Moro: The long overdue earnest summation

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away I cooked from the Moro cookbook, and it was one of my favorite cookbooks ever. I know I just gushed about Pioneer Woman, but let me leave no room for doubt: MORO IS BETTER. 

Eccentric and personal, Moro is my favorite kind of cookbook, the antithesis to the sterile, test kitchen-generated Gourmet Today. Although the desserts all failed me and the skate wing counts among the most repulsive things I've ever cooked, this Mediterranean/North African/Middle Eastern cookbook by Sam & Sam Clark (above) challenged and fascinated and educated and fed us very, very well for several months. Even after all that time there were dozens of recipes I still wanted to try but never got around to: roasted pork belly with fennel seed, fried liver with chopped salad, crab brik. The I only reason I stopped cooking from Moro was because Isabel became fixated on Pioneer Woman and practically begged me to move on.

 

I cooked 57 recipes from Moro:

Worth the price of the book: 2*

Great: 14

Good: 25

So-so: 12

Flat-out bad: 4

 

*the bread, of course, which I have baked a dozen or more times, but also the phenomenal chickpeas and spinach.

Definitely a shelf essential. 

Also, I have a story today in Slate comparing Pioneer Woman and Thomas Keller. His fried chicken is way, way better, but I still prefer her book.

Duck breasts & another problematic dessert

Having now cooked my first duck breasts, which were meaty and succulent, I don't want to ever roast another whole duck, which inevitably emerges from the oven gray and desiccated. Is there a recipe or technique out there that I'm missing? Should I just give up on roasted duck?

The Moro duck breasts with pomegranate molasses looked like steak, but were more tender and, in my opinion, more delicious. They were also dead easy. As Sam and Sam Clark might say. You sear the meat in a cast iron skillet, pop it into a very hot oven for 15 minutes, then make a quick pan sauce with a splash of water and some pomegranate molasses. If you haven't tried pomegranate molasses, it's inexpensive, keeps like ketchup, sells at Whole Foods (at least in this town), and tastes like very tart jam. Try it!

For dessert: rosewater and cardamom ice cream.

Moro: "This ice cream is not to everyone's liking, but those who appreciate the exotic, heavenly scent of rosewater will adore it."

I do appreciate that exotic, heavenly scent, but did not adore this ice cream, which was thin and insufficiently sweet. Not exactly bad, but nothing any of us needed to eat ever again, or even just the next day. The desserts in Moro have been a disappointment. In fact, this was the biggest hit yet. The churros & chocolate were a fiasco, the Malaga raisin ice cream was inedible, and the walnut, lemon and cardamom cake moved almost directly from oven to chicken coop. Odd, since almost everything else from this book has been wonderful.

Tonight: a Moro sardine or mackerel recipe, if I can find sardines or mackerel. Otherwise: Tortilla Espanola. Whatever I end up cooking will be served with the reportedly amazing David Leite/Amanda Hesser milk mayonnaise, featured on food52.

The Moro victory lap

The picture is as bad as the dinner was delicious.

I'll start with the pastry triangle at top. Moro calls these fatayer, and they are like Syrian calzones. You make a simple yeast dough and let it sit while you roast and puree some squash. Then you roll the dough into four circles, and fill each one with squash, feta cheese, lots of chopped fresh oregano, and toasted pinenuts. 

Pinch into a rough triangle and bake.  As Isabel pointed out, these are like a bready version of the pumpkin ravioli you get at Italian restaurants, but in ravioli the counterpoint to the squash is grated Parmesan, which sometimes lacks the power to overcome its cloying sweetness. Here, the counterpoint is feta, and nothing can shout down feta, not even squash. They're evenly matched and the oregano, in the role usually played by sage, adds complexity. Everyone loved fatayer.

 

Some of us loved the chickpeas and spinach even more. It's not like other chickpea dishes, so don't stop reading!

You cook your chickpeas, cook your spinach. Set both aside. Heat some oil in a skillet and add cubed bread and fry until golden, then add garlic, cumin, fresh oregano, and red pepper flakes and saute a little more. At this point you put the beautiful fried bread into a mortar (or food processor) and mash (or puree) with vinegar. 

