone at risk for prostate cancer, I'm interested in as much lycopene as I can find. My primary source is canned tomatoes. I'm not ready to give them up.

There's another possible solution—having the
government get the chemical out of the food (though this is, apparently, not without its risks; swap out the epoxy and invite botulism). None the less, there has to be a better technological solution. In the meantime,  bills are before congress to ban the chemical from food containers. I’m going to get in touch with my senator, Charles Schumer, who is
one of the sponsors of one of them.

Hard Family Times, Easy Fried Rice Recipe

by

Fried_Rice
Yesterday was a very long day, literally. Daylight savings
time ended, which for most adults means an extra hour of sleep, but not for
those with young children whose biological clocks take a few days to reset.
Pinta was up at 5:39 in the morning, and there was little that could be done
about it. We were up too.

 

It was also a long day emotionally. A year ago, my father
died after a long bout with prostate cancer. We spent the anniversary of his
death in church upstate and then eating ham, poached salmon, and quiche with my
extended family. The death of one’s father, no matter how expected, is a
roiling event that both defies discussion and spurs expression. Yesterday,
there was a lot of reminiscing, some arguing, and an opportunity to
connect with the living. I don’t get to talk very often face to face with one
of my brothers, who lives in Pennsylvania, and I was glad to see him.

 

Faulkner said, “The past is not dead. It’s not even past.”
The same could be said of the dead. They’re not past. We remember them in ways
large and small. In my father’s case, it’s in small ways such as looking up the
aisle at church or watching the New York Jet’s play on the television, and in
large ways like looking up the aisle at church or finding it difficult to
plainly reveal one’s emotional state. I’ll take a stab at the latter. Yesterday
was draining.I was sad, angry, morose, and probably a half-dozen other things I've yet to articulate.

 

We left upstate early and returned to the house before dark.
After a quick dash to the playground for some fresh air, we headed back inside.
I started to cook dinner while the girls played. I had a pound of flounder and
a head of asparagus and a questionable lack of plans for a starch.

 

The best I could come up with was mashed potatoes, which for
reasons that flummox me, the girls don’t really like. I didn’t actually feel
like making or eating mashed potatoes, but I needed something to go with the
fish and the vegetables. Somehow, I thought of fried rice. I have never made
fried rice before, but how hard could it be?

 

There were about two cups of rice already cooked in the
refrigerator, and I had three old scallions that it would be a potentially
poisoning crime to serve anyone without cooking them first. I looked in Mark
Bittman’s “How to Cook Everything” and took careful note of one detail. He said
it would take twenty-minutes to make; less, with pre-cooked rice. I was all
set.

 

Nina was excited for dinner. She wanted to help make
something. The asparagus was cooking, the fish kind of takes care of itself,
and the rice was well underway. There wasn’t any easy task for her to handle.
She loves to set the table, though, and she seized on this idea. She even wrote
and cut out place cards with everyone’s name. And she and Nina loved the rice.
It was the easiest and most relaxing dinner in a long time, a perfect antidote
to a challenging day.

 

 

 Quick Fried Rice

  • 1 or two garlic cloves, diced
  • 3 scallions, diced
  • about a half-inch or so fresh ginger, peeled and diced
  • vegetable oil
  • 2 to 4 cups of cooked rice
  • 1 to 2 eggs, lightly beaten
  • 1 to 2 teaspoons soy sauce

        Heat the oil in a large frying pan or wok.

        Saute the garlic, scallions, and ginger for about a minute.

        Add the rice, stirring constantly.

        Clear a spot in the center of the pan and pour a bit of the egg on the surface and continue to stir.

        Repeat until the egg is used up and mixed in with the rice.

        Add the soy sauce.

 

Bread Recipe for Simpletons

by

Eli_Bread
An old friend, Elisha Cooper, has recently developed an obsession with baking bread. Late last week, he paid me a surprise visit at work. He biked from his home to my office with a fresh, warm loaf on his back. I took it to my desk and my colleagues and I buttered the soft, salty, and cornmeal-encrusted slices and devoured them. The loaf was delicious.

