Engine Summer

Several years ago I wrote down in my commonplace book a very simple recipe by Elizabeth David; I was sitting in some used bookstore or out-of-town library or other, and it was not a book of hers I've seen round since, although nothing of hers is that rare. But I knew I'd forget to do it if I didn't write it down, which is why I have a commonplace book in the first place. (Well, and also for people's phone numbers, and the addresses of various restaurants, and the list of things I want to get various library systems to cough up, and this-and-that quotation, and because papersky gave me the book and it was one of those Christmas presents that one can't figure out how one survived before having, but I digress.)

sovay and I finally cooked it, and everyone ought to go and do likewise, because it is brilliant.

Dried Apricot Fool,
freely paraphrased from Elizabeth David

1/2 lb. unsulfured dried apricots. This is Very Important. You cannot do this with sulfured ones; they just won't. Finding unsulfured dried apricots that weren't as shriveled and hardened as a wood ear mushroom is the reason it took me five years to make this recipe, and sovay was the one who eventually found them. (Yes, I know Trader Joe's theoretically carries them. Theirs suck.) Unsulfured dried apricots will be a warm shade of brown, not remotely orange; will have, as the only ingredient, 'apricots'; and may say somewhere on the label 'unsulfured' or 'no preservatives'. They should be plump and moderately soft to the touch.

Honey.
Water.
A pot to put the apricots in, with a lid.
1/4 pint lightly whipped cream, just to soft-peak stage.

Put the apricots in the pot, and just cover them with water. Put on the lid. Leave them to soak for, oh, let's say at least four hours, or overnight, if that's more convenient.

When they've soaked, they will be plump, soft, squishy, and very close to disintegrating outright into the water. Put the entire pot, lid on, adding nothing, into a 330F oven for one hour.

Pour off the water. It will be cider-brown and smell and taste strongly of apricot; I kept it and am calling it apricot simple syrup and using it as such, because it needs no sugar. Coarsely puree the apricots.

Elizabeth David thinks you ought to coarsely strain them, too, at this point, but I can't see why. I suppose if you have any bits that resolutely failed to stop being hard and crunchy you ought to.

Mix in honey to taste. About two tablespoons, maybe? We were very doubtful about the honey, because the apricots are quite sweet enough, but it turns out to add not sweetness but complexity; don't skip it.

When the apricots are cool enough not to curdle the whipped cream, beat the whipped cream in. Elizabeth David would like you to chill the fool now; I'd say, chill at least long enough to get it to room temperature, as it is better than when hot, but you don't need to go all the way to cold.

The result resembles a pumpkin custard, except that it is better than anything of that sort I have ever had. It is as complex as though it had a week of careful stewing with spices, it has none of the tinny taste you can get from canned pumpkin or pumpkin cooked in the wrong pot, it maintains the perfect consistency and doesn't go watery, and it also tastes like apricots, but as though somebody achieved some kind of perfect apricot-pumpkin meld on, like, a genetic level. I instantly wanted to put it in a pie. (nineweaving points out that one should probably blind-bake a pie shell and do it as a chilled, molded pie, or the cream will run when it heats up. I am not sure whether I will try it that way, or beat an egg into it and make a cooked pie.)

Elizabeth David also thinks that if you are feeling particularly flush, you can beat ground almonds into it, too. My brain both trips over itself attempting to cope with the amount of sheer deliciousness that would produce, and starts muttering things about frangipane and phyllo and I could make some honey candy on the side...

... which is my usual attempt to complicate the hell out of a very simple and delicious dessert which is perfect for fall and requires no thought whatsoever except when you are finding the apricots.

Seriously. Do this. It is amazing.

As one does, I occasionally read old cookbooks with horrifically sexist yet somehow entertainingly bland vignettes of early twentieth-century life in them. My favorite of these is called A Thousand Ways to Please a Husband With Bettina's Best Recipes, by Louise Bennett Weaver and Helen Cowles Le Cron (1917). Bettina is a Home Economics Mary Sue, or possibly Mary Poppins without the sarcasm, Practically Perfect In Every Way. She is forever explaining things to her friends in a sweetly condescending fashion, has never burned toast in her life, and will only let her husband mix the salad dressing if she first provides him with a multi-step instruction manual-- after which she tells him how proud she is of him for making dinner. And yet she's a progressive, in her way; one of the chapters is about her providing a several-course luncheon for prominent suffragettes from out of town. It's an interesting mixture of unintentionally hilarious, dull, and historically revelatory.

