Hey Devon,

Last year around this time I half put together this recipe for chouxettes... then time went by and it was past blueberry season, and I decided to hold off. This recipe is meant for this time of year, when you can get fresh, inexpensive blueberries. It’s pretty festive too, if you are into 4th of July themed foods.

My great grandmother made this recipe, in fact it is written in her very old copy of the Joy Of Cooking. She lived to be 101, and made this well into her 90s. Coincidentally her sister passed away this week at 101 also. Now my mom mainly carries on the tradition of blueberry buckle, I’d say we have it at least 4 times a summer. She makes it for parties, out of town visitors... birthday breakfasts (with a more traditional birthday cake later on).

For me, blueberry buckle tastes like summer, and must be eaten on a napkin, while standing up, in the kitchen of the beach house, trying to avoid crumbs going all over (its inevitable, and probably shouldn’t be eaten that way). The thing is, you have to eat standing up so that when you are done you can cut another oddly-shaped piece to disguise how much of the cake you are taking. It is typically gone within a couple hours, though in our defense there are a lot of people there, waiting to pounce on it.

You can double the recipe and make it in a 9”x13”, as pictured here.

Blueberry Buckle

Mix thoroughly:

¾ Cup Sugar
¼ Cup Soft Butter
1 Egg

Stir in:

½ C Milk

Sift together and stir in:

2 Cup Flour
2 tsp Baking Powder
½ tsp Salt

Carefully blend in

2 Cups (well drained) Blueberries
(can sub in frozen in off season, just defrost and drain, though they will bleed more into the batter)

To make crumb topping, mash together with a fork until course crumbs are formed:

½ Cup Sugar
⅓ Cup Flour
½ tsp Cinnamon (I’d double that)
¼ Cup Soft Butter

Spread batter into a buttered and floured 9” square pan. Sprinkle with topping.

Bake at 375 Degrees for 40-45 minutes (I think around an hour if you double it). Cake is done when it feels solid and no batter sticks to a tooth pick, crumbs and blueberry mush are to be expected.

That’s Bea’s handwriting (my great-grandmother and middle-namesake).

Hope to see you soon,

Amanda

Chocolate and Sea Salt Tostadas

Dear Devon,

Short post today. I am leaving in a few hours for a weekend adventure to Valencia with a carload of friends. Packing is still on the “to do” list, as is lunch, both eating and making. But I wanted to tempt you with something to think over or possibly try this weekend.

My last half dozen posts have featured one ingredient: chocolate. I don’t confess to be a full-blown chocolate fiend (not yet that is), but I do have a completely new appreciation for it. The Spaniards love their chocolate dark, bitter, and pure. Here, chocolate is made from only three ingredients: cacao, sugar, and vanilla. No chemicals, no additives, no extra flavorings, just three ingredients, and it definitely shows in both the flavor and its shiny surface. The chocolate is richer, smoother, not overly sweetened and without that gross waxy texture that I’ve known all my life.

For the past few months, I have regularly stopped in at some of the best chocolate shops in the city. I am slowly befriending the staff and gleaning ideas for desserts and savories. Some of these shops have been in business for over 100 years, using the same techniques, recipes, and even grinder, delighting generations of Barcelonans. I can’t brag to have tried the entire stable of truffles or bonbons at any one place. Let’s just say, I have a completely new respect for chocolate and Hershey’s ranks below crayola.

My inspiration for this recipe is a bit hazy. I’ve seen variations of this flavor combination on menus, chocolate bars, and even in the NY Times. All I know is that it’s delicious, especially when you use the finest chocolate, bright sea salt and pungent olive oil. Since there are only four ingredients (bread counts too), you really need to invest in the best products. Set aside the table salt and crayons for another dish, real fleur de sel and good chocolate will make all the difference.

Chocolate and Sea Salt Tostadas
(makes 12)

1 baguette, sliced
large chunk of good dark chocolate (71% is best)
1 generous pinch of sea salt
3 tbsp olive oil

Arrange sliced baguette on a cutting board. Grate chocolate over the slices. A vegetable peeler works well, cutting the chocolate into long swirling strips. Sprinkle with a good pinch of sea salt and olive oil.

