Don't get your knickers in a twist, I'm not giving you a recipe to prepare strange and frightening innards. Not that I wouldn't! But no, this is considerably more tame. Although I hope it make take you out of your comfort zone as far as baked goods go. Why? Because it's made with a lot of buckwheat flour and that can have scary health-food store connotations. Trust me, you don't need to be wearing Birkenstocks to go for this delicious cake. It's actually inspired by an incredible muffin from Peels that I've enjoyed on several occasions. The pastry chef there, Shuna Fish Lydon, really rocks, as you can see by her blog, not to mention her addictive graham crackers, brown butter rice krispie cubes and other tweaked-homestyle treats. I've lauded her skills before.
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Use it up. Wear it out. Make it do. Do without.Eleanor Roosevelt said that, probably during the Depression or some wartime crunch. But I love its sentiment: the idea that what we have is enough. "Making do" is not really something you see advertised alongside Big Gulps and $35,000 handbags. Last weekend in the Times' opinion section, I saw this piece about a divorced Brooklyn mother of two who fell on hard times and resorted to starting a victory garden and baking her own bread to get by. (A former Bergdorf Goodman shopper and unwilling to give up perfume, she now makes her own from fragrant herbs!) It was very inspiring, and it gave me serious pause when I went to write "mint tea" on the grocery list that's posted on the door of our fridge. Instead, I went out to the garden and harvested huge armfuls of fresh mint. I had cut the unruly plants back a month ago—and frozen and preserved some leaves then—but they had grown in more vigorously than ever. While I was out there, I also snipped lots of other things to dry and use over the coming winter months.
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Another week gone by and, I'm pleased to say, another two of my recipes singled out by the editors of Food52. I still haven't actually won any of their contests, but lots of honorable mentions do add up. This time it was my Scarborough Fair Chicken and my Golden Rösti (made from yellow beets). I'll share the former with you first. My dear friend Marilee was recently asking me for a good roast chicken recipe, and I think this one is deliciously reliable. The name, of course, refers to the old English ditty and the herbs mentioned therein: parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme. Add some butter, lemons and shallots, and you're in serious business. The chicken you use really matters—and here I'm going to flog the organic argument once again. Despite the American propensity for enormous breasts, they're just not worth keeping our chickens in captivity in order to force-feed them the required diet of (subsidized) corn. Go for a nice free-range roaster and you'll enjoy better flavor and a freer conscience.
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