Mark Bittman posted one of his great roundups of recipes in the Times Magazine this weekend, featuring less-expected ways to eat apples. I'm particularly taken with the cheesy apple fritters and that apple tempura! I'm prone to tossing diced apple into lots of salads—with oil-cured tuna, with walnuts and blue cheese, with all kinds of herbs. And when I make oatmeal, I always grate an apple into the pot. This really supports good digestion. We have a big old apple tree on our property at the lake, and it's covered with mottled green fruit that looks dubious but tastes great. Our friend Julia up the road has an orchard of craggy old trees that produce a lot of fruit, including some of the most flavorful red apples ever and a few pears, too. I've already eaten some super-crunchy and juicy Honey Crisps this year, and I'm a big fan of the Pink Lady with its wonderfully tangy sweetness. There are so many things to be made with all these apples, from pies, crumbles, betties and cakes to butter, fritters, cider...and, pedestrian as it may sound, applesauce.
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In the summer of 1976, I was allowed to fly out to New York by myself to visit my aunt, uncle and cousins in Long Island. It was the bicentennial year, and I vividly recall the red-&-white-striped pantsuit my mother made me for this occasion, embroidered with navy blue stars. I was taken into the city to have lunch at Maxwell's Plum, and we drove through the caverns of Wall Street where the skyscrapers soared dizzyingly up into the wild blue yonder. It was at Bloomingdale's, though, where I was most intoxicated by the glamour, the excitement, the sheer abundance. For a thirteen-year old girl with a head full of frizzy curls and a mouthful of metal, the enormous caramel apple they sold there—a kitschy symbol of the Big Apple—was unattainably enticing. As volputuous as a Botero sculpture, one glistening end dipped in chopped nuts, it's remained forever a fantasy.
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Certain foods just have a universal appeal. Consider the dumpling, for instance. It's found in so many cultures, this rose by any other name: knedlíky (Czech), kreplach (Jewish), pantrucas (Chile), manti (Armenia), ravioli (Italy), buuz (Mongolia), pangsit (Indonesia), dim sum (China), gyoza (Japan), mandu (Korea)...the list goes on and on. Yogurt—and soured milk of all kinds—may not be quite as common, especially given that many African and Asian countries don't do dairy, but among those that do it's a deeply-held tradition. From straight-up yogurt to crème fraîche to quark to ricotta to paneer to Mexico's indigenous Nahuatl jocoque árabe, people have long been introducing bacteria or acid to milk with delectable results. Greek yogurt has become hugely popular in this country over the last few years, thanks in no small part to the ubiquitous Fage (pronounced "fa-yeh") brand and now Chobani, too. It's simply yogurt which has been strained to remove the whey, giving it a much denser, creamier texture. Sometimes this style of yogurt is even enriched with extra butterfat or powdered milk.
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One of my earliest memories is of being handed a small saucer of fresh cajeta by a tall, dark-haired neighbor of ours in Mexico. A sweet seduction like this you never forget, no matter how chaste. This amber-colored elixir is the taste of my childhood: dizzyingly sweet, with notes of burnt sugar and barnyard commingled in a sigh of pleasure. The name allegedly comes from the Spanish phrase al punto de cajeta, which means a liquid thickened to the point at which a spoon drawn through it reveals the bottom of the pot. But I've also heard it said that it takes its name from the small wooden boxes in which it was traditionally packed. There is simply nothing like goat's milk caramel, cooked to a dark satin swirl and touched with hints of salt and vanilla. It's delicious with cheese, believe it or not, and drizzled over or mixed into ice cream, but I enjoy it best spooned sinfully straight from the jar.

 

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This photo doesn't really begin to capture the insane blizzard swirling through Times Square as we stepped out of the theatre last night. Broadway was virtually deserted except for the rush of people desperately trying to make it home by any means necessary. The silence and the fluffy whiteness were magical but there were also lightning and strong winds. Luckily we made it down the snow-packed subway steps and safely back to the Ace, where we awakened today to a foot of snow out the window. Our White Christmas, just a little late.

