169. Frangipane Tart with Strawberries and Raspberries (p. 778)

It's strawberry season, and my go-to source for locally-grown produce, Mann Orchards, has been carrying beautiful fresh strawberries lately (the smallish, vibrantly red ones, not those humongous white-fleshed genetically-altered monstrosities that they sell at the mega-mart). I bought a few pints and went straight to The Book to find a good strawberry dessert and decided on this recipe.

The last strawberry tart I made, from Julia Child's MtAoFC, had a sweet, sugar-cookie-like crust and was filled with pastry cream. This tart, however has a Basic Pastry Dough crust and a frangipane filling. Frangipane, an almond-flavored pastry filling, is named after a 16th century Italian nobleman, the Marquis Muzio Frangipani, who was famous for his almond-scented glove purfume. Glove purfume? Really?

First, I made the tart shell. I rolled out the dough, fit it into a removable-bottomed fluted tart pan, and ran the rolling pin over the pan's rim to make a nice edge. (I actualy had to roll out the dough twice. For some reason, it fell apart the first time. I decided to ball the dough up and start over again. Worked out much better on the second try.) The Book says to put the tart shell in the refrigerator for an hour to chill it. I was in a hurry, so I put it in the freezer for ten minutes (same thing, right?). I pricked the tart shell with a fork, put some foil over it and filled the foil with some dried kidney beans that I use (and reuse) as pie weights. I baked it for a while, removed the foil and weights and baked it for a bit longer. I set the tart shell aside to cool for a bit and made the frangipane.

I beat together some sugar and softened butter in my Kitchen Aid stand mixer. That's right, folks, my wife gave me a 5-quart Artisan Series mixer as a tenth-anniversary gift. Sure, she got a diamond ring, but I still think that I made out pretty well. I've wanted a stand mixer for a long time, and I know that I'm going to give it a real workout. Once the butter and sugar were creamed, I added an egg, some almonds that I'd ground up in the food processor, a bit of almond extract, and some flour and salt. (I didn't have any amaretto on hand, so I skipped this optional ingredient.) Once the frangipane was all nicely blended, I spread it in the tart shell. I put the filled tart in the oven and baked it for a while until the frangipane was golden and a little puffy.

Once the tart was cool, I sliced my strawberries and arranged them in concentric circles on top of the frangipane. Finally, I melted some seedless strawberry jam and brushed it on top of the tart. Now, you're probably saying, "this recipe is called Frangipane Tart with Strawberries and Raspberries. Where are the raspberries?" I left them out. You got a problem with that? I'm sure that they would have been delicious, but I really wanted to let my fresh, ripe strawberries be the star of this dessert.

This was a delicious tart. The crust was crisp, flaky and buttery. I was a little concerned that the rolling and re-rolling was going to make it less flaky, but no worries. The frangipane was sweet, rich and almond-y. And the strawberries? Perfect. Nothing better than fresh, local fruit in season.

Date Cooked: June 21, 2009
Degree of Difficulty: Medium
Rating: A-

The Book before The Book

A few weeks ago, I was flipping through The Book looking for something to make for Father's Day. I absent-mindedly stopped at the Preface. Now, I'm sure that I read Ruth Reichl's introductory essay before I started The Project, but the first few lines apparently didn't register with me until now.

"The book that taught me to cook was a big brown leather-covered tome with The Gourmet Cookbook stamped in gold on the front. I called it 'the Book,' but to a little girl in the fifties, it was more than that."

