DORIE GREENSPAN

Very Verrine: Dinner in a Glass

What you’re looking at is the leftovers from yesterday’s lunch.  They don't look so bad, do they?  The original was just a salad – romaine, celery, tomato, scallions, carrots, raisins, tuna and a mustard vinaigrette – but when I couldn’t find a storage container and grabbed a jelly jar instead, the remains of the day started looking better.

My salad-in-a-glass was expedient, but these days – and for the past few years – chefs in Paris have thought long, hard and super-creatively about presenting their precious products in glasses and the results have been stunning.

Today, you can go to a restaurant and get a little amuse bouche in a slender vodka glass or an elaborate dessert in a slimmed-down lowball and in between be served an app in a glass, vegetables in a glass and maybe even a glass-enclosed pot-au-feu.  It’s a certified trend. (See the recent article in the LA Times; recipes included.)

The first meal-in-a-glass that I can remember (aside from my mom’s chocolate Slim-Fasts or my own sundaes, which weren’t meant to be meals but could have been) was some time in the late-90s at Petrossian in Paris when Phillippe Conticini was the chef.  My friend Nick Malgieri and I had a multi-course meal there in which every dish was served in a glass with custom-designed flatware – all of it long-handled – and the whole event finished with each of us being served a tray of desserts.  I don’t have the best memory, but I think we both had five glasses and each glass had eight elements (or maybe we had eight glasses, each with five different layers).  It was a wow meal and it wore out our brains – so much to taste; so, so, so much to think about. 

Nowadays, these kinds of dishes, called verrines, after the glasses they’re served in, are everywhere in Paris, especially in pastry shops.  At Pierre Herme’s they’re an art form – no surprise, I know. 

I’m not thinking art this weekend, but I do have glasses galore...

Jellied gazpacho?  Crab-avocado salad?  Seared scallops, mango salsa and a scallop ceviche to finish it?  Hmm – could be beautiful in the martini glass.  Layered beef tartar? That might be great in the snifter.  Actually, just a few tablespoons of chopped beef, a teaspoon or so each of chopped onions and salty capers and an adorable quail egg as the topper, would be a perfect hors d’oeuvre in that shapely glass that I’ve never used for anything but short flowers.  I could get into this.

Rugelach: Three Stories and a Recipe

This is a tri-part post on a cookie that merits a triple dose of attention:  rugelach, cookies (really pastries) made of cream-cheese dough, spread with jam and nuts (and often raisins), cut into wedges and rolled up to resemble mini croissants.

Part I: Making them

When I was a kid in Brooklyn, there were three bakeries: One had the best bread; another (Ebinger’s) had a famous Black-Out Cake; and the third had the greatest cookies, among them, rugelach. 

In our house, where my mother neither cooked nor baked (she did and still does use the oven as a breadbox), rugelach were always bought from bakery #3 - it never occurred to me that they could be made at home.  Then one day, I caught my mother-in-law in the act of rugelaching. 

I watched her, awestruck, asked for the recipe and made the cookies in my peanut-sized kitchen soon after.  (Click here to read the story and get the recipe.)

In those days, my major baking tools were a mixing bowl and wooden spoon and they're what I used to make the dough.  Hand mixing is still a fine way to make this easy dough, but nowadays I use a food processor, which mixes the dough in an instant and keeps it cool and supple.

Here are a few tips for making the dough:

• Take the cream cheese and butter out of the refrigerator just 10 minutes before you’re going to use them – they should be still cold and only a tad soft.  (If you’re making the dough by hand, the cream cheese and butter should be softened until they’re spreadable.)

• Give the dough a leisurely chill in the fridge before rolling it out.  Two hours is a minimum chill, overnight is even better.

• Roll the dough out on a lightly floured work surface.  This is an easy-rolling dough, so you’ll ace it first time out. 

• Warm whatever jam you’re using until it liquefies, then cool it a bit; you don’t want the hot jam to melt the dough.

• Chop the nuts and fruit for the filling.  The rugelach themselves aren’t very big and the dough is thin, so the filling should be generous but not super chunky.

