Six Truffles

I've been doing so much chopping, warming, stirring, rolling, and dipping of chocolate in recent days that I've developed symptoms of the carpal tunnel sort. Since I've been making sweets rather than making progress on the dissertation, I should probably avoid confusing the swelling and stiffness in my hands with any injury incurred from hours of furious typing. I'm suffering the consequences of of an activity so much sweeter than forming senteces on an electronic keyboard. I've been making Christmas gifts...pretty little edible things. It's truffle-maker's repetitive motion stress that's ailing me, and I couldn't be happier.


Aiming to spend responsibly and give richly this Christmas season, I tried to make and bake as many gifts as I could. In a moment of presumptuousness, I passed over all of those gift-worthy cookie and fudge recipes, girded my loins with a checkered apron, and embarked on a truffle making extravaganza. The recent arrival of Trader Joe's--and their inexpensive "pound plus" Belgian chocolate bars--made my plan seem so simple, so reasonable.* Come on, I thought, what's a box of plain old truffles compared to a box of six different truffles. That's almost a week's truffles for those of herculean will, twenty minutes' worth for those more inclined to an all out chocolate binge.



Food and Paper Truffles, clockwise from top left:
-chocolate covered macadamia nut truffle rolled in toasted coconut
-white chocolate ginger bread truffle with candied ginger
-dark chocolate covered caramel dusted with fleur de sel
-dark chocolate covered peanut butter truffle topped with salted peanuts
-dark chocolate truffle dusted with cocoa powder
-milk chocolate espresso truffle with chocolate covered coffee bean

For all their associations with decadence, truffles are simple things: (1) Melt chocolate in hot cream; (2) add your choice of flavorings; (3) chill; (4) form into balls; (5) chill; (6) dip, roll, or sprinkle; (7) and chill. I started with a few recipes from epicurious.com, and added some nuts here, some white chocolate there, until I had six tasty sounding varieties. Truffles don't test your baking smarts; they test your finger joints and your patience. A sharp knife for cutting chocolate bars and a decent double boiler will help preserve your hands. To preserve your patience? Well, this advice I can give rather confidently: pacing before the closed door of your refrigerator will not encourage your chocolate to stiffen up any faster, and neither will opening that closed door and poking the chilling chocolate with your finger. Out of all those repetitive tasks involved in truffle making, the only really onerous one is the waiting. But you know what they say comes to those who wait.

After a week of pacing and poking, I had a freezer full of truffles resting in tupper ware containers. When the gift-giving hour arrived, I plopped six truffles in candy papers, wrapped them in tissue paper, and closed them in boxes tied with twine. Those brown squirrels are eating acorns, I'm pretty sure, but they could almost be cradling truffles.


* I used Trader Joe's "pound plus" semisweet (53%) and dark (70%) chocolate bars for these truffles. I liked the flavor of this chocolate, and will use it in the future. I don't doubt that some more expensive chocolates are better, but they are also more expensive. This chocolate is a real deal at around $3 for 17.6 ounces. I do not recommend, however, Trader Joe's white chocolate chips. They are too sweet, and do not melt well. In fact, in the middle of dipping the ginger bread truffles, I chucked a whole pound of the stuff into the trash and went out to Whole Foods for several bars of Ghiradelli white chocolate. They melted very nicely and tasted good too.

Consider the Cauliflower

If you were asked to make a list of the top five vegetables available in virtually any grocery store, but continually overlooked by even foodish types, you would probably include that hefty, bumpy, yet attractively named cauliflower. It would fall on your list among the maligned but rebounding brussels sprout, the gem-hued but unpopular beet, and cauliflower's own ugly stepsister, broccoli. For years I looked blithely past these veggies, fixing my eyes on more simple, more obvious specimens, like bell peppers, carrots, even eggplant. I always thought that cauliflower looked nice, its bright buds encircled in a ring of pale green. It seemed like a vegetable that deserved to have its portrait painted, but not necessarily something to be taken home and eaten. Well, things have changed. Allow me to counsel you, dear reader, take it home.

