Cranberry Bean Crostini

As is so often the case, my market haul this week was far larger than it needed to be. Like a magpie, I was dazzled by the colors of the tomatoes, the peppers, the greens, the nectarines: and these, cranberry beans, also called Italian etna beans. Mottled pink and white pods, packed with speckled, plump beans like tiny candies. So pretty they must have been made by fairies. I'd like to string them on a necklace, which I probably would have done if I'd been introduced to these as a child. I would have eaten them, too, early childhood hatred for beans aside. Kids are gullible, especially me. I'd eat almost anything that I could reasonably associate with fairy culture.

Pretty in pink.

The hunt for fairies was a focal point of my childhood. I still have notebooks full of the complex social structures of Fairyland, penned in conjunction with my equally besotted cousins, full of secret passwords and histories of these creatures we were sure must exist in some alternate dimension. In our Fairyland, creatures called "patty pan fairies" were in charge of the cooking. I'm sure they would have adored cranberry beans.

I'm fairly sure these germinated Jack's beanstalk as well.

It seemed such a shame to cook them. Unfortunately cranberry beans lose their color when heated, but the taste more than makes up for it. Thirty minutes later I was happily munching my crostini, and thanking the fairies for their agricultural acumen.

Fairy made, human consumed.

Cranberry Bean Crostini

Makes about 1 cup, or 20 crostini

• 12 ounces cranberry beans, in the pod
• 1 clove garlic, roughly chopped
• 1 Tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
• 1/4 teaspoon red wine vinegar
• 1/3 cup cooking liquid (reserved)
• 1 + 1/2 teaspoons Kosher salt
• ground black pepper

To serve:

• one baguette
• fresh basil or parsley, chopped (optional)
• extra virgin olive oil

Shell the beans and rinse them well. In a small saucepan, cover them with cold water and 1 teaspoon salt, and bring them to a boil. Reduce the heat and simmer the beans for 15 minutes. Strain the beans, reserving 1/3 cup of the cooking liquid.

Pure magic.

In a blender or food processor, add the beans, garlic, 1 tablespoon olive oil, 1/2 teaspoon salt, pepper, red wine vinegar, and 2 tablespoons of the reserved cooking liquid. Blend until relatively smooth, adding additional cooking liquid if it is needed. Check the beans for seasoning and let them cool.

Preheat the oven to 350°. Cut the baguette in 1/2 inch rounds and lightly brush each side with extra virgin olive oil. Lay the slices on a tin-foil lined tray and bake them for 10 minutes, turning once midway. When they are cool, top each round with about 2 teaspoons of the bean mixture and fresh herbs, if desired. Drizzle the crostini with extra virgin olive oil and serve.

Husk Cherry Upside-Down Cake

This weekend I braved the heat, hills, and taxis, and took my bike where it had never gone before: Manhattan. In theory it seemed fun; ride across the Manhattan Bridge, detour along the Bowery toward Lafayette, take Lafayette to Park, which was closed down for walkers, runners, bikers, skateboarders, in-line skaters, and children on itty bitty child vehicles until 1pm. Ride up to see the Dumpster pools on 41st, have a dip, coast back downhill to the Union Square Greenmarket. I expected the scene to be something out of Sesame Street, with all boroughs converging in a multiethnic street party complete with trash can Oscar.

I have at least 30 pounds of produce in these saddlebags.

In reality, the hills were steep, my thighs protested strenuously, and the Dumpster pools were both full and more Disney than Sesame. By the time we wandered down to Union Square, lugging unused beach towels and water bottles, I was sweatier than a Muppet in a sauna. I was too mindful of the long ride ahead of me to grab more than a few vegetables and fruits, but I still couldn't pass by the crate of husk cherries after taste-testing. Husk cherries?! We're not in Brooklyn any more...

Husk cherries, au naturel.

