Aga Toast

Magically Delicious

2011-12-13T12:22:00.000-05:00

Wolfi recently announced during snack time at preschool that his “favorite fruit” is Lucky Charms.When I arrived, unsuspecting, to pick him up on that particular afternoon his teacher, Ms. Kyla, could hardly wait to tell me. His announcement to a group of juice-sipping four-year olds was simply too delicious not to share.

His favorite fruit? Declaring it his favorite cereal would have been bad enough, but his favorite fruit? A few days later I found a flyer at the bottom of his backpack. It was damp from some unidentifiable liquid which had leaked out of his sippy cup, but despite some smearing, I could make out the dates for an upcoming Family Health Symposium led, it seemed, by a nationally acclaimed dietitian Obviously the folks at preschool were trying to tell me something. When I confronted them about it, I was told that I had already been signed up for the Saturday session.

My new-found reputation as Lucky Charm maven was especially puzzling given the fact that our pantry is devoid of all boxed cereals, let alone ones filled with sugar and geared through cheerfully animated leprechauns at gullible four-year olds. Instead, Marc and I subsist on batch after gigantic batch of homemade granola. Indeed our pantry is so full of bulk boxes of oats, nuts and dried fruit that there is no room for cereal in the first place. It goes without saying, perhaps, that Wolfi would not touch our granola for all the gold in Ireland. Not given Pop Tarts or Lucky Charms as options, Wolfi instead breakfasts on a single banana cut meticulously into rounds and washed down with some Ovaltine.

Yes, Wolfi, much to his dismay, has the grievous misfortune to be born to parents who actually care about what he eats. I am sure you know the kind, and chances are you either love them or hate them. They are the ones who present their long-suffering children with a wide array of wholly unappetizing fruits and vegetables on a daily basis. The kind that plead and bargain and bicker at the dinner table over at least trying new foods. The kind who refuse to buy the Cheetos in the grocery store despite the fact that “all the other kids” have them. And most egregious of all, the kind who mercilessly dilute apple juice with water.

Such has been Wolfi’s fate since the eruption of his very first tooth when I stoically began pureeing fruits and vegetables for him in the baby food maker, and he, with as much steely determination, spat them right back out at me. And heck, even his Gaga (a.k.a. grandmother) who keeps him in a steady supply of Oreos when he comes to visit has yet to be caught with a box of Lucky Charms in her cupboard. Yes, I was pretty certain that the only place where Wolfi could possibly have ever been exposed to something as nutritionally spurious as Lucky Charms would have been at -- you guessed it -- preschool. Even if no one fessed up, I was sure that it was within those hallowed walls that he first experienced the Styrofoam-like squish of pastel marshmallows between his painstakingly scrubbed baby teeth.

A few weeks later the truth came out about the Lucky Charms Incident, and my reputation was restored. They were apparently part of some harmless St. Patrick’s Day festivities when one of the teachers brought them in for snack time along with some green fruit. Wolfi happily linked the two together and has probably been wondering ever since why Lucky Charms are only reserved for preschool holidays?

Clearly if my son and the cereal industry could have their way, we would be eating three to five magically delicious servings a day.

Magically Delicious Granola

I make this so often that I have the method down to an exact science. You will need a kitchen scale, a huge bowl and a large rimmed baking tray lined with bake-o-glide or parchment paper.

Ingredients:

510 grams rolled oats

210 grams nuts (I use whatever needs to be used up. If I am in the mood to chop them I do, sometimes I just leave them in whole or in halves!)

50 grams brown sugar

100 milliliters raw, local honey

60 milliliters canola oil

2 teaspoons cinnamon

1 teaspoon ginger

½ teaspoon kosher salt

2-3 cups dried fruit. (Again, I tend to use whatever needs using up. But cherries and apricots are an especially nice combination. Cut the apricots into little bits with your kitchen scissors. I never actually measure the fruit here either. I just keep adding until it looks right.)

Set large bowl on scale and add all ingredients except for the dried fruit. Mix with your hands and spread into prepared baking sheet. Bake on bottom grid of Roasting Oven for about 10 minutes until just starting to brown. Stir. Move to top of simmering oven for another 30-40 minutes, stirring occasionally. Marc likes this a little on the burnt side. You just have to experiment to see what suits you best. If you are short on time, you can even bake it in the roasting oven with the cold shelf, but you will have to watch it more carefully.

(For conventional ovens, bake at 300 degrees for about 40 minutes, stirring every ten minutes, or until golden.)

Remove from oven and add fruit to the pan. Mix and allow to cool before putting into a pretty glass jar.

Thanks to a recent edition of MENTAL FLOSS magazine, I learned that the best way to serve granola (or any boxed cereal for that matter) is to shake the container sideways before pouring. This helps to keep the mysterious small crumbs from falling to the bottom and all the large chunks of fruit and nuts from rising to the top.

Airing Out My Dirty...Dishes

2011-09-12T12:06:00.000-04:00

Marc and I will be celebrating our seventh wedding anniversary this October, and looking back across the three countries, two children and one terrier we have experienced together, I can say that I truly married my soul mate. Despite our different cultural backgrounds, we agree on just about everything. We are helpmates, best friends, an unbeatable team.

There is, however, one little matter in which my Liebling and I do not see eye to eye. That would be the matter of the dishwasher.

Now I know I really should not complain. Marc splurged on the Aga, after all, with only a little gentle prodding. But when it comes to our ancient GE dishwasher, he stubbornly stands his ground. The waste-not-want-not German in him says there is absolutely no reason to spend money on a new one when the old one still runs. Never mind the fact that it doesn’t actually get the dishes clean. Yes, I would argue (and believe me I have) that some things come out dirtier than they went in. During the three years we have lived in this house, I have tried every detergent on the market, every setting on the dial, every arrangement of dishes on the rack, and every combination of rinsing or not rinsing or half-heartedly rinsing, but in the end, a few things always emerge bespeckled with stubborn flecks of a Vesuvian-like crud.

Such embarrassment is compounded by the fact that Marc works for Bosch, and every single person who wanders into our house remarks on our lack of Bosch appliances. Oh no, instead of something sleek and silent and precision-crafted according to exacting German standards, we have a rattle-bang contraption which probably never even worked well when it was new. The monstrosity makes so much noise you would think Wolfi’s collection of plastic dinosaurs had suddenly come to life in a kind of suburban remake of JURASIC PARK.

And thanks to our open floor plan, the entire house gets involved. Walls tremble. Floor boards vibrate. Conversation is stunted. The noise is so unbearable that I try, even with a house full of dish-dirtying guests, (and I think I’ve mentioned that my in-laws visit often) to run it only at night, when all are in bed. But even upstairs on the other side of the house and tucked tightly under the covers, we can still hear the dishwasher as it lurches and thumps through the pot-scrubber cycle. Marc claims he couldn't go to sleep without it.

Speaking of sleep, once the baby came along, Marc started helping me out in the kitchen, territory which was traditionally mine alone. But now with me in charge of nightly feedings, Marc kindly gets up in the mornings, empties the dishwasher and makes us both a cup of tea. Being the sly and self-serving person that I am, I was secretly hoping that this new arrangement would have an added benefit: namely that Marc would get frustrated by all that baked-on crud and finally see the light about getting a new dishwasher, heck maybe even one from Bosch.

But no, to my great despair and astonishment, Marc goes about rewashing the still-dirty dishes by hand with a kind of zen-like absorption that would make even Thich Nhat Hanh proud. When I stagger down the stairs every morning, bleary eyed, a tray full of dirty bottles in my hands, I inevitably find Wolfi in his pajamas drinking Ovaltine while Marc stands peacefully at the sink, dishtowel over one shoulder, a placid smile playing on his lips.

My new strategy is to run the thing twice a day on the weekends using the argument that the fewer dishes, the cleaner they get. Surely such a waste of energy will get under Marc’s German skin not to mention the fact that he is home and has to suffer through the noise right along with us. I really thought I had him over Labor Day. The dishwasher was on after breakfast just as Wolfi was settling in to watch CHITTY CHITTY BANG BANG for the twenty-seventh time that week. Not only did we have the judgment-day booming of the dishwasher to contend with, but we also had Chitty’s theme song soaring above the rumble. And being Labor Day in South Carolina, it was entirely too hot to escape outside.

But Marc sat through it all cheerfully enough, a magazine open at the kitchen table, his equilibrium undisturbed even as the floor boards rattled beneath his feet, and Dick Van Dyke enthused through the speakers. Chitty, chitty BANG! BANG! Mixing up the dough for the afternoon’s Ozark pie and trying to hear my thoughts above the ruckus, it occurred to me that I was going to have to change tactics once again. A brand spanking new Bosch dishwasher would make a truly scrumptious anniversary present, don’t you think?

Ozark Pie

(for those of you who were wondering)

Ingredients:

1 Egg, beaten

½ Cup sugar

Pinch of salt

1 ½ teaspoon baking powder

¼ Cup flour

½ Cup chopped apples

½ Cup chopped walnuts

1 Quart best quality vanilla ice cream (We like Talenti’s Tahitian Vanilla Bean)

2 Large Heath Bars, crushed

Combine first five ingredients. Add nuts and apples. Pour into a greased nine-inch pie plate. Bake on rack on the bottom of roasting oven* for 25 minutes. Cool. Spoon over softened ice cream and sprinkle over Heath Bars. Freeze.

Recipe can be doubled to make three nine-inch pies.

*For conventional ovens, bake at 350 degrees for 25 minutes.

Shrine to the Nap that Was Not

2011-06-29T10:08:00.000-04:00

Aga Toast has been on maternity leave these last few months. Certainly not due to any lack of cooking and eating. No, I have been entirely too ravenous to abandon either of those two practices. While I was still in the hospital, Baby Leo only a few hours old, my dormant appetite roused itself. Magically, as if released from a spell, I hungered for foods other than the cookies and orange juice I had subsisted on for nearly nine months.

So I have been doing my fair share of cooking and eating recently. I just haven’t been writing.

And why is that? It is because children, and babies in particular, no matter how cute, no matter how heart-meltingly adorable, suck every last bit of creativity and coherency out of my brain. It has to do, I suspect, with a certain lack of sleep.

