I don’t always have time to cook an elaborate meal, I’m sure you don’t either. This is one of those unfussy, quick dishes I make from ingredients that are usually kicking around in my cupboards and refrigerator. It’s also one of the only dishes I ever make using canned goods. I have made this before by making and mashing the beans, by making enchilada sauce from scratch and by roasting green chilies. I’ll probably do that again on occasion and I do want to try to make my own tortillas. But let’s keep it real. While making everything from scratch may be the ideal, sometimes the only feasible goal is to get a healthy dinner on the table. So, here’s my recipe for inauthentic Mexican bean enchiladas that can be prepared, baked and on the table in about 30 minutes. That’s less time than it takes for pizza delivery in my neighborhood. The possible variations are numerous. You can add cooked shredded chicken, pork or beef, cooked shrimp, tofu, a bit of goat cheese or roasted vegetables to the filling. Any leftovers you have that you think will taste good are fair game. Disclaimer: I am in no way aiming to produce a Rachel Rae style meal and will not use any expressions such as “yum-o,” “de-lish” or “how (insert adjective) is that?” to describe this or any other recipe, no matter how good I think it is.

Enchiladas de frijoles

• 1 can (16 oz.) fat-free refried beans
• 1 can (4 oz.) chopped green chilies
• 1 small onion, chopped fine
• 1 t garlic powder
• 1 package (2 cups) Monterey jack cheese
• 1 can (10 oz.) enchilada sauce
• 12 corn tortillas
• Cooking spray
• 1 head heart of romaine, chopped
• 1/4 cup chopped cilantro or 2 scallions, sliced into rings
• 1 lime, cut into wedges
• Optional: sour cream and/or guacamole for topping

Heat oven to 375 degrees. Open the cans of beans, chilies and sauce. Place beans and chilies in a mixing bowl and add onion and garlic powder. Ladle 1/4 cup sauce into a large casserole dish and spread it around to cover the bottom of the dish. Heat a large non-stick skillet over low heat and spray with a very small amount of cooking spray. Warm the tortillas in the skillet, about 30 seconds on each side. You will probably need to use more cooking spray after every third or fourth tortilla. As you remove each tortilla from the skillet, place it on a clean work surface (counter or cutting board). Spoon about 1/4 cup of bean mixture onto each tortilla and spread it horizontally in a line down the middle, almost to the edges. Add about 1 T cheese on top of the beans and roll up the tortilla and place it in the casserole dish. Fill and roll each of the tortillas and line them up next to each other in the dish until the dish is filled. You’ll need to roll each one fairly tightly and fit them in snuggly together. Pour the rest of the sauce over the top of the rolled tortillas making sure that all of the tortillas have sauce all over them. You may need to use the back of a spoon to spread it around. Sprinkle the remaining cheese in a line down the middle of the tortillas and place the dish in the oven. Remove from the oven after about 20 minutes. The cheese on top should be melted, the sauce bubbling and the edges of some of the tortillas just beginning to brown. Let the whole thing rest for about 5 minutes before serving. To serve, place two tortillas on each plate with some lettuce, a wedge of lime and the sour cream and/or guacamole (if using) on the side and cilantro or scallions sprinkled over everything.

I like potatoes more than I like most people. Like people, they come in different shapes, sizes and colors. You can do lots of things to potatoes. I like them boiled, steamed, baked, roasted, fried. I don’t care if it’s home fries or hashed browns at breakfast or if it’s curly fries, steak fries or plain old French fries with my burger; I’m an equal opportunity potato eater. In the next year or so, I will probably give you several of my potato recipes, but today I’m going to share with you my absolute favorite way to eat potatoes in the winter (this summer, I’ll show you what we do with them on the grill).

I don’t remember my mom ever making just plain scalloped potatoes when I was a kid; she would only make them when she had leftover ham and she’d make ham and scalloped potatoes. I prefer to eat my ham on the side and fill my whole casserole dish up with as many potatoes as I can fit in there. I’ve been making this dish for quite a long time and I don’t usually use a recipe, but I thought that I’d look in my new facsimile edition of the first edition of the Joy of Cooking, that my new sister-in-law got me for Christmas (I’m so glad to have another book lover in the family!) to see how earlier generations of Americans might have made this. The recipe reminds me of what you used to get at the Bill Knapp’s. It tells you to cube boiled potatoes and combine them with a cream sauce, paprika or cayenne and some grated cheese with bread crumbs on the top. I might try this recipe some other time, but I will not call it scalloped potatoes, I’ll call it creamed potatoes with cheese.

Of course, because I’m a French professor, I call this recipe gratin dauphinois. This is a good name for it. A gratin is any dish that is baked in the oven until the top is browned. The word gratin comes from the word “gratter” to scrape or scratch. So a good gratin will be nice and brown on top and the best parts have to be literally scraped off the sides of dish. It really is those bits that are the best, right? The other word in the name indicates that it is from a historical province of France, Dauphin?, at one time also known as the Viennois and now a part of the Rh?nes-Alpes region. Like with the Prince of Wales in England, the oldest son of the king was generally given the title of Dauphin de Viennois, because he was heir to this region and then the word for heir to the throne eventually got shortened to “dauphin.” This word also means dolphin. The dolphin was used on the coat of arms of the rulers of this area because the dolphin was considered the king of fishes, just like the lion is often represented as the king of the animal kingdom and also used on royal coats of arms. The Dauphin? is known for its cheeses, its wines and especially its hearty mountain food, including this dish. Purists claim that a true gratin dauphinois does not have cheese in it, but I couldn’t imagine not putting just a little sprinkling of good quality grated cheese on the top just before putting it in the oven.

I like to use a smaller dish and pile the potatoes high. This recipe serves 6 to 8 people and can be doubled and baked in a larger dish, if you want to serve more people or if you want leftovers. This is one of those things that is really good heated up a little the next day for lunch. This is good with sliced ham, steaks, sausages, roast chicken and numerous other things. Some people get creative and put other things in this dish, like chopped roasted red peppers, chopped chicken, bits of ham or bacon, but like I said, I like my potato gratin to be just that, anything else gets served on the side. Resist all temptation to gobble this up while it’s still piping hot. It really will taste better and thicken up after it cools off a bit.

Gratin dauphinois: scalloped potatoes

• 5-6 medium sized potatoes (I really like Yukon gold, but russet are a good choice, too)
• 2 cups milk
• 2 T butter, softened
• 1 clove garlic, minced
• 1 bay leaf
• 1 t salt
• Freshly ground black pepper, to taste
• Optional: 1 cup good quality grated cheese, emmental, gruy?re or my favorite, comt?

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Butter an 8 inch by 8 inch square Pyrex dish or something of similar size. Peel and slice the potatoes as thin as possible, use a mandoline (also spelled mandolin) if you have one, if not, you can use the slicer attachment of a food processor or a very sharp knife. Place the potatoes in the buttered dish. Heat the milk with the garlic, bay leaf, salt and pepper until the milk just comes to a boil and pour this mixture over the potatoes (fish out the bay leaf). Let the milk settle in just a bit and press everything down a bit with your hands. Sprinkle the (optional) cheese evenly on top and bake for about 1 hour, until everything is bubbling and the top is browned. Let rest 10-15 minutes before cutting into squares and serving.