I had assumed the bread cubes would be a garnish, and thought the mashing step was a mistake when I first read the recipe. I reread the sentence. Did as told and ended up with a crumbly, dark paste that I toss this with the chickpeas and spinach. It was brilliant. The bread crumbs hold the intense flavors of the spices and garlic and cling to the chickpeas better than any liquid sauce.  A great, great dish.

On the other hand, the  beetroot soup with cumin

is not a great, great dish. I like the British terms "aubergine" and "courgette" but prefer the American  word "beet." I made a pot of this vegetarian Moro soup for my lunches because no one else in my family likes beets. I'm glad I didn't try to convert them with this soup, because while it was cooked for a long time, it tasted curiously raw. It was much better the second day, as soup often is, and I will keep eating it for the vitamin C and betacyanin, but would rather eat leftover chickpeas.

By the way, that's the Jim Lahey whole wheat bread on the plate. His cookbook, My Bread, is fascinating and contains recipes for 

-banana leaf rolls (long-rise, no-knead bread that incorporates fresh bananas and dates and is baked in banana leaves)

-bread made from seawater

-peanut butter-and-jelly bread

-celery root pizza

-a pancetta, mango and basil sandwich.

Bread update

As requested by a few commenters, the other day I baked the Moro bread (left) substituting whole-wheat for some of the white flour. For comparison, I also made a loaf of Jim Lahey's no-knead wheat bread (right).  (As many of you know, Lahey is the New York City baker behind the "no-knead" bread popularized by Mark Bittman a few years ago. )

Lahey uses a 3:1 ratio of white to wheat flour, a proportion he came up with after much experimentation. To make his bread, you mix the dough roughly then let it sit for 18 hours. After this you shape it into a round, let it rise for 2 hours, and bake in a Dutch oven. I wish I'd photographed the bread when it emerged from the oven, as it was a dark and noble loaf.

 

Because the 3:1 ratio worked for Lahey, I used a 3:1 ratio of white to wheat flour in the Moro bread. It took longer to rise than usual -- maybe 6 hours -- but otherwise worked beautifully. And it was better than the Lahey bread -- chewier, crustier, tastier. I don't understand how this can be, as they contain the same ingredients and it goes against all logic that the "quick" bread would be better than the long-risen. But it was better. The vote among four tasters was unanimous.  

Speaking of voting, Isabel and her friend Juliet have taken to playing Top Chef, and today I got to judge. The ingredient was flour tortillas, and here's one of the more appetizing dishes they presented: plain boiled macaroni on tortilla strips garnished with cold tomato paste. 

 Yum. Especially the unwashed lettuce.

Moro yogurt vs. Brown Cow

On the left is homemade yogurt with strawberry jam. What's on the right was marked down at Whole Foods this week.

Although I make yogurt all the time, I've hesitated to send a child to school with homemade yogurt in a canning jar because I worried it might be embarrassing, like going to school in a dress made from a flour sack. But Owen, who is a 9-year-old ecofreak, loved the idea. I questioned whether, for all his scruples, he would find strawberry jam an acceptable substitute for "fruit-at-the-bottom." He did. Amazing. It has really bugged me to make great yogurt and then feed the kids expensive and mediocre single-serving cartons of Dannon/Yoplait/Brown Cow just because they're pre-sweetened and portable. Non-serious problem now solved.

As for the yogurt itself, I used the Moro recipe, which is much fussier than my go-to recipe in Anne Mendelson's Milk. 

 

Mendelson's recipe involves heating milk and cooling it, adding a few spoonfuls of "starter" yogurt then putting the mixture somewhere warm to sit overnight.  In the morning, you strain the yogurt for a few hours to thicken. It's like Greek yogurt, and it's fabulous. (This is virtually identical to Mendelson's formula, and if you've never made yogurt, you should try it.)

The Moro recipe calls for boiling milk until it reduces by a third, which takes a while, then adding cream. You cool this decadent mixture, stir in your starter, and put it somewhere warm to sit overnight. It is also fabulous, perhaps slightly more fabulous than Mendelson's yogurt, if not fabulous enough to merit the extra effort. It is also extremely fattening.

