Off the Bone

I wanted to write about ramps – leek’s delicious wild cousin that resulted in many a tasty meal this spring and summer – but their season is over, so I shall tag this post for next spring. Instead I will draw your attention to tomatoes, since the good stuff is probably hitting the farmers’ markets just about now.

There are two things I like to do with really good tomatoes: a raw tomato sauce for pasta, and, recently, tomato soup. They are so simple that I am almost embarrassed to write about them. All you need is tomatoes. Fresh, ripe local tomatoes that tickle your nose with sweet and tangy aroma when you look at them close. I find that the sort matters little, just don’t buy enormous beefsteaks – these are for sandwiches – and don’t be tempted by yellow or orange ones – they are always less flavorful, although pretty in salads. Don’t buy any sort that you cannot smell.

Once you are in possession of tomatoes, scald and peel them. For sauce, seed, dice, toss in a large bowl with a bit of salt, a bit of sugar, and a few smashed garlic cloves. Leave at room temperature for at least a couple of hours – it will froth a little – then toss with pasta and fresh basil.

For soup, simply cut into chunks and toss in a pot with freshly sautéed garlic. Cook a little, add whatever you want (salt, a pinch of sugar, freshly ground pepper, herbs…), and serve. You can puree the stuff with immersion blender, but I like to leave mine chunky and eat it with cheesy toast.

Best summer meal ever.

I’m at the Williamstown Theatre Festival at the moment, working 14 hours a day in the theatre, my other hobby-gone-bad. There will be more about cheese soon - but as an interlude, here are the beginnings of our links section - my favourite food blogs.

My weekly reads begin with Derrick Schneider, and his Obsession with Food. I consider Derrick’s blog a more refined version of Chocolate & Zucchini (in Derek’s words, the world’s cutest food blog). His writing is excellent, informative, and enthusiastic, and he manages to be very present without ever drawing attention away from his subject.

Tana Butler’s Small Farms Blog is eloquent and passionate. Her descriptions are lush, her writing is flat out fun, and I like her cause. We should know what we’re eating. We should know who raised it and where, what it ate and how it lived, and she says it better than I can.

Tana takes good photos, but for real edirotica, there may not be a better amateur photographer out there than nordljus.

I can’t decide if I want to marry LKL Chu or be her. She’s staged at El Bulli and Ducasse, and is currently cooking at Crillon. Reads like Anthony Bourdain, is a better cook. The only downside is that she’s usually too exhausted to write much.

Butter Pig is a blog after my own heart. The name should tell you why. A tribute to what a home cook can achieve with enough time and senseless courage. To top it all off, he looks like Meat Loaf. No, not that kind of meatloaf.

I know this is old, but I only just came across this lovely story about the Bushes and the White House Chef. I almost wish I’d been at the inaugural dinner.

One of Riga’s attractions, listed in all guidebooks, is its market. It occupies a sizable territory on the outskirts of the slum and warehouse district and is architecturally dominated by three or four dirigible hangars, surrounded by rows of greengrocers, cheap eateries, flower sellers and a flee market. The hangars are filled with butchers, fishmongers, and dairy stalls, and scattered sellers of eggs, honey and wax candles. In the morning light filters through skylights, and seagulls outside cock their heads at passersby, hoping perhaps for a small herring.

The Latvian fish market cannot compare to the famous Japanese Tsukiji or New York’s Fulton, but it is a happy place, with its enormous salmons (from which one could easily cut 10-inch diameter steaks), enormous vats of bright-eyed sardines selling for peanuts, neat rainbow trouts, and an enormous variety of freshwater fish labeled confusingly in Latvian.

Freshwater fish are a staple of East European diet – almost unknown to me, aside from brown trout and carp. The women of my family refused to cook freshwater fish, making a reluctant exception for carp (a Christmas must), because they are incredibly bony and quite a pain to eat. Despite my studied disregard for this inconvenience, I must admit its existence, which I cannot explain – most edible fish theoretically have identical skeletal structure. Despite this problem, some freshwater fish is incredibly tasty, and one of them is vimba.

