A Beautiful Mosaic

Ever since I received my June issue of Bon Appétit over a month ago, I’ve been waiting impatiently for sour cherries to come in season.  Featured on the front cover, that Circean slice of lattice top sour cherry pie has been mocking me for weeks.  Normally ready for picking at the end of June in this area, montmorency sour cherries have become ripe earlier and earlier, (no) thanks to global warming trends.  Montmorency cherries are bright red, not to be confused with dark Morello sour cherries, which ripen later in the summer.

Montmorency sour cherries are ready to be picked.

I am extremely fortunate to have wonderful neighbors with not one but two sour cherry trees in their backyard and an open invitation to help myself to their veritable garden of eden along with enormous and prolific fig, blueberry, blackberry and quince bushes.  Thankfully, they’re always bemusedly tolerant when they discover my kids with cherry or blueberry stained shirts in their backyard.  Pies, jams and other baked goodies made with their fruit are always the perfect apology.

Picked with permission.

Sour cherries are perfect for baking since they retain their firmness better than sweet cherries and inherently have that needed tartness for successful pie filling.  Sadly, sour cherries are hard to come by in even farmer’s markets since these small soft cherries bruise easily and do not travel well. 

Pitting cherries can be, well, the pits.  Unfortunately, with cherries these small, you need to pit a subtantial number of cherries for any given recipe.  You do not need a fancy cherry pitter - these are really just too soft for it.  A small metal paper clip shaped into a “j” shape will do the trick.  Simply press the “j hook” into the top and scoop (or squeeze) out the pit.  Works like a charm.

This recipe has a perfectly flaky crust and just the right amount of sugar for these tart cherries.  It truly is a classic recipe, with only the most basic of ingredients.  I think you’ll like it.

Classic Lattice Top Sour Cherry Pie (from Bon Appétit)

Crust:
2 1/2 cups unbleached all purpose flour
1 tablespoon sugar
3/4 teaspoon salt
1 cup (2 sticks) chilled unsalted butter, cut into 1/2-inch cubes
5 tablespoons (or more) ice water

Filling:
1 cup plus 1 tablespoon sugar
3 tablespoons cornstarch
1/4 teaspoon salt
5 cups whole pitted sour cherries or dark sweet cherries (about 2 pounds whole unpitted cherries)
1 teaspoon fresh lemon juice (if using sour cherries) or 3 tablespoons fresh lemon juice (if using dark sweet cherries)
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 tablespoons (1/4 stick) unsalted butter, cut into 1/2-inch cubes
1 tablespoon  milk

For crust:
Whisk flour, sugar, and salt in large bowl to blend. Add butter and rub in with fingertips until small pea-size clumps form. Add 5 tablespoons ice water; mix lightly with fork until dough holds together when small pieces are pressed between fingertips, adding more water by teaspoonfuls if dough is dry. Gather dough together; divide into 2 pieces. Form each piece into ball, then flatten into disk and wrap in plastic. Refrigerate at least 30 minutes. Can be made 2 days ahead. Keep chilled. Let dough soften slightly before rolling out.

For filling:
Position rack in lower third of oven and preheat to 425°F. Whisk 1 cup sugar, cornstarch, and salt in medium bowl to blend. Stir in cherries, lemon juice, and vanilla; set aside.

Pie crust/pizza dough lifter is a must-have for anyone who loves to bake pies.

Roll out 1 dough disk on floured surface to 12-inch round. Transfer to 9-inch glass pie dish. Trim dough overhang to 1/2 inch. Roll out second dough disk on floured surface to 12-inch round. Using large knife or pastry wheel with fluted edge, cut ten 3/4-inch-wide strips from dough round.

Transfer filling to dough-lined dish, mounding slightly in center. Dot with butter. Arrange dough strips atop filling, forming lattice; trim dough strip overhang to 1/2 inch.

Fold bottom crust up over ends of strips and crimp edges to seal. Brush lattice crust (not edges) with milk. Sprinkle lattice with remaining 1 tablespoon sugar.

Place pie on rimmed baking sheet and bake 15 minutes. Reduce oven temperature to 375°F. Bake pie until filling is bubbling and crust is golden brown, covering edges with foil collar if browning too quickly, about 50 minutes to 1 hour longer. Transfer pie to rack and cool completely.

Serve with vanilla ice cream or just by itself.

