Backwards arithmetic

Sometimes, I daydream about food, about flavours and colours that might well meet on a plate someday, that could just take a liking to each other. But most of the time, the sorts of thoughts about food that occupy me aren't so elevated. They are as practical as can be, driven by questions like `What to do with that neglected crust of bread?', `Is the parsley too far gone?', and `Can that cabbage be stretched to make a little lunch tomorrow?'. These, I take it, are just the sorts of day-to-day thoughts that occupy almost any home cook worth her salt. She does a sort of larder arithmetic to make as much as she can of what she has, especially of the odd scrap or two leftover from meals long cooked and eaten. It isn't glamorous, but there's an art to it (one that mothers and grandmothers seem to have down pat).

Well, that is the sort of arithmetic that I do most of the time. Every now and then, though, I get it a little backwards. I bake a loaf of bread, hoping for a few stale slices at the end of the week to blitz into crumbs. I devise ways of using up egg whites, thinking to add to my stash of yolks in the freezer. That sort of thing. Not terribly out there but still a little backwards. But my most recent round of such arithmetic--I don't think it can be described as anything but very backwards. Up until last weekend, you see, I'd been thinking a lot about whole chickens--about riding across town with them on the bus, about roasting them with garlic and paprika, about braising them with caramelized onion and cardamom rice--but all that, truth be told, was secondary. What I was really thinking about were their backs, necks, bones, and wing tips. I was in it for the stock, you see. I needed five pounds of such bits, and let me tell you, that's a lot of bird to collect, bird by bird. So there was a lot of scheming done on my part and a lot of chicken dinners from January on. (I have to confess--I eventually got impatient and bought some extra necks to supplement what I had.)

But this is not a story about stock. It in fact is about dumplings--soft, pillowy, parsnip dumplings. I first made them back in January with their intended broth. And for a vegetable broth, it was pretty good. Ottolenghi promised depth, and there was some. But I am just not a vegetable-broth kind of girl. For me, vegetable broth just never has enough depth, enough savour, to really hold its own. The carrots, the onion--they add a lot of sweetness, and there's nothing to counterbalance that. But I loved the parsnip dumplings and wanted to make them again. All I needed was a broth to really carry them. So that's how I ended up riding the bus home with whole chickens, how I ended up amassing a freezer full of chicken odds and ends, how I ended up spending most of Sunday morning perched on a stool, peering over a giant, steaming stock pot packed with those odds and ends.

All I can do is hope that these efforts do as much to illustrate how very good these dumplings are as they do how crazy I sometimes get. I won't even try to encourage you to follow my lead as far as the stock goes. I'll just say that these dumplings deserve good broth (vegetable or chicken, whatever pleases you) and that they're worth a little extra effort.

But for those of you curious about the stock, I was following the recipe from The French Laundry cookbook, which makes about 5 quarts (Keller claims 6) from five pounds of bones, an optional pound of chicken feet (that's about 9), and a mirepoix of carrot, onion, and leek. I am not quite sure what the chicken feet added, and given that they weren't exactly a bargain (oddly enough), I might try the stock without them next time. As written, the recipe produces a beautiful, pale gold stock. It is a bit subtle, but that isn't too surprising, given that in the restaurant it's intended to play a supporting role in risottos and the like. You can, of course, reduce it to good effect. This definitely won't be the last you'll hear of stock around here. I have my eye on a couple of other interesting-looking recipes.

Parsnip Dumplings

Adapted, just a little, from Yotam Ottolenghi's Plenty

Note: You can get away with making the dough in advance, but it doesn't keep well past a day. It starts to lose its cohesion and won't hold its shape very well in simmering water. But if you want to get the prep out of the way and cook the dumplings a little later, make the dough as directed and chill but don't add the baking powder until you're just about ready to cook the dumplings. Otherwise, they won't float to the surface.

DUMPLINGS

225 g russet potato (one small one), peeled and diced (half-inch dice)

180 g parsnips (about 3 modest ones), peeled and diced (half-inch dice)

1 garlic clove, peeled

2 tablespoons butter

70 g / 1/2 cup all-purpose flour

1/2 rounded teaspoon baking powder

50 g / 1/3 cup semolina

1 egg

Salt and white pepper

TO SERVE

4 cups good-quality broth, preferably homemade

1 small carrot, cut into half-inch-wide batons and cooked until tender or reserved from homemade stock (optional)

Parsley, chopped

Cook the potato, parsnips, and garlic in plenty of boiling salted water until soft, 8-10 minutes. Drain well. Wipe dry the pan in which the vegetables were cooked and put them back inside. Add the butter and sauté on medium heat for a few minutes to get rid of the excess moisture. While hot mash them with a potato ricer or masher. Add the flour, semolina, egg, and some salt and pepper and mix until incorporated. Chill for 30-60 minutes, covered with plastic wrap.

