Sumptuous Dining in Gaslight San Francisco

San Francisco has always had its share of fine dining and debauched behavior. This is by no means a recent phenomenon. If fact, much of the high jinks of the past 50 years seems downright timid compared to the era ending the nineteenth and beginning the twentieth century.

Saloons, restaurants and houses of ill repute were rampant until 1921 when the Clubwomen’s Vigilance Committee foisted a respectability, coinciding with Prohibition, on the city.

Sumptuous Dining in Gaslight San Francisco by Frances de Talavera Berger and John Parke Custis is a glorious reliving of gaslight San Francisco in its heyday. The book is a biography, cookbook, culinary history, architectural history, cultural history and plain old entertaining history of San Francisco’s eateries and the people who made them from 1875-1915.





They are a colorful lot. There is “Irish” Dan O’Connell who confounded the Bohemian Club. He was brash, charismatic a bit of a poet:

Fill me a brimming goblet,
I said to my winsome wife,
Let me read in its bubbles reflected,
The story of its life.

Much to our sadness, “Irish” Dan failed to leave behind a recipe book, but a few of his recipes exist with some help from his friends.

Fricassee of Veal Bohemian

2 pounds of veal, cut into 2-inch chunks
3 tablespoons arrowroot
1/2 teaspoon dried basil
Cracked black pepper to taste
1/2 teaspoon dried oregano, crushed
1/2-teaspoon garlic powder
3 tablespoons bacon fat
3 tablespoons chopped fresh celery leaves
1/2 boiling water as needed

Dredge the chunks of veal in a mixture of arrowroot and dried seasonings. Brown the dredged meat in the hot bacon fat, and add the celery leaves. Cover the skillet and cook the meat slowly, in the same skillet, just until tender. Do not overcook it. If the skillet becomes dry during the cooking, add as much as 1/2 cup of boiling water.

A San Francisco chef who did leave behind his recipes was victor Hirtzel. The chef at the famed St. Francis Hotel, Hirtzel collected recipes and menus into the appropriately titled Hotel St Francis Book of Recipes and Menus, first published in 1910. With numerous printings, copies of his book are still prized among chefs and cookbook collectors alike.

San Francisco boasts inventing Peach Melba for the singer Nellie Melba,

Nellie Melba

Chicken Tetrazzini for the singer Luisa Tetrazzini,

Luisa Tetrazzini

and Pisco Punch for everyone else. Duncan Nichol of the Bank Exchange Saloon invented the Pisco Punch and it soon became the most popular and most copied drink in San Francisco. Nichol died with his recipe and with another of his Pisco punches, the Button punch. Pisco is an Italian brandy made from a grape known as the Rose of Peru. It is colorless, fragrant, and strong. It has been described as tasting like a fruity Scotch.

Pisco Punch

1 tablespoon Pernod
1 1/4 ounces Pisco Peruvian or other brandy
1-ounce Meyer’s Catawba or any grape juice
Shaved ice
6 ounces chilled pineapple juice

Coat the inside of an ample fizz glass with Pernod by swirling the liquor around the glass. Discard any of the liquid that does not cling. Pour the brandy into the glass and add the grape juice. Fill the glass with shaved ice and pour chilled pineapple juice to the brim.

Of a similar Pisco punch, the writer Rudyard Kipling said:

“It is the highest and noblest product of the age. I have a theory it is compounded of cherub’s wings, the glory of the tropical dawn, the red clouds of sunset and the fragments of lost epics by dead masters.”

The tales are tall and they continue throughout this book. It is thoroughly delightful. There is however one hugely egregious, if not fatal flaw in this book – there is no bibliography. How can that be? Who cold possibly gather such a delightful band of stories and recipes and fail to provide a list of further reading. I am shocked.

Still, it makes me want to pack my bags and go to San Francisco.

Famous Food Friday

Mrs. Marquis de Sade Cookbook

We couldn't resist Roz Chast's New Yorker cartoon depicting Mrs. Marquis de Sade making her favorite dishes including:

World of Hurt Broccoli

Chop up a bunch of raw broccoli, throw it on a platter, and serve without dip. Invite people over, stand back, and enjoy.

