Masher
Vasilopita
- by Nancy, January 08, 2010
How could I, an avid baker, artist, and lover of all things with a global connection and a long thread into the past, have gone my whole life without hearing about a Greek New Year’s holiday that is celebrated with a buttery cake, and not only that, but with a prize for good luck hidden inside? Here is a photo of my friend, colleague, fellow mom and musician Erasmia with her Vasilopita (which I am told can be a cake, bread or even pie) half-eaten by a crew of celebrants. It’s delicious and surprisingly light, and more than that, carries with it tales and traditions that reach back into ancient memory and history. The tradition of the vasilopita celebrates St. Basil, who made good on his promise to the impoverished of Caesarea that he would make their greedy emperor repent and give back all the coins, heirlooms and jewelry he had demanded from them to pay excessive taxes. Since the task was daunting to return everything to the rightful owners, the story goes that all the treasures were baked into a cake that was then sliced up and shared among the people. The miracle is that supposedly each family received a slice of cake that contained exactly the treasures they had contributed. In commemoration today, a foil-wrapped coin is baked into the cake and the person who receives it has good luck for the year to come. St. Basil is also credited with generosity in the community, having set up an orphanage and hospital during his lifetime.
Mastiha
I was intrigued also by old recipes for the cake, which contain Old World ingredients, mahlepi (crushed, powdered sour cherry pits with a fruity taste) and mastiha (a jewel-like aromatic resin) I had never heard of, but which Erasmia says are still available at cool specialty shops. She wrote to me, “I didn’t know that mastihashop opened in Soho last year!” You can also get this ingredient as a liqueur. About the taste she writes, ”This is the mastiha that I remember as a child – I see now that it is mastic with sugar and corn syrup. It’s easy to find, any Greek shop will have it (such as The Greek Store in Kenilworth, New Jersey.) As kids, we did not like the gum so much.” Erasmia also told me about how difficult it can be, as with most old recipes from other cultures, to get exact measurements. She writes, ”This blog shows pictures of the almonds decorating the top, and the recipe includes brandy, which was an important ingredient in my mom’s version. (I have to ask her to give it to me sometime – it’s in a very very old Greek cookbook (my grandmother’s) and the language is a little dated, so I don’t understand measurements, etc.” Erasmia’s version comes from a 1957 cookbook, which she shared with Jellypress.
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Why I Love Olives and Oranges
- by Nancy, January 07, 2010
I don’t want to complain endlessly about how the food world exasperates me sometimes because it is mostly overrun with poser celebrity chefs hamming it up like culinary clowns on their gimmicky TV shows featuring soulless recipes, more entertainment than substance. I’d rather turn my readers on to something real that makes me happy and this is one of those things. Every once in a while there comes along a great cook, and even better when that cook is possessed of a genuine and generous spirit and reaches out to share her gift. Such is Sara Jenkins, daughter of the food authority Nancy Harmon Jenkins. I met Sara at a party thrown by Saveur magazine where I was tagging along with Laura who had recently written for them. Lucky me. Not only was the party food exceptional and the company welcoming, but I was fortunate enough to be waiting on the buffet line next to Sara. We struck up a conversation during which she told me about her new cookbook with co-author Mindy Fox, Olives & Oranges: Recipes & Flavor Secrets from Italy, Spain, Cyprus & Beyond (Houghton Mifflin 2008). pictured above, and her restaurant, Porchetta, in downtown Manhattan. I was so impressed with Sara’s down-to-earth, modest demeanor and intriguing descriptions of her food and restaurant that I bought her cookbook online, sight unseen and hiked into the city to Porchetta as soon as I was able. Why do I love both so much? Sara has the kind of sensibility that knows what the word flavor means. The Mediterranean-styled recipes, of substantial soups, salads, entrees and sweets, yield dishes with flavors that are intensely nuanced and complex without being in the least difficult. She’s almost like a painter in the way she assembles a palette of flavors that meld beautifully. Her roast chicken, stuffed under the skin with sage, garlic and lemon peel, which was chosen for Saveur’s top 100 issue last year, is one of my favorites. Her tiny restaurant, practically a hole in the wall but with a clean, modern allure, is a treat if you love all things homey and rustic. You can read an interview with Sara here. And if you’re anywhere near NYC and you’re dreaming of a hot bowl of good soup, a crusty slice of fresh bread, melt-in-your-mouth pork, soulful beans, greens, and an exemplary biscotti, visit Porchetta.
