DORIE GREENSPAN

Sooooooo Many Books

I am drowning in books, cookbooks most especially.  In the past, I just built more bookcases, but I’ve run out of buildable places.  Worse, even though I give away about 100 books every year to local libraries, I still have more and more books and less and less space.  It looks like I am going to have to do what my husband keeps telling me I must do:  I’ve got to give away more books – lots more.

Finally, yesterday, I collected five big boxes and set to work on the shelves in my tiny office in New York. My office is a narrow room right behind my narrow kitchen – that’s my kitchen in the picture above – and it’s lined with bookshelves (as is the hallway, our bedroom and the guest room; our son’s room, the kitchen and the living room also have bookcases).  And where there aren’t bookshelves there are still books – on my desk, under my desk, on my file cabinet and in a pile near my desk.  Michael’s right:  It’s too much.  And the truth is, although I haven’t said this to Michael, there are books I don’t need and probably won’t need – ever.

So, I rolled up my sleeves and set to work.  I spent 3 hours “on task” and this is what I’ve accomplished:  I threw out 15 old magazines and put 12 books in a box that might or might not be a give-away box.  I seemed incapable of touching a single book without opening it and reading something.  And, of course, I couldn’t toss a magazine without clipping stuff first.  (I wasn’t interested in that Rose Petal Sangria when it was first published three years ago, but it looked pretty appealing yesterday.)

I’m about to hit the books again today, this time with renewed vigor and a dash more pragmatism, courtesy of the annual call I get from a guy I’ve known since seventh grade.  After catching up on parents and spouses, kids and work, he mentioned that he still had his notes from his college freshman English class!  I teased him mercilessly.  What was he ever going to do with them?  Why did he need them?  Did he think he was going to study them in retirement?  It all seemed so ridiculous to me.  And then I looked up at my bookshelves.  What was that 1990 datebook doing there?

To work!

Biscuits to the Rescue

Often it’s the little things in kitchen life that tickle me most.  Last night, the tickle came from turning the remains of a stew into something that looked good enough to have been done on purpose the first-time around.  What I did was quick, easy and versatile – it would fix up every kind of leftover from stews and chilis to thick meaty pasta sauces – and awfully tasty, too.  As you can see, all I did was cover the stew with biscuits, good, homemade, buttermilk biscuits with a pinch of thyme.  That I served it in a big, worn-by-time cast-iron skillet made the whole thing look better, more inviting and so much more special.

The biscuits are a slight variation on the ones in Baking.  I love them because they’re light and fluffy, buttery and slightly tangy, and because they give me yet another reason to play with my food:  these are completely handmade, they need no machines, but all your fingers will be delightfully butter-and-flour encrusted when you’re done.

There are just two little tips you should know before venturing into the world of biscuit-topped stews:

One: Don’t overwork the biscuit dough even though you will be sooooooo tempted to mix, knead, pat and play with it endlessly.  The dough is soft, sticky and fun to work with – a good thing and a problem, too.  Restrain yourself!  Mix and knead minimally and you’ll be rewarded with textbook-fluffy biscuits.

Two:  Reheat the stew on top of the stove while you’re mixing the dough for the biscuits.  You want the stew to be at eating temperature at the point at which you top it and slide the pan into the oven because the baking time will be short – just long enough to bake the biscuits.

Oh, one other neat thing:  If you haven’t got enough stew left over to handle the twelve biscuits the recipe makes, top it with as many biscuits as you want, then freeze the remaining biscuits, unbaked.  Put them on a lined baking sheet, freeze them, then pack them airtight.  The next time you want biscuits, just pull them from the freezer and pop them into the oven.  No defrosting needed; just bake the biscuits a few minutes longer.

HERBED BUTTERMILK BISCUITS (adapted from Baking From My Home to Yours)

Makes 12 biscuits

2 cups all-purpose flour

1 tablespoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/4 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon sugar

1 teaspoon dried or 2 teaspoons fresh thyme leaves, crushed between your fingers

6 tablespoons cold unsalted butter, cut into 12 pieces

3/4 cup cold buttermilk, well shaken

Center a rack in the oven and preheat the oven to 425 degrees F.  If you are making these as biscuits rather than a biscuit topping, line a baking sheet with parchment paper or a silicone mat.

Whisk the flour, baking powder, salt, soda, sugar and thyme together in a bowl.  Drop in the butter and, using your fingers, toss to coat the pieces with flour.  Quickly, working with your fingers, rub the butter into the dry ingredients until the mixture is pebbly.  You’ll have pea-size pieces, pieces the size of oatmeal flakes and pieces of every size in between – and that’s just right.

Pour the buttermilk over the ingredients, grab a fork and toss and gently turn the ingredients until you’ve got a nice soft dough.  Now reach into the bowl with your hands and give the dough a quick gently kneading – 3 or 4 turns should be just enough to bring everything together.

