May 2010

Buckwheat Crepes with Fresh “Ricotta” and Cinnamon Apples

Posted by Margot | Filed under:
May 27 2010

These crepes were the perfect example of how simple, humble elements can come together to make something way more impressive and tasty than the sum of its parts. The three elements, from top to bottom:

Thing 1: Cinnamon Apples

If you’ve been following for a while, you may remember the neglected apple crumble I made about a month ago, when I had so many mealy, wrinkled apples that after I’d peeled and diced them all, I realized I had more than I could possibly fit in my baking dish. I threw the extras (about a pound after coring and peeling) in a pot with a cinnamon stick, about a tablespoon of brown sugar, and about an inch of water and let them simmer while I prepped and baked the crumble. I had to add more water a few times—I think I’ve actually destroyed two pots by further neglecting already-neglected apples in my attempt to salvage them. (What did I say about my fruit-neglecting superpowers?) After 20 or 30 minutes, they were soft enough to mash with the back of a spoon.

if you care about your pots, don't leave this alone by the time it was done, it was getting dark, so the picture quality declines; you get the idea--the apples were soft

But I didn’t mash them. The apples were too sweet and mild to make a very good applesauce, although I suspect it would have been better if I’d added some lemon juice like I did in the crumble. I'm not much of a plain applesauce eater anyway, and the more I read about the health effects of sugar vs. fat, the less likely I am to substitute applesauce for fat in baked goods (I’m not actually to the point of avoiding sugar or starch, I just don’t choose them over fat). Instead, I left them chunky with the vague notion that I might use them to fill or top a breakfast or brunch-type object.

Perhaps because the apples were so lackluster, or perhaps because apples always seem more delicious when there’s cheese involved, or perhaps because an episode of Chopped inspired me to try making my own cheese (proof positive that despite what Michael Pollan claims, cooking shows do actually teach people useful skills and demonstrate recipes and techniques they can and do recreate at home), I decided that what my apple crepes needed was fresh ricotta.

Thing 2: Fresh “Ricotta”

Most cheese is made from milk curdled with rennet, acids, salt, and/or heat and aged. Rennet is found in mammals’ stomachs and contains protease enzymes like chymosin, which helps them digest their mothers’ milk.

Ricotta, on the other hand, is traditionally made from whey, which is what you get when you strain the curds out of the milk. I always assumed that making true ricotta must be more difficult, because all the “homemade ricotta” recipes I’d seen call for milk instead, but according to Instructables, it’s an almost-identical process (if you don’t feel like clicking on each of the steps, they’re : 1. heat the whey to 200 F, 2. let it cool to <140 F, 3. strain through a coffee filter).

I imagine the real reason most homemade “ricotta” recipes call for milk, which makes them closer to a traditional paneer or queso fresco, is that most people don’t tend to have whey lying around—at least not before making “ricotta.” Also, what you get when you heat milk with acid and strain it is so similar to ricotta it works for basically all the same applications.

Step 1: cook milk with acid to 165-180 F Step 2: strain...Step 3: profit?

In February, Serious Eats tested most of the primary variables—temperature, acids, and straining time. For temperature, they concluded that heating the mixture to anywhere between 165-180 F works. For acids, they report that vinegar is the most reliable, buttermilk a little fussy, and lemon juice more citrusy. And unsurprisingly, the longer you strain it, the less moist it gets. I decided to go with lemon because “citrusy” sounded just right for my insufficiently-acidic apples and let it drain for nearly 30 minutes while I was making the crepes.

It was drier than it would have been if I’d scooped it out of the paper towel earlier, but still creamy and salty and a lovely foil for the cinnamon apples. Sweetened and flavored with a vanilla bean and/or some cardamom, it would have also made a nice base for a creamy dessert, perhaps topped with fruit. Of course, it would also work as a filling for pasta or lasagna or any of the other standard ricotta applications.this is "acid whey" because the curdling agent was acid; the byproduct of rennet-curdled cheeses is called "sweet whey." both kinds, and others like "wine whey" and "cream of tartar whey" (also named for the curdling agent) were historically popular drinks in European cheese-making populations

The whey that’s left over can be substituted for the water in a bread recipe, consumed as is—usually chilled and sometimes sweetened, or apparently, used to make more ricotta.