We’re always running out of bread around the house, so I asked Elisha how long his loaf keeps. He doesn’t know. He always eats it fresh. It's so easy to make, he makes it all the time. After the dough is ready, it only takes about a half hour to finish the bread, so he’ll throw some dough in the oven while preparing the rest of his dinner. By the time his meal is ready, his bread is too.

Tonight, I left my office thinking about his bread. I was headed home to eat my Bolognese, which I was very relieved to find in the freezer this morning. I wasn’t in the mood to do any cooking when I woke. We’ve all been a little sick around the Stay at Stove Dad house. Given the limited amount of sleep we get (six hours is a wicked luxury, which makes me think of a sleep-related expression my mother-in-law introduced me to: “six hours for a man, seven for a woman, eight for a fool”), getting the necessary rest to get well seems like something reserved for the future, like say next May.

A loaf of warm fresh bread would have gone nicely with the Bolognese. I didn't have any intention of making it though. After my recent pizza debacle I’m a little gun shy. In time, I’m sure that will change. Meanwhile, here’s his recipe, which he got from his brother-in-law.

Bread For Simpletons 

  • 3.5 cups flour,
  • 1 teaspoon salt
  • 1.5  teaspoon yeast
  • 1.5 cups hot water
  • cornmeal

Mix the flour, salt, yeast, and water in a bowl in the morning.
Let it sit all day with saran wrap across top of bowl (think about other things, go on about your business).  

When ready to bake the bread:
Heat oven to 425 degrees.
Throw the dough in whatever shape on cornmeal-sprinkled pan and wait fifteen minutes.
After the quarter-hour passes, fold the dough over on itself. 
Place in oven and bake for 22  minutes (or however long), until it browns and it sounds hollow when you whack its belly.
Eat!

Why Pay for Pizza?

by

 

Kneading_dough
Pizza is perhaps the perfect food. It makes for cheap night
out with next to nothing to clean up (other than the kids). It is fairly nutritious
(lycopene, anyone?), and children almost universally love it. There’s just one
catch, as I discovered today—for all of its appeal to be evident, it must be
made by a professional.

 

This afternoon, a friend from Manhattan and her young son
stopped by before dinnertime for a quick visit. They had spent the day at the
Brooklyn Botanic Garden. We had spent the day getting ready for dinner, which
Nina announced as they were leaving. “We’re making plain pizza for dinner,” she said.

 

I overheard her and was torn. Should we have invited the boy
and his mom to stay for dinner? Maybe. I would have liked their company, but I
hadn’t planned on their coming over and I didn’t think I had enough food to
offer. So I didn’t say anything, and it turned out to be the best decision. Not
because there was a shortage of food, but because the pizza was terrible.

 

For father’s day earlier this year, Santa Maria gave me a
pizza stone. I had asked her for one after reading in the Sunday New York Times Magazine an enticing account   by Sam Sifton about
making pizza.

 

The stone has sat at the bottom of our oven since June, but
this morning, Nina asked me “When are you going to make pizza?” I’ve been
looking for dishes to cook with the children, and it occurred to me that pizza,
with the messy dough and the drippy tomatoes and the bits of herbs, was a
perfect thing.

 

This conversation took place at about seven in the morning.
Santa Maria was asleep. I went to the computer and looked up Sifton’s article
on the Internet and found his recipe for pizza dough. I read it closely to see what
I would need to buy.

 

A few things posed a problem. Bread flour, was one. I had no
idea what that is. Santa Maria, though, has done her share of baking, and would
be able to help decode that mystery. Sifton said the dough needed to be made
the night before, but that the morning was okay. It was early enough in the day,
so we were still in business. A larger challenge loomed, though. His recipe
called for a standing mixer. I didn’t have one of those.

 

I was sitting with Nina and Pinta on a bench in our kitchen,
with the computer on my lap. What to do now? The online version of his article
comes with a charming video tutorial. Kids love videos. So we watched it
together. It tells you what to do if you don’t have a
standing mixer: You can knead the dough. Problem solved.

 

When Santa Maria got up, I told her about my plan to make
pizza from scratch. This idea made her want to go back to bed. After a cup of tea, and a walk through the park, though, Santa Maria
came around to the notion of making the pizza. We made the dough before the
children’s naps, to give it time to rise. Nina and Pinta enthusiastically
measured the flour, salt, oil, and other ingredients. Everything was fine until the yeast and the water
went into the mixture. Then, I started to panic.

