Polka Dots and Pastries: 50-Women

Showing posts with label 50-Women. Show all posts

Thursday, April 12, 2012

50 WOMEN GAME CHANGERS #7 Madhur Jaffrey: The Best Eggplant Ever

50 WOMEN GAME CHANGERS #6 Marcella Hazan: Fettuccine al Limone

It's time to move on to some Italian and Marcella Hazan.

Marcella is another fabulous cookbook author that until the advent of Gourmet's 50-Women Game Changers article I had never heard of.

As per my new years resolution I not purchasing books. So, I took myself down to the local library and picked up a couple of books.

The first is for some light reading.

The second is a cookbook.

Marcella's Italian Kitchen

For dinner last night Alex and I made pasta for Marcella's

Fettuccine al Limone

pg. 96

Pasta

Ingredients:

3 large eggs
about 2 cups of flour

Directions:

Pour the flour onto a work surface.
Shape it into a mound, scooping out a deep hollow in its center.
Break the eggs in the hollow.

Beat the eggs lightly with a fork as though you were making an omelet.
Draw some of the flour over the eggs, mixing it, a little at a time, until the eggs are no longer runny.
Draw the sides of the mound together, pushing to one side any flour you think may not use.
Work the mixture of flour and eggs with your fingers and the palms of your hands until it is well amalgamated.
If it is still too moist, work in more flour as needed.
Put the egg flour mass to one side and scrape the work surface clean of all loose or caked bits of flour and of any crumbs of dough.
Wash your hands and dry them.
Knead the dough for at least 8 minutes.

Roll the ball of dough through the pasta machine.
Let rest for 10 minutes.

Use the broad cutters on the machine to make fettuccine.
Let dry.

Fettuccine al Limone

Ingredients:

4 tablespoons butter
1 cup of heavy cream
2 tablespoons freshly squeezed lemon juice
The grated peel, but none of the white pith beneath, of 4 lemons
Fettuccine
1/2 cup freshly grated parmigiano-reggiano

Directions:

Choose a skillet or saute pan large enough to accommodate the cooked fettuccine later.
Put in the butter and cream and turn on the heat to high.
When the cream begins to boil, add the lemon juice and stir thoroughly.
Add the grated lemon peel.
Continue stirring while you reduce the cream to half its original volume.
Do not reduce it completely because that fettuccine will be tossed with it later in the pan and absorb it all.
Turn off the heat.
Drop the pasta into a pot of abundant boiling salted water.
When cooked, but still quite firm to the bite, drain, transfer to the pan with the lemon sauce, turn on the heat to medium, and toss the fettuccine thoroughly in the sauce for 15 to 20 seconds.
Transfer all the pasta and sauce from the pan to a warm serving bowl.
Add the grated cheese, toss two or three time, then serve at once with additional grated cheese on the side.

Sunday, March 4, 2012

50 WOMEN GAME CHANGERS #5 MFK Fisher: Tarte a la Tomate

MFK Fisher.

She is a super famous cook and author. Long before I started on this little journey down Gourmet magazines 50-women game changers, I read The Gastronomical Me. Currently, I'm reading another of her fabulous books An Alphabet for Gourmets.

Up next on my reading list is her To Begin Again. I just love reading her prose. She transports me to a time where I was not alive. A time when not even my mother was alive, but for some reason I feel nostalgic for this time in American history.

For this weeks 50-women recipe I'm making

Tarte a la Tomate
From The Cooking of Provincial Franese

pg 50

Pate Brisee

Ingredients:

6 tablespoons chilled butter, cut into 1/4 inch bits
2 tablespoons chilled vegetable shortening
1 & 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1/4 teaspoon salt
3 to 5 tablespoons ice water

Directions:

In a large, chilled mixing bowl, combine butter, vegetable shortening, flour, and salt
Working quickly, use your fingertips to rub the flour and fat together until they blend and look like flakes of coarse meal.
Pour 3 tablespoons of ice water over the mixture all at once, toss together lightly and gather the dough into a ball.
If the dough seems crumbly, add up to 2 tablespoons more ice water by drops.
Dust the pastry with a little flour and wrap it in wax paper.

Refrigerate it for at least 3 hours or until it is firm.
Remove the pasty from the refrigerator 5 minutes before rolling it.
If it seems resistant and hard, tap it all over with a rolling pin.
Place the ball on a floured board or table and, with the heel of one hand, press it into a flat circle about 1 inch thick.