I’m curious enough about the differences between milk “ricotta” and whey ricotta that the next time I go to the store I’ll probably pick up a gallon and make a big batch of “ricotta” and use the leftover whey to make non-scare-quoted ricotta and report back.

The Cat in the Hat: Buckwheat Crepes

What summons Thing 1 and Thing 2 together to wreak havoc? Crepes do!

I thought crepes were supposed to be difficult. As it turns out, buckwheat crepes—which are confusingly sometimes called galettes, just like free-form tarts—are exceptionally easy (regular ones might be too, I haven’t tried them). Mine didn’t all turn out perfectly round, but the batter was really easy to spread around the pan with an off-set spatula, and basically no matter how thin or evenly I spread it, it cooked into tender, flavorful crepes that made a perfect vehicle for Thing 1 and Thing 2.

Side 1: not perfectly smooth at all side 2: browning cooperatively regardless of the imperfect spreading

Also, since the batter isn’t sweet, they were equally delicious filled with a little sharp cheddar, soft-scrambled eggs, and chives. So that’s all there is to it. Some bad apples and curdled milk and transformed into a beautiful weekend brunch by some flimsy pancakes:

in case it's not obvious: apple-ricotta topped with cinnamon sugar; cheddar-egg topped with fresh chives; evil but delicious Big Organic strawberries Read more

Don’t Drink the Agave-Sweetened Kool-Aid Part III: The Mint Julep Taste Test and Calorie Comparison

Posted by Margot | Filed under:
May 25 2010

taste tests are an excellent excuse to double-fist your cocktails

Earlier in this series: Why agave nectar isn't a "natural" sweetener and Why it isn't healthier than table sugar or high-fructose corn syrup

As promised, this entry addresses two final questions about the difference between agave nectar and sugar: 1) whether it tastes different and perhaps better in some applications and 2) whether it’s a good way to cut calories because it’s sweeter than sugar. The answer to both is yes in theory, but not really in practice.

The Claim: Agave Nectar tastes different/better

Agave nectar definitely tastes different than sugar, which is probably due mostly to the trace minerals that remain after the liquid harvested from the cactus is centrifuged, concentrated, filtered, coagulated, treated with activated charcoal, and then treated with heat or enzymes to hydrolyze the inulin into its constituent fructose molecules. However, the flavor is mild. Clotide of Chocolate & Zucchini used it as a substitute for honey in a recipe for marshmallows specifically because the flavor is less pronounced than honey:

I decided to use agave syrup, a more flavor-neutral sweetener that can be found in natural food stores.

However neutral, as long as it’s different, I’m willing to accept the possibility that it might taste better in some applications. But based on the Derby Day taste test, mint juleps aren’t one of them.

Part of the inspiration for the taste test was an entry on Cooking Issues about a blind taste test of margaritas sweetened with agave nectar or simple syrup, with the following results:

The consensus was that the agave nectar drink was deeper, more complex, had a longer finish, and was more tequila-y (in the sense of blanco tequila), than the simple syrup one. The simple syrup was deemed cleaner and fresher tasting. Three people said they outright preferred the agave nectar until Nils said, “It depends, during the daytime or at the beach I’d prefer the simple syrup, at night at a bar or with food I want the agave.” Everyone could agree to that.

They used a refractometer to make sure the amount of sugar in the two mixtures was the same, which required them to water down both the agave and simple syrups (4:1 water:syrup). Their mixes contained the same amount of tequila, lime juice, and ice, but the simple syrup one contained 22 g more water (about 3/4 oz) based on the refractometer’s measure of how much sweeter agave was. Not perfectly controlled, but I agree that you wouldn’t really expect 3/4 oz water distributed over multiple taster portions to affect the taste much.

“Deeper” was also how the friend who hosts the annual Derby Day party (and makes some of the best fried chicken I have ever had) described the agave-sweetened mint juleps he had had in the past. So my expectation—the hypothesis of this little experiment, I suppose—was that agave nectar is sufficiently different in taste from sugar to noticeably affect and perhaps improve the taste of cocktails.

you can see why this wasn't a double-blind experiment; agave does not look like simple syrup The Contenders: Agave Nectar in the French Press, Simple Syrup in the pitcher Read more

Popcorn Chickpeas: Random Cool and Delicious Stuff You Can Do With Pantry Staples

Posted by Margot | Filed under:
May 20 2010

the blurry flying chickpeas are easy to miss, so I circled them in red they're tricky buggers to photograph.

and i wasn't using a fast enough lens to capture them in focus so i'm hoping the preponderance of visual evidence will be convincing: these are not smudges on the lens, these are chick peas in flight.