Indeed, enjoy.

Jeni's Splendid Ice Creams At Home

We finally got our copy of Jeni's Splendid Ice Creams At Home by Jeni Britton Bauer. It has been on order since she stated writing the book. Lucindaville is the land of ice cream. We have quite the repertoire of favorite flavors including our Berries and Balsamic, Pimm's Cup, Red Velvet (hey we can turn any recipe into Red Velvet --it's a Southern thing), Pumpkin, Bloody Mary, if you can eat it, we can make it into ice cream. We recently ran across a recipe for asparagus ice cream and it is on our summer experiments list.

It is no wonder that our cookbook shelf is has an entire ice cream section. Bauer uses an interesting technique for making her ice cream. Instead of eggs to thicken it, she uses a corn starch. At Lucindaville where eggs are a mainstay, we were a bit shocked by this. So we were beyond anxious to give this corn starch thing a try. (Please don't tell our chickens about this cookbook. They are firm believers in offering up fresh eggs for ice cream and the thought that Jeni doesn't like that eggy taste in her ice cream will leave the girls miffed.)

Here at Lucindaville, the ice cream maker is a 1982 Simac Il Gelataio that was 20 years old when we got it. It is slightly smaller than a VW Beetle and weighs about the same. During the summer it sits on an old milk crate in the middle of the floor, close to the fridge. The freezing bowl does not come out. Generally it takes 40 minutes to make ice cream and 2 hours to clean it, but I still haven't found an ice cream maker that I would trade it for.

We were glad to see some of our staples in Jeni's Splendid Ice Creams At Home, like Sweet Potato and Olive Oil. We have been experimenting with a number of olive oil ice cream recipes, so we are adding Jeni's to our trial list. Another ice cream in the book that has us all aglow is the Oakvale Young Gouda with Vodka-plumped Cranberries. But let us begin with vanilla.

Ugandan Vanilla Bean Ice Cream


2 cups whole milk
1 tablespoon plus 1 teaspoon cornstarch
1 1/2 ounces (3 tablespoons) cream cheese, softened
1/8 teaspoon fine sea salt
1 1/4 cups heavy cream
2/3 cup sugar
1 1/2 tablespoons light corn syrup
1 vanilla bean, split and seeds scraped
Prep
Mix about 2 tablespoons of the milk with the cornstarch in a small bowl to make a smooth slurry. Whisk the cream cheese and salt in a medium bowl until smooth. fill a large bowl with ice water.

Cook
Combine the remaining milk, the cream, sugar, corn syrup and vanilla seeds and bean in a 4-quart saucepan, bring to a rolling boil over medium-high heat, and boil for 4 minutes. Remove from the heat and gradually whisk in the cornstarch slurry. Bring the mixture back to a boil over medium-high heat and cook, stirring with a heat-proof spatula, until slightly thickened, about 1 minute. Remove from heat.

Chill
Gradually whisk the hot milk mixture into the cream cheese until smooth. Pour the mixture into a 1-gallon Ziploc freezer bag and submerge the sealed bag into the ice bath. Let stand, adding more ice as necessary, until cold, about 30 minutes.

Freeze
Remove the vanilla bean. Pour the ice cream base into the frozen canister and spin until thick and creamy. Pack the ice cream into a storage container, press a sheet of parchment directly against the surface, and seal with an airtight lid. Freeze in the coldest part of your freezer until firm, at least 4 hours.

Of course it is Ugandan vanilla, but you can use plain old vanilla beans if you don't have the ones from Uganda. But then you will have to drop the "Ugandan" from the name. Now you need to go out right now and get yourself a copy of this book so that you, too, can make ice cream. If you live close to Jeni, just grab a pint. She's opening up a new store in Nashville real soon. Jeni is always on the prowl for new ice cream ideas, so check out her blog, salty caramel to follow more Jeni updates.

So now we have the ice cream machine sitting on the milk crate, the corn starch and Jeni's Splendid Ice Creams At Home, let the summer begin.

