Linguine with Tomato-Shrimp Sauce

by Sheila Connolly

And the other cookbook I bought in Northampton was (drumroll) Beard on Pasta! Published in 1983, it’s a companion to Beard on Bread (1974), which I’ve owned since before I was married. I’m not sure I’ve ever baked any of the recipes, but Beard is a good storyteller so it’s fun reading. (Confession: I also own a copy of The Tassajara Bread Book, which is even older, not that I've used it much, but back in the day you had to have a copy.) Obviously I’ve been collecting cookbooks for a long time!

Beard goes through the whole “make your own pasta” thing at the beginning of the book. Yes, I own a hand-cranked pasta machine. I’ve even used it, now and then. Not much lately.

But to get to the recipe (at last! you say). This one caught my eye because it’s quick and simple and tasty.

Linguine with Tomato-Shrimp Sauce

Adapted from Beard on Pasta, by James Beard

28 ounces (2 cans) canned whole or chopped tomatoes in puree

olive oil

2 small onions (or one large), sliced

salt and pepper to taste

dried basil or oregano (optional; I had fresh oregano—from my herb pot!—so that’s what I used)

1/2 pound peeled raw shrimp

2 cloves garlic, minced

3 Tblsp Italian parsley, chopped

2 Tblsp olive oil

Red pepper flakes (optional)

1 pound linguine

In a large pot, cook the sliced onions in a little olive oil over medium heat until they are just soft. Add the tomatoes, salt, pepper and herbs and continue cooking over medium heat for 20 minutes, stirring frequently.

If you like a smooth sauce, you can run the sauce through a food processor, or use an immersion blender. (I bought my Cuisinart immersion blender at a neighbor’s yard sale for three dollars. It’s come in handy.)

Taste for seasoning. When the sauce is finished, add the other ingredients and simmer until the shrimp turn pink (not too long).

Cook the linguine according to the package instructions. Drain, place in individual bowls, and spoon the sauce over it.

You can use frozen shrimp, or smaller shrimp, or scallops, or seafood chunks—the possibilities are endless. It’s still quick and easy.

This recipe easily serves four (we’ve got leftovers!).

When Nell Pratt isn't digging into murders (I know, a bad pun!), she gets to visit a lot of Philadelphia restaurants--which of course means that I have to investigate them thoroughly. Oh, the life of a writer is hard!

Available at Amazon and Barnes and Noble 

(and a lot of other bookstores, I hope!)

Strawberry Tart

by Sheila Connolly

The last of the local strawberries… I hadn’t been to a farmers market this spring, so I kind of over-indulged when I was in Northampton, buying two overflowing quarts of beautiful ripe berries.

There are only two of us at home these days, and that was a lot of strawberries. First round: the old stand-by, strawberry shortcake, with home-made shortcakes and plenty of whipped cream. Didn’t use up even half of the berries.

Also in Northampton, I visited one of my favorite used bookstores, The Raven, where I bought (1) a four-volume edition of the History of Middlesex County, published in 1927 (maybe only a Massachusetts genealogist can get excited about that); (2) Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (which somehow I’d never read); and (3) two cookbooks. I can’t stop myself.

One of these cookbooks was Seasonal Fruit Desserts, by Deborah Madison, which had lots of nice recipes (I’m always on the lookout for new apple recipes). But what struck me was that there were not one but two new pie-crust recipes! I may have mentioned (often) that I am pie-crust challenged—these two may be numbers 14 and 15. But hope springs eternal!

So there I was with a pile of strawberries and a new pie crust recipe—but I couldn’t find a single recipe I liked. So I snooped around and combined several, and this is the result.

Strawberry Pie

The crust:

8 Tblsp (1 stick) unsalted butter, 

     at room temperature

1/3 cup sugar

1/4 tsp salt

3 eggs, at room temperature

1/2 tsp vanilla extract

grated zest of one orange (optional)

1 cup all-purpose flour

Butter a 9" round or square tart pan.

Beat the butter with the sugar and salt with an electric mixer until light and fluffy, about 2 minutes.

