Natasha Saje

Even if you are not vegetarian, I think you will thank me for this. The chips can be added to sandwiches and salads, or eaten as a snack. I first saw a recipe on the back of a bag of Bob’s Red Mill coconut chips about ten years ago, and have since simplified it. I also discovered that Trader Joe’s brand of chips are larger (and thus better). Basically, you need soy sauce (do not use low sodium), Liquid Smoke, and an invert sugar like maple syrup, agave, date syrup, molasses, golden syrup, corn syrup, and so on (that’s date molasses above)–and a bag of the widest unsweetened raw coconut chips you can find. Liquid Smoke is a shelf stable product composed of water (and a little vinegar and molasses) flavored by smoked wood, for example hickory. Colgin’s is the most common brand–and the least expensive.

Stir together (approximately)1/8 cup each of soy sauce, liquid smoke, and invert sweetener in a bowl. Add 8 ounces of chips and stir occasionally until most of the liquid has been absorbed by the coconut. You can taste it at this point to see if you like the flavor, adjusting if necessary. The chips can sit in the liquid as long as you want, but at least 20 minutes.

Then spread the chips on sheet pan, using a silicone liner or parchment for easy cleanup.

Bake at 325 for 15 minutes or so, stirring occasionally, until the chips are crisp and darker than they were.

The baked chips keep a long time (if you forget you have them).

The chips will become more crisp as they cool, and you can always put them back in the oven for more baking, so it’s best to be conservative when baking. They can go from perfect to burnt very quickly. You might like them with a bit of chew, too.

Every fall I make a series of simple pear cakes–because I love pears–especially Bartletts (called Williams in Europe, like the eau de vie) and their season is short and carpe diem, etc. Pears must be used at their point of perfect ripeness; they ripen from the inside out, so if you wait too long, the core might be brown and mushy, and the flavor less intense. It’s a challenge to use or eat them at their perfect point (often only two days, which is why they are sold unripe) when the flesh still provides resistance, but they are at their peak flavor. One way to tell is to smell them–yes, the scent should be intoxicatingly pearish. Another way to tell is by the color–uniformly yellow, no brown spots.

Anyway, a few days ago I wanted to bake a pear cake, but only two of my four Bartlett pears were ready. Two would make too small a cake for what I had in mind, so I thought I would add raspberries. Eureka! The cake was the best version of itself. The raspberries provided brightness and acidity while the chopped pears blended into the batter, adding flavor and moistness.

In the next few days, I bought more pears and made the cake two more times, realizing that this is a flexible recipe, one that not only accommodates the number of pears you might have, but also the absence of a scale, more or less sugar, less butter, an extra egg, gluten-free flour. You can make it by feel and it’ll still be delicious. It might be a bit moister or drier or or, but you’ll still want to eat it.

I cook, and I also bake bread by feel–last weekend I showed a friend how to make challah, and we started by looking at the amount of egg yolks I had frozen (yes, yolks can be frozen–just stir in a bit of sugar–thank you, Rose Levy Beranbaum). Yes, sometimes my results are not picture perfect, but I don’t mind the variance–I learn something each time, and gain confidence, and experience the pleasure of serendipity.

So, this recipe idea makes a two-inch high, 9-inch wide cake. I used a 9″ springform pan, lined the bottom with parchment and sprayed it and the sides with Baker’s Joy. You can make it larger by scaling up the ingredients and baking it in a bundt pan. The insurance for success is beating the egg whites separately–this gives the cake two ways to rise, the chemical and the air-driven.

11 Tbs. butter (if you use unsalted, you’ll want to add 1/2 tsp salt later) room temperature (you can use less!–even half a stick)

3/4 cup sugar, divided (if you like your desserts less sweet, try 2/3)

2 Bartlett pears, peeled, cored, and somewhat finely chopped–currant or raisin sized pieces. I dusted the pieces with a bit of Trulemon to keep them white while I prepared the batter. I used between 7 and 10 ounces of peeled, chopped pear, and the cake was fine (albeit slightly different) each time.

1 cup, 4.5 ounces almond flour

1 cup, 4.5 ounces all purpose flour (gluten-free is fine, too–but add 1/4 tsp. of xanthan gum if your mix does not contain it)

1 tsp. baking powder

3 eggs, separated (I used four eggs the last time)

2 Tbs. whole milk yoghurt (or sour cream, or milk if you don’t have the other), only if necessary

1/2 tsp. cream of tartar (OK to leave this out–it stabilizes the egg whites with acid)

1 tsp. vanilla, dash of almond extract (you could try other flavorings, maybe use ground hazelnuts instead of almonds and use hazelnut extract?)

