tomato_kumato

I know that most people celebrate Halloween with candy… so how in the world did I end up spending my holiday with pasta, cupcakes and Britney Spears? I suppose I should begin at the beginning.

After a “tiring” shopping trip (tiring to the Canadian… I like wandering down the Champs Elysées), we headed back home. I went straight to the kitchen, where I had planned to bake some Belgian Brownies (love this recipe!) and some Chocolate Orange Muffins with Orange Cream Cheese Frosting, from slashfood. I had just started melting the chocolate over the double boiler when the Canadian called out, “You hungry?”

Of course, this doesn’t mean, “are you hungry,” but rather, “I’m hungry. Please feed me.” Because we were drinking that night (and also a little bit because I was already devoting all of my energy to melting chocolate), I suggested pasta. Directly after this, I remembered that a) we had finished all of the jarred pesto, b) I hadn’t replaced the parmesan cheese and c) the vat of tomato sauce I froze was frozen into the fridge and would need to be removed on a rainy day when I had a hammer and chisel. I did, however, have some tomato paste, tomatoes, and a recipe for Quick Tomato-Cream Sauce that was also on my list of things to try from Under the Tuscan Sun. Bingo.

This was one of the best tomato sauces I’ve ever tried, and it was really easy. My only qualm, as you can probably tell from the pictures, is that I made too much pasta and not enough sauce.

Once we ate the pasta, I still had cupcakes to bake. I made the Belgian Brownies no problem: this is one of the easiest recipes in the world and one of my favorites… and I don’t even like chocolate! But I had also wanted to make the Chocolate Orange Cupcakes… seeing as it was Halloween. One problem: no cream cheese. I decided to sub mascarpone, but in the end, the frosting was looking a little funny. I put it in the fridge, hoping that chilling it would help, and continued getting ready for our Halloween party. When my friends got there, I hadn’t had time to frost them, so I left them in the kitchen and just brought out the Belgian Brownies. However, they disappeared rather fast, and my friend Emese found and delivered the Orange-Chocolate Cupcake stash. And you know what? They were good even without the frosting. The mix of chocolate and orange is delicious, as always, and the crumb was dense. They were sweet without being cloying, and basically, just good. Sure, it looked very pretty on the slashfood site, but sometimes you just can’t make everything look pretty.

(The flatter ones are Belgian Brownies, the kind of bulbous ones are the cupcakes.)

Oh… and Britney? That was Emese:

Quick-Tomato Cream Sauce from Under the Tuscan Sun

Cook 4 or 5 slices of pancetta, drain on paper towels, then crumble and set aside. Chop 2 medium onions and 2 or 3 cloves of garlic and sauté in the pork fat for 5 minutes. Chop and add 1 large red pepper and 4 or 5 whole tomatoes from a can. Season with salt and pepper and cook 5 minutes more. Stir in 1/2 cup of creme fraîche and another 3/4 cup of canned tomatoes with juice. Add a spoonful or so of the pasta water to the sauce. Stir the pancetta into the sauce at the last minute to retain crispness. Cook and drain enough pasta for 4. Mix the pasta with half the sauce; serve the rest of the sauce over the pasta.

“Festina tarde was a renaissance concept: make haste slowly.”

It’s taken me a long time to get to Under the Tuscan Sun, but it’s not for lack of cooking. On Saturday night, I threw a massive dinner party at my house. I invited ten people, and crafted a perfect menu: apératif of Tomato Bruschetta and Wild Mushroom Crostini, Risotto with Parmeggiano-Reggiano for a starter, and then Under the Tuscan Sun’s Chicken with Lemon and Basil. The dessert was tarte tatin. I spent all day Saturday prepping, making sure that everything would be easy once my guests arrived. I made the tarte dough, precooked my risotto (a restaurant trick I learned while waiting tables), made my salad dressing, tomatoes, and dressing for the chicken, and precooked the mushrooms. I had very little to do once my guests arrived.

… If they arrived. I guess one of the drawbacks of having so many international friends is not being aware of their customs. Example? Apparently, in a lot of South America, it’s considered rude to show up somewhere on time. So while my American friends arrived about ten to fifteen minutes late (like my mother told me, and apparently their mothers told them, you are supposed to do), the others didn’t show up for two hours.

