Strawberry-Rhubarb Clafoutis catches some rays at breakfast

Sometimes I get a little over-zealous at the farmers’ market, especially in the late-Spring. I stock up on gorgeous gem-colored cherries, tangy-sweet blueberries, pints of radiant red strawberries, baby beets and rainbow chard, forgetting I made dinner plans or agreed to go to a wine tasting later in the week. As I’m unloading my bags and stuffing my crisper until it’s spilling out the seams like Jack Sprat, I realize I’ve bought way more than I’ll have time to eat without a little strategizing. (And sadly there are weeks I don’t realize this until I the strawberries begin looking like a fifth grade science experiment.)

Walking to the old Farmers’ Market on Fairfax and Third last week, Neal and I spied some rhubarb growing in a neighbor’s yard. The plant had already gone to flower, so it wasn’t going to be good eating, even if it wasn’t an integral part of their landscaping. But it got me thinking of the pint of strawberries in my fridge and one of my favorite, simple French desserts: clafoutis.

I love clafoutis, which is essentially fruit and cake batter, but it tastes a cross between custard and a pancake-y Dutch baby. In Limousin, where the dessert originated, it’s usually made with early-Season cherries, pits and all. The little stones inside aren’t edible, but as they cook they add depth of flavor to the clafoutis. When I make the dessert with cherries, I like to pit them, but rather than cutting the cherries up, I prefer to split them by hand to remove the pit but keep them mostly in tact. It adds to the rustic appeal of the dish.

Moreover, I love clafoutis because it’s so hard to mess up. Even the worst clafoutis tastes pretty good, and it takes hardly any time to make.  So I picked up some crimson stalks of rhubarb at the market to make a strawberry-rhubarb clafoutis. I found a recipe from the folks at King Arthur flour that I used as a foundation and set to hulling and halving strawberries and dicing rhubarb. And while the final version made for some good after-dinner treats (and late-afternoon, passing-through-the-kitchen will-power busters), this not-to-sweet version, which I spiked with cardamom and black pepper, was a delight first thing in the morning with my cup of coffee.

Spiced Strawberry Rhubarb Clafoutis
adapted from King Arthur Flour

Fruit
1 lb ripe strawberries, hulled and halved
1 cup rhubarb (about 2 stalks), diced
4 tbsp butter
1/3 cup sugar

Batter
1/3 cup sugar
1/4 tsp salt
3 eggs
3/4 cup unbleached all-purpose flour
3/4 whole milk
1 tsp vanilla
1 tsp ground cardamom
1 tsp fresh-ground black pepper

Heat the oven to 350 degrees. Grease a 9-inch cake pan or casserole dish.

In a sauté pan, melt the mutter. Add the rhubarb and place the strawberries on top, cooking for about five minutes and giving an occasional shake to make sure it’s not sticking. (The goal is the reduce the fruits’ juices to create a bit of a syrup without turning the strawberries to mush.) Sprinkle the 1/3-cup of sugar over the berries, stir and bring the mixture to a boil. Cook for a few minutes, until the mixture thickens slightly. Pour the fruit into you baking dish and let cook while you make the batter.

In a medium-sized bow, whisk the sugar, salt and eggs together until it is light. Slowly add the flour, whisking until combined. Stir in cream, vanilla, cardamom and pepper. Pour the batter over the fruit. Bake for 35-45 minutes, until the cake is puffy and browned on top. Dust with powdered sugar or serve with whip cream or ice cream.

Beignets for Fat Tuesday

People who know me know this: I have very few secrets. Maybe I read too much Dr. Seuss as a kid, or maybe I was interested in psychology too early, but I offer up information about myself like a flower does pollen. So when I recently let it slip that I have an obsession with donuts, I think my fiancé Neal was a little surprised.

I wasn’t allowed to eat many sweets growing up, and there were rarely any in our house. My mom occasionally bought coffee cake or, my favorite, boxes of Entenmann’s Donuts. I loved the mildly spicy powdered cinnamon ones best. They were cakey and just a little sweet, and they would almost dissolve into a glass of milk. When the cinnamon ones were all gone, I would furtively sneak the plain cake ones, thinking no one would notice.

Somehow, most of my donut eating after that was done on the sly—the honey-dipped Dunkin’ Donuts a secret treat from my Aunt, the dozen donuts at Yum Yum when my friends and I snuck out at 2 a.m. in seventh grade, even the pre-shift sugar donut in grad school that kept me bounding around the restaurant like a five year old at a birthday party after both cake and ice cream. No one knew.