1/2 cup raspberries, about 3 ounces (once, when I didn’t have raspberries, I used cranberries that had been cut in half and sugared overnight)

Powdered sugar, for decoration

Preheat oven to 350–I used convect.

Cream the butter with about 2/3 of the sugar until light. (I did this in a food processor to save my Kitchen Aid mixer for beating the egg whites.) Add the vanilla and almond extract and the egg yolks.

Whisk the almond and AP flour with the baking powder (and salt, if you used unsalted butter). Add to the butter/yolk mixture and blend until smooth. Stir in the chopped pears.

Whip the egg whites with cream of tartar until foamy, then continue beating while adding the last 1/3 of sugar, until stiff but not dry.

If the batter minus the egg whites is too thick (mine was, the first time, although I can imagine cases where it might not be, say if the pears are very large), you’ll need the yoghurt. So if your batter looks recalcitrant, as though you have to beat it hard to make it behave, stir in 2 Tbs yoghurt to loosen it. Then fold in the beaten egg whites in stages until you have an integrated batter. Stir in a few raspberries.

Pour or spoon the batter into the prepared pan and dot the batter with the rest of the raspberries–they will sink below the surface during baking. You want each piece of cake to have at least one raspberry in it, but don’t be tempted to add more; the cake will be too wet, and the raspberries will overpower the pears.

Bake in the center of the oven for 45-50 minutes, checking at 40, but you might need to bake it for 50–I did. Every oven is different. To check the cake for doneness, insert a tester (I use a straightened-out paper clip) close to the middle of the cake. It should come out more or less clean with a few crumbs attached. Remove the cake from the oven to a rack and allow to cool for 10-15 minutes. The cake will shrink from the sides of the pan and maybe fall a tiny bit. Remove the springform sides. You can serve the cake on the springform bottom, or better, once it is completely cool, use a cookie sheet to turn the cake upside-down and remove the bottom and the paper, and then right it on a platter. Use a sieve to dust the top with powdered sugar.

Makes 8 servings. It doesn’t need whipped cream (and I say this as someone who loves whipped cream) and it tastes divine at room temperature, although if you have leftovers, probably best to store them in the refrigerator because the cake is so moist it could mold.

I adapted this recipe by Nigella Lawson, making it vegan (and more nutritious) by substituting ground flax seeds for egg white. It’s a dense, seedy loaf (2 lbs.) with complex flavors and slow fermentation, a dark variation of Jim Lahey’s no-knead bread. A forgiving recipe that accepts variations and slices beautifully. I love it with smoked salmon or avocado. You can reduce or alter the whole seeds to your taste. I usually make two smaller (1 lb. each) loaves because they bake faster and I like to freeze one.

Ingredients

20 ounces mix of Guinness stout beer and filtered water. A can of Guinness is just under 15 ounces, but maybe you don’t mind opening two cans, so you can drink the rest. Maybe you have the stuff on tap! I use one can of stout plus 4-5 ounces of water. Place the liquid in a large, deep bowl. You can of course also use another dark/stout beer. If you like your bread without noticeable sweetness, omit the sugar.

whisk in:

2 Tbs. molasses

1 Tbs. sugar

2 Tbs. extra virgin olive oil

1 1/2 tsp. sea salt

Whisk together the dry ingredients:

4 ounces ground flax seeds, either golden or regular (1/2 cup, 114 grams)

300 grams bread flour (about 2.5 cups)

300 grams dark rye flour (2.5 cups)

1/4 tsp. instant yeast

35 grams unsweetened cocoa (I’ve used both Dutch process and non-alkalinized–both work although the color is lighter with the latter.) (3 Tbs.)

2 scant Tbs. caraway seeds

2 scant Tbs. nigella seeds

2 scant Tbs. fennel seeds

Feel free to change the seeds to your taste, even leave them out.

Stir the dry ingredients into the liquid until well mixed. The photo above is the just-mixed dough. Let sit at room temperature, covered, for 16-24 hours. The dough will rise only slightly; the texture will become a bit spongy; you might smell the fermentation. The top will have tiny bubbles. Gently place the dough into a large loaf pan (or two smaller ones) that you have prepared by creating a parchment liner sling and then coating with vegetable oil. At this point if you are not ready to bake, you can refrigerate (retard) the dough. Let rise in the pan another 3-4 hours or so or until the dough has risen again by half. Again, it will not rise much, and you can also refrigerate it at this point. Bring the dough back to room temperature before you bake.

