On Dasher, On Salmon?

Posted on December 26, 2010 by marigold

My husband is Norwegian in  that  his father’s family came from Oslo and he spoke Norwegian when he was very young.  My strongest recollection of  Norway is a  day spent just outside Bergen visiting Edvard Grieg’s house. To reach the house, we scrambled over rocks  in the  pouring ran. Later, I found out that it rains almost every day in Bergen, undoubtedly great for the skin  but  probably a tad depressing day after day.  Grieg’s house, in Troldhagen just outside Bergen, has  now been heavily marketed. I went to a house sprinkled with memorabilia  including Grieg’s piano. Today’s visitors can visit a cafe, a multimedia center, a museum and even go to a concert if their timing is right.

I  started making gravlax for Christmas because of my husband’s Norwegian heritage and then it became a tradition. There are two equipment-based aspects. One is that the fish has to sit under heavy weight in the fridge for several days. We use marble slabs that spend the rest of the year quietly packed away.

The other equipment is a special knife my husband uses to slice the gravlax. It takes a long time to get the slices very thin and it can almost certainly be done with another kind of knife but this is the one we use, reserved for just this purpose.

The only tricky part of making gravlax  is  remembering to start a week before you plan to serve it.

GRAVLAX (The New York Times)

2 lbs. fresh salmon

1/4 cup regular table salt

2 Tbls. sugar

2 Tbls. chopped fresh dill

1 Tbls. bottled green peppercorns plus 1 Tbls of their liquid

1 Tbls each fresh tarragon, thyme and chevril (if you don’t have fresh, dried will do but fresh is better.)

2-3 Tbls. capers

Additional fresh dill for sauce and garnish

A week before you plan to serve it, buy 2 or more pounds fresh salmon. Select the thickest part of the fish and ask the fish-seller to remove the skin. At home, cut the pieces in two against the grain. Place one piece of salmon on a piece of foil larger enough to wrap it with foil to spare. Mix the salt, sugar and chopped dill. Rub both pieces of salmon all over front and back with this mixture. Cover one piece of fish with the other (if there are thicker and thinner ends, place a thick end over a thin one.). Add sprigs of dill between the two pieces of fish and on top; wrap up the foil, crimping the edges. Put wrapped fish on a plate in the fridge. After one day, turn the package over.

After two days, remove and unwrap fish. Keep the now droopy dill. Make a puree of the peppercorns, their liquid and the three herbs. Spread the puree all over the fish, put back the droopy dill and more fresh dill and re-wrap.. Put a cutting board or other flat surface on top and weight top. Return to the fridge for three days.

To serve, slice as thinly as possible on a diagonal. Arrange on a platter and garnish with fresh dill and capers. Serve with thin sliced black bread and gravlax sauce.

GRAVLAX SAUCE (Martha Stewart’s Entertaining)

4 Tbls Dijon mustard

1 Tsp dry mustard

3 Tbls. sugar

2 Tbls. white vinegar

1/3 cup light vegetable oil

3-4 Tbls. fresh dill, chopped fine

Combine mustard, sugar and vinegar in bowl or food processor. Add oil drop by drop until mixture thickens. Refrigerate until ready to use. Sauce keeps in fridge up to ten days.

We eat gravlax with other finger foods and drink Prosecco.

If you have a special holiday recipe, please share. Cheers.

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From Peasant to POSH

Posted on December 19, 2010 by marigold

In a cable car going up Mt. Aetna in Sicily, I fell into conversation with a teen-aged boy and his mother who were  in on the island visiting family. The boy  had turned the trip into a quest for the perfect arrancini.

Arrancini are a clever way to stretch leftovers,  thought up by some Sicilian peasant ages ago. Rice is molded into a ball around leftovers, usually peas and a little mozzarella, sometimes with a dab of ragu or meat sauce . The whole is then rolled in breadcrumbs and deep fried. They’re sold at food carts all over Sicily, usually  accompanied by a tiny, waxy napkin and that’s about it. I asked the boy where he had found the  best arrancini.

He recommended those sold by a vendor in the square outside the Cathedral in Cefalu so, of course, we went there. As pictured, it’s beautiful but the day we went  it  was cold and windy, not ideal for sitting outdoors. On top of that, the famed Cathedral was closed for a three month renovation. Nevertheless, the arrancini were terrific.

