Mulberry Jam

Last night we finally got some rain; July has been shaping up as a dry one. Most disappointing after all that nice rain we had in June and May, too. Despite the respite, I know it won’t be long before we’re back to the heat and humidity that is summer in Washington. I look for any way to avoid heating up the kitchen on days like that, and here’s a recipe for a cold soup that has found its way into heavy rotation at my house.  You can whiz this up in a blender or food processor in five minutes flat.

Chilled Cucumber Soup
(makes about one quart)

2 large cucumbers, peeled, seeded and cut into chunks
1 clove garlic
1 c. greek style yogurt (such as Fage)
1 c. regular plain yogurt (may use 2 c. regular yogurt if greek style isn’t available)
1-2 c. buttermilk (depending on how thick you like your soup)
1/4 cup mixed fresh herbs: mint, marjoram, thyme, you pick
salt (don’t skimp here, it takes at least 1t., and maybe 2)
black pepper

Garnish: minced hard boiled egg, snipped chives

In food processor or blender, buzz up one cucumber and the garlic clove to a rough paste. Add salt, pepper, yogurt and blend on pulse. Add herbs and the second cucumber and pulse to blend, but leave a bit of texture in the soup. Add buttermilk to thin to the desired texture. Chill for at least an hour. You may add a few ice cubes to speed chilling of the soup, but don’t dilute it so much you make it watery. Garnish with the chopped egg and chives.

Naturally since the weather over the three-day holiday was not so good, today is just lovely. Sunny, blue sky and not horribly hot considering it’s July in Washington. The mulberries are finally fading after five weeks of creating their usual sticky, jammy mess on the front walk and street. I did get to make a batch of mulberry jam this year, and I think it turned out well. Now to decide who deserves one of the little labors of love. (Fritz, I’ve got one with your name on it, you lucky devil!)

This Spring raced by, filled with a heavy schedule of consulting and yoga teaching. At last the yoga studio session has finished, and I’m looking forward to a break from teaching. I’ve committed to just one class per week during July and August, which should allow a bit more breathing room in my weeks. I plan to use the extra time to catch up on some overdue writing projects, re-invest in my own personal yoga practice, and hopefully post to the Jam a bit more regularly. Most of all, I want to slow down and enjoy the summer by spending more time with friends and family.

We had the unexpected pleasure today of hosting our good friend and neighbor Chris Apostolou and his father for lunch. Chris’ father is a spry Greek gentleman with a gift for cooking. He’s sent many traditional pastries and other goodies our way through Chris, and today he finally accepted a long-standing invitation to drop in.

Mr. Apostolou emigrated to America from the mountains of central Greece in the early fifties, with no English and just $60 in his pocket. He’s a fantastic story-teller and an inveterate leg-puller. I was charmed to learn his name is Pericles! Greek names are so wonderful. I’ve met other Greek-Americans with names like Socrates or Athena. It’s enough to give a person a cultural inferiority complex.

We lingered over lunch for a couple of hours, listening and laughing over Mr. Apostolou’s stories of working as a haphazardly trained waiter at high class hotels like San Francisco’s Fairmont and Washington’s Mayflower in the fifties. His best punch line: “And how do you want your steak tartare done?”

If I worked in an office I’d never get to have lunches like that.

It’s very cold and windy outside today. A great day to stay in with lots of pillows and a snoozy cat. I did manage to organize myself after lunch to make some cookies, though. I’ve been doing some minor tinkering with this recipe for oatmeal cookies and I’m really happy with them. They’re irresistibly chewy with a great caramelized almost toffee-like flavor thanks to all the butter. Thanks to Mom for sharing the recipe for these:

Favorite Oatmeal Cookies
3/4 c butter, softened (1 and 1/2 sticks)
1 c packed light brown sugar
1/2 c granulated sugar
1 large egg
1/4 c water
1 t vanilla
2 and 2/3 c rolled oats
1 c flour
1 t salt
1/2 t baking soda
1 c sweetened flaked coconut
1 c chopped pecans

Cream together butter and sugars, then beat in egg, water and vanilla. Sift all-purpose flour together with baking soda and salt and stir into wet ingredients, then add remaining ingredients and mix. Drop spoonfuls onto greased cookie sheet and bake for 10-12 minutes. Since I don’t have a convection oven, I usually bake them for 10 to 11 minutes, then turn the pan and finish for another 1-2 minutes. Cool on the pan before removing to a cooling rack. These cookies are best when allowed to brown to a light caramel color. They are flat and very chewy, almost like Florentines. While I think old-fashioned rolled oats are best, you can use quick oats in pinch—with quick oats use 3 cups of oats and be aware the cookies will be somewhat doughier and less chewy. I don’t have to talk to you about using real butter, do I? Margarine just would not be the same.