Bear in mind, also, that this is rugby night in France, and France is playing England for a chance in the semifinals. We’ve opened the wine, eaten all the bruschetta, and the five of us have gotten quite tipsy while trying to find a way to watch the game online. When my friends finally arrived, I managed to get everything on the table (I forgot about the salad though), but my chicken didn’t brown the way I wanted to because I’d lost my sense of timing (thank you, Bordeaux), I didn’t have time to take any pictures of the plated dishes, and by the time we’d finished with the risotto and the chicken, we wanted to watch the rugby game, so we abandoned the finished pie in the cold oven and went down to the Champs de Mars.

The French lost, and the next morning I had to wash essentially all the dishes in my house. But later that evening, my friend Emese came by to help me finish the tarte tatin, and as we sat together on my couch, sharing half a pie between us, I realized that this was what I had wanted. Just to haves some friends, even one friend, over to my house, to cook something delicious, and to talk for awhile. I don’t know if I’ve learned how to make haste slowly, but I know that eating that one pie slowly was much more fun than any dinner party could have been.

The Menu:

Tomato Bruschetta

Wild Mushroom Crostini

Risotto with Parmeggiano-Reggiano

Basil and Lemon Chicken

In a large bowl, mix 1/2 cup each of chopped spring onions and basil leaves. Add the juice of one lemon, salt, and pepper. Mix and rub onto 6 chicken pieces (I used chicken thighs) and place in a well-oiled baking pan. Dribble with a little olive oil. Roast, uncovered, at 450 for ten minutes and at 350 for about an additional twenty, depending on the size of the chicken. Garnish with more basil leaves and lemon slices.
Tarte Tatin

I have to say, I was very, very proud of this chicken. I don’t really know why… maybe it’s because even though I kind of used the recipe for Lemon-Herb Roast Chicken on Epicurious, I kind of realized that I know how to do a lot of things myself, like timing, stuffing the cavity with all sorts of citrusy goodness, and especially with dealing with the kind of chicken they sell in France.

When you buy chicken here, even in the grocery store, there are often a few feathers left on. I find it reassuring… it makes me feel like it’s fresher. But I had to go through with a tweezer and get them off, rinse the whole chicken, and remove the parts they left inside.

Maybe I’m so proud because my friend, who is a self-proclaimed cook of two things: cheese on toast and sausages, stood and watched in awe as I slid the butter beneath the skin, stuffed the cavity with lemons and garlic, and even made a cream gravy afterwards. Seeing her watch me reminded me of watching my mother before I first went to university, trying as hard as I could to glean any tips from her before I had a kitchen all to myself. I think that may have been what Emily was doing as I made chicken and mashed potatoes for her last night in Paris. And I was proud.

I seem to have a thing for this pose.

In other news, I have finally picked this month’s book of the month… Under the Tuscan Sun. This memoir by Frances Mayes, which inspired the movie starring Diane Lane, has two whole chapters filled with recipes, one for summer and one for winter. Because I’m in neither summer nor winter (although it is starting to feel desperately like fall), I’m going to take recipes from both sections. I obviously can’t do some of the summer recipes now, but I’ve found things like Bruschette con Pesto di Rucola, Wild Mushroom Lasagna, Ribollita, Rustic Apple Bread Pudding, Red Peppers Melted with Balsamic Vinegar… So many things to try, so little time! I’m off to the market tomorrow… hopefully you’ll have some new Tuscan recipes shortly! Ciao!

Combine 1 stick room temperature butter, 4 tablespoons herbes de provence, 3 large garlic cloves, minced, and 1 1/2 tsp of lemon peel in small bowl and stir to blend. Season to taste with salt and pepper.

Preheat oven to 450°F. Rinse 6 1/2- to 7-pound roasting chicken; pat dry. Slide hand under skin of chicken breast to loosen skin form meat. Reserve 2 tablespoons herb butter for gravy. Rub half of remaining herb butter over chicken breast under skin. Spread remaining herb butter over outside of chicken and some in the inner cavity. Season chicken inside and out with salt and pepper. Stuff the cavity with one lemon, cut into wedges, and one garlic clove. Place chicken in heavy large roasting pan. Roast 20 minutes, and then reduce oven temperature to 375°F. Roast chicken until juices from thigh run clear when chicken thigh is pierced with skewer, about 1 hour 15 minutes. Lift chicken and tilt slightly, emptying any juices from cavity into roasting pan. Transfer chicken to platter. Tent with aluminum foil to keep warm. Note: Cooking times are always approximate. Make sure you check it early so it doesn’t overcook. If you’re not sure, use a thermometer: it should read 175 when inserted into the thigh.

