A Win for the Challenger

I collect anchovy recipes. It's not really a deliberate act, but an unconscious hoarding. The collection means I'll never want for ways to go through the anchovy tins that sit patiently next to my cans of whole tomatoes and garbanzo beans. It also means that I'll never want for a salty-fishy fix.

When I can't be bothered to browse the collection, I open up a tin, blot the oil from one flat body, positio it atop a saltine cracker, and pop the whole thing in my mouth, overhanging fish ends and all. Please do grimace and wrinkle your nose. The anchovy is a divisive little fish. And I wouldn't perform this particular act in the presence of company, anyway. But the truth is that I don't just collect anchovy recipes. I love anchovy recipes, and I love the foods and drinks that I consider--in some fundamental but unjustifiable way--as the anchovy's kin. Sardines, oil-cured olives, smoked trout, radicchio, gin martinis (dirty, please), stinky cheese, Campari, Pernod, dark chocolate, dandelion greens, the hoppiest beers, and--need I even say so--caviar of any size and color. Meet my favorite food group: the salty, the bitter, the sturdy.

I have been adding anchovies to my pasta sauces for a few years now. Not just puttanesca, but tomato-less pastas featuring broccoli rabe, radicchio, or arugula livened up with with a heavy dose of red pepper flakes, and those anchovies. These pasta dishes don't apologize for their salted fish, and neither does the one that graced the cover of Gourmet's April edition. Bucatini with spicy anchovy sauce and dill bread crumbs. Passing up Vogue's dewy Drew Barrymore, I bought the issue for its cover recipe as I searched for something to get me through the flight from Raleigh to Pittsburgh after my dissertation defense.

Let me tell you why I love this recipe. The dill, anchovies, and red pepper flakes--all assertive flavors--somehow melt into a pleasant and mellow pasta sauce. Bread crumbs bring a crunch to each bite of bucatini. But this seems not to be a recipe for everyone. I clicked over to epicurious.com and found a substantial number of dissenters including this one:

"I made this recipe last night, and it prompted me to post a review for the first time. Unfortunately it's because it is so very disgusting!!! I've been cooking for my husband for 10 years, and this was the first and only time he actually would not eat what I made. I don't blame him, I couldn't stomach it either. I even read the other reviews and put in a little extra anchovy and red pepper, and it was still terrible. I rate this recipe One Spoon, to gag myself with. GROSS!"

To each her own. But I would rate this recipe 4 forks, and my husband liked it too. You might, but probably not if you hate anchovies. I don't think I'll be able to do without it.

Bucatini with Anchovy Sauce, and Dill Bread Crumbs
Serves 4. Adapted from Gourmet magazine, April 2008.

Bucatini are thick, hollow noodles that otherwise look like spaghetti. They're particularly nice here because they stand up to the robust flavors in this sauce and are not overwhelmed by the breadcrumbs. Other pastas, especially regular spaghetti, would be fine substitutes.


1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil
2 cups fresh bread crumbs
1/3 cup chopped dill
1/2 cup extra-virgin olive oil
4 shallots, thinly sliced
1 (2-ounce) can flat anchovy fillets, drained and chopped
1 pound bucatini
1 teaspoon dried hot red-pepper flakes
coarse salt and fresh ground pepper

1. Heat 1/4 cup oil in a 12-inch heavy skillet over medium heat until it shimmers, then cook bread crumbs, stirring constantly, until deep golden and crisp, 6 to 8 minutes. Transfer bread crumbs to a bowl and toss with dill and 1/4 teaspoon each of salt and black pepper.

2. Wipe out skillet, then cook shallots with 1/4 teaspoon salt in remaining 1/2 cup oil over medium heat, stirring frequently, until very soft, 6 to 8 minutes. Add anchovies and cook, mashing anchovies into shallots, until dissolved.

3. Meanwhile, cook bucatini in a pasta pot of boiling salted water until al dente. Reserve 1/2 cup cooking water, then drain pasta.

4. Stir red-pepper flakes and reserved water into anchovy sauce, then add pasta and toss to combine. Add about half of bread crumbs and toss to coat. Serve sprinkled with remaining bread crumbs. Season with salt and pepper.

Milestones and Cheesecake

Well, how do you do? An interlude of over two months has a way of making a blog seem shiny and new all over. Although I didn't realize it at the time, my last post announcing this lull was the 100th post on Food and Paper. Disappearing for two months doesn't seem the way to mark any milestone, but I have been busy trying to make my way past another one. And I did it. I completed my Ph.D, and I'll be a professor in Duquesne's Classics department beginning in the fall. So, my life is looking sort of shiny and new, too.

