birthday flowers, whipped cream, maple syrup, blueberries…
Generally speaking, I’m not in charge of breakfast, and I prefer pancakes to waffles. This is not so true of my husband, who loves waffles, and who counted a waffle maker among the very few kitchen machines in his bachelor home. He made waffles pretty regularly (from a mix, yes, but he still made the effort).
However, about a week ago, the kids requested waffles, and I found a Fanny Farmer recipe for Raised Waffles at Epicurious. It’s an interesting recipe that calls for yeast (which we always have) instead of buttermilk (which we don’t). Also, the griddle cakes we are devoted to are also a Fanny Farmer recipe, so I figured this one had to be a hit as well. And it is. These are incredibly light, not too sweet, and perfectly tender and crisp when they come off the waffle iron. Ella asked for her dad’s “special platter”, which the waffles certainly deserve.
They are very, very, very easy to make, and like the English muffins, they have the benefit of being a make-ahead meal. I don’t really like to make an effort in the morning. But for these waffle, you make the better the night before, let it rise, then add 2 eggs and 1/4 teaspoon baking soda in the morning. And, voila! They’re ready to go. There’s no mess (unless you overfill the waffle maker), no flour to sweep up, no extra baking tools to wash in the morning. Apparently the batter will keep in your refrigerator for a few days, but we just make the big batch all at once, and then reheat the waffles in our convection oven for school days. The only down side is that, like all fresh waffles, you have to make them one at a time, and this can take time. But I sit on a tall stool, and baby sit the waffle maker while my family eats them hot. I’m very happy with my coffee, talking to them (we have an open kitchen), and by the time the last is done, I’m fully caffeinated and ready to eat. As far as I’m concerned, it’s win-win.
The first time we made them, we had leftover whipped cream and frozen blueberries, so they went on the table. This was a very. big. hit. Kids + waffles + blueberries + whipped cream=fruity, creamy waffles sandwiches for breakfast. We’ve made them twice now, so I can safely say that the waffle maker Kory insisted on registering for when we married will have a more regular place in our slow-food breakfast rotation.
Hop on over to Epicurious for the recipe. You won’t need another one. And as long as you can dust off, or buy, a waffle maker, you definitely don’t need frozen.
I would have added “simple” to this title, but it’s just too much alliteration. Still, it is a side benefit of another great winter pasta dish. In fact, I feel like I have (I definitely should have) written this one up before, but I can’t find it in any search. So here it is, again, perhaps , for some of you, one of our favorite cold-weather dishes, a family pleaser in any form. It’s also another dish that holds up to whatever you have in your pantry. If you only have sausage and tomatoes, it works. You can use fusilli to equal (if not greater) effect. You can certainly leave out the onion and garlic if you like and the saffron is an added bonus.
But if you want the full measure of this dish, use the saffron. It might be a new (fun! colorful! strange!) ingredient for your kid, who can yellow her palms crushing the pretty threads for you. It adds a gorgeous golden color to the tomato and adds its incomparable flavor to the dish, giving a rather ordinary dish an extra-ordinary twist. I believe I found the original recipe years ago in Food & Wine.
Also, I am certainly not one to keep expensive saffron in my pantry, but Trader Joe’s sells a Spanish version that does the trick nicely and which fits my family’s budget. I’ve also seen something called Mexican saffron, which is probably pretty similar. If you can splurge for the top quality stuff, by all means do. If not, these more affordable versions serve as a great introduction for your family and nice, new addition to your weekly dinners.
Spaghetti with Sausage & Saffron
1 lb spaghetti
3/4 lb (more or less, 3-5 small links) mild Italian sausage
1 bay leaf
1/2 onion (sweet, red, whatever…), sliced thin
1 or 2 cloves garlic, minced
1 can tomatoes (whole plum or chopped, your choice)
saffron threads, a generous pinch or to taste
Sautee bay leaf, onion, and garlic in a few tablespoons olive oil until soft.
Squeeze the sausage out of the casing, and cook, breaking up the sausage with a fork until the sausage is cooked through.
Deglaze the pan with a little water (or wine or vermouth if you like).
Stir in the tomatoes with their juice, and, if whole, use your spoon to crush them.
When the tomatoes are nicely crushed and simmering, add the saffron threads, crumbling them a little between your fingers. Use enough to get a nice, golden color and stir them in thoroughly.
Let the sauce simmer over very low heat for 15 or 20 minutes or so, or longer, to incorporate the flavors.
Cook the pasta in boiling salted, water.
Drain pasta and add to the sauce. Let it simmer for just a few minutes to incorporate the flavors.
Serve immediately with grated grana, parmesan or pecorino romano.
This recipe is an adaptation from my favorite cooking magazine: La Cucina Italiana. Sometimes the recipes are complicated and not friendly for weeknights or busy families, but the articles and pictures are terrific, and the recipes often astonishing.