But when you get home, don't, please don't, type "how to cook cauliflower" into your Google bar. I know, this tactic may have served you well in the past ("how to remove red wine stains," "how to tie a bow tie," "how to dice an onion"--I recommend all of these inquiries); but the world wide web is not, generally speaking, cauliflower-friendly. One site after another urges its readers to submit their cauliflower to hot water or steam. The result: pale, flaccid, waterlogged vegetables. As my youngest sister and her friends would say, "like, eewww." I may be going overboard here, but this culinary advice amounts to nothing less than vegetable hate speech. The hate you've felt towards certain vegetables--broccoli, brussels sprouts, rutabagas, and our dear cauliflower--has been displaced. We should be wrinkling our noses at boiling and steaming, not at the poor vegetables that emerge from these procedures.

No one, no four star restaurant chef, no opinionated food blogger, has undertaken the task of emending Wikipedia's cooking suggestions for this particular vegetable: "Cauliflower can be boiled, steamed or eaten raw." This bit of info would more accurately read: "Cauliflower becomes nearly unpalatable when boiled or steamed. Eaten raw, it's ok for starvation dieters. But roasted with garlic, it is just plain delicious."

Tossed with olive oil, garlic, and plenty of salt, then roasted in a blazing oven, cauliflower comes out all nice and toasty, tender in the middle and crisp around the edges. Dressed up with a sprinkling of chili flakes and a squirt of lemon juice, cauliflower tastes down right fancy...a side dish to dress up roasted chicken...maybe even outshine the chicken altogether. Heck, do without the chicken. It's already had its fifteen minutes of fame.

Roasted Cauliflower with Garlic and Parsley
Serves 4.

1 head cauliflower, cut into florets
three tablespoons minced garlic
1/4 cup olive oil
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon pepper
1/4 teaspoon hot chili flakes, or more if you're spicy
3 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley
1 lemon, cut into 4 wedges

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Toss cauliflower with olive oil, garlic, salt, and pepper.
2. Spread mixture evenly on baking sheet and roast 25-30 minutes, stirring every so often, until cauliflower is nice and brown around the edges. Don't take it out of the oven too soon.
3. Toss with parsley; season with salt and pepper to taste; serve with lemon wedges.

Be Prepared: Training for End-of-Year Gluttony

I admit it, my views about health food might not be altogether sound. I've praised the freshness of deep fried dishes. On the night before the big 5 K race, I served huge patties of red meat to a certain runner in training. My solitary dinners look like a carbo-fetishist's dream fulfillment. I'm not trying to hide anything. Really. It's just that other people don't seem to salivate at the prospect of munching through a lap-sized bowl of popcorn for dinner.

But come this time of year, even I blanch a bit at the holiday eating habits on the horizon, the ones against which I'll brace myself, only to give in the moment I meet my first array of holiday spreads and dips (Oh...my granny's crab dip!). Then, there are the tins of homemade candies and cookies: seven layer bars, peanut butter fudge, peanut brittle, peanut butter cookies topped with Hershey's kisses...

Hmmm. I never realized how peanut-buttery the Christmas season is until now. I should have, though. During the months of December and January, a plastic gum ball dispenser filled with red and green peanut M&M's sits on my grandparents' kitchen counter. I don't know what it is about those little candies that I find so irresistible, but I can't pass by that damn dispenser without pushing the lever, holding out my hand for a few M&M's, and greedily popping them into my mouth. I just can't help it...those M&M's sit in that little plastic globe, just waiting to tempt someone to push the lever..."Sarah, push the lever... Push it!!!!" And I don't really even like candy.

To get to the point--and, yes, there is one: now is the time for prophylactic dining...healthy eating to counterbalance, in advance, the many peanut-laced delights I am soon to gobble up. Nothing says healthy to me like tofu, seaweed, and buckwheat.


No, these are not the components of some bitter-tasting health tonic to be downed with a grimace. They are the ingredients of my favorite mid-week dinners, and not just when I'm preparing for Christmas gluttony. Slurping up thick noodles from a bowl of broth that smells like the sea, alternating bites of tofu and chewy strands of wakame, tossing in a dash of chili oil and a pinch of sesame seeds when I can make myself set down my chopsticks, I congratulate myself on my salubrious diet. There is nothing like seaweed to make one feel all bright-eyed and pink-cheeked. With a few more rotations of this dish before the 23rd, I just know I'll be ready for hours of lever-pushing and M&M-chomping.

Buckwheat Noodle Soup with Tofu and a Taste of the Sea
Serves 4. In her Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone, Deborah Madison gives a recipe for a similar soup. I think it was her version that got me started tinkering.


