Global Meatballs - its here!

Hi friends, those of you who know me in person probably know this already, I wrote a cookbook! You probably don't know that you can buy it now! I am still wrapping my head around the the real-ness of it all. It was a big project which began about a year ago, to write a book about meatballs. All meatballs, all balls, all the way!

Most of my recipes are traditional meatballs from over 40 cultures and countries around the world. The few which are not historical meatballs are riffs of unique ingredients or other food traditions.

I know, MEATBALLS? You love meatballs,  you say? So do I! Everyone loves them, kids, old peeps, all of us in between, which is really the point of the book.

This is like a teaser, because I have to run to work now, but I promise I will post the first recipe tomorrow! I just HAD to share this news with you now!

in the meantime you can check out my Thai Yellow Curry Meatballs here at my publisher's blog.

And if you just NEED TO OWN IT NOW,  go here for all the links where you can buy my book!!!

Cheers!

Coquito, Tropical Coconut Eggnog from Puerto Rico

Coquito is spiced, creamy, and full of rum. This Caribbean version of our traditional eggnog hails from Puerto Rico where it is a must have for every party during Christmas time.

Also now a must have at my house, everybody who tries it falls in love! Coconut, sugar and dairy products create a creamy base for rum. It is the tropics and christmas of memories all in a glass. (FYI, if you are lactose free, check out my recipe for Goat Coquito!)

Rich and strong, it can surely be dangerous if not drank from small glasses or at least in short pours. The richness will likley stop you before things get out of hand, If it is to be compared to anything else, it might be coconut custard, or melted ice cream.

Give it as gifts, or to bring to parties, typically it is put into reused liquor or clear wine bottles with stoppers. This has a cute DIY homemade feel to it as a gift.

These are my adorable bottles all filled and ready to gift away. I am now so enchanted with them it will be tough to part with them.

(Just note, it should remain refrigerated.)

Coquito, when looked up in the dictionary, translates not only into "eggnog" but also:
1) A small coconut.
2) Grimace to amuse children.
   (hacer coquitos)
3) A turtle dove of Mexico, having a song like the couckoo's.

Much like traditional English eggnog there is milk, cinnamon, and sometimes eggs, but not in mine. The eggs are not necessary to give it thickness and body, the coconut does that work. I have to say it is terribly easy to whip up with a blender, as most of it comes from cans and it is a matter of pouring, blending, tasting and serving it up in a pretty way.

In each bottle or jar place a cinnamon stick. When you go to shake it up before pouring, the cinnamon stick bangs around to help mix it up.

Coquito, made without eggs, could last in the fridge for likley a long time. However, good luck keeping it around longer than a week. You would have to hide it in the back of the fridge. Delicious!

Ceylon cinnamon, allspice, and vanilla comprise all the spices. The three of them are complex all together and people can't easily place what they are drinking, which is fun. I used a vanilla bean powder, but extract or a real bean would be great.






Cinnamon is a key flavor here, and for best results use real Mexican cinnamon, (aka Ceylon cinnamon, soft stick cinnamon, or canela.) The flavor is less aggressive than the typical cinnamon we find in the states. It smells heavenly, has notes of citrus and is very complex. I am lucky to be treasuring a small stash of cinnamon sticks from Granada brought to me as a gift. This seeming the perfect time to use them I blitzed them to dust in my spice grinder (right...coffee grinder.)

This is freshly ground cinnamon. And then all the spices laying atop the coconut milk.

Coquito 

• 1 can condensed milk
• 2 can evaporated milk
• 1 can coconut milk (unsweetened cooking variety)
• 1 can coconut creme (coco lopez)
• 2 teaspoons cinnamon
• 2 teaspoons vanilla
• 375 ml white rum (Don Q or Bicardi)

Simply open all the cans, measure the spices and rum. Using a blender, whip it into a frothy wonderland. In my regular sized blender is two batches of blending. Have a larger container ready to mix the two batches together before pouring them into bottles for gifting and serving. Store in the refrigerator, where it will have a chance to thicken up.

Serve cold in small amounts over ice, or not. For best results drink and share with friends in festive atmosphere.

Check out my Coquito de Cabra if you prefer goats milk to cows. It works and is just as yummy.

Biddeford, the town with Two Bookstores. Where we Find Julia Child and calves brains.

I am still daydreaming of my visit to Rabelais' Books in Biddeford Maine. Hidden away in a converted mill building about twenty minutes from Portland is a treasure trove of culinary history.