When I confessed my secret passion for donuts to Neal I discovered, to my delight, that Neal secretly harbored a love for donuts too!

Since tomorrow is Fat Tuesday, the culmination of Carnival celebrations, I thought I’d indulge my sweetheart and my sweet tooth and whip up a batch of one of my favorite kinds of donuts: beignets. Beignets are a traditional New Orleans treat—deep-fried yeast dough dusted with powdered sugar. The word beignet is French for “fritter,” a word that any donut-shop frequenter would recognize. I like mine rolled in cinnamon and sugar, though they’re also good with a little spiced chocolate.

To find a recipe I turned to my Anne, a friend and colleague who also happens to be a trained pastry chef. She pointed me in the direction of the Village Coffee Café blog, which had this simple (and might I add, fast) beignet recipe a la the famous Cajun chef, Justin Wilson. I cut mine into little bite-sized circles and served them three ways: dusted with powdered sugar, rolled in cinnamon and sugar, and dipped into oozy good dark chocolate. And I saved some dough to make them fresh for the perfect Fat Tuesday breakfast: Fresh beignets and café au lait.

Beignet Justin Wilson Style
courtesy of Village Coffee Café

2 cups flour
1 tsp salt
1 tbsp baking powder
1 tsp ground cinnamon (optional)
1 medium egg
3 tbsp sugar
1 cup milk
¼ tsp vanilla extract
1 quart of oil for deep frying
powdered sugar

Fill a large, heavy-bottomed pot with oil and heat to 375 degrees.

While the oil is heating, sift together the flour, salt, baking powder and cinnamon into a medium bowl.

In another bowl, beat the egg well. Then beat in the sugar, milk and vanilla.

Add the egg mixture to the flour mixture and stir until just moistened. Turn the dough out on to a well-floured work surface (it will be sticky) and knead lightly. Cut into diamond shapes or cut out 1-inch circles for bite-sized beignets.

Fry in oil, turning once, until lightly browned. Drain on a paper towel. Dust with powdered sugar or roll in cinnamon and sugar and serve hot.

These can easily be adapted to savory recipes as well.

Fresh bread, gorgonzola and quince paste

Fall is by far my favorite season and, since the trees here refuse to play dress-up in their crimson, persimmon and gold-colored October wardrobe like a stubborn child refusing to have fun, it’s the one I have to work the most to capture. Autumn comes in from the edges in Southern California. It’s most obvious in the morning—when the light is a little more slanted, illuminating the palm trees and mountains to the east with a pumpkin-tinge—and in the evening, when Orion rises in the sky, the stars on his belt sparkling like Paris Hilton’s bling. It creeps in at the farmers’ markets too, with apples and winter squashes peppering the farmers’ tables along with grapes and figs and dates.

But this year the weather here tells a different story. The summer-like blistering heat marches on like an oppressive regime. So I’m trying to bring the season in from the edges through cooking. Last week I made braised short ribs and slow-cooked chicken. I made sfratti (walnut cookies for the Jewish New Year) and bought a tiny kabocha squash all with the hope that if I ate the foods of fall, somehow I could make it feel more like fall. Mostly it just made my apartment even hotter than it was outside.

Then I found some quince—the yellow-green, lumpy fruit in the apple family with leathery skin like a pomegranate, the astringency of a persimmon when raw and an ethereal, sweet citrus-like flavor when cooked. The fruit has been around for more than 4,000 years in the Mediterranean and Asia, but is just starting to gain popularity here. Only a few farmers grow it, including Mud Creek Ranch in Santa Paula (California), and it’s season is short (late September/early October through December). It tastes delicious poached in vanilla syrup, red wine or honey, or stuffed with spinach—all great symbols of the fall. And because it’s naturally high in pectin, it also lends itself well to jams, jellies and, my favorite, quince paste.

Called membrillo in Spanish, quince paste is customarily served with Manchego cheese, though it contrasts nicely with other salty cheeses like parmigiano or pecorino. Try slathering a pat on fresh bread with gorgonzola, too. Because it keeps well, up to three months in your fridge, it’s easy to make and have ready for unexpected guests, or to serve as a no-fuss appetizer during the rapidly approaching holiday season.

Until I can feel the fall, I’ll be eating quince paste on everything—even if I’m wearing a sundress and the air-conditioning is on all the while.