David at Cooking Chat has announced a new food blog event, Leftover Tuesdays. My last post was also a blogger event. It’s not that I’m trying to jump on the Is My Blog Burning band wagon, it’s just that once I found out about this one, I really had to write about it. Am I the only person who loves leftovers? It must be some sort of OCD thing, because I really like making something that I can then pull out when I need a quick lunch or dinner or to use up in some other recipe. It seems to me that there’s a completeness to cooking like this. Nose to tail eating is fine by me.

Many people are worried about getting sick from leftovers. Frankly, this never really crosses my mind. Maybe because I worked in my dorm cafeteria in college and I had to watch those disgusting movies about hygiene (i.e. nose and scab picking, sleeveless t-shirt wearing mustache man leans over the huge Hobart of soup with a cigarette in his mouth), so I know how to handle food and I’m always really careful. If you have any questions about what’s safe to eat, the Food Safety and Inspection USDA has a new automated response system with a multicultural virtual representative, Karen, who is available 24/7 and has answers to many of your food safety related questions. This is what she has to say about leftovers:

Bacteria begin to multiply rapidly in the danger zone between 40 ?F (recommended refrigerator temperature) and 140 ?F. Therefore, food left out at room temperature will become unsafe in a matter of hours. Refrigerate leftovers at 40 ?F or below or freeze (0 ?F) as soon as possible, but never leave food out more than 2 hours, 1 hour if the outside temperature is above 90 ?F. Divide leftovers into shallow containers. This encourages rapid, even cooling. Cover with airtight lids or enclose in plastic wraps or aluminum foil. Use refrigerated leftovers within 3 to 4 days, or freeze them for longer storage. For more information, contact the USDA Meat and Poultry Hotline at 1-888-MPHotline (1-888-674-6854).

I don’t know about you, but I think if I had any questions about my leftovers, I wouldn’t call the hotline. I’d just chuck them in the garbage and eat something else. But they must see a need if they’ve actually set up a phone number for people to call.

I’m sorry if this deflates anyone’s publication ambitions, but the Leftover Recipe Book
already exists. I can’t wait to make noodle burritos and hamburger extender. They also claim to have ideas for leftover cold cereal. Please tell me if you have any ideas for that one. I’d be impressed if you could make something edible with cereal that’s been sitting in milk for more than 10 minutes. Leftovers has already been used as the name of a short movie, and the name of several bands, include this neo-punk pop band. If you really don’t like leftovers, you may want to advocate for their use as biofuel, though the extra food could probably be put to better use in feeding the homeless and underfed in this country and elsewhere.

I work at a small state university that has an awful selection of places to buy lunch from, and what little is edible would cost more than I can afford to spend on lunch, so I bring my lunch just about every single day and it’s usually leftovers. If I do have to resort to eating on campus, because for some odd reason I don’t have any leftovers (almost never), I usually buy soup, which keeps going up in price for a smaller and smaller container. What’s with that? Soup is about the cheapest thing you can make, and they could use leftovers rather than throwing things away everyday. They could practically give it away. I also don’t understand why you can’t get a discount on soup like you can get a discount on coffee if you bring your own container. You know that the container is more expensive for them than the soup.

I’ll make some things just because they make excellent leftovers, is that weird? A pork roast for two turns into lots of lovely pork sandwiches for the week’s lunches. When I make meatballs, I make a lot of extras and freeze them and also make a meat loaf at the same time. I have recently learned that this practice is not technically “leftovers,” rather it is called “planovers” a term that has been around since at least 1914. So, I’m guilty of making a lot of food on Saturdays or Sundays just so that I won’t have to cook when I get home at 8:30 p.m. during the week. Erik doesn’t complain and we’re both happy to have hot food when we get home rather than spending what little extra money we have on unplanned restaurant expenditures. If you remember my post on our outing to Prune last Fall, you know that I have a plan for the restaurants that I want to go to this year and I want to at least make it to some of them before the summer menus are rolled out.

We have leftover chicken quite often. I love roast chicken, but I’m usually just cooking for two. We usually eat only a breast and a half or one of the breasts and one of the thighs. So in the days after that, we’ll have a stir fry, cold chicken and a green salad with hot French mustard on the side or something Mexican that calls for shredded chicken, like enchiladas or chalupas. That last recipe, by the way, is one of the best things I’ve ever eaten. I make gallons and gallons of chicken broth every winter. I make so much broth and chicken soup that I’m always giving it to my friends. They must not mind leftovers, because they never say no.

Risotto is one of the most common things that I’ll make to use up leftovers, especially chicken or fish and odds and ends in the vegetable bin and the broth that’s always in the freezer. I make this so much that I don’t need a recipe. Many people are afraid to make risotto because it is supposedly such a time consuming scary fancy Italian dish that needs special rice, homemade broth, etc. I’m happy that the first time I went looking for a risotto recipe, it was before Mario had a cooking show and before I married a man with a copy of Marcella Hazan’s Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking. Not that I have any issues with Mario or Marcella, I’ve learned a lot from both of them. Still, the first time I made risotto, it was from a book that I’d received as a sort of a gag gift that turned out to be really great, The Surreal Gourmet Entertains by Bob Blumer. It has the kind of reassuring advice about dinner parties that my husband knows innately, but I’ve had to learn. The “Don’t worry so much about whether or not your bathroom is spotless or your dinner is perfect, just put on some fun music and hand everyone a drink when they come in the door” philosophy is really pretty good and something I’m getting better at. Anyway, Blumer’s advice about risotto is really good. You don’t have to stir constantly, just add the broth 1/2 cup at a time, give it a stir a few times every five minutes or so, and make sure to add more broth just as the rice is about to start sticking to the bottom of the pot. This is something you can do while you’re dicing the last minute additions (the already cooked leftovers), grating the parmesan, chopping the parsley and still have time for a glass of wine and a chat with your partner, your friends, or your dog. I’ve made risotto to go with fancy things like osso bucco, but it’s best if you treat it like a casual, use-up-your leftovers kind of dish. It’s also pretty good the next day.

The version I made last night and that we had leftover for lunch today included some shitake mushrooms, some leftover asparagus and some chopped up chicken and chicken broth from last Thursday’s roast chicken.

Risotto

• 5-6 cups chicken broth (purchased or homemade, yes homemade tastes better, no it isn’t essential)
• 1 cup white wine (or champagne, or dry vermouth, or dry sherry)
• 1 onion, finely chopped
• 2-3 cloves garlic, minced
• 1-2 tablespoons unsalted butter
• 1 T olive oil
• 2 cups Arborio rice, or use sushi rice, it’s also a short grain rice, it works and is much cheaper
• 1/2 cup freshly grated Parmesan (the best you can afford)
• Salt and pepper to taste
• Chopped fresh parsley and additional Parmesan for garnish
• Optional: chopped leftover meat and additional vegetables such as diced carrot, celery or zucchini; sliced mushrooms or chopped tomatoes; any leftover pre-cooked vegetables such as artichoke hearts, roasted peppers, squash, etc., just try and cut everything into roughly the same size pieces.

