Capellini with Chive Blossoms and Crème Fraîche

At this moment, I find myself in a curious situation: I’m drinking a white wine spritzer and writing about capellini with crème fraîche and caviar. It’s as if I’ve never had to eat/serve chocolate bark in a bathtub or carry a stuffed koala while undercooking cake. Two questions: who am I, and what have I become?

I fear that you can only go so long attempting fancy dish after fancy dish before you begin to occasionally crave stuff that is, well, fancy. We arrived at this precarious intersection when, the other day, Matt offered to go grocery shopping, and I added whitefish caviar to his list, right there next to toothpaste and almond milk.

One of my yoga teachers talks about the idea of expanding and stretching our bodies in class as a practice that ultimately leads to creating space for expansion in our everyday lives. Well, not to get toooooo yogic on you, but I’ve noticed something recently. When I don’t make it to class for five or six days in a row, my body starts to feel like it’s shrinking in on itself. My legs in particular feel like they are retracting and tightening into my hips. I don’t like it, not one bit. And I think my relationship with food is a little like this. Now that I know how delicious real linguine and clams can be, I don’t think I’ll ever be able to go back to using the canned Progresso stuff I grew up on. And now that I know how rich and round coffee tastes when you grind the beans yourself every morning, it’s a major bummer when you accidentally buy a bag of the pre-ground variety.

And now that I’ve tasted caviar for the first time, I look very forward to our second meeting. Though I’m sure it’s not for everyone. (If you don’t like foods that taste like the ocean floor, you probably won’t love it.) But, caviar or no, you should probably make this pasta in the near future. Once everything is prepped, the dish comes together in five minutes and looks so pretty. If you are going to leave out the caviar, I’d recommend substituting capers—the mellowness of the crème fraîche and butter begs for a briny, salty counterpart.

In my expansion, I think it’s fair to say that I haven’t completely lost myself. As you can see, I (or Matt, rather) couldn’t find the whitefish caviar the recipe called for, so we substituted with the dark-grey, American Paddlefish kind, which, unfortunately, is just as expensive. I also couldn’t find chive blossoms, so I chopped up a few petals of those edible flowers they sell alongside the herbs in grocery stores. I also didn’t press my hard-boiled egg through a sieve like Martha wanted me to. No, I mashed it with a fork. And in a sure sign of knowing who I am, I ate this meal while watching 1920s Atlantic City mobsters murder one another. (Boardwalk Empire is awesome.)

p.s. If you don’t like Bon Appétempt on Facebook and you don’t subscribe to Elle Girl Korea, you might not have seen that we were featured in last month’s issue. Check out the spread below! Our first print feature!

Capellini with Chive Blossoms and Crème Fraîche adapted from Martha Stewart Living

1 cup crème fraîche

1/4 cup minced chive blossoms, plus more for garnish (I'm thinking you might be able to find these at a farmer's market?)

1/4 cup minced fresh chives

1 to 2 teaspoons fresh lemon juice

salt and pepper

1/2 pound capellini (angel hair) pasta

1 tablespoon unsalted butter

1 jar (4 ounces) whitefish (or black!) caviar

1 hard-cooked egg

Stir together the crème fraîche, chive blossoms (if you got 'em), chives, and lemon juice to taste. Season with salt. Set aside. In a separate bowl, mash up the egg with a fork.

Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil, and cook pasta until al dente. Drain, reserving 3/4 cup pasta water. Toss pasta with butter and crème fraîche mixture, adding enough pasta water to make a light sauce. Season with salt and pepper.

Divide pasta among dishes. (This makes two big portions or four small ones.) Top each dish with some of the mashed egg, a nice dollop of caviar, and any remaining chopped chives. Serve immediately!

Cream-Braised Green Cabbage

I’m a bit scattered these days. If you’ve spoken with me lately, I’ve likely told you about my recent battles with sleeplessness, but what I probably haven’t told you, what I had been waiting to tell you so that I could do so in one swift, confident sentence, instead of one long explanatory paragraph, is this: I’ve been at work on a book proposal for a food memoir—a Bon Appétempt book.

