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Whipping up Meringues

June 1, 2015 by Carol Leave a Comment

My good friend Lorrin listens to what people say. Really closely. I happened to mention – once, and many months ago – that in preparing for the Big Middle Eastern Feasts this past winter, I had found several recipes calling for rose water, including Ottolenghi’s famous meringues. I didn’t have rose water in the house and, it being the dead of one of the snowiest winters on record, I decided to prepare dessert with ingredients already on hand or those easily obtained.

Well, wouldn’t you know that when Lorrin came for dinner last Friday night, my very thoughtful friend brought me a bottle of rose water, an ingredient so important in cooking and baking around the world, and especially in Persian and Middle Eastern recipes.

So, what should I try first? Nougat, Turkish delight, baklava? Indian rice pudding or lassi? Malaysian bandung? So many choices, and those were just the sweets.

Or, perhaps those meringues that Ottolenghi developed while working as head pastry chef at London’s Baker & Spice?

Yes, those meringues. The ingredients are few: egg whites, caster sugar, and of course, rose water, all rolled in chopped pistachios. And now that I had the rose water, it was time to bake.

With the recipe calling for ten egg whites to make only a dozen meringues, you can just imagine how big each one is. Enough to share if you happen to be the sharing type.

As for caster sugar, this is simply superfine sugar, and there’s no need to angst over not being able to find it in the supermarket. Just zap some regular old table sugar in the food processor – but not so much zap that it turns to powder.

But, what was I to do with the ten egg yolks now sitting in a bowl on the counter? It would be terribly wasteful just to throw them out. This is where the internet came to the rescue. I found a website, http://www.fortysomething.ca/2010/04/recipes_to_use_up_extra_egg_yo.php, that lists recipes for dishes requiring anywhere from one to twelve egg yolks. What a brilliant idea, and well worth book-marking.

I decided on a Golden Butter Cake calling for eleven egg yolks, for a couple reasons. First, a very rich crème brûlée on top of meringues would be a serious sugar and fat overkill, especially if we aren’t expecting guests. Second, it’s simply practical to freeze the cake for future use. Invited to a pot luck dinner? I’ll bring dessert! If you do decide to try this cake recipe, make sure to add vanilla; I’m pretty sure that its absence from the list of ingredients was inadvertent.

Now, what to do with that one extra egg white? Maybe fortysomething.ca will see this and post a similar list for whites. In the meantime, breakfast will probably be an omelette.

Gettysburg 150 Years Later

April 30, 2015 by Carol 1 Comment

“Our days are as grass; we flourish as a flower in the field. The wind passes over it and it is gone, and no one can recognize where it grew.”

This stanza from a poem read at Yizkor, Jewish memorial services, came to mind as we stood last week on the pastoral farmland on which the Battle of Gettysburg took place 150 years ago this July. The temperature had plunged 40 degrees, the wind blew, and the grass in the fields rippled with every gust.

Perhaps nobody would recognize where a flower once grew, but there is no danger that the tens of thousands of soldiers and the one civilian who perished in this Civil War battle will be forgotten.

Millions of people have made the pilgrimage to this tiny town in southeastern Pennsylvania to bear witness to the horror that took place here, in a war of brother against brother that nearly tore our nation apart. They reenact campaigns. They climb Little Round Top and gaze out at the positions held by Confederate troops. They look out from Cemetery Ridge and the Copse of Trees, trying to conjure the image of a mile-long phalanx of men in gray marching toward them during Pickett’s Charge.

The battlefield is studded with square white stones that mark the left and right flanks of every platoon — from both sides of the Mason-Dixon Line. And dozens of monuments — beautiful sculpture and even a tower from which to view that bucolic farmland — honor the regiments from every state that participated in the Battle.

They tour the David Wills House, where Abraham Lincoln spent the night before delivering his Gettysburg Address, an amazingly brief speech of only 272 words that has stayed with us for a century and a half.

And, they visit the first national military cemetery established in this country. Magnolias in full bloom and trees leafing out make it a beautiful place, silent but for the birdsong and distant hum of traffic. It is a most fitting resting place for the more than 3,500 Union troops who gave their lives to ensure that slavery be abolished.

The countryside around Gettysburg is spectacular, but it haunts me. That so much carnage took place in such an idyllic spot seems impossible. But it did.

May we never forget where the grass grew and where the people died.

The Scent of a Lemon

March 24, 2015 by Carol 4 Comments

This winter is really getting old. It’s been no higher than seventeen degrees for a couple days here, and there are still several feet of snow in the yard. Even the influx of garden catalogues isn’t enough to snap me out of my winter funk. What to do?

