Toast to Summer

I have recently had a revelation about toast. Specifically about garlic toast.

Toast is not one of those things you need a recipe for, though I'm going to give you one anyway. Whether it’s the perfect triangle of white bread toast from the local Waffle House (a particular favorite of mine), or a more sturdy piece of whole grain bread emerging golden brown and delicious from the toaster, or a browned circle of English muffin with its trademark nooks and crannies puddled with butter, toast is a pretty straightforward treat. Furthermore, it’s true, as a friend has told me, that “toast is one of the few things nicer than world domination.” It’s just as satisfying, but you don’t have to work nearly as hard to get it.

One of the most crunchy and flavorful versions of toast known to man is a delightful thing called bruschetta.

Bruschetta is slices of Italian bread toasted, rubbed with garlic, brushed with olive oil, and topped with whatever the chef desires. On first look, it seems pretty simple, as all toast does. But here’s the thing—with bruschetta, it doesn’t stop at the first look. I’ve seen bruschetta topped with tapenade, with sautéed porcini mushrooms and feta, with stewed fig and mascarpone. I recently watched an Iron Chef America episode on the Food Network during which Iron Chef Michael Symon topped bruschetta with uni. Uni, in case you’re wondering (and there’s a definite ewwwww factor coming, so be warned) is sea urchin gonads. You may not want to eat it, but you will definitely take a second look.

I’m fascinated by different ways of making bruschetta, but the bruschetta I like best to eat features a far more humble ingredient than those already mentioned. My favorite bruschetta features summer’s best ingredient—tomatoes.

When tomato is paired with basil, you can’t go wrong with this bruschetta. What I find most pleasing is the pronounced, but not overpowering, garlic flavor. This method completely tops both ways I used to make garlic toast. In the first way—mixing softened butter with a fair amount of garlic powder before spreading it on the bread—the dehydrated garlic sometimes tasted bitter. In the second way—topping buttered bread with minced garlic—the garlic sometimes burned. But in my new way of making garlic toast—and here’s the revelation—the garlic tastes like garlic and nothing else. It doesn’t taste like bitterness and it doesn’t taste like burnt. So you have garlic, olive oil, tomatoes, basil, and salt. And what could be more satisfying than that? Not even world domination.

Classic Summer Bruschetta

1 1-pound loaf Italian bread, sliced on the bias ½-inch thick

1 whole head of garlic

6 to 8 large basil leaves

about ¼ cup extra-virgin olive oil

6 medium Roma tomatoes, seeded and roughly chopped

kosher salt

Preheat your oven to 375˚. Cut the garlic head in half along the equator, leaving the cloves intact. Set aside. Stack the basil leaves; starting with a long end, roll them up and then cut the roll into ribbons. Set aside.

Lay the bread slices in a single layer on a baking sheet. When the oven is hot, toast the bread for 8 to 10 minutes, turning once and watching that it doesn’t burn. (You can also grill the bread; it won’t take nearly as long.) Immediately after removing the pan of bread from the oven, begin rubbing the cut side of the garlic onto each slice. I have found it easier to hold the bread in a mitted hand rather than rubbing it while flat on the pan. Ignore the little bits of garlic paper that might flake off, or, if you’re persnickety, pick them off with tweezers.

After all the bread has been rubbed, brush each piece with the olive oil. Top with tomatoes, basil ribbons and a sprinkle of salt.

A New Kind of Coffee Cake

You know summer has come to Florida when it’s time to pick blueberries. In northern states, blueberries may signal that summer will soon wind down, but here we kick off summer with them. The other day, looking about for a new way to use them, I remembered a recipe I read about quite a while back, Blueberry Boy-Bait.

You have to sit up and pay attention when you read a title like that. I do, at least. Even though I have a man and a boy (husband and son) who will come slobbering no matter what I bake, it’s nice to know there’s a fail-safe treat to beguile even the most sports- or action-figure-absorbed male around. The recipe was created by a teenager in Philadelphia in 1954 and entered into the Pillsbury $100,000 Recipe and Baking Contest, where it won second place in the junior division.

The first time I came across this recipe was in Nigella Lawson’s delightful book How to Be a Domestic Goddess. Nigella gives the same history of the recipe as I have given, and then proceeds to re-invent it. Her version features a crumb-thickened custard base, a gooey fruit layer, and a meringue topping.

