butternut squash latkes

Oh December!
I like this month. I'm an omniholidayvore, so I've got a few packed in, plus my birthday AND my wedding anniversary. And also, cookies. And eggnog. And latkes.

Let's go back to October for a minute- back in the hilly wonders of California at Naya and Oliver's wedding. I was sitting at a picnic table, spacing out on the early sun and gnarled trees, waiting for coffee to clear the Champagne fog. There were lovely Californians all around me, bundled in their sweatshirts and anticipating coffee, and in the midst of the conversation, one woman (who kept wearing the most perfect shade of yellow through the weekend) said to another, "Oh yeah, I saw that at Bi-Rite."

"Bi-Rite?" I cut in. "Does that place really exist?"

They laughed and assured me that it did.

You see, a week or two earlier, I'd gotten this beautiful cookbook in the mail. (I know! It happens every so often, and it feels like my birthday, but I promise you I only tell you about the books that I love). It was nothing short of enchanting, and I turned the pages and wanted to inhabit every one. I made two recipes from the book that first week, and both were perfect. But the store that it came from? It seemed like something out of California legend.


A few days after the wedding, I was walking the streets of San Francisco with my friend and nearly-brother Andrew. It had been a while since we'd seen each other, and we walked and ate and walked and ate. Burritos in the mission. An eclair at Tartine. Noodles in spicy broth. And when we came to the right block, he pulled me into the Bi-Rite Market.

It was tiny. And (as a friend had so perfectly put it the weekend before) it was exquisitely curated. It was a living museum of artisan food, each cheese and fruit and meat local and gorgeous. Most liquids were in vessels that you would want to repurpose as vases, tiny ceramic crocks for yogurt and sensually curved bottles for oil. We stood in front of the jam and preserves shelf. Each bay area chef had their own preserves, and there was quince and marionberry and herbs and all of those different and elevated fruits. Andrew and I spent the next 45 minutes in there, as if it really were a museum, discussing the food like art on the wall.

There are a lot of reasons why you might want to pick up a copy of Bi-Rite Market's Eat Good Food. It is, in a way, a manual for conscious food shopping (as Marisa so eloquently described in her review). But the recipes! They are my favorite part of this book. That, and the fact that is stays so fabulously open on the counter. This is a book that inspires. It is sturdy, and beautiful, and (as we move into that season) exceptionally giftworthy.

Oh, the season. Because although Hanukkah is a few weeks away yet, I say- December is latke month. My grandfather used to be the latke maker in our family, and he and my grandmother would throw a party and make latkes all day long. Friends would stack those greasy pancakes on little paper plates with blue menorahs printed on them, chunky applesauce and sour cream along side. The day would begin with desire for latkes, and the day would end with the hope that we would never see latkes again. It would take three washes to get the greasy smell out of our clothes.

These are better, if that's possible. The butternut squash is sweet, the texture is perfect, and the flavor is... well, entirely worth of expletives. This recipe uses a method where the latkes are started on the stove and transferred to the oven and so the grease factor is nearly gone. This is my latke recipe now- I'm never going back to just plain old potatoes.

Oh, before we get to that- one more thing! Maybe tonight, maybe tomorrow morning, my new site will be up! We're just working out a few last coding issues, but I can't wait to show you. So don't be scared- it's still me! And I've got a fairly rockin' giveaway to celebrate the site's first day, if I do say so myself. I'll see you there. Yeah!

And now, the latkes.

Butternut Squash Latkes
from Eat Good Food, by Sam Mogannam and Dabney Gough
Makes 18 (they say! but I got 24- lucky me!)

1 1/2 cups grapeseed or other neutral oil, more as needed
1 large yellow onion, halved, peeled, and thinly sliced lengthwise
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
1 1/2 pounds russet potatoes (about 2 large)
1 1/2 pounds butternut squash (about 1/2 medium)
4 large eggs
1 cup matzo meal
1/3 cup finely chopped fresh parsley
1/4 cup finely chopped fresh sage
1 tablespoon chopped fresh marjoram

Position racks the the top and bottom thirds of the oven and heat to 350 degrees.

Heat 2 tablespoons of the oil in a medium skillet over medium-high heat. When hot, add the onion and sprinkle with 1/2 teaspoon of the salt and a few grinds of black pepper. Cook, stirring frequently, until the onions are golden all over and very soft, about 10 minutes. Remove from the heat and set aside to cool.

Peel and grate the potatoes and butternut squash (I did this in the cuisinart using the grating disk, but a box grater will work too). Put in a large bowl, along with the onions, eggs, matzo meal, parsley, sage, marjoram, 1 tablespoon salt, and 1 teaspoon pepper. Toss gently to combine thoroughly.

