My great Aunt Helen died yesterday. I cannot go to the funeral. In her honor, I am going to make “Cheese and Raisin Coffee Braid”. It was at every family picnic, wrapped up in wax paper and then in flat boxes that must have been left over over from somebody’s sweater gift at Christmas. My agenda as a kid, when I got out of the car was to find my grandmother, give her a kiss, kiss my great Aunt Ruth, tell my great Uncle Harry (who prided himself on his taste in casual wear) how nice he looked, ask my Uncle Paul to wiggle his ears, ask after my great Uncle Art, who was rarely seen after my mother’s second wedding, and then turn to my Aunt Helen, who would be sitting in the folding chair between my grandmother and her sister Ruth, and ask her with hope from the bottom of my heart, did she make the Danish. “Of course I did”, she’d say. “Wow”, I’d say. And then she’d turn to my grandmother and say, “she’s funny.”

Ingredients:
1/2 cup sugar 6 Tablespoons of butter
1/2 teaspoon salt 2/3 cup of water
2 packages dry yeast 1 egg
3 1/2 cups of flour (approx.)

In a large bowl, combine sugar, salt, yeast, and 1 cup of flour. Heat butter and water til very warm. Beat with mixer on low speed into yeast mixture. Beat 2 minutes at medium speed. Beat in egg and 3/4 cup of flour. Knead 8 minutes, adding 1/2 cup of flour while kneading. Shape in a ball. Put into a buttered bowl and let rise until doubled in size. Prepare filling and refrigerate. Punch down dough. Let rest 15 minutes. Grease a large cookie sheet. Roll dough 15 inches by 12 inches. Spread filling in a 4 inch strip down the center. Cut dough on both sides of filling crosswise into 1 inch strips. Fold strips at an angle across the filling, alternating sides for braiding affect. Place on cookie sheet. Cover. Let rise til doubled. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Brush with beaten egg white. Bake 20 minutes.

Filling:
1 8 ounce package of full fat cottage cheese
1 8 ounce package cream cheese
1/2 cup sifted confectioner’s sugar
1 teaspoon fresh lemon rind (no pith)
1 egg yolk
1/2 cup of raisins

Press cottage cheese through a sieve into a bowl. At low speed, mix with all other ingredients except raisins. Fold in raisins.

Allow me to step up onto my soapbox under this tent, and hand me the microphone–”it is time to peel and grate, to roast and toss, to gently braise and season, to NOURISH your bloodstream, to clean your insides and PURPLE your outsides. I am a well woman now–my feelings are in order, my eyes are clear, my head is hopeful, and I put it all to the beets. Be brave. There is no substituting canned–you wouldn’t substitute canned for fresh watermelon would you, when you are sitting on fresh sand with fresh salt in your hair and a real sun heating up your program, would you? No. Buy fresh beets, and peel them. This is the very same pasta dish I told you about two days, ago, but this time I want you to make it. Start small if you have to and make enough for two. Peel and grate one medium sized beet. Get a little sauce pan full of water and add a pinch of salt and a dash of olive oil. Peel another beet and chop it up in small pieces. When the water boils, turn down to a simmer and throw the chopped beet in. Cook until just tender. (you need the cooking water from this–save the beet for a salad). Heat up a pour of your good olive oil with a tablespoon of butter. Finely chop one shallot and two cloves of garlic. Saute over a very low flame with a pinch of salt. Add a 1 teaspoon hand crushed fennel seeds and few tablespoons of finely chopped fresh parsley. Breathe deep to get that aroma into you. Add the beet. Stir around with a wooden spoon every once in a while until they are cooked, but still have a little snap. Grate a good handful of parmigiano reggiano on the big side. Wash and dry some tiny arugula leaves (a cup). Boil your pasta water and cook either 5 ounces of orchiette or farfalle (I like De cecco) until al dente.

Taste the grated beets for salt and give them a squeeze of fresh lemon juice. Drain the pasta and tip it into the frying pan with the beets. Another squeeze of fresh lemon juice, a tab of butter, the parmesan, a grind of black pepper, a few spoonfuls of the beet juice, and the arugula. Before you toss everything, give the arugula leaves a tiny drizzle of your best olive oil. Now toss. Taste. You should be feeling better already.

I am not well, and God only knows what is contaminating my clear thinking channels, but I have no reception at the moment.  I go to sleep with great hope of revival by nocturnal miracle, but I wake up the same.  Lightheartedness is like a language I knew but can’t remember.  It is a feeling of swimming under water warmer than the air.  When the same thing happened to my internet, I called up Time Warner and fired them.
I could cut and paste a rerun or just leave the page blank until I figure my slower than a herd of turtles self out, but I still have to cook.  I am making French Toast tonight with a slice of cheddar and roasted asparagus.  Ferdinand will refuse the asparagus–fair enough; the effect it has on him when he pees freaks him out–so he will have it with carrots instead.

