craigie on main

restaurant openings in my neighborhood always cause me some pain along with the joy. i very much like craigie street bistrot, and am quite happy that now it's around the corner on main street. at the same time, i really am not that happy that craigie street is what moved in on main street, because its prices are so high that it's not affordable for the vast majority of the neighborhood. while i don't object that much to the influx of well-heeled yuppie/upper-middle-class strangers coming into the neighborhood - who are we kidding, i mind a whole lot - it's more that i think that restaurants that purport to be so neighborhoody should pay more attention to who lives in the neighborhood. it just doesn't seem ethically right that a restaurant should locate itself in a place where most of the diners are not natives (unless we're in new york). not even brunch is affordable! contrast craigie on main with tosci's - tosci's is a true neighborhood place where you can sit, linger, and brunch for not too much. i just feel that craigie is being a little insensitive.

ethical tension aside, craigie on main is pretty good in the food and service department. first, let's do a couple of notes about decor. overall, quite nice - easy to hear, nice colors, no clashing, etc. but the two-tops are spaced too close to each other. i mean, really - i'm not a huge person, and i had trouble getting in and out of my seat because it was back to back with the seat behind me. you know how you feel like the restaurant doesn't think you're going to be that profitable for them, and they give you the most rotten tables? that pretty much sums up how i felt about that table. and the table size is fine - all the plates fit - but the spacing is pretty much horrible. also, i kind of like having the kitchen out in the open (concerns with food odors saturating your clothing aside), but it leaves the entryway space feeling really cramped. i don't know who their designer was, but they did not do that great a job - good idea, middling execution. i wonder if the draft from the door affects temperatures in the kitchen, or if it's far enough away?

anyway, the food. we came because they had a restaurant stimulus menu - a $35 3-course prix fixe. it was relatively unexciting, though, and the first course was crispy smelts that i wasn't sure i would like, so mary and i ordered a la carte. usually craigie street has a $30 3-course prix fixe, so i'm curious to know if at craigie on main, it has been edited out. because i would certainly go more often if there was a more affordable option.

appetizers: i started with grilled octopus with chorizo cream, cipollini onions, and hearts of palm. i'm not a fan of hearts of palm - they just taste bland to me - but the rest was an excellent combination. i haven't had octopus that many times - i can probably count the number of times on one hand - and the last one i had was at babbo, and it was fantastic. this one was excellent as well; the chorizo cream was a particularly good pairing. i find the difference between the textures of squid and octopus to be really intriguing - you wouldn't expect such similar creatures to taste so different. mary had the cream of cauliflower soup with rabbit sausage and a bit of brussels sprouts. the soup was pretty delicate in flavor, but was fantastic in combination with the rabbit sausage; in turn the rabbit sausage was definitely the best preparation of rabbit that i've had - i don't typically like rabbit because i find it bland.

by the way, bread service: generally blah. the bread was fine, but i don't see why craigie street always insists on serving butter that's too cold to spread.

for main courses, i had the slow-cooked sea trout with frizzled ginger, rock shrimp, and mussels, all in a bit of serrano ham broth with almonds (hot ham water, anyone?). i assume that "slow-cooked" means "sous vide" and i'm coming to understand that i don't really like the texture of things that are cooked sous-vide. i think i prefer food, or at least meat, with texture and chew to it, rather than it being food for babies and people with dentures. however, the flavors of this dish were really excellent - better than the octopus, i would say. everything was very complementary, and the rock shrimp were almost as good as the ones i had at babbo (the last place i had rock shrimp). the trout didn't taste overly trout-y (as mackerel sometimes taste overly mackerel-y), and every time i have mussels, i increasingly realize that i really like them.

the surprise of the night was dessert - gingerbread pain perdu, and it was a knockout! I don't typically think of dessert being a strong suit for craigie street, but this was the best thing we had all night. it was two triangles of cake that had a lot of egg in it - enough for a very moist, almost custardy way, but custardy in a cooked in a hot water bath for a while, rather than a typical creme caramel custardy-ness. it's difficult to describe, and i'd be curious to know what the preparation was. whatever it was, the slight crunchiness of the very top layer was absolutely delectable, and it was fantastic with the ginger ice cream. it was kind of like a ginger-spiced version of sticky toffee pudding, minus the copious amounts of caramel sauce.

service was excellent - it seems like the restaurant is really trying to please diners so they come back, in these difficult economic times. well...i mean, my views on this are pretty clear. i wonder if it's just not economically feasible to lower prices, or if there's a certain level of produce quality that can't be trimmed in any way to make the restaurant more affordable. regardless, it's nice to have some seriously good food in the neighborhood - it's definitely better than everything else (with the exception, perhaps, of salts, a restaurant i haven't been to). let's just hope that someday the locals will be able to partake.

a mouthful of curdled milk

yeah, that was just my ploy to get you to read this. while i did just take a swig of milk that turned out to be curdled (really, whole foods? after a week?), this post is really about caramel. but first, let me tell you - curdled milk is disgusting. look before you leap, i guess.

i have made five batches of caramel things thus far - two sauces (to find the recipe, search for "caramel sauce" within this blog), and two batches of caramel candy. what's not to love about caramel? chewy but soft, sweet but not tasting completely of sugar. well, tasting of caramelized sugar. lusciously caramelized sugar. i hadn't ever made caramel before last weekend, beyond the occasional batch of melted sugar for cake decorations or creme caramel. caramel is special because in addition to the sugar, it includes cream and butter. and, dear readers, after three tries, i have attained success with caramels. the first batch was delicious, but so soft that it refused to part from the aluminum foil i poured it onto without a bit of a battle. i won the battle, but the caramel won the war because it was all lumpy and unattractive looking. but i guess i won the meta-war because i rolled it out onto my leftover ganache, and now it's all cut up in a tupperware, waiting to be dipped in tempered chocolate. so HA, soft caramel. i win.

the second batch...well, since the first batch was too soft, i thought i'd try some different temperatures to cook the caramel at. and i wasn't watching that closely, and by the time i took it off the stove, it was at 270F like i wanted (the original recipe specified 250F), but it definitely smelled burned. i poured it off into a pan lined with wax paper anyway, and this i regret. i really doubt that i will be able to part the wax paper from the caramel. however, this is fine by me: the butter separated slightly from the sugar and has formed waxy little pools on the surface of the caramel, and it still smells slightly burned. if you like burnt caramel in candy form, ...fortified with a bit of wax paper, let me know.

i have to admit that i felt a little defeated when i thought about making a third batch. but lo and behold, while indulging in some retail therapy (school is hard, you know), i saw a silicone loaf pan on sale at crate and barrel. and now you know my dirty secret: i own a silicone baking pan. hypocrite, you say? you remember all of those times i railed against silicone baking pans because you only get true browning action with real, not-nonstick pans? well, a girl needs her caramel. and the sanity that comes along with making caramel correctly. besides, i'm not actually baking anything in the pan.

and this third time, everything ended up perfectly: this caramel is not oozing butter, is not too soft, is not sticking to anything but itself. i haven't actually tasted it yet, but the sheen on this caramel is the sheen of...well, caramel. i would say something nice about silicone, but then i'd have to add a catty disclaimer. everything is as it's supposed to be, and all is well.

caramels
(adapted from foodbeam, one of my favorite blogs)
180g sugar
20g water
70g corn syrup
45g butter
200g heavy cream, scalded (heated until it simmers)

a silicone loaf pan (or other pan of similar size)

1. if you haven't already, take the butter and cream out of the fridge and let them come to room temperature. combine the sugar, water, and corn syrup in a medium saucepan with a thick bottom. stir with a rubber spatula to combine completely, then heat on medium until the mixture is bubbling thickly and has turned a medium amber. don't stir; if you have a compulsive stirring complex like me, then you can swirl the sugar around the pan now and then. don't worry, you can stir later.

