DORIE GREENSPAN

Chocolate Chunkers: The Cookies That Didn't Get Me Fired

 

This week, the Tuesdays with Dorie bakers made the Chocolate Armagnac Cake, which is subtitled "The Cake That Got Me Fired" (it's on page 279 of Baking From My Home to Yours).  It's one of my favorite cakes -- a low, sleek, one-layer cake that's made with lots of dark chocolate, ground pecans and Armagnac-flamed prunes -- and the fact that I can still love it after it got me fired from a job I was happy to have, is a testament to its goodness. 

The short version of my getting the heave-ho is that, many years ago, I was an apprentice pastry chef in a very popular restaurant in Manhattan. It was my first job in a professional kitchen and, being the last person in and the least experienced, my job was to come in early and make the cake and batches of chocolate cookies.  The cake was a chocolate torte made with ground almonds and studded with whiskey-soaked raisins.  It was the restaurant's signature cake and it was my job to make sure it showed up perfectly made and on time when the lunch crowd was ready for dessert.  And that's what I did -- until I didn't. 

One morning, not so long after I started at the restaurant, I got bored and so, instead of mixing the chocolate batter with ground almonds, I used pecans; instead of whiskey, I used Armagnac; and instead of raisins, I used the funny fruit, prunes; and, maybe worst of all, I never mentioned the swaps to anyone.  I can only imagine how surprised the regulars were when they discovered prunes in their beloved cake!  That afternoon, the owner of the restaurant called me into her office, told me she thought my cake had been great and then, despite having liked my Playing Around rendition, fired me on grounds of "creative subordination"!  It was a tough blow, but at least she called me creative. 

As I wrote in Baking, I lost my job, but got a good recipe. 

Actually, the other recipe I had to make, the cookie recipe, was also a great one.  Originally called Mulattoes, the recipe for the cookies came from the wonderful Maida Heatter's Book of Great Desserts. And, just as I still loved the chocolate cake after having had to make it over and over again, I never lost my affection for these cookies even though I had to make 100 of them every morning.  In fact, I loved them so much that I put a version of them in Baking, where they're called Chocolate Chunkers (page 70).

As you can see, the Chunkers live up to their name.  They've got four kinds of chocolate, unsweetened, semisweet, bittersweet and milk or white, as well as cocoa powder, nuts and raisins or bits of apricots. Mix up a batch and you'll see that you've got more add-ins than dough.  Of course, you can play around with these.  You can add different kinds of chips, fold in different kinds of nuts, add a pinch of cinnamon or a tad of grated nutmeg and take whatever cookies you can snatch from the kids and mix them into some ice cream, storebought or home-churned. 

Here's the best part: you can be as creative or as insubordinate as you'd like, and you won't get fired! 

CHOCOLATE CHUNKERS

Adapted from Baking From My Home to Yours

1/3 cup all-purpose flour

1/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/4 teaspoon baking powder

3 tablespoons unsalted butter, cut into 3 pieces

6 ounces bittersweet chocolate, coarsely chopped

1 ounce unsweetened chocolate, coarsely chopped

2 large eggs, at room temperature

2/3 cup sugar

1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

6 ounces semisweet chocolate, chopped into chunks, or 1 cup store-bought chocolate chips or chunks

6 ounces premium-quality milk or white chocolate, chopped into chunks, or 1 cup store-bought chocolate chips

1 1/2 cups coarsely chopped nuts, preferably salted peanuts or toasted pecans

1 cup moist, plump raisins or finely chopped moist, plump dried apricots

Center a rack in the oven and preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.  Line two baking sheets with parchment or silicone mats.

Sift together the flour, cocoa, salt and baking powder.

Set a heatproof bowl over a saucepan of simmering water.  Add the butter, bittersweet and unsweetened chocolate and heat, stirring occasionally, just until melted -- the chocolate and butter should be smooth and shiny but not so hot that the butter separates.  Remove the bowl from the heat and set it on the counter to cool.