Recently, my husband and I were guests at a  New York City restaurant celebrated for its fabulous Italian food and given a relatively high rating in Zagat. One of the appetizers on the menu was a plate of arrancini which we ordered and shared with our host and the other guests. They were so good that we ordered another round. These arrancini were elegant and pricey, served on fine china and accompanied by a well-seasoned tomato sauce. They were as good, and certainly eaten in a more comfortable setting,  than the ones we ate in Cefalu, but minus the drama.

No recipe dear readers as deep frying is something I leave to the pros. But if you go to Sicily or see them on a menu wherever you are, sample arrancini. If they are crisp, greaseless and you want more, you’re on the way.

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Naples with Three P’s

Posted on December 12, 2010 by marigold

The first P is for Pompeii, a short trip from Naples. I’m  glad I went to Pompeii  before the problems with falling walls and crumbling ruins escalated to where they are now. The site is spectacular, with Vesuvius brooding in the background. In addition to the heralded frescoes ,baths and other evidences of complex plumbing  and erotica, the streets are impressive. The city planners were obviously very sophisticated to have fashioned certain thoroughfares for pedestrian traffic only, by placing large stones at the start of those streets to make it impossible for wagons or chariots to pass.

The second P stands for pizza, often said to have originated in Naples. Tomatoes were brought to Europe in the sixteenth century, although they were first thought to be poisonous. Time passed and tomatoes and cheese from the milk of the water buffalo, (as in buffalo mozzarella) were incorporated into the dish.  Pizza Margarita is named for Italy’s Queen Margarita who visited a Neapolitan pizzeria in 1889. In honor of her visit, the pizza maker created a pie with the colors of the Italian flag: red from tomatoes; white from buffala mozzarella and green from fresh basil. In Naples today there are many different kinds of pizza but the Margarita is king. Um, make that Queen.

The third P is for pasta fagiole, a peasant soup I ate at a Naples restaurant and enjoyed so much that I went back another night to eat it again. After eating many bowls of pasta fagiole, much of it thin and too brothy, I finally came up with a recipe that’s both easy and delicious.

Pasta Fagiole

Serves 8 (6 very generously)

6 ounces pancetta, finely diced\

1/4 cup olive oil

1 cup red onion, chopped

1 cup celery, chopped

1 tablespoon fresh sage, chopped

1 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon ground black pepper

6 cups chicken stock

4 (19 ounce) cans cannellini beans, drained and rinsed

2 cups seashell or other small pasta

2 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley

Sauté pancetta in olive oil until crisp. Unless you are very fat-phobic, leave the fat in the pot. Add onion and celery and stir for about 5 minutes. Stir in sage and black pepper. Add chicken stock, cover and bring to boil. When boiling, add drained beans to soup, cover and simmer 30 minutes.

Separately, cook pasta as directed with the salt in the water. Drain and add to soup. Stir in minced parsley and pass grated Parmesan.  Add more pepper if desired.

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The Brothers Grimm Really Were

Posted on December 3, 2010 by marigold

Do you remember Hansel and Gretel?  I’m referring to the original story that became an opera by Englebert Humperdink long before  Stephen Sondheim incorporated part of it into the Broadway show Into the Woods? My recollections of  H &G  are filled with  terror.  Start with the mean parents abandoning their children in the dark woods, (some versions say the wife was really the stepmother, meant as a neat dig at stepparents), so that they would have fewer family members to feed. Clever Hansel leaves a trail of breadcrumbs to find the way back but the birds eat them so the children get lost. They wind up at the candy cottage inhabited by a witch who makes Cruella de Ville look like Miss Congeniality.  Lost kids, scary woods, and a witch who thought a child was a top snack  and ensnared them to fatten for the grill!!  Even though the children finally escape the witch and force her into her own oven, it’s a frightening story.