These are best eaten right away. Serve as an afternoon snack or a light dessert.

Our M. Wells Diner Dinner

Dear Michelle, 

You must come back IMMEDIATELY. I have had one of the top ten meals of my life. 

I have many things to tell you about: Thomas Keller’s split pea soup, my time at home, naan cooked on the grill, rose infused vinegar, but this trumps all of them. Jeff heard about this place a while ago, a little diner car restaurant called M. Wells in Queens run by two transplants from Montreal, and decided to take me there for our first anniversary. 

I was fairly excited, having read good things about escargot, bone marrow, calves brains, you know, the things I tend to get curious about. We took the G train up into Long Island City, and walked a short way to the diner.  

The sun was setting, the night was mild and pleasant, and my hunger suddenly piqued to the point where I start getting a little weird. We entered the unassuming little diner car to an enclave of clatter and chatter, full of happy faces and promising smells. We wanted to try several things, and our waiter recommended five to six small dishes, so we hemmed and hawed and finally chose those that most intrigued us. 

The escargot with bone marrow was one of the dishes I’d read about and had really wanted to try, and immediately when it arrived I popped a piping hot snail covered in fat, parsley and bread crumbs in my mouth. I was lucky I didn’t burn myself! After that first hot but satisfying bite, I tried the cold dish that Jeff had wanted to order, Porchetta Sierra, while the escargot cooled a bit. 

I had not been all that excited about this dish; it was described as thinly sliced pork with a mackerel mayo and fried caper berries. Roast pork isn’t my favorite, but I was interested enough by the idea of it with fish mayonnaise. This ended up being my favorite dish, so elegant in its simplicity. The very juicy, thinly sliced roast pork had plenty of melty, not chewy, fatty bits. It was laid out in a circle on a plate, and the inner part of that circle was spread with a greyish mayo, and sprinkled all over were fried capers. 

This mayonnaise was the perfect amount of salty and umami for the pork, and the fried capers added a pop of much needed color and crunch. I don’t even like capers, which usually taste like mildew to me, but fried they are delicious! Jeff didn’t like it as much because mayonnaise weirds him out, but he did like his first ever taste of escargot, which was delicious, perfectly cooked. I was disappointed, and this was my only disappointment, that the marrow was liquid. I don’t know if this was by design or not, but I’d have liked spreadable marrow for the crunchy little toasts on the side instead of molten marrow that needed to be soaked up from the plate. 

Next out was caesar salad, Grouper cordon blue, and smoked chicken legs with fries. I don’t remember in what order we ate, but I am sure the level of gluttony we reached might have been just short of a deadly sin. The salad, Jeff’s idea as a light addition to the meal, was just that. It was a beautiful pile of green with a few golden croutons, all covered with a generous feathery fluff of fine, long bits of grated cheese. The dressing was made with smoked herring instead of anchovies, a nice touch. 

The Grouper cordon blue was good, although I was starting to recognize the physical limits of my stomach at this point. The fish was fried, with a crispy thin crust (I’m guessing cornmeal), combined with mortadella, pickled ramps (YUM), and a sour cream dressing on a thin toasted sourdough roll. That sauce was so good that even after I was uncomfortably stuffed, I was eating the leftover roll with the dressing soaked in. 

The most impressive dish of the night was the smoked chicken legs with fries. You see that description, and you think of a plate of drumsticks on fries, maybe with some sort of sauce, right? I did. What we got was a giant platter with a WHOLE CHICKEN LEG, thigh to claws, on top of biscuits and thin crunchy fries, all dripping with the best barbeque sauce ever. I say bbq sauce, but it was more like a cross between that and gravy (and it would have made an excellent poutine), thick and glossy and sweet and smoky and spicy. When I try to replicate this, I will make a white roux, then add chicken stock, tomato paste, apple cider vinegar, cayenne, paprika, and brown sugar. We each ate enough of the leg to taste it, as it was the most likely to be good reheated. That will be our dinner tonight, and the bones will go in with a ham hock and bacon to some baked beans I’ll make later in the week. You can bet I’ll try to make them taste like that sauce. 