But the original recipe, which I found in The Complete America’s Test Kitchen TV Show Cookbook, 2001-2010 and which is the source for the recipe repeated here, was more what I was looking for at the time, a moist coffee cake studded with blueberries and sprinkled with the simplest of cinnamon-sugar toppings.

Blueberry boy-bait indeed. Maybe I’ll just have a second piece myself.

Blueberry Boy Bait
2 cups (10 ounces) plus 1 teaspoon unbleached all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
1 teaspoon table salt
16 tablespoons (2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened
¾ cup packed (5 ¼ ounces) light brown sugar
½ cup (3 ½ ounces) granulated sugar
3 large eggs
1 cup whole milk
½ cup blueberries, fresh or frozen (unthawed if frozen)
Topping:
½ cup blueberries, fresh or frozen (unthawed if frozen)
¼ cup (1 ¾ ounces) granulated sugar
½ teaspoon ground cinnamon

For the cake: Adjust an oven rack to the middle position and heat the oven to 350 degrees. Grease and flour a 13 by 9-inch pan.

Whisk together 2 cups of the flour, the baking powder, and salt together in a medium bowl. With an electric mixer, beat the butter and sugars on medium-high speed until fluffy, about 2 minutes. Add the eggs, one at a time, beating until just incorporated. Reduce the speed to medium and beat in one-third of the flour mixture until incorporated; beat in ½ cup of the milk. Beat in half of the remaining flour mixture, then the remaining ½ cup milk, and finally the remaining flour mixture. Toss the blueberries in a small bowl with the remaining 1 teaspoon flour. Using a rubber spatula, gently fold in the blueberries. Spread the batter into the prepared pan.

For the topping: Scatter the blueberries over the top of the batter. Stir the sugar and cinnamon together in a small bowl and sprinkle over the batter. Bake until a toothpick inserted in the center of the cake comes out clean, 45 to 50 minutes. Cool in the pan for 20 minutes, then turn out and place on a serving platter (topping side up). Serve warm or at room temperature. (The cake can be stored in an airtight container at room temperature for up to 3 days.)

Summer Is Made for Salad

My typical church picnic or potluck dish is potato salad because it’s do-ahead-able, cheap in large quantity, and almost universally liked. Plus it goes well with grilled hamburgers and hotdogs or with Sunday ham, typical picnic and potluck dishes. But the heat of Florida in June had me contemplating some other sort of side dish for the past weekend’s church picnic. Something cool, yes, but something not heavy with mayonnaise. Paging through Everyday Pasta by Giada De Laurentiis, I found a recipe for saffron orzo.

Orzo is a curious ingredient because it looks just like rice, but it isn’t. This dish fooled just about everyone going through the buffet line. I know this because I hung out while people were serving themselves, to see what they might say about this salad. “What is that?” I heard a few times. “I think it’s rice,” came the response. I had fun pretending ignorance for a while, but then I revealed the truth. Orzo is pasta.

Like rice and small pasta shapes such as ditaline, cavatelli, and orecchiette, it’s very good in soup. But this is summertime, and I already foisted one soup dish on you, so on to the salad.

Giada’s recipe is a meal unto itself, with sautéed shrimp tossed in at the last minute. It’s also an expensive dish, requiring a teaspoon of saffron threads. (In my grocery store, saffron sells for about $13 a teaspoon.) I didn’t need anything so over-the-top as that. Without the shrimp, and with a less expensive substitution for saffron, this orzo salad, light and refreshing with olive oil, parsley and lemon, is my new go-to potluck dish.

Fooled-You Pasta Salad

Saffron is the dried stigma of a kind of crocus and is prized for both the color it imparts to dishes and for its distinctive bitter flavor. Tumeric comes from a rhizome in the ginger family and has abundant anti-oxidant properties; it is also slightly bitter and gives food a similar yellow color.

4 cups chicken broth or stock
1 teaspoon tumeric
1 pound orzo
¼ cup extra-virgin olive oil
¼ cup chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley
juice of 1 lemon
2 teaspoons salt
freshly ground black pepper

Bring the chicken broth to a boil over high heat. Reduce the heat so that the broth is simmering and add the tumeric. Simmer for about 5 minutes, giving the tumeric time to infuse the liquid. Return the broth to a boil and then pour in the pasta. Boil pasta until al dente, or about 8 to 10 minutes. Watch the heat carefully and stir frequently; you’re using just enough liquid and there may not be any to drain off.