The first time I encountered “popcorn chickpeas” was on a menu. It was offered as a $5 or $6 appetizer a wine bar/restaurant in downtown Ann Arbor. When I ordered it, I wasn’t sure whether to expect the chickpeas to be mixed with popcorn or coated in popcorn or if maybe the chick peas themselves would be puffed like corn pops. And I was initially a little disappointed when I got what looked like just a bowl full of regular old chickpeas. They had clearly been cooked—they were golden brown and mixed with browned bits of garlic. And that’s all there was—no greens, no sauce, not even a garnish; it was almost audaciously simple.

But they turned out to be delicious: a little crisp on the outside, creamy in the middle, garlicky and salty. Addictive. I imagine they’re a little like the fried black eyed peas that Alton Brown chose when he was featured on The Best Thing I Ever Ate.

I inquired about the name, and the server said it was because they “pop” when you cook them in hot oil. So the first time I made them, it was just for the novelty. I had to find out what this popping business was all about.

the size of the explosion seems to depend on how dry they are and how hot the pan is; drier & hotter = more spectacular explosions and a messier kitchenObviously, chick peas don’t have a hard shell the way dried corn does, so the explosion isn’t quite as spectacular and doesn’t produce a starchy poof, but as far as I can tell, the reason for the popping is basically the same—the outside of the chickpea is slightly drier and harder than the inside, so moisture inside the peas turns into steam and starts to build up pressure (again, way less pressure than inside a popcorn hull, but basically the same idea). When it reaches the breaking point, it ruptures, which makes a popping sound, and the release of pressure sends it flying.

Aside from being kind of fun to make, they’re such a vast improvement over plain chickpeas that this has become my favorite way to add them to salads or pasta/grain dishes. So I guess this is more of a concept than a recipe—the version below is as adaptable as chick peas themselves. The only constants are cooked chickpeas, enough oil to coat a pan, a clove or two of garlic, and plenty of salt. Serious Eats posted a version from the cookbook The Herbal Kitchen that calls for rosemary. You could dress them up even more with a blend of spices like chili powder, cumin, and ground ginger. Or you could use them to showcase a fancy or flavored salt.

 in a green salad, with roasted cauliflower and cucumbers over a brown rice pilaf with diced tomatoes, topped with grated parmeggiano cheese

Recipe: Popcorn Chickpeas

  • 15 oz can chickpeas or ~2 cups cooked chickpeas
  • 1-2 T. olive or peanut oil
  • 2-3 cloves garlic
  • 1 t. kosher salt
  • 3-4 grinds of black pepper
  • a sprinkle of fresh lemon juice (optional)
  • other herbs and spices, like rosemary, parsley, chili powder, and/or cumin (optional)

1. Drain the chickpeas well.

2. Mince the garlic and chop/grind any herbs or spices, if using.

3. Heat the oil in a large skillet until it shimmers. Add the garlic and toss or stir to coat lightly in the oil.

4. Add the drained chickpeas and cook for 5-10 minutes, shaking the pan or stirring occasionally. They should start to pop after the first couple of minutes. Cook until they’re as browned as you want them.

they are also totally delicious just as they are

Morel “Risotto” with Israeli Couscous: On cost, value, and pleasure

Posted by Margot | Filed under:
May 17 2010

my parmeggiano curls are not as pretty as they could be

The entry about identifying morels is here.

The Moody Sclerotium

This “risotto” was the fate of the morels that appeared in our yard late last month, which is unfortunately probably going to be the only harvest this year because the landlord decided that our little patch of moss and dandelions needed to be mowed and in the process, chewed up the ones I had left to see if they’d get bigger. Curse you, lawn maintenance norms.

