Ambivalent. That’s my primary emotion about Thanksgiving.

By most accounts, I should *love* Thanksgiving. After all, it is our one feasting holiday, this country’s only day devoted solely to food.

But it can be hard to get past the cultural politics, the complicated family dynamics, and the compulsory menu that has the culinary breadth of a bowling alley. Sure, you can have some fun with Marsala in the gravy, and maybe you’ll switch to wild rice dressing this year, or go a little crazy with the cranberry sauce. But in the end, you line up and chuck that ball at the same ten pins, year after year. When you consider the days of work that typically go into one afternoon’s meal, does it really pay off?

It’s not that I’m not willing to work. I love the idea of a week spent cooking for a single meal. But it had better be a spectacular meal. And no matter how you slice that heritage bird, Thanksgiving dinner is not spectacular. It is so overpopulated with must-have, deal-breaking dishes that your only chance for breaking out of the mold is in ‘the vegetable’. The. vegetable.

In the lead up, I agitate plenty to subvert Thanksgiving hegemony. I campaign for corn pudding and roasted winter squash salad. How about gorgonzola walnut gougeres? Chestnut soup? French pear almond tart? Sure, fine, make any of these, but they would not supplant the entrenched power structure. They would be additive, mere Thanksgiving day bench warmers, allowed at the table, but never into the game.

I have to admit my own hand in perpetuating the problem. Let’s face it, those foods that you eat just once a year are hard to give up. If not for Thanksgiving, when will I ever roast a turkey? Or eat stuffing, or cream gravy? Nobody made me put mashed potatoes AND sweet potatoes AND stuffing on the menu. Each one, lovely on its own, but together on the same plate? Guaranteed to cancel each other out in a big starchy null.

But you have to. People are passionate about these things. And they will not lie down and just let you take mashed potatoes off the menu because you thought you’d mash turnips instead this year.

Pumpkin pie is my Thanksgiving deal-breaker. Don’t speak of pumpkin trifle, pumpkin bundt, pumpkin fudge, pumpkin flan. Please, no pumpkin bread pudding, no pumpkin chocolate chip loaf, no pumpkin latte, no pumpkin souffle. And for crying out loud, no pumpkin cheesecake.

Any other day of the year, by all means, do anything you like with pumpkin. This pumpkin cake with caramel icing is one of my all-time favorites. I am crazy for Steve Herrell’s pumpkin ice cream with hot fudge. But on Thanksgiving? The only time in twelve months that pumpkin pie is guaranteed to appear?

Just the pie, please. But make it good.

Praline Pumpkin Pie
Adapted from Abigail Johnson Dodge’s recipe in Fine Cooking vol. 29

This Thanksgiving, everyone agreed that this is the best pumpkin pie we have ever tasted. This custard is ethereal, not overly sweet, and has just enough spice to let the pumpkin shine through. The gingery praline at the bottom imparts a mysterious caramelly heat and a delicious snap to the crust. This, I tell you, is THE pie, the pumpkin pie to end all pumpkin pies.

ingredients
1 recipe Galette dough

for the praline
1 cup packed dark brown sugar
2 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened and at room temperature
2 tablespoons finely chopped fresh ginger

for the filling
3-1/3 cups organic pumpkin purée
1 1/3 cups packed dark brown sugar
3 scant tablespoons all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon ground ginger
1/8 teaspoon freshly ground cloves
1/8 teaspoon kosher salt
6 large eggs
2 cups heavy cream
2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract

method
1. Using the method described here, roll out both disks of dough into 14-inch-diameter, 1/8 inch thick rounds. Line two 9 inch pie plates with the dough, taking care not to pull or stretch. Trim the overhanging dough to a width of 1 inch, tuck or roll under, and crimp. If you’re not sure how to crimp, this short video will help. Freeze for a half hour before blind-baking.

2. Preheat the oven to 425 degrees. Mix the praline ingredients in a small bowl until well-blended, and set aside.

3. Line the chilled pie shells with parchment, and fill with pie weights. (Uncooked beans or rice work well, and can be used over and over for this purpose. I keep a large canister of them for this purpose in my pantry.) Bake on the center rack for 10 minutes.

4. Remove the parchment and pie weights. Divide the praline mixture between the two pie shells, crumbling it evenly over the bottom. Return the pie shells to the oven until the sides are golden brown and the praline is bubbling, about 12 minutes, checking periodically for bubbles in the crust. If they appear, lightly press them down with the back of a wooden spoon. Remove from the pie shells from oven and set aside to cool while you are making the filling.

5. Reduce the oven temperature to 325.

6. In a large bowl, whisk the pumpkin, brown sugar, flour, cinnamon, ground ginger, cloves, and salt until smooth. Then add the eggs, cream, and vanilla and whisk until just blended. When the praline has hardened but is still warm, pour the filling into the crust.

7. Bake until the edge of the filling looks slightly dry and the center jiggles slightly when the pan is nudged, 45 to 50 minutes. Cool on a rack. Refrigerate overnight to let the custard set and the flavors meld.

Makes two 9 inch pies, which is probably two too few.

notes
As you may know, I am an all-butter crust die-hard, which doesn’t make for the prettiest single-crust pies. But it does make for the tastiest ones. A metal pie plate with a wide rim helps, as does freezing the crust before blind-baking.