When the pasta is cooked, drain any excess liquid. Turn the pasta out into a large bowl and add the remaining ingredients. Stir well. Serve warm or at room temperature.

Is There Any Food Word Sillier than “Kumquat”?

If you didn’t know what a kumquat is, you might not be able to guess its nature from its name. Say the word a few times—“kumquat.” It’s a bit of a tongue twister; try to say it five times fast. Or say it slowly. I can draw out the first syllable pretty easily, but somehow the final syllable clips itself off in my mouth. It’s not a very attractive word, is it? Not like orange, or lemon, or even citron. All the graceful words got taken first.

It’s too bad, too, because a kumquat is actually a very beautiful thing. Picture a citrus fruit the size and shape of a robin’s egg, with the brilliant color of an orange. That’s a kumquat.

You can eat it by itself; you just pop the whole thing in your mouth, rind and all, and work out the seeds with your teeth and tongue, kind of like working out watermelon seeds. Or, you can eat it slice by thin slice, which is what I like to do. The juice is very tart, but the rind is very sweet, so a thin little kumquat coin has a shocking contrast of flavors. Be prepared to pucker and smile.

Because they’re so small, kumquats in my grocery store are sold by the pint and stacked with all the berries. But because they’re so orange, they caught my eye one day last week, and the berries didn’t have a chance. I took a pint home and immediately thought “citrus chicken.” The sweet tartness of the kumquats is balanced by a touch of brown sugar and a kick from serrano chiles. Serranos are pretty hot, so try the dish with one and add more if you like more heat. I served the chicken over polenta, but you could just as easily cook pasta, rice or couscous, making this a fast dish that’s perfect for some night in the middle of the week. And there’s nothing silly about that.

Chicken with Kumquat Pan Sauce

2 tablespoons canola oil, plus more if needed
4 skinless, boneless chicken breasts, pounded ½ inch thick, patted dry, and seasoned with salt and pepper
1 large shallot, thinly sliced
2 serrano chiles, diced small (more or less to taste)
1 inner stalk celery, with leaves, diced small with leaves chopped
½ cup white wine (preferably with citrus notes) or orange juice or chicken broth
juice of 1 lime
½ pint kumquats, thinly sliced, seeds removed
1 tablespoon brown sugar
salt and pepper to taste
1-2 tablespoons chopped flat-leaf parsley

Heat the oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat until shimmering. Cook the chicken about 5 minutes, or until just cooked through, turning once. Remove to a plate and keep warm. Reduce the heat to medium. Add a bit more oil to the pan, if needed, to make about a tablespoon and a half. Add the shallot, chiles and celery to the hot oil and cook until softened, about 5 minutes, stirring occasionally. Deglaze the pan with the wine, orange juice, or chicken broth and the lime juice; stir in the kumquats and bring to a simmer. Add salt and pepper to taste. Return the chicken to the pan and spoon the sauce over; cook until the chicken is heated through, 1 to 2 minutes. Sprinkle the parsley on top.

A Welcoming Soup

With temperatures over 100 degrees, it’s definitely summertime in Florida. Which makes it weird that I’m giving you a soup recipe, particularly one bearing hearty winter ingredients such as kale and smoked sausage. But soup is one of those comfort foods you might take to a friend’s house, particularly one you haven’t seen in a while. With soup in hand, you’re always welcome. And I’m hoping you welcome me back to writing.

I’ve been thinking about this soup for a week. I recently read The Gastronomy of Marriage by Michelle Maisto, in which she cooks an excessive number of dishes containing either kale or white beans or both. I have never eaten kale, but have wanted to, and we don’t eat many kidney-type beans around here. But the gusto with which Maisto cooked, ate, and wrote about these ingredients got me thinking. And so I’ve been composing this soup in my mind ever since.