Working with a stand mixer, preferably fitted with a paddle attachment, or with a hand mixer in a large bowl, beat the eggs and sugar together on medium-high speed for about 2 minutes, until they are pale and foamy.  Beat in the vanilla extract, then scrape down the bowl.  Reduce the mixer speed to low and add the melted butter and chocolate, mixing only until incorporated.  With a rubber spatula, scrape down the bowl, then, on low speed, add the dry ingredients.  Mix just until the dry ingredients disappear into the dough, which will be thick, smooth and shiny.  Scrape down the bowl and, using the rubber spatula, mix in the semisweet and milk (or white) chocolate chunks, nuts and raisins -- you'll have more crunchies than dough at this point.  

Drop the dough by generously heaping tablespoonfuls onto the baking sheets, leaving about an inch of space between the mounds of dough.

Bake the cookies one sheet at a time for 10 to 12 minutes.  The tops of the cookies will look a little dry but the interiors should still be soft.  Remove the baking sheet and carefully, using a broad metal spatula, lift the cookies onto a cooling rack to cool to room temperature.

Repeat with the remaining dough, baking only one sheet of cookies at a time and making sure to cool the baking sheets between batches.

If, when the cookies are cooled, the chocolate is still gooey and you'd like it to be a bit firmer, just pop the cookies into the fridge for about 10 minutes.

PS.  The cookies in the picture were made by scooping out about 2 tablespoonfuls of the dough and flattening the mounds of dough slightly.

Quiche: And Now for the Crust

   

After writing yesterday about my latest adventures in quichedom, some of you sent comments and emails asking me for a crust recipe – how sensible of you.  While quiches can be crustless, they’re so much nicer when you can pair their soft, creamy custard with the slight crunch of a crust.

For the crust, I’m going to send you over to a recipe of mine that appeared in Bon Appetit magazine and that now lives on Epicurious.  Click and you’ll get a two-fer:  a recipe for a crust and a recipe for a mushroom and shallot quiche.  (It’s the mushroom and shallot quiche that’s in Pornchai Mittongtare’s photo above.)

The recipe’s self-explanatory, but here are a few extra pointers:

The key to a crust with good texture is to work it as little as possible, which is why I find the food processor such a godsend for pastrymaking.  The method for making crust in a processor is pretty much the same no matter the recipe:  whirr the dry ingredients together, drop in the pieces of cold, cold butter (or butter and shortening) and pulse until you get a mix that looks coarse and uneven.  It’s good to have pea-size pieces of dough and flake-size pieces, too.  If your butter is frozen, you might have to pulse – or even straight process – for longer to get it to break up.  When you've got a mealy mix in the bowl, stir the egg and water together (you might have a recipe that uses only water) and add it a little at a time, pulsing after each addition.  When the egg is in, process in long pulses – about 10 seconds each – until the dough, which will look granular soon after the egg is added, forms clumps and curds.  Just before you reach this clumpy stage, the sound of the machine working the dough will change: Heads up – stop the machine before the dough forms a ball. 

Of course you can make the dough by hand using your fingers or a pastry blender to work in the butter and a fork to toss the dough with the egg.

If you’ve made the dough in a processor and if you’ve used very cold or frozen butter, you might be able to roll the dough out immediately.  If not, give it a chill.  Chilling and resting the dough allows it to relax and helps keep it from shrinking during baking.  On the other hand, if you want to press the crust into the pan, doing it as soon as it’s made is the way to go.

No matter whether you roll or press the dough into the pan, it’s a good idea to give the pan a quick rub with butter.  And, speaking of pans, someone asked where you can get a fluted tart pan with a removable bottom like the one I used for my vegetable quiche:  you can find them at amazon.

I’m a big believer in the pre-bake – I think it’s the best way to have a fighting chance in the non-soggy crust department.  And I always chill or freeze my crust after I get it into the pan, another ploy to keep it from shrinking.  To pre-bake the crust, lightly press a piece of buttered foil against the base of the crust and over the sides and fill the crust with rice or beans – not pie weights, I think they’re too heavy.  (Actually, if my crust is frozen, I don’t use weights of any kind.)  Put the crust on a lined baking sheet and bake it for about 20 minutes.  Carefully lift off the foil, prick the bottom of the crust in a bunch of places with the tip of a knife or the tines of a fork and put the crust back into the oven to bake for about 10 minutes more, or until it’s lightly golden.