Heat the broth and taste for seasoning. In another pan, bring some salted water to a light simmer. Dip a teaspoon or small scoop (something with a release mechanism will make things easier--the dough is on the tacky side) in water and use it to spoon out the dumpling mix into the water. Once the dumplings come to the surface, leave to simmer for 30 seconds, then remove from the water with a slotted spoon.

Ladle the hot broth into bowls. Place the dumplings and carrot, if using, in the broth, garnish with parsley, and serve immediately.

Serves 4.

That pâte à choux magic

There are the things that you outgrow, and then there are the things you know you never will. The former, for me, include wild hair colours, teenage crushes, the (over)use of twenty-dollar words, and cookies-and-cream anything; the latter, wooly scarves, long road trips made in the right company, French philosophy, and honey crullers.

The cruller has always been my favourite doughnut. I love its delicate egginess, its impossible airiness, the crackly glaze that clings to its winding, golden ridges. It, for me, is doughnut perfection. So, naturally, I was excited to see that it was among the doughnuts featured in this month's Saveur (for those of you haven't seen it yet, it is a veritable doughnut extravaganza). Before this, it hadn't occurred to me to even try making crullers at home. How, after all, would you be able to reproduce those distinctive ridges, that airy structure, in your own kitchen? Saveur had answers. A star piping tip! Pâte à choux! Actually, now that I think about it, it seems kind of obvious. Pâte à choux is the egg-rich pastry dough out of which éclairs, gougères, and gnocchi parisienne are made. You start, typically, with water, butter, sugar, and salt over the stove and add to that flour and then eggs to pull together a pretty soft, unassuming dough. But when that dough hits heat it puffs, airy, golden, ethereal. So, really, it should have come as no surprise that crullers are made out of pâte à choux. They have that same magical quality about them.

So I was all set to make my first crullers until I looked at the ingredients list. Vodka? Instant potato flakes? Now, I'm not one to baulk at an unusual pâte à choux, but I at least want an explanation. The head notes, however, said nothing, and I just wasn't feeling that adventurous. But I still wanted crullers, so I took this as an excuse to get a book I've wanted for some time, Lara Ferroni's Doughnuts.

Leafing through the book, I almost got sidetracked. There are so many doughnuts in it that I'd like to make. Apple-cider doughnuts made with graham flour, picarones, which are Peruvian winter-squash fritters, crème brûlée doughnuts--they all sounded fantastically good. But in the end, the thought of those swirled ridges, that pâte à choux magic, it got to me.
Deep-frying, admittedly, can be intimidating. That oil, after all, gets very, very hot. But common sense, a deep, heavy-bottomed pot, a deep-fry thermometer, and a spider skimmer are all you really need to keep things safe. And besides, making doughnuts is fun, especially with a friend in the kitchen to help out. For these crullers, one of you can pipe rings of pâte à choux onto squares of greased parchment, while the other takes care of the frying. It's pretty straightforward. Really, there isn't much at all  standing between you and a dozen fine and lofty crullers.

And now that I've made these crullers, I'm really curious about the recipe printed in Saveur. Has anyone tried it out? Can anyone tell me what the vodka and potato flakes do?

Honey Crullers

Adapted, ever so slightly, from Lara Ferroni's Doughnuts

Note: About the piping tip. I used an Ateco no. 846, which is actually a closed-star piping tip. The equivalent open-star tip is the Ateco no. 826, but I couldn't find one of these in time. The only difference between the two, as far as I can tell, is that the closed-star tip produces more pronounced ridges in the pastry, which isn't a bad thing at all in this case. About the frying oil. I used canola oil, but I'm not sure that I would again. Though canola is a fine frying oil for some things, it isn't all that neutral, and with these doughnuts at least, its flavour was more noticeable than I'd have liked it to be. Ferroni recommends safflower oil, and I second that. About the parchment squares. If you end up with enough pâte à choux to make more than 12 crullers like I did, you might find yourself short on parchment squares. I reused a few. They were a little crinkly from the hot oil, but that didn't really pose much of a problem for piping.

1 cup water

85 g / 6 tablespoons butter

2 teaspoons sugar

generous 1/4 teaspoon salt

135 g / 1 cup all-purpose flour, sifted

3 large eggs, at room temperature

1-2 large egg whites, at room temperature and slightly beaten

Vegetable oil for frying

Honey glaze (see below)

Place the water, butter, sugar, and salt in a small heavy-bottomed saucepan and bring to a brisk boil over medium-high heat. Add the flour and stir with a wooden spoon until the flour is completely incorporated. Continue to cook and stir for 3 to 4 minutes to steam away as much water as possible. The more moisture you can remove, the more eggs you can add later and the lighter your pastry will be. The mixture is ready when a thin film coats the bottom of the pan.

