Oatcakes From Scotland

I find Nairn's oatcakes to be strangely delicious.  Given that they are essentially oats and water I don't fully understand the attraction...after all, it seems like the kind of thing that the poor serfs in Far and Away would be forced to eat.  

But despite, or perhaps due to, their rather ascetic nature, these oatcakes make a wonderful base for some rather indulgent toppings...cheese, butter, various saturated fat-filled dips.  And actually jam is a surprisingly good partner as well.

However, whenever I'm looking for them I can't find them, or I find some odd variety like ginger that I find totally unappealing.  And often if I do find them they cost $5 for one package.  For oats!  

Anyway, I took a gander at the ingredient list, and as it was pretty limited, I figured I could devise a recipe without too much trouble.  And I was right!  

I was a little worried about my steel cut oats being too coarse to form a dough without a bit of flour so I added some barley flour I had laying around and threw in some all purpose flour as well.  But if you have some fine cut oats, adjust as you see fit.

Scottish Oatcakes

1/2 cup barley flour

1/2 cup steel cut oats

1/2 cup + 1 tablespoon all purpose white flour

3/4 teaspoon fine sea salt

4 teaspoons vegetable oil (I used safflower, you could also use melted butter or bacon fat)

1/2 cup water

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

In a bowl, combine flours, oats and sea salt.  Stir in your fat of choice with a fork, blend with your fingers if the fork isn't doing it for you.

Stir in enough water to form a dough.  Knead on a floured surface for 10 seconds or so.  Flatten into a disk and roll out to a thickness of 1/8 - 1/4 inch.  With a cookie cutter (I prefer round but do as you wish) stamp out your crackers and place them on an ungreased cookie sheet.

Bake for 15-20 minutes, until edges are brown.

Looking Back

Now that my aunt has discovered Facebook, my sister and I have been noticing that quite a few of our baby pictures have been showing up on various walls and in albums and in god knows what other Facebook applications.  

Not that we're complaining, mind you.  We were adorable children after all.  And luckily she hasn't felt the need to post any images in the "naked in the inflatable swimming pool" family.

On my bi-monthly visit to Facebook this afternoon I noticed that my sister has fully embraced the trip down memory lane, and has decided to use this iconic (in our family at least) shot of her as a little tyke wearing my mother's hat:

See what I mean?  Cute kids.

What I Like This Week

I am a massive fan of The Kitchn, so couldn't be happier to have been chosen to write a guest post for them! I rhapsodize over foodstuffs on their site here.

I love bacon candy, so am totally captivated by the idea of bacon caramel, which Nom de Plume has graciously recommended a source for.

Terry over at Blue Kitchen has an inspired idea for my lunch next week with his Chicken Salad With Toasted Coconut and Roasted Cashews.

Clotilde at Chocolate and Zucchini has an absolutely brilliant idea for a tart dough (olive oil, no butter!), which I anticipate will be making my kitchen debut this weekend.

And on another note, I was lucky enough to get a tour yesterday of the much anticipated Highline. The elevated park is not yet open, as they are still putting on the finishing touches, but will be open to the public starting mid-June.

It certainly did not disappoint! The actual park is stunningly similar to the original renderings that were created at the beginning of the process (with smaller trees of course). The plantings do a beautiful job of approximating a field of wild flowers and grasses, and the architectural elements are sleek and imaginative.

I have a sneaky suspicion that I will be whiling away quite a few hours on the rolling wooden chaise lounges this summer!

Cast Iron

I love things that are well made, that seem as though they'll be around for decades to come. And although I'm a bit compulsive about culling my own belongings, there are certain items that have been passed down through my family over the years that I would never dream of parting with. So it will come as no surprise that I adore my grandmother's cast iron skillet, a family heirloom that is also possibly the most durable good you will ever come across.



If you look closely, you'll see the imprint indicating that the skillet was forged in Erie Pennsylvania. Good old time American craftsmanship if I've ever seen it.