One modern H&G  legacy is the build-your-0wn- gingerbread house, conveniently packaged and available at the supermarket. Martha types probably bake their own gingerbread and make their own icing ‘glue’–maybe they even make their own peppermint sticks and gumdrops. For the rest of us, the buy-and-construct version works just fine   Our gingerbread house-from-a -kit  was constructed by two girls. One, nearly eleven, knows the  Hansel story but, since she didn’t add that she hated it, has very likely only been exposed to the sanitized, Disneyesque version.
Recalling my fear when Hansel was read to me reminded me of of another unpleasant literary memory:  Struwwelpeterter,  (translated as ‘ Slovenly Peter’).

The book is a series of cautionary tales including  the title story about a boy who wouldn’t cut his fingernails or hair and another describing a boy who tortured flies.  The stories were so unpleasant I’m sure the intended messages never got through!

Do you remember a childhood story that scared you? Let’s hear.

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Turkey Redux

Posted on November 27, 2010 by marigold

Now that you’ve enjoyed your turkey, cranberry sauce, pumpkin pie etc., the truth is  that most of the Thanksgiving story is a myth.  All the facts aren’t known but these are some: in 1621,  ninety Wampanoag Indians (not yet known as native Americans) and fifty-two English colonists (not yet known as Pilgrims) gathered for a ceremony many times removed from “Thanksgiving” which then meant the literal giving of thanks, something the Wampanoags did daily. None of the foods we associate with the holiday were on the menu which historians haven’t yet figured out but “pumpkin” could have been squash and “turkey” local waterfowl. It took the 19th century editor of Godey’s Ladies Book, Sarah Josepha Hale,  to morph the original get-together into the idealized holiday feast.  Don’t stress comparing the merits of oyster, cornbread or sausage stuffing– the first Thanksgiving was harsh but the colonists were probably overjoyed to have survived.

A friend’s family used to eat lobster for their Thanksgiving dinner because they liked it so much–score one for a personal holiday tradition. My family sticks to the standard American plan: turkey with stuffing that varies with the chef, sweet potatoes and sometimes mashed as well, vegetables, cranberry sauce (I insist on making the raw version with a naval orange and far less sugar than the Ocean Spray people used to suggest and wonder every year why I don’t make it more often) and desserts including pumpkin pie. That’s Thanksgiving One. Then most of us gather at our house in Southern Vermont for Thanksgiving Two. Since we’ve been smothered in turkey for several days and still have leftovers,  at the Two meal this year I’m serving pasticcio, sometimes called Greek lasagna. Years ago, the man who cut my hair spent a day in my kitchen, teaching me to make  the Greek classics mousakka and pasticcio. Both use lots of pots and pans although this streamlined version is a little more sparing of the cook.

Pasticcio

1 pound penne, cooked and drained

1 pound ground lamb

1 pound ground beef

2 onions diced

1/2 cup red wine

1 6 oz. can tomato paste

1/2 tsp. ground cinnamon

6  Tbls. butter

1/2 cup flour (leveled in measuring cup)

3 cups whole milk

1/8 tsp. cayenne pepper

1/4 cup Parmesan cheese

Cook pasta and drain.  Meanwhile, in a large saucepan cook lamb and beef together breaking it apart with a spoon until meat is cooked through (no longer pink.) Add onions and cook stirring once in a while until they are translucent.  Drain fat and add wine. Cook about five minutes. Heat oven to 375 degrees.

Stir in tomato paste, cinnamon and 2 cups water. Simmer stirring every now and again until it’s thickened (about 15 minutes.) Season with salt and pepper.

While mixture simmers, make Bechamel Sauce: in medium saucepan melt butter over medium heat. Whisk in flour until it’s incorporated, then in a slow stream, whisk in milk until there are no lumps.  Cook whisking until the sauce is thick and bubbly and coats the back of a wooden spoon. Stir in cayenne and Parmesan.

Combine the pasta with the meat mixture and transfer it all to a 9 x 13″ baking pan. Pour the Bechamel Sauce over the top, smoothing it level. Bake until some spots brown, roughly 30-40 minutes.  Remove from oven and let sit 15 minutes for easier serving. Happy post-Thanksgiving!

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Now You See It…

Posted on November 15, 2010 by marigold

Magic captivates all ages, judging from the group at NYC’s Jewish Museum flooding in to see the exhibit: Houdini, Art and Magic.

Erik Weisz, the name Houdini was born with, developed killer abs and a way with straitjackets and handcuffs. The grainy 1907 video of him leaping, securely bound, from a bridge to quickly emerge from the water smiling, is as breath-stopping as many scenes with body doubles in contemporary movies.