 

Still, I count this yogurt as one more reason to love the Moro cookbook.

In other news, I finally got around to reading Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Not for everyone, this best-selling mystery, as it is lurid, grisly, intricately (some might say "implausibly") plotted, and overpopulated with sadistic Swedish sex maniacs. I never wanted it to end. Have now embarked on the sequel instead of taking down the Christmas tree. There are times when serial killers are better companions than sentimental Christmas ornaments, though I really do need to take down that tree. 

This soup is good food

I bought dried fava beans a few weeks ago to make Moro's fava bean, potato, and cucumber soup, but last night could not find them in the chaos of the pantry. Used lentils instead, with no ill effects. This soup could not be much easier. You cook the lentils (or favas) in one pot, while you saute onions, potatoes, and some fresh dill in another. Add lentils and their liquid to the softened vegetables, puree, reheat, add a big heap of grated cucumber, and serve. 

It was the idea of cool, grated cucumber added to thick, hot soup that drew me to this recipe. It's supposed to make the robust soup more refreshing, and it absolutely did. Recipes like this one -- simple, delicious, and novel -- make me love the Moro cookbook.

Obviously, it is not an exquisite broth you would serve in demitasse cups, but it made a hearty, healthy dinner enjoyed by everyone, even Owen, who puts soup -- "except clam chowder" -- on his list of loathed foods. 

Meanwhile, my mother has been in the hospital for 5 days and might go home tomorrow, though they say that every day. Her appetite is not the heartiest and she eats about three bites of every meal and then we scrape the leftovers into a bag and I take it home for the chickens. I am oddly uncomfortable feeding the chickens pasty hospital oatmeal and revolting overboiled vegetables. It's sad that a person feels creepy providing birds with "food" that is routinely brought on carts to ailing, demoralized human beings. 

Blood sausage is better than it sounds

The other day, I bought morcilla -- the polite Spanish name for blood sausage -- at the Spanish Table to make the intriguing Moro recipe for migas, which the authors describe as a thrifty and traditional way to use up stale bread.

You fry onions, green peppers, and pancetta in olive oil and 100 grams of lard, which, if you can't visualize it, is a hunk the size of a man's fist. That's a lot of lard. When the onions and peppers are soft and caramelized, you pour this fatty melange over chunks of bread and add the morcilla.

Bake. Top each serving with one or two poached eggs.

Looks like hash.

Morcilla, which is made from beef blood and onions, could be perceived as gross. It isn't gross, it's rich and satisfying. Like stuffing, the whole migas ensemble was crispy in places, and delectably soggy and melty in others, delicious and greasy, or delicious BUT greasy, I haven't figured out which. The first night I was unequivocally enthusiastic; we had the leftovers for dinner the next night and afterwards I felt like I needed to drink a big glass of ice cold vinegar.

I also served chard, blanched and dressed in oil and lemon juice, per the basic Moro recipe.

Pretty. Not so pretty in the finished dish, but tasty and healthy.

In other news, I reviewed P.D. James's new book about detective fiction here. It's an impressive and fascinating book, but will probably only appeal to fans of detective fiction. I interviewed James for a story many years ago. She was patient with my endless questions, forthcoming, intelligent, and an altogether lovely person. I was starstruck.

Bread & soup & failed ice cream

I want someone else to bake this Moro bread so we can discuss. It's stunningly easy if you have a mixer. This is the third batch, and it's better than almost any bread I've ever baked, and I've baked a lot of bread. 

The recipe below is true to the book, but I've added slightly more salt. I've left the metric measurements in because I fear conversions might jinx the excellent results, so you'll need a scale. I hope someone tries it and tells me what they think.

 

MORO BREAD

1. Dissolve 1 teaspoon yeast in 125 ml. tepid water.

2. In the bowl of a mixer, combine 2 1/2 teaspoons kosher salt, 700 ml. tepid water, 1 kg. bread flour (or plain), and the yeasty water. Mix until smooth and elastic. It will be too wet to handle.

