Great Moments in Cinematic Baking

I love food. I think the fact that I maintain a food blog might hint at that. I also happen to love film. If we suspend our disbelief for a moment and pretend that food and film were women and that I were somehow straight, my relationship with the two of them would go something like this...

Film was my first love. She was wild, emotional, larger-than-life. We dated through high school and most of our university years, but we'd grown apart by our senior year. We loved each other but just couldn't commit ourselves to a serious, exclusive relationship.

Along comes Food, who'd been there all along, to console me. Stable and nurturing with both feet planted firmly in the earth, I thought "Oh, how blind have I been not to have seen her all my life?" She moved in straight away and we started planning our future meals together.

Several years later, Food and I are still together, but part of me misses Film and always will. I confess sneaking off to see her every once in a while. Food pretends not to mind too much when she finds the theater stubs in my coat pocket. We've talked about my problem in couples therapy and, to my surprise, she confessed that she's always wondered what it felt like to be on Film.

Food, Film and Me. That's my idea of a three-way.

Are you nauseated? No? Then continue...

Food on Film. That's the topic for today. Yes, we've all seen Babette's Feast (30 times), Like Water for Chocolate, and Eat Drink Man Woman. All of these films appeal to us (or, at least me) for one reason or another. Food is center stage. Appetite as metaphor for human desire, etc. Another thing these films have in common is a central character for whom food is his or her primary outlet of expression. Cooking is action. They are, all of them, cuisine-driven cinema.

What has interested me lately are films in which cooking is not the central theme. I like to watch people who are not supposed to be food professionals preparing meals. For me, watching characters not known for their cooking abilities attempt to bake or boil is far more fascinating and often more telling. Think of Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany's. If you own it, watch the scene in which Holly Golightly attempts to make dinner for Paul Varjak. Perhaps I read too much into things, but notice the way she tosses the salad. She doesn't know what she's doing. She's in over her head, which is entirely appropriate, considering the character. It's actually rather heart-breaking. The tension of the scene finds release when the contents of her pressure cooker ("Chicken and saffron rice with chocolate sauce, an East Indian favorite.") explode all over her kitchen. So the foreshadowing and symbolism are a little heavy-handed. Food-focused people get the sense of what's about to happen.

This week's pick comes from the rather odd little 1970 Jacques Demy musical, Donkey Skin. Based on the the fairly tale of the same name (well, the french Peau d'âne) by Charles Perrault. I saw this film with my friend Dan a couple of years ago. Sadly for him, I associated the name of the film with his own. Po' Dan. I don't' remember who dragged who to see it, but I'm grateful to either one of us. It is marvelously bizarre and wildly anachronistic (the resident Fairy Godmother descends in a helicopter, naturally). And then of course there's not one, but two Catherine Deneuves in a musical baking number.

A film could not be more up my particular alley.

In the scene below, Deneuve (the Princess/Donkey Skin) prepares a "love cake" for the object of her affection, a lovesick prince. The importance of this cake is illustrated by the fact that she feels the need to don her dress "the color of the sun" to prepare it. It matters little if you understand French. I just want you to take note of her baking skills. And, possibly, the movement of her full, lace-trimmed sleeves as she works. Whether Demy intended it or not, Deneuve's unconvincing technique speaks volumes. Remember, this is a fairly tale and a French fairy tale musical at that. The suspension of one's belief is critical. How else can Catherine Deneuve baking in that gown be explained? Of course, my belief has been suspended for so long that I am convinced that she can do just about anything, like turn Susan Sarandon into a vampire by merely rolling around half naked with her and exchanging fluids.

Enjoy the clip.

Time to make the doughnuts

First of all, it's doughnut not donut. Let's give this pastry the respect it deserves. I suppose Mr. Doughnut is a bit much-- this treat is far too familiar to most of us for such formality. By familiar, I mean taken for granted. We've invited doughnuts into our homes often enough and spent endless hours with them in coffee shops, but what do we know about them? Have you ever bothered to ask one anything about itself? Of course not. They've infiltrated our children's schools, yet I doubt any County Administrator has ever bothered to do a background check on a single one.

Well, I have. Sort of.

You can say dank u to the Dutch. While you're at it, you might also want to thank them for cobbler and the koekje (cookie, if you couldn't figure that out on your own). The Dutch brought their recipe for olykoeks with them to the New World, where the name easily translated to "oily cakes"-- balls of sweet dough fried in pork fat. Sound like heaven on earth. Sweet dough and pork fat. I'm not kidding.

Somewhere in history, the oily cake hired an image consultant and changed its name to doughnut, most likely because they were, quite simply, little nuts of fried dough. Washington Irving mentions them as early as 1809. He seemed to know a lot about Dutch Americans.

