The Dinner Files

How I came to own a chestnut knife is not a very interesting story. Suffice it to say that I was reluctant to take it home. I am not a gadget girl. Don’t get me wrong, I have plenty of kitchen equipment, and even a fair number of gadgets, but I don’t really want any of them because 1) I hate clutter, 2) we have a small kitchen, 3) we don’t have that much storage space not claimed by books, and 4) s sharp knife and a heavy pot seem to deal with most cooking projects quite well. Yet this cunning little number has survived several kitchen clean-outs during which less-used items find themselves lined up on my counter to be culled.

Why do I keep it? First and most obviously, it is cute as the dickens. Equally important, however, is its unique ability to do its job extremely well. See the beak? It’s a sharp short knife blade perfect for cutting little x’s into the flat side of chestnuts, all the better to roast them after peeling. A job that used to require some awkward maneuvering of a paring knife and a lot of opportunity for injury, is now quick and flesh-cut-free.

So I cut the chestnuts, set them on some foil with a splash of water, and roasted them at 375 for 20 minutes. I then wrapped the whole package up in a kitchen towel, crunched the whole thing a few times to further open the shells, and let them sit – wrapped – for about 15 minutes. Then the horror of peeling them began. I always end up with shards of chestnut peel under my fingernails, embedded in there and requiring tweezers to get them out. But the sweet, meaty chestnut calls to me and I can’t resist. Even as my fingernails throb, even as it seems like about half of the nuts are moldy inside no matter where I buy them (what is up with that?), I will sit and peel chestnuts – to eat out of hand, to put in my stuffing, to make cream of chestnut soup with, to put on chocolate cakes and tarts. It’s chestnut season and I must indulge, nail beds be damned.

Plus, I need to justify the space in the knife drawer eaten up by the chestnut knife. It’s the time of year for that little bird to shine. Any and all chestnuts tips would be most appreciated.

I am no blind California-phile. I am not a San Franciscan cheerleader. I see plenty wrong with this state (many of which start with the word “prop” – 13 and 8 you know I’m talking about you) and even with this beautiful city (I would not at all mind a food market of some sort where I could go and, without parking or tourist hassle, just get all my groceries), but one bandwagon I can hop on with glee is the Northern California tradition of Dungeness crab at Thanksgiving. That’s right, the locals here eat crab at Thanksgiving – usually before but sometimes alongside the bird. Some families have it the night before, some the day after, but crab is *often* part of the feast. Brilliant.

I had my crab early this year. My Very Tall Cousin and his Viking Goddess Girlfriend called on Sunday offering to bring crab, fresh off the boats in Half Moon Bay, over for dinner. The answer, of course, was yes please.

They brought not just the crabs, but crab-sexing knowledge, expert crab-cleaning skills (My Very Tall Cousin was raised in Dungeness, Washington – yes, like the crabs), and the traditional Norwegian accompaniments of garlic-y herb mayonnaise, red onion, and fresh baked bread. I did not even have to melt butter. I boiled some water for them, opened the wine, and watched.

My son got pretty into the crabs – learning how to pick them up, moving them around, claiming one was his “pet” – but also had no trouble when they all got lowered into the pot. They were relatively cooperative. We had the pot really hot, so I like to think their demise was swift. The banging was minimal and there were no escapees. (I bring an inch or two of salted water to a violent boil in a very large pot, add the crabs, cover, and cook for just under twenty minutes – pull the crabs out and get them in very icy water to stop the cooking and chill them at least slightly for eating. The sharp edges are enough of an eating hazard, no one needs to get burned too.)

My Very Tall Cousin iced them down and cleaned them. My dashing husband helped, querying about the edibility of various parts along the way (that man will eat anything inside a shell – even the weird bitter gross parts I’ll run across a room to pull out of his gaping jaw to throw away).

Then we brought everything to the table and started picking. Picking the crab meat is, of course, one of the great appeals of crab eating – it extends the meal, gives you an obvious conversation topic if you find yourself wanting, and forces you not just to touch, but actually to play with your food.