Quince Paste
adapted from Epicurious

Ingredients
4 medium quinces (about 2 pounds), fully ripe
¼ to ½ cup water
2-3 cups sugar
1 tbsp fresh lemon juice

Directions
Heat oven to 350 degrees and lightly grease a 1-quart terrine.
Clean and dry quinces. Place in a small roasting pan and cover with foil, then bake in the center of the oven until tender. Transfer pan to a rack to cool.

When quinces are cooled enough to handle, peel and core them using a sharp knife.

In a food processor puree quinces with ¼ cup of water until smooth (if mixture is too thick, add a little water at a time, up to another ¼ cup, as needed). Push quince puree through a fine sieve into a liquid cup measure. Note the amount of puree. Transfer to a 3-quart heavy saucepan and add the equivalent amount of sugar and lemon juice.

Cook puree over moderate heat until thickened and begins to pull away from side of pan. If you do not cook the puree long enough it won’t set (though it will still taste good). Pour into terrine and smooth the top with an offset spatula. When paste has reached room temperature, cover with plastic and chill in the refrigerator until set, about 4 hours.

Run knife along sides of terrine and invert onto a platter. Slice and serve. Wrap unused paste in wax paper and then plastic wrap. It should store, refrigerated, up to three months.

Homemade Granola Bars!

Work. It doesn’t go away. If you’re planning a vacation, you have to do more of it, in a shorter period of time, so that you don’t miss any deadlines when you’re gone. When you get back, you have to catch up on all the work you missed while you were away, quickly negating the relaxing vacation you worked so hard for.

Problem is, we’re a culture that puts way more value on hard work than we do on play. We talk about how many jobs we have or how busy we are with work like it’s a badge of honor, like our exhaustion is something to be proud of. We look at people who live to play with disdain, but their easy smiles tell a different story. I’ve lived among them. I’ve been one, albeit a bad one (I always worked at least two jobs), living in Tahoe for years. And I’ve got to tell you there’s a lot of work that goes into a playful life, it’s just tempered with more rewards, more balance.

Fortunately, these days I work in food and wine—a gig that’s inherently geared toward pleasure. But I still have to check myself every now and then, from that impulse to work long hours, to take on too many projects in order to get ahead. Which is why Neal and I are going camping for four days up in the Sierra. Surrounded by the natural pace of things and inhaling fresh mountain air is restorative, balancing, something we should all do more often. Maybe it will even keep me from yelling at the radio for a week or two.

Of course, in preparation for our camping trip I did do a little work. Rather than eating energy bars that cost too much and taste like licking a wet dog slathered in B-vitamins, I made granola bars. One batch is a spicy take on my crunchy granola spiked with black pepper, and the other finished off the delicious Halawy dates I bought a couple of weeks ago at the Hollywood Farmers’ Market, spiked with cardamom and packed with toasted pistachios. The blend of honey and brown sugar sweetness, spices and a tiny dose of flax meal make these snacks tasty, relatively healthy and full of energy. If you’re not going camping any time soon, try them as a mid-day snack instead of a candy bar from the vending machine at your office, or in your kid’s lunch box.

Date and Pistachio Granola Bars

2 ½ c Trader Joe’s Multigrain Hot Cereal
¾ c pistachio nutmeats, toasted
1/3 c chopped, pitted fresh dates
¼ tsp fresh cardamom
1 tbsp flax meal
¼ c clover honey
¼ c brown sugar
2 tbsp butter, divided

Heat oven to 300 degrees.

Pour multigrain cereal onto a baking sheet and top with tablespoon of butter. Toast cereal for about 15 minutes, stirring occasionally for even browning. Remove and pour into a large bowl. Toast pistachio nutmeats for about 7 minutes or until lightly browned.

When the nuts are toasted, add those to the bowl with the multigrain cereal, chopped dates, ground cardamom and flax meal and stir together.

In a small saucepan heat honey, a tablespoon of butter and brown sugar over medium-low heat, stirring until the sugar melts completely.

Pour the sugar mixture over the grain and nut mixture, stirring to coat completely. Pour granola bar batter into a greased baking dish and let cool. Use a larger baking dish for thinner, crunchier granola bars, a smaller one for thicker, chewier ones.

To make the black pepper spiked granola bars, use 2 cups of Trader Joe’s Anti OXidant Nut and Berry Mix and 1 tsp freshly ground black pepper instead of the cardamom, dates and pistachios above.