Sleep has always been high on my priority list. I am not one of those writers who can burn the midnight oil. No Kafkaesque working days at the office and writing feverishly in the wee hours for me. No, in order to string together even a vaguely coherent Facebook status, I must have slept a good eight hours. Nine would be better. Uninterrupted.

So when little Leopold Roland arrived on the scene it was, needless to say, a shock to the system.

As if the leaden exhaustion of pregnancy had not been bad enough. I was so tired I could fall asleep on the sofa while Wolfi danced circles around me blowing his train whistle and cheerfully crashing his Hot Wheels. For Christmas this year, eight months pregnant and feeling decidedly bah humbuggish, I wished for nothing more than a blanket and an excuse to hibernate for the duration of the holidays. When Christmas morning rolled around, my wish was in part fulfilled. I was presented with a blue-gray bamboo throw. It goes perfectly with the dusky tones of our bedroom. It is softer than a baby’s bottom. It is exactly the right size and exactly the right weight. It makes me drowsy just to run my fingers along it.

But it remains untouched.

For as I have now determined, just being in possession of the perfect napping blanket is no guarantee that a nap will ever, actually, take place. Either the baby is crying or Wolfi wants a glass of Ovaltine or the dog wants to go out, or the dog wants to come in again. And just as the baby has settled down, Wolfi has chugged his Ovaltine and is now hankering after an apple juice. Meanwhile the THOMAS DVD I just put on seems to be already over. It’s time to start dinner. And there goes the baby again, just woken up. And what about that thank you note I haven’t written yet? Did I mention that the laundry needs folding? Crap. We’re out of diapers.

No wonder I never get any napping in.

Instead of leaving the coveted blue-gray blanket out in the hope of some spontaneous afternoon shut-eye, I have now solemnly retired it to strictly ceremonial status. Not draped invitingly across the foot of the bed, it is neatly folded and sitting atop a round glass table. Perhaps it is a rather unusual bit of bedroom décor, but placed such, it serves as a peaceful shrine to the Nap That Was Not. There, in a dappled corner of the room, it sits as a quiet reminder of life as it once was and as it might someday be again, a vicarious gesture to the well-restedness I wish I felt.

So if you do not find me blogging much in the weeks to come, please do not assume that I am not cooking. The faithful claret Aga is churning out breakfast, lunch and dinner as never before, and I am reveling in the fact that I can once again eat vegetables. No, it’s not that. It is just that my tired mind has been scrambled, right along with the eggs.

The Saga of the Supermarket

2010-11-18T09:49:00.003-05:00

On a recent Saturday morning, I had the seldom opportunity to go the grocery store: ALONE.

Before becoming a mother, I went to the grocery store ALONE on virtually every occasion. Vaguely, I remember the days of these quiet, inspiring trips. I could serenely check the produce for blemishes, enjoy the curve and heft of an apple in my hand, or mull over which bunch of asparagus had the tightest heads and best coloring. Yes, there was once a time when I could choose to go systematically down my list, or just arrive cavalierly without one, my head free enough to assemble ingredients on the fly. Back then, I would have enjoyed the colorful displays, been beguiled by bunches of purple-pink alstremeria, and perhaps come home with an interestingly contorted squash that I was not quite sure what to do with. In fact, I distinctly remember once as an enthusiastic young cook and graduate student telling my mother that I adored my frequent runs to the grocery store because they were a chance to escape the blue light of the computer screen and to go instead to "see all the pretty things." Even on days when the list was longish, I could generally be in and out in twenty brief, peaceful, stimulating minutes.

Since becoming a mother, let's just say my experience of the grocery store has changed dramatically. It is no longer a quiet and contemplative endeavor, a creative outlet or even just a pleasant chore. Rather, it is a mammoth effort to scrape together the basic essentials of a few uninspired meals while participating in a physical endurance test and honing my negligible abilities to think, listen and talk, all at the same time.

The saga begins already in the parking lot where I am immediately confronted with the challenge of keeping a straying toddler safely away from traffic with one arm while with the other, I dig my collection of reusable grocery bags out of the trunk – assuming, that is, that I remembered to put them in there in the first place.

Next, there is the little matter of the shopping cart. Back in the day, I could have gotten one of those little half jobs, light as a feather, which made me feel oh-so-European as I scooted it up and down the aisles. Not so now. Now I am forced to use all of my negligible upper-body strength to hoist Wolfi up into the driver seat of an enormous, dark-green plastic cart fitted to resemble a race car but with the turning radius of a woolly mammoth. You have not truly experienced the grocery store until you have maneuvered one of these beasts up and down the aisles. Even devoid of groceries and toddlers, they are cumbersome monstrosities, and, like prehistoric creatures, they have a mind of their own. You might think you are steering one in the general direction of the lemons when the thing veers off unexpectedly towards the deli counter. Mind the floral displays! Or that tower of cereal boxes! I consider myself lucky if I at least make it to the check-out line without taking down any fellow shoppers.

But that all happens later when we are actually doing the shopping. First, we have the obligatory stop at the "bakery" for a cookie. Being a bit of a baked-good snob, I would never actually purchase any supermarket bakery items, but with Wolfi on board, it is impossible to pass the shocking neon icing displays without stopping for a cookie, preferably sugar as it will not smear and stain and make my life more complicated than it already is. The cookie usually does not last long enough to see us through the produce section so out comes a lollipop from the recesses of my handbag. No wonder the child enjoys shopping so much.

Once I can get down to business, the real challenge begins: how to get what I came for while keeping up a constant stream of conversation? Now that my son can actually talk, he has something to say about every single item that makes its way into our cart. In the produce section, these comments usually revolve around things that he cannot identify ergo does not like:

"Mama, what is that?"

"An eggplant."

"I don't like eggplant."

In other parts of the store, his commentary might involve a toy he has spotted, a balloon floating above a sale display, a bag of donuts I am refusing to buy, or the presence of other children chatting away in other carts.

All of this chatter goes on, and on, and on, and on until that magic moment when we reach the check-out line, have loaded our items onto the conveyer belt (one of Wolfi's first words, incidentally) and come face to face with the friendly cashier ladies and kindly gentleman waiting to take our money and bag our wares. At that precise moment, Wolfi's conversation comes to a screeching halt, shyness over takes him, and my boy, who has been talking non-stop since the moment we got into the car to go to the grocery store, refuses to utter another audible syllable.

"Why hello there!" the check-out lady says, smiling kindly. "Are you a big help to your mama?"

Silence.

"How are you today?" ventures the bagger.

No reaction.

"Wolfi, can you tell them how old you are?" Mama does her part to cajole him into an utterance.

Blank staring.

These moments just kill me. He can indeed answer any of these questions in not just one but two languages, thank you very much. Except for when he is being asked by perfectly nice strangers in the grocery store.

One good thing about going to the grocery store with Wolfi is that I never feel guilty about asking for help out with my shopping. For at least a few minutes, the bagger steers the unwieldy race car, and I get a respite. This little foray to the parking lot also adds another opportunity for awkward silences as Wolfi stubbornly refuses to utter a single word, and I, haggard and frayed, rack my empty brains for things to say. I am ridiculously relieved when the bagger brings up something as prosaic as the weather. Ah, the weather, now why didn't I think of that?

Once Wolfi and I are both safely strapped into the car, the happy chatter revs up again and continues all the way home so that I cannot even listen to three minutes' worth of news headlines. Instead of learning about the latest G-20 summit, we remark on the sizes and shapes of the cars in the parking lot, the color of the traffic lights, the exact location of the dry cleaner. As I pull into our driveway, tense in anticipation of getting everything drug inside and put away while simultaneously washing Wolfi's dirty hands, taking off his shoes and providing him with a sippy cup full of apple juice, I feel exhausted. My simple trip to the grocery store, what was once, long ago, a peaceful, brief necessity, has become a prolonged exercise in patience, muscle and mental dexterity.

Ironically enough, I ran into one of Wolfi's preschool teachers this past Saturday during my rare solo trip to the supermarket. "Why, you are all alone!" she exclaimed as I waved hello to her. At least she managed to recognize me without my suspendered side kick. Of course, we ended up talking about --what else? Wolfi -- so that even in his absence, he was there filling my head with his three-year old antics. Meeting her like that was, perhaps, a suitable metaphor for motherhood, as once you become a mother you never, ever cease to be one – not even in those rare moments when you find yourself in the grocery store, all alone.

As I made my way up and down the aisles, relishing a few priceless moments of silence and solitude, I made sure to linger in the produce section. I wanted to pick out a dark-purple, smooth-skinned and completely unblemished eggplant, just for Wolfi.

So Much for all that Earth Mother Crap

2010-08-05T11:43:00.002-04:00

Since becoming pregnant with our second child, I seem to have become something of a junk-food junkie. Such a completely unexpected turn of events is downright alarming for someone like me, accustomed to making my own foods from scratch whenever possible. If you had come to visit me back in May, no doubt you would have been delighted to see that I make all my own breakfast cereals, breads, tomato sauces, jams, pesto and chutneys. Heck, I usually do not even use packages of pre-shredded cheese. Yogurt is bought plain and then sweetened with local, raw honey, and Wolfi, much to his despair, is seldom indulged with Oreos, Goldfish, Fruit Rollups or other colorfully packaged children's snacks. The poor child does not even know that Capri Sun exists.

Now, however, in the throes of morning sickness, I seem to be craving all those processed, brightly packaged foods which I have so righteously shunned for so long now. No more homemade granola for me, bursting with nuts, oats and dried fruit. Egit! Pass the Cheerios, please! French fries? Donuts? Kettle Chips? Bring them on! I knew things were getting bad when I could no longer stand the thought of homemade bread. Sunbeam, anyone?

Meanwhile my refrigerator is eerily empty. Normally, it is stuffed beyond capacity with a huge tub of bread dough, a cloche full of artisan cheeses, a giant pitcher of ice tea, fruits and vegetables of all varieties, and a hefty block of butter from the local dairy. Open it now and you will find little more than some vanilla yogurt and a gallon of milk -- to go with all that processed cereal.