Now, here’s a neat trick for keeping your crusts crisp:  As soon as the crust comes out of the oven, lightly beat an egg white with a fork and brush the white over the inside of the crust.  The white may craze and crackle and that’s fine, it will still provide a kind of waterproof lining between the crust and the quiche filling.

Hope this helps.  Let me know.

Quiche: Still a Favorite

  

When you bake as much as I do, which is just about daily, you get used to your husband only nibbling at a cookie or two, or cutting the thinnest possible slice of cake and not going back for seconds, and after a while (say 20 years or so) you don't take it personally.  Happily, there are still things I make that he finds irresistible, among them the French Pear Tart (it's the recipe I chose for Tuesdays with Dorie), rugelach, almost like his mother made, and quiche, eggy, cheesy, creamy, rich quiche.

Before the book, Real Men Don't Eat Quiche, and before the "Food Police" (a group Julia Child always referred to as "grumpy") decided quiche somehow wasn't p.c., the French custard tart was beloved on our shores.  Of course, it's never stopped being loved in France, from whence it sprung.

When lunchtime rolls around in Paris, quiche is on the menu of just about every cafe in town, including the one on my corner, where the type of quiche changes every day and, no matter the quiche du jour, it's ordered by stylish, impossibly slim women and just as many hip guys.  What we think of as old-fashioned, they think of as lunch, or an easy supper, or a dish for brunch or, cut into thin wedges or small squares and served at room temperature, the perfect nibble with an after-work glass of wine.

I think the French have the right idea here and, with that, and my husband's love of the tart in mind, I'm taking on the job of bringing quiche back.  In fact, I started last night -- I served little slices of a mixed-vegetable quiche with white wine before a dinner with friends.  I felt like I got the movement off to a good start:  it seemed to win the hearts and minds of the "real" men and women who were there and, just as I thought it would, it put a smile on my husband's face.

VEGETABLE QUICHE

This quiche is unusual in that it has lots more vegetables than it does custard.  If the sides of  your tart pan are not very high or if your crust has shrunk, you might not be able to get all the custard into the pan.  If you think you've got a short-sided crust, make a smaller amount of custard using 1/2 cup heavy cream and 1 egg.

1 tablespoon butter

2 stalks celery, peeled, trimmed and cut into small dice
2 slender leeks, white and light green parts only, trimmed, quartered lengthwise and finely sliced

2 slender carrots, peeled, trimmed and finely diced

1 medium red pepper, trimmed, seeded and finely diced

2/3 cup heavy cream (see above)

1 large egg

1 large egg yolk

1/3 cup grated cheese, such as Gruyere, Parmesan or cheddar

Salt and freshly ground pepper

One 9- to 9 1/2-inch partially baked tart shell still in its pan

Put a skillet over medium-low heat, add the butter and, when it’s melted, toss in the vegetables.  Cook, stirring, for about 10 minutes, or until the vegetables are tender.  Season with salt and pepper, then scrape the vegetables into a bowl and let them cool while you preheat the oven.

When you’re ready to bake the quiche, center a rack in the oven and preheat the oven to 400 degrees F.  Put the partially-baked crust on a lined baking sheet.

Spoon the vegetables into the tart shell and spread them evenly along the base of the crust – the vegetables will just about fill the crust.  Whisk the cream, egg and egg yolk together, season with salt and pepper and carefully pour the custard mixture over the vegetables.  Depending on how your crust baked, you may have too much custard – don’t push it.  Pour in as much custard as you can without overflowing the sides of the crust, wait a few minutes until it’s settled into the vegetable’s nooks and crannies then, if you think it will take it, pour in a little more.  Very carefully slide the baking sheet into the oven.  (If it’s easier for you, put the quiche into the oven without the custard, then pour in the cream.)

Bake the quiche for 20 minutes, sprinkle the cheese over the top and bake for another 10 to 15 minutes, or until the cheese is golden and, most important, the quiche is set and uniformly puffed (wait for the center to puff).  Transfer the quiche to a rack and cool until it’s only just warm or until it reaches room temperature before serving.

The World's 50 Best Food Blogs

The official news arrived late yesterday and I'm delighted: My blog has been chosen by The Times, that would be The London Times, as one of The World's 50 Best Food Blogs.