It is a common mistake to overbake custard pies such as pumpkin and pecan, leaving them in the oven until they are completely set. To check the doneness of any baked custard, give the pan a gentle shove. If you see a jiggle, the custard is done. If you see a wave that rolls back and forth, it needs more time in the oven.

Please note that the oven temperature for baking the pie is 100 degrees lower than for blind-baking the crust – don’t forget to turn it down.

Problem
Your friend Katie is turning 50. You volunteer to make her favorite, a yellow cake with chocolate frosting, for her and 50 friends.

Solution
1. Go to eggbeater
2. Click on ‘recipes’
3. Click on Yellow Cake {with chocolate frosting}
4. Muster faith
5. Follow recipe with quirky mindful exactitude
6. Accept emulsification into your heart
7. Thank the cake god Shuna Fish

Here’s the sort of salad I imagined we’d be eating as we rode our bikes through the hills of Tuscany: plates of field greens piled with herbs, fruit, roasted vegetables, cured meats, mozarella di bufala – everything local and in season. Peppery vinaigrettes. New olive oil. Verrry old balsamic.

The reality looked more like this: a glass bowl of green leaf lettuce, wedges of anemic tomato, and perhaps a few rounds of carrot or cucumber. Sometimes, an arugula salad, composed just of arugula. Accompanying the salad was not a vinaigrette – remember, vinaigrette is a french word – or, even ‘italian dressing’ (this may be an american invention), but the same four things that arrive with any contorno: olive oil, ordinary vinegar, salt, and pepper.

If you hail from the U.S., where the number of words a server uses to describe your entree seems directly proportional to the ‘fineness’ of the restaurant, the food of Tuscany requires a mental shift. Tuscan food is defined by a simplicity that verges on ascetic: antipasto is a plate of thinly shaved prosciutto, the primo piatto, a plate of hand-rolled pasta with olive oil, pecorino and black pepper, the secondo piatto, a perfectly grilled pork chop.

And this is where the salad comes in. Contorni are side dishes, and salad is a contorno. They appear nearly last on the menu, after the antipasti, primi, and secondi piatti. They are meant to accompany the secondo, such as your pork chop, and are therefore eaten toward the end of the meal. Sometimes you will find roasted onions or farro salad, but generally you will choose from cooked white beans, sauteed spinach or chicory, grilled vegetables, roasted potatoes, or salad.

Anything more involved than a lightly dressed bowl of arugula would detract from the superb pair of lamb chops that came to your table still smoking from the grill. And when you order bistecca fiorentina, the famously simple T-bone steak that wants no more adornment than a squeeze of lemon, you do not want the gorgonzola on your salad running off and stealing the show.

Tagliata – grilled meat, sliced and served on a bed of arugula – is the exception that proves the rule. And in pizzerias and bars you will sometimes find the insalatón: the big salad. This is basically an insalata with the addition of canned things – sliced black olives, water-packed tuna, tough little kernels of corn – and a modest amount of fresh mozzarella. That’s it. That’s the ‘big’ salad.

Needless to say, we didn’t eat a lot of salad in Italy. After some initial angst about missing our greens, we realized: if you want greens, order the cicoria. But really, skip the insalata. There are not enough euros in your wallet and there is not enough space in your stomach to fritter away the grand opportunity that is a Tuscan lunch on lettuce and hot house tomatoes.

You know that old saw, “I’ll sleep when I’m dead”? Well, I’ll eat lettuce and tomato salad when I’m dead.

Greens with roasted winter squash, pomegranate, and feta

We came home from Italy craving big salad. Here’s my winter insalatón. It is a jewel box of local fall produce, shining with oranges and reds. I used sweet dumpling and delicata squash, but butternut or any similar winter variety would work. Peeling and cubing the squash before roasting is a little labor-intensive, but resist the temptation to roast the squash in halves and then dice it once it’s cooked: it won’t caramelize or have the right texture if you shortcut this step. I chose feta because it was local, but if you have access to a nice blue, I think that might be even better. And finally, I used lemon vinaigrette, based on my favorite recipe from the Macrina Bakery Cookbook, but I think a drizzle of really old balsamic vinegar and olive oil would do you just as well.

four handfuls of mixed field greens
2 to 3 pounds winter squash, such as delicata, butternut, or sweet dumpling
1 pomegranate’s worth of seeds
1/2 cup crumbled feta cheese
1/2 cup toasted walnuts, or pepitas
olive oil
salt
black pepper

lemon vinaigrette, or olive oil and good quality aged balsamic vinegar

Peel and seed the squash and cut it into a 3/4 inch dice. Toss it with olive oil, salt and pepper, and roast on a baking sheet in a 400 degree oven until tender and browning on some sides, about 30 minutes. Stir it once or twice while roasting to give all sides a chance to caramelize.

Toss the greens with vinaigrette, season with salt and pepper, and divide among four plates. Divide the warm squash and the remaining ingredients among the plates and drizzle with a little more vinaigrette.

Serves four locavores.

The first time I had tarte Tatin, Kathy and I were on the coast of France, in a heartbreakingly beautiful fishing village just a scooter ride from Nice. Unlike Nice, whose imported sand beaches are plastered with sun-bathing tourists, we loved Villefranche-sur-Mer because it was beachless, and real.

It was a place where you could jump off a black boulder jetty into the sparkling harbor, and gaze up at the kaleidoscope of houses that are the town’s steep ascent from sea.