• The best tool for cutting dough is a pizza wheel; second best is a sharp chef’s knife.

• Refrigerate the cookies after you’ve assembled them – they’ll hold their shape a lot better if you bake them when they’re cold.

• Under heat, the butter in the dough and the jam and cinnamon-sugar in the filling are exuberant bubblers and dribblers, so use a lined baking sheet.  This is a perfect job for a silicone baking mat or nonstick aluminum foil.

Part II: Making them ahead

The assembled cookies freeze perfectly (I prefer to freeze them unbaked) and it's a good thing they do because my mom, who had been in for the weekend, was dreading her flight back to Florida and I hadn't had a minute to make her anything that might sweeten the trip. Happily, there were rugelach in the freezer. 

While she was packing, I pulled out the frozen cookies,

brushed them with egg wash, sprinkled them with sugar, then baked them – no defrosting necessary.

They were still a little warm when I tucked them into her carry-on bag. 

Part III:  Re-making them

Last December, I had a rugelach-making fest with Michele Norris, a host on National Public Radio’s All Things Considered, in her Washington, DC kitchen.  We made the cookies (click to listen to us baking), had a lot of fun, and then, as we were cleaning up, Michele asked what else she could do with the dough. I’d always thought of rugelach dough as dough for making rugelach, but I tossed out the fact that it’s sugarless and said that it would probably take to bunches of fillings.

In an instant, Michele, a very creative cook, was off and running and thinking of savory ideas – savory as in ham, cheese, bacon, dried tomatoes, hot-pepper jelly and on and on and on.

In the more than 30 years that I’d been making rugelach, I’d tweaked the recipe – I added chocolate, changed the jam – but I’d done nothing major and certainly nothing as radical as taking the pastries from sweet to savory or as serving them with cocktails or soup instead of coffee or tea.

Since Michele spun these terrific ideas, I’ve made chutney rugelach and tapenade rugelach and I’ve got a goat cheese rugelach in my head and some thoughts about riffing on a pissaladiere.  My mother-in-law may have introduced me to making rugelach, but Michele made me rethink them. 

I’m going to be making savory rugelach over the weekend and maybe you'll be rugelaching too – if you noodle with the fillings, let me know what you do. 

So that you don’t have to scroll, here’s the recipe again.

Out the Bedroom Window

For the past few weeks, I’ve been living in my apartment with all the shades drawn.  It’s dreary and depressing but it’s been necessary because at just about every window there’ve been workman balancing on scaffolding 15 stories above the street.  I don’t want to see them for two reasons:  1) If I can see them, they can see me and, frankly, I’d rather not have that (it’s enough I know that I sometimes work until 11 am in my fuzzy red pjs – do they have to know too?); and 2) it scares me to death to see them up there!

But today’s Sunday, a day when it’s safe to pull up the shades and even open the windows.  So here’s what I found this morning outside my bedroom window:

Strikes me as the kind of the thing the surrealist Max Ernst would have found interesting.  Me, I’m finding it just plain weird. 

Fish Flipping Made Easy

There are so many things that can make me happy in the kitchen and a perfect tool is one of them.  I love when I can grab just the right thing for a job, an act that entails:

• Knowing just what the right thing is;
• Having it; and
• Being able to put my hands on it the instant I need it.

Given that I’ve got oodles (shorthand for hundreds) of kitchen tools and gadgets, that they’re divided among three kitchens and that I’m neither the neatest nor the most organized person in the world, when all the tool-elements are aligned, it’s an excellent day.

Fortunately, when I need the right spatula for turning and lifting delicate fish (or omelets, chicken breasts, veal scaloppini or something that’s being sautéed), it’s always a happy day because I’ve got flexible spatulas in each of my kitchens. 

Here’s the one that lives in New York:

The spatula’s slightly wedged shape, thin blade and flexibility (bend it and it will give) make it easy to maneuver in tight spaces – think of it as the sports car of spatulas – while its shape is cradling and its slotted spines allow excess liquids to fall back into the pan.

The first time I saw one of these was when I was working in Daniel Boulud’s kitchen.  (Until Food Network chefs started flipping them around, they were rarely seen in public.)  Of course, I ran out and bought one as soon as I hung up my apron. 

