Manifest Macaron

Ginger with Grapefruit Curd and Orange with Rhubarb Compote

I hope that I'm not boring you with my repetitive macaron entries but my goal is to experiment with the different flavor options available to me on this delicate, airy canvas. Cooking is a new world for me and the combinations of tastes and smells, textures and colors is simultaneously intimidating and thrilling. It is my undiscovered country, which I am exploring with every new recipe I tackle and every mistake I make (like using a plastic spatula on the brittle, yes there is some polymer mixed with my toffee).

On the last page of F. Scott Fitzgerald's "The Great Gatsby", my favorite novel, Nick Carraway realizes that, "[he] became aware of the old island here that flowered once for Dutch sailors’ eyes—a fresh, green breast of the new world... 

Its vanished trees, the trees that had made way for Gatsby’s house, had once pandered in whispers to the last and greatest of all human dreams; for a transitory enchanted moment man must have held his breath in the presence of this continent, compelled into an æsthetic contemplation he neither understood nor desired, face to face for the last time in history with something commensurate to his capacity for wonder."

While I concede that there is a difference between the scale of our discoveries, the new world versus food, there is an unmistakable parallel. When one begins to learn how to cook, it marks not only an interest but a maturation. While making food is an accessory to my lifestyle now as a high school senior, soon enough I will have to do it for and by myself. 

A seemingly quotidian occurrence for adults is my manifest destiny. I have so much to try, so many recipes to conquer and so many dishes to stake my individuality within. I am holding breath in the "presence of this continent" just as Nick and Gatsby did, enthralled by the allure of food and captivated by its hold on my imagination.

It is not as if these dishes have not been perfected before, but like any island or body of water, they can be rediscovered seemingly fresh to the explorer's eyes. So today, I decided to find yet another tantalizing flavor marriage between the shell and the filling. I settled upon ginger shells with grapefruit curd and orange shells with rhubarb compote and also decided to exercise patience and clarity of mind.

I used fancy almond flour from Citarella, which cut down the preparation time considerably. It was very fine and led to smooth macaron shells. Instead of grinding the almonds and confectioner's sugar in the food processor, I sifted it together to make sure it was mixed. I used a few shakes of ground ginger and a few tsps of freshly squeezed orange.

Since I decided to make two flavors, I cut the recipe in half and made each batch one at a time which was luxuriously time consuming. I won't go through the motions yet again, you can refer to my previous macaron posts, but heed my new suggestions.

I let the piped cookies sit on the counter for forty minutes so that they developed a pre-baking shell. The resulting macarons were much better: slightly taller and with more pronounced feet, exactly as they should be. Before I lead you on too long, I should confess that while my ginger macarons were perfect, my orange ones were on the whole pretty cracked and footless (with some photographed exceptions).

My conclusion is that since I used a few tablespoons of squeezed orange, I diluted the mixture too much leading to an under-mixed batter. Next time I will reduce the water content of the orange by boiling the juice. Try try again. However, like I mentioned before, even macaron failures are delicious.

For the grapefruit curd filling, I modified my lemon curd recipe by adding half a grapefruit and its zest. Since it was a bit too sweet, I also added some lemon juice and zest and a pinch of salt. The rhubarb compote called for two cups of 1/2 chopped bits of rhubarb thrown into a saucepan with 3/4 cup of sugar and the juice of one lemon. Simmer on a medium low flame for five plus minutes until the rhubarb is soft and then put in the refrigerator for two hours.

One success and one scrumptious eh. I am immensely pleased and tingling with excitement at this newfound method of increasing the chances of a macaron victory. I will continue to forge ahead and discover what older but not wiser people already find mundane. Nick Carraway finishes, "it eluded us then, but that’s no matter—tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther. . . . And one fine morning—So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past," but always a step ahead of where we started...macaron-wise that is.

Walnut Chocolate Toffee Brittle with Sea Salt

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow said, "The best thing one can do when it's raining is to let it rain." And so today, even though I would have much rather been doing layback spins under the morning sun, I let it rain. While I thought of something to cook I studied for my upcoming Latin exam on the Vulgate (the Bible translated into Latin) and read a few chapters of "Leviathan" by Thomas Hobbes for my social contract class. Suffice it to say that after a few chapters on the relative injustices of defying natural laws I fell asleep and napped for two hours unencumbered by the prospect of work. It is so nice to be on break.

