4. Dress the warm potatoes and beans, and add chopped scallions at the last minute.
ROB WYNNE'S POTATO SALAD WITH CREME FRAICHE
1. Cook as many new potatoes as you need, about three per person if small. Slice and cool.
2. Skin as many cucumbers (even if you are using kirbys) as will equal the amount of potatoes. Cut into julienne and drain.
3. Dress with a mixture of half mayonnaise, half creme fraiche, black pepper, and a hint of garlic.
Potato Salad
35
My own potato salad is a snap. Idaho or new red potatoes can be used. Boil the potatoes. Make a dressing of Hellman's mayonnaise thinned with lemon juice and seasoned with black pepper. This does not need salt—prepared mayonnaise is quite salty enough. Mix the cut-up potatoes with chopped scallion and finely minced dill. Pour the dressing over and let sit for an hour or so before serving.
It is always wise to make too much potato salad. Even if you are cooking for two, make enough for five. Potato salad improves with age—that is, if you are lucky enough to have any left over.
FEEDING THE FUSSY
I will never eat fish eyeballs, and I do not want to taste anything commonly kept as a house pet, but otherwise I am a cinch to feed. My only allergy is a slight one to
caviar, making me a cheap date. Furthermore, 1 am never on a diet regime I cannot be talked out of.
I am also not squeamish. Some years ago I was dared into eating something listed on a menu as "Half a Grilled Lamb's Head" in which you could see the little critter's teeth, and scoop the little grilled brains out of the little grilled brainpan, and I found it delicious, even as I stared at its poor little face.
I do not keep kosher and, therefore, I am a kind of universal recipient—the 0 Positive for hostesses. I can be fed in combination with anyone.
This cannot be said of most people. Most people are idiosyncratic about food. The restrictions, fads, diets, notions, and phobias people have about food are truly endless, to say nothing of serious religious conviction.
Every host and hostess has the same nightmare. A dinner party has been planned for six, of whom two are kosher. A
menu has been invented around that fact: cold fish in green sauce, vegetarian lasagna, a salad and pear tart. At the last minute, it develops that of the other four guests, one is on a strict wheat-free diet, another cannot eat dairy products and another is allergic to fish.
An easy solution to this problem is to change friends instantly and find some red-blooded chowhounds with few scruples and no interest in health. Another approach is to take a preventative line: send out a questionnaire, or subject potential guests to ruthless cross-examination. "We're having a dinner party," you begin. "We're having the so-and-so's and we'd love you to come. Do you have any food phobias you would like to discuss? Have you recently discovered that you have any food allergies? Has your new naturopath doctor put you on any kind of diet we should know about in planning this meal? Have you recently taken up a new religion or gone back to your old one that has caused a change in your diet?" If you are wondering why you bought a home computer, you might now put it to good use and index your friends.
Some people have been taught that it is impolite to turn anything down, and if you ask them, they say: "Oh, I eat everything." Then, as you are slicing the steak, they shyly tell you that they have not eaten red meat in ten years.
It is also wise to know if people are fatally allergic to something. I know a woman who has a serious allergy to nuts. She spent her honeymoon in the hospital since the baker did not pay attention and slipped a little ground almond into the wedding cake frosting. You do not, of course, want to be responsible for the death of your guests, but sometimes it seems that they will be the death of you.
Vegetarians, for example, are enough to drive anyone crazy. Like Protestants, they come in a number of denominations. Lactovegetarians will eat dairy, eggs and usually fish, but some lactovegetarians will not eat fish. Vegans will not eat dairy products or eggs or fish. And some people say they are vegetarians when they mean they do not eat red meat, leading you to realize that for some people chicken is a vegetable.
On the subject of keeping kosher, there are degrees of strictness. Although they agree on a number of points—ritually slaughtered meat, no milk and meat together, no fish without scales, no pork—some Jews are more lax than others. 1 have friends who will have a meal in my house if they provide the food and I provide the paper plates and plastic forks. Others will eat a vegetarian meal. A few others will eat meat as long as it is kosher, prepared according to the dietary laws and cooked in a nonporous dish.