It's wonderful to be chosen and especially wonderful to be in such terrific company.  Like me, I'm sure you'll find many of your favorite blogs on the list, and, also like me, I'm sure you'll find many that will be new to you and many that you'll want to start following.  There's so much excellent writing in the blogosphere and so much extraordinary photography, so it's great that The Times has has chosen to recognize some of it.

I hope you'll take a look at the list and, if you've got a minute, let me know if your best-loved blogs are there or if there are some that you love that are missing.  It'll be a fun way for us to find new blogs to add to our favorites lists.

Paris: 25 Romantic Things to Do in the City of Love

 

As I wrote on Leite's Culinaria this Valentine's week, when David Leite asked me to guest-blog a Postcard from Paris, I'm often perplexed when friends who are traveling to that magical city ask me what they should do to make their trip romantic.  I never really know what to tell them because, to my mind, just being in Paris is the most romantic thing you can do.  My standard answer to the query is usually, "Do nothing, walk the streets, sit in a cafe and then do nothing again but be in the city and watch everything that unfolds before you."  Om.

But it's Valentine's Day, and it might be chilly, and just telling people to stroll didn't seem like it would make much of a guest post, so I thought about Paris -- my favorite pasttime after actually being there -- came up with a baker's dozen of things to do that I find romantic and sent it to David.  Then after he posted it, with beautiful photographs by Alona Martinez, I thought of a dozen more! 

So here are my 25 ideas for making Paris even more unbearably romantic than it already is.  If you've got more ideas, please add them.

1. Go to a crowded bistro and pretend you're the only people there.  You can try this out at two of my favorite places, Fish, La Boissonerie (69 rue de Seine, Paris 6), and Le Bistrot Paul-Bert.
2. Take time to have tea.  Have a grand tea complete with piano music and stunning flowers at the Hotel George V; tea made from first-rate tea at Mariage Freres (they import and blend it themselves); or tea with a little pastry upstairs in the blue velvet and silk room at Laduree on the rue Jacob.
3. Walk around the Luxembourg Gardens, magnificent at any time of year (the circuit is only about a mile, so it's doable no matter the weather), and finish by stopping into a cafe for a vin chaud, mulled wine.  I like to stop at either Au Petit Suisse, across from the park and the Odeon Theatre, or Cafe Tournon, near the Senat.
4. Have a big plate of oysters at the tiny Regis (where they only serve oysters), or splurge on a towering seafood platter at Le Dome.  Eat with your fingers, slurp the liquor from the oysters and drink Chablis, Sancerre, Muscadet or lots of Champagne.
5. Watch the sun set from the Pont des Arts.
6. Have a leisurely lunch.  Lunch is such a luxury, especially if you're a tourist with a long to-do list, but there's nothing lovelier than stopping in the middle of the day for something sybaritic.  The two most romantic splurges for lunch are the Jules Verne, Alain Ducasse's restaurant in the Eiffel Tower, and Le Grand Vefour in the gorgeous gardens of the Palais Royale.  Le Grand Vefour is the oldest continuously operating restaurant in Paris and it's beautiful, the service is perfect and every seat is named for a patron of the past.  Once I was seated at the Empress Eugenie's place (which meant my husband would have been Napoleon III) and another time I was in Colette's seat (be still my heart).  A stroll down the garden's tree-lined allees is the perfect way to cap lunch.  For a far, far less extravagant lunch, my favorite place is Le Comptoir (but it doesn't take reservations -- aarrrgh).
7. Buy chocolate-covered marshmallows at Pierre Marcolini or something with praline at Patrick Roger, two of the city's best chocolatiers.
8. Drink hot chocolate every chance you get.  The richest chocolat chaud is at Angelina's.
9. Have anything -- oh, if only you could have everything -- at Pierre Herme, hands-down the best and most exciting patissier in Paris and no, I'm not impartial.  If you've never had the Ispahan macaron -- rose, raspberry and litchi -- you must.
10. Have a glass of Champagne for no other reason than because you can.
11. Buy a bag of (the absolutely fabulous) chocolate-covered Sauternes-soaked raisins from Da Rosa and eat them in bed.
12. Visit Sartre and de Beauvoir's tombs at the Montparnasse Cemetery, which is a fascinating place, or go see Proust at Pere Lachaise Cemetery, another beautiful place (but much larger, so you might want to wait until the weather's a bit warmer).
13. Set off without a map, get thoroughly lost and celebrate your freedom at the closest cafe.
14. Go to the Jacquemart-Andre Museum and imagine that you live there.  Of course you can do this at Versailles, but it's easier at the palatially cozy J-A.
15. Buy a slice or two from several kinds of terrines from master charcutier Gilles Verot (3 rue Notre-Dames des Champs, Paris 6) and have a picnic in your hotel room.
16. Get a bottle of wine from La Derniere Goutte, one of Paris's best and most interesting wine shops (everyone there speaks English), to go with those terrines.
17. Take an evening cruise up the Seine in a Bateau Mouche.  Sure it's a touristy thing to do, but I figure if it was good enough for Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn in Charade, then it's good enough for me.
18. If you can't take the cruise, stand on the Quai opposite Notre Dame (the Left Bank side) and wait for a Bateau Mouche to sail by and shine its lights on the church -- the effect makes you catch your breath no matter how many times you see it.
19. Visit Claire Damon's pastry shop, Des Gateaux et du Pain.  Damon is one of the few, I want to say only, but I'm not sure, French women with her own world-class patisserie.  There's something lovely, light and, yes, feminine about everything she makes, even her breads.
20. Go to Berthillon and have one ice cream sundae with two spoons.  If you and whomever you're with can agree on what flavors to have, you'll know it's true love.
21. Have a drink at the sumptuous Bar 228 in the Hotel Meurice or at The Ritz's Hemingway Bar.  It will cost as much as a dinner, but it will be memorable.
22. Window-shop along the Faubourg Saint-Honore and finish with a fancifully decorated eclair at Fauchon.
23. Buy a scented candle at Diptyque and keep it burning late into the night.  
24. Head for Poilane and buy not one, not two, not a dozen, but a sack full of their buttery cookies.  After all, when it comes to love, nothing beats abundance.
25. Go back to Pierre Herme and buy just one more macaron to share.