Everyone has their own crab-picking style. My son picks and eats, picks and eats. My dashing husband, Very Tall Cousin, and I all had the patience to pick for a bit to build up enough crab to try it Norwegian-style, piled on the fresh baked bread with a slather of the yummy mayo, before devolving back to pick-and-eat-and-suck on the shells, extracting every bit of crab and crab-flavored juice.

The Norwegian at the table was the most impressive, however. Calm and civilized, she picked an entire half a crab, acquiring a mound of crab meat on her plate, before assembling her sandwich and eating it at leisure. The rest of us were like wild dogs in comparison, slurping and grabbing at our food, bending fork tines with our desperate need to get into those shells fast enough.

No matter our crab style, though, we all agreed that the first crab of the season (crab season here starts in November – hence the Thanksgiving tradition – and runs into May) are always the sweetest and meatiest. These fine creatures were excellent examples of their kind.

I have much to be thankful for this year, I hope you do too.

I’ve got the blue pumpkins blues. See the pretty blue pumpkin? See how it almost glows in the dull light of my kitchen? Now, I know that the inside of blue pumpkins isn’t also blue. I know the inside of blue pumpkins is just as bright orange and non-blue as any other pumpkin, but the naive child inside me is always a wee bit disappointed when I cut in and see no blue, no deep purple, no shimmery gray. Take heart, though, I cheer up almost immediately because that orange has a magical power all its own.

So I cut the top off the blue pumpkin, much as one would for a jack o’lantern, had my weird let down at the sight of orange winter squash flesh, scooped out the fat pumpkin seeds (again, as for a jack o’lantern), put about 6 oz. of fresh shiitakes (trimmed and halved) inside, sprinkled them with 1/2 oz. porcini that I’d soaked in hot water for 15 minutes and then chopped up, added a pinch of salt and some generous grinds of black pepper, and then drizzled on about a 1/3 of a cup of cream.

That all got popped in a 375 oven until the squash was tender and everything was bubbling and yummy looking, which took about an hour. It all seems a bit soupy because the mushrooms have let off their liquid into the cream:

It is quite tasty just like that, no doubt. But, if you can control yourself and not eat it while it sits (covered with foil to keep it warm) for 20 or 30 minutes, the cream and mushroom liquid gets all soaked up by the squash and the mushrooms and something magical happens:

You get this creamy, sweet, floury, earthy, savory delight. I liked mine with a poached egg and a bit of spinach salad. A great shared side dish – with everyone scooping their share from the baked gourd at the table – for Thanksgiving, no doubt. Also, in a smaller, individual, acorn squash (or similar sized) halves? I’m thinking that is a pretty sweet vegetarian main dish for the annual feast.

I learned several things this weekend. First, there isn’t much of a reason to add roasted winter squash to fresh pasta dough. The pasta turns a barely perceptible darker shade of yellow, not the brilliant orange a person might imagine.

Second, a 10 x 15 lasagna feeds ten people just fine, as long as you have five pounds of roasted brussels sprouts on the table too.

Third, whole wheat pastry flour makes a perfect crust for an almond tart.

Fourth, said almond tart makes a very tasty breakfast.

Almond Tart

Yikes but this is an easy, crowd-pleasing dessert. I’ve changed it over the years and am thrilled (thrilled!) with the magic of this crust with the almonds. I’ve served it with store-bought vanilla ice cream, homemade ginger ice cream, fresh berries, and spiced pear compote.

1 1/4 cups whole wheat pastry flour

1/8 teaspoon salt

8 Tablespoons butter

2 Tablespoons ice cold water

1 Tablespoon apple cider vinegar

1 1/2 cups sliced almonds

1 cup cream

3/4 cup sugar

1 Tablespoon whiskey [totally and completely optional]

1/8 teaspoon almond extract

Mix the flour and salt in a medium bowl. Cut the butter into small pieces and work the butter into the flour mixture with a fork, pastry cutter, or – my favorite- your fingers until the mixture looks like cornmeal with some small chunks of butter still visible and some bits of cornmeal-like flour starting to cling together into large pieces.

Drizzle water and vinegar over the dough. Stir until dough starts to hold together. It will still look shaggy, but if you gently squeeze it into a ball most of it should hold together. Pat dough into a six-inch disk, wrap in plastic, and chill at least half an hour (and up to three days).