When our waiter came by to ask about dessert (sigh), I told him this was the best meal I’d had all year, that it was exemplary. He returned with a bottle of maple syrup liquor (delicious!), and did a shot with us. It was a truly memorable evening, and we MUST go back when you return!

Frozen Chocolate Truffles

Dear Devon,

In an effort to get a bit more language practice, I registered for a cooking class at my local civic center. Unfortunately, there are no molecular gastronomy courses, but at 50 Euros a semester, I was hardly going to register a complaint. I put my money down for a chocolate themed dessert class. I had hoped that I’d learn to make liquor-filled bonbons but the class was more focused on baked goods than confections. In practice and theory, I knew how to make most of the recipes. In hindsight, it was for the better. My language skills are steadily improving but my comprehension greatly depended on my prior baking experience.

The partial meltdowns of my anxious teacher could fill an entire volume. In many ways, the course was particularly cruel to her. The kitchen is hardly equipped for teaching let alone actually baking. There was the constant threat of equipment malfunction (fridge or microwave), lack of basic materials like bowls, whisks or scale, and then there was the portly student from whose mouth issued a constant and unrelenting stream of advice, stories, loosely-linked words, and general nonsense. In six weeks, I know more details about her life than yours.

Given these setbacks, the class altered my perceptions of what is actually possible in the kitchen. The obvious lack of materials and occasional mistake didn’t stop us from making some really fantastic desserts. Sure, it had the distinct look of homemade and yes, at times, there was the failed, trash bound cake or cookies. She proved to me that it was possible to make and not just purchase macaroons. Truffles are delightfully easy to make and can even serve as the base for an amazingly decadent, dark chocolate cake.


I have been mulling over the recipes and the class for a few weeks, trying to decide where or if to begin experimenting. I admit, when looking over the packet of recipes, I am largely uninspired but then again, it usually isn’t the recipe that inspires me to start cooking, it’s the market.

There’s a wonderful stand at La Boqueria that specializes in foods of the forest. In the fall, the stand overflows with morels, truffles, wild mushrooms, and strange looking roots. Summer’s bounty includes zucchini blossoms, white asparagus, and wild strawberries. These berries are wonderful. They are about the size of my fingernail but intensely sweet and amazingly fragrant. One tiny berry is tastier than an entire giant American strawberry. I eat them like candy. Encasing them in chocolate truffle seemed the next logical step.


Frozen Chocolate Truffles
(makes 36)

100 grams of butter
50 grams of sugar (confectioner’s is best, but granulated will do)
100 grams of chocolate (70 % cacao)
1 egg yolk
1 tsp hazelnut oil (optional)
1 tsp espresso
24 frozen wild strawberries
¼ cup cocoa powder
1/4 cup coconut (optional)

Wash and gently dry wild strawberries. Place berries without touching one another on a small tray and freeze. Leave overnight.

Gently melt butter over a pot of simmering water. Remove melted butter from the heat and whisk in sugar and egg yolk. In a separate bowl, melt the chocolate with hazelnut oil and water. Add the butter mixture to the melted chocolate and thoroughly mix. Cool in the fridge until firm to the touch, roughly 2 hours.

When the chocolate mixture is set and the berries have frozen, begin forming the truffles. Using two spoons, scoop a bit of the ganache into each spoon. Center one frozen berry in one of the two spoons and cover the berry with the ganache from the second spoon. Work the spoons around each other, to form a small ball. It is similar to forming quenelles.

In a small bowl, sift in cocoa powder. Roll the freshly formed truffle in cocoa powder. I had some extra truffles so I rolled them in coconut. Set the finished truffle on a platter and continue with the remaining berries. Freeze the entire tray of truffles until set, roughly 2 hours.

Store in the freezer in a plastic container.

