February 17, 2022: On the rails
I’m writing this post on a train. A very late train. I missed the train that would have gotten me to my doctor’s appointment on time, and now I’m on the later train, which is also late itself. My appointment is at 8am and the office isn’t open yet so I have no idea if they’ll be able to see me. This is not what I want to write about today, but here I am, complaining, trying to write, but mostly looking out the window as the world goes by.
Anyway! This is not what you came here to read about. I want to talk about food. Food always makes me happy, even when the result is less than stellar (the yogurt I tried to make this month ended up as nothing more than milk with some yogurt starter clotted at the bottom of the jar…). And when it’s good, wow. It’s delicious, calming, and confidence-boosting at the same time.
I love figuring out how to cook everything from scratch. It never feels like a chore (which I have to admit, sometimes writing does). The past few weeks I’ve made lemonade concentrate, chocolate caramels, applesauce*, and coconut milk, but what I’m most excited about is puff pastry. I always thought that puff pastry was one of those crazy food items that no one would actually make for themselves, particularly when you can just buy it at the grocery store. But one of my favorite recipes from the One Pan, Two Plates cookbook is a root vegetable tarte tatin, which is a bunch of potato, onion, and carrot slices on top of puff pastry with some cheese. If I wanted to keep having this meal and keep my promise to cook only from scratch, I needed to figure out puff pastry. I looked up recipes and found a one that actually made sense to me. And you know what? It isn’t hard. It takes a bit of time because it has to cool in the refrigerator, but the hands-on time is mostly comprised of folding the dough a bunch of times. One note: the recipe said to do 2-4 folds but the accompanying article said 6-8. I did 8, refrigerated overnight and then did a ninth fold before baking. It was completely flaky and yummy, and I don’t think I’ll ever go back to store-bought. One question a lot of people asked me was whether it was rough puff or classic puff. I had no idea what they were talking about, but it turns out rough pastry is made by mixing pieces of butter into the dough, whereas classic pastry is made with a big slab of butter. I made rough puff pastry. Whatever! I made it, and it was an absolute winner.
I highly recommend the Root Vegetable Tarte Tatin recipe from One Pan, Two Plates: Vegetarian Suppers by Carla Snyder. The whole cookbook, in fact, is wonderful.
And when I think about all this delicious food, I can’t help but feel better! And to be honest, sitting on a train watching the world go by is not the worst thing you can do with your time.
* Here’s how I make applesauce: I take a huge bunch of apples—as many as I can get in a large pot—and cook them with a small amount of water and a cinnamon stick. I don’t peel them, but I do core them. They cook until they are an absolute mush, and then I strain everything through a fine mesh sieve. The straining is the hardest part because you really have to push it through the mesh with the back of a spoon, or it will just sit there. If you prefer, you can peel the apples before you start cooking, and then you probably don’t have to do the straining part. I just hate peeling!