By the time I was done studying, the idea of leaving the house to get ingredients seemed daunting as the sun set and the rain poured down. Some winter we've been having. But, since I am embracing the relative merits of rainy days I decided to make something out of what I already had in the cabinets and refrigerator.  My linear algebra teacher last semester joked that he would put a question on our exam asking us to make a dish out of the elements that he listed from his apartment. Needless to say, he did not and the questions that he did put on were a trifle more difficult.

However, not only did I want to make a dish that I already had the ingredients for, I also wanted to try something new and after searching various blogs and cookbooks, I came upon a recipe for walnut chocolate toffee brittle with sea salt, which I don't think has quite enough modifiers.

To begin, I melted four sticks of butter (2 cups) with 2 cups of white sugar and a pinch of salt. This will take a few minutes to melt and you should help it along by mixing and simultaneously breaking up the butter. After it has melted, stir it into a homogenous mixture and put the flame on medium high. Within five to ten minutes the mixture will come to a boil and you should mix periodically during this time interval.

For the next ten or so minutes, I mixed the brittle continuously to make sure that it did not burn. You should do this until the mixture is a dark amber or 300 F on a candy thermometer, which I do not own, and then stir in two cups of chopped up walnuts (or pecans, peanuts, almonds...) and make sure they are evenly distributed. 

Before hand, I lined two cookie tins with tin foil. You should pour the mixture onto these tins and then use a metal (not a plastic) spatula to spread it around until it is about 1/4 inch thick. Wait a minute or so and then pour two cups of semi-sweet chocolate chips on top. These will take four or five minutes to melt and then spread the chocolate around with a spatula. 

After a few minutes, sprinkle on your sea salt and put the brittle in the freezer for 30 minutes so the chocolate solidifies. When you take it out, break it up into little pieces (the size is up to you but mine were mostly 2 1/2 to 3 in. long and 1 in. wide. I stored them in a plastic container in the fridge and put pieces of wax paper between the layers so the candies don't stick together.

Rainy days do have their place. They make you slow down and devise your own entertainment, whether that is an old movie or making brittle and licking the spatula covered with melted chocolate. But for tomorrow...rain rain go away come again some other day little Nika wants to play.

Macaron Madness

Parisian Macarons: Star Anise and Vanilla with Lemon Curd Filling

I have been bitten by the macaron bug, a plague that has infected about forty percent of the foodie blogosphere and thus far is cured only by perfection. Since we can only advance asymptotically to perfection, we are left floundering with a chronic illness doomed to haunt us forever. Like any disorder, there is a large range of severity and I seem to have a milder version but nonetheless the agonizing symptoms drive me to alleviate them in whatever way I can: making more macarons.

Thus, like any clever parasite or immunological trickster, macaron madness is a positive feedback loop: when I make macarons, I get even madder and then I just have to make more macarons. Today was my third adventure into the world of persnickety cookies and while many of macarons cracked (apparently from being underwhipped and too humid), a few were pretty enough for a shoot.

I seemed to find the best possible flavor combination the last two times I made macarons: cardamom and lemon with buttercream frosting and so I found myself like a returning champion doomed to fail because I could not live up to my own creation. Luckily, as I searched through the spice rack I found beautiful star anise seeds, which smell like licorice and decided to combine the crushed seeds with 1 teaspoon of vanilla extract. Since the cookie was going to be slightly sweeter because of the vanilla, I chose to contrast the shell with a lemon curd filling from Tea and Sympathy's cookbook (see Lemon Danish post).

Mind you, I made these cookies in under two hours while I ate heated up leftovers for lunch before I left for my job as a figure skating coach, running out of the door the minute they came out of the oven. So, as one of my five year old students today said to me after we finished a conversation about the various designs of rink sideboards, "Speaking of shipwrecks..." you first grind your almonds and confectioners sugar (see specific amounts in my first Parisian Macaron post), and then sift into a separate bowl.

After you feel satisfied with the texture of your almond powder, whip your egg whites and sugar on low for three minutes, on medium high for three minutes and on high for three minutes. Now you should add your flavors and colors. I ground about five or six anise stars in a mortar and pestle and added the powder and one teaspoon of vanilla extract to the meringue. I also added a squeeze of yellow food gel to give the cookies a nice lemony look.