I find it difficult to separate the gustatory pleasure of morels from their market value, even when I get them for free. Obviously I’m not the only person who thinks they’re great—they’re widely admired for their nutty, richly umami flavor and chewy, meaty texture, which is one of the reasons they’re as expensive as they are. But there are reasons for the price that aren’t related to how they taste, too. Fresh morels are extremely fragile, so they have to be handled carefully and transported and sold quickly. They can be dried, which makes them considerably easier to transport and store, and dried morels are nearly as good as fresh when they’re soaked in some hot water. But they’re expensive too, even when you take into account that about 3 oz of dried morels are equivalent to about 1 lb fresh.

click for source, along with way more info about morel cultivation from Volk's websiteThe main reason that morels aren’t as readily available or as cheap as button/cremini/portabella (which are all the same species: Agaricus bisporus) or even the more exotic and flavorful shiitake or oyster mushrooms is because there’s an intermediary step in their life cycle that makes them exceedingly difficult to cultivate—the lump labeled “Sclerotium” in the diagram. According to Thomas Volk, a biology professor at UW-Lacrosse, the sclerotium is made up of big, thick cells that can survive all kinds of bad weather—including, say, Michigan winters. In the spring, the sclerotium has two choices: form a new mycelium, which is a network of cells arranged in tiny threads underground, or form a fruiting body—i.e. a mushroom.

All kinds of factors have to be exactly right for it to pick the “fruiting body” option—soil nutrients and moisture levels, CO2 levels, humidity, temperature. To complicate matters further, different species probably fruit in response to different factors, and the same species might even respond to two different sets of factors. That would make sense given that the same morel fungi seem to work like symbiotic partners with living trees (the mycelia can extend even farther than the root base, bringing useful nutrients closer to the roots) and saprobes that feed on the tree as it dies, possibly speeding its demise and then thriving on the remains for years.

The symbiotic/semi-parasitic relationship with trees adds yet another complicating factor. Morels seem to prefer ash trees, tulip trees, old apple trees, and dead elm trees, although they can grow under any tree and also seem to like areas cleared by wildfire. But you can’t just grow them in a basement or a parking lot somewhere; you kind of need a forest.

There have been scattered reports of effective cultivation strategies—a few patents have been filed and I read somewhere (can’t find the link now) about at least one company that figured out a way to cultivate them, but ultimately failed because it couldn’t come up with a cost-effective way to remove the grit from all the little brainy ridges without damaging the texture or rendering them too unstable for transport. There are also anecdotal reports of huge crops appearing where people have poured the water used to soak or rinse morels over a compost heap or on the roots of a tree. And earlier this month, The Traverse City Record-Eagle quoted a chef from a hospitality company saying they were sourcing them from a “a gentleman, a scientist, who has figured out how to raise them, like farm-raising fish…year-round and at a fraction of the cost of the dried ones.” But whatever the gentleman-scientist’s secret is, he must be guarding it pretty well. I still only see them in markets around Ann Arbor between May and June, and this year they seem to be priced around ~$40/lb.

which makes this about $14 worth; in New York, where I remember seeing them priced at $80/lb this would be nearly $30 of mushrooms

So I almost never buy them (or much of anything else that’s $40/lb+, even taking spices into account, which obviously get used in much smaller quantities; the only exceptions I can think of are saffron, vanilla, and cardamom; even cinnamon and Szechuan peppercorns are only half as much per lb) and I find myself wanting to “stretch” the ones I get. The most common preparation seems to be breading and frying them, usually using flour or cracker crumbs and butter. I’m sure that’s delicious, but with only 5.5 oz, it would yield two or three appetizer/small plate portions at most. Cream sauces are also common, usually paired with pasta or meat, and they show up in recipes for egg dishes, like omelets and quiche, especially with ramps—the wild leeks that appear around the same time in the early Spring. I decided on something risotto-like because the defining characteristic of risotto is that the starch is cooked in the dish rather than separately, so it seemed like a good way to really get the morel flavor infused into multiple dinner-sized portions of food.

Instead of using one of the varieties of starch-exuding short-grained rice that give risotto (“little rice”) its name, I decided to use Israeli couscous (or ptitim). Israeli couscous is basically just a bigger version of normal couscous—the grains are probably closest in size and shape to barley. They have a little more chew to them than normal couscous and they’re often toasted lightly before being boiled in liquid, which gives them a nutty flavor that I thought that would play well with the morels. Some people recommend against soaking fresh morels because they claim it changes the flavor and texture, but I wanted to be sure to get all the dirt and any critters out. If I had known about the home cultivation technique, I might have dumped the water under the tree, but instead I strained it with a paper cloth and used it for part of the cooking liquid. Aside from that, the recipe is classic risotto: some shallots and butter, a little white wine and homemade chicken stock, and lots of parmeggiano regiano grated into a heap of delicate curls with a microplane (that way it melts into the dish easily and doesn’t clump up).

before toastingthere's probably no reason you couldn't do this to normal couscous...and perhaps from now on, I will

It was one of the most delicious things I think I’ve ever made. Read more

Food, Inc. Part II: Is the food more dangerous? Aiming for the heart instead of the head

Posted by Margot | Filed under:
May 7 2010

I know the print is small, so fyi: the source of the "more than terrific--important" plug is Entertainment Weekly.

