Gettin figgy with it

Anyone who has ever been a college student, or a parent to a college student, knows that the return of the prodigal son or daughter—on Columbus Day, or Thanksgiving, or winter break—always involves a prodigal stocking of pantry shelves.

Or in my case, refrigerator shelves. My mother has always referred to me as her ‘fruit bat,’ proudly parading me around the farmer’s market upon my return from school, explaining her massive purchases at the Bethesda Women’s Farm Market by pointing at me and exclaiming, “The fruit bat is home!” I’m pretty sure that, given the amount of fruit she was buying, anything capable of flight was pretty far off the mark, but it was endearing.

Less endearing, however, is the origin of that nickname. When I was about five years old, the family took a trip out to Sacramento, CA to the home of a family friend—who had fig trees growing in their backyard. I went apeshit. I ate figs presented me at the kitchen table, figs wrested from Maxine en route from the fig tree to the kitchen table, and direct from the tree. I made myself massively sick in a most embarrassing way, which is probably not suitable content for a lady's blog. (I like to leave something to the imagination, but here are the main dramatis personae: 5-year-old Alex, lots of figs, and a lovely private swimming pool.)

You'd think such traumatizing experiences would have taught me my lesson, but to this day, I have zero self control around the things. My mom, true to form, has made a habit of buying them for me as a treat since I’ve been home, and every time I open the fridge to consider lunch or dinner, I do so over a fig that I’ve just absentmindedly grabbed from the carton. As a result, the cartons never last very long. So, consider yourself lucky that this cobbler made it into existence. Like the last recipe, it uses the unique mix of summer and fall produce we have available at this time of year—crisp autumn apples, the last of summer’s berries, and, of course, figs.

Apple, Fig and Blackberry Cobbler

Adapted from The New Basics Cookbook

*I stuck with the recipe’s filling, but instead of using a more pastry-like cobbler crust, I used a family favorite “cottage pudding” crust from Fanny Farmer’s Boston Cooking School Cookbook—it involves no cold butter, cut/manhandled into coarse crumbs, but a much simpler, much less messy mixing of melted butter and buttermilk into dry ingredients. As you would expect, it turns out a more drop-biscuit like topping, rather than a pastry topping. I doubled the FF recipe for the amount of fruit I was dealing with, and ending up with a 3:1 ratio of pudding to fruit—which was fine with me, but if you like a higher fruit ratio, I would stick to 1.5x the recipe presented here.

Filling:

6 fresh figs, halved (about 1 ½ c.)

6 apples (McIntosh, Granny Smith or Golden Delicious…or any baking apple), peeled, cored and cut into ¼ in. thick wedges

1 pint blackberries, rinsed and drained

½ c. granulated sugar

1 tbsp fresh lemon juice

finely grated zest of ½ lemon

Cottage pudding (remember to go with at least 1.5x this recipe):

1 ½ c. flour

2 tsp baking powder

½ tsp salt

½ c sugar

1 egg

½ c milk (or buttermilk)

½ c. unsalted butter, melted (one stick)

Preheat the oven to 425 degrees F. Butter a 13x9” baking dish, or a 2 ½ - 3 qt. casserole dish.

Make the filling: combine figs, apples, blackberries, sugar, lemon juice and lemon zest in a large bowl. Toss well to combine, and spoon into prepared baking dish.

Make the topping: Sift together flour, baking powder, salt, sugar. Mix in egg, milk and melted butter until just combined—if you overmix, the biscuit may get tough. A few patches of flour are fine.

Dot the filling with butter (if you feel so inclined—but it’s not necessary), spread the pudding on top with a rubber spatula. Bake for 30-35 minutes—watch carefully to avoid overbrowning. And if you do overbrown it, you can always top it with confectioner’s sugar, like, um, some people might do.

You say potato, I say yam

When I spent two months in Nigeria, the term 'yam' was an issue of great contestation between me and my housemate/employer. Ben, always with a huge smirk on his face, insisted that Africa was home to the original yam, and therefore the term yam could only be applied to the white, starchy tuber native to Africa. Those orange things sold as “yams” in the United States were definitely fake yams. 

It was a silly way to poke fun at each other, so neither of us ever really bothered to get to the bottom of the controversy. Besides, Ben knew pretty much everything about everything, so I didn’t question him. And we didn’t have water pressure up to the second floor and our electricity was generator powered, so I didn’t generally spend precious internet time looking up the difference between sweet potatoes and yams.*

But now, with my newfound lack of studenthood, I have lots of disposable internet time to look up questions of such paramount importance. So, let me give it to you straight, straight from the Library of Congress website: Yams sold as such in American supermarkets are not actually yams. They are sweet potatoes. Moreover, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, you should KNOW so, because yams are required to be labeled as BOTH sweet potatoes and yams.

How many supermarkets have you been to where this is the case? Either every supermarket I have ever been to is miserably sub par, or there is some lax regulation surrounding the sweet potato/yam conundrum. Election issue, anyone?