Almost a month ago, I embarked on a culinary journey that would make most wise bakers give pause.  A crusty loaf of French sourdough seems simple enough, right?   It calls for no yeast - how hard could it be?  As jealously insecure as a fourth wife whose husband just hired a 20 year old former Playmate as his new secretary, a sourdough starter is demanding, insisting you look at it rise and carefully watch for it to fall. You must then refresh the dough, kneading in new flour to the sticky mess, only to have to repeat the ritual two days later.  This process lasts longer than most Hollywood marriages and by the time you graduate on to the actual bread making, you already intimately aquainted its tempermental nature.

Which is exactly why I knew deep down that this was not going to work out.  I should have gone with my instinct and drawn up the pre-nup papers since I knew I wasn’t ever going to make my planned grilled paninis with it.  But just like all those celebrities who still tie the knot even though we all know how it’s going to end, I just closed my eyes and plunged in. 

I’ll spare you the gory details of how horribly my sourdough bread turned out, but in the end I was stuck with a huge loaf of partially risen, dense as brick bread.  Throwing out still edible bread just went against everything I was taught (not to mention the three weeks I already invested in it).  What to do…

Three weeks of my life I’ll never get back.

Bread Pudding

6 large eggs, lightly beaten

1 1/2 C. sugar

4 C. milk

1 C. heavy cream

1 Tbs. vanilla extract

1 1/2 tsp. ground cinnamon

1 (1 pound) loaf bread, cut into 1 inch cubes (about 10 C.) 

1/2 C. golden raisins

1/4 C. almond slivers

Preheat oven to 300 º F. 

In a medium bowl, whisk eggs and sugar together.  Add milk, heavy cream, vanilla and cinnamon. Whisk until smooth.  Arrange bread cubes in a 9 x 13 x 2 baking dish and top with golden raisins and almond slivers.  Cover with the milk mixture, allowing the bread to become completely saturated. 

Bake for one hour, until lightly brown. 

Bread pudding happens to be a favorite of mine (anything remotely custard-like in it makes me weak in the knees), the yardstick by which I measure the quality of a diner (dessert is often included with dinner, and bread pudding is almost always an option).  I’ve tasted many bread puddings in this state known for its diners, and this bread pudding recipe is a keeper.

I guess the sourdough fiasco didn’t end too badly.

The girls are back and better dressed than ever.

Not one to disappoint marketing directors at New Line Cinema, I went to see Sex and the City this past weekend.  We all filed in to the theater - suburban women age 18 to 65, physically close to Manhattan yet a million miles away from the life of the fab four.  I had watched the series on HBO and naturally loved it in the way so many young (and not so young) women fantasized about how their lives would have turned out.  I stayed away from reading the reviews since I knew I wanted to see it no matter what the New York Times had to say.  But I did get a sense of people questioning the relevance of overprivileged shopaholics waxing poetic about $525 a pop shoes, especially in light of recent economic trends.

Nonetheless, I predict Sex and the City  will be quite successful and perhaps the first of many movies and TV shows about the lifestyles of the rich and richer.  Depressed about the prospect of $5 a gallon gas?   Well then, let’s ogle Louis Vuitton’s limited edition summer collection handbags that sell out at $2,000+.  Frightened by rice rationing at Costco?  There’s no limit on how many Manolos you can (watch Carrie) buy.  It seems antithetical, an unapologetic movie about fabulous excess connecting with people at a time when most are feeling the squeeze. 

There is, however, a precedent for this.  These two iconic images date within 5 months of each other: 

“Migrant mother” has become perhaps the most recognized photograph from the Great Depression, capturing the uncertainty, pain and poverty of the era.  Interestingly, the same time period spawned the so-called Golden Age of American cinema, movies resplendent in sumptuous settings, glamorous clothing and beautiful movie stars. 

Fred and Ginger in Top Hat

People didn’t need or want gritty reality - they simply needed to look in the mirror or empty cupboards to get that.  They wanted escapist fantasy, pure and simple.  And Sex and the City is just that.  Now, does that mean Paris Hilton will be making a comeback? 

 Why not send this ecard to your girlfriends?