• Optional: 1-2 T butter stirred in at the end

In a saucepan bring broth to a simmer and keep at a bare simmer.

In a large heavy saucepan heat the butter and olive oil on medium until butter is just melted. Add onion and garlic and stir occasionally until onion is translucent. Add any uncooked vegetables now and saut? for 5-10 minutes (if the vegetables start to stick, you can add a little more butter or a touch of broth). Add rice, stirring to coat with butter for about 2-3 minutes. Add wine and allow it to reduce almost completely. Add 1 cup simmering broth and cook, stirring frequently until absorbed. Continue cooking and add broth mixture, about 1/2 cup at a time, stirring often and letting each addition be absorbed before adding the next. When it is done, the rice will be creamy and almost all the way soft. This will take 30 minutes or so. There may be broth left over, or you may need to use some water if you don’t have enough broth. Stir in any pre-cooked ingredients and cook for 2-3 minutes. Stir in Parmesan, and add salt and pepper to taste. Turn off heat and continue to stir for 2-3 minutes more (broth will continue to evaporate, and the risotto will cool allowing it to finish cooking and to set slightly). Let sit for about 5 minutes before serving.

It’s easy to come up with variations on risotto. For example, you can add some shrimp about 5 minutes before the rice is done and substitute finely sliced green onion or chives for the parsley, or use other cheeses in place of some or all of the parmesan. If you’ve got some bits of cheese left over from a cheese plate, this is a good place to use them up, just call it something like “3 cheese risotto” or “5 cheese risotto” and everyone will be impressed.

You can place leftovers in individual containers or in a larger casserole dish. Eat or freeze within 2 or 3 days.

Do you have a recipe that has changed your life? I think that this cake changed my life not once, but twice. Because of its importance to me and because it’s the recipe that friends and family most often ask me for, I’ve chosen to write about it to participate in Sugar High Friday, a food blogger event started by Jennifer of the Domestic Goddess. This month is Sugar High Friday #27: Chocolate by Brand. It’s being hosted by David Lebovitz, the dessert guru who lives in Paris.

The first life changing experience happened when I was living in France during high school in the mid-80s. I was 18. Flourless chocolate cake with cr?me anglaise was the it dessert that year. I ate the best version of this cake and I learned how to make the custard sauce at my friend Myriam’s house. Myriam was my classmate and because she was also a new student at our school and from the south of France, she was an outsider, like me. She was also more sophisticated and a lot smarter than most of the other students. Early on in that year I chose to sit next to her in class. At first, I mostly copied her notes and imitated her oh-so-French handwriting, because I couldn’t really understand the teachers. By the end of the year, I was able to follow along just fine and we had become close friends. Myriam started inviting me to her house on a regular basis to help me out with my French homework and to prepare together for the first part of the baccalaur?at, the exam in French that we would pass at the end of the year and that the rest of my classmates would finish the following year with tests in all of the other subjects.

Myriam’s parents had sent her “up to Paris” to live with her grandparents for the last two years of high school so that she would be at a better school and get better preparation for the baccalaur?at than she would have in her village in the Pyr?n?es, where she had literally attended a one-room school house. Myriam’s grandparents had been through the war and they talked about it as though it had happened yesterday. Of course they called World War II just “the war.” They had met in 1936, when they were both working at La Samaritaine. She worked in sales and he worked in the restaurant (before that he had worked as a cook for the train line that ran from Paris to Milan). They wouldn’t have met at all, except for the fact that 1936 was an important year for worker’s rights in France and La Samaritaine was the site of some of the first sit-in strikes. So they met amid political and social upheaval and were married and then separated by the war, he was a prisoner in a camp, she stuck it out in Paris, neither had much to eat for a long stretch. The rationing didn’t end until 1949. They showed me the ration books. They pulled out pictures, memorabilia, maps. They talked about their gratitude toward the Americans. Some of it was boring, they often repeated themselves. I politely listened. Myriam would sometimes roll her eyes at me when they weren’t looking, these were stories she’d heard too many times.

Myriam’s grandmother had her husband on a short leash. He wasn’t allowed to drink unless they had guests. He had Myriam invite me over every chance he could get. I think that he liked having me over not just to drink, but to share it with me. The wine cellar took up more than 500 square feet of space in their basement. He would cook special dishes and show us the important steps. He would bring out several wines for a several course meal, showing me how to evaluate the color and body of a wine, how to smell its perfume, how to taste it. Myriam complained about the food at her grandparents’ house. She was a proponent of the nouvelle cuisine, which was still pretty new, and she disliked all the cream and butter that her grandparents used in their cooking. Neither of us knew how lucky we were.

One Sunday, Myriam invited me over for a study session to be followed by dinner. I remember it in a strangely clear way. We were in her attic bedroom. It was white and blue and luminous. She had pulled out about 50 pages of notes on the history of theater, all written on grid-lined paper in indigo blue ink. She was telling me about the Greeks. I remember thinking that I had so much to learn and I was never going to pass that exam. Her grandfather called up to us and we clattered down the stairs and into the kitchen. He was making cr?me anglaise. He had us stir the milk to keep a skin from forming on the top. He showed us how to temper the eggs. He had us watch closely as tiny bubbles formed a ring all around the perimeter, next to the walls of the pan. Stirring slowly and watching, he told us to smell, that the nose could help enormously in knowing when something was ready. Then it happened, a puff of steam came up from the pot and the top of the sauce got less opaque and visibly thicker at the same time. It was done. He didn’t use a thermometer; he just used his eyes and his nose. I didn’t get to see him making the cake; he had done that the day before so the flavors would have time to meld. As he put the sauce away in the refrigerator to chill, Myriam and I hurried back up the stairs to continue our discussion about tragedy and Racine. Dinner was fairly simple. There was a first course of sliced tomatoes, onions and cucumbers liberally doused with vinegar and oil, a sprinkle of salt and pepper. The main dish was a roast, I think it was veal, with carrots and potatoes cooked with it in the roasting pan, these were soft in the middle, salty and caramelized on the side that had faced down or stuck to the side of the pan. A salad and cheese came next, then the dessert. They served the pieces of cake on little plates with some of the custard sauce on the side. We sipped champagne from old-fashioned coupes rather than flutes. The feeling of well-being after a good day and a good dinner is incomparable and practically impossible to describe. Finishing the piece of cake and the final sips of champagne, I thought, this is what life is supposed to be like, this is how I want to spend my life. With spoons and pots and books and friends. And this cake.