World Peace Cookies: Metric Measures and Variations

A few days ago, when the Tuesdays with Dorie bakers made World Peace Cookies, I piped in with a couple of stories about the cookies and heard from so many of you, who had your own WPC stories and a couple of questions, the most frequent being, "What are the metric measurements for these cookies?"

Below, you'll find the measures.  They come from Paris Sweets, where World Peace Cookies appeared as Korova Sables, their original moniker.  

Now for something different ...

Every Tuesday, when the TWD bakers post, I try to visit as many of the members' blogs as I can before my conscience starts screaming at me and telling to me to get back to work.  And a couple of weeks ago, I noticed that Caitlin of Engineer Baker had made WPCs with peanut butter and Reese's Peanut Butter Cups!  It made my head spin!  In all the years that I'd been baking these cookies, I, the Queen of Playing Around (I include variations for almost all of my recipes in my books), had never tweaked, tampered with or otherwise changed this recipe.  It had just never occurred to me.  But it had occurred to Caitlin -- and more than once:  She made them with espresso, too!

Inspired by Caitlin's boldness, I made peanut-butter and Reese's Peanut Butter Cup WPCs and, not surprisingly, they were fun. In fact, it's the peanut-butter version in the picture.  I'm not sure what else I might do with these cookies, but I think Caitlin's on to something. 

Have any of you made changes in the World Peace Cookies recipe?  Variations?  New flavors?  I'd love, love to know.

On to the metric measurements:  I haven't converted the spoon measures, but I think that if you figure 5 ml for a teaspoon and 15 ml for a tablespoon, you'll be fine.

World Peace Cookies: Metric Measurements

175 grams all-purpose flour

30 grams unsweetened cocoa powder

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

150 grams unsalted butter

120 grams light brown sugar

50 grams sugar

1/2 teaspoon fleur de sel  or 1/4 teaspoon fine sea salt

1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

150 grams bittersweet chocolate

Oven temperature: 160 degrees C.

Peace!