Husk cherries, sometimes called husk tomatoes, cape gooseberries, or groundcherries, are members of genus Physalis, part of the nightshade family and close relatives of the tomatillo (one of my very favorite fruits). There are actually several different varieties that are thus identified interchangeably, so although I'm not sure which I ended up with, I think they were the Physalis peruviana. They grow well in temperate regions and often show up in CSAs, but as a city girl I've never seen them before in bulk, only as garnish on desserts. Their small, yellowy-orange fruits are encased in paper-thin husks, which are peeled away before the fruit is eaten. And here's the thing: their taste is intoxicating. Very fresh, with strong overtones of pineapple, and a mild, green tomato taste at the end. Fruitier than not, and super sweet.

Cute and delicious.

I bought four cups with the intention of eating the cherries raw over yogurt, but of course I couldn't leave well enough alone. Riffing on their pineapple flavor, I decided to turn them into an upside-down cake, one of my all-time favorite desserts since way back when Snuffleupagus was still invisible. The result was every bit as sweet as I remember, but slightly less cloying, and maybe a bit more adult (I don't think my mother added rum, for one thing). Let's call it the locavore's upside-down cake: When you don't want to crack a can of pineapple, husk a husk cherry instead.

Gooey goodness.

Husk Cherry Upside-Down Cake

(adapted from the Fanny Farmer Cookbook)
Makes one 9 inch cake

• 12 Tablespoons butter
• 1 cup turbinado sugar (light brown sugar may be substituted)
• 1/4 cup dark rum (use orange or pineapple juice for a non-alcoholic version)
• 4 cups husk cherries in the husk (equals 1 1/2 cups husked)
• 1/2 cup milk
• 1 egg
• 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 cup white sugar

Preheat your oven to 400 degrees. Sift together the flour, baking powder, salt, and granulated sugar in a medium bowl, and set aside. Remove the husk cherries from their husks by squeezing at the stem end. Rinse the cherries and discard any that have split or are discolored.

Melt 4 tablespoons butter in a small saucepan over low heat, and add the turbinado sugar. Remove from the heat and add the rum. Return the pan to the stove and cook on low for 3-4 minutes. The sugar may not completely dissolve. Remove from the heat and pour the sugar mixture into the bottom of an ungreased 9 inch cake pan. Add the husk cherries and arrange them in a single layer in the bottom of the pan. Set the pan aside.

Over low heat, melt the remaining 8 tablespoons butter. In a small bowl, beat the egg with the milk, and slowly add in the melted butter, whisking to combine. Add the milk mixture to the flour mixture and stir until incorporated.

Pour the batter into the cake pan and smooth to the edges with a spatula. Bake the cake for 35 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean. Let the cake rest ten minutes, then invert it carefully onto a large plate and let it cool an additional 20 minutes. Serve the cake with lightly whipped cream.

Drool.

Lamb Chili with Black Beans

I was recently reading a site-which-shall-not-be named, when I came across a thread about online recipe engines, and the immense amount of duplication to be found therein. I can commiserate, to a certain extent; when I make my annual Concord Grape Pie, I also write down my annual Concord Grape Pie recipe, which I lose as soon as I finish eating the result. The next year I go on my annual search for a recipe that approximates what I remember "my" recipe to be, and it usually involves paging through dozens of almost-the-same-but-not-quite variations and their associated recommendations, commentaries, and ratings.

Sweet sweet onions, Grand Army Plaza market.

So when a commenter asked for standardization and filtering, I could understand. But then, this: "Please, when someone adds a recipe for chili, make it the only recipe for chili!"

Only one recipe for chili?

No chicken chili with fresh corn, beef chili with chipotle, turkey chili with squash? No white bean chili, black bean chili, meatless chili, beanless chili, chili with spaghetti? No chili like my mother makes, which is totally different than what my aunt makes, which is in turn not in the least bit like the chili from the soup guy down the street?

No lamb chili?

I cannot call my pantry stocked if it is not stocked with anchos.

