The Cookbook Addict

The Food That Makes Me Nervous: The Food You Crave by Ellie Krieger

There's something disconcerting about Ellie Krieger's affect.  I get distracted by the pinched, nervous look in her pale face, her cracking voice, and her obviously feigned enthusiasm.  To be honest, to me, she looks kind of hungry.  I imagine her to be a hair's breath away from freaking out and eating everything in sight, as soon as the Food Network TV cameras turn off.  I don't know, maybe I'm just projecting.  Or maybe I'm just jealous that she's beautiful, has an advanced degree from Columbia University, and hosts her own show on the Food Network.

Anyways, after the yeasted pastry and stuffed pasta extravaganzas of the last few weeks, and what with the warmer months approaching, I felt like I need to, ahem, tighten my belt a little and try out some cookbooks that do not have the capacity to single-handedly affect my clothing size.  So I decided to put my snobbiness aside and try Ellie's newly released light cookbook.

Every time I try a light cookbook, I am disappointed, and this one was no exception.  Like most light cookbooks, most of the food in Ellie's book will only taste delicious to you if you are on a diet.  If you are not, most of the recipes will be basically fine, sometimes even good, but uniformly a little watery, starchy, overly acidic, or all of the above.  Basically, this is what happens to most recipes if you take out too much of the fat and try to replace it with starches, dairy or acid.

The Peanut Satay was basically yummy but the accompanying peanut sauce tasted a little mealy from being diluted with chicken stock (which, in my experience, never really works well for sauces that are not served warm).  The soba noodle salad was too acidic, because the rice vinegar in the dressing was not balanced by enough oil.  It would have been better more lightly dressed with a fattier vinaigrette.  The roasted cauliflower with nutmeg was perfectly good, but not any different from roasted cauliflower recipes in non-light cookbooks (1 head cauliflower, 2 Tb oil, hot oven = yum).  The whole wheat fettucine with roasted red pepper and feta sauce was ok, but once again a little mealy tasting.  I will say, I normally despise whole wheat pasta but the pureed roasted pepper and feta in the sauce resulted in an aggressive sauce that made the whole wheat characteristics a lot less noticeable.

The portabella mushroom panini - portabellas stuffed with blue cheese and sun dried tomatoes, lightly brushed with oil, and cooked on a grill pan - were better than expected, but still a little watery.  With just a little more oil, they might have been pretty good. 

I was frightened about how the desserts would turn out, but actually they were our favorite dishes from the book.  The mocha cake with cream cheese frosting incorporates an alarming cup and a half of nonfat yogurt into the batter, but after I doctored the frosting with a little extra sugar and some amaretto, the finished product was actually pretty moist and yummy (proving that Scharfenberger cocoa, Callebaut chocolate and espresso are an unstoppable combination capable of making anything taste delicious).  The ricotta cheesecake, which I topped with strawberries and a strawberry champagne jam, was a little watery and starchy but fun to eat.  Mr. Addict, who is my litmus test for the credibility of light recipes, snacked on both of these of his own volition.

At the end of the day, I did not learn anything new, try anything that was challenging, or taste anything remarkably delicious this week.  But, these recipes were quick and painless and decent to eat.  I had healthy leftovers to take with me to work every day without any effort.  Also, I should mention that I lost a few pounds this week.  If you are on a diet, maybe this cookbook would be helpful for you.  Certaintly, it's far from the worst diet cookbook out there and the culinary techniques and flavor profiles are basically solid.  However, I don't think it really succeeds as a cookbook.  The only light cookbooks that I can think of that do are those by Sally Schneider, Patricia Wells, Alice Medrich and Nick Malgieri.  If you are a food snob who wants to try out a light cookbook, I would definitely turn to those first. 

There are, however, several beloved cookbooks in my collection that are not overtly "light" cookbooks but nevertheless largely contain recipes that are relatively low in fat and calories - Mangoes and Curry Leaves and the books by Jack Bishop are two examples.  Instead of wasting more money on light cookboks, I think I will try to focus more on cooking from those types of cookbooks and on selecting the healthiest recipes in otherwise non-light cookbooks.  If any of you have a favorite cookbook with healthy or light recipes, please post it in the comments!