2. when the sugar has started to bubble, start heating the cream on medium low in a small or medium saucepan with a thick bottom. the sugar should take about 15 minutes longer or so (this can vary a lot) to caramelize to the proper amber color. don't stir the cream either. when the cream starts simmering, turn the heat to low. if you're afraid it's going to burn, turn the heat off.

3. alright, so now the sugar should be amber and bubbling, and your cream has been scalded. take the sugar off the stove and add the cream and butter. stir until it's all mixed together, then put it back on the stove. keep the heat at medium and let the mixture boil and do its thing until it registers 255-260F on a candy thermometer. it should hold that temperature pretty well - not fluctuate from 245-255F - or it won't solidify correctly, or so my tests seem to indicate. you should give it a stir every now and then to make sure nothing burns; if your stove tends to run hot, you might want to use medium-low to boil the mixture.

4. pour the caramel into the pan. let it set for 3 hours, and you're good to go. you can slice the caramel with a sharp knife (to get the prettiest, cleanest cut), or a regular dinner knife if you just want to eat some.

[makes a loaf-pan shaped bar of caramel, about 5/8" thick]

chicken and rice

i have never really understood the point of arraying things on a plate in separate areas, only to turn around and stuff it all into your mouth at the same time anyway. why not save your guests the trouble of cutting everything up? of course, there are exceptions to this rule, because a world where everything resembles chopped salad is a depressing world, but chicken and rice isn't fancy. it's...chicken and rice. every culture has their own version of it, making it pretty much the universal comfort food.

this is the hainanese chicken from mark bittman's column a few weeks ago, tweaked here and there. the basic method is to poach an entire chicken, then shred it and its accompaniments together into one delicious pile. this is a chicken and rice that would silence all of those people who believe that chinese food is, above all, greasy and heavy, yet it still remains identifiably chinese in its flavors. and now i'll stop pretending i have any substantive knowledge of chinese cuisine. knowing how to make your mother's dumplings and spring rolls doesn't really qualify you as an expert on the entirety of chinese cuisine, last time i looked.

i do, however, know good food when i...see... it. you know what i mean. this chicken is pretty phenomenal - it doesn't get much better than this. the drawback: it just takes a while to put it all together. fortunately, you can do the prep while the chicken cooks, so you can feel like you're being efficient, even if it's not actually true and dinner takes two hours to go from the fridge to the table. for people who like ingredient efficiency, you'll be pleased to note that you cook the rice in the broth produced from poaching the chickens.

hainanese chicken
(adapted from mark bittman)
1 4-lb chicken, fat trimmed and put aside
5-6 large cloves garlic, smashed, plus 4-5 cloves garlic, minced
6-7 1/8" thick slices of ginger (~1/4c in volume), plus 3-4T ginger, minced
and yet more ginger: keep a piece the size of a few walnuts to grate for the dressing
1 medium onion, diced fine
2c long-grain white rice (this is better with white rice than brown rice)
4-5 scallions, trimmed and chopped, at least 1/2 cup
2-3 lbs tomatoes, diced
1/2c cilantro, chopped fine
2T sesame oil
1T soy sauce

1. bring a large pot of water to a boil. lower the chicken into the water slowly and drop the whole cloves of garlic and slices of ginger into the water, around the chicken. let the chicken cook at medium heat for about 10-15 minutes (you can always cook the chicken a bit more later), covered, then turn off the heat and let the chicken sit, covered, for 45 minutes.

2. while you're waiting for the chicken, you can do the rest of your vegetable prep - dicing onions and tomatoes, chopping herbs, etc. when the 45 minutes is close to being up, start sauteing the onion, minced garlic, and minced ginger in a large saucepan with a bit of butter, or whatever oil/fat you have on hand, as long as it's not olive oil. cook them until they're translucent, about 10 minutes.

3. use a pair of tongs remove the chicken from its pot and put it on a platter or in a bowl. add the rice to the sauteed onions with a bit more butter/oil and stir to coat all the rice. let it cook for about a minute, then add 4 cups of broth from the pot. let the rice come to a boil over medium heat, then turn heat to low and cook, covered, until the rice is done, ~20-30 minutes.

4. pull the chicken apart at the joints to cool it. while it's cooling, grate the ginger into a bowl, and then make the dressing: stir the sesame oil into the grated ginger, then whisk in some soy sauce - you can add more soy sauce if you want, now or later, when everything has been mixed together. when the chicken is cool enough to handle, pull the meat off and shred it into a large serving bowl. add the dressing and toss to coat.

5. when the rice is done, toss all of the vegetables (tomatoes, herbs) with the chicken. you can add more salt if you want - either soy sauce or kosher salt. you can either mix the rice into the chicken, or serve the chicken on top of the rice in bowls.

6. you'll probably have some broth left over - you can reduce it and put it in the fridge for future use.

[serves 5 hungry people, or 6-8 not-very-hungry people]

those cookies again

my feet are killing me because i just ran to school (ok, walked really fast; i don't run) to get my computer - i'm having dinner at josh's and i'm shamelessly using it as an excuse to have him help me extract my hard drive from my dead laptop so i can get the data off it.

luckily i think i have time to dash off this quick recipe, which i've been meaning to post for quite some time. so without further ado, the buckwheat-cocoa nib cookies. these are best made the day before you're going to eat them, as the flavors develop in a lovely partnership. and coming up: hainanese chicken, caramel sauce, and caramels!

buckwheat-cocoa nib cookies
(adapted from alice medrich)

1 ¼ cups flour
¾ cup buckwheat flour
2 sticks butter, at room temp
2/3 cup sugar
1/3 cup cocoa nibs

1. in a medium bowl, whisk together the flours.

2. beat the butter with a wooden spoon until it's soft, then add the sugar and mix until smooth and creamy. add the cocoa nibs and mix to incorporate. add the flour, and mix just until incorporated. the mixture will look more like dough as you mix it - the butter needs a little time to moisten the dough. when the dough is completely mixed together it'll pull away slightly from the side of the bowl.

3. on a sheet of plastic wrap, form the dough into 1-2 logs that are about 2" in diameter - this can be easier if you use the plastic wrap to help you squish the dough together. you'll probably have to press the dough together pretty firmly to get it to stick together. wrap the dough well in plastic wrap and chill overnight.

4. remove the dough from the fridge and slice it into 1/4" thick slices - if it shatters, you should let it sit at room temp for 30 minutes to an hour so the dough softens up a little. make sure you use a sharp knife. alternatively, you can probably try rolling it out and cutting it out with cookie cutters, but just make sure you don't roll it out too much or your cookies will be tough. if your dough gets too soft, just pop it in the freezer for 10 minutes or so. also, i generally recommend rolling cookie or pastry dough out between two sheets of plastic wrap - much less messy and easier to get onto the baking sheet.

5. preheat the oven to 350F. bake the cookies for about 11-15 minutes in the middle of the oven, on baking sheets lined with a silpat, parchment paper, or foil. space the cookies about 1" to 1.5" apart - 15 cookies per sheet.

6. cool the cookies completely before storing them, so they stay crisp - they do retain their crispness quite well over time. they stay good in an airtight container for about a month, more if you freeze them.

