Porrata

My friend Kim called me the other day to talk about leeks.  She had gotten a recipe from her cousin and was trying it out for the first time.  The recipe was for a savory tart with a bread crust that Kim remembered their grandmother making many years ago. She said she'd bring me a slice if it turned out well.

A couple of days went by and I didn't hear from her.  I called and asked about the tart.  Kim said she wasn't happy with it; the crust wasn't like she remembered.  Then she emailed me a different recipe for a leek tart that she found in the Silver Spoon cookbook (Italy's answer to The Joy of Cooking, it came out in English for the first time about five years ago).  This one sounded just like a quiche, with cheese and cream mixed into the leek and egg filling, and a pate brisee crust.  I started looking on the Internet for more variations.  In Italian the dish is called  porrata or torta di porri (leeks are porri; interestingly, it's the same etymological root as puree and porridge which were both originally always made with leeks). I found other examples similar to quiches, and also some with yeast crusts, some with cheese, and some with prosciutto or pancetta in with the leeks.  I sent a couple of those back to Kim.  We noted that some of the reason behind the variety was probably local ingredients, with the creamy, soft-cheese, butter ones from the north, and the olive oil and bread types from the south (where her people are from).

After all that recipe-reading, I had to try making one myself.   Kim said that this one sounded closest to what she remembered.  I just now took it out of the oven and it's late at night.  I'm hoping Kim will be home tomorrow so I can bring her a piece.  With luck, it will be more like the one Nonna used to make.

Addendum:  You would think, this being the second post I've done in a year on the topic of leeks, that I would be a little more on top of the progress of the leeks in our own garden. 

They're as tall as I am.

This is what you get when you neglect to harvest your leeks: a haven for Whos.  Hey Horton, I think they're over here...

If the bran doesn't do it, let's try wheatgrass.

While researching Parade magazine for the Thursday posting, I found this Julia Child tidbit from 1982 that ties in perfectly with my smelly-gym-socks Icebox Paradox of August 8.The Internet works in mysterious ways.

It's the column at the lower left, about the Evil-Smelling Refrigerator - sorry, I don't have a decent photo editor to clip and enlarge it with, but you can click on it to make it bigger.

What do chickens want?

They started off as sweet little fluffballs in a galvanized tub.

Andreas and the boys built them a perfectly comfortable chicken coop.

But now they loiter on the back porch, eyeing us through the screen doors.

I think the chickens are Up To Something.

                                                                            Stephan Pastis, Pearls Before Swine, 17 Jul 2009

FYI: In The Saturday Evening Pearls: A Pearls Before Swine Collection, Stephan Pastis lists 19 Facts I've Always Wanted to Reveal About Myself But Have Never Gotten the Chance Because Nobody Asked. Fact No. 5: "I am Icarian, meaning that my family is from a tiny island in Greece called Ikaria.  It is named for Icarus, the character in Greek mythology who ambitiously flew too close to the sun and died.  If I am lucky, this will not be a metaphor for my career."  Therefore Pastis is Andreas's cousin (yes, the island is that tiny).

Berry nice

At the Grower's Market today

We're deep into berry season here in southern Oregon.   I adore berries; I'm happy to eat them just plain (often while standing next to the berry bushes in the garden) or with half & half or cream.  Strawberries were the only fresh berry I ever had as a child, and I'll always remember the very first time I tried raspberries and cream, out of a champagne glass one sunny Berkeley morning.  Served with a sly grin and a flourish by a handsome man I was completely infatuated with, no wonder they're still my favorite. Still, I'm always on the lookout for new ways to make use of the delicious summer bounty. 