Heat 3 tablespoons of the oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat. When the pan is hot, use a 1/3-cup dry measure to scoop a mound of the mixture into the pan. With a fork, spread and flatten the mixture to a 4-inch disk. Repeat 3 more times. When the first side is golden brown (about 2 minutes), carefully flip the latkes over and brown the other sides, about 2 minutes more. Transfer the latkes to a rimmed baking sheet and continue to scoop and brown the remaining latke mixture in batches, adding another few tablespoons of oil before each new batch. Arrange the latjes in a single layer on the baking sheet; you'll probably need at least 2 sheets to accomplish this.

When all the latkes have been shaped and browned, transfer the baking sheets to the oven and bake until the latkes are cooked through, about 15 minutes. Serve hot.

(With thanks to Ten Speed Press! Reprinted with permission from Bi-Rite Market’s Eat Good Food by Sam Mogannam & Dabney Gough, copyright © 2011. Published by Ten Speed Press, a division of Random House, Inc.)

joe beef's jerusalem artichokes with ketchup

All last Fall, when we were working on the photos for the book, Jennifer May was so wonderful to work with that she made me feel like I was the only book she was working on. She spent endless hours with us, played with the girls, played with the cat, and of course, she took so many beautiful photographs. 

The other books that she was doing at the time came into conversation here and there. I knew that she was spending many of her days with artful cuts of sustainable meat. And I knew that on the weekends she wasn't hanging out with us, she was living it up in Montreal with the Joe Beef cookbook.

I was quite aware that her weekends with us were the quiet ones, the rural and family friendly ones, the days where she ate homemade crackers instead of foie gras sandwiches. And I was okay with that! I knew that Jen loved her time with us, and that her other needs were satisfied by her exotic time in Montreal with the other woman, er, I mean, cookbook.

A few weeks ago, the book arrived in the mail. I did not ask for it, but it showed up, beautiful, hip, both feminine and masculine at the same time. And if this book was the other woman, she was wearing clothes I would never think to try to pull off, and man oh man did she pull them off! She knocked on the door (at least, UPS did), cigarette hanging from her mouth, and in a faint Montreal accent, she greeted me and pushed her way in. And just like that, after Jen had been seeing us both, separately, for so long, we were there in the same room. And I fell for it. I fell for that cookbook.

This book has some recipes I can't wait to make, and some that I know I will never attempt. The photos are (of course!) stunning, and the writing is wonderful and witty.  And, true to its name The Art of Living According to Joe Beef, the book conveys an entire atmosphere, a way of relating to food, yes, but also time, and love, and communication. The recipes are sexy, but in the way that Montreal is sexy. If you have been to Montreal, I'm guessing you know what I mean.

I have never known a city to be filled with more beautiful people than Montreal. But unlike some other cities where I feel outside of it all, there seems to be no standard, no model of beauty. People are all shapes and sizes. Fashion is all over the place, and always fantastic. And it is contagious. When I am in Montreal,  I feel so beautiful, exactly as I am.

I'm looking forward to my next trip out there. I want to go to Joe Beef.

In the recipe for bagna cauda and aioli, we are instructed to "sit down in a garden chair with a bottle of rose or pastis, a cutting board on [our] knees, and good paring knife. Throw the peels straight into the garden."

I know! Sighs, blushes, and an ever so slightly shaking hand.

I wanted to tell you about one of the simpler recipes in the book. It deals with jerusalem artichokes, those strange little tubers that grow beneath what you might think is a bushy sunflower. They look like ginger, but they taste like something between a potato and an artichoke. And no one quite seems to know what to do with them.

This was my first year growing jerusalem artichokes. I did it against everyone's advice. "They'll take over!" people said. "You'll never get them out of your garden!"  That's okay with me. While the weeds strangled everything else, that jerusalem artichoke grew taller than me. The deer ate it every day, and every day it grew anyway. That's my kind of plant. One that can survive anything.

And so, in the way of Joe Beef, I roasted those indestructible tubers. I flipped them over, and then I roasted them some more. And then I popped a jar of the special occasion peach tomato ketchup, and Joey and I ate them in the garden, as we were meant to.

Jerusalem Artichokes with Ketchup
adapted from The Art of Living According to Joe Beef, by Frederic Morin, David McMillan, and Meredith Erickson (with photos by Jennifer May)

8 large jerusalem artichokes
a handful of coarse salt
butter, for greasing the pan
more coarse salt (or pretzel salt, if you have it)
a few sprigs fresh thyme
ketchup

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Smear a baking tray with a good layer of butter.

Put the jerusalem artichokes into a heavy duty freezer bag with a handful of coarse salt and a few tablespoons water. Seal the bag, and shake it several times. This will clean the jerusalem artichokes.

Rinse off each tuber, and cut in half lengthwise. Lay them cut side down on the prepared tray. Sprinkle with salt, and then with the leaves from the thyme sprigs.