Masher
Thing of the Day — Klee
- by Nancy, January 06, 2010
Around the Fish, 1926
Paul Klee
Today I was reading a book about Paul Klee, another of my favorite artists. His work related so beautifully to my last post, below, that I decided to share this painting and quote of his:
“It is not my task to reproduce appearances . . . for that there is the photographic plate. I want to reach the heart. In this way, we learn to look beyond the surface and get to the roots of things.”
see also: Thing of the Day — Chardin
Masher
Thing of the Day — Chardin
- by Nancy, January 05, 2010
Jean Baptiste Simeon Chardin
“Still Life with Fish and a Copper Pot”
This is one of my favorite artists, the eighteenth century master of all things humble and home. The color especially resonates right now in the midst of the bleak beauty of another north-east winter. On the kitchen counter: the makings of a good dish, and more than that, the light of inspiration. Laura and I subtitled Jellypress “Old recipes, modern life.” Mostly people assume that this means we are bringing the old recipes with us into modern life, such as when I baked challah with my son who I wish to teach a connection to his ancestry and their old foodways. Laura and I talk about wanting to shed some of this goody-two-shoes image of being the dutiful daughters of the kitchen. So sometimes “old recipes, modern life” means breaking tradition, leaving the old recipes behind if that’s what’s necessary to move forward. This is what I’m thinking about a lot now in my painting, and especially when I look at the Chardin, which I cherish for its light and economy, but know that I can’t paint like that now. To bring that old recipe entire into the present would be to deny the present time, to look backward instead of forward. It also would be to deny the viewer the opportunity to enter the painting imaginatively, and it would deny the forward movement of painting from the moment it came into its own after the invention of photography.
This is what I was thinking about when I painted myself recently, a self-portrait from this photograph my son took of my back. I knew I couldn’t just copy it in the manner of Chardin, or any other old master, even though I am trained as a realist painter, fluent in the art of illusion. I wanted something more. Something like what Virginia Woolf wrote in her memoir A Sketch of the Past: “If I were a painter . . . I should make a picture . . . of things that were semi-transparent; I should make curved shapes showing the light through but not giving a clear outline. Everything would be large and dim . . .”
Instead I painted it like this. I hope you understand. It has, hopefully, the light of inspiration.
see also: Old recipe: Modern Child
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A Good Night’s Dinner
- by Nancy, January 04, 2010
My son: if you read our posts often, you know he’s 12 and that I am a working single mom, a painter with a full-time gig. So some nights, anxious to get back into my studio, all I can manage is to coach him to get his homework done and microwave a bowl of canned soup for us. Tonight was different. My copy of the Gourmet Today cookbook arrived in the mail and leafing through it I got inspired. Here’s the homey plate of pork with balsamic glaze I made from it. I threw in carrots and substituted onions for the shallots (sorry, Ruth) To the book’s credit, it was easy and worked perfectly. Then I made my tried and true healthful mashed potatoes with lowfat milk and chicken stock and finished it with a little butter and salt. Admonished the delighted child, “Take human bites.” And plenty to be packed into lunch boxes tomorrow.
