Hot Chicken with Elvis

My Mom got an Alexa for Christmas this year. As far back as I can remember, she’s forever been dancing around the house, shaking it at parties, harmonizing to whatever tune comes on the car radio. Her house in Virginia had become quiet since my Dad passed away, and my sister and I realized her stereo was too antiquated (key words: tape deck) for actual usage. So we got her the smart speaker, mindful of the fact that she’s typically suspicious of new technology. On a recent visit, I set it up in her kitchen and needn’t have worried—she took to the new device like a duck to water. Her first request, for some reason, was Hall & Oates. Once she realized that wasn’t going to do it for her, she was on to Trini Lopez, the 1960’s Latin folk sensation. The joy was palpable as she danced around the kitchen to Cielito Lindo.

As evening drew near, and she had run through the Beatles and the Stones, we wondered aloud what to have for dinner. In addition to loving music, she’s a food fanatic and knows what she likes. We had gone out the night before, and it was getting too late to shop and cook at home.

“How about we pick up some hot chicken?” I asked, as I finished ridding her cabinets of vitamins and lipsticks from 1997.

“YES!”

 So we put in our order—“HOT” in the middle of a scale that ranges from Classic (no heat) to Code Blue (super extra hot) and we headed to our usual spot for pickup.

We both adore spicy food, a family trait she inherited from her father, who used to say nothing was hot enough “unless you sweat behind the ears.” For us, it’s not a distraction from flavor but instead another taste dimension, like umami or crunch. Mom keeps a tiny, adorable bottle of Tabasco in her purse at all times to season her eggs during travel; somehow, this has never triggered an intervention at airport security. I’m happy to be married to a fellow spice lover, and our 11-year-old son liberally sprinkles red pepper flakes on his pizza. We’re no strangers to the “what the hell” fried rice at our favorite Thai restaurant. When it comes to hot chicken, Mom and I are both code blue curious…but even we have our limits.

Back at the house, we got dinner going. She brought out the old brown salad bowl with the ridges around the side, and I turned on the oven to give our chicken some extra crisp. Perhaps the highlight of this takeout indulgence is the fried okra we always order on the side, and that got some extra crisping, too. The standard “side” portion is around the size of a wine crate, and we’re good with that quantity of okra. You can’t completely take the South out of a woman, after all.

Once everything was crisped to satisfaction and the salad tossed, we were sitting down to dinner, when Mom popped up and went back into the kitchen. 

“Alexa,” I heard her say as I piled okra on my plate. “Play Elvis Presley.”

Now if you’ve ever met my Mom, you’ve probably heard the story. She knows I know it, but she loves to tell it again and again.

“When I was twelve, in the sixth grade, my friend asked me if I wanted to come to a concert with her mother and her—they had an extra ticket. ‘You know, Elvis Presley? He sings Blue Suede Shoes?’ I’d never heard of the guy, but I figured I had nothing better to do that night. He was playing at the Mosque Theater, in Richmond. We were right near the front and I’d never seen anything like it before. Girls were freaking out. They were swooning. My own mother would have dragged us right out of there, but my friend’s mom was just as fascinated as we were, so we stayed for the whole thing. And then not long after that he was a super star. I didn’t get it, but I guess all those screaming gals did.”

“Did you become a fan, right then and there?”

“I didn’t know what to think. I was twelve. And he was so greasy.”

She thought for a second and speared an okra round. Perhaps visions of sideburns and hip swivels were parading through her memory. Hound Dog bumped from the speaker in the kitchen, and she continued:

“I watched that Elvis movie recently and the actor looked nothing like the real Elvis. Too clean cut. I mean…I saw the real deal up close, so I know. We were in the second row.”

The hot chicken was tasty and hit the spot. It could have been crispier, but that’s the gamble you make with takeout. In the subsequent days I thought a lot about hot chicken (and Elvis, too). I thought about how I might make it at home, and I remembered one of my favorite dishes at a neighborhood spot Popina: the hot chicken Milanese. A Milanese is a flattened version of fried chicken (see also katsu and schnitzel, as well as chicken cutlets), which gives it the advantage of quicker cooking, shallower oil, and less guesswork around doneness. The recipe below is what I came up with after some R & D. It’s neither a traditional hot chicken nor a true Milanese, but it’s delicious. You can dial the cayenne up or down, or eliminate it all together. I like this served with a nice, simple salad and half a lemon to lighten things and make it into a composed plate. It would be great with pickles and slaw, or on a Martin’s potato roll as a sandwich. You could also whip up a quick spicy mayo by stirring together mayonnaise and your favorite hot sauce, if you like things even hotter and richer.

This one’s dedicated to Mom:

Dial the spice up, down, or eliminate all together

RECIPE: HOT CHICKEN MILANESE 

Ingredients:

• 4 boneless, skinless chicken thighs

• 2 tsp. cayenne pepper (adjust cautiously for more spice, dial it down or eliminate altogether for a non-spicy version)

• 4 tsp. sweet paprika

• 1 tsp. garlic powder

• 1 TBS. salt plus extra for seasoning at end

• 1 cup all-purpose flour

• 3 eggs

• 2 cups panko (Japanese) breadcrumbs

• Peanut oil for frying (or canola, grapeseed, or other high-heat oil)

• 2 lemons, halved

• Salad for serving: Arugula and cherry tomatoes, or any greens and shaved vegetables, tossed with olive oil and lemon juice, or your choice of dressing.

Instructions:

1. Flatten the chicken pieces: First pat them dry, then one at a time, place chicken thighs between two pieces of parchment paper on a cutting board. Using the flat side of a meat tenderizer, or a rolling pin, or bottom of a small pot, pound the chicken pieces until they are around 1/3” thick. It doesn’t have to be exact, just try to get it even and thin. No worries if you don’t have parchment paper—it just makes for neater work.

2. In a small bowl, mix the spices and salt together. Sprinkle the chicken pieces with around half of this mixture on both sides. You should have an even and fairly generous (but not too heavy) distribution. Reserve the other half of the spice mix for the end.

3. Set up a dredging station, which will have three steps: 1 plate or wide bowl for the flour, 1 bowl for the eggs, and 1 plate or wide bowl for the panko—plus a final tray, preferably with a rack, for the dredged chicken. Put the flour and panko on their separate plates, and beat the eggs in the bowl. Now dredge each seasoned piece. First, coat chicken completely with flour, then shake off any excess. Dip chicken pieces in the egg, then shake off as much as you can. Next, roll the chicken pieces in panko, pressing to coat every surface area with the crumbs. Repeat with all pieces, setting them on the tray at the end. When you’ve finished, put the tray with chicken in the refrigerator for a half hour to an hour to really set the panko—this will ensure your breading stays put during frying.

4. You can prepare the salad, if serving, while the chicken rests. When ready to cook, heat a skillet over medium high heat, with oil in it. You are shallow frying, so you want around 1/4” or less of oil, enough to cover the bottom of the skillet but not immerse the chicken. When the oil begins to shimmer slightly, place the pieces gently in the skillet, not touching. Fry around 3 minutes on each side, or until golden brown and crisp and cooked through. Move to a tray when done. Working quickly but carefully, spoon a few spoonfuls of hot oil into the bowl with the spices, and stir. Brush the hot oil onto the surface of the chicken, coating evenly. You can skip this step if you like your chicken milder, but either way sprinkle some salt on the chicken if you think it needs more seasoning (taste a bit of the breading if you’re not sure). Serve with lemon halves and salad.

2023 in brief, and in no particular order

Made homemade blackberry jam from wild berries. Saw Flaco the owl in the rough. Watched my youngest grow taller than his grandmothers. Attended a bluegrass festival in Vermont. Sampled local ciders. Summoned the fire department by smoking a pork shoulder in our Brooklyn backyard at 5 AM on a September Thursday (sorry, neighbors!). Ate mail order lobster in Vermont. Felt my heart break at the violence in the world. Gave blood. Touched a melting glacier in Norway. Celebrated my Mom’s 80th with joyous music. Endured smoky orange skies in New York. Got misted by waterfalls. Did some puzzles. Lost my phone in a harbor while boarding a boat at night. Made raclette and doughnuts with 10 year olds. Helped organize a free CSA for neighbors. Turned 50 in Paris, and crashed an after school bar scene where there was BYO charcuterie. Took up pickleball. Skied through the woods, both downhill and cross-country. Saw some good art: Louisiana Museum in Denmark, Rothko in Paris, and Judy Chicago, Derek Fordjour, Ruth Asawa, & Henry Taylor in New York City.

Read books: Demon Copperhead, Tom Lake, Roman Stories, and the delicious tiny books of Claire Keegan were just a few. Joie is a beautiful favorite on my coffee table.

Cooked some decent things: miso salmon (will write down that recipe soon), olive oil cakes, Cassie’s cookies, fish tacos, Beef Bourguignon. Pretty pink chicory arrangements that don’t need much more. Simple things, mostly, with good ingredients and layers of flavor piled on slowly or slapdash.