The photo to the left is the dough before placing it in parchment sling/pans. The photo to the right is the dough before baking. When you are ready to bake, preheat oven to 400 degrees–convection works well. Bake for 40 minutes or until internal temperature is 200 degrees. One large loaf will take longer, start testing at 50 minutes. Carefully take the loaves out of the pan with the parchment sling and return to the oven without the sling for another 10 minutes to crisp the crust. Let cool completely before slicing.

What makes them “Japanese,” you might wonder. Well, Japanese cakes are leavened with whipped egg whites, and are delicately flavored. If you like chiffon cakes, sponge cakes, and cheesecakes, this is your dessert. It’s like eating a lemon and vanilla flavored cloud. You could flavor it otherwise (I’ll offer ideas below) but try this version first.

I made this cake in the 9 inch version about five times, messing with a spring form pan, wasting aluminum foil to keep it from leaking and parchment to keep it from sticking. Once the cake “fell” (but I ate it anyway–even fallen it tastes like a good cheesecake.) Now I’ve made the individual versions three times and I’ll never go back. So much easier, even fool proof. ( Note that you must taste the mixture before you bake it in order to adjust the flavoring. I’ll give you guidelines, but there’s no substitute for tasting it yourself.)

1/2 cup milk or half and half

2 Tbs. butter

8 ounces cream cheese

1/3 cup sugar, divided

1/4 cup cornstarch

1/4 cup AP flour (cornstarch and flour=50 grams together, if you have a scale, and it’s OK to sub gf flour)

flavoring: 1-2 tsp vanilla extract (or scant tsp paste), 7 drops lemon essential oil, 1/2 tsp. lemon crystals, 1/4 tsp salt

5 or 6 eggs, separated into a small bowl of yolks and a beating bowl for whites. Use 5 eggs if they are extra large, and 6 if they are large.

1/2 tsp cream of tartar

Preheat oven (NOT CONVECT) to bake at 330F and spray 9 custard cups with Baker’s Joy (or grease and flour). Baker’s Joy comes in generic brands as well, often termed “baking spray with flour.” Find a baking pan or two big enough to hold all the cups and deep enough to fill with at least 1 inch of water. (You won’t fill it with water until it’s in the oven.)

In a saucepan on very low heat, melt the cream cheese and butter in the milk (or half and half), with about half the sugar. You don’t want it to cook, just to dissolve well enough so you can whisk it smooth. Let cool to room temperature. Beat in the cornstarch and flour, then whisk in the egg yolks. Add the flavorings and taste: do you want it more lemony or more vanilla-y? This is a subtle cake, but flavorings vary in intensities. If you’re using high quality vanilla paste (no sugar added) you’ll need less. Essential oils are different. You can use a different citrus, for example lime or grapefruit. TruLemon is a company that makes good quality lemon, lime, and grapefruit crystals. I prefer crystals and essential oil to using grated rind because the latter spoils the smooth texture of the cakes. This is how it looks at this stage:

Whip the egg whites until foamy, add the cream of tartar, and continue beating until mixture holds a peak while adding the remainder of the sugar.

Fold about 1/3 of the sweetened, beaten egg whites into the flavored yolk mixture, mix well, then fold in the rest of the egg whites.

This is the batter ready to be baked. Spoon it into the prepared custard cups and place the cups into a pan (or two) big enough to hold them, and place into the preheated oven.

Use a pitcher to carefully pour hot water around the cups, at least to a height of one inch.

Bake for 20 minutes. This is how they will look:

Reduce the temperature to 265 and bake another 10-15 minutes, or until a tester comes out clean. The cakes will fall a little, either now or once you take them out of the oven, but they’ll still be fluffy and cloud like. I use tongs to remove them from the oven and water bath one by one, because I don’t want to risk dumping the hot water over the cakes or myself. (Remove the pan from the oven once it has cooled.)

Once the custard cups are barely warm, reverse them onto your palm or a plate or cooling rack. The cakes are wonderful warm, but can also be chilled for a more traditional cheesecake. Serve with fruit puree or fresh fruit, or both. The cakes stay fresh in the refrigerator for about a week–with a caveat: seal airtight because otherwise they’ll pick up scents from items in your refrigerator.

Other flavor options: matcha tea, cocoa powder, instant coffee, fruit powders (I order them from nuts.com). The flavorings are added to the cream cheese/egg yolk mixture. I eat a couple of these for breakfast each day (until they are gone and I begin to think about making the next batch.)

In restaurants, I want everything (food, service, décor) to be both interesting and considered—and better, or at least as good, as I can do at home. Our favorite restaurant in Salt Lake had beautiful chairs that were torture to sit in, so we’d ask for a booth. My last meal there ended with a cocoa cake that had too much baking soda—yuk—and I’m pretty sure the pastry chef had no idea. Under a different pastry chef, the desserts had been excellent. Restaurants get lazy when they are the only show in town,  when customers don’t complain, and when they can’t hire skilled workers. 