Anyway, if you were looking for some actual substance in this post, here it is: while yams and sweet potatoes are both angiosperms, or flowering plants, they are members of different orders and families. Yams are monocots, meaning that they have one embryonic seed leaf, and belong to the family Dioscoreaceae; sweet potatoes are eudicots (having two embryonic seed leaves) and belong to the family Convolvulaceae. Yams are starchier and dryer, with tough skins and usually white interiors (though this varies among the 600 species found in Africa). Sweet potatoes have a variety of skin and flesh tones, and the skin is generally thinner, softer, and edible.

The sweet potatoes Americans have generally come to know as yams are soft sweet potatoes, and were commercially farmed later than their firmer friends. As such, soft sweet potatoes were marketed as yams to differentiate them from their predecessors.

So, why this exegesis on yams vs. sweet potatoes? The recipe I’m about to present you with calls for sweet potatoes, but according to author Anna Thomas, “Yams can be used in place of sweet potatoes if that’s what you have on hand.” Curious cook that I am, I wondered how my soup might have been different had I used sweet potatoes, instead of the yams that were all I could find at my supermarket. Turns out it didn’t make a difference at all, on account of my yams are actually sweet potatoes.

Ok, enough of this nonsense. Here’s the recipe. It’s really lovely, quite light, and makes use of the mix of produce we have available at this time of year; the end of the summer greens, and the beginning of fall and winter’s hard tubers. Of all varieties.

Kale and sweet potato soup with cumin and lemon

Adapted from Anna Thomas’s Love Soup (thanks, Jules!)

2 large leeks, white and light green parts (6 oz.)

1 large yellow onion

2 tbsp olive oil

1 ½ tsp salt (plus more to taste)

12 oz. sweep potatoes

1 small Yukon Gold or white potato

12 oz. Russian kale (I used curly)

4 green onions, sliced

2/3 c. chopped cilantro

freshly ground black pepper

3-4 c. any broth (veggie if you’re trying to keep this vegan, but chicken works fine too)

1 tbsp. cumin seeds

1-2 tbsp. fresh lemon juice

cayenne

Wash and coarsely chop the leeks. A note on leek washing technique; leeks tend to be pretty sandy, so it won’t do to rinse just the outside. The best strategy, I think (thank you Mark Bittman) is to leave both ends of the stalk intact, and cut a long slit through the rest of it the leek; pull apart the two ‘sides’ you have created and run lots of cold water through the layers (see picture). Chop the onion.

Heat the olive oil in a nonstick pan and start sautéing the onion with a sprinkle of salt over medium heat. When the onion is translucent and salt, add the leeks and keep cooking, stirring often, until the vegetables are caramelized and golden, 25-30 minutes.

Meanwhile, peel the sweet potatoes, scrub the non-controversial potato, and cut them all into ½ inch dice. Trim the thick stems from the kale and chop coarsely. Combine potatoes and kale in a soup pot with 5 c. cold water and a teaspoon of salt, bring to a boil, then lower the heat and simmer ~15 minutes.

Add the caramelized onions and leeks to the pot, along with the green onions, cilantro, and a lot of freshly ground black pepper (really! A lot! It’s wonderful!). Add about ~3 c. of broth, or as much as you need to make a soup that pours easily. Simmer gently, covered, for another 10 minutes.

Lightly toast the cumin seeds in a dry pan until they are JUST fragrant (remember , they will keep cooking even when you take them out of the pan) and grind them (with a mortal and pestle if you think it’s quaint and want carpal tunnel…otherwise a spice grinder or cuisinart will do). (Actually toasting and grinding the cumin seeds yourself is worth it for this recipe, as cumin and lemon are the main—and really only—flavor events in this soup. Otherwise it’s quite mild—and you don’t want an insipid soup.)

Stir the cumin and lemon juice into the soup and taste; add more salt, pepper, or lemon juice as needed, and finish with a pinch of cayenne (just a pinch, especially if you’re cooking this ahead of time, as the heat will intensify as the soup sits).

Ladle into bowls and garnish with a swirl of olive oil (I used blood orange olive oil, which was fantastic—but use whatever you have as long as it is high quality! Otherwise, just serve it plain, or with crumbles of feta.).

Serves 6 as a meal

* I did, however, get a look at the NY Times’s “Chocolate Chip Cookies” recipe from the summer of 2008, where they researched everything that is awesome about all chocolate chip cookies baked across NYC and integrated it into a single, singularly awesome chocolate cookie recipe. Priorities are priorities, folks. Sweet potatoes vs. chocolate cookies is no contest.

