I really should have put a toothpick in that bowl with a flag on it explaining what it was because now and then when I’d stop by the table and drag a wedge of peach or a few blueberries skewered on a toothpick through it, someone would look at me, horrified, and say something like, “Blueberries with hummus? Really?” No, not really, but in retrospect, I shouldn’t have been surprised that people didn’t immediately recognize it, even if the plates of fruit surrounding it were meant to be a clue.

“Taffy apple dip” (aka “caramel apple dip”) is usually just a combination of softened cream cheese, brown sugar, and vanilla. The first time I had it was at a pumpkin carving party last autumn. My friend Sara brought it, and said it was something her mother had made every autumn for years. As soon as I tasted it, I understood why. The molasses in the brown sugar has many of the same flavor compounds as caramelized sugar, and combined with the vanilla and buttery cream cheese, it evokes toffee or milk caramels. It’s the perfect accompaniment for  crisp, tart apples, and so much simpler to make and eat than a whole apple on a stick dipped in caramel.

I knew I wanted to serve fruit at the party, but somehow just cutting up fruit didn’t seem festive enough. Since it’s not quite apple season—although I did find some honeycrisps at the farmer’s market—and the real stars of the late summer in Michigan are peaches and blueberries, I thought I needed to tweak it a little bit. I just wasn’t sure softer fruits would hold up to the original recipe. So I decided to combine it with some whipped cream. And just to be sure the cream wouldn’t start to melt or weep, I stabilized it with some cornstarch and powdered sugar, following Rose Levy Beranbaum’s instructions in The Cake Bible.

The resulting dip was exactly what I was looking for— rich, but light, like a caramelly cream cheese cloud. It was sort of reminiscent of marshmallow fluff, but not quite as sticky and way more delicious. I think the fat in the cream cheese also helped further stabilize the cream because even after three days in the refrigerator, the leftovers stayed perfectly light and creamy and didn’t seep any whey at all. So you could totally make this 24-48 hours before serving, and you could probably even skip the stabilizing step. Also, I bet it would make an amazing cake filling or icing, especially for a spice cake. 

Recipe: Taffy Apple Cream (adapted from Sara J. and Rose Levy Beranbaum)

• 8 oz cream cheese at room temperature
• 1/2 cup brown sugar
• 1 T. vanilla extract
• 1 cup heavy whipping cream, divided
• 2 T. powdered sugar
• 1 t. cornstarch
• pinch of cinnamon (optional)

1. Refrigerate your mixing bowl and whisk attachment(s).

2. Combine the powdered sugar and cornstarch in a small saucepan. Gradually add 1/4 cup of the heavy cream, stirring constantly until all the lumps are dissolved and the mixture is completely smooth.

3. Cook the mixture over low heat until it simmers, and keep cooking it for 30 seconds to a minute at that temperature until it thickens to about the consistency of corn syrup.

4. Scrape the mixture into a small bowl and let it cool to room temperature.

5. Once the mixture is cool, beat the cream in the chilled bowl just until it’s just thickened enough that the tines of the beater leave distinct trails. 

6. Add the cooled cornstarch mixture, beating constantly if possible or in several small additions, beating well after each addition. Continue beating just until stiff peaks form when the beaters are raised. Do not overbeat.

7. In a separate bowl, beat the cream cheese until it’s smooth and creamy, and then add the brown sugar and vanilla and beat until the sugar is dissolved.

8. Gently fold the whipped cream into the cream cheese mixture just until combined.

The Official Verdict in the Fruit v. Vegetable Debate

In 1883, the U.S. Congress passed a Tariff Act imposing a 10% tax on imported vegetables to protect American farmers from foreign competition. Although that may sound like a fairly straightforward piece of legislation, one New York family took issue with a single word in the law: “vegetable.” The Nixes—John, John, George and Frank—imported a shipment of tomatoes from the West Indies in 1886, and were outraged to have to pay a “vegetable” tax on what scientists had for years agreed was technically a fruit. They forked over the 10%, but then they turned around and sued Edward Hedden, the Collector of the Port of New York, to recover the duties they thought they had been made to pay unfairly.

