The Wednesday Chef

Maria Speck's Artichoke Tart with Polenta Crust

Thank you so much for all your cheers, congratulations and excitement! Sometime in the last few weeks, the little guy in my belly went from being a very abstract sort of thing to a real person who likes to wiggle around like clockwork at midnight (oh dear) and whose face I cannot wait to see. I was waiting for this to happen, for the pregnancy to morph from something I couldn't really wrap my head around to something that makes my heart leap. Now that that feeling is here, it's even better than I imagined. I'm so lucky that I get to share our happy news with all of you fantastic people. I'm so lucky, period.

A few months back, actually, more like last summer, when Max turned 35, we had a bunch of friends over for brunch before retiring to our local beer garden down the block and sitting outside under the leafy canopy while drinking beers until dinnertime. (If you are planning a trip to Berlin, ever, make it in summer. It's magic.) While we were still at home, Max made a big pitcher of Pimm's and I put out a coffee cake of some kind and frittata, too, if I remember correctly, but neither one was really more than picked at because I'd also made this artichoke tart with a polenta crust and it was inhaled in record speed. Gone in a flash. Zip, boom, bang.

I got the recipe from Maria Speck's fantastic book, Ancient Grains for Modern Meals, a pretty incredible collection of recipes featuring whole grains such as rye berries and cornmeal and rolled oats and wheat berries and spelt flour, not to mention amaranth, millet and quinoa. Just as with Kim Boyce's Good to the Grain, Maria's book is less focused on the health aspects of whole grains and more focused on the delicious flavor that these ingredients bring to the table (har). She uses cream and butter with aplomb and has a beautiful way with words - each of her headnotes makes me hungry all over again.

(Full disclosure: I learned about the book after meeting Maria at a conference a few years ago and later blurbed the book after I'd read the proofs, stomach a-growling.)

Raised in Germany with a Greek mother and a German father, Maria has fused the whole grains of her German childhood with the gutsy flavors of her Greek heritage into every recipe she put into the book (along with a wealth of knowledge on each whole grain she uses). This means you get things like farro cooked with cream and served with grapes roasted in honey for breakfast or bulgur cooked in Aleppo-pepper-spiced tomato sauce for dinner. There's Greek-style cornbread (layered with feta and thyme, served with salad for lunch, perhaps) and a brandy-soaked fruit bread made with rye flour, spices and nuts.

The artichoke tart is brilliant for the pastry-averse or just those looking for a more wholesome version of a quiche or vegetable tart. You make a pot of polenta, flavoring it with broth and cheese (an egg adds body) and then pat it out into a cake or tart pan. Then you defrost artichoke hearts (or open a can, which is what I did because I've yet to find frozen artichokes in Germany) and cut them into quarters, laying them down on the polenta base. On top goes crumbled goat cheese and then a scalliony-herby mixture of eggs and Greek yogurt and a generous sprinkling of Parmesan cheese. And that's it.

After 45 minutes in the oven, what emerges is bound to make everything else on your brunch table pale in comparison. It did on mine. What I like especially about it is that it's hearty and savory, full of wonderful flavors (the artichokes really do shine through, as does the rosemary and creamy-sourness of the yogurt and goat cheese), yet it still feels relatively light. A big wedge of this won't weigh you down the way a piece of quiche, full of cream and sporting a butter crust, would. Also, I like the fact that the polenta crust makes people first do a double-take and then ask for a second helping.

I would have given you a photo of a slice of the tart, too, just for some cross-section action, but, uh, it happened again this weekend - the tart was gone too fast for me to react (or eat a piece!). Next time, I thought, I'm making one all for myself.

