Something Borrowed and Something New

Readers of this blog (bless you!) know that I don't often post recipes that I have made up myself. I do contrive certain dishes, even on a regular basis, but the results are usually (a) uninspiring and (b) unphotogenic. I attribute these shortcomings to the fact that these recipes are usually based loosely around the following ingredients: canned chick peas, kalamata olives, parsley, lemon, sardines, and parmesan cheese. Those are the ingredients I inevitably turn up when it's 7:30, I'm hungry, alone, and peering into the nooks and crannies of my kitchen. But when there are so many excellent recipes out there, and, on top of that, so many that have been tested, endorsed, and tweeked by cooks more ambitious than I, slight variation usually wins out over sheer creation, especially when I have other mouths to feed.

It was just that sentiment that drew me toward a miso-glazed fish recipe passionately endorsed online. There is a reason, I suppose, why variations on this dish were on the menu of several swanky restaurants in recent years including Nobu, Morimoto, and Aqua. It's good. But, who needs fine dining in New York when you can cook up your own gourmet, slightly passe, but entirely delicious miso-glazed fish at home? Why get all dolled up, glide into Nobu, and sip a gin martini while waiting for my miso-glazed cod when I can throw my own version together in Pittsburgh on a Wednesday night? Right? Right? It's not so different when you have someone to do your dishes, and I do. At least that's what a budget-conscious food aficionado who obsessively reads the restaurant reviews in the New York Times tells herself every now and then.

And what did I serve with the aforementioned fish but a salad that I dreamed up while gazing at a pink grapefruit in the local Giant Eagle. I daresay that this melange of fruit, scallions, and toasty sesame seeds outdid the fancy fish, though it was fine and all. Its tanginess certainly paired nicely with the musky sweetness of the miso-clad cod. Evidence: My table mate said, "Yum" as he bit into the fish. Fine. But, when he tasted the salad, he set down his fork, looked me in the eyes, and said, "Whoa, I've never tasted these flavors all mixed together before." Since he wasn't wearing a grimace on his face as he spoke and since he cleared his plate, I took that as a compliment.

So, Mr. Morimoto, in case you're reading this (and you just might be if you like to google yourself and then skip to the fiftieth or so page of results), please give my recipe a look. I know you still have the Black Cod with Miso on your menu (I just checked). I don't know what sort of fruit or vegetable you usually serve with it, but this pink grapefruit thing I threw together works pretty well. I think New Yorkers might like it, maybe even Frank Bruni himself.

Pink Grapefruit Salad with Scallions and Sesame Seeds
Serves 2.

1 pink grapefruit
1 scallion, white and light green parts chopped on the bias
1 teaspoon toasted sesame oil
1 teaspoon toasted sesame seeds
coarse salt

1. Positioned over a bowl, slice the skin and pith away from the grapefruit. Then cut along the interior membranes with a paring knife to release fruit wedges. Drain off most of the juice gathered in the bowl and discard (or drink!).
2. Toss grapefruit wedges with sesame seed oil and scallions. Sprinkle in sesame seeds and season generously with coarse salt.

A Life in Crackers

Food (or the lack thereof) has probably shaped the history of this planet more than anything else. There's war, of course, but what would war be without the human need to consume calories. Most of this history goes untold, despite every public school child's exposure to The First Thanksgiving and The Potato Famine. Today, though, I'm thinking on a smaller scale. Personal histories have their food chapters, too.

I suppose I could recount my life in chocolate (chocolate peanut butter balls made by mom, Easter Cadbury Creme Eggs, the countless milkshakes I blended for pay in high school, flourless chocolate cake, Christmas truffles).

I could give you a history of my life in beer (sips sneaked from my dad's Bud, a few too many Michelob Lites around age 20, Pale Ale revelation in grad school, the 2005 legalization of soupy Belgian beers in North Carolina).

And there are so many other possibilities: meat (didn't like it, liked it, vegetarian, not vegetarian); coffee (lots of milk and sugar, weak with skim milk, strong with creamer, latte, skim latte, double espresso); cereal (Cheerios, Honey Nut Cheerios, Chex, Frosted Mini-Wheats, Grape-Nuts loaded with sugar, Peanut Butter Captain Crunch, granola, oatmeal, Grape-Nuts with no sugar).