Perhaps such circumstances would not be quite so distressing if my cravings and aversions did not coincide with the very height of summer. Usually at this time of year, I am out stopping at every farmer's market in the county, pulling over spontaneously at roadside stands, and swooning over the first tomato sandwich of the season. This year, however, I can hardly stomach the thought of lush displays of squash, peppers and pole beans. At home in my own garden, the tomatoes which I so optimistically planted back in April are rotting on the vines. Rampant cucumbers sprawl over the deck, completely unchecked, and the scent of my gigantic basil plant gives me the vapors.

For even if by some miracle, I should summon the digestive stamina to cope with making and eating a real meal from my garden, I would still have the oven-like summer heat of South Carolina and my pregnant lethargy to contend with. Some evenings, the thought alone of going outside, even just to harvest some fresh herbs, makes me want to collapse on the kitchen floor next to the air-conditioning vent and weep.

All this is quite bad news for my husband Marc who is used to homemade meals three times a day. And it is hell for me to be missing out on virtually all of tomato season. The only one of us who is secretly rejoicing is Wolfi, free at last to eat Oreos and donuts to his heart's content. Let's just hope he is equally as excited about his new sibling.

The Lemonade Stand

2010-07-07T21:00:00.003-04:00

Summer is in full swing here in the Upstate, and that means the kids in our neighborhood have set up their curbside stands and are busy flagging down neighbors for cold lemonade, poured carefully into paper cups and best drunk in one gulp amidst the clatter of bicycles, scooters and discarded helmets, right there on the street.

Is there anything more refreshing than a lemonade stand, that symbol that despite cell phones and I-pods, video games and Wii, some vestiges of traditional childhood remain? What more simple pleasure than a homemade sign, a few chairs, a primitive cash box and a bright assembly of children with an endless sea of school-free days stretching before them?

I have to say with some residual jealousy that the children in our neighborhood are predestined for lemonade-stand success. We are some 800 families strong with busy main corridors and quiet cul-de-sacs. At any time of day during the summer, someone is almost always coming or going, on the way to pool or tennis courts, grocery store or play ground. Mini vans teaming with sippy-cup-clutching toddlers sail by, joggers sweat courageously past, dog walkers stride onward to the next fragrant patch of grass. Luckily for the children of this neighborhood, the next thirsty customer is always just around the bend.

How different things were for me as a child! We lived out in the country at the bottom of a long and quiet dead-end street. No clubhouse, no pool, no tennis courts. No merry to-ing and fro-ing, just the lonely, thirstless buzz of the cicada filling the air. Not to be deterred, my two best friends and I set up shop in the cul-de-sac and waited eagerly for customers. If it had not been for Mama, secretly calling up all twelve of the neighbors to suggest they swing by, we would not have sold a drop. As it was, neighbors, never before reported to have been seen outside, emerged from their air-conditioned homes and strolled down to our driveway, their pockets jingling coincidentally with loose change. At the end of the day, counting up our coins and smoothing out our dollar bills, we never dreamed that the invisible hand of my mother was behind any and all success.

So yes, the children in this neighborhood are quite fortunate, and I, for one, am always grateful to them for being real kids on a real suburban street on a real, hot summer afternoon. I can hardly wait for Wolfi to be old enough to set up shop. And then, as his mother, I won't need to make a dozen surreptitious calls. I might, however, be in charge of making the lemonade.

Lemonade

This recipe comes to us from another English friend of my mother named Dinky. She served it to us one afternoon many summers ago in her tiny English garden after an outing to Highclere Castle.

Ingredients:

1 pound 8 ounces sugar

1 ounce citric acid*

3 cups boiling water

Grated rind and juice of three large lemons

-- Combine sugar and citric acid in a jug.

-- Add boiling water and stir to dissolve.

-- When slightly cooled, add lemon rind and juice.

-- When cold, strain and bottle into mason jars. Refrigerate for up to several weeks.

-- To make the lemonade, combine one third syrup with two thirds cold water. Stir and serve over ice.

*Citric acid is available at your neighborhood drugstore. Go a few days early because it sometimes needs to be special ordered. A four-ounce bottle costs about $15, but it will see you through an entire summer worth of lemonade.

Janice’s Strawberrry Tart

2010-06-16T10:39:00.009-04:00

The month of May, perhaps my favorite month in the entire year, has inevitably flown by again. This time around, Klaus and Ursula were here visiting, and on the seventeenth, two sets of grandparents took their places outside on the terrace for the grand celebration of Wolfi's third birthday. The table was strewn with party hats and kazoos and stacks of sugar-dusted brownies, but to honor such a momentous occasion, I also made our family's spring time favorite: Janice's strawberry tart.

Janice is an old friend of my mothers, and her black Aga puffs away in an ancient stone house somewhere near the South Downs of West Sussex. It is likely the first Aga my mother ever saw in person after having read about them for decades, and it is tucked away in just the kind of kitchen you wish your Aga were in: There are stone floors, exposed beams, a dark larder down some uneven steps, short door frames and long blond labradors lounging in their beds. As far as I know, the house even has a requisite ghost haunting the upper stories. And the garden with its sweet spongy grass and shaded nooks for taking afternoon tea is straight out of the pages of your favorite British novel.

Janice, like her Aga and her home, is quintessentially British. She is willowy, gentle and supremely sweet with a whispering lilt that makes you want to lean in closer and soak up every charming word. She is also an incredible cook, a professional one at that, and so it has been a joy for my mother to watch her at the Aga. Over the years of our friendship we have benefitted from many of her great stock of recipes: There are Janice's cheesy jackets, Janice's quick stir fry and Janice's sticky chicken. But our family favorite, the recipe that we return to year after year, spring after spring, is Janice's strawberry tart.

We learned the recipe many Mays ago when Janice ventured across the Atlantic to come for a visit. My mother and I were both starry eyed with admiration for the speed with which she managed to whip the tart up as only one aspect of a multi-course meal -- and in a foreign kitchen to boot. One of my life goals has since then been to whip one up with equal speed and equanimity, but let's face it, Janice's strawberry tart still takes me several days and lots of unsuitable language.

Obstacles not withstanding, I always look forward to making it as soon as the first local strawberries start appearing on the market. Wolfi, thoughtful enough to have been born into the world in my favorite month of May, has provided me with the ultimate excuse for making one. Never mind the fact that he prefers brownies from a box. At least I can whip up a batch of them on the fly!

JANICE'S STRAWBERRY TART

For this recipe, you will need a 12-inch tart pan with a removable bottom, a food processor and your grandmother's rolling pin.

INGREDIENTS

For the Custard Filling and Topping:

Two eggs

Two egg yolks

Two ounces sugar

Two ounces of flour

One pint whole milk

Two teaspoons vanilla extract

One small of jar red-currant jelly, melted

Fresh strawberries, washed, hulled and cut in half

For the Tart Shell:

Ten ounces cold butter, diced

One pound all-purpose unbleached flour

Two ounces granulated sugar

Two chilled eggs, lightly beaten

To Make the Custard:

-- In a large bowl, whisk together eggs, yolks, sugar, flour and vanilla until well blended.

-- Place milk in a large, shallow saucepan and bring slowly to a boil on the simmering plate.

-- Remove immediately from heat and transfer to a large beaker with spout.

-- While whisking continuously, pour hot milk slowly into egg mixture. Set aside.

-- Wash milk pan. Return custard mixture to pan and put on simmering plate.

-- Continue whisking over low heat until custard thickens. Remove from heat. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate until ready to assemble the tart. Custard can be made one day ahead.

To Make the Tart Shell:

-- Place butter, flour and sugar in the bowl of a food processor. Using the blade, pulse together until mixture resembles bread crumbs. Add beaten eggs in a slow drizzle, pulsing until mixture comes together. You might not need all of the egg.

--Remove dough from processor and shape gently into a flat, round disk. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate at least 20 minutes and up to 24 hours.

-- When ready to bake the shell, remove dough from refrigerator. If it has been chilling for several hours, allow to rest at room temperature for ten minutes before rolling out gently to fit the bottom and sides of a 12-inch tart pan. Trim the sides, eat the scraps while no one's looking, cover shell with plastic wrap and refrigerate for 20 minutes or up to 24 hours.

-- To bake the shell, poke a few small holes in the bottom with the tines of a fork and place directly on the floor of the roasting oven until golden brown, about 20 minutes. Remove and allow to cool to room temperature before filling. Shell can also be baked one day ahead.

To Assemble the Tart:

-- With a pastry brush, spread the bottom of the baked case with the melted red-currant jelly. Fill with chilled custard and top with strawberry slices. Using a pastry brush, glaze the strawberries with the remaining jelly. Serve immediately or chill until serving time. The tart can be made several hours ahead as long as it remains well chilled!

Notes:

In baking the tart shell, I never bother with aluminum foil or pie weights. If the pastry starts to buckle while baking, I just reach in with my fork and squash it down again. I learned that trick from my Parisian friend Florence, so how wrong can it possibly be?

The British prefer mild sweets so you might want to add more sugar to the custard to accommodate American tastes.

While cooking the custard, shuffle the pan on and off the simmering plate as you stir. You want the mixture to cook in a bearable amount of time, but you also do not want to burn it on the bottom.

The tart can be made all through the summer with any number of fresh berries.

Risotto Revisited

2010-05-06T10:53:00.017-04:00

If you are like me, you do not often find yourself confronted with the question of what to do with leftover risotto. Usually at our house, whatever might be left in that shining Charleston rice pot gets secretly eaten by whoever happens to be cleaning up the kitchen.

That would be me.

Yes, in my perhaps somewhat unorthodox opinion, risotto is at its most gooey, comforting best when eaten room temperature, straight out of the pot it was cooked in.

Should you, however, be faced with leftovers, there are two options beyond simply finishing things up while no one is looking. Both procedures involve exact timing and lots of hot oil so be sure to chase everyone out of your kitchen before you begin.

First, there is the simpler variety of risotto al salto. These delightful treats are easy to wing and can be made with any amount of refrigerated leftovers. Simply form the chilled risotto into patties, dip them in beaten egg and bread crumbs respectively, and fry them up in a goodly amount of olive oil until brown and crisp on each side. Serve them hot with a green salad for a sophisticated lunch.

