Okay

How are you, friends? I hope well. Many of you wrote to check in on us after the bombing here on Monday, and we so appreciate it. I wanted to stop by today to thank you, and to let anyone who might still be wondering know that Eli, Mia, and I, and all of our Boston family and friends are, thankfully, okay. Shaken and sad, but okay.

Our thoughts are with those who are suffering. I hope with all my heart that you are not among them.

I'll have some cake for you soon. For now, I'd like to share a piece I wrote for Tablet Magazine about running, fear, and Boston that appeared on Tuesday morning.

Also, The One Fund. If you're so inclined, I hope you'll join me in donating to help the victims and families of the attack.

Sending much love your way. xo.

Long live the oatcake

Calling all people out there with kids and full-time jobs who manage to blog one, two, three (!!!) times per week: Kindly pull up a chair. I bet you're the same people who return e-mails immediately and never run out of dish soap. On all accounts, I have a lot to learn. You'll teach me, yes? In exchange, I offer Heidi Swanson's Oatcakes. You know they're something special when I say it's a fair trade.

I wasn't in the market for an oatcake - for any cake at all, really - when I pulled Heidi's book, Super Natural Every Day, from the shelf and sat down to my Grape-Nuts and tea. I was just there to visit page 1, home to the following words:

I live in a modest six-room flat with twelve-foot ceilings on the second floor of a Victorian apartment in the middle of San Francisco. And by "middle" I mean that if you threw a dart at the center of a map of this city, you'd likely hit my house. My street dead-ends into an east-sloping neighborhood park, and when you stand at the front window you can watch a parade of pugs and pinschers, big kids on dirt bikes and small kids on scooters, dealers, joggers, and the occasional flute player go by. There are times when two girls set up a music stand in the shade and practice trombone.

Over breakfast, I always try to read something that reminds me of what words can do. Before I pick up my manuscript each day, it helps to see proper evidence that writing is, in fact, possible. There are some bits of texts that I return to, and this paragraph is one of them. (Also in heavy rotation right now: anything by Mary Karr or John McPhee.) I so admire Heidi's economy of words, the precision of her images, the way she sets us down right in the middle of her home, her city, her world, to take it all in alongside her. I'd like to stand there at that window for a while.

Anyway, I was just passing through Heidi's pages that morning, not even planning to turn on my oven, when my finger found a sticky tab I'd placed who knows when. Suddenly, I was face to face with a recipe for oatcakes, ones that looked nothing like the round, flat discs I normally associate with that word. The only oatcakes I'd ever known were plush-looking crackers that crunched, more savory than sweet, but just barely. When I lived in the UK, I ate a lot of them, mostly because I was 22 and they were cheap - you could get a whole package for under a pound - and with jam and cheese they could pass for lunch. (Molly posted a recipe for that kind of oatcake not long ago.)

Heidi's, as you can see, are different, muffin-like in shape, and almost a cookie in substance. She packs them with walnuts and flax seeds, and sweetens them with sugar and maple syrup. I cut the sugar in half after my first go-around, and still find them sweet enough to call a treat. Let me be clear: There is nothing delicate about the Heidi Swanson Oatcake. The oats on top harden into a helmet of a crust that I like to break off bit by bit and save for last; the interior crumb, while softer, is dense and made for chewing. I couldn't be happier about that. These (almost 18!!) months since Mia came along have been the hungriest of my life. Long live what fills me up for more than a blink of an eye! Long live the oatcake.

Have a bang-up week. 

Heidi Swanson's Oatcakes
Adapted from Super Natural Every Day by Heidi Swanson

I've only tried these with walnuts and flax seeds, as Heidi recommends. It's a winning combination, but I think I might swap in coarsely-chopped sunflower seeds for the flax the next time around, just for a change. The recipe printed below includes only half the sugar of the original recipe. As I mentioned above, I think they're still plenty sweet this way. Note: I follow the weight measurements listed below; the volume measurements are Heidi's, and I have not tested them.

[Oh, and a question! I bought coconut oil for this recipe for the first time and I'm fascinated by the stuff. What else can I do with it? If you have suggestions, do tell...] 

300 grams (3 cups) rolled oats
225 grams (2 cups) spelt flour or whole wheat pastry flour (I use spelt)
½ teaspoon baking powder
2 teaspoons salt
45 grams (¼ cup) flax seeds
85 grams (¾ cup) chopped walnuts, lightly toasted
70 grams (1/3 cup) extra-virgin coconut oil
85 grams (1/3 cup) unsalted butter
¾ cup maple syrup (I use Grade B)
35 grams (¼ cup) sugar
2 eggs, lightly beaten

Position a rack in the top third of your oven and heat to 325 degrees. Butter a 12-cup muffin pan.

