Still, I’ve been thinking about this place… see?

NB: This is just an assignment for a book design class. I don’t really have a book, and Wiley’s not really publishing it. I don’t know Mort Rosenbaum, Tony Bourdain, or Ruth Reichl. If I did, I doubt they’d have such nice things to say about me. But it’d be pretty cool, wouldn’t it?

An oven-roasted chicken is to my mind one of the most delicious things a person could eat at seven-thirty on a Tuesday night in December, at home, after a sort of long day out in the world. It isn’t part of a “30 minute” meal for sure, but active preparation time is minimal. Whole chickens are relatively inexpensive considering all that you get: bones and cartilage for chicken stock, livers to feed to your cats, and at least two meals’ worth of meat for you and a friend. Plus, a simple roasted chicken is darned tasty and goes with anything you might want to eat it with. I happen to prefer sautéed green beans with shallots, butter, and toasted almonds and lumpy mashed Yukon Gold potatoes, but you can serve just about anything with a chicken. That’s part of what makes them so great.

But here’s the thing about roasting a chicken: everyone, everywhere—in every blog, cookbook, and TV show—claims that cooking a chicken in the oven is the easiest thing in the world to do. They also usually claim that it takes about forty minutes. The first time I roasted a chicken, I accepted both of these premises without question. I rinsed the bird, patted it dry, salted and peppered it, stuffed it with a lemon, and stuck it in the oven. I waited fifty minutes (to be on the safe side) and then I pulled it out onto the counter, hacked into it, and was horrified to find it still pink near the breastbone.

I did this three times with only minor adjustments.

A sort-of-pink-in-the-middle chicken isn’t the worst thing that ever happened to a gal. There’s enough fully cooked meat to have your meal, and the rest becomes stock. Still, my inability to properly roast a chicken grated.

After an indeterminate period of sulking, I resolved to learn how to do it right. I turned to three of the most-referenced cookbooks in my library: A New Way to Cook by Sally Schneider, The Art of Simple Food by Alice Waters, and The America’s Test Kitchen Family Cookbook. Naturally, each had a different take on “perfect” and “foolproof” procedures. Waters and Schneider both advocate flipping the chicken from its back to its breast during cooking as a means to achieve more even cooking by mimicking rotisserie action. They disagree, however, about which position to start in and how many times to flip. All disagreed about oven temperature and seasoning methods. America’s Test Kitchen (ATK) offered the simplest procedure, of course, though they recommend one additional step—brining.

So I made them all, following the instructions as closely as I was able (perhaps you are familiar with my inability to follow directions), thinking critically about the chicken-baking odyssey unfolding in my very own kitchen. More than two months later (’cause how many chickens, no matter how divine, can you expect a girl and her squeeze to eat?), here is what I know:

• Chicken flipping, though awkward, is worth the effort.

Waters suggests starting the bird breast up, flipping it after twenty minutes, then flipping it again to finish. Schneider advocates flipping only once, starting the bird breast-side down. However you choose to flip, you’ll get a more evenly done bird—no more dried out white meat waiting for the dark to be done.

• Temperature is critical.

Removing the chicken from the refrigerator about two hours before putting it in the oven will also contribute to uniform doneness. Likewise, starting off with a cooler oven (350º) and then raising it mid-roast (to 400-450º) will ensure that the inside of the bird has time to cook through before the skin attains brown and crispy perfection.

• Chicken-roasting to an internal temperature of 170ºF (that’s 5 degrees above the official “safety zone,” even before carryover cooking) will take longer than you want it to.

This mental disconnection may be accounted for by the fact that in recent years we’ve come to equate simple with quick. This is flawed logic. The last bird I cooked, one weighing nearly four pounds, brined (more on this in a moment), and removed from the fridge two hours before insertion into a hot oven, took one hour and fifteen minutes to cook. My oven and yours are different, so don’t count on any chicken you cook to take as long, but you can count on at least an hour to cook, plus ten or twenty minutes to rest after removing the bird from the oven.

• Brining is cool!

