A Moveable Feast: My Blog

Post-Thanksgiving post

November 28, 2018 by Carol 3 Comments

Back in the day, I subscribed to the late, great Gourmet magazine. Every month I swooned over gorgeous photos of exotic places, dreamt of touring France in a hot air balloon, and of course tried many recipes. One dish in particular I resurrected this year: a rum-glazed sweet potato, apple and chestnut gratin.

I had first made this recipe ages ago, staying up until one a.m. to roast and peel each and every chestnut. But the results were so delicious that it was worth the labor, so I continued to make it. (I have since discovered ready-made chestnuts.)

Then my kids, being kids, declined even to touch the lovingly prepared dish, so I stopped making it.

Until this fall. At Rosh Hashanah, I made a double batch, expecting to bring the second half to my friend’s home the second day of the holiday. But the rather small group around my dining room table vacuumed up almost the entire casserole.

Hmm. Something was up. Perhaps now that they are all grown and with little ones of their own, I should try it on my kids?

So, I made a triple batch for Thanksgiving dinner and all but a few tablespoons disappeared.

Gourmet may be long gone, but it will remain for me a portal into a beautiful world of culinary and travel delights.

And, thank goodness for Google. The recipe is available online!

https://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/rum-glazed-sweet-potato-apple-and-chestnut-gratin-1911086

One Potato, Two Potato, Three Potato, More!

August 20, 2018 by Carol Leave a Comment

I find nothing quite as satisfying as preparing — and eating — a meal with vegetables from my own garden. An eggplant caponata, zucchini latkes, even just a simple sun-warmed tomato with a sprinkle of salt – all scrumptious.

But, as wonderful as all these things are, I like to add something new and different every year. After all, I have enough jalapeno and banana peppers in my freezer to last for the next decade, so there is available space in the garden.

So this year I planted potatoes. Fingerlings, to be precise, the small, stubby, finger-shaped type, because I adore those tiny potatoes oven-roasted with a bit of olive oil, garlic, salt, and pepper. (I’m salivating already, and it’s only 8:30 in the morning as I write this.)

Having no idea how to grow the tubers, I went online and found several different methods. Given the annual invasion by little critters that invade the backyard, taking one bite of everything on the vine (couldn’t they just finish one thing?), I chose to plant them in a tub. And by “tub,” I mean a pot that was big enough to bathe a baby.

As instructed, I dutifully added soil to the pot to build up the plants, and I watered “evenly” (or as evenly possible given the torrential downpours we’ve been seeing in New England this summer).

I even moved the pot around to follow the sun. In one tactical error, I didn’t take into account the weight involved in this project. Although the “Spud Tub” is made of plastic, adding the entire contents of a 25 pound bag of soil made it quite heavy. Luckily, I happen to have a wheeled plant stand from a previous attempt at growing citron trees from seed. (Note the word “previous.” After ten years, all I got was blossoms but no fruit.) So all I had to do (once loading the tub onto it. was to push it with my foot.

The plants grew tall and lanky, seemingly by the minute. And now the foliage is beginning to turn yellow, which means that it is time to dig them up. Hubby J did the honors this week, surprising me with a single, perfectly formed fingerling.

Should I save it for the rest of the harvest, or eat this one tiny spud?

There’s Always Room: Reclaiming the Gelatin Mold

December 1, 2017 by Carol Leave a Comment

Jello, and its jiggly cousin Royal, have long been derided by people who consider themselves epicures. Perhaps their bad rep is due to the association with school cafeterias and hospital stays. Or colonoscopy prep. So, I feel it’s time to come out and admit that I like the stuff, particularly when it’s combined with other ingredients, and even more when it is fashioned into a beautiful shape by virtue of a mold.

After all, let’s be honest. If we called it aspic, we’d get oohs and aahs. In another time, aspic represented the height of a gourmet dining experience. But aspic is simply gelatin in which meat and/or vegetables are suspended.