Stir together the oats, flour, baking powder, salt, flax seeds, and walnuts in a large mixing bowl.

Put the coconut oil, butter, maple syrup, and sugar in a saucepan over low heat and stir, just until the butter melts. Let cool slightly, so that you don't cook the eggs in the next step!

Pour the oil and butter mixture over the dry ingredients, give it a few stirs with a fork, add the eggs, and stir again to form a wet dough. Spoon the dough into the muffin cups - they'll be close to full - and bake for 25-30 minutes, until the edges of each cake are golden brown. Let cool in the pan for a few minutes, then run a knife around each cake and transfer to a cooling rack.

Serve warm or at room temperature.

Riff

A couple of Sundays ago.

 :: :: ::

It has been nearly two years since the redesign of The New York Times Magazine, but I still think of the current incarnation as "new." My favorite part, the page that I flip first to each week, is the critics' column, Riff. The column debuted in March of 2011 with Sam Anderson's essay on the art and (for him, near obsessive) practice of marginalia. It's sharp, thoughtful, funny, the perfect inaugural piece for a column serving up first-rate criticism that's relevant to the digital age. (See also the accompanying images of Anderson's marginalia from 2011 and 2012.) I hope you'll read the entire essay - it's wonderful. Here are some excerpts:

Today I rarely read anything - book, magazine, newspaper - without a writing instrument in hand. Books have become my journals, my critical notebooks, my creative outlets. Writing in them is the closest I come to regular meditation...

According to the marginalia scholar H. J. Jackson, the golden age of marginalia lasted from roughly 1700 to 1820. The practice, back then, was surprisingly social - people would mark up books for one another as gifts, or give pointedly annotated novels to potential lovers. Old-school marginalia was - to put it into contemporary cultural terms - a kind of slow-motion, long-form Twitter, or a statusless, meaning-soaked Facebook, or an analog, object-based G-chat...

Marginalia - with its social thrill of shared immersion - is what the culture is moving toward, not away from. We are living increasingly in a culture of response. Twitter is basically electronic marginalia on everything in the world: jokes, sports, revolutions...

I've long been frustrated with the "distance" between criticism and reading itself. Most critical energy is expended in big-picture work - situating texts in history, talking about broad themes - all of which is useful but hardly touches the excitement of actual reading, a process of discovery that happens in time, moment by moment, line by line. What I really want is someone rolling around in the text. I want noticing. I want, in short, marginalia, everywhere, all the time. Suddenly that seems deliriously possible.

I love the energy of this essay. I love how gracefully the author pivots from the theoretical to the applied, how the writing is both intellectually rigorous and deeply personal. I can say the same things about the majority of the Riff columns (which almost, almost, makes up for that maddening One-Page and the departure of Virginia Heffernan), and I often find myself going back to some of my favorites. I want to list them here so that I have them all in one place, and because I think you'll enjoy them, too.

:: Steve Almond on the effective narrator. 

:: Sam Anderson again on information overload.

:: And again on the "meta-memoir" by Luca Spaghetti, a character in Elizabeth Gilbert's Eat, Pray, Love. (A piece that, while quite funny, includes some serious and important observations about memoir that I still think about all the time.)

:: Hugo Lindgren, the editor of The New York Times Magazine, on his creative process. You'll forgive the nerd in me for pointing out a probable error: Mr. Lindgren attributes the wise words "Be wrong as fast as you can," to Pixar founder John Lasseter but, according to Tad Friend's 2011 New Yorker article (an incredibly inspiring read, by the way), these are actually Andrew Stanton's words. I know this because when I was getting bogged down in my book proposal, and now when I'm having a slow writing day, I return to this paragraph from the piece:

Stanton's precepts are often invoked at the studio, particularly "Be wrong fast" or "Fail early." He explains, "It's like every movie is a kid, and no kid avoids puberty. Just dive through it - get that outline that should take three months done in one, so you get the inevitable bad stuff out of the way and have more time to plus the good stuff."

(How's that to light a fire under you?)

Anyway, thanks for letting me deposit all of this here today. I'm happy to get it all down. I don't have a recipe for you at the moment, but I will tell you that we've been eating loads of this soup lately, with no plans to slow down. (Except for Mia, who's not so into soups these days. She'd rather chew.)

A lot to go on about citrus

So far, 2013 has been the year of the head cold, the year of the stomach bug that took us down one by one (whoa), the year of the 2002 Honda Accord in sudden need of a new transmission, and the year of the grapefruit. You’ll understand if we focus on the grapefruit today.