The fish is called exactly the same in Latvian, Vimba vimba in Latin, and “rybets” in Russian (a variation on “ryba” or simply “fish”). Vimbas can weigh up to two pounds and normally look quite unremarkable, but in spring their fins blush pink, their bellies become lighter and freckled with gold, and vimbas become positively pretty. They are tasty all the time and can be cooked any way you want. For a simple and enjoyable meal, simply fry it, whole or cut across into three or four pieces, sprinkling the skin generously with salt and pepper. For something unforgettable, brown on one side, turn, and add liquid to poach gently – fish stock or vegetable stock or simply water, with pieces of carrot and onion, stalks of parsley and thyme, and a few pieces of lemon. It will be delightful hot, but if you let it cool completely in its poaching liquid (take out the things you’d rather not eat), you will be rewarded with lovely chunks of fish in flavorful jelly. Eat carefully – they are still bony!

One of the freshwater fish you should not buy is the roach. Its Latvian name - “raudas,” or “tears” – reflects equally accurately its culinary value. The roach is of unremarkable flavor, small at a third to half of a pound per beastie, slippery as hell, and a royal pain to prep. Holding it still for cleaning requires rubber gloves, or a thick paper towel, or a certain serendipitous touch – almost a non-touch – that can only be achieved after a couple of dastardly roaches have driven you to despair and you had to meditate on the nature of fish to calm yourself down. While possibly good for your spiritual development, roaches are not worth it. If you get a pound of them as a present, boil them whole in soup with more tasty fish. You may also want to reconsider your friendship with the giver.

Cheesemaking is a lot like kendo – all it is is hitting people with a big stick – but it requires so much heart to do it properly. If you really want to learn as much about cheese as you can learn without touching milk, you should go and read the first chapter of Harold McGee’s On Food and Cooking. What follows is a brief, technical but hopefully readable description of the basic steps involved in turning milk into cheese. Another article will follow, discussing the less visible aspects of this process.

Start by milking your cows. You are now in possession of the two key components of cheese – insoluble protein and bacteria. Unfortunately, you’re also in possession of a number of other things which you don’t really want – chiefly water, soluble protein and more bacteria. Everything we do from here on out will essentially be about separating these two groups.

The milk is collected in a large temperature controlled vat, and some of yesterday’s whey is used to seed it with lactobacteria, which cause it to acidify. Between the large seed colony of lactobacteria and the rapid acidification of the milk, other, undesirable bacteria don’t stand a chance, being either killed by the rising acidity (in which lactobacteria thrive), or out-multiplied by the (thriving) lactobacteria.

Looked at another way, removing water from milk is the same thing as removing the solid stuff from milk. The solid stuff in milk consists largely of insoluble proteins and fats. We could theoretically filter them out molecule by molecule, but it’s much simpler to make all these millions of little molecules into much larger clumps and deal with those instead. On a molecular level, we’re essentially making dust into dust bunnies.

Given enough time, souring of milk by bacterial action will cause the insoluble proteins to clump together, but this results in a curd structure unsuitable for most cheeses. Instead, we accelerate the process by adding rennet, an extract of a calf’s stomach which basically makes it easier for proteins to clump.¹ Rennet causes the vat of milk to form a very fine network of protein strands, what looks like a single, soft, 60-gallon mass, in which fats and water and solutes are trapped rather than actually chemically integrated, much as dust bunnies have unidentifiable particles suspended inside. These particles of solution are whey.

As soon as the curd sets, we cut it using a cheese harp, which looks either like a zither, or giant egg cutter, depending on how poetic you’re feeling. Cutting the curd, a controlled destruction of the protein network, begins the process of releasing whey, and soon enough the curd is aswim in a lake of whey. We stir the curds and whey, and the gentle agitation causes the curds to expel even more whey. Controlling how firm the curd is when it’s cut, how finely it is cut, and how much whey is expelled from the curd after cutting, is one of the main ways of controlling the final texture of the cheese.²

We drain the curd and pour it into moulds, of varying size and porousness, and leave it to drain, overnight or longer, flipping it from time to time to encourage the even distribution of liquid in the cheese. The next day, we salt it, then sit it in front of a fan to dry and allow the salt to be absorbed – and then the magic begins.

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I just ate an ancient ocean.