In some ways, I’ve been down this road before and didn’t want to divulge this fact until the proposal had been sold, and I could just make a giant layer cake, throw my hands up and announce the book deal. But, as I keep learning over and over again, getting what you want out of creative endeavors is never as simple as you hope them to be. It always takes five times longer than you’d planned and is ten times harder than you’d anticipated. So, instead of celebratory, self-assured cake, I bring you workaday, hopeful cabbage.

I had been eyeing this cream-braised cabbage recipe that Molly Wizenberg offers up in her book, A Homemade Life, for a while now, but had been waiting for the right cold day to make it. When gray clouds and rain set in about a week ago, I knew it was time. I picked up a small head of green cabbage and heavy cream at the grocery store. Only, the very next day, the day I’d planned to make the dish, in classic Los Angeles fashion, it was shockingly hot and sunny—not exactly cream and cabbage weather. I’d spent the morning and afternoon in a tizzy—the kind when no sooner had I hung up the phone, I was dialing again, afraid to be alone with myself for longer than a few moments, afraid what that might actually feel like.

At around four o’clock, I realized that we had no good ingredients for a decent hot-weather dinner. I started thinking about what else I might make, when something in me told me to stop thinking and just make the cabbage.

I’m so glad I listened. Once I began—once I turned on some music, did the dishes/cleaned the kitchen (yes, I pre-clean, what of it?), and started in on the simple act of washing the cabbage leaves, I could feel the tension leaving my body. Don’t get me wrong. It’s not always this therapeutic in my kitchen, but that day, that moment, I needed a break from the rapid-fire thoughts shooting around in my brain box. I needed to focus on something else, and if that something happened to smell like buttery, nutty, toasty cabbage, I was okay with that.

When I re-made the recipe (so that Matt could take the photos in order to share this miracle cabbage with you), I was listening to one of my favorite podcasts, On Being with Krista Tippett. Ms. Tippett was speaking with the late Irish poet and philosopher, John O'Donohue, who at one point, said the following:

“But for me, philosophically, stress is a perverted relationship to time. So that rather than being a subject of your own time, you have become its target and victim, and time has become routine. So at the end of the day, you probably haven't had a true moment for yourself… to relax in and to just be. Because, you know, the way in this country—there's all the different zones. I think there are these zones within us as well. There's surface time, which is really a rapid-fire Ferrari time.”

Surface time! So what I’ve been doing has a name! Something must have gone off in the host, Krista Tippett, as well, because she chimed in: “Yes, and over-structured.” Exactly, Krista! We fill our days with over-structured, surface-time. I think this is partly why making this heavy-cream-braised cabbage on a hot, sunny day was so good for me. On a practical level, the two didn’t belong together, but on another level, a level that was meant to soothe and restore me, they did. And if I hadn’t listened to that part of me that was begging to just start cooking and stop thinking, I may never have discovered this.

So, if stress is indeed a perverted relationship to time, well then, count me as a total pervert. I take on project after project and then rush to distribute them into the universe. And when things don’t go as quickly or as smoothly as I’d like, I become discouraged and anxious, which leads to sleeplessness, which leads to grumpiness, which has a marked, negative impact on the work and everything else.

Mr. O'Donohue explains how one of his friends does a meditation where he first imagines the surface of the ocean; it’s restless and unsettled. Then, he imagines slipping down deep below the waves “where it's still and where things move slower.” Like all of us, I have many structures in my life, but probably none quite so rigid as my day job and the weekly Bon Appétempt posts. And while I love this latter arrangement, while it gets me through many a week, I also want each and every post to be thoughtful and somehow better than the one before it. And in order to get there, I believe I need to let go of my weekly schedule for just a bit—in order to wander and wonder more, in order to relax and just be—under the sea, if you will.

The good thing about not being able to sleep is that I’ve gotten to do a lot of bonus reading. One of these nights, I picked up A Homemade Life and reread the chapter with the cabbage recipe, curious as to why something so plain had appealed to me so much. Wizenberg writes: “Cabbages may be homely, hard-headed things, but with a little braising, they’re bewitching. Cut into wedges and cooked slowly in a Jacuzzi bath of cream, they wind up completely relaxed, their bitter pungency washed away and replaced with a rich, nutty sweetness.”