Lightly dust a work surface with flour and turn out the dough.  Dust the top of the dough very lightly with flour and pat the dough out until it is 1/2-inch thick.  Don’t worry if it isn’t completely even.
Use a knife to divide the dough into 12 pieces and transfer the pieces to the top of the bubbling hot stew.  (Or, if you’re baking them stewless, put the pieces of dough on the baking sheet.)

Slide the stew pot into the oven and bake until the biscuits are puffed and golden brown, 14 to 18 minutes.

Serve immediately.

Cab Cuisine

Many years ago – really, many, many years ago – my husband and I were in a taxi in Burgundy on our way to have dinner at Lameloise, then a restaurant with three Michelin stars.  I started chatting with the driver and he asked if I knew what I was going to order for dinner.  I had read a little about the restaurant and knew the specialties, but certainly hadn’t decided what I’d have.  “Take the chicken in pig’s bladder (poulet en vessie),” the driver counseled, “c’est magnifique.”

The chicken, a preparation both simple and splendid (it tastes so much better than it's name would suggest), was the pride of the house.  Perhaps created by the legendary Fernand Point, the dish consisted of a chicken, stuffed with sausage, placed in an inflated pig’s bladder and poached in a rich bouillon with aromatic vegetables.  It was presented in its wholeness and then carved tableside and it was, as the taxi driver promised, magnificent.

At the end of dinner, when we called for a taxi, the same driver arrived and I was barely settled in the cab when the questions began.  Our connoisseur/chauffer wanted to know everything we ate and drank.  He nodded enthusiastically as I went from course to course and then, when I told him we had drunk a Sauternes with dessert, he shook his head in disapproval.  “Ah, too bad,” he sighed, “it would have been much better if you'd had that with the foie gras.  Yes, too bad.” 

What was so interesting was that he wasn’t judgmental, just really sorry that I’d missed out on what he thought was a sublime combination.  (So many years and so many foie gras-and-Sauternes pairings later, I can say he’s right:  it really is that proverbial match made in heaven.)  He spoke with such passion and, more than that, such authority, that when I got out of the cab, I half expected to see that instead of a hack’s license he had a diploma from Le Cordon Bleu.

That was my first conversation with a cuisine-savvy cabbie and I’ve since lost track of the number of French drivers I’ve met who have strong opinions on everything culinary – and even some recipes.  My latest encounter took place in the back of  a Mercedes as I headed to the Paris airport yesterday.

I’m always miserable when I have to leave Paris, the kind of miserable that I’d rather not be jollied out of.  Fortunately, the weather matched my mood:  it started to rain as I had to leave; unfortunately, Taxi Bleu had sent me a perky driver:  The door closed and he started to talk.  At first the topic was the upcoming French elections, but no sooner had we crossed the Seine than he was talking about food.  Turns out Djamal – yes, we quickly introduced ourselves to one another – is new to taxi driving; he spent 14 years as a waiter at Bofinger.  And, while he never worked in the kitchen, he was in the kitchen enough to learn about cooking and to become passionné about food.  It’s Djamal who does all the shopping and cooking for his family (a wife and 18-month-old son – very cute, I saw the picture).  He’s also the one who sets the table – beautifully – “it’s the way I was trained,” he says. 

By the time we reached CDG, we’d covered everything from the importance of finding a good fishmonger to the joy of eating at home, especially after working a 12-hour shift.  I had the feeling that Djamal is a good cook, and I’m going to find out if I’m right.  The next time I’m in Paris, Djamal and I are going to try to cook together.  I was hoping he’d teach me one of his mother’s Algerian couscous dishes, but he doesn’t know those – his mother taught them to his wife, continuing a centuries-old tradition of handing down recipes from mother to daughter.  Never mind, whatever we do, I’ll bet it will be interesting.  I’ll let you know.

When in Doubt, Chicken-in-the-Pot

Every cook needs a clutch of totally trusty recipes, a bunch of go-to recipes you can turn to when you haven’t got the time, inspiration or ingredients to tackle something new or when you’ve just got to be sure that the dish will be perfect. It also doesn’t hurt if the recipe is so easy you can put it together quickly, maybe even with your eyes closed, and if it’s flexible enough that if you haven’t got a couple of the ingredients you can swap them for others or skip them entirely.

My favorite recipe in this exalted category is a type of Chicken-in-the-Pot. I hardly ever make it the same way, but every time I make it it’s a winner. Basically, it’s a chicken (which you can brown or not, depending on how much time you’ve got and how you’re feeling about a little sputtering fat) surrounded by vegetables (your choice) and lots of garlic (a must), moistened with olive oil, wine and chicken broth (or just broth), put into a pot that’s only just big enough to hold everything, sealed up tight (the original recipe calls for sealing the pot with a flour and water paste that hardens with heat) and baked for an hour or so.

As simple as it is, it’s always delicious and fun – especially if you put the pot in the center of the table and encourage everyone to dip hunks of bread into the goop, which is the only thing I’ve ever called the cooking juice and which is what my friends now call it. It sounds particularly funny in French, but I couldn’t think of a translation. "Jus de cuisson", which is correct, sounds way too formal for anything you’re dunking into (a no-no in polite French company, but I consider my apartment American territory) and certainly too formal for anything, like this, which usually entails finger licking.