Our orange tree is reaching its peak, and on a very rainy Saturday afternoon, this dish looked like just the warm, rich dish we needed on a very rainy Saturday night. I could make it with what I had in my pantry (& on my tree). It’s simple enough for a weeknight, elegant and rich enough for a weekend. Think of it as a kind of fancy variation on a Fettucine Alfredo (with an egg), which I’ll write about tomorrow. It’s another example of how seasonal eating can be serendiptious, spontaneous, and fulfilling. If you keep your kitchen stocked with ingredients available in and appropriate to the season, you can almost always whip up something great. (Unlike, say, keeping around a zucchini in Februrary January (apparently I just lost a month…), which is what I saw an unnamed Food Network “star” cook with last night….and I nearly gagged on my cauliflower broiled w/emmenthal and cream….).
Also, in keeping with the gastronomic education of the kids, this is interesting because it pairs the familiar with a new taste. It looks like something they’d love; it looks a little boring, maybe, but the flavors are a sunny surprise and a comfort. More: the kids aren’t used to seeing zest in their pasta, but they loved the flavor so, as we say, they got over it quickly. It’s also more filling, so they chose to eat less of it which was fine for me. (I had a couple of warm lunches.)
This is a rich and filling dish, so adapt your side dishes or first courses accordingly.
Winter Citrus Pasta
1 lb pasta
zest of one orange
1 cup cream
1 T butter
about a tablespoon of fresh chopped sage OR thyme
1 beaten egg
1/2 cup grana; parmesan, or pecorino, or more to taste
salt & pepper
Put orange zest in cream and heat (in microwave if you like) to near boiling. Let steep.
Cook pasta and drain.
In pasta cooking pot, sautee sage or thyme for a minute or so to release fragrance.
Lower heat and add pasta to pot. Toss with cream/zest mixture.
Quickly stir in the egg and the cheese; this will make a thick and creamy sauce.
Serve immediately.
The following was appended on Jan. 12, 2010
And for those of you suitably excited about this, and not afraid of the extra eggs and cream, the recipe as originally published is below. Read it, read my quicker version, and adapt to your kitchen, time frame, your taste and tolerance for cream. Both recipes are satisfying and delicious, as long as you don’t leave out the egg or cream. Or, um, the zest.
zest of 2 oranges
1 1/2 T butter
1 lb spaghetti
1 1/4 cups heavy cream
1/3 cup chervil
1/2 cup parmesan
3 large egg yolks
Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil.
Warm serving plates in a low oven.
Melt butter in a medium skillet until foam subsides. Add zest and a pnich of salt, reduce heat, and cook until zest is soft and golden. Set aside.
Bring cream, chervil, salt to a boil in a small saucepan. Simmer for 4 minutes.
Cook pasta until al dente.
Just before pasta is served, spoon 3 T of cream onto serving plates. Using the back of spoon, spread the cream to cover plates.
Darain pasta and toss with remaining cream, zest and egg yolks until fully incorporated.
I will stop with all the cookierecipes soon, I promise, and get on to other topics, but I couldn’t resist writing about this one which I first spotted on my friend (and Mama, PhD contributor) Sheila‘s blog: Flourless Peanut Butter Cookies.
Now, normally I am a big fan of flour in baked goods. You can keep your flourless chocolate cake, thank you; with the exception of ones made by my sister and served with pools of raspberry sauce, I like my chocolate cake with a bit more bite. And I’m lucky, I know, that no one in my family has trouble digesting flour; too many adults and kids I know are gluten-intolerant or suffer from celiac disease, and so now I’ve got another treat to share with them!
Tony did the school drop-off this morning, so when I got back from my run, I turned the oven on to preheat, got the egg and peanut butter out of the fridge, and ate my breakfast. By the time the oven was hot, the cookie dough was ready to go. This one couldn’t be simpler, and would be an excellent one to make with the kids: few ingredients, easy measuring, no electric appliances necessary.
1 cup super chunky peanut butter (I had several nearly-empty jars of nut butters in the fridge, so wound up using a combination of creamy and chunky peanut butters, plus some almond butter)
1 cup (packed) golden brown sugar
1 large egg
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup miniature semisweet chocolate chips (about 6 ounces) (I didn’t have mini chips, so just stuck 2-3 chips in the top of each cookie)
Preheat oven to 350°F. Mix first 5 ingredients in medium bowl. Mix in chocolate chips. Using moistened hands, form generous 1 tablespoon dough for each cookie into ball. Arrange on 2 ungreased baking sheets, spacing 2 inches apart.
Bake cookies until puffed, golden on bottom and still soft to touch in center, about 12 minutes. Cool on sheets 5 minutes. Transfer to racks; cool completely.
