Voracious
Page 5
ANNE OF GREEN GABLES
Salted Chocolate Caramels
Makes about 80 caramels
1½ cups heavy cream
1⅓ cups granulated sugar
½ cup firmly packed dark brown sugar
½ cup light corn syrup
3 tablespoons unsalted butter
3 tablespoons salted butter
Seeds of 1 vanilla bean
1½ pounds good-quality semisweet chocolate, chopped
2 teaspoons flaky sea salt (such as Maldon)
Grease an 8-inch square glass baking dish. Cut a piece of parchment paper so that it is a little bit less than 8 inches wide by 14 inches long. Press the parchment into the baking dish, leaving 3 inches of paper hanging over the sides of the dish (this will make it easier to lift the cooled caramel out of the baking dish). Coat the parchment in more butter and set the baking dish aside on a metal cooling rack.
In a large, heavy-bottomed saucepan, bring the cream to a boil over medium-high heat. Stir in both sugars and the corn syrup. Bring this mixture back to a boil and cook, stirring constantly, until the sugars have completely dissolved, about 3 more minutes.
Reduce the heat and continue to gently boil the mixture until it reaches 255°F on a candy thermometer. Don’t worry if the temperature rises quickly to 225°F and then plateaus for a little while—this is normal. It should take 20 to 25 minutes for the mixture to reach 255°F.
Once the mixture has come to temp, remove it from the heat and add the unsalted and salted butters and the vanilla bean seeds, stirring until combined. Pour this mixture into the prepared baking dish and allow it to cool on the cooling rack until the surface is set and the baking dish is warm but not hot, about 1 hour.
At this point, transfer the dish to the refrigerator to chill for 15 minutes (don’t leave it in there longer than that!). After 15 minutes, run a knife along the edges of the baking dish and use the parchment paper ends that are hanging over the dish to carefully lift the caramel out of the pan.
Line two baking sheets with parchment paper. With a very sharp knife, cut the caramel into ¾-inch squares, set them on one lined baking sheet, and place them in the refrigerator to continue to harden while you temper the chocolate.
Set up a double boiler: Fill a medium saucepan with 2 inches of water and bring it to a simmer over medium heat. Place a heat-safe glass bowl over the pot and add two-thirds of the chopped chocolate, stirring until the chocolate has melted and a candy thermometer registers 118°F. Remove the bowl from the double boiler and add the remaining chopped chocolate, stirring until the temperature of the chocolate reaches 80°F.
Return the 80°F chocolate to the double boiler and bring it back up to 88°F (it’s important that the chocolate stay between 87°F and 89°F while you are enrobing the caramels, because this is the temperature at which it will set and harden to a smooth shell).
Take the caramels out of the fridge and dump them into the melted chocolate. Use a fork to remove them, one at a time, allowing the excess chocolate to drip off before placing them on the second lined baking sheet and sprinkling them with flaky salt. Make sure the caramels are not touching, and let them sit until the chocolate completely sets, about 30 minutes. The caramels will keep in an airtight container in the refrigerator for up to 2 weeks.
Homer Price
OLD-FASHIONED SOUR CREAM DONUTS
Donuts have figured more heavily in my life than I would like to admit. “Donut” was one of the very first words I spoke and, perhaps because of this, my family rarely calls me by any name other than “Doozy Donuts” (although I’m still unclear on where the first part of that nickname came from). After church on Sundays, if my sisters and I had been good, my parents would take us to Dunkin’ Donuts and we would each get to choose a treat. We never told them that our Sunday school teachers had already given each of us ten donut holes an hour earlier in an attempt to keep us quiet while they taught us about the Crucifixion. Once my sisters were in the store, their decisions were simple—Ande: jelly; Gemma: chocolate frosted with sprinkles—but my favorites were constantly changing. I dabbled in toasted coconut and Boston cream, strawberry-frosted and honey-dipped, lemon-filled and powdered-sugar-dusted, and I never tired of the old-fashioned, my father’s favorite.
