Apple Brown Betty with Panettone Crumbs

October 11, 2011 Clare Schapiro

If you didn't already know it, I can be a bit of a kook when it comes to food. I'm clearly thinking about it, sometimes stewing about it, even when I'm asleep. Many times I wake up with either a fully formed food idea in my head, or a food clue rattling around. By now I've learned enough to know that a follow-up in the cold light of morning is usually a good idea.

In this instance, in preparation for Felix's fall break homecoming, I woke up with apple pandowdy on my mind. Not knowing exactly what constitutes a pandowdy, I had a grand time with my cookbooks trying to figure it out. What I learned is that pandowdy is decidedly American, dating from around 1880 and is, effectively, an apple pie made with the crust broken up half-way through the baking and then pressed into the pie filling. This is called "dowdying" in fact.

No-Fail Pie Crust

September 29, 2011 Clare Schapiro

I promised a couple of weeks ago in the fig and blue cheese crostata post, to get into the subject of pastry. If you're game to read the saga, I'm game to tell you. Perhaps you've already noticed that I can be a tad bit--how shall I say?--obsessive. Pastry is one such obsession. I come from a fine tradition of expert pastry makers. My mother, who was otherwise not a particularly inspired cook, was renowned for her pastry. As a little girl, to my untrained eye, pastry making seemed to involve terrifyingly tiny dollops of ice water doled out just so. To my horror, with the least provocation, it seemed to me, a tiny drop too much could land the whole batch in the trash. Talk about intimidating.

Sea Salt Encrusted Roast Chicken

September 23, 2011 Clare Schapiro

Perhaps it's that first autumnal nip in the air, perhaps it's just the usual busy week, but I was again reminded that possibly my all time favorite, easiest comfort food dinner of all just may be roast chicken.

Talk about easy--at least the way I habitually make it--and talk about delicious. As with all things, the results are going to be very dependent on the quality of ingredients, so, for the sake of argument, let's just assume you're going to come up with the very best, freshest and hopefully non-battery raised bird you can find.

Fig and Blue Cheese Crostata

September 16, 2011 Clare Schapiro

Because of the aforementioned chaos that's been the state of things around here of late, I seem to have mostly missed out on one of my favorite late summer obsessions: figs. One place from which I have been conspicuously absent is my garden. After a weekend at Bois Dore opining to my friend Claudia upon the wonder that is figs, I sheepishly went down to inspect mine. Sadly, I think that the squirrels and birds have had a fig fest going on which didn't leave but so many for me. Nevermind, the great thing about gardens, I've discovered, is that even if you "miss" a season through benign neglect as I seem to have done, it will come back around next year, hardly the worse forwear.