Cooking as Remembrance: Sasha

Everyone who cooks has at least one recipe that has some memory attached to it. We make "mom's pot roast," or "Nana's tomato sauce," "Aunt Jill's latkes," and so on and so forth. Even if the final product is not that good, we make them because the invoke spirits for us: spirits of the past, spirits of memories, spirits of feeling "at home" with whomever the recipe reminds us of.

I have many of those. Nana's tomato sauce is one of them. Then there are things I made years ago with Richard Sax. Or dishes that I made FOR someone, or some party , that stand out in my mind. As the holiday rush is upon us, and I am fully committed to the craziness that is cookies (35 varieites down, and counting!!!), I recall "Sasha's cookies."

Sasha was one of my first cats. Back in 1982, after I had moved into my first apartment (a studio apartment, on the Upper East Side), I decided I needed a cat. Knowing that I'm a softie when it comes to animals, I called my friend Mary McClain, to ask her to come with me to the shelter because, in my words "if I go alone, I will come back with a litter of kittens. I want ONE CAT Mary. Not six kittens. ONE CAT."

We went to the shelter and I looked around, and finally, I found "the one." It wasn't Sasha. It was a gorgeous, golden haired tabby kitten, three months old, who just stole my heart. He was in a cage with another, sort of nondescript, black and white cat who didn't really do anything for me. But the identifying card for that other cat had written on it "go down" followed by the next day's date. I asked the volunteer if that meant what I thought it did, and it did: the kitty would be put to sleep the next day.

OK, so what would you do? I looked at Mary, and she looked away. I looked at the volunteer, and SHE looked away. So in typical smart ass NY fashion I said "do I get a volume discount?" In fact I did, so I said "alright, wrap them up, I'll take them both." On the way home, Mary was rubbing my arm, reminding me that it was Yom Kippur and I had just done a mitzvah, a good deed.

The kitties and I got home. The tabbly, whom I named Nijinsky, ran under the sofa and I almost never saw him for three months, except at dinner time. The other one, on the other hand, followed me to the kitchen. I was making sauce and I spilled some on the floor. He came over and ate it. And looked at me for more. So I put some on Italian bread and fed him. And he ate that.

This, like in the Bogart movie "was the start of a beautiful friendship." Sasha, as I called him, came as close to being a best friend as any cat can. If I were sick and had to stay in bed, Sasha stayed in bed with me. He always seemed to know when I was lonely, and would just park himself in my lap and purr. When he was thinner, he used to sit on my shoulder, like a parrot, and meow , as if he knew he was supposed to make bird noises. My less kind friends would refer to him as my "familiar." Maybe they were right.

Well, Sasha was never a very healthy cat, but he possessed an incredible will to live. I've never had another cat with that fighting spirit. After 16 years, he gave up the ghost, and it is STILL hard. I DO feel that he's still with me.

He died in December, 1998, as I was making cookies. Before the end came, he had to have some emergency, risky surgery, and I was doing what I always do when I'm nervous: I was cooking. I was baking cookies. And I had a recipe on my counter, that was a cookie that needed to be baked while the dough was cold. As I was prepping the cookies, the phone rang. It was the vet calling to tell me that the surgery was a success, and Sasha was in recovery. I was on the phone for a while, and when I got back to the kitchen, the dough had gotten to room temperature. I was too exhausted to chill it, and start, so I baked it warm. And if it wasn't the "right cookie," it was a good cookie.

Unfortunately, there were complications, and Sasha died a few days later. But the cookie remains. Interestingly enough, when it's finished baking, it has a brown and white pattern on it, not unlike Sasha's coat did. So I called these cookies "Sasha's."

Full disclosure too. I was so overwrought the night that I first made these, that I had forgotten how I had worked the dough. And since that first batch, I have never been able to get them completely right. I think I have now. The original recipe calls for ground nuts, but also says that you could leave these out, because kids don't like nuts. What I must have realized at the time, and then forgot, was that if you take out the nuts, you have to add something to replace it to give the cookie body. That's what I did this time, and the cookies worked better than they ever did.

I did not let the dough sit, but there were several batches. It seemed to both me and my partner, that the later batches were lighter than the first ones. So keep that in mind. It might be a good idea to leave the dough to sit for an hour or so before baking it. The cookies bake up really fast, so they're a good "last minute" cookie. Try them, and think of my baby Sasha, as I do whenever I make them.

This makes a Lot of cookies. You'll need 3-4 cups of flour (less for lighter, more for heavier cookies), 2 teaspoons of baking powder, and 1/2 a teaspoon of salt, mixed together and put aside.

