So who did invent whipped cream?

Indianerkrapfen

Trying to cook from the 27-book Time-Life international series is overwhelming! I sit down to write a grocery list, happily flip through one book after another, and 3 hours later look up and don't have a grocery list which is cool because I no longer have the energy to go to the grocery store. I may have to refine my approach.

Indianerkrapfen. Not a pretty word in English, so we'll call them Indianer cakes. The recipe comes from The Cooking of Vienna's Empire (part of the Time-Life series) by Joseph Wechsberg, a revered food writer whose Blue Trout and Black Truffles I once read but remember nothing about. He offers an account of the invention of Indianer cakes that is so silly I almost don't want to waste the energy typing it. But will: A Hindu tightrope walker traveled to Vienna in 1850 and a woman was watching him traverse the tightrope between two towers when her husband told her to quit staring This pissed her off and she threw a lump of dough at him. The dough landed in a pan of hot fat and when she pulled it out she filled it with whipped cream, iced it with chocolate, and named the new cake in honor of the Hindu tightrope walker.

This is the stage where you think you have failed.

Do you believe that? Neither do I. Wechsberg also writes that a Viennese housewife invented whipped cream and while the Austrians do seem to eat a lot of it,  I don't believe that either. Wikipedia concurs.

To make Indianer cakes, you mix an airy batter of cornstarch, flour, sugar, and egg and bake in a muffin tin. Cool the muffin-cakes, which will be sunken and misshapen, scoop out the middle of each, and fill the hollow with whipped cream. Turn the cakes cream-side down and glaze the tops with chocolate. The cakes resemble profiteroles, but instead of firm, bland choux-paste shells, the Indianer shells are tender and sweet, like a French cruller. I loved them. Everyone did. They were gone in 24 hours.

The recipe had problems, principally, the glaze. You're supposed to melt unsweetened chocolate with water, sugar, corn syrup, and cream, then whisk in beaten egg at the end. I knew this was going to fail and fail it did, yielding a thin, oily fluid full of scrambled egg bits. I threw it out and made an easier glaze from Kaffeehaus by Rick Rodgers that worked beautifully. Rodgers offers a somewhat different technique for Indianer cakes that I want to try, as well as a more plausible story of their origin. I will print a recipe for Indianer cakes as soon as I've got it perfected because they are really, really special.

like greasy quesadillas, but less tasty

Less special: the Tunisian brik from Quintet of Cuisines. You place a mound of seasoned ground lamb on a square of fillo dough, crack an egg on the lamb, fold the fillo into a triangle, and fry for a few minutes. A diagram would have helped with the fillo origami and I also could have used a few words on how to fry the brik because: too fast and they will brown before the egg inside has cooked. This happened. Wet, gelatinous egg, tasty lamb, oily filo. I would give the recipe another shot and try to correct my errors, but just don't love savory fillo pastries enough to bother.

On another subject, I had to go back to Monterey this past weekend and saw something in the backyard of a historic adobe that reminded me of a big project I have not yet completed:

Oh, go away, not now.

I was so gung ho about our pizza oven last fall, but the weather got bad so we had to stop before applying the final layer of insulation and plaster. Now the weather is lovely again and all I want to do is sit on the deck eating cherries and flipping through books on Austrian pastries.

Go ahead and call me Little Suzy Farm Girl

Sadly, aging chickens have never been a problem for us.

I can't post every day. I don't have enough to say! You would all get very bored. Yesterday I cooked the lamb filling for the Tunisian brik, but failed to remove the filo dough from the freezer in time so I didn't cook anything and had nothing to write about.

Today I do have something to write about. In the comments, Ida asked me what I thought about this impassioned post criticizing people who want backyard chickens -- but don't want to deal with them  once they stop laying. The owners no longer want to pay for the hens' upkeep, but are too wimpy to kill them. So they try to give them away. The author thinks this is bogus:

"There is absolutely nothing ethically superior – and quite a bit that is ethically dubious, if you ask me – about enjoying the benefits of a young laying hen and then turning over the care or slaughter of that hen to someone else once it stops laying.
That is not how animal husbandry works and it’s not how pet ownership works, and those are your two choices. I don’t care which path you take with your chickens, but pick one. Playing Little Suzy Farm Girl until it’s time to get the axe and then deciding you aren’t up for chicken ownership just doesn’t fly with me."

Well, it flies with me. First of all, if you can find someone who wants to adopt and feed your old hens, great. I don't see what's ethically dubious about "turning over the care" of superannuated chickens to someone who wants to take them. It seems like a win-win-win situation.