I’ve watched my family—all of them—become great cooks. It’s satisfying. They each excel in a particular domain: my husband at British comfort cooking and grilling, The oldest at clean-the-fridge vegetarian, the middle at pastas & risottos, and the youngest with his signature grilled cheese (his secret: Duke’s mayo, never butter, for frying). Yesterday, at the end of a long holiday break and a no-show snowstorm, we got out and had lunch at Noodle Village on Mott Street. The wonton soup with snips of garlic chives—which reminded me a little of ramps—made me think of Spring and I realized it’s really not that far away, because time goes so quickly now. We almost forgot to eat dinner because we were so full and got collectively absorbed in the Beli app, running through all the places we had eaten over the past year and laughing at the memories attached to those meals. Yes we were on our devices, but actually connected and conversing—imagine that! Food is a unifying force.

All told, the 2023-2024 switch felt like little more than a transition to a new datebook (yes, I still keep paper ones and save the old ones for reference, and then throw them away eventually). The world’s problems are not solved and the news is hard to watch. Sometimes all we can do is be kind to one another, cook together and feed each other…and hope it spreads, just a little.

Other Ways

Last weekend we spent some delightfully analog time in Vermont with friends. The snow has been subpar this year, but the ski places were making it work with what they had. The excellent Wild Wings (cross country) center has a simple warming room with a wood stove sporting a little propellor on top like one of those old-fashioned beanies and whirls with the rising heat, dispersing it throughout the room. Equipment rentals and a day ticket come out to a fraction of what a similar arrangement would cost at one of the downhill ski resorts—minus the lift lines—so I’m officially a convert. We worked up a sweat along streams and over bridges on the quiet wooded trails, which had been hand groomed by a shovel-wielding crew (an Instagram post the day before showed them literally moving snow by the shovelful from the woods onto the trails). After a day like that you feel simultaneously beat up and at peace. It’s Vermont at its finest.

The house we’re renting this year might not be everyone’s jam, but it suits our crew just perfectly. The original part was built in the 1920’s I think, and the foundation is constructed around a natural spring, so the first thing you see upon descending into the basement is a boulder with actual spring waters trickling out of it and into a small diversion ditch that leads them gently outside to join a stream that feeds into the larger stream that traverses the property. You would think this setup would breed mold and rot and all sorts of moisture problems, but everyone who goes down to the basement marvels at how the air smells pure and crystalline somehow.

The overall vibe of the house is 1970’s hippie family compound, with homespun paintings and lots and lots of dark wood paneling, and a quirky accumulated library from 100 years of bookworms (1968 Whole Earth Catalog, anyone?). There’s even a harvest gold upholstered Barcalounger, which is highly coveted fireside real estate; as soon as someone leaves it to fetch a drink from the kitchen, there’s always a kid waiting to swoop in and claim the spot. The floors are Vermont soapstone—the deep green of a forest swimming hole and just as chilly. Among the house’s quirks is a perpetual draft, which we counter with chunky sweaters and a dawn-til-dusk fire in the fireplace. Our 10-year-old has taken to getting up in the pre-coffee hours and making the fire himself; we’ll find him seated criss-cross on the hearth, feeding shreds of cardboard into the flames, gazing glassy-eyed into his creation…much preferable to staring at an ipad.

After this weekend, during which we enjoyed outdoor sport and worked an impossible puzzle and ate collaborative meals and slept under ancient quilts, we made the long drive back to the city, where the shock of Manhattan was real—the wall of skyscrapers along the FDR streaked by, brightly lit, looking like futuristic pod dwellings. “What is this strange place we live in?” I thought to myself. The next morning no one in my family wanted to get up, and then we had to walk a block out of our way to avoid the usual film crew that had claimed our street as their own. An alligator was found this week, emaciated and lethargic, floating in our local park’s lake.

Is it time to live another way? To move somewhere quieter and sweet-smelling and more wholesome? Impossible to fathom, though in some branch of the multiverse my kids are fire building and woods roaming on the daily. The community is just too good here and we’re not ready for change. A non-NYC friend recently asked me how we’ve survived this long in the city and I answered: “We’re kind of like prisoners who’ve been incarcerated for a long time and can’t figure out how to move on in the outside world. It’s like Morgan Freeman’s character in Shawshank—We’re institutionalized.”

At some point during the weekend a text pinged in from my sister, though when she sent it is unclear as service is blessedly spotty out there. She’d scrawled an excited note about some miso chocolate chip cookies she’d made. She’s more of a savory cook—an excellent one—and mostly only bakes under pressure from her children, so I knew I had to try this one. You’ve probably seen a lot of miso added to baked goods lately, and done well, the addition of this subtle umami element is worth the hype. Add brown butter and irregularly chopped dark chocolate chunks, and the goodness is almost too good to take. It’s a bit of a departure from a classic, basic chocolate chip but worth the journey.

Pan banging results in a flatter, denser, chewier cookie

Cassie’s Miso-Brown Butter-Chocolate Chunk Cookies

Ingredients:

• 1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter PLUS 2 tablespoons butter for browning both softened at room temperature

• 1 heaped tablespoon dark miso paste (light or medium is fine too)

• 3/4 cup granulated sugar

• 1 cup dark brown sugar, packed

• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract

• 2 large eggs

• 2 1/8 cups all-purpose flour

• 1 teaspoon baking soda

• 1/2 teaspoon salt

• 2 1/4 cups dark chocolate chunks or chocolate chips

Instructions:

1. In a small saucepan heat the 2 tablespoons butter over medium heat, watching carefully. Once the butter develops golden colored flecks and a nutty aroma, remove from heat and stir in miso paste until smooth. In a medium bowl, cream together 2 sticks of butter plus sugars with a mixer until smooth, then blend in the miso brown butter. Add the eggs and vanilla until just incorporated. In two additions mix in flour until just blended (no streaks of flour) but do not over mix. Using a spatula, stir in the chocolate chunks. Put dough in the refrigerator to chill at least an hour.

2. While the dough chills, preheat oven to 350°. Scoop dough into balls roughly the size of ping pong balls and space on parchment- or silpat-lined trays about 2” apart. Bake until edges are golden brown, around 12-15 minutes depending on your oven (check often—they should look slightly underbaked). Remove and give your pan a good bang on the counter so cookies flatten—this will make them denser and more chewy. Sprinkle a little flaky salt on top and allow to cool and firm up before removing them from the tray.

Adventures in Pescatarianism

The first week of 2022, my boy came home from school and announced: “I’m becoming a pescatarian,” and then paused for effect. He was a few weeks away from his ninth birthday, and we’d been down this road before. A few years back it was an attempt to go full-on vegetarian, a run that lasted all of a week and a half and was stymied, as is usually the case, by bacon.

“Oh really?” I asked, unconvinced. “What’s the inspiration?”

“S. is going vegetarian for the new year, so I figured I would too. Except I don’t have a problem eating fish.”

The logistics would not be much of an issue. Our oldest daughter has been an unflagging vegetarian for nearly four years, and we’ve all slowly drifted toward a more plant-based existence. When my son made this announcement, his sister had just returned to school, and we were thinking about braising a big pot of pork paprika…but apparently the universe had other plans. Instead, we pulled together an emergency “Sahadi’s night,” a thing in our family that involves picking up middle eastern prepared foods from a favorite market and making a big Greek-ish salad to go alongside it.

“How’d it go with the pescatarianism?” I asked him the next night at dinner.

“Great,” he said. “Except they had hotdogs in the cafeteria and they smelled soooo good. I was almost tempted.”

“Gross,” said his 15-year-old sister.

“And S.?”

“Still goin’.”

On the third day, my son came home and announced that his friend S., erstwhile vegetarian, had lapsed.

“What did it?” I asked.

“They had pulled pork in the cafeteria and he couldn’t stand the temptation. ‘I just gotta!’ he said.”

“And you?”

“Oh, I’m committed.”

We had miso salmon for dinner.

Things continued like this for the next few weeks. S. continued to hop on and off the wagon, and my son recounted his friend’s struggles with temptations of the fleshly variety.

“I hope you’re not shaming him?” I asked, suddenly worried he might be that sanctimonious kid everyone avoids at lunchtime. “You’re not a meat-shamer, are you?”

“Oh no! Definitely not. I do me, he does him.”

A month and a half later, he’s still going strong, and I realize the ways in which he’s becoming a big person, capable of long-term goals and commitments. I’m a little verklempt. Many nights we rely on our vegetarian favorites: savory tarts, tofu tikka masala made with a favorite vegan simmer sauce, simple pastas sans meat. For him and his sister I created a vegetarian version of hearty French Onion Soup. We have fish some nights, but given the state of today’s fisheries limit consumption. One favorite is slow-roasted salmon which I first spread with a paste of white miso, sesame oil, rice vinegar, ginger, and garlic. Another salmon favorite is Alison Roman’s slow roasted citrus salmon with herb salad (possible paywall). They are both easy.

But the thing the boy has been asking for again and again is clam chowder, one of his most favorite foods. He once ate a raw oyster for $20, but other than that, shellfish is usually off the table. Except for clam chowder. This week, I granted him his wish. It holds a special place in my heart, too, ever since I enjoyed a bowl at Grand Central Oyster Bar in my early NYC days. Like barbecue, clam chowder is a culinary lightning rod, telling of regional alliances and gustatory prejudices. Manhattan or New England? White, red, or clear? Bacon or none? For us, the answer in that winter moment was simple: white clam chowder with no bacon and no frills. A deep dive into internet chowderdom revealed a dizzying number of options. The two I was most drawn to were Sam Sifton’s, made with bacon and cream, and Ina Garten’s, with no bacon or cream and a large amount of roux. I came up with something in between, creamy and rich but not too thick, and of course no bacon, because that would just be mean. It starts with whole fresh clams, which may seem fussy but I promise is worth it. I got mine from our local shop Fish Tales, and the fishmonger kindly scooped armloads of free oyster crackers into the bag. The chowder came together nicely, and as we warmed from the cold February day the taste was rich, briny, and comforting.

