Curious about asparagus.

books, food and cooking, ,

The Curious Cook, Harold McGee, has now studied whether asparagus-snapping is the best way to avoid this vegetable’s tough parts, and you can read his conclusions here . We were just having a discussion about this issue in our kitchen last week. My own style of trimming is sort of a variation on Harold’s. But I’ll tell you about that, maybe, next spring when I have more and fresher of the stalks to photograph. In the meantime, there is much fascinating and useful information to be had from the short article.

I haven’t made very much use of the two books by McGee that I invested in many years ago. But I am grateful to him for applying scientific research to our common kitchen tasks. I did learn–and remember– that if you happen to have a copper bowl around, you will get more volume to your egg whites if you beat them in it, because of a chemical reaction that happens. And it’s o.k. to wash mushrooms, because even sitting in a bowl of water, they hardly absorb any (he weighed them before and after) and don’t get soggy.

Recently I subscribed to his blog, but it isn’t very busy. And just taking his books off the shelf and leafing through them makes me think that if I put in a little time with them, I might be able to learn more for use in my current culinary phase.

French Cooking (Leek Week)

food and cooking, pie

Last week my friend K. let me know that she had a large crop of leeks she needed to harvest to make room for summer plants. Not once but twice I went to her back yard and got a bunch. If you aren’t familiar with this vegetable, you won’t know what a treasure had been bestowed on me. K. says that when she cooks leeks it makes the house smell like a French restaurant. They are in the allium family, but have their own distinctive flavor, not like onions or garlic or anything else.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Leeks need some prep work before you can fully enjoy them.There was my bundle of leeks (the second batch, as I’d neglected to do any documentation of the first) on the back step. These were mostly smaller in diameter than the ones I see in the store, but contrary to the resemblance, they don’t taste like a large scallion, either. And they are dirtier than other members of their family. The next photo was taken a couple of days later, after I took them out of the refrigerator and sliced them lengthwise for cleaning.

Leeks always have dirt between the layers of flesh and you have to spend some time getting them clean. Just plop them in the sink and run the water over them while you use your fingers to loosen the dirt and let it run down the drain.

I accidentally deleted the picture of leeks in my sink, but I think you can imagine it.

Here are the nice clean vegetables. I was preparing to make Leek Confit, a recipe I got online at http://www.epicurious.com/ and then changed a little bit. I made it twice, once using mostly the white part and this time using the whole thing, I found out that it works either way. It is a very easy way to prepare the vegetable, and the finished product can be used as an ingredient in more leek recipes.
 
Leek Confit
1/4 cup unsalted butter
4 large leeks, halved lengthwise and cleaned, cut crosswise into 1/4″-thick slices (about 5 cups)
2 tablespoons water
1/2 teaspoon salt
Melt butter in a large pot over medium-low heat. (I had 15 cups of chopped leeks, so I tripled this recipe and used a 12″ cast-iron skillet.) Add leeks; stir to coat. Stir in water and salt. Cover pot; reduce heat to low. Cook until leeks are tender, stirring often, about 25 minutes.
Uncover and cook to evaporate excess water, 2-3 minutes. Serve warm.

This second picture shows how the leeks turn more of an olive green color after cooking. At this point they are ready to eat as a side dish just the way they are. The first night I made crostini and we spread the toasts with goat cheese and piled the confit on top. That was my favorite. Since then I have also served them alongside or in eggs or as a vegetable dish next to–anything!

The author of the recipe said that the confit will keep for a week in the refrigerator, so I have been hoarding the last bit of my second batch to savor some morning on my eggs or toast. If I get a windfall of leeks again I think this confit would be a good way to freeze any excess.