3. Oil 2 bread pans and sprinkle with flour. Pour in the dough. You'll need a rubber spatula to ease it into the pans.

4. Cover with a damp towel and let rise for 3-5 hours or until doubled.

5. Heat oven to 450. Bake loaves for 30 minutes, then remove from the pans and bake on the oven rack for 15 minutes more.

The crust on this bread is hard and crackly, and when you slice there are biggish bubble holes. 

The flavor and chewy texture are, in my opinion, perfect, like the best artisanal bread but in sandwich-friendly loaf form. And it's simpler than  Mark Bittman/Jim Lahey no-knead bread because you don't have to think a day ahead. In future, I might increase the salt even more, and try to omit the flouring of the pans. I also wonder if you really need a separate step for dissolving the yeast.

My sister-in-law, Amy, is visiting and we have spent a lot of time talking about food, though we come at it from very different perspectives. She's writing her dissertation on food in women's prisons, but she is not, herself, a cook. She said, "I feel about cooking like I do about skiing. I don't care if I can ski, and I really don't care if I can cook." She goes to Stop & Shop and buys the same reliably tasty things every week-- chicken, veggie burgers, pre-made pesto, pre-crumbled goat cheese, and then comes home and assembles it. I, on the other hand, spend untold hours obsessing about what I'm going to cook and then cooking it. Is this perhaps the reason that I, unlike Amy, will never have a PhD?

For dinner, I served the Moro's version of harira, a classic North African soup that includes a lamb shank, lots of vegetables, turmeric, chickpeas and lentils. Moro: "We always imagine the name of this soup being spoken with a guttural Islamic tongue, and being eaten without ceremony at the edge of a busy bus stations somewhere in Morocco. The flavours of the spices and coriander are very evocative, and only the bus fumes are missing. "

Nice!

Malaga raisin ice cream was a fiasco. I had frozen some heavy cream a while back, defrosted it for the ice cream, thought it looked a bit grainy but since it tasted okay went ahead and used it. Lesson: don't ever do this. When churned, this ice cream contained little flecks of hard butter. "You shouldn't have told me!" said Amy. "I thought those were tiny white chocolate chips."

 

In other news, my mother is very sick. I don't know how to weave this into my goofy food blog, and the idea of trying to do so makes me way too sad. But if I'm going to keep writing a blog that is any way honest, I can't pretend it's not happening.  I'll just leave it at that for now.

Quince it is

It's curious that quince are creamy and pale, like pears, but Spanish quince paste is burgundy, like red wine. 

The Moro roast duck was duck as usual which is to say, it threw off epic quantities of fat while retaining a puny amount of grayish meat that clung tightly to the brittle bones. To make the quince sauce, you remove most of the fat from the pan drippings, add sherry and quince paste and cook until you have a sweet-tart gravy. By coincidence, I had also baked the Moro flatbreads (stellar!!) and when I composed a sandwich with the pillowy bread, crackly skin, meat, and jammy sauce, it tasted like Peking duck. Only missing were slivered green onions and chopsticks. 

My mother has just told me I can't post a macabre chicken story that unfolded last night: "People don't want to read about things like that. You've lost enough chickens, no one wants to know about how you lost this one. Write about a beautiful baby, or a Christmas tree lane." 

A Christmas tree lane? 

I don't know any stories about Christmas tree lanes, but she's right about withholding the chicken story, at least on Christmas Eve. Plus, we haven't actually lost this hen. I practiced some amateur veterinary medicine and if she pulls through, it will be a heartwarming tale of a brave little bird and a sadistic raccoon. If she dies, maybe I will save it for Halloween. 

I just had my mother proofread this post. She said, "What are you talking about that you don't know stories about a Christmas tree lane? We go to one every year and we're going tonight. The man who has 250,000 lights and brings in snow? The toboggans? The people who walk up and down the street and sit out in front of their houses and meet and greet? It's just charming!"

She seemed hurt that I didn't instantly jump on the Christmas tree lane story, but now I have and you know what? She's right. It's much nicer than the chicken story.

Moro mystery meal

Whatever could it be?  There appears to be a heel of bread on a chipped blue plate, and some mysterious matter contained in a bowl atop which float puddles of what could be oil and lumps and flecks and globules of what could be anything at all. 