Most of the food would not work for a modern palate. Bettina puts pimento in everything, makes white sauce as a default to go over all foods, and considers something 'deviled' if it has a quarter-teaspoon of paprika and 'curried' if it has a quarter-teaspoon of curry powder (I mean a quarter-teaspoon for, say, an entire leg of lamb). The only herb she has heard of is mint, which she incessantly soaks in vinegar before using it, for reasons unknown to me. She uses one square of baking chocolate per chocolate cake, and makes peanut butter sandwiches by mixing the peanut butter with mayonnaise.

But I decided I would pay more attention to the recipes after I noticed during a recent reread that the chocolate meringue pie I have been making for the last several Thanksgivings, which I got from another source and which has been greatly acclaimed, which is that magical combination of easy and delicious that means you can toss it off while also worrying about the turkey-- is Bettina's. Huh. Not what I expected.

Further poking around came up with a few things that looked usable, and tonight for dinner I wanted a starch, and I didn't want bagels because we use them for lunch sandwiches, and the oatmeal bread Ruth likes wouldn't have gone with the asparagus, and I haven't made any bread lately and we haven't any rice or potatoes and I didn't want to go out to buy anything and we had a limited amount of time before Sassafrass rehearsal--

Bettina's Emergency Biscuit

(as it appears in the book; this recipe is meant for the days you've had to go out and do something that prevents you from making bread, biscuits that need to rise, or cake, or in other words for modernity)

2 cups flour
4 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
3 tablespoons fat (butter, lard, drippings, whatever you have)
7/8 cup milk

Mix the dry ingredients and cut in the fat. Add the milk, mixing with a knife. Drop by spoonfuls on a buttered pan, placing one inch apart. Bake twelve minutes in a hot oven.

I halved it, because there are two of us, and that made exactly the right amount. I used butter, all-purpose flour, and whole milk, and preheated the oven to 350 F. Threw the dry ingredients into a bowl, didn't even really bother mixing them, softened the butter a very little bit in the microwave (I keep my butter in the fridge so you might not need to do this), smashed it into the dry ingredients with a butter knife and cut the knife through the mixture a few times until I felt like I couldn't see any huge chunks of butter. I didn't bother measuring the milk-- just poured it in a little at a time, kept stirring with the butter knife thoroughly between trickles, and stopped when the mixture came together in a ball with no flour left at the bowl bottom. Dropped rounds of it onto a greased cookie sheet without really shaping them and put them in the oven. After six minutes I took them out, rotated them 180 degrees, and turned the oven up to 400 F; they were done at twelve minutes on the dot.

Total expenditure of my time: three minutes of mixing, a little futzing with the oven.

Total expenditure of my brain: zero thought required except when halving measurements.

Results: in contention for the best biscuits I've had, certainly better than any I've bought from a store and right up there among the ones from restaurants. They're crusty on the outside, but not hard to bite through, and inside they're ridiculously fluffy, flavorful, and savory. Make sure the balls of dough are at least the size of golf balls, as the one biscuit I made smaller than that was a little dry; also I could tell from the flavor and texture that they would go tough in the refrigerator and dry out on the counter, so only make as much as you need. Would go beautifully with butter and jam, especially when hot, but would also dip well into gravies or sauces, and I was perfectly content to eat them with nothing at all.

It's nice to remember that baking does not have to be Hard Work.

... and okay, props to Bettina. I must try her actual baking-powder biscuits that she considers correct for the days when one has time, as I will be very impressed if they are better.

composed on the fly, with ingredients we have in the house, and written down because it turned out very well.

The curry paste has no chilis because Ruth is allergic, but you could add them if you wanted.

Curry Paste:

1 tsp. ginger, either finely chopped or ground
1 tbsp. caraway seeds
1 tbsp. ground coriander
1 tsp. cinnamon
1/2 tsp. ground cloves
about 2-3 tsp. lemon juice (or, if you have lemongrass, that)
about 1 tbsp. brine from a jar of olives (a vegetarian substitute for Thai shrimp paste)
1 tsp. salt
1 medium shallot
5 cloves garlic
vegetable or canola oil, not olive

Peel shallot and garlic cloves and either chop finely or process in Cuisinart until finely chopped but not quite paste. Fry gently in a little oil over medium-low, stirring occasionally, until soft and brown (I don't like a very dark brown, but your taste may vary). Remove from pan.

Fry the ginger, caraway, coriander, cinnamon, and cloves in the pan until lightly browned, probably less than a minute. Scrape into a mortar and pestle and pound till homogeneous. Add salt and shallot-garlic mixture and pound into a paste. Add the lemon juice and brine and keep pounding until paste is fairly smooth.

Put the paste back into the pan with a little bit more oil and fry another two minutes. Makes about four tablespoons.

( Chicken/Protein Massaman Curry with Sweet Potatoes )