My dad’s breakfast specialty hinged on the old-fashioned donut, which may be why I hold such a special place in my heart for it. In our house, there was always a box of Entenmann’s old-fashioned donuts in the cabinet, and if we were lucky enough to catch my dad before he went to work, he would carefully split one in half for us, toast it, and slather it with salted butter. I casually mentioned this to a friend recently, thinking it was normal, and she was horrified, but I stand with my dad on this one. After a quick round in the toaster oven, even those packaged donuts came to life—suddenly all burned-sugar edges and bone-warming nutmeg, salty butter pooling in every imperfection that the factory had somehow failed to smooth over.
The summer I was seven years old my mom and her twin sister bought my cousin and me Robert McCloskey’s Homer Price—a book of beautifully illustrated adventure stories from the 1940s. They would read it to us every night before bed, and I remember well the excitement that I felt when we finally got to the story “The Doughnuts.” In the story, Homer is working at his uncle Ulysses’s donut shop. Ulysses invents a machine that can make donuts at lightning speed. Things, of course, go awry and the machine malfunctions, spitting out donuts faster than they can sell them.
Soon the entire store is filled, floor to ceiling, with donuts (not the worst problem), and a customer’s pricey gold bracelet has gone missing in the dough. The story is goofy and charming and all ends well. However, rereading it as an adult, I couldn’t help but hear a bit of fear in McCloskey’s voice. “The Doughnuts” was written in 1943, only nine years after a donut machine was a major attraction at the world’s fair, marketed as a glimpse into our robotic future.
The fear of being replaced by machines remains with us today. It’s a fear that creeps into my bones every time I read about factory butchering (or encounter an intern who is young and efficient and willing to work for free). The robotic future of McCloskey’s nightmares became a reality in the realm of donuts. I never tried, or even saw, a fresh, handmade donut until I was around nineteen. I never made a donut from scratch until I started baking professionally in my twenties, and when I did start, they were the pastries that scared me the most. Over the course of time (and hundreds of failures) I learned how to mix and knead, how to fix a dud batch, and how to carefully drop the dough into the fryer without dousing myself in hot oil. Mostly I learned patience, or—as Laura, the girl who first taught me to make donuts would always say—I learned how to “become one with the donut.”
Donuts have been experiencing a bit of a revival the past few years. It seems as if a new artisanal donut shop pops up in Brooklyn every other week. They’re vegan, they’re gluten-free, they’re covered in neon frostings and pumped full of local fruit jams, they come in flavors like mojito, black licorice, grapefruit ginger, rose, root beer, and café au lait. This is all well and good (really good), but I will still choose an old-fashioned donut every single time.
HOMER PRICE
Old-Fashioned Sour Cream Donuts
These are old-fashioned donuts for an old-fashioned story. The sour cream makes a shaggy dough that results in donuts with deep, crispy creases that absorb every bit of the glaze. The sugar is light and the nutmeg is cozy; the yeast is in there more for its flavor than its rising properties. These donuts are the toasted and buttered Entenmann’s of my childhood all grown up, but they’re even great without toasting or buttering. (Of course, if you want to gild the lily, please be my guest.)
Makes 2 dozen donuts and donut holes
1 cup sour cream
1 teaspoon active dry yeast
2 large eggs
1 cup granulated sugar
3½ cups pastry flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
1 tea
spoon nutmeg
1 teaspoon kosher salt
½ teaspoon baking soda
5⅓ tablespoons unsalted butter, melted and cooled a bit
¼ teaspoon pure vanilla extract
Canola oil, for frying
Glaze
¼ cup whole milk
¼ teaspoon pure vanilla extract
2 cups confectioners’ sugar, sifted
In a small saucepan, heat the sour cream over low heat until it is very warm but not hot to touch, and mix in the yeast to dissolve. Set aside.
In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with a paddle attachment, beat the eggs and granulated sugar until thick and light yellow, about 3 minutes.