Good Egg Dishes

We were thrilled to hear that Angry Bird is coming out with own egg cookbook. As you know, egg cookbooks are a favorite here at Cookbook Of The Day. Until the Angry Bird hatches, you will have to settle for this gem, Good Egg Dishes by Ambrose Heath. Heath wrote and translated more than one hundred works on food, this being the fourth of his books we have reviewed.

Like many egg cookery books, this is not so much a "cookbook" as a list of how to treat the eggs after they have been cooked. It is more of an egg "decorating" book.

Eggs Sur Le Plat Clamart

The bottom of the dish is garnished with green peas
à la française, and the egg is broken on to these and baked.

How many peas? How high the oven? You are left to the imagination.

The most favorite thing about this book is the clever use of recipe titles. Heath wallows in his French providing the most decadent titles for the most simple of dishes. Think about it-- eggs cooked over peas -- I don't think so. But Eggs Sur Le Plat Clamart, I am so making this dish.

How about scrambled eggs? Heath makes a mere scrambled egg a vision of poetry.

Eggs Scrambled Chatillon

The scrambled eggs are served in a border
with minced fried mushrooms in the middle, surrounded by a heap
of fried parsley, and little fleurons of puff pastry round the outside.

Again, if you have to ask how to scramble and egg or make a puff pastry or fry mushrooms or parsley, this book is not for you.

Chatillon is a French town or family or battle, one would guess depending upon how you perceive your eggs.

A border is a small platter with slightly raised edges. Now days a square plate would work nicely.

Fleurons are literally florets. In typography they are those curly cues around type, the frilly bits, which accurately describe the exact way those little bits of puff pastry should adorn the boarder.

Here is his cooking instruction for Eggs Mollets.

"There is no English word to describe this kind of egg, which might perhaps be called a soft hard-boiled one, for it is cooked enough for the white to to be firm enough for the shell to be removed, while the yolk remains quite soft inside."

Let's go out a limb here and and say that in English we would call eggs mollets "soft-boiled" eggs. Again we must point out that a soft-boiled egg doesen't hold a verbal candle to eggs mollets. And, as a added bonus, Heath points out that for every recipe that calls for poached egg, eggs mollets can be substitute and there would, of course, be a name change:

"In any recipe for Poached Eggs that follow, an Egg Mollet can be substituted where convenient. The name would then run: Oeufs Mollets So-and-So."

Next time you are in restaurant and the waiter says, "How would you like your eggs?" You know what to say!

Requiescat in Pace -- Kathryn Tucker Windham

The great storyteller, Kathryn Tucker Windham, died 12 June 2011. She was 93. In addition to many volumes of ghost stories, she also wrote two cookbooks. One of our early Lucindaville posts featured Southern Cooking To Remember. We have reprinted it below.

Here at Cookbook Of The Day, we featured her book, Treasured Alabama Recipes.

She was a lovely lady who constantly reminded people of the importance of listening. In 1940, after writing movie reviews for her hometown paper, she began a career as a police reporter for the Alabama Journal in Montgomery. At the time newspaper women were generally confined to the society pages. She gained the respect of the police by following the most grisly of stories, even scrambling down a steep ravine to get to the body of murdered child. Of the incident Windham wrote:

“When they saw me stay with them on that one, they accepted me. They knew I could do a good job, just like our male reporters."

But storytelling would always be her greatest gift -- storytelling and playing the comb. Here is a short video, in honor of her 90th birthday, describing an early comb playing class.

She will be missed. But don;t be surprised if you see her now and then, strolling down an Alabama road, or waving from a high, dark window...