I co-hosted a baby shower this past weekend, something I have done quite a few times during the past fifteen years.  Whether a bridal or baby shower, christening or any such celebration, the elements of a successful party are always the same.  You need:

1. lots of delicious food
2. attention paid to presentation and decor
3. most importantly, people who love and wish the best for the guest of honor

Naturally, the menu is important, and a meager spread is a particular pet peeve of mine.  I was raised with the notion that if the table wasn’t groaning under the weight of the food atop it, it wasn’t a good party.  One doesn’t have to spend an exorbitant amount of money, but you do have to spend time planning a good menu, having a proper mix of low-cost items, low-effort foods, do-ahead dishes and perhaps one or two show-stoppers.

I am not a cake decorator, and as a result,  I’ve always been one to buy cakes for all the showers I’ve been in charge of.  I decided to make cupcakes for this shower since I’ve become a bit more emboldened thanks to this blog, and the mother-to-be had wanted cupcakes from Magnolia Bakery for her wedding (alas, it was not to be).  I’ve been trying out different chocolate cupcake recipes, and I’ve really like this one I’ve found on Recipezaar.  It’s very moist, uses basic ingredients, and doesn’t sink down in the middle as some cupcakes are prone to.

A basic chocolate glaze using melted high quality chocolate and heavy cream tops these delicious cupcakes.  I used rolled fondant and a mini onesie cookie cutter from Ebay to decorate these cupcakes with a baby boy theme. 

Moist Chocolate Cupcakes 

(Yield:  original recipe said 24, but I found it only made about 22)

1 1/2 cups flour

1 cup unsweetened cocoa

1 1/4 teaspoons baking soda

1 1/4 teaspoons baking powder

1 teaspoon salt

2 cups sugar

3/4 cup hot water

3/4 cup milk

2 large egg

1/2 cup vegetable oil

1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 325° F.   Sift the flour, cocoa, baking soda, baking powder and salt into the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment.  Add sugar.  Turn the mixer on low and add, in order:  water, milk, eggs, oil and vanilla; scrape down the sides of the bowl and beat on medium briefly until smooth.

Scoop the batter into muffin tins lines with paper baking cups; each cup should be about 2/3rds full (maybe even slightly less than 2/3rds).   Do not over fill - 3/4ths full is too much!  Bake at 325° until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean, about 30 minutes.

I also used a basic buttercream and fondant flowers as explained step-by-step in Cake Journal, along with a cupcake tower.

Vases of cut flowers from the garden (peonies, bleeding hearts and roses) add tasteful decorations to any gathering.  I try to use in-season fruit as much as possible, and June means strawberries in these parts.  Guylian Belgian chocolate and large sweet strawberries:  a perfect marriage.

The mother of all stains is a Sharpie mark (good luck with that one), but second only to that are kim chi stains.  Spaghetti sauce?  Hah!  Mere child’s play.  Anyone who has had the pleasure of eating kim chi knows the true second burn:  finding that tiny vermilion drip on your pants or shirt as you throw it into the laundry.  And then finding that same stain undiminished after it comes out of the wash.  After three or four washes, you pretty much resign yourself to the fact that that unflaggingly red stain is now a permanent part of your wardrobe.

Despair no longer!  Here’s the simple trick to getting out kim chi and any tomato-based stains.  Simply place the stained clothes in direct sunlight for several hours.  I usually wash the clothes and then place it outside still damp, but inside by a  very sunny window will do the trick.  The problem I’ve found with placing it outside is the other things that fall on it (leaves, pollen, etc.), forcing me to wash it yet again.  The stain will disappear like magic.  I promise.

The downside to my kids’ love of Korean food:  kim chi stains on their clothes.

Here’s my daughter’s shirt after a couple of washes - the stain did not budge even after direct scrubbing with my first line of defense (Shout gel, Fels Naptha soap, Oxiclean soak).

Her shirt after a couple of hours in the sun.  The hard part was waiting for a sunny day.

We’ve been watching a robin family in one of our bushes for the past few weeks gathering twigs for a nest in preparation for their soon-to-be hatchlings.  The children love getting a peak at the nest and the lovely blue eggs.

Mama robin keeps her eggs warm.  She looks like she’s smiling, no?

The newest addition to the flora and fauna of our yard, hatched just yesterday.

Is that mama I hear?

Happy mother’s day to all mothers, great and small.

Drool-worthy:  not my kitchen.