These memories were with me when I was finishing graduate school about ten years later. I wanted to make a cake for a friend’s birthday, so I started looking for a recipe for this chocolate cake. I had a few cookbooks in those days, but I was a poor graduate student and all my extra money went into books for my research. If I wanted a recipe, I’d usually take 3×5 cards and go to Border’s where I would look through all of the cookbooks and copy out the recipe I wanted. If I started using a particular book a lot, I would buy it. So, a couple of days before the day of the party, I took my 3×5 cards, went to Border’s and browsed through all of the dessert books. That’s how I discovered Maida Heatter and her Best Dessert Book Ever. I copied out the recipe for “The H?tel de Crillon’s Chocolate Cake.” The next day, I came up with a menu, I went to the grocery store, I bought the ingredients for everything I wanted to make for the party. That evening was cool and stormy, odd for June in Michigan. I had a friend come over to help out. A near disaster struck when the electricity went out in the apartment. The wind had knocked down a wire nearby. I had a gas cook top, but the oven was electric. The cake was only half-way through cooking. We were almost all of the way through a bottle of wine. In my tipsy state, I just calmly said, well, it’s still hot in the oven, I’ll just leave it in for a couple of hours and proceed as though nothing had happened. So that is what I did and the cake was fine. The next day at the party, everyone ate up all the food, drank all the wine, and gobbled up every bit of the cake. How did this cake change my life this time? My husband Erik says it wasn’t the cake, but I remember seeing him eat it, watching his face as he ate first one piece, then another. We started spending a lot more time with each other after that party. We were engaged several months later, the night he tried this cake the second time. I bought the book and we’ve made the cake together countless times since then. It’s even better when baked properly.

I’ve used several different recipes for this type of cake over the last ten years. I tried Maida Heatter’s other flourless chocolate cake, the Queen Mother’s cake with almonds, but I prefer a more pure chocolate flavor. I’ve settled on using powdered sugar. It dissolves better and the small amount of corn starch used to keep the sugar from clumping up gives the cake a better texture. For some time, I used coffee to make this a mocha cake or coffee in the cr?me anglaise, or a coffee ice cream instead of the custard, but the caffeine keeps me awake, and I don’t like the flavor of decaffeinated coffee. Because the Sugar High Friday theme is chocolate by brand, I recommend Ghirardelli 60% cacao Bittersweet chocolate chips, what they used to call double chocolate, but they’ve recently changed the name. I also use Ghirardelli unsweetened cocoa powder. The Ghirardelli website has some really good recipes and video demonstrations on working with chocolate. They even have a video for a decadent flourless chocolate torte, which is two of these cakes put together and frosted with a chocolate whipped cream frosting. I prefer the classic one layer, dense, almost fudge-like cake, dusted simply with cocoa and served in a pool of cr?me anglaise. The cake itself is really easy, just mix everything up in a double boiler, pour it into the pan and slide it into a water bath in the oven.

After the first experience, my idea of chocolate cake was changed. My platonic ideal, my internal understanding of chocolate cakeness was transformed from the Bill Knapp’s chocolate birthday cake of my childhood into this, an almost brownie-like dense, rich cake, a cake more true to the essence of chocolate. After making this cake over and over again and passing the recipe out to friends and family, I see it has that effect on other people, too. You’ve been warned.

Flourless chocolate cake with cr?me anglaise

• 8 ounces Ghirardelli 60% cocoa bittersweet chocolate
• 8 ounces butter (1 stick)
• 3/4 cup of powdered sugar
• 1 pinch salt
• 5 eggs
• 1/4 cup unsweetened cocoa
• 1 T flour
• Cr?me anglaise for serving (see below)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees and place a jelly roll pan on a rack in the middle of the oven and pour in approximately 3/4 of an inch of water. Butter a nine inch round cake pan. Line the pan with parchment paper, use the outside of the pan as a guide, tracing around the pan with a pencil and cutting just inside your line to make the paper fit the pan. Place paper in pan. Butter the paper. Mix 1 tablespoon of the cocoa with the 1 tablespoon flour and use this mixture to flour the pan (this is a tip from Maida Heatter, as she says, the cocoa will turn the flour brown so that the flour won’t mar the appearance of the finished cake). Set pan aside.

Bring a small amount of water to boil in the bottom of a double boiler and turn heat to low. Place chocolate, butter, sugar and salt in top of double boiler (a stainless steel or pyrex bowl works to do this job) and place it over the simmering water. Stir the chocolate mixture occasionally with a whisk until it is almost melted. Place the top of the double boiler on a kitchen towel on the countertop and let it cool slightly. Whisk in the eggs one at a time and give the mixture a few more strokes until it is thick and shiny. Pour batter into prepared pan, give it a few taps on the counter to get out any air bubbles and to smooth the surface, place it in the water bath in the oven and bake until cake is almost set, but still a little wobbly in the middle, about 40 minutes. Remove cake from oven and let cool for about 2 hours, then use a paring knife to loosen the sides and turn it over onto a cake plate. You may need to give the pan a good thwack to get the cake to come out. Make sure that the cake has loosened completely from the cake pan, but leave the pan on top of the cake and place it in the refrigerator for at least 8 hours, preferably overnight. Remove the cake from the refrigerator about 2 hours before you’ll be ready to serve it. Take off the cake pan and remove the parchment paper. Clean up the sides of the cake using a warmed knife, if necessary. Put some cocoa powder into a sieve and sprinkle it all over the cake. You can make a design on the top by putting a paper doily or some cut out hearts, or both if you’re making this for Valentine’s day, for instance. Cut the cake using a sharp knife and either rinse the knife or wipe it with a damp paper towel in between cuts. Spoon a little cr?me anglaise onto each plate and put a piece of cake on top of the sauce.

Serves 12.

Cr?me anglaise

• 2 cups whole milk
• 1 vanilla bean, split lengthwise
• 1/3 cup sugar
• 4 large egg yolks, lightly beaten

Bring the milk to a boil with the vanilla and the sugar, stirring occasionally. Remove from heat and allow to cool slightly. Whisk 1/2 cup milk mixture into the eggs and whisk this mixture into the pot with the rest of the milk mixture. Place on low heat and whisk for 5 or 6 minutes until small bubbles just begin to appear in the sauce around the edge of the pan and the sauce is thickened slightly. Do not let it boil or you will have a mass of scrambled eggs in sweetened milk. Strain the sauce into a container, cover and chill until ready to serve.

After making the cr?me anglaise, I rinse off the vanilla bean and let it dry completely on a piece of paper towel. I break it into a few pieces and use it to flavor sugar. This is great in many recipes and I especially love a small spoonful of it in a cup of Earl Grey Tea.

Curnonsky called it soupe d’or, or soup of gold. A complex blend of some of the best ingredients of the Mediterranean, bouillabaisse is more than just a fish soup. That’s because it’s not just the fish that gives it flavor; it’s the garlic, tomatoes, onions, white wine, fennel, pastis, saffron, orange peel, and olive oil. Add to this the rouille, the preparation made like a mayonnaise with a base of egg yolks, garlic and olive oil that you spread on toast rounds and slather on the fish, seafood and vegetables. Bouillabaisse is a noun derived from the combination of two French verbs. First, bouillir, which means to boil and second, abaisser, which means to reduce. This describes the cooking method perfectly. After a quick saut? of the vegetables in olive oil, you add stock and bring it up to a boil, then you add the fish and lower the heat to poach everything. It really is as easy as that.