Recommendations from two separate people on the same day sent me there. (It was so bizarre I couldn't not-go) Not knowing what I would find, but sure it would be inspiring from the stories I had heard.

It was a couple of the most fun hours I had spent and I have been telling all my foodie friends about it since. Don Lindgren gave us a tour of his shop and let us dig around the shelves and drawers rifling through antique books, cooks journals, farm ledgers and menus from restaurants that long ago shut their doors. 

For a girl who heads straight to the cooking section in every used book store and is always keeping an eye peeled for the odd old cookbook in antique shops and yard sales this was a dreamland. It was almost too much, I wanted to look at every book, I could have spent days and days there.

I know everyone might not love old cookbooks as much as I; imagine you ended up in a store filled with seemingly every book ever published on the subject that excites you most. Like a kid in a candy store I was literally bouncing up and down. I felt like the luckiest lady to be where I was at that moment.

I got to look through a stack of books owned by Julia Child's in her french apartment. That is her signature on top of La Chanso de Roland. My favorite was La légende de St Germain des Prés, a 1950 photo book celebrating a classic day in the quintessential Parisian neighborhood. Young Parisians drinking cafe a lait for breakfast, in the afternoon they are "practicing jitterbug in the flower market", at midnight they are twisting at a night club, and the last image is (my favorite) a girl sleeping on her knee in the subway waiting for the metro home after a night of so much jitterbugging. The only caption: "6 a.m." Hilarious!

Flipping the pages of Julia Child's books was the tip of the iceberg. Lindgren has organized the shop by both subject and time period. Bouncing from one section to the next I found myself in a shelf or two of books on spices, next fruit, with a large section devoted to plums.  I breezed over the sections on how to raise chickens and bees.





Among the bins of cookery pamphlets, you know the type sold or given away by baking soda or mayonnaise companies, I found this definitive 60 ways to Serve Ham. I did not feel the need to bring this home, having never been a fan of ham. I am NOT a ham fan. My little sister always liked ham a lot. She was and still is a big ham fan! I doubt my mother had more than 3 recipes for ham. They all involved swiss cheese or mustard. And sometimes there were cans of deviled ham, which were strangely wrapped in white paper. When I had to eat ham I never liked it very much but felt that since it was my sister's favorite I should not complain so she could enjoy it and mom would make it again for her. That sounds very nice of me!

The real joy for me were the oldest cookbooks. The leather bound volumes kept behind glass doors were books I had read about in other books, but never seen in person. Cookbooks from grand houses in England, the very first Parisian restaurant reviews, some things in Latin I was amazed to see in the flesh. Don could tell how excited I was and carefully brought down his favorites for show and tell.



 He allowed met to take a few photos, above is a delicious sounding seed cake with rosewater and caraway seeds from The Complete Court-Cook.

There are very few pictures in these old books, these were a highlight; the carving diagrams take up much of this book, all varieties of dead fowl and where to cut up a calfs head. Look the poor calf's brain on display, like a brain hat.

Old British cookbooks are far from vegan. So so far.

I gleefully fell in love with many books with smaller price tags than the brain-hat book. I went home with a big armful of new and old books which I am still working my way through.

I already wrote a post about the beautiful grey book; Good Things in England.


If you happen to make it to Biddeford to find this mecca of cookery books I urge you to go down the street about 6 blocks or so to Elements, a coffeeshop and used book store. This is where I found a hilarious book called the ABC of Casseroles and a classically bad blender cookbook for a total of $5. The bar is covered with photos of authors, it is clean, sunny, and witty. Clever people, all the signs play with the periodic table concept.

Now I need to create more bookshelf real estate in my apartment.

Old Fashioned Morning: Attempted Fig Pancake, Recipe circa 1845

I love love love reading old cookbooks. Lets be honest they can be tricky to cook from. Sometimes they are recipes big enough to feed an entire boarding school or made all of butter and beef fat. And there are rarely enough green vegetables. But such fun all the same. I just bought this gorgeous reprint of Florence White's Good Things in England which aims to celebrate the history of British cooking. The real roots of British cooking are milk, butter and flour it seems. (read more of what I found in the book here). I had to give one a try. Considering the fridge was pretty bare and breakfast was wanted rapidly, from my limited options I tried this funny Apple Fraize or Froise. Its a pancake type of dish, see the process in photos below; simple enough with a messy outcome!

