Nanny Rolls

My sister's in-laws make these rolls for holidays meals. I'm pretty sure "Nanny" was someone's grandma and not a child care provider. Flavored with mace and slightly sweet, their family loves them so much that they make a quadruple batch to ensure there are more than enough for everyone. Sliced in half and stuffed with leftover turkey or ham they make for an excellent sandwich.

Nanny Rolls
Makes 16 rolls. Be sure to leave enough time for 2 risings and a rest after shaping. The recipe didn't indicate how long for each rise, so I went about 90 minutes for the first and 45 minutes for the second.

1 cup milk
1/2 cup sugar
8 tablespoons butter, plus 1-2 tablespoons separately melted
3 eggs, beaten
4 cups all-purpose flour, plus 2-3 tablespoons for dusting
2 packages instant yeast
2 teaspoons ground mace
1/2 teaspoon salt
2-3 tablespoons confectioners sugar

Scald milk. Add butter and sugar and stir until melted/dissolved. Remove from heat and cool slightly.

In a large bowl combine flour, yeast, mace and salt. Add beaten eggs and warm milk mixture. Stir until well combined and shape into a ball. Brush top of dough with melted butter, cover and let rise. Punch down dough and let rise again.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. In a small bowl, mix 2-3 tablespoons of flour with equal parts confectioners sugar. Dust work surface and rolling pin with sugar-flour mixture. Divide dough in half and roll or pat out into an 18" circle. Brush top with melted butter. Cut into 8 wedges. Roll up each wedge starting at wide end, curl ends in to make a crescent shape. Place on baking sheet and cover with a towel. Let rise until doubled in size.

Bake for 13-15 minutes or until golden, switching top and bottom baking trays halfway through baking.

Vegan Chocolate Cream Pie

We all know how annoying vegans can be. What with their not eating animal products and all. I mean, a vegan can really throw a wrench into your baking plans. I wanted to make chocolate cream pie for a double birthday party, but one of the birthday boys happened to be a vegan. What to do, what to do? Well, of course, I love a challenge. I consulted the internets and I found a few recipes that seemed promising. Then, at yet another birthday party, I met a real live vegan. I told her about operation vCCP and she had several great ideas - she wrote down a recipe she liked and suggested some brands that were vegan-safe.

Armed with this information I put together a plan and purchased the animal-product-free ingredients. The results were pretty amazing. Good chocolate flavor, super creamy texture with no grittiness and a decent crust. My intention was to buy a tub of (non-dairy) Cool Whip to use for the topping, but when I got to the store I discovered that they only had it frozen. The label said it had to be slowly defrosted in the refrigerator for 4 hours. You don't want to rush the defrosting of whatever space-age polymer it's made of or it turns watery and weird. Since I didn't have the 4 hours to spare, I just skipped it. The vegan didn't seem to mind.

Vegan Chocolate Cream Pie:

Crust
5 oz. Mi-Del Chocolate Snaps, broken into pieces
2 tablespoons cocoa powder
2 tablespoons canola oil


Filling
1 can coconut milk
1/4 cup cornstarch
1/3 cup plus 1 tablespoon vegan chocolate chips
1 teaspoon vanilla
1/3 cup sugar
pinch salt
8 oz Tofutti non-dairy cream cheese


For the crust:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Pulse cookie pieces and cocoa powder in a food processor for about 15 1-second pulses, then run until evenly broken down into fine crumbs, 15-20 seconds. Transfer to a bowl and add canola oil, stir to combine evenly. Press the mixture into a 9" pie pan. Use the flat bottom of a 1/2 cup measuring cup or glass to press it firmly and evenly across the bottom and up the sides. Refrigerate for 20 minutes, then bake until fragrant and set, about 10 minutes. Cool on a wire rack.

For the filling:
Shake the can of coconut milk before opening. Add the cornstarch to about a 1/4 cup of coconut milk and whisk until there are no lumps. In medium, heavy-bottomed saucepan, combine the cornstarch mixture, remaining coconut milk, vanilla and sugar over medium heat. As it begins to warm, add the chocolate chips and bring to a simmer, stirring frequently. Cook until the chocolate has melted and the mixture has thickened to a pudding-like consistency.

Pour into a large bowl and add the Tofutti cream cheese. Stir thoroughly until completely incorporated. Pour into the cooled crust and refrigerate overnight or for at least 5 hours or so. Serve as is or with a non dairy topping.