There are a few tales, some of them tall, about how the doughnut got its hole. The best and most famous is that of one Captain Hanson Gregory whose mother sent him off to sea with-- what else?-- fried pastry. During a violent storm, Captain Gregory needed both hands free to man the wheel of his ship, so he impaled his doughnut upon the top spoke of the wheel, thereby creating the center hole.

Believe it. Or not.

A more likely explaination is that the center of the pastries had been notoriously hard to cook thoroughly. They usually ended up a doughy, oily goo. By punching a hole in the center, more surface area is created, therefore allowing for faster, more even cooking. But if you prefer to believe the first expailation, by all means do.

For a really good read about doughnuts, please visit Mr. Breakfast. I think he might be my new hero.

The Dutch, and through them, Americans, are not the only people on earth in love with puffy fried dough. The Argentines have their facturas, the Austrians love a good krapfen (giggle, it's okay), the Chinese go for youtiao (though it is not sweet), and the French, of course, are dating the beignet.

Wherever in the world you may eat them, eat them warm and fresh. A doughnut made yesterday dunked into this morning's coffee might be fine, but it really cannot compare to a doughnut still warm from the fryer. I almost typed friar, which might say a lot about me.

The last time I made doughnuts was in June of 2001. I must have been in love or something. I was going to my boyfriend's cousin's annual oyster party on Limantour Beach. I wanted to make a favorable impression on them and, for some reason, doughnuts seemed the perfect thing to make. Perhaps I had hoped that, had the wind kicked up a bit too much, no one would notice the sand that would stick to the pastries, camoflauged as they would be by their coating of granulated sugar. My boyfriend thought I was crazy to go to so much trouble. Maybe I was, but everybody still remembers the doughnuts.

Try making a batch for yourself. They're really easy. I mean it. You'll need a good thermometer though. The temperature of the oil is key.


Buttermilk Doughnuts



What I like most about this recipe, which has been borrowed from Epicurious.com, but altered slightly, is that the sweetness is rather subtle. I'm just not a super-sweet fan. I tend to regard these doughnuts as, well cakes, though hopefully not oily ones. I like these served up on a plate with a bit of fruit sauce. Blueberry compote works really, really well. It's sort of like a lazy man's version of a jelly doughnut. Or, looked at in a more positive way, a healthy (or healthier) man's version.

Ingredients:

2 1/2 cups all purpose flour
1 1/4 cups sugar
3/4 cup buttermilk
2 large eggs
2 tablespoons solid vegetable shortening, room temperature
3/4 tablespoon vanilla extract
1/4 tablespoon almond extract
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt

Vegetable oil (for frying)

Powdered sugar

Preparation:

Place 1 1/2 cups flour and 1 1/4 cups sugar in large bowl. Add buttermilk and next 7 ingredients. Using electric mixer, beat mixture until just smooth. Beat in remaining 1 cup flour. Cover and refrigerate at least 1 hour and up to 6 hours.

Turn dough out onto floured work surface; roll to 1/2-inch thickness. Using 3-inch round cookie cutter, cut dough into rounds. Using 1-inch round cookie cutter, cut hole from center of each round, making doughnuts. Gather scraps and reroll dough, cutting additional doughnuts until dough is used up.

Pour oil into heavy large pot to depth of 5 inches. Heat oil to 350°F. Add 3 doughnuts at a time to oil and fry until golden, turning once, about 6 minutes total. Using slotted spoon, transfer to paper-towel-lined rack to drain. Repeat with remaining doughnuts. Cool. Sift powdered sugar thickly over doughnuts.

Makes about 10.

Blue Bottle Coffee Company

My friend Lyle is mildly obsessed with coffee. If it's daylight outside, there is usually a paper take away cup filled with the black, caffeinated liquid within a two-and-a-half foot radius of him. I haven't measured his wingspan. I'm just telling you it's nearly always within his reach. Or nestled in a cup holder inside his car. The other night at work, he announced he was going to The Blue Bottle Coffee Co. the next day and was taking orders. I had no idea what he was talking about, so I asked what the big deal was. He mentioned that they happened to serve the best frigging coffee in the city. Only I am not certain he used that precise word.

The next afternoon, after a little bit of directional confusion for which I blame my own genetics and short attention span, I found my way to tiny Linden Street, the block known unofficially as The Artists Alley. I saw a crowd of about fifteen people not-too-neatly queued up in front of what looked like a garage. Lyle was there, off to the side reading a magazine; the remnants of something brown and foamy making its way gradually to the bottom of a little glass in front of him. "Order a Gibraltar," he said. That's what he had been drinking while waiting for me. I did as I was told, but I wanted to try their coffee, too. The line wasn't terribly long-- I waited about five minutes for my Gibraltar (which is basically a very short latte with just a titch of foam and, I believe, named after the glass in which it is served) and my cup of drip coffee (one size only, thank you). I threw in a few cookies for good measure and snapped a few photos.



