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Archive for the ‘About Food’ Category

April 26 is National Pretzel Day and I wanted to share my recipe for traditional Italian

Taralli

pretzels called taralli.

Just about anyone of Italian descent is familiar with taralli. Common all along the southern provinces of Italy, taralli are crunchy and pretzel-like and are eaten as bread or enjoyed as a snack.

These baked snacks are often referred to in English as biscotti, because technically it is cooked twice (the definition of biscotti). But the end product is nothing at all like a biscotti. In both appearance and texture, these are more like hard pretzels.

Believed by many to have originated in Puglia, where bread reigns supreme and bread-like products are abundant, taralli start off much the same way as other pretzels: they are shaped, boiled, and baked until hard and crisp. There is a subtle difference between taralli and pretzels, though. Pretzels are often made with eggs, which give them a “softer” crunch flakier texture than taralli, and the spices added to taralli make them the perfect accompaniment to meals.

I never had much of a sweet tooth, not even as a child. I got this trait from my mother, who would (and still does) pass up a slice of cake for a tasty cracker and some grapes anytime. This proclivity, plus a desire to avoid giving her family too many sweets, my mother has always made taralli for us to snack on.

The crunchy, pretzel-shaped treat and, fennel seeds give these biscuits their unique flavor and aroma, but sweeter versions can also be found.

Although taralli are eaten throughout the year, production by bakeries and home cooks alike ramps up around holidays. This Easter, I helped my mother make the taralli and here are some shots of the process, as well as her recipe, which appeared in my cookbook, What, No Meat? Traditional Italian Cooking the Vegetarian Way. Enjoy.

Taralli

Biscotti di Mamma (My Mother’s Pretzels)

1 package active dry yeast
5 pounds all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon salt
4 teaspoons fennel or anise seeds
5 eggs, slightly beaten
1 1/3 cups corn oil

Sprinkle the yeast into 1 cup very warm water. Let it sit until it is murky, about 5 minutes. Stir until all the yeast is dissolved.

On a kneading board, make a well of flour. Have about 2 cups warm water nearby. Sprinkle the salt and seeds over the flour. Place the remaining ingredients in the center of the well and begin mixing by working your way around the inside of the well with your hand and pulling in the dry ingredients, a little at a time. Mix all the ingredients well. If the dough is too dry, add a little water as you mix. Knead the dough for about 5 to 7 minutes. The dough should be firm but not tough. If it is too wet, add a little more flour and work it in. If it is too dry, add more water and work it in.

Cut the dough in half. Cover one half with a bowl until you are ready to use it. Cut off several 1-inch pieces from the other half and cover the rest with a bowl. Roll a piece out into a 1/4-inch-thick rope. Fold over the ends of the rope to make a criss-cross shape. Press the ends in firmly or they will come apart. Repeat this process with the remaining dough.

As you are shaping the last few pretzels, bring a large pot of water to boil. Place several pretzels into the boiling water (this will give them a flaky texture and a shiny exterior). When they rise to the surface, remove them immediately with a slotted spoon and place them on a clean cloth towel to dry. They should only take about 30 seconds to rise. If they don’t rise after a minute, nudge them a little with the spoon—they sometimes stick to the bottom of the pot. Boil the remaining pretzels and allow them to dry out, about 10 minutes.

As the pretzels are drying, preheat the oven to 375. When the pretzels are dry, lay them directly on the oven racks, about ½ inch apart, and bake them until the undersides are a golden brown, about 10 to 15 minutes. Turn them over and bake until their undersides are deep golden brown, another 10 minutes. If they burn quickly, lower the oven to 350º. They will not all brown at the same rate so keep checking them. Remove the ones that are done and replace them with others.

Serve them as a snack or as an accompaniment to antipasto or dinner.

Store the pretzels in a tin or loosely covered in a basket up to 2 months.

Makes 70 to 80 pretzels.

I’ve been a little behind in my blogging the past couple of weeks (I do a few others besides this one) and I’m trying to catch up. Between dealing with Hurricane Sandy, stupid stuff at work, and an-out-of-town trip, I just haven’t been able to keep up the blogs. But I’m getting back into the swing.