Then in a saucepan, combine a stick and a half of unsalted butter, melted, with 3/4 cup of cocoa, 2 cups of sugar, and a tablespoon of vanilla. Stir this until it's combined. Then add four eggs, one at a time.

Stir in your flour, probably in thirds or fourths. This makes a very heavy dough, so you can use a mixer if you like (I eventually did, it was getting too tiring). When the color is uniform, you're done.

Roll up one inch balls and put them on parchment lined baking sheets. Preheat your oven to 350, and when the oven is heating up, dunk each ball of dough into confectioner's sugar. Cover it completely. Then bake the trays for eight minutes, and let them cool.

As the cookies bake and cool, they will "crackle." The sugar will melt in a non-uniform way, and you'll see why they were oringally called "cocoa snowflakes," because no two of them look alike.

I got about 70 cookies out of this. If you make them smaller, of course, you'll get more. I wouldn't try making them bigger. The cookies don't expand much when they bake, so you won't have "in the oven colllisions" but the size that you get with the one inch is just fine. And the flavor is very strong, and very rich, and it's better to eat a whole, smaller cookie, than to be confronted with the half that you can't eat.

I hope you try them. And I hope you have your own recipes that remind you of people, places or things, and that you'll share them with me, or anyone else. It's a way of keeping connected to people and things that aren't right "there" anymore

Tis the season: COOKIES

Yesterday, I wrote about cookies being the true time sucker of the kitchen. Trust me, this is true. I can say categorically that NO ONE knows this better than I do. Ok, you want details.

Any of us who feel that we have our lives under control is wrong. Completely and totally. The question is not : is your life under control? Rather, the relevant question is : how many aspects of your life are OUT of control? Mine could fill an entire writing tablet. One of those is cookie baking. By December 15, I will have baked somewhere between 2000 and 2500 cookies.

You read that right. Two thousand, and two thousand five hundred. How did this happen? Beats me. I THINK what happened is I made a tin of cookies for someone one Xmas. People heard about it and asked for theirs. So next year I made five tins. That became 15. Now, I have no idea of how many there will be. What I DO know is that between last Friday and the end of Sunday night, I made 31 different types of cookies, and the end is not yet in sight. My ankles are in open revolt, and they are calling me names in languages that have been extinct for two thousand years. But I go on.

Is this crazy or what?

Still, let's face it. A cake is wonderful, and just about no one (well, I can think of ONE person, but I think he's lying), will turn away from a piece of cake and say "I just don't eat the stuff," give someone a plate of homemade cookies and WATCH THEM BEAM.

The only thing better than receiving cookies, in my view, is being the one who inspires that kind of look, that kind of pleasure for which there are no words. And I am blessed with SO MANY friends, most of whom I don't see, or don't see enough of, during the holiday season, that this is my way of saying "you're on my mind, I love you, and I wish I were spending more time with you."

Well, THAT was a little saccharine wasn't it? But it happens to be true. I can't tell if the look when they open the tin is more satisfying than the look when they bite into the first one, but it's a close, close call.

The types of cookies that go into the tins is essentially a matter of whim. Every year I make a selection about a week ahead of time, and then when I start baking, toss out the list and cook from the heart. That's the only way to describe it.

But there are some constants. One of them is gingersnaps. Now, when was the last time you had a REALLY GOOD ginger snap? Hmmm? Can't think of when, huh? Well, I'm gonna see if I can fix that.

NO, I am NOT sending all of you gingersnaps. But I'm going to slip into enabler mode and let you make them yourself.

There are scads of gingersnap recipes all over the place. I am told that people find the gingersnaps at Chez Panisse the pinnacle of this type of cookie. Well, y'all know that I am obsessed with CP, and treat their recipes not unlike members of certain religious sects treat prounouncements by their leaders, but on this one... I beg to differ. Mine are better.

And "mine" are not really mine. The recipe I'm about to print is from The Joy of Cooking. The BIG one. NOT the one that is called "The Joy of Cooking Christmas Cookies." They changed some recipes in that little book, and this is one of them. The changes are NOT for the better.

This recipe makes about 100 cookies, which is a lot, but not really. You can make them before you go to work in the morning if you're truly crazy (which is what I did today), or you can spend an hour in the kitchen at night and make them. And because they're so easy, when you finish them two days later, you can make another batch.

You will do that. Trust me. They are that good.

1.5 sticks of unsalted butter, at room temperature
1/2 cup of molasses
2 cups of white sugar.

Blend the butter until it's soft, then add the molasses and combine it well, and then the sugar

2 large eggs
2 teaspoons of vanilla

Now blend in the eggs, one at a time, and the vanilla.

