DORIE GREENSPAN

Mortar and Pestle: What Took Me So Long?

You know how mothers are always telling their kids to follow their advice so that they (the kids) don't have make their (the mothers') mistakes?  Well, I feel a little like a mother now telling you to add a mortar and pestle to your batterie de cuisine sooner in your cooking life than later.

It's not that I didn't have a mortar and pestle before -- I did.  It was just the wrong one.  I had a small green marble duo that looked like it came from ye olde apothecary.  As pretty as it was, that's how ineffective it was.  It just wasn't big enough to do anything that really needed doing and, when I gave it a job that fit its petiteness, it couldn't do that either because it was so slick that stuff would just slide around no matter how fiercely I pounded. 

At last, after so many years in the kitchen, I found a proper mortar and pestle and instantly became a mortar-and-pestle evangelist.  I've also become someone who uses her food processor a lot less.

See the mint leaves in the mortar?  Three minutes after I took the picture, they were pesto!  There's a reason the tool has been around for centuries: it works -- quickly.  And it's fun to use.  And it's easy to clean.  And it's beautiful.  In the few days I've had it, I've made guacamole, an herb paste for a roasted chicken, a garlic vinaigrette and a red pepper dip.  And, I bought another one for Connecticut.  Can you tell I'm hooked?

This particular mortar and pestle comes from Thailand and is made from one piece of rough (the better to grind) granite.  It comes in three sizes: 1 1/2 cups, 2 cups and 3+ cups.  I bought the 3+ and I think, if you get a mortar and pestle, you should go jumbo, too.  You can use it to pound and grind teensy quantities, but when you've got a bunch of basil, a fistful of nuts, or a few heads of garlic, you'll be happy to have the room to move around. 

In true motherly fashion, I think that the first time you pound your way to pesto, you'll thank me.

Gifts for the Baker

This week, instead of a Baking with Dorie recipe on Serious Eats, I've posted a list of holiday gifts that would be fun to give to the bakers on your list - oh, and yes, they'd be fun for us bakers to get, too.

Of course it would be nice to give or get big-ticket bakers' dreams like a KitchenAid Stand Mixer or a fabulous Cuisinart Food Processor, which is what I use to make pie and tart doughs, but there are so many other great gifts that are so much less expensive, like the six-buck Pie Crust Bag that makes rolling out dough a cinch, or the great vanilla extract "crush" from Sonoma Syrups (which you might be able to find for even less at your local TJ Maxx).

After you take a look at the list, you might want to email it to Santa.  I'm told there's still time for the elves to fill special requests.

Bubble, Bubble, Toil, No Trouble: A New Soap

Today, my husband heard me say something that would only have been more startling had I chanted it in Swahili.  The words I uttered were:  “I can’t wait to get home and clean!”

Even I (who, sadly, was born without the neatness gene) was surprised by my reaction, but as soon as I smelled the soap that Amelia Hunt of Falls Brook Organic Farm had created, I wanted to just bathe in it.  And I can.  Amelia’s soap is totally organic, non-toxic, fabulous-smelling, good-cleaning and really, as she says, all-purpose. 

 

Just so you know, the cute farmer on the bottle is Michael Newburg, Amelia’s husband.  You’ve heard me talk about him lots because he’s the man who grows the best greens on earth and also the person responsible for teaching me how to keep his great greens fresh.

Here are the uses for the soap listed on the side of the bottle:  Hands, body, oily hair and pets; dishes, appliances, counter tops, cabinets, porcelain and tile surfaces; floors, woodwork, walls; produce (Amelia and Michael say you can add a drop or two to a salad spinner, rinse and spin); laundry; carpets and fabrics with spots and stains; cars and, my favorite, tractors.  I love this idea of one-stop soaping.

Here’s what I think is so delicious about the soap:  its smell.  The soap, which is a concentrate (you pour a little into a dispenser, then add water), is based on organic coconut, olive and jojoba oils and aloe vera and gets its scent from essential lavender, rosemary, oregano, marjoram and nutmeg oils with some grapefruit and rosemary extract mixed in.  You can see why any foodlover would fall for the fragrance.

When I got to the Farm, Amelia had only four bottles of the soap left

 

But there’ll be a batch arriving Monday (August 27) and, by Monday, she’ll have everything about the soap and how to buy it on the Farm's site (where you can also sign up to buy the Farm’s handmade paprika).

Each bottle holds 32 ounces, comes with a foaming dispenser, costs $18 and, because you dilute it, is probably enough to keep even Mr. Clean happy for a very long time. I know it kept me happy through the lunch dishes.