"Slabs" - love the name (not)

This week a new idea came via Relish Magazine, one of the freebies that arrives monthly in the newspaper.  There are several similar publications now, and more all the time. It started with Parade magazine. Julia Child and then Sheila Lukins wrote for Parade, bringing a cachet to their populist mission that I think is missing now under Bobby Flay. The Publishing Group of America, which is behind Relish, also produces the beyond-lame American Profile whose recipe offering this week is an unfortunate Chicken Milano: "Long the favorite of college students in the United States, ramen noodles are a perfect base for this substantial chicken dinner." Eww.  But I like Relish.  You may have to avert your eyes from the lurid advertising that makes these free magazines feasible (Marshmallow Pebbles Slabs is this week's gross-out award contender) but the featured recipes can at times be both adventurous and accessible.

Anyway, that was a long digression; the Relish recipe for English summer pudding is right here. Don't expect me to make any jokes about British food. The thought of a dessert of boiled berries in a soggy bread is perhaps not immediately appealing, but my whole family will back me up when I say this is a keeper (I'll admit, I wasn't going to bet on their approval, and I halved the recipe to make a one-quart version - perfect for using up my half-loaf of day-old La Baguette challah).

I did a little poking around on the Internet and found a couple of more recipes - it seems that red currant is considered an important ingredient, and also it is more authentically served with clotted cream. For comparison's sake,  here's a version by an Englishwoman transplanted to San Francisco; and another from the London Times.

I'm going to keep my fingers crossed that the Mail Tribune doesn't ditch Relish in favor of Dash, Parade's new newspaper food magazine, set to launch in September with the tagline “Simple. Fast. Delicious.”  The first two, probably - the third, we'll see.

Our daily bread

Our Nik has a weekend job delivering bread for La Baguette in Ashland.  He drives all around town in a van full of buns and baguettes destined for the various markets and restaurants, replacing yesterday's loaves with new ones.  He often gets to bring home day-olds, so we tend not to buy much bread at the grocery store anymore. Not that I did anyway, these past three years, at least not in the summertime, thanks to New York Times "Artisan Bread". When there are no La Baguette rejects, we favor this ridiculously easy to make rustic round loaf. 

This recipe created a huge sensation among home-cooking foodies when it first appeared in the New York Times in 2006.  Since then, many variations have turned up in various cookbooks and magazines.  It deserves all the attention. With only four ingredients to stir together, and no kneading involved, it truly is revolutionary.  And it works out to about 26 cents a loaf - sure beats the $4 or $5 you'd pay for a good loaf of bread at the bakery (with no disrepect intended toward La Baguette et al - it's the overhead, I know).

The only drawback is the timing.  While it only takes five minutes to mix up the dough, you have to plan ahead to ensure you'll be home 18 hours later to turn it out, then two hours after that to bake it for 40 minutes.   Also, because the rising takes place over 18 hours, people who do not heat their houses at night in winter (like us) have to settle for store-bought - or a different recipe with a shorter rising time- in the cold season.

Here's the recipe, just in case the NYT link doesn't work for you.

Artisan Bread

3 C. flour (I use half bread flour, half regular unbleached white flour)

¼ t. fast-acting (“bread machine”) yeast

1 ¼ t. salt

1 1/2 C. warm water

18 hours later

Mix all ingredients together. Cover bowl with plastic wrap. Let rise 18 hours in a warm room.

Turn onto a floured surface and fold over twice. Cover loosely with plastic wrap and let rest 15 minutes. Gently shape into a ball. Dust a smooth cotton cloth generously with flour, cornmeal, or bran and set the ball of dough on it. Cover with another flour-dusted towel and let rise 2-3 hours – now it should be more than double in size.

This old Dutch oven is perfect for the job

While the dough is rising (the last 30 minutes of the rising time), heat a heavy covered Dutch oven or other deep heavy pot with a lid in the oven to 450 degrees.

When dough has risen, remove the top cloth, then pick up carefully by the cloth underneath and dump the dough out into the heated Dutch oven (it’s all right if it has stuck to the cloth and so is not perfectly smooth; just scrape any stuck dough off and toss it in on top). Bake with the lid on for 30 minutes, then uncover and bake about 10 minutes more, until nicely browned. Remove bread from pot to cool. After it has cooled completely, you might want to store it in a plastic bag so it doesn’t dry out too quickly.

