blog archive for March 2008

I made a wonderful French soup last night — Soupe au Pistou. (Pistou is the French version of Italian pesto.) The soup requires a lot of chopping, but once that’s done, it’s no-fuss. Perfect with crusty bread, it’s similar to minestrone but not as heavy and quite fresh tasting. I’ll be making this a lot this spring and summer when our farmers’ market starts selling fresh, local produce.

Here’s the recipe:

2 tomatoes, peeled, seeded and chopped
3 red potatoes, peeled and diced
2 carrots, diced
3 small zucchini, chopped
1 handful green beans, cut in thirds
1 leek, white part only, thinly sliced
1 onion, chopped
2 quarts water
1 teaspoon salt
Coarsely ground back pepper
1/2 teaspoon dried thyme (or 1 1/2 teaspoons fresh thyme leaves)
1 bay leaf
1 (15-ounce) can cannelini beans, rinsed and drained
1 cup frozen green peas
1/2 cup small pasta—such as mini penne
1/2 cup basil pesto (preferably homemade)

Combine first seven ingredients (tomatoes through onion) in a large stockpot. Add water, salt, pepper, thyme and bay leaf and bring to a boil. Reduce heat, and simmer 20 minutes, covered. Add beans and peas. Cook 5 minutes. Add pasta, and cook 7 to 10 minutes, until pasta is done. Remove from heat and stir in pesto. Cover and let stand 10 minutes for flavors to meld. Serve with grated Parmesan cheese and additional pesto if desired. Serves 8 to 10.

Recipe based on Anne Willan's Soupe Au Pistou in The Country Cooking of France (Chronicle Books, 2007)

We recently recceived a question from a Relish reader about wine — specifically whether we thought a 1975 bottle of Charles Krug Caberet Sauvignon that had been stored away for years would still be good. Our wine expert, Charles Smothermon, provided this reply:

It was a delight to receive your letter and to hear such 
an intriguing wine story. Thanks so much for sharing the experience!

The 1975 Charles Krug Cabernet Sauvignon could be a fascinating wine 
to taste. After a period of neglect, wine lovers have become 
interested once again in mature, high-quality California Cabernets 
such as this one. The big concern, of course, is the condition of 
this particular bottle. If you know for certain that it was subject 
to extreme temperature swings, including periods of heat — say, in an 
attic or garage — then, chances are, the wine will be in pretty tough 
shape by now. But if conditions have been relatively constant and 
never very warm, the wine may still be fine. Obviously, sealed up in 
that box, it hasn't been exposed to lots of damaging light, so that's 
certainly in its favor, as well.

My suggestion is to find someone in your area who is passionately 
interested in wine and to share both the story and the wine with 
them. I know it may seem like a lot of trouble to try to find such a 
person — to ask around local wine shops, and perhaps even post a 
notice on an internet message board such as Craigslist — but for 
someone truly fascinated by the subject of wine, the opportunity to 
taste an older wine can be something they will remember for a 
lifetime. And that's regardless whether the wine turns out to be in 
good condition or not — in my opinion, there's something to be said 
for that moment of drama and suspense in opening just about any wine 
older than 20 years or so. You just never know!

The wine will of course need to be decanted in order to separate the 
good stuff from the sediment, but I wouldn't advise letting it 
breathe for a long period of time before tasting. I would taste it 
soon after decanting and then notice how it evolves the longer it is 
exposed to air. And do stand the bottle upright for at least 24 hours 
before uncorking, in order to allow the sediment to travel to the 
bottom of the bottle. This makes decanting much easier.

I hope that helps — even though I have given you an "assignment"! 
And, thank you once again for sharing your story and for reading 
Relish every month. Please feel free to drop me a line to let me know 
how your Krug Cabernet story turns out. I'll be looking forward to 
hearing from you.

Warm regards,

Charles Smothermon
 

Last time I boiled some eggs, I noticed something different about them. The shell was stamped with the words “Born Free.” Very puzzling. Are eggs “born” when they are laid, or does the “borning” take place at hatching? Hmmm.

    Turns out Born Free is a company in Watertown, Mass., that packages and sells cage-free eggs (another puzzling concept—isn’t it the chickens, not the eggs, that are cage-free?).

    All this musing about eggs and chickens reminded me of my grandmother’s chickens. Though I was raised in the city, my grandparents lived in the country. In addition to chickens, my grandmother’s menagerie included, at various times, pigs, sheep, cows and a goat named Davy Crockett.

    When the cousins gathered in the country for a visit, we’d play on top of the cellar, a great place except for one problem: You had to walk through the chicken yard to get there. Most of the chickens were docile enough, but mixed in with the brood were some that had less than pleasant beginnings—they were our Easter chickens. Having been dipped in dye as chicks, they weren’t too fond of humans, and kids were easy targets. As you raised the latch on the chicken yard gate, you needed to carefully scan the area for any nearby Easter chickens—easy to spot because these mostly white birds, as adolescents, still had purple dye tips on their feathers. Then you’d run like the dickens for the cellar roof. If you weren’t fast enough, the chickens would charge, and if they got too close, they’d flog you. (For you city-slickers out there, that’s when they jump on you and beat you with their wings while pecking away with their pointy little beaks.)

    OK, OK, I know. They had a rough childhood. But an attack by a chicken is enough to make a chicken out of anyone.

After receiving a question from a reader about Elsie’s Gingerbread (Dec. 2007 issue), I decided to retest the recipe. I remembered the cake as wonderfully flavorful with the coarse texture I prefer in homemade cakes. Here’s what happened:

   I preheated the oven, mixed up the batter, popped it in the oven and waited. After 30 minutes (the time called for in the recipe), I checked the cake and found two things: 1) the batter was totally liquid and 2) and I had mistakenly preheated the oven to 250F instead of 350F! (I've got a really old oven, and the numbers on the dial are worn off. Believe it or not, I've painted the degree marks on the dial in 100-degree increments with red nail polish. I missed the mark by 100 degrees. Don’t be alarmed: This is NOT the oven we normally use to test Relish recipes.)  

    I then cranked the heat up to 350F and baked it for about 20 minutes. And guess what--it was perfect! It didn't fall at all in the middle and the texture was wonderful. 

    The next day, I decided that this wasn't a proper test. I also thought that perhaps the reason our cake rose on the sides and fell slightly in the middle (as in the photograph in the magazine and on our website) was that the oven temperature was too hot. So, I preheated the oven to 300F and baked the cake for 30 minutes. Then I cranked the heat up to 350F and baked it for 18 minutes. It would have been perfect, except for one thing: When I checked the cake after the first 30 minutes, I jerked the oven rack a little too hard (my oven doesn’t have those wonderfully smooth gliding racks), and the cake fell in the middle. I continued with the cooking though, and the center rose almost as high as the sides.  

   Anyway, it was delicious.   

   Based on these two (faulty) tests, when I make the cake again, I’ll bake it at 300F for 30 minutes and then increase the temp to 350F and bake it for 18 minutes. (You’ll see that we’ve changed the recipe to reflect those times and temperatures if you go to www.relishmag.com/recipes/view/34760/elsies-gingerbread.html )

    One more bit of advice: if you use a tube pan with a removable bottom, wrap the outside bottom of the pan with foil. I found that the batter leaked out a bit. So now, not only is my oven really, really old, it’s also dirty.—Candace