REPRINTED from 27 February 2009

Famous Food Friday -- Kathryn Tucker Windham

If you were a child in Alabama, you know Kathryn Tucker Windham. She is a quintessential storyteller who made ghost stories a way of life. It all started in 1966 when a "friendly" ghost named "Jeffery " took up residence in the Windham house. When a group of kids came over and tried to "contact" Jeffery with a Ouija board, they succeeded and Jeffery was photographed. Jeffery became a kind of spirit world collaborator as Mrs. Windham collected stories that became 13 Alabama Ghosts and Jeffrey. My favorite is the Red Lady of Huntingdon College. Kathryn Tucker Windham began collecting ghost stories and other tall tales from around the South. Now 90, she is still in demand as a storyteller. She founded the Alabama Tale Tellin' Festival, held each year in Selma, Alabama.




What people may not know is Kathryn Tucker Windham's first book was a cookbook. Later she published a second cookbook, Southern Cooking To Remember. In November, I was in a large, well stocked grocery store and found a lovely bag of sunchokes, which I thought was funny since they looked like Jerusalem artichokes to me. Actually, Jerusalem Artichokes are not from Jerusalem nor are they artichokes. They are indeed, sunchokes, tubers from a sunflower like plant. When an early explorer to America sent the tubers back to an Italian friend, he dubbed them, "girasole articicco," quite literally, "sunflower artichoke" or sunchoke. The Italian pronunciation was corrupted and "Jerusalem artichoke" stuck. What do you do with them, my friend asked and Kathryn Tucker Windham knew the answer. Most Southern larders have at least one jar of Jerusalem artichokes pickled in some way.

Jerusalem Artichoke Relish

2 pounds Jerusalem artichokes
4 yellow onions
3 red peppers
1 cup salt
1 quart cider vinegar
2 cups sugar
1 tablespoon mustard seed
1 tablespoon celery seed

Use a stiff brush to scrub artichokes well. chop coarsely. Chop onions and peppers coarsely. Put chopped vegetables and salt in a large bowl and cover with cold water. put in the refrigerator overnight. being sure to cover it tightly. Next day, pour off the water and place vegetables in a large kettle. Add other ingredients and cook over moderate heat, stirring , until sugar is completely dissolved and mixture boils. Reduce the hear and simmer for half an hour or until relish is thick. Stir right often during the simmering. ladle into sterilized pint or half-pint jars and seal. This makes four pints.

Grab yourself a sous chef, spectral or not, and make a batch of this relish. And afterwards, I'll tell you the story of the Red Lady...

Food Graphics

Today we are not looking at a cookbook, but at the changing ideas of food and nutrition. This was, of course prompted by the unveiling of the new USDA food "plate." This whole idea started back in the 1900's when then director, W. O Atwater published his booklet, Principles of Nutrition and Nutritive Values of Food. The gauntlet was picked up by Caroline Hunt who quantified the process by recognising five food groups and how they should be divided. Hunt recommended a diet consisting of 10 percent daily calories from milk; 10 percent from meat; 20 percent from breads and other starches; 30 percent from fruits and veggies; and 30 percent from all else, including fats and sugars.

The 1930's brought diversity and H.K. Stiebeling. His guide to buying groceries gave consumers the Basic 12. this included milk; eggs; flours; cereals; potatoes fruits; veggies; tomato or citrus; lean meat; beans/nuts; leafy greens; sugar and other fats. Though there seemed to be some overlap in his categories. These detailed booklets fell flat, and by the 1940's zippy graphics were employed to better explain what one should be eating.

1942 took the Daily 12 to the Daily 8.

1943 brought us several variations on the new "Basic 7"

Including suggestion on how to arrange the Basic 7 into meals.

And even this patriotic graphic in Red,White and Blue.

1949 continued the Basic 7.

1956 saw the the rise of Basic 4, not only to provide nutrition, but fitness, also.


There was the 1979 Hassle-Free food Guide



Even the Red Cross got involved in 1984.

After carefully looking at Sweden's food pyramid, the USDA adopted their own in 1992.

The pyramid's proportions and directionality were updated in 2005.

This week, we saw our new USDA graphic. The friendly plate.

I don't know about you, but I am ready to go grab a bag of Cheetos.