Sometimes I like a milder broth, sometimes a spicier one, or with a deeper miso flavor. I just keep layering soy sauce, miso, sesame oil, and mirin into the broth, tasting until it seems right. These measurements of ingredients are estimates.

Now, you may protest: my week-night pantry isn't stocked with bonito flakes; I don't even know what wakame looks like. But this stuff is increasingly stocked on mainstream grocery shelves, and once you've bought your little seaweed packets, shrimp flakes, and silken tofu, they'll sit in your pantry, never threatening to go bad, until you want your next bowl of healthy victuals. One kombu packet will see you through this dish time and time again.

For stock:
6 cups water
2 3-to 4-inch pieces of dried kombu seaweed
1/4 cup bonito flakes

For soup:
1/4 cup dried wakame seaweed, plus 1 cup warm water for soaking
1/2 pound firm silken tofu, cut into small cubes
1/2 cup tamari or soy sauce
1 tablespoon toasted sesame oil
1/4 cup mirin
1 teaspoon hot chili-infused sesame oil
1/2 pound buckwheat soba noodles
2 tablespoons miso, color of your choosing

necessary garnishes:
green onions sliced into 1/2 inch pieces
toasted sesame seeds
hot chili-infused sesame oil

non-necessary garnishes:
thinly sliced mushrooms
fresh cilantro leaves, roughly chopped


1. Make the stock. Wipe off any salt or grit on the kombu with a damp cloth. Place kombu into a good sized pot and add about 6 cups of water. Bring to a boil over medium-high heat, then cover and simmer on lower heat for about 10 minutes. Sprinkle bonito flakes over water and remove from heat. Let sit for five minutes or so and then strain the liquid into a bowl through a fine mesh colander or cheesecloth-lined not-so-fine colander. At this point, you can let the stock cool and keep it refrigerated for a few days until you want it, or proceed with the soup making.

2. Proceed with the soup making. Cover dried wakame with warm water and let sit for 10 minutes until softened.

3. Set a large pot of water to boil for noodles. Bring stock to slow simmer in another pot over medium heat. Add soy sauce, sesame oil, and mirin to stock. Taste and adjust for saltiness and sweetness. Add more of anything you see fit. Reduce heat to low.

4. Boil soba noodles according to package directions (I usually dispense with the slow additions of cold water method, and boil them like flour pasta...but just don't overboil. They should still be firm to the bite when you take them off the heat.) Drain noodles and rinse them in colander with cold water to stop them cooking. Toss with a bit of sesame or peanut oil if it looks like they're sticking together.

5. Dissolve miso into soup. Add noodles and tofu and warm until heated through. Ladle into bowls. Garnish with necessary garnishes. Garnish with all, a few, or none of the non-necessary garnishes.

Figs and Philosophers

Come this time of year, you may find yourself scavenging for something yummy, festive, and good-looking to serve cocktail party guests or tote to a potluck dinner. You may or may not find yourself whipping up a plate of hors d'oeuvres for professors and graduate students of philosophy, but this was the predicament in which I recently found myself. Not sure if Ms. Stewart, epicurious.com, or the food channel could guide me here, I turned to a cookbook with a promising title: The Philosopher's Kitchen: Recipes from Ancient Greece and Rome for the Modern Cook.

I've dabbled in the pages of this beautifully photographed cookbook before. My first foray--a certain dish featuring scallops, fried garlic, and an arugula-mint cream sauce--has earned a rotating space in my dinner party repertoire. I've not revisited the trout custard since I discussed it here, but only because the opportunity has not presented itself...fish, eggs, and cream not being an often appreciated combination. The lamb skewers with mint marmalade are divine, and the chicken with plums has been recommended to me by a genuine philosopher, though I haven't yet had the chance to try it. In short, the recipes in this book will please the 21st century palates of your friends and family despite being written almost 2,000 years ago. Ms. Segan has kept her recipes true to their ancient origins by steering clear of the tomatoes, corn, potatoes, and chocolate not available to Greek and Roman cooks; but she has fulfilled her subtitle's promise by tweaking the recipes of Apicius and other ancient gourmands for today's cooks.

In other words, this stuff tastes good. As someone who has participated in a Roman banquet or two, I can say that this cookbook tastes like antiquity, but without the cloying amounts of honey, ubiquitous fermented fish sauce, and underseasoned meat. These dishes need not be eaten while wearing a bed-sheet toga. I'm sure I could pull them off in any dining setting, without even disclosing their ancient provenance. But if the mouths you will be feeding fancy themselves philosophers or know how to read Latin, all the better. The Philosopher's Kitchen's assorted fig appetizer is a personal favorite of mine. It has proved to please modern tastes, but, I wondered, what about the philosopher's palate?