Finally, there are people who cannot eat certain things for reasons of health: people on salt-free diets, heart patients who must have polyunsaturated oil and no saturated fats whatsoever, and people with ulcers and other gastrointestinal disorders.
For those who have problems sleeping, making up menus for this range of problematic eaters provides lively late-night entertainment. If you do not have insomnia, fussy eaters in your social orbit will give it to you.
I have spent many white nights grappling with this problem and have come up with some foolproof, all-purpose answers.
For example, fruit salad. Everyone can eat this. Simply find out who is allergic to strawberries and leave them (or the strawberries) out. Fruit salad can be made year-round. In the summer, there is such a profusion of fruit that you must limit your choices. In the winter, the pickings are slimmer, but a wonderful fruit salad can be made with oranges, apples, pears and bananas, livened with kiwi fruit and some drained canned lichee nuts. This salad does not need sugar or liquor (but you can add both).
No one I have ever met is allergic to lettuce (although somewhere someone doubtless is), but some people simply will not eat salad. No matter, Bibb lettuce never harmed anyone, and even a heart patient may have a little olive oil. Salt-free dressing is not at all horrible if, to your oil and vinegar (or lemon juice), you add a little ground celery seed, some minced garlic and some dry mustard. Some people, however, really cannot ingest garlic and for them you must either make a separate dressing or serve them naked greens with oil and vinegar on the side.
Now for dinner. Here are two choices—one for meat eaters, one for vegetarians. This chicken dish can be fed to invalids, people recovering from abdominal surgery, heart patients and picky children.
CHICKEN WITH CHICKEN GLAZE
serves 4
3 whole chicken breasts
spring water
cucumbers (V2 hothouse or 8 medium kirbys)
chopped scallion (optional)
/. Split chicken breasts and remove every scrap of skin and fat. Leave the bone in.
2. Place in spring water, barely to cover. Add nothing — no onion, no garlic, no pepper.
3. Poach very slowly until very tender Never allow to boil.
4. Remove the chicken, set aside to cool, and when cool, cut into strips.
5. Set the broth in a saucepan over medium high heat to reduce.
6. Meanwhile, cut cucumbers into julienne. Kirby or hothouse cucumbers are preferred — but if only those big waxed monsters from the supermarket are available, peel and seed. One will do. Place the cucumber on a platter and place the chicken on top.
7. Reduce the broth to a syrup. You now have chicken glaze. Pour this on top of the chicken and let sit until lukewarm. A refrigerated glaze will jell.
8. Chopped scallion on top is nice, unless someone can't eat it.
Now, for vegetarians of any stripe, people who keep kosher and
those on macrobiotic diets. Pasta will not do; for some it is too fattening. Others can't eat wheat. Vegetable fritters would be nice except some won't eat eggs or fried food. A minimal approach is best: steamed vegetables with green sauce.
There is no limit to the quantity and combination of vegetables to serve, it depends on the number you are feeding, the vagaries of the season and what is in the market. Any and all vegetables will do. I like
asparagus, snow peas, string beans, zucchini, yellow squash and broccoli. Simply steam until tender.
The sauce is a trick: it looks like and has the texture of mayonnaise, but it is not. This recipe was given to me by a friend with a tender stomach who has been on every health regime known to man.
JEANNETTE KOSSUTH'S GREEN SAUCE
1 bunch watercress
4 scallions (green part only)
1 large clove garlic (optional)
1 tablespoon Dijon mustard
V2 cup olive oil (or V4 cup olive oil,
V4 cup polyunsaturated oil)
freshly ground black pepper
lemon juice (from V2 lemon)
/. Cut stems from watercress (serve the tops with the steamed vegetables) and place in a blender with the green parts of scallions and garlic.