Maria Speck's Artichoke Tart with Polenta Crust
Make one 10-inch tart
Recipe from Ancient Grains for Modern Meals

Crust:
1 1/2 cups low-sodium vegetable broth
1 1/4 cups water
1/2 teaspoon sea salt
1 1/4 cups polenta
1/2 cup (about 2.5 ounces) grated Parmesan cheese
1 large egg, room temperature
1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

1. Bring the broth and water to a boil in a heavy-bottomed saucepan over medium-high heat. Add the salt. Slowly add the polenta in a thin stream, whisking constantly, and continue whisking for 30 seconds. Decrease the heat to low and cover. Cook for 10 minutes, stirring with a wooden spoon every few minutes to keep the polenta from sticking to the bottom of the pot. Remove the saucepan from the heat and let sit, covered, for 10 minutes, stirring a few times. Stir in the cheese, egg and pepper.

2. Grease a 10-inch tart pan or cake pan with olive oil. Have a glass of cold water ready. Spoon the polenta into the pan and press it out, pushing it up the sides. Dip a wooden spoon or your hands in the cold water to help the polenta along. Set aside for 15 minutes and then form an even rim about 3/4 of an inch thick with moist fingers, pressing firmly. Don't worry if the crust looks rustic.

3. Put a rack in the center of the oven and heat to 375 F.

Artichoke filling:
1 cup plain Greek yogurt
2 large eggs
1/2 cup finely chopped scallions
2 tablespoons chopped flat-leaf parsley
1 tablespoon minced fresh rosemary
1/4 teaspoon sea salt
1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
12 ounces artichoke hearts, canned or frozen
1/2 cup (2 ounces) crumbled goat cheese
1/2 cup shredded Parmesan cheese

1. Whisk the yogurt, eggs, scallions, parsley, rosemary, salt and pepper together until well-combined. Cut the artichoke hearts into quarters and distribute them evenly over the polenta crust. Sprinkle the goat cheese on top of the artichokes and pour the yogurt filling evenly over the artichokes. Sprinkle with the Parmesan cheese.

2. Bake the tart until the top turns golden brown and the filling is set, about 45 minutes. Transfer the pan to a wire rack and let cool for at least 20 minutes, though 40 is better. The tart can be prepared up to one day ahead.

Bess Feigenbaum's Cabbage Soup

I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, girl, of course you're posting about cabbage soup. It's January 6th, for Pete's sake, and we're all supposed to be on the New Year, New You! plan. You know, the one in which, just two weeks after Christmas, you swear to get up early each morning to sweat at the gym, eat whole-grain hot cereal for breakfast and drink nothing but green tea and think soothing thoughts about everything and everyone for at least, shall we say, two weeks before collapsing in a heap and eating an entire bag of Cape Cod potato chips for dinner in front of the television.

But no! You're wrong! That's not at all why I'm posting about cabbage soup. Sure, cabbage is good for you, all packed with vitamin C and flavonoids (or maybe it was antioxidants? Whatever it was, it's not goose fat or almond paste, thank Jeebus, because I can't look at either right now without wincing.). But take a closer look: There's ketchup in this soup, people. Ketchup. KETCH-UP. And brown sugar. And you're supposed to dollop sour cream on top. Okay? No diet soup here, no sirree, I don't think so.

It's not that I'm not into New Year's resolutions. Last year I made a bang-up list (uh, yes, drinking more green tea was on there, but so was stuff like "get a pedicure"and "buy a standmixer" (got the former, not the latter)). By February, though, it devolved into a to-do list of wedding-related errands and things like "open a German credit card" and "go to the cemetery in Kassel" and before too long, I hied that list of resolutions to the curb.

This year, I was too busy to make a list. I wanted to enjoy every blessed minute that Max was here over the holidays (two whole weeks!) and we had our very first Christmas at home (which has been one of my life goals since I was a small child - check!), replete with a candle-lit tree that the poor man lugged home the day before Christmas Eve and that is still perfuming our living room almost two weeks later. (Before you throw out your Christmas tree, have you seen this?)

Plus, I was sort of consumed with thoughts about the book, you know, and this other thing that has been occupying whatever spare part of my mind I've still got left (it's not much) (good grief, the parentheses in this post are multiplying like bacteria) (more on that, the other thing, not the parenthesiitis, in a minute)).