I also expect to learn something when eating out: a new ingredient, combination, technique: a surprise or three. Surprises in food are like surprises in poetry—a pleasurable resetting of expectations, another way of thinking. At a recent meal out, I ordered the “apple tatin” expecting a new version of an apple-forward dessert. The re-imagined dessert featured whipped cream, two disks of pastry, and a small ring of pectin-set cooked apple. The pastry was stodgy, the whipped cream overwhelmed the fruit. It looked nice but I only ate a few bites. In excellent restaurants, surprises are managed by the chef—surely I was not the only eater who did not enjoy that dessert? Someone else must have complained about the pastry, not buttery or caramelly, more like a flavorless cookie, or left it on their plate? But maybe the chef doesn’t look at the plates on their way to the dish room or just maybe other diners thought it was fine. Yet good food is not determined solely by personal taste, and anyway, taste can be trained. It’s not a person’s palate that determines whether something is good, but techniques and ingredients. Those pastry disks were overworked. When I cook at home, I trouble shoot/correct my ingredients or technique. Too-wet sweet potato gnocchi made me vow to try including a russet or potato starch in the dough the next time. At home, guests are forgiving (or at least too polite to complain).

One highly touted hotel restaurant has a Vietnamese chef—I had dreams of a Slanted Door in DC, but we got Popeye’s with coconut milk and pandan, fried food carelessly executed. I had the classic pork with rice noodles and salad. The salad consisted of wide pieces of cucumber on leaf lettuce. Why not daikon and carrot julienne in rice vinegar? If a dish is classic, the reinterpretation should be at least as good as the original. The pork was fatty and gristly, the rice noodles mushy.  Other new  restaurants in our neighborhood have not made us want to return. One interpretation of bacon-wrapped scallops consisted of a slice of raw lardon around a scallop. The vegetables were overcooked and uniformly seasoned with gritty dried herbs and too much salt.  

There’s also the sense of value—allied to “better than I can make at home”: at Oyster Oyster, the restaurant Washington Post Critic Tom Sietsema thinks is the best in the city, we paid $370 for two people, with three glasses of wine. The service was superb, and I asked the server “how is this made” about more than one dish. That pecan mousse with the candy carrot coating! Everything was both delicious and inventive—yet because the kitchen had imposed so many restrictions on itself: local, sustainable, seasonal, vegan, their fall menu featuring root vegetables (celeriac, kohlrabi, sweet potato, beets, mushrooms) and grains had us asking ourselves the next day: was it worth it? No, alas. One or more unusual and expensive ingredients can make the difference. Even a vegan restaurant can offer something hard-to-get.

Because I worked in restaurants as a server and hostess I understand the need to turn tables, to make a profit. Since we like to eat early—5 pm–if we walk in, I promise the host that we’ll be out in an hour if necessary. Yet we’ve had hosts tell us, an entirely empty restaurant behind them, that they can’t seat us because of reservations. Or tell us that a particular table is reserved (here’s looking at you, Bombay Club). 

Restaurant service should be unobtrusive. Vivid in my memory is one server who explained (without my asking) what a caper was (and actually got it wrong), and the server at Sundance’s Tree Room, who, when I told him the cherry sorbet had been made with salt instead of sugar, said, “no it hasn’t.”  Another waiter at that same establishment on another visit insisted (after my initial inquiry and after the dish had been served) that the blue cheese was not goat (anyone who dislikes goat cheese recognizes it; I can imagine ski dude carelessness creates problems for people with allergies or sensitivities). Another variety of obtrusiveness is over-describing and recommending. At the restaurant with the failed apple tatin, a server interrupted us to explain how everything was made. In most cases, it was obvious, and anyway no one cared. How hard it is to get all the aspects perfect: food, décor, service!

Two new DC restaurants deserve accolades: 

I’ve eaten at Rania three times since it opened in October, each time with delight. (My wife says, when she leaves town, “please don’t go without me.”) On 11^th street close to Pennsylvania Avenue, it used to be a bar. Now it offers 3 or 4 course prix fixe  ($75 or $95) menus of inventive Indian food, with enough choices to please both vegetarians and meat eaters. Meals start with an amuse bouche, a deep fried murukku garnished with trout roe or a vegetable. The beef eater in our group raved about the short ribs. I ordered the chicken korma (meatballs) twice because of the white truffle shaved on top, the morel garnish. (That’s the photo at the top of this post.) Fresh oysters were slightly warmed from a creamy sauce with wasabi fire in it. Diners can choose two side dishes from a list of eight, including three kinds of bread, raita, rice pilaf, and black or yellow lentil dal. If you’re eating with others, the side dishes offer more tastes in the classic Indian style. Don’t skip dessert: what could have been an ordinary mango sorbet was made extraordinary by frozen fennel granita. The pastry chef employs all manner of French and Asian pastry techniques, including homemade marshmallows, puff pastry, and friandises (sweet little bites with the bill). Eating there is worth every penny. https://www.raniadc.com

