Belated Birthday Musings

Wednesday was Julia Child's birthday.
She taught me how to cook. Who knew there was an easy and efficient way to chop an onion, julienne a carrot, roll an omelet? Truth be told, I'd never seen or eaten an omelet before opening "Mastering."
One of the many things I loved about Julia was the way she shared credit with Paul. After she signed my copy of "Julia Child & Company," she immediately handed it to him. Nearly 30 years after that evening, looking at this signature page still makes me smile.
August 15: Shouldn't it be a national holiday?

Honey Lemon Souffles

Damn these were good! And I'd had low expectations: I wanted to play around with some souffle techniques, didn't want to trek to the store and had the ingredients in my pantry. I set out some vanilla gelato and a bowl of olallieberries and raspberries as accompaniments, but the souffles were so delicious that we completely ignored the gelato and added only a scattering of berries.
The dishes are French charlotte molds -- these measue 4-inches across the top and are 2.5-inches deep.


Honey Souffles for Two
(adapted from "Omelettes, Souffles and Frittatas" by Lou Seibert Pappas)

3 eggs separated + white from one additional egg
dash salt
1 Tb. powdered sugar
1/3 cup honey
2 tsp. coarsely grated lemon zest
1 Tb. flour
1 Tb. butter, melted

Place a baking sheet on the lowest oven shelf and preheat oven to 400-degrees. Lavishly butter 2 individual souffle dishes; dust the bottoms and sides with sugar and then place them in the refrigerator.
Beat the egg whites until they just begin to foam ; add the salt and powdered sugar and beat until *soft* peaks form.
In a separate bowl, beat the egg yolks until thick and pale in color. Whisk in the honey, lemon zest, flour and butter. Fold one-fourth of the beaten egg whites into the yolk mixture and then fold this into the remaining egg whites.
Spoon into the prepared dishes, filling them to the rim.
Place on the baking sheet in the oven and immediately reduce the heat to 375-degrees.
Cook until well-risen and browned on top. Mine were perfect after 10 minutes, but if you use ceramic dishes rather than metal charlotte molds, I suspect they'd take a bit longer.I also suspect that my oven runs a little hot. Once I get my gorgeous new Viking ovens installed I'll be able to provide laboratory-accurate oven temps and times.
Of course, I have to order the ovens first. Details, details.

Inaugurating Souffle Tuesday -- part the first

It was, after all, a five- (maybe six-) inch souffle dish, certainly an adequate portion for two. But the next time I'm in Paris I'm going back to Le Recamier and have a caramel souffle ALL TO MYSELF.
Le Recamier is a delightful little restaurant in the 6th arrondisement, just across the street from the Hotel Lutetia. Souffles are their specialty, which meant that the waiter didn't arch an eyebrow or curl a lip when we ordered savory spinach souffles for a first course and then followed our veal shanks entrees with the aforementioned caramel souffle. Caramel au fleur du sel, to be precise.

Since it may be quite a while before I return to Le Recamier I've decided to explore souffle-making with a tad more intensity than my usual pace of one-souffle-every-other-month and will report back here on my successes and failures each Tuesday.
Tonight I made a very simple dessert souffle ( flavored with honey and lemon zest) to see if two tips I'd learned recently would make any noticeable difference in my quest for souffle success.
First, in rereading an old New York Times article, I found this from Amanda Hesser: "With sweet souffles it is helpful to add a little powdered sugar at the beginning (about a tablespoon for every four egg whites). This helps the whites form tight bonds and for the finished souffles to rise evenly in tall, firm cylinders."
Second, I decided to ignore the usual cookbook advice to fill souffle dishes only to within an inch or so of their tops. A visit to the kitchen at Le Recamier had revealed cooks heaping the souffle dishes to the rims -- even, in some cases, mounding the batter into pyramid-like peaks above the dishes' centers.

I incorporated both suggestions into tonight's individual souffles. Results in the next post--because Computer Guru is still frolicking in Maine, far from any internet service, and I still can't figure out how to incorporate multiple photos in a single post.

Eric's EZ Lemongrass Maple Granita

Here's another granita recipe that was intended for last Wednesday's Chronicle FOOD story. This one hit a hurdle in the testing stage: the oh-so-convenient Gourmet Garden prepared lemongrass had all but disappeared from supermarket shelves. Since a recipe that began with "Beat the hell out of lemongrass stalks, puree them and then beat them again" hardly fit the article's premise of quick and easy desserts I asked cookbook author Eric Gower for another suggestion.


The resulting Ginger Maple Granita made it into print, but I still loved the lemongrass idea. Recently I found that the prepared lemongrass is again widely available, so I'm delighted to share this recipe from one of the most creative cooks I know. His beautiful new cookbook, "The Breakaway Cook," ranks as one of my favorites of the year.
Yes, that is a pile of his books sitting on my desk - a pile that soon will need replenishing, as I'm finding the book to be a perfect birthday/shower/host gift.