To “dramatically improve the flavor and tenderness,” ATK recommends a brine of 2 quarts cold water, ½ cup table salt and ½ cup sugar for a 3½ – 4 pound chicken. Dissolve the salt and sugar in the water in a container large enough to accommodate the bird. Submerge completely, cover, and refrigerate for thirty minutes to an hour. Remove from the brine, rinse, and pat dry.

If brining’s not your thing, there are other ways to season and tenderize a bird, however.

So, here’s A Chicken, Roasted:

1. If possible, season your chicken a day or two before you are going to prepare it. Rinse it inside and out, pat it dry, and remove excess fat. Rub the chicken, again inside and out, with a mixture of 1½ teaspoons Kosher salt and ½ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper. At this time, you can also put slivers of garlic and sprigs of herbs (I like thyme) under the skin.
2. Wrap the chicken back up and refrigerate until at least one hour before putting it in the oven.
3. Preheat your oven to 350ºF.
4. Prepare your baking pan: Use a V-shaped rack if you have one. It’s good to elevate the bird from the bottom of the roasting pan. This allows air to circulate around the whole thing, which helps cook it more evenly. Having an appropriately sized pan is important, too. You want one about the size of your chicken. As Waters points out, if a too-large pan is used, the accumulated juices will burn and smoke.
5. If you’re planning to make chicken gravy, add roughly chopped carrots, onions, and celery to the bottom of the pan for a richer flavor in the finished sauce.
6. Stuff the interior cavity with lemon quarters, herbs, and garlic. The lemon will tenderize the meat, and impart a distinctly lemony flavor. If you are planning to use the carcass for stock, substitute onion or shallot for the lemon.
7. Truss the chicken. You can watch a how-to video here. If you’re not down with trussing, at least tuck the wings behind the bird. This will prevent them from burning during roasting.
8. Place the bird on the rack breast side up. Roast for fifteen minutes.
9. Remove the pan from the oven and carefully flip the bird (I’ve just grabbed it with pot holders, though bird-lifting gadgets are available). Return to oven and cook for fifteen minutes more.
10. Flip again, so that the breast is up. Return to oven and increase temperature to 425ºF.
11. Continue to cook until an instant-read thermometer registers 170ºF when inserted into the thickest part of the breast. Also, look for evenly browned skin. Remove from oven.
12. Tip the chicken so the juices run out of the cavity. Move the chicken to a carving board and let sit, uncovered, for fifteen minutes before carving.

Ingredients:

Procedure:

1. Measure out the flour and place in a large bowl.  Make a well in the center of the flour mound.
2. Mix eggs and yolks in a separate bowl.  Break up yolks and whites with a fork, as if you’re fixin’ to scramble them.  Add basil.
3. Pour the egg mixture into the flour well.  
4. Mix with a fork, then with your hand when the flour is too stiff. Add a little bit of water if the dough is too crumbly. Turn out onto  lightly floured surface and knead until a smoothish dough forms.
5. Divide and form two discs.
6. Wrap discs in plastic and let sit at room temperature for at least an hour.  This gives the gluten some time to relax and makes it much easier to roll and stretch out later.

You can roll out pasta by hand, or use a machine.  I used a machine.  

7. Pass the disc through the machine at its widest settling.  Fold in thirds and pass through the machine again.  Repeat twice, or until the surface of the dough is smooth and shiny.
8. Continue to pass dough through the machine, gradually decreasing the space between rollers until desired thinness is achieved. 
9. Cut to desired shape and length.
10. Fresh pasta absorbs a lot of water when it cooks, so use a generous amount of lightly salted, vigorously boiling water.
11. Fresh pasta also cooks very quickly, about three to six minutes.

If you’re not going to cook the pasta right away after cutting it, toss in a little bit of flour, lay out on a sheet pan, cover with parchment or a towel, and refrigerate.

I guess I must have grown up a Nabisco Kid. I can still hear the mid-1980s jingle: the rising intonation of the company name followed by the sweet little “bing,” just like, I always imagined, a faerie’s wand, putting just a little bit of magic into my favorite snack cookie. Little Debbie was cute, but she never stood a chance.

