Asymmetrical Information

From the desk of Jane Galt:

Mushroom Strudel

2 medium onions, chopped fine
3/4 stick (6 tablespoons) unsalted butter
1 1/2 pounds mushrooms, chopped fine
2 small red bell peppers, chopped fine
1/3 cup cream sherry (such as Harvey's Bristol Cream)
1/2 cup packed fresh parsley leaves, washed, spun dry, and minced
3 tablespoons fine dry bread crumbs
a 17 1/4-ounce package frozen puff pastry sheets (2 pastry sheets), thawed

In a 12-inch heavy skillet cook onions in butter over moderately low heat, stirring occasionally, until softened. Stir in mushrooms and bell peppers and cook over moderate heat, stirring occasionally, until liquid mushrooms give off is evaporated and mixture begins to brown. This takes aproximately forever, although luckily, it is a low-intensity activity; I churned out a cheesecake and two kinds of canape-stuffing while this was going. Add sherry and cook, stirring, until liquid is evaporated.

In a bowl stir together mushroom mixture, parsley, bread crumbs, and salt and pepper to taste and cool, uncovered.

Preheat oven to 400°F. (NOTE: if you want to make these ahead, simply stick them on a cookie sheet after you've put them together, cover well with foil, and freeze. I froze the ones served at the party for a week, then pulled them out and popped them into the oven at 400°F the evening of the party. They came out fine--not a morsel survived, and several people asked for the recipe.)

On a lightly floured surface roll out 1 pastry sheet into a 14- by 10-inch rectangle. Halve rectangle lengthwise with a long sharp knife and spread about half of mushroom filling on 1 half, leaving a 1-inch border all around. Put remaining pastry half on top of filling. Crimp edges of dough together with fork tines and cut several slits in strudel with a small sharp knife. Carefully transfer with 2 spatulas to a large baking sheet, leaving room for second strudel. Make another one in same manner with remaining pastry sheet and filling.

Put in middle of oven and reduce temperature to 375°F. Bake until golden, about 35 minutes. Pastries may be made 1 day ahead, cooled completely on a rack, and chilled, wrapped in foil. Reheat, uncovered, on a baking sheet in a preheated 375°F. oven until hot, about 6 minutes. With a serrated knife cut into 3/4-inch slices.

From the desk of Jane Galt:

Chocolate Pound Cake

This is the best chocolate cake I've ever had. The caveat is that I'm not a chocolate freak, and this isn't the super-fudgy, dark 'n oily concoction that chocolate freaks generally like. But the outside is crispy and the inside has a wonderful texture -- soft and delicate. The chocolate extract gives it a lovely, delicate flavour.

Cake:
2 1/4 cups cake flour (not self-rising)
3/4 cup unsweetened
Dutch-process cocoa powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1 cup sour cream (8 1/2 ounces)
2 1/4 sticks (1 cup plus 2 tablespoons) unsalted butter, softened
1 1/2 cups granulated sugar
1 1/2 cups packed dark brown sugar
1 tablespoon chocolate extract (available at Williams Sonoma)
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
6 large eggs

Do not preheat oven. Butter and flour a 12-cup bundt pan, knocking out any excess flour.

Into a small bowl sift together flour, unsweetened cocoa powder, and salt. In another small bowl stir together baking soda and sour cream.

In a large bowl with an electric mixer (preferably a standing electric mixer) beat together butter and sugars until light and fluffy, about 10 minutes. Beat in extracts and add eggs 1 at a time, beating well after each addition. With mixer at low speed, add flour mixture and sour cream mixture alternately in batches, beating until just combined.

Pour batter into bundt pan and put in middle of cold oven. Set oven to 350°F and bake cake 1 hour and 25 minutes, or until a tester comes out clean. Cool cake in pan on a rack 15 minutes and turn out onto rack to cool completely.

When cake is cool, wrap first in plastic wrap, and then in aluminum foil, and freeze for at least 24 hours. (Cake may be frozen up to 3 months). Let thaw in refrigerator for an additional 24 hours, and at room temperature for at least another two hours, before serving.

From the desk of Jane Galt:

Artichoke Bruschetta

This was one of the big "finds" of the party -- even someone who likes neither cheese, nor mayo, nor "green things" said these were "really good." And it pretty much doesn't get easier than this; it also turns out to be delicious for dinner, with a nice salad.

1 6-ounce jar marinated artichoke hearts, drained, patted dry, chopped
1/2 cup grated Romano cheese
1/3 cup finely chopped red onion
1 tablespoon lemon juice
5 to 6 tablespoons Miracle Whip
16 1/3-inch-thick French bread baguette rounds

Place first 4 ingredients in bowl. Mix in enough mayonnaise to form thick spread.

Preheat broiler. Top bread rounds with spread. Arrange bruschetta on baking sheet. Broil until spread is heated through and begins to brown, about 2 minutes.