My husband Mark loves homemade applesauce. And so do I. You might not think there would be a great difference between the kind you buy in a jar and homemade, but trust me, there really is. Maybe it’s because with something as simple as applesauce, which is really just apples and a bit of sugar cooked down, the pure flavor of the raw materials really comes through.

This year I was excited to make a batch because I had the chance to go out to the country and buy apples directly from the grower. Fifer Orchards in Wyoming, Delaware, raises a large variety of apples. Even better, they sell the “seconds” or bruised and nicked apples, for dirt cheap prices out of huge bins right on site at the orchard. I bought an enormous sack, probably at least a peck of apples, for only a few dollars. That’s when the economics of making applesauce work for you, as well as the flavor benefits!

The hardest part of making applesauce is the preparation. Peeling twenty or thirty apples by hand is no joke! Modern kitchen equipment is no help at all here. What you want is something that is nineteenth century technology—an apple peeler gizmo like the one in the photo above. It makes short work of peeling and coring apples. With one of these the job may still be messy, but at least it will be quick.

After peeling and coring the apples, slice them into quarters or chunks. Put them in a pot with a little water and cook for about half an hour. Then it’s back to the old-fashioned techno gadgets for me. For pulping the apples after they’re cooked, I use a manual food mill with the coarsest disk in place. It gives perfect applesauce consistency—textured and not too smooth.

Here’s my very simple recipe, adapted from The Margaret Rudkin Pepperidge Farm Cookbook, ©1963. I love this cookbook, and stole it from my mother’s shelf the first chance I got.

Homemade Applesauce

20 – 25 medium apples
2 cups water
1 cup sugar

Wash, peel, quarter and core the apples. Cook them with the water until tender, about 25 to 30 minutes depending on the variety of apple used. Remove from heat and process through a food mill using the coarsest disk. Add the sugar and cook for five minutes longer. Cool and chill before serving. Makes about two quarts.

Applesauce freezes very well. You can experiment by using different blends of apple varieties. My favorite by far is to use two-thirds Golden Delicious to one-third Fuji. I find that combination produces my Platonic ideal of applesauce flavor and texture.

Yesterday my husband and I drove up to Downingtown, Pennsylvania on a one-day trip. Downingtown is about a half-hour west of Philadelphia in Chester County, an area that’s still largely rural but with a growing population of suburban commuters into the Philadelphia metropolis. Our visit was for the annual meeting of investors in Victory Brewing Company, a craft brewery that’s probably best known for its Hop Devil and Golden Monkey beers. It was an exciting trip, because after ten years of unrelenting work the brewery is really doing well. They’ve doubled in size in the last three years and have moved well beyond the micro-brewery category to become a successful regional brewery with solid sales throughout the mid-Atlantic and beyond. Mark and I have known the founders, Bill Covaleski and Ron Barchet, since long before the brewery was even a gleam in their eye. I’m delighted to see my friends doing so well and to know we had a part in that as two of their first investors.

I’ve always gotten a thrill from visiting the brewery, now just as much as in the days when Victory was a tenth its current size. It’s a surprisingly sensual experience, with fascinating smells from the natural ingredients that go into the beer—the floral green smell of hops, the earthy oatmeal smell of barley malt, and the unmistakable slightly sour, yeasty smell of the fermenting beer. The wing where the beer is brewed and fermented is toasty warm, with bright sunlight falling in from skylights overhead. The rooms where the shiny stainless tanks stand to age the beer are cool, dim and slightly damp, with water puddling on the tile floor.

The finished product is served in a family-friendly restaurant overlooking the lagering tanks. I used to be surprised by how many children I saw in the dining room, but now I understand why. It’s a roomy, casual place with oak tables and chairs and high ceilings. Kids can run around between the tables and no-one seems to worry if they get a little loud. The food is simple but very tasty. The menu includes burgers, salads and barbecue. Most popular is the pizza cooked in two wood-burning ovens.

