Date I made these recipes:
Sunday, September 11, 2016—15 Year Anniversary of 9/11
Published by Workman Publishing, New York
ISBN: 1-56305-337-3; © 1992
Purchased at Aardvark
Books, San Francisco , CA
Recipe: New
York
Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
ISBN:
978-0-544-45431-6; © 2015
Purchased at Barnes
and Noble – Used Books – Roseville ,
MN
Recipe: The Black-and-White Cookie – p. 279
Has it been that long?
Has it really been 15 years since 9/11 happened?
Every year since then, I have tried to observe that day in
my blog by cooking from my New York
cookbook collection. I try to find foods
that represent New York
and provide "comfort" at the same time. I think I nailed it this year with recipes
for New York Penicillin i.e. Chicken
Soup and Black-and-White Cookies.
I also try, every year, to articulate something about that
horrible, horrible day and this year have just been at a loss. I have written
and rewritten and rewritten again and only now have I decided that
"it" will do.
This year's anniversary folks, number 15, is significant
because it coincides with my first year in law school. Fifteen years ago on 9/11, I was three weeks
into my 1L (first year law) classes when the planes crashed in NYC and Washington D.C. and then
later, Pennsylvania . I was also only a couple of weeks away from
my 43rd birthday. It's now
been fifteen years since I thought that going to law school was a "good
idea." It has not necessarily been
a good idea, partly because the world started to collapse that day when those
towers fell and the economy went into a freefall as well. It wasn't a good time to be in any career,
much less the new one of law.
It has been fifteen years since the world, and especially
all of us in law school, got a look at how law and order (also the name of one
of my favorite TV show), became lawlessness and disorder on the grandest of
scale. Fifteen years since those towers,
never architecturally interesting to me, fell in a city that I loved.
I have always loved New
York and always will. Our family road trips back east
to see my grandmother (my dad was born and raised on the east coast) informed
my youth. My first "road trip"
into the city was actually to Queens for the New York World's Fair when I was six. We frequently took trips into the city to
sightsee and to visit my dad's aunts, uncles and cousins in the Burroughs. I gorged on all the Italian/Sicilian food
they made for our visits.
This love affair of mine never wavered, not in the 70's when
New York
wasn't the safest place, and not in the 80's when I came "this close"
to moving there. 9/11 changed nothing
for me except that it made me love New
York and New Yorkers even more. People tend to think of New Yorkers as harsh,
rude, and disconnected people who care nothing about their neighbors and who
have no time for other people's "problems." I'm here to tell you that image is
wrong. I'm here to remind you that we
saw otherwise on that day and every day thereafter. New
York is nothing but resilient, always has been,
always will be. New Yorkers cope, and
one of the ways they cope is through food.
New Yorkers love food and they should because there is
hardly a world cuisine that goes unnoticed or uncooked in NYC. Some foods, like Vietnamese (versus Chinese)
have been slow to trend in NYC (unlike here in MN where you can find Vietnamese
foods all over the place) but once New
York latches on to a food item, it never gives up and
(almost) never looks back.
Food trends are like that, too. Once something catches on, it seems to have a
toehold on us, like freshly-made pasta or soup stock made from scratch.
Two foods that are now considered "quintessential"
New York
foods are today's recipes: New York
Penicillin a/k/a Chicken Soup and the Black-And-White Cookie. Neither are trendy, neither represent
previously unknown cuisines, but they are there and they exist because it must
be so. If you know nothing about New York , you need to
know about these items as they are staples.
They are the dishes we can always count on, even when the world turns
upside down.
Cookbook author, Molly O'Neill tells us all about New York food in her 500
page tome – New York Cookbook - a book that took her five years to write. I jest when I say it took me about that long
to read it, but only slightly. Over the
years, I've pulled it off then shelf, flagged some recipes, then put it back,
rinse and repeat. I could just never
decide as there were so damned many awesome recipes to be sampled.
