COOKBOOK/A TABLE - Cool as a Cucumber

This cooling Couscous and Crab Salad with Cucumber and Mint has been one of my summer go-tos for years, thanks to the brilliant former New York Times food columnist Molly O’Neill (who we sadly lost in 2019) and her cookbook A Well-Seasoned Appetite. As you might guess, the cookbook is divided by season, but also includes superb essays celebrating the virtues of eating well, as informed by O’Neill’s conviction that “cooking should nourish life...”  

Do enjoy!

Couscous And Crab Salad With Cucumber Juice And Mint
By Molly O’Neill

Ingredients
Yield: Four servings

1 cup cucumber juice* 
½ cup uncooked instant couscous
2 cups lump crab meat, picked over for shells
15 small cherry tomatoes, quartered
1 small red onion, halved and thinly sliced
1 tablespoon chopped fresh mint
½ teaspoon grated lemon rind
½ teaspoon grated lime rind
1 teaspoon salt
Freshly ground pepper to taste

Preparation
Step 1
Place ¾ cup of the cucumber juice in a saucepan and bring to a boil. Add the couscous, cover and remove from heat. Let stand for 5 minutes. Uncover and stir with a fork. Place in a bowl and set aside to cool.

Step 2
Add the crab meat, cherry tomatoes, onion, mint and lemon and lime rinds and toss to coat. Toss in the remaining cucumber juice. Season with the salt and pepper. Divide among 4 plates and serve immediately.



*If you have a juice extractor...to make one cup of cucumber juice, pass one large peeled cucumber through a juice extractor. OR—cut to the chase, as I do, and pick up a brand of cold pressed juice that contains cucumber, such as Suja. You may also puree a few peeled, seeded cucumbers and squeeze the pulp through cheese cloth for your juice!

BOOK/A TABLE - Blueberry Cobbler

 

Happy Juneteenth! As I was plotting out a small tribute here to Nobel Prize-winning author Toni Morrison, NYT Cooking sent out an email for a Blueberry Cobbler recipe. I remembered the scene from Morrison’s first novel, The Bluest Eye, where sweet, tragic Pecola Breedlove encounters a cobbler bubbling with “blackish blueberries” and suddenly I had an idea for this post.

“On the counter near the stove in a silvery pan was a deep-dish berry cobbler. The purple juice bursting here and there through crust.”

I was completely bowled over by Morrison when I discovered Beloved  in 1992. Something always seems to be simmering stovetop in her novels—and certainly in her vivid, extraordinary prose. With that in mind, I hope you enjoy this summery cobbler!

Chez Panisse’s Blueberry Cobbler
Recipe from Lindsey Remolif Shere 
Adapted by Molly O'Neill

INGREDIENTS
Yield: 4 to 6 servings

Berries:
4½ cups fresh blueberries
⅓ cup sugar
1tablespoon all-purpose flour

Dough:
1½ cups all-purpose flour
½ teaspoon kosher salt
1½ tablespoons sugar
2¼ teaspoons baking powder
6 tablespoons cold unsalted butter, cut into ½-inch pieces
¾ cup heavy cream, plus additional for serving, if desired

METHOD
Step 1
Heat the oven to 375 degrees. To prepare the berries, place in a bowl and toss with the sugar and flour. Set aside.
Step 2
To make the dough, mix the flour, salt, sugar and baking powder in a bowl. Cut in the butter until mixture resembles coarse meal. Add the cream and mix lightly, just until the dry ingredients are moistened.
Step 3
Put the blueberries in a 1½-quart gratin or baking dish. Make patties out of the dough, 2 to 2½ inches in diameter and ½-inch thick. Arrange them over the top of the berries. Bake until the topping is brown and the juices bubble thickly around it, about 35 to 40 minutes.
Step 4
Let cool slightly. Serve warm, with cream to pour on top, if desired.

Pear Galette

In A Well-Seasoned Appetite, Molly O'Neill's collection of  "recipes from an American kitchen," she wrote about her dissatisfaction with pears for not being apples. I've always believed O'Neill was stating that while she was quite pleased by pears, she simply wished that they weren't gritty, and rather that they were also as tingly crisp as apples. While I wholeheartedly agree, I had no problem taking a bite out of this recipe for pear galette and quickly scarfed down (winter time, get it?) two slices. But to round out the point in a way, I do however find quince to be a kindly considered hybrid of apples and pears, respecting both parties.

This dessert is elegant and designed to impress but honestly it's not even that difficult and moves along pleasantly. Just have your frangipane ingredients all measured out for convenience sake, and use care when dealing with the delicate business of slicing the pears. Work quickly too, so your pie dough doesn't lose its vigor before being transferred to the rimmed baking sheet (or pie dish, as I used).

Edges brushed with egg wash before going into the oven...

While making my galette, quite by happenstance, Laura Nyro  sang out on my stereo, "...marzipan sweet bakin out in December..." While frangipane and marzipan do have their differences, the lyric was certainly apropos enough here. 

So...care for sour cream on that? Extra jam topping? I'd be delighted!

The recipe for Pear Galette below and the direct link with a more printer-friendly page is here.

From the Williams-Sonoma test kitchen:

Pear Galette

Serves 6 to 8

For the frangipane:
1 1/2 cups (6 oz./185 g) sliced almonds
2/3 cup (5 oz./155 g) sugar
1/4 tsp. kosher salt
2 eggs, lightly beaten
1 tsp. vanilla extract
1 tsp. almond extract
2 Tbs. unsalted butter, melted

3 firm but ripe pears, preferably Comice or Anjou
1 batch Basic Pie Dough
1 egg beaten with 2 tsp. water
1/4 cup (2 1/2 oz./75 g) apricot jam

Position a rack in the upper third of an oven and preheat to 425°F (220°C).

To make the frangipane, in a food processor, combine the almonds, sugar and salt and process until the almonds are finely ground. Add the eggs, vanilla and almond extracts and melted butter and process until the mixture comes together. Set aside.

Cut the pears in half through the stem end and remove the cores with a melon baller. Slice the pears very thinly vertically, stopping 1/2 inch (12 mm) from the stem so the pear slices stay attached at the stem end.

On a sheet of parchment paper, roll out the pie dough into a round 13 inches (33 cm) in diameter and about 1/8 inch (3 mm) thick. Trim off any ragged edges to make an even 12-inch (30-mm) round.

Evenly spread the frangipane over the dough, leaving a 2-inch (5-cm) border uncovered. Fan the pears in a decorative pattern on top of the frangipane, cutting the pear halves in half vertically if necessary to make them fit. Fold the edges of the dough up and over the filling, forming loose pleats all around the edge and leaving the center open. Using the sheet of parchment paper, transfer the galette and parchment to a rimmed baking sheet. Using a pastry brush, brush the edges of the galette with the egg wash.

Bake the galette until the pears are tender when pierced with a knife and the crust is golden brown, 50 to 55 minutes. Transfer to a wire rack to cool.

While the galette is cooling, in a small saucepan over low heat, warm the jam until it is liquefied. Pour through a fine-mesh sieve set over a small bowl. Using a pastry brush, gently brush the top of the tart with a thin coating of the jam. Cut the galette into slices and serve warm or at room temperature.