What? But I thought that I was reading The Gourmet Cookbook? The Book was published in 2004, not the 1950s. It's yellow, not brown. Was Ruth mistaken? I needed to get to the bottom of this, so I put The Book aside and pulled up Google. I typed "Gourmet Cookbook 1950s" in the search window. After a few minutes, I had learned that, in 1950, as Gourmet Magazine was approaching its tenth anniversary, the magazine's editors decided to publish a cookbook "based on the cream of the recipes that had appeared in the magazine during the first decade of its existence." A few years later, in 1957, the editors published a second volume of The Gourmet Cookbook, meant to be a companion to the 1950 book, but at the same time "a complete and independent cookbook in itself." Whereas Volume I is a broad-based general cookbook, Volume II delves deeper into "pastry making a la francaise, outdoor cookery, and the accouterments of the grand buffet." After a number of printings, the editors undertook a complete revision, and in 1965, they published a second edition of the two volumes. (The early 1960s also saw the publication of a couple of other Gourmet books: The Gourmet Menu Cookbook and The Gourmet Basic French Cookbook.)

I had to get my hands on these books. My local library was no help. But e-bay came through. I found a set of the 1965 second edition available in an auction set to end in a couple of days. My first instinct was to lunge and make a "buy it now" offer, but I decided to play it cool. There were no bids yet, and the minimum bid was $9.99. I stalked the auction, checking it almost hourly as the end-date approached. A few hours before the auction ended, there were still no bids. I could smell victory. With only minutes left in the auction, I typed my bid into the dialogue box. After a few tense moments, and for the bargain price of $9.99 plus shipping, I was the proud owner of The Book's mama and papa.

A few days later, a great big brown-paper package (not tied up with string, but that's OK) was waiting for me when I got home from work. I tore the package open, and there they were. The pages were slightly yellowed and had that faint, mildewy high-school library scent. They are both big, heavy, and more than 700 pages each.

If The Gourmet Cookbook is the food Bible, the 1965 edition is the Old Testament. The pages are crammed with recipes written with an economy of words. The recipe for French Onion Soup, for example is only six sentences long. Notably absent, however, is the list of ingredients that precedes recipes in modern cookbooks. The recipes in Volume I and II are written in paragraph form, in the style of the classical cookbooks like Escoffier's. Apparently, ingredient lists, like those printed in the margins of Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking (1961), were still innovative in the 1950s and 60s. The books are also liberally illustrated with red ink line drawings, and lush, if somewhat corny, technicolor photographs. For instance, the photo of Caneton a la Orange au la Bigarade (Duck with Orange) includes a creepy prop ceramic duck sitting uncomfortably beside its cooked cousin. And the photo of Chocolate Bavarian Cream is decorated with a statute of Napoleon and a model of the Arc de Triomphe.

As I sat on the sofa flipping through Volume I, my wife asked me, "So, are you going to cook through that book, too?" Just then, I happened to stop flipping at page 473. I looked down at the page, and without hesitating for a moment, I answered, "No, I am not going to cook through this book." The recipe I had stopped at was for Ours Grand Veneur, or "Bear Huntsman Fashion." That's right, a recipe for roast bear loin. Apparently, "bear flesh is rich, sweet, and delicious." I don't think that they carry it at Stop & Shop, though. But if you don't like your bear "huntsman fashion," perhaps one of the three other bear recipes will appeal to you. What's that, bear's not your thing? That's OK. There are six pages of recipes for venison, two recipes for woodchuck, and six for frog's legs.

So, while I won't be making Brunswick Stew any time soon ("Cut 2 plump young squirrels into serving pieces..."), I know that I'm going to enjoy flipping through the pages of these books for ideas and inspiration.

168. Summer Fruit Salad with Mint Sugar (p. 167)

I made this recipe to bring to a cookout with my wife's "moms group." It's just a simple fruit salad of cherries (pitted and sliced), peaches (pitted and sliced) and green grapes (seedless and sliced). But being a Gourmet recipe, it has a special touch that takes it from ordinary to extraordinary. That special touch is the mint sugar.

I took about a quarter-cup of packed whole fresh mint leaves and three tablespoons of granulated sugar and whizzed it up in the food processor. The mint leaves got finely chopped and fully incorporated with the sugar. When I opened the food processor, I was pleasantly surprised by the intense, sweet mint aroma. All of the mint's essence was released by the processing with the sugar. It had the smell of those LifeSavers Wint-O-Green mints, but it was a fresher, and even more intense scent. Awesome!