You could find a simple hotel room for thirty francs, and fling open its tall shutters to air and sun. And from that window, gaze down at a verdant garden, and follow its lush rows of fat tomatoes and peppers rambling toward a house, to discover it belonged to a neighborhood bistro, La Trinquette. It would have been closed earlier, when you checked in to the friendly hotel, eking out the transaction in painstaking French.

Setting out for dinner, you would walk past its chalkboard announcing grilled sardines, toward the restaurants with a sea view, candles blinking prettily atop tables set in straight rows. Tuxedoed waiters worked in tight formation, attending to a rising tide of diners.

On instinct you would turn away from your guide book and back toward the neighborhood restaurant that does not have a view of the sea. The owners have been cooking there since one of them was thin and both of them were young. Their clientele knew them when they were this way, and will tell you of jolly stories of the old times.

According to french tradition, the late 19th century originators of tarte tatin are the Tatin sisters, proprietors of Hotel Tatin in Lamotte-Beuvron. Legend holds that Stephanie Tatin rescued overcooked apple tart filling by throwing pastry over the top and baking the tart upside down. Others claim that Stephanie was a fine cook, but “not the brightest of people” and one day accidentally put the tart in the oven “wrong way round”. I find this hard to believe. I prefer the former story, featuring the smart, resourceful Stephanie Tatin.

To be sure, tarte Tatin is the smartest apple pie I have ever known. The filling is nothing but a skilletful of apples, butter, and sugar, caramelized by a long stint on top of the stove. The pan goes into the oven with unfussy pastry laid on top of the fruit, where it has no chance of becoming soggy. The tart is turned ‘right side up’ once out of the oven, flipping the crisp crust to the bottom, topped by a gorgeous swirl of meltingly tender apples.

I first attempted tarte Tatin working at Restaurant Jennifer James, four skillet’s worth at a time. The result was lovely, golden wedges served with whipped creme fraiche, but the process was painstaking, all that tending of apples caramelizing over high heat on the stove. The fine line between caramelized and burnt does not forgive the multi-tasker.

It wasn’t until I found Edward Schneider’s piece in the New York Times that I had my ‘aha’ moment about tarte Tatin. The method he outlines, paired with this kernel of wisdom is all you need to see your way clear to excellent tarte Tatin.

Many things called tarte Tatin are merely brown and sweet. To be sure, a tarte Tatin should be brown and sweet, but it needs to be more: the apples need to be cooked in sugar and butter long enough that they are not only coated in buttery caramel but also permeated with sweetness. Like what happens in jam-making, where some of the water in the fruit is replaced by sugar.

While many insist that high starch apples like Golden Delicious are the only acceptable option, Schneider allows for whatever apples, and whatever pastry, giving more importance to the method.

Tarte Tatin

Peel and quarter a bunch of apples, enough to tightly pack into a twelve inch skillet. (Schneider warns that this is many more apples than you would expect, and he is right.) Sprinkle them with 2/3 to 3/4 cup sugar, and saute over MEDIUM heat. Once the juices start to run, throw in two tablespoons of butter and continue sauteing, tossing or gently moving the apples around every so often. The goal is for the apples to become ‘candied’ and translucent – this will take 15 to 20 minutes – before the appley syrup begins to caramelize. When everything is deep golden and the apples are browned in some spots, you’re done. Add a little more butter to the pan and turn off the heat.

Now pack the cooked apples from the 12 inch skillet into a 10 inch skillet. (It’s at this point that Schneider’s method gets a little controversial, but I think it works. The apples will have lost considerable volume from when they started. The tarte Tatin I recall from France is one whole apple tall, and packing apples from the larger skillet into the smaller helps achieve this result.)

Then, drape pastry over the apples and tuck it down around the sides. I think that this galette dough works perfectly here, but as Schneider points out, the crust has no structural role, so it can be almost any variation on pie crust. Cut a few steam vents, and into the 400 degree oven it goes, until the pastry is well-browned and done, probably 20 to 30 minutes.

You need to turn the tart out of the pan when it is hot out of the oven, or the cooling caramel won’t release. Give the pan a shake to loosen things, put a large plate over the top, and grasping the plate and the pan with two oven mitts, turn the whole thing upside down. If a few pieces of apple stick to the pan, use a spatula to put them back in place. Be careful – everything is very, very hot.

Serve the tart when it is room temperature, or barely warm. Creme fraiche is traditional, but plain old whipped cream is just as nice.

Other than my grandmother, my friend Kiley is the only person I know who 1) feels as strongly as I do about not wasting ANYTHING and 2) does not believe in expiration dates on canned food.

While my parents shed the contents of their pantry once every six months, I can hardly find room to put the groceries away. Our shelves sag with ginseng-echinacea tea, quinoa flour, and asofoetida, plus my parents’ cast-offs, like ‘lite’ soy sauce, which I will probably never use, and sesame oil, which I can’t use as fast as they shed it. I accept these bags of cans and bottles like baskets of kittens deposited on my doorstep, keeping every one for which I can’t find a good home.

When the pantry is bursting at the seams, I toy with the idea of sneaking sorghum flour into the collection bins of the local food drive, but reject the idea, knowing that such an item would more likely end up in the food bank dumpster than in somebody’s gluten-free pie crust.

A couple of years ago, Kiley took a year off from work to travel. She cleaned out her house for a renter, giving away things that she could not store. Out of that transition I inherited a dozen types of tea, a large bottle of rancid almond oil, and a dozen cans of organic pumpkin. Rancid oils are the one category of thing that I can easily dispose of, but the tea stuck around. Thanksgiving got me through two cans of pumpkin.