This time though, I pulled it off the shelf and stuck with
it. This time though, I noticed a photo
on the inside cover that I never paid much attention to before: The Twin Towers. When this book was published
in 1992, nobody on this earth could fathom that nearly 20 years later, those
towers would no longer exist.
I took this as a sign that I was meant to cook from this
book on this anniversary date. And I
also took as a sign the fact that this time around, the book fell open to the
chicken soup recipe. It's not for
nothing that chicken soup, in whatever form it takes, is the world's "feel
better" soup. And today, I wanted
to feel slightly better.
But if you're not in the mood or if you want more from NYC
than just soup, then fear not, for this book has everything else you might
need: "Nibbles, Noshes, and
Appetizing [bites];" "Soups for Sipping, Slurping, Supper;"
"To Bake an Honest Loaf," or "The Meat of the Matter" – you
name it, it's in there. In fact, the
reason it takes a while to "read" is because the author shares so
many stories of famous food stores and restaurants and people – not all
celebrities of course, but the people of NYC.
I love it.
But if this 500-page work is too much to handle, then
consider getting your hands on Robert Sietsema's New York in a Dozen Dishes.
Like a lot of New Yorkers, Sietsema gets right to the point: there are 12 dishes of merit in this city, so
there, deal with it.
While generally, I agreed with the author on a good half of
the recipes included in this book (so much smaller than Molly's. So much), we are going to have to agree to
disagree on his inclusion of Cuy, an Ecuadorian favorite. I shall not tell you what it is as I want you
to read the rest of this blog, but let me just say that if curious, Google
it...and then be prepared to look away (and quickly!). And please keep in mind that many countries enjoy
foods that we would never consider. It
is not a stretch for me to say that 99.9% of you will not consider this food item
at all and would raise an eyebrow on it being in this book. Count me in on that 99.9% club!
Happily, Sietsema also discusses some favorites like "Pizza,"
"Egg Foo Young," and Pastrami.
We shall quibble about "Fried Chicken" and "Barbecued Brisket" as in my opinion
these have been slow in coming to New York (Jewish brisket though, is another
story), and I will tell you for a fact that Minneapolis and St. Paul have a
total lock and load on "Pho," a Vietnamese noodle soup (pronounced
"Fuh"). In fact, I have to say
that I was surprised to see it included here.
Up until a few years ago, my New York friend Susan, who lived in
Minneapolis for five years (which is how I got to know her), bemoaned the fact
that she couldn't find any place in Manhattan that served Pho, at least not the
pho like we have here, and I totally agreed with her as we were pressed to find
Vietnamese food at all. And now it's
included in the "Dozen Dishes" category, say what?
I tell you what folks, if you come to Minneapolis
or St. Paul , we are hopping on the Green Line,
our light rail system, and are taking the train to a section of St. Paul called Little Mekong. And that is where you will have pho like it's
meant to be made. St. Paul is especially rife with Vietnamese
immigrants who came to the Twin Cities as refugees during the Vietnam War, and
with a little help, a good number of them have started their own
restaurants. Restaurants that serve
awesome pho. Awesome. New
York may excel at a number of things, but I refuse to
believe that pho is one of them!
Side note: I'm
starving but even though I am surrounded by some great Vietnamese restaurants,
we are not NY and most don't deliver and of course it's raining out and so how
to fix this sudden pho craving? ;)
Although the Black-and-White cookie is not among the
"dozen dishes" (gross oversight, that), the author at least made it a
baker's dozen by including a recipe in the back of the book. (All recipes are accompanied by a narrative
of how they came to be popular and also where to "buy" them in NYC) It's
the least he could do because this cookie, this basic cookie, dressed up with white and
black frosting, is a New York
original. A New York original that is as
essential to New Yorkers as a yellow cab or, be still my heart, a subway train
that is actually running, never mind running on schedule! (We can all dream...)