When I am on the other side I will know that much more, which is a good thing. And on the very bright side–I feel times like this call for chocolate with abandon, tulips for no reason, and the serious consideration of salsa lessons.

It is snowing without stopping. We didn’t shop on Tuesday when we were down to the bare bones of just about nothing, and now it’s Friday, and I have a bag of flour left, some beets, a half inch of parmesan and 2 eggs. And chicken bones–frozen. I have a fear of having no food, and so every time I buy a chicken, just in case we are cut off from the food chain by loss of job or weather, I chop off the wings and throw them in the freezer. My first husband will attest to the fact that it used to be a lot worse. My freezer was a mid western study in panic. I froze 2 inches of milk in pint containers, the ends of bread, the last few spoonfuls of soup, cheese rinds, onion tops, and cookies. In rinsed out plastic bags or pieces of parchment paper I had frozen cream cheese, fresh and canned tomatoes, fresh herbs, cubes of ever so over ripe pineapple and grapes. I think it all got to be too much for him. I had no ability to organize, no desire to decorate, no roots, and I froze everything. That’s not easy.

All I have to say is–thank goodness I haven’t given up freezing entirely. To some what’s left in my larder would appear to leave no option but to order out or starve my family, but that just isn’t true. I can make cannellini soup with sauted beet greens on the side, and bruschetta from my stale bread, spread with a roasted artichoke (back-up canned), and garlic duxelle for lunch, and for dinner, I am going to grate the beets, saute them with toasted fennel seeds, shallot and garlic, and serve them tossed with homemade pasta and parmesan. With the last egg I can make a pumpkin bread for breakfast with frozen cranberries, the last eight dates (chopped to make up for their low number), frozen pecans, and a can of pumpkin left over from Christmas. Ha.

Pumpkin Bread

2 1/2 cups of flour, 2 teaspoons of baking soda, 1/2 teaspoon of salt, 1 1/2 teaspoons of cinnamon, 1/2 teaspoon of cloves, mixed. In separate bowl, whisk 2 eggs with 1/2 cup of vegetable oil, 2 cups of canned pumpkin puree, and 1 1/2 cups of sugar. Mix the two together with your hand or a rubber spatula. Fold in 1/2 cup of whole dates that you have chopped, 1/2 cup of whole pecans, broken, and 1 cup of cranberries. You can change these last amounts, based on what you have in your freezer.

Bake in a loaf pan (or 2)–it should come halfway up the sides, at 350 degrees, until a cake tester comes out clean, about 45 minutes to one hour, depending on the size of your loaf pans.

Last night I went out to a restaurant that served a vegetable disc with no claim to taste, on an aging bun that looked like a whole wheat tinted seed studded, well sprayed hair do. Bread should never be an after thought.
When you have really good bread, it is almost a guarantee that good food will show up as well. It’s hard to eat cheap burgers and doritos with a side of Reese Cups when on the table you have a ciabiatta or baguette good enough to work your heart strings. Hunt down a loaf to be proud of until you find it. It could be a tortilla, or nan or a crepe–it doesn’t matter–just be sure that whatever it is it’s good enough to make you wish you could have it every day for the rest of your life. (if you’re close, bolt to the Blue Ribbon Bakery in the West Village, and buy anything they have.)
For anything soft on the outside and crusty on the outside, roast some yellow and red peppers with a spill of olive oil and salt, toss a salad of endive with a little red vinegar, and olive oil and a pinch of salt, pepper, sugar, dijon and finely chopped parsley and then for dipping, make a pesto out of wilted swiss chard. Slice up a little cold roasted chicken.
If a crepe is what you find, fold it around a beautiful ham and gruyere cheese and serve it with a green apple and chive salad with toasted walnuts and homemade mayonnaise.
Buy a little skirt steak, season it with salt and sear it on the grill or in a hot and heavy frying pan. Stack up those tortillas, and make a salad of grape tomatoes, chunks of ripe avocado, cilantro leaves and hunks of a small, tight red onion.

The thing is, you can’t not cook for 14 years and then expect FABULOUS, like you are some kind of super hero, doing a fast one in a phone booth and coming out ready to serve in your super suit.

In case you haven’t really seen your kitchen for a while, I’m on a little mission to get you back in there with just a few hints on what to make, and how to make it–no need for tights.

Rule 1: buy yourself the best ingredients you have available to you–ingredients that make it hard to think about anything else once you have them in the bag.

Rule 2: try a week with no soda, and nothing with additives or preservatives.  You are looking for food that is as close to it’s original form as you can get it.