Or would be if these people existed. If they do, I haven't met them. The author is correct that when your hens stop laying, you will probably have to either suck it up and keep them on as expensive pets or kill them.

But unlike the author, I don't think there's any reason you have to do the killing yourself if you don't want to. What's the point? To prove something? To punish yourself? You kept chickens for eggs and probably gave them a really nice life, however short, and enjoyed their company and now that's over. There are people who will happily take those birds off your hands. I don't think turning the slaughter over to them is unethical. I think it's sensible. You're giving someone a flavorful stewing hen they will enjoy eating and sparing yourself an experience you won't enjoy having. The only loser here is the old chicken, but that was a foregone conclusion.

We've never faced the problem of aging chickens as they've all been eaten by bobcats or contracted fatal illnesses before they stopped laying. I don't know what we'll do if we ever find ourselves with a bunch of elderly hens. Probably keep them. I don't even pretend to be a real farmer.

P.S. I just read through many of the comments on the original post and someone makes the same argument I just did. The author responded very civilly and said she should have worded the piece differently. She objects to people who won't make the DECISION to kill an old hen. She doesn't mean they have to kill it themselves. So there's no real disagreement at all.

That was fun

You can have no idea how badly I wanted to taste that tart when I was 10. 

Thank you so much for your incredibly nice -- and abundant! -- comments on the last post. I've been blushing for the last three days. I wish I had a blockbuster post to continue my hot streak, but tonight it's  business as usual.

A few things:

1. The asparagus and rice soup from The Zuni Cafe Cookbook is great. Make it. Owen said it was "pretty good" and Mark gave it a 7 out of 10, but I would give it a 9.5 out of 10 and I'm the one to listen to. It's easy and inexpensive and the recipe is here. It's a very brothy so if you have homemade chicken stock in the freezer, use it.

2. On Friday we had a party and I made pulled pork from Make the Bread, Buy the Butter. The first glitch I noticed was that I didn't specify whether the pork shoulder should be bone-in or boneless. BONE-IN. Actually, that was the only glitch. Otherwise, the recipe worked pretty well. Next time you have 12 hours to babysit some coals, consider pulled pork.

3. I'm going to cook from the Time-Life Foods of the World series next. Vintage, out-of-print, still enthralling. These were my first cookbook love and probably, even after all these years, my greatest. I recently started flipping through the books again and wondered why I never thought of doing this before. I'm very, very excited. I was going to make the Tunisian brik from A Quintet of Cuisines tonight, but it looks like I'm going to a high school drama production instead. Like, right this second. Brik tomorrow.

brik

My Smitten Kitchen problem

transference /trans·fer·ence/ (trans-fer´ens) in psychotherapy, the unconscious tendency to assign to others in one's present environment feelings and attitudes associated with significance in one's early life. . .  

I was chopping broccoli for Smitten Kitchen's broccoli slaw on Friday -- the fourth time I've made this great salad -- and decided it was time to write about my Smitten Kitchen problem. Or, I should say, my former Smitten Kitchen problem. This all happened a few months ago and I wasn't sure how to tell the odd story, and I'm still not, but here goes.

I'll start in the middle.

I used to be a semi-regular visitor to Smitten Kitchen, Deb Perelman's recipe blog. I read her posts and skimmed the hundreds and hundreds of loving comments appended to each one.  If you're unfamiliar with Perelman, though I doubt you are, she's a thirtysomething woman who lives in New York City with her husband and pre-schooler son and writes about cooking. Her chummy, confiding persona is that of a charmingly obsessive perfectionist. She's not my soulmate, but she's a real pro, cheerful and consistent in her posting, reliable and often inspired in her recipes, a strong photographer.

Yet I found myself holding back approval from her blog. When her book was published last fall, I bought it right away but again held back. I was even a little sorry when the first recipe I tried, the buttered popcorn cookies, turned out to be so delicious. I was reading her in a mean spirit, looking for faults. This is no way to read a cookbook or anything else.

Was it jealousy?  I wrote a cookbook that did fine and Smitten Kitchen wrote a cookbook that was a huge hit. I pondered this at length, because it seemed like the most obvious explanation. But while I should have been jealous of her sales, which translate into tangible benefits like money and professional opportunities, I didn't feel so much as a twinge of envy. It was something else. I thought and thought and then suddenly it was clear as day and since that moment of clarity I've had no problem with Deb Perelman at all.