If you are feeling more adventurous and have a goodly amount of risotto left over then you can, instead, make a more involved version known as arancini. These tasty nuggets involve forming the risotto into quaint little balls and stuffing them with mozzarella cheese. They are so delicious that you might consider making up an extra pot of risotto just for the occasion. I often do.

No matter which one you pick, both recipes showcase how easy and tidy it is to fry on the Aga. Say adieu to the world of stained clothes and burnt skin, grease-spattered walls and a stench that lingers for hours. With the Aga, you can fry your risotto patties, or anything else for that matter, on the roasting oven floor which makes the entire experience considerably more Zen. Heck, I could perhaps even handle having a conversation while doing it.

On second thought, maybe not.

AGA ARANCINI

For this recipe, make an extra pot of risotto as directed below or start with about 3 cups of chilled leftovers.

Serves 4

For the risotto:

1 tablespoon olive oil

1 small onion, diced

1 clove garlic, minced

½ cup dry white wine

2 cups chicken broth

½ cup frozen peas

2 ounces finely chopped ham

Salt and pepper

½ cup grated Parmesan

For the Arancini:

1 egg, beaten

1 egg, beaten with 1 tablespoon milk

4 ounces mozzarella cheese, cut into ¾ inch chunks

½ cup all-purpose flour

1 1/2 cups panko bread crumbs

olive oil for frying

TO MAKE THE RISOTTO:

Measure the broth into a heat-proof beaker and put on the floor of the simmering oven to warm.
In a heavy sauce pan, heat the olive oil on the simmering plate. Add onions and sprinkle with a salt and a dash of sugar. Sauté gently until soft and transparent. Add garlic and rice. Toss the rice to toast the kernels in the oil until they start to release a fragrance.
Add wine and stir until it has been absorbed.
Remove the broth from the simmering oven and add it, all at once, to the pot. Transfer pot to boiling plate and bring to a boil.
Give the pot a quick stir and then transfer it to the floor of the simmering oven. Let simmer, uncovered, until broth has been absorbed and rice kernels are done but still have some bite, 20-25 minutes.
Remove pot from oven. Gently fold in the parmesan, peas and ham.
Cool to room temperature, cover and chill for up to three days.

TO MAKE THE ARANCINI:

Using your hands, gently mix one beaten egg into the chilled risotto mixture.
With wet hands, gather up about 2 tablespoons of risotto mixture and flatten in the palm of your hand. Place a piece of mozzarella on top and gently pat up the sides to enclose. Proceed with all of mixture until you have about 18 golf-ball sized arancini.
Roll arancini in flour, then into egg mixture and then into bread crumbs.
Cover and chill in the refrigerator until ready to fry.
Heat oil in a deep saucepan on the boiling plate until a bread crumb thrown into the pan sizzles and turns golden immediately. You will need enough oil in the pan to come up to half way of the arancini.
Transfer pan carefully to floor of roasting oven. Using tongs and an oven mitt, add arancini in batches. DO NOT CROWD THE PAN.
Fry arancini on both sides, turning with tongs, until brown and crispy.
Transfer to a platter resting on the warming plate or on top of one of the domes and tent with foil until done with the entire batch.

Notes:

Chilled batter and wet hands make quick work of forming the balls.

These can be frozen before or after frying but in my experience, it is better to go ahead and fry up the entire batch while you already have all that hot oil ready to go.

Stainless steel breading trays are a salvation if you, like me, hate to bread but love to eat breaded things. They link together and make quick work of the entire process.

Cookies From Another Dimension

2010-04-12T11:07:00.004-04:00

To my husband's despair, I have never been much of a cookie person. In his family, as in many other German families, cookies are practically as central to weekend and holiday festivities as cake. Many years ago when we were first dating, I attempted to bake some typical German Christmas cookies for him and his parents. Instead of looking like "praying men" as they had been labeled in the bright pictures of my giant German baking book, the cookies came out looking like flying saucers. Similarly, the "cinnamon stars" were more reminiscent of amoebas than anything that might be spotted in the heavens. To be fair, everyone gobbled them up and agreed that their amorphousness lent them homemade appeal, but I was crestfallen. It was, after all, not the first time that my cookies had gone into the oven looking tidy and quaint and had emerged twelve minutes later looking like something from another dimension.

Cookies, I also admit, have become even more of a bugaboo since getting the Aga. I have a two-oven model with no preordained baking oven, and with no previous successes with a conventional oven to fall back upon, I had despaired of ever turning out cookies that even vaguely resembled the pictures in my cookbooks. My first strategy was just to avoid baking them altogether. But with a strapping soon-to-be-three-year old in the house, cookies are taking on a whole new significance in my life. Wolfi could eat them quite easily for breakfast, lunch and dinner. And whenever his best friend Moritz comes over to play, it behooves me provide them with something interesting yet wholesome to eat.

This has led to a lot of experimentation on my part over the past months, and with Easter coming up and Wolfi home from preschool for the week, we decided to give things another go. Out came my abandoned collection of cutters, the cookie sheets, his great grandmother's rolling pin, and his great-great aunt's sugar cookie recipe. We rolled up our sleeves, washed our hands, and proceeded to transform my sparkling kitchen into a moonscape of strewn flour and stomped cookie dough.

Despite the collateral damage on the floors and counters, the cookies themselves were a total success. For the first time in my entire life, bunnies looked like bunnies and not like culinary reinterpretations of the Blob. Hearts and stars were clearly recognizable as such. Best of all, the roosters kept their coxcombs and did not wind up resembling some sort of fanciful road kill.

Afterwards, on my hands and knees cleaning up the flour from around the floor boards and scraping dough off Wolfi's stepstool, I smiled to myself. Finally, after a decade of trying, I managed to produce cookies that actually resembled something in the real world. One small step for man; one giant leap for me. And by the way, the next time that my cookies come out of the oven looking like flying saucers, it will be because I meant them to.

Two-Oven Aga Sugar Cookies

This recipe is adapted from that of my Great Aunt Mary, a zippy redhead who lived to be well into her nineties. A keen baker, she was known to send batches of these cookies overseas to her stepson serving in the military.

2/3 cup shortening

1 ¼ cup sugar

2 eggs

3 cups flour

½ teaspoon salt

2 teaspoons baking powder

Grated rind plus juice of one orange (2 TBS)

1 teaspoon almond extract

Cream shortening, eggs and sugar until foamy.
Sift together flour, salt and baking powder.
Combine mixtures. Add rind, juice and extract.
Mix until smooth.
Cover and chill until ready to use.
Line a cookie sheet with bake-o-glide or parchment paper.
Roll batter out to ¼ inch thickness on a lightly floured board.
Cut into desired shapes and transfer to prepared cookie sheet.
Bake at the very top of the simmering oven for 12-15 minutes. Transfer to the grid of roasting oven floor and bake another 1-2 minutes to crisp. Remove when the edges are just beginning to brown. Keep an eye on them, they will burn in a flash.

Notes:

-- When rolling out the dough, do not roll it out too thinly. Sure thin cookies taste better, but if you want your bunny to keep his ears intact while he is being moved from work surface to cookie sheet, you'll roll him out thick.

-- Use a variety of cutter shapes and sizes. Large ones are more fun but small ones mean you can use up more of the rolled-out dough. We have a small dog-bone-shaped cutter that did the trick nicely.

-- When working with dough that has already been rolled out once, just smush it out flat with your fingertips rather than trying to roll it out again with the rolling pin. The dough will be easier to keep together at this point with a little friendly force.

-- Obviously, you can decorate the cookies as elaborately as you like. Being decoratively disabled, I just throw some sprinkles on top and call it a day.

AGA RISOTTO

2010-03-15T09:46:00.003-04:00

In all my cozy British cookbooks, risotto is always being touted as the ultimate comfort food. It is calming and relaxing to make. Restorative and soothing to eat. Soporific even. And while I heartily agree that it is one of the world's most perfect foods, I have never much enjoyed making it.

That's not to say that I object to all of it. I love, for example, the fact that it can be cobbled together from pantry items. It is nearly always our dish of choice when we arrive home from the airport, weary and hungry after a long journey. I also love the pot I use to make it in, an old Charleston rice pot whose soft curves and shiny steel always delight me. As for the cooking, I find it satisfying to grate the cheese and warm the broth. I adore the smell of the onions as they fry in their yellow pool of butter, the nutty smell of toasting rice kernels, and, most of all, the sizzle of cold white wine as it hits the hot pan. Yes I do love all of that.

But then the stirring begins.

A little stirring is fine, surely. But twenty minutes of uninterrupted stirring in front of a hot stove is frankly not my idea of a good time. Rather than find it relaxing, I find it tries my patience in the most horrible of ways. It is also, I have noticed, the point in my cooking in which the entire family disappears. Otherwise, someone is always hanging about wanting to chat while I carefully measure ingredients or demanding my attention while I am in the middle of something that involves exact timing and lots of hot oil. Wolfi pulls up his little red step stool and wants to "help," while Marc lounges in the most improbable parts of the kitchen, deftly blocking my way from chopping board to sink, from sink to stove and then feeling disenfranchised when I suggest he go sit in the corner.

But in those rare moments when I am bound to the stove doing nothing but stirring – bored, impatient and primed for a nice chat -- everyone disappears. And there I am alone wishing I had had the foresight to put some music on before I began. Sometimes I dash off for a magazine between stirs and then stand by the hot pot flipping through with one arm. And while this kind of reading may help to pass the time, it certainly does not qualify as relaxing.

Which is yet another reason to love the Aga. Aga risotto, as I have discovered, practically stirs itself. I get to do all my favorite parts, but when it comes time to actually cook the dish, I can pop it into the simmering oven, pour myself a glass of wine (it's already open, isn't it?) and fling myself onto the sofa for a nice, cozy read until the timer rings. Now this kind of cooking truly is relaxing.

Aga Risotto with Sage and Pear

Adapted from THE SPLENDID TABLE'S HOW TO EAT SUPPER by Lynne Rossetto Kasper and Sally Swift (Clarkson Potter: New York, 2008)

Serves 4-6

3 tablespoons butter

1 medium onion, minced

1 large garlic clove, minced

1 ½ cups Arborio rice

¼ cup dry white wine

3 cups vegetable broth

30-40 sage leaves, fried in batches in hot olive oil until crispy. Then liberally salted.