Add the eggs, one at a time, beating well. Scrape down the sides of the bowl and beat again until smooth.

Add the flavorings, then the flour, and mix just to combine. 

Scrape the batter into the tart pan (be sure to gather up all the bits of flour from the bottom of the bowl).  With an offset spatula, spread out the batter, pushing it up against the sides to make a rim.

If the batter is too soft to handle, refrigerate it for 10 minutes.

When making your tart, preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Line the tart pan with the dough and set it on a cookie sheet. Bake for about 30 minutes, until it just begins to brown.

Remove from the oven and let cool (it will shrink down a bit).

Lemon Curd:

Wait, what’s that doing here? Call it mortar, so you have something to set your strawberries in, to bind them to the crust. (You could also use a simple pastry custard without the lemon.)

2 large eggs

1/2 cup sugar

3 Tblsp fresh lemon juice

1/4 cup (1/2 stick) unsalted butter

1-1/2 tsp grated lemon peel

Grate the peel from the lemon. Squeeze the lemon to extract the juice. (One large lemon will provide both enough juice and peel for this recipe.)

Whisk the eggs, sugar and lemon juice in a small heavy saucepan. Add the butter and the lemon peel. Place over medium heat and stir until the butter melts. Keep stirring until the curd thickens to the consistency of pudding, which should take about 5 minutes.

Place in a small bowl, then press plastic wrap on the surface (to prevent a skin from forming). Chill at least 2 hours.

Putting it all together:

Remove the rim from the tart crust and place the crust on a serving plate.

Spread a thin layer of the lemon curd to cover the bottom.

Arrange the strawberries on top of the curd.You can use whole strawberries, or slice them as I did (tastes good either way!). 

Melt some jelly (seedless—take your pick from any red jelly you like) and brush over the top of the berries.

Chill to set—then eat quickly! This tart gets soggy overnight.

P.S. The other pie-crust recipe from the Seasonal Fruit Desserts cookbook? A more typical rolled crust, but made with maple or brown sugar and a bit of whole-wheat pastry flour. Now, what kind of filling should I try?

Privy to the Dead, still in its first month. I promise there's nothing disgusting in the privy!

At Amazon and Barnes & Noble

Have a wonderful (and safe) Fourth of July!

Emily Dickinson's Rice Cakes

by Sheila Connolly

This past weekend fell into a knot of family events—birthdays for both my husband and myself, Father’s Day, the summer solstice (it rained, so no dawn). We usually take ourselves out to dinner, but we couldn’t get inspired by any of the local restaurants in our neighborhood (few and far between, at least the good ones), so we decided to go where we knew we’d find plenty of restaurants: Northampton and Amherst. Saturday was one of Northampton’s market days, so I loaded up on fresh asparagus and garlic scapes. When we arrived in Amherst, we discovered they were holding a three-day event featuring a million or so restaurants, and you could graze at little expense. Despite generally ominous weather the event was well-attended: that is definitely foodie territory.

By Sunday morning it was pouring buckets, so we decided to visit Emily Dickinson’s house (which I had seen but my husband hadn’t). Lovely, as always, and not crowded. The house next door, The Evergreens, was built later by Emily’s brother Austin, and I had never managed to see it, so we followed our very well informed docent to it.

Oh, my. Through a convoluted series of events, the house has changed almost not at all since it was built, in the high Victorian style. It really is like stepping into the past (except that the place needs a lot of work after 100-plus years!). I love grand formal rooms, but I also love what goes on in the back of the house—kitchens and larders and pantries and such. The docent apologized that the stove there now dates from 1903, I think, but the refrigerator (yes, there was one), sinks, etc., are all as they always were (and in the adjacent dining room, the table was set for dinner, with the original family china). (The kitchen in Emily’s house next door is currently off limits to visitors. No picture-taking was allowed at either house.)

Emily was said to be the baker in the family, although if you look at her dress (a replica is on display at her house), it’s clear she was a slight woman, and she had some significant health issues (although there’s still a lot of argument about what they were). So let’s assume she had one or another servant helping her with the baking, especially with the dishes that made vast quantities, like her famous Black Cake recipe (which I presented here in 2010).