By the time Kiley was coming back from her travels, Kath & I were emptying our house for our own year of travel. I divided the contents of the cabinets into three piles: for the food bank (canned soup, ‘lite’ soy sauce), for the garage (long-lived things like unopened bottles of vinegar) and for Kiley. She would receive the lion’s share, including a five-year accumulation of condiments from the fridge, a pharmacy of medicinal tea, an obscurity of flours and grains, and a general miscellany, from arrowroot to xanthan gum.

In seven Frida Kahlo shopping bags, I dragged all this to Kiley’s empty kitchen, filling her refrigerator with cornichons, an octet of mustards, curry paste, sriracha, pickled ginger. I lined her empty cupboards with bags of sorghum flour, towers of canned black beans, and various shapes of tinkyada pasta-joy. And eight cans of solid pack pumpkin, from the same stock she’d given me a year earlier.

By the time Kiley arrived home to see her fridge converted into an asian mini-mart, I would be deep in Mexico.

The next time we saw each other, she was ready for me. With nettle leaf tea and teff flour, Breathe Deep and quinoa pasta. NO, I protested, pressing a box of Peach Detox back into her arms. I don’t want them back! YOU throw them away!

I noticed she didn’t try to return any of the pumpkin. Good thing I set aside a couple of cans in the garage. Vintage 2006 was a really good year.

Spiced Pumpkin Cake with Caramel Icing

I’m not sure whether this a bread or a cake. Take away the icing and add walnuts or raisins and it leans toward bread. With the caramel icing, it is most definitely a cake. Pre-ground spices will do, but fresh will make it sing. I used canned pumpkin, but if you choose to make your own puree, be certain that it is well-drained. Watery pumpkin will make too wet a batter.

I used leftover caramel icing from Shuna Fish Lydon’s Caramel Cake, thinned down with heavy cream to a pourable consistency. The icing isn’t necessary, but will elevate the cake from simple tea cake to luxurious thing, its deep caramel notes harmonizing with the bright heat of fresh spices.

2 1/2 cups packed brown sugar
1 cup vegetable oil
3 large eggs
1 15-ounce can solid pack pumpkin
2 tablespoons fresh ginger, finely grated
3 cups all purpose flour
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon ground cloves, freshly ground
1 teaspoon ground nutmeg, freshly grated
1/2 teaspoon black pepper, freshly ground
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
Caramel Icing, thinned to a pourable consistency with several tablespoons of heavy cream (optional)

1. Preheat the oven to 350°F. Butter and flour a bundt pan.

2. Beat the brown sugar and oil in large bowl until blended, then mix in eggs, grated ginger and pumpkin.

3. Sift flour with the dry spices, baking soda, salt and baking powder into another bowl.

4. Stir the dry ingredients into the pumpkin mixture in two additions until blended. Do not overmix.

5. Pour the batter into the pan and smooth the top. Bake in the center of the oven until a tester comes out clean, about 1 hour 10 minutes.

6. Transfer the pan to a rack and cool for 15 minutes. Before turning the cake out, shake the pan from side to side a few times. This should loosen the cake from the pan without using a knife. Turn cake out onto a rack and allow to cool completely before drizzling with icing. Grate a little nutmeg over top, if you like.

Makes 1 cake.

A few years back, I did a brief stint in the lesbo-kitchen of Jennifer James. I’d been entertaining the idea of cooking school for a long time, and making desserts for Jennifer sounded like my dream job. I didn’t have the experience to merit the position, but Jen and I agreed on three basic principles – simplicity, quality, NO CHEESECAKE – and she handed me the reins to the dessert menu. Even better, she gave me the freedom to change it every two weeks.

I served Gale Gand’s chocolate terrine with almond brittle, lemon ice cream sandwiches with candied zest pressed into their sides, caramel pots de creme, fat wedges of David Lebovitz’s fresh ginger cake with butterscotch and sautéed pears, roasted pineapple shortcakes, Julia Child’s boca negra, indian pudding with honeyed whipped cream, and red chile ice cream studded with pralines. I made tarte tatin, fresh lemon tart, clementine sorbet, pear galette with almond cream, and countless other things.

Jen’s sous chef, Cheyenne, was exceedingly patient with my bumbling around her kitchen. I took up too much room on the stove, let huge vats of cream boil over, forgot to bake the chocolate terrine in a bain marie, left lethally sharp objects underwater in the dish sink, and generally made more of a mess than a professional pastry chef ever would. And I was slow, often finishing my work just before service began.

In time, things got easier and smoother, but after five months of working in Jen’s kitchen, I came to the decision that the life of a pastry chef was not for me. Mainly, it was too solitary a pursuit. It was baking, devoid of the reason that I love to bake: the people. What I love most about making food is being able to share it.

I was isolated even from other kitchen staff, who started their shifts later in the day. After eight hours spent peeling pears and separating eggs, I would place the fruits of my labor on a lonely rack and head home, hours before my desserts were served, or even plated. I had little idea whether they were loved or hated, except from the handwritten note that I’d find the next day, telling me how many more of each thing was needed. And then, in the steely quiet of morning, I’d turn on the ovens, get out the butter and eggs, and start again.

I never expected that a day spent baking would kill my desire to cook at home.