I'm continuing to try to choose dishes from Moro that are challenging or expensive or exotic and therefore exciting to cook. Since exotic and expensive are unsustainable, I've recently made two dinners that involved poached eggs, as there is still a small challenge/thrill attached. (Until recently, I'd never poached an egg.)

The first poached egg dish was Moro's garlic soup, which was rudimentary but outstanding. You separate four heads of garlic into cloves, cook in olive oil until soft, squeeze the velvety garlic out of the skins and puree with chicken stock and paprika. Just before serving, poach eggs in the soup, one for each eater. Thick and rich and a big success.

Yesterday I made the meal above: poached eggs with yogurt, sage, and paprika. You pound garlic with salt and mix with some homemade (or Greek) yogurt. Put a dollop of yogurt in each person's bowl. Brown some butter, fry a little bit of sage, poach an egg. Put egg on top of the yogurt, put sage and butter on top of egg, sprinkle paprika over all and serve with toast. It sounds weird, possibly even icky, but the yogurt is substantial and super-garlicky, like one of those pungent Greek dips you scoop up with pita bread, and the whole ensemble is craveworthy. You should have seen Owen gobbling it up. 

Tonight: roast duck with membrillo and some crazy "wind-dried" tuna I had to mail order. Definitely expensive, I'm hoping for exotic, and perhaps, if I'm lucky, not too challenging.

Maybe you really do have to pay to play

Yesterday's New York Times food section pre-empts regular programming. You have to read this  article about Alabama layer cakes -- from which I swiped the beautiful photo above of Martha Meadows and her "little layer cake." Kim Severson writes at length about Southern holiday cake-baking traditions, which are, apparently, venerable and highly localized. (Scott Peacock, who collaborated on a cookbook with Edna Lewis, is collecting oral histories of the women "in their 80s, 90s, and 100s" who bake these cakes, which sounds like possibly the best job in the world.) The story includes two recipes, including one for that mighty tower of a "little" cake in the picture. It looks delicious. It looks very, very hard. It looks a little bit like a Dobos torte.

The whole food section was phenomenal yesterday. Not sure what to make of the square watermelon, but want to bake stollen and peanut butter blossoms and taste some Moser Truffel. 

Back to Moro & me.

I tested the theory about being crabbier when I cook a routine, practical dinner. Monday -- night of roast chicken and cauliflower -- I was glum and snippy. Tuesday night, made Moro's pea soup with jamon serrano and just opening the little packet of jamon gave me a buzz. Felt fancy. You chop up the jamon and cook it with frozen peas, mint, chicken stock and some other stuff, puree it, and there's dinner. As closure to a rainy day of working, carpooling, arguing over long division, feeding chickens, and cleaning up cat pee, a few slices of jamon struck me as cash well spent on mental health.

 

Also, cash well spent on soup. Outstanding soup.

Last night, we had a hot chorizo and bean salad for which I bought the specified imported judion beans. Moro describes these as "plump and luxuriously creamy." 

And they were! Which is nice because they cost fourteen times more than what I usually pay for beans. Literally, fourteen times. I won't buy them ever again, but they were huge and buttery and unlike any other bean I've cooked before, and I'm not sorry I bought them once. The recipe calls for briefly marinating the beans with thinly sliced onion, halved cherry tomatoes, and a vinaigrette, then over all of this you toss hot fried chorizo. It was the most delicious dinner I've cooked out of Moro yet, made possible by going to a special store (Spanish Table) and spending extra money.

 

There's a lesson in this, and it's kind of depressing.

But let's talk about depressing. Later, about to go to bed, I heard a feral scream from the backyard, ran outside with a flashlight and saw a raccoon had peeled back the chicken wire from one of the gaps in the hen house. I've been waiting for the clever, hateful raccoons to weigh in on our poultry project, and this was my lucky night. With his fidgety little paws, this one had unhooked wire from nails and rolled it away from the side of the house and was about to slither in. His pointy face was framed by the inside of the "window" and we stood there staring at each other for about 45 seconds, me, in my pajamas shining a flashlight in his eyes; him, frozen, hoping I would depart so he could begin killing and eating his dinner. My husband came down with a stick and we chased off the raccoon, who then crouched in the street and insolently observed us for a while.  We spent 20 minutes patching every tiny hole in the chicken house from the inside, with a hammer and scrap wood, while all around us the hens purred and clucked. We must really love these chickens because eggs really aren't worth the trouble.