Speaking of out-of-town trips, I just got back from visiting someone in Alabama. Trips to the South mean some very interesting culinary adventures. This time around, I had myself a fried MoonPie. Yes, I’m referring to the round cake-and-marshmallow treat that have been around forever.

copyright Chattanooga Bakery

MoonPies were created in 1917 by Earl Mitchell, a bakery salesman. He visited the Chattanooga Bakery, which catered to the local miners. The miners told him that they wanted a snack that was substantial and filling because they didn’t always get to break for lunch. When Mr. Mitchell asked them how big they wanted this snack, a miner made a round shape with his hands and said, “About that big.” He went back to the bakery, where they were already making cookies dipped in marshmallow, and told them what he wanted. It’s unclear from the history on Moonpie.com who came up with the idea, but someone suggested adding another cookie so that the marshmallow sat in between, and then coating the entire thing in chocolate. They got an excellent response to it. By the 1930s, it was a standard treat in the South. During World War II, the Chattanooga Bakery sent MoonPies to troops overseas.

The advent of the vending machines lead to the creation of the double-decker MoonPie. Evidently, the original, single-decker MoonPie would slip through the spaces in the machine. So, the three-cookied MoonPie was born.

MoonPies became particularly important in Alabama. During Mardi Gras in Mobile—which is considered the birthplace of Mardi Gras in the U.S.—MoonPies were thrown into the crowd from parade floats. And, according to Sam Walton’s’s autobiography, Made in America, a MoonPie-eating contest takes place every year in Oneonta, Alabama. This supposedly was started by a Wal-Mart employee who ordered too many MoonPies and had to do something with them.

Fried MoonPie at Railway Brewing Co.

And it was in Alabama that I had my first—and, I’m quite sure, my only—fried MoonPie. It was on the dessert menu at the Railyard Brewing Co., a brew pub in Montgomery. After a fine lunch, it was impossible to resist. It was disgustingly delicious, the kind of good that you know you shouldn’t like because the combination of ingredients and technique were completely contrary to all that we know about healthy eating and uniquely designed to harden your arteries instantaneously. But like you shall, because the marshmallow in the middle was smooth and creamy, while the outer shell was crispy, sweet, and not at all greasy. When you break into it, the marshmallow and chocolate ooze out just a bit and I found myself chasing it around the plate. Accompanied by a bowl of vanilla ice cream, sliced bananas, and caramel sauce, the fried MoonPie was a fun experience that I can now cross off my list. After all, I want to live a while.

Last week, I had the opportunity to have dinner at Mari Vanna, a traditional Russian restaurant on E. 20th Street in Manhattan. It was my first “dine-around” dinner with the New York Women’s Culinary Alliance, and the date also happened to be my birthday. So, it was a nice way to celebrate.

Ambiance is part of any great dining experience, even if it’s non-ambiance, as in the case of some mom-and-pop places where the food is the focal point. The word “ambiance” really doesn’t even fit Mari Vanna. They’ve created a sense of place. A world, in fact.

Upon entering Mari Vanna, you feel like you are entering a turn-of-the-19th-century shop/café, with its trinkets and small café tables. The furniture is mostly (I think) baroque and reminiscent of an Old World country home. There was one woman at our table who happened to be Russian (she’d been born in Moscow but moved here when she was 7) and she described the restaurant as “like going to grandma’s house.” Indeed, a china cabinet was jammed with plates, baking dishes, gravy boats, candy dishes, soup bowls, and an assortment of other culinary vessels and utensils. It was so much like many a grandma’s kitchen.

The layout of the place was interesting, too. The main dining room was separated from the kitchen by windows, which made it seem as if beyond those windows was a garden. You can easily peek in and watch the staff cooking your meal.