4 cups of flour
1.5 teaspoons of baking soda
BIG pinch of salt
a tablespoon (yup, a tablespoon) of good quality ginger
a teaspoon of cinnamon
half a teaspoon of cloves

BUY NEW SPICES TO MAKE THIS unless you're a spice freak and can swear yours are fresh and fragrant. Blend all of those dried ingredients into the wet ones, until they are just combined. You can add a heaping half cup of candied ginger too, as I sometimes do (not this year).

Then, on parchment lined baking sheets, roll one inch balls and line them up. You can get about 30 to a sheet. You can roll them in sugar, if you like, but I don't. Bake them at 325, for about twelve minutes. But check. When I was doing my baking, some baked fast, and others needed more time. You want that little ring of dark brown to form around them, and you want to see a tell tale "cracking" on the top.

Now, you can play with these spices, and I have. But ultimately, I came back to the classic combination and just kicked up the quantities of everything. I add a bit more flour than the Joy recommends, because measuring four cups of flour is a helluva lot easier than 3 3/4 .

And here's something you n eed to know: cookies like this pick up moisture. FAST. If you put them in a tin before they're cooled, they will soften and while they will taste good, they will not "snap." And if you plan to put them in a mix of other cookies, put them in last. They have far less moisture in them than others do, and molasses is "hygroscopic" as we tech folks say, which means it sucks the moisture out of other things. So the longer they're around moist cookies, the softer they will get.

Enjoy them. Eat them. And make more. And then give some to people. You'll feel SO good about yourself you won't believe it.

Reconsider the lentil

I've been away from the blog for a few days. It's that time of year. This is when I do the Xmas cookies that are the present we will give to many people. There will be somewhere between 40-45 different kinds of cookies and candies in each tin. It's nuts. It's totally, totally nuts. I'm pleased though, that someone else recognizes this. A few weeks ago I read an article by someone who was advocating that everyone start baking their own cakes. S/he (I don't remember who wrote it), answered the argument that "they take too much time" with the comment "anyone who bakes knows that COOKIES are the demon time stealers, not cakes."
Amen to that. Bake the sheet. Rotate the sheet. Preheat to 350. Cool to 325. Heat to 375. Set the timer. Make the syrup. It's totally crazy. And I wouldn't let the year go by without it.

So, why are we reconsidering the lentil? Ah, I have said to you, gentle reader, that we get where we're going although sometimes it takes a while to get there. Here we go. Several weeks ago, at Savoy restaurant (one of my favorites), one of the dishes came on a bed of green french lentils. I have lentils in the cupboard. I bet EVERYONE has a bag of lentils in their cupboard. Probably about three years old. Why'd you get them? Because they're easy to cook, they're cheap, and they're good for you. Have you paid attention to their taste though? And.... then there's the issue of texture and color. So those lentils are sitting there until you're desperate. And no one is EVER that desperate.

Well, here's a thought or two. I actually like those brown lentils. I think they taste quite fine, and I don't mind the texture at all. But I confess: I have bags and bags of them, and I never us them. "I'll get to them." And then "something better" comes along.

So last week, I was again looking at soup. Hearty, thick, tasty soup, which wouldn't take too long to do. Lentils fit the bill. One of the useless pieces of trivia you'll never need to know is that dried lentils are the only dried legume you don't have to soak prior to cooking. And they cook fast. You can go from a bag of lentils to a pot of soup in half an hour. And they're still cheap. The bag of fancy french green lentils I had in my cupboard cost 2 bucks for a pound and a quarter. When you look at the other ingredients in my soup, you'll note how economical it is.

For those of you who have issues with the color and texture of the "common" brown lentil, I suggest the green ones. They hold their shape, they have a more desirable color when cooked, and the texture is more like a soft sesame seed than anything else, when they're cooked.

What I did was I chopped, very roughly, a cup each of carrots, celery and onions. I sauteed these in olive oil until the sound when from a vigorous sizzle, to a slow one. While that was happening, I used a trick out of Lidia Bastianich's book. If you watch her shows, when she fries or sautees, she moves things out of the way as she adds new things, so there's a "hot spot" to toast the flavor. She does this with tomato paste a lot. Tomato paste is a natural partner for lentils, in my book. I use the stuff in a tube, so I don't have opened cans of stuff going bad in my fridge. I squirted a good two tablespoons onto a bare spot in the pot, and cooked for a few seconds. Then I stirred that into the veggies, and added two cups of dried lentils, and just stirred them to get some oil on them. A big pinch of salt, two bay leaves and then two quarts of chicken stock (here, though, you could just as easily use water, and the soup will be just fine). When the pot came to a boil, I lowered the heat, and let it go for half an hour. Then I pulled out the bay leaves.