Part I of this series is here.

The Claim: “The food has become much more dangerous”

When NPR’s Steve Inskeep interviewed Robert Kenner and Michael Pollan about Food, Inc. he noted that the entire film can basically be summed up by one sentence spoken by an unattributed voiceover close to the beginning of the film:

Now our food is coming from enormous assembly lines where the animals and the workers are being abused, and the food has become much more dangerous in ways that are being deliberately hidden from us.

There are parts of that claim that I don’t dispute at all. A lot of the food—not just in this country but around the world—is mass-produced using assembly-line production. Many of the animals raised in industrial-scale agriculture are subjected to enormous pain and discomfort and conditions that require vast quantities of synthetic hormones and antibiotics to make them get big enough and live long enough to be profitable (even Pollan chose to feed the steer he bought during his research for Omnivore’s Dilemma corn and horomones instead of grass). Food processing plants are often dangerous places to work—according to the government, “In 2007, rates of work-related injury or illness for full-time food manufacturing workers were higher than the rates for all of manufacturing and for the private sector as a whole,” with especially high rates in the seafood and dairy industries. And the jobs pay very little. In the last few decades, the meatpacking industry in particular has come to  depend heavily on undocumented immigrant workers who are far less likely to seek compensation for job-related illness and injury or unionize to bargain for better conditions and wages out of fear that the employer will report them to immigration enforcement officials (and some companies have been accused of knowingly hiring undocumented workers who they can pay less than minimum wage). So please, don’t mistake me for a defender of the industrial animal agriculture system. It sucks for most of the animals and people involved.

Except for the consumers. I think that’s why Kenner and Pollan have to make the argument that the food is less “safe” even though they don’t have any real evidence to back up that claim. Animal rights and exploited immigrant workers might elicit a little sympathy from some people, but most of the people whose eating habits are actually going to be changed by those things alone have probably already been converted. Kenner and Pollan make a big deal about how it’s so hard to get this information, but I think they underestimate the average consumer. Just because there are happy-looking cows on the packages, that doesn’t mean most Americans are really duped into believing their meat and dairy come from halcyon farms, just like a million smiling suns on food packages don’t really convince anyone that the sun has a mouth. People know the meat production system is ugly—that’s the entire thrust of the cliché about not wanting to see how sausage is made. But if you really want people to stop eating industrially-produced meat, you have to convince them that it’s bad for them and/or their kids.

2006 edition with a forward by Eric Schlosser: grisly butchered cow staring at you with a sad, accusing eye 1980s cover apparently designed by someone who actually read the book and perhaps thought students being forced to read it deserved fair warning: an old painting of people who look poor and sad. 2006 edition with a forward by Eric Schlosser: grisly butchered cow staring at you with a sad, accusing eye

Upton Sinclair discovered the same thing over a century ago. The Jungle—as I was surprised to discover when I taught it a few years ago—is a novel about the exploitation of the mostly-immigrant workforce that powered the industrial revolution, not a piece of journalistic muckraking about the meatpacking industry. And it’s not subtle. It’s about the most heavy-handed treatment of the subject you could possibly imagine. Sinclair doesn’t leave any room for confusion about his agenda, which is not reform of the food system. But, of course, that is its legacy. Over 400 pages of leaden prose and cheap melodrama designed to reveal the crushing poverty, the lack of social support and legal protections, the punishing nature of the work, and the impediments to social mobility, and instead, people got their panties in a bunch over the idea that the meatpacking industry was insufficiently sanitary. As he famously put it:

I aimed at the public’s heart, and by accident I hit it in the stomach.

To abuse his metaphor a little bit, I don’t think Sinclair’s problem was his aim, but his weapon. He was so focused on trying to bludgeon the public in the heart with his softball-sized hunk of purple prose about worker’s rights that he didn’t even realize he’d shot a perfect, bullet-sized piece of rat shit-tainted sausage at its stomach.