1 large ripe pear, diced

1 cup coarsely grated Parmesan

Measure the broth into a heat-proof beaker and put on the floor of the simmering oven to warm.
In a heavy sauce pan, heat the butter on the simmering plate. Add onions and sprinkle with a little salt and a soupçon of sugar. Sauté gently until soft and transparent. Add garlic and rice. Toss the rice to toast the kernels in the butter until they start to release a fragrance.
Splash in the wine and listen as it sizzles. Pour yourself a glass. Stir until it has been absorbed. Pour yourself another.
Remove the broth from the simmering oven and add it, all at once, to the pot. Transfer pot to boiling plate and bring to a boil.
Give the pot a quick stir and then transfer it to the floor of the simmering oven. Let simmer, uncovered, until broth has been absorbed and rice kernels are done but still have some bite, about 20 minutes.
Remove pot from oven. Gently fold in the parmesan, sage leaves (If there are any left. I tend to gobble them up while waiting for the rice to get done. They go well with a glass of white wine, after all) and diced pear. Serve immediately.

Notes: Though this is a no-fail recipe for me in my particular Aga, it might need some individual tweaking. Basically, I have found that the rice to broth ratio is always 1:2 but the first few times you make the recipe, check while the rice is simmering. If it is going dry before it is done, you will need to add more broth. (Bring it to a boil before adding.) Conversely, if it done but a bit too soupy, you will need to decrease the broth slightly the next time you make it. It is a bit of work on the front end, but it is worth it for effortless bowls of risotto in the future!

Karmic Crêpes

2010-02-08T10:53:00.004-05:00

In an unexpected flurry of Mardi Gras enthusiasm, I recently decided that Wolfi and I should make some crêpes together for an afternoon treat. He has been venturing into the kitchen with me lately thanks in part to the purchase over the Christmas holidays of a blue-and-white miniature apron. I have also provided for him a little wooden step stool, painted red to match the Aga, which means that he can reach the kitchen counters quite comfortably.

Crêpes were my choice not only because of Carnival but also because I have resolved this year to confront some of my culinary bugaboos. These are things which I had mastered to some degree or another on a conventional stove but which I have been hesitant to try on the Aga. Most of them -- puddings, pastry creams, curds and crèmes -- involve prolonged use of the stove top and exact temperatures. With the crêpes, I fretted that the simmering plate would lose heat before I had gotten through all of the batter.

Viewed objectively, our mother-son crepe baking was quite successful. Wolfi was delighted to stir the silky batter and to watch at my elbow as I fried the pancakes up in my trusty Teflon pan. The simmering plate held its heat quite nicely, and while the crêpes themselves were perhaps a bit thicker than they should have been, they tasted delicious.

Or so I thought. Wolfi, however, was of a different opinion. While we were making our way through the batter, I plated one up for him to try. Still warm from the pan, it was covered in melted butter and flecked with brown crunchy specks of turbinado sugar. Here we are, I thought. Cooking together and eating those kinds of "nursery foods" one always reads about in novels and old cookery books. Ahh yes. Celebrating holidays. Ushering in new seasons. Living in the moment. This is what parenthood is all about.

Unfortunately, Wolfi has not yet read the same books I have. Rather than gobble up his crêpe and plead for another, what did he do? He promptly spat it out onto the counter, butter, sugar and all. The parts that did not exit his mouth immediately he then proceeded to peel off his tongue with the kind of attention to detail only a toddler can master. No crêpes for him thank you very much. And where has that package of Jell-O instant pudding gotten to, anyway?

Marc tells me not to take these moments too personally. Wolfi came into the world a finicky eater, and no amount of cajoling will change that. But I know it is personal. I, too, was a picky eater throughout my childhood. Wolfi's outright refusal to eat just about anything I make for him -- be it crêpes, a grilled cheese sandwich or even a plate of homemade chicken fingers -- is the universe getting back at me for all the frustration I caused my own mother.

But if that is as bad as my Karma gets in this life, I suppose I can handle it. Besides, the sight of Wolfi in the kitchen with his apron on might just make up for a whole lifetime of uneaten crêpes -- butter, sugar and all.

Something Warm To Lean On

2010-01-21T07:38:00.002-05:00

I was without an Aga for almost three weeks over the holidays. And although I did not object to having a break from the daily cooking regimen, I sorely missed the friendliness of living in a house with a cast iron stove that is always on. We were spending Christmas in Germany where, upon our arrival, it was a frosty nine degrees Fahrenheit. There was a wind that blew through our clothes and stung at our faces and a chill that crept into our fingers even as they cradled steaming mugs of mulled wine.

Germany with its long winters and candle-lit interiors would certainly be perfect Aga country. Which made being without mine all the more tragic. Every day in true German fashion, we undertook lengthy excursions outdoors, despite the cold. In one particularly heroic act of motherly love, I built Wolfi a snowman with catalpa seedpods for arms and rosehips for eyes. "I must really love you Wolfi," I mumbled through my scarf, "because I really hate snow." Another morning we went out to visit the ducks huddled together by the banks of the local stream. And in the evenings, we trudged into town to visit the Christmas market where Wolfi rode a miniature steam engine and the grownups drank great quantities of mulled wine and remarked, yet again, on the cold.

As much fun as these winter adventures were, they inevitably ended in disappointment. I found that I was constantly coming in to my in-laws gleaming house, flinging scarves and hats and boots in all directions and then instinctively searching for something warm to lean on. I finally settled for the radiator, but its negligible warmth left me longing for more. One could lean on it yes, but one could not drape one's entire body over it. And while it served well enough to heat the room to something resembling a bearable temperature, it did not have that solid steadfastness that an Aga does on a cold night. It was, after all, just a radiator.

Meanwhile back home, my mother's Aga went out on her. "It is as if there's been a death in the family," she reported to me, thousands of miles away, over the telephone. It was one of the chilliest Decembers in recent memory in North Carolina, and without her huge royal blue Aga puffing away in the kitchen, Christmas quickly became all shadow and no sparkle.

Because yes, our Agas are much more to us than sleek cooking machines. They are a comforting presence that warms the room and steadies our souls.

And should you find yourself, one cold winter's night, thousands of miles away from one, your only salvation will be to drink plenty of mulled wine.

Mulled Wine

This warming concoction comes very close to the traditional Glühwein served at German Christmas markets. It is a great choice for holiday parties, but there's nothing stopping you from serving it through the winter months.

Serves eight, more or less

4 thin orange slices

8 thin lemon slices

8 cloves

3 cinnamon sticks

Pinch of nutmeg

Scant ½ Cup of sugar

¼ Cup water

2 bottles of red wine (a good table wine will do, nothing too fancy)

½ Cup Brandy

-- Place fruit, spices, sugar and water in a large pot.

-- Bring to a simmer and stir until sugar dissolves.

-- Add wine and heat almost to a simmer but, for obvious reasons, do not boil.

-- Stir in brandy.

-- Strain into warm mugs and serve.

Spätzle for All Seasons

2009-12-07T10:37:00.007-05:00

The holidays are upon us, and it is time to get cooking like we mean it. Time to hone our knives, haul out our largest cookware and test the capacity of our Aga ovens.

For our family, holiday feasting means spätzle, those ribbon-like dumplings that are served as an accompaniment to a roast with lots of gravy. Popular in the south of Germany, spätzle are reminiscent of egg noodles with the exception that they are worlds better. They also, alas, cannot be bought in a box. No, spätzle have to be made from scratch, and while restaurants throughout southern Germany serve them up daily, in my family they only appear during the holidays.

To be precise, my mother-in-law makes spätzle exactly once a year on Christmas Eve to go with the sauerbraten. She absolutely loathes making them, but, as with everything she does, they always turn out text-book perfect. Chewy, salty, slender and with a hint of nutmeg, Ursula's dumplings are irresistible. Personally, I could forego the sauerbraten all together and just dine by the stove on slippery spätzle as they emerge from the steaming pot.

I have to admit, however, to understanding Ursula's loathing. She is, after all, a "most terribly tidy particular little mouse," and an afternoon of spätzle making can transform even the neatest of kitchens into an outright circus with flour dusting the floors, bowls cluttering up the counters and an elastic dough clinging to various pots, pans and utensils. Surely I was a wreck the first time I made them with the Aga. I was certain I was going to get the sticky dough baked onto the shiny new enamel in such a way that I would never get it off again.

Still, after every cooking session, I wonder that I do not make spätzle more often. They are impressively tasty, and their versatility means that they can accompany a whole host of hearty roasts from beef to pork to chicken. Best of all, they can even stand on their own as käsespätzle, a decadent version in which the cooked dumplings are layered with Emmentaler, topped with caramelized onions and baked in the oven until hot and bubbly. European comfort food at its best.

So if you are looking for something challenging and unusual to deck your table with this holiday season, I suggest you roll up your sleeves, pour yourself a glass of lager and have a go at making spätzle. You will discover a uniquely German indulgence that deserves to be celebrated all year round.

SPÄTZLE

Adapted from BLACK FOREST CUISINE by Walter Staib (Philadelphia: Running Press, 2006)

For my money, this is the book to own if you are at all interested in German cooking. Staib's focus is on the traditional dishes of the Southwest, and his directions -- unlike most German cookbooks available in English -- are scrupulously clear.

Serves 4

2 cups all-purpose flour

4 large eggs

1 teaspoon fine sea salt

¼ teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg

½ to 1 cup mineral water, preferably something with a bit of zip like Gerolsteiner

3 tablespoons butter, melted

Several hours before making the spätzle bring a large pot of water to boil. Cover and put in the simmering oven.
Combine the eggs, flour, salt and nutmeg in the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment.
With the mixer on medium, slowly add enough water to make a smooth yet thickish batter. Mix for five minutes until the batter is elastic. It should fall in wide, slothful ribbons from the paddle. If you get the batter too runny, add a bit more flour to thicken.
Remove the pot of water from the simmering oven and place on boiling plate. It should come to a boil instantly. Salt liberally as you would for pasta water.
Working in batches, place the dough on a small cutting board (preferably one with a handle) and scrape in very thin strands into the boiling water using a dough scraper.
Cook the spätzle until tender but firm, stirring occasionally, for about 3 minutes. They will float to the top and the pot water will foam. Be careful not to let the pot boil over!
Using a slotted spoon or a spider, lift the spätzle out of the pot and transfer to a colander. Rinse with cold water. Once you have used up all of the dough, drain the dumplings thoroughly and transfer to serving plate.
Douse liberally with melted butter and put into the simmering oven to warm while you set the table and carve the roast.