At the end of that, I had a soup which would have passed muster anywhere. I decided to bulk it up a little, by slicing half a pound of chicken sausages and frying them until they were just black on the cut surface, and adding that to the soup, together with two cups of cooked pasta that I had cooked as I had with the minestrone soup that opened this blog. It looked a little thick to me, so I added a pint of water, tasted it for seasonings, and added salt and pepper.

I had three good quarts of tasty, inexpensive, and nutritious soup all set to go.

When you're making hundreds of thousands of "time stealing demons" for Xmas gifts, any time you can get back is a blessing. I think we'll be eating more lentils this winter!

OOPS!

You hear people saying things like "So and so is a good cook, I'm so jealous. I can't cook." If you probe a little further, as I sometimes do, you frequently find out that the person who "can't cook," had a bad experience with a recipe, or a dish turned out wrong, or didn't turn out the way s/he thought it should, and thus, by definition, they can't cook.

My friend Andrew told me some time ago about trying to make pancakes, and how they tasted good, but "they just didn't get brown on one side. What did I do wrong?"

What makes someone think they did something wrong? I try to stress in these blogs that there are so many things that are involved in putting a dish together, that a recipe can only guide you so far. Unfortunately, we get trained, so early, to "FOLLOW DIRECTIONS." So if the recipe says "bake in a 350 degree oven for twenty minutes," that's what we do. Well, what if the oven's thermostat was off? It happens more than you might think. What if the recipe writer were working on a dry day, and it's raining when you cook? Well, your ingredients are going to have more water in them, and it will take longer to cook them. It happens more than you think. Or - one of my favorite examples - what if the recipe says "use apples that are somewhat tart," and you have a taste for things that are sour? Your idea of what is "somewhat tart" is going to be different from what someone who likes sweet apples considers a "somewhat tart" one, and the two of you, making the same dessert, will get different results. Which one is correct? Both of them.

So, there are two lessons here, and then a story. First, is the one I've been stressing: don't treat recipes as the "be all and end all" of cooking. Second, don't be so hard on yourself if it doesn't work the way you thought it was supposed to. Your result may very well be the correct one.

There's an excellent analogy drawn in an essay by Daniel Patterson. He talks about how you might have directions to "drive west for five minutes." Well, what if you run into red lights? Or what if there's a bump that slows you down? Or what if the speed you think you're going at is wrong? Does that make you a bad driver? Of course not.

And as Mr. Patterson observes in his essay "Good cooks make mistakes all the time. They take wrong turns and end up in strange places. Their attention sharpens as they try to figure out where they are and how they got there. Eventually they either reach their original destination or discover that wherever they stumbled into is really the best place to be. Sometimes it's important to get lost."

Amen to that. I think of myself as a good cook. So do a lot of people. But I make mistakes. I make a LOT of mistakes. At thanksgiving, I made a BIG one. I was trying to make some kind of gratin with white potatoes, and chard, but instead of using milk, I used chicken stock. I knew that chicken stock doesn't have the thickening agents that milk does, but I figured that the starch in the potatoes would bind the dish together.


WRONG!!! And in retrospect, what in the name of Buddha was I doing? Yes, there ARE baked casseroles based on broth, called "panades," but they all involve lots of bread to sop up the stuff. So, after an hour of baking, I had a very wet casserole dish filled with lovely slices of potato that had been cooked in chicken stock for so long that they had taken on wonderful flavor, and some very soft, but still vibrant, chard. What I did NOT have was a gratin. What to do?

I fished out the potatoes, and the greens, and I reserved the stock (that would make a good soup later on). Then I piled everything into a baking dish, covered it with bread crumbs and butter, and broiled it for five minutes. INSTANT SUCCESS. And a few days later, the leftovers, blended with an egg, some broccoli, and a little salt, made superb potato "pancakes" alongside of a plate of tuna steak.

You're going to make mistakes. We all will. I won't make a casserole in that fashion again (although I WILL review recipes on panades and my next one will work), but now, I have a new recipe for a baked potato casserole. Maybe when I make it again, I'll cook the potatoes in the stock on the stove, rather than bake it for an hour, but then again, maybe for old times sake, I'll do it the way I did the first time.

NOT!