Tonight I had mozzarella for dinner. You make mozzarella by taking curd that has soured to the correct acidity to be stretchy, then essentially melting it in hot saltwater, then pulling and folding. Repeat this 12 or 16 times, and you have 4096 to 65,536 layers. Tonight’s mozzarella was warm from the saltwater and the hands of its maker, and was in an udder 12 hours before it hit my plate. It tasted of cream and warm animals, and, faintly, earth.

We ate it sprinkled with Tears of Drolma. Tears of Drolma are a very fine grained and delicately pink sea salt, shades of coral and sunset sky. They are all that remains of the Sea of Tethys, which, two hundred million years ago, separated India and China. As they came together, a hundred million years ago, and gave birth to the Himalayas, pockets of the Sea were trapped in the mountains, depositing their salt when they finally disappeared. They taste of iron and history. The Tibetans quarry these deposits, with hammer and chisel, and worship them as sacred, and say they were created when a goddess wept.

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I come from a line of chocoholics, at least on my mother’s side. When I was two, my mother tells me, I had a problem with pronouns. But I knew my desserts — when I was asked what kind of ice cream I wanted, I said, “you want the black.” Since then, my love of chocolate has grown from the childish pleasures of Hershey bars and M&M’s to ever-darker varieties of chocolate.

My current favorite chocolate desert is a flourless chocolate cake. My mother has made a lot of these over the years — they’re one of my two favorite deserts during Passover, when no leavened bread products can be eaten (the other, recently discovered, is almond macaroons). Her recipes tended towards the dense and fudgy. But I’ve recently discovered a somewhat lighter (but still quite rich) variety which I prefer.

Like macs, this recipe relies on eggs to provide substance. Because of this, it’s a bit delicate — if you overbake it, it will become dry, and if you underbake it, it might collapse.

Ingredients:

• 1/2 cup water
• 1 cup sugar
• 1 tbsp instant coffee (optional)
• 12 oz chocolate, chopped
• 1 cup butter, chopped
• 6 large eggs
• 1/3 cup sugar
• Frosting — chocolate ganache or whipped cream
• whipped cream (to serve with)
• raspberries, for garnish

Preheat oven to 350 F

Cook the water and 1 cup sugar until boiling, then a few minutes more to make sure it’s combined. Remove it from the heat. Add the coffee, if you’re using it, and the chocolate. Stir until the chocolate is smooth, then add the butter and stir until it is melted.

While the chocolate is cooling, beat the eggs together with 1/3 cup sugar for fifteen minutes. Make sure the eggs are at room temperature. The egg froth should fill your mixer bowl. Fold the chocolate into the eggs, and pour the batter into a 9 inch greased cake pan lined on the bottom with parchment paper.

This cake is cooked with the pan in water. So, pour boiling water into a larger pan, then put the 9 inch pan into the larger pan. Be sure to account for the displacement of the cake pan when putting water in — you want to the water to be roughly half way up the sides of the cake pan.

Bake for 25 minutes, then check for doneness in the usual fashion — a toothpick or knife tip inserted into the cake will come out clean. If it’s not done, bake up to ten more minutes — after that, it’s done whether or not it’s done. Allow it to cool for a few minutes, then invert it onto a cake platter and carefully peel off the parchment paper. You can serve it warm as-is, or allow it to cool to room temperature and coat it with ganache (if you really need more chocolate), or whipped cream. In either case, stick some raspberries on top, since few tastes pair as nicely as chocolate and raspberry.

On the day I left Boston for Riga, the New York Times Sunday magazine published an article on Mille Crêpes - a modern variation on an age-old French desert commonly knon as Gateau de Crêpes recetly made trendy by the Lady M Cake Boutique. Gateau de Crêpes is a French embodiment of the same impulse that makes Americans stack blueberry pancakes and soak them in melted butter and maple syrup: to multiply simple goodness until it is transformed into sublime decadence. One can stack crepes with layers of candied apples, jam, or any flavor of pastry cream; Lady M flavors its pastry cream with vanilla or green tea, lightens it with whipped cream, and top the concoction with a crunchy layer of caramelized sugar. Lady M is a commercially minded establishment and not only declines to reveal recipes, but tries to prevent attempts at imitation by creating an aura of hard-won perfection. I have never tried their cake, but my first attempt to recreated it proved so successful that I suspect the aura of perfection is a simple commercial trick.

