Time to Detox

I decided to get a jump start on my New Year’s detoxification plan yesterday and have always found a good first step is making some sort of healthy, comforting, vegetable soup. I had friends over last night and we ate this soup accompanied by sweet apple sausages with yellow mustard and sauerkraut, bread and butter, grapefruit and avocado salad, honey-sesame covered almonds, Belgian beer, Jameson on the rocks, hummus and crackers, gherkins, leftover and slightly assaulted gingerbread men, and chocolate. Errrr, yeah, let the detoxification begin!!
Butternut squash soup has become a winter essential- I make it all the time. There are so many different variations possible, but generally I just chop everything up, submerge it in either chicken or vegetable stock, cook it until everything is tender, add some fresh grated ginger, and then use my trusty immersion blender to puree it. So simple and so delicious! With a spoonful of sour cream it is the perfect light yet satisfying dinner. My godmother first told me how to make this soup and she likes to sometimes sprinkle crumbled blue cheese on top- which is wildly good too!
Recently I have been adding a little brown sugar into the soup at the end to give it that added sweetness and depth of flavor. When I make it I just eyeball all the measurements, but here are some general proportions for a soup that will serve about six good eaters (as long as you also have other food to give them too, such as sausages, bread, chocolate, nuts…just kidding).

*Also congratulations to my friends Joel and Nomi who had a beautiful baby girl yesterday. Welcome to the world little Nora Bettina, and Happy New Year everyone!

Butternut Squash Soup
1 big butternut squash, peeled and chopped

2 onions roughly chopped
A few cloves of garlic, chopped
2 apples, peeled and roughly chopped
2 carrots roughly chopped
About 6 cups chicken or vegetable stock
1-2 Tbs fresh grated ginger
Salt and pepper to taste

Directions:
In a big pot sauté onions and garlic in a little oil. Add chopped carrots, apple, and squash. Pour in stock so that vegetables are totally covered and simmer until tender, about 20 minutes. Once tender, add fresh ginger, remove from heat and blend to desired smoothness. Adjust seasonings to taste- maybe add some brown sugar if you want.

%#@! Doughnuts

One of the presents I received yesterday was a vintage McCall’s Magazine bread baking book. Apparently my mother found it in the gift store of the Kenyon’s Grist Mill in Usquepaugh. After days of what feels like constant eating- cookies, chocolates, bits of half eaten gingerbread men lurking in just about every corner of the house- cooking, let alone baking was way off my radar when I got up today. In fact, I went upstairs this morning to find my mother in the kitchen, flour dusted over the counter and her hands gingerly rolling out more gingerbread, her festive holiday cookie cutters standing at attention, ready to be put to work.
Oh god, I thought, she’s really gone off the deep end.
“You’re not serious,” I snapped. “What are you thinking? How can you possibly be baking more? Enough is enough!”
My gut has been hanging over the edges of my pants for days now and I’m grumpy and cranky about it. Horrified by the scene I had stumbled into, I decided to go for a vigorous power walk far away from all gastronomic temptation.
I returned sometime later feeling virtuous, hungry, but admittedly a little bored and lackluster. I made some phone calls- no one answered. I looked around my apartment- glimpsed at the TV but quickly turned it off. Thought about grading papers.... sigh, what to do, what to do?
I picked up the McCall’s bread book and started flipping through it. Yeast breads? No, I don’t have the patience. Biscuits? No. Muffins? Ugh, no. And then I arrived at the Doughnut page. “Perfect doughnuts are tender, light, fragrant,” I read. “We warn you that once you have learned to make them, your family will never permit you to forget- they’ll want you to make them again and again.”
Don’t do it, I told myself. You don’t even really like doughnuts. I looked down and poked my belly with a finger. Definitely chubby.
I looked at the photograph on the opposite page- the beautiful, round, glazed, “light” doughnuts. It would make a good blog post I thought…and there is that little get together later, so it’s not like I would be left with this huge batch of doughnuts to deal with. And it has been so cold outside, and it’s just going to stay cold, and slushy, and get dark by 3:30 this afternoon.
Oh the irony.
So I made them damn it, and they were worth it. The nutmeg in the batter gives them a very subtle, warm flavor and I opted to simply dust them in cinnamon and sugar instead of dealing with all that sugary frosting.
When I made the batter I forgot to add the final ¾ cups of flour and when I took it out of the fridge and put it on the counter to roll out, I noticed it was very wet. Too wet. I added more flour and mixed it all in and it did not seem to negatively affect the dough at all. A sturdy recipe indeed! I love doughnuts!
I also did not have a doughnut cutter so I had to make do with just a circular one for biscuits. At first I thought it would be fine, but when I fried up the first batch and broke one open, it was raw in the middle. My brilliant friend Charlotte was over and announced that this was indeed why people began cutting the middle of doughnuts out, so that they would cook all the way through. Oh Charlotte, why didn't you say so!
I hand rolled out the rest of the dough and twisted them into “free form” doughnuts. But ultimately the whole thing worked out because, with the middle of the doughnut raw, you only eat the cooked bits around the edges. So if you think about it, you’re not really eating a whole doughnut at all, and we all know when you just take little bits here and there to “taste,” it doesn’t count. It’s totally not like eating an entire doughnut at all. No, it’s completely different.