A couple of weeks ago, I was on the phone with a friend, venting my frustration in trying to find canned cherries. My usual grocery had discontinued stocking them. My friend suggested I try frozen cherries, and then asked why I needed them. When I told her that they were an essential ingredient in my late mother-in-law’s cranberry-cherry gelatin mold, her immediate reaction was, “Ugh.” I responded that the ruby red side dish is actually delicious. And, besides, it’s a tradition on our Thanksgiving table. Everybody in my family not only expects it; they demand it.

Fast forward to the actual Thanksgiving dinner: In recounting the conversation, my daughter-in-law’s mother said that she, too, prepares a beloved recipe that was her mother’s. Then my other daughter-in-law reminisced about her grandmother’s gelatin mold. In fact, although she herself doesn’t cook or bake, she announced that she would, indeed, make gelatin molds for her family. (I hope I will be invited to partake.)

I loved E’s excitement, so immediately began scouring my bookshelves for my copy of The New Joys of Jello, a book I had received as a gift decades ago. And the memories came charging back. I must have tried a dozen different recipes from that book and from the various magazines that came through our mail slot, and almost all were successful. “Under-the-Sea Pear Salad,” made with cream cheese, pear halves, and ginger? Excellent. “Glazed Peach Cream,” prepared with vanilla ice cream and sliced peaches? Delicious. “Carrot , Celery and Olive Salad?” Loved it.

But it was the Crown Jewel Cake that captured my heart, and then broke it. The photograph of that magnificent construction motivated me to try my hand at making it. Consisting of cubes of stained-glass-colored gelatin cubes suspended in creamy white whipped topping fortified by lemon gelatin, it was gorgeous. Unfortunately, my attempt sagged, the topping not sturdy enough to hold it all together.

Then there was the magazine ad featuring a fishbowl in which fish-shaped fruit pieces swam in a sea of blueberry gelatin. In the ad, it looked fabulous and I thought my kids would love it. Unfortunately, when I tried it, the fishes all went belly-up just like real goldfish. And then, somebody (name withheld to protect the guilty) said upon setting her sights on it, “Blue food? How disgusting.” But it did taste okay.

Despite my failures,
the gelatin mold holds a dear place in my heart.

It’s time to reclaim the gelatin mold. Call it retro. Call it hip. Just call it.

Looking for Mr. Peanut: My Quest for the Perfect Peanut Butter

September 26, 2017 by Carol Leave a Comment

In an effort to become healthier, I, like so many other consumers, have been reading labels. Hydrogenated oils, high fructose corn syrup, and saturated fats are all ingredients that I try to avoid. One of the biggest challenges as been with one of my favorite foods: peanut butter. I have it on toast every morning, so I want it to be the best it can be, and we have gone through many brands and styles, from creamy to chunky. My mother always bought Skippy, but when I grew up and became a mom myself, I experimented with Jif (because I’m a choosy mother), then Peter Pan (because I’m one of the picky people). But soon, I realized that added sugars, hydrogenated oils, and salt, although tasty, were not landmarks on the road to healthy.

So, I began to experiment with the “natural” peanut butters, going so far as to make my own, first in a peanut butter maker that a neighbor gave us, then in the food processor (both very noisy endeavors).

For a long time we’ve been using Smucker’s because it is available at a decent price at BJ’s and, because with a name like Smucker’s … (Do I come across as vulnerable to jingles?). I love the taste and the texture. However, I hate having to stir it as the bottom of the jar is very dense. At one point I went so far as to buy a tzatchke from the internet that screws onto the jar like a regular lid but has a stirrer attached. It worked okay, but the rubber lining disintegrated in less than a year.

Desperate, I then devised a hack to homogenize the Smucker’s: I turn the jar over for 24 hours, then stir and place in the fridge to keep its consistency.

But isn’t that a lot of work? So, back to the drawing board with Trader Joe’s peanut butter (runny and not good flavor). At a son’s house we sampled the Whole Foods variety — delicious — but , alas, we don’t have a Whole Foods nearby.