I never get excited for winter citrus the way I do for summer berries or fall plums, which is odd, because once the oranges, and grapefruits, and lemons are here, I can’t get enough. When I was a little girl, my great-grandmother Edith would send us HoneyBells from Florida each year. Did you know they’re part grapefruit? And the other part tangerine. They’d come in a box with faux warnings on the outside about the extreme juiciness within, and tie-on plastic bibs, like lobster bibs, for emphasis. There were many more HoneyBells among the grassy plastic padding than there were bibs. I assumed you were supposed to wipe down your bib between uses and wear it again, so I did. We ate them with ceremony on a newsprint-covered hardwood floor, bibs tied beneath our chins, one a day after school until they were gone.

Grapefruits were for cold weekend mornings, for halving and sectioning and topping with honey or heaped teaspoons of sugar, and eating on fold-up tables in front of the TV. I’d scrape and squeeze the skins clean, move to the floor by the heat vent, pull my knees up under my nightgown and, lips still burning from the pith, watch the rest of the show from there. I ate grapefruit just like that – minus the TV and nightgown, eventually – until late 2006, when my mother-in-law Sarah taught me how to supreme. I spent countless hours that winter sliding a sharp knife between membranes and plump, pink vesicles, transferring thrillingly intact slices to plates of arugula and avocado. Eli would joke sometimes that I didn't even like that salad, but made it just for the chance to supreme.

Well. That was a lot to go on about citrus when all I’m offering today is juice of. But when I started thinking about grapefruit, this is what came out. Bear with me, if you would; there’s vodka on the way.

The grapefruit juice currently in my fridge is from a guy called Uncle Matt. And by “a guy,” I mean a company, I guess. The point is that this Uncle Matt, whoever (whatever) he is, makes a very nice juice. We’re only 25 days into the new year, and I’m already on my third jug which – considering that I am the only grapefruit juice drinker in my household and that for a few fevered days I consumed nothing but Gatorade and the entire first season of Downton Abbey – is healthy evidence that this juice and I are ON. The first jug arrived in the final hours of 2012 with my friend, Julia. She’d been mixing up Greyhounds – vodka, grapefruit juice, and lime – and came equipped on New Year’s Eve to spread the good word. I didn't have one that night, or for many nights, sticking instead to a tamer grapefruit juice and soda while my head cleared and stomach quieted. That's what I'm drinking right now, in fact, a – what shall we call it? A "Virgin Greyhound?" A “Grapefruit Fizz?” A “Fizzy Pup?” I knew I was in trouble when the words “Dog Soda” flashed through my brain. In any case, I’m sold.

On the alcoholic version now, too. The Greyhound is clean, simple, sleek, not too sweet, all things that make me suck it down more quickly than I should. I've mentioned before what a lightweight I am, but honestly, I barely even deserve that title, when a single swallow of champagne hits me right between the eyes and two sips of wine are enough. And yet. The Greyhound goes down easy. He’s a quiet, gentle pup. I drank nearly a whole one earlier this week after Mia went to sleep and still made it from sofa to bed on my own. Then last night I emptied my glass! January's looking up. And not a moment too soon.

Eli's Greyhound

Don't let me stop you from squeezing and straining your own grapefruit juice for this drink. Just know that best-quality store-bought 100% juice is also very good here. Replace the vodka with soda for a virgin option.

1 ounce vodka (We're into Cîroc right now.)
2½ ounces grapefruit juice
Wedge of lime

Fill a glass almost to the top with ice cubes. I think a Collins glass is the traditional one for this drink, but we don't have any, so we use a rock glass. Add the vodka (or soda), then the grapefruit juice, squeeze in the lime, and stir well.

Makes one drink.

How it feels

It's January 7th. The new year is one week old. I'm probably supposed to be charging ahead, thinking new-new-new, and resolving the crap out of things. But you know, if 2013 were a human, it would still be in that sleepy, blobby stage, when the name of the game is take good care.

Here's a thing: At our table on New Year's Eve, someone asked about resolutions. I couldn't think of a single one. I want to do better and I want to be better, and I have some specific, personal ideas about what that means. Does it count as a resolution, though, if I felt this way every day of last year, too? Maybe yes. "Better" means lots of potential new.

This last year was very big and very fast, like one of those dogs, enormous and eager, that you sometimes see straining against its leash and wonder who's walking whom. It slobbers all over your chin and leaves paw prints on your sweater; it doesn't know its own strength. And though I could probably use a shower, and a nap, and maybe a hot fudge sundae, what I'd really like is to sit right here in it for just a little while longer.