Our rendition of New England clam chowder

CLAM CHOWDER RECIPE

Ingredients:

• 24 medium/large sized top neck clams (or cherry stone, or if using quahogs, fewer clams), rinsed briefly

• 1 large white or yellow onion, diced

• Salt - 1 teaspoon or as needed

• 5 tablespoons unsalted butter

• 1/2 cup dry white wine

• 4 medium yellow potatoes, peeled and cubed

• 1-2 ribs celery, peeled and diced

• A couple sprigs fresh thyme

• 1 bay leaf

• 3 tablespoons all-purpose flour

• 2 cups whole milk

• 1/4 cup cream

• Chopped parsley for garnish

• Oyster crackers (Optional but recommended!)

Instructions:

1. In a large heavy pot or Dutch oven (le Creuset or similar), put the clams and about a cup of water. Cover and heat for 10-15 minutes, checking occasionally. When clams are open, transfer them to a bowl to cool. Discard any clams that haven’t opened after about 15 minutes. Important: Strain the liquid through a fine strainer and set the liquid aside for later—this will be your broth.

2. Clean the pot and put it over medium heat. Add 2 tablespoons of the butter and the diced onions, and sprinkle with some salt and pepper. Cook gently for about 10 minutes, until onions are softened a bit but not browned at all. Add the potatoes, celery, thyme, and bay leaf and sauté, stirring, for a few minutes, then add the white wine. Let simmer for 5 minutes or so, allowing the wine to cook down a bit, then add in the strained clam broth and cover the pot. Cook over low-medium heat until potatoes are soft enough that they can be pierced with the tip of a knife.

3. Meanwhile, prepare the clams: pull them out of their shells and discard the shells. Chop the clams into quarters or more if they are on the large size.

4. In a small saucepan melt the remaining 3 tablespoons butter and then whisk in the flour. Cook, whisking, for 5 minutes, then add milk and continue cooking. Whisk until the lumps are out, milk is simmering and beginning to thicken. This will take around 10 minutes.

5. Once potatoes are tender, add clams to the pot and pour in thickened milk mixture. Bring the pot to a simmer and cook for another few minutes. Taste for seasoning. Clams and their broth contain natural saltiness, but you may find the soup needs a little more. Just before serving, remove sprigs of thyme and the bay leaf, stir in cream, crank in some pepper, and taste once more for seasoning. Serve hot, with parsley sprinkled on top and oyster crackers.

Sausage Rolls and Flaming Pudding

When our girls were small, and their brother was nothing but a speck of stardust, we would sometimes steal away between Thanksgiving and Christmas. We’d ditch school and head to England, because that is where Ben’s extended family lives and there was usually some excuse—an anniversary party or a birthday—that didn’t take much arm twisting. His Granny was alive until a few years ago, and when she celebrated her 91st birthday we didn’t hesitate to fly over for it. We’re so glad we did.

Those trips weren’t always easy. Toddler jetlag deserves its own circle in hell, and during that first mini-vacation, England was in the clutches of a cold snap. Our hotel room’s window was stuck in a “cracked open for ventilation” position, ushering in an Arctic blast that left us all sniffly and ill-slept; the girls’ noses ran like faucets the entire trip. London is magical around the holidays, though, and its delights soon outweighed the trials of travel as we wandered the glittering streets way past bedtime every night. We made the obligatory visit to Father Christmas at Harrod’s, and he was so convincing I’m sure he extended the lifespan of our daughters’ beliefs. They squirmed and shotgunned pastries through high tea (“top tea” as they called it). The Winter Wonderland amusement park had sprung up in Hyde Park, and we spent hours on the kiddie rides and trying our luck at archery games, sub-freezing temperatures be damned.

In the countryside, hoarfrost blanketed graveyards and hedgerows, making everything look as though a giant hand had brushed it with icing; none of the pictures I took managed to capture the magic. When our fingers got numb we took refuge in warm, dark pubs where we drank warm, dark beer. The girls lived on mediocre chips and fruit pastilles. I don’t know how much they actually remember of these trips, though, especially that first one—if you ask them they’re probably recalling photographed scenes. And in this digital age our lives have become collections of crisply photographed scenes. (My own early memories are tinted orangish, no doubt because I’m actually remembering 70’s era photos rather than the occasions themselves).

The girls are teens now, and we haven’t been back to England for years. Playing hookie is now a no-no, and casual travel is all but impossible in the omicron age. Our holiday traditions, though, will always be partially British, just like our kids are. Typically, we’ll cap off the Christmas feast by dousing a Christmas pudding in booze and lighting it on fire. Someone runs it around the dinner table while it burns, as many times as possible before the flame dies out, because the more laps you can make the more prosperous the coming year promises to be. And Christmas would never be Christmas in our house without piles of sausage rolls, which often sit on a platter beside ham biscuits, a Virginia tradition from my childhood.

Christmas is never really the same as it was the year before, but it’s these little traditions that keep it festive. I’m experimenting with a vegetarian mushroom version of the sausage rolls and will keep you posted. For now, I give you our traditional recipe, both the short and the long versions….

Easy sausage rolls:

Ingredients:

• 1 package good quality, all-butter puff pastry (I like DuFour, in U.S. freezer sections)—defrosted overnight in refrigerator

• 6 or so good sausages, either sweet Italian variety or something sage-y. Feel free to experiment with non-meat varieties.

• Flour for rolling

• 1 egg, lightly beaten in a bowl with a few drops of water

Instructions:

1. Preheat oven to 450°. On a lightly floured surface, lay out the puff pastry and gently roll it with a rolling pin until it’s even in thickness and just slightly compressed. Next, squeeze sausage from its casing and lay it vertically along the left side of the dough, in a couple of inches from the edge. Pat the sausage into an even strip, about 1 inch thick. Discard the casings. Now you’ll want to work out the width of the pastry needed to surround the sausage, allowing enough dough to overlap slightly. With a sharp knife, cut the dough parallel to the sausage. Brush edges with a little bit of egg and fold the dough over the sausage, until the sausage is completely surrounded. Press the edges firmly together to seal; you can use the tines of a fork to make little crimps along the edge. Now you should have a long strip of dough-wrapped sausage. Cut it into equal pieces (Size is up to you! We like them bite sized) and lay them on a lined baking tray. Cut small slits into the tops and brush with egg.

2. Bake at 450° for about 10 minutes, then lower heat to 375° and bake for another 10 minutes or longer, if needed. Pastry should be puffed and golden brown and the sausage cooked through and sizzling around the edges. Serve hot or room temperature. I like to serve them with mustard for dipping.

********************

Traditional Sausage Rolls from Scratch:

(This recipe was given to me by my mother-in-law, Pauline:)

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They're Here

Happy June! I’m fresh back from a week in Virginia, where a strange sound awakened me around 5:30 most mornings. The first day, my brain registered it as someone’s home alarm system going off incessantly in the distance. I cracked open the quarter pie window of my childhood bedroom, and the outside world was loud—filled with a high, ringing roar that kicked up with the first hints of light and pulsated in the background throughout the day. It’s everywhere, most days: in the trees, in your head, all around you. On beautiful, warm mornings after a nighttime rain, the ruckus sounds downright apocalyptic. In the evening, the din morphs into something like a bunch of lazy-sounding weed whackers whizzing up and down the street.

The sound, of course, is the chorus of Brood X cicadas emerging after 17 years underground, all of them trying to get it on before it’s all over for their red-eyed tribe for another 17 years. Everywhere there are ragged holes left in the dirt where the nymphs emerged. Their molted shells, the color of perfectly done fried chicken, adorn every climbable surface, and the adults in their new bodies stumble around unsure of what to do with themselves. Some don’t look quite right after subterranean phase; they weave around drunkenly or beat a hopeless circle on their backs. The air is filled with them, like tiny drones, and each time a squirrel scampers across a tree bough a flock is unleashed into the sky. The sidewalks are littered with a flotsam of wings (the birds, who are pretty psyched right now, apparently spit those out).

If you come upon one emerging from its shell, it’s an eerie and beautiful sight: a diaphanous creature with etched crystal wings and eyes like little rubies. This is the stage when you can capture and eat them, apparently—"tree shrimp,” according to this guide. Within minutes their exoskeletons have hardened and darkened.

Their numbers are astonishing. They’re especially thick around my favorite tree, a huge and magnificently twisty old Japanese maple whose branches were barely large enough to support me and my sister when we were little, and under whose boughs, as teens, we were made to pose awkwardly for a portrait photographer. At the time of that picture (which I hope Cassie and I destroyed all copies of), the generation that would become the 2004 emergers were biding their time silently beneath us.

In cities that are reopening right now—definitely in my neighborhood of Brooklyn—the human population is behaving much like those cicadas. People are flocking out of their homes and into the streets and parks and bars and outdoor restaurant terraces (definitely one of the upsides of covid times). We’re not all getting it right. Some of us are still a little disoriented and dazed, and some have emerged a little damaged from the long stint underground. Others—plenty—are spreading their wings and looking for action.