Note: Be sure to work quickly. The truffle mix will begin to soften if left out too long and will make forming the truffles difficult. If this happens, pop the bowl back into the fridge for a bit until the mixture hardens again.

Fira Lactium: Vic

Dear Devon,

Last November, fresh off of six weeks of intensive Spanish lessons, I tested my new skills at my first Barcelona dinner party. Seated with eight other guests around a large wooden table and a generous dinner of wild mushroom risotto and braised chard, I listened to the excited chatter. The conversations moved quickly and fluidly. I strung together snippets of phrases and pieces of dialogue, my tongue stilled by their effortless chatter.

The conversation shifted to food, specifically cheese. One cheese-loving guest praised a soft, fragrant cheese from the Basque Country in emotional terms, finally pounding his fist on table in excitement and frustration with the gentle teasing of our fellow table companions. I had to interrupt. How often do I run across such an ardent cheese enthusiast? That’s when he told me where to find cheese heaven, otherwise known as the Fira Lactium in Vic, the largest town in the Catalan comarca of Osona. Like Christmas, it comes only once a year in May. I jotted down the details and even made a note in my calendar to remind myself to look for the fair in April. Six months later we were on a train headed north to the Fira Lactium.


Vic was in the full throws of its Saturday market, but the big event of the day was the cheese fair. Vegans and lactose-intolerants be warned: This is glorious dairy indulgence. I was warned to restrain myself to avoid overwhelming my tastebuds. The sour, flowery, rich smell of cheese was everywhere, as were the samples! Producers’ stands lined the street and a temporary eating hall had been erected at the heart of the fair.

When we arrived, the cheese competition was in full swing. Four tables of judges scribbling, sniffing, poking, and eating cheese filled most of the tent. Two sample plates with an assortment of hot and cold cheeses were being sold. Buying both of these meant trying sixteen different cheeses. For our panel of three, these two plates were more than enough. One cheese in particular had our heads spinning. We brought the sample to the front to ask for more details, only to be told that since the competition was still in progress, the name and origin of the cheese could not be revealed. Undeterred, we took our small sample to the each of the thirty-odd cheese stands, hoping the vendor would recognize his cheese. Unfortunately, this didn’t work either: We never did find our mystery cheese, but we boarded the train to Barcelona carrying artisanal yogurts, cheesecake, and of course, cheese.

The real surprise of the excursion was that we bumped into our fist-pounding friend, whom we found tasting the very same cheese from the Basque country that he had praised to us six months earlier.

Coconut & Sea Salt Brownies

Dear Devon,

A few months ago, Melissa Clark had a recipe in the Times for brownies made with olive oil, sea salt, and shredded coconut. I bookmarked the recipe, and ran to the store to buy some shredded coconut, but it wasn’t until last week that I got around to making the brownies.

I thought I knew how to bake the perfect brownies: Moist, dense, fudgy squares with a crunchy crust. But Ms. Clark’s recipe gave me something to think about. She substitutes olive oil for butter, runs a layer of coconut through the brownie, and dusts the top with sea salt for extra flavor. Her tweaking of a classic recipe and play with unusual ingredients grabbed my interest right away.


I’ve only started to experiment with olive oil as a baking ingredient very recently. The wide variety of good and reasonably priced Spanish olive oil, plus my lack of an eggbeater, has made me reconsider recipes in which I always used butter. It’s broadened my repertoire. I’ve found that olive oil gives a nice fruitiness to cakes and baked goods, and renders a moist crumb that is sometimes lacking in butter-laden recipes.

Following Melissa Clark’s advice, I sprinkled the top of my brownies with good quality sea salt from Mallorca. This topping gave the brownies an unusual character and flavor, a bit peppery, and even buttery. Since buying a box of sea salt, my palette has felt the sparkle of salt. It’s become indispensible on my kitchen table, topping everything from fresh salads to pastas primavera. If I keep discovering new gastronomic delights, I’ll have to throw out all my clothes to make room for them in my suitcase.