In Defence of English Cooking

I am going to take this Famous Food Friday to namedrop. No, I do not know George Orwell, but I am friends with Christopher Hitchens who has often written about Orwell. In fact, Christopher Hitchens is often credited with inspiring a kind of “Orwell Revival” as it were. Though for, some of us, the revival was preaching to the choir. Still anyone who fosters a further reading of Orwell is peaches in my book.




Now let me clarify: When I say Christopher Hitchens and I are friend, I don’t mean in that -- Graydon-Carter-and-I-are-headed-to-the-Waverly-Inn-do-you-want-to-join-us-for-lunch -- way, but more in the way that we would say hello if meeting on the street.

About a year ago, I was doing some research and ran across an unpublished essay of Orwell’s entitled British Cookery. It was complete with several recipes and I was totally enamored. It was one of those moments you really wanted to share with someone. (Yes, people, finding an obscure, unpublished essay by George Orwell is definitely a Hallmark moment for many of us. The card would say: Reading Orwell and Thinking of You – Keep The Aspidistra Flying!) Alas, I had no one to share it with. Several weeks later I was to see Mr. Hitchens and I made him a copy of the article. When I saw him I handed him the article and he promptly left the room. I was undaunted by this behavior and rightly so. A few minutes later, he returned bearing a large book. For one of his speaking engagements, he was given a multi-volume hardback collection purporting to be EVERYTHING that George Orwell ever wrote. He had ducked out to check this collection to make sure that British Cookery was included. It was and all was well.






For Penguin’s 70th birthday, they published works from 70 of their authors for 70p. One of these titles was a collection of Orwell essays featuring In Defense of English Cooking. Had I been the editor, I would have compiled all or Orwell’s writing about food into a single volume. It would be scant but very interesting. After all, In Defense of English Cooking has nary a recipe included just the best of English cookery.

"We have heard a good deal of talk in recent years about the desirability of attracting foreign tourists to this country. It is well known that England’s two worst faults, from a foreign visitor’s point of view, are the gloom of our Sundays and the difficulty of buying a drink. Both of these are due of fanatical minorities who will need a lot of quelling, including extensive legislation. But there is one point on which public opinion could bring about a rapid change for the better: I mean cooking. It is commonly said, even by the English themselves, that English cooking is the worst in the world. It is supposed to be not merely incompetent, but also imitative, and I even read quite recently, in a book by a French writer, the remark: ‘The best English cooking is, of course, simply French cooking.’"

Nonsense says Orwell. His list of British culinary accomplishments are vast. There is bread sauce, horse-radish sauce, mint sauce and apple sauce along with redcurrant jelly. Sweet pickles which are he says, "in greater profusion than most countries." All the bread is good. Stilton cheese and Cox’s Orange Pippin apple would go great with the bread.



I am more taken with his unpublished British Cookery that begin with the French:

"When Voltaire made his often-quoted statement that the country of Britain has “a hundred religions and only one sauce”, he was saying something which was untrue and which is equally untrue today, but which might still be echoed in good faith by a foreign visitor who made only a brief stay and drew his impressions from hotels and restaurants."

It ends with a flurry of recipes for British culinary favorites, including an orange marmalade that Orwell cites as a bad recipe with too much sugar. It is nice to know he cooked his recipes before publishing them, or attempting to publish them. I am sorry, after the Voltaire quote, that Orwell did not include his recipes for sauces that he speaks so highly of in The Defence of English Cooking. We will have to settle for puddings. Here are two examples (one savory, one sweet) from British Cookery and the recipes to go with them.

"Most characteristic of all is roast beef, and of all the cuts of beef, the sirloin is the best. It is always roasted lightly enough to be red in the middle: pork and mutton are roasted more thoroughly. Beef is carved in wafer-thin slices, mutton in thick slices. With beef there nearly always goes Yorkshire pudding, which is a sort of crisp pancake made of milk flour and eggs and which is delicious when sodden with gravy."

Yorkshire Pudding

Ingredients:

4 ounces flour
1 or 2 eggs
½ teaspoonful salt
½ pint milk (or milk and water)

Method. Put the flour into a basin with the salt. Make a well in the centre, break in the eggs; beat well, adding the milk to make a think batter; allow this to stand for 2 hours. Melt some dripping in a baking-tin and when quite hot pour in the batter. Make for half an hour in a hot oven.