This time I’d like to share a simpler—and smaller!—recipe for rice cakes, which would have been served with tea to callers. They’re much more appropriate for spring or summer baking, plus they're quick and easy to whip up when you see guests coming.

Emily Dickinson’s Rice Cakes

1 cup rice flour

1 cup powdered sugar

2 eggs (at room temperature)

1/2 cup (salted) butter, softened

1 tsp milk mixed with 1/4 tsp baking soda

You may add spices to flavor the cakes—mace and/or nutmeg are suggested. Or you could add a teaspoon of vanilla. I went with mace.

Note: this recipe was adapted for modern cooking!

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

Cream the butter. In a separate bowl, beat the eggs. Add the sugar to the butter and mix, then blend in the eggs.

In honor of Emily I used a vintage sifter

 Sift together the dry ingredients, and add to the butter-egg mixture. Add the milk mixed with soda.

Grease an 8x8” square pan (actually my pan is closer to 7x7”, so I used a 9x9” pan instead—it worked fine) and line it with parchment paper. Pour in the batter and bake in the preheated oven for 15-20 minutes, or until the top is lightly browned.

Let cool in the pan before cutting, then cut into squares.

The small cakes are not too sweet, with a bit of crunch (due to the rice flour—it was somewhat coarsely milled). You could serve them with strawberries when they’re in season (which they were in Northampton)!

For cozy-lovers: This is Emily's sister Lavinia (with a cat). The sisters lived together in The Homestead for most of their lives. Lavinia loved cats and had many. Emily hated the cats. Must have been an interesting household.

No privies in sight at either of the Dickinson residences, but some really interesting antique plumbing!

Privy to the Dead is available at Amazon and Barnes & Noble

Three Flags Cake

by Sheila Connolly

This recipe was one I adapted from The Culinary Lives of John and Abigail Adams, by Rosana Yin-Ting Wan, published last year.

In case you didn’t notice, Flag Day was this past Sunday. Don’t worry if you missed it—it’s not one of the major American holidays. In fact, Pennsylvania is the only state that celebrates it, but it took the rest of the country thirty years to notice.

On June 14^th, 1777, during the American Revolution, the Continental Congress adopted a resolution stating that “the flag of the United States be thirteen alternate stripes red and white” and that “the Union be thirteen stars, white in a blue field, representing a new Constellation.” Legend has it that Philadelphia seamstress Betsy Ross designed the new canton for the flag, which consisted of a circle of 13 stars and a blue background, at the request of General George Washington. (Historians have been unable to conclusively prove or disprove this legend.)

The Star Spangled Banner, immortalized by
Francis Scott Key during the War of 1812,
which now resides in the Smithsonian in Washington.

 Flag Day was officially established by the Proclamation of President Woodrow Wilson on May 30th, 1916. But it was not until August 3rd, 1949, that President Truman signed an Act of Congress designating June 14th of each year as National Flag Day.

Anyway, in Paris in April 1778, John Adams wrote in his diary about a cake he shared at an event with, among others, Benjamin Franklin. When the cake was served, it bore three flags whose inscriptions celebrated the actions of the American Congress in creating its own symbolic flag.

The recipe given in the book was reported to be from an 1830 transcription of a recipe written in French from 1789. Let me say only that I hope the historical information is more accurate that the cake recipe as given—I had to make a lot of modifications, or I would have ended up with a sodden mess.

Three Flag Cake

1 package yeast, dissolved in 1/4 cup 

   warm water (see package

   instructions)

2-1/4 cups all-purpose flour

8 egg yolks

2 egg whites

1/4 cup water

2 Tblsp rosewater (since I was lacking on rosewater, I substituted orange water, which also appears in many early recipes)

1/2 cup sugar

12 Tblsp (1-1/2 sticks) butter

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Grease a cake pan with butter. [Note: the recipe did not specify what size pan. I used a vintage pan that holds 4 cups of batter and it proved to be the right size.]

Prepare the yeast in a small bowl. Make sure it’s fully dissolved.