Tuesdays with Dorie: World Peace Cookies

 

Today, in the nooks and crannies of the blogosphere, wherever the Tuesdays with Dorie bakers are, it's World Peace Day. As I think I explained when it was my turn to choose the TWD recipe (I chose the French Pear Tart),  Tuesdays with Dorie is a group of more than 400 baking bloggers who bake something from Baking From My Home To Yours each week and then post about it on Tuesday.  Started by Laurie Woodward, the group has been baking for more than a year, which is surprising on its own and makes it even more surprising that a member of the group didn't choose World Peace Cookies earlier.  I say this because at last check there were, incredibly, 463,000 links on Google for the cookies!  But in a world that needs as much peace as it can get, better late than never ...

The cookies, for those of you who don't know them, are chocolate sables, French shortbreads, but, because they've got more brown sugar than white in them, they've got more chew than most shortbreads.  They've also got a generous amount of dark chocolate chunks and enough fleur de sel, moist, coarse-grained French "finishing" salt (i.e., salt to be used in teensy quantities as a spice or condiment), to make them noticeably salty and completely addictive, in the way so many good things with salt are.

I was given the recipe in 2000 by Pierre Herme, who had created the cookie for a restaurant in Paris called Korova and so, when I included the recipe in Paris Sweets, I naturally dubbed the sables Korova Cookies.  I don't have the stats to prove it, but my guess is that those cookies were the most frequently made recipe in the book. 

Because the cookies had become such a hit -- and because I was making batches of them at least once a week -- I wanted to reprise the recipe in Baking From My Home to Yours and had it all written and ready to go when I ran into my neighbor, Richard Gold, who couldn't stop talking about how much he loved the Korovas and how much everyone he'd ever made them for loved them too.  "In fact," he said, "in our house, we call them World Peace Cookies, because we're convinced that a daily dose of the cookies is all that's needed to ensure planetary peace and happiness."

How could I not rename them World Peace Cookies!

And the story continues.  Shortly after BFMHTY was published, I received a letter from a member of a California group called Grandmothers for Peace.  The Grandmothers believe that peace can be achieved one cookie at a time and so, every week, members of the group bake, assemble on a street corner and hand out their cookies to passersby.  But there's a string attached -- you only get a cookie if you agree to bake your own cookies and pass them on to others.  The letter was a request to make World Peace Cookies the group's official sweet.  Of course I agreed and, last I heard, WPCs, recipe included, were still being passed out every Saturday.

Now that you've got the backstory on the cookies, I hope you'll make them.  You can find the recipe at Cookbook Habit.  (Because Jessica of Cookbook Habit chose the recipe for TWD, she gets to post it for the group.)

One last word.  I noticed that some of the TWD bakers mentioned that their dough was crumbly and a little difficult to form into logs -- WPCs are slice-and-bakes.  I've had the crumbly problem from time to time, which is why I mention the possibility in the recipe, and I've come to think that the culprit might be the cocoa powder.  It seems to me that Dutch-processed cocoa makes an easier-to-handle dough than "natural" cocoa.  I've had very crumbly dough using Sacco brand cocoa and I've made my best cookies with premium cocoa powders from Valrhona and Scharffenberger.  As for supermarket brands, Droste is my pick.

Eggplant Dip on Parade

Remember how excited I was when my beet, tomato and yogurt salad turned out to have just 70 calories?  Well, I've got another 70-calorie wonder, this eggplant caviar that I created for Parade Magazine. 

Calorie counts, as well as carb and cholesterol counts, are odd things for me.  I've got a sense of what's what nutritionally.  I know what's highly caloric and what's not, what's generally healthful and what's not, and I guess that I must police myself on some unconscious level.  I know that I think about these things when I'm creating recipes.  Not when I'm creating a hot-fudge sundae -- then, all I'm thinking about is getting the flavors of childhood.  Or not, for example, when I'm creating a butter coookie -- then, I'd never stint on the most caloric ingredient, the butter, because it would be a disaster for the cookie.  Or not when I'm making a classic or traditional recipe -- again, I wouldn't want to compromise what made the dish a classic in the first place.  But when I'm making something new, particularly a savory dish, I like to see how much flavor and texture I can get with how little oil or butter or cream.  It's a kind of game I play with myself and, as in any game, it's always fun to win -- and I consider this dip a winner! 

The dip's made by roasting a couple of eggplants in a hot oven until their bellies give at a prod.  The scooped-out flesh is whirred in a food processor with a little olive oil, and then I add lemon juice and zest (the combo really brightens the dish), garlic, onion and basil.  The mix is delicious and it's easy to make, too (another reason it's a winner).