Pour pan juices into large glass measuring cup. Spoon fat off top. Add 1/4 cup white wine to pan. Place pan over high heat; bring wine to boil, scraping up any browned bits. Pour wine mixture into cup with pan juices. Add enough chicken broth to same cup to measure 2 1/4 cups liquid. Melt reserved 2 tablespoons herb butter in heavy medium saucepan over medium-high heat. Add 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour; whisk until smooth and beginning to color, about 3 minutes. Gradually whisk in pan juices. Boil until thickened to sauce consistency, whisking occasionally, about 7 minutes. Season gravy with salt and pepper.

“What sort of person am I? Where are my loyalties? And who will I remember when I grow up?”

An interesting note on which to end September. I meant to get through so much more of this book… post some kebab and baklava recipes, and really get into Middle Eastern cooking. I felt a bit like a failure, to be honest. But then I realized as I was rereading this passage in The Language of Baklava what Diana Abu-Jaber wanted us to understand: food is not just nourishment. Not just food for the sake of food. Food is about the rest of your life. Which brings me to this quote.

It’s a scary thing to have to think about. What kind of person am I, really? I project an outward image… I can’t think of anyone who would think of me as a bad person, per se, but I know that there are bad things I do, and more importantly, bad things I think that no one will ever know about but me.

Sometimes I start thinking about choices I’ve made along the way, friends lost but not forgotten. So it’s for them that I post these sambusik cookies. To Diana Abu-Jaber, this is what they meant. I’m hoping they can mean the same for me and for you.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Stir together one cup of clarified butter and half a cup of sugar. Add 3/4 cup of milk at room temperature. Add 4 cups of flour in small batches and knead the dough by hand until it is smooth. Roll out the dough to 1/4 inch thick and cut with a 2-inch cookie cutter. Combine 1 1/2 cups of ground walnuts, 1/2 cup sugar, 1 teaspoon of cinnamon, and a grating of nutmeg for the filling. Place a good mounded teaspoon of the filling on each round, fold it over, pinch the edges closed, and form into a crescent shape. Bake at 350 degrees for 15-20 minutes, until the cookies are lightly browned. Remove from the oven and sprinkle liberally with confectioner’s sugar.

“For my first night back, we’re having chicken fatteh–a layered dish of toasted bread, chicken, onion, spices, and pine nuts covered with a velvety yogurt sauce. It’s so lush and lovely, I eat recklessly, like an amnesiac with no awareness of anything but the table, the sweet sadness of return, an the moon hanging like a sigh just beyond the long dark fields.”

Read. This. Book. If not for the recipes, then for the style. Diana Abu-Jaber is a lovely writer, and she knows exactly how to evoke the sentiment in the reader. When I read this sentence, I think of my own homecoming foods, remembering my days at boarding school when I couldn’t cook for myself. I would call my mother weeks before coming home, asking her what they were having for dinner, pressing the phone hard to my ear as though listening hard enough would bring me back to roast beef and yorkshire pudding, to spaghetti and meatballs, to rotisserie chicken and oven-roasted potatoes. When I finally arrived home, she would cook as I commanded: always lasagna, beef in tarragon mustard sauce, and swordfish with watermelon salad. I was a nomad, faded from my home. My sister barely remembered when I lived there. When I was gone, I was a ghost, a few books and an empty bed to suggest that I used to belong. Eating was coming home, and as I filled my belly with warm food, I stopped fading and became real again.

For Diana, the food that does this is this fatteh, and I can see how. Even not having grown up with it, there is something comforting about the warmly spiced, steamed chicken, the creamy yogurt sauce, the sweet bite of onion. I served the dish with roasted vegetables and tried to imagine my own homecoming, which now seems so far away…

“I used to hate magloubeh, but Gram instructed me never to say ‘hate,’ so now I just don’t care for it instead.”

Diana Abu-Jaber may not care for magloubeh, but I’m certainly glad she still included the recipe in her book, because I love it. This is the first recipe I tried from The Language of Baklava. I had considered progressing through the chapters in an organized manner, sampling each recipe. But the first recipe was shish kabob, and I don’t think my little Paris kitchen has room for that. Besides, the story doesn’t really go in chronological order anyway, so why should I? Instead, I paged through the book until I found a recipe that interested me. The one I found included eggplant and chicken, both of which I had on hand.

Magloubeh, as Abu-Jaber explains, means upside down in Jordanian. This part had me a little bit worried… I was supposed to turn out the huge dutch oven onto a plate at the end. But she cautioned that her version was not supposed to stand up like a timbale, so that was good enough for me.

