Well it’s hard to believe that 2013 is rapidly coming to a close. With my new position as a State Legislator in Maine, 2013 has been a whirlwind. Sadly with all the time I have been spending in Augusta I haven’t had as much time to cook or to blog. Luckily the holiday season has given me some free time and I’ve decided to catch up on blogging.
Below is one of my favorite apple recipes. Every fall I turn into an apple fiend. As soon as the first Cortlands are ripe I dash off to Willow Pond Farm to pick at least one hundred pounds of apples to can, cook, eat, and store. This apple chutney recipe is a great use of several varieties of apples. Also we had a bumper crop of peppers this year from Dad’s garden (we picked our last ones at the end of October) so this recipe was a great combination of all of our fall crops. This chutney is the perfect condiment to have in your fridge for the holiday season. It goes great with roast pork, sharp cheese, and my family even puts it on toast. My favorite way to use it is to have it with a grilled cheese sandwich. This chutney is not too sweet and packs a pleasant punch. Enjoy!
Apple Chutney
(Makes 8 pints with a little left over for storing in the fridge or eating right away!)
Ingredients:
2 organic lemons
1/4 cup fresh grated ginger root
4 T chopped crystalized ginger
2 large cloves garlic, finely diced or grated
8 cups apples, on the greenish side ( I used a combination of Macs, Cortlands and Northern Spies)
3 diced green tomatoes
4 organic chopped red peppers
2 1/2 cups raisins
1 small jalapeno
1 1/2 cup cider vinegar
1 cup dark brown sugar
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup water
Pinch of cayenne powder
Wash and chop all fruit and vegetables. Combine all ingredients in a large heavy-bottomed saucepan. Simmer the chutney, stirring frequently, for two hours or longer. Keep tasting the chutney to determine when the sauce is done. At this point you can store the chutney in your fridge for up to two months. The longer the chutney sits the better the flavor gets. If canning the chutney pack the pint jars while the chutney is piping hot. Leave a 1/2 inch headspace and process for 15 minutes.
I hope that all of you had a tasty and relaxing Thanksgiving!
Julia McWilliams Child was born one hundred years ago today. In my opinion, this should be a national holiday dedicated to the pleasures of the table and our culinary history. Smith College always celebrates its famous alumna on Julia Child Day, the Thursday before Thanksgiving. Every dining hall and the campus center features different recipes from Julia. Some of my fondest college memories are from roaming from one Julia venue to another and another, stuffing myself to the point of gluttony and leaving little appetite for the less exciting Thanksgiving table to follow in a few days (we used to call the span of time from Julia Child Day to Thanksgiving “Fat Week”).
Unfortunately, my work and campaign schedule leaves me little time to devote to doing anything elaborate to celebrate her birthday. So I shall celebrate by treating myself to her newest biography, “Dearie,” just published by Bob Spitz, and by enjoying some of her good basic everyday recipes like Salad Nicoise, an improvised Peche Clafoutis using peaches instead of cherries, and her favorite chocolate cake.
This is the perfect time of the year for Julia’s favorite main-course salad, Salad Nicoise. The new potatoes are in season, the green beans are plentiful, and the tomatoes are finally turning red. I like to use tiny new yellow potatoes that can skinned just by a vigorous brushing and cooked in just a few minutes. My Mother’s garden is filled with delicious little haricots vertes. She plants Taverna, Maxibel, and Fortex beans to harvest when thin and about six inches long. And her Sun Gold and Sun Sugar cherry tomatoes are huge this year.
This recipe is from one of my favorite (if there can be such) books of hers, “Julia’s Kitchen Wisdom, Essential Techniques and Recipes from a Lifetime of Cooking.”
This little book, published a few years before she died, is a distillation of pure Julia and is always perfect to give as an introductory gift to someone who is not already a fan of hers.
Salad Nicoise
1 large head of Boston or Summer Crisp lettuce, washed and dried
1 pound of green beans, cooked 4 to 5 minutes in a large pot of rapidly boiling water
1 ½ Tbs minced shallots or ¼ very thinly sliced sweet onion (optional)
½ to 2/3 cup basic vinaigrette
Salt and freshly ground pepper
3 to 4 ripe red tomatoes, cut into wedges (or 10 to 12 cherry tomatoes, halved)
1 ½ pounds potatoes, peeled, sliced and cooked
2 3-ounce cans oil packed canned tuna or ½ pound leftover fish like salmon
6 hard-boiled eggs, peeled and halved
1 freshly opened can of anchovy fillets (optional)
1/3 cup small black Nicoise or Kalamata olives
2 to 3 Tbs capers
3 Tbs minced parsley
Arrange the lettuce leaves on a large platter. Shortly before serving, toss the beans and the potatoes separately with the onion or shallots, several spoonfuls of the vinaigrette and salt and pepper. Baste the tomatoes with a spoonful of vinaigrette. Place the potatoes in the center of the platter and arrange a mound of beans at either end, with tomatoes and small mounds of tuna at strategic intervals. Ring the platter with halves of hard-boiled eggs, sunny side up, and curl an anchovy on top of each. Spoon more vinaigrette over all; scatter on olives, capers, and parsley, and serve.