Coconut & Sea Salt Brownies
(adapted from Melissa Clark NY Times 2/4/2011)

½ cup plus 2 tbsp water, boiling
1/3 cup cocoa powder, unsweetened
2 oz chocolate, coarsely chopped (70% or higher)
3 large eggs
1 egg yolk
1 tsp hazelnut oil
1 cup sugar
1 ¾ cup all-purpose flour, sifted
¾ tsp salt
2 ½ oz chocolate, chopped
1 cup shredded coconut
1 tbsp fleur de sel

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Butter a 9 x 13 inch pan. Set aside.

Sift cocoa powder into a large mixing bowl. Pour in boiling water and whisk until cocoa is dissolved. Add 2 oz chopped chocolate. Stir until chocolate is melted. Add olive oil and hazelnut oil. Beat in eggs one at a time, until the yolks disappear. Gradually add sugar. The mixture will look curdled and at first the olive oil will not mix into the chocolate, but keep working. With steady whisking, the batter will come together into a smooth chocolatey-mixture. Using a rubber spatula, fold in flour and table salt. Fold in 2 ½ oz chopped chocolate.

Pour batter into the oiled pan. Sprinkle with sea salt and shredded coconut. It is easiest to start with the sea salt. It’s amazing how easily the sea salt hides in the finely shredded coconut.

Bake 25 to 30 minutes. The toothpick test doesn’t work here, so be sure your oven is at the right temperature. I also like to turn on the broiler for just a bit, to get the coconut nicely toasted.

Cool on a wire rack. Cut into nicely sized squares.

Red Onion and Cherry Tomato Pizza

Dear Devon,

There are some combinations of flavors that should be repeated, and repeated often. For me, red onion and fresh cherry tomatoes with roasted garlic is one of those unbeatable combinations. About two weeks ago, I walked past an artisanal pizza shop. A fresh tray of hot pizza topped with red onions and cherry tomatoes had just been set in the display window. The clean white tiled interior and chalkboard menu drew me into the shop. It was dangerously close to dinnertime, but I bought a slice, anyway, and walked home munching on warm pizza.

Fingers barely wiped clean of grease, I thought to myself: I can do this, and I can do it better. I set a frozen ball of pizza dough out to defrost and made a mental list of ingredients: cherry tomatoes, red onion, garlic, and basil.

Don’t expect to get the most scrumptious results without using the best quality ingredients. Lately, I have been getting some delicious red cherry tomatoes from the local market. Sweet and bright, these tomatoes are great in salads, sauces, or as a refreshing snack. I have taken to eating them cold, straight out of the fridge. My other recent luxury is fresh basil– I was planning to make a big batch of pesto– so a few big leaves made it onto my pizza, as well. A few slices from a wedge of raclette cheese added that last touch to the rich flavors fo the pizza. Requests for a second round have already been recorded!

Red Onion and Cherry Tomato Pizza

Pizza dough
1 red onion
5 cherry tomatoes, sliced
3 cloves of garlic, smashed and sliced
¼ to ½ cup tomato sauce
cheese

Preheat oven to 450 degrees F.

Roll out dough on a lightly floured surface, forming a large disk. Sprinkle a bit of cornmeal on the pizza board and set the prepared dough on top. Spread a generous spoonful of tomato sauce over the dough. Top with thinly sliced red onions and garlic. Next, top with cheese and tomatoes.

Bake in the oven until golden brown and the cheese is nicely melted, about 15 minutes.

Chocolate Chip Cookies - Crispy Style

Dear Devon,

There may be amazing desserts in Europe, but there isn’t anything quite like a good old American chocolate chip cookie. I am a full-blown cookie monster, and for the past seven months, I’ve have been satisfying my cravings with European “cookies.” Flat, hard, crunchy, more like crackers than the buttery, sweet, dense morsels that we call cookies. They are adequate, but some days, a girl just needs her cookies!


I asked a Europe-bound friend to bring a box of brown of sugar, so I could get a bit of the US into my Barcelona apartment. I am thrilled that she dragged it eastward in her suitcase (warm hugs to her boyfriend, who ran to the corner store to pick up my last minute request). Brown sugar in hand, I prepared for a chocolate-chip-cookie-baking marathon.