2012 was hard in the way that the best things are hard. I'm grateful for that, and proud, and I want to remember how it feels. The breathless, jam-packed days. A proposal-in-the-making became a book deal; an idea became a business; a doughy, blinking babe became an honest to goodness person who walks, and talks, and wakes up singing, and will fight you for the last fish taco. (She does, I am happy to report, still smell like a warm pretzel. Thank goodness.) I've wondered sometimes if our pace is sustainable. Some days, I'm sure that it's not. But of all the shades of tired out there - sick tired, bored tired, sad tired - it's unspeakably lucky to get to fall into bed every night exhausted to the core by the people and things I love. I'm happy tired.

These are the party maps from the last month of the last year. Not pictured: the one from New Year's Eve. A bad head cold took me out of the game before I could finish it. Fortunately, there was a Molly in the house that night to take the reins and make sure no one starved. I repaid her by disappearing for 45 minutes to nurse a teething baby when I was supposed to be cooking and, upon my return, knocking a full glass of red wine to her feet as she rolled gnocchi for twelve. Then, because I am a very good friend, I burned a pear tart and moped about it.

I did get one thing right though, a spread of whipped feta with sweet and hot peppers that I think you're going to love. It was something of a December specialty - we made it and made it and ate it and ate it - and it's with us here in the new year, too. The fact is, whipping feta is a very smart thing to do. Feta is notoriously crumbly, but whipping it (or whirring it like crazy in a food processor, which this recipe counts as "whipping") makes it creamy and smooth. The sweet here is roasted red pepper (from a jar!) and the spicy is Aleppo pepper which adds a mild heat and, though this might just be me, a flavor like sun-dried tomatoes. I tasted this spread for the first time years ago at Oleana, a favorite Cambridge restaurant that I've mentioned here before. The chef, Ana Sortun, published the recipe in her first cookbook, Spice, which came out in 2006. Eli served it that year at my 26th birthday party, and we made it a handful of times after that, and then for some unfathomable and totally unjustifiable reason it fell off our radar for years. (Despite delighting over it time and again at the restaurant. We are sometimes not so bright.) Now that it's back, I'm not letting it out of my sight, and neither should you.

p.s. Halfway through writing this post I realized that today is the fourth anniversary of this blog. That's a nice chunk of years! Let's do some more. xo.

Whipped Feta with Sweet and Hot Peppers
Adapted from Spice by Ana Sortun

1 pound sheep's milk feta, drained and roughly crumbled 
2 medium red bell peppers, roasted, peeled, seeded, and roughly chopped (I use jarred.)
2 teaspoons Aleppo chilies, plus a pinch for garnish
1 teaspoon Urfa chilies, plus a pinch for garnish
½ teaspoon smoked Spanish paprika
1 teaspoon lemon juice
¼ cup olive oil

Put everything in a mixing bowl and stir until the sweet and hot peppers coat the cheese. Transfer to a food processor fitted with a metal blade and purée for about 2 minutes, until very smooth and creamy. The mixture will be loose, but will firm up when chilled. Pour into a bowl or, as I do, a few ramekins, and refrigerate for about 30 minutes. Sprinkle with the extra Aleppo and Urfa chilies and the paprika before serving.

Off the charts

My first first day of kindergarten was in Armonk, New York, a hamlet of Westchester County. I don't remember that day at all. My second first day of kindergarten, halfway through the school year, was in Moreland Hills, Ohio, and I do remember it, because I thought I was losing my mind.

That morning, we circled up on the rug, and our teacher handed out laminated disks of construction paper. A girl across from me held up her red circle and a kid to my left held up his, which was blue. Okay, a game about colors. Hers was red, and his was blue, and weren't we a little old for this? "PURPLE!" the class shouted, all at once. Purple? My cheeks burned hot. Where? But we were on to the next round, a yellow circle, a blue one: "GREEN!" they crowed. These Ohioans were advanced.We hadn't learned color mixing at my old school. I was five years old, and also, me, so on a scale of no big deal to really quite a very big and stressful deal, this situation was off the charts.

Another source of confusion - though, thankfully, of a less stressful variety - was the buckeye. Someone brought one in for show-and-tell that year, a glossy brown knob with a yellowish circle on top. He said it was good luck. We passed it around and our teacher explained that it was the nut from Ohio's state tree. I slid my thumb along its smooth skin. One day after school sometime after that, a friend's mother offered me a buckeye of my own. I held out my hand expecting one of those lucky nuts, and at first that's what I thought I'd gotten. But the dark part of this "buckeye" was chocolate, and the lighter round bit on top (and inside!) was peanut butter. My mind raced back and forth between buckeye number one - that wasn't candy... was it? - and buckeye number two. There was the twinge of discomfort at something not being what I'd expected, but after giving it some thought and figuring out what was what, I was delighted.