The odd lump on top is a little piece of dough I scraped off the cloth and tossed in the pot.  It will still taste good!

Fenikia

This classic cookie is served all over Greece. In some parts of the country they call them melomakarona, which means "honey macaroons."

On Ikaria and the other southern islands, and in the Peloponnese , they are called fenikia - "little Phoenicians." Apparently when Cadmus and crew were spreading their culture around the Mediterranean in 800 BC, they offered cookies along with the alphabet lessons. Today's pastries are still named for the ancients who invented them. Greeks have long memories.

The first time I made baklava, I was sure I'd written the recipe down wrong. Was it really telling me to pour hot wet syrup all over the tray of pastry I'd spent hours on, carefully layering and slicing up into little symmetrical diamonds, then watching closely as it baked to the perfect shade of golden brown? I was convinced it would be ruined. But my husband Andreas said to just have faith and dump that boiling liquid on there. I did, and they turned out great. So with years of baklava experience behind me, this fenikia recipe didn't scare me at all. Boil those crunchy cookies in honey? I'm on it.

Andreas's Aunt Koula is the queen of Greek pastries. She shared her recipe with me last summer. I'm giving her equal billing with the Phoenicians.

Thea Koula’s Fenikia

3 C liquid shortening (cooking oil – see note)
1 ½ C melted unsalted butter
1 ½ C sugar
1 ½ C orange juice
3 T baking powder
10 ½ C flour

Preheat oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit.

Stir together oil and melted butter. Mix in the sugar and orange juice. Sift the baking powder with the flour, then add the dry to the wet ingredients. Mix thoroughly. Batter/dough will be quite oily.

Shape dough in small ovals (about 2 ½ inches long and 1 ½ inches wide) on baking sheet. Bake 10 minutes at 400 degrees, then lower temperature to 325 and bake 15 to 25 minutes longer. Keep an eye on the cookies – they should be well browned but not burnt.

While they are baking, make the syrup:

1 lb honey
2 C sugar
1 ½ C water
Juice of ½ lemon

Boil all ingredients together for 15 minutes. Keep warm.

When cookies are baked, bring the syrup back to a simmer. Immerse the cookies in the syrup 7 or 8 at a time (or however many fit easily into the pot). Leave them in the syrup 2 to 3 minutes, then remove and place on tray. While hot, sprinkle with:

1 C walnuts, finely chopped

Let the cookies sit out overnight before serving.

This recipe makes a lot of cookies: these are traditionally served at weddings, memorials, and large holiday gatherings. The recipe works fine if you halve it.

Helpless in Medford

I will admit to a brief moment of insecurity with regard to refrigerator hygiene before I figured out that it was the feta causing yesterday's problem. It’s not like I don’t clean my fridge regularly. Honest. I take everything out and wipe the inside down with vinegar water every two or three weeks, which seems like it ought to be enough. But inevitably some rogue lemon half or dab of leftover fish stew gets shoved to the back and starts to make its presence known, and I'm off on yet another full-scale cleanup operation.

But I don't know about these things, not really. I grew up with a housekeeper and so never had to clean anything at all until I was all grown up and it was too embarrassing to ask how. I'm like the southern white ladies in The Help (my book club's selection for July), except I'm from California. This has given me a better attitude about civil rights, I hope, but I'm still a little grumpy about the cleaning thing.

Good thing there is the World Wide Interweb to show me the way. Check out this less than helpful tidbit from the OCD advice lady at Arm and Hammer (make sure you click on the "Fresh Fridge Solution" video.) Hah. A case of baking soda. That'll be the day. I'm not THAT insecure.

(Whoa... I just checked my Arm & Hammer link and noticed that I don't always get the "fresh fridge solution" option. Oh well, maybe you'll get some even better bicarbonate of soda tips)