But today, a life in crackers:

*sweet-tasting crackers gummed down in the early years
*peanut butter sandwiched between two Saltines
*Mt. View cafeteria: two packets of Saltines per child...crush, tear, and sprinkle into chicken noodle soup
*after school Ritz crackers with cream cheese
*late night snack of Saltines and butter
*fish crackers doled out to after-school day care kids
*stomach flu: saltines and ginger ale
*party cheese balls: blue cheese rolled in walnuts; neon-colored port wine cheese; cream cheese with green onions, Worcestershire sauce, and a dash of tobasco
*every Christmas: triscuits loaded with crab dip and fist fulls of an oh-so-addictive oyster cracker and ranch seasoning snack
*high school lunch: "Cheese on Wheat" Lance snacks and a can of apple-grape juice
*in Joyner Dorm: breakfasts of graham crackers and coffee, lunches of microwaved triscuits and cheddar
*in a sudden jump of refinement: water crackers and brie
*parties: wine, cheese, and cracker samplers
*a hard fall for Whole Foods' crostini with aged gouda in graduate school

Of late, crackers have sort of retreated from their once essential position. In this post no-knead bread world, I've been spreading my Camembert on hunks of the stuff, and dipping end-pieces into my soups.

Well, this life in crackers has a new chapter:
*February, 2007: homemade icebox crackers

Now, you might be thinking, why would anyone make crackers? Aren't there plenty of perfectly good crackers out there? Doesn't this life in crackers itself not only testify to their ubiquity, but suggest that a well-stocked grocery store can satisfy every cracker need? I might have once conceded these points. But now that I have experienced the crunchy, cheesy, salty perfection that is these crackers, a Cheez-it just won't do.

These crackers trump all party nibbles to date. Spiced nuts, olives, chips and salsa...I'll pass. Should you ever find yourself with a glass of sparkling wine in one hand, one of these crackers should be in the other. And you needn't even set your glass down to manage the cheese tray. The cheese is in the cracker. And, believe you me, these crackers are cheesy. Rich, but not greasy. Festive, but not fancy. And easy, easy, easy to make. If you've made ice-box cookies, you know what I mean.

You just pulse up the ingredients in a food processor, roll the mixture into a log, wrap it up, stash it in the fridge. Then, when you want some tasty crackers, slice the log into rounds. Bake. And munch.



There are many possible variations on these flavors. Ms. Stewart's book also showcases a Gruyere and thyme cracker. I'd like to try something with lots of cracked black pepper, but I haven't decided what sort of cheese would work best. Suggestions welcome!

Parmesan Rosemary Crackers
makes 20 crackers, adapted from Martha Stewart's Hors d'Oeuvres Handbook

3/4 cup all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon coarse salt
1/4 teaspoon fresh ground pepper
2 teaspoons finely chopped fresh rosemary, plus 20 full leaves for decoration
3 tablespoons chilled unsalted butter, cut into small pieces
1 cup (2 1/2 ounces) finely grated Parmesan cheese
5 tablespoons sour cream
1 egg white, lightly beaten

1.Pulse flour, salt, pepper, and rosemary in the bowl of a food processor to combine. Add butter and pulse until mixture resembles coarse meal. Add cheese and pulse to combine.Add 1 tablespoon of sour cream at a time, pulsing after each addition, until a well-combined dough comes together.

2.Transfer dough to a work surface and shape into a 2-inch-diameter-wide log. Wrap with plastic wrap and refrigerate over night.

3. Heat oven to 325 degrees F. Slice log into 1/4-inch slices and place them on a parchment- or silpat-lined baking sheet. Dip a rosemary leaf in egg white, and place in the center of each cracker. Bake immediately, rotating sheet once, until crackers are golden brown, 25-35 minutes. Transfer to a rack to cool. Crackers can be made a day ahead and kept in an airtight container at room temperature.

Spicy Cheddar Crackers
makes 20 crackers, adapted from Martha Stewart's Hors d'Oeuvres Handbook

1 cup all-purpose flour
2 tablespoons yellow cornmeal
1 1/4 teaspoons coarse salt
1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper
pinch of nutmeg
2 tablespoons chilled unsalted butter, cut into small pieces
1 cup (2 1/2 ounces) finely grated cheddar cheese
1/4 cup plus 1 tablespoon milk


1. Pulse flour, cornmeal, salt, cayenne, and nutmeg in bowl of a food processor until combined. Add butter and pulse until mixture looks like coarse meal. Add cheese, and pulse. With machine running, add milk until dough comes together and is well combined.