About half way through the recipe, I realized that I was ½ cup short on flour. I was hardly going to run to the store for an extra ½ cup of flour. Instead, I substituted that ½ cup of flour for an equal amount of shredded coconut. How big of an effect could it have?

Well… do you know Tate’s Bake Shop? They turn out amazingly crispy and almost caramel-like chocolate chip cookies. Unassumingly packed into clear plastic bags with big green labels, these cookies were an occasional afternoon treat in my New York office. And while I never turned down a Tate’s cookie, I was not convinced that their style could be recreated in the home kitchen. In my current state of deprivation, impatience was a virtue… I inadvertently discovered the magical proportion of butter to flour to chocolate that must be the secret of Tate’s chocolate chip crisps!

As a side note, these cookies are best eaten cold, with a nice cup of tea or coffee– they’re actually not all that great for ice-cream sandwiches.


Crisp Chocolate Chip Cookies
(makes about 6 dozen small cookies)

1 ½ cups all-purpose flour
½ cup shredded coconut
1 tsp salt
¾ tsp baking soda
8 oz butter, at room temp (2 sticks)
1 cup sugar
2/3 cup light brown sugar (packed)
2 large eggs
12 oz dark chocolate, chopped into large chunks
1 cup hazelnuts, chopped

Preheat oven to 375 degrees F. Line baking sheet with parchment paper or silpat.

In a large bowl, whisk together flour, shredded coconut, salt, and baking soda. Set aside.

In a second large bowl, beat butter until smooth with a wooden spoon (or to save your arm strength for carrying groceries from the subway, use an electric mixer). Add brown and white sugars, mix until well-blended. Beat in eggs one at a time until each is well-incorporated. In three portions, mix in dry ingredients, nuts, and chocolate chunks. Cool in the fridge for 1 hour, until the dough is firm and set.

Using two spoons, carefully transfer dough onto baking sheets. Set far apart, about 2 inches. The cookies will spread in the oven.

Bake the cookies, 8 to 12 minutes. Checking the oven at the 8 minute mark. When the cookies are nice and brown, pull the sheet from the oven and let cool for 1 or 2 minutes. The cookies will harden as they cool. Set aside on a wire rack.

Repeat with the remaining dough, cooling baking sheet between batches.

Mallorca, the real ensaimada

Dear Devon,

One of my favorite treats is a fluffy, spiral-shaped ensaimada. Dusted with a generous sprinkling of powdered sugar, the simple yeasted pastry has a history that extends back to the Middle Ages. The story goes that the spiral shape was modeled after the ends of Torah scrolls. The ensaimada can be found in every pastry case. (I am particularly fond of the ones offered at my corner shop.)

Mallorca claims to make the true ensaimada. I suppose Paris could claim to make the true croissant, but are such declarations necessary? The island of Mallorca seems to think so. A sticker denoting geographical indication, similar to the French system of Appellation d'origine controlée, appears in every ensaimada-selling establishment, as does a bright orange sticker on each ensaimada box. The poster sums up their feelings.

A week ago, I was fortunate enough to sample the “real” ensaimada. A friend, who made a quick two-day jaunt to the sunny town of Palma, brought one up to Barcelona. Transported in an octagonal blue box patterned with white dots and stamped with the orange Consell Regulador Indicació Geográfica Protegida sticker, the ensaimada rested under a soft blanket of powdered sugar and white tissue. Larger than any reasonable single serving, this could easily feed four people. I later learned that some reached the size of small dining table: Imagine putting one of those in the overhead bin!

I whipped out my camera, took some pictures, and couldn’t wait until morning, when this pillowy treat would be my breakfast. I wasn’t disappointed. The bread was light and fluffy, filled with a subtly sweet jelly-like paste, and perfect with that first cup of coffee. Is it better than the Barcelona varieties? I’m not so sure. But, I think it’s a perfect excuse to head over to my corner shop for a second look.