So there's no official list of virtuous resolutions this year. In fact, a few days ago I even canceled my gym membership (if you must know, it's because my gym stinks - well, figuratively, not literally). I was pretty sure the gods of January were going to smite me for doing such a profane thing, but miraculously I made it home in one piece. Being virtuous for a few weeks feels like a waste of time when I've got so much more in my lap right now. Instead I've decided to do things like "use up the vegetables languishing in the fridge instead of letting them calcify" or "embrace self-indulgence every once in a while, you mean old hag, you" and I've also decided I don't need a pretty list doodled on good paper to do that, either.

Which leads me back to the ketchup soup. The other night, I had nothing but three moldy carrots, half a green cabbage and several lemons so dried out you could have cracked them like eggs skulking around my fridge. The carrots especially were starting to seriously irritate me. Carrot frittata? I wondered as I stared at this motley crew. Lemon sandwiches? Cabbage spaghetti? No, no and no.

Instead I vaguely remembered reading something about a cabbage soup, but who knows when, my mind is a sieve these days. A few clicks later and there was Bess Feigenbaum's Cabbage Soup staring back at me from the computer screen. As I scrolled through the ingredient list, I felt more and more triumphant. I had everything I needed, everything except for the raisins which I didn't want in my soup anyway, no way, no how. How perfect was this?

Also, as I might have already mentioned, there was ketchup in this soup. KETCHUP. In the soup. People. When I saw that, I scrambled to the kitchen so fast that dust clouds kicked up under my feet.

To start, you make a simple tomato sauce base, really - sautéeing onions and garlic in olive oil, adding sliced carrots and canned tomatoes and tomato paste. But then you throw in a bay leaf and ketchup and brown sugar (and not a small amount either, though I confess to halving the sugar, because I just couldn't bring myself to use the full amount, not with a whole half-cup of ketchup in the soup to boot) and when this has cooked for about twenty minutes you render it coarsely mashed or puréed, depending on your taste, and then you add an enormous amount of sliced cabbage and water and what seems like far too much lemon juice, but do not skimp, please, because the lemon juice is crucial.

This whole messy concoction, cabbage strips sticking every which way, then gets cooked until it's good and silky. Two hours at least. I had a bowl after an hour and I don't advise you do the same. You want the cabbage to go limp and soft, really soft. Practically melting. And you want all those crazy flavors to meld into something a little less nuts (don't worry, the ketchup does blend into the background). (Also, it feeds a blessed multitude, so invite your whole block over for dinner or else be prepared to eat this for days.)

A dollop of something cool and creamy on top is sort of crucial when you serve the soup. Otherwise it could err a little on the sweet-and-strange side. You could go for sour cream or plain yogurt, if you were feeling virtuous (or if that's all you had in the house, ahem). But don't skip this bit either. You want that final hit of bracing acidity and smoothing lactic power, brightening the coldest and darkest of winter days.

My father arrived this morning for a two-week visit and I served this to him for lunch, along with a slice of dark bread. (He always eats a slice of buttered dark bread when he gets off the airplane in Berlin and then, with a deep sigh, tells me how good it tastes.) (Also, he is a cabbage man, if you know what I mean. Never met a cabbage he didn't like.) He said it tasted like the stuffed cabbage his mother used to make, which is exactly the point, according to Zoe Feigenbaum (Bess was Zoe's grandmother and Bess's stuffed cabbage was the inspiration for the soup.)

...

But wait! We're not done yet! There's still that thing I have to tell you about, the thing I mentioned just above. I have been wracking my mind for days (weeks! months!), trying to figure out a good way to tell you all, my darling readers, my friends who I've never met, and I keep on coming up empty. It's just too big, I guess, too good.

So. You know how I said I was hiding from you because I was so wrapped up in the book and all the craziness that goes along with the final weeks of revisions and writing? Well. Um. I might not have been telling you the whole, entire truth. Technically.