I’m still wrapping up the posts about how we ate over the holidays, which is sort of nice because in the post-holiday filter I’m finding new ways to think about how our special occasion eating is related to and consistent with our every day philosophy.
Anyone who know me knows that Christmastime, the season, is nothing without the Nutcracker. And even though we are immersed in rehearsals from September on, we still are devoted to seeing a big production before Christmas. If we’re back east, which admittedly hasn’t happened for some years now, we go to Lincoln Center and see New York City Ballet. If we’re here, we go to San Francisco Ballet’s ravishing production, and this year was no exception.
I share a season subscription to SF Ballet with a friend, but when the family goes to Nutcracker, we make a big day of it and also eat at Citizen Cake. Until this year, the children’s energy level and naptime needs always necessitated a pre-show lunch, which has always been lovely. But it did always pose the problem of what to do for dinner. We were home from the matinee to early to sleep, but no one wanted to cook after a lovely day at the theater, and we certainly didn’t want to spend any more money….
But this year, with Finn well over his nap, and a veteran viewer of Nut, able to discuss special effects and story differences between the 4 different production he’s seen at the ripe old age of 5, we (okay I) had a revelation: We would do dinner! An early, lovely dinner at Citizen Cake, and be home in time for bed.
And so we did. And it was really, really lovely. We arrived just before the dinner service started, and had a drink at the bar: Prosecco for me (I’m really predictable and boring); Shirley Temples for the kids (which Ella “savored” and Finn slurped); and a fresh egg nog thing for Kory. We relaxed for a few minutes, were seated promptly, and proceeded to chat, order, and eat for more than an hour. The staff was very kid-friendly, and they offered Finn several things not on the dinner menu. Of course, true to form, he had the macaroni and cheese, Ella the burger, but before that, while we ate the duck rilletes and cauliflower soup, they colored and munched happily on some pretty amazing sesame flatbreads. Ella scouted out the After Midnight cakes, which makes the outing for her every time, and I had one of the best chocolate desserts of my life, which I think was called a Log Cabin: warm, flourless chocolate cake crumbled over a pine nut crust and pine (not the nut, the tree) ice cream. It was “heavenly”, according to Ella, who might have traded me her After Midnight, if I’d let her. We were able to relax and linger in a way we never could at lunch (with a show to get to) and we were all still basking in the visions of sugar plums, even as the real thing was being set before us.
The whole evening was so perfect, that I found myself thinking about exactly why. That said, here are some more things I’ve learned about taking your kids to an upscale restaurant.
1. Dine at a time at which they will be hungry, but not too hungry and not too tired. This may seem obvious, but you want your kids to be alert, engaged, at their best. You want them ready to eat, not ready for bed. If they’re too hungry, they’ll whine. Or fill up on bread and crackers. Either one will ruin your pre-dinner glass of wine, or your main course.
2 . Don’t let them fill up on bread or appetizers. If they eat too much too fast or too early, they’re done and ready to bolt. Pace them. Let them have a bite of your first course if it’s something they like. Or order them something very, very small to split (olives, maybe?). Or let them have a small piece of bread, etc. from what’s put on the table. We really like to have a first course, so we’ve had to be ingenious about pacing our children right along with us. They have to learn how to eat in courses, in restaurants. Our job is to help them.
3. Bring something discreet and quiet to engage them. Like a discreet coloring page, a small sketchbook, a few crayons. Very many places offer these. Take advantage. Play tic tac toe, or hangman, or whatever your kids like. We’re lucky that Kory can entertain them with his illustrations and both kids like to color. The key, we think, is an activity that will engage and distract them during the wait if they need it, but which will not sever them from the table’s life and conversation. DO NOT bring a portable electronic game or an iPod etc. Do not give them your iPhone to play on. We think these cause kids to tune out, to disappear from the table, to bide their time until its time to bolt out the door. We think electronics at the table are just plain rude. I’ve been known to read a book when I’ve dined out alone, but that was a very, very long time ago. I don’t let my kids read at the table, either.
4. Talk to your kids about things that matter to them but don’t pander. Make time for family conversation. Talk about their coloring, play a little game, but also take time to talk to your adult companions. Try to balance adult/kid interaction. It’s your night out, too.
5. Let yourself & them have something special. Let them have that kidtini (as long as it won’t fill them up). Enjoy your glass of wine. Sit and linger if they let you. Kids learn how to behave from you. If you’re enjoying yourself and the food and their company, they’ll learn restaurants can be fun, too.
6. Make them wear nice clothes. As Kory said, there is a direct relationship between how well kids are dressed and how well they behave. Nice clothes=something special=nice manners. This is old fashioned but true.
7. Encourage new foods, but don’t force them. Order something your kids want to eat. Hint: Sometimes, we don’t even let them see the kids’ menu.
I will stop with all the 