Preheat oven to 400. On a well floured surface, roll out dough to fit a ten-inch tart pan. Line the pan with the dough, trim edges, and lay a large piece of buttered tin foil, butter side down, on the tart crust.  Chill the covered crust about 15 minutes. Weigh down the foil with beans or pie weights, put the tart pan on a baking sheet, and bake until crust is set and starting to turn golden, about 20 minutes.

While crust par-bakes, combine almonds, cream, sugar, whiskey, and almond extract in a medium bowl. Let sit, stirring once in a while, until sugar dissolves and the whole mixtures thickens a bit, about 15 minutes.

Remove foil from crust, pour almond mixture into the crust and bake until crust is browned, filling is bubbling, and the surface is starting to caramelize [about 40 minutes]. Let tart sit at room temperature to cool for at least an hour before serving.

All those crêpes last week made me think of French camp and the awesome breakfast of baguette and chocolat chaud we got to have every morning. I got to thinking, why not? I am a grown-ass woman who eats a giant piece of leftover almond tart from a dinner party for breakfast if I feel like it. Why not have a tranche of baguette slathered with butter and dipped in hot chocolate like I did when I was eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen…. yeah, yeah, I became a counselor. I told you, I loved French camp with an ardor that scares me now. I went every summer from eleven to seventeen. It was my glee club.

As luck would have it, I’ve been experimenting with baguettes.

“Experimenting” is, perhaps, a strong word. Last week I started baking some French bread. My dashing husband and son both love baguette, and after the whole “Mama can make crêpes?” episode, I’ve been in a bit of smack-down mode. “Yeah, not only can Mama make a mean crêpe, but she can bake a baguette, too – booyah.”

The problem is, I’m not so terribly great at baking a baguette. They were tasty enough, but look at those things! They stuck to the floured kitchen towel on which they were raised, I had to untangle them to get them into the oven, and I ended up with these mangled, twisted sticks. But wait – what was that first part? – oh yeah, they were tasty enough. That is what matters. The family gobbled them up – I ate mine with plenty of butter. Dipped in hot chocolate.

It is, perhaps, unfair to characterize this soup as a “clean the fridge” creation. It was really terribly delicious and satisfying – neither my dashing husband nor grade school son said anything other than “more please” about it – but I was using stuff up. Using it up fast. Using it up before I’d have to throw it out. So I hacked a hunk of bacon that had been sitting in the back of the freezer into pieces and put it in a pot and sweated out its fat – adding a bit of water now and then to keep it from scorching before all the fat had melted. While that went down, I sliced a small onion that looked like it was thinking about sprouting, chopped a small savoy cabbage that needed a few wilted outer leaves pulled off of it first, and diced a carrot that was holding its own but I couldn’t remember when it had made its way into the fridge in the first place, which is never a good sign.

All of this was sauteed in the pot with the bacon and a bit of butter and a bit of olive oil (I was hedging all fat bets) until they softened a bit, then I threw in the potatoes that needed some trimming as they were chopped, a bunch  of chicken broth, and brought the whole thing to a boil.

I simmered it all down, cooked it until everything was tender and the flavors had all blended together nicely – about 25 minutes or so, and served it up with some chopped parsley on top for color. So pretty! So fresh!

A whole grain baguette and two half-eaten hunks of cheese were placed on the table along with the soup and we had ourselves a tasty, frugal, quite French (although the potatoes would have been peeled and the whole thing likely pureed) dinner. And the fridge? It’s all ready to be filled, yet again.

Did I mention that fall is always a wee bit crazy around our house? My dashing husband tends to have lots o’business travel during these warm-and-golden turns gray-and-chilly months and it’s all as school is getting going and cooking turns from slicing tomatoes and tossing salads to actually cooking things that take more than ten minutes to pull together. Sooo… my fall gets a little insane. A bit busy.

While I’m busy roasting things he – for work, mind you – gets to run off to London and Paris. He returned and gave our son a jar of Nutella. Ernest was pretty intrigued. Then my dashing husband explained that the best way to have Nutella is in a crêpe. Then he said that I would make crêpes.

“Mama can make crêpes?”

Yes she can.