Roast for 45 minutes, then flip the jerusalem artichokes over and roast for 30 minutes more. Allow to cool slightly, and then serve in the garden, with a side of ketchup.

kid's cookbooks

People often think that I know my stuff when it comes to kids in the kitchen. Since I write about cooking and parenting, I guess it would make sense, but the truth is, I'm just trying to figure it out.
The girls are 5 and 7 now. They can read, especially the big one, and they can tell sugar from baking soda. They can totally make a cake on their own.

As long as I put my hands over my eyes.

I need to be in the room to put the thing in the oven, but otherwise, I'm no help at all. I wince as the tablespoon gets confused with the teaspoon and I judge the clumpiness of the batter. The only way I can help is to let go and let it all happen.

Easy, peasy.

The truth is, the worst thing that can happen is that the cake doesn't come out so well. They're happy about it anyway and it was a good way to spend an afternoon. I can tell you that it is a really good thing to let your kids make their own food in the kitchen. It's worth working on, and that's why I'm still here, taking deep breaths and and trying not to draw blood from my lip in the corner while Sadie is about to spill oil all over the table.

I am able to do this because they are reading the directions by themselves. There is a book, open to the chocolate cake page. Sadie's friend Aurora is reading the directions and interpreting the pictures. Sadie is measuring and stirring. And because the girls have learned that a cake is not a cake unless someone is taking pictures of it, Rosie chronicles every moment with the camera.

We have three cookbooks for children in our house, and I love them all for different reasons. These cookbooks speak directly to the kids; they often use pictures to explain the recipes, and the recipes themselves are simple yet good enough for us all.

This is the newest book in our little collection, and it is showing a whole lot of promise. Our friend Naya included it in the best care package in history, and Sadie was busy looking through it before Rosie could put all of the cupcake printed bandaids all over her skin. Mollie Katzen and the whole Moosewood family have not let us down yet, and so far Honest Pretzels is no exception. It contains snacks, meals and desserts, from spunky chili to the grilled cheese and broccoli sandwich to Peanut Butter doo-dads to dinner rolls. Kids need to be able to read for this one, and she really speaks respectfully to them, which I love. Not only are the recipes simple, they are foods that kids actually want to eat.

Way back when the girls were tiny, we had a visit from our friend Liz's mother, Anita. Anita is one of those home bakers who makes absolute magic in her oven. Everyone tries to get in her good graces so that they can score a box of goodies from her in December, and her chocolate chunk cookies are pretty much the best in the world. She came for dinner that night, on a visit out from Denver, and we talked about baking most of the time. A few weeks later, there was a package, with a little thank you and this book. The girls were maybe 2 and 4 we pretty quickly moved through the whole thing. The girls would sit on the couch together, picking out recipes as though they didn't have the whole book memorized. The Baking Book is filled with basics- birthday cake, scones, and shortbread cookies, but the recipes are all done through pictures. This layout is what makes this book great for younger children- they can really lead you through the recipe. The recipes have all worked for me, and the birthday cake is actually one of our go-to cakes.

Of the three, this is the book that we have used the least, although not for any lack in its quality. I think we're just not quite there yet. Fanny at Chez Panisse is written from the perspective of Alice Waters's daughter, and it goes through several of Alice's more simple and basic recipes. It is beautifully written and pleasing to look at, and I think that it is perfect for a child of eight or nine who is really discovering themselves in the kitchen.

Made-in-the-Pan Chocolate Cake
from Mollie Katzen, Honest Pretzels

1 1/4 cups unbleached white flour
1/3 cup unsweetened cocoa
1 cup sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
3/4 teaspoon baking soda
1 cup water
1/3 cup canola or vegetable oil
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 teaspoon cider vinegar or white vinegar

Ask an adult to turn on the oven to 325 degrees. Put the flour, cocoa, sugar, salt and baking soda into a square glass baking pan. Mix it slowly. taking turns with a fork and a soup spoon. until it is completely light brown. Peek through the bottom of the pan to make sure that you don't see any more white. When it is all mixed, make 4 dents with a spoon- 2 large and 2 small- in the mixture. Measure 1 cup water and pour it into one of the large dents. Measure 1/3 cup oil and pour it into the other larger dent. Measure one teaspoon vanilla extract and pour it into one of the smaller dents. Measure one teaspoon vinegar and pour it into one the other smaller dent. Begin stirring with a fork in little circles to get all of the dry parts wet. As it turns into batter, start mashing it down with a fork. After you mash it a few taimes, scrape the bottom and stir. Do this again many times- mash, scrape, stir. When the batter is smooth, scrape the sides one more time with a rubber spatula and spread it into place. Clean off the edges of the pan with a damp paper towel. Ask an adult to put the pan in the oven. Set the timer for 30 minutes. Ask an adult to take it out. Cool for 30 minutes before cutting and eating.

if you're not giving cookies

A friend of mine asked me this morning, and rightly so, "Where is the holiday baking around here?" Well, the week has just begun, and although Hanukkah is over, we have a few more holidays left. But I did have a few answers for her, and I'll give them to you too.