And after reading pages of recipes for leek tart or quiche, I added some of the confit to whatever typical quiche ingredients I could find in my refrigerator and came up with the following:

Leek Tart
2 cups Leek Confit (recipe above)
4 eggs
1/3 cup sour cream
2 tablespoons heavy cream
2 tablespoons Chardonnay wine
3 slices cooked bacon, diced
1/4 teaspoon salt
freshly-ground black pepper to taste
Preheat oven to 400°. Beat the eggs with the creams, wine, salt and pepper; add bacon and leek confit and stir. Pour into a pie shell that has been pre-baked for 10 minutes, and place in the bottom third of the oven. Bake for 25-30 minutes, until the top is golden and puffed and the custard is cooked through.

I like this picture of the tart, even though it has dappled sunlight on it, and it wasn’t even quite done cooking when I took the photo. I didn’t want to stick a knife in to test the custard before I’d taken some pictures. When I did peek inside, I realized that the quiche was still too soft, and I put it back in and it puffed more as it was finishing.

I’d like to try more variations on Leek Tart–perhaps something that is not so eggy. But I think it would be hard to go wrong with leeks. Their irresistible flavor almost guarantees success, at least in my house.

Here I’d like to give you my favorite pie crust recipe, since I’ve been blogging about pies lately. For most of my life I used the basic pie crust recipe from Joy of Cooking, until a few years ago I discovered Mark Bittman’s wonderful recipe in How to Cook Everything. It is my new standard never-fail basic, and he gives variations for different size pie pans, single and double crusts, and so on. His was my basic, but I have already altered this recipe to make it less salty. He is assuming salted butter, by the way. I am only giving you the ingredients list here, because I can’t imagine using printed directions to make pie crust, and I didn’t write his down. If you don’t know how, find a real person to teach you while standing next to you.

Pie Crust
For an 8-10″ single crust:
1 1/8 cups flour (5 oz.)
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon sugar
8 tablespoons cold butter
3 tablespoons ice water
(sweetened/enriched, add 2 tablespoons sugar and/or 1 egg yolk with the water)
For a generous 10″ or deep single crust:
1 1/2 cups flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 teaspoon sugar
10 tablespoons butter
4 tablespoons ice water
For a 2-crust pie:
2 1/4 cups flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
16 tablespoons butter
2 teaspoons sugar
6 tablespoons water
Happy Baking!

Buttermilk Pie

food and cooking, pie

I made this pie tonight to share with some friends. It’s a bit of a twist on a custard pie; lemon juice and buttermilk give a more complex flavor, and butter makes for a–well, buttery experience! This is my version of a traditional Amish recipe. I cut down on the sugar, and next time I think I’ll reduce it further, maybe to 1/2 or 3/4 cup instead of a full cup.

Buttermilk Pie
1 unbaked 9” pie shell
½ c butter, softened
1 cup sugar
3 tablespoons flour
3 eggs, beaten
1 cup buttermilk
1 teaspoon lemon juice
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
Speck of salt
Grated nutmeg
Preheat oven to 350°. Prepare pie shell. Cream butter and sugar. Add flour, eggs, buttermilk, lemon juice, vanilla and salt. Mix well. Pour into unbaked pie shell. Sprinkle nutmeg over top. Bake for one hour or until top is golden brown.
 

I like to put a foil collar around my crust for at least the first half of the baking time, so that we don’t end up with extra-brown and unappetizing crusts. We like to eat our piecrust.

 At first I was planning to make a fruit pie with a top, so I measured out enough flour for a top and a bottom crust. When I changed my mind and didn’t need top crusts, I doubled the recipe and made two pies.
This would be a good dessert for a meal that was a little low in protein, as it has quite a bit in the form of eggs and buttermilk.
Another variation I have tried is to use 2 tablespoons of arrowroot powder instead of the 3 tablespoons of flour. I think it was a bit creamier result.

These pies look a bit lopsided–that’s evidence of the fact that my stove is not level! At least the homely appearance doesn’t affect the flavor.

Book Notes

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This stack represents the top of the current pile I’ve been working on. Any guesses as to which one I’ve already abandoned? I’ll start from the top. At Large and Small by Anne Fadiman was a gift from Pippin. We had both enjoyed her earlier book for readers, Ex Libris. She specializes in the personal essay and does a fine job of it, but I like the first book better; this one ranges over topics not so interesting to me. At least it is a small and lightweight book, which makes it possible to read while lying down just before the eyelids get heavy.