Difficult Vegetables: Cauliflower

As we head into the cold weather, the "favorite" vegetables of the warm weather are gone. No more green beans, peas, tomatoes, summer squash, or all of the other goodies that people mention when they talk about their favorite vegetables. Now we're left with the "tough stuff," like beets, kale, chard, and the cruciferous ones: cauliflower, broccoli, cabbage, brussel sprouts, and that whole category. (Know why they call them "cruciferous?" The flowers of these guys look like little tiny crosses. They DO. I've seen em on cabbage plants and broccoli plants. Really neat).

Winter vegetables have very strong flavors, and they aren't as easy to cook as the summer ones. And all of us have some kind of memory of one or more of them that isn't appealing. I know I have them.

I DO enjoy some of these vegetables, but no one is going to get me to eat brussel sprouts. At least not willingly. I have only liked them ONE way: I had a stir fry once, of shredded sprouts, pecans, apples and maple syrup. That is more like candy than a vegetable, so I can't say that "oh, I had some great brussel sprouts." Not that long ago, at one of our favorite restaurants, the kitchen sent out, on the house, their special brussel sprouts salad. Bravely, I dug in. These were shredded raw sprouts, mixed with enough "stuff" to make it barely palatable to me. I'm sure that it was delicious, like all the food at Barbuto, but it's just not my thing.

Indeed, for years, I had an adversion to cauliflower, and for a while, broccoli. Where the adversion to broccoli came from, I do not know. I had always liked the stuff, but then one day, I woke up and the thought of it, the sight of it, the smell of it, and of course, the taste of it would leave me running to the bathroom to , well.... Then one day, it just disappeared.

I THINK I know where the adversion to cauliflower came from , and I think many people share the same adversion: SMELL. When you cook any of these cruciferous vegetables, you can get a really, truly nasty smell in the kitchen and your home, that lingers. That's the sulfur in these vegetables. It's also what makes them somewhat indigestable to some people. Not being able to digest a veggie is reason enough not to eat it, but the odor problem CAN be solved. Trust me. I got over my cauliflower problems, and I believe that you can too, if you follow a few little guidelines.

First, when you buy cauliflower, or cabbage, or any of these vegetables, you have to divorce yourself from the American concept that "bigger is better." It's not. The larger varieites of these vegetables will have more "aroma" than the smaller ones, and it's not proportional. In other words, it's not the case that a two pound head of cauliflower is going to have twice the odor of a one pound head. Uh uh. It's more pronounced than that, because in addition to getting bigger, the vegetable is older. Older vegetables have more "aromatics." Why do you think French women, those masters of soups, use older carrots in their stock instead of young ones? So go for the smaller specimens.

Second, when you buy them, plan on using them sooner rather than later. These veggies all store well, but that doesn't mean you should push them to the back of the fridge, and use them when you "get to them." The longer they store, the more water they will lose, and the more concentrated the sulfurs. More concentrated sulfurs means a stronger aroma.

And finally, what to me is the KEY point. When you cook these vegetables, use PLENTY of water. WAY MORE than you think you'll need. What I believe happens is that as the veggies cook, the aromas vaporize. If they can dissolve into the water, they won't get into the air. And you won't smell them. And you'll be able to enjoy the veggies without having to deal with, what my grandmother used to call "underwear odor."

When I was a kid, cauliflower was white. In big heads. These days, you seem to be able to buy it in a new color every year. Now we have golden cauliflower, and purple cauliflower, and I think there's a green one, too. I remember when the golden ones came out for the first time. They hadn't "quite" gotten the genetics down yet, and when you cooked it, the color leached out and when you drained the water, it looked a lot like, well, urine. Now THERE's something that will turn a cook's stomach. Now, though, the color seems to fade a little, but to hold in the final product. That's a "good thing." I think that happens with the purple variety too, but honestly, here's one of my prejudices, I can't see myself eating a purple vegetable other than eggplant. I have a purple sweet potato in my fridge from Nevia, BEGGING to be cooked, and I just can't do it....

Anyway, cooks seem to have "gotten it" and cauliflower became "chic" last year, even to the point of one restaurant putting a side order of white/golden/purple cauliflower on the menu at 15.00 a plate. FIFTEEN BUCKS for cauliflower. Can you imagine? I think they either took it off the menu or reduced the price. There is no way I would pay that. Would you?

Cauliflower works beautifully as a soup. You saute the florettes in butter and oil with other aromatic vegetables until they just begin to soften, then add stock and cook it until it's soft enough to puree. When it's cool, either put it through the food mill, for a rustic feel, or blend it for a smooth one. Add milk if you like, but that will obscure the taste. It's also wonderful baked in a cheese sauce, or deep fried, but let's face it: you could cut the rubber fingers off of a glove and deep fry them, or bake them in cheese sauce and it would taste good. No, let's stick with getting the flavor of the vegetable.