Right before we left for the cookout, I sprinkled the mint sugar over the fruit and gently stirred it to coat all of the fruit. As the fruit sat, the sugar combined with the fruit's juices to make a light, sweet and minty syrup. This was a delicious and simple fruit salad, and just the thing if you're looking for something a little different. The only drawback is that at first glance, the fruit salad looks like it's been sprinkled with dried oregano.


Date Cooked: June 14, 2009
Degree of Difficulty: Easy
Rating: A

167. Old-Fashioned Potato Salad (p. 148)

My sister-in-law makes the best potato salad in the world. I'm serious. It's death-row-last-meal good. The potatoes are tender but not mushy. The vegetables (carrots, celery, green peppers, and onion) are crisp and sweet. The layer of sliced hard-boiled eggs on top is sunny and bright. And, most important, the mayonnaise ratio is exactly right. No family cookout is complete without her perfect potato salad.

I had great expectations for this recipe. Maybe I set my hopes too high, because it just didn't measure up to my sister-in-law's potato salad.

First, I peeled a couple of pounds of Yukon gold potatoes and cut them into one-inch pieces. I boiled them for a while until they were tender but not too soft. I'll admit that I cut a corner here. The Book says to cook the potatoes "in their jackets," and peel and cut them after they've cooled a bit. I usually try to follow The Book's instructions exactly, even if I think that they're fussy or a waste of time. But the day I made this recipe, I was a bit overwhelmed. I attempted to make six recipes from The Book for the same meal, and as lunchtime came and went with food still not on the table, I had to compromise. The Book says that its cooking method results in a better texture. But in my opinion, the texture of the potatoes was not the problem with this salad.

After the potatoes were cooked, I tossed them with some cider vinegar and salt. Next I added some chopped celery, white onion and a cup of mayonnaise. I topped it off with some sliced hard boiled eggs.

This potato salad could have been good. The potatoes, even though I didn't cook them the way The Book wanted me to, were good. The eggs gave it a nice richness. The celery gave it a nice crunch. The white onions (which are a lot milder than yellow or red onions) gave it a nice sweetness and bite. But, there was way too much mayonnaise in this salad. It was swimming in the stuff. The next time I make this salad, I'm going to use about half as much mayonnaise, and I'm going to add more vegetables, like carrots and green peppers.

Date Cooked: June 13, 2009
Degree of Difficulty: Easy
Rating: B-

166. Foolproof Grilled Chicken (p. 363)

I have a little bit of a problem with The Book's use of "foolproof" in the titles of several of its recipes. It's the same problem that I have with the "... For Dummies" and "Idiot's Guide ..." Books. You see, by calling this recipe Foolproof Grilled Chicken, The Book is telling me, "this recipe is so easy, not even a fool like you could botch it." I don't appreciate being called names.

But, after tasting this chicken, I got over myself. It's good enough to endure a little bit of name-calling.

The key to this recipe is brining the chicken. I know, I know, brining sounds like a pain in the neck--and it is--but, in this case, it made some pretty darn good chicken. First, I boiled a whole lot of salt and some sugar in a large pot of water for fifteen minutes. Then I cooled it compltely. Maybe some food scientist (are you out there Harold McGee?) could explain why it was so important to boil salt and sugar for fifteen minutes only to cool it completely. I figured I'd just trust The Book on this one. I put six pounds of chicken parts (I cut up a whole chicken rather than buying pre-cut parts) into the brine, covered it, and put it into the refrigerator for six hours.

Remember how I was saying that brining is a pain in the neck? Yeah, well, The Book says that you can brine the chicken a day in advance, but you still have to remove the chicken from the brine after six hour. I suppose leaving the chicken to soak in a saltwater bath for longer than that would be a bad thing. Well, I finally got the chicken into the brine at 10 o'clock on a Friday night. So, all you need to do is count to six to realized that, when my wife got up at 4 o'clock on Saturday morning to feed Jack, I had to get up, too, to take the chicken out of the brine. The things I do for The Project!