Rainy Day Salad

My husband, Michael, couldn’t resist this Siamese-twin tomato at the Lyme Farmers Market this week (it would have been a perfect match for the boomerang eggplant I bought the week before, but that had already become caponata)

Then, having bought it, he went back to New York, leaving me to tackle the double-headed monster on my own, which I did with one of my favorite knives

The knife (so elegant), made in Japan by Kyocera, has a ceramic blade with microscopic serrations that slice through tomato skin and soft tomato pulp effortlessly and neatly – the skin never tears and the fruit never goes ragged. 

Once I had separated the twins, I tasted the tomato to see if it was worth continuing.  The answer: yes!  In fact, the tomato was so good that I dashed out into the pouring rain to get some basil from the garden. 

With a tomato this good, less is just enough, so all I did was cut it into chunks, sprinkle it with fleur de sel and splash it with great olive oil.  Then I added some sliced plums, an idea lifted from a salad Dan Barber, the remarkable chef, had made at the remarkable Blue Hill at Stone Barns.

With a hunk of bread and good butter, it was the perfect lunch, made perfecter by the fact that I was alone so, when I finished the salad, I could drink the luscious tomato “soup” that had accumulated in the bottom of the bowl.  It certainly brightened a gray, rainy day.

Champagne: How to Keep the Fizz

A French friend once told me that the way to hold an opened bottle of Champagne was to stick a silver (or silverplated) spoon in it.  Since my friend had never steered me wrong, that’s what I did and I was happy for lots of years. 

Then some know-it-all told me that the spoon thing was an old wives’ myth.  He shrugged dismissively when I mentioned that my spooned Champagne seemed to have fizz a day later, and he insisted that the only thing to do with bubbly wine was to drink it up quickly – admittedly, not a bad idea, or to seal it with a cap made especially for that job – also not a bad idea.  So, I bought a cap and I used it and it was fine, perhaps finer than the silver-spoon solution, but I couldn’t really tell because, just like with the spooned leftovers, we sipped the stoppered stuff only a day later.

These days, I always have a stopper at hand, but I’m just as likely to grab a spoon as I am the little gadget, so you can imagine my delight when tonight, just as we were finishing a really delicious dinner at Chez Josephine (on the rue du Cherche-Midi in Paris), I saw the waiter pop a spoon into the top of an opened bottle of Champagne before stashing it in the fridge.

My question was: “Does it really work?”

And his answer was:  “It works for me; it works for my mother, who taught me the trick; and it worked for her mother, who taught it to her.” 

Of course.  And who’d argue with three generations of spooners?

PS.  After I wrote this, Serious Eats picked it up and posted an interesting idea on what works, what doesn't and why when it comes to keeping the bubbles in the bottle.  Click here to read it.

A Furi of Sharpness: Keeping Knives in Shape

I am not a competitive person.  For proof ask The Kid, who used to get so annoyed with me because I wouldn’t play checkers – capturing men upset me and having my men captured upset me even more.  So it’s not out of competitiveness, but rather a sense of tickledness, that I say, “I beat Rachel Ray!”  Well, I beat her at only one thing, but I beat her by a fair measure: I had my fabulous FuriTechnics TechEdge Pro Knife Sharpening System before she did.  Okay, she’s got her name on it now and now the sharpener comes in RR’s signature orange, but so what?  I’ve probably had sharper knives longer than she has!  (That's an RR version in the photo; my original model is in Connecticut.)

Actually, I saw the sharpener when its Australian designer, Mark Henry, was touring America with his prototype and for me it was love at first sight.  At last, I, who in addition to being non-competitive am a coward when it comes to handling lethal objects, could have sharp, sharp knives without having to use the dreaded steel or the gotta-get-it-precisely-right-or-you’ll-ruin-your-knives stone.

The sharpener – more technically, the system – looks like a lyrical piece of modern sculpture.  The curved part is a hand-protecting base with a clever contraption that holds the removable business ends of the system, all of them designed to be foolproof (ie, you don’t have to adjust a thing).  There’s a restorer that gets the angle on your knife into just-so condition; a springy diamond-coated sharpener; and a honer, which I think of as a polisher and use everyday – actually, several times I day:  whenever I pull down a knife, I give it a couple of slides through the honing gizmo. 

Good tools make me happy (I’m sure I’ve said this before) and I find cutting with a sharp knife a pleasure, efficient too:  sharp knives cut faster and everything they cut looks better.  This might sound ridiculous, but I think that even if your knife skills aren’t Iron-Chef worthy, you end up feeling better about your cutting chops when your knives are sharp  - at least I do. 

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 ...