Buying fish used to be the thing you did because you knew that it was the best source of low fat protein. These days, it can be tricky to figure out what fish to eat and where to buy it. The best thing you can do is make friends with a fishmonger. Where I live, I have several choices of good places to buy fish. The best one is Gadaleto’s Seafood Market and Restaurant. The owner of this place drives twice a week down to the Fulton Market in New York (now located in the Bronx) to get the fish he sells in his market, in his restaurant and to other restaurants in the mid-Hudson valley. When a friend told us that he’d be working at Gadaleto’s fish market during the Holiday break, the first thing I said was, “Great, let’s make bouillabaisse.” Lucky for me, he agreed and offered to bring the fish and we got together to do this last weekend.

Popular legend in Provence suggests this is the soup that Venus made for Vulcan to lull him to sleep while she cavorted with Mars. Some say Vulcan was a lucky man. While Marseille claims bouillabaisse as its own invention, fish soups such as this one are made all over the Mediterranean. It’s the stew traditionally made by fishermen with the catch of the day. Some historians say that the Greeks brought it with them when they colonized Marseille in 600 BC. The British novelist, Norman Douglas wrote, “Bouillabaisse is only good because cooked by the French, who, if they cared to try, could produce an excellent and nutritious substitute out of cigar stumps and empty matchboxes.” (Siren Land, “Rain on the Hills.” 1911) I wouldn’t want to try that version, but I understand his meaning. Americans are often told that we can’t make a true bouillabaisse here because we can’t get the fish that is found in Southern Europe, especially rascasse, a type of scorpion fish. It’s got a lot of bones and cartilage, which make for a lot of spitting and such while you’re eating it, but it also gives the broth its typically rich, gelatinous quality. Even if we can’t get the right kinds of fish here, I say we should try to make something as close as we can get, because trips to the south of France are few and far between.

This is not meant to be a fancy dish, but it is a celebratory one. Invite over a large party of friends and enlist their help with rubbing garlic on the croutons and chopping vegetables. Make the stock a day ahead of time and freeze some of it for the next time you have a craving for liquid gold. Once you’ve got the fish stock made, this isn’t very time consuming and the results give you two courses. First, a fish broth in which you float baguette rounds spread with the garlicky rouille. Next, serve the fish, seafood and vegetables on a platter with more rouille and baguette on the side. You could round out the meal with some tapenade and nuts with the ap?ritif, a green salad and cheese platter after the main course and a simple dessert of ice cream or sorbet. To drink, you can serve red, white or ros?, French is best. If you choose red, make it a C?tes du Rh?ne and serve it on the cool side. For white or ros?, make it something light and dry and serve it very cold.

Bouillabaisse

• 2 T olive oil
• 1 fennel bulb, sliced (use the tops and the fronds for the stock)
• 2 medium onions, peeled and sliced
• 4 leeks, cleaned and sliced (use the green parts for the stock)
• 8 cloves garlic, peel, crushed and chopped
• 8 plum tomatoes, peeled, seeded and diced
• 6 Yukon gold potatoes, peeled and sliced into rounds
• Peel of one half orange, chopped into three or four pieces (use the other half for the stock)
• Bouquet garni: use a small piece of kitchen twine to tie together 1 bay leaf, 10 branches of parsley, 5 or 6 branches of thyme
• 1/2 t saffron threads
• 12 cups fish stock (see below)
• 1/2 cup pastis
• Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste
• Approximately 6 lbs. fish and seafood from at least 3 different varieties of non-oily, salt water fish. Some good choices are red snapper, sea bass, tilefish, grouper, striped bass and halibut. For the seafood, you can use any combination of cuttlefish, squid, shrimp, mussels, clams, tiny crabs (called favouilles in French). Have the fish cleaned and cut into filets with the skin left on, peel the shrimp and debeard the mussels. Give everything a rinse before you put it in the pot.

For serving

• 1 baguette, cut into rounds, toasted and rubbed with garlic
• Rouille (see below)

Heat the olive oil in a large pot and add the fennel, onion, leeks and garlic. Cook over medium heat until vegetables are translucent, stirring occasionally, about 5 or 6 minutes. Add tomatoes and cook for another 5 minutes. Add all of the rest of the ingredients except the fish and seafood and bring it all up just to a boil, then add the fish and seafood and lower the heat again and simmer until the fish is cooked through, about 8 minutes. Turn off the heat. Serve in two courses. Strain some broth into a soup tureen (or large bowl) and bring it to the table along with a basket of garlic toast rounds and a couple of small bowls of rouille. Ladle out the soup and have your guests add their own croutons and rouille. Next, use a slotted spoon to transfer the fish, seafood and vegetables to a large platter. Pass this around the table along with more rouille.

Fish stock

• Green part of 4 leeks
• 2 medium onions, cut in half
• Tops and fronds of one fennel bulb
• Peel of one half orange, chopped into three or four pieces
• 2 large carrots, broken into pieces
• 2 ribs celery, broken into pieces
• 5 or 6 lbs. of fish carcasses, preferably red snapper (my fishmonger gives me these for free, one more reason to make friends at the fish market)
• 1 bottle dry white wine (Sauvignon Blanc or Chenin Blanc are good choices)
• Bouquet garni: Bouquet garni: use a small piece of kitchen twine to tie together 1 bay leaf, 10 branches of parsley, 5 or 6 branches of thyme
• 10 peppercorns
• 1 t sea salt

Place all ingredients in a large pot and bring to a boil. Lower heat and simmer for 2 or 3 hours. Skim surface foam from time to time. Strain stock and chill in refrigerator overnight. The stock should be a near solid gel in the morning. This is a good thing.

Rouille

• 2 egg yolks, cold
• 2 t French mustard, cold
• 2 cloves garlic, smashed to a paste with a mortar and pestle
• 1 cup extra virgin olive oil, or a mix of olive oil and vegetable oil if you like it less strong
• 1 t paprika
• 2 T lemon juice
• Several threads of saffron
• 1 small piece of bread
• 1/8 cup fish stock or warm water

Place saffron, bread and fish stock or warm water in a small bowl and set aside. Whisk together egg yolks, mustard and garlic in a small bowl. Add oil in a thin stream (another good job for a friend), whisking constantly until a thick mayonnaise forms. Add paprika, lemon juice and bread mixture, whisk to combine. Refrigerate until ready to use.

In northern France, among other places in the world, epiphany is celebrated with a galette des rois or King’s cake. This is a pastry that isn’t really a cake and isn’t really a pie. Also called a Pithiviers, after the village in France just north of the Loire where it originated, it’s made of puff pastry with a filling of almond powder or almond paste, butter and eggs. The cake is baked with a f?ve, or bean, inside or as is more common these days either a porcelain or plastic figurine. When the cake is ready to be cut, the youngest person present goes under the table, so as not to see the cake, and calls out a person’s name as each piece is cut. The person who finds the f?ve is named king or queen for the day and must choose his queen or her king and both must wear ridiculous gold paper crowns for the rest of the evening.