The Book gives instructions for cooking the chicken on either a charcoal grill or a gas grill. I've been wanting a nice Weber charcoal grill for a while, but for the time being, I've been using a gas grill (also a Weber, and we're pretty happy with it). I cranked the heat up all the way to pre-heat the grill for about ten minutes. I seared the meat for a little while, and then turned the heat down just a bit to cook the rest of the way.

There's another thing, besides the brining, that makes this recipe different from other grilled chicken recipes. The Book says to coat the cooked chicken in a Asian-inspired vinaigrette made with cilantro, mint, garlic, red pepper flakes, lime juice and fish sauce. I didn't make the vinaigrette and I didn't coat the cooked chicken with it. To be honest, I just ran out of time and decided to skip it. There may be some sticklers out there who'll say that I don't get to check this recipe off the list because I didn't make the vinaigrette. Well, this is my Project, and I get to say what counts as a recipe. I got out of bed at 4 o'clock in the morning to take the chicken out of the brine, so gosh darn it, I'm counting this one. (But, grilled chicken coated with Asian vinaigrette sounds pretty good, and I'm sure that I'll come back to this recipe some summer day.)

The chicken was excellent. The brining really did make a difference and was worth the extra effort (although I could have timed it better.) The chicken was nice and crispy and grill-makred on the outside, and tender and flavorful on the inside. Even the wings, which are usually the last parts to go after every grabs the drumsticks and breasts, were really good. Since I had no vinaigrette, I served the grilled chicken with the Manchamantal Sauce I made to go with the pork kebabs. Like I said, the Manchamantal Sauce was like a tropical barbecue sauce, so it worked just as well with the chicken as it did with the pork.

Date Cooked: June 13, 2009
Degree of Difficulty: Medium
Rating: A-

165. Grilled Pork Kebabs with Manchamantel Sauce (p. 483)

Becky, my good friend from college, and her boyfriend, Brian, came over for lunch a couple of weekends ago to visit with my son, Jack. I haven't seen Becky in months, and I wanted to make something special for her and Brian. That, and I was really excited to have an opportunity to cook for meat-eaters. I've been wanting to make this recipe ever since Teena made it last month. It was not a disappointment.

This recipe was a fair amount of work spanning over two days because it required marinating the pork and making the sauce.

First, the marinade. I started by toasting some dried chilies in a cast iron skillet for about a minute. The Book calls for dried ancho chilies, but I used the dried red chilies that I had leftover from the Shrimp in Adobo Sauce I made a while ago. (That recipe called for anchos, too, but the dried red chilies worked out fine in that dish, so I figured they'd be OK in this dish, too.) It's really amazing how just a few seconds in a hot skillet makes the dry, brittle chilies plump and pliable. I slit the chilies up the middle, removed the seeds and ribs, and covered them in boiling water to soften them up some more. (I prepared enough of the dried chilies for the marinade and for the sauce, which also calls for them.)

I combined the chilies, which I had coarsely chopped, with some water, chopped onion, garlic, thyme, oregano, cumin, salt, crushed peppercorns, olive oil and lemon juice in the blender. I ran out of ground cumin when I made my Green Bean Salad with Pumpkin Seed Dressing, but I was relieved to find some whole cumin seeds kicking around in my spice rack. Since I needed to crush the peppercorns anyway, I pulled out my mortar and pestle and ground up the cumin seeds old-school. Pre-ground spices are a real convenience, but there's nothing like fresh-ground for intense flavor and aroma. I don't know that I'd do it all the time, but there really is a difference.