I went to all-girls schools from kindergarten through 8th grade, a period I think of as my own private Dark Ages. I was excruciatingly shy and struggled to navigate the intensely social and socially intense culture of an all-girls school. I was constitutionally unable to sit on other girls' laps, talk baby talk, dance gracefully around the maypole (seriously!), excel at field hockey, join in spontaneous renditions of Rainbow Connection, or jump up when Fiona or Mindy walked into the lunchroom and cry out "Sit here! Sit here! I saved you a place!"

That's one of my chief memories of 8th grade: Mindy or Fiona entering the lunchroom and the competing cries of "Sit here!" "No! Sit here." The more one girl begged the harder the other girls would plead. They sounded like seals begging for sardines. I'm sure they thought I resembled a hermit crab, if they noticed me at all.

At the end of the school year there were tears and promises and big group hugs.Yearbooks were serious business, the pages blanketed with sentimental notes signed with nicknames that originated at slumber parties, every "i" dotted with a heart. There were drawings of flowers, drawings of Snoopy, smiley faces.

I tried to throw out my old yearbooks last year, but Mark made me keep them. In preparation for writing this post, I pulled out my 8th grade volume of Works and Days. I was sure I would have nervously solicited signatures from  Lisa Bransten, Lindsay Dunckel, maybe Leslie Howes and a few others. But there is only one signature in the book.

Thank you, Margaret.

Fast-forward to 2013: Smitten Kitchen's most recent post got 261 comments. Mine got 14.

Do I need to connect the dots?

Sure, no problem.

I wasn't envious of Deb Perelman's professional success as reflected in sales, which would have been sensible. I was envious of her popularity among girls. When I read her blog and the hundreds of comments I felt like I was back in 8th grade, standing meekly in the corner watching an outgoing girl get her yearbook signed.

I like to think I've changed completely, yet 33 years later: exact same hairstyle.

Just recognizing what was going on solved the problem instantly. I don't know how that works, but it does. I'm now very fond of Smitten Kitchen.

This is all just to say that our feelings about cookbooks can be far more complicated than whether we love a certain recipe for broccoli slaw. Which we do.

While I was flipping through that old yearbook, walking down bad memory lane, I saw a picture of Mr. Bell, who taught English and P.E.

Mr. Bell was handsome, wasn't he? I didn't think so at the time, but a 13-year-old girl can't see past facial hair. Nor should she. I think Mr. Bell may have something to do with my Michael Ruhlman problem. He has everything to do with why I hate field hockey.

Bumper crops

Yeah, I guess the new goat babies are sort of cute. Check out the ears on the brown one. Now look at the ears on either of the black ones.

runt in foreground

Back in December, we bred Natalie to a Nigerian Dwarf (upright ears), but he didn't seem tall enough to knock her up, so a Nubian buck (floppy ears) was brought out a few minutes later. Now I think we got kids from both of them. Score! We all favor the runt because people always favor the runt.

I'm continuing the policy of cooking only one item every night, although I'm allowed to make dessert if the mood strikes. I harvested half a laundry basket of monster fava beans on Monday and braised some of them with sage and pancetta, adapting a recipe for peas in The Zuni Cafe Cookbook. I put them on the table next to the rotisserie chicken. (Note: I asked Mark to choose the next 10 dinners, but he declined the offer.)

not sure I'm up to the job

"No fava things for me," Mark said jovially. "I'm on a diet." Isabel tried the favas and disliked their texture; Owen said they didn't taste good. I alone ate the fava beans. Must every blog post include an anecdote of this nature? Apparently. Here's another from the same night:

For dessert, I made David Lebovitz's chocolate-banana ice cream. I used the version of the recipe printed in Ready for Dessert,  but it is also here. It's a super-cool recipe: Puree bananas, melted chocolate, milk, Bailey's Irish liqueur, and rum. Freeze. No machine required. The resulting ice cream is dense, icy, and complex, like a spiked fudgesicle. Mark took a bite and said, "Nope! Too alcoholic." He then served himself a big bowl of Snickers caramel swirl chunk and we sat down on the sofa with our different ice creams and watched Robin Wright have hot flashes on House of Cards. Whatever. The day we start watching different TV shows in different rooms, that's when I'll start to worry.