From the desk of Jane Galt:

New York (style) Eggnog Cheesecake

Those who were at my housewarming on Friday who asked for recipes were told that the entire collection was going up on the website this weekend. That was clearly a lie. But I'll be posting them throughout the week, so that anyone looking to replicate what they were served can.

The first recipe is for the cheesecake:

Ingredients:
1 cup gingersnap crumbs
3 Tbsp. sugar
2 Tbsp. butter or margarine, melted
5 pkg. (8 oz.) cream cheese, softened
1 cup sugar
3 Tbsp. flour
1 Tbsp. vanilla
3 eggs
1 cup sour cream
3 Tbsp. rum
1/2 tsp nutmeg

Mix crumbs, 3 tablespoons sugar and butter; press onto bottom of 9-inch springform pan. Bake at 350°F for 10 minutes.

Beat cream cheese, 1 cup sugar, flour and vanilla with electric mixer on medium speed until well blended. Add eggs, 1 at a time, mixing on low speed just until blended. Blend in sour cream. Stir rum and nutmeg into batter. Pour over crust. Sprinkle with additional nutmeg if desired.

Bake at 350°F for 1 hour and 5 minutes to 1 hour and 10 minutes or until center is almost set. Run knife around rim of pan to loosen cake; cool before removing rim of pan. Refrigerate 4 hours or overnight.

From the desk of Jane Galt:

A Day to Remember

I have some natural sympathy for PETA. Not because I'm a vegetarian, incidentally. I'm a vegetarian because it's healthier, and I feel better on the diet, but I have no illusions about what it means to be on the top of the food chain. Nor am I under the impression that if we didn't raise them for food, the cows and chickens would be able to run free in the wild. The native habitat of a domestic animal is a barnyard, and the cows wouldn't make it five feet without someone to milk them and leave hay out in the winter. I'm even less enthralled by the vegans who've told me that death was better than "slavery" for farm animals -- anthropomorphizing is a form of speciesism, you know. This argument is revealing only in that it makes it crystal clear that these animal rights people have never spent time with a cow. They eat, they chew their cud, they excrete. They do not strike out into the wilderness to build representative democracies securing the blessings of liberty to themselves and their descendants. And if they did, those blessings would be -- eating, chewing their cud, excreting. And in many cases, dying younger than they do now of predators and disease.

Nonetheless, I'm somewhat sympathetic to their crusade against horrible animal living conditions. The fact that we eat meat doesn't mean we have to make their short lives miserable, and the fact is that industrial farming practices often mean that the animals spend their entire lives in horrifying conditions. One of the most repulsive cases I did in business school involved the poultry industry, where the extreme crowding induces the birds to fight each other. The solution? Why, cut off their beaks and talons, of course. This makes them vulnerable to disease, impedes their eating, and is extremely painful for the birds. This is a dumb creature, incapable of understanding, that you the consumer are torturing to save a buck a dozen on eggs. That's why I buy nest eggs instead of the cheaper ones, and free-range birds when I ate meat. If I were genuinely poor, of course, I'd probably make a different choice. But I'm not, and I can afford an extra dollar for eggs or three for chicken breasts, and I think that knowing what I do, it would be shameful not to spend the money.

So I really do sympathize. But then they have to undertake dumb campaigns like throwing blood on people or their latest work of genius: comparing the slaughter of animals for food to the Holocaust. It's stupid on two levels: one, for expecting people to equate the suffering of people and animals, as if abuses committed during the inevitable process of killing to eat were the same thing as the senseless slaughter of 11 million people; and two, for trying to appropriate someone else's tragedy to dress up the seriousness of your own cause. I've always found the competitive ethnic grief exhibited during some forms of argument -- slavery-was-awful-but-the-Holocaust-was-worse-yea-well-what-about-the-Famine? -- to be both counterproductive and faintly repulsive. Trying to apply it to the process of making food is risible.

So Meryl Yourish is proposing, in response, International Eat an Animal for PETA Day. Now, you'd think it would be hard for a vegetarian to participate. But not that hard, as the official position of PETA is vegan, and I'm lacto-ova. So I'm going to participate in my own fellow-traveler event: International Eat a Strata for PETA day:

Mushroom-Cheese Strata

1/4 cup (1/2 stick) butter
1-1/2 pounds fresh mushrooms, sliced

8 cups (packed) 1-inch pieces white bread (about 12 slices)
2 1/4 cups whole milk

1 1/2 cups half and half
5 large eggs
3/4 cup chopped fresh chives or scallions
2 tablespoons chopped fresh thyme or 1 tbl dried
3 garlic cloves, chopped
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
3/4 teaspoon ground black pepper
9 ounces soft fresh goat cheese (such as Montrachet), crumbled (about 2 1/2 cups)

1 1/2 cups (packed) grated Parmesan cheese (about 4 ounces)
1 cup (packed) grated Fontina cheese (about 4 ounces)

Preheat oven to 350°F. Butter 13x9x2-inch glass baking dish. Melt butter in large nonstick skillet over medium-high heat. Add mushrooms and sauté until tender, about 8 minutes. Season to taste with salt and pepper. Cool.