Notes:

-- The consistency of the batter is pivotal to the success of the recipe. Get it too runny and the dumplings will be stringy and flimsy, too thick and they will lie in your belly like lead. Still, for novices it is better to error on the side of too thick. Just give them a bit more time to cook in the boiling water and serve your guests some schnapps instead of dessert.

-- Bringing the pot of water to a boil hours before cooking is a great trick for any kind of Aga cooking which involves using the boiling plate for an extended amount of time. That way, the plate has plenty of time to reheat fully before it has to go to work again.

-- The technique of flicking the dumplings off a cutting board with a dough scraper takes a little practice. The dough should be thick enough to stay ON the board yet the strands of dough that are scraped into the boiling water should be as thin as possible. It helps to dunk the scraper into the boiling water to get all of the dough off it between scrapes. Alternatively, Staib suggests using a colander and pushing the dough through the holes with a spatula. You can also use a potato ricer or an actual spätzle press, but to my mind, the most traditional way is also the easiest. It also makes for the speediest cleanup.

-- Mercifully, spätzle can be made ahead. Rinse and drain them well after cooking. Cover and refrigerate. When it is time to serve them, bring them to room temperature and then douse liberally with melted butter and put them in the simmering oven to re-warm. Alternatively, you can also sauté them in butter until slightly browned.

-- As for clean up, I find that the bowl I use to mix the dough does beautifully in the dishwasher. Everything else must be scrubbed by hand. Conventional wisdom holds that cold water is best for removing dough from pots, but I find that warm water works too and certainly makes washing the dishes mildly more pleasurable.

The Smoking Possum

2009-11-12T10:04:00.005-05:00

Folks have been asking me lately about the rooster painting that is hanging over the Aga. He is actually a Spanish rooster, and we acquired him long before I ever dreamt an Aga would be part of my future. Outside of the Prado in Madrid, artists converge with their easels to paint and to sell their wares. When I saw that proud rooster with the hot Iberian sun beaming down on him, I knew he was destined for my kitchen.

I have always loved images of chickens, and perhaps this particular one attracted me because the flourish of blue, yellow, white and red feathers reminded me of a rooster we had when I was a child and my mother kept chickens. Named either after Martha Stewart (it was the eighties, after all) or after characters in Arthurian legend, our bantams and silkies enjoyed a peaceful existence in a coop at the edge of the woods down by the old red barn.

Mama wanted chickens in part for the nostalgia of her own childhood but mostly, I think, for the eggs. I well remember the day when we discovered the first egg in the hen house. Mama and I raced inside to fry it up for lunch. As an eight-year-old, I was perhaps too young to appreciate its delicate taste, but I did marvel at its dainty misshapenness, at the muck clinging to the shell, at the bright orange yolk and, most of all, at the fact of it having come from our own chickens.

Unfortunately, Mama's chicken-keeping days were numbered. One by one, Lancelot, Guinevere, Martha, Chanticleer, and Peg Leg began disappearing. Something, it seemed, was tunneling in and snatching them. A weasel perhaps? A fox? After several attempts to shore things up by digging trenches and laying wood beneath the chicken wire, my parents decided that the only way to protect our brood was to lock it into the perches of the henhouse at night. Mama undertook the task and was diligent about her work. Every evening she tucked her chickens into their cozy quarters and released them to freedom come sunrise.

One morning, however, Mama unlocked one of the small doors to find a fat possum sleeping soundly on a soft bed of white fluffy feathers, his bulging stomach moving deeply in and out with every contented breath. Mama had, it seemed, shut one of her silkies in with the enemy. Such a tragic mistake had made for a gloriously convenient meal, the possum equivalent of a T.V. dinner.

For weeks afterwards, Mama refused to believe that a possum had all along been feasting upon her chickens. "But possums are vegetarians!" was her undying refrain despite all evidence to the contrary. Dad with his usual humor began referring to the event as the incident of the smoking possum, and after some while, we convinced my distraught mother that North America's only marsupial is, indeed, an omnivore.

I too am a devoted omnivore, and while I could easily go through life never eating another chicken, I could never do without eggs. Even my son Wolfi, who does not like anything thank you very much, is eating them at the moment. He prefers them boiled, and I suspect that his enthusiasm is due to the fact that he is allowed to whack them on the plastic tray of his highchair and shatter the shell, the only instance in his toddler world in which the rough handling of food is not only sanctioned but also encouraged. When later presented with his egg, peeled, sliced and liberally salted, he proclaims that "eggs come from chickens" without having the foggiest notion of what that might mean.

There is hope though that he will soon be learning firsthand the joys of both the chicken and the egg. Last time we were visiting my parents, I stumbled upon a book of coop designs. Mama, it seems, is thinking of returning to her henhouse days with a more solidly built, predator-proof coop. I certainly hope she tries it again. Life is too short to eat any more of those soulless eggs from the supermarket, and as any modern mother should be, I am eager for Wolfi to learn about the origins of his food.

Meanwhile, though, at night, when the wind is still, we can already hear the sound of all those vegetarian possums in the woods loudly licking their chops.

Let THEM Eat the Cake!

2009-10-19T15:17:00.009-04:00

Since we are on the subject of in-laws and baked goods, I thought this might be an appropriate juncture to talk about cake. You see, not only are German bakeries stunning repositories for breads and rolls of all kinds, but they are also a Cockaigne of confections. Perhaps we are more inclined to think of France when thinking about fairytale sweets, but Germany holds its own with any number of delectable pastries. These go well beyond the famous jelly-filled Berliner to include pretzels made of marzipan, fruit-studded tarts, sugary crumbles and deep-fried dough balls that appear in the chilly weeks leading up to Lent.

The crown jewel of the German confection collection, however, has to be its lavish assortment of cakes. From the internationally renowned chocolate-cherry Black Forest Cake to obscure regional delicacies, these creations are a rich whirl of whipped cream, butter, chocolate, fruit and nuts. Served in generous portions and eaten alongside a cup of thick, bitter coffee, cake plays a central role in the German Sunday afternoon tradition of Kaffee und Kuchen, partaken of either at home by the fireside or out with friends in a smoky café. These cakes are the edible centerpiece of family gatherings, the raison d'être of all birthday parties, and the essence of any holiday festivity.

And I hate them.

Yes, it's true. While the sight of a table festively decked with huge slices of layered cake might be joyful and welcome to most, for me it is the signal that my good time is about to end. Some of the most traumatic experiences of my life have been spent in Germany around the coffee table when I found myself forced to eat large slices of richly layered cake. Certainly I do not mean be a kill joy, but for some visceral reason, the mere sight of such cakes sets my stomach churning. Give me a deep-fried dough ball any day, but please do not make me eat anything involving massive amounts of whipped cream, chocolate, butter and fruit.

Clearly I remember my mother-in-law's sixtieth birthday when her own mother, our dear Oma Anna, proudly presented her with a gigantic strawberry cake. It was about three feet tall, slathered in icing, layered with cream and garnished with berries. Everyone, it seemed, was excited about this cake except for me. As it was unwrapped and placed ceremoniously onto the table for slicing into enormous portions suitable only for Nordic men who had spent the day dog sledding, my heart sank. I knew I was somehow going to have to get a piece down my throat or run the risk of offending Oma.

I ate the cake.

At home and left to my own devices, my cake baking tends to center around things totally devoid of whipped cream, fruit or even chocolate. Though I do occasionally branch out to a pumpkin cake with cream cheese icing, I tend to stick to the simplest of pound cakes for my own Sunday afternoon rituals. It is the kind of cake that can be gussied up with cream and fruit should the German in-laws be coming over but which can hold its own completely unembellished. Buttery, moist and unadulterated, a subtle slice of yellow pound cake paired with a strong cup of coffee in the afternoon is, for me at least, a truly welcome sight.

Aga Pound Cake

This recipe comes to me from fellow two-oven Aga owner Gregory Knott. He adapted his grandmother's recipe for the Aga, and his meticulous instructions are a great introduction to baking with the cake baker.

2 sticks butter, cold

1 2/3 C sugar

5 eggs, beaten

1 tsp. lemon extract

1 tsp. vanilla extract

1/2 tsp. almond extract

2 C (10 oz.) cake flour, sifted after measuring

1. Place the cake baker with its lid into the roasting oven to warm. Set the trivet aside.

2. Line the medium cake tin with bake-o-glide or with butter and flour.

3. Dice butter into small pats and arrange evenly along the base and sides of a large mixing bowl.

4. Sprinkle sugar evenly over the butter. If using cold butter, set bowl onto a folded towel on one of the Aga lids to soften. Meanwhile, measure out other ingredients.

5. Using the wire whisk attachment, cream together the butter and sugar at a medium-high speed. Scrape bowl and beat until fluffy.

6. With mixer on a medium speed, add beaten eggs in a steady, SLOW stream (this should take a full 30 seconds).

7. Add extracts.

8. With mixer on low speed, slowly add flour.

9. Scrape bowl and mix again on medium-high speed for about 15 seconds to introduce air into the batter.

10. Turn batter into prepared tin, and spread so that the outer edges are a bit higher than the middle.

11. Stand tin in the cake-baker trivet and carefully place into the preheated cake baker. Adjust so that tin is centered. Replace lid, and carefully return to the roasting oven floor.

12. Check for doneness after one hour by inserting a wooden skewer into the center of the cake. The center should be springy and the sides will pull away from the tin when done.

NOTES:

-- Recipe can be halved and baked in the smallest cake tin. For the eggs, beat 3 together and visually set aside the equivalent of half an egg. Check for doneness after 45 minutes.

--You can add or omit any extracts that you like. You can also add grated lemon or orange zest.

-- Should you accidently overbrown the top, then dust lightly with powdered sugar to make it look intentional.