Epiphany, or twelfth night, is the celebration on January 6th of the arrival of the magi, Caspar, Melchior and Balthazar, before the newborn Jesus. I’ve already written about the French tradition of a yule log cake for Christmas and referenced its pre-Christian history. It appears that epiphany is another of those pre-Christian practices being folded into the new religion of Christianity, a continuation of the celebration of the winter solstice. Celebrating a king of the party may be a reference to tribal practices in pre-Roman Europe or it may be an offshoot of the Saturnalia celebrations of the Romans, when society was turned on its head and a slave was declared king of the festivities. Epiphany may also be linked to the celebration of the first full moon after the winter solstice. Today, the Christian holiday epiphany marks the end of the twelve days of Christmas and is celebrated both in Europe and in North and South America usually on the second Sunday after December 25th. King’s parties can be held in France up until the end of January and in Louisiana up until Mardi Gras. The cake made in Louisiana resembles that of the south of France; a yeasted bread dough, similar to brioche, is formed into a ring and filled with dried fruits and nuts. In Spain and much of the Spanish speaking world, this is the day that children receive gifts, and not on December 25th.

During the French Revolution, the state outlawed religious celebrations, so people re-named this holiday, la f?te du bon voisinage, the feast of good neighbors, and the pastry was called le gateau de l’?galit?, or the cake of equality. I think that this aspect of the celebration continues today. When I lived in France in my early twenties, I was invited to all sorts of king’s cake parties. People would open their doors and invite neighbors, family, friends, and colleagues in a way that didn’t happen on other occasions. Hors d’oeuvres and drinks would either precede or follow the cutting of the cake and the choosing of the king and the queen. In some groups, the person who is king or queen either pays a round of drinks for everyone or has to invite everyone to his or her house for the next party. The only thing that is obligatory at this party is the cake, the rest can be as simple or as sophisticated as one wishes.

The most memorable party I went to the year I spent in France after college was with a friend who lived on rue des Canettes in the sixth arrondissement whose downstairs neighbors invited us to their place in the middle of January “pour tirer les rois” (to pull the kings) as they call it. It was a blustery cold night. I took the subway and practically ran the few blocks from the subway exit to my friend’s apartment building. We went from her place down the stairs to the apartment below. Sasha was Russian, his wife, S?verine, was French. They were in their thirties and seemed awfully cosmopolitan to me. Their one-bedroom apartment was small and cozy. Some of the other neighbors were there when we walked in and other friends arrived soon after us. We sat around their trestle table on benches and chairs and the lamps and candles gave off a yellow glow that made everyone’s skin look luminous. Sasha had made blinis and bought caviar and cr?me fra?che to smear on them. There were other things to nibble on: some cheese, a saucisson, the French dried sausage, some olives and I forget what else. We had vodka and champagne and one of the neighbor’s children called out names from beneath the table. My friend got the piece with the little figurine. She was embarrassed about it and turned very red, was it the champagne or did she have a secret crush? I’ll never know. She chose Sasha, our host, as her king and he gallantly paid attention to her for the rest of the evening. What I remember most from this party was a sense of friendship and sharing that had been missing for me in Paris since I had arrived there in October.

Normally, people in France buy their galette des rois at a pastry shop like Clotilde does. For the past few years, my friend Mercedes has been having a party at her house to celebrate epiphany. She has her husband go to a French bakery in New York City to buy the cakes. They need more than one because the party is big. This year, I decided to overcome my apprehensions about making puff pastry, so I offered to make the cakes and bring them to the party. I was inspired by Pascale at C’est moi qui l’ai fait. Even if you don’t speak French, I advise checking this post out to see her photos if you do decide to make the puff pastry. Erik encouraged me to do this without a safety net, but I wanted to make this with homemade puff pastry and with the store bought stuff for comparison’s sake and because there were going to be 18 people at the party.

So, there were going to be four cakes, but as often turns out, the first one was a disaster, for very silly reasons. This had nothing to do with the preparation of the cake, but had to do with the equipment and the temperature of the oven. I put the first cake on one of the very large baking sheets that someone bought for me two years ago for my birthday, I won’t lay any blame here. After five minutes in the oven, there was a loud noise. The heat from the oven had caused the baking sheet to warp in one split second and the top of the cake had slid completely off the bottom, leaving the filling to ooze out all over the place. The poor porcelain angel lying on its back near the middle of what remained of the cake looked as surprised as I was. For the other three cakes, I used my normal size baking sheets and had no problem. The other issue was temperature. On the box of puff pastry from the store and those I found on the web, all the recipes state to cook the puff pastry at 400 degrees. On French websites, they claim that 210 Celsius is the right temperature, which is 410 degrees. But when I put in the first cake, I also put in some of the leftover bits of pastry on another baking sheet to see how they would come out, and I didn’t like the way they looked. I also didn’t like the look of the filling from Pascale’s recipe, so I decided to change that as well.

I poked around the internet and in my cookbooks a little more and found several recipes where puff pastry is cooked at 475 degrees for the first 15 minutes and then the heat is lowered to 400 degrees. This seemed logical to me, since what is happening in the dough is that the layers of butter that have been built up in the folding and turning process melt and boil. The subsequent steam from the liquid in the butter will cause each little layer of the dough to rise and separate. I reasoned that a higher temperature at the outset could very well result in a puffier dough. Because the first cake disaster included a gooey ooze of filling all over my baking sheet, I lifted the idea of freezing the filling ahead of time from Gale Gand. Nobody complained that I only brought 3 cakes. My claim that there were three kings and not four was accepted as a good explanation for my mishap.

Galette or Pithiviers des rois (King’s cake)

• One 7 oz. Tube almond paste (not marzipan, which has a lot more sugar)
• 4 T butter
• 1 egg
• 1 t vanilla extract
• 1 package puff pastry, thawed for 30 to 40 minutes as directed on package
  or 1 recipe puff pastry (see below)
• 1 egg yolk and 2 T cream, whisked together

Line an 8 inch pie plate or cake pan with plastic wrap. Place first four ingredients (almond paste through vanilla extract) in bowl of food processor and process until smooth. Pour mixture into lined pie plate and freeze for 45 minutes. Meanwhile, preheat oven to 475 degrees and roll puff pastry dough out to just larger than a nine inch round. Use a sharp knife to cut the dough into a circle. All edges must be cut, or the dough won’t puff up in the oven. Turn this round of dough over and place what was the top side down on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper, this will also result in a puffier dough. Take filling from freezer, unwrap and place in the center of the dough. Brush some of the egg yolk and cream mixture around the edge of the filling, not quite onto the outer edge of the dough. You don’t want to get egg wash on the edges of the dough, one more thing to watch out for if you want your pastry to puff. Roll out a second round of dough and proceed as with the first, placing it over the filling and pressing gently all around. Use a knife to cut either a diamond pattern or a swirl pattern on the top of the dough, making sure to poke through the dough in a couple of spots towards the middle to allow steam to escape so as to prevent the cake from completely collapsing once it cools. After assembly, place the cake on its baking sheet in the freezer for about 1/2 hour. It can also be covered with plastic wrap and then tin foil and frozen like this for up to a month. No need to defrost it in order to bake it. Just before placing the cake in the oven, brush the top with a generous amount of the egg and cream mixture, once again being careful to not let it run down the edges. Bake cake for approximately 30 minutes, or until golden brown.