Then we went to visit our daughter and her family in Vermont. They had Teddie, a brand I had bought years ago and liked but had totally forgotten about (after all, BJ’s doesn’t carry it). Elana claimed that, although the label says to stir, it really didn’t need to be either stirred.

So, Teddie is the all-round winner, although I do put it into the refrigerator to keep it at the right consistency.

All this thinking about peanut butter has made me hungry. Excuse me while I go make myself a sandwich.

Mahlab Powder and Ma’amoul Cookies: A Mystery Solved

September 6, 2017 by Carol Leave a Comment

So, it’s time to pull on the elastic waistband slacks again because I’m reviewing another cookbook. This one is called Fress, a collection of Middle Eastern and Eastern European recipes gathered from author Emily Spitzer’s extended family members.

The woman loves her exotic flavorings, and I’ve been buying so many little jars and bags that my cabinets are overflowing. Baharat, nigella seeds, pomegranate molasses …

One of the spices Spitzer calls for is mahlab powder. I had never before heard of the spice, so I went straight to my friend Google, where I learned that mahlab powder is processed from the seed inside the pit of a St. Lucie cherry, and provides a flavor that is a cross between bitter almond and cherry. The spice has been used in Middle Eastern and Mediterranean sweets for eons. (How did anybody ever think to look inside the cherry pit? Were people in ancient Mesopotamia just sitting around the campfire one night spitting out cherry pits when one bored Sumerian decided to crack one open with a rock?)

Anyway, in the dessert section of the book was a recipe for ma’amoul cookies that called for mahlab powder. Again, I was off to Google, where I learned something that brought me back in time and solved a mystery. Back in 2004, our daughter Elana spent a semester at the University of Haifa, studying Hebrew and Arabic. Naturally, we went over to visit and followed her around to places she loved to frequent. One of these places was the Druze village Daliat el-Carmel, where she had heard that a particular type of tea she favored was sold.

Elana approached the proprietor of one particular shop and asked, in Arabic, if he in fact stocked the sought-for item. He did indeed, and the young man and his father were so taken with her that they refused to accept payment for said tea. (The father also tried to marry her off to the son, but that’s beside the point of this tale.)

This generous gesture meant, of course, that I felt obligated to purchase something. Which I did. Unfortunately, I had no idea what it was I had bought until this week. It looked like a mold of some sort, but for what purpose I hadn’t a clue.

It turns out that the little mold I had bought was a ma’amoul mold, used for making ma’amoul cookies! Mine has four separate deep indentations with four distinct designs in four different sizes (see photos). It is used for making a very buttery sandwich cookie, this particular recipe calling for a spicy date and nut filling.

The cookies are delicious. It’s only too bad that the confectioner’s sugar used to dust their tops completely covers the beautiful designs.

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Foraging Sumac

July 22, 2017 by Carol Leave a Comment

Last year, I made the mistake of not reading the small print. The small print in this case wasn’t on a contract; it was on a website. As anyone who reads my stuff knows, I love wild food foraging, and one of the things I have on my to-do list is sumac, its tangy flavor crucial to so many dishes, especially to Mediterranean and Middle Eastern cuisine. Since learning that sumac grows wild all over the Berkshires, I was psyched, and immediately went online to learn how to harvest it in New England. To make a long story short, my enthusiasm overwhelmed my common sense. The website’s author instructed readers to harvest in August, so I enlisted husband, daughter, and son-in-law to join me in the hunt. After all, the latter two are wonderful, adventurous cooks. Armed with plastic bags, we plucked dozens of the ruby red blossoms and brought them home to process on the dining room table. But, UGH. The blossoms were infested with lots and lots of tiny, wriggly worms. I had to throw out the whole lot — as fast as I could hustle myself out the door.

The website was indeed very instructive, but I had failed to notice that it was written in northern Maine, whose season has to be a good month later than ours in southern New England. Lesson: pay attention to the small print.

Tomorrow we go out to try again, the blossoms having just turned red in the past week.

Stay tuned. I have a craving for shwarma.