American Bread, German Style

2009-09-18T15:04:00.006-04:00

I have just survived two-and-a-half weeks of house guests. And not just any old house guests either. Marc's parents, my in-laws, were staying over. It was the first time they had visited us in our State-side home, and accordingly, we wanted things to be perfect. Having owned and operated an interior design store specializing in sleek, sophisticated Italian and German furnishings for the last 30 years, Klaus and Ursula are not only stylish and sleek themselves, but they also live in a house that is beautifully decorated and immaculately kept.

And so it was that they came to stay in our wee housie, and I not only found myself presented with the challenge of keeping things neat and tidy, but also with the three-times-daily question of what to feed them. Back home in Germany, Klaus and Ursula eat bread for breakfast, either simply with butter and jam on the weekdays, or more lavishly with cheeses, eggs and cold cuts on the weekend. Such breakfasts are all easy enough for them. Just a few doors down from their house an artisan bakery sells a stunning array of pastries and breads. These range from sesame-seed-studded hard rolls to soft, salty pretzels to wholesome peasant loaves made with robust flours like spelt, semolina and dark rye, the likes of which we down here in the land of White Lilly can only imagine.

In short, knowing what kinds of glorious breakfast foods my German in-laws are accustomed to, I could not exactly place a bowl of cereal in front of them and call it a meal. Come to think of it, I have never actually seen them eat a bowl of cereal. I also could not stomach the thought of making a full-fledged American-style breakfast every day for two-and-a-half weeks. And so it was that I turned to my already dog-eared and dough-splattered copy of the book ARTISAN BREAD IN FIVE MINUTES A DAY and set to work recreating in the Aga the kinds of breakfasts Klaus and Ursula typically eat back home on the weekends.

Bread baking was one of the primary reasons I had wanted an Aga, and put to the ultimate test of baking for my chic European in-laws, it did not disappoint. Every day for two-and-a-half weeks (did I mention they were staying with us for two-and-a-half weeks?) I pulled deliriously fragrant loaves out from the depths of the roasting oven. And while my offerings could not quite compete with those of an authentic German bakery, the scent alone of freshly baked bread had us swooning.

As the days progressed, Klaus, Ursula and I perfected the art of the leisurely breakfast. We sat outside on the terrace under the shade of a big umbrella and ate slice after heavenly slice. Certainly it was delicious spread with soft cheeses and topped with South Carolina peach jam. But my Aga bread achieved perfection when eaten in combination with the tomatoes spilling off the vines in the garden. We slathered our slices with a thick layer of cool, salted butter, spooned over a bit of softly scrambled egg and topped them off with thin rounds of bright red tomato, crunchy from a sprinkling of fleur de sel and flecked with black pepper.

To my delight, every morning as he reached for the last bit of bread in the basket and stabbed the remaining wedge of brie off the cheese board with his fork, Klaus praised my efforts. Leaning across the table to me in his exquisitely ironed polo shirt, his mouth satisfyingly full, he said, "Sabrina, you must someday come to Germany and open a bakery selling your American breads!" In vain, I explained to him that I was actually trying to imitate German breads, but he never quite caught on. Still, I was not disappointed. My work had paid off, the Aga had come through brilliantly once again, and if such perfection goes down in the history books as American, then so be it!

AGA PEASANT BREAD

Adapted from ARTISAN BREAD IN FIVE MINUTES A DAY by Jeff Hertzberg and Zöe François (St. Martin's Press: New York, 2007)

Makes three to four one-pound loaves

3 Cups lukewarm water

2 Packets granulated yeast

1 ½ Tablespoons coarse salt (for lack of something more chic, the green plastic spoon found in boxes of Miracle Grow works great here!)

½ Cup rye flour (51 grams)

½ Cup whole wheat flour (60 grams)

5 ½ Cups unbleached all-purpose flour (687 grams)

Combine yeast, water and salt in a five-quart container. The container should have a cover but should not be airtight. I recommend using one with a flat lid so that you may stack other things on top of it in the refrigerator for extra space.
Add flour. I prefer to put my container on top of a kitchen scale and measure the flour directly into the bowl by weight rather than by cups.
Mix ingredients together with hands until thoroughly combined. The dough will be wet and sticky.
Cover and let rise for two hours. Refrigerate for at least three hours and up to 14 days.
Sprinkle a section of the dough generously with flour and pull off a one-pound piece. Shape it into a ball and leave to rise, uncovered, on a piece of parchment paper for about 40 minutes.
Sprinkle the top of the loaf with more flour and slash a few times decoratively with a serrated knife.
Using a pizza peel, transfer dough including the parchment paper to the floor of the roasting oven.
Fill a small, heat-proof beaker with water. Pour a little bit of it (carefully and with the aid of an oven mitt!) directly onto the floor of the oven to create a burst of steam. Place the beaker next to the bread and shut the door.
Bake for 30 minutes until golden, fragrant and utterly irresistible.

If you can stand to, let it cool on a rack completely before slicing and eating.

Powder Room Confessions

2009-08-19T13:55:00.012-04:00

If there is anything in my home which I love as devotedly as I love my Aga, then it must be my powder room. Just a few short years ago, when Marc and I were living in a doll-house of an apartment in Germany, I often lay in bed at night imagining how much I would revel in such luxury. Back then, our living quarters were outfitted with exactly one miniscule bathroom. The shower was so narrow that even Barbie would have had difficulty shaving her legs in it. The sink was small, the counter space nonexistent. And if the awkward positioning of the toilet was not problematic enough, the toilet paper itself was suspended on a wire from the ceiling in an otherworldly attempt to conserve space.

Besides the Herculean feat of just making myself presentable in this kind of setting, having guests over for dinner also presented a challenge. Our dinner table seated two comfortably -- three was already a stretch -- and we ate in a room that doubled during the day as the office. Squeezing people around a small table and dining by the glow of the computer did not bother me nearly as much, however, as not having a proper powder room. Any time guests would come, not only did I have to do all the shopping and cooking, but I also had to make sure that our one bathroom was dazzlingly clean. God forbid someone should find a splodge of toothpaste on the sink or an unfortunate hair on the floor.

No, back then, I could only fantasize about the carefree existence I lead now, a life completed by a small bathroom off the den reserved exclusively for dinner guests. The room is delicately scented with honeysuckle soap and quietly filled with interesting objects d'art. At the moment, I have it decorated with iridescent glass eggs made from the ashes of the Mount St. Helens eruption. Tucked away in a corner, there is salt lamp giving off a soothing orange glow, and up on a shelf, sits a yellow vase of dried thistles, a hostess gift from Scottish guests. At other times of the year, the room is filled with more exotic fare: carved wooden boxes and marble elephants from India, or a collection of mean-faced warriors from the South Seas. I do so love the paraphernalia of a well-done powder room. One of the most interesting ones I ever came across was plastered with framed report cards, diplomas and artwork from the owner's childhood in the 1950s. My mother, a hopeless anglophile, has a powder room with an English theme including wallpaper displaying a map of the island, framed bookmarks with Shakespearian quotes printed on them and a porcelain jug proclaiming in the words of Samuel Johnson that, "the man who is tired of London is tired of life."

This particular powder room is also charmingly equipped with a trick door which has been the undoing of many a dinner guest. Family members know the special knack of turning the iron knob in the wrong direction while pressing on it until it clicks, but this method is not easily explained through the door to guests who have locked themselves in -- especially if the evening is well advanced and the gin has been flowing freely. On one such occasion when Mama was having a party in honor of Julia Child's birthday, one of the guests wandered off to the powder room and never came back. She had become trapped amongst the British bibelots and ended up having to climb out the window in order to rejoin the party. Fortunately for us, she was a poised Southern lady who graciously kept her manners about the whole ordeal. She did not even complain about her exquisite clothes getting ruined when she landed in the ivy bed. At least, as my father later pointed out, she had missed the bird bath.

By now, surely, you are wondering what all of this powder-room talk could possibly have to do with the Aga? It is simply because the two things share the same tragic fate: visitors completely ignore them. Without the show-stopping element of a trick door knob, my powder room sinks sadly into oblivion. I put so much of my heart into the positioning of its trinkets, the scent of the soap, the angle of the damn lamp, and yet, at every dinner party, I am crushed anew by my guests' failure to recognize its understated genius. At the last evening we hosted, no one even ever went to the powder room! Imagine that! Certainly, I would never forego the chance to slip off to the powder room at someone else's house!

In the same way, it is a cosmic impossibility for me to imagine walking into a kitchen featuring a wine-red stove and not begin -- at the mere sight of such a marvel -- to speak in tongues. Yet my guests are never as moved as I am. They come, laugh, eat, enjoy, but at the end of any given dinner party, I am invariably deflated. No matter how jolly the conversation, how well-received the food, how fast the hours flew by, Marc finds me in the kitchen putting the wine glasses on the Aga to dry and feeling forlorn.

"Did you have a good time?" he asks.

"Well, yes, a very good time…"

"But?"

"But no one noticed the powder room or even cared about the Aga!" I whine.

"Why don't you point them out?" is his straight-forward, manly solution to such complex feminine problems.

Obviously he does not understand that to draw attention to these things would be to destroy the illusion that their beauty lies not in coincidence but in carefully crafted design. Besides, it would be tacky. No, rather than succumb to the tasteless pointing out of my own small decorating achievements, I must be content to be a voice in the domestic wilderness. And if nothing else, I can take private pleasure in the beauty of my powder room, the gleam of my claret stove and in the fact that the toilet paper is no longer suspended from the ceiling.

Divina Commedia

2009-07-09T11:10:00.002-04:00

Speaking of messes, let's talk about pizza. The only truly dramatic mess I have made in my Aga so far, one which left the entire house perfumed with the scent of burnt offerings for what seemed like days on end, was my maiden attempt at making pizza. We had just moved into town, the house was freshly painted, the Aga was newly installed, and my mother had trundled down from North Carolina for her first visit. Excited about all the new shopping possibilities of the area, Mama spent one morning at the kitchen table drinking diet sodas and leafing through the yellow pages. Before long she landed on a listing for a restaurant supply store, and an hour later, we found ourselves pushing a decidedly unenthusiastic 16-month-old in his umbrella stroller up and down the crowded aisles. Amidst the clatter of timers, egg rings, serving trays, industrial-sized cookie racks, and those funny brown bubbled glasses only ever seen at Mexican restaurants, we found something we had both been coveting for years: pizza peels. Hanging in the front corner by the window, they were of two different models. Mama and I both being novices to the world of pizza baking, we did not suspect that true pizza masters needed one of each, a wooden one to build the pizza and put it into the oven and a metal one for its removal. After several minutes of debate during which it never occurred to either of us to ask the store clerk for help, we settled upon a long-handled metal one, and then, to Wolfi's great relief, we headed off home, ready to roll up our sleeves and get to work.