If you’re in a store, buying one is simple:  you just point to the spatula of your choice.  The problems start when you try to stock up online – the tool is variously called a flexible spatula, a slotted spatula, a chef’s spatula, a flexible slotted chef’s spatula, or even a flexible slotted French chef's spatula. Aaarrgh.

Just to get you started, here are a few sources for the many-nomered always-dependable spatula:

• You can get a Wusthof slotted spatula (that’s the one in the picture) for about $40 at Chefs Catalog; it’s pricey, but you’re only going to buy it once in your life – there are no moving parts to wear out;

• You can pick up a Lamson and Goodnow Chef’s Slotted Turner (I’ve got one of these too) for $25 at their online store (or at amazon, where the more expensive ebony-handled turner is a better buy);

• And then there’s the new kid on the block:  Mario Batali’s Soft Grip Slotted Fish Turner, made of nylon and ringing in at an easy-to-take $8 on amazon. 

I’m not sure that nylon has the support of metal, but for 8 bucks I’ll give it a test drive. Unless you know something I should know ...

Street Snacks of Yore

Yesterday, walking in Greenwich Village, I saw this fruit cart on the corner and thought:  It’s great that you can grab a good-for-you snack while you’re on the go, but where are the street foods of yesteryear?  Specifically, I was thinking of garlicky dill pickles pulled out of a wooden barrel by the Pickle Lady who, during my childhood, set up shop on a street corner in my part of Brooklyn - or at least I thought she did.

I mentioned the Pickle Lady to Michael, my husband, who grew up in the same neighborhood and who has the memory of an elephant, and he insisted there was no Pickle Lady!  He was sure I was thinking of the Newspaper Lady, she who was unkindly called Orphan Annie because she was dressed in a million layers of tattered clothing.  In fact, the Newspaper Lady was on the corner I’d imagined Mme Pickle holding down, but there was a barrel:  next to her stacks of papers, the Newspaper Lady had a beaten up metal oil barrel in which she built a blazing fire and around which passersby would stop to warm their hands and chat.

Michael’s always right about this stuff (and, once he said it, I knew he was right), but I called my mom anyway.  Mom confirmed the details of the Newspaper Lady, but made it all better by saying that I did get pickles from a Pickle Lady, I’d just misplaced her or co-mingled a couple of memories – Pickle Lady was in a covered market down the block. 

Then my mother started talking about a street-food place I remembered perfectly and loved almost as much as she did:  the narrow enclosed stand (it was like a luncheonette counter without the stools) where you could buy a Charlotte Russe. 

I can’t think of fancier street food than a Charlotte Russe, an elaborate construction of sponge cake, jam, gobs and gobs of piped and swirled whipped cream and the proverbial cherry on top!  What made it street-eatable was the fact that the entire confection was housed in a cardboard cylinder with a bottom that might have been engineered by Wonderbra. You ate the cherry and the first layer of cream, pushed up the bottom, devoured the next layer – inevitably getting cream on the tip of your nose – and on it went, for as long as you could make it last.

I know a banana is a far more healthful snack than a Charlotte Russe and I’m glad bananas and their fruity brethren are so easily gettable, but where's the fun?  While virtue - and virtuous bananas - may be their own reward, they certainly won't be the stuff of memories.

YIPPEE!!!!!

Three seems to be my magic number today.  Here’s all the good news I got this morning:

My newest book, BAKING FROM MY HOME TO YOURS, was nominated for both a James Beard Cookbook Award and a Cookbook Award from the IACP (International Association of Culinary Professionals).

And, as though that isn’t thrilling enough, I just learned that at the James Beard Awards Ceremony in May I will be inducted into the Who’s Who of Food and Beverage in America.

I’m so excited I can barely breathe. I wonder if Champagne would help...

Slow-Roasted Tomatoes: A Pasta Picker-Upper

Just when it looked like we were heading into the lamb part of March (is the expression March comes in like a lion and goes out like a lamb universal? or at least known in the northern hemisphere, where March is a winter/spring month?), along comes real snow and with it pokey traffic.  By the time we got up to Connecticut the other night, it was past serving time at all our favorite places and we were left to scavenge dinner, using whatever was in the pantry and the bag of leftovers I’d scooped up in New York and tossed into the car.  It was a little like Iron Chef … but not.