The kitchen bitch vs. bitchy in the kitchen

Owen has claimed Isabel's Snuggie as his own, a practice we called "Indian giving" back in the day. They don't use that term around the schoolyard anymore, which is probably for the best. The Snuggie makes him look a little like Max in the Wild Things book, and I sometimes even think he acts more demanding and imperious when he's wearing his cape.

One quirk of our picky family is that everyone loves salad, so the other night we had feta salad with pita crisps out of Moro. It was fine; I was trying to diet. See wooden salad bowl in foreground. Didn't get around to setting a gracious table that night.

Yesterday, I roasted chicken with harissa and made the cauliflower with pinenuts, saffron and raisins, also from Moro recipes. I was feeling very disspirited and bored and cooking dinner seemed like a monumental drag and I decided it's because I've been picking the most boring, frugal, and easy dishes out of the book. There's little excitement in a conscientious work- and child-centered day if you eliminate even the cheap thrill of grilling a quail, or frying an imported chorizo. I am much less crabby when I try something new or fancy or challenging or exotic. 

This is why I took Dan Duane's side in Eizabeth Weil's New York Times Magazine story that all my friends were talking about a week ago. Let the guy go wild in the kitchen, I thought. Especially if you won't French kiss! (You have to read the story.) A pig's head and some squab are cheaper than a divorce.

But I had more sympathy for Weil after reading Hanna Rosin's Doublex piece today about culinary turf wars and the rise of the male "kitchen bitch." You can read it here. I know these men, the ones who have you over for big, showy dinners with pricey cuts of meat and Tuscan wines while the little brown wren of a wife quietly clears away the dirty glasses. 

I don't know what I would call my husband's kitchen persona, but this is not it. When I came back from Hawaii, the refrigerator was full of Oscar Mayer products, the super-cheap milk from Walgreens, and half-eaten jars of spaghetti sauce. Frustrating in its own way, but at least there are no power struggles over who's making Christmas dinner.

I started to wonder if I'm guilty of what Rosin and Weil complain about, of forcing my spouse to do the childcare while I pour my energy into time-consuming, show-offy cooking feats. On occasion, yes. But after some soul-searching, I acquitted myself. Almost all my cooking, ambitious or otherwise, occurs between 5 and 7:15 p.m. when I'm alone in the house with the children, helping with long division homework and listening to them fight. Cooking just keeps my hands busy; I'm available, but not idle. What else would I do? 

In other news, I just read a dark little book (physically little, not little in any other way) called American Salvage by Bonnie Jo Campbell. If I had my own 2009 top ten list, this would be on it.  Campbell's stories are scary, precise and exquisitely written; the characters are meth addicts, salvage yard operators, and struggling Michigan farmers, so-called "ordinary" people but they're not given the usual, solemn "ordinary" treatment. It's funny and wicked and brilliant. Highly recommend -- but not for everyone. Definitely not for my mother, for instance. If you don't like dark, disturbing books, I would instead recommend Mennonite in a Little Back Dress by Rhoda Janzen, which I also loved, and is sweet, witty and altogether delightful.

  

She's no mall rat

I need to correct an error from a previous post. Isabel wanted to go to the mall strictly to buy Secret Santa presents; she and her friend had no other agenda. I was wrong to poke fun and will be more sensitive in the future.

We had a second "family" birthday party for her the other night, this one with my father and sister. Divorce may be hell on the kids, but it's a bonanza for the grandkids. Isabel didn't get to choose the whole menu, just the dessert.

We started with two easy appetizers out of Moro.

The paprika roasted almonds are billed as a "delicious accompaniment to a glass of chilled fino sherry." I'm sure they are.  I went to the Spanish Table today and looked at all the sherries and was impressed and fascinated by both the variety and the prices, but while I'm eager to learn more about sherry, I need to do more research before investing. 