Perfect Doughnuts

3 eggs

1 c. sugar

2 Tbs. soft butter

3 3/4 c. sifted flour

2 tsp. baking powder

1 tsp. baking soda

1 tsp. salt

3/4 tsp. nutmeg

2/3 c. buttermilk

canola oil for cooking.

In bowl with electric mixer beat eggs, sugar and butter until light and fluffy.

Meanwhile, sift flour, baking soda, baking powder and salt. Set aside.

At low speed, add buttermilk into egg mixture. Then, gradually mix in the dry ingredients. Dough will be soft.

Refrigerate for one hour.

On well floured surface roll out dough 1/3 inch thick. Cut out doughnuts and continue to re-roll dough until all used.

Heat oil in skillet until 375 degrees. Gently dropped doughnuts in 3-4 at a time. As they rise to top turn over and fry until golden brown (about 3 minutes in all).

Place on paper towel to drain. Then roll in cinnamon and sugar. Enjoy!

Metamorphoses Part I

Three years ago my little brother came out to me as transgendered. We were driving up to my aunt’s house in East Providence for Thanksgiving and I remember distinctly it was just past exit 10 on Route 95 when he said it. I don’t remember being shocked necessarily but I do remember asking him to clarify what exactly that meant. I mean, I knew what it meant to be transgendered, but more of what it meant for him. Who was a she at this point.
My sister.
Sarah.
She was nineteen and a freshman in college.
“Like, you want to be a boy?” I asked him while I was driving.
“Yeah,” he said. “I am a boy.”
This was not just that he was gay I realized. I remember when he came out about that too. He was 12 and it was the summer and we were in the swimming pool, floating around on fluorescent foam “noodles.”
“I like girls,” he had told me.
“So you think you’re a lesbian,” I replied back. “You have sexual crushes on girls.”
“Yeah,” he said.
“Like you want to be with them, not just be like them,” I said, a differentiation I thought was important to make.
“Yeah,” he said.
“Like you want them to be your girlfriend.”
“Yes, I do.”
I found this shocking at first, although my best friend told me later she could have called it years ago. I felt proud in a way that he felt comfortable enough to tell me, and when he was so young. So many people suffer through years of angst ridden confusion and denial about their sexuality; I thought it was good he seemed to have it all figured out. But this, on the other hand, was exactly why my mother was not thrilled.
“She’s so young,” my mother had said. “How can she know what she wants or likes, she hasn’t had enough experience!”
This is true in a way. When I was 12 I had never kissed a boy, and was still straddling the cusp between childhood and adolescents, playing house one minute and then curiously shuffling through Seventeen magazines the next. But I always knew what I liked. I did not have to have kissed a boy to know I liked them. And for him it was the same way.
Driving in the car that day, the idea of him actually changing seemed so far away. It was a long process he explained. He would have to be evaluated by psychologists, see other doctors, do all this “stuff” before he could begin testosterone treatments.
While I tried to understand and be open to his decision, I was afraid and apprehensive. The whole thing just seemed so severe and the idea of taking any kind of drug or hormone for the rest of his life seemed like such a serious commitment. And this hormone would morph his body and change it forever. It seemed so science experiment-y, not to mention extremely unnatural.
But my reservations were nothing compared to my mother’s grief and unparalleled doubt. My father, much to my surprise, embraced my brother’s decision and was a strong supporter from the beginning. My mother on the other hand was riddled with questions and fear. My mother always wanted the best for her children and for her children to make the best choices for themselves. And this choice my mother wasn’t sure about.
“He’s so young!” she would say over and over again (and at this point we were still using female pronouns). “She’s only nineteen, think how much you change from one year to the next at your age!”
This was true too. And deciding to transition from female to male is not like getting a tattoo. I thought back to when I was nineteen and the choices I had made. The very, very, unawesome choices.
“What if she turns twenty-five and realizes she made a mistake?” my mother pointed out. “It will be too late and the damage will have been done.”
I understood what my mother was saying, but looking back at him when we were growing up, his second grade picture in which he is dressed in a three piece suit and a tie, the realization that he is male made lots of sense to me. When my mother was pregnant with him everyone’s guess was that the new baby would be a boy. When he was at summer camp in elementary school my mom would pick him up only to hear him complain how the counselors made him play on the “girl team.” When we played house he always volunteered to be the dad or the brother, which I thought was so weird because being assigned to have to play the dad, in my mind, was the worst thing ever.
I’ll stop here for now, Part II coming soon….