Combine bread and milk in large bowl. Let stand until milk is absorbed, about 15 minutes.

Whisk half and half and next 6 ingredients in medium bowl to blend. Stir in goat cheese.

Place half of bread mixture in single layer in prepared glass baking dish (bread will not cover bottom of baking dish). Top with half each of mushrooms, Parmesan cheese, Fontina cheese, and half and half mixture. Repeat layering with remaining bread, mushrooms, Parmesan and Fontina cheeses, and half and half mixture.

You can make it up to a day ahead; if you want to, this is the point to put it in the fridge. It's actually almost better when you let it sit for a while.

Bake strata uncovered until firm in center, puffed and golden, about 1 hour.

Guaranteed to make any PETA representative who sees the recipe faint.

From the desk of Jane Galt:

Cranberry Fruit Bread

I'm not a big fan of fruitcake; candied fruit is not my thing. But even you candied fruit haters out there should give this a try -- there's something about this bread, with its big chunks of cranberry, that's really special. It's not like your normal cranberry bread, which is really orange bread with a few cranberries thrown in. In this one, the cranberries are the main event.

You will need:

4 cups of flour
3 cups of sugar
1 Tablespoon of baking powder
1 teaspoon of baking soda
2 teaspoons of salt
2 oranges
1/4 cup + 2 tablespoons butter
3/4 cup of water
1 cup chopped nuts
2 eggs
1 lb cranberries
1/2 cup seedless raisins
1/2 cup chopped citron
1/2 cup mixed candied fruits

Bowls of various sizes
2 small saucepans
Sifter
2 full-sized loaf pans or 4 smaller ones

1. First things first: turn the oven on to 375 degrees.

2. Put your 3/4 cup of water on the stove to boil. In a different pan, put 1/4 cup of butter (1 stick) over low heat to melt.

3. Wash the oranges in very hot water. (Some oranges are coated in wax; this removes it.) Grate the zest -- the orange part of the skin -- off the orange with the finest section of your grater. As soon as the white shows through on a section you're grating, you're done with that section and it's time to turn the orange.

4. Once you've grated the oranges, cut them in half and squeeze the juice out. If you don't have a juicer, you can purchase plastic manual models for a buck and change at the supermarket, and it makes a nice brunch accessory.

5. Combine the melted butter, boiling water, juice, and zest and set aside to cool.

6. Sift together the flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Set aside

7. Chop the cranberries into coarse pieces, perhaps 1/6 of a cranberry.

8. Chop the citron and nuts, if you did not buy them pre-chopped.

9. In a large mixing bowl, beat the eggs with a whisk or fork until lemon-yellow and foamy.

10. Add the warm orange mixture to the eggs.

11. Add everything else to the bowl. Mix with your hands (I know, but it's really better. Trust me.) just until everything's damp.

12. Butter your loaf pans with the remaining butter.

13. Pour the mixture in and let stand for 20 minutes

14. Bake at 375 degrees 1 to 1.5 hours.

From the desk of Jane Galt:

Recipe File: Homemade Macaroni and Cheese

I promised to put this up for the bloggers I met last night at Paul Frankenstein's charming poker gathering, at which your correspondant brought home a tidy 7.5% return on her initial investment of $20. Since we were there for just over four hours, this is an annualized return of 16,425%, suggesting that perhaps we should leave off blogging and take up gambling for a living.

Anyway, it occurs to me that many, not to say most, of my readers know only the ersatz petroleum-based product marketed by Kraft, or the horrible creations turned out by beknighted relatives who believe that the dish is produced by pouring together some milk, cheese, and macaroni and seeing what happens. So I thought it would be instructive for everyone to learn how easy, and tasty, homemade mac 'n cheese can be. Aside from an extra couple of minutes shopping, and a half hour spent pleasantly sipping your beverage of choice while you wait for this to cook, you really shouldn't spend any more time on this than you do on the box version.