Move the mixture to the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment. Although you can mix the pâte à choux by hand, this can be rather arduous, so use a mixer if you have one. Stir the mixture for about 1 minute to allow it to cool. Then mix on medium speed and add the first egg. Let it mix in completely and then scrape down the sides of the bowl. Add the remaining eggs, one at a time, and mix in completely. Add the egg whites, a little at a time, until the paste becomes smooth and glossy and will hold a slight peak when pinched with your fingers. Be careful not to add too much egg white or your crullers will become heavy. Transfer the batter to a pastry bag fitted with a 1/2-inch star piping tip.
To fry the crullers, heat at least 2 inches of oil in a heavy-bottomed pot until a deep-fry thermometer registers 370 degrees F. While the oil is heating, cut out twelve 3-inch-by-3-inch squares of parchment paper and lightly grease them. Pipe a generous ring onto each square. When the oil is hot, gently place one cruller at a time in the oil, paper side up. Remove the paper with tongs. Fry on each side until golden brown, 2-3 minutes. (Undercooked crullers will collapse while cooling, so observe the first one, and if this happens, increase your frying time and check the oil temperature for the rest.) Remove with a spider skimmer or slotted spoon and drain on paper towel for at least 1 minute. Leave on a rack to cool. Once cool to the touch, the crullers can be glazed.
Alternatively, you can bake the crullers. They will have slightly firmer crusts than fried ones. Preheat the oven to 450 degrees F. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper and pipe the crullers onto it, at least 2 inches apart from one another. Bake for 5 minutes, then reduce the heat to 350 degrees F and bake for another 15 minutes. Turn off the heat, open the oven door slightly and let the crullers sit in the cooling oven for 5 to 10 minutes. Remove, dip in glaze, and cool on a rack until the glaze has set.
Makes 10-15 doughnuts.

Tips for using a pastry bag. To fill the bag, first fit the bag with the tip and then tuck some of the bag into the wide end of the tip. This will prevent whatever you're filling the bag with from running out the tip as you fill. Second, roll down the sides of the bag a bit so that when you transfer your filling to the bag, it doesn't end up all near the wide opening where your hands will be. You'll just make a mess trying to squeeze its contents towards the tip. If you're working alone, stand the empty bag up in a tall glass to keep it steady as you fill. Regardless, a tall glass can be helpful if you need to put the bag down at any point in the middle of piping. Finally, with the bag filled, twist the wide end of the bag shut and hold it there with one hand (use your other hand to support and guide the bag by holding the bag closer to the tip). With the bag twisted and held this way, you should be able to easily force the filling through the tip.

Honey Glaze
From Lara Ferroni's Doughnuts

150 g / 1 1/2 cups confectioners' sugar, sifted
1 tablespoon honey
3 to 4 tablespoons milk water

Place the sugar in a medium bowl and slowly stir in the honey and milk, a little at a time, to make a smooth, pourable glaze.

You have to engage

 

"We're sensorily deprived right now in modern life. Our eyes are engaged--sometimes our ears--but our bodies? Not so much. These aren't just bags of bones we're carrying around." -- Michael Pollan in Lucky Peach no. 6.

Smoked ham hock rillettes. This one might be a hard sell, not because making a few jars is particularly difficult but because--there's no point in trying to hide it--it's messy and time-consuming, a real process as far as a recipe goes. You cannot but get your hands (and your kitchen) dirty. But that's also what I enjoy about making them.

You might roll your eyes. Grad student. Too much time on her hands. But that's not what this comes down to. On weeknights, I'm all for ease and convenience, for meals that practically cook themselves and hardly leave a trace. But those aren't the meals that draw me to the kitchen. They're not the reason I cook. I cook to engage myself, to use my hands, to make messes and learn a thing or two in the midst of making them. These aren't, of course, the most basic reasons for being in the kitchen, but they are the ones that make cooking a pleasure, whatever night of the week it may be. And it's good, I think, to remind ourselves of this once in a while and cook something demanding, something that draws us in. And these rillettes, they do that.

Rillettes traditionally are a coarse-textured, rich spread made from a fatty cut of pork, duck, or goose. The meat is gently braised, finely shredded, and then mixed with fresh herbs, spices, and the flavourful liquid in which it was braised. Pretty straightforward. The result is something like pâté but less fussy. These particular rillettes, however,  come from the good people at Mission Street Food and so, unsurprisingly, part with tradition. 

The hock is pretty lean as far as cuts of pork go. In fact, it's mostly skin, bone, and connective tissue. So that's where things start to get messy with these rillettes. Once the hocks have been cooked, you need to get at what little meat there is. And there's no getting around this, you need to use your hands. Bits of  meat are often tangled up with connective tissue and hard to spot, so what you need to do is break down the hocks by hand and feel your way through them, pulling soft tissue from bone, picking out the meat as you go.