I followed the recipe, you can read it at top. From Good Things in England by Florence White. Using figs instead of apples. Since I had no apples. Also, I used part buttermilk, which wasn't right either. I am too independent. And I make do.
It wasnt bad, a rustic sort of stuffed pancake. I don't think ill make it again. But I might try, and if I do, I would use a small personal sized frying pan for each portion instead of one enormous 8 inch plate sized pancake. It did not stick but was unwieldy to flip and it might cook better (on medium low) if smaller.
Adventures!

Morning Tea & Reading: a Sunday Ritual

Sunday morning has always been a special time carved out for reading. Anytime before noon it is acceptable to be curled up, doing no work, simply reading and indulging in my best cup of tea. Sunday mornings are sacred in our own way, we read the New York Times and the Boston Globe all morning, passing sections back and forth, pointing out articles. We read out loud the best parts and discuss.

As children we started with the (oh so special!) comics. We slowly graduated to the entire breadth of the paper, which is a great excuse for lounging and reading until noon. Now living three blocks away from my parents I begin my Sunday morning reading at my own house and inevitably travel over there before the morning is over for more reading, especially when my sister is in town. 

Sunday is also the best day of the week for really taking time to enjoy the best cup of tea. For me it is Earl Grey from Upton Tea Imports, made in a glass tea pot, served in a china tea cup with my favorite miniature creamer (unsweetened hemp milk) next to it. It is nice to take time to enjoy special something special and thoughtful for oneself.

I was especially excited today to dive into my haul of new and used cookbooks I acquired over the last two days on a visit to Maine. I will write about the phenomenol cookbook store very soon. But, see all the books, a dozen of them! All full of promise...

 (the blender cookbook from 1961 and ABC of Casseroles is sort of a joke.) But look at it, each letter of the alphabet has a poem about casseroles. Im not kidding.

The beautiful gray book in the top photo, Good Things in England by Florence White has a cheerful end paper. 

This is a new reprint of her 1933 compendium of British cookery. Between the wars she was urging her countryfolk to stop trying to cook like French people, as it does not suit the British taste at all. ... "Anyhow, we must not become a weak inferior imitation of any other country, however great or friendly, or however much we may admire its people and their ways."  

I love the book, the soft gray cover and the early typeset. Like reading an antique book but the binding is oh so solid! Without any delay she tells how to make a correct cup of tea. I checked, my cup of tea was well made according to Ms. White. Although I steep mine for 4 minutes before removing the leaves.

There are 370 pages full of historical recipes, 1399 to 1932. Documented from houses of Queens, lords, normal folk and down to odd specialties from the Isle of Mann like Limpets and this "Dumb Cake" which reads: 

" 'This cake,' says Mrs. Cashen, or Peel Castle, 'must be made of flour and water without any leaven, and is mixed and maked in the hot turf ashes. A piece which must be eaten walking backwards to bed. A number may join in the performance and they will dream of their future husbands.' "

I will skip the doubtful Dumb cake as it seems I already have a suitable husband. However, this book has me all excited to make english muffins and try a few other things also. I will post them here! 

Roman Artichokes with Mint & Garlic

The artichoke is a most wonderful thing. Enormous edible flower buds. Just glorious! Growing up we had them as a special dinner in the spring, just steamed and served with hollandaise sauce. I always loved them. When I moved to San Fran I learned you could buy them as baby and young artichokes too.

My in-laws make these bold artichokes with mint, garlic, salt, pepper, and olive oil stuffed inside all the leaves. I liked them but couldn't get much of a recipe out of my mother in law, she always shrugged it off. And everybody said Grammy made them the best anyway. Sadly, I never had the chance to meet the matriarch of the family who was a legendary cook. One day this spring, doing research for some writing, I was deep in Italian cookbooks. A recipe jumped out at me, Roman Artichokes from In Nonna's Kitchen. There was the mint and garlic and I thought "I've FOUND IT!"

Soaking trimmed artichokes in lemon water.

I made them them for my husband, mostly following the recipe to test it out. His grandmother's artichokes are among his TOP-5 favorite foods. (Although the TOP-5 has more like 20 favorite foods.) So the pressure was on. Incidentally, I also used my pressure cooker, because somebody had a memory of Grammy using a pressure cooker, but nobody had recently. I thought this might be a clue.

The first batch were good. Really good. The only suggestion was "they should have more pepper."

So I forged on and made them for the family. I put in much more pepper, and sadly I don't have exact measurements because it is that sort of a thing so I have modified the recipe from In Nonna's Kitchen with my changes to the best of my ability.

I felt the ultimate satisfaction when my artichokes were approved as as good as Grammy's. And they wondered if I wasn't really Italian and hiding it. The whole table stripped the leaves in almost-silence, which is saying something!