Food, Inc. aims for the heart,too, with perhaps the most lethal form of sentimental appeal: be afraid for your children. I kept waiting for the film to offer some kind of real evidence for the “more dangerous” claim—or at least specify what ideal past moment the comparison was based on (pre-pasteurization and refrigeration, perhaps?). Instead, the “dangerous” part of the argument is carried almost entirely by the story about Barbara Kowalcyk, whose son Kevin died from eating hamburger that was contaminated with E. coli. The contaminated meat was recalled, but not in time to save her son. And that is tragic. You’d have to be a monster not to feel for a mother crying over the loss of her son and trying to find a way to make sure that never happens to any other family.

Kevin’s law sounds like an entirely reasonable piece of legislation—it calls for the UDSA to do a survey of food-borne pathogens and develop a plan to reduce their presence in the food supply, and gives them the power to shut down plants that fail inspections and don’t take corrective action. I have not spent a lot of time with this law, and I’m not a law or policy expert—if you have or are, please let me know what you think. What I do know is that even if it’s a good law, it probably wouldn’t have saved her son—the meat that killed him wasn’t from a plant that had failed any inspections. Nor would she have been able to save him by feeding him only pastured beef, even if that were financially and logistically possible. As Food, Inc. also reminds us, many of the recalls in recent years have involved things besides meat, like spinach, jalapenos, and peanut butter. And don’t let the equally-falsely-pastoral marketing of Big Organic products or the Food, Inc. soundtrack choices fool you; if E. coli or salmonella gets into the water, “organic” food is just as vulnerable to contamination as conventional. Read more

Benedictines and Pimento Cheese Sandwiches for Derby Day

Posted by Margot | Filed under:
May 3 2010

not, perhaps, filled as neatly as possible, but I'd rather have the filling go all the way to the edges. you can definitely pretty them up more if you have the time and inclination. some people even cut little hearts and flowers in the bread with a cookie cutter. 

The Great Crust Contradiction

Given that a chewy crust is the main distinguishing feature of expensive, artisinal breads, it’s sort of ironic that when people want to make sandwiches “elegant,” they often cut the crusts off entirely. And it’s even more ironic that many of those crust-less sandwiches are filled with some combination of cheese and/or mayonnaise, the hallmark ingredients of un-refined midwestern, church-social, Jell-O and macaroni “salad” cuisine. Especially given the Wonderbread-style bread, the ingredients on their own say something like “trailer park,” but turn them into little crustless triangles filled with cool, tangy spreads and you conjure images of dainty tea parties and women in be-ribboned hats. They’re perfectly-suited to the kinds of events where you plan on sipping mint juleps while you watch horses with names like “Make Music For Me” and “Devil May Care” dash around a track in the most potentially-lucrative two minutes of their racing careers.

These two sandwich spread recipes contain both cheese and mayonnaise, but I promise you that despite the low esteem that many people hold the primary ingredients in, they will generally consider these sandwiches classy and delicious. I know I’m posting them too late for this year’s Derby (I made them for a Derby party and it’s difficult to explain how something turned out or post any pictures of it before you’ve actually made it), but they’re also perfect for any other spring or summertime event. And pimento cheese is also a great appetizer or burger topping. I’ll post the recipe for the sourdough-risen, soft, white sandwich bread I used sometime later this week, but if you’re not up for making your own bread, store-bought loaves will seem just as fancy when you remove their crusts. And if you’d rather not waste the crusts, they’re perfect for making homemade croutons. 

if you're in a hurry, it's just a basic sourdough bread recipe: 1 c. starter, 1 c. water, 3-4 c. flour, 2 T. melted butter, 2 T. sugar, 2 t. kosher salt per loaf, knead until a smooth ball, rise until double, shape and place in loaf pan, rise again, bake at 350 for 35-45 min or until golden and the bottom sounds hollow when tappedI usually try to check my snark about processed foods because to each her own, right? But I admit to being totally flummoxed by those frozen pb&j pockets called "uncrustables." I mean, how much time does it really save you if you have to defrost or toast the thing? And you give up the ability to choose the kind of nut butter and jelly you want. AND the crimped edge may not be dark like a crust, but it's still a harder bit without filling. What the hell is the point?