[makes about 60 2" cookies]

exhausted (pork v)

i am exhausted.  i have been sleeping poorly all week, probably from attempting to wake up well before my body really wants me to.  so then i'm half asleep for anywhere from half an hour to three hours, and i'm sure it's messing up my sleep cycle.  i should really learn to leave well enough alone.

but more to the point, i was going to make the hainanese chicken recipe from mark bittman's column last week, but decided against it because it would take too long.  of course, i still ended up cooking for a good three hours or so, roasting pork v.  nothing too fancy, just regular dinnertime fare.  

i'm being facetious.  it's true that it wasn't that fancy, but it also wasn't regular dinnertime food.  it was friday night relaxation cooking: roast pork tenderloin stuffed with sage and coriander seeds, and wrapped in bacon; roasted potatoes; sauteed spinach; and pumpkin pie.  this sounds a lot more involved than it was, really, and i've made all of these things before so that's where it's not so fancy.  nothing experimental, nothing i hadn't tried before, because i really just didn't feel like i had that much energy to expend.  the biggest flourish of the meal was the pumpkin pie, which i decided to make as i was lying on my bed working during the day, since it was cold and rainy outside.  

i love fall and winter because they're the cold months, and i actually prefer the comfort factor of cold-weather foods to the abundance of produce you get in the summer.  i mean, i like a real tomato just like all of the other food snobs out there, but it's just not as good as getting home when it's really cold outside and having something warm to eat or drink.  winter is full of hearty foods - stews and mashes, things simmered for a long time over low heat, pies and roasted things - and the weather forces everyone to huddle around in blankets on the couch.  the smell of fall makes you think of pumpkin pie, and all is good in the world.  i guess that since the fall and winter are occupied so squarely with thanksgiving and christmas that i associate them more closely with family and camaraderie, for lack of a better word, than i do the spring or summer.

a couple of notes on the other stuff - the pork was cooked just correctly, which was a surprise because my meat thermometer has gone missing (which is a real problem because it also goes high enough to candy-making temperatures) and i didn't know any other way to test if it was done.  i did the bacon-wrapped pork loin again, but instead of just putting sage under the crust, i also put a layer of sage inside it, with coriander seeds.  so i think that the middle layer is definitely a good thing, but in general i actually prefer pork sirloin to pork tenderloin, because it's just more savory.  i discovered coriander seeds when i made a slow-cooked pork shoulder with just onions, wine, and coriander seeds, and i like them with pork a lot; however, they weren't quite as good with pork tenderloin, probably because they need a longer cooking time.  last but not least - well, actually it was the least good thing - the spinach was cooked correctly, until it was just wilted enough, but i accidentally oversalted it because i wasn't paying enough attention.

so this was an informal type of thing, my usual friday cooking when i have time for it.  i really like the idea of making it a regular part of my schedule, where whoever is free just comes over on a given week, and have whatever i'm making.  kind of like a rotating supper club, because i need to cook, but then i also need people to eat what i've made.  the notion that people would just drop by is also inexplicably attractive; it's like we've reached that level of neighborliness that they know they can just come by.  it's like having all of your friends living not necessarily with you, but in the same general area.  the idea of people coming over and that there would be hot chocolate or tea-infused apple cider on the stove for them?  somehow very appealing.

so, to keep track, these are the things that remain on my food list to do when i'm feeling more adventurous:

1. puff pastry -> palmiers

2. successful popsicles

3. bacon-pear bread from this month's bon appetit

4. that hainanese chicken!  google it - it sounds really good

5. traditional steamed english puddings, like a sticky toffee pudding

6. winter pies: pumpkin, chocolate walnut, just any kind of wintertime pie.  but especially pumpkin pie.

there are more things on this list, but i've forgotten them.  as usual.

sandwich brunch I

just to start with an aside: i added a pork tenderloin (one of the big ones, you know, ~2' long or so) to the collection of frozen meats in the freezer. to date, i have: 1 pork tenderloin, in quarters; 1 lb bacon; 1 large pkg chicken thighs; 1 chicken. probably plus some miscellaneous things. in case it wasn't clear before, i am one of those people with a compulsive need to stock up on things. i'm that girl who buys tons of chipboard so she has it when utrecht is closed or it's raining; that girl who signs up for lasercutter time all the way into december when it's only september. hey, i just like to be prepared.

anyway, for those who insist on logic, we'll pretend that the above digression is really a preface, albeit one totally unrelated to what will now follow. the point of this post, as its title suggests, is really a discussion of this past sunday's sandwich brunch. when i sent out the invitation i wanted to say something witty, or at least use someone else's witticisms - for a tea party, for example, i usually use something from "the importance of being earnest," which has great lines about muffins. however, i forgot, and so the invitation was rather plain. i suppose there's always next time. i actually had great plans for this brunch; instead of my usual text-only invitation, i was going to make a poster with tons of little icons of iconic sandwiches. but i frittered away the summer, so i didn't have time in the end. not quite on top of things this time, unfortunately.

however, the brunch itself was really fun! i love themed brunches and potlucks, goodness knows why; this one is a good idea for many reasons.

1: creativity. i do think that for the less food-inclined, making a sandwich is more fun and less daunting than trying to make your mother's home fries for a more traditional brunch.

2: quantities of food. you know how, when you have potlucks, you always end up with too much food? and then it's not clear whether the proper etiquette is to accept all of the leftovers, as the hostess; you don't want to step on anybody's toes but it's impossible to tell if your guests want you to keep what's left, or whether they want it for later to snack on, and if everybody is too polite/passive aggressive, then you've got a problem. the sandwich brunch - everybody brought 3ish sandwiches, which we cut up into smaller pieces - is a pretty effective way to moderate how much food you end up with, while still ending up stuffed as is a requirement for brunches.

3: utility associated with eating small things. i feel that you can never underestimate how much pleasure you gain from how you eat, in addition to what you are eating. there's a reason why people like finger foods so much; you get to eat a lot of different things without eating too much, and somewhat perversely, it's easier to eat more because you don't notice all the little things that you eat over the course of a few hours. grazing on small things is also nice and informal. plus grazing is, for me at least, a very pleasing way to think about eating.

and in case you're wondering what we had, this is the list:

roast chicken/pear/dill-ricotta spread
pastrami sandwiches from zaftig's
pb+j with yogurt
openfaced smoked salmon with some sort of spread and dill
smoked salmon and grape tomatoes on triscuits
tuna melt

and for dessert, ice cream sandwiches - i made a brownie sheet and a blondie sheet for the outsides, as well as these dense chocolate cookies from foodbeam that i cut in half to fill with ice cream.  kind of like a solid, chocolate profiterole.  ice cream was inexplicably cheap at star market, so i bought a package of blackberry, one of fenway fudge, and one of peanut butter nation.  for those not in the boston area, the latter two are hood brand, red sox-themed flavors.  peanut butter nation is vanilla ice cream with semi-solid fudge ripple and little peanut-butter-filled chocolate socks, and is my favorite commercially produced ice cream besides vanilla/chocolate.  somehow none of the cookie bases froze all the way through, and were still chewy out of the freezer; i know this pretty well because i've been eating them all week.  the best combo, by the way, was the brownie sheet base with the blackberry ice cream, which turned out to be surprisingly good and non-artificial tasting.

so there you have it - sandwich brunch no. 1, hopefully to be followed by no. 2 when it gets colder - and it'll be soup and a sandwich, i think. 

tovolo, my love

just some quick reportage on some recent and ongoing experiments - last-day-at-the-office cupcakes and my newly acquired popsicle molds (see awesome image to the left).

so my departing gift to the office wasn't really an experiment - after all, this is the third time i've made them - but i've continued to finetune the recipe, or at least the logistics of making them.  i had been planning to make them for quite some time because i knew people would like them, but had been rather leery of doing so because of the problem of transport.  i mean, i can make lots of cupcakes no problem, but how do you transport them after that?  because the container has to be portable, not too big because there's not much space in the kitchen, closed sufficiently so the cupcakes don't dry out, etc.  and it's a bonus if the container fits into the fridge too, so there's no need to build a box after storing them somewhere else overnight.

i'm happy to say that i've got the production time down to about 3 1/2 hours, from 6 hours the last time i made these.  unfortunately, some of the increased efficiency is due to the fact that i almost destroyed the ganache - i heated the cream much too fast, and as a result the chocolate almost seized.  it didn't quite seize, but it solidified to spreadable consistency really fast (about 5 minutes instead of 45) - too fast!  also, the texture tasted fine, but looked a little funky.  and i was hoping people wouldn't notice that on the cupcakes that were refrigerated, the ganache had actually broken (separated) a little bit.  how embarrassing!  the last time that i made these, the ganache was beautiful as ganache is.  