This recipe doesn't take much which, as one year slides into the next, is the kind of recipe I like best. You don't even have to turn on the oven.

Wishing you all good things for these final hours of 2012 and better things still for the year to come. We're cooking at home tonight with friends. There will be bread, and bourbon balls, and the return of a salad. I'm looking forward, very much.

Buckeyes
Adapted from another Ohio transplant at Remedial Eating, who adapted the recipe from Saveur.

Please note that this recipe calls for 2 cups of sifted confectioners' sugar, which is not the same thing as 2 cups of confectioners' sugar, sifted. (2 cups unsifted is considerably more than 2 cups sifted; I checked.) So even though it's a little bit of a pain, you'll want to sift the sugar first, then measure it. For the peanut butter, I'd stay away from the natural stuff, here. I think even well-stirred, it could give you trouble. As for the vegetable shortening, I use Spectrum.

2 cups sifted confectioners' sugar (sift first, then measure; see note)
¾ cup smooth peanut butter
4 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted
½ teaspoon vanilla
¼ teaspoon salt
8 ounces semisweet chocolate
½ teaspoon vegetable shortening

Put the sugar, peanut butter, melted butter, vanilla, and salt into a mixing bowl. Give it a few stirs with a wooden spoon to get things going, then knead with your hands until smooth. Roll into 1-inch balls, place them in a single layer on a plate, and freeze for 15-20 minutes.

Stirring often, melt the chocolate and shortening in a double boiler or heatproof bowl over a pot of barely simmering water. Remove from heat.

Line a cookie sheet with wax paper and set aside, next to the bowl of melted chocolate. Take a few peanut butter balls from the fridge. One by one, insert a toothpick into the center of each ball and dip into the melted chocolate, leaving a circle of peanut butter showing at the top. Twirl the toothpick to toss off the excess chocolate and place on the lined cookie sheet. Repeat with the remaining peanut butter balls.

Freeze the buckeyes until firm and smooth out the toothpick holes with your finger. Store in the refrigerator. They'll keep for a couple of weeks. Serve chilled or at room temperature.

Makes about 30. 

How it works

Hello and happy winter solstice from the rainiest afternoon I've seen in a while. The days only get longer and lighter from here. Thank goodness.

I have one more recipe for you before the year is out, but I have a feeling that the last thing you need this week is another something to do in the kitchen. Because of that, and also because it's long overdue, I thought I would tell you some more about Eli's company, Directr. When I announced the project back in July, I had to keep the details under wraps. It was fun sharing some of the big ideas behind it, but nowhere near as fun as telling you exactly how it works, which is what I finally get to do today.

Directr is an app, a free app, I should say, that helps you make beautiful short films with your phone. It takes just a few minutes, and there's no editing required. You choose a storyboard from the Directr library, shoot the frames however you'd like, add in your own titles, and hit print. The app stitches your shots into a clean film - backs it with music, too - and you're done. That's it! If you're looking for inspiration, there are suggestions and camera angle ideas included on each frame. Or you can go ahead and shoot what you please. There are holiday-specific storyboards (UPDATE: holiday cards!), storyboards for your walk to work, for your awesome baby, your awesome dog, your awesome morning coffee, and a few blank slates, too. And of course, there's plenty of food. The Directr team is hard at work creating hundreds of storyboards; a new one pops up on the site (and in the app) every day. You can see them all here.

Directr launched softly, quietly, as if on tiptoe, really, a couple of months ago. Now, after much ramping up and steadying of the ship, they're ready for all of us. I've said before that Directr reminds me a lot of what we do here in blogland, making something out of the stuff that surrounds us all the time, looking for the stories in our everyday, and doing our best to get them down somehow. It has been such a thrill to watch as people start doing just that with this thing that Eli and his team are building. Here's a film called Grateful: Finger Dancing that a user named He Ren made earlier this week.



I don't know who you are, He Ren, but I like your style.

And here are some of the other storyboards that I find especially lovely, stirring, and fun:

:: This is me.

:: A snowstorm.

:: Autumn.

:: Stripes in the wild.

:: Baby bathtime and baby eating. (Starring Mia, when she was just a pup!) 

:: And finally, dessert.

(with a side of my friend Jonah, who loves to dance.)

Eli and I would be honored - and that really is the word - if you'd try out the app and make some films. We've heard from some of you who already have, and it means the world to us.

And hey, if you do make a film, would you share it here in the comments? Pretty please? Or shoot me an e-mail with the link? I do most of the sharing and the showing around here, but I treasure the conversations we've had in this space over the years. It would be such a treat to see a few corners of your world, and of you. Oh, and please don't be shy about speaking up if you run into any glitches or bugs, or if there's something you'd like to see. The Directr team is just getting started, working on new builds all the time, and would be grateful for your feedback.