Julia Child’s 90th Birthday. Picture from the SF Chronicle.
And because it is Julia’s birthday I have another Julia recipe to share. This one is taken directly from her writing and has no embellishments from me. Below is Julia Child’s favorite chocolate cake “La Reine de Saba—the Queen of Sheba Chocolate Almond Cake.”
From Julia Child: La Reine de Saba—the Queen of Sheba Chocolate Almond Cake
“My favorite chocolate cake. For an 8 by 1 ½ inch cake, serving 6 to 8. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F, set rack in lower-middle level, and prepare cake pan. Measure out ½ cup sifted plain bleached cake flour and 1/3 cup …pulverized almonds… Using an electric mixer, cream 1 stick butter with ½ cup sugar; when fluffy, one at a time beat in 3 egg yolks. Meanwhile, melt 3 ounces semi-sweet chocolate and 1ounce bitter chocolate with 2 tablespoons dark rum or strong coffee…, and stir the warm chocolate into the yolks. Beat 3 egg whites into stiff, shining peaks…and stir a quarter of them into the yolks. Rapidly and delicately fold in the rest, alternating with sprinklings of almonds and siftings of flour. Turn at once into the prepared pan and bake about 25 minutes, until it has puffed to the top of the pan but the center moves slightly when gently shaken.
Let cool 15 minutes before unmolding. This type of cake is always at its best at room temperature. Serve with a dusting of confectioners’ sugar…”
So without further ado: Happy birthday, dear Julia.
Toujours bon appétit!
Also because PBS brought Julia Child into our lives through their TV programming I feel the need to remind everyone that tomorrow is Maine Public Broadcasting Network’s “Super Thursday” One Day Pledge Drive. Instead of taking up the airwaves with a week of pledge drives MPBN is trying to do it in one day. Please consider donating tomorrow to help them meet their funding goal. For more information check out their site: http://www.mpbn.net/Support/DonatetoMPBN/SuperThursdayOneDayPledgeDrive.aspx
An image from DuBose Heyward's "The Country Bunny"
Easter in my household is a distinctly feminine affair.
The holiday starts the night before with a reading of our traditional Easter book, The Country Bunny and the Little Gold Shoes by Du Bose Heyward. My mother has read it to me every Easter and my grandmother read it to her as a child. The story is a heartwarming tale about overcoming hardship and negativity. In it a little girl bunny dreams of growing up to be the Easter Bunny, but all the boy and aristocratic bunnies mock her and tell her to go back to the country and raise little baby bunnies. It is a magnificent feminist children’s book written in 1939 by the same man who wrote the opera Porgy and Bess. If you have not read it then check it out: The Country Bunny on Amazon
When I was younger I would bounce out of bed in search of what the elusive Easter bunny had left. Now I bounce out of bed to prepare Easter brunch. This holiday I was lucky enough to have Benjamin and Kippy staying at the house.
Mimosa
Kippy and I were in charge of brunch and decided to meld our traditions. The menu consisted of Fresh Fruit, Mimosas, Asparagus with Mornay Sauce, Kielbasa and Eggs Benedict/Florentine covered in a sumptuous Hollandaise sauce. Or at least that was the plan.
The first part of the menu went off without a hitch, then it came time for the Hollandaise. Hollandaise sauce is as elusive as the Easter bunny and generally as satisfying as the sugar rush he leaves behind. I’ve seen people quiver with both desire and fear when discussing Hollandaise. My college roommate swears that her heaven would be floating in a vat of the stuff.
“In these fat-fearing and egg-fearing times, I think we may be forgetting just how good hollandaise is, with its voluptuously silken texture and its lemony-buttery flavor.” – Julia Child from Julia and Jacques: Cooking at Home
Hollandaise is an utterly sinful culinary delight; well it is if you can pull it off. Hollandaise is the true diva of sauces. All to often and easily this magnificent sauce can go wrong and you’re left with a curdled soup of yolks and butter.
Emulsion: noun. A mixture of two or more liquids that are not soluble in one another. One is suspended as small droplets in the other.
Hollandaise is an emulsion sauce, like Mayonnaise. It is completely dependent upon the ability of the egg yolks to absorb the butter and flavors. The egg yolks hold the butter in suspension to create a creamy and decadent sauce. But if it goes array the emulsion fails and the eggs curdle and separate from the butter.
In a hurry I grabbed the first recipe I found out of Julia Child’s Julia’s Kitchen Wisdom.I used her directions but went with the traditional method of making the sauce over a double boiler. Kippy and I furiously worked together while balancing the task of cooking the meat and slicing the rest of the ingredients. We tried to be careful, following the recipe and we treated it with love! Yet somehow before we knew it we had a sad curdled Hollandaise starring up at us. But no! What happened? We clarified the butter. We thought we had cooked everything right!