The Philosopher's Kitchen is a bit of a misnomer. Having praised its recipes, I can ask, without much guilt, why Ms. Segan attributed these re-worked recipes to the kitchen of a philosopher. The philosophers of Greece and Rome, I feel compelled to say, were not gourmands in any sense. There was no philosopher's kitchen. If there had been such an establishment, where the meaning of Plato's forms were contemplated along with the steps required to make a good stuffed fish, philosophy as we know it may have taken an entirely different course. It turns out that philosophy and food, like vinegar and oil, don't mix so well.

I'm sure that ancient philosophers ate. A few of them may have aimed at transcending the exigencies of the body, but the success rate had to have been low at best. Epicurus, that Greek philosopher whose name has become equivalent with the pleasures of the table, would have certainly shuddered at the thought of a three star restaurant, and perhaps at the thought of a successful cookbook. If a philosopher's kitchen ever existed, its discovery would have meant disgrace upon the philosopher who dined on its dishes.

Epicurus urged his disciples to tame their bodily desires, avoid luxury at all costs, and follow a spartan's diet. Eating food may have been a necessary pleasure, but not one to be cultivated. Hunger and thirst, he reasoned, must be sated so that rumbling bellies and dry mouths would not hamper the pursuit of truth. The desire to dine was a distraction at best, a trouble in its own right, at worst. "Send me a little pot of cheese," Epicurus wrote, "so that I can indulge in extravagance when I wish."

Burdened with this history, what does one prepare for a gaggle of hungry philosophers? In his Republic, Plato envisions his city's inhabitants subsisting on a diet of barley and wheat flour loaves. It takes Glaucon's panicked interjection--"It seems that you make your people feast without any relishes"--for Socrates to grant them salt, olives, cheese, root vegetables, beans, and, lucky for me, figs. I'm not sure he would have approved of The Philosopher's Kitchen's figs, which, lined up on a white platter, look like edible gems. But figs they are, if a bit embellished.

At this particular holiday party, I witnessed philosophers pausing their philosophizing to pop a fig into their mouths. It seemed to me that they were able to resume their arguments on the validity of the death drive, the genius of Nietzsche, and other wine-soaked subjects after they swallowed.

Assorted Fig Appetizer
Adapted from The Philosopher's Kitchen: Recipes From Ancient Greece and Rome for the Modern Cook. Serves 8-10.


24 whole dried figs: It doesn't really matter if you use Mission or Turkish, as long as they have a nice shape (not too flat or squishy).
1 cup white wine
4 teaspoons marscapone cheese, stirred to a smooth consistency
zest of one lemon, finely grated
3 tablespoons finely chopped pistachio nuts
2 teaspoons honey
4 ounces thinly sliced prosciutto

1. Bring figs and wine to simmer in a saucepan over medium heat. Reduce heat to low, cover, and continue to simmer until the figs are soft, about 5 minutes. Remove them with a slotted spoon.
2. When figs have cooled enough to handle, cut 1/4 inch off the tops of each one. You may need to reshape the figs a bit at this point, rounding them out and pressing them to create a bottom flat enough for them to stand up on a platter. Top 8 figs with 1/2 teaspoon marscapone cheese and sprinkle with lemon zest.
3. Place chopped pistachios is small dish. Drizzle a little honey (warmed if necessary) onto the tops of 8 figs and then press cut side of figs into pistachios to coat.
4. Make a small cavity in the tops of the remaining 8 figs with the tip of your finger. Cut the prosciutto into 1/2 inch wide strips, roll into 8 small bundles, and press one into the cavity of each fig. You'll likely have a bit of prosciutto left over. Eat it secretly in the kitchen.
5. Arrange figs on platter and serve.