As of tomorrow, I will be on the road, traveling to Todos Santos, Mexico. Four of us are gathering at a rented house on a pineapple plantation in this tiny surf town/artists' colony on the Baja peninsula to celebrate Scott's 50th birthday. I don't surf but I plan to swim, stroll the beaches, eat lots of fresh fish and generally soak up as much relaxation as possible. Not sure what the wireless situation will be, but stay tuned...
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In the movie of my life, I'm sitting on the couch in front of the fire watching a movie. I have done this, plus or minus the fireplace—and assorted family members—ever since I can remember. I definitely associate holiday time with watching movies and eating See's. So I thought I might take this opportunity to create a list for you of movies that would make great viewing during all the downtime you'll hopefully be having in the next few weeks. Of course I'm assuming you'll also be doing the requisite skiing and snowshoeing to offset all that lounging and the inevitable onslaught of calories. We've got a light snow cover here and I'm praying for more. I may even learn to ice skate this year! (I am a horrible, knock-kneed skater but G has promised to school me.) Perhaps you feel I've been shirking my duties and not posting enough holiday-relevant recipes. You're not wrong. Blogging has taken a bit of a back seat to the insanity of shopping and wrapping and schlepping. But it's not that we haven't been eating well. Last night there was a delicious salad of fresh Tuscan kale with roasted delicata squash, pecorino and fresh pomegranate.
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Around this time every year, our house turns into a veritable hive of activity. Of course there is the requisite wrapping of presents, but mostly it centers around the annual caramel bonanza. There is something about the convergence of salt and sweet and butter and chew (and chocolate) that makes these humble candies so addictive. We pour lots of love into them and send them out into the world as a reminder that something homemade, something from the heart, is the most wonderful gift of all. If you've never made candy, I recommend these as a starting point. All you need is a big, heavy pot, a baking sheet and a candy thermometer. It's a bit like baking in that you need to follow the instructions closely as far as temperature and proportions, but the rest is all stirring and wrapping. Always use the best ingredients because the flavors are quite concentrated. And give yourself plenty of time, because it's best to avoid panic when there is molten caramel around.

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Forgive me, readers, for I have sinned. Somehow I neglected to tell you about one of my favorite treats. I do like having secret sources, but this one is too good not to share. Askinosie is a bean-to-bar chocolate operation based in, of all places, Springfield, Missouri. (No, not all groovy handcrafted chocolate is from the new Brooklyn.) The owner, Shawn Askinosie, had a sort of chocolate epiphany in 2005 and got really distracted from his career as a criminal defense attorney. He studied cocoa post-harvest techniques in the Amazon rain forest and worked in a chocolate factory in Guayaquil, Ecuador, and the result is a very interesting company that is not at all pretentious despite its sophistication. They seek out farmers in Latin America, really understand the beans and process them into award-winning bars at their factory located in a historic building from 1894. Not only is their single-origin dark chocolate some of the best I've ever sampled, but they also do a Soconusco White Chocolate bar made from non-deodorized cocoa butter and goat's milk powder that is studded with pistachios; a Dark Milk Chocolate with Fleur de Sel; and their new Malted Moo Moo Dark Milk Chocolate Bar, with the robust, funky flavor of malt that I find totally irresistible. (Full disclosure: Shawn just mailed me one of these to try after I sent the family chocoholic an Askinosie gift certificate for his recent birthday.)
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G did a bad thing. He went to Bouchon Bakery in the Time Warner Center and came home with all these goodies. I mean baddies! He claimed they were for our guests but a few crumbs fell into our mouths as well. Do you love Thomas Keller? (If you don't know who I'm talking about, Rip Van Winkle, you can read his bio on the Bouchon Bakery website.) I had an incredible lunch at the French Laundry in the spring of 2001 and even went into the kitchen to have Thomas sign a copy of his recently published cookbook of the same name. It was immaculate in there and quiet as a tomb. But the food that came out was hardly demure. For such a serious chef, he loves his little food puns: oysters and pearls (tapioca); coffee and doughnuts (cappuccino semifreddo), etc. He opened Bouchon Bakery right outside Per Se—his magnum opus where I have dined in splendor overlooking Central Park—so that it could provide bread for the restaurant and also "add an additional layer of cafe life to the surrounding area." So thoughtful. There, you can grab and go, perch on a stool, or get a real table at which to enjoy light fare, including soups and sandwiches, quiche, wonderful breads and all manner of sweets. I once had a huge coconut-dusted doughnut stuffed with passionfruit curd that nearly did me in. They even bake dog treats for New York's most pampered canines. My personal favorite from the selection shown above happens to be the frisbee-sized Nutter Butter. It's unwise to eat more than a quarter of this creamy, peanutty travesty at a time. I've even posted the bakery's recipe for it should you be reckless enough to want to try this at home.
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Yesterday G and I saw "Up In the Air," Jason Reitman's film starring George Clooney, Vera Farmiga and Anna Kendrick. It was adapted from the novel of the same name by Walter Kirn. The credits feature a lot of amazing images of clouds, as you see them from an airplane; fields of them stretching out forever, impossibly puffy, pneumatic, full of air. The movie was not the sort of romantic comedy I thought it would be. It takes a rather more dim and realistic view of the human heart and shows how the very thing we imagine ourselves to be can turn out to be our undoing. It was actually kind of dark and poignant and unexpected. Clooney and Farmiga are both gorgeous and at the top of their respective games (for once Vera isn't playing an impoverished drug addict) and the new girl, Kendrick, is fresh and unmannered. Afterwards, we went to Union Square Café, to use an anniversary gift of a meal there we had received from G's parents. I hadn't been in ages but it's really the same as ever: warm, efficient, enjoyable.
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