Cuba Calling
The Book: Cuba Cocina! (1994)
My three years in Miami allowed me plenty of time to sample the wonders of Cuban cuisine–ropa vieja, picadillo, caldo gallego, pressed sandwiches like the medianoche. Nothing charmed me more, though, than pastelitos, the flaky, ubiquitous turnovers (sweet or savory) served at every Cuban coffee joint in town.
And the best of the pastelitos, by far, were guava filled.
Guava makes me happy. It tastes of sun and citrus and tropics. Tart and red, it sings at dessert. Except when subjected to the dessert found on page 227 of Cuba Cocina. This recipe, for Capricho Habañero (Havana Whim), was yet another dish discovered during our Three Cubed adventures that, despite the potential promised by its ingredients (homemade caramel custard, meringue and guava) looked off on paper. And it was in practice.
Basically the capricho is a strata. But the tiers of bread, covered with guava jam and custard, only makes a brief trip through the oven–to brown the meringue on top. The result is layers of stuff that do not meld, remaining in their constituent parts. And bread soaked in custard, no matter how good the custard, is still bread.
I was tempted to just bake this before topping with meringue. But then I would not have been following the recipe. And while I am kind of inclined to try it that way — or to make a caramel-guava bread pudding (!) — I think I would rather stick to perfect, flaky, triangle-shaped pastelitos.
Bierock and Roll
Standard football-watching food in Nebraska and Kansas–a beef and cabbage-filled pocket sandwich called a bierock–comes courtesy of the German immigrants who settled the plains and their ancestors, including my family, who kept the tradition alive.
The bierock’s modest ingredients and homey appearance belie how tasty it is, especially with a dab of horseradish sauce on every bite. The basic yeast dough, enriched with butter and eggs, folds around the three- to four-ingredient filling (if you stick to tradition). Baked to a golden brown, brushed with melted butter, a bierock straight out of the oven reveals steamy deliciousness. And it is a heck of a lot better than delivery pizza at any party.
Nuts to You
I absolutely do not have space in my kitchen for specialty kitchen gadgets. And still I buy them. After Christmas, I scored a sweet mold for walnut-shaped cookies. The deep discount served as my justification (for this mold as well as one for shortbreads…) But, if I am going to be honest, I was really just smitten with how clever the final results would look.
Walnut cookies cross cultural barriers. Mexico has polvorones. Delicious and powdered sugar covered, these delicate wedding cookies are associated with our southern neighbor, but originated in the Arab world and traveled to the Western Hemisphere via Spain. Eastern Europe–I am thinking Poland and Czech Republic here, but I suspect they are widely Slavic–trot out the walnut-shaped cookies at Christmas.
Walnut cookies are as versatile as they are delicious. They can be rolled in balls or flattened like a traditional cookie. Or they can be cooked in molds, made fancy when the two halves are cemented together with icing or melted jam… or, when in my hands, with chocolate ganache.
The Kings and I
Christmas may be a hazy, food-coma hangover, but that does not mean pastry season is over. Indeed, today we have entered King Cake time, the weeks between Epiphany and Mardi Gras–the last night before Lent and its prescription of 40 days of restraint.
In the United States, New Orleans has made King Cake synonymous with Mardi Gras. Named for the visit of the three Magi to the newborn Christ child, the cake comes in so many variations that one needs a few weeks just to fully enjoy them all. It can take the shape of a cinnamon-scented ring of bread sparsely dotted with candied fruit (Spain and Latin America) or an almond-paste-filled circle of layered puff pastry (France). One commonality is a buried trinket–a plastic or ceramic baby figurine or a dried bean to symbolize the infant Jesus–which bestows various honors upon the person who gets the item in her or his slice. Mexico, where I first encountered the bread, has my favorite tradition: The person who wins the baby has to make tamales for everyone on Candlemas, February 2.
Mexico’s cake, rosca de reyes, is a vaguely sweet yeast bread (akin to pan de muerto), formed into a ring and finished with a sugar topping that may also include candied fruit and/or nuts. It is tasty–and lovely with a cup of coffee for breakfast. However, I like my desserts sweeter and have long been drawn to the French version (galette des rois) and its layers of sweet almond filling.
So I pulled together a hybrid to celebrate Día de Reyes, a basic sweet dough filled with a rough almond paste, rolled like cinnamon rolls, shaped and baked into a ring, and glazed when cool with almond icing. I just might call it a rosca des rois.
Risotto Mio
I must be suffering a rice deficiency because all I seem to crave these frigid winter days is risotto. And I have been making it with some frequency: Over the last few weeks, asparagus, wild mushroom, pumpkin, lemon, and pumpkin-and-mushroom risottos have all turned up at the dinner table…
I have to say, though, that I may have hit a new high point on Christmas when, in honor of the season–and to satisfy my obsession for beets–I concocted this bright red bowl of joy. Served with pull-apart garlic bread, this was definitely celebratory. And probably good for us, too.
Darling Clementine
Our British friend, Tessa, has had to give up gluten. The worst part of it, she says, is avoiding hot bread when it hits the table. Second to that: saying no to cake, especially at the holidays.
Years ago, at a birthday party in Cornwall, the hostess decided Tessa should not go cake-free for the evening. She whipped up this tangy, delicious almond and clementine confection especially for her–and a tradition was born.
“In the U.K., clementines and tangerines are very much part of Christmas, and the combination of sweet oranges and almonds are a good gluten-free alternative to Christmas Cake (aka, fruit cake),” says Tessa, who capped her holiday dinner in D.C. this year with this easy dessert.
Sugar and Spice
Eons ago, I worked in a small-town bakery. The homebaked goods–cookies, pies, rolls and bread–featured the local flour, ground by a real-life Dutch mill nearby. The bakery was an old house, its kitchen was our kitchen, still recognizable as a basic farmhouse cooking zone with the addition of a mixer big enough to fall into, an industrial oven and a stainless steel counter where we rolled and measured dough, and dropped cookies onto large metal sheets. We sold what we made just steps from the work area, at a glass case near the back door.
I learned a lot working there… mostly tricks to improve efficiency, a must in a small space with several moving people and a hot appliance in the middle of it all.
I was reminded this week of one of those tricks after I toted piles of Christmas cookies into the office. First, I heard people marvel that I took all that time to bake cookies. (“They’re such a pain.”) Next, they wanted to know how I got them all perfect, e.g., all round and the same size.
Now, I do not believe for a second that cookies are a chore. On the contrary, they are a zen joy to me, all process-based chemistry with quiet fulfillment at the end. I will admit, though, that several actions can make the baking all the more simple–and lead to more satisfying (visual) results.
So my Christmas gift to you–in addition to recipes for my favorite ginger snaps, a chewy coconut-pecan bar and the sublime no-roll sugar cookies that we produced every morning at the bakery–are these three tips:
1. Always chill the dough. Even half an hour will help cookies keep their shape, make them easier to form and let them rise rather than run. This is especially true if you have a hot kitchen.
2. For drop cookies, use a small ice cream scoop with a release band that sweeps the bowl of the scoop. Just dip, scrape against the bowl to flatten the bottom and drop the cookie onto the sheet. No fuss, no muss. And the cookies will exit the oven all the same size.
3. Do not overbake. Unless your oven temperture is wildly off, bake no more than the time range advised by the recipe. They will still cook a little once out of the oven, and you do not want them over dry. Or burnt (unless you are my dad…).
Happy Holidays!