Are the Brood X cicadas another plague descending upon us? Or are they a symbol of hope and renewal and the tenacity of nature? I’m a Spring optimist these days, so I’m leaning heavily toward the latter view.

Check out this cool Washington Post interactive on the cicadas’ life cycle.

If you’re not into eating bugs, here are some other seasonal cooking ideas (with links to recipes):

Asparagus:

•Throw them in a hot skillet with some butter or olive oil, a little salt. Turn them to brown on all sides; you just need around 5 minutes (a little more if the spears are fat). When they are almost done, scatter a bunch of shredded parm over them and let it crisp at the edges a bit. Squeeze some lemon on and serve.

•Steam and top with ramp butter or miso butter.

•Rub with olive oil, salt and chili flakes and throw on the grill

Strawberries:

•Try this vintage recipe for strawberry shortcake made with one huge biscuit.

•Buttermilk panna cotta with fresh strawberries

•Strawberry-almond muffins

Pea Shoots:

•Wilt the sturdier ones with miso and Spring garlic

•Use the wispier pea tendrils in this salad with pecorino and almonds

Fig Leaves:

Yes you can use them! Especially the tender new ones. They have a very special flavor. Here’s how:

•Wrap up fish like fresh sardines or branzino and grill.

•This fig leaf and honey ice cream from David Lebovitz will exceed your wildest expectations.

Green Tomatoes:

•Fried green tomatoes are the best!

•Pickle them

Greens, miscellaneous:

•Savory greens and feta tart

•Add some green tops (radish, carrot) to basil in a pesto to stretch it out and eliminate food waste.

If you love farmer’s markets but can’t always catch them, check out Our Harvest for those in NYC, Long Island, and parts of Connecticut. 25% and free delivery off your first order (or use discount code SHALLOT at checkout)!

emerging

On Recipe Keeping

In spite of all the heaviness and uncertainty in the world—or maybe because of it—my thoughts have turned to recipe keeping this week. How do we keep track of recipes? Is there a best way? How has that changed over time? What does this say about us and why does it matter (or does it)?

First, the book project I’ve been working on was inspired by recipe keeping, and I’ve had my head in archives of mid-century recipes—the good old fashioned tin box and jotted notecard variety, which has its charms. At a certain point in time, the inherent value of the recipe is eclipsed by the richness of the actual material the recipe is recorded on. Paper softens and goes to shades of ecru and sepia, ink blurs the slightest bit. Small food spatters that were the results of long-ago meal preparation become part of the paper’s grain. I realize, too, how much handwriting is changing, and how it used to be such an extension of someone’s personality—while in our present day it’s possible never to know the intimate quirks of penmanship in even close friends and coworkers.

One night around dinnertime, in one of my group chats, a lively conversation sprang up about our preferred ways of saving the recipes that are the keepers and the repeaters. I was surprised, among a relatively tech-savvy group, how much paper is still involved. One friend said she prints out the good recipes and puts them in a binder. Another explained her method of tracking beloved recipes in the “Notes” feature of her computer…except for the ones found in the New York Times’s integrated app, which live there in their cloud home. She added: “I print a lot of them, too, and put them in a folder.”

I think some of these systems are indicative of our generation—X—which came of age during a time when people were still fervidly scribbling letters to one another while quickly adopting email. We still love the tactile quality of paper but also, like the generations that came along after us, are basically cyborgs reliant upon the electronic devices attached to our bodies at all times.

I also find it fascinating, and also lovely, how each person’s system is such an individual expression of creativity—even when using a digital interface. Something like Pinterest (which is one friend’s go-to) has the visual appeal of recipe cards and also allows space for notes and an interface built for sharing.

When I started thinking about my own system, I realized with horror that the scattered and noncommittal way I approach the process is reflective of my general psyche. But somehow, it works. I bookmark Instagram posts that look promising. I once used but have now abandoned Pinterest (the sponsored content became overwhelming). I use and pay for the NYTimes cooking app but haven’t gone the extra step of saving the recipes. Often, I do a frantic, last-minute search of the internet or my now-unruly collection of print cookbooks, which is a completely inefficient (but enjoyable) route that leads to distractions and rabbit holes. Aside from baking, I usually cook from memory, anyway. The one thing I do in an organized fashion is working my favorite dishes—original or adapted—into actual recipes, photographing them, and aggregating them here in the Recipe section of this site.

But while it’s tempting to attribute recipe keeping techniques to generational differences, it’s not as simple as that. My kids make use of a combination of paper cookbooks and tricks found on platforms like TikTok (hello baked feta pasta!). My son, who is eight and loves to cook, just proudly followed his first recipe from a cookbook; he made us cream puffs from the Usborne First Cookbook.

My 16-year-old likes to fridge-forage and make her own creations, following her heart and stomach. My 15-year-old bought a Moleskine Recipe Journal a few years ago with some Christmas money and has been recording—and illustrating—her favorites in it ever since.

She makes this every morning

There are so many digital platforms out there, and I have yet to explore them all. Here are some, gleaned from personal recommendations and internet sources (including Kitchn):

New York Times Cooking (app and website): Yes, there’s a paywall! But in exchange you gain access to many decades’ worth of well-tested recipes. Comments section is also helpful in seeing what did and didn’t work for people.

Pinterest: This virtual “pin board” allows the user to organize and share in a visual way. I’m not sure quite what is going on with the “Suggested Content” on my own board, but other people swear by it!

Evernote: Note-taking and organizing app that allows you to arrange recipes by “favorites”, “to try,” or whatever categories work for you.

Google Drive: Yes, good ole-fashioned Google Drive! It’s a great way to integrate links, documents, notes in a way that’s cloud-based and therefore not tied to any individual device or shelf.

Paprika Recipe Manager: Available (and very well rated) on app stores.

Recipe Keeper: Similar to above.

♨︎♨︎♨︎♨︎♨︎♨︎

Please weigh in, if you’re so inclined, on your preferred way of recipe keeping or how you remember your parents/grandparents doing it. I’m really curious, and this is also research for my book. You can comment in the comments section or just hit “reply” if you’re getting this as a newsletter.

All About The Crunch

The Mayflower Inn is a destination of sorts in Washington, Connecticut—in the hills of Litchfield County. It has lately undergone a renovation and re-styling, and its restaurants have been revamped by chef April Bloomfield. Before all that, though, the Mayflower was a quietly upscale, slightly stuffy New England Inn where we would go for the occasional brunch on Mother’s Day or for a birthday dinner. In spring and summer, its best feature was the formal garden you could wander, getting lost in the boxwood mazes and stumbling upon Shakespearean quotes among the flowers. In colder months, a visit was guaranteed maximum coziness thanks to intimate little libraries and sitting rooms where you could take a glass of wine, commandeer your own personal fireplace, play a game of chess with your kid.

When Ben and I were married, many moons ago, a lovely bridesmaids’ luncheon was thrown for me at the Mayflower by my godmother and her daughter, and we most certainly had the Bibb Salad to start, because there was a time when that was the iconic salad at the Mayflower. A bit of a 90’s throwback, the dish was notable for its perfect balance of flavors and crunch: soft lettuce leaves, blue cheese, diced tomatoes, and crispy shallots. That’s it. (A journey into the internet’s memory tells me it was also dressed with truffle oil vinaigrette, but nooooo that can’t be, I’ve already overwritten that part.)

That salad was always, first and foremost, about the crispy shallots, and after receiving a huge order of shallots from OurHarvest recently*, I’ve become re-obsessed with their sweet, sublime crunch. If crunch were a food group, crispy shallots would give bacon bits some stiff competition. They are outstanding on any salad and even more so on Vietnamese noodle dishes, as a mix-in for a sour cream-based dip, a topping for your most decadent mac-n-cheese. A plus is that they are vegan so make a fine substitute for crumbled bacon on many plant-based things.

In the process of re-working this beloved salad recipe I tested out different techniques for making the crispy shallots. I tried the deep-fry method, where you heat the oil to a high temperature first and then let the shallots frizzle in it. It’s fast but also stressful, due to the vigilance needed to keep the shallots from burning. Another method—found on Bon Appétit and other sites—is to cover the shallots with a quantity of oil, adding both to the pan at the same time and cooking in a longer, more controlled manner. I was worried at first this would yield oil-sodden shallots, but my fears were allayed by a batch of perfectly browned and sweet little frizzles, which magically crisp up as they drain on paper towels. This is now my method of choice. Something I highly recommend if you are making this is using a mandoline to slice the shallots. They allow for even thickness, which translates to even cooking (i.e., you won’t have bitter burnt pieces mixed in with undercooked ones). If you’re not using a mandoline, just slice as evenly as you can. Instructions, plus the salad recipe, are below.

The Mayflower Salad lives on

Crispy Shallots

Adapted from Bon Appétit

• 1 cup or a bit more of vegetable oil (grapeseed, canola, refined sunflower all work)

• 3-4 large shallots, peeled, sliced crosswise to the approximate thickness of a dime

• Salt

Set up a tray covered with a couple of layers of paper towels. In a high-sided skillet or saute pan, put shallots covered in oil and turn heat on to medium high. Stir the shallots around with a fork to separate the rings. The shallots will cook slowly and begin to take on a golden color; once they do, watch them carefully and remove once they are golden brown—around 20-25 minutes. Pour the shallots and oil through a strainer with a bowl underneath to catch the oil. Allow to drain for a minute or two, and then spread shallots onto the paper towels and sprinkle with salt. They will crisp up after a few minutes. Store in a sealed container for a couple of days.