Puff pastry recipe

Puff pastry is one of those legendary recipes that seems so daunting, but is actually fairly easy and not even very time consuming. All told, this took about three hours, but for most of that time the dough was resting in the refrigerator. There are a couple of items that you will need: a ruler, a rolling pin and a pastry brush. I’m giving both volume and weight measurements for the ingredients. If you do have a digital scale, use it. The measurements will be more precise.

• 1 2/3 cup flour (200 g), plus more for dusting
• 10 T butter, chilled (150 g)
• 5 T butter, melted (70 g)
• 1/3 cup water (80 g)
• 1 pinch salt

1. Put the flour in a large bowl and make a well in the center of the flour. Mix the melted butter, the water and the pinch of salt together and pour this mixture into the well in the flour. Mix with the tips of your fingers until you form a ball. Turn the ball out onto a board and cut across it to form a cross. Wrap the dough in plastic wrap and put it into the refrigerator for at least 1/2 hour. This dough is called the d?trempe (pronounced “day-trahmp”).

2. After the 1/2 is up, take the chilled butter from the refrigerator and place it between two pieces of parchment paper or plastic wrap. Use your rolling pin to smash it to about 1/2 inch thickness and your hands to coax it into about a 4 inch square.

3. Put flour on your board and take the d?trempe from the refrigerator. Roll the dough out into a cross with the center part being about a 4 inch square. Place the butter in the middle of this square and fold the arms of the cross over the butter, making a package that covers the butter entirely.

4. Roll this package of dough into a 4 inch by 12 inch rectangle. If there is any excess flour, use the pastry brush to flick it away. Fold this rectangle in three to form a sort of envelope. Turn the dough 90 degrees, or 1/4 turn, and roll it out again into a 4 by 12 inch rectangle. Fold it in three once again and stick two fingers into one corner of the dough, so that you will remember that you have turned the dough twice. Wrap the dough in plastic wrap and put it in the refrigerator for at least 1/2 hour.

5. After the 1/2 rest in the refrigerator, repeat the steps in 4 above and before wrapping it in plastic wrap and putting it in the refrigerator again, stick four fingers in one angle of the dough to remember that it has had another double turn.

6. Repeat 4 once more for a third double turn. The dough must rest for at least one more 1/2 hour and up to two days before being used, or it may be frozen for up to 3 months.

This dough can be used for a variety of sweet and savory recipes. It is easy to use, but there are several rules to follow that will ensure that your pastry puffs as high as possible.

1. Make sure you follow the folding and turning directions carefully and always allow at least 1/2 hour of rest before each double turn.

2. Brush off excess flour with a pastry brush. Any flour that is folded in to the dough can make unappetizing gray streaks in the center of the dough when it puffs up.

3. Cut the dough using a sharp knife on all sides. This allows the dough to puff up as it is baked.

4. After cutting the dough, turn what was the top over so that the top faces down on the baking sheet. This will also help the dough rise.

5. Keep any of the dough you are not working with in the refrigerator until it is needed.

6. Any filling used with puff pastry should be room temperature or colder to avoid melting the dough before it is baked.

7. When using an egg wash, make sure it does not drip down onto the sides of the dough, which can fuse the pastry together and prevent rising.

I’m sick in bed with a cold, day two. Yesterday we ate the last of the chicken noodle soup from the freezer. Today I want more soup. I’m remembering when I was a kid; I would lie on the mushroom colored velveteen couch and watch TV and my mother would make me tomato soup either with crackers or a grilled cheese sandwich. If you grew up in Middle America like I did, your mother probably did the same thing. Or she made you something else that you now only think about when your head is stuffed with cotton and you have a growing pile of Kleenex on your nightstand.

My mother never used many recipes that had a can of something in their ingredient list. We never had anything made with mushroom soup. I wanted to be one of those people who had the green bean casserole for Thanksgiving and who had Tang for breakfast. I talked about this with my mother recently. She was surprised, because she only remembers the guilt of snack foods, sugary drinks and frozen vegetables. And of course there was the bread issue. When she was growing up, her mother made the bread her family ate. Once a week. Always. There were 13 children, 2 cousins whose parents had died, my grandmother, my grandfather and anyone else who showed up for dinner. That’s a lot of bread. My mother remembers being embarrassed at school that everyone else had store bought bread for their sandwiches. What comes around, goes around. Now we have different things to be embarrassed or guilty over. And frozen vegetables are good for you.

We did have Campbell’s soup in our cupboard. It was usually either chicken noodle or tomato. Apparently, their condensed tomato soup was one of the original five varieties, which also included consomm?, vegetable, chicken and oxtail. Oxtail is the only one no longer on the market. Now the oxtails probably end up with all the other bits and pieces used in sausage and hot dogs. It was Joseph Campbell’s nephew, John Dorrance, who invented the condensing process in 1897 that made these soups cheaper to package and distribute, thereby reducing costs. Dorrance traveled the U.S. himself to market the soups. He apparently was able to convince women that they were high quality, inexpensive and time saving. The best part was his side stepping of the comparison with homemade soups. The Campbell Soup Company website quotes Dorrance, “they are something different with a taste all their own.” He got that right. These days, I don’t buy many things in cans, I find that the convenience is just not worth it and that if I spend time making something, I can usually make enough so that I put some of it in the freezer and have “instant” the next time I want it, sans the salt. Or I’ll make something on Sunday and we’ll have the leftovers for lunch for a few days.

Andy Warhol changed our vision of industrialized food products with his iconification of the Campbell’s tomato soup can. Food is art. Everyday objects are beautiful. An artist can make art out of anything. Not everyone sees this in the tongue in cheek way that artists like Warhol or Marcel Duchamp approached it. Ironically, the Campbell Soup Company has co-opted the tomato soup can as art into its own advertising.

The last time I made tomato soup, I followed the recipe from the Fannie Farmer Cookbook. My family is a Joy of Cooking family, but when I got married, my husband came complete with his own copy of Marion Cunningham’s book. I sometimes compare the two; usually the Joy wins out. Not for tomato soup. Inside this book is a tomato soup recipe with one of those wondrous tips passed from cook to cook that seems either really odd or just plain magic. This recipe calls for a half teaspoon of baking soda added after the tomatoes have cooked. Recipes don’t usually explain themselves, but this one says adding the baking soda will keep the milk from curdling. Harold McGee, the guru of food science, has nothing to say about using baking soda in tomato soup in his book, On Food and Cooking. He does discuss baking soda’s alkalinity, though. Sodium bicarbonate effectively neutralizes the acidity of the tomatoes reducing the chance of the milk from curdling in the soup. Just don’t boil it once the tomatoes and the cream are combined.