2. Follow steps 2 and 3 for Parmesan Rosemary Crackers.

A Sweet and Sour Valentine

I won't argue that Thanksgiving and Christmas are the most food-centered holidays of the year. This Thanksgiving, the first I hosted at my own house, I not only cooked my first Thanksgiving turkey, I also managed to come up with a vegetable dish worthy of second helpings. Considering my Thanksgiving vegetable track record, that is no small feat. Advent came and went in a flurry of chopped, rolled, and dipped chocolate gifts. On Christmas Eve, as tradition demanded, I stuffed myself with Granny's crab dip. Despite all of this, my favorite holidays food-wise are the meeker, but oh so craftier, Halloween and Valentine's Day. As these holidays approach, I find myself dreaming up elaborate cocktail party menus full of kitschy nibbles and over-the-top cocktails. No matter that these cocktail parties have yet to materialize. They will someday, and, let me tell you, I will be one ecstatic and exhausted host.

In past years, my fantasy Valentine's Day treats tended toward the dark and chocolaty: individual molten chocolate cakes with rose-scented whipped cream, a heart shaped chocolate-hazelnut layer cake wearing a shiny coat of ganache, a flourless chocolate torte floating on a lake of raspberry coulis. But with February 14, 2007 right around the corner, I seem to have set all things chocolate aside and developed a sweet tooth for something sour. Well, sweet and sour. The taste of love.

It is no mere coincidence, I think, that pink grapefruits and blood oranges start parading their blushing rinds around Valentine's Day.


First off, what could be more refreshing on a gray February morning than a plump grapefruit or a glass of scarlet-hued orange juice? And, while boxed chocolates, red roses, and doilies may have a monopoly on Valentine's Day symbolism, do pink grapefruits not bring lips to pucker? Do blood oranges not call hearts to beat? These revelations fashioned a fantasy Valentine's Day spread featuring pink grapefruit mini-cheesecakes, blood orange sorbet, pink grapefruit and campari cocktails, and blood orange and pink grapefruit tarts topped with fresh raspberries. Well, I'm here to tell you, sometimes, some Valentine's fantasies come true.




I can vouch that these tarts marry excellently with a hot mug of black tea. I will wager that they would dress up real nice with a glass of champagne. I like them most of all, though, for how pretty they look lined up on my windowsill. And pretty is something all Valentine's Day treats, fantasized or otherwise, should be.

About the curd color: My heart sunk a bit when I realized that my blazing red blood orange juice was yielding a homely brownish-orange curd, but this is what egg yolks and butter do. Red and yellow make orange. The raspberries, however, bring out the red flecks of the zest, which makes for a sort of smashing color combination.

As for the pink grapefruit: Grapefruit juice tends to go more than a little wan when cooked up into a curd. Once I took mine off the stove, its pinkness has all but faded, leaving in its place a very pale orange. Not willing to forgo my Valentine's Day hue, I added a drop of red food coloring. I suppose my drop was on the hefty side because my curd promptly turned a garish pink. But this color, too, grew on me. What Valentine's Day is without a dose of the artificial?

Blood Orange Curd and Pink Grapefruit Curd Tarts with Fresh Raspberries



1 recipe blood orange curd (see below)
1 recipe pink grapefruit curd (see below)
1 recipe tart dough (see below)
1 container fresh raspberries

1. For individual tarts: Cut each log of tart dough into 5 slices. On a lightly floured surface, roll each slice into a round. Press each round over the bottom and up the sides of a tart tin.

For two full-size tarts: On a lightly floured surface, roll each disk of dough into a circle large enough to fit your tart pans with a slight overhang. Press dough over the bottom and up the sides of tart tins.

2. Prick the bottoms of the dough with a fork. Set tart tins on a baking sheet and chill for at least 1 hour, and up to 1 day.

3. Preheat oven to 375 degrees F. Bake tart crusts until golden, about 15 minutes. If they start to bubble up, press them back down with the back of a fork. Cool crusts to room temperature.

4. Spoon curd into tart crusts, smoothing it evenly with the back of a spoon. Top each tart with a few raspberries. Give one to your valentine.


Valentine's Citrus Curd
makes enough for 10 4-inch tarts or two full-size tarts

This recipe produces a robustly flavored curd. Because pink grapefruits and blood oranges tend to be milder and sweeter than your usual curd fruit (lemons and limes), I upped the usual juice and zest measures a bit.