Reserve strained oil—which is now toasted shallot oil—for dressings and stir-fries.

Mayflower Salad

Serves 2

Ingredients:

• 1 bunch Boston Lettuce, Bibb Lettuce or Butter Lettuce, washed and patted dry (keep leaves whole)

• 1 medium tomato, diced, excess seeds and goo removed

• Blue Cheese, crumbled (Bleu d’Auvergne or Arethusa Farms Blue both work great)

• Crispy Shallots

• Tarragon vinaigrette (below) or other basic vinaigrette

• Salt and Pepper to Taste

Instructions:

Assemble Salad as you like! Toss greens and tomatoes with a couple of tablespoons of vinaigrette then scatter blue cheese and shallots on top. Sprinkle with salt and pepper.

Tarragon Vinaigrette

Ingredients:

• 1/2 tsp. honey or agave, or a pinch of sugar

• 1 tsp. Dijon mustard

• 2 TBS tarragon vinegar or just white wine vinegar (I make my own tarragon vinegar by inserting a clean bunch of fresh tarragon into a bottle of white wine vinegar and letting it infuse indefinitely).

• 1/4 cup oil: grapeseed oil, olive oil, a mix, or your choice of neutral oil

• Salt and pepper

Instructions:

Whisk together honey, mustard, and vinegar to blend. Slowly whisk in oil until it’s evenly blended. Season with a pinch of salt and a couple cranks of pepper to taste.

🧅🧅🧅

*OurHarvest, the source for the shallots I used, is an online farmer’s market and grocery that delivers to NYC, Long Island, and Southern Connecticut. You can use the code SHALLOT to get 25% off your first order plus free delivery…or just follow this link.

🧅🧅🧅

Why Cast Iron

Some of my earliest and happiest memories take place on the Piankatank River in Virginia. It’s a lesser-known estuary of the Chesapeake Bay and my grandparents had a home there, perched on a bluff, salt grayed and modern for the time when it was built. My Mom’s father, Poppy, traveled the world for the tobacco giant he worked for (back when cigs were health food), but he loved nothing more than getting up before dawn and going fishing with the local watermen. I remember it, because I slept in my grandparents’ room on a cot sometimes when the house was packed, and the shock of an alarm clock ringing out in the dark was real.

Scattered through these memories like punctuation are cast iron skillets, because that was where the bacon crisped in the morning and the fish fried at the end of the day. Sometimes they were fish Poppy brought home in a cooler, sometimes dinner was a small spot or perch I reeled out of the water myself, proudly, after sweaty hours swinging my legs off the side of the dock with no see’ums stealth bombing my sunburnt shoulders. After I lovingly swaddled my catch in a dish towel (my Nana tolerated this ritual and always managed to coax the fish away from me) Poppy would clean it on the long dock, tossing the guts into the water and then hosing away the scales. Before dinner he would go out to the garage, where an entire wall by the tool bench was hung with iron skillets of various sizes; there, he would select the appropriate one and then stride into the kitchen twirling that skillet in his hand like a boss.

I still relish the sound and smell of butter foaming and popping in an iron skillet, because butter foams and pops in an iron skillet in a very distinctive way, if you listen—more vigorously, more decisively. And when freshly caught fish, dredged lightly in cornmeal, is laid into foaming butter in an iron skillet it crisps in a way it can’t crisp in any other kind of pan. That’s not a scientifically proven statement but I stand by it.

During college, I pilfered a 9-inch cast iron skillet from my parents’ garage while I was home on a break. It seemed abandoned, so I claimed it. It already had a perfect, smooth black season to it and quickly became my favorite pan, following me to New York City and remaining my preferred vessel for making frittatas, skillet cornbread, and our current weeknight hack, an absurdly lazy version of Deb Perelman’s pizza beans.

That little skillet was joined by a larger, hefty 12-inch beast, which I bought in my 20’s while working as a professional cook. I seasoned it myself—a process that took a little patience but not as much as you might think—and it went from gunmetal gray to deep black and only improved with time. Sometimes I would even lug it along with me on jobs if I wasn’t sure about the client’s cookware situation; it felt like a security blanket. In the present day, it is my preferred place to sear steaks and make a big batch of bacon, or crisp brussels sprouts. All the meals we’ve cooked in those skillets have somehow left their imprints which will enhance now and future meals.

Saveur, in their most recent Top 100 issue, listed “The Great American Cast Iron Revival” as #24—but cast iron never actually went away. It was just joined, over the decades, by countless other products and their marketing clamor. I cook with many types of pans and love them all for different reasons. Copper I admire for its quick heating and conductivity—and if I’m honest, its prettiness. Stainless steel is plain but dependable, and I cherish my All-Clad collection, amassed mostly as wedding gifts. I have a small stable of Le Creuset pots, their colorful enamels somewhat dulled with the patina of cooking. Nothing is better for a languid braise. Nonstick pans? I mostly avoid them except for making omelets. But my cast iron skillets are the real workhorses, the Budweiser Clydesdales of the bunch: kind of clunky but handsome, solid, and all-American.

There are several reasons, nostalgia aside, why cast iron so good. Number one is browning and crisping power: steaks and fish and chicken skins get a really terrific sear in a cast iron skillet, and I would swear that they also pick up some undefinable boost in flavor. The thicker material of cast iron pans takes a little bit longer to heat up (unlike copper), but the heat inhabits the pan for longer, making them practical (and charming) for stove-to-table. Also: it sounds nerdy, but I find that the Lodge skillets I own (which may actually qualify as antiques by now) have a really ideal bottom-to-side ratio, which means they have enough depth for making fried chicken or cornbread but aren’t so high-sided that food begins to steam in their depths. The pan’s material can actually give your food an extra dose of iron, too, especially when the food cooked within it has some measure of acidity. And then there’s the surface. Once you get the pan seasoned and start using it regularly, its cooking surface is smooth and darn near non-stick. More on that below.

The options for cast iron cookware are varied these days, and most companies now offer pre-seasoned pots and pans. Lodge, the company that’s been at it since 1896, still makes the old-fashioned footed camp stove that allows you to cook directly over a fire—plus more streamlined configurations for the modern stovetop. Some other, newer, brands include F. Smithey Ironware Co., and Butter Pat, out of Maryland’s Eastern Shore. Try your luck at a local thrift store or antiques store, too—you may strike black gold.

What is seasoning? Simply: seasoning is the process of coating the metal with a protective seal made of hardened oils. Bare cast iron has a natural topography of microscopic gullies and hillocks, and you want to fill all of that in and create a smooth plain so food can release during cooking. For the initial seasoning (which you may never need to do thanks to pre-seasoned products on the market today), cookware must be coated with oil and baked in the oven for an hour or so; Lodge has a nifty guide to this. The best oils, according to food scientist Harold McGee, are soy oil and corn oil because they are conducive to “polymerizing”. I use grapeseed oil for maintenance, since it also fits the bill, and is also a neutral oil that withstands high heat. You should never use oil with a low smoke point, such as extra virgin olive oil. Oils high in saturated fat, such as animal fats and coconut oil, are also not so great for seasoning or maintenance (but are totally fine for cooking).

Maintaining your cast iron automatically becomes easier the more frequently you use your cookware. This is because it won’t sit there and become rusty from neglect, and also because you are adding to its seasoning layer by cooking. Do not be afraid to wash it, either. My basic rule of thumb is to use the gentlest degree of cleaning needed but exert a little more force as the cleanup requires. Sometimes you can get away with simply wiping out the pan. Most often, I use gentle dish liquid like Seventh Generation (which I use at all times anyway) and a soft, natural-bristled brush rather than metal scouring pads. If you get stuck-on food particles in the pan, rubbing in some kosher salt is also a safe way to remove the gunk, but you can also use a metal scrubber if the job calls for it. Beware of leaving your pan soaking in the sink—the resulting rust rings are not fun. After cooking and cleaning, I heat up my pan on the stove and then rub a thin layer of oil (usually grapeseed but the others mentioned above work) on the surface and allow it to cool before putting it away. You can get away with not doing this every time, but definitely do it if you’ve cooked something acidic or have put your pan through a vigorous scrubbing.

What should you cook with your cast iron? Anything! Some people say to avoid cooking acidic foods in there, but it’s ok once you have built up a good surface—just make sure you rub some oil onto the clean, warm pan after cooking, say, tomatoes or lemony chicken in it. Also, a tip if you’re using the skillet in the oven: invest in a silicone handle cover. I can’t tell you how many times I have grabbed a searing hot handle with my bare hands without thinking beforehand—ouch!

Here are some cast iron recipe ideas from around the internet:

Edna Lewis skillet cornbread (note: I use my 9-inch skillet with this. The recipe says 10-inch. Either is fine)

Shakshuka

Cast-Iron Skillet Pizza

Breakfast Hash

Extra-Billowy Dutch Baby

Skillet Berry Crisp

Cast-Iron Chocolate Chip Cookie

…And here is our beloved pizza bean recipe—it’s brutally simple, it’s vegetarian, and we usually plunk down the skillet onto the table along with lots of garlic bread, and then just dive in.

