Hedonia

Chocolate mousse made with ... bean water?

Hey, did you know that the UN has designated 2016 the International Year of Pulses? Of course you didn't! Do you even know what pulses are? Bet not. I'm not talking the throbbing on your wrist, or the thing you do on the food processor to pulverize nuts. Pulses are dried members of the legume family that include beans, chickpeas, lentils and peas. This does not include fresh beans or peas, soybeans, or peanuts. Got it? Good. 

I had the privilege to be invited to the gorgeous Culinary Institute of America Greystone a few weeks back to learn more about pulses, and get inspired on how to use them. During this weekend intensive, we heard from experts on the virtues of pulses, and then went into the kitchens to work with instructors to get our pulses racing. 

Why pulses? Simple. Pulses are: 

• Renewable and sustainable. Pulses actually fix nitrogen in the soil, adding rather than depleting nutritional value like many other crops do. 
• Healthful. Pulses are high in protein and low in fat. Increasing pulse consumption has been demonstrated to aid in weight loss, even without making other dietary change. They are heart-healthy, and help regulate blood sugar. 
• Oh yeah, delicious. If you're not already in love with them, you haven't had them prepared right. And about that farty thing: Research has shown that once you integrate more pulses into your diet more regularly, that little problem tends to go away.

To get more people to enjoy pulses as part of their regular routine, they've launched the #PulsePledge, where you commit to eating at least one serving of pulses a week. In our household, that's a no-brainer. We eat beans on the reg, most especially the fabulous ones from Rancho Gordo. 

We were split up into two groups; each group would work first with either the pastry department or culinary arts, and then switch out the next day. On day one I got assigned to pastry, which struck dread in my heart. You know I'm a cursed baker, right? If you don't believe me, just look at what I did to this pound cake on that day. 

To be fair, the chef confirmed this was not my fault. It was a gluten-free pound cake, and the formula was not suited to the size of the pan. It over-rose, and broke tension, causing that nuclear crater effect. But still, this is not outside the realm of what I'm capable of under normal circumstances.

Yet I did have some successes, like this ham and cheese bread with chickpeas. YOU GUYS, I BAKED. 

And on the second day I made falafel, very good falafel, with some cracking baba ghanouj and hummus. 

Persimmon skillet cake

In 1993, dpaul and I moved into an apartment on Dolores Park, on the edge of the Mission District. At the time, the area was pretty edgy. There was gang activity nearby and drug dealers in the park. The windows on either side of the front door of our building were pocked with bullet holes.

Needless to say, this had a negative effect on the commerce of the neighborhood. On the corner was a grim little restaurant called Real Good Karma that served cheerless bowls of brown rice and tofu. A friend remarked that it was the site of countless lesbian breakups; so much for that good karma. At the opposite end of the block was a produce market where fruit lay molding on the shelves. In between stood another storefront, a corner market called Bi-Rite, which we'd hit up for the occasional can or box, but otherwise its offerings were meager.

So it was until 1997, when Sam Mogannam, the nephew and son of Bi-Rite's owners, took the place over. By this time the dot-com boom had brought young money into the Mission, and the neighborhood was ripe for gentrification. Sam shuttered the market for a remodel, and when the paper (and bars!) came off the windows, the neighbors came out in droves. At last, a real market! Look, gourmet cheese! Ohmigod, a deli case! Hey, fruit that isn't rotting!

Before long, we were spending a sizable portion of our take-home pay at this new food shrine, routinely making dinner from ready-made salads and entrees from their case, or cobbling together fancy cheeses and charcuterie to go along with their (very reasonably priced) wines. And in the early days, one of the things we bought most often was a pear skillet cake made by Sam's mom, a spice cake with pears and a sticky caramel edge. It was pure crack, and regularly stood in as both dessert and breakfast. 

Cannoli, an unexpected family secret

Every holiday has its food. Easter of course means ham, hard-boiled eggs, cheap chocolate and Peeps, but for me it also means cannoli.

