This Is What You Should Do with Fresh Cranberries

Freestyle Weekends #2

This Thanksgiving, I tried making my own cranberry sauce. I don’t know what drove me to do that, having been perfectly happy with canned cranberry sauce for decades now, but I would like to blame the produce manager for stacking bags of brilliant berries on the right-of-way leading to the oranges, where I couldn’t have missed them if I had wanted to. As a person given to shopping with my eyes, I found it futile to resist, even though I wasn’t exactly sure what I would do with them.

I brought home the cranberries with some vague notions of tinkering with Thanksgiving tradition. Being married to a history professor who thrives on tradition, I should have murdered that thought as soon as it rose up. I am, alas, a person given to bucking tradition.

I do wish I had remembered one thought: You really can’t lose with canned cranberry sauce. Think about it. It always has that perfect sweet and tart taste, it always emerges from the can with the same irrepressible color, not to mention the unmistakable sucking sound as its gelled sides lose contact with the sides of the can, and its consistency is always—well—consistent.

That’s the thing about cranberry sauce from a can—you know what you’re getting. And unlike cranberry sauce recipes, you get the same thing every time.

I’m sure you can see what’s coming—I did not like this new-fangled cranberry sauce cooked on the stovetop, made with sugar and shallots and orange juice and actual real cranberries that popped as they got hot. I think the problem was the shallots. I’m pretty sure cranberry sauce is not supposed to taste like onion. I suppose I could try it again, leaving out the offending ingredient, but why bother? It’s much easier—not to mention traditional—to open a can.

(Canned cranberry sauce will make my family happy, too, for though they are much too polite to say so, I got the distinct feeling that none of them liked the recipe either.)

Making the recipe left me with something of a dilemma, however, a dilemma in the form of half a bag of unused cranberries. Since I have now sworn off homemade cranberry sauce, what to do with the rest of the bag?

Fortunately, I have in my Freestyle Weekends folder a recipe I’ve been holding onto for quite some time now, at least as long as I’ve been eating canned cranberry sauce. It is called, appropriately enough, “Cranberry Muffins” and lists, as its first ingredient, 1 cup fresh cranberries, quartered.

Half a bag of cranberries, in case you’re wondering, comes out to about 1 cup.

I clipped this recipe years ago from a Taste of Home magazine. The only thing I changed was to substitute lemon peel for orange. Their website calls the recipe “quick,” a designation I disagree with only because it took me a little while to quarter the cranberries. Not a lot of time, of course, but a lot longer than scooping the equivalent amount of dried cranberries from a bag.

The extra time, and stained fingertips, were worth it, however, for the muffins emerged from the oven splotched with brilliant color, not to be outdone by sweet-tartness and moist texture.

This recipe is a keeper, and now I need not fear walking the cranberry gauntlet on my way toward the oranges. I can even smile at the produce manager as I sling a bag of cranberries into my cart. Of course, since I need only half a bag for the muffin recipe, that gives me some leftovers to play with. Maybe I could try that sauce again, this time without the shallots.

Cranberry Muffins

1 cup fresh cranberries, quartered

8 tablespoons sugar, divided

1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour

2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder

1/4 teaspoon salt

1 egg

3/4 cup milk

1/3 cup vegetable oil

1 teaspoon grated orange peel

cinnamon-sugar

Preheat oven to 400˚. Lightly grease 12 standard muffin cups.

Sprinkle the cranberries with 2 tablespoons of sugar and set aside. In a large bowl, combine the flour, baking powder, salt and remaining sugar. In a small bowl, beat the egg, milk, and oil; stir into dry ingredients just until moistened. Fold in cranberries and orange peel. Fill muffin cups two-thirds full. Sprinkle with cinnamon-sugar. Bake for about 15 minutes, or until muffins test done. Cool for 10 minutes, if you can wait that long. Consume rapidly while warm.

Winter Supper

Freestyle Weekends #1

Picture this: The first snow of the season covers the ground. It’s evening, dark outside already, but inside the glow of kerosene lamps lights the table around which you and your family gather for a supper of apples, hot buttered popcorn, little pickles, hot cocoa, and cake doughnuts.

Homemade doughnuts, of course.