Somehow, none of the lower courts managed to satisfactorily sort out this semantic debate, so by 1893, the case had made it all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. The lawyer for the plaintiff read definitions from Webster’s and Worcester’s for potato, turnip, parsnip, cauliflower, cabbage, and carrot to prove that the tomato was of an entirely different ilk than those edible roots, leaves, and flowers. The defendant parried back with Webster’s definition of “vegetable”: “cabbage, cauliflower, turnips, potatoes, peas, beans, and the like,” and called in multiple witnesses to testify that tomatoes were commonly understood to be covered by those crucial last three words.

The court sided unanimously with the defendant. As Justice Horace Gray wrote in the decision:

The passages cited from the dictionaries define the word “fruit” as the seed of plants, or that part of plants which contains the seed, and especially the juicy, pulpy products of certain plants, covering and containing the seed. These definitions have no tendency to show that tomatoes are “fruit,” as distinguished from “vegetables,” in common speech, or within the meaning of the tariff act.

Gray went on to explain that regardless of the scientific definition, in “common parlance” tomatoes were considered a vegetable and most commonly eaten as part of the main course, as opposed to fruits, which the court agreed were more commonly eaten for dessert. And so, to this day, the tomato is legally considered a vegetable even though, as even the court acknowledged, it is botanically classified as a fruit.

More Than a Technicality

I suspect that the reason the debate about whether the tomato is a fruit or a vegetable lives on while other culinary “vegetables” that contain the seeds of flowering plants (like cucumbers, peppers, squash, peas, and beans) remain relatively uncontroversial is because tomatoes walk the line between savory and sweet. As the Supreme Court noted, they’re too savory—and in particular, contain too much glutamate, which makes them rich or even “meaty”—to be routinely eaten for dessert, but at the peak of their season, they can be almost as sweet as strawberries and far sweeter than other berries that do regularly appear in desserts, like cranberries or currants. Read more

A “French” Bread from Austria

There are conflicting accounts about the origins of the baguette—the thin rod of bread with a crisp and chewy crust and soft, yielding inside with large, irregular holes that most Americans associate primarily with France. Indeed, baguettes or at least something baguette-shaped is usually what English-speaking people have in mind when they refer to “French bread.” Nonetheless, according to The Food Timeline and Elizabeth David’s English Bread and Yeast Cookery (1979), the baguette actually originated in Vienna, where steam ovens were invented in the 19th C. “True French bread,” according to David, is “the old round or cylindrical hand-shaped ‘pain de campagne' [country bread] or pain de menage' [bread of the household, or common bread], plump, and crossed with cuts so that when baked the crust is of many different shades, gradations and textures and the crumb rather open and coarse.” That explains why in France, and still occasionally elsewhere, things that look very like baguettes are called “Vienna bread.”

However, baguette-shaped loaves were common in France nearly a century before Viennese steam-blasting ovens were adopted. According to Jim Chevallier, the author of a self-published book on the croissant, by the 18th C. “the default shape [for bread] was already long and narrow, and Malouin refers to the round shape as how ‘bread was shaped in former times’.”

Both David and Chevallier suggest that the shift from round balls to long batons was caused not by the steam oven, but instead by the increasing use of soft doughs (molle or batarde, meaning in-between or “bastard”), which relied on two inventions: a more refined flour sifted to remove most of the the fibrous bran and germ and the use of brewer’s barm or dried yeast. The resulting breads were much softer and lighter than the older style of bread made with whole grain flour and leavened with old dough (levain, which is basically a kind of sourdough starter). The older styles, called pâte briée or pâte broyée, were so dense and coarse that they were traditionally kneaded with the feet or pounded with long iron sticks.

The shift from hard, whole grain dough to soft, refined-flour dough also prompted a proliferation of interest in crust. Before the 18th C., the crust was considered the least desirable part of a loaf and often grated off and sold separately as bread crumbs. But the lighter loaves, when not burned by the uneven wood-burning ovens of the day, developed a golden-brown exterior with a rich, toasted flavor that was still soft enough to  chew. Instead of getting rid of the crust, bakers started to develop ways to maximize it, including new shapes and slashing techniques, like the fluted pain long, which if not a “baguette” proper certainly looked a lot like one.

Ultimately, whether we believe David that the baguette is a 19th C. invention or Chevaillier that it dates to the 18th C. may come down to the definition of “baguette." If you take the name “baguette” to refer primarily to the shape of the loaf, it seems clear that it pre-dated the Industrial Revolution and Viennese steam-blasting oven. However, if you think “baguette” refers only to the specific kind of baton that’s 2-3’ long and about 2” in diameter with barely-there insides and the kind of crust you can only achieve by blasting it with steam periodically during the baking process, then it’s a far more recent invention.