1/2 cup sugar
1/3 cup, plus 1 tablespoon pink grapefruit or blood orange juice
4 large egg yolks
5 tablespoons unsalted butter, cut into small cubes
1 1/2 tablespoons pink grapefruit or blood orange zest

1. Whisk sugar and juice in medium sauce pan to blend. Whisk in yolks, butter, and half of zest. Cook over medium-low heat, stirring constantly with a wooden spoon, until the curd is thick enough to coat the back of the spoon, about 10 minutes. This will happen around 160 degrees F. if you happen to have a candy thermometer in your arsenal. Mix in the rest of the zest.

2. Pour curd into a small bowl. Cover with plastic wrap, pressing it directly onto the surface of the curd so that it won't form a skin. Chill in refrigerator for 3-4 hours. Curd can be made 4 days ahead and kept refrigerated.


Martha's Tart Dough, adapted from Martha Stewart's Baking Handbook
makes enough for 10 4-inch tarts or two full-size tarts (this is double Ms. Stewart's recipe).

This is, to date, my favorite dough recipe for sweet tarts. It is easy to work with and it yields a crispy, but firm, and just sweet enough crust. I overworked this batch quite a bit due to a miscalculation about the size of my tart tins, and the crust still turned out very nice.

12 tablespoons unsalted butter, room temperature
**(Let me take this moment to say that, although I have expressed a few doubts about the produce and the employees of Trader Joe's stores, I love Mr. Joe's butter. It's cheap and tastes like that expensive European stuff. Buy it, if you can.)**
1 cup confectioner's sugar
4 large egg yolks
3 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
4 teaspoons heavy cream

1. Arm your electric mixer with the paddle attachment. Combine butter and confectioner's sugar, mixing on low speed for about 2 minutes.

2. Add the egg yolks, and mix until incorporated, about 1 minute, scraping down the sides as needed. Add 1 cup flour, and mix on low speed just until the flour is incorporated, about 30 seconds. Repeat with second cup of flour. Add remaining cup of flour along with salt and cream, and mix just until flour is no longer visible, about 1 minute.

3. For individual tarts: Divide dough between two pieces of plastic wrap, and shape each one into a log with a diameter of about 2 1/2 inches.

For two full-sized tarts, divide dough between two pieces of plastic wrap, and shape each one into a flattened disk.

4. Refrigerate dough for at least 2 hours. Dough can be frozen for up to a month; in that case, thaw it in the refrigerator overnight before using.

Sweet Honeycomb Tripe

What sort of dish would you prepare with this?



Or, perhaps, this?



I still don't have answers to those questions, because I didn't cook this.


But I ate this, and it was good.



I spent the last week in January back in North Carolina where I downed cups of coffee and wrote furiously against a deadline by day, and downed margaritas and ate heaps of home cooked mexican food by night. This food was cooked in the home of my sister by her roommate, Luis, who chops a fine pico de gallo, pours good tequila, and, when he can find someone willing to eat it, cooks up a mean pot of cow belly.

Luis' take on Menudo--Mexican beef tripe stew--is heavy on the garlic and black pepper. After being cooked down for hours and hours, the tripe relinquishes its rubberiness and unfolds into tender, meaty tasting morsels that soak up the spicy broth. From what I can gather, hominy is often a principle ingredient in menudo, but not Luis' menudo. Perhaps he didn't want any starchy filler taking the place of all that offal goodness.

He bought his tripe from a Mexican meat market in Durham, where it was piled high among the beef cheeks, pig's feet, chicken claws, and several unidentifiable parts. Cows have four stomachs. Luis chose slabs from stomach number 1 (smooth tripe) and stomach number 2 (honeycomb tripe), along with a few beef feet. He looked very happy. My sister looked a little green. And I couldn't stop staring at the cows' tongues, sprawled out in a row, each one as long as my forearm. Cow tongue, I was relieved to learn, is not a traditional menudo ingredient.

Back in Pittsburgh, perusing the meat section of the neighborhood Giant Eagle Grocery, I lingered a bit over the beef tripe and pig's feet. Apparently Pittsburghers eat offal too. I sort of have a hard time picturing a Pittsburgher cheering on the Steelers over a hot bowl of tripe stew, but perhaps I have lots more to learn about my local cuisine.