While the Keebler Elves kind of creeped me out, and I’ve always preferred Premium brand saltine crackers to Nabisco’s Club, the Fig Newton is, I believe, among the very best of the brand’s bunch. And while I can’t really sign off on the “fruit and cake” assessment, the classic Fig Newton is no ordinary cookie. Neither is my grown-up version of it, a revision and expansion of David Lebovitz’ Fig Cookie recipe in his gorgeous cookbook, Room for Dessert.

You will need a couple of hours from start to finish, which may be split over two days if you like. I suggest starting with the filling, and letting it reduce and thicken while you make the cookie dough. When both the filling and the dough are well chilled, you’ll want a good-sized, cool workspace upon which to roll out the dough and assemble the cookie logs. I like working on a lightly-floured pastry cloth, as the cloth makes transferring the log to a cookie sheet quite easy. When I set to making these the first time, I was somewhat intimidated at the notion of making a filled cookie, but they are really quite simple.

Roll the dough out into rectangles, then make a row of filling in the middle.

Then brush the edges with water. Fold one side up, then the other.

Next, just press the short ends together to seal off the log and transfer to a lined baking sheet.

Bake until golden, about thirty minutes. Cool; slice.

I do not often bake cakes. Cake, somehow, has become dessert of higher order. Cakes mark birthdays, weddings, anniversaries, graduations – and evidently conception – and these are no ordinary events. Cakes signal extra-specialness. I’m more of a cookie girl myself. I’m big on breakfast pastries and quickbreads. I like me a real nice tart once in a while. But I only make cake when someone else is having a party and I am asked very nicely to provide dessert.

There are two noteworthy results of this trend: One: Whenever I do make a cake, I am always eager to test a new recipe that I’ve been sitting on for weeks, maybe months. Two: Since I get such little practice, I’m not terrifically good at it.
I have picked up a few tricks over the years, though – most from the Infamous Frenchman – and this handful of techniques has served me relatively well. Attempting to be sensible, this time around I only altered one piece of the cake puzzle and stuck with the rest of my usual construction. There was little chance that the fillings, frosting, or decoration would go awry – the only wildcard this time around was Sally Schneider’s Nut Cake recipe. But it isn’t as if I found the Nut Cake recipe stuck to the underside of a MAX seat, Ms. Schneider seems to know what’s what (far better than I).

J9′s Nuts and Berries Cake, for Julia and Skippy

Components:
• Berry Compote (I used cherries and marionberries and a little bit of sugar, cooked down until very thick.)
• Fresh raspberries
• Fresh blueberries
• Candied hazelnuts
• Lemon Chantilly (chantilly = heavy whipping cream + confectioner’s sugar)
• Edible flowers
• Sally’s Nut Cake (mine was almond and hazelnut)

Ingredients:

Procedure:

1. With a very sharp knife, cut corn kernels from the cob. This should yield about five cups of kernels. Reserve the cobs.
2. In a large, heavy stockpot, combine the olive oil, onion and shallot and cook over medium-low heat, covered, until the onions are translucent.
3. Stir in the corn and cook for about 4 minutes longer.
4. Stir in the garlic, peppers, and cumin seeds and cook, stirring occasionally, until the cumin is very fragrant.
5. Add the salt, sugar, stock, milk and reserved cobs.
6. Bring to a boil, reduce to a simmer, and cook, covered, until the corn is very tender, about 20 to 30 minutes.
7. Remove corncobs and puree at least 50% of the soup. I recommend using an immersion blender, though a food processor or blender will get the job done just fine. If using either of the latter two, exercise caution moving the very hot soup around.
8. Season to taste with black pepper.
9. Garnish with freshly minced cilantro and a squeeze of lime juice. Serves about six.

I grew up eating Nabisco’s Nilla Wafers. They were a snack cupboard staple and I loved them. I loved them fresh and crisp, all rich butter-snap and artificial vanilla flavor. Sometimes, I would put an entire disc in my mouth, place it vertically between my teeth with my mouth open wide, seal my lips around the edges and breathe through the cookie, like a gas mask: Nilla Air. I also loved them stale, and soft. I’d suck on them until they disintegrated and I could press the crumbs into a ball with my tongue. I ate them right out of the box, by the handful. Sometimes, though not often, I’d dunk them in milk.