In a larger bowl, combine the flour, egg yolks, egg whites, water, rosewater, sugar and butter. Add the yeast mixture and mix well.

Pour the batter into the pan. Place the cake pan into the preheated oven and bake for 30-40 minutes, or until a toothpick comes out clean.

Let cool on a cake rack before icing.

You can use any simple icing—you can just mix confectioner’s sugar and lemon juice together until you get a drizzly consistency.

The result was interesting: yeasty, of course (baking soda and beaten egg whites were not popular as leavening until the early 19^th century), and not too sweet. 

And if you should ever happen to try it, raise your glass to John Adams and Benjamin Franklin!

And don't forget Privy to the Dead, which takes place not far from where Betsy Ross's shop may (or may not) have stood, and also close to Benjamin Franklin's grave, where people often leave him offerings (no, not cake!).

Available at Amazon and Barnes and Noble

Chicken Korma

by Sheila Connolly

Years ago, when I was working on a political campaign in Philadelphia, we often ordered takeout from a hole-in-the-wall Indian restaurant a couple of blocks away. I fell in love with the lamb korma, but I’ve never found it since, and lamb is hard to come by around here, for reasons that mystify me, so I can't make my own.

The great culinary resource Wikipedia (you do know I’m kidding, right?) says that “Korma (from Turkish kavurma), also spelled kormaa, qorma, khorma, or kurma, is a dish originating in Central Asia consisting of meat or vegetables braised in a spiced sauce made with yogurt, cream, nut or seed paste.” A bit oversimplified, but you get the basics: meat simmered in sauce that includes yogurt and a bunch of spices. The nice thing is, you can vary the spices and the heat any way you want.

So when I saw this recipe earlier this year in the New York Times, I pounced on it. And then I started changing it, of course. The original version was kind of sweet, incorporating cloves and cinnamon. I respect the tradition, but I’m not a big fan of the flavor combination. I decided to hang on to the cardamom, though, because that has a very distinctive flavor.

So here goes my excursion into Bangladeshi cooking (in case you don’t remember, Bangladesh was once known as East Pakistan, and it’s next door to India). 

Chicken Korma

2 lbs skinless, bone-in chicken pieces (dark meat works best. As it happens, I had a whole chicken, and the two hind-quarters weighed almost exactly two pounds. And the sauce was just about the right amount for those two pieces.)

1 tsp salt

1 medium onion, peeled

1 1-1/2” knob of fresh ginger, peeled and chopped

3 cloves garlic, chopped

1/2 cup whole milk yogurt

4-6 green cardamom pods, cracked open

2 bay leaves

1/2 tsp black peppercorns

2-3 small hot green chiles (optional)

2 Tblsp butter

2 Tblsp vegetable oil

Season the chicken pieces with salt and place in a medium-size Dutch oven. Thinly slice a quarter of the onion and set it aside. Roughly chop the rest of the onion, then puree it in a blender with the ginger, garlic, and 3 Tblsp water until smooth. If it thickens too much, add a little more water.

Yes, I have a blender. It was a wedding present.
It is Harvest Gold. It still works.

Combine the onion puree with the yogurt, cardamom, bay leaves and peppercorns. Spread it over the chicken in the Dutch oven. Bring the mixture to a simmer over medium-high heat, stirring. Cover the pot until the chicken releases its juices, in 5-7 minutes.

Uncover the pot and adjust the heat to maintain a gentle simmer. Cook, stirring and flipping the chicken occasionally until it is tender and the sauce is as thick as gravy, about 35 minutes. (It took this long to cook the chicken through. It’s kind of a juggling act to keep the sauce from boiling too hard while making sure the chicken is cooked.) If you need to, you can thin the sauce with water. If you’re using the hot chiles, now is the time to add them. Taste to see if you want more salt.

Heat the butter and oil in a small pan over medium-high heat. After it foams, add the sliced onions and cook, stirring, until they are well browned, about 3-4 minutes. Add a pinch of salt, then add the onion mixture to the chicken.