Then beat your meringue for thirty or so seconds on the highest speed of your mixer and pause. Fold in your dry ingredients and add 1/2 tsp of salt (better to add this to your almond flour before hand so it disperses). Use a rubber spatula to mix, folding for as long as it takes to create a homogenous mixture of lava like goo. Deflate the meringue as you go along to expel any potential air bubbles and then add your mixture to a silicone pastry bag or a makeshift ziplock one.

Squeeze out as many cookies as you can fit (they don't expand so you can bunch them as close together as you want) and then tap the trays on your counters to give a final kick in the butt to the bubbles. Your oven should be pre-heated to 300 F and you can cook them for 18 minutes. Proper macarons should have "feet", which are the little bubbles around the edges in the picture above. Like I mentioned before, for some reason or another many of my macaron shells had cracks in them, but the problem might be as simple as too high a temperature in the oven (place on the middle rather than upper shelf).

While Not so Humble Pie has a great, but wonderfully neurotic, diagnostic survey to diagnose your macaron ineptitude, my hypothesis is that these cookies will work when they want to. I cannot isolate a single error factor present today that was not present during my first two tries (I have always been in a hurry, same oven, same tins, same almond source...) but nonetheless, some of my macarons just were not in the mood today. Fortunately, even cracked and footless macarons still taste sublime.

Since I don't like to leave the ice on a bad jump (it leaves a bad taste in my mouth), I will try try try again. Whereas repeatedly falling on a bullet sit spin this morning at my freestyle session was not so fun for certain parts of my body, trying to improve my macarons is a treat in and of itself. This flavor combination was amazing and my next attempt might be....drumroll please...chocolate with a blood orange curd filling. Yet I, like many, are driven to make these cookies because in their facade of simplicity they offer up the ultimate challenge. It's as if the macaron stares back at me from its perch on my plate saying, try to make me again, just try. In "Isis" one of my favorite songs by Bob Dylan he finishes by singing, "Isis oh Isis, you mystical child, what drives me to you is what drives me insane." Like all that is worth doing, as I told countless four year olds today, you must fall down. But on a less corny and more poignant note as Dylan finishes, "I cursed her one time, then I rode on ahead."

Butter and Love

Chocolate Chip Cookies

There is a Norwegian proverb that says,"Cookies are made with butter and love." Butter and love are often synonymous but here are distinguished simply because butter has a corporeal manifestation that is essential to the perfect biscuit. Like so many of the best inventions and discoveries, chocolate chip cookies were created by accident. 

While Alexander Fleming was busy accidentally stumbling upon Penicillium notatum and Alfred Nobel was fooling around with stable dynamite (an ill-advised pastime), Ruth Graves Wakefield was creating chocolate chip cookies in 1930. It takes some skill to find killer mold growing on staphylococci bacteria and to understand the molecular structure of stabilized nitroglycerine, but to accidentally invent possibly the best cookie that exists is worthy of well a Nobel Prize (take that Alfred!) 

What did children munch on when they returned home from school in 1929 BC (Before Chocolate chip cookies)? Cookies these days are contrived and ostentatious. A wonderful gourmet bakery in Williamsburg, Marlow & Sons sells Fleur de Sel chocolate chip cookies. In an episode of M*A*S*H, Hawkeye observes that, "champagne is just ginger-ale that knows somebody," and while I do love the fleur de sel cookies, there is something (a lot of somethings actually) to be said about simplicity. 

My dad and I have made these cookies together since I was a little squirt and now I find comfort in their consistency and steadfastness. One of my primary reasons for making them is so that I can scrape the sides of the mixing bowl replete with sugar, eggs, walnuts, chocolate and butter. I use the recipe on the back of the chocolate chip bag which calls for 2 1/4 cups of flour, 1 tsp baking soda, 1/2 tsp salt to be mixed together. 

Then add 1 cup of butter, 3/4 cup brown sugar and 3/4 cup white sugar to the mixer. Gradually add in two eggs and continue to mix. Little by little, add the dry ingredients and finish by pouring in chocolate chips (semi-sweet Ghirardelli) and chopped walnuts. Bake in the oven for 10 minutes at 375 F. I let the cookies settle on cooling trays until they hardened a bit and then I set them up for their photo shoot. 

They are wholesome, reliable, valiant little marvels that treat and cure sicknesses of the body and soul. Chopin once said, “Simplicity is the final achievement. After one has played a vast quantity of notes and more notes, it is simplicity that emerges as the crowning reward of art." So perhaps after my dalliances with macarons and danishes, I shall return to Ruth's accident.