Maybe eight years ago or more, Nabisco changed the cookie’s recipe, and my love flagged a little bit. I don’t know what they did to the Nilla, and by now I doubt I could tell the difference. I only remember feeling awfully disappointed when I first realized they were different. I threw the whole package away. Perhaps my own tastes changed, but I don’t think so. The first few years were pretty rough, but, predictably, I got over the loss, stopped crying in the supermarket. I even forgot about them for a stretch. Now, I buy a box maybe once a year and I can appreciate them for what they are. The NewNilla isn’t so bad; it’s perfectly passable in fact.

I have come to believe, however, that I deserve a cookie that is more than passable. Imagine, then, how my little heart fluttered when I came upon a recipe for “Whole Wheat Vanilla Wafers” in my newly aquired Bob’s Red Mill Baking Book. I am still on the fence about the Baking Book, so I was eager to try out another recipe. And what better test than a potential Nilla-replacement? A Nilla for grown-ups.

I followed the recipe exactly as outlined in the book. This alone is a congratulatable feat for me. Halfway through mixing, I thought that adding some almond extract might be a good idea – or rolling the dough in sesame seeds before baking, or – - – I like to fuss. I think I know better. (and I do, but this is immodest.) In order to judge a new recipe, however, you really have to make it their way at least once, just to know what you’re working with. It would be a shame to set to improve something that’s already exactly what it ought to be. And, though most recipes are never even close to what they ought to be, I am making an effort to give them at least one shot to show me their stuff.

The verdict: I will never recapture the NillaLove of my youth. In order to make a facsimile of the original Nilla Wafers, I would have to use more sugar and more hydrogenated fats than I am prepared to put into a cookie. But this cookie, this Whole Wheat Vanilla Wafer that Bob’s got in his book, is pretty good. I don’t think I would call them “wafers,” but the vanilla flavor is right on, and the addition of whole wheat flour adds a level of complexity to both flavor and texture absent the Nabisco cookie. Bake them until they are just browning on the edges for a softer cookie; bake them until they are golden for a crisper one. Flatten them a little before you put them in the oven and they might be passable as “wafers,” but I think the little cookie mounds that I made are just fine.

My journey to hooch-in-the-linen closet began many months ago, when a good friend discovered – by what means I can’t recall – The Joy of Home Winemaking. Being the type of woman inclined to make her own wine (just as she cooks, bakes, gardens, and makes her own jams), she set to work at all kinds of home brews – dandelion, grapefruit, berry – which, reportedly, not only did not kill anyone, but were also very tasty.

On August 18th of last year, I publicly vowed that I, too, would make my own wine someday. I promptly ordered the book. I even read most of it. And then I put the winemaking project aside in favor of other things. Finishing my Bachelor’s degree, for instance. I imagined that home winemaking could rapidly become an expensive and time-consuming hobby. My kitchen and craft room already spilling over with baking bread, sewing projects, knitting lopsided baby blankets, jam-making, card-designing, writing (in theory anyway) and more, I told myself that I would have to get one or two other projects well in hand (like the degree, see?) before I could embark on another pastime that would only make me giggly and my kitchen sticky.

Last March I could wait no longer. I consulted my guidebook once again, visited my local home brewing supply store and plunged forward.

I made the Easy Apple Wine from Garey’s book. It’s what she recommends for beginners. I also picked up a book at Steinbart’s that had a very similar recipe for apple wine – similar in that both called for apple juice and only one fermentation, instead of “fermenting on the fruit” and then straining out solids, which seemed overwhelming at the time. I made that one too, so that in a few more months when I work up the courage to taste the stuff I can do some scientific-like comparisons. Or something.

When I racked my wine three weeks ago – that’s siphoning off the liquid from the yeastysediment or “must” that falls to the bottom once the initial fermentation takes place – I splashed a bit into my mouth, just to confirm or deny the presence of alcohol where once there had been none. When I splashed the wine into my mouth I also splashed it all over the kitchen.

It smelled a bit like a recycling center in here for a few days. Alcohol? Check.