Milestones are supposed to assure travelers that they're on the right path, that they've made it a certain distance, and have a certain distance yet to travel. I can't recall ever having come across a milestone made of stone that actually marked miles. These days they seem more ephemeral, made of paper or a handshake or a meal shared, and they tend to mark ephemeral paths like the one that winds through graduate school.

If I had my choice in the matter, milestones marking anniversaries and dissertation defenses would be made of cheese. A cheese plate. Or a pot of fondue. Or a wheel of Camembert, wrapped in grape leaves and charred over a fire. Or--finally getting to the recipe at hand--cheesecake. And the five packages of cream cheese in the milestone I'm bringing to you today make it anything but ephemeral. It's big, heavy, extra-cheesy, and a fine way to mark the 101st post on a blog that began in April of 2006 with a cheesecake recipe.

That first cheesecake was a fresh, light, strawberry-laced, and rather naive thing. It was good, but this one is better. The shortbread crust provides a nice, sturdy ground for this cheesecake's heft without competing with the flavor of the cake, and the browned top suggests a certain sophistication without adornment. Sort of what I wanted my dissertation to be like, but with the addition of a few wandering wombs, a pregnant Christ, and a thirteenth-century Ovid impersonator.

Writing that sentence almost made me miss working on the thing. Almost.

I think I need another piece of cheesecake.


New York-Style Cheesecake
Adapted from The New Joy of Baking


The baking method for this cheesecake is quite similar to the one suggested by the folks at Cooks' Illustrated which I posted in April, 2006. The initial high temperature browns the top and allowing the cake to cool in the oven prevents it from cracking. Many cheesecake recipes call for a water bath to prevent cracking, but this method seems better to me because crusts baked in a water bath sometimes emerge soggy from exposure to steam. Having all of the ingredients at room temperature will create a creamier cake without cream cheese clumps.

1 recipe shortbread crust (see below)
1 egg white, well beaten

The following ingredients should be at room temperature:
2 1/2 pounds (five 8-oz. packages) cream cheese
1 3/4 cups sugar
3 tablespoons all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon grated lemon zest
1 teaspoon vanilla
5 large eggs
2 large egg yolks
1/2 cup heavy cream

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees F. Lightly butter a 9-inch spring-form pan with removable bottom.

2. Press about 1/3 of the shortbread dough over the bottom of the pan as evenly as possible. Prick the dough all over with a fork and then bake until the crust is golden brown, 10-12 minutes. Let cool completely on wire rack. Press the remaining dough about 1/8 inch thick around the sides of the pan, making sure that it is attached to the bottom crust all around. Brush the bottom and sides of crust with egg white. Refrigerate crust while you prepare the filling.

3. Preheat oven to 500 degrees F. In the bowl of a stand mixer (fitted with the paddle attachment, if you have one), beat cream cheese until smooth and creamy, about 1 minute (this may take longer if the cream cheese is not yet at room temperature). Scrape down sides of the bowl and paddle. Gradually add sugar, beating until smooth and creamy, about 2 minutes. Add flour and beat until combined. Beat in lemon zest and vanilla. Scrape down sides of bowl and paddle.

4. Beat in eggs and yolks one at a time just until incorporated, scraping sides of bowl and paddle after each addition (make sure you don't leave any cream cheese around the upper edges of the bowl or you'll have lumps in your cheesecake, yikes!). On low speed, beat in cream.

5. Scrape the batter into the prepared crust and smooth the top with a spatula. Bake for 15 minutes at 500 degrees, then reduce the oven temperature to 200 degrees F, and bake for 60-70 minutes more. The cake should still looks a bit jiggly in the center. Turn the oven off and prop the oven door ajar with the handle of a wooden spoon. Let the cake cool in the oven for at least 30 minutes, and up to 1 hour. Remove to a rack and let cool completely before unmolding. Cover and refrigerate for at least 6 hours. Refrigerating overnight will allow the cake to firm up and the flavors to develop.

Pat-in-the-Pan Shortbread Crust
1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1/3 cup sugar
1 teaspoon grated lemon zest
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, cut into 8 pieces
1-2 large egg yolks


1. In a food processor, mix flour, sugar, lemon zest, and salt for 10 seconds. Add butter and pulse until mixture resembles coarse crumbs.

2. Add 1 egg yolk and pulse just until dough comes together. If the mixture looks too dry, add second yolk and pulse again.

3. Wrap dough in plastic wrap and chill in refrigerator for 30 minutes (or up to 2 days) before working with it.