fortunately, these cupcakes are a surefire showstopper, so my technique issues didn't detract from flavor.  i like the cake recipe i use for these in particular, partly because they have a nice deep chocolatey taste from the beer and cocoa powder, and partly because they develop a bit of sticky crustiness from the high sugar content.  this time, i didn't have any bailey's and didn't feel like buying any just for this one thing, but it turned out that unflavored whipped cream is just as good as the real deal.

and, logistics.  i ended up refrigerating the ones that had to be refrigerated - namely, the ones with the whipped cream filling.  i left some plain and some filled with marmalade, to accommodate differing cupcake preferences.  so in the morning, i made stacking trays out of some cardboard boxes i had from pots i bought for the summer - just cut them in half horizontally, tape as needed, and stack.  i taped them all together to stabilize the whole deal, and carted them off to work.  actually, it was easy to build the box - a lot easier than i expected it would be - but harder to carry the box.  i didn't have the foresight to build something that would fit into the bag i had from whole foods - one of the recycled plastic ones that's kind of stiff.  the bag didn't really have enough give for me to hold the bag by its straps, so i ended up putting the box into the bag sideways and holding the bag in my arms the whole way to work.  slightly inconvenient, but what can you do.

so that was then, and this is now; or rather, the popsicles are now.  i went to pick up the knife i had sharpened at kitchen arts (it cuts like a dream - thanks, kitchen arts!) and these popsicle molds caught my eye.  i've been thinking about popsicle molds in the back of my mind for a while, and these were pretty inexpensive - $10 for a set of 6 - so i went ahead and indulged myself.  i currently have a test batch of peach iced tea-flavored pops in the freezer, to see how much i can fill the molds and how they freeze and unmold.  they seem pretty great - i also have ice cream sandwich molds by this brand that work well, but popsicles are much easier to make than ice cream sandwiches, so i think the molds will see some good use.  i think the future of the molds include yogurt pops and some sort of attempt at fudgsicles, at the very least.

hot and crusty

r is leaving for australia for three months, so we had brunch on labor day.  assuming that most places would be closed, i made popovers.  i can't recall ever having made them successfully before, so this time i wanted to get them right.

of course, it turns out that it's really not that hard to get them right; i suppose i was on crack or something when i made them last.  these popovers were so attractive that i don't quite know what went wrong the first few times.  all you do is mix the ingredients together, pour the batter in the pan, and let the eggs do their thing in a rather hot oven.  i think the trick is to leave them in the oven long enough to get crispy and brown on the outside, as you can see is what happened here.  

popovers are good on their own - i mean, you can't really go wrong with eggs, butter, flour, and milk - but i made scrambled eggs to go with them for the savory, and whipped cream and cherry preserves for the sweet.  the scrambled eggs were good, but i think i prefer the cherry preserves; at any rate, i think that the wetness of the jam and whipped cream is a better complement for the crustiness of the popover than the scrambled eggs.  i think shredded rotisserie chicken would be good as a savory filling, but that might just be me and my current obsession with rotisserie chickens.  

oddly enough, i made the last batch of popovers after the batter had been sitting for several hours (possible health risk, i suppose, bacteria-wise, but given that the popovers bake for 15 minutes at 450F and longer at 350F, i figured we'd kill all the bad stuff off) and that was the best batch.  the popovers rose higher and had more consistently hollow interiors - a couple of the previous ones were a bit solid in the middle.  the best ones are the ones that turn over while they're cooking; i don't know why it happens, but they curl and climb the sides of the pan and produce mutant popovers that are impossibly tall.  (these popovers were already huge because i made them in a huge-muffin tin.)

so there you have it: popovers aren't that hard to make.  just be sure that you don't curdle the eggs with butter that's too hot.

popovers

adapted from the joy

1c flour

1/2t salt

2 eggs, room temp

1 1/4c whole milk, room temp

1T butter, melted and cooled to lukewarm

1. it's important that the ingredients are all at room temp for maximum volume, so don't skip that step.  grease your muffin tin - i just melted some butter and brushed it on with a pastry brush.  preheat the oven to 450F.

2. combine the flour and salt in a bowl.  in another bowl, whisk together the eggs and milk, then drizzle in the butter slowly, while continuing to whisk.  this is to avoid curdling the eggs with the butter, which is hotter than the egg-milk mixture.

3. add the wet ingredients to the dry and fold together.  don't overmix - a little lumpiness is fine.

4. fill each cup in the tin 2/3 to 3/4 full; if any cups are empty, fill them a third full with water.  bake in the middle of the oven at 450F for 15 minutes, then turn the heat down to 350F and continue baking until the popovers are nicely browned, about 20-25 minutes.  don't open the oven until the last five minutes or so, lest your popovers deflate.

5. take the popovers out of the cups and puncture the sides with a sharp knife, to let the steam escape.  you can recrisp these in the oven if you've let them sit for a while, but you should really eat them as soon as they're out of the oven.

[makes 6 large popovers or 12 cupcake/muffin-size popovers]

no rest for the weary

sometime towards the end of last week, i got an email titled "corn is 4 for a dollar."  and right away i knew that this was an email i would like, because who doesn't like emails about food?  true, i was a little curious because after all, at the height of corn season (still continuing now!) it's usually more like 12 for a dollar at star market.  turns out mary had bought corn at whole foods because it looked and tasted that good, and so we made dinner.

that's dinner cooking away on the stove.  we met at star market in porter square, bought groceries, then walked back to mary's.  i had brought arborio rice with me, so we (ok, i) decided that we were going to have risotto with corn.  i dunno, people, i was a little scattered because i'd just gotten back that afternoon, so i didn't have any grand ideas.  however, while we were at star we passed by the rotisserie chickens.  c has been waxing poetic about rotisserie chickens that sit in the heating pans all day, touting their flavor and texture.  so we bought 1.5 rotisserie chickens to go into the risotto.  and as you can see in the photo, there is a pot o' chicken stock behind the risotto that holds water, chicken better-than-bouillon, and rotisserie chicken bones, and a good hunk of thyme.  as i have recently become a huge fan of warm risotto with a crunchy, raw-veg "relish," we made one with tomatoes, corn, and cilantro, with a very light balsamic vinaigrette dressing, to go with the risotto.  we also added some of the corn into the risotto to get cooked, along with a bunch of frozen peas.

there's blanched broccoli in the back left, for nutritional value.  actually, i'm pretty sure most of the nutritional value disappears into the cooking water because a lot of vitamins are water soluble, so i don't know how much benefit you get from blanched broccoli.  personally, not a fan, i guess because i'm so used to my mother's sauteed broccoli, which she does with garlic and ginger, and which we would have at least once a week.  

and, in the front is the cast iron pan with sugar and peaches caramelizing for the lavender-scented peach upside-down cornmeal cake that we had for dessert.  i think more peaches next time, but it was surprisingly good for such an odd combination of flavors.  

it was rather nice to come back and relax while cooking; i fell right back into the communal cooking patterns that are so ingrained among all of my lmf friends.  i think it's enough of a unique arrangement that i really miss the post-lmf cooking patterns we adapt to after we graduate; we prefer cooking in/for groups, and can really cook together very comfortably because we're all so used to cooking with each other.  that's it for this.

it's all about the table

do you ever find that when you're having a dinner party, and you're finally sitting down to eat, you...don't actually feel like eating? it's one part adrenaline from getting everything done, and one part nervousness about people liking what you've made - especially when you're cooking for people you haven't ever cooked for. it's not like cooking for friends back home, where you've already been tried and vetted. granted, i don't think anyone's going to be judgmental about just a dinner party, but when i do give one, there is always that competitive spirit that aims to impress, vying with the more social desire to feed people.

i think i've mentioned this before, but really, the best part of the dinner party for me is the cooking part; of course, when you cook something, somebody needs to eat it, so naturally it makes sense to invite some people over. and the social phenomenon of a dinner party really appeals to me: a group of people gathered around a table, talking and idling the evening away. take note of the table: it actually makes a huge difference, having now entertained for four years without one. it really surprises me just how much having the table matters - just having this physical thing that everybody is sitting around, and that you can rest your elbows on.