The other day, we were cocktailing with our friend Michael, a fellow paisano albeit of Sicilian extraction. I mentioned I wanted to revisit my post on cannoli from a few years back. Michael said in his family they called them Aunt Mary Cookies, for fairly self-evident reasons, and lamented how much of a pain the shells were to make -- getting the dough thin enough, frying them off, and so on. I mentioned that in my family, we didn't do the fried shells, but used pizzelle and rolled them while still hot and pliable. "Yes, well, that's cheating," he said, to which I rebuffed, half-feigning indignity: "It's not cheating, Michael, it's regional." But as soon as the words spilled from my mouth, I was suddenly filled with doubt.

So, yes, the cannoli I grew up with are made with pizzelle, the delicate, rose-window-patterned cookies, rolled into tubes. I blindly assumed that this was derived from some old-world tradition carried over from one of my forebears from the motherland. But I was also aware that I have never known anyone else to make their cannoli in this fashion.

When I mentioned to my mother that I was making a batch, she remarked that her grandmother didn't use pizzelle; she had a curling iron-like device with which she wrapped dough around and dipped into frying oil. Somehow, this detail had eluded me for four decades. When I asked her how our family came by the tradition of using the pizzelle, she said she didn't know. After Great-Grandma Battaglia passed in the 1960s, the cookies seem to have dropped out of our culinary tradition for a bit, then magically reappeared with this new technique. 

I then went on to ask my Aunt Barb, my mother's younger sister, who has long taken an interest in the family recipes, desserts in particular. She was also unsure where the pizzelle came in, though she in fact didn't even remember her grandmother making the fried shells; she was rather young when Grandma Battaglia passed away. But she noted that Aunt Chris may have been the source of the recipe.

Aunt Chris is my mother's sister-in-law. Of French and Irish descent, she married my Uncle Joe in the late '60s, and right away took to adopting the family recipes to please him. I called her and asked who provided the cannoli recipe. She flipped through her recipe folio, and found the original recipe for the filling ... which in fact came from her neighbor Ida Iovanella. As for the shells, she surmised that at the time she was not versed in frying, and came up with the idea to use pizzelle instead. In other words, it sort of was cheating.

But if it is a cheat, it's a damn good one. For me and the other kids of my generation, this was the only cannoli we ever knew. My cousin Nicolle and I both prefer this version to the traditional fried shells. Plus it's easier and a lot less messy to boot. It's a tradition, no matter how recent, I think is worth carrying on.

Chocolate-covered strawberries

I'm going to break form here. Normally, in each post, I tell a little story, take you on a small journey or give you kernels of insight into our lives.

Not today, no. Today, it's all about eating with your eyes.

Because, really, what's there to say? What could I put in words that could trigger the salivary glands better than just looking at these ruby-red, perfectly dimpled berries coated in luxuriant chocolate ganache?

Mint julep poached peaches

Once again, I am guest-blogging over at Married ...with Dinner for another installment of their Drink of the Week feature. This time I am discussing a drink I absolutely adore, the mint julep.

As an ice-cold beverage, the julep is cool and refreshing, but the flavors lend themselves well to other preparations. By upping the ratio of simple syrup and mint to bourbon, it makes a wonderful poaching liquid for ripe fruit, and in particular that most southern of fruits, peaches. Since peaches are just now reaching their pinnacle of ripeness, this is a perfect, and perfectly seasonal, dessert.

I stole the idea from Nigella Lawson's Forever Summer; I never actually bought the book, just watched her make this on the television show. I just intuited the recipe -- it isn't really all that complicated.

Do you dare to eat a [mint julep-poached] peach?

Almond-ricotta cupcakes with lemon royal icing

I was sort of strongarmed into the Cupcake Challenge co-hosted by Garrett of Vanilla Garlic and Cheryl (Chockylit) of Cupcake Bakeshop. "I expect you to participate," said Garrett. Far be it from me to back down from a challenge.

I have long enjoyed the cupcakey escapades of both bloggers. Many times have I been inspired to whip up some batter and snap to it. Yet, I must confess, I was a cupcake virgin. I had never baked a cupcake in my life.

So what does one do to pop one's cupcake cherry? Cherry vanilla? Cute, but taken. Plain old Duncan Hines-style vanilla with chocolate frosting? Too boring. No, after weighing the options and dreaming of yummy flavors, I decided I wanted to make almond cupcakes with a lemon frosting.