You see, that other something I mentioned above, well, it's not just a little thing, though, actually, it is pretty little. With wee legs and arms and delicious cheeks to nibble on soon and a thumpy, steady heartbeat and the cutest little profile I ever did see, already turning 2012 into the best year of my life, hands down, without a doubt, book or no book.

What I'm trying to say is, that thing occupying whatever space I've got left in my mind and taking up all the space in my belly is our baby. Our baby! A boy, our son, due in June. This June! Our baby! Our son!

Bess Feigenbaum's Cabbage Soup
Original recipe here
Serves 8

2 tablespoons olive oil
2 tablespoons chopped garlic
1 cup chopped onion
1 cup peeled and sliced carrots
1 28-ounce can plum tomatoes
1 cup tomato paste
1/2 cup tomato ketchup
1/4 cup dark brown sugar
1 bay leaf
1/2 cup lemon juice
3 pounds green cabbage, approximately half of one large head (tough outer leaves, core and ribs removed), sliced into 1/4-inch-wide strips
1/2 cup golden raisins (optional)
Fresh ground black pepper
Sour cream or plain yogurt

1. In a large pot over medium-low heat, heat olive oil and add garlic. Cook, stirring, until garlic is tender but not browned, about 2 minutes. Add onion and sauté until translucent. Add 3 cups water, carrots, tomatoes and purée, tomato paste, ketchup, brown sugar and bay leaf. Simmer for 10 minutes, then crush the tomatoes with a fork or wooden spoon. Continue to simmer until carrots are tender, about 10 minutes. Discard bay leaf. 

 2. Using an immersion blender, process mixture until it is coarse, not puréed. Add lemon juice, cabbage strips and 3 additional cups water. Place over medium-high heat and cook at a lively simmer until cabbage is meltingly soft, about 2 hours. Add water to thin to desired consistency. Ten minutes before serving, stir in raisins and a few twists of black pepper. Garnish each serving with a dollop of sour cream or yogurt.

2012

Hellooo! I'm still here, folks, just on the other side of the screen, in fact. But the thing is, I've been hiding. Shhhh.

You see, I'm in the home stretch, delivering my book in February (which apparently is four weeks from now? Stupid, silly, good-for-nothing calendar) and as a result I've been gripped with the craziest case of panic and terror and when that happens, I don't know what in the sam hell to write about besides feeling crazy and panicked. And that does not make for particularly gripping reading. So I've hiding from my clipped recipes and - gulp - from you, too. I'm sorry. It's true. It's been for the best, really, but still. I'm sorry.

But it's December 31st and tomorrow it will be 2012 and I couldn't let the year change without a little wave and a hello!, even if my hair is matted and my eyebrows are unkempt and none of my clothes fit and I have a slightly wild-eyed look about me. (Newsflash to aspiring writers everywhere: Writing is bad for your appearance. And your general well-being!)

2011 has been such a good year, what with our wedding and our honeymoon and all manner of other wonderful things. Also, we ate so well:

This pink salad.

A kamut pound cake.

Homemade bagels.

Roasted-carrot and lentil soup.

I learned to love mayonnaise.

And the best banana cake.

But what dawned on me the other day is that even with all that wonderfulness making 2011 a year I'll never forget, 2012 is going to be even better. I mean, holy cats, people. It's going to be nuts. And that makes me feel pretty darn lucky.

I hope you all have a fantastic New Year's celebration, with plenty of dry, fizzy, cold Champagne. Here's to a wonderful 2012 for all of us.

My Uncle Oreste

My mother is the youngest of three children. That's her on the far left. My aunt Laura is next to her, my grandfather is the white-haired dude in the middle and on the right is my uncle Oreste. This photo was taken 14 years ago, at my cousin's wedding. I love how happy everyone looks.

They say that birth order really does determine your character and in the case of my mother's family, it's hard not to believe it. Laura, the oldest, was the family peacemaker, protective and a little bossy. Oreste, the middle child, was the quiet one who was always more content watching from the sidelines than being in the middle of the action. And Letizia, the youngest, was the feisty one who often clashed with my strong-willed, stubborn grandfather even if, or because, she resembled him the most.