Lamb Chili with Black Beans

Makes about four servings

• 1.5 lb ground lamb (have your butcher grind lamb shoulder if you don't see pre-ground)
• 1 large red onion, diced
• 1 (28 oz) can crushed tomatoes
• 2 (14 oz) cans black beans (unsalted), drained
• 2 teaspoons ground cumin
• 1 teaspoon ground coriander
• 2 teaspoons Kosher salt
• 1 teaspoon fresh ground black pepper
• 1 Tablespoon + 2 teaspoons olive oil
• 2 cups water
• 1 cup beer (or one additional cup water)

For the chili sauce:*

• 1 large ancho chile
• 2 medium chipotle chiles (dried) or 1/2 to 1 chipotle chili in adobo (canned)
  
• 1 puya or arbol chile
• 1 1/2 cups water

  To top (optional):

• diced red onion
• fresh cilantro
• avocado or sour cream 

Cut upen the dried chiles and remove the stems and seeds. In a small frying pan, heat 2 teaspoons of oil over high heat, then add the dried chiles (do not add the canned chilis, if using). Turn the chiles to toast all sides, about 30 seconds per side or until light and blistered. Keep a close eye on the pan, as chiles can burn easily. When toasted, place the chiles in a small bowl, and cover them with 1 1/2 cups of hot water. Weigh down the chiles with a smaller bowl or glass until they are submerged, and let them soak for 10 minutes.

In a large, heavy saucepan (at least 5 qt) set over medium-high heat, brown the meat in 1 tablespoon of olive oil, breaking it up with your spoon as you go. Cook the lamb until it is slightly browned, about 6-7 minutes. Add the diced onion, cumin, coriander, salt, and pepper, and turn the heat down to a simmer.

While the meat is cooking, purée the chile mixture (along with any canned chiles) in a blender or a small food processor, liquid and all. When smooth, pour it into the meat mixture, and add the crushed tomatoes, black beans, two cups of water, and one cup of beer (if using). Cover and simmer the chili for 45 minutes, then uncover and cook it for an additional 15 minutes.

Serve the chili with fresh cilantro and diced red onion, avocado, or sour cream.

Only one kind of chili? This is why we can't have nice things.

*This combination will produce a mild-to-medium, smoky chili. For additional heat, add another puya or arbol chile. To make the chili milder, use only one ancho and one dried chipotle chile.

Mamoncillo Daiquiris

New York has a special relationship with its fruit vendors. Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these guys; all year round they're there, in summers with sunglasses, on rainy spring days with tarps, in winter bundled into parkas. They're like our street corner vending machines, dispensing fruit and nuts with precision and a regularity to rival the Postal Service. Just be warned: When avocados are three for a dollar, it really is too good to be true.

Mamoncillo fruit, in their natural state.

They also have a really superb selection. When my corner market is out of fresh figs, my corner fruit guy never is. And in summer, they're loaded down with mamoncillo, a fruit that hardly ever shows up stores. I've passed several vendors both in Manhattan and Brooklyn that have the little green buds right now, and of course, I couldn't resist them.

Uncracked.

Mamoncillo is most often called quenapa in New York, as it is in Puerto Rico. Of course, it also goes by a hundred other names—mamón, ackee, chenet, guaya, gnep, guinep, skinnip, genip, guinep, ginnip, kenèp, talpa jocote, canepa, genepa, xenepa, kenepa, limoncillo, and Spanish lime, which refers to its flavor, as it is a drupe (see: peach) rather than a citrus.

Cracked!

To eat a mamoncillo fruit, you crack the shell with your teeth, and then suck on its pit, which is covered with a thin layer of soft fruit. It's a bit like a pomegranate in this regard, and is often eaten with salt and chili, like a mango (warning: the juice stains terribly, and was used by Native Americans to dye cloth.) The pit itself can be roasted and eaten, but I decided to cook the fruits whole, which I gather is a bit sacrilegious. Eaten raw, the taste is lime-esque; after simmering the fruit with sugar, its flavor regressed to something between a peach and a guava. Perfect, I thought, for a cocktail.