Happily, given the limited storage and display options that my apartment offers, the skillet is also an extraordinarily useful item. Despite its considerable heft, I find myself wrangling it to the stove at least twice a week.


It conducts heat evenly and retains heat extremely well, which makes it the ideal implement for searing meats. But I also find myself using it for a variety of tasks including baking (cornbread and frittata particularly), roasting (perfect for a small shoulder roast or the like) and cooking fish on the stovetop. This last task is not traditionally recommended, but in my experience it works wonderfully well, and when I found out that Le Bernadin, the high temple of fish, uses only cast iron cookware, I felt fully vindicated.


So why is cast iron cookware not a more common item in American kitchens? My guess is that people have been scared off by all of the talk of seasoning, of scrubbing with salt rather than soap, and of the ongoing maintenance. And I'll admit that often the instructions that are given for cast iron care are off-putting and complex. But as is the case so often, life doesn't have to be so difficult.


For the uninitiated, when you buy a new cast iron item (they are surprisingly cheap by the way), its surface is just about as far opposite from nonstick as you can get. However, the seasoning process will make the surface more nonstick than Teflon, and will erradicate all of that concern about chemicals in your food and the associations with well liked but adulterous politicians.

Seasoning consists essentially of coating the pan with a thin sheet of oil, and then heating it for some time, either in a low oven or over a low flame, until the oil is absorbed. You do this five or ten times, and the surface is no longer porous...all of the small crevices will have filled with baked oil. The more you oil it, the better the surface (and the more resistant it is to rust), which is why old, well used cast iron pans are highly prized.


General wisdom goes that you should re-season the pan after each use, and that you should not use soap of any kind on cast iron as it will only serve to compromise the seasoning. Therefore you should use coarse salt to scrub away any cooked on food. Now if this were actually the case I probably wouldn't ever use cast iron either.

My mother, as she often does, has debunked this labor intensive myth and come up with a much easier method. Now you can't get around the initial need for seasoning, but once you've got a good thing going, all you need to do after each use is heat the pan on the stove, turn off the flame, rub a little coconut oil on the pan with a paper towel and leave it alone until the pan has cooled down. As cast iron retains heat like nothing else, this will be a good fifteen or twenty minutes. Once it's cool, simply wipe off any excess with a paper towel. Couldn't be simpler. And if I may put my two cents in on the cleaning question, if you can't get the pan clean with a scrub brush and very hot water, a tiny bit of mild soap like Dr. Bronner's isn't going to do any harm.

Et voila, you will eventually have a pan that gleams with nonstickiness.

If you come across an old cast iron pan with old cooked on food, do not despair, there is hope. I speak from experience here...my grandmother, who was a wonderful woman in countless ways, was not, as far as I can tell, a great cook. Thus this pan had a lot of non-iron material stuck to the surface. I can only assume it was the result of some botched cooking experiments.

I started off by sanding the offending particles off. But that was slow going so I began to research alternatives. I was advised to throw the pan into a hot fire for three hours and then re-season. But if I were to come across a fire of that size in Manhattan I am fairly confident that I would want to run away from it, not towards it with a skillet in hand. However, it turns out you can achieve the same effect with a self-cleaning oven. Simply leave the skillet in the oven during the cleaning cycle and you will have a nearly virgin surface to deal with. The seasoning will need to be re-done, but the surface will be perfectly smooth and food-free. No manual labor required.

Aren't you tempted to give it a go now?

What To Do With Buttermilk

I am consistently baffled by the fact that buttermilk seems to be sold almost exclusively in quart-sized cartons. I can't think of one recipe that calls for more than a cup of it (if you are making normal, residence-sized quantities of course) and yet I'm always forced to buy four times that amount at the grocery store.


So, unsurprisingly, after making Smitten Kitchen's buttermilk dressing last week, I was left with the better part of a carton and, loathe to waste a thing, spent the better part of a day casting about for a recipe to use it in. I was in the mood for tea cake (it's a rare occasion that I am not) so focused my efforts there.