Oggy Oggy Oggy

Cornish Pasties

Last summer, I embarked on an ancestral journey through archival records, family interviews, photographs and old books that documented members of my family. The 20th century emigrations in my family from both Italy and Poland were much more difficult to trace because of the lack of public records in both of those countries and the disorganization once they were processed in the United States. It was also very difficult to trace the slightly earlier pilgrimages from Scotland and France due to the commonness of the names Gilpatrick and Goudreau, but my family's emigration from England was well documented in Maine's historical records.

Using a combination of ancestry.com, family websites (I am distantly related to so many people), military records for my Crockett and Strout ancestors given to be my great aunt, Jean Gilpatrick, and a book that she was given concerning schooner owners on Chebeague Island, I was able to trace my English roots to the mid 16th century. I started with my third great-grandfather, Isaac Everett Strout, who built a church on the aforementioned island that still stands today. My dad and I explored it a few years ago and found our way into its attic where thousands of ladybugs had found a home.

From there, I was able to find his roots in Truro, Massachusetts and from there I found James B. Strowthe born in Cornwall, England in 1582. His son, Anthony and his daughter in-law Mary Olyver had a son named Christopher who is cited as the first Maine Strout to appear in the New World. He was born in a province of Cornwall called Egloshayle and died in Truro in 1715. When Isaac married Ella May Crockett, whose family was originally from Devonshire, the two English halves of my family were brought together. As a result of my Cornish roots, I decided to make a classic English dinner called Cornish Pasties also known as Oggies, since that is Cornish (a Celtic language in Cornwall still spoken by a few hundred people today) for pasty.

My motivation for making these ancient pies was informed partly by my quest for my historical roots and  partly by my intense hunger after teaching skating to little weebeasties for 4 hours on Saturday. I found the recipe in my "Tea and Sympathy" cookbook, which called for suet in my dough. I however, did not read the entire recipe through and after adding the improvised suet (I used duck fat), I realized that I was going to need to steam the dough for nearly 3 hours, which simply put, was not going to happen.

So instead of my trusty recipe I scoured the internet for viable alternatives and found one that I liked from the food network's website. This did not call for steaming and suggested using lard instead of suet. I modified the recipe and added twoish ounces of butter and twoish ounces of duck fat. But before I get ahead of myself as Maria von Trapp would say, "Let's start at the very beginning, that's a very good place to start, when you read you begin with ABC's when you sing you begin with do-re-mi," when you make cornish pasties you begin with 2 1/4 cups of flour, 2 tsp confectioner's sugar and 1 tsp salt.

Add 3 ounces of cold butter and the combo I told you about earlier (2 ounces of butter and 2 ounces of duck fat or lard). You can also use vegetarian shortening like Crisco. Mix this together and then add a one egg yolk and 6 tbs of cold water whisked together. Knead this all together into a ball and place in the refrigerator for 30 minutes or more. In the mean time in between time, you should make your filling. I used Tea and Sympathy's filling, which called for 2 lbs of ground lamb although I recommend 1, since I had a lot of leftover, 2 onions peeled and diced, 2 small carrots peeled and diced, some herbs of your choice (I used basil and thyme), and two peeled and diced potatoes. I sautéed the onions in olive oil and then added the lamb, carrots, herbs and two tablespoons of Worcestershire sauce. I boiled the potatoes until they were tender and then added them to the cooked lamb mixture and sprinkled on some salt and pepper.

I then removed the dough from the refrigerator and rolled it out on the counter until it was about 1/4 inch thick. I used a bowl with a 5 inch diameter to make circles and then cut them out with a knife. For each circle, I added about 3 tablespoons of the lamb filling to one side of the circle. Your finished pasty will be a semi-circle so close the circle by folding it over and pressing the sides closed with your fingers. Make three slits in the top of the pasty and brush with whisked eggs (use both the whites and the yolks for your glaze). I also brushed the egg onto the side of the circle before I closed it.

I baked these (yields 6) at 400 F for 20 minutes and then at 350 F until they were golden. I made mashed potatoes to accompany the oggies although they can alternatively be served with baked beans. The crust was uber flaky, I made my papa proud, and the lamb was delicious. They are very rich and I couldn't finish mine but as Parolles said in All's Well that End's Well, "I will confess to what I know without constraint: if ye pinch me like a pasty, I can say no more."