I recently picked my daughter up at a birthday party and I was taken aback to see she was crying.  My attempts to get to the bottom of it was met with complete resistance.  Her entire vocabulary seemed to have been whittled down to “I don’t know” and “I can’t explain.”  But as it often happens, bedtime hugs and snuggles were the pick to the lock of the secrets of the day. 

“I was … *sniff* … jealous, “  she wailed.  Not of the fact that it was someone else’s birthday (she’s a veteran of at least 50 birthday parties with nary a glisten in her eye), but of its fabulousness.  The party was held at her home, you know, one of those typical suburban McMansions (the irony that people who use the term McMansion are those who cannot afford to live in a McMansion is not lost on the writer), with 34 of her closest friends.  I couldn’t physically have 35 seven year olds in my house (well, I suppose I could, but only with the aid of a Xanax).  And the party favors - well, let’s just say the hostess spent more of the favor than I did on the gift.

It was such a raw, open statement,  breath-taking in its simplicity and honesty.  It was the kind of statement that most people spend the rest of their lives diligently avoiding saying unless lying on a couch and paying someone to listen to them.  I kissed her for her bravery and told her it’s natural to feel jealous, but you can’t burst into tears every time someone has something better than you (otherwise I’d have mascara running down my face every time I walked past Williams-Sonoma or Neiman Marcus).  We talked about how blessed we are and how there will always be people who have better, faster, more expensive things than us.  And of the many, many more who have much less than us.

In that funny way the stars can align, I read this article after I put my daughter to bed (still slightly weepy - she is nothing if not dramatic).   But we all need to acknowledge the seven-year-old in all of us whenever the green-eyed monster bubbles up.   For me, it’s when I walk into the take-out queens’ gourmet kitchens the size of the entire first floor of my house.  I just say hello to it and then beat it down with my Le Creuset Dutch oven.  That sucker’s heavy.

 Baking bread:  you’re giving the gift of time

I am sure you know someone like my father-in-law - absolutely impossible to buy for.  You get that gnawing feeling in the pit of your stomach as Christmas, Father’s (or Mother’s) Day and birthdays draw near.  It’s not that he’s ungrateful for anything you give him - quite the opposite.  But after profuse thanks, you mentally note never to get him clothes/tools/cologne/ties/books again.  It’s just never really “him.”  He is a fan of my cooking, but as we live almost three hours away, we don’t always see each other on those special days.  We usually mail him his present and food wouldn’t be very practical.  Or would it?  After brainstorming about foods that would travel well, I came to the conclusion that a hard crusty bread would fit the bill.  (My father-in-law’s bread of choice is Arthur Avenue Italian bread from the Bronx, so I know he’d like such a loaf.)

The problem is I have never made bread before, bread that required yeast, that is.   I know, I know -  it’s one of those things I’ve been meaning to do and have never gotten around to doing.  I had purchased Maggie Glezer’s Artisan Baking and decided to finally take the plunge.  Why be frightened away by a whole new lexicon with strange words like “autolyse,” “levain,” and “poolish” when the end product is so sublime?

I decided to make Tom Cat’s Semolina Filone, no couch-jumping or You Tube crazed laughter required.  It’s marked “intermediate” level, but I decided to make it since I already had durum flour.  The recipe is over two pages long and quite complicated (for a novice at least), requiring me to flip back and forth to the technique section, so I’m not going to include the recipe here.  I would highly recommend buying the book if you love the crunch of freshly baked bread and gorgeous photography. 

The recipes says it takes at least 13 hours, but it took me almost 16 from start to finish.  I soon realized that this is a wonderful gift - a gift of our ever dwindling time.  The ingredients couldn’t be more humble:  flour, water, yeast and a bit of salt.  But when you add time, you have something truly special.  Why don’t you make a loaf of bread to give as a gift along with some infused dipping oil or gourmet jams the next time you’re stumped as to what to give that hard to shop for person on your list?  Just make sure to tuck in a copy of the 4 page recipe so s/he can appreciate the hard work you put in.

My very first interaction with yeast.

I had no idea bread dough was so demanding.

The hardest part is elongating the loaf without popping bubbles.

Time to coat with sesame seeds.

I hope he likes it.

