Raccoon and Lobster

This is my first ever apple pie. Clearly, I am not very American. When it comes to the pie versus cake debate, I am pretty firmly on the side of Team Cake. There are those in the Cake Club that do not agree, however, and on their behalf, I agreed to attempt my first ever real pie. (Real pie being pie that involves two layers of crust and baked fruit, not things in pie pans that are called pie but are actually custards on a shell. French Silk Pie, while delicious, does not qualify.)

With a little help from Cook’s Illustrated, Smitten Kitchen, and Shuna Fish Lydon pastry chef extraordinaire, I managed to cobble (heh) together a lumpy heap of fruit wrapped in crust.

It smelled amazing. And seeing the steam rise out as it was cooling was pretty cool, I’ll admit. Very homey in a way that cake rarely manages to be.

The recipe called for 4 pounds of apples in two different varieties. Smitten Kitchen seemed to confirm this. The recipe instructions said to “mound slightly in center”. My pie pan was half an inch bigger than required. My apples were smaller than described so more of it was core and had to be discarded.

I was only halfway through the bowl of filling when I hit generously mounded status. Nonetheless, I was not about to question culinary gurus with far more baking experience than me. If the recipe says 4 pounds of apples, then by golly I am going to stuff 4 pounds of apples in that pie. The end result was an assertive high-rise of apples barely contained by a crust that was rapidly developing excess venting holes under the strain of enveloping such a load.

Of course, after it cooled and the steam escaped, the pile of apple filling collapsed to a reasonable height while the shell remained the original height. Hmph. I suppose that’s part of being rustic. Or something.

Superficialities aside, the crust was flaky and buttery, and the apple filling was tart and sweet and cinnamon-y and nutmeg-y in all the right ways . While the presentation may leave something to be desired, it seems as if the pie itself is a winner.

At every step of this recipe, the crust should be kept as cold as possible. If you are not actively handling it, it should be in the fridge.

All Butter Pie Crust via Shuna Fish Lydon (did I mention she used to be the pastry chef at The French Laundry?)

Makes enough for a pie top and bottom

2 cups of all purpose flour (I used 9.2 oz)
4 tablespoons sugar
8 oz butter, cut into equal pieces and frozen
½ teaspoon kosher salt (or about 1/4 teaspoon table salt)
ice water

Assemble all dry ingredients in the bowl of a stand mixer. Use paddle attachment on mixer and drop the butter in a few pieces at a time. When the chunks of butter are slightly larger than pea size, dribble in ice water until the dough just begins to come together. Do not wait until it forms a ball. It is ready when it stops looking dry and barely starts to bind to itself.

Stop the mixer and turn it on to a lightly floured work surface. Flour your hands and  just push the dough together into a ball. The dough is ready to use immediately without resting. Divide dough in half and refrigerate during other prep work.

Apple Pie via The New Best Recipe with a tweaks from Smitten Kitchen and Shuna

2 pounds Granny Smith apples
2 pounds McIntoch apples
1½ tablespoons fresh lemon juice
1 teaspoon lemon zest
3/4 cups sugar
1/4 teaspoon salt (or ½ teaspoon kosher salt)
½ teaspoon ground nutmeg
½ teaspoon ground cinnamon
½ teaspoon ground allspice
heavy cream for brushing
raw sugar for sprinkling

Preheat oven to 425°F and put your pie pan in the freezer.

Peel and core all apples and cut into 1/4″ slices. Toss with sugar, lemon juice, zest, salt, and spices.

Roll out a ball of dough onto a lightly floured surface. Dust hands and top of dough with flour and roll out into a circle about 12″ in diameter. Fold dough in quarters and unfold appropriately into the pie pan. Gently press the dough into the sides of the pan.

Move fruit mixture, including juices, into the pie shell. Refrigerate the pie while rolling out the top shell.

Place the top shell over the pie filling and trim the top and bottom edges of the dough to ½” beyond the edge of the pan. Tuck the rim underneath itself so it lies flat with the edge of the pan. Press with fork tines to seal. Cut four slits for steam to escape on the top of the dough.

Brush crust with cream and sprinkle with sugar. Bake for 25 minutes until the top is golden and reduce temperature to 375°F until the crust is deep golden brown and the juices bubble. Stick a baking sheet under the pie to catch any drips from the cream or the filling to make for easier cleanup.