How I learned to stop worrying and love the spore

This blog will start with a recipe. Because, although writing a blog is among one of the most egocentric activities in the whole gosh darn world, this blog is really not intended to be about me, or my adorable new child (I’m looking at you, Smitten Kitchen...also I don't have a child) or the politics and economics of food (I’m not interesting enough to be writing about eating out in New York, let alone Not Eating Out In New York).*

This blog is about the food that comes out of my [parents’] kitchen and about keeping my writing in shape during my time off from being a student. So thanks for tuning in and indulging this exercise. So let me actually start with the recipes already!

I’ve got some fun recipes (a kale and sweet potato soup, some fig, apple, blackberry tart action) backlogged, but any of my housemates from college would object heartily, I think, if I started with anything but challah. 

Despite the fact that my father has always been a bread baker, yeast beasties (as he calls them) made me nervous. They were live critters, weren't they? Couldn't they have minds of their own and refuse to go to their carbon dioxide generating work? However, over the winter break of my senior year of college, close family friends--and prodigious bread bakers-- were snowed in with us, and I took advantage of the opportunity to eke out a baking lesson. Richard and Susan were wonderful teachers, and cured me of my phobia, at least with regard to this very forgiving recipe. 

And so, for the semester following that snowstorm, challah was a regular occurrence in my off-campus house. It usually came out of the oven on Saturday or Sunday evenings**, and generally didn’t last beyond 24 hours. If it did, it was sliced, slathered with mustard, and topped with brisket (college was hard).

So, without further ado, here’s the recipe that filled our grungy and wonderful house at 181 Governor with the smell of baking bread—and even got a mention in my housemate’s phenomenal one-man show. 

Challah

Adapted from the Capen-Weinstein recipe, and taught me on a snowy Saturday in late December 2009

1 ½ c. water

1 c. milk (whole, skim, whatever you have)

heaping ½ cup granulated sugar

4 eggs (+ 1 for the wash)

1 tbsp. salt

1 tbsp. dry active yeast

flour (about half of a 5 lb. bag)

Combine eggs, sugar, salt, milk and water in large mixing bowl using a wooden spoon. Add 2 c. flour. Add yeast (it does not matter how warm the mixture is, though if you’re an anxious sort, you could let the milk and eggs come to room temperature before starting with the whole thing.). Mix thoroughly.

Add flour one c. at a time, until mixture is kneadable (see photo). (The dough will be difficult to stir before it should be kneaded. In this case, employ what my dad calls the ‘man stirring technique:” wrap your hand in a fist around the spoon handle, sprinkle the flour over the dough, and just kind of pull it away from the sides of the bowl. The flour will eventually be incorporated.)

Turn the dough out onto a VERY well floured surface. Knead for 5-10 minutes, then place dough in a greased (Pam works well) bowl. (I wash my large mixing bowl and throw the dough right back in after greasing). Cover and let stand for 3-4 hours, or until the dough has doubled in size. If you have soffit lighting, this is a great moment for it to shine (I wish I could say this kind of stupid punnery won't happen often on this blog, but the fact is that I will probably try to make it happen as often as possible); place the rising dough under the lights, and the extra warmth will expedite rising, especially on chillier days.

Turn the dough out onto a very LIGHTLY floured surface for braiding. Cut the large piece of dough into two equal halves using a bread knife (a scale is handy here). Set one half aside (it will be the second loaf, but for now, let’s just deal with the one).

Divide the half into three equal pieces. Squeeze the three pieces into ropes about 15-18” long. Set them side by side. Find the middle and start your braiding from there. In one direction, you will braid by crossing whichever rope is central to the outside, alternating moving it to the right and left. Each time you move a rope, give it a light tug, stretching it a little over whichever rope it is crossing. Once you have come to the end of one side, pinch the three ropes together, and tuck the end under the braid, pinching the dough of the end and the bottom of the loaf together. Then, braid from the middle to the other side—this time, the braiding will be of the normal sort—crossing right over center, then left over center, etc. Don’t forget to tug, and tuck the end under! Repeat this process with the second three pieces.

Move the loaves onto a parchment lined cookie sheet- If your cookie sheet is rimmed, it will help to grease the rim to prevent the loaves from sticking, should they rise to touch the rim. Allow the loaves to rise, loosely covered, for 1 hour.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Beat the remaining egg, and brush it liberally over the risen, braided loaves. Place the loaves in the oven for 30 minutes (or until a toothpick inserted comes out clean), rotating after 15 minutes. Cool loaves on the sheet for 5 minutes,  then transfer to a rack to cool completely (if you can keep your housemates, students or parents, away from the loaves for that long).

Makes two sizeable loaves.

*I really like both of these blogs, by the way. No slam intended. I just don't have a cute kid or a political agenda. Honest.

**Yes, I know that challahs are a traditional Shabbat food, and that it was absolutely sacrilegious that I should be making them any other day than Friday, let along during Shabbat itself. But Friday afternoons, especially in the rainy months (which is about 10 in Providence, RI), are a perfect time for any college student to get some work out of the way to allow for thoroughly lazing about all weekend. (Which, I guess if you’re me, means making challah.)