Cheese pull for the win

Lazy Pizza Beans

Ingredients:

• 2 cans large white beans (such as cannellini or gigante beans), drained

• 1 jar Rao’s marinara or tomato basil sauce (other brands work, Rao’s is just our favorite! Not sponsored!)

• Pinch of salt

• 8-oz fresh mozzarella or more as needed, thinly sliced (we use around half of one of those big balls of mozz found everywhere in NYC)

• Optional: fresh basil for garnish

Instructions:

Preheat oven to 400°. Put beans into a 9-inch or 10-inch skillet. Pour in half a bottle of Rao’s sauce and add more as needed—you want the tops of the beans to still be visible. Stir in just a pinch of salt. Put in oven and bake for about 15 minutes, then cover the top with mozzarella and put on the top shelf of the oven and cook until it’s bubbling and the mozzarella has begun to brown. Scatter torn or sliced basil over the top, if using.

Garlic Bread:

People have their opinions, but here’s mine: Melt some butter and crush a bunch of garlic cloves (I use a microplane zester)—around 4 garlic cloves per 4 tablespoons butter. Stir and season with a pinch of salt. Now slice a baguette or long Italian loaf into 4-inch or so segments, then slice these in half lengthwise. Spread the cut sides liberally with garlic butter then toast in the oven while the pizza beans are cooking.

Poppy’s skillets - the O.G.s

Citrus is Good Medicine

Happy 2021! My office is currently doubling as a (very loud) 2nd grade classroom. More broadly, the new year so far seems like a bad sequel to the weird movie that was 2020.

Zoom Life (James) by Kamila Zmrzla @topbunartist

So let’s escape, for a moment, into all things citrus. It’s something I do in an ordinary January, but as this winter calls for an especially deep dive, I thought I would share some of my resources, ideas, and recipes for the juicy, puckery citrus fruits that are coming at us. In normal times my relationship with citrus has bordered on obsessive, as was revealed a few years back when I smuggled a dozen giant lemons and citrons back from Italy, only to narrowly wriggle my way out of a scrape with customs agents (ask my kids about this). The lemons made it home to my kitchen, but I don’t recommend making children your citrus mules.

First, if you’ve been underwhelmed by the citrus on offer at your local supermarket, here are some sources that bring fresh fruit to your door:

I recently discovered that Etsy—yes Etsy! is a treasure trove of fresh citrus fruits, shipped straight from someone’s sunny orchard in California or Florida. In fact, you can find all manner of exotic produce, seeds, and saplings—technically sold under “gifts”—on Etsy. 🤯 I recently ordered a box of pretty pink cara cara oranges from this shop and a box of blood oranges and unwaxed meyer lemons from here. It’s an interesting way to shop, since even with travel distance the supply chain is more direct.

As I was sitting down to begin this post, Mark Bittman’s newsletter slid into my emails. It’s devoted to all things citrus and he’s offering a box of mail order oranges, lemons, limes, etc. from California, along with some of his always excellent ideas and recipes.

Got a green thumb and a sunny window? You can order your own lil’ key lime, Meyer lemon, or Australian finger lime tree to keep you company (and bear fruit) through the winter months. Via Citrus and Four Winds Growers both ship to most states.

Frog Hollow Farm is also a solid source for great quality, seasonal citrus and other fruits.

Natoora, which aggregates produce from small growers, has many specialty varieties of citrus that you don’t see in stores available for delivery this time of year.

Recipe ideas:

Do you need a drink? If I had to pick just one cocktail, it would be the puckery and spicy tequila potion my sister Cassie regularly concocts, which has taken hold in my own household. Hey! We’re just warding off scurvy. The “recipe” is this: Squeeze together mixed varieties of citrus, serve the juice over ice with a splash of soda and as much tequila as you want or need. I don’t sweeten it, but you can put in a bit of agave, simple syrup, or sweetener of choice. Scatter in some jalapeño slices to spice it up. Taste and trust yourself!

I usually keep loads of lemons on hand, since a squeeze of the juice is a nifty way to bring up flavors and even reduce the amount of salt you need. One of our favorite weeknight dinners is a one-pan chicken with lemons, caperberries, and potatoes. Also on the savory side is this Citrus, fennel, and green olive salad. There’s plenty of sweet stuff on my site, too, including recipes for meyer lemon ginger curd, which is like silky sunshine spread on toasted croissants in the morning, and a lemon-quark snacking cake, which never sticks around very long after I make it. To satisfy a craving for both chocolate and citrus, try these Chocolate-Orange Pots de Crème—they are adult grade pudding cups.

Also, you should know about Andy Baraghani’s whole lemon-sesame sauce at Bon Appétit. It was the first thing I made with those contraband Amalfi Coast lemons, and it’s stellar with salmon.

Here’s a basic recipe for making preserved lemons, which are an essential pantry item in this house. I’m fond of slicing them very thinly (you eat them rind and all) and laying them atop sardines on toast, and I also make a tahini sauce that’s loaded up with preserved lemons and a little garlic.

This Blood Orange Bundt Cake with Bitters, from Eyeswoon, is truly magical. If you’re looking for a vegan version there’s a gorgeous one over on Fare Isle.

If you’re still here I’m sharing a totally unrelated link for this extraordinary story by Ann Patchett that has really stuck with me since a friend forwarded it along. It speaks of human connection and the mysteries of life, and yes the silver linings of Covid. It’s a lengthy one, so grab a slice of lemon cake or a tequila-citrus cocktail and find a comfortable spot.

The Cooks Who Came Before Us

Today would have been my Dad’s 78th birthday. I miss him all the time, especially when there’s something funny or exciting I really want to tell him about, and I have that split second impulse to shoot him an email or pick up the phone…and then I realize with a pit in my stomach that I can’t. If he were still alive I would tell him about an article that I just had published, which happens to be about his own mother—my Mimi—who was a food writer from 1946-1976. It’s also about all the women who came before, who helped build food writing back when it was seen as “just women’s work.” Please have a read. I’m thrilled to be featured in Comestible Journal and am a fierce advocate for small, independent publications.

Also: Dad was a huge influence on my love for food, cooking, and writing about it. He was always a great supporter and teacher. In honor of his birthday I’m including a version of a piece that I wrote in 2017 for The Virginia Sportsman magazine.

°°°

Hunter, Fisherman, and Chef

Fall 2017

This May marked the passing of my father, Andy Williams, who was a longtime reader of this magazine; he also served as an inspiration and a tremendous resource for the recipes and stories I’ve put down here. Many who knew him would agree that he was not only passionate about hunting and fishing—as he was about his many chosen pursuits—but he was also an accomplished cook of wild-caught foods. He was generous with his talents and over the years came to be known as the chef-in-residence during the many hunting and fishing expeditions he enjoyed with friends. In many respects, these occasions became happenings around food, as well as celebrations of the bounty that nature had provided.

Back when I was a young child, I cringed at the bundles of bird carcasses he hauled home along with muddy boots and bloodied hunting gear, and I’m sure I pleaded with him tearfully to stop killing the creatures I saw as friends. I hadn’t yet made the connection between the hamburgers and chicken nuggets I enjoyed and the animals they had previously been, nor did I think about the quality of those animals’ lives. What I eventually learned, by watching his rituals, was a natural completeness and circularity of tracking and taking wild animals, preparing them, using every possible part of them, and crafting a beautiful meal that could be shared among friends. This knowledge was a gift—so many children now are disconnected from the origins of their food, and I got to understand and appreciate this ancient cycle from an early age.

I also got to learn a trick or two, as Dad was constantly refining his repertoire of recipes and adding new ones to it—whether taking courses at Le Cordon Bleu in Paris, or experimenting with a new-to-him ingredient such as harissa or quatres épices, or tinkering with a recipe he had somehow cajoled a famous restaurant chef into sharing with him.

One constant was his stock-making routine, which took place every year once the air became crisp, and he’d amassed enough game bird frames and cast-off bits to fill the basement freezer. Then, he lugged down his tallest stockpot, which took its place on the rear right quadrant of the stove, beside the small wooden barrel into which he poured leftover wine to make his own vinegar. The first day, the pot sat tranquilly as delicate currents circulated around the jumble of bones, vegetables, and bundled herbs inside. Once the liquid went to gold and had drunk all the essence of the solids, he ran the whole mess through a fine, cone-shaped strainer into a smaller pot, where the clear stock concentrated further, overnight and into the next day, darkening from wheat-colored to ochre, and finally deepening to a rich umber emulsion through which bubbles rose thickly. You could chart the progress of the stock’s reduction by the strata of skin deposited around the inside of the pot, ruffling in the rising steam.

My love of cooking was born and grew in that kitchen, as I assisted or sometimes just watched, listened, and smelled. Even during the vegetarian years of my teens, I was attuned to what was going on at the stove and had a solid respect (if not appetite) for hunting and the reverence and resourcefulness that can and should go along with it. Later, with genuine interest, I spent many afternoons beside him at the counter, learning the components of classic cuisine, as well as how to clean and prepare wild birds and fish. By the time I was enrolled in cooking school in my 20’s, I was already conversant in the vocabulary of the kitchen and comfortable with the more visceral aspects of working with food.