Transfer to a cooling rack and let cool to almost room temperature, about 4 hours.

Mercilessly taunt the dogs moping under the table, hoping for pie.

The Gray Kunz spoons have arrived. Traveling all the way from the east coast in an epic journey…

…they have found their new home.

The first thing you need to know about the Gray Kunz spoons are that they are big. Huge. Much bigger than you thought they were.

The “regular” sized spoon is as big as your hand. But on a handle that is normal sized, so it looks a little like Humpty Dumpty. A giant egg head with stubby legs.

But  instead of being clumsy and unwieldy, they are full of graceful curves. The stem arches smoothly into the bowl. The edges of the bowls  have a subtle flange that helps to seduce the perfect quenelle out of sorbet and ice cream.

Cool Hwip is not quite as sexy as homemade ice cream, not even homemade beet ice cream, but it is a good, cheap medium with which to practice your skills of quenelle-conjuration. If your dogs happen to get the occasional scoop of canned pumpkin with their dinner, they might appreciate getting it in the form of an elegant egg shape also. I am assured that foods that come in the form of a graceful seamless ovoid just taste better. With a spoon in my hands, everything looks like it needs to be quenelled.

When compared to normal spoons, you can see the deeper curve to the stem and the increased depth to the bowl that Gray Kunz spoons have. The only spoon that comes close is a large serving spoon, shown third from the right, and it is still shallower than the small Gray Kunz spoon. The large carrying capacity makes it ideal for glazing, drizzling, and basting, and the short handles and lower sides compared to a ladle or large scoop make it easier to maneuver in a saucepan or pot.

Having used these spoons for a few days, I understand what the fuss is about. Do you need a Gray Kunz spoon for your own? Probably not. After all, most of us are only making a few meals a day and wouldn’t get that much benefit from a specialized saucing spoon. But desire and need rarely go hand in hand. There is a certain pleasure and satisfaction to using exactly the right tool for the job, and that small gratification, added up over thousands of dishes and hundreds of days, could easily lead to love.

The Gray Kunz spoon can be purchased here. I have no affiliation with Gray Kunz or JB Prince.

Coming from a culture where the nasty bits of animals have always been considered food, I sometimes forget that other people weren’t raised the same way I was. Oxtail stew seems pretty self explanatory to me, just like trotters or tongue. Ages ago, during one of the first times I had cooked for The Boyfriend, I made him a fragrant stir-fried shrimp dish that I was quite fond of. He looked at it, blinked a few times, and looked back at me, and did not touch the shrimp.

“Is something wrong?”

“The shells are still on it.”

It had never occurred to me that anyone could fail to figure out what to do in that scenario. I don’t think the shrimps even had their heads on. Thirteen years later, to my great dismay,  he still expresses disgust at the idea of shrimp heads. And trotters. Some people.

Oxtail stew is a good gateway to the stranger cuts of meat. It’s hearty and filling and full of flavor and eat it is a lot less work than getting the meat from around the incredibly anatomical setup of pig’s feet. The Boyfriend still needed a little guidance on getting to the good bits, but I have confidence that you’ll figure it out. Keep napkins handy.

The original recipe also uses puréed olives (1/2 cup olives to 1 tablespoon olive oil) and Kalamata olives. To reincorporate them, add the olive paste an hour before the stew is done and the whole olives about 2 minutes before.

Oxtail Stew adapted from Staff Meals from Chanterelle

olive oil
1 large onion, sliced
1 piece bacon, diced (or  lardo*, finely diced)
2 large cloves garlic, minced
3 pounds meaty oxtails, cut into 2″ sections
4 cups canned whole tomatoes with liquid
2 cups beef broth
1 cup red cooking wine
3 bay leaves
thyme
oregano
salt and pepper

*Somehow we are the household that always has lardo and crème fraiche but rarely has bacon and sour cream. I know it’s weird. I’m sorry.

Brown the oxtails in a large pot with some olive oil over medium-high heat. Remove the oxtails and add in a tablespoon or so of olive oil  to cook the onions.

Cook the onions until softened and add the bacon and garlic, cooking for about 2 minutes more, until the bacon and garlic are both softened but not burning. Add the oxtails, tomatoes, broth, wine, and herbs and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat to a low simmer and cook, partially covered, for about 3 hours, until the meat is tender and falling away from the bowl.

Season with salt and pepper and discard the bay leaves before serving.