Clotilde's yogurt cake is my favorite low-guilt cake recipe (by low-guilt I mean butter and frosting free, and defensibly eaten in the afternoon) so I started there. I replaced a few ingredients (buttermilk in place of yogurt for one), added a few ingredients (inspired by a recent recipe in Gourmet Magazine that incorporated raspberries into a similar cake I did the same) and in honor of my whole grain loving father, threw in some rye flour for a little intrigue.


And I must say, the cake fit the bill perfectly. Light, not a hint of grease, and tartness of the raspberries (which, conveniently enough, were on sale at Citarella) provided the ideal counterpoint to the sweetness of the cake.
Sadly, as it turns out, I'm incapable of taking an attractive photo of a piece of cake, so you'll just have to take me at my word on this one. It was good. Very good. Now I just have to figure out what to do with my remaining 2 cups of buttermilk.


Buttermilk Cake With Berries


2 eggs
1 cup buttermilk
1 cup sugar
1/3 cup vegetable oil
1 tablespoon rum
1 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 1/2 cup white all purpose flour
1/2 cup rye flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon fine sea salt
scrape of nutmeg to taste
1/2 pint of raspberries


Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease a 9-inch round cake tin, springform if available and set aside.


Whisk together eggs, buttermilk, sugar, oil, rum and vanilla. Sift white and rye flour, nutmeg, baking powder and salt together. Add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients in thirds, whisking until smooth between each addition. Pour half of the batter into the prepared cake pan. Place raspberries evenly over the batter, pour remaining half of the batter into the pan and even out the top with a spatula.


Bake until a tester inserted in the center comes out clean, approximately 40 minutes.

Leisure Time

Memorial Day could not have come at a better time.  A busy period on both the professional and social front had left my apartment, and perhaps more importantly, my refrigerator and pantry, in a deteriorated state.  I needed some time to recharge myself, and one of the best ways that I know of to do so is, after a quick trip to the Greenmarket, to spend a few hours puttering about the kitchen while Paul spends some well deserved time on the couch, lifting his head only occasionally to ask after the origins of the aromas wafting towards him.

I was feeling a bit down after a week without flowers in my living space, so my first order of business yesterday was to pick up a couple of bunches from James Durr in Union Square.  

As summer approaches, Mr. Durr's stand is quickly becoming my favorite.  His selection of flowers is almost never the same week to week (although thankfully peonies have been a constant over the past month), and he is bringing an increasing variety of vegetables and fruits to market these days.  With choices ranging from rhododendron boughs to bearded iris to asparagus (the best in the market in my opinion) to rhubarb to strawberries, it's hard not to feel inspired by the bounty of the season.

After picking up my usual milk, eggs and cheese, my last stop at the market was Paffenroth Farms, my root vegetable stand-by, where I picked up a bunch of mellow french breakfast radishes.  Once home, I indulged in the wonderful french children's snack (I suppose adults indulge on occasion as well) of radishes with butter and salt, which I consider to be the perfect warm weather weekend snack (or meal, depending on your mood and how heavily you indulged the night before)

Now, I must insist on being a bit of a salt snob here.  Maldon salt, in my opinion, is utterly necessary in this dish.  As is extremely good butter.  I always use Ronnybrook's butter, which I consider to be among the best available here in New York, but brands like Plugra also make a good product with a high butterfat content.

Once my hunger had been sated, I got to work on my kitchen puttering.  My first order of business was the Zuni Cafe's pickled red onions.  

I hewed fairly closely to David Lebovitz's adaptation, although Molly over at Orangette has a nice one as well.  As they both mention, the methodology that is recommended by the Zuni Cake Cookbook is sort of a pain, but look at what a brilliant pink my onions gained as a result!  I'll reserve judgement on the taste until they've marinated for a day or two but I have to say, based on a couple of sneaky tastes, my hopes are high. 