It Arrived!

I'm happy to report that Simon held up his end of the beet bargain and when he returned home Friday night he was indeed bearing Mrs. Prop's delicious raspberry vodka infusion, per our arrangement. (It turned out to be vodka after all, not rum). The mason jar was already half empty (or half full depending on how you look at it...I guess) and Simon said this was because he felt he deserved some of it since he had arranged the whole barter. And then my mother said she also deserved some since she grew the beets, technically. So ok, I give them that- but the rest is mine!

This infusion is delicious and deadly since the fruit really masks the fiery burn from the hard liquor. I have to remind myself to drink it slowly. Over ice with a pfeffernusse cookie is especially lovely.

We are buried under 18 inches of snow in Rhode Island today and I am not going anywhere. I should grade the stack of papers I took home with me for the weekend but a tromp through the snow followed by a modest glass of this by the fire is much more appealing. Happy holidays everyone!

The Souffle Project

A few years ago I stumbled upon a copy of Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking at the Salvation Army in North Kingstown. I bought it for ten dollars, took it home, but sadly never ended up making many of the recipes. I have been a Julia Child fan since I was about six, when I would watch old re runs of her cooking show on PBS, sitting on the couch, while my parents made dinner in the kitchen. Besides being mesmerized by all her cutting and clomping, kneading and mixing, all I remember is thinking how strange she was. Like, this woman is really weird. Weird and amazing.
So when I decided that it was time to attempt the infamous soufflé, it was Julia I turned to. I had wanted to try making soufflé for a while, especially since my mother’s chickens were laying well over two dozen eggs weekly- and there could easily be seven dozen eggs in the fridge on any given day. So making a soufflé seemed very practical and logical, despite the soufflé’s reputation. And you all know the reputation I am referring to here- I am referring to the myths, the legends, the paranoia, the “culture of fear” if you will, that surrounds the delicate, elegant, elusive soufflé.
I did not allow myself to be daunted by this however. And early Sunday morning I was resolved. Before I could change my mind I sent out a text message to the few friends I thought may be brave enough to partake in the project. It was 9:00 in the morning. “Attempting the soufflé tonight” I wrote. “Join me if you dare.”
Only a small handful replied. “Shhhhh,” one wrote back. “We will speak only in whispers.” And later, “I’ll wear my slippers.”
With the word officially out, there was no turning back. I promptly began researching and luckily Julia Child is explicit about each step, and heeds simple warnings about the process to the home cook. For example, the bowls you use to beat your egg whites cannot be greasy or oily or your whites will not stand up right. And that once out of the oven the soufflé must be eaten immediately (within 5 minutes) before it begins to deflate.
Armed with this new knowledge I went through my refrigerator and cupboards in order to gather ingredients and write a shopping list. I traveled upstairs to my parents’ refrigerator to procure the necessary eggs when !Shock! Gasp! There were none! *
By 3 pm however the hens had come through and laid half a dozen beautiful, pale eggs. I held them delicately between my fingers and as I made my way back to the house I found myself thinking about this passage from Margaret Atwood’s A Handmaid’s Tale in which Offred, the protagonist, describes how long ago women used to hold eggs in between their breasts to incubate them. I don’t know why, but to my seventeen-year-old mind this just seemed to be the pinnacle of sensuality and eroticism. And I remember lamenting distinctly that my breasts were too small to ever hold and incubate an egg and how this seemed unfair. Offred goes on to remark how eggs seem to glow and have a life of their own, and how thinking about them gives her an intense pleasure. And how holding an egg in between her breasts would have felt really good…
But clearly I digress! I am supposed to writing about cheese soufflé, not bosoms. Sorry if that last paragraph made any of you uncomfortable....
So anyway, I decided to make one cheese soufflé and one with spinach, onion and cheese. I even made a soufflé playlist of calm, quiet music in order to coax and encourage the soufflé to rise and be voluminous and golden (Julia’s description, not mine).
A half hour later my soufflés were indeed golden and voluminous much to my elation and relief, and I immediately rushed everyone to the table to eat it ASAP. Two of my friends were late and while I would never start dinner with missing guests soufflé! can’t! wait! So we had to start without them but luckily they arrived just as I was pulling the second soufflé from the oven.
The soufflés turned out lovely- were creamy and comforting and tasted perfect on a late summer night with a glass of red wine.
Desert soufflés are next.