Dad and I cooked many meals together over the years and enjoyed even more that we didn’t prepare; food was one thing we could always agree on and look forward to during visits. I will miss those times with him in the kitchen or at the table, and I treasure the recipes he so enthusiastically shared with me, usually in the form of rambling emails with meandering asides and silly puns. Below are two of his beloved fall classics, in time for dove season—one of his favorite times of year.

Andy’s Grilled Dove in Red Wine Marinade

Serves four as an appetizer, or as part of a dinner buffet

Ingredients:

• 1 cup red wine

• 1 shot of gin

• 1/2 cup olive oil

• 3 TBS. soy sauce

• 3 TBS. balsamic vinegar

• 1 dried bay leaf

• 2 sprigs fresh thyme (or 1 TBS dried thyme)

• 1 tsp. ground black pepper

• 1 tsp. salt

• 8 whole dove breasts, split, on the bone (16 halves)

Directions:

1. Whisk together all ingredients except dove breasts. Lay breasts in a casserole dish or in a zip-lok bag, and pour marinade over them. Marinate for approximately two hours, making sure the meat is uniformly covered with the marinade.

2. Preheat grill to medium-high flame. When the grill is hot, lightly oil grates and grill dove 3-4 minutes each side, or until medium rare. Do not overcook. Dove breasts can be eaten straight off the grill or served with collard greens, or with sautéed cabbage and caraway seeds.

Dove Breasts with Jalapeños and Bacon

Serves 4 as an appetizer

Ingredients:

• 8 whole dove breasts, split, on the bone (16 halves)

• 8 small jalapeño peppers, halved and seeded or 16 rounds of jarred jalapeño slices

• 8 slices bacon, cut in half

• toothpicks or small bamboo skewers

Instructions:

1. Preheat grill to medium-high. Lightly oil grates. Lay dove breasts bone side up on a flat surface, and place a piece of jalapeño in the center of each piece. Wrap a piece of bacon snugly around each breast, crossing ends on top of jalapeño, and secure with a toothpick or skewer.

2. Grill breasts 4-5 minutes on each side, or until dove meat is medium rare and bacon is crisp. Enjoy!

Ice Cream

One of the things I miss the most about our old life, the one before coronavirus, is going out for ice cream on the first warm days of spring. We are—were—fortunate to have two wonderful options within a couple of blocks of our house. The first, MilkMade, closed last fall, and I miss the little storefront with the pepto-colored trim and the innovative flavors like Haunted Hayride, Mango sticky rice, and Key Lime Pie (my favorite). All the ice creams were spun right there in the back, and on a hot summer night a tight queue of happy, sweaty families stretched halfway around the block. Remember tight queues?

Right across the street from the former MilkMade is Farmacy, which is temporarily closed. When we first moved to this neighborhood the space was a creepy, abandoned drugstore whose windows we used to peer through, speculating on what the story was there. It was littered with dust bunnies and weathered pharmaceutical products someone had just walked away from one day and never looked back. Luckily, some fine folks rescued and turned it into an old-fashioned soda fountain, its tiled floors and old pill cabinets beautifully preserved, a countertop with swivel stools where you can perch and watch the soda jerks work their magic with the shiny chrome equipment. We would pop in with the kids to get one of their creative sodas or sundaes, like the Pink Poodle or Sir Twix-a-Lot. We grownups liked to drown our afternoon slump in an affogato. I hope those days will be back soon.  

This weekend, the time was right for some ice cream, so I got my clunky old ice cream maker down. It’s heavy and it takes up too much cabinet real estate, but it has its own compressor so you don’t have to freeze a canister and if you really wanted to you could spin quart after quart, all day long. For our 2020 inaugural run I used up some mangos that were wrinkling in the fruit bowl. Those smaller, sweeter yellow mangoes called Ataulfo or Champagne mangos seem to be plentiful in the markets right now, and we had gotten a deal on a case of them. After the kids tired of having mango “hedgehogs” for breakfast I had to find a way to use the rest.

Wrinkly, flavorful Ataulfo mangoes

I developed a vegan mango ice cream with a slight hint of cardamom since I love that flavor and happen to have a fresh batch of cardamom. It gets its creaminess from coconut milk (I used the canned, unsweetened organic kind. You can get it without guar gum if that bothers you). A note on sugar and sweetening: the amount I specify in this recipe is low. That is because our mangos were super ripe and sweet, and I have been trying to go light on sugar in general. I would advise tasting your blend and deciding what works—and you can also experiment with alternative sweeteners like coconut sugar.  It’s so good! My family voted thumbs up and my daughter Cece said I should definitely put the recipe up here. Note: If you don’t have a machine I’ve included an alternative freezing method. Won’t be 100% the same but still delicious. You can also check out my all time favorite ice cream recipe, fresh mint leaf/chocolate chip, here or at its old blog home here.

Vegan mango cardamom ice cream

Vegan Mango Cardamom Ice “Cream”

Ingredients:

• 3 lbs very ripe whole mangos, preferably the smaller yellow Ataulfo aka Champagne mangos (around 5 of them)

• 1/4 cup sugar — more or less to taste

• juice of 1/2 lime

• 1/4 tsp. ground cardamom

• pinch salt

• 1 cup unsweetened coconut milk

Instructions:

1. Slice mango away from the pit on each side. Scoop the fruit out of the skins. Cut all the mango fruit you possibly can away from the pit, avoiding the hairy fibrous part close to the pit. Repeat this with all the mangos, discarding skins and pits.

2. Put mango and all other ingredients in a blender and blend thoroughly until super smooth. Taste and add more sugar if needed—all mangos are different so sweeten accordingly! Chill mixture until quite cold.

3. Freeze according to your ice cream maker’s instructions. If you don’t have an ice cream maker, freeze in a shallow container, going in every 20 minutes or so to stir and scrape with a fork, outer edges to center, until you’ve reached the consistency you like.

All Together Now

It’s Friday and the second day of Spring, but this is not how any of us pictured spring unfurling. I have to remind myself to look up and notice the trees are starting to bloom, and flowers are peeking out of the soil, because it’s so hard not to be frustrated that we’re separated from beloved family and friends. For now, though, we are staying healthy, occupied, and quasi sane in our new cloistered normal. There’s an odd sense that the world has suddenly gotten very small and we are going through the same things together, albeit in slightly different ways and at different stages. Thank goodness we live in the time of the internet so we can check up on news around the world, FaceTime with faraway family members, do distance learning and virtual yoga classes.

We can watch people in Italy singing their hearts out from balconies while under quarantine. And Parisians cheering in appreciation for the medical workers from their windows. In about an hour, my neighbors are “meeting” on their individual stoops and out of their windows for an Italy-inspired singalong and wine.

Art museums, though shuttered, are open for virtual tours. And Audible is offering free audio books for kids right now. This crisis has not brought out the best in everyone, but for the most part there’s a sense of cooperation and inventiveness that reminds us of our collective better selves and sustains us through the long, formless days.

In my neighborhood in Brooklyn, people are going out for careful walks with their kids, but since groups are verboten, playdates are off the table. Someone around here started a Rainbow Connection project, where kids can make rainbows to display in a window, then other kids out walking can play a game of I Spy and spot the rainbows. It seems to be spilling over to other cities, too. There is a map of the project here and you can add your own to the map here.

As a friendly reminder to wash hands, a neighbor around the corner installed a temporary sink outside his gate, open to all, with foot-operated pedals dispensing soap and water.

We are keeping ourselves sane by taking walks and bike rides in our local parks (for as long as we’re allowed to!), keeping chore schedules, and of course cooking. A lot. Luckily, everyone in my family likes to cook, and we’ve had a rotating lunch schedule in which we all sit down together. So far we’ve had a vegetarian sandwich by the eldest child, homemade pizza from the middle child, and “breakfast for lunch” from the boys. There’s been some talk of chicken and waffles, so the ante is upping.

Cooking is one thing I’m able to do when I don’t feel in control of much else, so I’ve been doing a lot of it. That’s not to say I’m doing the other things well. I make a terrible home school teacher—and as the kids are technically on spring break right now we haven’t even gotten to that phase yet. My thesis project exists in a parallel universe where attention span is an actual thing, and I’m not even sure how graduation is going to play out. But we’re all healthy, so that’s what really matters.

If you are facing a never ending string of meals at home—and you probably are—you can find some easy and tasty recipes at the New York Times. David Lebovitz, confined at home in Paris, has pulled together some here (call me crazy but I’m kind of excited to try the sardine rillettes). The Kitchn has some good stuff, too and Amanda Hesser of Food52 has been doing cooking tutorials on her Instagram (@amandahesser).

It was my turn to make lunch today, so I simmered up a big batch of black beans and put together a mess of sheet tray tortillas we could all help ourselves to—crisped corn tortillas loaded up with spiced beans, cheese, avocado, pickled onions, and fried eggs. They’re vegetarian but the recipe is open-ended, so you can mix it up with anything you have around. I’ve included recipes for a few of the core basics below, along with a list of other things I piled on. The black bean recipe is one we use for tacos, burritos, bowls, and a host of other things.