2. Add Dijon mustard, olive oil, pepper and lemon juice. Blend.
3. Garlic, which makes the sauce more delicious, can be omitted if one of your guests can't eat it. If you do use it, add it in Step I.
Host- and hostessing, as we know, is often a heroic endeavor.
Feeding the Fussy
41
requiring daring, ingenuity, a desire to take chances and a concern for others. These traits are also called for in saints and Nobel Prize winners.
And always keep this motto in mind: some are born fussy, and some have fussiness thrust upon them.
BREAD BAKING WITHOUT AGONY
It took me a long time to get around to baking a loaf of bread, and when I finally did, I stayed home all day to do it. It seemed such a mysterious and intimidating process. What was "kneading" and how did you do it? What happened if the bread didn't rise? If it rose too much? Suppose it got in the way of a draft? The recipes I read assumed a familiarity 1 did not possess, but I figured it couldn't be all that difficult since people had been baking bread since man began. But to put me at my ease, I called in a more experienced friend to help me. One gloomy winter day, we set about to bake. My friend insisted we do something called "setting the sponge"—that is, mixing up a little sugar and some of the flour with the yeast and water to get the yeast started. Then we sat around drinking coffee till the sponge got frothy. When the rest of the flour was added, my friend showed me how to knead by putting the dough on a floured surface, pushing it away from her, folding it over and pushing it away again, each time giving it a quarter turn. Very soon the dough had the springy, soft texture of a baby's bottom. 1 was very impressed.
We rolled the dough in soft butter and put it in a warm bowl, wrapped in a warm towel, in a warm place to rise, and while we waited we had elevenses.
About an hour or so later, we peeked under the towel and I learned what the term "doubled in bulk" means. The dough had grown to twice its size. The next thing to do was to "punch it down" (or "knock it down," as the English say). I found it very satisfying to give that puffy, balloonlike dough a good smack, which flattened it down at once. Then, as instructed, 1 kneaded it again. This time it was springier and seemed to come back at me. Again the dough was rolled in butter and put in a warm place, all dressed up in its protective snowsuit.
"Let's go out," 1 said.
"Oh, no," my friend said. "It isn't worth it. We'd have to turn around and come right back anyway."
By this time 1 began to feel fidgety.
"How much longer will this take?" I said.
"About another forty minutes to rise, and about an hour to bake," she said. "Let's have lunch."
We had lunch and then we played a desultory game of Scrabble, punctuated by punching the dough down again, forming it into loaves and slipping it into buttered loaf pans. We sat around a little while it rose a bit more, and then we baked it.
The result was a perfectly nice loaf of bread, but after spending an entire day in its service, I expected something a little more heroic.
After this marathon, I did not bake for some time, but I thought about it. I believed that everyone should know how to bake at least one kind of bread as a step toward self-sufficiency, and besides, the bread bought in the store was truly awful.
Then another friend gave me a recipe for a three-cup loaf that took one hour to bake, start to finish. I cut my teeth on this loaf, so to speak, and considering its density, it's a wonder I didn't knock them out. This loaf was heavy and tasted heavily of yeast.
Left out for a day, it developed into something that resembled a doorstop.
While 1 developed a craving for this bread, my affection was not shared, and after I had eaten a few slices, the rest of the loaf was left to languish and eventually produced a lush coat of furlike blue mold.
Nevertheless, I continued to bake it, and I gave it away to people, too. It is unknown what most of them did with it, but I did once bring a loaf as a house present and the expression on the face of my hostess made me finally realize how unavailable this bread looked.
Then I read a book that changed my life: English Bread and Yeast Cookery by Elizabeth David, with American notes by Karen Hess. 1 read it as if it were a novel: I took it to bed with me and stayed up late to finish it. 1 did read it as a house-bound person reads a travel book since I was now the mother of an eighteen-month-old daughter and I did not see how 1 could meet the demands of a loaf of bread and pay attention to a child at the same time.