I No Can Haz Steam-Blasting Oven, Oh Noes!

So, as suggested above, it’s true that the kind of baguettes that instantly make anyone holding one look impossibly-French get their characteristic crustiness from steam-blasting ovens. I’ve discussed this issue before.

I can’t create quite the same dramatic seam-splitting and crustiness in my standard dry-heat oven, and I imagine the best home results probably rely on a specially-shaped lidded ceramic baking dish like this La Cloche, which traps the moisture from the dough just like the covered pot used in Jim Leahy’s no-knead method. However, I have not been disappointed with the results I get from overnight refrigeration, a pizza stone, a cast iron pot, and a spray bottle. Mine turn out a little breadier than a traditional baguette, but they also last a bit longer without getting stale and still have a nice crisp, chewy crust.

Further blasphemy: even though the baguette was created specifically for the special characteristics of refined flour—the quick-rising, seam-splitting, ethereal insides and shattering outsides that depend on the dough being composed almost exclusively of easily-digestible starches and not a lot of indigestible fiber, I think I get pretty good results even using almost-entirely whole wheat flour as long as I add a little more gluten and sugar. Sure, my whole wheat loaves are a little denser and a little chewier, but not, I think, unpleasantly so. As you can tell from the pictures, they rise almost as much as their refined-flour counterparts, although the crumb isn’t quite as open and irregular. They still seem unmistakably baguette-ish to me.

What follows should be in no way construed as a “traditional” baguette recipe—if anything, it’s probably closer to the 18th C. predecessors than the modern baguette. Nevertheless, it is shaped like a baton, crusty on the outside, soft and flavorful on the inside, and just right for serving alongside a few wedges of cheese or slicing on a bias and topping however you like for canapés.Read more

In celebration of the first anniversary of Sour Salty Bitter Sweet this coming Friday, I’m posting a recipe every day this week. Many of them are also a way of celebrating the bountiful produce of late summer and recording for posterity the things I made for our housewarming party this weekend:

Roughly clockwise from the bottom left:
Sweet tomato shortbread squares with candied basil
Curried zucchini fritters with ranch raita
more tomato squares
Kale chips with nutritional yeast and chili powder
Basil pesto, parmesan shaving, & roasted cherry tomato canapés
more kale chips
Spiced tomato jam and aged gouda canapés
Taffy apple cream with apples, peaches, pineapple, and blueberries
Sourdough-risen baguettes
Aged gouda and fontina
Deviled eggs with saffron aioli 

Whether you’re a regular reader or this is your first time here, thanks for visiting. I’m never quite able to give this blog as much time as I wish I could, but what time I have been able to spend on it has been richly rewarding, and that’s largely due to you. Your theoretical presence is what makes me write things in the first place, and I really enjoy the conversations I get to have with you in the comment threads, over e-mail, and IRL. I try not to be too much of a traffic whore, but this makes me happy:

Sorry, no cake. But there can still be singing:

“Happy Birthday” by Sufjan Stevens

To start off Blogiversary Week 2010, here’s a brief pictorial preview the planned “festivities”:

Monday: Sourdough-risen Baguettes

Tuesday: Spiced Tomato Jam 

Wednesday: Taffy Apple Cream

Thursday: Deviled Eggs with Saffron Aioli

 Friday: Curried Zucchini Fritters with Ranch Raita

Saturday: Sweet Tomato Shortbread Squares with Candied Basil

I’m hoping there will be something in there that you enjoy—they’re definitely all things I’d make again. Meanwhile, I’m still wading through a century’s worth of research on weight-loss dieting for the next entry in the series about calorie counts on menus, but I hope to get that distilled into something publishable this week, too.

So here’s to a year of cooking and eating critically! May there be many more.

I meant to make this recipe and post it on Monday in honor of Sneak Some Zucchini Onto Your Neighbor’s Porch Day, but we were in the process of moving to a new apartment. So a bit belatedly, here’s my take on the classic zucchini fritter, which is a great way to make any kind of summer squash into something entree-worthy. As a seasonal bonus, it pairs beautifully with the tomatoes that are just now getting ripe enough to harvest in Michigan. The one I sliced up for last night’s dinner was our first German Queen, which is some kind of “heirloom” variety, whatever heirloom means when you’re buying it at a big box store.