No-Knead Rosemary Olive Bread

I've been reading my blogger friend Cathy Erway's new book, The Art of Eating In: How I Learned to Stop Spending and Love the Stove. She and I first met at a supper club in Brooklyn a few years ago. As I read, I wasn't surprised to learn how much we have in common food-wise. In her book, she mentions this revolutionary technique for home bread baking first published in a New York Times article in 2006. The concept came from Jim Lahey of Sullivan Street Bakery and swept like wildfire throughout the blogging and baking worlds.

A home bread-baking uprising (pun intended) was taking place and where was I? Years ago, I had tried to make rustic loaves and French baguettes with disappointing results. It was bread, but it wasn't light and airy with that perfect crusty crust and chewy interior. I did a little research, and tried some of the tricks - like putting a baking pan at the bottom of the oven and pouring in a cup of water right when you put in the bread to simulate the steam-injected ovens used in professional bakeries. Still, not the results I wanted.

I'd heard about this new technique, but never got around to checking it out. Reading about it in Cathy's book got me excited again - why not give it a try? In fact, why not make my favorite: Rosemary Olive Bread? After a quick look around the web, I settled on the America's Test Kitchen version. Their recipe called for a slightly different ratio of ingredients but the basic principles were the same. The genius of the no-knead technique is two-fold:

1.) Let it sit for a long time instead of kneading it - a minimum of 12 hours, best at 18 or more.
2.) Bake it in a hot, covered pot in the oven to simulate a professional oven.

Check out this video from the NYT to get the inside scoop from Mark Bittman and Jim Lahey. My favorite part is at the very end when Lahey says of the no-knead recipe: "Let's make sure that everyone has access to it." I love that he wants to spread the bread-baking gospel throughout the land! This is what gets me excited about food and blogging! Learning new things and sharing them and hopefully inspiring others to get into their kitchens and make their own creations.

Here's my dough from the Almost No-Knead America's Test Kitchen recipe after sitting for 17 hours:


And here it is after a very brief knead (about 15 times, which is fun):


A week after I made this, I also tried the basic Lahey recipe. Both times I found that the bottom of my loaf came out too dark. I'm not sure exactly why that is since my oven runs pretty close to accurate temperature. Twice bitten, thrice shy, though. Next time I'll set the oven 25 degrees lower and see how it fares. If I lose crumb structure or crustiness, I'll try some other options.

Otherwise, the loaf was amazing. The crust was crisp, the interior was chewy and stretchy and had a great flavor. I might skip the Parmesan cheese from this recipe, since I don't think it's really essential. I just love getting a nice salty olive in a good bite, and the rosemary flavor is great. I intend to try new flavors and different types of flours, like whole wheat or rye. There are a ton of recipes on-line and the technique delivers a really incredible result. Even if you've never baked before, I encourage you to give this a try.

Happy baking!

P.S. I also made my own butter for my first loaf! Shake up some heavy cream in a large, chilled glass jar for about 20-25 minutes. You might want to trade off shaking duties with a friend. The liquid in the jar will appear to solidify into a giant block of whipped cream and won't seem to be shakeable, but keep shaking! Eventually you will shake the buttermilk right out and chunks of yellow butter will clump up in there. Shake until you have lots of chunks and a thin liquid. Drain that off (into a clean container) and then put the solids in a bowl. Smash the butter against the side of the bowl with a spatula to squeeze out the rest of the buttermilk. Get it all out, because otherwise the butter will taste sour. You can save the buttermilk for pancakes or biscuits if you like. Add some kosher or sea salt and get ready for a damn fine serving of bread and butter.

Motorino and Roberta's - The Pizza Crawl

My friend Rachael (of The Night Way) is moving to Germany in a month. While I fully encourage great life adventures, I am also firmly opposed to my friends leaving New York. This puts me in a great conundrum of trying to be supportive while secretly wanting to throw a big tantrum with threats, pleading and tears. Usually I manage to contain myself.

Like most people on the verge of leaving New York, Rachael has a list of places to go and things to do that she somehow hasn't gotten around to while living here. Of course she recruited me for the restaurant portion of her list and I gladly stepped up to the challenge. While I cook at home more than the average New Yorker, I also like a meal out on a regular basis.