It starts with smoked sausage. Well, no, even before the sausage, this soup starts with tomatoes, a good summertime ingredient. Use them from your garden, if you’re fortunate to have such a thing. Or, if you must procure yours from the supermarket, like I do, ramp up the flavor by roasting them first. The trick to a good roasted tomato is to put the half-sheet pan in the oven while it is pre-heating. When the oiled, salted tomatoes hit the hot pan, the sizzle tells you you’re one step ahead on caramelization. You can roast the tomatoes a day ahead.

So, then, after the tomatoes comes the sausage; slices of it browned on both sides form the flavor base. After that, this soup is pretty straight-forward: aromatics and veggies are cooked in the sausage fat, a little wine deglazes the pot, and the white bean puree thickens the broth. I kept the seasonings simple—using only rosemary, black pepper and garlic—to keep the flavors clean.

Kale and Sausage Soup with Roasted Tomatoes and White Bean Puree
1 pound Roma tomatoes, halved lengthwise, quartered if large, pulp removed
3 tablespoons olive oil
½ teaspoon kosher salt
1 pound smoked sausage links, cut into ½-inch thick slices
2 medium onions, chopped
1 large zucchini, quartered lengthwise and then sliced
½ teaspoon dried rosemary, crushed
½ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 large bunch kale, ribs removed, leaves roughly chopped
more olive oil, if needed
½ cup white wine, optional
4 cups chicken or vegetable stock
2 cans cannellini beans, pureed
more kosher salt, to taste

Preheat oven to 425˚. Put a half-sheet pan or jelly roll pan into the oven while it is heating up. Toss the tomatoes, olive oil and salt in a medium bowl. When the oven is hot, slide the pan out and pour the tomatoes onto it. Enjoy the sizzle. With tongs, turn the tomatoes skin side down. Roast for about 10 minutes, or until the skin is lightly charred in places. Remove the tomatoes and then roughly chop them when they are cool enough to handle. Set them aside.

In a Dutch oven, brown the sausage slices on both sides over medium-high heat in batches, removing to a paper towel to drain. Reduce heat to medium-low. Pour off all but 2 tablespoons of the fat. Add the chopped onions to the hot fat and cook, stirring occasionally, until onions are beginning to become translucent, but not browned. Increase heat to medium and add the zucchini, rosemary, and black pepper. Cook 2 to 3 minutes, stirring a time or two. Add the garlic and cook about 30 seconds. Add half of the kale and stir as the kale on the bottom starts to wilt. When all has more or less wilted a bit, add in the rest of the kale. If it looks a little dry, add more olive oil. When the kale is wilted, but still bright green, deglaze the pan with the wine, if using. Cook for 2 to 3 minutes, or until the wine is reduced; then pour in the chicken stock and bean puree. Bring the soup to a low boil; reduce the heat and simmer about 15 minutes. Add the roasted tomatoes and browned sausage to the pot and simmer another 15 minutes.

If you have it, you can toss a bit of the rind of Parmigiano-Reggiano into the pot as the soup simmers. Your friends will thank you and will probably welcome you back, no matter how long you’ve been gone, and no matter how hot it is outside.

Be My Valentine

My husband and I have a grand Valentine’s Day tradition that sprang up a few years ago in response to overcrowded restaurants and jacked-up menu prices on the big day of love. We cook at home. Together. We plan the menu, shop for the ingredients and heat up the kitchen, just the two of us. We’ve cooked rib-eyes and Cornish hens weighed down with a foil-wrapped brick. We had our first risotto on Valentine’s Day. Once we did potato nests with shrimp. We’ve made crab cakes. We try out extravagant desserts like Molten Chocolate Cake and Mocha Ricotta Cream.

Coming up with this year’s menu went something like this:

Me: “What do you want to cook for Valentine’s Day this year?”
Him: “Pork chops.”
Me: “That sounds good. How should we fix them?”
Him: “Let’s stuff them with something. How about crab meat?”
Me: “Mmmm. What else should we have?”
Him: “Potatoes au gratin, grilled asparagus, and chocolate bread pudding.”
Me: “Done, done, and done.”

And now my secret is out. I am useless coming up with ideas. I like to think I can, however, execute to perfection.

These pork chops, for instance, are succulent and juicy. The crab meat with its sautéed aromatics adds a nice touch of the sea, and the port reduction sends them over the top. Feel free to use jumbo lump crab if you have extra money to blow; I found the claw meat, at a third the price per pound, more than satisfactory.