This is my current favorite way of serving cauliflower. I almost always use the golden one for this, but you can use the white variety, and it will look like creamy mashed potatoes and you can fool people into trying it. I'm sure the purple variety will work, I'm just not there yet.

You break up the head of cauliflower into florettes, and then cook them in a BIG pot of boiling, salted water, until they just begin to feel tender. It shouldn't take more than ten minutes to do that. Then, fish them out and put them in a food processor or blender, with about half a cup of the cooking water, and puree this to a nice smooth puree. Add some salt, and either butter OR, my new favorite finishing ingredient "olio verde." Olio verde is "fresh" olive oil, which is to say olive oil that has not been allowed to settle down yet. It's got a bite of pepper that is a bit fierce, and it's GOOD. You don't cook with this oil. You finish vegetables with it.

If you want to trick people into tasting cauliflower, you can put a pat of butter into the puree instead of olive oil. The purees really DO look like very creamy mashed potatoes. It's a good way to get people to pay attention to what they're eating, something we ALL need to do.

My second favorite way of using this vegetable is in a pasta dish, that I'm told comes from Sicily, where cauliflower is a key vegetable in the winter. I'm told that you can do this several ways, here's how I do it. First, I boil the florettes of a head of cauliflower like above, but I stop the cooking after five minutes, because I'm going to cook them again. Then, in a pan with some olive oil, I add the cauliflower, some capers (preferably salted ones that I've soaked to get some of the salt out), and then some dry bread crumbs. Many folks add anchovies at this point, but it's another ingredient that is not in my list of favorites . So instead I add pine nuts at this point. And sometimes raisins. I just toss this together and add some olive oil to it at the end. NO CHEESE. Then, boil up a pound of pasta and toss this vegetable sauce through it (you need a pasta like ziti or rigatoni or something short and "muscular" like that. No linguine here, and use dried pasta). I made this pasta concoction one year for a party, thinking that no one would touch it and we'd eat the leftovers the next day. In fact, I had to run to the kitchen and make a second batch of it.

So, it's time to come out of the closet all you cauliflower lovers. Try these recipes. Let me know if you like them. I really hope you do.

What ARE those things? Persimmons

Persimmons are one of those fruits that people don't know a lot about, and I blame agricultural distributors for that. And also cookbook writers. You see them just about now in East Coast markets: dull orange colored, either tear dropped shaped, or round, like apples, with a big "star" in the center from where they grew on the tree. Occasionally, you'll see another variety called a chocolate persimmon, that is very small and has big black seeds in it. When it's ripe, it's got brown spots, like pock marks all over it.

Persimmons do not appear to be very promising as fruit. Usually, you find them rock hard, when they are essentially as inedible as a quince. Bite into one, and you'll wish you didn't. They are so full of tannin, you'll feel like you just drank the dregs from a bottle of good red wine. If they're ripe - and there are varieties that MUST be "drop dead" ripe to be edible - they are so soft that they will literally squish in your hand. Good for eating, terrible for storing and selling: if you have something so soft that it will "moosh" when it's touch, what do you do? Think about it: when you buy bananas, even if you like them black and soft and ripe, do you buy them that way? No, you buy them firmer, and let them ripen at home. And that is how you should buy persimmons if you want to try them, unless you're willing to lose some of them on the way home as they bump into each other and turn to goo.

I used to buy them that way. In fact, one "grocery store moment" I will always remember came about seven years ago. It was after work, and I was buying produce for the weekend. There was a big box of very, VERY soft persimmons: five for a dollar. I grabbed ten, and the manager looked at me and said "take another five, I don't want them." Uh, twist my arm. And I went into this reverie thinking "you know, if I had a restaurant, I would now ask him how much he wanted for ALL of them, t ake them back to the shop and make a special dessert." I did that anyway, but it was only for a few people.

Thoughts of persimmons this morning because of chatting with my friend Gary over a "persimmon pudding" I made last night. I could say LOTS about Gary and embarrass him silly and I may do that one day anyway, so let me justs say that Gary knows his produce. And his flowers. And anything that grows. Show him the plant, and he'll say "oh, that's..... You got it from....." And he'll be right. Gary knows I basically live by "local and seasonal," so when he heard that the dessert was persimmon , his question was "where did you get them at this time of year?" See, persimmons on the EAST coast are a fruit that needs a hard frost to be edible. It seems to be the frost that puts down the tannins and of course, frozen, thawed fruit is always soft. We haven't had that, yet, so "where did you get those" was a logical question.