Like a champion, so I won’t go into how now I’m somehow making crêpes as part of his “sorry I was gone for two weeks but I was thinking of you” gift.

I learned to make crêpes when I went to French camp at age eleven. Have I mentioned French camp before? It was awesome and is, possibly, the geekiest thing about this very geeky girl. French camp itself isn’t nearly as geeky as my deep and abiding love of it is. Folk dancing, wine drinking songs, lace making, Mille Bornes, berets – I loved it all. I’d like to say my favorite thing was learning to make crêpes, but my favorite thing was actually the hot chocolate and buttered baguette we ate for breakfast every morning which was a far far cry from the whole grains and sensible lean proteins of breakfasts at home most mornings. Even when my mom made a treat (like German pancakes), it wasn’t hot chocolate for breakfast.

I did, however, learn to make crêpes at French camp and I still use the recipe I learned when I was eleven – with the optional brandy.

Crêpes

2 eggs

1 1/2 cup whole milk

1/2 cup heavy cream

2 Tbsp. butter, melted and cooled plus more for the pan

1 cup flour

2 Tablespoons sugar

1/4 teaspoon salt

1 – 2 Tablespoons brandy or liqueur (Grand Marnier if making crêpes suzettes, for example) – optional

1/2 teaspoon lemon zest – optional

In a blender, whirl the eggs, milk, and cream until combined. Pour in butter and whirl to combine. Add flour, sugar, and salt and whirl to combine – you may need to scrape down the sides so all the flour gets incorporated fully. Transfer to a bowl, cover, and chill for at least two hours and up to two days. Just before you’re ready to make the crêpes, stir batter – it should resemble very thick cream. Stir in brandy and/or lemon zest, if using.

Now, if you have a crêpe pan that is awesome. I have one and I love it, but I have made dee-licious crêpes in the crappiest most random pans you can imagine. A soup pot, a dented aluminum piece of s***, a cast iron griddle over a wood-burning stove – they all work if you want it bad enough. A frying pan is better that other options – a smaller one better than a bigger one.

Heat the pan over medium heat and melt a generous amount of butter in it – like a full tablespoon. Pour off the excess butter into a small dish or measuring cup ( you can use it as you make more) and ladle in three to four tablespoons of batter for an eight-inch pan. If you don’t have an eight-inch pan, you’ll need to experiment with the amount that works for your pan. Quickly swirl the pan to spread the batter in a thin layer over the whole pan, then swirl a bit more to spread any extra batter evenly over the batter that has already started to set, or cook, against the hot pan.

Let the crêpe cook until bits start bubbling under the middle and the edges turn from golden to almost brown. Then you need to flip the crêpe. This is when a thin wooden crêpe spatula can come in handy, but a fork gently used or fingertips that aren’t too sensitive work too. Treating the crêpe like a regular pancake and trying to flip it with a metal spatula will, in my experience, only lead to heartbreak. The crêpe will tear easily at this point, but practice will make perfect and you’ll figure out how to flip it using a method that makes sense to you. Before I had my thin wooden crêpe stick, I would slip a fork under one edge and sort of lift and flip it with my fingers after lifting the edge off the hot pan.

You may need to straighten or flatten the crêpe a bit to get it to lie flat after flipping. You can do this with your fingertips (notice my weird monkey paws doing just that below). Let it cook on the second side until both sides have brown spots, then slip or flip the crêpe onto a plate. Repeat with remaining batter. You should end up with about a dozen eight-inch crêpes.

Be warned: the first crêpe will not turn out. It will be a disaster. You will think “oh no, I can’t do this.” Find comfort in this: every first crêpe of every batch of crêpes I have ever made hasn’t turned out. It’s been ripped, uncooked, and often landed on the plate in a weirdly pale and gloppy looking heap. Sometimes that’s happened with the first two or three crêpes if it’s been a while since I made them. Just keep making crêpes and you and the pan will get used to each other and it will all work out.

This is why, however, you may choose to make the crêpes before you want to eat them. They keep, covered with plastic wrap, at room temp for several hours very nicely and reheat to perfection. Just pop a cooked crêpe in the hot pan, lay on any fillings, and fold and heat and serve in a snap. Everyone will think you’re  genius.