Souffle Aux Epinards (Spinach Souffle)

1 Tbs. minced shallot or green onion

1 Tbs. butter

1/4 c. chopped frozen spinach

1/4 tsp. salt

Cook the shallots for a moment in the butter. Add the spinach and salt, and stir over medium heat for several minutes to evaporate as much moisture as possible from the spinach. Remove from heat.

Souffle Base

3 Tbs. butter

3 Tbs. flour

1 c. boiling milk

1/2 tsp. salt

a pinch each of black pepper, cayenne, and nutmeg

4 egg yolks

Melt butter in saucepan. Stir in flour and cook over medium heat until butter and flour foam together for 2 minutes without browning. Remove from heat and when mixture has stopped bubbling, pour the boiling milk and beat vigorously with a wire whisk unit blended. Beat in the seasonings. Return to medium heat and boil, stirring, for 1 minute. Sauce will be very thick.

Remove from heat and drop each yolk into hot sauce and beat together.

The Egg Whites and Cheese

5 egg whites

A pinch of salt

3/4 c. graded cheese of your choice (SSwiss, Parmesan, Gruyere, cheddar)

Put egg whites in bowl and beat with salt until stiff. Stir a big spoonful (1/4 of egg whites) into the sauce. Stir in all but a tablespoon of the cheese. Delicately fold in the rest of the egg whites.

Baking

Preheat oven to 400 degrees and then turn down to 375 once souffle is put in oven.

Butter the mold heavily and then coat with grated cheese or breadcrumbs. Pour the souffle mixture into the mold, which should be 3/4 full. Sprinkle remaining cheese on top and place in center of oven. Bake for 25-35 minutes until the top is nice and brown. Serve at once!

* When the fridge is really on egg overload my aunt takes them to Providence and sells them to her co workers*

Cry Baby Beets

I've been feeling a little down the last couple weeks. A mixture of shorter days, a little heartache, and being really, really ready for the semester to be over. My little brother Simon came home for Thanksgiving last week and said his friends at school had been lusting for the pickled beets I had made last summer. "Sorry," I said in my negative and moroseful state, "no pickled beets this year."

"But that's not true," my mother chimed in. "There are lots and lots of beets left in the garden that no one ever picked!"

Simon assured me that if I agreed to pickle beets that weekend he would help. He also said that he could arrange a barter with his ex-girlfriend's parents in Vermont: a jar of beets for one of her mom's vodka infusions (which are pretty amazing...drank some last year).

Somewhat reluctantly, and not at all determined, I joined my father in the garden later that day to help dig up the beets. They hadn't been thinned and many of them were quite small. But I knew the little, tender bulbs would be delicious.

I gained momentum. In the fading daylight I trimmed off the greens (not worth saving by this time of year unfortunately) and rubbed off the big clumps of dirt.

I then set up shop in my kitchen, began sterilizing jars, and cooking the beets until they were nice and tender and their skins would peel easily.

My mood began to lift as my apartment turned into a steam room and I treated myself to a few generous glasses of wine. I downloaded some tracks from Jay-Z's new album, and just between you and me, I busted some mean dance moves during the "wait time."

Sunday afternoon Simon hopped on the train to NY with two pints of dark maroone pickled beets. The barter agreement had been finalized also- although it's rum this year, not vodka. Raspberry I think.

The recipe I used came from the same book I got the Dilly Bean recipe from. I added onions to my beets, but you can omit them if you prefer.

Cry Baby Beets (or Spicy Pickled Beets)

Select small young beets. Break off the stems (which can be cooked and eaten like spinach). Leave about an inch of the stem so that the beets do not bleed during cooking. Cook until just tender. Dip into cold water. Peel off skins. Discard stems. Large beets should be treated the same way, but slice to desired thickness. Make a syrup in the following proportions to cover (I doubled the recipe for about 10 pints):

2 cups sugar

2 cups cider vinegar

2 cups water

1 tsp. salt

1 tsp. cloves

1 tsp. whole allspice

1 Tbs. ground cinnamon

1-2 cups thinly sliced onion.

Pour over beets and boil about 10 minutes. Pour hot into sterilized jars and seal at once in a water bath for 20 minutes.