Creators is the first book by Paul Johnson that I have actually completed, though I’ve started in on two others by him. It is a collection of essays on famous creative individuals “from Chaucer and Dürer to Picasso and Disney.” Um…to be exact, I didn’t complete the book; there were a few in whose stories I couldn’t drum up enough interest at bedtime. The chapter comparing Picasso and Disney was certainly thought-provoking. Johnson thinks that the ideas of Picasso will fade and be outmoded, while those of Disney will endure–not because Picasso was so selfish and violent and Disney a maker of “family movies,” but for an entirely different and more fundamental artistic reason, which I don’t want to give away here.

I learned a lot more about many people in this book: T.S. Eliot, Jane Austen, Mark Twain, J.S. Bach, fashion designers and landscape painters. How does Johnson know so much, and how can he be so opinionated? He is easy to read, and refreshing in his willingness to tell you just what he thinks, and to not be politically correct, either. This book is one of a series with two others: Intellectuals, published many years ago, and Heroes, which has come out since. Some critics thought Intellectuals somewhat of a downer, but these last books should make up for that.

My friend K. lent me The Folding Cliffs. It’s not a book I’d have ever picked up otherwise, written as it is without any punctuation and me a member of the Apostrophe Protection Society. Is this even English? I guess it is, as I am able to read it, though it is definitely a variant form. In this case it is worth the trouble, though I’m not ready to tackle Merwin’s other poems. Here’s a sample from Cliffs:

The story is as captivating as the imagery, and I certainly won’t abandon this one, even if it takes me a year of little snatches. I like the way the words flow as soothingly over my consciousness as the stream over the narrator’s body.

Steinbeck’s novel East of Eden was recommended to me by two friends, so I was happy to find it in the used book store. I’ve read almost half of it, and enjoyed several of those hundred pages. But this is the one I’m quitting. Mr. Glad says I could write a dissertation on “What Can Be Learned of Steinbeck by Reading Half a Book”; I gave him my whole dissertation while cooking dinner after my decision to quit, but I will spare you readers. It boils down to the reality that life is short, and there didn’t seem to be anything to be gained by continuing with Steinbeck. There has always been something missing between him and me. Perhaps this time would be different, and I’d be surprised and gratified if I’d finished it, but one can’t have everything in life.

The Hacienda by de Teran is a re-run for me, but now my husband and I are reading it aloud together. It’s a fascinating story of Venezuela in the 1970’s and of the author’s experience–how she got herself into a mess and lived in a primitive society for quite a while before escaping for her life. I’ve read a couple of other books by this author and she tells a good tale–the ones I’ve read were the autobiographical accounts.

I love to read on a airplane. There is not much else to do, usually, so hours can go by without the attention being distracted. The Everlasting Man by G.K. Chesterton I took on my last flight as a treat I’d been long waiting to enjoy again. I knew the first time I read it that it was the kind you have to read at least two or three times if you hope to get near the bottom of it.

Before our plane taxied down the runway I was well into the first chapter. My seatmate, who had initially seemed reserved, interrupted my reading to tell me that he much admired Chesterton and that particular book. Over the next ten or fifteen minutes we chatted on the subject of good writers, Christianity, how books had changed us, etc. And we still hadn’t taxied anywhere, because as it turned out, the plane had a mechanical problem which ended up delaying our flight for three hours, by which time we’d all disembarked and my new friend had got a different flight. I was quite pleased that the Lord had given me a short and sweet discussion time and a long and sweet reading time, all on the same leg of the journey.

Richard Wilbur may be my favorite poet. K.’s having introduced me to hers jogged me into digging out Wilbur’s poems again, which are so varied and beloved, I will have to write one or more posts just on him.

Now that there aren’t any travels in my near future, there might not be many new books begun, either. But as you can see, I’ve still plenty to keep me busy.