Mamoncillo Simple Syrup

• 1/2 lb mamoncillo fruit, shelled
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1/2 cup water

Simmer all the ingredients together for 6-8 minutes. Cool the mixture and refrigerate for 24 hours before using. Strain, if desired.

Ready for Papa.

Mamoncillo Daiquiri

• 1.5 oz rum (I used Smith + Cross, here's why)
• 1 oz mamoncillo syrup
• juice of 1/2 lime

Shake the rum, syrup, and lime juice with ice, strain, and serve in a chilled glass.

Disclaimer: Glass not approved by American Bar Association.

Chiles Rellenos with Huitlacoche

I have a thing for odd foods: I see them as a challenge. Not in an Andrew Zimmern kind of way, but maybe in an Anthony Bourdain kind of way. I've had this problem since I was about 12, and my parents took me to Guatemala, and they fed me a strange animal called a paca.

These will be important later in the story.

I suppose I really shouldn't blame my parents for this; after all it was my idea to go to Guatemala, after reading The Adventures of Holly Hobbie, the gripping story of a time traveling girl from colonial America (my favorite era) who visits Tikal in order to solve a modern-day mystery. I decided that I must go to Tikal as soon as possible, since colonial America was somewhat out of the question. My parents being good sports (also birdwatchers), they agreed.

So we ended up in Tikal, and a guide took us to a restaurant, and the restaurant served us paca. The paca is sort of an animal unto itself, with two species and one genus in the family Cuniculidae. It is a cousin of the capybara, a fuzzy kind of rodent mostly famous for being designated a fish by Catholic missionaries eager to eat it on Fridays. Here ends my knowledge of this branch of the order Rodentia. I've seen a lot of capybara in the plains of Venezuela, but I ain't never eaten one.

I remember thinking that the paca tasted like veal. My father also later semi-gleefully told me that it was an endangered species (this turned out to be NOT TRUE). Well, huitlacoche doesn't taste like veal, and it's extremely common, so common that the US government has spent millions of dollars trying to eradicate it. Not that most of us have ever heard of it. Huitlacoche is a multi-layered thing, an infection of Ustiliga maydis (a fungus) in corn ears, the resultant food being an amalgam of both the diseased kernels (swelled almost beyond recognition) and the blackish fungus itself. Um, here's a picture of a relatively benign infection:

Thank you, jasonsewell.

A little odd looking, which isn't surprising since it means "excrement" (of some debated kind) in Nahuatl. Thank you, Aztecs. Although I always preferred the Maya, your naming schemes are brilliant.

Since huitlacoche is a fungus, it can be used in place of mushrooms in many recipes, although the taste is somewhat different--very pungent, very earthy. I elected to use my Bottle O' Excrement in some chiles rellenos, which turned out spectacularly. Where do you get huitlacoche? In your local Latin American grocery store. Unless you live in a yurt in Alaska, I refuse to believe that you don't have one of those. If you don't have one of those, here. But in that case you probably live in a place that grows corn, so don't tell me you can't find any. I live in Brooklyn, so I have to resort to the bodega.

Yeah, corn fungus!

Don't listen to the naysayers--huitlacoche is delicious, musky, rich, and goes well with cheese. It's also really good for you. Even the paca wasn't all that.

Chiles Rellenos with Huitlacoche

• 4 medium poblano peppers
• 1 medium onion, diced
• 1 T olive oil
• 1 (8 oz) jar or can huitlacoche
• 1 package queso blanco or another mild white cheese
• pepper

For béchamel:

• 2 T butter
• 2 T flour
• 1 cup milk
• 1/2 t Kosher salt

Preheat the oven to 375. Wash and dry your peppers. If you have a gas range, turn two burners to medium-low and place two peppers directly onto each burner, over the flames. If you have an electric range, place the peppers in a shallow pan and put them under the broiler. In each case, the peppers should be carefully monitored and turned every 2-3 minutes, allowing the skin to become blackened and blistered on all sides. When the skins are evenly blackened, place the peppers in a bowl covered with a dish towel. Let the peppers rest for 15 minutes.

Burn baby burn.