back to the matter at hand: a recap of last night's dinner. i know you're all waiting with bated breath. i was going to be cooking for more people than usual - typically i cook for four to six, on a given weekday in cambridge, but it was going to be a party of ten. i wanted to improve on the previous dinner party with respect to logistics, where it wouldn't be late and where i could set everything up ahead of time. i thought that dessert (vanilla panna cotta) slowed me down last time, and i also didn't give it enough time to set. i had been wanting to make a cheesecake for a few weeks - i just bought a good set of stainless steel springforms from sur la table, for cheap - so there's dessert. i also didn't want to make as many separate things as i did last time - salad, meat dish, veg side - but i did want to maintain the robustness of having lots of vegetables, since it's summer (aka produce season) and i do believe in both butter and vegetables. so, in the interest of time, space, and economy, i decided to make a big all-inclusive pasta with some sort of veg side/salad.

i don't know why this is, but i always seem to be better at making desserts, even though i spend more time thinking about the dinner part. cooking (as opposed to baking) is the more essential skill, because you've got to eat dinner, but you don't have to eat dessert; because cooking is the survival skill, i've tried to cultivate it. perhaps it's just the logistics of cooking for more people than i'm used to - apparently i can really only do 4-6 people or 25 people, well - but i think that in both dinner parties, dinner has been a bit of a letdown, but dessert has always been good. last night, for the salad, i did a green bean salad - i had been thinking green beans, and was sold when the green beans at whole foods looked uncommonly good. they were really green, a little waxy in sheen, crisp, and just very attractive. the salad is a cherrypicked combination of two different salads i've made before (for those who know them, the wheatberry salad and the dilled warm green bean salad). so: green beans, smoked mozzarella, tomatoes, oranges and their zest, and a little bit of balsamic vinaigrette which i couldn't get to emulsify correctly (oops). i was going to add some cilantro too, but i thought there was enough in the salad already, so there you go.

for the record, i've been superbusy this week - longish hours at the office followed by 6-7 hours for my other job - so i didn't even decide on what to make until friday night. i was a little worried about making enough food for ten people, so i thought a pasta with meat and veg in it would be doable. specifically: sweet italian pork sausage, a little bit of bacon, onions, garlic, thyme, and peas. verdict: so-so. the stuff:pasta ratio was a little too low for my liking, and i think one more veg would have been good - mushrooms, or maybe sundried tomatoes to add a bit of acidity. oh, i also added a couple pinches of the smoked salt (smoked alderwood salt from whole foods, from the bulk foods aisle), and i thought it was pretty good. i think it would be better in stews, or long braises, but it went with the bacon pretty well - it would be out of place in a vegetarian dish. i also think that the sizes of things were a little off - the sausage was a little too big (i took the casings off and tore the sausages into bits before browning them), and i thought the pasta was as well, so it was a bit hard to get a bite with everything in it. if i did this again, i would probably use a different pasta - maybe an orecchiette or acini de pepe, or at least pipette - i used chocciole or something like that, from whole foods, because they didn't have pipette (a barilla brand pasta shape that i really like - it's a little smaller than the chocciole).

i also thought that the pasta lacked something saucy to bind it all together. i had originally been thinking that i'd make a pesto to fulfill that purpose, but then i remembered that i have neither blender nor food processor in this apartment, so that was out of the question. i briefly considered buying premade pesto, but i wasn't really ever serious about that. i was hoping that the surfeit of onions and combined, concentrated meat juices would be enough to sauce the pasta, in combination with parmesan cheese, but it just wasn't quite there. i also considered tomatoes, because the pasta is essentially an all'amatriciana with a couple of extras tacked on, but tomatoes are super-expensive these days, and i didn't want to use canned. in retrospect, a pesto would have been perfect - a little bit of vegetal freshness to contrast the meat flavors - and i should have at least gone with some tomatoes. consider this my mea culpa.

i thought dessert was pretty good, though - i ended up making a gingered plum compote to go with the cheesecake, for a few reasons: (1), for color; (2), to bump up the net volume of a serving of dessert because there would be so many people; and (3) because fruit is always good with cheesecake. i realized far too late (ie, now) that this is the second time that i've made something with yogurt and forgotten to tell c, who is allergic to yogurt (oh, crap) and i'm hoping that he's not really sick today. perhaps the bacteria cultures in yogurt die when they're cooked? i sure hope so, although i'm not sure that that's the case at all. well, anyway, the fact that i had to use anna's lemon things (not the ginger-flavored thins that i generally use) did not detract from the cheesecake, although i do think that ginger flavored thins are a little better. the plums - which i typically make for plum shortcake - were pretty good. i grated the ginger this time, which eliminated the problem of the gross texture combination of sauteed plum and minced ginger. we also had some farmer's market ufo/donut peaches that y+g brought, which were really good - peaches are one of those things i would actually buy at a farmer's market, because you know they haven't been artificially treated with ethylene to make sure they ripen at the end of their thousands-of-miles-long journey to your supermarket.

despite the hiccups and poor choices, i thought that dinner went well - i'm slowly getting the hang of dinner parties at a table, for more than four (and, budgeting for this many people). oh, and iced tea, take 2 went well - i used the harney + sons peach iced tea, slightly sweetened. i might go buy some more before the summer is over - that's how much i like this tea. anyway, this dinner had the right amount of things - everything fit well on the table, including a couple of ramekins with lemon slices in them - yes, i did buy meyer lemons at whole foods just because they were beautiful. plus, you don't find them all that often on this coast, although they're common in california. they were this gorgeous, brilliant egg-yolk-y yellow. one of the things that i do miss about cambridge, though, is that it's so much easier to have spontaneous dinner party (these tend to be more dinner, less party) in cambridge because i can just send out an email in the afternoon and stop by the supermarket on the walk home. there's no having to contend with completely variegated schedules because almost everyone i know is in school; no having to spend an hour and half going to the grocery store; no having to wait for people to travel from more than 20 minutes away. if i'm wandering around the city, i don't mind when it takes forever to get anywhere or do anything, but if i've planned something, the time that it takes to do anything in this city really get to me.

notes
in the boston globe's (not that great) interview with tim cushman, the chef/owner of o ya, he reports that the restaurant is booked solid for 1 1/2 months. right now i'm feeling pretty good about having made a reservation the day the review came out. when i made i wondered if i was being silly, but now i'm glad i didn't have to have dinner surrounded by obnoxious yuppie foodies. p.s. i am completely aware that most people would consider me to be a yuppie foodie. and to those people: i defy you! i'm not a foodie; i just happen to like food. and food science.

also, about the chocolate bundt cake - looked fabulous, tasted not bad. i really should have bought toothpicks to test the cake, which i thought was slightly overdone. whoops. these are the problems attendant to using a 10-cup bundt pan instead of of a 12-cup bundt pan. so the cake really needed an extra day for its flavor to develop, because i thought the brown sugar was a little too prominent over the chocolate, but it was pretty good anyway. a chocolate glaze - i'd been thinking of making one, but judged it to be too easy to mess up the glaze when transporting the cake - would probably have been a welcome addition. i made one last summer when i made this cake for my office then.

i stopped by whole foods in union square with my mother on saturday; they don't sell cocoa nibs, but they do sell bittersweet callebaut chocolate. it mystifies me why they don't sell the bittersweet at whole foods tribeca. and i've really soured on new york grocery stores in general, given this whole cocoa nib fiasco. granted, they're somewhat hard to find in cambridge too - i walked all the way to christina's once, only to find that they were out, and the next time they had them, they didn't have the same ones - but you're supposed to be able to find anything in new york city, right? i would have liked to have done a taste test between the cocoa nibs i have - locally processed tazo brand nibs, organically grown in the dominican republic - with another type of cocoa nibs. i really liked the ones that i got at christina's before the tazo ones - they were smaller and have a purer chocolate smell. perhaps one of these days i'll happen upon them, and let me tell you, those will be happy days.