What draws most people is the chance to sample the full range of Victory’s many beers. There are usually at least eight to ten beers on tap at the restaurant, in a lineup that changes seasonally. Yesterday I sampled a light, fresh-tasting kolsch, a style that originated in Cologne, and a brown ale that’s still in the tanks and hasn’t even been named yet. Both were delicious. Victory has won multiple awards for their flagship Hop Devil beer, an India Pale Ale. They’re also increasingly famous for a Belgian-style beer called Golden Monkey and for their pilsner, Prima Pils. Prima was recognized as one of the best pilsner-style beers in the world by both the New York Times and Men’s Journal magazine in 2005.

If I’ve piqued your curiosity, I encourage you to look for the beer. It’s sold in supermarkets throughout the Washington area and in a growing number of states across the country. The company website has a beer finder to help you find a local distributor wherever you may live. Or you might consider taking your own little trip up to Downingtown. I think you’ll find it worth the trip.

I mentioned in my last post that my husband is home sick with a nasty cold this week. So of course he made a request for chicken soup. In this house, I am never without a few quarts of homemade chicken stock in the freezer, so I was happy to accommodate him. Having my own stock available as a base for virtually any soup is one of those things that gives me a feeling of satisfaction and preparedness. Like having refrigerator full of food or knowing all the laundry is done and put away. Mark says he gets the same feeling from having a full tank of gas. Since my own stock is so much more flavorful than ordinary canned broth, I am only a few ingredients and a few minutes away from tasty soup whenever I want it. I highly recommend that you try making your own chicken stock at least once. If you find that it’s not worth the bother to you (which I could understand) or that you can’t taste the difference (which I doubt), then you can go back to canned stock with my blessing. But I bet you won’t.

This recipe has been adapted from one found in the Dairy Hollow House Soup and Bread Cookbook, by Crescent Dragonwagon. Yes, she’s a former (?) hippie. She also runs a well-known inn in the Ozark mountains of Arkansas. Her cookbook is one of my favorites, and I’ve made many of the recipes in it over the years.

Chicken Stock

4 to 5 pounds chicken pieces.
Note: A whole chicken cut up is great, or I often use a family pack of leg quarters since they’re so inexpensive.

2 medium onions, unpeeled and quartered
8 whole cloves
3 ribs celery with leaves, broken into big pieces
1 medium parsnip, scrubbed and cut into chunks (optional but highly recommended)
2 medium carrots, scrubbed and cut into chunks
3 cloves garlic, unpeeled
2 bay leaves
8 whole peppercorns
large pinch each of dried rosemary, thyme, sage
4 sprigs fresh parsley
large pinch of celery seeds
2 T. cider vinegar
1 T. salt

Rinse the chicken parts, leaving skin on but removing any large pieces of fat. Spray a large stock pot with non-stick spray and put chicken in the pot.

Stud each onion quarter with one of the cloves. Put all the vegetables into the pot with the chicken. Add the seasonings and top off the stock pot with spring water or filtered water. My stock pot is quite large, so I add about four to five quarts of water.

Bring to a boil slowly, over medium heat. Once the stock reaches a boil, lower heat to a steady simmer and continue to cook, uncovered, for two and a half to three hours. As liquid boils away, replenish occasionally to keep the water level up.

After about three hours of cooking, you’ll be left with a flavorful liquid and a bunch of mushy, tasteless chicken and vegetables. Pour off the stock by straining it into another large container or stockpot. I filter my stock through a mesh sieve lined with several layers of cheesecloth to strain out little bits of herbs and chicken that make the stock not so attractive.

Cool the strained stock as quickly as possible. In summer I often do this by sinking the container in a sink full of cold water mixed with ice cubes. Pour the cooled stock into freezer-safe containers (I use old yogurt containers) and refrigerate for several hours. After the stock has chilled thoroughly, the fat will rise to the top and solidify in a yellow sheet. You can simply lift the fat off and toss it for healthy, defatted stock.

Stock keeps indefinitely in the freezer. When I use it in soups, I never bother to thaw it out in advance. I run warm water over the outside of the container until the frozen stock slides out into my soup pot, then melt the stock over heat and bring it to a boil, which takes only a few minutes.

Makes 4 to 5 quarts stock.

Enough with the boneless skinless chicken breasts! What if you could have a golden brown roasted chicken ready in about an hour and fifteen minutes? And remember, once you get the bird into the oven, most of that time can be spent relaxing with a glass of wine while you wait for a savory dinner.