"Far and away the best of all suet puddings is plum pudding, which is an extremely rich, elaborate and expensive dish, and is eaten by everyone in Britain at Christmas time, though not often at other times of the year."

Christmas Pudding

Ingredients:
1 lb each of currants, sultanas & raisins
2 ounces sweet almonds
1 ounce bitter almonds
4 ounces mixed peel
1/2 lb brown sugar
1/2 lb flour
1/4 lb breadcrumbs
1/2 teaspoonful salt
1/2 teaspoonful grated nutmeg 1/4 teaspoonful powdered cinnamon
6 ounces suet
The rind and juice of 1 lemon
5 eggs
A little milk
1/8 of a pint of brandy, or a little beer.
Method:

Wash the fruit. Chop the suet, shred and chop the peel, stone and chop the raisins, blanch and chop the almonds. Prepare the breadcrumbs. Sift the spices and salt into the flour. Mix all the dry ingredients into a basin. Beat the eggs, mix them with the lemon juice and the other liquids. Add to the dry ingredients and stir well. If the mixture is too stiff, add a little more milk. Allow the mixture to stand for a few hours in a covered basin. Then mix well again and place in well-greased basins of about 8 inches diameter. Cover with rounds of greased paper. Then tie the tops of the basins over [with] the floured cloths if the puddings are to be boiled, or with thick greased paper if they are to be steamed. Boil or steam them for 5 or 6 hours. On the day when the pudding is to be eaten, re-heat it by steaming it for 3 hours. When serving, pour a large spoonful of warm brandy over it and set fire to it.

In Britain it is usual to mix into each pudding one or two small coins, tiny china dolls or silver charms which are supposed to bring luck.

In addition to these essays, Orwell wrote a lovely piece on tea. A Nice Cup of Tea outlines Orwell's eleven rules of making tea. (Read Christopher Hitchens' article on making tea the Orwell way, here.) In Moon Under Water, Orwell waxes poetic about his favorite public-house, or pub, discussing its decor, its beer and its food. How nice would it have been if Penguin had collected all these essays into a single volume.



P.S. As you know, Christopher Hitchens has been very sick. The last time we saw him on television we noticed that he was building new bookshelves. Always a good sign! From the Hallmark/Orwell collection we say:

Hope You Are Feeling Better -- Keep the Aspidistra Flying!

P.P.S. Keep the Aspidistra Flying is a rather dismal book to have such a zippy title. I am not suggesting you read it, but it is an excellent charades clue.

Plenty

In 2006, The Guardian asked Yotam Ottolenghi to write a weekly column on vegetables. “The New Vegetarian” proved to be a runaway hit with readers and it spawned Ottolenghi second cookbook, the vegetarian That led to a vegetarian Plenty. It is often noted that Plenty spent a great deal of time on the England’s best-seller lists jostling with some girl with a dragon tattoo! Who knew veggies could be so scintillating.

If there is any irony to this accomplishment, it is that Ottolenghi is not a vegetarian, himself. In fact, he caused quite the stir when he boldly announced, “You can be vegetarian and eat fish.” This sent the died-in-the-wool (or should I say, the-vegetable-dyed-in-the-hemp) vegetarians into a frenzy and her later tweeted, “To all, fish eaters are NOT vegetarians!”

I feel if you are going to be a vegetarian, you should be a vegetarian that eats meat, but I digress.

Recently, Yotam Ottolenghi paid a visit to Martha Stewart, who was gaga over Plenty. He made the following tart:

Caramelized Garlic Tart

375g all-butter puff pastry
3 medium heads of garlic, cloves separated and peeled
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar
220ml water
¾ tablespoon caster sugar
1 teaspoon chopped rosemary
1 teaspoon chopped thyme, plus a few whole sprigs to finish
120g soft, creamy goat’s cheese
120g hard, mature goat’s cheese
2 free-range eggs
100ml double cream
100ml crème fraîche
salt and black pepper

1. Roll out the puff pastry into a circle that will line the bottom and sides of a 28cm, loose-bottomed tart tin, plus a little extra to hang over the edges of the tin. Line the tin with the pastry. Place a large circle of crumpled greaseproof paper on the bottom and fill up with baking beans. Leave the tin to rest in the fridge for about 20 minutes.