The first is that I have a very emotional and gluten free almost seven year old tyrant stomping up and down the hall. I have, as you know, chosen not to become the master of gluten free baking (I leave that to others more capable), especially because, in exactly 11 days, the doctor has given us permission to try out the wheatiness again and see how the girl takes it. But in the mean time, sweets that the tyrant can't eat are met with tyrannical tantrums, and really who can blame her.

Of course there are many other sweets to create. For days I have been planning a repeat of last years treats in little white take-out boxes, a layer of these, and a layer of these, of which I was so very proud. And there's also this, which I dream of sending out in little mason jars. If you receive a little package from me, that is what it will contain, and the surprise is really whether I'll get it together to do it, and my sense from the two kids whining into either ear at the moment is...
maybe, possibly, no.
But perhaps I should do a January treats mailing this year. Don't you all have enough sweets coming to you now? Maybe we'll give it a few weeks, and then you will have deprived yourself of sugar because you went on overload, but now you're just about ready. We shall see, we shall see.

We all know that handmade gifts are the best, right? I'm sure you're all filling your tins as we speak, and hooray for you. But for those of you who, like me, are failing in the homemade department (shame!), I thought I would offer a second option- cookbooks.

I only bring this up because the Thanksgiving Hot line seems to have been replaced by the holiday gift cookbook hot line around here. I have given so many cookbook suggestions, I am confident in saying that the food publishing business is doing fine this year, as long as it's not in magazine form.

Cookbooks are a pretty fabulous gift to give. Beautiful, instructional, sometimes life changing, cookbooks are something most people covet, but refuse to buy themselves. So for you, I offer a brief list of cookbooks for all of your loved ones.

Before we start, I must make a heartfelt plea for your local independent bookstore. There are other options, I know, that cost less, but right now if we don't support our local independent bookstores they will be gone, and fast. So if you are buying books, buy them from your local bookstore, or if yours is gone already, feel free to support mine. It is quite lovely.

Let's get back to it then.



I Know How to Cook by Ginette Mathiot

I just mentioned this book, because it arrived on my doorstep on my birthday. My friend Alice thought it would make me happy, and she was so right. This is the French equivalent to The Joy of Cooking, a basic primer in French Cooking. It is huge, and satisfying, and it stays open to the page that you want. It also has the most oddly hip illustrations in this new printing.




Pure Dessert by Alice Medrich

Yes, I've told you about the caramels, the tangy lemon bars, the bittersweet citrus tart with jasmine cream and the sour cream ice cream. But I wish I could show you how beautiful this book is. Just the titles of the desserts read like poetry, and as you read through them one by one, I promise that you will commit to making the entire book.


The River Cottage Meat Book by Hugh Fearnly Whittingstall

I don't own this book, but I get it out of the library every few months, and one of these days I'm going to stop paying late fees and put that money into buying the book for my very own. For anyone who is interested in sustainably produced meat, or just good tasting meat in general, this is a fabulous gift. It goes through every cut of every animal, tells you what it is, and how to cook it. Although the cover is not kidding around, the interior of the book is filled with lovely photographs, and the thing reads like a novel.


Home Cooking by Laurie Colwin
I know, that meat book ain't cheap. But here's a good ten dollar paperback for you. If you've been around here this past fall, you've been a voyeur to my love affair with Laurie Colwin, and maybe you've had one with her too. These are the very best food essays peppered with with the very best recipes. And if you'd like to spring for them both, there's also,

More Home Cooking by Laurie Colwin
You don't want the first book to end, and so it doesn't have to. And this is the one with the gingerbread recipe.


The Art of Simple Food by Alice Waters
I have sold every copy of this book off the shelves of my local bookstore. Whenever I'm there, drooling over the cookbooks, there is always someone asking the counter person for a good general gift cookbook. Usually they are led to The Joy of Cooking, or perhaps The Gourmet Cookbook. I have an endless amount of respect for the people who work at the bookstore, but usually I can't but add my own little tidbit (those of you who know me know that this is a bit of a habit for me, and I have to actually hold my mouth shut if I want to keep my two sense out of the conversation), and when the counter person walks away from the cookbook buyer, I say, "Have you seen this one?" I can't help but gush over it. It is just so beautiful, philosophical without being dogmatic, and the recipes are perfect. Last time I was at the bookstore, both copies were sold in my presence, and a third was ordered. If you know someone who doesn't have it, this is the one.





Well, there are a few for you. If you need more, give me a direction- you know I love a challenge. And I'm sure there will be some cookies around here too- they always seem to happen somehow. I'll let you know how it all comes out.