 

Santa Maria proved her commitment to the project (and to me)
by fending off my shouts to review the recipe and the video. She
calmly dusted the countertop with flour and gave a quick tutorial to Nina,
Pinta, and myself on the finer art of kneading.

 

Our fingers were sticky with dough and flour covered the
floor, the girls’ dresses, and somehow, the chair in the next room, but
eventually we had a nice ball of dough. It smelled remarkably fresh and
delicious. I started to think about buying a standing mixer. Wouldn’t it be
nice to make this all the time? We napped and the dough rose. Later, I started to actually make the pizza.

 

In college, I worked in a pizzeria and I know how to toss
the dough in the air. With my children beside me, I relived my undergraduate
days. It was a great show, but soon I had stretched the dough until it was much
larger than my little pizza stone and wooden peel. I folded the dough over
itself and fit it on the wooden surface. Mistake number one.

 

Together we spread the tomatoes and cheese on the dough. I slid
the pizza into the oven without incident and felt a happy tingle of
anticipation. I had been anxious about the pizza sticking to the peel, so I had
covered it with extra flour. Mistake number two.

 

As the pizza cooked, the kitchen started to fill with
smoke (that extra flour started to burn the minute the pie went into the oven). Before I could deal with the smoke, I realized that I didn’t have any way to get the cooked pizza out of the oven.
My pizza stone came with a wooden peel, but not with the thin metal thing
necessary to slide under the cooked pie and pull it from the heat. Mistake number
three.

 

According to the recipe, we had seven minutes to come up with a solution. I wielded a
spatula. Santa Maria stood by with a baking sheet and a ceramic plate (as small
as the pie was, it was still wider than the largest baking sheet we had).
Eventually, we pulled a delicious-looking pie from the oven.

 

We sprinkled it with fresh basil and grated Parmesan, and
brought it to the table. The girls were waiting with their little knives and
forks. We sliced up two pieces each for them, and that’s when the futile nature
of the whole enterprise became evident.

 

Pinta didn’t like the tomatoes. Neither did her older
sister, who kept calling them “the orange stuff.” Soon neither one of them was
eating anything.

 

Santa Maria was suspiciously silent at her
end of the table. There’s a silence when people are eating that’s good. It
means they are so interested in their food that they have forgotten to talk. There are
usually a couple of periods like this during every dinner party. This was not
one of those silences. This was more like a “I don’t know how to find the words
to tell you, dear husband who spent nearly the whole day involving the family
in this lark, that the pizza tasted like something I can’t say in front of the
children.”

 

I went back into the smoke-filled kitchen to redeem myself
with another pie. I told Santa Maria that she would like the next one I made
better. “That wouldn’t be hard,” she replied.

 

The first pie had been plain and the crust too thick and
floury. I halved the amount of dough, doubled the tomatoes, added fresh
mushrooms and garlic. I was going to make a thin-crusted masterpiece. Into the
oven it went. When I tried to take it out, I pulled a hole in the center and
was left with what could charitably be called a donut.

 

The kitchen was a flour-covered mess. The sink was full of
dirty dishes. No one had been fed. I told the kids that next time we have pizza we'll go out for it. And I told myself, that at least I won’t have to spend any money on
a standing mixer anytime soon.

 

 

 

 

Win Some, Lose Some Puttanesca Recipe

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Anchovies

As much as I would like to run the family kitchen like dictator and decide for everyone what they should eat, I don’t. I run it more like a very small restaurant, with a very limited  menu. The menu is not on a chalkboard (although that might help once the kids learn to read), and it is not printed up on paper. It is a verbal menu. I tell the kids what I can make for them on a given day, and give them a choice or two.

As simple as this is, it can be confusing for a young child, mostly because I’m giving them the choice of lunch and dinner before I’ve given them breakfast. At 7:45 a.m., I’ll say, “Do you want puttanesca for dinner?” and Pinta will reply in that plaintive way known only to two-year olds and mega-rich rock stars, “I want it now!”

I have to explain to her that I don’t have it made yet, never mind that it’s not something one eats for breakfast, and that the oatmeal that she was demanding moments ago is already boiling on the stove. She gets it, eventually.