Of course, there were many good things. My favorite times were the first Tuesday nights of the new dessert menu. Kathy would bring in a tableful of our friends and we’d sit in the dining room. Cheyenne would plate one of each and send them out in leisurely succession so we could critique all six.

Ironically, the thing I liked least – the repetitiveness of the work – was also the most valuable. It’s no use pretending that I didn’t find peeling twenty-five pounds of apples and pears for a fall fruit crisp to be utterly monotonous – I did. It’s hard for me to imagine being a professionally trained pastry chef working in one of those restaurants where the dessert menu changes perhaps four times a year. (At some point, there is just nothing interesting about making chocolate pot de creme. But it is good, and people clamor for it, and so you must.)

But there are things that I learned about baking, which I could not have learned, probably not even in the course of my lifetime, with any less repetition. The first on this list is pie crust, a skill that most women learn from their mothers, if they learn it at all.

To be sure, there is a history of pie-making in my family. The earliest I know is of my great aunt Irene and her mother, who worked as cooks for an early twentieth century wheat harvesting crew. The workers stayed out in the fields for weeks at a time, sleeping and eating there until the harvest was done. Fourteen year old Irene and her mother fed them three hot meals a day, which they cooked on wood-fired stoves in the backs of wagons. Like the men, they slept under the stars. Unlike the men, they awoke before dawn to start on the bread and the pies.

This is just one of countless stories about my great aunt Irene and her famous pies. (Another tells of how she wrecked her new car trying to save a pie from its slide off the front seat.) So you might have great hope for my mother, and for me. But Irene’s brother was Orville, my mother’s father, and in that time, pie know-how was matrilineal, rarely passing from sister to brother, or from father to daughter.

So it was up to Lillian, my maternal grandmother, to pass on the pie gene. Youngest child of fourteen, raised on a Michigan dairy farm by her elder sisters, you’d think Granny would be a slam dunk. The family churned their own butter, for goodness sake. And probably there was some decent pie crust in her life. But by the time that she was teaching me, the three pies in her repertoire (lemon meringue, pumpkin, chicken pot-) started with the same basic ingredient:  Pillsbury refrigerated pie crust. Anemic, sticky rounds of plastic-encased dough that might fulfill the technical requirements for making a custard into a ‘pie’, if a technicality is what you’re after.

I did have another chance. In my early twenties, I worked at the Tulane Street Deli, a lesbo-kitchen owned by two straight women, who had more repressed love for one another than they did for their pre-pubescent sons. Debbie was a great culinary talent from Texas, bitterly married to a mobile home salesman, and in possession of the pie gene. She turned out great quantities of perfect peach pies with fat double-crusts. With the allele as her guide, she relied on instinct: flour and shortening in a wide stainless steel bowl, cut together until it feels right, and mixed with water until it feels right. Under her supervision, I could manage it, but at home, I never got the proportions right, mixing up dough that was easy to handle, but baked into a leaden, tasteless receptacle.

In the next decade and a half, I made the occasional, torturous stab at pie crust, gingerly coaxing reticent dough between pieces of waxed paper. I don’t recall what recipes I used during that third of my life, so unmemorable were those obligatory rounds of pumpkin and pecan.

And so. Imagine the trepidation with which I placed pear frangipane galette on my first dessert menu at J. James. I’d had my eye on a David Lebovitz method for rustic tarts in Fine Cooking,  which promised to take the mystery out of crust making. “My galette dough is a wonder,” David boasts. “Easy to mix and roll, it bakes up sturdy yet flaky.” A sturdy dough. Just what I had been needing.

And really, herein lies the abrupt end to a long story. David Lebovitz does not lie. His dough is a wonder. I used it perhaps a hundred times at the restaurant, and at least two hundred times since. The knowledge of so many pies has set itself into my bones.

Maybe times have changed. Maybe the inheritance of a good pie crust is no longer matrilineal. Maybe it’s passed along with the gay gene. In any case, thanks, David for the recipe, and thanks, Jen for the chance to perfect the method. And thanks, Xq28.

Galette Crust

Adapted from David Lebovitz’s Sweet Galette Dough

It’s just flour, salt, cold butter and ice water – an ingredient list that you’ll find for any butter crust. But stay true to these quantities and the principles outlined in the instructions, and it’s hard to miss. Remember: 1) The butter and water must be very cold; 2) let the butter be big: you are done ‘cutting in’ when the largest pieces are the size of sugar cubes; and 3) it’s easiest to do this with a stand mixer if you have one. A food processor will work for these instructions, as well. Lacking both, the method can be accomplished by hand, but not as easily.

While this dough is perfectly suited for the galette,  I use it for pie, and tarts, and tarte tatin. This dough freezes beautifully. It’s just as easy to make two or three batches as it is to make one, so why not store three or four crusts in the freezer?

11-1/4 oz. (2-1/2 cups) all-purpose flour
1/2 tsp. salt
8 oz. (16 Tbs.) unsalted butter, cut into 1/2-inch pieces and chilled
5 oz. (about 2/3 cup) ice water

Method

1. Cut cold sticks of butter into 1/2 inch pieces and set them into the freezer to chill.

2. Mix the flour and salt in the bowl of a stand mixer using the paddle attachment.

3. Cut the butter into the flour on low speed in the stand mixer. Mix until the butter is well distributed and the largest pieces are the size of sugar cubes.