Because it was family day at the museum, roving magicians showed their stuff including a trick in which a ring borrowed from an on-looker turned up attached inside the magician’s zippered key wallet. A special magic show for kids explained the fine art of magical distraction and taught them a few simple tricks.

The exhibit, which runs until the end of March 2011, includes posters, film, video, contemporary art, an impressive  hologram and plenty of information about Houdini’s life, escape techniques and self-promotion skills. He often performed a new stunt right outside the main newspaper in town to be sure that photographers and reporters were at the ready. The Tony Curtis version of Houdini in the eponymous 1953 movie isn’t in a league with the real thing.

From magician to rabbit isn’t a big leap (sorry) so here is a recipe for Welsh Rabbit, a dish my father often made for Sunday night supper. (The name, sometimes written as “rarebit,” is said to be a dig at the always-poor Welsh who had to settle for cheese instead of meat for dinner.)

Welsh Rabbit

3 tablespoons butter or margarine
3 tablespoons all-purpose flour
3/4 cup light or dark beer ( I use Guinness)
12 ounces shredded sharp Cheddar cheese
1 1/2 tablespoons dry mustard
1 teaspoon paprika
1/4 teaspoon pepper
1 teaspoon Worchestershire sauce
Toast

Melt butter over low heat, whisk in flour and keep whisking until smooth. Add the beer and continue whisking, about three minutes.
Stir in cheese and all other ingredients. Heat just until cheese melts. Pour over toast slices set into a bowl and serve immediately. (We used to eat our Welsh Rabbit poured over Holland Rusks which I haven’t seen in a long time. If you can find it, it works well. You could also substitute a toasted English muffin.)

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Dim Sum Lunch

Posted on November 8, 2010 by marigold

My cousin and I have an every- few- months ritual of a weekend dim sum lunch in  Chinatown, convenient both to her coming from Brooklyn and me from uptown.   The literal translation of dim sum is something close to  “touch your heart” and eating in a dim sum restaurant is called yum cha, ” to drink tea.”  Dim sum restaurants may be tiny holes in the wall or gigantic food palaces with noise to match but the first thing that invariably happens is that a teapot and cups are plunked on the table.

These are shu mai filled with vegetables:

And duck, not a super-typical dim sum offering but good although hard to handle with chopsticks:

And potstickers:

My cousin loves tripe and beef curd skin and I’ve been known to polish off chicken feet (a lot of work for a small amount of meat).  Dim sum do not  a glamorous meal make but are delicious and inexpensive.

After lunch, I dragged her  to a Chinatown bakery selling both Western and Chinese sweets and some East-Meets-West curiosities like a tuna salad Chinese bun.  I bought something called a chocolate nut roll that had a dash of powdered chocolate, a tiny sprinkle of nuts and dry pastry–it sounds odd but was just the taste I craved!

In Hong Kong, try dim sum at the Luck Yu Teahouse in Stanley, a  haven that opened in 1933. Luck Yu is a bastion of  Art Deco atmosphere  and brass spittoons and serves a tremendous variety of dim sum including many that don’t show up in US Chinatowns. The restaurant–a true teahouse–offers a huge number of different types of tea which I don’t have the palate to appreciate. What I did appreciate is the following recipe, given to me in Hong Kong by a long-time resident.

Lettuce in Oyster Sauce

Start with a head of  ordinary iceberg lettuce . Core it leaving the head whole.

Bring a large pot of water to a rolling boil.  Put the lettuce in the water and keep it in for two seconds only. Take it out, put it into a serving bowl and pour a full bottle of Oyster Sauce, preferably bought in a Chinese market, over it. Serve immediately.  It’s odd, delicious and unlike any other vegetable I serve.

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In Cooperstown But Not at Bat

Posted on October 31, 2010 by marigold

We went to Cooperstown in mid-October, well beyond baseball season.  On a previous trip to this town that looks like the town fathers insist on a  plants- and- flowers- surrounding- the- house when property changes hands, we went to the Baseball Hall of Fame and loved it although neither my husband or I are huge fans of America’s national pastime. On this visit, designed to meet friends from Hamilton, Ontario half-way (a shorter half for us than them), we went to some less obvious sights starting at the Saturday Farmer’s Market featuring lots of squash,

several Amish farmers selling their wares and a typical outlay of cheeses, maple syrup, and late season lettuce.