Sauté the onion in olive oil over medium heat for 4-5 minutes or until lightly golden. Add the huitlacoche, liquid and all. Reduce heat to medium-low and stir for 2-3 minutes or until most of the liquid has evaporated. Huitlacoche is generally packed with plenty of salt, so additional salt is not needed. Add pepper to taste.

Remove the peppers from the bowl and run under cool water, carefully removing the blackened skins. Let dry on a paper towel.

Prepare the béchamel by melting the butter over low heat in a small pan, then adding the flour and whisking until smooth. Continue whisking for two minutes, then slowly add the milk by quarter cups, whisking each addition until smooth. After all the milk has been added, turn the heat to medium and stir constantly until the mixture starts to boil, then reduce to a low simmer. Continue cooking until the béchamel thickens to coat the back of the spoon. Add salt and remove from the heat.

Stuff it.

To stuff the peppers, slit each one from stem to tip. Carefully remove the seeds from the peppers, taking care not to tear them further. Cut a slice of queso blanco to fit inside each pepper, then carefully fill the remaining portion with the huitlacoche mixture. Place the stuffed peppers into a baking dish, and pour béchamel on top. Grate additional cheese on top, and cover the peppers with foil.

Turn the oven down to 350 and bake the peppers for 30 minutes. Remove the foil, and bake for an additional 20 minutes. Remove the peppers from the oven and let cool for 1o minutes before serving.

Hot and cheesy fungus poppers.

Sunday Science Experiment: Limoncello

I grew up in a town full of second generation Irish and Italians. My playmates went home and ate lasagna; I ate moussaka. When I went off to college in the midwest, I was surprised to learn that most of my school was not Catholic. That people considered themselves to be things like Baptists, and even Calvinists, which I had learned about in 5th grade but naively thought had gone out with whalebone corsets.

This is all just a long way of saying that I was unaware of limoncello for some time.

Today I decided to make some. I took the following:

• lemons
• sugar
• vodka

And put them together in a bottle. Then I put the bottle into a dark cupboard and tried to forget all about it.

Lemony goodness.

At least, it should have gone that way. What really happened was this:

Annabelle: (Reads Scott Mansfield's recipe for limoncello, looks at picture of lovely bottle, looks at empty Michter's bottle in recycling bin, puts two and two together, sets aside quart jar washed out for this purpose. Peels lemons, stuffs sweetly-smelling zest into old Michter's bottle, hums quietly to herself)

If I were a fish, I would get caught in one of those Native American inverted-V fish traps.

Boyfriend: So how does this work? When is it ready?

Annabelle: Well it will sit for a month or so, and then I will strain it, and... oh...

Boyfriend: What?

Annabelle: I just realized that I can't strain it. Um, I won't be able to get the lemon zest back out of the bottle.

Boyfriend: Well, maybe you could do it... really carefully...

Annabelle: Like with chopsticks? No... I don't think so... oh and... this bottle isn't going to be big enough for four cups of vodka, is it? And now I can't get the lemon out... oh dear.

Annabelle: (Gamely continues, pouring sugar on top of peels, cutting amount of sugar and vodka down slightly from the original recipe)

Annabelle: Well, maybe I can get three cups in here... EUREKA! I've got it! This will just be the Neverending Limoncello Bottle! It is self-straining, so when we drink out of it, we'll just top it off with more vodka and sugar, until the lemon peel eventually loses its potency! It will just keep getting better and better with time, as the bottle that keeps on giving! Maybe!

This might still be a disaster, but at least it's pretty.

Annabelle: (Pours in vodka, which bubbles up as it filters through the sugar and lemon peel)

Boyfriend: Look, a chemical reaction!

Annabelle: I think that's actually just gravity, and, um, displacement or something.

Boyfriend: Oh well.

Annabelle: (Puts volatile bottle into the cupboard)

So... check back in a month or so for results. In the mean time, I've ordered Scott Mansfield's book, so next Sunday I can whip up some mead, spruce beer, or maybe just the homemade bitters I've been promising myself for weeks. Oh, and I'll brush up on my physics and spatial reasoning as well.