But why use smoked hocks in the first place, why go through all that trouble for so little? Because what smoked hocks lack in flesh and fat they make up for in flavour and collagen. Remember all of that skin, that sticky connective tissue? Even after four hours of simmering, these are still steeped through with woodsy, smoky flavour. And just as important, they're rich in collagen. Collagen is all about texture. It's basically what gelatin is made out of. It's the stuff that gives homemade stocks their satiny, rich mouth-feel. So, naturally, that skin and connective tissue don't go to waste here. You whirl them in the blender with a splash of stock from cooking the hocks and push that through a sieve. And there you have it, smoky gelatin purée.

Now, this, I think, is where things get demanding. It isn't that anything gets difficult. It's just that your attention, your judgement is called for. You have to engage. Let me explain. At this point, you'll have all of your components lined up. From the hocks, you'll have meat, pork stock, and gelatin purée. You should also have some rendered pork fat (yes, lard) on hand to supplement what you have, since ham hocks are so lean. Then there are the seasonings. Quatre épices, a blend of white pepper, nutmeg, cinnamon, and clove, is traditional. Crushed garlic, dijon mustard, sherry vinegar, and fresh thyme leaves aren't out of place either. Salt, needless to say, is important. (As printed, the MSF recipe is loosey-goosey. Very helpfully, it calls for 'spices'.) The meat goes into the bowl of your stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment. What happens next is more or less up to you. Each of the components will contribute a particular flavour and/or texture to the finished rillettes. How you prioritize them is a matter of preference. What this means is that you have to taste and tweak as you go. You have to ask yourself: does this need more fat? Is it getting too dry--should I add some stock? Could it use more acidity, more vinegar, maybe? Like I said, you have to engage. And little by little, you'll get to something that pleases you, that makes you beam.

So what I like about making these rillettes is that it's very physical, very involving. It's all about you feel and what you taste. This is no dump-and-stir exercise. There's no crossing your fingers, hoping that things have turned out. How things go is on you. It's a little scary, for sure. But it's also utterly liberating. I don't cook like this very often. I lean a lot on good cookbooks, regimented quantities. And on most days, that's all I feel I have the time for. But once in a while, I think, this is just the sort of thing you need to do.

Smoked Ham Hock Rillettes

Adapted from the Mission Street Food Cookbook

Note: About the seasoning. I stuck with fairly traditional seasonings, but you shouldn't feel limited to these. Look at other rillettes recipes for guidance. It'll be hard to go wrong. For example, I flat-out forgot to add mustard. My feeling is that juniper might be a nice addition. About the pork fat. There's no need to spring for anything as fancy as leaf lard for these rillettes. Save the good stuff for pies. But do take the trouble to find yourself some good, unprocessed fat. Try your favourite butcher. About the quantity of hocks. I got away with using just over 3 lbs of hocks but only because one of them was extra meaty. It would probably be wiser to use closer to 4 or 5 lbs. Shelf life. Sterilizing your jars will help the rillettes keep for longer in the fridge. Both Nigel Slater and Jane Grigson advise pouring a layer (half an inch or so) of melted pork fat over the rillettes if you're not planning on eating them within a few days.

3-5 lbs meaty smoked ham hocks (see above)
2.5-3 quarts chicken stock, pork stock, dashi, or water
1-2 cups rendered bacon or pork fat, plus more to cover (see above)
2 tablespoons or so sherry vinegar
1 tablespoon thyme leaves
1 1/2 tablespoons or so quatre épices
1 large clove garlic, crushed
Salt

Gently simmer the ham hocks in the chicken stock, pork stock, dash, or water.

After about 4 hours, the meat should be very tender. Cool the entire pot until you can handle the hocks. Drain and reserve the stock. (At the end you'll have plenty of stock left for cooking greens, or just for sipping.)

Pick the ham hocks apart by hand. Separate the meat from the skins and soft collagen. Reserve both. (The edges of the ham hocks can become dried out and tough from the smoking process or from not being fully submerged in liquid. Move the hocks around periodically as they simmer, and discard any parts that may be too tough to rillette. Discard any tough skin, bones, and weird gristle.)

Blend the skins and collagen with just enough stock to get the mix going (probably about 1/4-1/2 cup), creating a gelatin purée. Strain the purée through a fine sieve, using a lade or spoon to push it through.

Combine the meat and some of the purée, fat, vinegar, and spices in a stand mixer. (The ratios of fat-to-meat-to-gelatin will vary, depending on how you prioritize richness (fat), unctuousness (gelatin), and moisture (stock). Taste as you mix; add the salt, vinegar, mustard, and your spices, herbs, or garlic until you reach the desired balance.) Mix using the medium-low setting and the paddle attachment of your mixer. For best results, mix the rillettes at the temperature it will be served.

Store in glass or ceramic jars and chill in the fridge until ready to serve. Serve with good bread, pickles, a sharp salad, or even some tart fruit preserves. Consider stuffing any that remains in baked potatoes, as Nigel Slater suggests.