summer baking experiment #2

as my funds run out (i just parted with my tuition money - my first semester paid with money i earned all on my own!), i am still managing to fritter away money on my baking experiments. i guess i'll just have to work more hours on my freelance stuff.

i have to admit that, in the absence of my (cambridge) roommates, it's really nice that people at the office are willing to eat things that people bring in. in cambridge, we basically have a revolving door and somebody is over almost every day or night, thus creating the perfect environment to give away food after every experiment. in new york, i just don't know as many people, nor do the people i know live close enough to just stop by in the evenings. so the office is my stand-in recipient of my baking experiments.

this week's experiment is actually a pretty poor in terms of rating an experiment, and more a crowd pleaser for work - it's a chocolate pound cake i've made several times. i like pound cake in general because it has very little artificial leavening - ie, baking soda or baking powder. instead, it derives its structure and texture from the actual making of the cake - if you don't mix the batter enough, your pound cake won't have the right texture. when i bought my first baking cookbook, the author expounded on the virtue of creaming the butter for a full five minutes every time. i admit that i was a young and naive 18 year old at the time, and i scoffed. i still make cookies with a wooden spoon (ie no creaming the butter), but i am a convert to creaming the butter properly for cakes. creaming the butter incorporates air into the butter, giving your cake structure and texture. pound cake is essentially a study in how to incorporate air into your batter - the standard method is to cream the butter, beat the butter and sugar for a good long 10 minutes, add the eggs one at a time, then alternate dry ingredients and some moisture-rich ingredient (sour cream, in this case), beating each in every time. so you see that by beating everything in very slowly, you develop the structure of the cake purely by mixing the ingredients together. the efficiency of the method is a beautiful thing.

so i was curious to know how hot weather affects this sort of butter-rich batter - i would expect that it would be harder to mix everything because the butter would get melty too fast. true to form, the coating i use on the pan to keep the cake from sticking - just melted butter and cocoa - refused to cool until i stuck it in the fridge. in defense of the butter, i also didn't brush the pan with the cocoa butter until i was done making the batter, so i was probably overly impatient. surprisingly, though, the batter looks pretty much as it always does: tan, thick, airy. it was slightly shinier than it usually is, but it was nowhere nearly as bad as i thought it would be. it's also not the hottest evening, but just ignore that part. it's definitely warmer in the apt than it usually is at cutcat. the most noticeable point at which the butter was meltier than usual was when i creamed the butter by itself - it took very little time and was super-shiny. i was still worried when i added the sugar and it was still looking shiny, but that's why you beat the butter and sugar together for a full ten minutes: the incorporation of air starts to minimize the butter meltage. you know what else? billington's dark brown sugar - my favorite to use when the flavor really matters - has been really lumpy the past couple of times i've used it. i don't remember it being that lumpy in the past; perhaps both times it was an old batch of sugar? i mean, i know brown sugar has a tendency to clump, but it's been a little ridiculous.

i can smell the cake now, which is a good sign - it's been in for about 35 minutes or so. will report back later on how it tasted.

home and homesickness

i've been kind of grumpy lately, because i've been trying to figure out whether or not to take a semester off, but more, i suspect, because i'm starting to get homesick. don't get me wrong, new york: i like you fine. even more than fine, really. i really like you. but living out of a suitcase for a few months, regardless of how much of your stuff you've surrounded yourself with, just can't compare to being home: there's this permanent sense of your life being temporary.

i think i've felt as much at home as i can this summer, and in truth it really has felt like a vacation. you know, a vacation where i've got multiple jobs, but a break from school is a break from school. so now that i've finally had enough vacation, i'm starting to get antsy about feeling like i'm at home. part of this is cooking, and it's just been so long since i've gotten to do any therapeutic cooking. this sounds pretty stupid, but it's actually a great way to relax: basically i just do something that's really complicated or unnecessary, just for the sake of doing it. my standby is roasting a chicken to use the meat for chicken pot pie; usually people just buy a rotisserie chicken from the supermarket (ugh) or poach some chicken breast (uninspiring). after you roast the chicken and pull all the meat off the bones, you get to make chicken stock. and somehow the chicken and the food it's turned into all disappears within a day or two, courtesy of your friends.

i like the involved nature of doing something like this, and also the physical exhaustion that comes with it after you've been on your feet for hours. your kitchen smells good, and you've washed all the dishes so there's no mess, and you can go to sleep feeling that you've done something for the day. all of this is very satisfying.

so i'm making dinner for the roommates tomorrow, as you know, so today i made dessert (chocolate pudding) and the chicken stock for the risotto. really i should have made veal stock, but i'm sure the flavor of the sausage will overtake the risotto anyway, so it doesn't matter. anyway, i roasted a chicken while making the pudding, and then put the stock on the stove to simmer after finishing the pudding. i also made some peach iced tea, which i picked up at balducci's - it's harney + sons, and it's really quite good (it's a blend of fruit infusion and black tea).

i'm actually pretty excited about the risotto (which will be have to be timed carefully to be done in time for dinner). i was too lazy to make the oven-roasted tomatoes, so i'm going to do a tomato relish with lemon zest that's cold, to go with the warm risotto. the risotto will have sausage and morels in it, with fennel and sage. so the meatiness gets balanced by the fennel and sage, and the morels and the creaminess of the risotto get balanced by the acidity of the tomatoes and lemon zest. i think it'll be pretty good.

i did my shopping at fairway this time, and frustratingly came away with fennel (an impulse buy) but without cocoa nibs. i've now been to whole foods, citarella, and fairway, without success in sourcing cocoa nibs, and their unavailability is really starting to bother me. what gets me is that i know exactly where to get them in cambridge (christina's) and although i know i can get them at the scharffenberger store, i don't actually like scharffenberger chocolate, so that's kind of a no go. ah well...i guess there won't be any buckwheat cookies this week unless i suddenly acquire cocoa nibs. it's actually possible that fairway had them (they're the only grocery store to carry my callebaut bittersweet - whole foods and citarella only carry unsweetened and semisweet), but it was such a madhouse that i didn't really try that hard to look. in general, i like fairway, but apparently when you go after work, you catch the after work crowd. i never really mind waiting at the cash register, but i do mind having to navigate around people constantly because i like to do a nice, leisurely circuit of the whole place so i can remember what's on the shelves and what they don't have, for future reference. fairway seems to be organized so that people are always banging into each other - it's some combination of what's on the shelves and where, and the narrowness of the aisles. i wonder if it would be better if i went early in the morning? i'll have to see.

food, logic, and my ocd

do you ever think about food as a puzzle? because sometimes i do. i don't know if it's because it's some subconscious need to elevate cooking to some other level as a justification for doing it so frequently, or if it's just because that's the way my mind works; probably some combination. i mean, let's face it: normal people don't plan things out as thoroughly as i often do. i'm not a total nutcase, but i definitely have above average oc disorder.

problematizing (to use a fake archispeak word, sorry) food and cooking is basically the selfish part of why i like having dinner parties: getting to set a menu. i like this part of planning a dinner party so much that i probably derive a little too much pleasure from it. first you think about when you will be eating: is it going to be nice weather? what would you want to eat in that weather? how will people be eating, at a table or standing around, or just sitting on couches? because certainly you wouldn't want your guests to have to cut anything while standing up unless they were all four-handed people, right? i've definitely never made that mistake before...er, moving on.

and then you get into what's in season right now and available at the supermarket, which helps constrain your choices more. you have to balance the meal, so you start with something and it's actually good for you, rather than being likely to set off heart attacks. if you do have something rich in one course, then you'd balance it with something lighter in another course.