With half a container of grape tomatoes and a red bell pepper in the canvas bag, Parmesan cheese in the fridge and good olive oil (always on hand) and a box of quinoa pasta, something I bought but hadn’t tried, in the pantry, dinner, albeit a plain one, seemed to organize itself.

It took just 10 minutes to finely dice the pepper, cut the tomatoes, grate the cheese and cook the pasta and then, when I was reaching into the refrigerator to see if there were any herbs hidden away somewhere, I saw the container of oven-roasted tomatoes and dinner immediately got ten times better.

The way I think about them, slow-roasted tomatoes, or tomates confites, are somewhere between fresh tomatoes and sun-dried tomatoes and the best thing you can do with any tomato that isn’t as flavorful as you’d like it to be.  By drizzling the tomatoes with oil and roasting them long and slow, you concentrate and deepen the flavor – it’s a mini magic trick.  Then, if you don’t use them right away, you can cover them with oil and get a bonus:  tomato-infused olive oil.

So here’s what I did with the pasta:  I diced the grape tomatoes and bell pepper and put them in the bottom of the pasta bowl with some extra-virgin olive oil, sea salt, freshly ground white pepper and a pinch of hot pepper flakes.  I cooked the pasta, drained it, tossed it with the tomatoes and pepper and then added the slow-roasted tomatoes, grated Parmesan cheese and just enough of the tomato oil to bring up the flavors.  With a glass of wine, it was a pretty good made-in-10-minutes-welcome-home dinner.

Here’s a recipe for the tomatoes:

Slow-Roasted Tomatoes/Basic Tomates Confites

1 pint cherry (or grape) tomatoes

Pinch of fleur de sel or fine sea salt

Pinch of freshly ground white pepper

1 or 2 sprigs fresh rosemary or thyme, optional

1 or 2 cloves garlic, unpeeled and smashed, optional

About 2 teaspoons extra-virgin olive oil

Center a rack in the oven and preheat the oven to 225 degrees F.  Line a baking sheet with parchment paper or use a silicone baking mat.

Cut the tomatoes in half – I cut cherry tomatoes horizontally (around their waists) and grape tomatoes from top to bottom – and place them cut-side up on the lined baking sheet.  Sprinkle over the salt and pepper and drizzle with the olive oil.  There’s no need to use a lot of oil – just enough so that the tomato tops glisten.

Slide the baking sheet into the oven and roast the tomatoes for about 3 hours.  When they’re done, the tomatoes will be shriveled and a little dry looking, but press them gently and you’ll see that they’ve still got some juice.

Use the tomatoes immediately or cool them on the baking sheet.  If you don’t need them now, pack them in a jar along with the garlic and herbs, if you’ve used them, and cover them with good olive oil.  Topped with oil, the tomatoes will keep in the refrigerator for a few weeks.

In addition to pulling the tomatoes into service to give pasta a little more punch, I put them and a little of their oil over chicken, salmon or tuna, steamed vegetables and anything else that needs a little color and an extra hit of flavor.  I’m sure once you have a stash of these tomatoes, you’ll find lots of uses for them.

Say What???

I always thought that this was a screw cap, but last night I was told I had it all wrong.  The conversation went like this:

Setting:  A restaurant

Characters: A couple of friends, my husband and I

Action:  The server approaches the table while we are chatting and starts opening our wine

Me:  “Ah, I hear the romantic sound of a screw cap.”

Server:  “No, it’s a Stelzner Enclosure.”

Me:  “Huh?” (or something equally elegant – it’s a paraphrase)

Server:  “Yes, that’s its professional name.”

Action: My friends and I try to use the name “Stelzner Enclosure” as many times as we can during the evening so that we can imprint the term in our brains and never be caught saying ‘screw cap’ again.