Day 18

As I’ve said in the past, I’m not really one for sweets. My preference is to bake and then give away any desserts I make, as I’m usually sick of whatever it is by the time it comes out of the oven. Between checking the batter and testing for doneness, I’ve usually had enough. My mother started complaining about losing her sweet tooth when she was in her twenties, and her mother used to do the same to her, so it with a strong sense of family tradition that I grump to my pups about how I just don’t have an appetite for sweets anymore.

And yet it came to be that after baking these cookies last night, I forced The Boyfriend to join me in a midnight cross-town schlep to give these damn things away. Even in the course of wrapping them up for the delivery, a few of the chocolate devils managed to find their way into my mouth. And somehow during the car ride over, the plate got lighter again. I managed to save some so that I could take pictures in the sun, but as I sit here typing, my mouth is suspiciously covered in crumbs.

I just ate another one. Dammit.

The last time I made these was for a cookie exchange, and they were flown across the continent not long after coming out of the oven so I was spared this horribly delicious fate. This time, I had no one ready to remove them from my presence and I had ran out of chocolate chips and was forced to use chopped Valrhona fèves to make them even more tempting. Help. Another one just found its way into my mouth.

World Peace Cookies by Dorie Greenspan via Smitten Kitchen

makes about 40 cookies

1¼ cups (175 grams) all-purpose flour
1/3 cup (30 grams) unsweetened cocoa powder
½ teaspoon baking soda
1 stick plus 3 tablespoons (11 tablespoons or 150 grams) unsalted butter, at room temperature
2/3 cup (120 grams) packed light brown sugar
¼ cup (50 grams) sugar
½ teaspoon fleur de sel or ¼ teaspoon fine sea salt
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
¾ cup  (150 grams) chopped Valrhona fèves or chocolate chips.

Sift together the flour, cocoa and baking soda and set aside.

Cream together the butter and both sugars until light and fluffy, about 2 minutes. Add the salt and vanilla and mix to combine. Add the flour mixture to the batter and pulse a few times to combine, covering the bowl with plastic wrap or a towel to prevent flyaway. Stir in chocolate.

Gather the dough and divide into two. Roll each half out into a smooth log about 1½ inches in diameter and wrap in plastic wrap. Refrigerate for at least 3 hours or up to 3 days (you can shorten the cooling time by sticking it in the freezer for 20 minutes immediately after wrapping and then moving it to the fridge for 30-40 minutes).

Preheat the oven to 325°F. Slice the cookies into ½ inch slices and bake for 12 minutes. Dough will still be soft. Serve warm or at room temperature with milk.

At the mushroom fair 2 weeks ago, I picked up an oyster mushroom growing kit. My instructions were to stab it a few times with a clean fork and stick it in the closet. As the days went by, it went from looking like a sack of dirt and mulch to a sack of dirt and mulch that was slowly being taken over by a white growth. The bag had beads of moisture inside and I was worried that I had somehow messed up my simple task and I was growing a container of mildew and slime ooze.

The white growth was firm instead of slimy, so I assumed that it was the mycelium spreading and that the plastic bag would contain it all. Probably nothing to worry about, right?

This is what greeted me on February 27, 13 days after I first stuck my bag o’mushrooms in my closet.

My perverted oyster mushrooms flashed me and now I’ve passed that indecent exposure on to you. You’re welcome.

Once the primordium formed, it was time to let the mushrooms out of the closet.

48 hours later, the mushroom indecency was transformed into mutant alien buds and now instead of just two growths, I had three.

This last picture was taken a few minutes ago, a little over a day after the previous photo.

The buds are  starting to look like actual mushrooms!

Today marks day 16. In about 5 or 6 more days I will be able to make my first harvest of fresh homegrown mushrooms. My total effort exerted so far consists of stabbing the bag with a fork and moving it from the closet to the living room. Even my black thumb can manage that. Fungus among us indeed.

Edit: Want to get your own mushroom growing kit? You can order them online at Fungi Perfecti and Mushroom Adventures or check with a mycological society near you about mushroom kits and forays.

Angel food cake is as virtuous as the name implies. No butter, no oil, no fat of any kind. Naturally, the boyfriend took this opportunity to eat four slices.

Very stiff peaks are necessary to ensure a light texture to the cake.  This bowl contains 14 egg whites. This means, of course, that the next cake will be some sort of insanely dense egg yolk concoction filled with fat to balance things out.