While the eggs are being creamed, whisk together the flour, baking powder, nutmeg, salt, and baking soda in a separate bowl and set aside.
Once the eggs are thick, add the butter and vanilla and mix until well incorporated. With the mixer running, alternate between adding the dry ingredients and the warm sour cream until everything is well mixed.
Transfer the dough to a well-oiled bowl, cover loosely with greased plastic wrap, and refrigerate for at least 2 hours or up to overnight.
Line a baking sheet with parchment paper and lightly oil the parchment. Once the dough has rested overnight, turn it out onto a well-floured surface and roll to ¾ inch thick. Cut with a 2½-inch donut cutter (or a 2½-inch circle cutter for the donuts and a ½-inch circle cutter for the holes) and set the donuts and holes on the lined baking sheet. Gather the scraps into a ball, reroll, and cut (do this only once or the donuts will be tough).
Cover a wire cooling rack with paper towels or brown paper bags. Heat a large pot halfway full of oil to 350°F.
While the oil is heating, make the glaze. Heat the milk and vanilla in a medium saucepan over low heat until warm. Add the sifted confectioners’ sugar and whisk until completely smooth. Transfer the glaze to a bowl and set it over a pot of warm water to keep it from hardening while the donuts fry.
Once the oil is up to temp, use a slotted spoon to lower the donuts two at a time into the oil. Cook until deep golden brown, 1½ to 2 minutes per side. Remove the donuts from the oil with the slotted spoon and transfer to the paper towels. Once all of the donuts are fried, fry the donut holes in 2 batches and drain on paper towels. Dip the donuts and donut holes in the warm glaze or drizzle it over them. Eat immediately.
The Witches
MUSSEL, SHRIMP, and COD STEW
Recently, a group of friends and I were reminiscing over dinner about various childhood humiliations, swapping stories about terrible first kisses, super-flared jeans, mushroom cuts, and organized dance routines. One friend talked about laughing until she wet her pants at a middle school semiformal; another told of getting a jumbo cola thrown at her from a car full of older girls.
Then my friend Nick, who is also from Massachusetts, told us about the time he went on a class field trip to the Salem Witch Museum in third grade and threw up from sheer terror in front of his entire class as soon as the tour guide placed his head in the stocks. I was laughing so hard I had tears coming down my cheeks, but the rest of my friends, all of whom grew up outside New England, were absolutely horrified, unable to believe that we were taught about such violent atrocities at such a young age.
I had always assumed that this was a part of everyone’s elementary school curriculum—that everyone had learned about Cotton Mather and Bridget Bishop, about stonings and hangings, before being dismissed, wide-eyed and silent, for recess. I was shocked to learn that most of my friends had never heard of the Salem witch trials until high school, when they were assigned The Crucible, and others not until midway through college, when it came up in an Early American History class.
After that night I started asking friends who teach elementary school whether they taught their students about the witch trials, and all but one of them laughed and said that they would never be allowed to. It got me thinking about my early education and the teachers who firmly and honestly taught me and my peers about witch hunts and genocide and war. These were the blue-haired New England teachers of the old school, who wore sensible, midcalf cotton skirts and believed that fear was an integral part of educating children.
I loved these women, with their Ivory soap smells and tea-stained teeth and their willingness to tell the truth about just how ugly the world can be. It was easiest to imagine that these ladies, who never once mentioned husbands or children of their own, lived at the school—unlike those bubbly, young, just-married teachers who were forever showing us photos of their new homes and kittens and bringing their husbands to school for visits. It was also easy to imagine that these women, who insisted on teaching us about the atrocities of the Salem witch trials, were themselves witches.
Year after year rumors circulated about the same teachers, and things only got worse after we read Roald Dahl’s The Witches. While the history lessons about the witch trials provided us with impractical tools for spotting a witch—hidden birthmarks and difficulty reciting the Lord’s Prayer—The Witches told us that it was as easy as looking at hair, hands, eyes, gums. We looked and looked, finding signs wherever we wanted to and making them up when we couldn’t.