Reaction:  I don’t know much about Stelzner, but the word ‘enclosure’ to describe a bottle cap just seemed weird to me, so I noodled around on Google when I got home and discovered that the perky server had it only almost right.

Climax:  What you’re looking at is a STELVIN CLOSURE.  And, if the fact that the last four bottles of wine that I ordered in restaurants came with Stelvin Closures not corks is any guide, my guess is you’ll be looking at them a lot more.

Stelvin Closure?  Who knew?  Did you?

Bottlerocket: Wines for All

 

If there were a Bottlerocket in every neighborhood, my bet is that wine consumption would, well, rocket.  The store is so appealing – and sooooooo user-friendly – that only a card-carrying member of a temperance society could walk out without buying something.

This is one of those shops, of which there are several these days, meant to de-fright, de-mystify and de-snob wine and it succeeds on all counts.  That it actually does this while offering a really interesting selection of wines makes it worth a visit.  (I found a bottle of not-so-easy-to-find Pleiades from Sean Thackrey – yum!)

Built on the idea that wine is meant to go with food, a concept the French have been trying to get us to understand for years, there are kiosks throughout the store displaying wines that go with our major food groups:  meat, seafood of all kinds, poultry, treats (that’s the sweet stuff) and the category beloved by so many New Yorkers, take-out.  In fact, at this kiosk, along with the wines and their informative and often funny tasting notes, you can also pick up take-out menus from local places.

If you like the idea of choosing your wine to go with your food but you haven’t a clue what you’re going to have for dinner, worry not – Bottlerocket’s got you covered.  At the back of the store you’ll find bunches of cookbooks and a nice comfy table where you can spread out and plan your upcoming feast.  The only thing that might distract you is the nearby kids’ corner, where, in addition to a shelf full of picture books, there’s a kid-sized table covered in chalkboard.  It’s a fun place for the little ones - and others - to hang.  Here's the proof:

Licorice, the Real Stuff

All I did was mention the word licorice – I mean, it wasn’t as though I forced anyone to eat a piece – and my friends’ faces wrinkled up like dried apples, proving again that there’s no in-between with licorice, you either love it or loathe it.  (One of my friends said she didn’t mind red licorice but, as any real licorice lover knows, the red stuff isn’t real licorice.)

I grew up on black licorice – corrugated nibs (why do I think I remember a camel or something Saharan on the box; yes, a box - in the way-back most candy came in boxes), long supple laces that you could twirl or tie in knots, twisted sticks, pinwheels with floridly colored sugar dots in their centers, minuscule lozenges that were bought in little paper packets and Good & Plenty, pink and white candy-coated pieces of licorice that made a ton of noise when you shook them out of the box (I’m surprised they sold them in movie theaters, but they did). 

I’m sure I liked licorice because my mom did, but now, when I think of the candy, it doesn’t seem a kid’s sweet at all.  Although I do see kids buying licorice as after-school treats in Paris. And they must buy it in all the other licorice-friendly countries, like Holland, where it’s not at all uncommon to find salted and even double-salted licorice candies; Germany; Finland (the Panda brand’s made licorice almost cuddly); Italy, where so much of it is pure and unsweetened; and all over France, where it’s as easy to buy a stick of licorice root as it is a croissant.  In fact, one of the most interesting dishes I’ve ever had used a licorice stick as a skewer for sweetbreads.  It was a Jean-Georges Vongerichten creation and I had it with my husband, Michael, who doesn’t like licorice or sweetbreads, but thought the combination was great.

In fact, it’s interesting that so many licoricephobes seem just fine with licorice taste-alikes like fennel, star anise, anisette and that great Provencal thirst-quencher Pastis.  Not that any of these is so all-American. 

Maybe that’s it.  Maybe it’s that licorice is just not an American flavor.  My two friends who did everything but say “yuck” when the dread l-word escaped my lips, conceded that I might be on to something, except, according to them, one of whom came from Oklahoma and the other from L.A., New York City's the rule-breaker, a licorice-loving town in a country of licorice loathers.  It's just another thing that separates the natives from the transplants and it's not anything that my friends think is going to change - neither can imagine ever being New York enough to like the stuff.  Oh well ... more for us real Gothamites.