There was also kitsch. Along the buffet table, and throughout the place, there were examples of Russian folk art: dolls, toys, and colorfully painted bric-a-brack. It brought a sense of charm to a room that might otherwise seem a bit stuffy. I loved the bathrooms! With its old-school pump faucets and wall-mounted toilet tanks with the chain, you really felt as if you’d stepped into another world…except for the fact that there is graffiti all over—and I do mean ALL OVER—the walls and doors.  This is part of the décor and I think they actually encourage guests to scribble their own personal messages. When you exit the bathrooms, there’s an old wall-mounted rotary phone, above which is an old Stalin-era military propaganda poster. I had no idea what it said, but it did give you a sense of the atmosphere in which Russians lived in that era.

I suppose I should talk about the food. The menu consists of traditional Russian dishes, from blini with caviar to cured herring and Siberian pelmini. However, for our group, the chef and one of the NYWCA women worked on a creating a special menu. We had:

Cocktails (choice of one)
Signature vodka shot or signature martini

Salads
Olivier
Vinegret
Sunflower

Cold Appetizers
Salo Plate (Assortment of salt-cured pork fatback)
Meat Plate (Assortment of cured meats and charcuterie)
Soleniya (housemade picked vegetables)

Sunflower Salad

Hot Appetizers
Pirozhki Assorti
Blini with Red Caviar

Soup

Borsch
Entrée
Beef Stroganoff
Branzini

Dessert
Napoleon
Smetannik (signature dessert with strawberries and cream)
Onegin

All are classic Russian dishes. The dilly bread, as well as the raisin bread and pickles, was a tasty starter. The Olivier (potatoes, Russian sausage, and sage mayo) is similar to American potato salad, in that it is made with mayo, but it has a different mixture of elements (sausage, peas, and, in this case, halved quail eggs). The salad has a Hollywood folktale attached to it. Legend has it that it was named for the actor Sir Lawrence Olivier. In truth, it was named for its creator, a Belgian chef named Lucien Olivier, who created it in the 1860s at his renowned Moscow restaurant, Hermitage. (For more info on it, click HERE.

Pirogki

The sunflower salad consisted of tomatoes, radishes, cucumbers, and—with a nod to more Western European ingredients—arugula, and topped with, of course, sunflower seeds. The vinegret was a kind of beet salad, and beets are a staple food of Eastern Europe. Speaking of beets, the borscht was exceptionally delicious and was my favorite dish of the evening. It was deeply flavored and warming (as opposed to the cold beet soup on the regular menu). By that point in the evening, though, I was already getting full and needed to leave room for everything else.

The pirogki, wheat dumplings stuffed with meat and potato-cabbage) were fun and so well balanced in cabbage and spice flavors. The blini were more like crepes than the little pancakes that are usually associated with blini, and were accompanied by red caviar and an assortment of condiments. They were light and delicate and buttery.

I’m not big on meat, but I did taste a bite of the beef stroganoff. The flavor was good, but the meat was a bit tough. The branzini, on the other hand, was delicate and cooked just right.

Branzini

The desserts were all delicious, but I have to say that the Napoleon was not flaky. The smetanik was like a strawberry shortcake and cheesecake combined. The onegin was sort of like a Napoleon, but was more of a sponge cake with dried fruit and almonds.

The coordinator of the event, Wendy, was nice enough to have them put a candle in one of the cakes for my birthday. The entire staff came out with tambourines and sang a Russian song to me.  I have no idea what they were saying, but it was enthusiastic and loud.  As Wendy said, that’s something that will probably never happen to me again!

Of course, their specialty is their infused vodkas. There is a long list of choices and I’m sure you could spend a very long time trying out each one in a variety of ways. I had the cherry vodka with cherry soda. I thought it needed a bit more soda to sweeten it up a bit but I didn’t say anything because I was desperately fighting off a stomach bug and I didn’t think it wise to get crazy with the booze anyway. Although I did try a strawberry vodka shot after dessert. It was just so vibrantly red that I couldn’t resist. Delicious.

Vodka Infusions

And that was my interesting journey through a long-ago Russia. I recommend it for the experience alone–it will definitely be a memorable one.

41 East 20th Street
New York, NY 10003
Between Park Ave and Broadway
By phone 212-777-1955

http://www.marivanna.ru/ny/menu/#/about/