As a child, anything that I read in a book was the absolute truth as far as I was concerned, so when Dahl told me in the foreword to The Witches, “This is not a fairy tale. This is about REAL WITCHES,” I believed him wholeheartedly. I read the book like a manual, flipping back to it for reference whenever an adult was particularly cruel to me or an old woman looked at me for too long while I read at the library.
Dahl, like the teachers of my youth, wasn’t shy about frightening children. His insistence that what he was writing was true is perhaps one of the reasons that this book has always been so controversial—kids are gullible and witch hunts are real, and teaching children to look for physical signs in a woman that will condemn her as evil is dicey territory. Before the Salem witch trials in 1692, there were the Vardø witch trials in Norway, starting in 1621 and continuing intermittently until 1663. These trials serve as the historical backdrop to The Witches. The narrator’s grandmother hails from Oslo and assures him that “her witch stories, unlike most of the others, were not imaginary tales. They were all true. They were the gospel truth. They were history.”
Besides their bleak shared history of witch hunts, Norway and Massachusetts also find common ground in the fact that they are coastal and have therefore relied heavily on the ocean as a food source throughout history. I never knew just how spoiled I was by Massachusetts seafood until I moved away from home and ate in other cities. Growing up, we consumed enormous amounts of seafood—tiny, sweet scallops and plump, briny Wellfleet oysters; mayo-heavy lobster rolls, with meaty claws peeking out from inside buttered hot dog buns.
In the winter we ate oven-broiled cod, white and flaky and covered in butter and Ritz Crackers. In the summer we rowed a rickety boat a half mile out to gather armloads of shiny, tight-lipped mussels from a gigantic lion-shaped rock, braving razor-sharp barnacles and dive-bombing seabirds so that we could have mussels, steamed or grilled, for dinner. In every season we ate steaming bowls of creamy, chest-warming clam chowder dotted with sweet corn and linguiça sausage and full-bellied littlenecks.
One scene in The Witches resonated with me the most, both as a child and as an adult: the one in which the narrator’s grandmother reminisces about her childhood days spent “out in the rowing boat.” She tells him about how she and her brother used to explore the tiny islands along the coast, diving into the sea “off the lovely smooth granite rocks,” dropping anchor to fish for cod or whiting, and frying up whatever they caught in a pan for lunch—adding that “there is no finer fish in the world than absolutely fresh cod.”
They used mussels for bait, and if nothing bit they would “cook [the mussels] in sea-water” until they were “tender and salty” and “delicious.” When they were feeling less ambitious they would simply row out to sea and wait for the shrimp boats to head h
ome, waving at the men so that they would stop and give them handfuls of shrimp, “still warm from having just been cooked,” and they would “sit in the rowing boat, peeling them and gobbling them up,” even sucking out the head to make sure they got every last bit. It’s a beautiful passage, and one that reminds me just how much talent Dahl had, not only as an imaginative storyteller, but as a writer.
Reading about cod and mussels and shrimp so close together immediately makes me think of the cioppino my family used to get in the Italian North End of Boston, packed with the morning’s catches and simmered in wine and plump tomatoes and speckled with crushed red pepper.
THE WITCHES
Mussel, Shrimp, and Cod Stew
In this recipe I use mussels, shrimp, and cod for their literary authenticity, but feel free to add or substitute any fish or shellfish you prefer, or whatever looks the freshest at the market.
Serves 6
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 tablespoon unsalted butter
1 yellow onion, diced
1 fennel bulb, thinly sliced
1 bunch fresh parsley, roughly chopped
½ bay leaf
2 teaspoons kosher salt, plus more to taste
5 garlic cloves, roughly chopped
1 teaspoon crushed red pepper
1 (28-ounce) can crushed tomatoes
2½ cups chicken stock
1½ cups dry white wine
½ cup bottled clam juice
2 tablespoons tomato paste
2 fresh basil leaves, finely chopped