DORIE GREENSPAN

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.

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 ...

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.

Swedish Visiting Cake

The water is still crashing over the dam, the rain is still strong and steady and the leak over the stove is still leaking – the roofer said he couldn’t get here until Monday (actually, he said he was “swamped” – really) – but I am in a much better mood and all it took was a couple of minutes in the kitchen. 

I thought I was going to make muffins and then the Swedish Visiting Cake came to mind (the recipe’s in Baking) and I could think of nothing else.  The recipe for his cake was given to me by my friend Ingela, who said her mother claimed that you could start making this cake when you saw visitors coming up the drive and have it ready for them as soon as they were settled into your home.  And mothers never lie. 

Making the cake just now reminded me for the nine-millionth time why baking is so dear to me:  it is a pleasure that engages all your senses.  In the 10 minutes it took me to get the mixture into my old cast-iron skillet, I rubbed sugar and zest between my fingers, watched a batter grow from thick and dull to lithe and shiny, caught the fragrance of lemon, vanilla and almond and had the satisfaction of knowing that I was making something completely by hand and that it would be something others would soon enjoy.

The fact that the house will smell like butter, sugar and vanilla for hours is just a happy extra.

Swedish Visiting Cake (adapted from Baking, From My Home to Yours)

Makes 8 to 10 servings

1 cup sugar, plus extra for sprinkling

Grated zest of 1 lemon

2 large eggs

1/4 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

1/2 teaspoon pure almond extract

1 cup all-purpose flour

1 stick (8 tablespoons) unsalted butter, melted and cooled

About 1/4 cup sliced almonds (blanched or not)

Center a rack in the oven and preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.  Butter a seasoned 9-inch cast-iron skillet or other heavy ovenproof skillet, a 9-inch cake pan or even a pie pan.

Pour the sugar into a medium bowl.  Add the zest and blend the zest and sugar together with your fingertips until the sugar is moist and aromatic.  Whisk in the eggs one at a time until well blended.  Whisk in the salt and the extracts.  Switch to a rubber spatula and stir in the flour.  Finally, fold in the melted butter.

Scrape the batter into the pan and smooth the top with a rubber spatula.  Scatter the sliced almonds over the top and sprinkle with a little sugar.  If you're using a cake or pie pan, place the pan on a baking sheet.

Bake the cake for 25 to 30 minutes, or until it is golden and a little crisp on the outside; the inside will remain moist.  Remove the pan from the oven and let the cake cool for 5 minutes, then run a thin knife around the sides and bottom of the cake to loosen it.  You can serve the cake warm or cooled, directly from the skillet or turned out onto a serving plate.

Eccentric Eggs from Daniel Patterson

Daniel Patterson of Coi Restaurant in San Francisco was the only American chef to be invited to this year’s Omnivore Food Festival in Le Havre, France. He walked onto the big stage, faced the audience and the camera crew from Cuisine TV (France’s Food Network), smiled shyly, greeted everyone in soft school-boy French and then proceeded to keep the mostly French audience of food pros, press and Michelin-starred chefs hushed and wide-eyed.

Patterson, an autodidact (the word, describing anyone self-taught in anything, seems to come more trippinly off the tongue of French- than English-speakers), is a writer, an author, the chef of a restaurant that fits squarely into the Omnivore ideal – it is small, original and ferociously personal – and a guy who’s curious about the world around him, which explains his collaboration with the perfumer Mandy Aftel (he used her essential oils in his first two dishes), his invention of kitchen tools (I want the metal plates he used to weight fish while it cooked) and his exploration into the eccentricities of eggdom.

While Patterson may be known for many other things, the Omnivorians will probably remember him for his poached scrambled eggs, a technique he developed and later wrote about in The New York Times.

Basically, you put a pot of salted water up to boil, beat four eggs, stir the water so that you create a little vortex, pour in the eggs, cover the pot, count to 20, then strain the eggs. What you get is not beautiful – if you want to give it a better look, you’ve got to roll it in a tea towel, a simple act that rounds out the eggs and allows you to call the resulting dish a roulade – but the texture is fabulous, almost like a soufflé, light and fluffy, but not uniformly set.

I was so intrigued by the method that I cooked up a quartet of eggs as soon as I got back to Paris and then I repeated the trick on our shores. Both times, the eggs were a success and I got a kick out of making them. Is it a parlor game? It might be. Is it worth playing? Yup.

A word about the eggs:  Patterson discovered that his technique works best with super-fresh eggs that have thick, cohesive whites (whites thin as eggs age – a bonus when you’re making meringue, a liability when you’re poaching-scrambling), but he and food scientist Harold McGee came up with a way to get the most out of eggs that are a little less than perfect:  crack each egg onto a slotted spoon and let the thinner whites drip down.

And a word on flavoring:  The eggs can’t be flavored before they’re cooked –everything has to happen afterward.  You can serve the eggs drizzled with butter or olive oil, sprinkled with herbs, covered with sauce or topped with grated cheese that can be quickly browned under the broiler; crème fraiche and caviar wouldn’t be bad either.