An angel food cake needs to be inverted immediately after baking so it can set while stretched to its full height. Mistakes in baking, an errant draft, or evil pixies can cause the cake to fall out of the pan at this time so pay attention to your baking times, put your cake away from open windows or doors and scatter anti-pixie dust as appropriate. It’s also a good idea to put down a sheet of parchment paper or a large tray so you can salvage your cake if it does fall.

Mine did not!

In fact, it is steadfastly refusing to come down. Hmph.

Okay. That’s better. Angel food cake is not the most photogenic of cakes. You can barely see the tweed peeking out behind the crust. What this cake needs is a tweed jacket.

There, that’s much tweedier!

Chocolate Tweed Angel Food Cake from (who else?) Rose’s Heavenly Cakes (the tweed comes from grated chocolate in both the cake batter and the frosting).

I was settling in for a quiet evening curled up with my copy of Ad Hoc at Home when I come across a picture of Thomas Keller lovingly admiring a spoon.

“I do love to spoon,” he says, “I love spoons the way I love eggs, for the beauty of their shape and their multiple uses.”

And as I read those words, something itched in the back of my skull. I remembered a blog post that I had happened across several months ago, while browsing food blogs late into the night. It was an ode by a pastry chef, written to her favorite spoon. I suddenly felt compelled to find that post again and so I began to google. It took me a few minutes to happen across the phrase “pastry chef spoon favorite sauce” and suddenly the words Gray Kunz appeared in several search results. I knew immediately that this was the spoon, even though I had not yet found the post.

One more search brought me to the post I was looking for but my journey was not to stop there. What I had originally thought was one chef’s quirky love affair with a simple utensil suddenly seemed to be much bigger than that. In the comments to that post were two people talking about their own love for their Kunz spoons and a later there was a link by a third person to a post on his blog, also about this Gray Kunz spoon. Why were so many people talking about this particular spoon? It appears second on a list of top gifts for chefs, there is an entire thread about it at eGullet, and several chefs list it as their number one utensil. Everywhere I looked, people were talking about this damn spoon.

He then presents me with two items, a Gray Kunz spoon and a small, offset spatula.  “These are two items that every cook in my kitchen receives.  They are essential tools of this kitchen, and we use them every day.”

When I was at Lespinasse everyone had to work with a special spoon that the JB Prince Company later marketed under Gray’s name. Once you get used to it, you really can’t go back to using any other type of spoon.

My Kunz spoon was given to me by a chef at The French Laundry. I have treasured it for 6 years now. Everyone on the line knows not to touch my spoon.

And so it was that sometime after midnight on a Saturday evening, I suddenly found myself in desperate need of a spoon. A spoon that so many chefs had passed on to their protégés. A spoon that invoked deep love and undying devotion from so many chefs. The mythical Gray Kunz would be mine. After reading all of those comments singing the praise of this spoon in almost fetishistic tones, there could be no other spoon that could fill the spoon-shaped hole in my heart.

Already I am dizzy thinking of the things I can scoop, ladle, baste, drizzle and ye gods, form a quenelle with. Have mercy! I do not know if my delicate heart can endure the eons that stand between me and my fated love.

I couldn’t allow this enormous head of cauliflower to remain where I found him, silently plotting whatever it is that giant cauliflowers plot. Look at the tendrils of his green cauliflower leaf-hands. Can’t you see them unfurling oh-so-slowly? No? Just wait. You will.

Cauliflower, like trolls, are well known for their ability to regenerate, and the only defense against them rising up is to attack with fire or acid.

I chose to do both, first pummeling them with a blast of heat from my burners, and then finishing them off with the slow burn of my stomach acid.

My good deed for the day is done. You’re welcome, universe.

Sautéed Cauliflower

Cauliflower
vegetable oil
salt
pepper
minced garlic
chopped chives
crushed cayenne pepper flakes
grated Asiago cheese

Tear off leafy cauliflower hands and trim the stem. Rinse the monstrous creature under running water and cut it into small florets of roughly equal size.

Sauté in a skillet over medium heat with vegetable oil until golden brown. Season to taste with salt and pepper and add in the garlic. Remove from heat when the garlic is softened and fragrant and toss with the chives, cayenne pepper, and cheese. Eat with the satisfaction of a job well done.