Next up: The Fennimore Museum of Art, a gem. The current special exhibit: John Singer Sargent and His Portraits In Praise of Women,  follows the Goldilocks formula: not too big, not too small, just right. The paintings and a few sketches are set against salmon-colored walls inspired, according to the curator, whose gallery talk we stumbled into, by the pinkish dash in the left of the portrait of Mrs. Abbott Lawrence Rocht:

This exhibit  runs through December. In addition, the museum has a highly regarded Native American collection, a folk art exhibition  and a cute cafe with a small but well thought-through menu and a patio where one can eat or sip coffee and admire Lake Otsego.
We had two terrific dinners at The Rose & Kettle in Cherry Valley, NY, a tiny town about a fifteen minute drive from Cooperstown. Chef Matthew Begley pulls off a fabulous crab cake with sauteed spinach and lemon caper aioli and a rosemary flatbread with caramelized onions appetizer as well as a great stuffed pork loin and other delights. You might not want to drive to Cherry Valley for dinner but if you’re in Cooperstown, you could do a lot worse.

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How to Flame Your Dragon

Posted on October 23, 2010 by marigold

This metal dragon now makes his home on the center floor of the Ghent Belfry, which dates from1313.  The dragon  originally lived on top of the building where a contemporary gilded dragon current resides. In the old days, when times got tough and invaders threatened,  the townspeople put burning pitch in the dragon’s mouth so he appeared to be spouting flames. It must have been impressive and probably terrifying.

To visit this dragon and another from the same period requires climbing a long flight of narrow, circular steps, the same kind as are in in many small Belgian buildings, perhaps to maximize space in this tidy, compact country.

Nearby, the St. Bavo Cathedral displays the Adoration of the Mystic Lamb, a large altarpiece  completed  c. 1432 by the brothers Van Eyck. The lamb was having his coat tidied when I was there (undergoing restoration) so I made do with a copy hung in one of the large, rear chapels. The photo shows only the lamb section; the altarpiece has  twenty-four sections.

Since I couldn’t come up with a recipe for anything dragon-related (dragons-head meatballs are best left to good Chinese restaurants and dragon fruit isn’t a big seller in the US) and have too many recipes for lamb, I thought I’d recirculate that classic, braised Belgian endive. Curiously, in my whole time in Belgium, I rarely saw endive. Perhaps fall isn’t the right season.

Braised Belgian Endive

8 large endive

2 tablespoons butter

3 tablespoons  fresh lemon juice

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 tablespoon sugar

Wash and dry the endive and trim off the bottom end. If the tips are brown, carefully trim these off also. Put butter in a heavy skillet or saute pan and gently saute the endive, turning over, about two minutes on each side. Add all the other ingredients, stir gently and cover the pan. Lower the heat to a gentle simmer and cook about twenty minutes. Serve as a side dish with any meat.

Eat endive, think dragon!

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Amsterdam Hermitage

Posted on October 15, 2010 by marigold

The Hermitage is in St. Petersburg, right? Well, yes but there’s another in Amsterdam. Seems that Tsar Peter the Great had a thing for Amsterdam and when the Russian powers that be were looking for a site for a “branch” they picked Amsterdam.
The building used to be a senior living facility. Everyone living there was relocated and serious renovation took place. The museum opened in July 2009 and it’s terrific–rather bland outside with a wonderful courtyard lined with stone benches and very contemporary inside right up to the elevator with glass on all six sides. The Neva Cafe could be in any large city, very white with lots or orchids and a stylish menu. Tulips are the flower I associate with Holland but during the non-tulip season, Amsterdam seems to have adopted the orchid which were in many public spaces.

The exhibit, Alexander the Great, is a tribute to the myth, the reality and the heritage of this Macedonian conqueror.  A clever video encapsulates the 22,000-plus miles Alex traveled during his war years — pretty impressive especially as it was all done on horseback.  Conquering Asia Minor, into X into India, until his death, possibly of West Nile Virus or wounds combined with years of serious drinking.

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