Sure the dip clocks in at 70 calories in part because the count doesn't include pita wedges, but if you wanted to be really, really careful, you could spread it on tomato slices or scoop it up with lettuce leaves or endive, nature's most perfect scooper.

And, you can play around with the recipe.  I added chopped tomatoes to the dip in the picture, but it'll take roasted peppers, sun-dried tomatoes, cilantro or even a little thyme.

Naturally, if you're not as jazzed about a 70-calorie dip as I am, you could add tahini, but then your eggplant caviar would not only be richer, it would be babaganoush!

For the recipe, click over to Parade's website.

Snow Again, Soup Again

   

I thought I was so smart getting up at 5 am and turning the car around in the driveway so that I wouldn't have to back out in the snow  (I'm not crazy about reverse in any weather -- it's just another quirk I'll work on one day when I've got more time).  What I failed to remember was that the snowplow would come along and sock me into the driveway no matter which way my car was pointing.  Oh well, it's not so bad being snowbound, since the electricity -- and therefore the heat -- is still working and I've got a lots of stuff in the fridge and the cupboards so that I can play in the kitchen.  And, I've got soup, always a good thing.

I drove up to Connecticut solo yesterday and did a little foraging on the way, knowing that I might have to stay in today.  And last night, while I had a chicken roasting in the oven, I made a pot of celery soup, which, good as it was last night, was even better for breakfast.  While I don't usually have soup before my morning coffee, I don't usually get up at 5 to do heavy manual labor.  When I came in from the cold and was finally able to rassure myself that all my digits would work once again, soup seemed liked the best idea, as good an idea as it seemed just an hour or so ago, when I guess I could legitimately say it was lunch.  I'm calling this Double Celery and Apple Soup, but it might just as well be called Soup for a Topsy-Turvy Day.  The way things are going, I might be having oatmeal for dinner.

DOUBLE CELERY AND APPLE SOUP

Makes 6 servings

2 tablespoons unsalted butter

3 stalks celery, with leaves, sliced

2 large yellow onions, peeled, trimmed and coarsely chopped

2 sweet apples, such as Macintosh or Fuji, peeled, cored and cubed

1 pound celery root, peeled, trimmed and cubed

1 bay leaf

1 sprig thyme

6 cups chicken or vegetable broth

Salt and freshly ground pepper

Crème fraiche, heavy cream or sour cream, for serving (optional)

Melt the butter in a large Dutch oven or soup pot over low heat.  Toss in the sliced celery, onions and apples, season with salt and pepper and cook, stirring often, for about 5 minutes, or until the vegetables are soft.  Add the cubed celery root and turn it around in the butter.  Toss the herbs into the pot, add the broth and bring to the boil.  Lower the heat and cook at a gentle simmer for about 30 minutes, or until the celery root is soft enough to mash with the back of a spoon.  If you can, pull out the bay leaf and what’s left of the thyme.

Working in small batches in a blender (first choice) or food processor, puree the soup until it's smooth.  (If you’re using a processor or an immersion blender, you might not get a super-smooth soup.  If you’d like, you can run the pureed soup through a strainer, but it’s really not necessary.  As you can see, mine is pretty chunky.)  Taste for salt and pepper. 

This needs to be served very hot (especially on a snowy day) and, while it really doesn't need an embellishment, like just about everything else in the world, it's better with cream, so either stir some into the pot or put a spoonful in the center of each bowl and let everyone swirl it into the soup.

 

Playing around:  It's fun to put a little surprise in the bottom of the soup bowl.  Cut a peeled and cored apple or two into chunks and toss it into a skillet with a little melted butter.  Stir it around, season with salt and pepper, then sprinkle the cubes with some curry powder.  Heat, stirring, until the powder is fragrant and coats the apple evenly.  Put a spoonful of apple in each bowl before you ladle in the soup.