So it went the other morning, when Pinta was tossing her head back and crying out for puttanesca. No problem, I told her, I’ll make it for your dinner. Lately, it’s been one of her favorites.

The beautiful thing about puttanesca, besides its rich and salty taste, is that it is one of the easiest things in the kitchen to make. And all of its ingredients are things that don’t spoil and
can, and should, be kept on hand at all times. I put the sauce together in the brief moment it took Santa Maria to get the milk and cereal from our kitchen to the dining-room table.

The sauce gives off a slightly odd smell for eight in the morning, but knowing that it would be ready for their baby sitter to give to them for dinner was very comforting.

Puttanesca sauce is perhaps one of the
oldest recipes in the world. It is a storied sauce, and no matter the hour. it’s a tale worth contemplating. Its
origins are often traced to Naples and to the prostitutes of that
seaside city. Puttanesca derives from the Italian for prostitute,
puttana, and for some, its pungent and enticing aroma calls to mind
what Courbert captured so gamely in l’Origine du Monde. The story I favor is that puttanesca sauce came into being because the prostitutes
needed something to make between customers, and they didn’t want to
waste time. I know what it feels like to be rushed.

I finished the sauce by throwing in the olives and capers while doing the breakfast dishes. As delicious as the sauce turned out, I learned later that Pinta spurned it that evening. Win some, lose some. And that means more sauce for me.

Puttanesca Sauce

  • 1 28 oz. can peeled plum tomatoes, crushed (or hit with an immersion blender, which is very fast)
  • 4 or more cloves of garlic, peeled and smashed
  • 3 anchovy fillets
  • 1 chili pepper
  • 1T capers
  • 12 or so black olives, sliced
  • herbs
    such as basil or oregano to taste (completely optional)

Heat some olive oil in a heavy-bottomed
pan. Add the garlic and anchovies and chili pepper. Saute until garlic is
soft, add tomatoes and reduce.

When the sauce thickens (in about fifteen minutes), add capers and olives and any herbs.

Serve over the pasta of your choice.

The Many Ways to Make a Bolognese Recipe

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My brother Tom and his wife, Liza, recently brought into this world their first child, a beautiful little boy, Luca. Last week, I took one look at him swaddled on their Brooklyn couch and said to myself, “Yes, I’m ready to be a grandparent.” Then I thought about what advice I might give my brother.

When I first became a parent, I learned that there are at dozens of different ways to do any child-related task, from breast-versus-bottle feeding, to plastic-versus-glass bottles, to milk-versus-soy-based formula to co-sleeping, attachment parenting, and Ferberizing. What I took away from the surfeit of opinions was that there was no right way to do anything. No right way, therefore, no wrong way. I was in business as a father.

I considered how I could sum this up to him. I concluded that the easiest thing to tell him is that there are as many ways to make a Bolognese as there are to parent.

In his book about learning how to cook Italian food, “Heat,” Bill Buford enumerates a few of the variations: “A Bolognese is made with a medieval kitchen’s quirky sense of ostentation and flavorings. There are at least two meats (beef and pork, although local variations can insist on veal instead of beef, prosciutto instead of pork, and sometimes prosciutto, pancetta, sausage, and pork, not to mention capon, turkey, or chicken livers) and three liquids (milk, wine, and broth), and either tomatoes (if your family is modern) or no tomatoes (if the family recipe is older than Columbus), plus nutmeg, sometimes cinnamon, and whatever else your great-great-great-grandmother said was essential”

Most Americans I know have little knowledge of what their great-great-great grandmothers might have cooked (or what she might have thought was essential when it came to child rearing). My brother and I are no exception. In a great-grandparent’s place, we have authorities like Marcella Hazan and Mark Bittman.

Hazan’s “Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking” outlines her requirements for a good Bolognese:

  •     The meat should not be from too lean a cut; the more marbled it is, the sweeter the ragù will be. The most desirable cut of beef is the neck portion of the chuck.
  •     Add salt immediately when sautéing the meat to extract its juices for the subsequent benefit of the sauce.
  •     Cook the meat in milk before adding wine and tomatoes to protect it from the acidic bite of the latter.