Crispy Roman Artichokes

Roman Artichokes with Mint & Garlic

4 large artichokes

2 lemons

2 teaspoons dry mint

1 teaspoon dry marjoram

1 1/2 teaspoons garlic powder

2 garlic cloves, crushed

1 teaspoon black pepper (the powder)

1-2 teaspoon salt

1 cup olive oil

1 cup water

1/3 cup dry white wine

Fill a bowl with cool water, cut one lemon in half, squeeze it into the water and drop in the halves.

Trim the artichokes; remove the toughest outside petals, use scissors to cut the sharp points off the leaves, and a knife to chop off the top inch off of the artichoke. The stem is very tasty, cut the stem off at the base, and peel off the tough outside and the old cut end. Submerge the trimmed artichoke in the lemon water. This stops them from turning gray when cut, and it may tenderize them or impart flavor. The Nonna said to soak them for 2 hours, so I did, I have no complaints and will continue to do it this way!

Put the fresh garlic through a press, or mince small. Mix with the powdered garlic, dry mint, majoram, black pepper and salt. Pour some olive oil into the mix, making a thin paste. Remove an artichoke from the water, shaking it out, use your fingers to open up the petals a little bit. Scoop up some of the herb oil paste in your right hand and cup it on top of the artichoke, smoothing it downward so it goes in between the petals. Divide the herb paste among the artichokes. 

Place the herbed artichokes upright into a pressure cooker (or a regular soup pot.) It is ok to stack them on one another, use the peeled stems to hold them upright if necessary. Add the water, wine, and drizzle some more olive oil into their centers. Bring the pressure cooker up to pressure and cook for 10 minutes. (If using a soup pot, simmer covered for 35-40 minutes.) To test for doneness pull one of the outisde petals, if if falls off, it is done, if it hangs on it needs more cooking. Which can come on the stove or later in the oven. Remove to an ovenproof baking dish. The sauce in the bottom of the pan is precious and should be poured over the artichokes. (You can do up to this point ahead, and cover them in the fridge for a day or so until ready to crisp them.)

Preheat the oven to 400°, put the artichokes uncovered into the oven. Cook for about 30 to 40 minutes until the outsides are golden and terribly crispy, the oil will be sizzling. If you are in a rush, it is possible to broil them, and I did this once. It is nearly as good. It goes very fast, make sure to get the oil to sizzle madly, as this turns the flavors from a steamed thing into something terribly better. Cooked for the 40 minutes in the oven they nearly melt away in your mouth. 

Drizzle any sauce over the artichokes as you serve them. I find shallow bowls are best so you have somewhere to put the petals as you eat it. And you know not to eat the choke; scoop that out with a spoon. Happy springtime!

How do you make Peach Mangoes?

One of my most delightful Christmas gifts was some antique cookery/housekeeping books found by my uncle, and avid old-book collector. I have had such fun with them, some new ideas and mysteries too. I saw this recipe or "recipt" as they said, for "Peach Mangoes" in the Williamsburg Art of Cookery by Mrs. Helen Bullock, originally printed in 1742. 

"TAKE large plum Peaches, sufficient Quantity to fill the Jar. Peel nicely and take out the Stones. Have ready the Stuffing in proportion to the peaches, preserved Orange-peel, preserved Ginger, Coriander seed, Celery seed, a small quantity of Mace, Cinnamon, candied Strawberries, if you have them, and pickled Cherries. Sew the Peaches up after stuffing them and fill the Jar. Then to every Pound of Sugar add one-half Pint of Vinegar, allowing the above quantity to two Pounds of Fruit. Make a Syrup of the Sugar and Vinegar, and pour on the Peaches, boiling hot. Repeat this for three mornings; the forth Morning put them all together, and boil a short Time; add a few spices; Cinnamon and Ginger to the Syrup when you make it. They will be ready for Use in a few Weeks."

Essentially a sweet and sour pickle, of a peach where the stone-cavity was filled with minced sweet preserved fruit and spices. Definitely something new I have never tasted before. I will have to try this in August when I have too many peaches. I like the part where she describes sewing up the peaches. Or, she does not describe it and leaves it all to the imagination. Would you use cotton string? Are the peaches ripe or crunchy?

But, where do the mangoes come into play, in early America, I was wondering? I looked it up. The Mango, from India, was first is found mentioned in Italy in 1510 (manga). When mangoes were transported by ship to further affar such as England and America, they were only in their unripe and pickled form. Apparently novel and popular, "mango" became a synonymous to pickle. Perhaps more specifically pickled fruit?