2. Preheat the oven to 180°C/Gas Mark 4. Place the tart case in the oven and bake blind for 20 minutes. Remove the beans and paper, then bake for a further 5-10 minutes, or until the pastry is golden. Set aside. Leave the oven on.

3. While the tart case is baking, put the garlic cloves in a small saucepan and cover them with plenty of water. Bring to a simmer and blanch the cloves for 3 minutes, then drain well.

4. Dry the saucepan, return the garlic cloves to it and add the olive oil. Fry the garlic on a high heat for 2 minutes. Add the balsamic vinegar and water and bring to the boil, then simmer gently for 10 minutes.

5. Add the sugar, rosemary, chopped thyme and ¼ teaspoon salt to the garlic in the pan. Continue simmering over a medium heat for 10 minutes, or until most of the liquid has evaporated and the garlic cloves are coated in a dark caramel syrup. Set aside.

6. To assemble the tart, crumble both types of goat’s cheese into pieces and scatter them over the bottom of the pastry case. Spoon the garlic cloves and their syrup evenly over the cheese – the deliciously caramelised garlic will try to stick together in clumps.

7. In a jug, whisk together the eggs, creams, ½ teaspoon salt and some black pepper. Pour this mixture over the tart filling to fill the gaps, making sure that you can still see the garlic and cheese peeping through.

8. Reduce the oven temperature to 160°C/Gas Mark 3 and put the tart in the oven. Bake for 35-45 minutes, or until the tart filling has set and the top is golden brown. In my oven, this took almost an hour in total. If the tart’s golden and cooked on top but still wobbly, remove it from the oven and don’t worry – it will set as it cools. Leave the tart to cool a little.

9. When you’re ready to serve, remove the tart from its tin, trimming and tidying the pastry edge if needed, lay a few sprigs of thyme on top and serve warm (but not burning hot) with a crisp salad.

On Martha, he used American measurements, but my copy is from England so you have to ask Martha for conversions.

Or, you could pick up your own copy, which is what we would suggest. Ottolenghi has a nifty blog and he talks about his trip to New York, so, do check it out.

Ottolenghi: The Cookbook

We have been spending a lot of cookbook time recently with Yotam Ottolenghi. Ottolenghi is an Israeli-born English chef. He has a a series of restaurants in England and this cookbook was all the rage. The cooking is not defined by a particular region though the influences are very Mediterranean and Middle Eastern. There is a lot of emphasis on vegetables and grains. He loves bold, bright flavors and cares about the ingredients. Of a philosophy of food Ottolenghi says:

"We take our food extremely seriously. We make everything – be it marshmallows, an elaborate upside down pear cake or a French bean salad - right from scratch. We don’t buy anything other than raw ingredients, and we only produce things that we would want to eat ourselves. We don’t use colouring or preservatives, we don’t freeze and we don’t refrigerate for long periods. We buy mostly local produce (that is, British and European), very often organic, and we cook to feed and to share, applying the same instincts as a home cook. But we are also perfectionists; testing and re-testing each dish until we get it just right; creating and maintaining beautiful and serene dining environments."

In 2002 he oped Ottolenghi, which was like a small deli and today there are 2 restaurants and three carry-outs. One of our favorites is a sweet potato gratin, so we are always on the lookout for chefs who make our humble favorite in new ways. This is a very interesting twist on our fave. the potatoes are rather thick and the skin is kept on. They are baked in a standing position for about an hour, then the cream is added for another half hour.

Sweet Potato Gratin

6 medium sweet potatoes
2 1/2 cloves garlic
250 ml heavy cream
5 tablespoon fresh sage
2 teaspoon coarse sea salt
1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper

Directions

Preheat the oven to 200C/Gas mark 6. Wash the sweet potatoes (do not peel them) and cut them into discs 5mm thick.