Even without a glass of chilled fino, it's hard to pass up a roasted nut.

 

I also assembled some Manchego with membrillo (quince paste), one of the genius food pairings of all time.

I have enthused about Manchego and membrillo before and while it's not exactly a recipe, Moro finally taught me how to serve it properly -- in triangles cut to 1/8 the circumference of the cheese. Almost worth the price of the book. It would be interesting and thrifty to learn to make membrillo should our quince tree ever fruit.

 

For the main course: Moro's pork loin braised in milk, which is similar to the incredible Marcella Hazan version. If you are unfamiliar with Hazan's dish, you should to try it immediately -- recipe is reprinted here.  I prefer Macella's to the Moro version as she permits the use of pork butt while Moro is very specific about pork loin, a cut that, as always, I found pallid and dry. Justine says she's coming around on pork loin, that when she eats pork butt she feels sick afterwards. I wonder if this is because it's fattier or because it's so much better that she eats more.

Dessert was a fat-free angel food cake that used up a jar of egg whites.

Isabel did not approve of this frumpy, unadorned cake and requested I make some rocky road ice cream to go with. Which I did (David Lebovitz recipe, awesome), because she's a lovely daughter and a girl only has three thirteenth birthday parties. 

There is a teenager in the house

Isabel turned 13 yesterday. She received a hair dryer, a curling iron, nail polish, a GAP hoodie, and a Lady Gaga CD, all of which she wanted. She didn't request a Snuggie, which was Owen's gift. He was very proud of his gift; she was uncharacteristically gentle and diplomatic. 

She and I also had this first-ever exchange.

Isabel: Mom, are we doing anything on Saturday night?

Tipsy: No, why?

Isabel: Because Juliet and I want to go wander around the mall.

Silence. 

Tipsy: What mall?

Isabel: Oh, I don't know. Just a mall.

Her dinner of choice: hibiscus cooler from the Mexican phase of this blog, calzones, and an Oreo bundt cake from Maida Heatter's cake book. It looked like a giant chocolate donut.

You make a rich sour cream batter into which are folded fifteen chopped Oreos; bake; top with thick chocolate glaze. Not a bad cake, but you can't taste the Oreos at all, so there is really no point. 

After cake, after my mother went home, we watched The Office. Fought over the Snuggie.

*****

It seemed unappealing to lead this post with lentil soup, but I did start cooking from Moro the other night and the lentil soup is vegan and yummy. It's also ugly and sludgy brown, so no picture. To go with, I made Moroccan flatbreads

 

that contained fennel seed and were perhaps a tiny bit overcooked hence cardboardy. Tasty, though.

Here are some Moro dishes I want to make: chestnut and chorizo soup; pheasant with cloves, cinnamon and chestnuts; grilled quail with rose petals; Malaga raisin ice cream.

Here are some Moro dishes I don't want to make: pickled turnips, turnips with vinegar, scrambled eggs with mushrooms, kidneys with sherry.

Gourmet Today: earnest summation

If you have it, keep it. If you don't, it's nothing you can't live without. That's my assessment of the fat and shiny new book from the producers of the late magazine. I wish I loved this book, but unlike the mighty 2004 Gourmet cookbook, it felt like brand extension. I heard Ruth Reichl on Forum a while back trying to explain -- and she is very persuasive -- that the book embraces all the nifty new ingredients available in our supermarkets, things like pomegranate molasses and smoked paprika and while that sounded terrific, as an organizing principle, it simply doesn't work. Or she and her crew don't make it work. This isn't an everyday cookbook like Joy, because it won't tell you how to make chocolate chip cookies, but then it includes basic, soporific recipes for pancake and custard, which struck me as lazy filler. And a lot of the supposedly kicky new dishes aren't all that kicky, they just require a bottle of spendy pomegranate liqueur, or that you send away for a sack of Canadian maple sugar. Most of the recipes were solid, few inspired.

I made 46 recipes from Gourmet Today.