Spiced Black Beans

• 2 TBS or so neutral oil

• 2 cups cooked black beans (approx. 1 can), some liquid reserved

• 1 small onion (or 1/4 large onion)

• 1 tsp. salt or to taste

• 2 tsp. cumin

• 1 tsp. chili powder or sweet paprika (depending on level of spiciness desired)

• 1/2 tsp. ground coriander seed

Instructions:

Heat oil in a skillet or small frying pan. Add onions, spices, and half of salt, and cook over medium heat, stirring, for 5-7 minutes until onions have sweated and spices smell toasty. Make sure not to burn. After that has sizzled for a bit, add beans and some of their liquid (or plain water). Simmer for around 20 minutes, adding a bit of water as needed, until beans are tender and flavorful, simmering away in their own sauce. Add more salt to taste.

Pickled Onions

• 1 small red onion, sliced into thin rings or pieces

• 1 cup apple cider vinegar

• 1/2 cup water

• 1 TBS kosher salt

• 1 tsp. sugar

Instructions:

Put sliced onions in a bowl or jar. Bring other ingredients to a boil, then pour over the onions to cover. Let sit at least 30 minutes until bright pink and ready to use. Once cooled, put in the refrigerator. These keep for a long time and have many uses.

Assembly ingredients (suggested only—add your own):

• Small corn or wheat tortillas

• Neutral oil

• Beans

• Shredded cheese

• Eggs

• Avocados, sliced

• Chopped chiles

• Thinly sliced radishes

• Pickled onions

• Sliced scallions

• Cilantro leaves

• Limes for squeezing

• Your favorite hot sauce or salsa

• Other ideas: sauteed Mexican chorizo or sausage; corn; sauteed peppers and onions

Assembly:

Preheat oven to 400°. Brush or rub 8 tortillas with oil on both sides and arrange on tray slightly overlapping. Once the top side starts getting crisp, flip and rotate them so they crisp evenly. Take them out and scatter over beans and then as much shredded cheese as you like. Put them back into the oven to let cheese melt. While this is happening, fry the eggs in a skillet. Once cheese is melted and starting to bubble, take the tray out and arrange eggs and the other toppings any way you like. You can make a smaller version of this if you’re confined on your own, or multiply infinitely once it’s safe to come together in one big party. That day will come!

JuJu's Tea Cakes

(Originally Published here December 9, 2011)

I’d been working on a post about Brussels sprouts, when all of a sudden I woke up one morning and Wham! was on the radio singing “Last Christmas”, and the tree people had come down from Vermont to re-forest the corner of Kane & Clinton. This means, by necessity, that letters for Santa have been painstakingly scrawled in childish hand, and Good Curious Elf has begun his nightly patrols. We’ve already been swept into the whirlwind of the Christmas Spectacular and tree viewing at Rockefeller Center, and we've handed the tots off to the grandparents for the more onerous Manhattan errands. So suddenly, shredded Brussels sprouts with lemon and cappellini, as much as I love that dish, seems colossally un-special. It’s time for some baking, and I’d like to share a cookie recipe that, for us, always kick-starts the holiday season. It’s not the most original one you’ll see in this year’s cookie line-up, but it was my great-grandmother’s. That sounds even more impressive when I tell my daughters we are baking their great-great grandmother’s cookies, the ones my mom used to make with my sister and me every December.

Mrs. Julia Butterworth, known as “JuJu,” lived in the tiny town of DeWitt, VA. This is not the first time I’ve written about her here. Since she reached the venerable age of 96 I got to know her for a handful of years, but those being my youngest years I only caught her in glimpses, which at this point in my life have gotten muddled together in a grainy black-and-white montage. I imagine her with a nimbus of snow-white hair and old-fashioned eyeglasses, slimly built and simply dressed, with a sweet, old-lady smile. I suppose, now, I know her more from Mom’s stories than anything else and can almost feel the feeling of climbing in between cold sheets in her guest bedroom, peering out at the dark shadows that gathered in the corners of her old farmhouse. I can hear the birds chirp in the morning as I imagine stealing into her garden to pull sweet young turnips from the dirt, warm underfoot in the Virginia sun.

And so, following her recipe for “tea cakes,” rolling out the buttery dough and pressing down onto the cookie cutters and snapping a crisp cookie between my teeth, I almost believe I can visit with her for a while and bring my daughters along to meet her. They don’t yet appreciate time passed and memories preserved as I do, but they adore a good tea cake and beg for them year round. We’ve been known to pull out this recipe at Halloween or Valentine’s Day, too, merely as an excuse to wield cookie cutters.

There’s nothing especially elaborate or new about this recipe, it’s just a good, solid one for this old-fashioned type of cookie, which inhabits the space somewhere between a butter cookie and a sugar cookie. In spite of what the name might suggest, there’s nothing cake-y about them–especially when rolled thin as we’re in the habit of doing in my family. Juju had two different versions: the “everyday” ones baked with Fluffo instead of butter and cut thicker in the shapes of bunnies, with raisins for eyes…and then the fancy “tea cake” rendition for special occasions: made with real butter, rolled thin, cut in a variety of shapes, and decorated prettily with sprinkles. That’s the kind my mother made with us at Christmas. It was part of her slim repertoire of sweet treats, and in fact the only thing we ever baked during the holiday season. But she was a decent baker and had her opinions about how things should be done. The dough had to be stretched whisper-thin and lightly adorned, preferably with 4mm silver dragees. My sister and I used to torture her by loading on the colored sugar, as much as a cookie could physically hold, as soon as she turned her head…and gleefully watched her horror when she turned back around to discover our handiwork. As I make these cookies with my daughters every year, I catch myself falling into the same OCD patterns, tensing up as they pile on the crystallized red dye #5. But I hold myself back, letting them unleash their little creative demons.

Around here, it’s not Christmas until a round of these cookies gets made, and flour dusts the whole kitchen, and the house fills with their buttery-sweet smell. I do roll them wafer thin, a habit which demands a little more work and watchfulness (they burn in a flash). My preference is for cookies that are golden and a little toasty around the edges, with a hint of caramelized flavor. I am also partial to the glittering dragees, even though I’m not quite sure what sort of metals we’re ingesting (note: I prefer the 2mm size to the 4mm; they’re more like birdshot than BBs and much gentler on the teeth).

Truly, the best thing about these cookies always was–and still is–the raw dough. Rich and vanilla-scented, with a sugary crunch between the teeth, it is the very essence of what cookie dough should be, and there is no better anywhere. I still gobble up the scraps as I roll and cut. Mom used to give us each a beater off her 1968 hand mixer–the one she still owns in spite of the gaping hole in its casing and exposed wiring and gears within (“I keep things until they die,” she'll proudly tell you). We would strip off every atom of dough with our tongues and stick our heads into the empty mixing bowl for good measure, until somewhere along the line there was a salmonella scare, and a dough-laden beater acquired the same, suburban menace as a raccoon out in daylight or unwrapped candy on Halloween. It became every parent’s responsibility to keep cookie dough away from children’s mouths, and so Mom fell in line. Still, we managed to swipe our fingers in the dough bowl while she wasn’t looking and later, growing bolder, to steal down to the refrigerator where the dough rested, peel back the plastic wrap and break off hunks of chilled dough, which was even better, somehow, than it had been at the freshly-whipped stage. After she got wise to our ways and threatened to cut us off from Christmas sweets forever, our deceptions grew more intricate, and we honed the art of opening the fridge swiftly with a well-timed cough to mask the sound, and with a potter’s skill, of molding the dough back into place after prying off a sugary chunk.

Enjoy this recipe any way you like: pressed thin, left thick, modestly or garishly sprinkled, iced, pale, tawny at the edges, or burnt to a crisp. Enjoy the meditation of flouring the board and rolling out the dough. And if you happen to be making these with kids, savor the way you're forced to slow down a bit during the holiday season. Let go of your control freak side for a moment and make a terrible, floury, sprinkly mess.

Recipe: Juju’s Tea Cakes  

Ingredients:  

• 2 sticks butter (8 oz.), softened at room temperature 

• 1 ½ cups sugar (the natural kind works if it’s finely textured)  

• 2 large eggs (or one Jumbo)  

• 2 ½ cups all-purpose flour plus extra for flouring cookie surface  

• 1 tsp. good-quality vanilla extract  

• 1 tsp. baking powder

Instructions:  

With an electric mixer, cream together butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add eggs and vanilla and beat until combined. Sift dry ingredients together into a separate bowl, then add to the butter mixture in two additions. Mix until just combined. Scrape out of bowl and shape roughly into four disks, wrapping in plastic wrap or parchment. Chill for at least an hour, or overnight, until firm.

When ready to make cookies, preheat oven to 350º. Leave dough out at room temperature for 20 minutes or so, until softened and workable but still cold and somewhat firm. Prepare trays with either parchment or silpat. Ready a clean surface and rolling pin, along with some extra flour for dusting. Lightly dust your work surface and rolling pin and roll out cookie dough, working from the center outward and rotating the disk for the most even thickness. When you’ve reached about between 1/8" and 1/16” thickness (or as desired), cut out your cookies with floured cutters of your choice. Transfer to prepared cookie sheets (a dough scraper really helps) and decorate as desired. 

Bake, checking frequently, between 15 and 25 minutes. Ovens vary widely, and much depends on how thinly you've rolled your dough. When done to your liking (I like them golden around the edges), remove tray from oven and cool cookies before handling. They keep in an airtight container for a couple of weeks.