The sauce was easy. As was the crust. As were the toppings. The trouble came when it was time to combine all three and build the pizza. For whatever reason, I just assumed I could roll the dough directly out on the counter top, artfully cover it with toppings, and then scrape the finished product up with the peel and transfer it to the oven. That's what a pizza peel is for, right? Those of you who are pros to pizza making are now undoubtedly shaking your heads and cringing at such outright stupidity. Those of you, however, who have not yet tried to make your own pizza from scratch, read on and learn from my mistakes. When I went to scrape up the pizza, it stuck with all its glutenous might to the counter top. There was no budging it without destroying it completely. I, personally, was appalled. My carefully prepared dinner had been ruined in a few seconds through my own thoughtlessness. Mama, on the other hand, already on her second gin and tonic and feeling quite inspired, did not seem to think an unbaked pizza stuck irrevocably to the countertop presented too serious a problem. "Just make a calzone," she said, draining her glass. And so without further ado, without consulting any books, without uploading and closely scrutinizing any You Tube videos on proper calzone technique, without, frankly, thinking, I folded the dough over and somehow maneuvered the whole thing, with the help of my new pizza peel, into the oven.

Then the smell began, the Vesuvian smell of blackened cheese and charcoaled pepperoni. A smell which, as I mentioned before, lingered on in the house for days. That week, the new wire brush that came with the Aga received a ritualistic work out as I scraped the insides of the burning oven, on my knees and praying to the Aga gods that whatever damage I had done to the roasting oven floor might not be irreparable. At night, lying in bed and inhaling the fumes that were still wafting through the upstairs bedrooms, I was convinced that I had ruined my Aga in the very first week of its existence. But, as those of you who have been cooking with one for a while know, in a few days time, all evidence of my blunder had been wondrously eradicated.

Months later, I have now, if not quite mastered, at least vastly improved my pizza making technique. I have a wooden peel which I use to put the pizza into the oven, one that I bought at the Christmas market in Stuttgart that fits perfectly. (As it turns out, most wooden pizza peels available in the States are too large to fit into the roasting oven. More practical-minded souls than I shave them down with a saw of some sort, but beyond an immersion blender, I do not trust myself readily with power tools.) And as I am still not brave enough to build the pizza directly onto a cornmeal-covered peel like a true pizza master would do, I instead build it on parchment paper. After the pizza has been in for five minutes or so, I pull the paper out from under it and leave the pie to cook directly on the roasting oven floor, all evidence of my lack of professionalism once again completely eradicated.

And Aga pizza has definitely been worth the trial by fire I went through to learn how to make it. Though the roasting oven might not get up to the infernal temperatures of an authentic pizza oven, its hot stone interior does an incredible job. The crust comes out bubbled up at the edges and perfectly done on the bottom, the cheese beautifully melted, the finished dish, a work of art. And if you keep portions of dough and sauce made up in the freezer, you can have a show-stopper dinner ready in the time it takes to say "Divine Comedy."

AGA PIZZA

One pound of olive oil dough (pg. 134 of ARTISAN BREAD IN FIVE MINUTES A DAY by Jeff Hertzberg and Zoë François. If you do not already own this book, go out and buy it. NOW.)

For the sauce:

3 TBS good quality extra virgin olive oil

one yellow onion, chopped

two cloves of garlic, minced

one 28-ounce can of diced tomatoes

salt, sugar, freshly ground pepper and oregano to taste

Heat olive oil in a large saucepan on the simmering plate and add onion and garlic. Fry gently until soft, about 5 minutes.
Add tomatoes and season with salt, pepper, sugar and oregano
Put into simmering oven and leave until ready to use, at least 30 minutes and up to several hours. Don't you just love your Aga?
Using an immersion blender, blend until smooth and recheck for seasonings.

For the toppings:

Fresh mozzarella, of course, basil leaves, Kalamata olives, sardines, capers, ham, artichoke hearts, bacon, fresh figs, gorgonzola, arugula, goats cheese, red peppers, mushrooms, walnuts, the possibilities are endless, though frankly, is there anything better than a plain old pepperoni pizza?

To assemble and bake:

Roll out the pizza dough to an oval big enough to fit easily on your pizza peel and place it on a piece of parchment paper.
Spoon over the sauce leaving a bit of a border.
Top with whatever toppings you like.
Drizzle over a bit more olive oil just for good measure and using a pizza peel, gently transfer the whole thing to the floor of the roasting oven.
After the first 5 minutes in the oven, pull the parchment paper out from under the pizza.
Continue baking for 15 minutes more or until the crust is as crispy as you like it and the toppings are done to your taste.

Making a Mess, Then Cleaning It Up Again

2009-05-15T10:47:00.002-04:00

The thing that I seem to be spending the most time doing these days is making a mess and then cleaning it up again. I suppose my life has always been a bit like that, but with a toddler in tow, I have become acutely aware of the fact. We unpack his puzzles, three of them at a time, and then we scatter various pictures of dinosaurs, vehicles or farm animals all over the floor. We might even work a few of them, pieces going back into tidy compartments, but if so, it is only for the joy of dumping the results back onto the rug. Blocks, needless to say, are the same. Stack them up. Knock them over. Roll the ball up hill. Watch it tumble down again. For my son, Wolfi, these activities are play, simple diversions. For me, they have become the essence of my daily existence.

Laundry gets washed, stubborn Carolina dirt stains removed, yesterday's splotch of chocolate milk gone. It is dried, neatly folded and put away again, in anticipation of tomorrow's sullying. And cooking, of course, is the same: Get out the pots and pans. Clutter the counters with spice jars and measuring spoons. Puddles of spilt sauces collect by the sink, and onion skins flutter down to the floor. Knives that must not go in the dishwasher get dirtied one after the other, tomato pulp miserably splatters off the cutting board and works it ways down the cabinet sides. Sometimes while I am in the midst of all this mess making, Wolfi decides it is also a good time to empty the entire contents of my bakery cabinet. Out come the cookie racks to be strewn about my feet, and off he toddles with various bottles of sweet smelling extracts -- lemon, vanilla, almond -- which I later find at the bottom of his toy basket.

All the more reason to love my Aga. If washing up the dirty mixing bowls, drying knives and sweeping the floors free of onion skins always feel like chores, cleaning the Aga never does. The insides take care of themselves, after all, and while some particularly conscientious Aga owners actually remove the doors to clean them, I, for one, believe that whatever goes into the Aga, stays in the Aga. My only caveat is that the exterior remain as glossy and shiny as the day it was installed. Luckily, this particular aspect of my Sisyphean existence is always agreeable, a welcome ritual. At the end of the day, while waiting on that one last cup of tea to steep, I run a soft cloth slowly and deliberately over the black top and down the dark red face plates. I wash away butter spatters from the afternoon's round of toasted cheese sandwiches or wipe off droplet marks from the evening's pasta water. And then I shine and buff and revel in the feel of the cloth gliding over hot, smooth surfaces. Perhaps I will straighten out the tea towel, warm and crisp between my fingers, a pleasant prelude to climbing between equally warm and crisp sheets. And I will sleep soundly in the knowledge that my kitchen has once again been returned to its pristine shine, ready for tomorrow's fresh new round of mess making.

Toasted Cheese

2009-03-27T16:25:00.012-04:00

What better way to begin a writing project devoted to the joys of Aga cooking than with an ode to that ultimate Aga creation, the toasted cheese sandwich? To be sure, any kind of toast is grand on the Aga -- be it the traditional crisscrossed kind made with that medieval-looking contraption known as the "Aga Toaster"; rows of sandwich bread lined up neatly on a cookie sheet and roasted briefly in the roasting oven; or a thick chunk of peasant bread grilled directly on the simmering plate. But nothing is quite so glorious as a simple toasted cheese sandwich.

For the first time in our married lives, Marc comes home every day from the office for lunch. When we were living in Stuttgart and later in Madrid, the commute was too forbidding, but here in South Carolina where the pace of life is still deliciously slow, he can trundle home for a lunch break five days a week. Aga Toast is always awaiting him. Of course the combinations vary. This particular week we are on an olive loaf and muenster kick, but the spirit of the sandwich is always the same: The bread is crisp yet buttery. The cheese is stringy and escapist, the insides are tangy and mysterious. And that first bite is a pleasurable reminder that a routine lunch break can indeed be sublime.

AGA TOASTED CHEESE

Thin slices of artisan bread

Freshly grated cheese (not that desiccated bagged stuff resembling packaging material. I always just buy a block of something nice and keep it under my mouse-shaped cheese dome for grating and slicing as needed. If you prefer sliced cheese, the finished sandwich will need a few minutes in the simmering oven for it to melt fully)

Thin slices of lunch meat (According to my Swabian husband, Boar's Head olive loaf is pretty darn close to a lip-smacking slice of German sausage!)

Mayonnaise, mustard and softened butter

1. Spread the bread with mayonnaise and mustard.

2. Layer the bottom half with a few slices of neatly folded lunch meat, sprinkle over the grated cheese and top off the sandwich with the remaining slice of bread.

3. Butter the top piece of bread liberally. (You do not need to butter the bottom half as it will brown nicely in the left over butter on the simmering plate.)

4. Line the simmering plate with bake-o-glide. (This is not, strictly speaking, a necessity, but rinsing off bake-o-glide in the sink is loads easier than scouring the simmering plate with that strange wire brush -- yet another medieval contraption.)

5. Toast the sandwich, butter side down, until starting to brown, about one minute. Flip and toast the other side. If you like, give the whole thing a good squash. I love using a sandwich press just for the fun of it, but anything heavy and flat will do. Serve immediately or keep warm for a few minutes in the simmering or warming oven.