Spirited from the Bread Box: A Baking Odyssey by Greg Patent

My bubby never let anyone in the kitchen while she was cooking. If you asked her about how she made her kreplach, strudel or breakfast cake, she would inevitably respond with some variation on “a little of this, a little of that, until it is right.” You were lucky if this explanation was even provided in English. When she was eventually prevailed upon to allow my mother and her sister to take down her recipes, they could only provide measurements in yarzheit glasses. Even so, these are treasured recipes.

A Baking Odyssey, by Greg Patent, is essentially a compilation of treasured baking recipes translated from the homes of Americans of various ethnicities and nationalities, including Indian, Russian, Swedish, Polish, Turkish, Chinese and many others. Every recipe includes an introduction that attempts to capture some of the story and personalities behind a particular recipe. Although there are a number of trickier recipes, like strudel, the recipes are described with careful detail and a DVD demonstrating some of the methods is included.  (Although I appreciated the effort put into creating the DVD, which was somewhat helpful, I didn't understand going to this effort but not providing alternative measurements for recipes by weight.)

The sweet recipes that I tried were, hands down, some of the most astonishingly delicious and soul-cheering sweets that I have ever made. The Swedish Cardamom Coffee Rolls, yeasted rolls flecked with freshly ground cardamom and sprinkled with a toasty topping of sugar, chopped almonds and cardamom, were the most sparkly little rolls when eaten piping hot from the oven. The next day, they were slightly less charismatic but still delicious and a little magical. Potica, a Polish coffee cake that involved a traumatizing session rolling out the dough paper thin on my kitchen table, was even more exceptional. Potica is a tall ring of thin layers of yeasted dough that have been brushed with an egg wash, spread with a meringue of nuts and honey, and coiled to form many, many delightful little layers of dough and nuts. It is the type of cake that still feels unbelievably special days later, when the last crumbs are retrieved from the bread box for a midnight snack.   A labor of love, we greedily ate it, with the knowledge that I may not be able to bring myself to make it again.

The savory baked goods that I tried were nice but certainly less impressive. The Turkish Feta Turnovers were a bit doughy and dry. The Kachauri, a puri-type Indian bread stuffed with a puree of barely-cooked split peas and spices, was the tiniest bit bitter and off-tasting. Still, both were unusual, homey and satisfying. Also, his savory doughs seemed to be easier to make and roll out than many others I have tried.

This is hardly a comprehensive book of American ethnic baking, baking techniques, or the baking recipes of any particular nationality. It is not that useful, therefore, as a reference or a tool for acquiring baking skills. Also, although Patent has adapted the recipes slightly with his professional touch, they are not pastry chef’s recipes. But, these are special recipes. Baking from them, I couldn’t help but feel a little bit guilty, like maybe I was circumventing the jealous and idiosyncratic methods through which these types of recipes are typically transmitted. My bubby, after all, would probably never have let a cookbook author into her kitchen, nor been able to explain to him how to make her recipes, even if she wanted to. But, these recipes did remind me of the type of treasured family recipes that a few aunts and close friends have shared with me over the years.

In that spirit, I thought I might post one or two of my family’s homey and beloved baking recipes. I am still trying to procure my bubby’s coffee cake recipe, and hope to post it eventually. In the meantime, here is our family recipe for a very sweet, yeasty and doughy challah, the type never sold in stores or bakeries but eaten in thousands of households every Friday night. I hope you enjoy it (but I also secretly hope that you will not pass it on).

Aunt Dvo's Challah

Note: This recipe makes a massive amount of challah.