Thank you, friends, for being here. Merry Christmas to all who are celebrating, and glad tidings to all.

A whole chicken to stay

On Wednesday afternoons, when Mia wakes up from her nap, we go swimming. Last Wednesday was business as usual. I wrangled Mia into her bathing suit. (A tankini. A pink and green halter top. I die.) Mia grabbed a floating dumbbell and bobbed around the pool, as is her custom, smiling and waving at anything that moved. She drank pool water, also her custom, drifted along belly-up for a while, got sufficiently wrinkled and shivery, gave me the evil eye when it was time to get out, then cruised naked around the changing room shutting locker doors. Typical. We showered. I dressed myself. I dressed Mia. I stuffed her into her jacket, strapped a fuzzy hat (with ears, obviously) onto her head, and locked the whole squirming package onto my chest for the walk home. Nothing out of the ordinary.

What came next happened so quickly - it was a matter of seconds, really - I keep thinking that perhaps it didn't happen at all.

We pass through a hotel lobby on our way home, and as we neared the door last week, I saw a woman in a wheel chair. She was African-American, dressed all in black, with long silver dreadlocks. At once I had the feeling that I knew her. Mia started smiling and waving frantically, and I swear they locked eyes for a moment, and just as it's hitting me that whoa, WAIT A SECOND, I do know her, another woman rushes up, introduces herself as professor so-and-so and, breathless, looking like she is either about to faint, or cry, or sprint around the block, says, "Hello, Ms. Morrison. It is a pleasure to meet you. I'll be escorting you to your speaking engagement tonight." (I forgot to mention that I was in the middle of dialing Eli when this whole scene transpired, and at the precise moment when it all clicked, he'd picked up, and was now waiting patiently while I said slowly, shakily, over and over into the phone, "Hold on... Hold on... Hold on...") I am at this point blinking furiously, feeling that I might spontaneously faint, or cry, or sprint around the block, and Mia, still in that damn hat with those damn ears, is still waving, then clapping, then blowing kisses at Toni Morrison's back as she's wheeled across the lobby and out the door.

Well. You cannot wave and blow kisses at Toni Morrison, or have the miniature human strapped to your chest wave and blow kisses at Toni Morrison, and then just go home. So we went to the bakery instead for two slices of Boston brown bread, heavy with molasses and serious flours, lightly sweet, speckled with dried blueberries that steam and swell as the dough bakes. Mia loves it, and so do I. While we were waiting for our slices, the guy behind the counter told me about a man and a woman who come in once a week, order a whole chicken to stay, then sit down across from one another and eat the entire thing with their hands, tearing it apart as they go. He called it primal, mildly disgusting, and one of the most romantic things he's ever seen. The person by the register handed Mia a star-shaped cracker the size of her palm. It had anise and almond and citrus in it, and I'm sure a bit of sugar, too, though it wasn't terribly sweet. It's probably safe to say that it was more a cookie, but Mia doesn't eat cookies yet, officially speaking, so I'm going with cracker. It was a real treat.

That morning, I'd read that it was Joan Didion's and Calvin Trillin's birthday. Walt Disney's, too.

Also that morning:  Mia walked.

Brown bread all around.

p.s. Emma Brockes on Toni Morrison here.

Boston Brown Bread
Adapted from Hi-Rise Bakery and Artisan Baking, by Maggie Glezer

Traditionally, Boston brown bread is steamed in coffee cans for a crust as moist as its crumb. They do use cans at Hi-Rise, but leave them uncovered for a crisp crust. I folded dried cherries into the dough instead of blueberries because they're what I had on hand, and I really liked their deep, winy flavor with the rye flour, molasses, and cornmeal. You might also try dried currants. You'll need two 28-ounce cans or two 8 x 4-inch loaf pans for this recipe. I used a couple of 9 x 5-inch loaf pans (and shortened the baking time), so I ended up with shorter, flatter loaves. It wasn't ideal, but the bread still came out fine, with a damp crumb and extra crust. Please note: I baked this bread according to the weight measurements listed below. I have not tested the volume measurements and, as is always the case when converting from weight, they're approximate.

8 ounces (about 1½ cups) all-purpose flour
8 ounces (about 2 cups) rye flour
4½ ounces (about 1 cup) whole wheat flour
4 ounces (about 2/3 cup) medium- or coarse-grind cornmeal
1 tablespoon baking soda
1½ teaspoons baking powder
1¼ teaspoons salt
¼ cup molasses
¼ cup honey or maple syrup (I used honey)
2 cups whole milk, plus a bit more, if you end up needing it
1 cup dried cherries (or dried blueberries, or dried currants)
Butter for the pans

Heat the oven to 300 degrees and butter your cans or pans.