This is an aside, but I think it’s relevant. I know the skinless breasts are popular largely because they cook quickly, but I think it’s also related to the lack of respect we give to chicken these days. I’ve always thought of chicken as budget food, but that certainly hasn’t always been the case. In a history of the 1930’s that I read recently, the prices of common food and dry goods items during the depression were listed. At that time, chicken cost as much as beef, pound for pound, and a chicken dinner was something special. That fact kind of lends a new light to those old campaign promises of "a chicken in every pot," doesn’t it?

My husband claims that he could happily eat roast chicken once a week. Jacques Pepin, my kitchen idol, says that his family served roast chicken every Sunday. Although I’m not ready to have it quite that often, it is something I make at least once or twice a month. It’s so simple and so good that I hope more people will consider revisiting a simple roasted chicken.

Part of the secret is cooking a smaller bird. Many chickens labelled "oven stuffers" can be five or six pounds, which takes a long time to cook. When you roast a small bird, it doesn’t take long and the breast stays juicy, so I always look for a bird of three-and-a-half to four pounds. I cook the bird more quickly at a higher temperature which helps make sure the outside turns golden brown while the meat stays moist. The method below is adapted from one of my favorite cookbooks, "Julia and Jacques: Cooking at Home."

1 fresh 3 ½ pound chicken
salt and pepper
handful of fresh sage leaves or ½ t. dried thyme
1 lemon cut into ¼-inch slices
2 T. unsalted butter
kitchen string

Preheat the oven to 425 degrees. In a heavy roasting pan, cover the bottom with parchment paper to keep the bird from sticking.

Wash the chicken inside and out and pat dry with paper towels. Sprinkle salt and pepper in the cavity, and stuff with the lemon slices and herbs. Cut off the final joint of the wings and truss the bird tightly with kitchen string. Smear softened butter over the entire bird and sprinkle with more salt and pepper.

This is the part that’s different from what most people do: Lay the bird on its side in direct contact with the parchment for the first portion of the cooking. If well-trussed, it will probably be able to sit up that way on its own, but if it tends to fall over I brace the chicken with a slice of potato. This way the darker meat of the thigh and leg receives more direct heat and browns beautifully.

Bake the bird on its side for about 25 minutes (four or five minutes longer for a 4-pound bird). Then pull the pan out of the oven and turn the bird gently onto the other side, trying not to break the skin. Lower the heat to 400 degrees (Important!) and put the chicken back in for another 25 minutes. When that period is over, take the pan out and turn the bird breast side up. Brush with the juices that have collected at the bottom of the pan and return it to the oven for a final fifteen to twenty minutes. At the end of that time, the bird will be golden brown. Test for doneness by pricking the thickest part of the thigh. Juices should run clear, with no trace of pink, and the bones should move easily.

Let the chicken rest for ten minutes before carving into quarters. This serves four or makes two meals for two.

When I lived within the District of Columbia in my late twenties, lots of my fellow city dwellers were very dismissive about the idea of living in the suburbs. The general attitude was, why would anyone pass up the excitement and stimulation of living in the heart of the city in order to go out to a territory of manicured sameness and homogeneity? And for a few years I bought into this idea too. I treasured my easy access to ethnic restaurants and quirky shops. I was enormously pleased to hear the mishmash of foreign languages on the streets around me. I congratulated myself for living in such a culturally advanced setting.

But it’s a good rule to never say never. Just a few years later I found myself in love with a man who had just bought a nice house in northern Virginia. We quickly decided we couldn’t do without each other and I moved my household lock stock and barrel into his place eight miles outside of DC.

I expected that this would mean a sharp reduction in my exposure to other cultures. But I’d been reckoning without the turn-of-the-century model of a suburb. I quickly found that my neighbors were now a far more diverse lot than before. Whereas my neighborhood in Washington had been almost exclusively comprised of white professionals, now I live in a neighborhood where immigrant families outnumber the American-born. My immediate next-door neighbors are from the Philippines, from Jordan, from Guatemala and from the Caribbean. I’ve had lots of occasions to use my rusty Spanish when communicating with the folks with whom I now share a property line.

I haven’t suffered any decline in nearby ethnic restaurants and shops, either. Within walking distance from my house are four Asian grocery stores, two Latin American groceries, and one Indian grocery. There is a Bolivian bakery, a German gourmet food shop, a Vietnamese place specializing in pho (beef broth and noodle soup) and a Korean restaurant. The local pizza and sub shop is run by an Iranian family and the Italian restaurant has a staff of Eastern Europeans. If I get into my car, I am within five minutes of the Eden Center, a huge shopping plaza catering to the local Vietnamese population with restaurants, jewelry stores and video shops, travel agencies and more.