But as 1 read 1 came across the interesting fact that bread dough will rise slowly and well at room temperature, which, considering the temperatures of most American houses, means a lukewarm place. If left to rise for a long time, only a small quantity of yeast is necessary. The process is rather like marination, and develops the taste of wheat (rather than the taste of yeast).
And then I read this liberating sentence:
It's really a question of arranging matters so that the dough suits your timetable rather than the other way around.
Why, you could have knocked me over with a pastry brush! This meant that I could mix up the bread in the morning, leave it to rise and actually go away! I could come home when I wanted, punch the dough down and let it rise all afternoon, if I needed to. Or I could take my daughter to the park, come home, punch
the dough down, give it a short second rise and bake it during naptime. The idea that bread baking was something that would accommodate itself to me was downright thrilling.
The next morning I embarked on a Bloomer loaf—a wholewheat baguette-shaped bread.
Unlike many recipes this one had no setting of the sponge and no proofing the yeast with sugar. The ingredients were flour, water, yeast, salt and a little milk.
Most recipes tell you to coat the dough with butter or oil (to keep it from sticking to the bowl). This recipe asked you to roll it in flour, which in my opinion gives a better crust. It is baked on a floured rather than a greased baking sheet.
And of course most recipes state that bread dough is fussy and must be treated with extreme care, put in a warm place and wrapped up tight. This recipe called for a warm bowl, a towel and a cool place.
I did as I was instructed, put the bowl on my dining room table, and then my daughter and I went about our business.
Three hours later we returned. I punched the dough down and gave it a second kneading, gave my daughter her lunch and put her in for her nap. An hour before she woke up, 1 formed the loaf, slashed the top with four diagonal cuts, brushed it with water and set it in the oven.
The result was absolutely breathtaking. 1 could not believe I had baked such a perfect loaf of bread: a dark brown crust, a beautiful smell. 1 let it cool down and when I cut it, it had air holes just like a loaf from a French bakery. Furthermore, it was delicious: wheaty, light but not at all airy. Everyone loved it, and I assumed it was beginner's luck.
It was not, for 1 have now made this bread over and over, with varying proportions of white to whole-wheat flour. 1 have added wheat germ or corn germ, made it with all water and no milk, let it rise all day, half a day, with a short first rise or a short second one. One afternoon I was about to leave the house when I rea
lized that the second rising was probably over and I had forgotten about baking, so 1 punched the dough down again and
let it rise a third time, and the resulting loaf was one dinner guests tore apart with their hands. The second best thing about this bread (the first is its taste) is that, unlike most things in life, it adjusts to you.
Before starting out there are a few things to consider. Although perfectly good bread can be made using whole-wheat flour from the supermarket, it goes without saying that the better the flour, the better the bread. Health food stores often stock excellent flours in bulk and there are mail order sources of first-rate flours, some of them organic. One such is Walnut Acres (Penns Creek, Pa. 17862), which has a bread flour that turns tan when water is added and makes an excellent loaf. There are often wonderful flours available at farmers' markets, and some people are lucky enough to live near a mill.
Sea salt is purer and saltier than any commercial salt, and it is not a mere nicety to use filtered water.
As for yeast, I use a preservative-free yeast from Walnut Acres which I buy in quantity and keep in the refrigerator. The finest loaves I ever made, however, used fresh yeast, which you can sometimes buy at the supermarket and sometimes beg from a friendly bakery.
Home-baked bread of any kind is better than anything you can buy at the grocery store. This, of course, is not saying much, since most commercial bread has the taste and texture of a cellulose sponge. Long-risen bread, however, is better than anything you can get even from a fancy bakery.
I have tinkered with the original recipe until I have found the bread I like best, one that manages to be dense and light at the same time:
FOR ONE LOAF
IV2 cups unbleached white flour
V/2 cups stone-ground whole-wheat flour
% cup coarse ground (or regular)
whole-wheat flour
1 heaping teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon wheat or corn germ
V2 scant teaspoon yeast
Va cup milk
% cup water
Home cooking Page 4