Rule 3:  make your own stock (start with vegetable or chicken).  This may sound like a small thing, but this is what is going to make you feel like you can cook with the rest of them.  And you can do it.  Fill a pan with water, throw in the bones (1 lb.).  Bring to a boil, toss out the water, new water, same bones, and add a piece of celery, a carrot and an onion.  Even better, add a piece of parsley and a bay leaf.  Let it simmer, and skim every once in a while for an hour (or 2).  Use it or freeze it.

Rule 4:  Stick to things like:

omelettes with a gorgeous cheese melted inside, toast from bread that is so good it makes you want to cry, and a braised or sauted vegetable along, with the best olive oil you can find, sea salt and a grind of pepper

a roasted chicken (try just the breasts with skin on bone, season them sear them skin side down, shove a few sprigs of rosemary under them and a few whole cloves of garlic.  Let them roast in the oven at 400 degrees until just cooked through), roasted potatoes and roasted broccoli.

Sizzle a few whole green onions until dark green, and then set them on a plate; in the same pan, sear a piece of salmon in that beautiful olive oil after you have given the fillet a good sprinkle of sea salt, and cook until it is a gorgeous brown. Flip.  Cook over medium heat on the other side until nearly cooked through.  Serve with a smashed avocado and potato salad that is nothing more than hot potatoes, smashed, then drizzled with olive oil and fresh lemon juice.

Make potato leek soup (2 ingredients, unless you want to add your homemade stock to the potatoes and leeks)

Make meat balls and a spicy tomato dipping sauce on the side and big garlicy croutons.

Make rice in one pan, and in the other pan, saute one onion and 2 cloves of garlic.  Add a sprig of thyme and a bay leaf.  When the onion is completely soft, as if it never knew what crunchy was, add a teaspoon of chipotle pepper in adobe sauce.  Add a few whole tomatoes from a can of San Marzano, that you squish in with your hand.  Rinse a can of black beans (you can make them next week), and add those.  If you made that stock, add a little of that as well.  When these have simmered for at least 20 minutes, give them a good squeeze of fresh lime juice and serve them with a pile of shredded cheddar and the rice. (–and tomato salad and avocado salad and a dish of new radishes)

Make pasta with lemon zest, red pepper flakes, sauted garlic (fresh only), with a little chopped parsley thrown into the garlic pan, toasted fresh breadcrumbs, and a grating of parmigiano reggiano.  Have a salad of arugula greens on the side with just beautiful olive oil, lemon and salt.

Make a pan of garlicky fresh (look the fishmonger in the eye and ask for the truth) mussels, with white wine and serve with that bread to die for that you are buying now.

Make a homemade mayo and drizzle it over halved and hardly set boiled eggs.  Serve with proscuitto, carrot sticks, the inside stalks of celery and a the prettiest dish you have of olives.

See how it feels.

I have a few things to say about cooking chicken in vinegar.

1. Try it.

2. I changed the recipe again.

I know this is a problem I have–always fixing, messing, running down roads I have no business even walking down–and it doesn’t always end well, but sometimes it does and when it does, it can be worth every minute of a bad reputation. I remember when my fourth grade teacher Mrs. Price put my desk in the closet she said to me, “You have a bad attitude, and you have no right telling me how you think things ought to be done and you have no idea what you are doing.” (we were having a fight about how to teach) I said nothing at all. I opened the door of the closet, went in, sat down, and came up with a plan. I asked for lab mice. Over the next few weeks (in the closet), with a whole lot of construction paper and popscicle sticks, I taught the mice how to do tricks; then I wrote about it, slapped it all together, packed it up, and asked Mrs. Price to enter me into the city wide science fair. I won first place and she let me back in the classroom. I told her I preferred the closet.

Any old how, the truth is, I am no chef. I can’t butcher a cow, I have no idea about how to make just about everything in a classic French cookbook, I can’t identify many, many fish in the ocean, I would collapse under the pressure of cooking more than 25 covers in a restaurant and much more–but I know what I like, and I know how to cook, and I love a challenge.

So I decided I had complete authority to change a recipe called Poulet Saute au Vinaigre written by a Mister Chef Simon Hopkinson of Roast Chicken and other stories (I highly recommend it, even though I’m merciless with the recipes).

The first time I tried it, was only in my mind, and I decided to add the onions and garlic as I mentioned a few days ago. But last night I was on a roll and had the chicken in front of me. I love the technique of simmering each liquid as you add it, down to a syrup. Transformational. But I switched half of the vinegar (check amounts below) to a dry red chianti. I added a cup of stock twice, (reducing first time to a simmer, and second time just be half) and I swirled in only 2 tablespoons of butter at the end, instead of his stick. I served it with rice instead of boiled potatoes, but I bet the potatoes would have been just as good. (I would have gone for the potatoes, but it was Valentine’s Day, and the man likes rice.)