This tradition is “First Snow Supper,” and it comes to me via the New Hampshire home of my friend Bekki, whom you met a few weeks ago. She sent me this recipe and some Green Mountain coffee to try to save us from the evil clutches of Starbucks. We haven’t tried the coffee yet, but the doughnuts, which we made on a sleepy Saturday morning, sans snow, certainly passed muster.

The dough is very soft, so don’t skip the refrigeration step. I chilled mine overnight and it was still soft in the morning, but rollable.

A word on the potatoes. Russets make the best mashed potatoes. Bekki also uses sweet potatoes in this recipe, so feel free to try those. Whatever potatoes you use, mash them really well. If you leave them lumpy, it won’t matter too much for taste of the doughnuts, as long as the potatoes are cooked through, but aesthetically-speaking, lumps in the middle of a doughnut do not make a pleasing picture. Ask me how I know this.

After the doughnuts emerge from the fryer, drain them briefly and give them a little shimmy in sugar. And then bite into one, still warm, and discover a texture so light you can barely feel it even as you taste its spices and its sweetness.

Kind of makes even a thin-blooded Floridian wish for snow. Not that I’m waiting for it to try these again.

Wicked Good Doughnuts

(makes about 2 ½ dozen)

2 eggs

1 cup sugar

2 cups cold mashed potatoes (mashed with milk and butter)

¾ cup buttermilk

2 tablespoons butter, melted

1 teaspoon vanilla or almond extract

4 ½ cups all-purpose flour

4 teaspoons baking powder

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon nutmeg

1 teaspoon cinnamon

1/8 teaspoon ginger

oil for deep-fat frying

additional sugar

In a large mixing bowl, beat the eggs and the sugar. Add the potatoes, buttermilk, butter, and vanilla; mix well.

In another bowl, combine the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, nutmeg, cinnamon, and ginger; add to the egg mixture and mix well. Cover and refrigerate 1 – 2 hours.

Heat oil to 375 ˚On a floured surface, roll the dough to ½” thickness. Cut with a 2 ½” doughnut cutter. (Or, if you’re like me, with two glasses—one big-mouthed and one small-mouthed.) Fry the doughnuts, a few at a time, for about 2 minutes on each side, or until browned. Fry the doughnut holes, too, for about a minute on each side. Drain on paper towels layered over brown paper grocery bags. Roll in sugar, if desired.

Kissing Is for the Kitchen

My friend Bekki has been an inspiration to me on a number of household fronts, including cooking. We like to trade tips and questions on Facebook. I told her about chipotle and she reminded me that toast is greater than world domination. A couple weeks ago I asked her to write something for you. You can believe everything she says here, except the part about my being a gourmet cook. I prefer the term “junior foodie-in-training.”

Please leave her lots of comments telling her how wonderfully humorous her writing is and how much you enjoyed the soup (you are planning to make it, aren’t you?); maybe the pressure will finally catapult her to start her own blog. (Please, Bekki? Please!)

 “Kiss the Cook” Chicken Soup

Hi, I'm Bekki, Rachel's friend from New Hampshire. Rachel has been teasing me to start a cooking blog for almost a year (not going to happen) and then sweetly requested a guest post for her blog last week. Mmmmhmmmm. Guest post for a gourmet cook/English professor. No pressure there.

Rachel's writing and cooking appear effortlessly graceful. I'm quite sure she's never had to fish the box out of the trash because she forgot how long the cake had to bake. After 27 hours of paper grading I envision her whipping up a pot of homemade sauce and hand-rolled tortellini while Kevin entertains her with his witty banter, not scrounging through her couch cushions to find enough change for the Dollar Menu at McD's.

And her writing? Wow, just wow. How does she make you feel like you're standing in her kitchen chatting with her while she cooks? Every time I try to write I end up channeling Martha Stewart or Mr. Rogers. Understandably, I'm nervous. But I love Rachel, and if she wants a guest post, I'll give it a whirl.

I also have a very different cooking style from Rachel. I don't own a T.V., so I missed that inspiring Iron Chef episode featuring gilded badger spleens on couscous. (Can I use so as a conjunction? See what I mean? This is stress with a capital “S”. Or is it capitol “S”? Maybe that question mark is supposed to be inside the quotation marks. I need coffee...)