You can find a good version of the recipe in the NYT article (the correspondent was similarly not deterred); write to me if it’s been taken down and I’ll send you an archived version. Here I’ll indulge myself and ruminate on crepes, seeing that their Russian version - bliny - is kind of our family specialty.

There are almost as many versions of “authentic” Russian bliny as there are families who make them. Some use buckwheat flour, some are leavened with baking soda or even yeast; they can be thick like pancakes or almost paper-thin, plain or rich with eggs and dairy, sweet or savory, filled and refried (think blinzes or traditional crepes) or simply folded and dipped in sour cream or preserves; they are usually as large as the pan they are made in. The women of my family are extremely good at one particulr kind - rich, unsweetened, and paper-thin - a liter of full milk, six eggs, a pinch of salt, and flour until it’s just thick enough. Except for butter and sugar, it is remarkably similar to the crepe recipe used for Mille Crêpes and they cook about the same (and best in a well-seasoned cast-iron pan).

I am not certain of the role of crêpes in French culture, but the role of bliny appears to be more similar to that of American pancakes at brunch - the clear intention is to pig out. Bliny, however, are not brunch food - they are for feasts (especially Mardi Gras, when they serve as an excuse to get rid of all the eggs, butter, and sour cream in the house before the start of Lent) and special occasions, served with smoked fish, lightly salted salmon, or caviar (you can even make a caviar cake if you can afford it - it seems to be a Russian version of Gateau de Crêpes), or bowls of sour cream and butter, or jams and preserves - and vodka or tea or both in turn. For a small friendly gathering, bliny are delicious straight out of the pan, if the cook will let you have them that way - as an added advantage, you’ll get to watch her flip your blin by hand (that’s the real family skill!). For a larger one, they are just as good if made in advance, buttered and stacked, perhaps in a warm oven.

Mille Crêpes, although French in its origins, tasted Russian to me thanks to this family history, although also undoubtedly foreign. For the same reason, perhaps, it resonated well with my guests, although they could barely understand why I would put so much effort into making a desert - any desert - instead of simply buying one. This is, perhaps, for another post.

Posting from the farmhouse at the Bobolink Dairy, where I am ostensibly learning how to make cheese and bake in a wood-fired oven.

Really, what I am learning is that cheese begins with sun and rain – and perhaps this is less than obvious. Every morning, I drink a shot of milk, raw, unpasteurised, straight from the cow, and chew it like wine. It tells me what they were eating, what the weather was, and how happy they were yesterday. Grass and barnyard mean they were grazing on clover, of which there’s a great deal here. Sweetness is a happy cow on a cool day, more of a lactic prickle, a ripeness, means it was hot and itchy and the milk was warming in the udder (how the cow felt about this is uncertain). One day there was a faint, herbal aftertaste – mint in the pasture.

Jonathan, the cheesemaker, chooses not to work with his ingredients, in that what we make, on any given day, is determined less by what the milk tastes like than by what he’s been making recently. We tag each day’s production, and months from now, when we taste what we’ve made, yesterday’s cheese will taste different from tomorrow’s. The methods of control look subtle – how much whey is in the cheese, how big the cheese is, how much it’s salted, a percentage point of humidity here or there. One huge tool we use which people always overlook – chasing the cows from one pasture to another, making silly noises, whacking their arses with a stick and stepping in tarte de vache on the way. (Jonathan also, by the way, makes an excellent cheese called tarte de vache).

I know most or all of this from eating and reading. That cheese is milk intensified, that good cheese is made by good pasture, that it, like wine, is a small history of a place. Being here makes it true.

I think it will be strange, after this, to go home and bake. This place makes patisserie seem a little cold, yet I’m tempted to think there is somehow more of the patissier in the pastry than of the cheesemaker in the cheese – the process seems overwhelming and wondrous, too wild and hidden for the person to come to the fore. But perhaps there is more in us than two hundred perfect and perfectly identical desserts.