Last night I made fettuccine with preserved lemon and roasted garlic from The Essential New York Times Cookbook because it looked easy, delicious, and unusual. It was all three. Everyone in the household ate it without complaint. Next time I'd mince the preserved lemon finely like the recipe says, rather than chopping it coarsely like a lazy person does. I'd also add more cheese. It's a great recipe to have on hand for those occasions when you really, really, really don't want to go to the supermarket, which for me is always. Try it.

pretty pound cake baked in new bundt pan

I owe him big

could be lunch, could be breakfast

Our goat Natalie was supposed to kid last week and I planned a short business trip to Monterey based on that calculation. But yesterday I could either leave with the kids yet unborn or forfeit the hotel deposit. What would you have done? As I was about to walk out the door, Mark said, "I'm freaking out about the things being born while you're gone."

I don't know the details, but there were three things and at least one of them has its father's floppy Nubian ears and Owen and Mark were out there in the dark. I know this because Mark sent pictures that I found in my in-box this morning. The absence of text could mean nothing and could mean he was too furious to type at 1:24 a.m. when he pressed send.

I cooked two noteworthy dishes this week. Both are Amanda Hesser recipes.

The first was yogurt with quinoa, dates and almonds, a recipe she posted a year ago on Food52 that I knew I would one day have to make. Wednesday was the day. It's one of those strange dishes I didn't exactly love as I was eating it, but have found myself thinking about ever since. It's a little sweet and a little salty, the yogurt creamy, the dates  sticky, the nuts crunchy and the quinoa crunchy in a completely different way. The tiny amount of olive oil you drizzle on top is crucial. You should try this recipe and see what you think. My only "complaint" would be that 6 ounces of Greek yogurt was more than a delicate little bird like me could eat at a sitting.

Veal is expensive. It should be.

There's a whole category of dishes I've heard about all my life but never actually tasted. Offhand: crepes suzette, syllabub, summer pudding, steak and kidney pie, blancmange, beef Wellington, lobster Newburg, Cornish pasties. Hundreds of them!

Vitello tonnato -- cold poached veal served with tuna mayonnaise -- topped the list and because it was hot last week, I made it. Used the recipe from The Essential New York Times Cookbook.

Too bad we only had half a lemon, as this is a dish that requires serious garnish.

First of all: expensive. Second: ugly. And not just when I make it. In fact, my vitello tonnato is comparatively lovely. Third: Delicious.

Sadly, the price and appearance guarantee I won't make this again.

I wonder if this is one of these dishes no one will make in 50 years. The recipe will exist forever, of course, but once people stop cooking it, the dish is dead. Few enough people make vitello tonnato now that I'd never seen or eaten it and I don't see that trend reversing, certainly not when the meat of baby cows costs $20 per pound. Plus: baby cows.

Or am I wrong? Do a lot of people make vitello tonnato and I just don't know about it?

Mark gets to choose everything I cook for the next 10 days.

Earnest Summation: The Homesick Texan

Fifty-one dishes, y'all. I made 51 dishes from The Homesick Texan by Lisa Fain and it's only taken me 4 months to get around to writing the conclusion to that epic project. Talk about ending with a whimper. But I'm crossing it off the to-do list today, damn it.

I'll keep it short and sweet: I loved The Homesick Texan. I picked it up after spending the fall cooking from a Syrian Christian cookbook followed by Burma, and while I love novelty and challenge, opening Homesick Texan was like getting off an 18 hour flight from Asia, stretching out on the sofa with a cold drink, and turning on Friday Night Lights.

The book has flaws. Fain neglects to mention the size of pans in her dessert  section (where it matters!) and seems to think that adding 1/2 teaspoon of Mexican chocolate to a gallon of chili could possibly affect the flavor. The recipes are not blazingly original and maybe not even original at all, as some Chowhound naysayers have suggested. But what great recipes are? People regularly give Marcella Hazan credit for pork loin braised in milk, but the dish appeared in Ada Boni's Talisman Cookbook decades before Marcella started writing. And who knows where Boni got it? Who cares? It's a living, breathing recipe, not a military code, and the further it travels the better. Right?

Ah, but there are gray areas. I'm seeing more and more of them as I type. Much to say on the subject of recipe plagiarism, but I haven't figured out exactly what I think and in the interest of finishing this post I will do that figuring out later. Last December when I first opened The Homesick Texan, I just wanted to eat delicious tacos, chili, and enchiladas, and the recipes inside helped me do that. The end.

By the numbers:

worth the price of the book  -- 1 (marinated skirt steak from the small apartment tacos)
great -- 13 (chili, posole, meat loaf)
good -- 30
so-so -- 7
flat out bad -- 0

Shelf essential? If you've already have cherished recipes for Tex-Mex classics, you don't need this book. I don't and do.