Dust a little flour over and under it and roll it out - from the center to within an inch of the far edge.
Lift the dough and turn clockwise, about the space of two hours on a clock, roll again from center to the far edge.
Repeat - lifting, turning, rolling - until the circle is about 1/8 inch thick and 11 or 12 inches across
If the pastry sticks to the board or table, lift it gently with a metal spatula and sprinkle a little flour under it.

Butter the bottom and sides of a 8 to 9-inch false-bottomed quiche or cake pan on more than 1 & 1/4 inch deep.
Roll the pastry over the pin and unroll it over the pan, or drape over the rolling pin.

Lift it up and unfold it over the pan.

Gently press the pastry into the bottom and around the sides of the pan, being careful not to stretch it.
Roll the pin over the rim of the pan, pressing down hard to trim off the excess pastry.
With a fork, prick the bottom of the pastry all over, trying not to pierce all the way through.

Chill for 1 hour
Preheat oven to 400 degrees
To keep the bottom of the pastry from puffing up, spread a sheet of buttered aluminum foil across the pan and press it gently into the edges to support the sides of the pastry as it bakes. (I didn't have any aluminum foil and I used wax paper and pinto beans to keep my dough in place)

Bake on the middle shelf of the oven for 10 minutes, then remove the foil.
Prick the pastry again, then return it to the oven for 3 minutes or until it starts to shrink from the sides of the pan and begins to brown.
Remove it from the oven and set it on a wire cake rack to cool.

Tarte a la Tomate

Ingredients:

1 pate brisee pastry shell
1 pound Gruyere cheese, cut in thin slices
2 or 3 large tomatoes, cut in 1/2-inch slices
Salt
Freshly ground black pepper
1 teaspoon dried basil
2 tablespoons grated Parmesan cheese
2 tablespoons melted butter

Directions:

Sprinkle the tomato slices generously with salt, and place them on a cake rack to drain for about 1/2 hour

Preheat oven to 375 degrees
Arrange the cheese slices, slightly overlapping, in the bottom of the pastry shell.

Place the drained tomato slices side by side on top.

Sprinkle with a few grindings of black pepper, the basil, and the grated Parmesan cheese.

Dribble the melted butter over the tomatoes and bake in the upper third of the oven for 25 minutes, or until the cheese has melted and the top of the pie is lightly browned.
Served hot or warm

Sunday, February 19, 2012

50 WOMEN GAME CHANGERS #4 Martha Stewart: Chocolate Mousse

Today I listened to Joy the Baker Podcast.

Episode 30: Take it Easy

Episode 31: Beanbag

While making a 50 women game changers in food recipe for number 4 on the list.

Martha Stewart.

Currently, I'm reading her unauthorized biography Just Desserts.

I don't really have an opinion about her "domestic empire", but I do like to look at her ideas.

Like it or not Martha Stewart is here to stay. She is part of our American culture for better or worse.

Now from her cookbook, "The Martha Stewart Cookbook: Collected Recipes for Every Day", I have made...

Chocolate Mousse I (pg 406)

Ingredients:

6 ounces semisweet chocolate
1/4 pound unsalted butter
3 eggs separated
2 tablespoons sugar
3/4 heavy cream
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

Directions:

Melt chocolate with butter (this is where a double boiler would come in handy)

Transfer to a mixing bowl and set aside to cool

When chocolate mixture has reached room temperature, add the egg yolks and stir well
Beat the egg whites to soft peaks.
Beating continuously, add the sugar until stiff peaks are formed

Whisk a small portion of egg white into the chocolate mixture to lighten it.
Gently fold in the remaining egg white

Whip the cream with the vanilla until stiff
Fold it into the chocolate mixture carefully

Spoon mixture into individual containers (martini glasses? Wine glasses? Parfait dishes?)
Chill

Sunday, February 12, 2012

50 WOMEN GAME CHANGERS #3 Fannie Farmer - Oatmeal Bread

For some time a few of the blogs I read on a regular basis have been doing this 50 Women Game Changers challenge started by Mary from One Perfect Bite after the May 2011 article in Gourmet. I've been wanting to join in the fun, but have been full of excuses. This year my goal is to do it my self! Even though the rest are all the way up to #32 and I'm starting at the bringing I'm still excited.

Fannie Merritt Farmer (March 23, 1857 to January 15, 1915) wrote a famous cookbook in 1896 called The Boston Cooking-School Cook Book. At my local library I was able to obtain an eleventh edition of this book.

This edition was published in 1965. I loved looking at the old check-out stamps. I wonder who those people were, why did they check-out this particular book? What did they make or take from having this book? These are just things that wonder.

Enough musings on to the recipe.

Oatmeal Bread