Strawberry Preserves with Black Pepper and Balsamic Vinegar

I can’t find my first sentence. Do you know where it went? I had it wrapped around my brain when I rolled out of bed this morning, but staring at the computer now, I can’t remember what it was. I had been dreaming about Top Chef again and Gordon Ramsey was the judge and Nancy Silverton had replaced Padma. We were getting ready to start the Quick Fire Challenge when G-Ram said…what?! Argh!

If you’ve seen enough episodes of Ramsey’s Kitchen Nightmares you’d know that Gordon tells all his flailing restaurateurs the same thing every time–that the key to success is simple, fresh ingredients prepared well. It’s easy to get seduced by the idea that a complicated dish is the superior one, but like writing, getting rid of the fat usually makes the meat taste better.

To me, Nancy Silverton exemplifies what Gordon Ramsey rails on about. Her entire career has been about elevating the simple: bread, cheese, grilled cheese. Having trouble writing last night, I decided to go visit Nancy and have something to eat over at Osteria Mozza. I only ordered two small dishes, but it was the first that inspired me to come home and write about simplicity. The dish was based on five ingredients: sheep’s milk ricotta, roasted garlic, roasted hazelnuts, fleur de sel and lemon zest. The garlic appeared three ways, as sweet whole cloves mingling with the roasted hazelnuts on the plate, whipped until it was the consistency of creamed honey and spooned onto the dish beneath the ricotta and blended with hazelnuts to create an aillade then spread onto crostini. Its smoky, earthy sweetness was the anchor on the plate, grounding the ethereal texture of the slightly tangy sheep’s milk ricotta. The hazelnuts and crostini were the perfect textural counterpoint adding depth of flavor in addition to crunch. The salt and the lemon zest elevated the whole dish. Nothing was masked, nothing was overwhelmed. Instead, it was like every ingredient had the volume turned up all the way–their dissonance coming together in harmony.

It was an expensive and roundabout way to get me to the simplicity of strawberry preserves, but sometimes you have to stretch the rubberband, you know?

Though it’s only the beginning of April, the strawberries at the farmers market have already been tempting me, beckoning with their ruby clad fingers of perfume. Amazingly, I bought a flat a couple of weeks ago and promptly forgot about them for a week. When I finally remembered, the strawberries were a little soft, but still super-sweet and vibrant. Since their texture was the main thing that suffered, I decided to make strawberry preserves with balsamic and black pepper. Tangy, spicy and sweet, this simple jam is the perfect foil for fresh bread, robiola or braised short ribs. The recipe is the epitome of simple–just five ingredients–and absolutely transcendent.

Strawberry Preserves with Black Pepper and Balsamic Vinegar
from Gourmet, June 1997

2 cups strawberries (about 1 pint), trimmed and quartered
1 ½ cups sugar
3 tbps balsamic vinegar (I like an aceto from Modena)
3 tbsp water
1 tsp cracked black pepper

Combine all ingredients in a saucepan and bring to a boil, then reduce the heat and simmer, occasionally skimming the foam off the top. Cook until thickened and translucent. Remove from pan and cool completely. Preserves keep, covered and chilled for one month.

It’s taken me a couple of times to figure out “thickened” means slightly syrupy, which usually takes about 30-40 minutes. Remember that the preserves will thicken when they cool, too. If you want to make a larger batch, I recommend heating some canning jars and processing them for 15 minutes in boiling water after you remove the preserves from the stove. To read more about canning, read my End of Summer post.