Divining Christmas Gifts: No Sweat Acorn Squash

My mother, Lord bless her, has some difficulty keeping secrets. While I am pretty confident in her ability to preserve mandatory, or earnestly sworn secrets, Lord bless her, those of the more quotidian variety tend to slip out. In other families, Christmas gifts might have fallen under the category of secrets to be specially guarded. Christmas secrets come but once a year. And, if only for the fact that they are relatively quickly disclosed in an orgy of torn wrapping paper and crushed cardboard, are not just easy to keep, but also rewarding. The look of utter surprise on a gift recipient's face might very well be considered why giving 'tis the reason for the season. My dear gift-giving mother, however, could never quite follow through with her intentions to guard her Christmas secrets. The result: while other children were annually driven to curiosity-induced frenzies by their tight-lipped parents, my siblings and I spent Advent making every effort to avoid discovering what lay hidden within the packages we would open come Christmas.

And it wasn't easy. By the first week in December, my parents' room was off limits--and not because they forbade us from entering when they might be in the act of gift wrapping. We voluntarily avoided this room because we knew that beyond its doors, our Christmas presents lay exposed...well, maybe not exposed, but sitting, unwrapped in transparent shopping bags. My sister and I avoided gazing upon my mother's shopping bags with the anxiety of children confronted with the primal scene. How could we avert our eyes? Yet how could we preserve a facade of normalcy around our parents if we looked, especially come Christmas morning?

My mom is not an exhibitionist by nature. Her indiscretion during the Christmas season was adopted, so I believe, to compensate for her own childhood Christmas anxieties. She was, I eventually learned, one of those children tormented by the secrecy of Christmas gifts. Unable to sleep at night, she would tip-toe out to quietly loosen the wrapping paper on at least one present under the tree, just to take the edge off before Christmas morning. Perhaps she thought she was giving us the greatest Christmas gift at all by casually exposing at least a few gifts, should we care to look.

In the end, though, my sister and I have become vigilant keepers of Christmas secrets, my sister even more than I. Mary might even find another recipient for the gift she intended for you should you discover its contents. She doesn't like Amazon wish lists--too easy, too predictable, too exposed. In order to keep from accidentally discovering the gifts to be given to me, as soon as Thanksgiving passes, I try to dismantle the parts of my brain that are capable of deductive reasoning. This policy may not be conducive to making progress on the dissertation, but it preserves the mysteries of Christmas.

With this history in tow, I today discovered the contents of the gift that will soon rest under our tree, bearing the label: From Patrick, To Sarah. Come December 25th, I will be the proud owner of a Chef's Choice M130 Professional Knife Sharpening Station, the item on my Amazon wish list I've most coveted over the last year. The secret came out as most genuinely guarded secrets do: an inkling + a doubt + a desire to please + a hint + a misperceived naivete = a knife sharpener disclosure. This discovery has me salivating for razor sharp knives, but also pining, with the knowledge of an adult, for a child's experience of Christmas morning.

I had already bought two acorn squash before I learned of my coming Christmas boon; and I have to say that I would have put off this purchase until after Christmas had I known then what I know now. I love winter squash: simmered in soup, tossed with pasta, mashed and served under a pat of butter, and baked with salt and pepper.

But I do not love cutting through winter squash. It's tedious, it's difficult, and it's scary. I've read the recommendations for the use of a cleaver and rubber mallet, neither of which I can ever imagine owning (unless someone wants to offer them to me as Christmas gifts). I usually end up sawing through their skins with a serrated knife, wiping away the sweat beads on my forehead before they drip onto my hands, cause a finger to slip, and send me to the emergency room. As my faith in this method tends to waver, I often find myself pushing my cart past piles of cute little winter squash and toward vegetables that require less elbow grease. But, by January, I'll be feasting on these little gourds, sliced safely and cleanly in half. For now, I'm glad to have had my acorn squash fix, despite the risk it entailed. The flesh of this squash comes out sweet and savory with, pardon me, vegetarians, an intriguing bacon-y flavor, which I love. Sage and squash make a perfect couple. The herb's flavor in this dish is assertive, but not at all overwhelming.


Baked Acorn Squash with Sage
Serves 2 as main dish.


2 small acorn squash
2 tablespoon olive oil
4 sage leaves
coarse salt and pepper
4 tablespoons finely grated parmesan cheese

1. Heat oven to 375 degrees. Cut the squash into halves and remove the seeds with a spoon. Brush the olive oil on the cut sides of the squash, place one sage leaf in each of the cavities, and sprinkle cut sides with plenty of salt and pepper.
2. Place squash halves cut side down on a baking sheet, and bake until the squash is soft and nicely browned, about 30 minutes.
3. Sprinkle squash with parmesan cheese, and serve.