What To Cook When You’re Not Cooking Veggie Burgers

Now that I’ve finished the recipe writing/testing/rewriting/retesting aspect of the veggie burger cookbook (BTW: Become a fan on Facebook! Follow me on Twitter! Check out the veggie burger blog!), I might turn to working my way through all of Laure Colwin’s recipes. If you’ve not yet read Home Cooking or More Home Cooking and you like food writing, you will probably enjoy her a lot. For me, she’s the calm, patient, understanding aunt who shares all my interests, and when she puts together a menu, she says something like, “Oh, these are just four easy pieces.”

Last weekend I was faced with baking an impromptu Super Bowl dessert and I wanted to bring cake. I chose Colwin’s “Happy Winter Fudge Cake,” from More Home Cooking, which is deceptively titled because it’s not fudgy and it doesn’t necessarily evoke winter. I’d have called it “Chocolate Willow Cake.” It’s soft, a little bit spongey, and moderately sweet: a Pacific Northwest beach cake, or something the Ramsays might have taken with them to the lighthouse had things turned out differently the first go-round. Which is all to say: you could eat it for breakfast if absolutely necessary. I added a big pinch of salt (because, in the same vein of yogurt-for-oil substitutions in the '80s, “sodium” was quick to go) and halved the recipe because I don’t own a tube pan. If I were serving it again, I’d probably try that thing Smitten Kitchen did, of topping it with whip cream that’s had a plop of sour cream folded into it. Whatever, here’s the way I did it.

“Happy Winter Fudge Cake”: Preheat oven to 375°. Generously butter a tart pan and sprinkle with sugar, tossing it around so that it’s evenly coated, and pour off the excess. Melt 1-1/2 ounces dark chocolate and 2 tablsepoons butter over low heat until smooth. Meahwhile mix together 1 cup flour, 1/2 cup sugar, 2 teaspoons cocoa powder, a big pinch of salt, 1/2 teaspoon baking powder and 1/2 teaspoon baking soda. In another bowl whisk together an egg, 1/2 teaspoon vanilla, and 3/4 cup plain yogurt, and then beat in the slightly cooled chocolate. Add wet ingredients to dry, not overmixing, and stir in 1/2 cup chocolate chips or nuts or something else you like. Pour into the tart pan, bake for 15 to 20 minutes, until firm to the touch. Let cool until safe to touch before popping it out of the tart pan.

But I stopped there in my quest to cook through all of Colwin's recipes. Later on in the week, between monitoring my bank account and watching Marion Nestle’s Authors@Google talk, I made shakshouka, which I wrote about on this blog once before. I’m just going to re-do the recipe here, because I don’t want to encourage anyone to read any of the dumb stuff I wrote two years ago. Plus, you might say I “revised” my recipe to make use of a spice blend I bought three four years ago in Paris called “Piment Basque.” If anyone knows exactly what “Piment Basque” is—besides “Basque Pepper Powder”—I’d love to know. It’s totally delicious—heady and smoky-sweet—and has been holding strong for three four years now and counting.

Shakshouka Redux: Heat a tablespoon of oil in a saucepan over medium heat. Add a small minced onion, 1/2 teaspoon sweet paprika, a pinch red pepper flakes, and 1 teaspoon “Piment Basque.” Cook until the onions are thoroughly softened and taste quite rich, about 12 or 15 minutes. Add a 28-ounce can of crushed tomatoes (I know that people can be picky about tomatoes and for most of my life I’ve been indifferent, but I used San Marzano tomatoes here and they were very, very good), 1/2 teaspoon brown sugar, and 3/4 teaspoon salt. Heat to a boil, and then lower the heat to a simmer and cook, stirring every so often, for about 20 minutes, until it reduces slightly. You can do all this in advance if you’d like. When you’re ready to eat, heat up the sauce so that it is simmering, and then crack 4 eggs into it. You want them to cook as individual entities—you do not want them to be a mass that floats on the surface. The best way to do this, for me, is to press a cavity into the sauce with a small ladle, crack the egg into the ladle, and then carefully rotate the ladle out from underneath (the egg stays in the cavity). Either transfer the pan into a preheated, 375° oven, or cover the pot and simmer. Baking will take about 15 minutes, and stovetop will take 7 or 8 minutes. You may want a runnier egg or a firmer one, and in that case you’ll know to cook less or more.

Then we had this snowstorm thing. One minute I was walking around outside with my coat unzipped and thinking about how no one will have any reason not to attend my birthday party, and the next minute the schools were closed, everyone in publishing seemed to have the day off, and it was either a Snowpocalypse or Snowmageddon. I had to work at the restaurant, where I basically earned my subway fare and where I spent the entire shift thinking about cheese soufflé. My experience of cheese soufflé is limited to this restaurant: the call bell starts ringing furiously; one waiter, the one nearest the kitchen, scurries in there to take a soufflé just as it comes out of the oven; the other waiter clears a path through any patrons that might be in the way; and we deliver it ceremoniously to the table of some middle-aged woman who usually gasps at how beautiful it is. Sadly I’d never eaten it myself. So deciding that shitty weather calls for soufflé, Matt agreed to trudge through the snow and meet me at the grocery store after work.

Did you know that soufflé is basically just béchamel sauce glorified with eggs? Or eggs glorified with béchamel? Lord, who cares. These were good—and not that hard. We didn’t have ramekins, so we cooked them in 6-oz coffee mugs. (Note: Lots of soufflé recipes call for adding cream of tarter to the eggwhites, which is supposed to make it easier for peaks to form, I think? Cream of tarter costs like $9, and you don’t need it. If you want a stiff peak [ha], just use a very clean—as in, wipe it out even if it’s already clean—big metal bowl, and store it in the fridge with the eggwhites in it while you get the rest of the soufflé ready. Update from from Arch, who is most often right: Wonder if this tip is useful mostly for hearty soufflés that call for stiff egg whites, or if it applies to egg whites that’ll be used for desserts too, specifically macaroons; some recipes call for ‘aged’ eggs [separated and left at room temperature for a couple of days] in order to get the best results: egg whites that form firm peaks but still have a glossy appearance.)

Spinach Cheese soufflé: Preheat oven to 400° F. Generously butter six ramekins or coffee mugs. Separate 6 eggs, and keep the whites in the refrigerator in a large, clean bowl until ready to use. Steam or boil 10 ounces of spinach. Transfer to an ice bath to cool, squeeze out as much water as possible, and then chop finely. In a medium saucepan, melt 4 tablespoons butter over medium-low heat. Sprinkle 6 tablespoons flour over it, stirring constantly for two or three minutes, until it darkens slightly and smells nutty. Slowly whisk in 1-1/2 cups warm milk in increments so as to avoid any clomps forming. Stir constantly until the mixture thickens considerably, about 5 minutes. Now you’ve got béchamel! Whisk in the egg yolks and off the heat. Stir in 1/2 teaspoon salt, 1/4 teaspoon black pepper, a few gratings of fresh nutmeg, the chopped spinach, and 4 or 5 ounces bleu or goat cheese, and let be. In the cold bowl the eggwhites are in, beat them until stiff peaks form. Fold them into the custard mixture. Scoop into the prepared cups using a ladle, filling each an inch from the top. Wipe the rims clean with your finger (this allows the soufflés to rise evenly). Bake for about 20 minutes, until puffed up and golden brown; they’ll be a little bit jiggly in the center. Serve IMMEDIATELY.

And after all that, I can now start to think about getting ready for the toughest half-marathon in the Northwest, which I just agreed to do this coming April.