If you have any doubt, then you should go find the full
episode or clip from Jerry Seinfeld's show – Seinfeld - where he and Elaine discuss the Black-And-White Cookie:
"If people would just look to the cookie, all our problems would be
solved. Look to the cookie, Elaine, look
to the cookie."
So folks take a minute to "look to the cookie,"
and look at (and make, of course) the chicken soup and your outlook will change
and it will be for the better.
I love New York . Always have, always will.
4 quarts cold water
1 chicken (4 to 5 pounds), quartered
2 chicken feet, or 4 chicken wings, or 1 turkey wing
1 clove garlic, peeled and bruised (Ann's Note: to bruise, smack one side of the garlic with
a flat side of your knife.)
1 onion, peeled
2 carrots, peeled and cut into 1-inch pieces
2 ribs celery, cut into 1-inch pieces
½ bunch fresh parsley, tied together with string and rinsed
1 bay leaf
1 ½ teaspoons salt
½ teaspoon black peppercorns
Pour the cold water into a large pot. Add the chicken, garlic, onion, carrots,
celery, parsley, bay leaf, salt and peppercorns and slowly bring to a
boil. Reduce the heat and simmer for 4
hours, skimming frequently. (The soup can be strained at this point to use in
the recipes that follow, both in this chapter and throughout the book.)
Strain the soup.
Discard the onion, parsley, bay leaf, and peppercorns but reserve the
other vegetables. Remove the chicken,
skin and debone it, and reserve the meat.
Return the chicken stock, chicken meat, carrots, celery, and garlic to
the pot and bring back to a simmer; season with additional salt or pepper, to
taste.
Serve the soup in big bowls over pastina, rice, or
spaghettini. (Ann's Note: I used dumpling noodles.) The soup's curative powers are released only
when the vegetables are mashed together in the bowl. Use a fork for mashing. Use a big spoon for eating. You'll feel better soon.
Black-and-White
Cookies – makes 8 four-inch cookies
For the cookies:
1 stick unsalted butter, at room temperature, plus more for
greasing
1 cup all-purpose flour
½ cup cake flour
½ teaspoon baking powder
½ teaspoon salt
2/3 cup granulated sugar
1 egg
½ vanilla bean, slit lengthwise, seeds scraped from the pod,
or 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
½ cup milk
For the icing:
2 cups confectioners' sugar
1 tablespoon light corn syrup
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 to 3 tablespoons water
1/3 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
Preheat the oven to 375F.
Grease a baking sheet with butter.
Sift the flours, baking powder, and salt into a medium bowl; whisk to
combine.
In a stand mixer on medium speed, cream together the butter
and sugar until light and fluffy, about 3 minutes. Scrape down the sides of the bowl, add in the
egg and scraped vanilla seeds or the extract, and mix well to combine. Reduce the speed to low, add half of the
flour mixture, then the milk, then the rest of the flour mixture, mixing to
just combine after each addition. Scrape down the sides and bottom of the bowl
one last time.
Spoon 1/3-cup mounds of dough onto the greased baking sheet,
1 ½ inches apart (8 should fit on a standard baking sheet, but use a second
sheet if necessary). With wet hands
press down gently on each mound to flatten slightly. Bake until the edges of the cookies are set
and light golden brown, 16 to 18 minutes.
Allow the cookies to cool on the sheet slightly before removing them to
a wire rack to cool completely before icing.
To make the icing, stir together the confectioners' sugar,
corn syrup, vanilla extract, and 2 tablespoons water until smooth, adding more
water a teaspoon at a time to make a smooth, spreadable icing. Transfer half the icing to another bowl and
whisk in the cocoa, adding more water, ½ teaspoon at a time, to achieve a
similar consistency as the white icing.
To frost, spread the vanilla icing over half of the flat
surface of each cookie, letting the excess drip off. Let the vanilla icing set for 15 minutes,
then spread chocolate chip icing onto the other half of the cookie. Let the icing set for an hour before
eating. Store the cookies in an airtight
container for up to 3 days.
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