If you’re feeling really crêpe-tastic, you might even consider making galettes – buckwheat crêpes that are pure perfection for savory items. I was feeling nothing if not crêpe-alicious the other night, so after I flipped all the crêpes to fill with Nutella, I busted out the galette batter and filled those puppies with ham and cheese, blue cheese and walnuts, and smoked salmon and crème fraîche. Same method, nuttier result.

Buckwheat Galettes

2 cups whole milk

6 Tablespoons butter, plus more for the pan

1 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoons sugar

1 cup flat beer

4 eggs

3/4 cup buckwheat flour

1 1/2 cups all purpose flour

In a small saucepan, warm the milk, butter, sugar, and salt until butter melts. Let cool slightly and pour into blender. Add beer and whirl to combine. Add eggs and whirl to combine. Add buckwheat and all purpose flour and, again, whirl to combine. Cover and chill at least two hours and up to two days. Cook as crêpes.

After all the crazy, off-the-cuff potato gnocchi-making I’ve engaged in this fall, I decided to branch out. To sweet potato gnocchi. It works pretty much the same as regular potato gnocchi, except the dough never took on that playdough quality and stayed quite soft/tender/flour-hogging. Part of the reason for that is that the sweet potato is an entirely different vegetables, I’m sure, but the fact that the sweet potatoes I used were gigantic and so I peeled and cut them in order to boil them surely didn’t help – they probably soaked up a fair amount of water while cooking. Next time I might try just roasting the sweet potatoes whole….

Due to pantry shortages, I used whole wheat pastry flour instead of all purpose flour. It worked great. I’ve found these two flours can be used completely interchangeably in almost any recipe. Still, that it worked so well in gnocchi sort of shocked me.

Sweet potato gnocchi

Easy as homemade gnocchi are, they aren’t as easy as pulling something out of the freezer, so I made a large batch – half to eat that night, half to freeze for future. The entire batch makes about eight reasonable servings, servings that leave me plenty full. That said, I really have no idea how much you eat. This “large” batch may be just the right amount for your family of four. Then again, you might find it serves 12. It also depends on how you serve them: Just coated with a bit of brown butter or doused in cheese sauce? Sauteed with a few veggies or topped with ragu?

Note: To freeze simply lay shaped gnocchi on a baking sheet in a single layer and put in the freezer for a few hours or overnight. Once frozen, transfer to an airtight container or ziploc bag. When you’re ready to cook them, just pop them in the boiling water. They’ll take a minute or two longer to cook than do the fresh ones.

2 lbs. sweet potatoes

1 Tbsp. salt (for cooking water)

2 – 2 1/2 cups whole wheat pastry flour or all-purpose flour, plus more for rolling and shaping

1 egg

Peel sweet potatoes and cut into even-sized pieces. Put sweet potato chunks in a large pot and cover with cool water. Bring to a boil, add salt, and cook until sweet potatoes are very tender when pierced with a fork (try to limit your check-ins, you don’t want them taking up even more water than they already will). Drain sweet potatoes and return to the still-hot pot. Put them back on the stove over low heat and shake to help evaporate excess water.

Mash sweet potatoes thoroughly. I find pushing them through a ricer is the best way, but a large fork or potato masher works just fine, too. Stir in 2 cups of flour, 1 cup at a time.

If you’re cooking a batch of gnocchi, bring a large pot of water to a boil. If you’re going to freeze all the gnocchi, bring a small saucepan of water to a boil. Drop a spoonful of the batter into the boiling water. Stir and then let cook, undisturbed, until the “dumpling” floats to the surface. Let it continue cooking for 30 seconds before fishing it out. If it holds together, proceed with the recipe without adding the egg. If it falls apart, stir in the egg. The dough will separate and look weird. Do not panic. Instead, keep stirring. The dough will come back together, I promise.