We decided on pizza. Rachael had been hearing a lot of buzz lately about Motorino, especially since they opened their second location in the East Village spot where Una Pizza Napoletana had reigned. I was leaning towards Roberta's in Bushwick, where I had twice had great pies, a hearty bowl of linguine carbonara and rustic roasted chicken from their brick oven.

For some reason, I was having a really hard time letting go of my Roberta's idea. I guess I wanted to impress my friend with this unique restaurant. After all, Roberta's is much more than a pizza place. Not only a hipster hangout, it is virtually a temple of the local, sustainable food movement. Just off their cozy back patio are re-purposed shipping containers, now used as a home for the Heritage Radio network - an internet radio station hosting food related programming. And on top of the containers is a "rooftop" greenhouse, providing the restaurant with ultra local produce.

As we haggled back and forth, I had a burst of inspiration - why not go to both? Motorino in Williamsburg is just a block or so from the Graham stop on the L train and Roberta's is 3 stops away at the Morgan Ave exit. Genius! Gluttony! Glory! A pizza crawl - something only a food lover would want to do.

We got to Motorino at about 7:15. There were plenty of seats available and we scored a cozy two-top back near the big brick oven. We decided to go simple and ordered just one Margherita pie: a simple trio of tomato, basil and fresh mozzarella cheese. About 10 minutes after ordering, a man came to our table holding a small plate with two sugar-crusted rounds of fried dough. The waitress ran over and redirected him to a neighboring table.

"What was that?" I asked, sort of awed, "Was that...doughnuts?"

The man came back. "Sorry about that, yes, those are our house-made doughnuts. One is filled with a fruit jam and the other with our home-made vanilla custard."

If we didn't have to save room for our next stop we definitely would have ordered them for dessert. Luckily, shortly after this sweet tease, our pie arrived - fresh, hot, and very juicy with fresh olive oil drizzled over the top. The crust was nice and chewy with the requisite char. I mopped up the olive oil left on the serving plate with torn bits of crust. We settled up and headed out to the L train.

After a bit of a fiasco with what should have been a quick subway ride, we arrived at Roberta's at 8:30 pm and waited for another friend to arrive. He was crucial in our dining plan as we were both feeling more full than expected after only 2 slices of thin crust pizza each. We needed his appetite so that we could order another pie! For true comparison we should have ordered another Margherita, but this was more about getting to experience two different places than judging which was better. So we got a pizza the menu called "The Good Girl," a promising combo of kale, taleggio cheese, pork sausage and garlic. We also ordered a simple Bibb lettuce salad with a dried cherry vinaigrette, gorgonzola and roasted walnuts.

I wanted to try a lot of the other things on the menu like their sauteed Hen-of-the-Woods mushrooms or the pan-fried sweetbreads. There was also a cavatelli special and a pork chop that arrived at a neighboring table already carved into glistening, medium-rare chunks with lovely charred edges. Pork, chopped.

I couldn't talk Rachael into having any of the salad. "Just one slice of pizza," she insisted.

"What about a drink?" I suggested, sipping my (way-too-much-to-pay-in-Bushwick, Brooklyn,) $11 glass of red wine from a small mason jar.

"Yeah, maybe." But we had already ordered dinner and the drink subject didn't come up again.

The pizza arrived. It was dark green from the crisp kale leaves that covered it from edge to edge. There were little juicy chunks of pork sausage hidden throughout, and pools of super gooey and pungent cheese. I had sort of forgotten what taleggio was until I bit into it and remembered, "Oh yeah, it's that cheese!" The flavors went well together, but the amount of kale was sort of overwhelming. A major plus for me at Roberta's is the little bottle of olive oil with crushed red peppers on each table. I can dip my crusts without a special request to the server for oil.

This pizza was cut into five slices as opposed to Motorino's four. After we each got through our first slice, I longingly eyed the two remaining. But I was so full! It just doesn't seem fair that there's only room for so much good-tasting food in one night.

I think Rachael enjoyed the pizza crawl, and I'm glad she got to cross two places off her list. I'm even more pleased that she overcame her squeamishness after reading the recent New York Times article about a rabbit butchering class held in Roberta's parking lot.

But most of all, I was just glad to spend some time with her before she heads off to Berlin and leaves me here to deal with all this pizza on my own.

For Rachael's take on the evening, please visit The Night Way.

Motorino
319 Graham Avenue
Brooklyn, NY 11211
718-599-8899

Roberta's
261 Moore Street
Brooklyn, NY 11206

photo via Roberta's