I don't subscribe to any cooking magazines or have a besplattered copy of The French Laundry on my cookbook shelf. Eighteen years ago when I first married, I realized that even a hamburger was outside my skill set and started collecting recipes. Then I began noticing that technique made a lot more difference than whether or not I used Herbs de Provence or celery salt. Now I know whether I want to sear, saute, or braise the meat, and how to put together a colorful, tasty salad in the middle of February without breaking the budget. My passion is Bistro cuisine: I like to riff on simple classic menus using fresh local ingredients.

During the fall and winter I make soup once a week. Even my kids love soup. Of course, that could be because I always serve a dessert on soup night, but I prefer to think they actually enjoy the soup. My first soups weren't particularly memorable. Meat has a tendency to assume the flavor and texture of three-day-old bubblegum when it's been simmering for hours. Rice, noodles, and potatoes dissolve into a gelatinous mass, and vegetables become mushy. I was quite disappointed to discover this after all the stories I had read portraying the homey pot of soup bubbling away over the fire.

As it turns out, soups are much tastier when you prepare the ingredients to maximize their individual flavors and then combine everything just long enough to meld those flavors at the end of the process. I suppose it would spoil the fairy tales to stop and dismember whoever is ending up in the soup pot so you could roast the meaty bits and use the skin and bones to create a kickin' broth, though. (Maybe that should be “whomever”? And I still don't remember where that pesky question mark belongs. Time for a chocolate break...)

Without further ado, I present the speedy version of the Page family's favorite chicken soup. The idea for using a pre-roasted chicken and enriching a commercial broth is from Pamela Anderson (no, not that one!). If you, like me, prefer to start with a whole raw chicken, go to the library, check out a copy of The Perfect Recipe (also by Pamela Anderson), and flip to page 19. Unless you taste the two recipes side-by-side, however, you probably won't be able to tell the difference.

 “Kiss the Cook* Chicken Soup”

3 quarts water

3 Tbsp Chicken base. If you don't have or can't find base, replace 2 quarts of the water with a quality boxed chicken stock.

1 fully cooked rotisserie chicken. Beware of weird flavors like lemon pepper or Bubba's BBQ that will ruin the soup.

2-3 Tbsp. vegetable oil, just enough to coat the bottom of your soup pot.

1 large onion, finely diced so it will fly under the kid radar

2 large carrots, peeled and cut into 1/4” x 1” sticks

1 large stalk celery, halved and sliced fairly thin

2-5 cloves garlic, depending on how important kisses are to you

¼ cup chopped fresh parsley, or 2 Tbsp dry

Bay leaf

1 teaspoon dried ground marjoram. Marjoram is a sweeter, more delicate version of the flavors in oregano. A favorite in Europe, it blends well with other French spices like parsley and thyme.

2 tsp lemon juice from a contented lemon grown on a south-facing slope in Spain or a bottle of ReaLemon, whichever you happen to have on hand.

¼ tsp white pepper

Dash of cayenne pepper

3-4 cups cold cooked brown rice or barley. If a starch is refrigerated after being cooked it chemically changes so that it will not absorb much more liquid. The soup will taste better if the rice/barley was originally prepared in chicken broth.

2 cups fresh baby spinach or chard leaves torn into bite-sized pieces, optional

Bring water and base to a simmer over medium-high heat in a large soup kettle. While the water comes to a boil, pick the meat off the chicken and put it aside. Pop the bones and skin into the simmering water. Reduce heat to low, partially cover, and simmer 20 to 30 minutes until flavorful.

Strain, reserving broth, and discard the skin and bones. Return the empty kettle to a burner set on medium-high.

Add oil, heating it until shimmering, then onions, carrots and celery. Saute until soft, stirring occasionally, about 6-8 minutes. Add garlic and parsley and cook just until they release their aroma. Do not allow to brown. Add chicken and broth and bring to a simmer.

Add bay leaf, marjoram, lemon juice, white pepper, red pepper, rice, and spinach/chard. Return soup to a simmer until spinach/chard is fully cooked, about 3 minutes. Taste and adjust salt and seasonings if necessary. Serve immediately with a great crusty French bread. The person you love the most always gets the poisonous bay leaf or a stray bone to choke on. (Oh dear. I just ended a sentence with a preposition. I think I'd better call it quits!)

*We have a tradition in our home that if dinner is so fantastically delicious that it all gets devoured, the cook gets a kiss. Unless, of course, you simply didn't make enough. Then you get kicked instead.

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.