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Thing of the Day — My French Press
- by Nancy, January 04, 2010
I love my new French Press coffee maker. Here’s a photo of it pre-plunge. A lot of people have the glass ones, but I read recently about how the stainless ones keep the coffee hot longer. Yes they do. Ten minutes after plunging (and I know this since I am always rushing around in the morning and never quite getting to pour the coffee) it’s still piping hot. I went looking for old coffee recipes to post with this photo and came across cool ones for coffee cake on The Old Foodie. Back then, they baked in a hearth which was an overwhelming amount of work, and even though it’s wonderful to fire up my stove in a second rather than chop wood and work for hours with a tinder box to get a fire going, I still fantasize about how nice it would be to have a toasty hearth in my kitchen on a frosty ‘morn like this. It’s 32 degrees here in the east today and what they call “feels like 17.” Brrrr. Feeling pretty grateful for that hot cup of Joe just about now.
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(Fabulous) Thing of the Day — Sea Salt Chocolate
- by Nancy, January 03, 2010
I’m having a love affair with specialty chocolates made with sea salt. This craving for sweet plus salty has been on chefs’ minds a lot recently, and one of the results are some incredible chocolates. If you are trying to cut back on all that’s sweet this January, as I hear some people are, you might find it satisfying to have a chunk of dark chocolate after a meal instead of cookies or cake. Works for me. Here’s two of my current obsessions: Hawaiian sea salt and burnt caramel chocolate from Chocopologie and Butter Toffee Infused with Welsh Sea Salt in chocolate from Chocolat Moderne. My son bought me these for my birthday. Aw! Ain’t that sweet?
see also: Thing of the Day — Black Walnut Shortbread
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Thing of the Day — Black Walnut Shortbread
- by Nancy, January 02, 2010
Laura says she’s over all the holiday sweets. Not me. I never can tire of baking and sweet things, but that’s because I’ve got a baker’s soul, generations deep, and an athlete’s psyche, out on the street taking a run or riding my bike every day to compensate. So, with all due respect for the January buzz urging moderation in eating, here’s a photo of the black walnut shortbread I just baked. Black walnuts in particular are an obsession of mine. I wrote about them in my book Walking On Walnuts which is much more about old recipes and modern life, just like jellypress, than it is about walnuts. My favorite black walnut recipe comes from Sarah Belk, who wrote the fabulous cookbook Around the Southern Table. These cookies are like pecan sandies in texture, but in flavor, worlds beyond the ordinary. If you’ve never tasted a black walnut, do. They’re more intense, more darkly rich and more flavorful than other nuts, and though they need tempering with other ingredients to render them palatable to most people, they are sublime in that way that food lovers crave: singular, unrivaled, challenging to the adventurous. Their toughness to crack has made them legendary (there are stories of trucks being backed over them in order to open them, but I can’t confirm that . . .) Read about and buy them here. So I know it’s officially Get-in-Shape-and-Eat-Light January, but if you still want something sweet once in a while, try this recipe:
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One Badass Gingerbread Cake — Happy New Year
- by Nancy, December 31, 2009
Ladies and Gentlemen, we have a winner. The search for the perfect gingerbread is over, and here is the winning recipe - a combination of an Edna Lewis recipe my sister sent to me, and “Grandmom Lindner’s Gingerbread” I found in a book. I am proud this New Year’s Eve to bring to you, yes indeed, One Badass Gingerbread. Here’s to a great 2010 for us all. And if you want, you can do what I have been doing for years. Make your list of the things you wish, dream and hope for in the coming year. Print it on a bright colored 3 x 5 card and hang it in sight somewhere in your home. Watch your dreams come true. And in the meantime, if you love to bake and love gingerbread, here’s the most badass of the badass gingerbreads:
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Thing Of The Day — Fresh Dough
- by Nancy, December 29, 2009
When I’ve had it with the holiday pressure and rush, this is one of the places I like to go: into my kitchen, up to my elbows in dough.
they dreamed of following in out of the light
to hear step after step
the heart of bread
to be sustained by its dark breath
and emerge
to find themselves alone
before a wheat field
raising its radiance to the moon.