I only made a little stock to use by hacking off the bottom half of the breast and throwing it a pot with a half a carrot, a piece of celery, a sprig of parsely and a leek. When I used all I needed for the sauce, I salted the last little bit and threw in a few handfuls of green beans to simmer with a splash of olive oil. These were a perfect on the side of: very-delicious-I-will-definitely-do-it-again-now-that-I-have-it-where-I-want-it chicken.

Always feel like you can take it where you want it to go.

There are mad crushes that end as soon as the night is over and there is Italy. I love Italy as I do the ocean, or reading. I love Italy as I love music. And the Italy I love is certainly Rome and Naples and Venice, but what wove Italy into my bloodstream is Umbria and Tuscany. It is the the wind across the wild herbs that lie hidden in the grass, the smell of the pancetta hanging from hooks at the butcher, the light that finds its way through impossibly narrow stone paved streets and the gentle hills to walk. It is the gracious hospitality, the elegance of each day and a ready humor that embraces my terrible Italian and accepts gesticulation as a neccessary. It is an unwavering tradition of passion in the kitchen, coffee to solve all problems in less than 2 minutes, and olive oil that is life changing.
I find the best places to stay for all this can be the simplest. Hidden behind a long stone wall in a village just outside the bustle of Cortona is a lovely private villa where I learned how to make my first braised chicken with vinegar. and behind the villa, a well kept secret of ancient farmhouses for sleeping and dreaming and doing your own cooking.
In case you get there, and need a recipe, you could always ask Signora Scarpaccini for hers, which is far and beyond, the best, or to practice, here goes:
Season a 3 pound chicken that you have cut into at least 6 pieces with sea salt and a tiny grind of black pepper. Be sure you get all sides. Heat up a heavy frying pan with olive oil good enough to make your heart sing. Sear off the chicken to a nearly chestnut brown. Remove and pour off nearly all the fat. Add another drizzle of olive oil. Add 1 whole clove of garlic and let it go until golden brown. Get the chicken back in the pan. Cut 3 San Marzano canned tomatoes in half and remove the seeds. Squish them with your hand and add to the pot. Let all this simmer, stirring with loads of attention, until the tomato has lost nearly all of its liquid. Pour in 1 cup of best quality red wine vinegar. Let it simmer gently until it is only a glaze. Add 1 cup of chicken stock and again, at a simmer, let this reduce by a third. Remove the chicken, and off the heat, whisk in a few tablespoons of butter.

For an absolutely simple Tuscan hide-away, have a look at toscanaumbrialowcost.com

After Pappa’s Pasta Fagioli (below) sit back, dim the lights and watch the FAYEFOOD Feature:

“Food in Marriage”

http://blip.tv/file/655736/

Only kidding. It’s not Pappa’s, I just love alliteration.
The first thing is to soak the beans. Bring a little over a cup of cannellini to the boil in plenty of water, and then leave them covered and off the flame for an hour. Rinse, new water in the pot with the beans, a sage leaf, a piece of any tomato, canned or fresh, and a good drizzle of olive oil. Back on the flame until they come to a simmer, and then cover them with a piece of parchment paper that fits exactly inside the pot. When they are nearly tender, give them a good few pinches of salt. When they are done, leave them be in the pot until you are ready for them.
Get out the biggest dutch oven you have and start to sweat a head of celery, finely chopped, and 2 onions, also finely chopped in a douse of olive oil. Add 3 to 4 cloves of garlic, halved. Give them salt, a sprig of rosemary, a sprig of parsely and if you have one, a sprig of thyme, and keep them going over a low heat until you feel your heart opening when you taste them. They should be completey soft and so delicious that it is going to be hard to continue with the rest of the soup. Resist and carry on.
Add a few red pepper flakes and about a 1/3 of a pound of pancetta, also diced finely (this is optional, all you vegetarians). Continue cooking until the pancetta is nearly crisp, but only lightly browned. The flame has got to be low.
Add 1 28 ounce can of hand squished San Marzano tomatoes. Let this go at a simmer with a sprig of parsley for half an hour. (If you have a good rind of parmegiano reggiano, you can scrub that and add it to the tomatoes for flavor). Smash about a third to a half of your beans with a fork. Add to the soup. Add the rest of the beans whole, and enough liquid to your liking.
Cook three handfuls of pasta (I like penne) in salted water until very al dente. Drain. Pour the soup over so it’s a balance of pasta and soup that you’re happy with. Let it simmer for a minute. Add a bit more liquid if you need and get the grated parm or (if you have an excellent romano) ready.
Serve with a salad of chopped belgian endive, a little ridichio, a little arugula, a few parsley leaves and a few torn basil leaves that has been dressed with your best olive oil, salt and a squeeze of lemon.