I have developed two main approaches to defeat the gray mood of this never-ending winter:

To borrow a phrase from Lady Macbeth, “Hie thee hither” — to the sunroom. Basking in the fresh aroma of earth and chlorophyll infuses me with life-affirming hope. And now, with my “Big Red” amaryllis, figs, and key limes all blooming and fruiting, I can actually believe that spring is around the corner.
When life hands you lemons, put them on the table. There is nothing as cheerful as a bowl of sunny yellow lemons– unless it’s a bowl of lemons and oranges together. The height of the citrus season is one reason I can tolerate this months-long season of cold, gray, ice, and snow.

The scent of citrus is both energizing and romantic. Yes, romantic. Swaying palms in the moonlight, a blossom pinned to my hair, slow-dancing on a patio with a tall, handsome man. Sigh.

And then, there’s the practical side of having a bowl of citrus fruit. After about a week, before the fruit begins to soften, remove the rind, extract the juice, and put it all into premeasured baggies and into the freezer for that inevitable situation in which you start a recipe and discover you have no fresh-squeezed juice or rind in the house. (That stuff in the plastic lemon? Oh, please.)

Life may indeed be a bowl of cherries, but for cheering there’s nothing like one of citrus.

The Traveling Vegetarian

March 16, 2015 by Carol 4 Comments

I recently got an assignment to write an article about dining out as a vegetarian. I was supposed to focus on “American” restaurants. The longer I thought about it, the murkier the definition became. What exactly is an American restaurant?

Does its kitchen use only ingredients indigenous to the United States? If so, then we are going to have a pretty narrow choice of foods.

Or, does the term include all produce, meat, and fish that is raised in the United States? That certainly expands our options.

How about the Americas — South, Central, and all of North? That opens up our menu even wider.

Or, is an American restaurant one that encompasses the cuisine of the myriad immigrant groups that have come to our shores and made this place their home — places as diverse as Burundi, Brazil, and Belarus?

An interesting factoid: In my research, I found that virtually every so-called American restaurant that does list a vegetarian entrée on its menu chooses Italian. There may be one more (very few restaurants list more than two veggie dishes), but the default seems to be pasta.

Snow Job

February 9, 2015 by Carol 1 Comment

growing_orange_on_tree_187928 It’s snowing again. Rather, still. Here in Central Mass we will be at, or pretty close to, the seven-foot mark by the time this latest in a series of winter storms ends. And, while trees and shrubs dripping with glistening white frosting are pretty enough to illustrate a book of fairy tales, the glossy, gleaming ice dams building up on my roof are big enough to sink an ocean liner.

Thank goodness for my little sunroom, where I keep houseplants and fruit trees, along with a tray of herbs and vegetables I am attempting to grow from seed. If only the sun would shine.

Today is watering day. Normally, I might just look at that chore as another in a long list of tedious items on my to-do list, but today it is a pleasure. Why? Because within seconds of the water hitting the soil, the aroma of the rain forest begins to waft up and cause body and soul to rejoice.

This hint of Mother Nature’s perfume lasts only a moment, but for as long as it does, I can forget the swirling snow, the howling wind, and the sub-zero wind-chill factor. I can enter my little fantasy world in which I pick my breakfast orange from my own tree,
and enjoy it with a cup of coffee and the morning paper in the open-to-the-sky courtyard of my hacienda.

At least until the phone rings.

The Wish Book

January 20, 2015 by Carol 2 Comments

My kitchen table sits next to a big bay window that looks out onto my backyard. I love to sip my morning coffee gazing out at the expanse of green surrounded by all manner of trees and shrubs. Crab apple, wisteria, potentilla, hydrangea, spirea, climbing roses. Their vivid colors against the lush greens fill my mornings with cheer. Isn’t it great to be alive? And, isn’t it amazing how many shades of green there are?

As the frigid cold descends upon Central Massachusetts, thank goodness for the evergreens. Rhododendrum, azalea, spruce, and arbor vitae provide a warming counterpoint to the bare gray branches that make shiver. Even when it snows, the branches of these backyard stalwarts provide a sculptural framework for sparkling white frosting.

Round about January I start to fantasize about palm trees. Tall and gangly, with a Dr. Seuss-like mop of foliage on their heads, they sway in balmy tropical breezes in time to the rhythm of steel drums while I lounge in a hot sun drinking fruity drinks with little umbrellas in them.

But I am not in the tropics. I am in New England. So, I sit with baited breath awaiting the arrival of the postman. In his bag should be the annual onslaught of seed catalogues. These books filled with fruits, berries, vegetables, and flowers entice me and, even though I know that my plans are bigger than my acreage, I devour their pages with hungry eyes. Vibrant reds, sunny yellows, rich purples – they compete for my attention. And I want them all.

Astronomical spring will be here in about 59 days, and perhaps the path to the backyard will be clear enough to be able to plant some peas, even if I have to start them in the cold frame. In the meantime, I am poised like a Pavlovian dog waiting for the postman to ring twice and set me to salivating.