The Bolivian bakery at the end of my street is a great example of the stew of influences I’m surround by on a daily basis. The shop makes terrific croissants and doughnuts, but also sells Bolivian favorites I’d never encountered before. Pastel con api is a popular combination—a light flaky pastry filled with cheese and a thick warming drink made from blue corn and sweet spices. There is also a sit-down Bolivian restaurant nearby and I’m trying to learn my way through a menu that is filled with dishes I’ve never tasted before, like sopa de trigo, a hearty soup thickened with whole grains of wheat.

Don’t think I’m living is some unusual enclave either. In this area, my neighborhood is typical, nothing special. So just a suggestion to my city-dwelling friends still harboring anti-suburban mindsets: Why don’t you come out and visit a little more? You might find that the whole idea of city versus suburbs is more than a bit passé.

Last night we had vegetable soup and cornbread for dinner, one of my favorite cold-weather combinations. You’ll notice from the photo that this is yet another dish that’s best baked in my beloved cast-iron pan (see my blog entry about the pan from earlier in January). I’ve tried literally dozens of cornbread recipes because I love it so much. This is the standby, the one I always come back to. I’ve adapted it from a recipe in Dairy Hollow House Soup & Bread, one of my favorite cookbooks. Written by the unforgettably named Crescent Dragonwagon (a true hippie from wayback), my book is starting to come apart at the seams from too much love.

Buttermilk Cornbread

1 cup yellow cornmeal
1 cup unbleached all-purpose flour
1 T. baking powder
½ t. salt
¼ t. baking soda
1 ¼ cups buttermilk
1 large egg
2 T. sugar
¼ cup canola oil (or other mild vegetable oil)
2 T. butter

Preheat your oven to 375 degrees. In a large bowl, combine cornmeal, flour, baking powder, salt and baking soda. In another bowl, whisk together egg, oil, sugar and buttermilk. Spray a 10-inch skillet with nonstick spray and heat over med-high heat on top of the stove. Melt the two tablespoons of butter in the pan until it starts to sizzle, then quickly combine wet and dry ingredients and scrape all batter into the skillet and transfer to the oven. Bake for about 25 minutes, until golden brown. I like mine slathered with butter and honey.

I went to the store last week in search of beef short ribs to make a Belgian beef carbonnade. I was picturing a fork-tender, slow-braised dish, some egg noodles and a goblet of Belgian-style ale for one of these long January nights. This dish came out so well I wondered why I haven’t made it more often. I have a feeling I will be in the future.

Braising is a cooking method that I fall back on time and again during winter. Cooking more substantial cuts of meat using slow, wet heat produces rich flavors without much attention or effort from the cook. You can get everything in the pot at a low simmer, pour yourself a glass of wine and relax. Dinner won’t be ready quickly, but all you need to do is stir once in a while for the two to three hours it will take to develop. Put this dish on the stove late one weekend afternoon. You’ll feel enviably cozy when you serve this up a few hours later from a fragrant kitchen.

This carbonnade is my adaptation of a traditional Belgian recipe, where beer is often used in cooking. I strongly recommend using a malty-flavored ale for the braising liquid, as opposed to a dry beer like a pilsner. My favorite beer for this dish is a barleywine made by Victory Brewing Company called Old Horizontal. It’s a somewhat extravagant choice to use this high-alcohol beer usually thought of as a sipping beverage, but the complex flavors meld beautifully with the flavors in the stew. The alcohol will cook out during the two hours of simmering time and you are left with an incredible elixir of a sauce.

3 lbs. beef short ribs
3 T. peanut oil
4 c. sliced onions
3 cloves garlic, peeled
1/3 cup flour
2 t. salt
1/4 t. ground pepper
2 bay leaves
2 T. tomato paste
2 T. brown sugar
1/2 t. thyme
1 c. beef broth
1 bottle Victory Old Horizontal beer (or another malty beer)

Lightly coat a deep Dutch oven with non-stick spray. Heat peanut oil over medium high heat until very hot, then brown meat, turning so all sides may brown. Remove to a small bowl. Add onions to the pot and cook until golden. Add meat back to pot and sprinkle with flour, salt and pepper, stirring to coat thoroughly. Add remaining ingredients and bring to a simmer.

At this point you may move the pot to a preheated 325-degree or continue cooking over low heat on the stove. Either way, cook for 2 to 3 hours or until meat is fork-tender. Serve with boiled potatoes or egg noodles to enjoy the sauce.