I got them from the citrus folks, Kim, Sandra and Eric. I got an email one day saying "the persimmons are in, we just sent you a box." And given their generosity, this was NOT a box of six or seven fruit. Uh uh. Probably closer to 25 pounds.

I love using persimmons in salad, and we had the "triple P" salad of pomegranates (also from the gang), persimons and pistachio nuts, and then the pudding.

Guy does a bakesale for his Chorus as a fundraiser. They had their last one before their holiday concert last night, so he wanted to do an "eat free" night. Given my southern Italian love of excess, I said "let's do it big." So we did. And persimmon pudding was one of the things we brought.

"Pudding" is deceptive in this context. This is really a cake. I guess it's there because in England, "pudding" is a dessert, and the British DO know something about persimmons.

The recipe is adapted from Lindsey Shere's incredible "Chez Panisse Desserts," with my usual modification. I left some things out, and changed the cooking time. But it DOES take a while. It's a cake to make when you're going to be home for a while: like during persimmon season when it's cold and nasty outside. This is a real delight. You can eat it plain, like I do, or put some vanilla ice cream with it, or whipped cream. It takes very well to spirits too. Flavor the whipped cream with brandy, or pour some over the ice cream, or just sip it while you're eating it. It's GREAT

You need a pound and a half of persimmons. Make sure you have the variety that does not need to be soft to eat, or if you do, that they're soft. And if you have more than a pound and a half, that's ok, too. Cut the tops off, and then cut the fruit into pieces. Puree them in a food processor (this is a recipe where , unfortunately, I think you do need a processor. I don't know how you would do this without one). Put it aside. (Ms. Shere tells us to peel them. I didn't and it wasn't a problem). Put them aside, and then mix in a bowl 1.25 cups of flour , a pinch of salt, a teaspoon of baking powder, a teaspoon of cinnamon, and put that aside .

Now, mix together 3/4 cups of sugar, 3 large eggs, and EITHER two cups of milk or 1.5 of milk and .5 of cream (light or heavy, your choice). Add the persimmon pulp to t his, then pour the whole thing into the flour mixture, and stir it to combine it. (Ms. Shere suggests letting this sit for a while to thicken, but I didn't see a need. She also toasts walnuts and combines them with butter, which I've left out, because many people won't eat the nuts. Also, she has left out a lot of spices so that you taste the persimmon. I fully agree with this approach, and leave out the nuts as well).

Pour this mixture into a buttered springform pan (9 inches is a good size), and then stand it on a baking sheet. Put it into a preheated, 350 oven and let it bake for 2 hours (in the original, it calls for 2-3 hours. I think that more than 2 would probably burn the thing to death, but use your judgement. If it's "just jiggly" at the center, after two hours, you're done).

The cake is an example of "plain is pretty" It's dark brown, and it's solid, but when you unmold it, and put it on a plate and start thinking about "what does it need?" the answer is NOTHING. Just leave it as it is. No powdered sugar, no candied violets, NOTHING. And you don't have to refrigerate it.

Yes, it's best warm, but room temperature will do just fine, too, and it's so satisfying, you will serve a LOT of people with it, and have leftovers, which you will be glad to have.

And in making this, especially in the fall, you will be connecting with the past. Keep in mind that, before transport was available, in the winter, this was one of the few sweets that were available.

This is really one of my favorite cakes to make, and persimmons are one of my favorite ingredients to play with. I hope you'll search them out and try it

When "OK" isn't good enough

Going back a few months, I had an email chat at work with my friend Steve. He was asking about a pork tenderloin he had cooked the night before. I don't recall the particulars, but I remember that he was asking about the recipe because "it was OK, but OK isn't good enough for me when I do the cooking."

Anyone who cooks with any kind of frequency gets into that frame of mind. Dishes that your friends love, taste "so so" to you, or just plain off. A show of hands here: how many of you have served dinner to your friends, had them all "oooh" and "ahhhh" over it, while you sit there , knowing they're being honest, but thinking "I'm not tasting it...."

What you cooked is fine. What has happened, in my opinion, is that your taste buds have moved on. If you're serving a dish to company, it means , probably, that you've cooked it before, perhaps more than once, and you've gotten it "just right" to your taste. So, BAM. The thrill of the new is gone. And for people who like to cook, part of the "rush" is that sense of "what is new." If I remember correctly, I didn't see anything that was "wrong" with what Steve had cooked. But every single cook has very strong opinions. And if he thought it wasn't good enough, it wasn't good enough for him.