Friends, we have quite a few funny cooking videos to shoot, Paris to explore (only one month away!), and beautiful cakes to mess up; I won’t be gone long. I’ll be surprised if I last more than two weeks without you, but when I do return, I hope to be a little more relaxed and a little sweeter, just like this cabbage.

See you soon!

Cream-Braised Green Cabbage via Molly Wizenberg's A Homemade Life
1 small green cabbage (about 1 1/2 pounds)
3 tablespoons unsalted butter
1/4 teaspoon salt, plus more to taste
2/3 cup heavy cream
1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice

First, prepare the cabbage. Pull away any bruised leaves and trim its root end to remove any dirt. Cut the cabbage into quarters, and then cut each quarter in half lengthwise, taking care to keep a little bit of the core in each wedge. (The core will help to hold the wedge intact, so that it doesn't fall apart in the pan.) You should wind up with 8 wedges of equal size. (She also notes that if you've chosen a larger cabbage, just be sure that each wedge is no thicker than 2 inches at its outer edge. Otherwise, the cabbage won't cook properly.)

In a large (12-inch) skillet, melt the butter over medium-high heat. Add the cabbage wedges, arranging them in a single crowded layer with one of the cut sides down. Allow them to cook, undisturbed, until the downward facing side is nicely browned, 5 to 8 minutes. She likes hers to get some good color here, so that they have a sweetly caramelized flavor. Then, using a pair of tongs, gently turn the wedges onto their other cut side. When the second side has browned, sprinkle the salt over the wedges, and add the cream. Cover the pan with a tight-fitting lid, and reduce the heat so that the liquid stays at a slow, gentle simmer. Cook for 20 minutes, then remove the lid and gently, using tongs, flip the wedges. Cook for another 20 minutes, or until the cabbage is very tender and yields easily when pierced with a thin, sharp knife. Add the lemon juice, and shake the pan to distribute it evenly.

Simmer, uncovered, for a few minutes more to thicken the cream to a glaze that loosely coats the cabbage. Serve immediately, with additional salt at the table.

Video Attempt: A Moveable Dinner Party

First things first: thank you to Ali and James for coming to dinner and committing to keeping the night moving. It was such a pleasure to sit in the bathtub together. Secondly, I must say, this is one of those moments I find myself so thankful for this small, creative outlet. Where else could I share my combined love for Barefoot Contessa, dancing, and having friends over for dinner? I hope you enjoy it!

Lentil Vegetable Soup via Ina Garten
1 pound French green lentils (which is 2 1/2 cups lentils, which I think is really really good to know.)
4 cups chopped yellow onions (3 large onions)
4 cups chopped leeks, white part only (2 leeks)
1 tablespoon minced garlic (3 cloves)
1/4 cup good olive oil, plus additional for drizzling on top
1 tablespoon kosher salt
1 1/2 teaspoons freshly ground black pepper
1 tablespoon minced fresh thyme leaves or 1 teaspoon dried
1 teaspoon ground cumin
3 cups medium-diced celery (8 stalks)
3 cups medium-diced carrots (4 to 6 carrots)
3 quarts chicken stock
1/4 cup tomato paste
2 tablespoons red wine or red wine vinegar
Freshly grated Parmesan cheese

Directions
In a large bowl, cover the lentils with boiling water and allow to sit for 15 minutes. Drain.

In a large stockpot on medium heat, saute the onions, leeks, and garlic with the olive oil, salt, pepper, thyme, and cumin for 20 minutes, until the vegetables are translucent and very tender. Add the celery and carrots and saute for 10 more minutes. Add the chicken stock, tomato paste, and lentils. Cover and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat and simmer uncovered for 1 hour, until the lentils are cooked through. Check the seasonings. Add the red wine and serve hot, drizzled with olive oil and sprinkled with grated Parmesan.

French Chocolate Bark via Ina Garten
8 ounces very good semisweet chocolate, finely chopped
8 ounces very good bittersweet chocolate, finely chopped
1 cup whole roasted, salted cashews (I used peanuts, which worked fine. I think the important thing here is that the nuts be salted and roasted.)
1 cup chopped dried apricots
1/2 cup dried cranberries

Directions
Melt the 2 chocolates in a heatproof bowl set over a pan of simmering water.