(In addition to the ham-hock stock, there'll be lots of leftover gelatin purée, which you can use to enrich anything from meatballs to gravy. If you're not quite ready to jump into another meat-centric project, it's okay to freeze the purée for later use.)

Serves 12-16 as an appetizer. (Fills about four 200 g jars.)

This is it

If in the past year or so there was a cookbook that I reached for most, one whose pages caught the spatter of sauce and oil and cream more than any other, it was definitely Nigel Slater's Tender. I cooked from it a lot, and we ate really well, all year long. But this year, it's my feeling that things will be a little different. This, I think, might just be the year of Jerusalem. And, as I'm sure you've already heard, this cookbook is one that dazzles, one that overflows with colour and stories and bold, brilliant flavours. So I won't say much more about it. I'll just say this--I cooked from it all weekend, and, friends, this is a cookbook rich in small splendours. It is one hard to pull away from. I can't wait to cook from it again.

The dish from this past weekend that I want to share with you is one, I think, that between dishes like roasted chicken with clementines and arak and burnt eggplant with garlic, lemon, and pomegranate seeds is easy to overlook. Parsley and barley salad. It sounds about as uninteresting as can be. But it isn't. This salad is bright, bold, and vibrant. The parsley, with its peppery, anise notes, definitely leads, but then there's the creamy za'atar-marinated feta, the crunchy bits of sweet green pepper, the delicate barley, the crushed, roasted cashews, the sharp scallion. I don't know about you, but come February, I'm starved for clean, bright, simple foods. I need something to counter the inevitable heaviness of winter, the rich stews, the parade of roasted root vegetables. I need something that will wake me up. This salad is it. Confetti for the parade. Let it fall on your plate, and you'll see.

I've made this salad a couple of times now and have eaten it just on its own as a late dinner and alongside a number of other things. I think it went particularly well with roasted, cumin-spiced cauliflower. But it's pretty versatile. Think of it as a sort-of wintery tabbouleh, (for those months when tomatoes are just unthinkable).

Parsley and Barley Salad

Adapted from Yotam Ottolenghi and Sami Tamimi's Jerusalem

Note: About the barley. This salad is all about the parsley. Even so, I do like to add a little more barley than is called for, but do what you will. About the za'atar. Za'atar is a blend of dried thyme, sumac, and roasted sesame seeds. The blend I bought also has oregano and hyssop in it, which I'm not sure I'm all that crazy about, but it's easy enough to make your own at home. About the feta. It's really important to get a good, creamy feta for this salad. It serves as a counterpoint to the sharpness of the salad's other ingredients. None of this insipid, watery stuff.

40-55 g / scant 1/4 - 1/3 cup pearl barley (see above)

150 g / 5 oz good, creamy feta cheese

5 1/2 tablespoons olive oil

1 teaspoon za'atar

1/2 teaspoon coriander seeds, lightly toasted and crushed

1/4 teaspoon ground cumin

80 g / scant 3 oz flat-leaf parsley (2-3 bunches), leaves and fine stems

4 green onions, finely chopped

2 garlic cloves, crushed
40 g / 1/3 cup cashews, lightly toasted and coarsely crushed

1 green pepper, seeded and cut into 3/8-inch dice

1/2 teaspoon ground allspice

2 tablespoons freshly squeezed lemon juice

Salt and pepper to taste

Place the pearl barley in a small saucepan, cover with plenty of water, and boil for 30-35 minutes, until tender but with a bite. Pour into a fine sieve, shake to remove all the water, and transfer to a large bowl.

Break the feta into rough pieces, about 3/4 inch / 2 cm in size, and mix in a small bowl with 1 1/2 tablespoons of the olive oil, the za'atar, the coriander seeds, and the cumin. Gently mic together and leave to marinate while you prepare the rest of the salad.

Chop the parsley finely and place in the bowl with the green onions, garlic, cashew nuts, pepper, allspice, lemon juice, the remaining olive oil, and the cooked barley. Mix together well and season to taste. To serve, divide the salad among four plates and top with the marinated feta.

Serves 4.

Above all, flakiness

When Octavian and I were in Berlin last summer, we were more or less on two different trips. He was there for a workshop and so was limited most days to a view of the city from a hotel conference room. I, however, was only tagging along and so had the luxury of spending my days wandering the winding streets, drinking in everything. There was a lot to the trip, then, that Octavian only ever saw in photos, heard about. And, unsurprisingly, there were spaces, moments, flavours, that were pretty well impossible to capture or convey, that he would've had to have just been there for.