I poured the marinade in a zip top bag and added the pork kebabs. The Book calls for 2 1/4 pounds of pork tenderloin, cut into 1 1/2 inch cubes. After wandering around somewhat aimlessly in front of the pork case at McKinnon's butcher shop, I asked for some help. The butcher I talked with told me that I wanted to use thick-cut, boneless pork chops and cut them into pieces. Not sure if he sold me a bill of goods, but the pork chops worked out well, and I was satisfied. The Book says that the pork needs to marinate for at least six hours and up to 24. I put the pork in the marinade the day before and left it in the refrigerator overnight.

Next, I moved on to the manchamantal sauce. According to The Book, manchamantel is Spanish for "tablecloth stainer." With its deep rust color, I'm sure that the name is well deserved. We ate outside, however, and the tablecloths were safely tucked away in the linen closet.

The Book suggests making the sauce in advance because it takes a little bit of time. Considering that most of the recipes take me longer than the start-to-finish times listed in The Book, I wasn't going to ignore a suggestion like that, and I made it the night before. First, I cooked some garlic and chopped onion in oil until the onions were golden. I added some sugar and vinegar and cooked it a little while longer. Next I put the onion mixture into the blender with the rest of the chilies, some water, some chopped fresh pineapple (yeah, I cut up a whole fresh pineapple ... it's a little bit of work, but worth it), a banana, and some cinnamon, cloves and a bit more sugar. I blended it up until it was smooth (crossing my fingers the whole time in hopes that the noisy blender wouldn't wake my sleeping son). I put the sauce in the refrigerator.

The next day, I drained the pork and discarded the marinade. I threaded the pork kebabs on bamboo skewers, alternating with large pineapple chunks and wedges of red onion. I put the kebabs on the grill and cooked them until the pork was done.

This wasn't the quickest recipe, but it wasn't hard and it was pretty tasty. I think that I overcooked the pork just a bit ... it was a little tough. But, just the same, it was good. The grilled pineapple was excellent. The red onions, though, didn't cook as quickly as the pork and pineapple, so they were a little underdone. The machamantal sauce was great. I was a little apprehensive about combining chilies, onions, pineapple and banana, but it really works. The sauce was sweet and sour and a little spicy and smoky. The flavors all blended well, but I was still able to sense a hint here and there of the pineapple and banana flavor. It was like a tropical barbecue sauce. It was a perfect match for the pork, but it also worked well with the grilled chicken that I'll post about next.

Date Cooked: June 13, 2009
Degree of Difficulty: Medium
Rating: A-

164. Green Bean Salad with Pumpkin Seed Dressing (p. 143)

When my sister was little, she hated green beans. She'd do anything she could to avoid eating them. I don't know if she's changed her view on green beans now that she's an adult. If not, this recipe might just bring her around.

What makes this salad so special is the dressing. The Book calls it "Mexican Pesto." The key ingredient in the dressing is green pumpkin seeds. First, I toasted the seeds in a dry skillet for a few minutes. I set aside a handful of the seeds for a garnish, and whizzed up the rest with some extra-virgin olive oil, water, fresh lemon juice, garlic, ground cumin, and fresh cilantro. The result is a surprisingly smooth, creamy and delicious dressing.

Next, I cooked some fresh green beans in some salted, boiling water for a few minutes until just tender (don't let them get mushy!). The Book says to drain the beans and plunge them into ice water to stop the cooking. I drained them and ran them under cold water instead and I think that it worked just as well. I let the beans drain completely and I dabbed them with some paper towels to get rid of any extra moisture.

I tossed the beans with some of the dressing, spread them out in a dish, arranged some tomato wedges on top, and drizzled on the remaining dressing and sprinkled some chopped cilantro and the reserved pumpkin seeds on top.

I really liked this salad. First, it was a really attractive dish. The bright green and red colors are very appealing. Next, the flavor was excellent. The beans were crisp and fresh tasting. The dressing was creamy and delicious. The combination of the garlic, lemon and cumin is really nice, and the pumpkin seeds are a very mild component ... very similar to the pine nuts that, according to The Book, are an acceptable substitute.


Date Cooked: June 13, 2009
Degree of Difficulty: Medium
Rating: A-