Daniel Patterson's Poached Scrambled Eggs

(adapted from The New York Times)

Makes 2 servings

4 large eggs

2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil (optional)

Fine sea salt

Freshly ground black pepper

Crack each egg into a medium-mesh sieve or slotted spoon, letting the thin white drain away. Transfer the remaining white and yolk to a small bowl.  Beat the eggs vigorously with a fork.

Set a medium saucepan filled with 4 inches of water over moderate heat.  Put a strainer in the sink.  When the water is at a low boil, add a few large pinches of salt, then stir in a clockwise direction to create a whirlpool.  Pour the eggs into the moving water.

Cover the pot and count to 20. Turn off the heat and uncover the pot.  The eggs should be floating on the surface in ribbons.

While holding back the eggs with a spoon, pour off most of the water.  Gently slide the eggs into the strainer and press them lightly to squeeze out any excess liquid.

Scoop the eggs into bowls, drizzle with olive oil,  if desired, and season with salt and freshly ground pepper.  Or, if you'd like, turn the eggs out onto a clean dishtowel and roll the eggs to shape them into a cylinder; slice into rounds.

Serve immediately.

Fresh From the Oven

Some of the 100 tartlets I made for the workshop at The Florence Griswold Museum tonight.  They're mini versions of the Tarte Noire from Baking and I'll tell you more about them the first chance I have.

Fireside Soup

There are lots of differences between men and women – you noticed, I know – but here’s one that came to mind last night as I settled into our house in Connecticut for a week of work sans Michael:  When the temperature hovers around zero, men build fires and woman make soup.  At last, that’s what this woman does.

On the drive up from New York, the weather guy kept saying that it was going to be dangerously cold and, in fact, it was awfully nippy when I made the dash from driveway to door and fumbled for my keys.  I got the heat going (that’s easy – a flip of a switch; no tree-chopping required), queued up the music, turned on the computer (it may be the country, but life without the internet is no life at all), made the big wine decision (it was definitely a red night) and started rummaging through the fridge.

There wasn’t a lot of fresh stuff in the house, I’d dragged pretty much everything back to New York with me last Sunday, but I always think that if I’ve got onions and a few carrots in the house, all is not lost, and, in fact, there was one onion, three big carrots and a few bonus tidbits: half a head of garlic, a teensy knob of ginger and one parsnip. 

I put all the vegetables in my trusty soup pot (a French blue Le Creuset number) and started softening them in olive oil over low heat, when inspiration struck – I stirred in turmeric and some wonderful garam masala, which had been mixed at Falls Brook Organic Farm, up the road a piece in Lyme.  Stir, stir, soften, soften, season, season, and then a big can of chicken broth and a handful of barley for stick-to-your-ribsness. 

It’s hard to tell you how happy I was.  Just knowing there was soup on the stove gave me the feeling of all being right in the world (or at least, in my little house for that little moment).  That it turned out to be an earthy, satisfying soup with a little bit of sweetness – the carrots, parsnips and garam masala did that – only added to the pleasure.

Oh, there was another nice thing:  the fire.  Once I knew the ingredients in the pot were on their way to soupdom, I could consider building a fire.  Naturally, by the time I built it I didn’t need it for warmth, but it was pretty swell for atmosphere. What doesn’t taste better eaten fireside?

Here’s the picture of the fire.  It’s not great, but I sent it off to Michael, who’s in London, just to prove to him that I did learn something when I was a Brownie.

And here’s the recipe – kind of – for the soup.  I say kind of because I didn’t measure anything while I was making it and you probably won’t either, it’s not that kind of recipe.

FIRESIDE SOUP

Makes 4 servings

1 to 2 tablespoons olive oil

2 to 3 onions, peeled, trimmed and diced

3 big carrots, peeled, trimmed and diced

1 parsnip, peeled, trimmed (cut out the core if it’s woody) and diced

3 cloves garlic, peeled and chopped

One 1-inch piece of ginger, peeled and chopped

Turmeric, to taste (start with about 1/2 teaspoon)

Garam masala, to taste (start with about 3/4 teaspoon)

Hot pepper flakes, to taste and optional

1 large can (48 ounces) chicken or vegetable broth (or water)

1/2 cup pearl barley, rinsed

Sea salt and freshly ground pepper

Warm the olive oil in a large heavy pot with a lid.  Add the onions, carrots, parsnip, garlic and ginger and stir to coat with oil.  Season with salt and pepper, cover and cook for about 5 minutes over low heat.  Stir in the turmeric, garam masala and hot pepper, if you’re using it, cover and continue to cook very gently, stirring often, until the vegetables are soft but not colored, about 15 minutes more.  Add the broth or water, bring to the boil over higher heat, then stir in the barley.  Reduce the heat so that the broth simmers, cover and cook until the barley is tender and “blossomed” (it will puff considerably).  Taste and add more salt, pepper and spices, as needed.

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.

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.

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.