I think, in a way, that Laura and Letizia have always seen themselves as being my uncle Oreste's buffers against my grandfather. Oreste was by nature a far gentler spirit than my grandfather, who could be so hard on his children. As hard on them as he was sweet on us, the grandchildren. Which is why it is all the more devastating that Oreste has passed, after a short, intense illness that took us all by surprise. His death was mercifully quick, but his illness itself was a shock to our family, in which so many people lived very long lives, some of them nearing or passing 100. Oreste still had so many years ahead of him.

We're not a religious family. We don't go to church and many of us don't believe in God. So imagining my uncle's path now is a difficult, slightly nebulous thing. I wonder, is he in Verona, hanging out behind his wife's dining room chair, wrapped up in the slightly smoky air he left behind? Or is he in Torre San Tommaso, walking back and forth on the country road that joins the cemeteries where my grandfather and grandmother are buried, past the house that we all love so much even if it holds some memories we'd like to forget? Is he in Toronto, whispering in his son Riccardo's ear that he's with him every step of the way, on Riccardo's trip to India later this month to meet his future wife's family, at City Hall when they marry, at everything that still lies ahead?

I like to think he is in all those places at once. And in Berlin and Brussels, too, flashing his infectious grin at his sisters and telling them not to be sad, that he had a good life even if he had to leave it too soon, a good marriage, a son to be proud of. And that, anyway, he'll be with them always - as the knock-kneed little boy who once fell out of a moving car on a family trip, as the proud father of a baby boy who grew up to have his same smile, as the brother who always knew how much his sisters loved him and love him still.

He's all around us, everywhere.

Monastery of Angels' Pumpkin Bread

I always have to read a little before I go to bed. I get all ready - brush my teeth, wash my face, put on my cashmere bed socks (the best birthday present a girlfriend ever gave me) - and then I get in bed, adjust my pillow, fluff the blanket and open a book. If I don't read before turning off the lights, I'm guaranteed to toss and turn for a long while before falling asleep, if I'm able to do that at all.

For the past few nights, I've been re-reading Farmer Boy. I can't tell you how many times I've read it, but we can all be sure it's a fairly high number. The Little House series was my reason for living when I was a child (until Narnia came long and then Anne of Green Gables and Diana Wynne Jones and, oh, let's stop this right now, otherwise we'll be here all day) and when I was at my friend Joan's last year, gripped with writer's block and worry, she pulled Farmer Boy off her shelf and handed it over to me. "Remember this?"

The pleasure I get from going back into Almanzo's world is hard to put into words. Every other sentence plunges me back in time to when I was first reading about how the Wilder men cut and stored ice, packed in straw, until summertime, how Almanzo and his siblings made candy while their parents were out of town, using up all the good sugar their mother warned them not to finish, how Almanzo longed to be given the responsibilities of caring for the family's horses while his father continued to command him to stay away. And, of course, how little, 9-year old Almanzo put away in one regular weeknight dinner what most of us could barely manage on a holiday like Thanksgiving.

None of us (well, as far as I can imagine) are doing anywhere near the amount of physical labor that he was at nine years old. But still. Here's what Almanzo ate on one winter's evening:

1. Sweet, mellow baked beans
2. Mealy boiled potatoes, with brown ham-gravy
3. Ham
4. Velvety bread spread with sleek butter
5. A tall heap of pale mashed turnips
6. A hill of stewed yellow pumpkin
7. Plum preserves, strawberry jam and grape jelly
8. Spiced watermelon pickles
9. A large piece of pumpkin pie

And then (oh, you didn't think he was done, did you?), the family retired to the fireplace and Almanzo ate popcorn and apples and drank apple cider, and he took such pleasure in this and his family and his life that when I read that bit I always fairly burst with the longing to reach out through time and space and dimension to touch his sweet little self or give him a hug. And also eat a handful of popcorn with a glass of cider in the other hand.

Books, man. They kill me.