i'm making up a menu right now, for dinner on tuesday with my roommates. in fact i kind of need to prep some things tonight. i think i'm going to make a risotto, because it won't take too long (um, hopefully). i was thinking of doing a sausage risotto with morels in it, but that seems a bit rich, so i'm going to add in some oven-dried tomatoes for acidity. it occurred to me that i could make the tomatoes, so i need to do that tonight. oops, i just looked at the recipe (search this blog for "oven-roasted tomatoes") and it says 200F for 6-8 hours. i guess i remembered that time wrong. gotta get on that then. maybe i'll try 4 hours at 300F, that's still pretty low...

so anyway, i went to whole foods today and bought some of the ingredients. i was intrigued by the prospect of using fresh morels (i've already got dried morels from balducci's), so i bought a few for comparison. i also got a chicken because it costs the same amount to make your own chicken stock as it does to buy 3 packages of it. and then you also get the chicken meat, so i guess i may actually bring my lunch a couple days this week. i suppose i could also make chicken pot pie. at any rate, i'm going to roast the chicken, pull all the meat off, and make stock out of the bones. it'll be good. while i was at whole foods, i also bought a few pork chops; i actually haven't decided if it will be a sausage risotto plus some roasted veg, or just risotto with pork chops and roasted veg. i suppose it would be easier to do just a risotto, and less cleanup too. perhaps i'll freeze the pork chops in that case; as i think about this more, it seems to be the appropriate thing to do. regarding herbs, i'm thinking sage, to go with the pork; i saw some cheap and good-quality sage at citarella this afternoon.

i was also going to make a cheesecake because i just bought some nice and cheap springform pans at sur la table, but i think that may have to wait - the thought of using the oven so much tomorrow is kind of daunting. i might do just berries and whipped cream, which i can do with a whisk and a good bowl. i could also do a pudding, since i've been wanting to make pudding forever and now have the chocolate pudding recipe in hand. hmm. i should think more about dessert. i don't think i'm doing a first course, since this is just a simple weekday dinner; if it were friday, maybe. i had been thinking about making these parmesan basil zucchini muffins i made a while back, but that might be a bit too much work for just a weekday dinner, right?

i've also been thinking about what to make next for the office. i really like having an office where i can bring stuff in and people will eat it (i mean, nothing gross or ugly or anything, just the successful things...). i remember being really frustrated the summer i was in seattle, because i didn't know enough people at work to bring stuff in (and there was nowhere to put it, anyway) and my roommates were allergic to gluten. i've been meaning to make the buckwheat cocoa nib cookies again, but i have yet to find a source for cocoa nibs. actually, this is really pissing me off, because citarella doesn't have them, i didn't see them at the tribeca whole foods, and fairway is really far away (also, i don't know if they have them, though egullet reports that they do). and that's the only exotic ingredient in these cookies (the other ingredients being flour, buckwheat flour, butter and sugar)! hmph. i've also been toying with the idea of making the chocolate cupcakes again. they're so good, and would be great cold from the fridge, but really, where does one put 50 cupcakes anyway? are there really that many people in the office? 50 cupcakes is also a lot to transport, and i'd have to make up a special box to put them in, even. i've thought about making tiny cupcakes, but that would require a special pan, which i don't have here. i guess rocco is coming this weekend and i could ask him to bring my mini muffin tins...but anyway, it would be hard to find a place for these cupcakes in the office kitchen. it would be fun, though. i could bring in a half gallon of milk, too, as a whimsical, fun accompaniment for those who wanted it. i wanted to bring in milk for the chocolate chip cookies, but i didn't know if people would think it was stupid or just not want it. anyway, the most likely thing for work this week will be the buckwheat butter cookies, as soon as i can get my hands on cocoa nibs.

lab report: ny times v. toll house

i haven't done a lab report since high school chemistry (10 years ago!), so here you go.

purpose/problem: i used to use the chocolate chip cookie recipe from nick malgieri's cookies unlimited; however, as i stopped making chocolate chip cookies as frequently, i forgot the recipe (i basically had it memorized) and then reverted to the trusty toll house cookie recipe. i have been using the toll house recipe for some time, though it's not the best chocolate chip cookie in the world, to be honest. it's just the easiest and simplest to remember. then i saw the new york times article and had to know: does the new york times chocolate chip cookie recipe really beat out toll house chocolate chip cookies? a corollary question: if the new york times beats toll house, is the extra effort required to make the cookies outweighed by the better flavor of the cookies (ie, do you actually gain utility from the new york times cookies)? specifically, the new york times recipe differs in the proportions of ingredients (most notably, the flour-butter ratio) and also in the inclusion of a chilling period. which of these differences has the most effect on the cookies?

hypothesis: this is a taste test, so positing a hypothesis would probably unduly influence the outcome of this experiment.

materials: here is the new york times recipe and also the toll house recipe. i don't really believe in using an electric mixer to make cookies so i used a bowl, wooden spoon, and measuring cups. i couldn't find the measuring spoons, so i just estimated with a non-standard metal spoon from the silverware drawer.

procedure: i made a batch of the new york times recipe and a batch of toll house at the same time (well, not exactly at the same time because i only have two hands), and chilled it for 24-ish hours. i also made a batch of toll house before i started baking the other cookies; it sat in the fridge chilling for about 2 1/2 hours before i baked it. it was still a little softer than i would prefer when i baked it, but it was late and i was tired, so there you go.

i made a few substitutions in the batter: all batches omitted vanilla extract, because vanilla extract is gross. no, really, i find it quite disgusting these days. in addition to not liking the flavor of vanilla extract, i'm treading the locavore/clear flavors/higher yuppie moral ground when i posit to you that omitting the vanilla allows the butter-sugar flavor to come through better. why muck up something that's already fantastic? i mean, we eat butter cookies for a reason: because butter and sugar is a wonderful flavor. i'm sure there's some reason why we use vanilla that has to do with trade and nations manipulating what we eat. because really, what if some enterprising nation wanted us to eat a lot of almond extract and started providing subsidies to almond extract producers? yeah, our cookies would have almond extract in them. so i view vanilla extract as an unnecessary, capricious inclusion in these recipes. i will also say that i love real vanilla, as in vanilla beans scraped from the pod; i like both the flavor and the very slight crunch you get when you eat the tiny vanilla flecks.

um, ok, more substitutions, now that i'm done ranting about vanilla. i used light brown sugar for the first two batches and then dark brown sugar for the last batch, because when i went to whole foods to buy sugar they were actually out of light brown sugar. i generally use dark brown sugar for chocolate chip cookies anyway, but in terms of keeping the sugar variable constant, i've kind of failed miserably. for your records, i also used ghirardelli bittersweet chocolate chips for all of the cookies - i like the shape and size of these chips. they just make your cookies more attractive - they have a nicer sheen than other chocolate chips, too. lastly - for the new york times recipe, it stipulates a combination of cake and bread flour. i'm guessing that this is a measure to prevent too much gluten from forming when you stir the dough, since it has a high flour:butter ration. i didn't really care to buy cake and bread flour, though, since then i'd be stuck with cake and bread flour. accordingly, i just used regular unbleached flour instead.

analysis/conclusion: yeah, this is getting combined because this experiment does not totally conform to the lab report format. sorry for you purists out there.

effect of chilling the dough
i do typically chill the dough before baking it, but not for flavor reasons. it's simply a measure to prevent the cookies from spreading too much as they bake: the colder the dough is, the more slowly the butter will melt and you'll have prettier cookies. it's also easier to handle if it's not sticking more to your hands than the baking sheet - all the more easily to make perfectly shaped cookies without bothering with a cookie dough scooper.

so i'm bothered by the new york times article, actually, in which david leite talks about the recipe. it seemed to me that the article was mostly about extolling the virtues of chilling the dough, and the miraculous effect that has on the dough. well, i didn't read the recipes before making them, and after looking at them a little more closely, i see that the new york times' recipe actually has a much higher flour:butter ratio - ie, more flour per tablespoon butter. and i think that chilling the dough does have an effect, but this effect is mitigated in the new york times recipe by the fact that it has so much flour in it - the dough needs more time in the first place to chill, because there are more dry ingredients than there are in the toll house recipe. so the article is actually being a little facetious in the way that it plays up chilling the dough, since the recipe it gives automatically needs a long chilling time, and thus the effect of chilling the dough is partially negated.