4. Add the ice water all at once and continue mixing on low speed just until the dough comes together (this will happen quickly).

5. Dump the contents of the bowl onto a lightly floured work surface, and gather it together with your hands. Divide the dough in half and form each half into a flat disc about four inches in diameter. Wrap the discs in waxed paper and place them in the refrigerator to chill for one hour.

Rolling out the dough

This is what works best for me in creating an evenly thick, round crust, and helps assure that the dough does not stick to the work surface. I find that it is much better than sawing away at the dough with a rolling pin. Try it and see what you think.

The dough should be very workable – pliable and not crumbly. If at any point you feel that the butter in the dough is melting, or it seems inordinately sticky, stop what you are doing and place it in the refrigerator for a few minutes to chill.

Lightly dust your work surface with flour and place the disc of dough in the center. Using the palm of your hand, flatten the disc a little.

Scatter a little flour over the dough and your rolling pin.

Starting closest to you, place the rolling pin on the dough about an inch from the edge. Roll firmly away from you, stopping about one inch before the rolling pin reaches the far edge.

Slide your hand under the round of dough and rotate it a quarter turn clockwise. Then repeat the step above. If the dough is beginning to stick to either the work surface or the rolling pin, dust it with a little more flour.

Continue rotating the dough and making a single pass with the rolling pin until you have achieved the desired thickness and diameter.

When you are ready to transfer the dough to the pan, either drape it over the rolling pin or loosely roll it onto the rolling pin and carefully unfurl it onto the pan.

Yields two large crusts.

In my early days as an earnest young lesbo, I did not consider myself to be good at making soup. The three we cooked when I was growing up were two pages out of my grandmother’s book, and one out of my mother’s.

Chicken and noodles was just as it sounds. I’d get home from school to a boiled chicken, cooling in its broth. It was for me to pick the meat off the bones, and then return it to the pot  with a bag of wide egg noodles. Just three ingredients: water, chicken, noodles. And heavy use of the salt shaker at the table. My sister does not remember it now, but she hated that soup.

The only thing she hated more was pea soup, which started the same way: a turkey carcass cooling in its broth when we got home from school. I’d pick the meat off the bones, and return it to the pot with a bag of split green peas. Then I’d mix up baking powder dumplings in a pyrex measuring cup and drop them by the tablespoonful into the boiling broth. Seven ingredients: water, one bay leaf, turkey bones, split peas, flour, salt, baking powder. If there was fat in those dumplings, I certainly don’t remember it. Then more salt, applied in great quantities at the table.

My mother’s soup came from the Vegetarian Epicure, one of only two cookbooks in the house. The potato soup started with a potato peel broth (the instructions admonish you never to throw them away!) in which you boil leeks and potatoes. Then add a little milk and dill. To my sister’s great dismay, all three soups were regularly made in great enough quantities to feed the four of us for three consecutive nights. I expect no less of any pot of soup I make today.

But it is easy to see how these three would not add up to much soup know-how.

Months ago, when I first started writing here, I included a list of recipes that I wanted to try in the sidebar. One of the first things to appear on the list was a ribollita from Jamie Oliver. I did try it shortly thereafter, and have made it many times since, but ribollita never made it off of the list and into a post, partly because I had tampered with it so much that I wasn’t sure it could be called ribollita anymore.

After having eaten ribollita in italy, I now know that this is true. The huge pot of fennel-scented soup that I have been cooking has nothing to do with bread, and ribollita is all about bread. And as far as my fennel-scented broth is concerned, well, ribollita is not much about broth. You can no more take the bread out of ribollita than you can take the pasta out of Penna al’ Arrabiata.

In Tuscany, ribollita (which translates as re-boiled) is a minestrone (generally, beans, cabbage, onions, tomatoes) laden with enough stale bread to give it legs. The ribollita we tried literally stood up in its bowl, maintaining the shape of the ladle that placed it there, and is more akin to pasta than to soup.

In taking the bread out of Jamie Oliver’s ribollita, I unwittingly took it backward toward minestrone, where I have been happily stuck for months. The basic formula of onions, beans, greens, tomatoes, and a good measure of olive oil results in a soup that is more than the sum of its parts, and best of all, seems always to be achievable from ingredients we already have on hand.

Last night, I found these things languishing in the kitchen: yellow and red onions, parsley, a bunch of carrots, five aged zucchini, half a pot of pinto beans, spinach, and a few just-reddening tomatoes plucked green from Rose’s garden before the first frost.

minstrone: a method

1. Saute roughly chopped onion, carrots and celery in a good amount of olive oil – a third of a cup at minimum. If you don’t have carrots or celery, add more onion. If you happen to have chard stems, dice them up and throw them in now.

2. Add a teaspoon of crushed fennel, and half as many red pepper flakes. And minced clove or two of garlic, if you like. Saute for another minute or two, being sure not to let the garlic brown.

3. Tomatoes. If you have garden tomatoes a little past their prime, or have more of them than you can handle, throw them in. Otherwise, there’s nothing wrong – other than a little Bisphenol A – with a can of good diced tomatoes.

4. Beans. White beans like cannellini are an obvious choice, but why not use something local, like pintos or anasazi beans? Black-eyed peas, kidney beans, garbanzos – anything, really, as long as they are pre-cooked.

5. Greens. Chard, kale, spinach, savoy cabbage – whatever. The more greens the better. Lots of recipes will tell you to blanch then separately, but I say, chop ‘em up and throw ‘em in.