2 cakes compressed yeast
12 cups bread flour
1 cup sugar
1 1/2 tablespoons salt
1 1/4 cups vegetable oil

Mix the yeast with 1 cup of warm water in a large bowl.  Let this mixture sit at room temperature for five minutes.  Mix in the remaining ingredients and 2 cups of room temperature water.  Knead the resulting dough until smooth and elastic.  Spray a clean bowl with cooking spray, put the dough in and then turn it over to slightly coat the other side of the dough with the cooking spray.  Cover the bowl with a slightly damp kitchen towel.  Let the dough rise in a warm place for 1 hour.  Punch it down and let it rest for 10 minutes.  Shape the dough into challahs.  Let the challahs rise again for 1 hour.  Preheat oven to 350.  Brush the challahs with egg wash and place in greased baking trays.  Bake for 35 minutes, or until browned.  I recommend making one or two very large and impressive-looking challahs, and a few smaller little knots or rolls to eat for breakfast or midnight snack.

Good Things Come to Those Who Wait, Sometimes: Braise by Daniel Boulud

If you have read my review of Paula Wolfert’s Mediterranean slow cooking book, you know that I am not the world’s most patient cook. Slow recipes make me suspicious. They are also wholly incompatible with my career situation and temperament. Lucky for me, many of the world’s best recipes require less than fifteen minutes of cooking time.

But, even I must admit that there is something special about the soothing aroma and savory gravies created by slow cooking. So, I decided to brave my second reader-recommended cookbook, Braise by Daniel Boulud, time demands notwithstanding. Needless to say, the majority of the recipes are strictly weekend projects for me. So I hope you will forgive me for the missing review last week; it just took me that long to get through enough recipes to review this one.

The most striking thing to me about this cookbook is how different these bold, assertive multi-ethnic recipes are from the restrained, elegant food served at Boulud’s New York restaurants, Daniel and Café Boulud. It seems that Mr. Boulud likes to cook far more adventurous meals when he is on his own time. While most of these flavors were delicious, some of the recipes were actually a little too assertive for me. In particular, I was a little overwhelmed by the Indian-Style Quail in Beet, Apricot, and Tomato Chutney – the profusion of apricot, tomato mint and spices ended up tasting like the aggressive love child of a North African casserole and an Indian stew. But, it was still quite good and the accompanying fennel, apricot and saffron salad was inventive and delicious. The Spicy Merguez with Spinach and White Beans was also a gamey, assertive dish; I liked it, but Mr. Addict felt the lamb flavor was too gamey for his tastes. It was also a bit watery.

Everything else we tried was lovely. The Pork Butt with Hazelnuts, Golden Raisins and Jerusalem Artichokes had the most scrumptious, slightly sweet gravy; after soaking up this gravy for two hours, the Jerusalem artichokes and cippolini onions were melting rich and tender. Also, I was grateful that Daniel’s braising method mostly took place in the oven; I am notoriously bad at babysitting a simmering pan on a flame for hours. Here, at least I could put it in the oven and let it do it’s thing.

I should mention that most of the recipes are braised in the oven. This is a definite plus for me, but does require multi-step cooking processes for every recipe. These recipes were not low mainenance.  In fact, I would classify these recipes as fairly fussy, involving lots of peeling, soaking, making of crusts, etc. Boulud being who he is, rest assured these are not “fix it and forget it” type stews.

Interestingly, the most wonderful recipe that we tried was one that did not require a long cooking time, the Scallops with Salsify, Shiitake Mushrooms, and White Miso. For this dish, the scallops are seared on one side, the vegetables are separately sautéed in butter and miso, and then the whole affair makes a brief, fifteen minute visit to the oven (first braised and then broiled with a toasted crouton and herb topping). There was something unfamiliar about this dish. I think it may have been the taste of the reduced yuzu, which I have not cooking with before. Whatever it was, we instantly fell in love with this charismatic, mysterious dish. This is one I will definitely make again, soon.

The recipes I tried these last two weeks made me appreciate Boulud’s sophistication, boldness and mastery of flavor and technique. I am still not 100% over my suspicion of slow cooking, but I did warm up to it a little bit more.

One caveat about this book, though: I have had it exactly three weeks and it is completely falling apart.  Granted I do not treat my cookbooks gently but I thought that a three week shelf life is a little ridiculous.  Not that this should stop anyone from getting this book, but just thought you should know.

See you next week!