Meanwhile, line a sheet pan with parchment paper. Using a ruler and a pencil, draw a 9 by 10-inch rectangle on the paper. Turn the paper facedown on the baking sheet.

Pour the melted chocolate over the paper and spread to form a rectangle, using the outline. Sprinkle the cashews, apricots and cranberries over the chocolate. Set aside for 2 hours until firm. Cut the bark in 1 by 3-inch pieces and serve at room temperature.

Swedish Cardamom Buns

Many of you know that I have a crush on Sweden. It probably started with the Shout Out Louds. Then, there was the Poetry in Translation class I took with the Swedish poet Malena Mörling, whose book, Astoria, I recently read and highly recommend. Around this time, I discovered the music of Loney Dear, one of the most sincere live performers I’ve ever seen. Then there was Jens Lekman, girls with dragon tattoos, Robyn (of course), and most recently, this article, which delves into the question: “What makes the Swedes glow with health?”

Enter Lisa, who I met through my good friend Heather. Lisa’s mom grew up in Sweden, and, well, it didn’t take us too long to come to the necessary conclusion that we must meet up to make Swedish cardamom buns and drink Glögg.

However, by the time Lisa and I found a free afternoon to make these cardamom buns, she was in the middle of a cleanse. How Swedish is that? (Sweden’s a bastion of health and wellness, remember?) So, while Lisa couldn’t chow down on gluten-y, sugary foods and vodka-based beverages, Matt and I were very much available to partake in both. Of course, there is a difference between chowing down and fika, which Lisa explained, is Swedish for taking a break to drink coffee or tea and eat something sweet—usually a cardamom bun—with a friend. (Seriously, that four-letter word means all of that, and it can be used as a verb or a noun!) So, while the cleanse may have stopped her from sipping the aforementioned Glögg, it didn’t put a damper on the fika.

See, I think it’s important to note that these are not the kind of cinnamon buns you find at the food court. No, these buns are much more Swedish. They are subtly sweet. There is no extra glaze on top and no cream cheese filling. I also think it’s important to note that it’s 2pm in the afternoon and one is warming up in the toaster oven as I type this.

This version here is a combination of two Swedish recipes, one of which comes to us via Lisa’s brother’s girlfriend, Ebba, and the other from Lisa’s Aunt Veronica, which she translated into English for us, and which was titled “Mommy’s Buns.” So I must extend a big thank you to these ladies for all of the information!

Hear that? It’s the ding of the toaster oven. Excuse me while I go fika.

Cardamom Buns adapted from a few different Swedish recipes, with a lot of help from Lisa Fika!
Dough:
25 g of fresh yeast for sweet dough OR 1 1/2 packets of dry active yeast (.9 oz)
75 g butter (5.2 tablespoons)
2 ½ deciliters milk (1 cup)
½ deciliter granulated sugar (3.5 tablespoons)
1 pinch salt
1 teaspoon ground cardamom
about 7 deciliters flour (scant 3 cups)

Filling:
50 g room-temperature butter (3.5 tablespoons)
½ deciliter granulated sugar (3.5 tablespoons)
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground cardamom

For topping:
1 egg
pearl sugar or granulated sugar

Equipment: 25 cupcake/muffin wrappers

To do this: [I kind of love this detail from one of the recipes we used. Instead of the classic directions, to do this seems so much more deliberate.]

Start with the dough. Melt the butter in a sauce pan and add the milk. Warm the mixture until it is “finger warm," a.k.a. room temperature. Dissolve the yeast into this mixture. Let it sit a few minutes. (It should look a bit foamy.) Then, add the salt, sugar and cardamom. Stir.

Transfer mixture to an electric mixer or, if mixing by hand, a large mixing bowl. Add about 2/3 of the flour and mix until it becomes smooth and shiny. Add a little more flour, but save enough for kneading later. The dough is ready when it easily releases from the sides of the bowl. Cover the bowl with a thin towel, place it in a warm spot, and let it rise until it is twice the original size (about 30 minutes).

Remove the dough from the bowl, and using the rest of the flour, knead it lightly on a floured surface until smooth and shiny. Divide dough into two halves. Roll each half of dough into a thin, big rectangle.