Serve with steamed basmati rice. This kind of rice has long been a staple in Indian/Pakistani cooking (it’s no harder to cook than any other kind of rice, except maybe Minute Rice, which is still around). You can use regular long grain or Jasmine rice, but it won’t have the same flavor.

The sauce

One note: the original (authentic?) recipe called for whole peppercorns and cardamom pods, which are a bit hard to chew. If you prefer, you can add ground black pepper, and remove the seeds from the cardamom pods (or even use ground cardamom).

Privy to the Dead! Came out last week! What do you mean, you don't have a copy yet? (Come to think of it, I may have mentioned that Philadelphia Indian restaurant in the book, or one that came before it.)

Find it at Amazon and Barnes and Noble.

On a related note, I did mention a sandwich place down the street from the "Society" in Philadelphia, but I had long since forgotten the name of the real place: More Than Just Ice Cream (I walked by it last month--it's still there!)

Gougere

by Sheila Connolly

I kind of backed into this recipe. You see, it’s fiddlehead season. If you’re not familiar with fiddleheads, they are the tender tips of emerging ferns, still tightly coiled. They’re available for a very short time each spring. They taste a bit like asparagus, with a nice crunch.

The thing is, there’s not much you can do with them, if you want to enjoy their delicacy and freshness: simply saute/steam them with a little butter.

So, while contemplating my pound of fresh fiddleheads, I tried to come up with a complementary recipe for something, and I landed on gougère. That’s a fancy word for a pastry made of pâte à choux. Not any clearer? Think cream puff dough. I was first introduced to gougère by Julia Child, many years ago. Most often they are made by the spoonful, which produces a hollow crispy pastry that you can fill with either a sweet or savory filling. The dough is easy and fun to make.

But I wanted a single dish, not a fiddly (ha, a pun) bunch of little things. So I had to go hunting, and found one that was kinda, sorta what I wanted, so I started fine-tuning it. And voila! Here is my companion dish to the fiddleheads!

Gougère with mushrooms and ham

Pâte à Choux:

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.

 

1 cup flour

Pinch each of salt and pepper

1 cup water

1/2 cup butter

4 eggs

1/8 lb sharp Cheddar cheese, diced (about 1/4 inch cubes)

Mix the flour, salt and pepper together. Heat the water and butter in a large saucepan until the butter melts.

Bring the liquid to a boil. Add the flour mixture all at once and stir vigorously (most sources suggest a sturdy wooden spoon for this) until it comes together in an elastic ball. This should take about a minute.

Allow the mixture to cool for about 5 minutes. Add the eggs one at a time, beating well with that wooden spoon after each one.

Stir in the diced cheese.

  

Filling: (actually I made the filling first, because it can sit while you make the dough)

4 Tblsp butter

1 medium onion, chopped

1/2 lb mushrooms, sliced

1-1/2 Tblsp flour

1/2 tsp salt

Freshly grated pepper

1 cup chicken broth, heated

6 ounces cooked ham, chopped

1 Tblsp Cheddar cheese, shredded

Melt the butter in a large skillet. Saute the onion over low-medium heat until soft but not browned. Add the mushrooms and cook for another 2 minutes.

Sprinkle the flour, salt and pepper and cook for an additional 2 minutes. Add the chicken broth and mix well. Bring to a boil, stirring constantly. Remove the sauce from the heat and add the ham. Taste for seasoning.

Butter a 10- or 11-inch ovenproof skillet or shallow baking dish. Spoon the pâte à choux in a ring around the edge, leaving a hole in the center. 

Spoon the filling into the center. Sprinkle the shredded cheese over the whole thing.

Bake in the preheated oven for 40 minutes or until the gougère is crisp and puffy and the filling is bubbling.

Serve at once, cut into wedges (it kind of goes splat once you cut into it, but it tastes good!. Along with your fiddleheads!

At last! Privy to the Dead, available everywhere! You can finally find out what's in that hole in the basement of the Pennsylvania Antiquarian Society. (Don't worry, it won't turn your stomach.)

Find it at Amazon and Barnes and Noble and Indiebound