One of those things was a pastry I had at Brot und Butter, a buttery, delicate swirl of a pastry filled with poppy seeds. I ordered it pretty much at random. It was one of my first days in Berlin, and I had been walking all afternoon, paper map in hand, and had already had a few awkward I'm-sorry-my-German-is-awful-sprechen-Sie-Englisch? moments that day. So by the time I'd found my way to the cafe, I was tired and couldn't quite find the courage to speak up and order something. (I also couldn't figure out whether I was supposed to order from the counter or just take a seat.) So instead I just stood there, looking at the pastries in the cases, then at the rows of canned and boxed goods, indecisive about what to do and on the verge of just fleeing the situation. Apparently, I looked pathetic and stricken enough that about ten minutes in one of the women behind the counter asked me if I needed help. So I fumbled my way through another conversation, pointed at one of the poppy seed pastries, and was relieved just to be able to sit down with something, anything, and not feel so much like the silly North American that I was. It helped that the pastry was good, very good. For a few moments, anyway, I forgot the awkward exchange, lost between flakey, poppy-filled bites.

I knew as I ate that this pastry wasn't one that I'd be content just to remember. I needed to be able to make more just like it at home, long after this trip was over. But given all the awkwardness that had just transpired, I wasn't about to start asking questions about pastry methods and ingredients. So I settled for scribbling down its name from the pastry case--Mohnschnecken--and retreated.

This brings us to this past week, when I finally accepted that I would have to pull together a laminated yeasted dough if I wanted more Mohnschnecken.* Now, just what a Schnecke is seems to depend on who you ask. Some recipes have you add sour cream to the dough, some have you make letter-folds with it for flakier layers, some have you laminate in the butter for even flakier layers still. Most agree that the dough should be rolled up with its filling and cut into spirals--hence the name Schnecke, which just means snail in German. But because I remembered flakiness above all, I decided I would have to make a laminated dough--beat cold butter into a pliable slab, tuck it into a yeasted dough, and letter-fold it for layer upon layer of flakey pastry. But honestly, the prospect of working with a laminated dough again scared me. I'd only done it once before, and as I knew, it could get messy. You need to work quickly, so that the dough and butter don't get too soft to work with. But you also need to be gentle. If there isn't enough flour on the counter and the dough sticks and tears, the butter will start seeping out, and you might not get those perfect flakey layers. (I don't want to overstate the difficulty of working with laminated dough, but it's definitely something that I'm still working to get better at.) So it took me a few days to work up the courage. Then I dove in.

And it wasn't all that bad. I had a bit of trouble towards the beginning getting the butter the right consistency, and there were a few minor tears in the dough, which I tried my best to pinch together and then forget, but that was it. By early the next afternoon, we were tucking into our first pastries, puffed, golden, still warm from the oven, and ever so flakey. Totally, totally, worth the trouble, awkwardness and all.
Oh, and for those of you unfamiliar with poppy seed fillings--well, I just think we ought to see more of them around here. Poppy seeds have a pleasant bittersweet quality to them, which I think lends itself particularly well to pastry. I saw poppy-seed-filled pastries everywhere in Berlin and poppy seed ice cream too. The Berlinners have the right idea.

Much of my success with the Schnecken, I think, owe to the step-by-step photos that Joe, the man behind the pastry recipe, took the trouble to take. You can find his instructions for pulling together the pastry dough here, his instructions for laminating (especially helpful!) here, and his instructions for shaping here. I am actually looking forward to my next encounter with a laminated dough. These particular Schnecken, by the way, are a marriage of two recipes. The poppy seed filling comes from a New York Times recipe for hamantaschen via Smitten Kitchen.

Poppy Seed Snails (Mohnschnecken)

From Joe Pastry and Smitten Kitchen

Note: About freezing. I have to say that in my experience, pastries that have been frozen and then thawed, proofed, and baked are never quite as good as ones baked fresh. They just never have quite the same airy crumb. But these Schnecken held up pretty well. I'm probably just being overly picky in saying that they're not quite, quite as good. About the raisins. The next time I make this poppy seed filling, I might consider giving the raisins a rough chop before adding them in. This filling is about the poppy seeds after all!

1 batch pastry dough, chilled for at least an hour (recipe here)

1 batch poppy seed filling, chilled completely (recipe here)

2 egg yolks lightly beaten with a splash of milk or cream

Roll out the pastry dough into a rectangle (the exact dimensions don't really matter--I'd aim for it to be at least twice as wide as it is long) just shy of a quarter-inch thick, dusting the work surface, the dough, and the rolling pin with flour as necessary. Gently spread the poppy seed filling in a thin, even layer over the dough, leaving a half-inch border at the sides and bottom of the rectangle. (You might not need all the filling.) Starting from the top of the rectangle, roll the dough up into a cylinder about 1-1/2 to 2 inches in diameter. Trim the ends and then cut the dough into 1-1/4 inch pieces with a bench scraper or a sharp knife.