I recalled that bit of history when I was trying to think of what to do with some pork tenderloin I had taken out of our freezer. This is a cut of meat that I'm fairly new to. We certainly didn't have it when I grew up, and even after it became "the rage," I had avoided it. Too popular.
Its popularity is easy to see: it's very lean, it cuts into nice, small slices so it's fine for kids as well as adults who want "just a bit," and because it is not as strongly flavored as other cuts of pork, it takes to just about anything you give it (which is a gift and a curse).

I, too, was thinking of something that was "more than ok," but I wanted it to be quick, and easy.

I don't quite know what "lock and key" operate when I get ideas in the kitchen, especially when they work. But this one did.

Some years ago, the head chef at City Bakery in NY, published a recipe for pretzel encrusted chicken. For about four months, it was EVERYWHERE. The pretzel vendor at our Farmers' Market even had a sign up "these are the pretzels you need for Ilene's chicken." I went along with it. It is an excellent recipe: a simple food processor sauce is used to coat the chicken, and then it's coated with pretzel crumbs and baked. Then, the coating sauce is used as a dipping sauce as well.

Remember that old TV and magazine campaign: "PORK. The other white meat?" Well, there was the connection. The sauce for the chicken is made of balsamic vinegar, mustard and water.

Mustard is a natural with pork. The sharpness cuts right across any fat, and seems to compliment the mild flavor. The sweet/sour ("agrodolce" as we Italians call it) flavor of balsamic is also a common combination with pork. Finally, add the saltiness of pretzels, and CRUNCH, and how could it fail?

In fact, it didn't. I did have to modify the recipe a bit, but it wasn't too difficult. You will probably want to modify it too, as Steve will, and go right ahead. Remember, this is a guide, not a rule book.

To make the sauce, you will need equal amounts of mustard and balsamic vinegar. Let me take the vinegar first. Get a GOOD one, but not a GREAT one. In other words, leave the 99c a bottle stuff at Costco, but don't use that 25 year old stuff that pours like molasses and costs a hundred bucks. I used 2 year old vinegar that cost me six bucks a bottle. I used a cup of it, with a cup of mixed dijon and honey mustard (thinking, correctly, that honey is a good combo for pork). You combine this with half a cup of water. But let's not get ahead of ourselves. FIRST, you need to make the crumbs.

You need good pretzels. Not the thin ones you buy for snacking, but the thick, "tooth breakers." I use a brand that is locally made , "Martin's" They are really good, and while I can deal without the 'FREE BIBLE VERSE IN EVERY BAG' I do like the pretzels. And I use the regular salted ones, although you should feel free to use the "baldies" or rub some of the salt off. Put a half pound of them in the food processor and plug up your ears as they turn to crumbs. Don't go for fine, evenness. You want irregular crumbs: some big, some small. Then dump them out on a flat surface, like a baking sheet.

NOW you make the sauce. Don't even bother cleaning the food processor. Just put the three liquids in, and whirl. Pour that off to the side. You will want to use about half of it for dipping the pork, so pour that onto a second sheet pan.

Now, roll your pork tenderloin in the sauce and then the crumbs. When I do this with chicken, one dip is enough to get a good coating, but I had my doubts with the tenderloin, so I did a dip in sauce, then pretzels, then repeated it. That turned out to be a good idea. I only had one tenderloin, but there was enough stuff to do two of them if you wanted to. BUT KEEP HALF OF THE SAUCE RESERVED.

Put your tenderloins onto a baking sheet- maybe even the one you used for the crumbs, that has been coated with parchment paper if you like, and bake them at 375 for about 30 minutes.

I will admit that I'm unsure if this is proper time. When I did mine, 30 minutes brought the pork just past pinkish red and bloody, to pink/white, and still juicy. But if eating pink pork gives you the skeeves, keep cooking it. DO keep in mind that because tenderloin has an irregular shape, the thin pieces at the end will be cooked more, and crispier then the central slices.

After it's cooked as long as you like, slice it on the bias, and use that extra sauce to pour over the pork.

I can't imagine serving this without cabbage, which is not everyone's cup of tea, so use your favorite vegetable. And if you go t hrough this recipe, you'll see t hat there really isn't any fat in it, other than what's in the very lean pork. So do something rich for sauce. If I have time when I serve these, I'm making spaetzle (yes, I made it ahead of time).

You can play with the mustard you use: there are so many interesting ones around. I don't like all dijon, and I don't like all honey mustard in the sauce: they go from too acidic to too sweet for me. But it's your choice. And of course, play with the amount of salt in the pretzels, and the cooking time.

So , Ilene, your idea goes forward.

And Steve, if you make it, I hope you find it better than ok.