Hollandaise Gone Wrong!
Naturally, my mother managed to stroll into the kitchen during our moment of culinary failure. Peeking into the pan she chuckled and suggested a new cookbook for us and grabbed Julia and Jacques: Cooking at Home. Julia has a different method with softened butter, no double boiler and clear instructions from Jacques about cooking the yolks or “sabayon”.
Sabayon: noun. A light, frothy mixture made by beating egg yolks with water or other liquid over gentle heat.
Our biggest mistake was patience; we had rushed the emulsion. When cooking the yolks make sure you whisk them thoroughly but don’t beat them into a fury. The key here is to cook and thicken the yolks. Next make sure you add the butter slowly. Give it time to absorb and adapt to the butter. We had much better luck using chunks of warmed/softened butter than with the melted/clarified butter. Traditionalists, like Jacques Pepin, swear that using clarified butter results in a thicker Hollandaise. Our version, with the softened butter, was exactly how I like it and I could not imagine it being any thicker. It simply doesn’t seem worth the time to bother with the other methods involving double boilers and clarified butter. Another big difference was the size of the saucepan. We used a far to large pan the first time and the volume of the pan didn’t match the amount of yolks. Using a smaller pan gives your greater control. It really is a capacity issue! Also this recipe took very little time and was much easier than blender Hollandaise recipes.
Remember this sauce is very rich. It took so long to recover from that it took this blog entry a week and half after Easter to come to fruition. But you shouldn’t wait for the next holiday to make this truly sumptuous and classic sauce.
The finished Hollandaise on our Eggs Benedict/Florentine
Hollandaise Sauce adaptedfrom Julia and Jacques: Cooking at Home
Makes about 1 cup
3 egg yolks
1 Tbs water
1 Tbs freshly squeezed lemon juice (we ended up adding a bit more at the end for flavor)
8 ounces of very, very soft unsalted butter. (It must be unsalted butter the sauce needs very little salt)
Itty bitty pinch of salt
Pepper
Whisk the yolks, water, and lemon juice in a medium heavy bottomed saucepan. Whisk until thick and pale. Set the pan over moderately low heat and continue to whisk at a reasonable speed. Whisking in a figure eight pattern is best in order to keep the eggs from overcooking.
Moderate the heat by frequently moving the pan of the burner for a few seconds and then placing it back. As the yolks cook they will become frothy and increase in volume/thicken. When the yolks are thickened and you are able to see the bottom of the pan through the steaks of the whisk (like in risotto) remove from the heat.
In 1 Tbs chunks add the soft butter and whisk constantly to incorporate each addition. Work slowly. Do not rush the butter. As the emulsion forms, you may begin to add the butter in slightly larger chunks but always whisk until fully incorporated.
Continue adding butter until the sauce has thickened to your preference.
Season lightly with salt, pepper and additional lemon if wanted. Whisk in well and then serve.
Valentine’s Day is a time when we all rush out to get flowers, chocolate, cards, jewelry and any other item that might show our darling just how we feel. While I am a big fan of all of the aforementioned items, I have to say that this year we took a different path on Valentine’s Day.
This year, Ben and I decided to show our love with the true superhero of food: Pork! “Such a sweet meat!”
“Pork – no animal is more used for nourishment and none more indispensable in the kitchen; employed either fresh or salt, all is useful, even to its bristles and its blood; it is the superfluous riches of the farmer, and helps to pay the rent of the cottager.” Alexis Soyer 19th century French chef. ‘The Modern Housewife’ (1851)
What else could show true love more than a boneless pork roast stuffed with sausage and sage and then wrapped in bacon?
Valentine's Stuffed Pork Roast
Valentine’s Pork Roast
1 large boneless pork loin roast
2 – 3 Italian sausages, casings discarded
2 large shallots
6 large fresh sage sprigs, plus 4 to chop up
Bacon
1 ½ cups white wine
Peeled carrots
Washed and quartered potatoes
Salt
Pepper
Kitchen string
Preheat oven to 450°F with rack in middle.
Chop shallots and four sage leaves up and toss together. Toss this mixture with the sausage to create the stuffing.
Cut the pork roast open through the middle to create a crevice to put the stuffing in.
Rub pork, inside and out, with salt and pepper. Put the stuffing mixture inside the cut roast. Roll the roast back together with the cut side facing up. On top of the incision drape the six large sage leaves across the roast covering the cut. Then cover the entire top of the roast in bacon. Next tie the roast together with kitchen string.
Pork Roast Covered in Sage
Cutting the Bacon to place on the Pork Roast
Covering the Roast with Bacon
Starting to tie the roast together
Finishing up
Put roast, bacon side up, in a large roasting pan with carrots and potatoes, then pour in wine. Roast 20 minutes, then reduce heat to 350°F and continue to roast, basting meat every 10 minutes or so with the pan drippings, until a meat thermometer registers 155°F, about 1 – 2 hours more. Let stand 15 minutes. Serve with pan juices and roasted vegetables.