Worth the Price of the book -- 0

Great: 9

Good: 23

So-so: 11

Flat-out bad: 3

What did we love? We loved the mussels ravigote and the sun-dried tomato dip and the pot roast and I'd make all of them again, but they're not worth the price of the book. There's probably a recipe that is -- I never made the pork belly buns and just typing those succulent words makes my mouth water -- but time to move on to Moro. 

Shelf essential: no. 

Long post about recent social events and what I cooked

We clocked some serious recipe mileage over the last few days. All dishes made from Gourmet Today.

 

Saturday

Guests: The parents of Isabel's best friend, who have become friends in their own right 

Topics discussed: the perfidy of middle-school girls, gravlax, wallpaper, Cheerful Money, football.

Made:

Pisco sours. This highly alcoholic South American cocktail is supposed to be creamy, frothy, tangy and white. As prepared using the GT recipe, this drink was all those things, but it was also lumpy. Although GT says you can use powdered egg whites instead of the real thing, you can't, or, if you can, you need more detailed instructions.

mussels on the half-shell with ravigote sauce. The first time I've ever made anything "on the half-shell" and it wasn't as hard as feared. In fact, it wasn't hard at all. You should make these for Thanksgiving; they were great and the recipe is here.

You steam the mussels, remove from shells, marinate in an oniony vinaigrette, then place them back in the shells. Everything can be done ahead. I omitted the chervil because I've never been able to find anywhere, ever. My other piece of advice would be to get the biggest mussels you can find.

wine-braised chuck. Really good pot roast.

roasted brussels sprouts with pancetta. Really good brussels sprouts

red leaf lettuce salad with citrus dressing and pine nuts. Not an especially good salad.

hazelnut gelato. I prefer Jack Bishop's recipe from Complete Italian Vegetarian.

Sunday

Guests: my mother and our cousin Ana Maria

Topics of discussion: the cuteness of chickens, the ugliness of turkeys (at least in my mother's very strong opinion), Cheerful Money, new mammogram guidelines, Thanksgiving table settings

Made:

chunky butternut squash and white bean soup. Chosen because my mother requeseted "bland, comforting" foods. It wasn't all that bland; it was delicious. I hope it was comforting. Floating on top are toasted pumpkin seeds.

pear fool. You poach pears in lemon and wine, puree them to a Gerber consistency, layer with whipped cream. See photo at top of post. Bland and comforting.

Monday

Guests: my husband's parents who are in town from Boston for Thanksgiving

Topics discussed: the appropriateness of the movie An Education for a 7th-grade girl (too late, already took her, she'll live), ginger cookies made by a long-deceased Wasp relative for which no one has a recipe, family, Cheerful Money

Made:

black bean soup with ancho chili. What it sounds like.

grilled cheese sandwiches with curried mayo and fennel. You take an already fattening food and make it more fattening by adding mayonnaise. Brilliant idea! These were fantastic. Recipe here. 

banoffee pie. Sickly sweet, sticky, and I'm wondering if it will hurt the chickens to eat the remains. Probably. I ordered this once a long, long time ago at a restaurant in Ireland and remembered it as ambrosial. Apparently my tastes have changed. Crust, dulce de leche, bananas, whipped cream. The recipe is here, if you're interested.

 

In other news, I wrote a story about my attempt to buy a Thanksgiving turkey which you can read here. 

Will start the Moro cookbook right after Thanksgiving. 

Not to change the subject or anything

But it is hard to weigh a live turkey on a bathroom scale. I did it, sort of. She weighs about 20 pounds. I didn't even try with the Narragansett tom, who is about half her weight and even more skittish. He's really skinny. For an interesting take on heritage turkeys, I recommend this blog post. 

The author of that blog owns a ranch that is featured in the beautiful and inspiring Big Sur Bakery Cookbook, which I have. Of course. Since it is well past time to move on from Gourmet Today, I've been considering starting up with this book. But there are two other strong contenders. Here's the lineup:

-The Big Sur Bakery Cookbook (California cuisine; very concerned with purveyors; lots of text; seasonally organized)

-Moro (Spanish/Northern African. Downside: I have the British edition which means converting all measurements, which I dread. But it is supposedly a brilliant book)

-A16 (Italian; challenging; recipes for squid ink pasta and pancetta)

There's a poll, if you feel like voting.