Crab-Stuffed Pork Chops with Port Reduction for Two
2 1½- to 2-inch-thick bone-in pork chops
brining solution made from ¼ cup kosher salt dissolved in 2 cups of water
1 tablespoon butter
¼ cup finely diced celery
2 tablespoons grated onion
1 clove garlic, minced
4 ounces crab meat
2 tablespoons beaten egg
1 tablespoon whole-grain mustard
1 teaspoon kosher salt
freshly-ground black pepper
2 tablespoons chopped cilantro
1 tablespoon canola oil
1 teaspoon butter
additional kosher salt and freshly-ground black pepper
1 shallot, diced
¾ cup port
¾ cup low-sodium beef broth

Place the pork chops in the brining solution. Cover and refrigerate for 1 to 2 hours. Remove and dry thoroughly. Discard brine.

Preheat oven to 325˚.

Pick over the crab meat, removing any bits of shell. Place the crab meat in a medium bowl.

Melt the butter over medium heat in a small heavy skillet. As soon as the foaming subsides, add the celery, onion and garlic and sauté until softened, but not browned.

Add the sautéed vegetables, egg, mustard, salt, pepper and cilantro to the bowl of crab meat. Stir gently but thoroughly and set aside.

Cut a pocket in each chop about 2 inches wide and deep starting from the side opposite the bone. Do not cut all the way to the bone. Lightly stuff 2 to 3 tablespoons of the crab mixture into each pocket, reserving 2 heaping tablespoons. Refrigerate remaining crab mixture.

In a large, heavy, oven-proof skillet, heat the canola oil and butter over medium heat until foaming subsides. Season chops with salt and pepper. Cook chops on one side until browned, about 2 minutes. Turn carefully so that crab stuffing does not fall out.

Insert a meat thermometer into one chop, preferably into a portion of the chop that has not been cut, and not touching the bone. Transfer the skillet to the oven and cook until the thermometer registers 155˚, about 10 to 15 minutes. Remove chops from skillet and place on a warm platter. Cover with aluminum foil and let rest until temperature reaches 160˚, about 10 minutes.

Pour off all but 2 tablespoons of fat from the skillet. Heat skillet over medium heat until fat is hot. Cook reserved crab mixture until it is heated through. Transfer to a small bowl.

In the same skillet, cook the diced shallot until tender, 3 to 4 minutes. Pour in the port and bring to a boil, stirring and scraping the browned bits from the bottom, until port is reduced by half, about 4 minutes. Pour in beef broth and bring to a boil. Cook until liquid is reduced by half, stirring occasionally.

To serve, plate each chop and mound a heaping tablespoon of hot crab mixture on top. Spoon a bit of the sauce over and around the chop.

The chocolate bread pudding was truly a delight, and comes to you courtesy of The Gourmet Cookbook. I left the crust on the bread and was very happy with the result—a pudding that was chewy in spots and soft in others. Using Ghiradelli 86% chocolate in place of the lower quality unsweetened chocolate available in my grocery store gave me a custard that was rich and balanced. The accompanying cherry sauce is our own invention, inspired as we were standing in the grocery store aisles.

Chocolate Bread Pudding
from The Gourmet Cookbook
4 cups cubed (3/4-inch) day-old Italian bread
½ stick (4 tablespoons) unsalted butter, melted
4 ounces unsweetened chocolate, finely chopped
2 cups whole milk
1 cup heavy cream
2 large eggs
1 cup sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/8 teaspoon salt
Accompaniment: whipped cream

Toss bread with butter in a large bowl.

Put chocolate in a heatproof bowl. Bring milk and cream to a simmer in a 2-quart heavy saucepan and pour over chocolate. Let stand for 2 minutes, then whisk until smooth. Add eggs, sugar, vanilla, and salt and whisk until well combined. Pour custard over bread. Cover pudding loosely with plastic wrap, then place a smaller bowl or plate on top and weight with a heavy can. Let pudding stand for 1 hour so bread absorbs custard.

Put a rack in middle of oven and preheat oven to 350 F. Butter an 8-inch square baking pan.

Transfer pudding to pan. Bake until just set but center still trembles slightly, 40 to 45 minutes; do not overbake (custard will continue to set as it cools). Serve warm or at room temperature, with whipped cream [and cherry sauce; recipe below].