Place on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper, six to a sheet, and cover to proof until soft and airy, about 2 hours. (At this stage--before the final proof--you can also put them in the fridge overnight and then proof them the next day or store them in the freezer for up to three months. Just be sure to thaw frozen pastries overnight in the fridge before proofing and baking. From the fridge, the pastries may need an extra hour to proof.) Then brush with the egg wash and bake in an oven heated to 375 degrees F until golden, about 15 minutes.

Makes about 12 pastries.

*It occurs to me now that the Mohnschnecke I had in Berlin might not have been made with a laminated dough. Looking back at my notes from the trip, my guess is that that pastry was made with a sour cream dough, which made it crisper and less croissant-like. But hey, I'm not going to complain.

It's not always about looks

A smoked ham hock is one of those items off a hog that will never win any beauty contests. It comes to you still wearing its skin, now dark and leathery from the smoker. Sometimes, a few wiry hairs still jut out from the skin, a reminder of its provenance. A thick bone protrudes from its centre, making it obvious that there isn't much to it but bone. I was more than a little intimidated the first time I freed one of these from its butchers' paper. I just wasn't sure that I wanted it in my pot, especially with that hair. Did this thing really belong in a cooking pot? (The one pictured above is a much nicer-looking specimen than my first hock. Hair-free too.)

But I quickly came to appreciate a smoked hock for what it was. It isn't always about looks, you know. See, a smoked ham hock is an ingenious thing. The hock is the cut from a hog's hind leg between the foot and the ham proper. Unlike the ham, there isn't much meat to the hock. It's mostly bone, skin, and tough connective tissue. And what meat there is is pretty lean. For these reasons, it's not a much sought-after cut. It takes a little work to get to a hock's goodness--a long, low, simmer. So the smoking is one way to make it worthwhile. As a smoked hock breaks down in its cooking liquid, it gives off a lot of flavour--smoky, porky, woodsy flavour. Like I said, ingenious.

Now, maybe early January isn't the best time to be extolling the virtues of pig parts. But one of things I like most about a smoked pork hock is that a little goes a long way. Drop just one meaty hock (remember, it's mostly bone) into a pot with some onion and water and set it to simmer, and you're on your way to something special. That's the idea, anyway, behind Kemp Minifie's hoppin' John collard stew. You let your hock simmer away the afternoon, returning just to add some black-eyed peas to the pot after an hour and some collard greens an hour after that. It's my favourite kind of winter cooking. You can leave things to bubble merrily on their own and wander off to daydream, read, or do a load of laundry. And when the day's light has faded, you just return to fish out the hock, separate the meat from skin, fat, and bone, return the meat to the pot, and then ladle some of that stew over a plate of rice.

Pork and beans and greens might not exactly be your idea of how to start off the new year. But the smoked ham hock and the culinary tradition behind it--the resourcefulness of it, the ingeniousness of it--really appeal to me right now. These are ideas I can get behind, ideas I want to carry with me the  whole year through. And, if nothing else, who doesn't like a pile of silky collards, smoky meat, and creamy beans floating in porky broth on a cold winter's night? Just don't forget to bring your favourite hot sauce to the table too. Happy new year, everyone. 

Hoppin' John Collard Stew
From Kemp Minifie via Gourmet

1 medium onion, chopped
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
1/4 tsp hot red-pepper flakes
1 meaty smoked ham hock, about 1 lb in weight
10 cups water
1/2 lb / 1 1/4 cups dried black-eyed peas, picked over and rinsed (don’t soak)
1 lb collard greens, center ribs discarded and leaves chopped
Hot sauce to serve

Cook onion in oil with 1/2 tsp salt in a deep heavy medium pot over medium heat, stirring occasionally, until lightly browned, about 8 minutes. Add red-pepper flakes and cook, stirring, 1 minute. Add ham hock and water and simmer, partially covered, 1 hour. 

Add black-eyed peas and simmer, partially covered, 1 hour. 

Stir in collards (add water if necessary for a soupy consistency) and simmer, partially covered, stirring occasionally, until greens are very tender, 45 minutes to 1 hour. 

Remove ham hock and chop meat, discarding skin, fat, and bone. Stir into stew and thin with water, if necessary, then season with salt.

Serve over rice and with hot sauce at the table. The acidity of the hot sauce helps to cut through the rich smokiness of the stew.

Serves six.

And the jewels do shine

A few weeks ago, a friend of mine had a few of us over for a housewarming. We spent a lot of it plopped down with steaming cups of tea, pouring over her cookbook collection. My friend said that we were free to borrow whichever cookbooks we wanted, that she didn't cook from them much and was mostly content just to read through the stories and recipes and be warmed by them. I didn't take her up on her offer that day, but there was one particular book that stuck with me, Sam and Sam Clark's Moro East.
On dark, drizzly days like the ones we've been having here in Chicago, leafing through its pages is just about enough to warm you. The book provides a glimpse into life at the community garden where the Clarks tended a plot--a year in vegetables, small gatherings, and food shared with friends. Though the Clarks are based in London, their book has the feel of some place warmer, some place arid and sun-kissed. This owes mostly to the friends the Clarks made while gardening. Many of them hailed from the Mediterrannean--Turks and Cypriots who knew a thing or two about grape leaves and sumac and grilled lamb. They and the Clarks cooked together, often over charcoal in the open air right by their neighbouring plots. Many of the recipes in the book are contributions from these friends.