Excerpted from “Bread” by W. S. Merwin, 1993.
see also: Thing of the Day
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Calling All Gingerbread Detectives — Post-Christmas Update
- by Nancy, December 26, 2009
I just sent my boyfriend off to work with two giant foil-wrapped pieces of fresh gingerbread cake. How lucky is he to be the significant other of the obsessed baker-blogger? It’s day three of the search for perfect gingerbread and even though there’s still work to do to find the one true recipe, it sure was nice to have a plate of fresh gingerbread with warm lemon sauce for Christmas dinner dessert, whatever its shortcomings. You’d think I’d get tired of baking and tasting the stuff but I still can’t get enough. Good thing I’m on the stationary bike every day. Update: We have tried four recipes so far and procured the chefs’ molasses of choice, Steen’s Pure Cane Syrup, plus several jars of different types of molasses found at most supermarkets, among them “Grandma’s Original” and “Plantation Blackstrap.” We’ve also been out there on the ‘net looking around, and were not surprised to find that this holdiay gingerbread obsession is shared by a lot of us food bloggers. And we are happy to announce that we have a contender! The promising recipe, found by my sister, Janet, as I mentioned in my previous post, is pictured on the left: Edna Lewis’ Dark Molasses Gingerbread, adapted from The Gift of Southern Cooking, by Edna Lewis and Scott Peacock (Random House, 2003.) On the right is a very good, well-spiced but lighter version from Home Cooking: A Writer in the Kitchen by the late Laurie Colwin (Harper Perennial, 2000.). So what do we do now?
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Calling All Gingerbread Detectives — Christmas Update
- by Nancy, December 25, 2009
Merry Christmas Jellypress! Thank you to all our readers who roamed Sherlock-Holmes-style to help us find the dark gingerbread of our dreams. Here’s a picture of one find, Steen’s Pure Cane Syrup, which is from what we understand, the chef’s choice ingredient for any recipe yielding something dark and rich and made with molasses. I shlepped through the slushy sidewalks of Manhattan to get this can at Dean & Deluca but you can also order it online. We are about to test two or three variations of recipes sent to us, some with blackstrap molasses, some with Steen’s. One recipe comes from the late beloved food writer and chef Laurie Colwin and the other is this New York Times recipe sent to me by my beloved sister, Janet. May the baking commence! More pix and updates soon. Thank you again to all who replied and Happy Holiday. We’ve got snow here in the northeast and it’s very pretty and peaceful this morning. Hope it’s a wonderful day for all.
see also: Calling All Gingerbread Detectives
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Calling All Gingerbread Detectives
- by Nancy, December 22, 2009
Just look at it. It’s the Holy Grail of gingerbread. The benchmark. The bar, raised really, really high. Moist. Dark. Intensely flavored. It’s the gingerbread I bought from the Mennonites’ bakery stand at the Reading Terminal Market when I lived in Philly this summer. The bonneted one wouldn’t give me the recipe. So I’m sending out an S.O.S. to all our jellypress readers. I must find a recipe for this wonderful stuff. I found two that seemed promising. I made both. Here’s a picture of them:
On the left: “Grandma Lindner’s Favorite Gingerbread Cake” from Gingerbread (Andrews McMeel, 2009) which required 13 ingredients and exacting, time-consuming steps. On the right: “Molasses Cake” from The Amish Cook’s Baking Book(Chronicle, 2009) which was ready to bake in a minute, all seven ingredients mixed at once in one bowl. Nope. Neither one is the one. Not dark enough. Not fragrant enough. Not intense enough. Not . . . well, it. Can you help? If you can, use the comments link above to send me a recipe or a lead to a recipe and I will pursue it and make it. Send in your best, and watch for future posts to see how the search unfolds. To be continued . . .and in the meantime, if you like a plain molasses cake, perfect for children especially, or a lighter version of spice-y gingerbread that is delicious in its own right, here’s the recipes for the ones I made:
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Old recipe: Modern Child
- by Nancy, December 12, 2009