In a bowl, mix together the sweet potatoes, sage, garlic, salt and pepper. Arrange the slices of sweet potato in a deep, medium sized oven-proof dish by taking tight packs of them and standing them upright, next to each other. They should fit together quite tightly so you get parallel lines of sweet potato slices (skins showing) along the length or width of the dish. Throw any remaining bits of garlic or sage from the bowl over the potatoes.

Cover the dish with foil, place in the oven and roast for 45 minutes. Remove the foil and pour the cream evenly over the potatoes. Roast, uncovered, for a further 25 minutes. The cream should have thickened by now. Stick a sharp knife in different places in the dish to make sure the potatoes are cooked. They should be totally soft.

This is a great way to solve that problem of getting the potatoes fully cooked. By standing them up, the potatoes have a nice visual look, too.

We liked this cookbook so much, that we could not wait for his next book to arrive...

Fannie's Last Supper

I admit I am not a great fan of Chris Kimball. He boarders on the obsessively geeky and I find him a bit dry and didactic. That being said, all his obsessiveness has come up with some pretty cool ideas. I never make pumpkin cheesecake without first draining the canned pumpkin on paper towel and I would have never thought of that if not for Mr. Kimball.

When I saw that he had written a book about re-creating a menu from an old cookbook, well I had to read it. I love nothing better than gleaning elaborate menus form period publications and bringing them to fruition. If ever there was a place for Chris Kimball's fussiness, it is in re-creating a meal from Fannie Farmer's 1896 Cookbook.

Don't be discouraged by some of the lukewarm reviews of this book. Many people were initially critical of Kimball for tweaking the recipes. That is what Kimball does. He is Mr. Tweaker. There is no way that you can give Chris Kimball a recipe and not have him screw with it all day long and into the next.

Everything that Kimball changed was changed for a reason that he explained. The book is fun history of cooking, Boston, manners and Victorians. And for all the things he could have easily cut corners on, like using prepared gelatin, he went the distance like making his own gelatin from calves feet. Along with a rather funny explanation of how he went about finding calves feet. Here is his recipe if you are so inclined.

Homemade Gelatin From Calves Feet

This was a much less smelly and also an easier proposition than we had thought originally. Yes, you do need to purchase split calves' feet, but the good news is that this gelatin base can be used to thicken a great many jellies or puddings. We decided to use this gelatin in our lemon jelly but used regular powdered gelatin in the other two jelly molds. We did detect a slight aftertaste to the calves' foot gelatin, and did not want the flavor of the spatlese or rhubarb jellies to be affected.

4 calves' feet, split in two
1 tablespoon sugar
1/4 cup lemon juice, from 2 lemons
1 cup white wine
Water

1. Soak split calves' feet in cold water for 1 hour; drain. Transfer soaked feet to 17-quart stockpot, cover with water and bring to boil for 10 minutes; drain. Return feet to stockpot, and add sugar, lemon juice, wine and 6 quarts of water to cover. Bring to boil, and reduce heat to maintain gentle simmer; simmer for 4 hours. Remove and discard feet; skim fat; strain liquid through fine mesh strainer. Let cool to room temperature. Transfer to refrigerator; chill overnight.

2. When it firms up, remove any fat from the top, wash the surface with warm water to remove all traces of grease. Lift out jelly, without disturbing sediment at the bottom. Use per recipe for Lemon Jelly Mold.

Yields about 3 quarts

Kimball even went so far as to procure and assemble an authentic Victorian cast iron stove into his Boston brownstone. It sounds exactly like a gigantic fire waiting to happen. In the end the whole thing was filmed for PBS. I never saw the documentary, but the book was delightful. I admit I read the selections on finding and refurbishing the stove first.



This book is a delight for those of you who are interested in the Victorian era and really I don't hold it against him that decided to make a zippier desert. Really! I am sure Fannie would have been proud.

Check out more recipes and info at Fannie's Last Supper.