While Rania is not as well-known as it should be, the newest Chang restaurant at 1200 19^th Street NW, perhaps because of Peter Chang’s reputation, has gotten wide press. Everything’s good, but the crisp-fried cauliflower is superb. Succulent pig’s feet. Slightly too salty duck hot and sour soup. I love tofu skin because the texture is chewy, more chewy than al dente noodles, and it’s tofu that is somewhat hard to find in restaurants. Chang Chang serves it prepared very simply, with sauteed bok choy in a light soy sauce, an example of good ingredients and technique. At Chang Chang  the desserts are also good—my favorite is the passion fruit pie on a rice crust garnished with black pepper spiced (surprise!) meringue. I also appreciate the selection of loose leaf teas and nonalcoholic drinks, for example lavender kombucha. Every item on the menu has been considered—no decision fatigue here, no “ho hum.” Lovely service, the three times we ate there, with servers  considerate about turning down the music (loud music just makes diners eat faster), and thoughtful about not rushing us.

It’s a tough business, the restaurant business. But then, some diners notice perfection–and rave about it.

Final Stage of soup below:

I don’t usually post soup recipes (because most soups don’t need a recipe), but I was especially pleased with something I discovered making this creamy vegan soup. It’s light yet richly flavored, and creamy (because of the soaked cashews). It has protein! It’s a good receptacle for any mildly flavored vegetable scraps you might have. You’ll need apple and/or white wine to add acid and verve.

I used 4 pounds of celery root (after peeling), 2 leeks, 1 bunch green onions and a few scraps of shallots, 3 Tbs avocado oil, 1/2 bunch parsley, 2 peeled and cored apples, 1 1/2 cups of leftover champagne, and 1 pound of raw cashews, soaked. Filtered water. White pepper, nutmeg, and salt.

Saute the leeks/onions in oil a few minutes, add the cubed celery root, then the apples and parsley or whatever vegetable scraps you want to use up (make sure they don’t have strong flavors–you want the celery root to shine), and the soaked (an hour, drain soaking water) cashews. Simmer with water or wine or a combination (at least 1 quart) and a teaspoon of salt for about 40 minutes, or until the celery root is soft. Add seasoning: about 2 tsp each ground white pepper and nutmeg, and 3 more tsp salt. Add the seasoning in stages BEFORE you blend, so there’s no grit. Add filtered water if it’s too thick. Keep tasting until it’s a bit spicy. If you correct the seasoning, do this in small amount of the soup in the blender, blend again, and then stir into the larger amount. It took me three tries to get the right amount of pepper, nutmeg, and salt.

I love the creamy color of the soup and the fresh taste. Don’t be tempted to use vegetable stock or garlic or anything that could overwhelm the celery root. You could garnish with some minced chives or parsley or lovage and a swirl of extra virgin olive or avocado oil.

Like many things I make, this batch of candy resulted from my own craving. Why buy caramels if they are likely to be too sweet, stale, expensive, or all three? These scratched the itch and were easy, even without a candy thermometer.

1 pint heavy cream

2 1/2 cups sugar

1 cup corn syrup

1/2 tsp salt

10 ounces bittersweet chocolate (I used 75%, you could make them more bitter by using a higher cocoa percentage.)

I stick unsalted butter

1 tsp. vanilla extract

flaky sea salt for garnish

Line an 8×13 (or so) pan with parchment paper. (The smaller the pan, the higher the caramels.) Spray the parchment with cooking spray.

Whisking constantly, simmer the cream, sugar, corn syrup and salt until it thickens slightly and reaches 220 degrees, 10-15 minutes.. Off the heat, whisk in the butter and chocolate. Cook (and whisk) until it reaches “firm ball” stage (240 degrees)–this may take 20 more minutes. Be patient. You’ll see the mixture thicken yet again; the simmering bubbles will be large. To test, put a bit on a cold plate and see if it holds its shape. Stir in the vanilla and take off the heat.

Pour into the prepared pan and sprinkle the top with Maldon or other flaky salt, as desired. Allow to sit 8-12 hours in a cool place. Unmold onto cutting board and cut into squares or rectangles, then wrap each piece in parchment or wax paper.