I made this last night with a chicken and vegetables I bought at the market on Avenue du President Woodrow Wilson (which I never know how to pronounce in French and which, when pronounced in "American" is not understood by Parisian taxi drivers). We were just four for dinner, but I ended up adding so many vegetables, I had to pull out the pot I usually use when I’m cooking for a crowd. That’s the thing about this recipe, you can do just about whatever you want with it and it will always be great.

Here’s a basic recipe. I know you’ll play around with it – it’s impossible not to – so I hope you’ll let me know what you do.

Oh, the picture shows what the dish looked like before it went into the oven -- by the time I remembered that I wanted to take an "after" picture, the chicken and vegs were pretty picked over.

CHICKEN-IN-THE-POT
Makes 4 servings (but you can multiply the recipe easily)

Approximately 2/3 cup extra-virgin olive oil
4 heads of garlic, broken into cloves, but not peeled
16 shallots, peeled and trimmed, or 4 onions, peeled, trimmed and quartered, or 4 leeks, white part only, halved lengthwise
8 carrots, peeled, trimmed and quartered
4 celery stalks, trimmed and quartered
Salt and freshly ground pepper
4 sprigs fresh thyme
4 sprigs flat-leaf parsley
3 sprigs fresh rosemary
Grated zest of 1 lemon
16 prunes, optional (apricots or dried apples are also good in this dish)
1 chicken, whole or cut-up
1/2 small (2 lbs or less) cabbage, green or red, cut into 4 wedges (try Savoy cabbage)
1 cup chicken broth
1/2 cup white wine, or another 1/2 cup chicken broth
About 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour, for the seal
About 3/4 cup hot water, for the seal

Preheat the oven to 450 degrees F.

Set a large skillet over high heat and add about 2 tablespoons of the olive oil. Toss in the garlic cloves and all the vegetables, EXCEPT the cabbage – you might have to do this in two batches, you don’t want to crowd the skillet – season generously with salt and pepper and cook, stirring, until the vegetables are lightly browned on all sides. Spoon the vegetables into a large Dutch oven with a tight-fitting lid – you’ll need a pot that holds at least 5 quarts. Stir in the herbs, lemon zest and prunes, if you’re using them.

Return the skillet to the heat and add another tablespoon or so of oil. Season the chicken with salt and pepper and brown the chicken on all sides. Put the chicken in the casserole, nestling it among the vegetables. Fit the cabbage wedges around the chicken.

Stir together the chicken broth, wine and 1/2 cup olive oil and pour the mixture over the chicken and vegetables.

Now you have a choice: you can cover the pot with a sheet of aluminum foil and the lid, or you can make a paste to seal the lid. To make the paste, stir the flour and water together, mixing until you have a soft, workable dough. Working on a floured surface, shape the dough into a long sausage, then press the sausage onto the rim of the casserole. Press the lid into the dough to seal the pot.

Slide the pot into the oven and bake for 70 minutes. If you need to keep it in the oven a little longer because you’re not ready for it, don’t worry – turn the heat down to 325 degrees F and you’ll be good for another 30 minutes or so.

The easiest way to break the seal, is to wiggle the point of a screwdriver between the dough and the pot – being careful not to stand in the line of the escaping (and wildly aromatic) steam. If the chicken was whole, quarter it and return it to the pot, so that you can serve directly from the pot, or arrange the chicken and vegetables on a serving platter.

Epiphany! Pierre Herme Style

No sooner is the Bûche de Noël, the traditional Christmas log cake, removed from pâtisserie shelves, than the Galette des Rois, or King's Cake, takes its place. The holiday that brings us Galette des Rois, Epiphany, lasts only one day (January 6), but pastry shop windows will give pride of place to the cakes until almost the end of the month, and with good reason—the galettes are delicious and the custom attached to them is great fun. Click here to read more about these Galettes...

New Year's Resolutions

The good thing about not keeping any of your new year’s resolutions is that you can recycle them for the following year, which is exactly what I did:  I took all my resolutions from 2006 and moved them over to 2007.  But, young as this new year is, it’s looking like it might be a good one because here I am ticking off one of the list’s biggies – I’m welcoming you to my new home on the web.   

I'm thrilled to finally start this adventure, but I think I might have procrastinated even longer had it not been for the wonderful people I met on my recent tour for my new book, "Baking: From My Home to Yours".  In every city I visited, I met someone I knew from the web – people who’d been baking from my book and posting stories and pictures about the desserts on their blogs and on websites where groups were working their way through the book – and I loved it.  I loved the immediate sense of community, warmth, openness and enthusiasm for sharing, and I wanted a way to keep in touch with everyone I met and to meet even more people who are as passionate about food as I am. .     I hope this site will be just the kind of place where we can get together. 

I’ll be writing about what I’m doing in the kitchen, where I'm traveling and what life is like in America and France, and I’d love for you to keep me company.  It will be such fun to have you along.