I made him. It’s Chanukkah after all. Of course he said “no” first. He’s twelve going on seventeen and none of this is cool anymore. Guitars are cool. So are purple high-top sneakers. And video games that block me out. But baking with Mom? “Okay if I have to . . . “ He adored all the fuss as a small child but now that he’s wearing a man’s size ten shoe, he’s forgotten. He’s forgotten a lot of things. How to effuse. How to hold Mom’s hand in public. How to answer questions about his day in more than one syllable. “What did your music teacher say about your concert last night?” “Good.” “That’s all after months of preparing? Just ‘good’?” “Yeah. No. What?” Each night, I worry over the backpack spilled on the floor, the messy school folder. When I look closer, though, I see everything is fine. He has even taken out the garbage and emptied the dishwasher as I requested. Reading by his side while he shoots imaginary aliens with a digital shooter, I’m suddenly amazed at his profile. The toddler’s softness replaced by handsome angles, the unruly copper curls, once so embarrassing they had to be hidden under hats, now worn loose and free. At the counter, leaning over the flour, he was patient, mixing, whisking, measuring. Doing it for me. A kindness. I reminded him how to form the braid. Hand over hand, too big yet for the still-catching-up wrists, he gently lifted each rope of shining dough and placed it just so. And when it was done, he smiled. Such radiance. Over this magical, simple thing, this sweet and homey bread. Happy Hanukkah.
Masher
Food and Eating in Genoa: Once Again
- by Laura, November 23, 2009
I just returned from Genoa for an ever-so brief week there. My soul and belly were filled by pesto and my heart verklempt at the sight of “Little Village” aka Camogli with its trompe l’oeil painted facades, black stone beach, and looming Portofino Mountain. The last time I’d been there was with my boys (oh so grown now) when I was researching my memoir The Lost Ravioli Recipes of Hoboken, questing about for a lost family recipe and trying to get my story straight.
This visit, was for a different mission. (More on that later.) But in the meantime, here’s a glimpse:
Camogli first. Local fishermen (of the Camogli Fishing Cooperative) still go out with little boats and use traditional netting methods.
Salted anchovies are popular in Liguria. You see the fresh silvery ones in bins at the market and on the plate, as here at a place called La Rotunda (also in Camogli).
At La Rotunda, I also sampled a tiny little local fish called rossetti,, smaller than your fingernail, and this excellent octopus salad with potato. (Oh why oh why do I have to drive half an hour to find good octopus?)
Next stop: Da o Vittorio, a very old trattoria in Recco--my great grandparents’ town. Here is the famous Recco style focaccia. It comes out on the huge round platter. I caught this photo just as the last two slices were cut and plated. Recco style focaccia is basically two thin slices of dough baked with hot melting crescenza or strachino cheese between.
See any red sauce yet?
If Genoese food were to have a single color, it would green, green from all the vegetables and herbs. Here are fritters that were perfect--made from an herb-specked leavened dough, deep fried, not greasy in the least, and salted.
So much Genoese cuisine: gathered greens, mushrooms and chestnuts.... comes from the hills and mountains. Here is the view from Enrichetta’s house an hour north of Genoa. (You loyal readers may remember her from Lost Ravioli. She is the mother of my friend Sergio Rossi.. Enrichetta is eighty years old and a former professional cook.
Gnocchi fly off her magic hands in a whir. She made a large batch in twenty minutes.
After a lunch, Enrichetta brought out some rose petal liqueur that she’d made last summer. I almost fainted. Does anyone in the USA makes rose petal liqueur? If so I want to know about it.
Vegetable pies called torte (torta for one) are very popular in Liguria. These--photographed in the seaside town Chiavari--look a lot like the kind my family has always made. “Bietole” means chard.
One of my favorite meals ever: a bowl of Genoese style minestrone at Trattoria Arvigo in a town about 40 minutes north of Genoa in a town called Cremeno.
And of course the thing the Genoese are most famous for: pesto. I wore earrings to match.
To find out about Laura's search for a long lost family recipe, click [
A James Beard Award winning book that tells a history of American women through food, recipes, and remembrances. Recipes and illustrations from prehistory to the present day.
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