Leah’s Crunchy Granola

The East Coaster in me hates the crunchy granola hippie part of me. It’s true. She thinks that the combination of rolled oats, dried fruit and nuts kissed with honey is silly. And weak. The East Coaster in me thinks I should eat egg on a roll. With Bacon. Every day. And I don’t blame her. By most accounts, a fresh Kaiser roll with fried egg, butter and bacon, dusted with salt and pepper, is a very satisfying way to start the day. It can be easily eaten on-the-go, out of a brown paper bag, and goes great with a light and sweet cup of coffee. But I’ve lived in California too long. I enjoy my leisure too much. In the warm California sun I’ve learned to sit quietly and listen as my teeth grind each cluster, sounding like rocks rolling in a polisher. I like granola out of hand on a hike in the winter green mountains of Los Angeles and served with tangy Greek yogurt and a drizzle of local honey at the breakfast table.But it hasn’t always been that simple. Food has always defined me–the urban intellectual battling the laid-back, outdoorsy mountain girl competing for dominance over my brain and stomach.When my family first moved to California I was acutely aware the food was, well, different. You’ve heard the New Yorkers’ lament: the bagels suck, the pizza is bad and the Kosher deli is virtually non-existent. Every trip back east was planned around what I wanted to eat, my best friend Trish carting me around from pizzeria to pizzeria to find fresh Italian ices, to eat greasy Chinese, to pop garlic knots slathered in mozzarella cheese and marinara. I stuffed boxes of Devil Dogs in my luggage for my mom, packed the overhead compartments with onion bialy and pumpernickel bagels for my dad and once even brought a cheese pizza wrapped in foil through airport security for my brother.But then, after nearly 15 years on the West Coast, I moved back to New York. While living in Manhattan I craved Mission-style burritos and authentic refried beans, but was consistently disappointed with the Mexican food. The salsa tasted like marinara and the tortillas were rarely fresh. Avocadoes were limited to Haas, and were always on the verge of rotting after their long journey east. In a place where, with a little work, you can seemingly find everything your heart desires I missed things that hadn’t traveled far to my table: eggs from the chickens I saw running around when I lived in Petaluma or strawberries, just-picked, purchased at a roadside farm stand off the freeway in Ventura, near my folks.When I first lived on the West Coast I took for granted the mid-winter sunshine, the access to the mountains, the beach and the desert and the food. Back in New York I paid attention to the food, but too often forgot to appreciate the rainbow of fall leaves, or the subway or the Met, instead missing being able to hike or cross-country ski with little planning. In retrospect, I realize that it’s easy to get stuck in a psychological and gastronomic bi-coastal battle when you’re busy looking back.These days I live in Southern California, a place, to be quite honest, that I never thought I’d come back to. And I love it. A couple of weeks ago, while the East Coast was getting pummeled by winter storms and my friends in Lake Tahoe were making turns through five feet of fresh Sierra snow, I was walking to the farmer’s market on Third and Fairfax in a t-shirt, shorts and flip-flops. Yesterday, when I felt like I was coming down with a cold, I walked into my backyard to pick lemons off the tree for honey ginger lemon tea. And this morning, Neal and I drove 20 minutes to the Santa Monica Farmer’s Market where I picked up a fresh, young pasture-raised chicken that came from a farm in Fillmore, just an hour from here. And live equidistant from the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and hiking in Runyon Canyon. What’s left to miss?Which brings me back to granola. I’ve been obsessed with granola lately, maybe as a sign that I’m finally comfortable is my own skin, and no store-bought clusters have been able to satisfy me. Bulk or pre-packaged granola is often dry, stale and flavorless or expensive. It’s either really high in fat or tastes like cardboard. With every granola I’ve tried I’ve thought—much like jewelry after I’d learned to make it—I can do that better.And so I set out to make granola myself. I was surprised to find that something so simple wasn’t nearly as easy as I thought. My first batch burned, leaving the grains over-caramelized and tasting like charcoal. My second batch had the right flavor, lightly sweet, nutty and tart, but the oats didn’t bind together and I was left with dust to sprinkle over my yogurt. Inspired, my friend Brooke of Foodwoolf tried the granola recipe from Orangette, which was also slightly overdone and too loose. I was getting close to giving up when I remember the beautiful golden clusters when I made Ben’s Apple Crisp. The trick, I realized, was kneading in cold butter and piling the cereal together to cool. On Thursday night, armed with a new baking sheet from Surfas, a Silpat baking mat, multi-grain hot cereal from Trader Joe’s (a blend of rye, oats, wheat and barley) and TJ’s Anti-OXidant Nut & Berry Mix, which includes walnuts, almonds, cashews, dried cranberries, raisins, blueberries and raspberries, I finally nailed it: Granola that tastes like home.

Leah’s Crunchy Granola5 tbsp cold, unsalted, butter cut into pats3 cups TJ’s Multi-grain cereal or oatmeal2 tbsp honey¼ cup brown sugar6 oz. TJ’s Anti-OXidant Nut & Berry MixPreheat oven to 325 degrees. In a large bowl combine cereal, honey and brown sugar. Slowly and gently knead in butter to form clumps of cereal, being careful not to crush the grains. Pour onto baking sheet and cook until light brown, occasionally stirring and piling granola toward the center. (If the cereal spreads as the butter melts, it’s more likely to burn and you won’t get big granola clusters.) Once desired color is reached, take out and let cool. Break up clusters and stir in nuts and berries. 

Eat your granola by the handful, but save some for the next day’s breakfast (and your favorite East Coaster).