Whisk together the dry ingredients (flours, cornmeal, leaveners, and salt) in a large bowl. Add the molasses, honey, and milk, and mix with your hands until the dough just comes together. Do not overmix. If it's crumbly, add more milk, a tablespoonful at a time, until you have your dough. Gently fold in the dried cherries.

Divide the batter evenly between the prepared cans or pans, and bake for 60-90 minutes (my 9 x 5 inch loaves were done in 50) until deep brown with a hard, crisp crust. You can stick them with a toothpick, if you want to make sure their insides are cooked through.  Remove from the cans or pans while still warm and transfer to a rack to cool.

Serve with cream cheese.

Mostly tomatoes

Howdy.

My friend Molly turned 30 last week, and we – oh, hey, there she is now! Hi, M. Many happy returns to you! That's our friend Mary in the middle with the party eyes and backwards lips. Get your lips on straight, woman! Sheesh.

All right, who's that little mustachioed dudette, and who let her in here? Little bugger must've sneaked in through the back door while I was frosting the cake. Crasher.

Anyway, as I was saying, Molly turned 30 last week, and we had a dinner party to celebrate. Molly and I cooked up a storm – roasted squash with cardamom, lime, and a yogurt-tahini sauce; eggplant with buttermilk dressing and pomegranate seeds; soup; whipped feta with sweet and spicy peppers; anchovies; olives; bread – I baked a cake that I'm dying to tell you about, but I can't, not yet, because it's for the book; and my sister Kasey made (amazing! spicy! chocolate!) ice cream. Before the party, my friend Steph and I set up a makeshift photo booth (surprise, Molly!), and while Mia napped, Eli hot-glued 22 paper mustaches, glasses, bow ties, and hair pieces to 22 wooden sticks. Goooo team!

I love cooking with Molly. And that's saying something, because I very, very rarely enjoy cooking with anyone. There are people, I hear, who crowd into the kitchen, crack open a cookbook and a bottle of wine, divvy up the tasks at hand and get down to it. There's conversation and multiple knives in action, and music, maybe something like this. There are no lists or maps at all, just good food happening, and the mean heart rate in the room is andante, at most. It pains me to tell you that I am sooo not one of those people. But I often wish I were, and when I cook with Molly, I get to be. (Minus the wine. I'd never make it to the table.) Molly is unflappable in the kitchen. She's a scientist; her brain is packed with a boggling amount of information about how cooking works, thanks in large part to the book she put together for Cook's Illustrated. (Seven weeks and counting on the New York Times best sellers list! Yesssss!) But all that book learnin' (and writing) aside, Molly is an incredibly intuitive cook. She has fabulous taste, and I've learned so much from her. Molly said that for her 30th birthday, she wanted us to cook a meal together for her friends. I couldn't have been happier about that. 

Molly started in on the squash when she arrived, and I got going on the soup.

It was a tomato soup, a recipe from Yotam Ottolenghi's new book, Jerusalem, but different from the tomato soup, also Ottolenghi's, that I shared here last week. This one's lighter, more devotedly tomato, with a flavor that's delicate yet deep. The ingredients are mostly tomatoes, plus sourdough, which I thought was kind of weird, and more cilantro than I thought was wise. But the sourdough breaks down completely, pulling together all those tomatoes, smoothing them out, and the cilantro is cooked, so it does something different, something quieter, than I expected.You purée the soup before serving, but only about three-quarters of the way, so that chunks of tomato remain and there are still plenty of seeds to burst between your teeth. It's a magnificent soup. I couldn't shake the feeling that I was eating the best tomato sauce I'd ever had, only from a bowl, straight. Fine with me. At the last minute, we decided to toast some pumpkin seeds to sprinkle on top. I suggest you do the same.

Happy December, friends.


p.s. - More photos here. 

Tomato and Sourdough Soup
Adapted from Jerusalem by Yotam Ottolenghi and Sami Tamimi

This is intended to be a summer soup, I think – the recipe calls for some fresh tomatoes, some canned – but I've winterized it by using only canned. It might seem strange to hand chop a can of tomatoes when you're also using another can of already-chopped tomatoes, but the variation in texture between the hand-chopped and ready-chopped is very nice. Use the best, most flavorful canned tomatoes you can find. We went with Muir Glen organic tomatoes and they were excellent. A note about the cilantro: The recipe calls for 2 tablespoons chopped cilantro, not 2 tablespoons of cilantro, chopped, which would be significantly less cilantro. That may feel like a lot, but it mellows considerably when cooked. I don't typically have sourdough on hand, but my new plan is to buy a loaf, slice it, and store the individual slices in the freezer so that I'll be able to make this soup on a whim.