Cheese and Mayonnaise Sandwich #1: No, Not that Benedict

Benedictines are essentially a variation on the classic cucumber sandwich in which the cucumber is shredded and drained and then combined with the cream cheese and mayonnaise to make a spread. They’re usually flavored with onion and tinted a pastel green with food coloring. The main difference between the many different Benedictine recipes out there seems to be how the onion flavor is added. The simplest way is just to add onion powder. Yumsugar uses scallions. Saveur’s recipe calls for grating an onion and squeezing the juice into the cream cheese mixture and then discarding the onion flesh. Other recipes, including Paula Deen’s, include the grated onion in the mixture—as much as an entire onion or as little as 2 tablespoons (all of them call for just one 8 oz. package of cream cheese so it’s not a question of scale).

I have no real fidelity to “authenticity” (a term that’s usually meaningless anyway), but I decided to try to find out whether there was an “original” recipe out there somewhere and how it incorporated the onion. The sandwich shares its name with monastic orders that follow the teachings of Benedict of Nursia  and the herbal liqueur originally produced at the Benedictine Abbey in the Normandy region of France, but apparently isn’t related. Nor does it bear any relation to the classic brunch dish composed of a split English muffin topped with ham, poached eggs, and hollandaise sauce, which is apparently named after either Lemuel Benedict, a 19th C. Wall Street broker, Commodore E.C. Benedict, an early 20th C. banker and yachtsman, or Mr. And Mrs. LeGrand Benedict, who were regulars at Delmonico’s (my money’s on Lemuel—I expect I’ll have the occasion to look into it more another time).

Classy but accessible: Benedict's restaurant in a photo published in The Louisville Times November 13, 1969, from http://www.littlecolonel.com/Places/Louisville/Benedicts.htmThe sandwiches have a much more recent and less contested namesake—one Miss Jennie Carter Benedict, who studied at the Boston School of Cooking with Fannie Farmer and then worked as a caterer and restaurateur in Louisville from 1893-1925. She’s been credited with shaping the tastes of the Kentucky elite and the emerging middle-class. She catered weddings and other special events for many of Louisville’s most prominent families, whose tastes were broadly influential. And given her Boston School training, which emphasized the kind of cooking that came to be seen as “American” in that period (inspired by British/New England traditions, distinguished on the one hand from the French food associated with aristocrats and on the other from the foodways of recent immigrants), she and her eponymous restaurant were among the pioneers of a new kind of middle-class entertaining and dining.  Benedict’s and the kinds of food popularized by “Miss Jennie,” as she was known, were seen as genteel and respectable, but not aristocratic. Benedict’s was part of the emerging middle-ground between the pubs and cafeterias that catered to the (mostly male) working class and fancy restaurants that catered only to the wealthy. Miss Jennie’s food was a newly “respectable” version of recognizable, “American” ingredients and techniques within reach for families who couldn’t afford the kinds of ingredients or brigade of servants required to prepare elaborate French meals.

Despite the fact that she and her restaurant were so famous for their dyed-green cucumber sandwich spread that people referred to it by her name, she didn’t include a recipe for it in The Blue Ribbon Cook Book she wrote, first published in 1904. The omission was so glaring that when the University Press of Kentucky decided to re-issue the cookbook in 2008, they added one provided by Louisville-area cookbook writer Ronni Lundy. Like Saveur’s recipe, it calls for onion juice. But unlike any of the other recipes I’ve seen, it also jettisons the cucumber pulp. You grate and drain the cucumber, but reserve and add just the juice to the spread.

I want a little more than cream cheese in my sandwiches—I actually prefer entire slices of unpeeled cucumber when I’m not trying to be Derby-appropriate. Also, while I have no personal any objection to food coloring, I was afraid other people might (I wouldn’t have any qualms about their response to truffle oil or “natural” flavoring, but consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds, right?). Since my favorite thing about classic sliced-cucumber sandwiches is the dill, which Benedictine recipes usually don’t have, I tried to give it a little more green coloring with a puree of fresh dill and a little of the cucumber water.

the dill juice was quite green... but barely noticeable once stirred in

All of which is to say, the recipe, as with most things I post, is a set of general guidelines at best. I don’t think you can make a bad sandwich with cream cheese and mayonnaise and cucumber and onion.

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