LEMONGRASS MAPLE GRANITA

Unlike most granitas, which require four or five hours of freezing time and periodic tending, this granita takes just a few minutes, start to finish. For a creamier version, add a tablespoon of plain yogurt to the blender.

2 cups ice (about 10 medium-large ice cubes)
2 tablespoons prepared lemongrass*
2 tablespoons maple syrup
1 cup very cold sparkling mineral water

Place all the ingredients in a blender, and puree until smooth, scraping down the sides if necessary. Transfer to bowls and enjoy right away, or transfer to a plastic tub and freeze for later.

* Gourmet Garden lemongrass, comes in a refrigerated tube (sold in the produce section of most supermarkets)

I'd add three more footnotes:
*The Gourmet Garden tubes are about 5-inches long, have green lids and often are located near those little plastic packets of obscenely overpriced fresh herbs.
*My puny circa-1987 blender wasn't up to the task of creating instant granita, so I used the standard freeze-and-scrape method.
*Chill the serving bowls for a while before making the granita.

Loving Lemon Verbena

Lemon verbena is the herbal equivalent of The Eggplant that Ate Chicago. It starts out as a wee little slip of a plant in a 4-inch container and by mid-summer it's taller than corn in Kansas. I like how it looks both in the garden and in flower arrangements, but I never made much culinary use of it other than steeping a few leaves in tea.


Then Michelle Polzine -- the brilliant and adorable pastry chef at Range in San Francisco -- gave me this recipe for an article. The article appeared today in the San Francisco Chronicle's food section , but -- because of space constraints -- only the recipe for Polzine's delicious raspberry granita made it into print.
Her lemon verbena ice also is terrific, so I'm happy to have a place to share it. If you don't have the herb in your own garden and can't find it at a farmer's market, check to see if a friend is growing it. I'll bet you a dinner at Range that said gardener will have plenty to spare.

Lemon Verbena Granita

1 scant cup simple syrup (equal parts sugar and water)
1/3 cup lightly packed *small* lemon verbena leaves
2 cups spring water
2 tablespoons lemon juice
¼ teaspoon salt

Whirl lemon verbena leaves in blender with cold simple syrup until only small green flecks are visible. Strain through a coarse sieve, pushing most of the non-fibrous bits through. Add spring water, lemon juice and salt. Pour into a shallow pan and set in freezer. Every 30-40 minutes, rake icy portions until entire mixture is frozen into feathery flakes.

Perfection Found

Should Heston Blumenthal be planning a sequel to "In Search of Perfection," he doesn't have to crisscross the world in search of the perfect hoagie. It exists, as it has for 53 years, at a tiny storefront in Ocean City, New Jersey.
Usually I welcome culinary debate. Are the macarons better at Pierre Herme or Laduree? Which crab meat is sweeter: West Coast Dungeness or East Coast blue? Is Humboldt Fog one of the five top cheeses of the world or does it only rank in the top 10? I have my opinions, but well-reasoned arguments and numerous comparative tastings might sway them.
But my Hoagie Manifesto is carved in granite. Until you have tried the Basic Italian -- with hot peppers -- at Voltaco's, you simply have not sampled the Platonic Ideal of hoagies.

There's been plenty of twaddle printed in Mid-Atlantic newspapers and magazines as to what determines hoagie quality, with most articles including quasi-mystic references to the bread -- in particular, the water used to make the bread dough. Balderdash. As the attractive young woman I spoke to across the counter a few days ago said, "We use the best quality ingredients, more meat and cheese than most other shops and make the sandwiches only to order."
So, if you ever find yourself anywhere near Ocean City, proceed directly to 975 West Avenue, order the largest size hoagie and refuse to share it with anyone. And if you should run into Heston Blumenthal, expect to see an enormous grin of delight on his face.

Sweeter than Mother's Love

My feelings about yellow-kernel corn on the cob can be summed up by a question a French friend once asked: "Is that not something one feeds to the horses?"
But corn with tiny white kernels -- grown in South Jersey, harvested early in the morning, heaped on a wooden table in a vegetable stand a few hours later and cooked that night -- heaven.
This summer J has been grilling the corn and we're all loving it. No more cauldron of water steaming up the kitchen--just sweet, tender corn steamed in its own juices and rushed to the table.

To prep the corn, J pulls back the husks, removes all the silk (well, most of it), closes up the husks and wraps each ear in aluminum foil. These packages go on the gril for about 15 minutes, with one turn about halfway through the cooking time.

And each time she takes her first bite, my mother -- who has been eating sweet Jersey corn for nearly 90 summers -- sighs and says: "Sweet as Mother's love."