The book said that it should, at the racking stage, taste a “little raw,” and that the longer I wait before bottling and/or consumption, the more the flavor will balance and smooth, so I’m not worrying yet. For now, I am actually rather enjoying the waiting. I did not, in fact, ever experience the urge to barrel ahead as I was worried I might. Perhaps this apple wine is teaching me patience. Or perhaps I am afraid that it’s been bungled somehow and I’ll be disappointed after all of this blasted patience and restraint.

I just uploaded the images that you see here on my post. I hadn’t looked at them side by side before. See in my closet, the one on the right? That’s the very same that’s above, being prepared back in April. The color difference is really quite striking. Maybe there is some hope yet.

The Chef was, in fact, unflappable. But the class was fantastic. He taught us about amaranth and other “ancient” grains. I had my first introduction to quinoa, a previously overlooked complete protein that has as much protein per ounce as cow meat. Triticale. Loquat. Quince. Kiwano. Fiddlehead Fern. Durian. The man was full of stories – travel adventures and culinary experimentation. One day we tasted twenty two grains back to back, picking apart the differences between long- and short grain rices, red and yellow lentils. We had a blind salt tasting, our task to name the origin of a tray full of refined salts – sea, or rock. It was the ultimate foodgeek class, the only time we had during school to just sit around and talk about how neat foods are.

Neat (and too often overlooked) food no. 484: Cherimoya.
The Cherimoya is an Andes native now cultivated in Spain, Ecuador, the US, Chile, Israel, Australia, and Mexico as well and, according to the class’s required text, the Visual Food Encyclopedia, is borne of a thorny-branched tree that can reach up to 24 feet high. The trees often have to be hand-pollinated as the flowers are too fragrant to attract most insects. When ripe, their soft fruit is intoxicatingly sweet, creamy, and a little tangy. Visual Food recommends using the cherimoya in salads, ice creams, yogurts or jellies. Me, I think there’s no better way than standing in the kitchen, spoonin’ the flesh from a halved fruit right into my hungry little mouth.

Exhibit A: page 134, Gyo’s Chilled Noodles with Dipping Sauce and Embellishments. There’s a story, the recipe for the dipping sauce, suggestions about what to serve it all with. and if you don’t like enoki<, for heaven's sake, don't use it. How refreshing.

       The spirit of the book: here are the basics, and here are some suggestions regarding how you might want to fiddle with it. The real fun in the kitchen, for me anyway, is getting away with breaking the rules. It is not a perfectly executed Roast Chicken a la Julia, rather it is running a recipe through my own filters of style, flavor, nutrition and availability and creating something that is my own. On these pages – the contents of which cover allthe bases (from the nuances among sour cream varieties to vegetables by cooking method to a whole chapter on “flavor catalysts” and a delightfully comprehensive discussion on grains) – Sally offers herself as a partner instead of a dictator. She is pro-flavor and anti-excessive fat. Her recipes are classics and neo-classics, borrowing from a whole world of culinary traditions. This is the kind of book that makes me want to devote my year to cooking through its pages, though that kind of thing has already been done, and I’d hate to seem like a bandwagoner.

       My comments on cookbooks always come up short, I think. The trouble is that I get so overwhelmed, so excited at the possibilities flopped open on the table before me that I can’t make myself think straight. My hands start to feel twitchy and I can begin to feel out the meal I will make. To have such a visceral reaction to a cookbook is, I feel, a good sign. The James Beard Foundation and the IACP both thought enough of Sally to honor this book; so if my ineloquence is unconvincing, maybe you can trust them instead.

Anyhow, yesterday Sally and I stayed in and made this:

focaccia, winter squash sauce and stuff

I used Sally’s Pizza Dough recipe (p 355), and folded pinenuts and minced fresh rosemary into the dough during its second rise.
The sauce is butternut squash, shallot, garlic and ginger, simmered until tender and pureed to a satisfyingly velvet texture.

Over the sauce went thin slices of more butternut, yellow onion, fresh rosemary, yellow crookneck squash, leftover green beans, garlic cloves, olive oil, freshly ground black pepper, and milled sea salt – oh! and a couple of very thin slices of fresh lemon. You might not think that’s OK, but, damn, give it a shot anyway.

Oven @ 450º F., baked on a stone until browned along the edges, about 20 minutes.