Sweet Cherry Sauce
12 ounces frozen dark sweet cherries, thawed
2 tablespoons lime juice
1 tablespoon honey
1/8 teaspoon chipotle powder

Puree all ingredients in a blender. Strain through a fine-mesh sieve.

If You’re Snowed In, This One’s for You

Chili is one of those dishes. You know the kind I’m talking about. Chili is the thing you crave when it’s been snowing, and it’s cold, and the wind knifes through your coat on your way home from work or the store. It’s the dish you make on a cold, dreary Saturday with everyone trapped in the house because it’s cloudy and freezing and precipitous outside. On a day like that, you need a big pot of chili. You make it, and it’s delicious. It’s so good you eat some more the next day. It’s even better. On the third day, tired from work, you have another bowlful. By the fourth day, you’re royally sick of chili and want something like fried chicken. You put away the big chili pot and swear you’ll never crave it again.

But along comes another cold front, another snowstorm, God forbid another blizzard, and you start to long for the warmth of a big bowl of chili. That’s the kind of dish chili is.

When that urge strikes, this is the chili you want. It has big chunks of beef, not the ground stuff that disappears underneath the kidney beans. Mind you, this chili has kidney beans, and tomatoes, and all the flavors you look for in chili, plus a few surprises. One of those surprises is chicken. I love how the smokiness of the chipotle infuses the chicken. The chipotle is another surprise. Here I use it in two ways—chopped in its adobo sauce, and powdered. Coriander, cumin, chili powder, and red pepper flakes round out the heat. And don’t be shy about the cinnamon. It’s probably not the most orthodox of ingredients for a savory dish, but this is food we're talking about, not religion, so go ahead and throw it in. It’s the thing that brings all the flavors together.

Sometimes when I cook chili, I add a few handfuls of elbow macaroni at the end of cooking, just to give more body to what is essentially a stew. Feel free to do the same.

All you need to go with this meal is a big spoon. A pan of cornbread wouldn’t hurt, either. For all you folks snowed in, you have my sympathy, and now you have my chili recipe. Hang in there, spring’s coming. Make this chili before it does.

Smoky Beef and Chicken Chili
2 pounds beef for stew
4 skinless, boneless chicken breasts, cut into 1- to 2-inch cubes
salt and pepper
2 tablespoons canola oil, plus more as needed
1 large onion, diced
1 large sweet green bell pepper, seeded and diced
1 stalk of celery, with leaves, chopped
3 cloves garlic, minced
2 tablespoons finely chopped chipotle in adobo
3 15-ounce cans diced tomatoes, drained, liquid reserved
2 16-ounce cans light red kidney beans, drained and rinsed
about 2 cups beef broth
1 tablespoon chipotle powder
1 tablespoon cumin
1 tablespoon ground coriander
2 teaspoons chili powder
½ teaspoon red pepper flakes
½ teaspoon dried thyme
½ of a stick of cinnamon
toppings: shredded cheddar cheese, sour cream, thinly sliced scallions

Pat the beef and chicken dry and season with salt and pepper. Heat the canola oil in a large heavy Dutch oven over medium-high heat. Brown the beef in batches, then the chicken, and remove to a bowl with a slotted spoon. Add more oil as necessary. Reduce the heat to medium. Cook the onion, bell pepper, and celery in hot oil until softened, but not browned. Add the garlic and chopped chipotle in adobo and cook another 30 seconds. Stir in the tomatoes and kidney beans and cook until tomatoes start to break apart a little, about 3 minutes.

Meanwhile, pour the reserved tomato juice into a measuring cup and add beef broth to equal 3 cups. Pour the liquid over the vegetables and beans in the pot. Add the chipotle powder, cumin, ground coriander, chili powder, red pepper flakes, and dried thyme. Stir well to combine. Drop in ½ stick of cinnamon. Return beef and chicken to the pot, along with any juices accumulated in the bowl. Bring just to a boil, cover, reduce the heat, and simmer 2 to 3 hours, or until the beef is tender, stirring occasionally. Remove the cinnamon stick before serving.

Serve with a sprinkle of cheddar cheese, a dollop of sour cream, and a few sliced scallions scattered on top.