at the end of the day, it's true that chilling the dough seems to have some effect on the flavor. or so people tell me: having brought the vast majority of the cookies to work, it seemed that the chilled-dough toll house cookies were the favorite. alack, my palate did not detect enough of a difference between the 24-hour-chilled toll house cookies and the chilled-until-firm toll house cookies. it's up to you to decide what you want to do when you make the cookies, then.

effect of the flour:butter ratio
let's return to the ingredient proportions and the flour:butter ratio. toll house does 2 1/4c flour for 2 sticks butter, while the new york times does about 3 2/3c flour for 2 1/2 sticks butter. that's 0.14 cups flour/tbsp butter for toll house v. 0.18 cups flour/tbsp butter for ny times, or 2.24T flour/T butter for toll house and 2.93T/T butter for ny times. a significant difference: that's 30% more flour in the new york times recipe. of course, i did a straight substitution without weighing things out, as my electronic scale is in cambridge, so there was probably some adjusting to do that i didn't do. but still: that is a noteworthy difference.

ok, so it's true that somehow this higher flour content made the new york times cookies a lot more attractive. a lot more attractive. but it also made the cookies a little chewier with too much crumb - i have to say that i prefer a cookie with more butter and sugar, so that it's a little candy-like in the caramelization of sugar and butter, rather than being a more bready cookie. all things considered, more attractive cookies is not an acceptable tradeoff for less flavorful cookies unless you're not planning to actually eat the cookies. or if you're giving them to someone you don't like, or who you know won't be eating the cookies.

effect of weather
i'd like to put in a word about the weather here. i generally haven't baked all that much in hot weather, and i recall vaguely that at cutcat, we would have the air conditioning on while i was baking so it was never really hot when i baked stuff there. (i know it's not a good strategy with respect to energy and sustainability, but nobody's perfect.) in this case, i was baking at night when it was cooler, but it was still pretty hot, and i'm fairly certain that this had an effect on the cookies - they spread faster than they normally would. i say this because in every other case when i've made chocolate chip cookies, they have not looked quite so...flat as these did. in short, they looked like an amateur made them, and that was certainly a little annoying. i mean, if they were going to have the gall to look so ugly, then why bother to chill the dough at all? hmph. that's what i think of you, new york weather.

effect of attractiveness of cookies on eating utility
it's nice to know that people (including myself) like chocolate chip cookies so much that even if they're kind of crappy looking, people will eat them. chocolate chip cookies positively ooze nostalgia for childhood - or, at the very least, other people have memories of making chocolate chip cookies as a child. i don't, really; perhaps this is why i really like them now. however, this brings up an interesting issue: how much are we affected by how good the food looks? i mean, i was really disappointed with these toll house batches because the last batch i made a few weeks back were the most gorgeous cookies i had ever seen. they were golden brown from the dark brown sugar (billington's brand), perfectly puffed but still soft and chewy in the middle, and the chocolate chips looked so pretty in the mass of the cookie that they positively glowed. they certainly had a very pretty luster to them. and because these cookies were so beautiful, they were actually more pleasing to eat. i can picture those cookies now, and it frustrates me that the next batch didn't look like them either. i know it wasn't the leavening, because it was new; i know it wasn't the dark brown sugar, either. the only thing that was different was the butter: i used plugra in that batch last month because it was cheaper to buy a half pound of plugra than it was to buy a pound of regular american butter. but wouldn't you expect that using butter with higher fat content would cause the cookies to spread more? i sure would, yet the converse of that happened. search me; i have no answers for you except to say that i would probably have to do another experiment between regular and european butter to figure out where the culprit lies. i think it's most likely the weather, but i do wonder if the plugra had an effect on the dough. to come back to cookie attractiveness: i suppose i'm lucky that people are so forgiving with chocolate chip cookies; only my ego is bruised.

and the winner is...
i almost forgot to render my verdict regarding the recipes! whoops. well, everyone, the new york times is a little like per se: pretending to be all posh, but not really delivering in the end (let us just say that per se delivers more than the new york times, though). i really don't think it's worth all the trouble to make the new york times cookies. i do think that toll house can be improved - the cookies are really a little too sweet for me - but i have yet to find the recipe that does that. i guess now we know?

the "i hate gristedes" post

ever since the new york times posted its definitive recipe for chocolate chip cookies, i've been meaning to do a taste test between those and our trusty standby, toll house. we all know i'm a sucker for taste tests; the best ones that come to mind include the shaws whole chicken v. chinatown whole chicken (the chinatown chicken tasted surprising like a chinatown chicken you would get in a restaurant, which was really surprising to me) and the apple pie taste test, after which i swore off cinnamon in apple pies.

so, gristedes. i had decided to do three batches of chocolate chip cookies, since the gimmick of the new york times recipe lies in both proportions of sugar/flour/butter and also in how long the dough is chilled. the three batches are then: (1) the new york times recipe; (2) toll house, chilled as long as the ny times recipe; and (3) toll house, chilled the normal amount (about an hour, until the dough is firm enough to use). i went to gristedes to get ingredients, assuming that a supermarket would definitely have all of the ingredients i needed for my experiment. (because that's what this is, folks: a geeky experiment. so sue me.) of course, i was wrong, and this is why gristedes makes me hate new york. because they don't carry the chocolate chips i use in chocolate chip cookies, which is not an exotic brand and is basically carried in every other grocery store known to man. the brand, incidentally, is simply ghirardelli 60% bittersweet chips. i like the size and shape of these chips in particular - they're chubbier, and a little bigger and flatter, so they're more pleasing to the eye and consequently make them more attractive to eat. kind of like the way that arborio rice is more pleasing to me to eat than basmati rice.

gristedes: you cost me a day, and my curiosity has increased accordingly as time has elapsed. i'd like to point out that whole foods did not disappoint me, and that i was able to procure my non-exotic chocolate chips there. technically, the ny times recipe calls for feves, which are the flat chocolate disks sold with all of the bulk chocolate, but i didn't really have that much faith in my ability not to break them when stirring them into the dough, so i just used regular chocolate chips.

so right now, two bags of chocolate chip cookie dough are slowly chilling in the fridge. the rationale is that the liquid ingredients absorb better into the dough with a longer chilling period, which i know to be true: the buckwheat cocoa nib cookies require overnight chilling because they consist of flour, butter, sugar, and cocoa nibs. you have to wait for the dough to get to the right consistency or it won't bake correctly. i'm curious to see just how much of a difference it makes, since i often chill my dough for up to 12 hours anyway, so that the butter doesn't melt too fast when you bake the cookies. for some reason, i find chocolate chip cookies with really flat edges to be kind of unappetizing. i don't really know why, and i know it's weird, but that's just the way it is.

my initial thoughts are that the doughs really are significantly different. the ny times recipe has more flour per tablespoon butter than the toll house recipe - you could tell with the two doughs that the toll house recipe was a lot goopier and harder to handle than the ny times recipe. i wonder if i should have used the typical brown sugar that i use - just dark instead of light - because the dough looked really pale to me, too. the last batch of chocolate chip cookies i made were at s+l's place, and i made those with billington's dark brown sugar, since that's what i'd bought at the supermarket (not a gristedes). they were a rather pleasing golden brown; using dark brown sugar definitely helps color-wise. i also happen to like the flavor of dark brown sugar, which is especially nice since i don't use vanilla extract. i can only stand to use real vanilla beans these days - i've discovered that i don't really like the flavor of vanilla extract, and that i don't want to obscure the flavor of sugar and butter with the vanilla.

well, that's about it. i'll report back about how the cookies turn out tomorrow.