We think Thanksgiving is such a busy time and we overwhelm ourselves with grocery lists and cooking strategies and forums on whether to brine or not to brine (actually, this lady doesn't), so reading about how the women in Almanzo's family did that kind of work every day, in addition to churning the butter and curing the ham and dying their own wool and cloth so they could sew their clothes and their own rag carpets, among a hundred other daily chores and duties, well, it's humbling.

The resourcefulness and thrift and sheer doggedness is particularly inspiring, as well as mortifying, of course, because I think nothing of throwing out a stale heel of bread or letting those two stray carrots in the fridge whither into sponginess. While I'm far away from ever wanting to move to a house in upstate New York and become a self-subsistent farmer, what I'm trying to say, I guess, is that Farmer Boy is as enchanting to the adult me now as it was to the little me then.

I made pumpkin pie for our Thanksgiving feast (we celebrated on Saturday instead of Thursday), but due to a little, er, mathematical error, I roasted about six times too much squash in preparation for the pie (this one, in case you're wondering, which was once again demolished in one fell swoop, but with this crust recipe, the second half of which I used for this tart, which was eaten even faster than the pumpkin pie).

I froze some of the squash, but with all the Advent tea times ahead of us in the next month (the Germans are big on Advent Sunday tea time), I decided to get resourceful and bake something to have on hand during the next few weekends. Pumpkin bread from a monastery in Los Angeles that sells loaves for $9 a pop seemed like a good place to start.

The recipe hasn't changed since the early 1970's, which is a pretty good pedigree, if you ask me. It's a basic sweet bread or tea cake or whatever you'd like to call it, spiced with cinnamon and nutmeg (I also added some cloves) and is quiveringly tender and moist. If you, like me, use Hokkaido (or red kuri) squash, your batter will seem practically fluorescent.

I promise, though, that it will mellow in the oven, turning an agreeable, gingerbread-y brown. The crumb is velvety-soft and fragrant with sweet squash and the spices, while the crust gets all caramelized and toothsome. Some bits of it even crunch. It's a lovely thing to eat. I wanted to add walnuts to the batter, but mine were all rancid, so I threw in chopped pecans, the last of a precious stash from the States, instead. Their earthy crunch is a nice thing to happen upon as you work your way through each soft slice of bread.

My only advice would be to try and make as many loaves out of this one batch of batter as you can. I crammed all of the batter into one 13-inch long loaf pan and ended up having to bake the loaf for an hour and a half, nearly burning the edges. If you bake it in smaller loaf pans, the baking time reduces to one hour.

I let it cool completely, then I wrapped it carefully in plastic wrap and foil and put in the freezer where it'll rest until this Sunday when we have friends over for tea in the candlelight.

But next Sunday, I've already decided, there will be popcorn and apples and cider. And in addition to being grateful for my family's good health and my good fortune in life, I'll be saying a little gratitude prayer for books, my constant companions in this life.

Tell me, readers, what were the childhood books that you loved the most?

Monastery of Angels' Pumpkin Bread
Makes 1 13-inch long loaf or 2 smaller loaves
Original recipe here

3.5 cups of all-purpose flour
3 cups sugar
2 teaspoons baking soda
2 teaspoons cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
1.5 teaspoons salt
4 large eggs
1 cup vegetable oil
2/3 cup water
2 cups puréed pumpkin or squash
1/2 cup chopped pecans tossed with a spoonful or two of flour

1. Heat the oven to 350 degrees F. Butter and flour loaf pan(s). Sift together flour, sugar, baking soda, cinnamon, nutmeg and salt in a large bowl.

2. In a separate bowl, combine eggs, oil, water and pumpkin and mix well. Mix the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients until the batter is smooth and there are no streaks of flour left. Fold in the pecans.

3. Scrape the batter into the buttered and floured loaf pan(s). Bake for 1.5 hours or until a cake tester inserted into the center of the bread comes out clean. Cool the pan(s) on a rack for half an hour before turning the loaves out to cool completely. Wrapped tightly, the bread keeps for at least three days.