There are dozens of ways to fritter your squash. I tend to prefer a high ratio of vegetable matter : batter, so I use just enough egg and whole wheat flour to bind the shredded squash. To keep them light despite the whole wheat flour, I separate the eggs and beat the whites to stiff peaks before folding them in (hat tip: Mark Bittman). For flavor, I add a minced onion, some garlic, a handful of sharp cheese and a generous sprinkling of Old Bay, the latter inspired by a mock “crab” cake recipe. For the sake of convenience, I prefer pan-frying to deep-frying, although if you have a deep fryer, I’m sure they’re crisper and more delicious that way.

I don’t think they taste a thing like crab cakes, but they can certainly serve the same role—they work as an appetizer or small plate on their own, as a sandwich on a bun with some coleslaw, or as the centerpiece of a more substantial meal accompanied by a salad or cup of soup or some other side dish. 

Although they’re tasty plain, they really want to be served with something creamy and tangy, possibly with a little (or a lot) of heat. If you plan ahead at least 24 hrs, Alton Brown’s chipotle crema would be perfect. On shorter notice, some canned or re-hydrated dried peppers blended with some Greek yogurt and a little mayonnaise does the trick. Other options: some avocado slices and black bean salsa, ranch dressing (especially combined 1:1 with a good salsa), crème fraiche or sour cream, or just plain mayonnaise perked up a bit with some fresh lemon or lime juice and minced or powdered garlic.

I’ll be back to fretting about calorie counts on menus and Food, Inc. and things that won’t kill you soon. But first, I have a lot of books to unpack. Read more

Devil’s Fart Bread

“Pumpernickel” has the best etymology in baking (sorry, bagel). “Pumpern” was New High German slang for flatulence, and “Nickel” or just “Nick” was a common name for Satan (e.g. “Old Nick”) as well as other off-brand goblins, demons, rascals, and bastards. So the name of the bread literally means “farting devil” or “farting bastard.” Seriously, this etymology is accepted by German philologist Johann Christoph Adelung, Merriam-Webster, the Snopes Language Database, the publisher Random House, and the Kluge, which from what I can tell is basically the German OED.

It apparently got its name because, especially in its original form, it is extraordinarily dense and full of indigestible fiber. Traditional German pumpernickel is made from un-bolted rye flour and whole rye berries, which move through the digestive system like Metamucil (which I will forever associate with Black History Month). The other reason traditional pumpernickel is so dense is that rye contains very little gluten. No matter how much yeast is in the dough, it won’t rise very much because much of the gas just escapes.

Rye flour also absorbs a lot more moisture than wheat flour and has to be very wet in order to rise at all. A 100% rye flour that’s dry enough to be kneaded or shaped by hand will be a dense, unpleasant brick. Instead, traditional pumpernickel is made with a dough that’s almost like a batter and very sticky. It’s stirred instead of kneaded and poured into loaf pans to rise and bake. The gluten network isn’t strong or extensive enough to create the rounded top you get from wheat breads or American rye risen in loaf pans. That’s is why the German-style pumpernickel (100% rye) that you can buy at the store is perfectly square—it can only rise as high as the sides of the loaf pan.

American Deli-style Pumpernickel

The almost-black color of traditional pumpernickel is due to an incredibly long baking time (16-24 hours at 250F), which apparently causes Maillard reaction browning throughout the entire loaf. Maillard reaction is the same thing that makes toast brown, so traditional pumpernickel is sort of like bread that’s been entirely toasted from the inside-out, which gives it a deep roasted flavor reminiscent of chocolate and roasted coffee.

American bakers who didn’t want to spend the time and resources on that kind of baking process found they could mimic the color and flavor produced by a long stay in a low-heat oven using cocoa, molasses, and/or instant coffee granules. As packaged dry yeast became more widely available, that was substituted for the sourdough starter to shorten the rising time, and vinegar was often added to mimic the traditional tang. Additionally, American bakers used a high proportion of wheat flour to rye flour, which gave their version enough gluten to be shaped by hand and rise like other wheat breads. That’s the version that became popular as part of American deli cuisine. It’s still dense, richly-flavored, and dark brown or almost black, depending on how many darkening agents are used. However, the texture is much lighter and springier than traditional pumpernickel, which makes it far better-suited to sandwiches.

Read more