6. Water. Salt. Black pepper. Use stock if you have it, but water will do just fine.

7. What else? Zucchini? Cauliflower? Parsley? If you’d like it to be more substantial: rice, farro, cooked diced potatoes, orzo, stale bread. If you want it to be a little thicker, puree a couple of ladlesful in a blender and return it to the pot.

8. At the table: Douse each bowl with more olive oil and grated pecorino cheese. Maybe ladle the soup over a garlic-rubbed piece of toast, or top it with croutons.

From start to finish, it shouldn’t be more than an hour. Rather than prepping everything beforehand, I chop as I go along, letting the onions saute while I chop the carrots, which saute while chopping the tomatoes, and so on. By the time it’s all in the pot with the water, it shouldn’t have to simmer for more than twenty minutes to let the flavors meld.

We’ve just come out the other side of a week of seriously sketchy weather. Days of driving rain or constant drizzle, punctuated by periods of clear enough skies to buoy false hopes that it would end sooner. Despite the weather, this last week ranks among our favorites, with the rain often being a catalyst for the best experiences.

On the last day of a 4 day tour of medieval hill towns, we camped in the front yard of a lovely octogenarian named Anna, who treated us to crostata, milky coffee, and long conversation, despite our formidable (but diminishing) language barrier. Just outside of Siena, morning rains cleared the normally hazy skies of The Crete, bringing the most classic of Tuscan landscapes into high resolution, hills of rolling amber offset by purple skies.

Our late start that same day caused us to stop short for the night in San Giovanni d’ Asso, where we had one of our best meals of the trip at a random roadside restaurant, including pici con cacio e pepe (hand-rolled pasta with pecorino cheese and black pepper). Unrelenting rain led us to depart early from Perugia, which we expected to love, but did not, for Assissi, which we loved without reservation.

Perhaps it’s that we’re just hitting our stride, but we are loving Umbria and its food more than we did Tuscany, which has been a surprise. Our Italian is improving, which helps everything, including the ability to find the most interesting things on a menu (Quale è il suo favorito? ), as well as the ability to decipher posters that announce local events. Perhaps most importantly, we can now ask for directions, and understand the answers we get.

A few fun details:

- Twice we’ve come across foraging families of cinghiale, the allegedly fearsome wild boars that are ubiquitous on the Tuscan restaurant menu. Both times they turned on their heels and ran.

- To officially call ourselves connoisseurs of Italian coffee would at minimum require that we drink only espresso (untainted by the slightest hint of milk), several times a day, and at least once before bed. We’re doing alright on the frequency – our average is 3x daily – though we’re still stuck on the morning cappuccino, and switching to macchiati after that.

- Most times we ask for recommendations in restaurants, we get a blank stare, and then the obligatory “tutto è buono”: Everything is good. But we always try. In Assissi, the trying paid off: Cappelacci con pecorino di fosso e miele: a small meat filled pasta dressed with butter and pecorino cheese and finished with poppy seeds and a drizzle of honey. Amazing.

- Either the gelato is becoming less good or we are becoming more discerning… It’s been over a week since Siena and Nannini’s excellent fig and creme caramel. I have high hopes for Rome, but for the time being, I am officially boycotting gelato out here in the sticks. There are much more interesting dolce to explore with three euros. Like panna cotta, for instance.

- In Umbria, the second course features meats grilled over a wood fire and served with little more than a squeeze of lemon. Huge wood-fired grills are central features of many restaurant dining rooms, where any table affords a good view of your lamb chops sizzling over the glowing coals. No more than thirty seconds elapses between the grill and your fork and knife. Today we ate ours with onions that were roasted directly on the hearth under a pile of coals.

- English translations by non-native speakers provide not only amusement (a country side hotel describes itself as a ‘perfect outhouse’), insight into our own butchery of Italian, as well as perfect, couldn’t-have-said-it-better-myself truth: a sign at the hermitage of St. Francis of Assissi marks a trail for contemplation and prayer as a ‘No Way Out Path’. Another at the entrance to the hermitage announces: NO PICNIC.

Tomorrow we’re heading out in the direction of Norcia. Ciao!

First things first.

1. Minor revision to the claim that “this camping thing is crazy-good”. (We make this revision in the interest of accuracy, knowing full well that you will use this information against us for many years to come.) Start by deleting “good”. It would seem that there are drawbacks to being the first civilization to invent indoor plumbing, the most obvious of which is that most of the plumbing is as ancient as its cathedrals. Those interested in green power might explore the possibility of capturing the methane that is off-gassing from city sewer vents. Especially near camping areas. Where we are trying to sleep. And hoping we will wake up in the morning.

Really, the problem is not everywhere, and is mostly a problem if you locate yourself downwind of the source, but is common enough that at least two campgrounds have earned the title “bog of eternal stench”.

Not that we want to dissuade you from considering camping as an option for your next tour of Europe. The in-city locations are great, the price is a quarter of the cost of a cheap hotel, your fellow campers are quiet as mice, and your campground will often have a great panoramic view and a bar and cafe to enjoy it from. And your tent is guaranteed to be nicer than most hotels in the budget category.

2. On to Florence, where we parked the bikes for a bit, and spent three days. Some highlights:

Finocchiona (fennel salami) and goat cheese panini at I Due Fratellini, where the brothers serve up twenty types of sandwiches and wine from an 10 x 4 foot storefront. Leave your wine glass on the curbside shelf when you are done.