She goes on, but I won’t. I adapted my recipe from Potato masher

Recently, however, she has cut back on her consumption of the sauce. It could be that her tastes have changed, or might just be the fickleness of a four-year-old. Either way, I wanted to get her eating it again, so I made a slight adjustment to my method.  I realized that my meat was clumping (perhaps a consequence of skipping the milk step?), and I remedied that by crushing the cooked ground beef with a potato masher. I wasn’t sure if the more finely pulverized beef made a bigger difference than fact that I told her that I’d made it special for her, but Nina loved my latest version of it.

One note on the sauce: It may take hours to cook (during which period your house will smell heavenly), but it freezes extremely well and, if packed in quart or smaller container, defrosts on a low heat in the brief amount of time it takes to boil water and make pasta, making it a perfect alternative to a weeknight take-out dinner. Plus, it will taste much better than anything that comes out of a steaming cardboard box.

Bolognese Meat Sauce (the Park Slope Way)

  •  1 onion, chopped
  • 2-3 carrots, chopped
  • 1 stalk of celery, chopped
  • 2 slices of bacon, chopped
  • 1 cup chicken stock
  • 1/2 cup white (or red) wine
  • 11/2 lb ground beef
  • 3 cans of peeled plum tomatoes, diced to bits with an immersion blender
  • Cinnamon and nutmeg to taste

 

Saute the onion, carrot, celery, and bacon until the vegetables are soft and the bacon fat rendered.

Add the beef and cook it until it is brown.

Add the wine and cook it off.

Add  the stock.

Add the tomatoes and the spices and simmer until thick (about three hours).

Where I’ve been

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Last week, we headed out west to see Santa Maria’s folks, and spent five days in their company. They have many things at their place, from a grand piano that needs tuning in their living room to an old Mercedes coupe that’s going to seed in their garage. But they don’t have wireless Internet access, so I wasn’t able to blog.

Instead, I went swimming at a nearby lake where evergreens ring the water and canoes slip silently by. Another day we went to a family-run amusement park out in the country where green mountains stand sentinel over the gleeful screams of children and piped-in strains of country rock.  It was a fine way to end the summer.

We make the two-hundred-fifty-mile trip to visit them once or twice a year. Sometimes the journey goes well for me. Other times, not so well.

A low point of recent memory: Thanksgiving last year. Pinta screamed through dinner. I lost my temper and tossed some thoughtless verbal barbs at those gathered around the table before retreating to the kitchen. I’m forever grateful to Santa Maria’s brother for the sly comic line he let loose as I departed the dining room. I don’t remember what he said, but I remember that it was funny and that it made me feel a little bit better.

During this visit I happened to be sitting outside a local shop drinking an iced coffee. It was Sunday, and I watched a father and his family leave the shop. One of his boys was whining about something he wanted to keep. His father insisted that he throw it out. The child was about eight, and he had his heart set on holding on to it. I heard them arguing before I saw them, and when I looked at the father I could see how angry he was.

Why are dads typically so angry? My dad was angry. I’m often angry. If I thought for a minute, I could find many more examples than the guy at the coffee shop, my dad, and myself, but three examples constitutes a trend so I’ll stop there.

Perhaps it is because men are conditioned to succeed in the business world, where controlling, managing, and more-or-less avoiding emotions are part of the unofficial office rule book. Except for anger (see professional football, traffic cops, and investment bankers at the top of their game). Anger is ok.

Children, on the other hand, are nothing but pure emotion. They cry. They scream. They have temper tantrums. All things grown men wish they could do around the cubicle, but can’t.

Put men with children, and out comes anger, the single emotion men are most versed in. Of course this is not true for all men, and it's not true all the time for any man. But there's some truth to it, I'm sure.

I'm sure this dynamic can change, and the thing I'm banking on is awareness. If we can see it, we can change it.

What does this have to do with cooking? Emotions are at the root of why I cook so
much: where else do I experience the same sense of control and reward?

I found some reward in my lunch today. Because we were away for few days, we're a little behind on the shopping. There wasn't much in the kitchen this morning, but today I found enough left-overs to make a nice sandwhich. The key was basil pesto. I had it in the fridge from the other day.  I put it on some poached chicken and had it with fresh bread. It changed two simple ingredients, bread and chicken, into a tasty treat.