My father was someone who ate to live.  He was appreciative of any food, from the humblest meal to a gourmet feast.  This gratitude, I am sure, was formed from experiencing a devastating war, loss of family, and near-starvation.  When I was a little girl, he once plucked a broad-leaf plantain, a common weed, from our lawn and informed me he survived on plants like that for three months while evading the Communists.  Naturally, he had little patience for picky eaters - we all learned to eat whatever was placed before us. 

My mother, on the other hand, did not view food in such black and white terms.  Yes, food is sustenance, which she learned in the same way my father did.   As a young teenager during the Korean War, she and her sister decided to sell strawberries to augment their modest and inconsistent income.  Unfortunately, their entrepreneurial skills could not withstand their grumbling tummies and their goods quickly disappeared, thus ending their very short-lived career as fruit sellers.  I wish I could have seen my mother and my aunt, sitting in a gray crumbling city as they sat giggling and licking their sticky red-stained fingers.  The strawberries’ sweetness,  while lingering on their tongues for a fleeting moment, meant more to them at that moment than making a few won to buy a necessary staple like rice.

Eventually, my mother become a very good cook, learning as many do not by reading cookbooks or using measuring spoons.  She was taught in that universal old world method - using a knuckle, a pinch, a fistful, all while tasting frequently until it’s just right.  I remember the first time my mother taught me how to cook rice, eschewing measuring cups for an imaginary line on the back of my hand when placed flat in the water on the uncooked rice.  And in a couple of years, I will teach my children the same way my antecedents have been making rice for time eternal.

The most important thing she taught me, however, was not methods or recipes.  It was never spoken, but it was seared into my person more permanently than if it had been.  It was something I gathered from years of observing my mother getting up at dawn meal to prepare a meal for a special guest.  I learned it from watching her take over the kitchen with bowls larger than some small cars to make kim chi.  I understood it from the countless hours she spent chopping, grinding, mixing, frying, boiling, and grilling. 

It was that food mattered.  Food was more than something that just powered you to get through the day or a thankless chore than simply needed to get done.  More specifically, it was that you mattered and that you were worth the time and effort to make something delicious and worthwhile.  Cooking is giving a piece of yourself, making yourself vulnerable, hoping that others will recognize that tiny particle of you in that meal.   And hopefully, they’ll love you for it. 

This photo was taken soon after my mother immigrated from South Korea to the United States.  She sent this picture to her sisters back in Korea to show how richly she was living.  Apparently, bananas were exorbitantly expensive in South Korea in the early 70s.  I guess no one told her bananas brown in the fridge.

Will Smith wows his future employer with his ability to solve a Rubik’s Cube.

My son received a Rubik’s Cube for Easter and I spent the better part of the day fiddling with it.  Back in the 7th grade, I could solve one side and that was pretty much the upper limit of my spatial manipulation skills.  I was chagrined to discover I hadn’t progressed much past that point.  I suppose my renewed interest in the perverse puzzle stems from my recent viewing of The Pursuit of Happyness in which Chris Gardner (played by Will Smith) solves the cube in a suspenseful taxi ride to his prospective employer’s house.  The employer is so impressed he gives Gardner his proverbial foot in the door (Gardner eventually made millions at Bear Stearns - good thing he got out while the going was good).  

Nowadays, the Rubik’s Cube comes with the solution in the package.  The problem,  however, is that it’s written in Cyrillic (or something very similar to it) and I simply could not decipher the cryptic abbreviations.  So for all my diligent manipulations, the Cube sat forlornly for weeks with only a few sides solved. 

The other day, I decided to google how to solve the Rubik’s Cube.  I just needed someone to show me what  Ri - F - Ti - R - B looked like, and as expected, there were plenty of videos on the web of young men sitting in front of their computers flipping and turning their Cubes at dizzying speeds.  As fascinating as it was watching the twenty-ninth Youtube video of compugeek solving it in under 30 seconds, I just wanted to learn how to solve it myself.  I like this video series since it’s pretty straightforward, he doesn’t move too quickly, and you only have to memorize five patterns (or algorithms). 

And so I did finally learn to solve the Rubik’s Cube.   In breakneck speeds of just under four minutes. Maybe if I put some WD-40 on it, I might be able to shave off a few seconds…

On a sidenote, I had taken the solved Cube and made this pattern to show the kids:

I later decided I needed some more practice and I tossed it to my son and told him to go mess it up.  I came back, and it looked like this:

He’s four.  Does this count as the essay portion of the early admission application to MIT?