New Amsterdam Market

Last weekend a friend and I restarted a long-running debate about the merits of trying to eat sustainably, locally, and ethically. Naturally this circled back to Michael Pollan, and we discussed various arguments made (by others) as to his elitism, or the elitism of this "movement" in general.

Look, some chard!

(Disclaimer: I have only read one book by Michael Pollan, which was The Omnivore's Dilemma, and have never read any other book on the subject. Given my high-strung nature and tendency to jump on bandwagons, I think one of these per year is enough for me, unless I want to pull a Gwyneth and go macrobiotic and maybe live in a yurt in Alaska and make my own cheese, which actually doesn't sound so bad, but I digress...)

This post, in any case, is not about that. But it does inform it. Let's just say I try to do my part; try to buy locally and seasonally, from farmers markets and good butchers, try to avoid peaches in winter (not hard) and grain-fed beef (harder). I'm slowly changing my lifestyle, and it gets easier with time, and much easier with these fantastic bike saddlebags I bought on my trip to Amsterdam.

Xzibit would be proud.

Sorry; I take this seriously, I really do. Of course I also take my bike seriously, and like to trick it out like a Berliner at Christmas... but I recognize that these choices are easier to make considering the community in which I live (Brooklyn) and in the socio-economic class to which I belong (non-car owning but able to afford $11 maple syrup on occasion). I can't leave my apartment without tripping over a local-free-range-organic-sustainably-slaughtered-by-Amish-farmers carrot smoothie, so buying peaches in season is pretty damn easy. If I lived in certain areas of Detroit, it might not be.

Which brings me to this: The New Amsterdam Market. Where the Greenmarket leaves off (most prepared foods, greater New England area), the New Amsterdam market jumps in. With vendors hailing from as far as Maine (Port Clyde Fisherman's Co-Op) and as near as the outer boroughs (Queens County Farm Museum, speaking of which, could you hire me?), hawking everything from boule to Brandywines, it's a foodie heaven for New Yorkers.

A lot of the goods are also really expensive, not-even-comparatively speaking.

The market aims to emulate 19th century markets in New York, along with Les Halles in Paris, shut down in the 70s for being a rat-infested hovel. Well, I assume that part will not be recreated, but... I love almost everything about this market. I love the produce, the piles of baguettes, the samples of smoked duck melting in the summer heat, the free tastes of local wine, the rich smell of roasted porchetta. I love that it's hidden behind the tourist mall that is South Street Seaport, with a view of the Brooklyn Bridge shimmering in the background, and is filled with equal parts strollers and bike baskets.

I swear, there were lots of strollers AND bike baskets.

After twenty sweaty minutes in June I left with the aforementioned $11 bottle of maple syrup (small), a $10 tub of rendered duck fat (which I do think is a good deal, all things considered), and, as the pièce de résistance, a $9 heirloom tomato. Which nearly made me cry. $9 for a tomato? A single tomato? I breathed quickly, I considered putting it back. It had already been weighed; I had already put my grubby hands all over it. It had leaked a little bit on my bag. I tried to justify it by considering the fact that it could be made into lunches for two (it actually ended up stretching to three). I tried to quell the voice in my head that told me "You have never had an heirloom tomato to rival a good Jersey red. AND YOU KNOW IT." But still it came home with me, cradled in my lap like a baby on the subway.

Expensive fucking tomatoes.

So the market will remain look-but-don't-touch for the most part, for me. I may buy locally, but I'll mostly stick to collards and kale. I may buy sustainably, but I'll try to bake my own bread. I may dress my pancakes with small-batch syrup, but I won't eat them every Sunday (this has additional benefits in the waistline area). This all isn't to say that the market isn't a great idea, that it doesn't further The Cause in a positive way, that I'm not extremely happy that it exists. I am. I don't think it's elitist, I just don't have the pockets for some of its better products, is all. Please forgive me, and try the free sausages.