Stir in the final 1/2 cup flour if the dough seems wet. If it seems like you could, with well-floured hands on a very well-floured surface, roll the dough into snakes and cut it into dumplings, turn it out onto a very well-floured surface. Divide the dough into four parts. Working with one part at a time, roll it into a 1-inch-thick snake and cut it into 1/2-inch dumplings. I found the dough too soft to really shape on a fork as one does with traditional potato gnocchi, but if you want to give it a try I’d love to hear about it! Put cut gnocchi on well-floured baking sheets. Put any amount you want to freeze in the freezer. Any gnocchi you plan to cook the same day simply cover loosely and leave in a cool spot until you’re ready to cook them.

To cook the gnocchi, bring a pot of salted water to a boil and cook the gnocchi as described for the sample – add to boiling water, stir, and let boil until they float to the surface, then let them cook 30 seconds more before lifting out of the water. Only cook as many gnocchi as will fit in a single layer when they float to the surface. Keep cooked gnocchi warm in a low oven, with a bit of melted butter or whatever sauce you plan on serving them with. I chose browned butter with a bit of sage and a few toasted walnuts. It was a solid, if unimaginative option.

You can call this a Dutch pancake if you want. Or a Dutch baby. Or a baked pancake. But in my family they are German pancakes. I don’t even know if they make these in Germany. Or why we call them German. All I know is my mom would make them every once in awhile and it was always a big treat because we were usually left to our own cereal-scrounging, toast-making devices come breakfast time.

And, I have to say, that was a good thing. It’s a decent life skill to be able to create breakfast for yourself. Breakfast is a meal that more people than not seem to the same, exact thing every day and be quite content with it. I had a friend who ate Grape-Nuts and coffee yogurt for about a decade straight. That was her breakfast. If she came to stay at your house you pretty much had to provide those items or risk a fairly bad vibe emanating from your house guest in the a.m.

My dad downs about half a loaf of toast every morning. Even if he is planning on making eggs and bacon for everyone later in the morning, he will toast himself up a few slices of bread to get the day going.

I tend to mix my breakfasts up a bit more. I think I could, however, eat whole grain crisp bread, thinly sliced mild cheese, a few cold cuts, a hard-boiled egg, and about a pot of black coffee every morning. I don’t, because this is America and that’s not what we eat for breakfast, but this post has got me thinking about what I would eat for breakfast if I had to eat the same thing everyday and that’s what came to mind – the elements I pull off a Scandinavian breakfast buffet every time I’ve had the extreme good fortune to encounter one. I’m going to add a few things to my grocery list and give it a try at home.

Along with teaching me valuable morning kitchen scavenging skills, my mom also taught me how to make German pancakes. That said, I don’t think this is her recipe. In any case, she taught me one could make a batter that, when poured into a hot skillet and baked, puffs up into a crispy-on-the-outside and tender-on-the-inside breakfast treat. And she taught me to call those treats German pancakes.

German pancake

This recipe makes one large pancake two not-too-hungry people could split, I suppose, but I really can’t imagine not wanting the whole pancake to myself. The recipe easily doubles or triples or more, as long as you have enough frying pans for each one and space in your oven for said frying pans to fit. A pie plate also works. You just want to use something with slanted sides – in my experience the whole thing puffs better for reasons I don’t understand (perhaps because it’s only anecdotal observation and coincidence and not science).

Don’t worry too much if your pancake doesn’t puff very much. They usually do, but sometimes they don’t – the pan wasn’t right or the oven wasn’t hot enough or you didn’t say the incantation correctly – but they’re still delicious. Not puffy, but still delicious.

2 Tbsp. butter

2 eggs

1/3 cup milk

1/3 cup flour

2 tsp. sugar

1/4 tsp. salt

Preheat oven to 400. Put butter in a 9- to 10-inch frying pan or pie plate and put it in the oven to melt (do this with each pan you’re using). Whirl eggs and milk in a blender (you can do this all with a whisk and a bowl, but I like using a blender to minimize lumps), add flour, sugar, and salt and whirl until you have a smooth batter. Pour in about half the melted butter from the pan and pulse to incorporate the butter into the batter. Pour batter into the still-hot (or at least warm) pan and bake for 20 minutes. Reduce heat to 350 and bake until golden all over and browned at the peaks, about 15 minutes.

Serve hot with powdered sugar and a squirt of lemon. Or with jam. Or syrup. Or honey. Or fruit. Or bacon. Whatever sounds good to you.