2 tablespoons olive oil
1 large onion, chopped (1 2/3 cups, or 250 grams)
½ teaspoon ground cumin
2 cloves garlic, crushed
3 cups vegetable stock
1 28-ounce can of whole peeled tomatoes, chopped, juice reserved
1 14-ounce can of chopped tomatoes
1 tablespoon sugar
1 slice sourdough bread, crust removed (40 grams), torn into 1- to 2-inch chunks
2 tablespoons chopped cilantro, plus extra to finish
1 teaspoon salt, plus more, to taste
Freshly ground black pepper
½ cup pumpkin seeds, toasted in a hot dry skillet, then salted (optional)

Heat the oil in a medium pot over a medium-high flame and add the onion. Sauté for about 5 minutes, stirring often, until the onion is translucent. Add the cumin and the garlic and fry for 2 minutes. Give it a stir every now and then to make sure nothing is sticking.

Stir in the stock, all of the tomatoes with their juices, 1 teaspoon of salt, and a couple of grinds of black pepper – everything but the sourdough – and bring to a gentle simmer. Cook for 10 minutes, stir in the sourdough, then cook for another 10 minutes. Add the cilantro, and purée with an immersion blender. You’re after a soup with varied texture; you want some tomato chunks and definitely some tomato seeds here and there. It’s a thick soup. If it’s too thick, add a little water.

Serve drizzled with olive oil and scattered with fresh cilantro.

Serves 4-6.

All I really want to do

I've been thinking all week about how to bring this whole NaBloPoMo thing to a close, whether I should bang out one last reader request post, or reflect on just how lovely it was for me to be here every day this month. (It was very lovely.) But in the end, all I really want to do today is thank you.  And feed you cake.  

This is Alice Medrich's sherry and olive oil pound cake. I've never baked a boozy cake before, and for some reason I thought that most of the alcohol would burn right off, the way it does in cooking. I was mistaken about that. I discovered my error at approximately 1:25pm today when, after consuming two slices in rapid succession, my head felt suddenly swimmy. This cake is festive, shall we say, soaked and squidgy with a FULL CUP of sherry. (Though I am a terrible lightweight, so it's possible that you won't find it nearly as strong.) The dimpled crust has a crunch to it; the crumb is tight and rosy. It's scented with orange zest and as the cake baked, I could smell winter coming.

Thank you for a great November, everyone. I've loved spending this month with you.

xo.

Sherry and Olive Oil Pound Cake
Adapted from Pure Desserts by Alice Medrich

You have your choice of pans for this cake. The recipe makes enough for one 10- to 12-inch tube or Bundt pan, or for two 5- to 6-cup loaf pans. In her recipe notes, Alice Medrich says something about toasted slices for breakfast, so I went with the loaves, naturally. She also says that the cake improves over a day or two. It's very good today just a few hours out of the oven, so I'm looking forward to that.

The recommended sherry for this recipe is a medium sherry called Amontillado. I had only Pedro Ximénex on hand (thanks to this recipe), which is sweeter, but I went ahead and used it and reduced the sugar by ¼ cup. No problem.

3 cups all-purpose flour

2 teaspoons baking powder
¼ teaspoon salt
1¾ cups sugar
1 cup extra-virgin olive oil
Zest from 1 medium orange
5 cold eggs
1 cup sweet sherry (Amontillado or Pedro Ximénex; see headnote)

Position a rack in the lower third of the oven and heat to 350 degrees. Oil and flour the pan(s), or line the loaf pans with parchment.

Sift the flour, baking powder, and salt into a medium bowl.

Put the sugar and the zest into the bowl of a stand mixer and mix with your fingertips, breaking up any clumps of zest as you go. Fit the mixer with the whisk attachment, add the oil, and beat on medium-high speed until well-blended. Beat in the eggs one at a time, waiting until each one is fully incorporated before adding the next. Continue to beat for 3-5 minutes, until the mixture is thick and pale.

Add a third of the flour, beat on low until just blended, half of the sherry, beat again on low until just blended, then repeat until all of the flour and sherry are incorporated. (Flour, sherry, flour, sherry, flour.)

Scrape the batter into the pan(s). Bake until a tester comes out clean, about 60 minutes, and the top is nicely browned. Cool the cake in the pan(s) on a rack for 15 minutes. Then, slide a knife around the sides of the pan(s) to release the cake(s), and turn out on the rack to cool completely.