And lastly, I got to work making my rhubarb compote.  After making a rhubarb custard a couple of weeks back, I've been somewhat obsessed with this very odd vegetable, and have picked up a bunch of the stuff at every chance I've had.  

I rather loosely followed Deborah Madison's recipe for rhubarb compote and the result was utterly delicious (she suggests adding strawberries and mango which I'm sure would be delicious but I took the purist route).  The end product provided the perfect accompaniment to my yogurt for breakfast this morning.

Now I'm feeling sufficiently recharged to venture out of my kitchen to spend time with some long neglected friends.  And tonight I'm thinking traditional Sunday roast.  Yum.

Rhubarb Compote

Adapted from Deborah Madison's Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone

1 bunch of rhubarb (mine weighed about 1 lb 12 oz.)

scant 1 cup of sugar (this is a matter of personal taste, increase or decrease depending on your preference)

juice and zest of one orange

1/8 teaspoon ground cloves

dash of vanilla extract or a bean, scraped (optional:  the vanilla will mellow the rhubarb out, if you prefer a more bracing taste, omit it)

In a Dutch oven or other heavy pot, combine all ingredients and simmer over medium heat until rhubarb is tender.  At the ideal point, some pieces will have disintegrated, some will still be relatively whole.  This should take about twenty minutes.  Serve at room temperature or chill in the refrigerator to serve at a later date.  Keeps for approximately one week.

Mayonnaise Remade

For as long as I can remember, I have hated mayonnaise. As a child I would recoil from the small jar on the shelf on the refrigerator door. Gelatinous and pale, the blue and yellow Hellman's label seemed the only indicator that the contents were meant for human consumption.


Each time I would complain about how awful I found mayonnaise to be, my mom would say something along the lines of "I know, this is nothing like the real stuff". The real stuff? She would then regale me with tales of the homemade mayonnaise that she had had the pleasure of consuming when she lived in France. And that would be the last I would hear of it. Back to the horrid jar of gunk.

Fast forward ten years or so, I had graduated from college, moved to New York and was beginning to collect a few cookbooks. My mom had set me up with the basics...Julia Child, the Doubleday Cookbook, Deborah Madison, but I also added a few supplements of my own, including Cooking For Mr. Latte. In this charming little book I came across a recipe for basil mayonnaise chicken salad, and my interest was piqued.


So I set to work making my first mayonnaise. I whisked like mad...I whisked the oil into the egg yolk until the concoction thickened. I threw in a little salt and lemon juice, tasted, and my revelation, one not so different from the one my mom must have had forty years ago in France, was complete. It was smooth, silky, and with the slight lemony piquancy the taste was vastly more appealing than any store bought brand.

I added the basil and mixed my newly herbed mayonnaise through my warm chicken pieces and quickly fell in love. It was my new lunch dish for too many days in a row.

As I became more of a mayonnaise aficionado I began to experiment more. Different herbs (the chicken salad is excellent with tarragon rather than basil), different bases (asparagus is fabulous dipped in good mayonnaise) and different oils (olive oil makes for a thinner mayonnaise while something like safflower oil makes for a thicker mixture). The options are endless, and most certainly worth exploring. To get you started, here is the basic mayonnaise recipe that I have settled on:

Mayonnaise

1 egg yolk, room temperature

1 teaspoon dijon mustard

coarse salt

1/2 cup mild oil like safflower

1/4 cup high quality olive oil

lemon juice to taste

Select a relatively heavy mixing bowl, one that will not move around too much as you whisk. In the absence of such a bowl, set mixing bowl on either a non-slip surface or a wet dish towel. Whisk egg yolk and mustard together and add a healthy pinch of salt. Then, while whisking, drizzle safflower oil slowly into the mixture. It will begin to thicken fairly quickly. Then whisk in the olive oil. The olive oil only makes sense if you have a delicious one that can add another dimension to the mayonnaise. Otherwise, substitute safflower oil. Taste, and add lemon juice to taste, approximately 2 teaspoons, and more salt if necessary.