I finally asked for my friend's copy just as the temperatures around here were dipping. In return, I snipped her the last few raggedy blooms from the garden out back--something to brighten her new place for a while. By then, it was November. Thanksgiving was just around the corner. I'd been busy writing and hadn't thought much about it. I certainly hadn't placed an order for a turkey. So I started leafing through Moro East, looking for ideas. One of the first recipes I landed on was for something called la caldereta, a bone-in lamb shoulder rubbed with thyme and rosemary and slow-roasted with onions and potatoes. Exactly what I was looking for, and with a pretty name like that, how could I resist? So, that's what we built our Thanksgiving meal around this year, a lamb roast from Extremadura (in western Spain) re-interpreted by a couple of London chefs. It was wildly non-traditional. Think homemade pita bread, chickpea fritters, mint-flecked yogurt, and roasted eggplant scattered with pomegranate seeds. (I don't think our guests minded.)

Thanksgiving was a while ago now. But weeks after, there's one dish from our meal that I'm still thinking of. It's another from Moro East, a side dish that the Clarks call jewelled pumpkin rice. (They really know how to name a dish, now don't they?) It's not much to look at, despite the name. The colours are those of the late autumn landscape--soft browns, bursts of orange, faded greens. But it really is something. The rice is made spectacularly fragrant by cinnamon, allspice, and cardamon. These go in the pot following the butter and onions and toast for a good long while, perfuming your kitchen. And the jewels buried in the rice do shine--tart, chewy currants, roasted butternut squash, and toothsome pistachios. All this is finished with a splash of buttery saffron water, which lends it a lovely roundness.

The friend who lent me the cookbook was one of our Thanksgiving guests. I was gratified when she told me that we'd cooked things that she'd often looked at but would probably have never cooked herself.

I thought that the rice went wonderfully with the lamb shoulder we roasted. Its sweetness complemented the grassy, gamey notes in the roast. With the onions and butternut squash in this dish, its sweetness is rather assertive. You'll want to pair it with something else that can hold its own.

Jewelled Pumpkin Rice

Adapted from Sam and Sam Clark's Moro East
Note: About the butter. Vegans, you can easily replace the butter that the onions cook in with an equal amount of olive oil (75 g), which is what I did for one of my friends at Thanksgiving. After letting the rice rest off heat for 5 minutes, I then set aside his portion and poured the buttery saffron water on the remaining rice. Just as easily, you could omit the butter from the saffron water. I've since made the rice again, this time going half butter, half olive oil. Surprisingly, the butter didn't make much of a difference.

500 g / 1 lb peeled and seeded butternut squash (the flesh of a 750 g squash), cut into 1/2-inch dice
1 teaspoon fine sea salt
2 tablespoons olive oil
a big pinch of saffron (about 50 strands)
100 g / 7 tablespoons unsalted butter, divided (see note above)
3 inch cinnamon stick
4 allspice berries
1 large or 2 medium onions, thinly sliced across the grain
15 g / 1 1/2 tablespoons dried barberries (or currants)
50 g / 1/2 cup shelled unsalted pistachios
1/2 teaspoon ground cardamom
300 g / 1 2/3 cup basmati rice, soaked in tepid, salted water for 1 hour
450 ml / 1 4/5 cup vegetable stock

Preheat the oven to 450 degrees F. Toss the diced butternut squash with half of the salt and the olive oil. Spread it in a single layer in a baking tray and roast for 30 minutes or until tender.

Mix the saffron with 3 tablespoons of boiling water and add 25 g (about 2 tablespoons) of the butter, which should melt. Set aside.

Heat the remaining butter in a medium saucepan with the cinnamon and allspice until it foams, then add the onion and the remaining half teaspoon of salt. Fry over medium heat for 10-15 minutes, stirring occasionally until the onion is soft and starting to colour. Add the barberries, pistachios, and cardamom and cook for 10 minutes more, until the onion is golden and sweet.

Now drain the rice and add to the pan, stirring for a minute or two to coat, then pour in the stock. Taste for seasoning then scatter with the roast squash. Cover with a circle of parchment paper and a tight-fitting lid and cook over high heat for 5 minutes. Reduce the heat to low and simmer for a final 5 minutes. Remove the lid and parchment and drizzle with the buttery saffron water. Replace the lid and leave to rest, off the heat, for 5-10 minutes.
Serves 4-6.