If you’d like to see the original Fannie Farmer recipe, see Pure Cream of Tomato Soup at epicurious.com. I’ve made several changes. I thought that using some chicken broth would make for a more flavorful soup. I also cut out the sugar and added a couple of cloves of garlic. I used less flour, because I don’t like a cream soup to be too pasty. As for seasonings, there is just salt, pepper and bay leaf. I liked it like that, but rather than use a half of a bay leaf, I put in a whole one. A half of one just seemed strange to me. What would I do with the other half? I also used an immersion blender and didn’t strain the soup. The original recipe calls for five tablespoons of butter. Whenever I see a recipe with this much butter I cut whatever they say down to two tablespoons to see how it tastes. It was fine. I’m sure you could use olive oil instead of butter and soy milk for real milk. But it would be something different.

Cream of Tomato Soup

• 2 T butter
• 1 onion, chopped
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 3 T flour
• 2 cups whole milk, at room temperature
• 2 cups chicken broth, at room temperature
• 1 bay leaf
• 1 t salt
• 1/2 t baking soda
• 26-28 ounces of chopped tomatoes (I use Pom? brand, it comes in a 26 ounce box, if you use something else, two 14 ounce cans will work)

Melt the butter in a large pot on medium heat. Turn heat to medium low and add onion, garlic, bay leaf and salt and cook, stirring occasionally until onion and garlic are softened and only slightly caramelized. Sprinkle the flour over the pot and continue to stir and cook for 2 to 3 minutes. Turn heat off and allow mixture to cool slightly. Add the milk, turn the heat back up to medium low and simmer until slightly thickened, stirring occasionally. Stir the baking soda into the tomatoes and let rest a minute or two until most of the foam subsides. Add the tomatoes to the milk, and bring just to a simmer. Pur?e using an immersion blender. If you don’t have one of these, you can use a regular blender, but let the soup cool or you could blow the top off things. Remove from the heat and serve with crackers or grilled cheese sandwiches.

Makes about 8 cups.

When New Year’s rolls around, we are typically too tired and too broke to do much event organizing. We’re usually in Michigan; from Christmas through New Year’s Eve our time is divided between my parents’ house in western Michigan and a visit to my brothers in Ann Arbor, with a birthday party for my brother Paul sandwiched in on the 27th. Because of the magazine food for Christmas and the birthday dinner for my brother, I’ve always had a policy of not being the one to plan New Year’s Eve, I just follow along, have fun and make sure someone else is available to drive. This year, our usual party source was back together with his girlfriend who now lives in New York City. While he was probably making plans to be in Times Square, I was trying to appease my sister Kate’s pleas to do something, anything, other than watch that damn ball drop on Paul’s size huge television.

My best friend, Nancy, hadn’t made plans either. Nancy bought a house this year and very generously offered to put us up during part of our visit. We arrived on the 30th. I was stunned to find her house perfectly decorated for the holidays. Lights outside, a wreath on the door, a gorgeous tree, kitsch candles on the windowsills. She had a catering style buffet table set up in her dining room with white tablecloths and skirting. It had a punch bowl with cups, a centerpiece, candies, chocolates and loads of homemade cookies. I know that Nancy loves profusion and pretty things and that her new roommate Michela works in catering; I put the two together and realized that Nancy’s house was all ready for a party. I’m sure you see how this story turns out. It wasn’t hard to convince her that we could easily put together a short guest list of cool friends and have a big load of fun whooping it up for the New Year. Because Nancy works in the fireplace, grill and patio section of her family hardware store, she even has a gas fireplace with remote and a beautiful propane heater on her front porch next to the teak chairs, perfect for the cigarette smokers.

The important question, “What to serve?” I suggested we first take stock of what was on hand. We looked in the cupboards, in the fridge, in the freezer, in the basement. This was the most well stocked pantry I have ever, ever seen in my life. Seriously, there was more than enough food to feed several people for days on end. And she had not just any old jumble of canned goods. There were several bags of potato chips and tortilla chips, jars and jars of salsa (including the fancy sort with chipotle peppers). For the several kinds of crackers there were several kinds of cheese: a big wedge of manchego, an equally large piece of stilton, an English cheddar and a small piece of dilled havarti. From my brother’s house the night before, we had brought over leftover pork tenderloin that had been done with an Asian marinade. “Nancy, do you have hoisin sauce?” I asked. She whips out the largest bottle of hoisin sauce I’ve ever seen from the refrigerator and deadpans, “Is this enough?” I wasn’t sure if she was joking, dry isn’t usually her style. I decided to take off the gloves. “Nancy, wouldn’t it be great if we could make the whole party from the things you have here, without going to the store at all?” “But I wanted to buy stuff to make a fruit salad, and we need lemons, and…” I cut her off, “No, really, I think we can make do without any trip to the store at all, you’ve got four grapefruits, three oranges and a pomegranate. That’s a perfect winter fruit salad, if we really need something, we’ll ask my sister to pick it up.” We got to work. In the freezer was a two-pound bag of shrimp. There was ketchup, lemons, fresh horseradish. We whipped up a shrimp cocktail. There was cream cheese and poached salmon, we combined them and made a terrine to serve with crackers. I toasted the baguette, rubbed it with garlic and topped it with goat cheese and roasted peppers. I discovered edamame in the freezer and steamed them knowing it would make my sister particularly happy. We put nuts and olives in little bowls, made a cheese plate, and dug further into Nancy’s stash to find a jar of Indian curry. We thawed some chicken breast, cut it into pieces and followed the directions on the jar to simmer the chicken in the sauce until just done. Nancy not only had toothpicks for fishing the chicken out of the sauce, she had the fancy bamboo kind. The bag of samosas from the freezer said to deep fry them in a large vat of oil. We popped them on a baking sheet and threw them in the oven at 350 degrees. I couldn’t believe it when I saw the bag of poppadom. She pulled out the two jars of chutney - cilantro and tamarind - that are usually served with them at the beginning of a meal. At one point I looked at her and asked, “What are you, Mormon?”

Nancy insisted that we were going to at least have to go to the liquor store. We looked on her drink cart in the kitchen: several semi-full bottles of various things plus a full bottle of vodka. In the basement there was lots of beer, three (maybe more?) bottles of red wine and three BOTTLES OF CAVA! No way were we going to the store. We had a whole party right there in Nancy’s pantry. We called family and friends. Normal people (not like us) plan this sort of thing ahead of time, but we were able to rustle up a dozen revelers and make them happy by feeding them, playing music, dancing and doing those crazy rowdy things that seem perfectly normal only on New Year’s Eve.

The next morning, I kid you not, we had a very lovely brunch with toasted bagels, lox, cream cheese, chopped red onion, capers, hard boiled eggs, toast with butter and loganberry jam. This last item is obviously a result of too many trips to Ikea. We toyed with the idea of pancakes; all the ingredients were there right down to the real maple syrup. The coffee was Kona and the mimosas were made with Blood orange juice from Valencia via Trader Joe’s. I said to my brother-in-law, Jason, “When Nancy pulled out the smoked salmon yesterday, I remembered the bagels in the freezer and told her to save it for the morning.” He giggled. I know men aren’t supposed to giggle, but Jason’s laugh is either a giggle or something very close to one. My sister looked at me from across the table and said in the low voice she uses only for secrets and wishes, “I think we have a new tradition for New Year’s.”