The recipe started out simply… sauté some onions, fry cauliflower and eggplant… but pretty soon I had several different dishes waiting to be combined. My tiny kitchen almost couldn’t handle it, but I managed (it involved balancing things on the edge of the counter and in the sink), and I’m so glad I did.

The final product had to steam for 40 minutes, and then another 10 after I added the couscous (I replaced the rice in her recipe. I don’t like rice. I don’t keep it in my kitchen. I don’t eat it.) I could barely keep from lifting the lid… the smells of cinnamon, black pepper, and allspice wafted through the house. (Note: Allspice is called “4 spice” in French… wish I had known that. I stood like an idiot in front of the spice rack at the supermarket before picking up vaguely brown bottles at random and inspecting the ingredient lists).

When I finally turned out the pot, a little bit of the chicken stuck to the bottom, but I had no problem dishing it out and placing it on top. Not perfect, but I’m learning. Abu-Jaber suggests serving this with yogurt. Her version also includes sumac, which I couldn’t find… but the last time I bought it I used it once and then the rest sat around forever, so maybe I tried not to find it. She also says you can use either lamb or chicken. Maybe next time… this time I was so entranced by the spices that I couldn’t think of adding a thing.

Magloubeh

In a heavy saucepan, heat two tablespoons of olive oil. Add one large onion, chopped, and sauté until soft and browned. Add 8 ounces of boneless chicken, cut into chunks. Cook, stirring, until evenly browned. Add 1/8 teaspoon each of ground cinnamon, ground coriander, and ground cumin, and 1/4 teaspoon of ground allspice. Add salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste. Add one and a half cups of water (note… she suggests broth, but the only broth I could find in the store had MSG, to which I am highly allergic. If you can find broth, I suggest it, although the dish did not suffer with the water), and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat to low, cover, and simmer for one hour, until the meat is tender.

In a frying pan, fry one half of an eggplant, cut into 1/2 inch half circles, and one half of a small cauliflower, cut in half and then into 1/2 inch pieces, in olive oil. Remove and set on paper towels to drain excess oil. Coat the bottom of a large dutch oven with olive oil (about 2 teaspoons). Arrange the meat in an even layer in the pot. Cover with the eggplant, then 1/2 cup of couscous, then the cauliflower. Pour the broth from the meat over the entire thing. Cover the pot and simmer until the couscous is cooked.

Meanwhile, saute 1/8 cup of pine nuts in butter until lightly browned.

When the meat and rice are done cooking, invert the pot over a serving dish. Top the meat with the pine nuts.

I had expected to have a little bit more time. I wanted to experiment with some corn butter recipes I’ve been putting off since last summer. I hardly had my fill of summer ripe tomatoes. I’ve half a mind to stuff my mouth full of nothing but basil before it all withers and dies. Yes… summer is over, at least for me. In New York, they’ll get a few more weeks, but here in Paris, it is undeniably fall.

Yes… I have finally made the move. I have my own tiny kitchen in my tiny apartment in a tiny building on a tiny street. And all of this is in the huge metropolis that is Paris. My new home. I broke it in (finally) today, by making my ceremonial “new home” tomato sauce. The recipe is secret, but it’s very labor intensive, so I’m pretty sure you wouldn’t want to know it anyway. I’ll be making a few more batches before the fresh tomatoes are off the produce stands.

Fall is bringing in yet another exciting new thing: my new (and first) food book of the month: The Language of Baklava by Diana Abu-Jaber. I cheated a little by picking a book that I’ve already read… it’s a memoir of an immigrant’s journey between upstate New York and Jordan throughout her life, and her relationship with the two places. The story is punctuated with recipes, mostly from Abu-Jaber’s food-obsessed father, Bud.

In the book, while making baklava, Diana and her aunt have a discussion about food as a way to remember: to Bud, it is the only way he can remember his homeland of Jordan. Her aunt’s theory, however, negates this concept: she thinks that food is a way to forget. By cooking the same things he ate at home, Bud is forgetting how they were originally. Now, he can never truly go back to the way things were.

I only recently understood this concept. I have tried again and again to replicate my mother’s tomato sauce, putting hers on a pedestal and knowing that mine can never equal it. The more I try, the farther I get from the original, until I can’t even remember what was right. Luckily, I still have Christmas to taste my mother’s and to remember why it is so special. For Bud, though, this is impossible.

Luckily, these recipes don’t hold any history for me, so I am free to enjoy them. It seems strange to start my life in France by experimenting with Jordanian cooking, but I’m looking forward to it, and I hope you all are excited about baklava, shish kebab, lebneh, hummus….