After stumbling across it in a cafe near the Uffizi, I become positively obsessed with Schiaciatta de l’uva. We trekked all over the old part of the city to sample versions of this florentine tart, which is sort of like a sweet fennel spiced focaccia with red grapes, seeds and all.

We climbed the endless spiral staircases into the famous dome of the city’s duomo, which deposited us at eye level with the ‘hell’ section of the dome’s huge frescoes, the writhing bodies of 20 foot tall demons and sinners right in our faces. Then, back into the maze of shoulder-width stone staircases that delivered us to its cupola through a hatch door, for sweeping views of the city at sunset.

We loved Italian dinner theater at lo Teatro del Sale, where the food is as theatrical – and wonderful – as the musically comedic performance of its star, Maria Cassi.

Each course is presented from the open kitchen by its chef in a booming, Wizard of Oz man-behind-the-curtain yell – Attenzione! Attenzione! It is lucky, but by no means necessary, if your table mates are bilingual italians, and happy to translate.

No translation needed for the performance, which was bilingual – italian and physical comedy, which thankfully, we do speak. If you’re in Florence on a tight schedule, skip the Uffizi and spend an evening here. Boticelli’s Birth of Venus aside, the great works of the italian masters left us, more than anything, with aching backs and feet and wishing for more context and fewer iterations. I mean, really: How much Pietà can two athiest lesbians take?

3. Leaving Florence, we pedal up into the hills of the Chianti region, its geography made architecture by rows of grapevines that recede like an art class exercise in three point perspective. Despite the beautiful landscape, our Chianti karma is a little bit off. After a near vertical climb up to the winery at Castello Verazzano, we discover that we have missed the last cellar tour of the day. We taste the winery’s excellent wines standing at the bar, without food, even though, as everyone knows, Chianti is meant to be enjoyed with food.

We splurge that night and stay at a vineyard outside Greve-in-Chianti (which was having its annual Chianti festival one day after we would depart). Laden with enough antipasti for an italian extended family, we grunt up the huge hill to our wine country lodging. On a terrace overlooking a classic Tuscan landscape, we lay out the picnic, and open a bottle of wine gifted to us by acquaintances in Florence, and … it is corked. Horrors! Kathy runs to buy a bottle of wine from our host vintner and … they are closed. Nobody home.

With legs too tired to go down and up that hill again, we resign to our fate of being the only two people in Chianti eating dinner without wine that night.

Since the Chianti region, we have been to Sienna, and then on a four day tour through San Gimignano, Volterra, Massa Marittima, and the surrounding medieval hilltowns of Sassafortino and Roccatederighi. We write this from Sienna, where we have just spent the day immersed in gothic art and architecture. Tomorrow we’re off to more wine country – Montalcino and Montepulciano.

Until the next update, arrivederci, ciao.

Ok, this business of 120 char tweets is driving me crazy. We’re going to try using the blog instead to allow prose and complex retrospective reality to come a hair closer together. Even if we are typing with only one finger.

We are at the end of week one. An amazing thing about bicycle touring is that so many things happen in one day, that every week feels like a month. Every day, a week.

Here are some of the important things to say:

1. Italy may be the best place in the world to ride a bike. The roads are good, but more importantly, the drivers are amazing in their attitude toward bikes. They are patient and careful and don’t pass until they can give us a wide berth.

2. This Italian camping thing is crazy-good. Can you imagine staying five minutes from the beach in Sausalito with an ocean view for only $25? That was us in Lerici night before last. (Dove stiamos in Lerici due notti fa.)

3. Bicycle touring will help you learn italian. We have to talk to people A LOT. Plus, they want to talk to us about our giro d’ italia de sei setimane. In Castelnuovo di Garfagnana a woman curious about the bikes was thrilled to discover that it was two *women* who had dragged those trailers over the apuane alps – ended our exchange by slapping me on the butt repeatedly: bella! brava! bella! brava! The same happened to Kath near Radicci pass.

4. It’s hard to climb a couple ‘a mountain ranges and still make it on time for dinner. Lunch is from 11 to 1 and dinner isn’t until 7 or 8. We are constantly rolling into town in that 6 hour gap, famished. We might make it to lunch if we get a really early start but nothing opens for breakfast until after 7. If we aren’t going to come home knowing nothing about italian cuisine except pizza, we’ll need to work out the food timing issue.

4. We are squeaking by on a combined budget of $100 per day ($50 each) but it’s tight. No way it would be possible without the camping. Any meals eaten sitting down really push the limits. Gelato and cappucini are so cheap however, that you couldn’t consume enough of them to challenge the budget. Which is a good thing, since we can’t seem to get enough cappucino or gelato. While standing.

5. A day spent ascending an 18% grade will make all lesser grades, say of 13%, feel like a picnic. Thank you, Radicci Pass.

6. The Garfagnana and the Cinque Terre are among the most challenging and most beautiful terrain we have ever ridden. Make us tell you about these places when we return but first determine the limit of your personal tolerance for photos of colorfol villages perched on mountainsides. Or perhaps you’d enjoy seeing all 1000?

7. 29 degrees celcius may sound refreshing… perhaps October will be the tiniest bit gentler?

We’re off to Florence in the morning. There might be another opportunity for affordable Internet access there, but no guarantees. At $14/hr, it pretty much boils down to a matter of eat or tweet.