You will need:

1 box of macaroni (elbows are traditional, but anything will do, even spaghetti)
9 tablespoons of butter
6 tablespoons of flour
4 cups of whole milk. (buy a quart, okay? Milk is good for you)
2 cups of cheddar cheese, shredded
2 cups of monterey jack, shredded
(while in general, better ingredients make a better dish, I'm afraid that in this case, the processed Kraft stuff does quite well. We've tried complicated gruyere-and-brie mixtures, and such, yet we keep coming back to this one. If you are truly lazy, and flush, buy two bags of the pre-shredded Monterey Jack and Cheddar mixture, or one back of pre-shredded Jack, and one bag of pre-shredded Cheddar)
Lots of salt
Somewhat less pepper
(At this juncture, I feel I should tell you that you really ought to buy a pepper grinder. They cost practically nothing, and peppercorns are cheap, and fresh ground pepper tastes so much better)
1/4 teaspoon of paprika (don't worry; you'll use it again when I teach you how to make deviled eggs)
Worstershire sauce

An oven and a stove.
A large (13x9) baking dish
A medium saucepan
A small saucepan
A grater, unless you bought pre-shredded cheese
Assorted random small dishes for you to measure things into, like grated cheese and flour. It does not matter what size these are.

All right, first thing's first: turn the oven on to 350.

Bring the water to a boil. While you are waiting for it to boil, shred your cheese and start your white sauce:

Melt 6 tablespoons of the butter in a large saucepan over medium heat. That's 3/4 of a stick of butter, for those who are not up on these things. Do not use margarine; this is not a dish that is going to make you any friends in your arteries. As well to be hung for a sheep as a lamb.

Measuring out 6 tablespoons of flour into a small dish. You do have a dishwasher, right? Flour should be measured by the dip-level-pour method: you dip the tablespoon or measuring cup into the flour, you run the flat side of a knife along the top so that the surface of the flour is level with the edges of the spoon, and then you pour the flour you've measured into the little dish we just talked about.

Meanwhile, take a medium saucepan, put your milk in it, and put it on to heat over medium-low heat. If it starts to bubble over, the heat is too high. Turn it down.

When the water is boiling, put several tablespoons of salt in before you add the pasta. Unsalted pasta is an abomination in the eyes of God. Note the cooking time on the side of the box and set your oven timer or mental clock to the lower number.

Your butter should be melted now. Dump in the flour and stir it around until it's mixed in. Now leave it on the heat. In a minute it will start to bubble. When you see it bubble, let it bubble for one minute more. It would be a good idea to use your watch or clock rather than relying on your judgement of how long a minute is.

While you are letting it bubble, take a tablespoon of the remaining butter and rub it around the inside of the pan until it is covered with butter. This is known as "buttering the dish". The downside is that your hands will also end up covered with butter, but thankfully they're washable.

When the butter-and-flour-mixture in the pan has bubbled for a minute, dump in your now-hot milk. Stir. It's important to stir fairly constantly, scraping the bottom so all the gook you just bubbled gets blended in. That gook is known as a "roux", and as soon as it thickens up, the sauce you are working on will be known as a "bechamel sauce". Congratulations. You just did your first fancy French cooking.

For a streaming video of how to make a white sauce, for anyone who is confused, click here.

This sauce is also the base for any number of things, from creamed chicken to chicken-pot-pie to the ever popular chipped beef on toast.

Anyway. Stir the sauce until it stops thickening. By the time your sauce has thickened up, your pasta should be done. It might be done before that. Don't worry about leaving the sauce while you drain the pasta. It will survive.

Run the pasta under cold water and set aside.

Add the cheese to your bechamel sauce and stir it until it's melted. Now add the paprika, a teaspoon of worstershire, and grind in some salt and pepper. Be conservative with the salt; easier to put more in than to take it out. Keep adding salt and pepper in small amounts until you like the taste. If you want to add more worstershire, you can also do that. This is your macaroni and cheese. Own it.

Once the taste suits you, put it into your covered dish. Cut up the remaining butter into little pieces about the size of a baby pea and sprinkle them over the top. Don't obsess about the size of the butter too much. It's not that important.

Bake at 350 for 40 minutes. Take out. Eat. Enjoy. This makes a beautiful, puffy, not-overpowering mac-and-cheese.

As you can see, this requires about ten minutes of constant work, versus opening a box. But I guarantee you'll like this better. Plus, this makes an enormous amount, so you'll have more leftovers. And overall it's cheaper.

If you don't need quite that much, you can cut the recipe in half. Or you can make it and freeze it instead of baking it.

To review:

The separate pieces are
a) Preheat oven
b) Butter pan
c) Shred cheese
d) Make pasta
e) Make white sauce
f) Add cheese and spices to white sauce
g) Put in pan and bake.

Variations

Before putting the macaroni and cheese into the pan, try lining the bottom with:

Ham mixed with shredded cheese
Sliced mushrooms sauted in garlic
A can of chopped, spiced tomatoes
Frozen boil-in-bag broccoli
Cooked, canned, or frozen asparagus
Sauted onions

Or try topping with these old favorites:
2 cups of breadcrumbs mixed with 1 cup cheese and 2 tablespoons of softened butter
Crushed crackers
Potato chips

If you like your mac-and-cheese creamier, halve the amount of white sauce and add a container of sour cream.