Combine the filling ingredients and then spread evenly over one of the rectangles. Place the other dough rectangle right on top, making a sandwich! Then, roll the sandwich up, long side to long side, to form a long cylinder. Using a sharp knife, cut each cylinder into equal slices.

Place each slice into a paper cupcake holder and arrange on top of a rimmed baking sheet. Cover them with a towel and let rise until doubled in size (about 30-45 min). Preheat oven to 425 F. Once the buns have risen, brush the rolls with the beaten egg and sprinkle with pearl sugar.

Bake in center of oven at 425 degrees for 8-10 minutes.

Tip: It's fine to make a double batch (or more)! [This was taken verbatim from one of the recipes. Such a great tip!]

Shelf life: At room temperature, the buns quickly become dry out, so if you don’t intend on eating them soon, freeze them!

Caramel Cake

Here’s something I learned on Friday: mind your caramel. Yes, certain as the sun rises in the east, an unwatched pot of caramel sauce will get all effed up.

I have been wanting to attempt this cake ever since I found it in one of my mom’s old issues of Gourmet—and then was recently reminded of it again when I was up late one night trolling Lottie & Doof’s recipe archives—but to quote Morrissey, we tried and we failed. Yes, I overcooked the caramel glaze, so that instead of a beautiful, transparent, liquid glaze (like Gourmet’s and Lottie’s), I blanketed my cake with dark brown sugar-leather.

At one point, I considered trying to remake the glaze, substituting half and half for the heavy cream (I had used all of my cream), but the hardened caramel layer and cake had melded together—like a couple of best friends, inseparable.

I share this failure with you as yet another example of me trying to do too much and then doing those things poorly, instead of slowing down and doing one thing right. I need to work on this. I had an old boss who used to say: Ya do it right, ya do it light. Ya do it wrong, ya do it looooooong. I was working as a waitress in a Middle Eastern themed lunch spot, and I was given a series of very serious versions of this speech throughout my time there. And would you believe it? Eight years later, I did this caramel cake wrong. But instead of starting over (doing it long?), I simply lived with it, though I'm kind of glad I did. It was still pretty great in a dealing-with-this-dessert-is-a-bit-like-eating-a-deliciously-sweet-old-boot kind of way. And, bonus, it gave our dinner guests a good laugh.

Next time, I’ll do it right/light. Yes, next time will be different.

Caramel Cake via Gourmet
Cake:
2 cups plus 2 tablespoons sifted cake flour (not self-rising; sift before measuring)
1 teaspoon baking powder
3/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 stick (4 oz) unsalted butter, softened
1 cup granulated sugar
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
2 large eggs, at room temperature 30 minutes
1 cup well-shaken buttermilk

Caramel Glaze:
1 cup heavy cream
1/2 cup packed light brown sugar
1 tablespoon light corn syrup
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

Make cake:
Preheat oven to 350°F with rack in middle. Butter an 8-inch square cake pan and line bottom with a square of parchment paper, then butter parchment.

Sift together flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt.

Beat butter and sugar in a large bowl with an electric mixer at medium speed until pale and fluffy, then beat in vanilla. Add eggs 1 at a time, beating well after each addition. At low speed, beat in buttermilk until just combined (mixture may look curdled). Add flour mixture in 3 batches, mixing until each addition is just incorporated.

Spread batter evenly in cake pan, then rap pan on counter several times to eliminate air bubbles. Bake until golden and a toothpick inserted in center of cake comes out clean, 35 to 40 minutes. Cool in pan on a rack for 10 minutes, then run a knife around edge of pan. Invert onto rack and discard parchment, flip cake so it is right-side up and then cool completely, about 1 hour.

Make glaze:
Bring cream, brown sugar, corn syrup, and a pinch of salt to a boil in a 1 1/2-quart heavy saucepan over medium heat, stirring until sugar has dissolved. Boil until glaze registers 210 to 212°F on thermometer, 12 to 14 minutes, then stir in vanilla.

Put rack with cake in a shallow baking pan and pour hot glaze over top of cake, allowing it to run down sides. Cool until glaze is set, about 30 minutes.