The Chili-Chicken Sandwich: Holding on to a Taste from Laos

     

Ever since The Kid, our son, Joshua, and I got back from our travels through Southeast Asia, this sandwich has been a regular in the house.  Actually, it's been on Joshua's menu just about every day, sometimes for lunch, sometimes for dinner and sometimes at hours others might not consider sitting down to anything this substantial ... or anything at all.  The sandwich, a layered affair, is inspired by the ones we had in Luang Prabang, Laos.  There, the chicken sandwich was the last thing we'd eat every night, and in between bites, as we tried to keep up with the heat and the dribble of the chili sauce, we'd look at one another with grins and invariably say the same thing: "I can't believe this is so good!"

After a full day of traveling in and around Luang Prabang, we'd walk into town to visit the night market, a huge, colorful market with so many vendors and so many scarves and t-shirts and embroidered throws that after a couple of turns around it my head would spin and we'd head for the food stalls.

Our first stop was "the vegetarian buffet," where a young woman stood watch over two stacks of shallow soup plates, one set just a bit larger than the other, and through smiles and a lot of pointing to dishes and signs, explain that you buy a plate, large or small, and then fill it as high as you'd like with as much of whatever you'd like.  There were noodles and greens and dumplings and rice of various kinds and tofu and Laos beer in tall-neck bottles.  Plates full, we'd  find spots at the long communal tables, dig in and try making friends with the people around us.  We loved being surrounded by so many people and so much motion and such good food, food that was so irresistible that even after our piled-high plates we'd wander around nibbling sticky rice in banana leaves and sipping fruit shakes .  And then we'd buy our sandwiches.

The sandwich ladies were set up at the entrance to the market, three of them in a row with no other way to tell whose sandwich was best, but to taste them all, and we did. (In case you're going, the stand furthest from the entrance won our best-of-the-fair blue ribbon.) 

Each woman had her supplies in front of her and would start putting together a sandwich only when the order came in; no grab-and-go here.  The process would start with Miss Sandwich slicing a bamboo-skewered grilled chicken breast into long strips.  Next would come the bread, a soft, almost squishy half-baguette, not crusty, not crackly, not even very tasty, but just right for this sandwich in which its job is to hold everything together and give the chili sauce a comfortable home.  She'd open the bread wide and place it on the palm of her left hand and then get to work slathering both sides with mayonnaise and then hot chili paste, layering the slices of chicken, rounds of tomato and onion and long slices (sometimes wedges) of cucumber, tucking in some lettuce and then finishing it all off with a prolonged squeeze of sweet chili sauce.  Then, the final touch (one Joshua doesn't replicate): she'd close the sandwich with a rectangle of paper torn from a magazine and then secure the whole bundle with a rubber band. 

With two sandwiches in my carry-all and another beer or milkshake, we'd walk back to the hotel to have our "dessert".  One night, we ate our sandwiches at the market and we didn't think they were as good.  The next day, pondering the sandwich let-down, we figured it out:  the in-place sandwiches lacked the 15-minute seep-in time provided by the walk back to the hotel!  Of course, at home, once the sandwich is made, neither of us can bear to wait 15 minutes for the bread to soak up the chili sauce and we never tie the sandwich with magazine strips and rubber bands, another soak-up helper.

As for the chili sauces, we're using sriracha over the mayonnaise and Thai sweet chili sauce over everything.  It's not authentic, but it's just as messy -- and so, so good.

PS:  We seem to have started a tiny trend.  When we were in Paris over the holidays, Joshua made one of his Laos specials for our friend Helene, she of Parisian burger fame.  Helene fell in love with the sandwich immediately, went out and bought all the ingredients and then called The Kid to come over for a sandwich-making demo.  They made the sandwich together and later that day he got an email from Helene saying:  "Thanks for the lesson on how to make the sandwich, now I need a lesson on how to eat it!"  It's that messy factor again.

PPS:  As you can see, Helene went the semi-homemade route.  Chez Greenspan, we've taken to cooking six chicken breasts on Sunday, so we've got a supply for the week.  And because it's not grilling weather, we cook them quickly and simply in the oven.  I rub the breasts with a little olive oil, lemon juice, salt and pepper (not necessary at all, but why not?) -- sometimes I even marinate them in the oil and juice.  Then I lay them out on a baking sheet lined with parchment, nonstick foil or a silicone baking mat, and bake them in a 375 degree F oven for between 15 and 20 minutes, or until they're cooked through.  It's the easiest way I know to cook chicken breasts that are perfect for sandwiches and salads.