The Gibraltar was good. Very good. I carefully sipped at it a couple of times-- creamy, well balanced and rich. I was happy. I thought about swirling it about in the glass as I one might do wine, but the glass is too small and I worried about the likely coffee stains down my shirt and crotch. I headed back to my apartment with Lyle to drink our drip coffee in relative comfort. By relative, I mean in a chair. By chair, I mean a piece of furniture with four legs and perhaps a bit of padding-- Blue Bottle has one plywood bench that I believe may have at one time been a seventh grader's midterm wood shop project. Such is the Blue Bottle's charm. I can't say I can blame them for not encouraging people to lounge-- the demand for their coffee can be fierce (they regularly sell out of their bags of whole beans)-- especially on weekends.



We sipped at the Bella Donovan en route to my apartment. This is, according to Blue Bottle's website, their most popular blend; "the wool sweater of our blends." I could feel the caffeine taking hold of me. I was feeling a little light-headed when I go out of Lyle's car. By the time we got ourselves into seated position--cookies in hand, I had consumed half my coffee. I felt the end of my nose tingle and my cheeks begin to go numb. This is serious coffee. I don't think I had ever gotten myself this caffeinated before. I hadn't intended on drinking two Charles Atlas-strength coffees on top of my accustomed morning cup-and-a-half. I felt nauseated. I blame myself, of course, but I now see the warning sign so clearly hinted at in the blend's name-- drinking this blend is like snacking on digitalis; my heart raced wildly and, had I thought to look in the mirror, I am certain my pupils would have been enormous. I hope it made me look pretty.

In spite of my caffeine overdose, I find myself in agreement with Lyle-- this coffee is frigging good.

If you are a serious coffee drinker and have not been to Blue Bottle Coffee Company, I suggest you give it a go. In addition to the garage/kiosk at 315 Linden Street, you will find them at the Ferry Building Farmer's Market on Tuesdays and Saturdays, and at the Berkeley Farmer's Market on Saturdays, brewing and selling their wares.

For much more information, visit their website. It's an amusing and informative read:

Blue Bottle Coffee Company

A jug of wine...

"A Jug of Wine, a Loaf of Bread-- and Thou" -- Omar Khayyam.

I am not going to dissect that line from the Rubiayat today. I just placed it in this blog to somehow justify the fact that I chose to photograph a $3.99 1.5 liter bottle of Carlo Rossi Burgundy and put it into my blog.

Today, I am going to a wine tasting. It's for work, so I'll have to do a lot of spitting, sadly. My friends and colleagues, Saeed and Lyle, have kindly taken the time to share their wine knowledge (and our restaurant's wine cellar) with the rest of their co-workers. This week's session is loosely structured. Today, they are merely taking call-in requests-- we're drinking whatever the hell we want to drink. I think I'm a rather lucky fellow to have this opportunity.

Of course, this is work. I pretty much live in a restaurant. I talk about wine with strangers. And food, of course. It's what I do.

When I am dining out with friends or family or anyone lacking in wine-related gumption (and I am not talking about gumption derived from wine intake), the wine list is automatically handed to me. In my earlier, I-have-to-impress-everyone-by-my-wine-knowledge days, this was a dangerous act of trust. Hopefully, my ordering habits have mellowed like, well, something that mellows. Friends, please correct me if I am wrong. I am still feeling my way.

The road of wine education has been a long one, with lots of sharp learning curves. And wet, too. Wine tends to make everything slippery, you know.

And the scenery is not always pretty. There are photos to prove it.

I myself was introduced to wine at an early age. Sadly, my early experiences weren't shaped by early autumn harvests at my grandfather's vineyards in Piemonte. He was an auto mechanic from Philadelphia. He liked beer. Lucky lager-- the brand with the little concentration puzzles on the insides of the caps. My first taste of wine came with a threat from his wife. "You're not getting down from this table until you finish your wine." I was five. My grandmother didn't like to waste anything. I cut my Ernest (R.I.P.) & Julio Gallo with as much ginger ale as I could pour into my wine goblet-- the one with the etched glass grape vines-- and did as I was told.

My introduction to champagne was only slightly more romantic. At nine, I ran about the garden tables filling the hollows of plastic Korbel "corks" with "champagne" and sipping from them daintily-- pinky raised-- at my cousin Stephanie's wedding. I hope no one saw the pinky action. I have no idea who I was imitating. It just seemed the proper hand gesture for champagne drinking.

No wonder I preferred hard alcohol in my youth.

I mention these little snippets of my upbringing because I have the feeling I am not alone. I was not a wine savvy child. I didn't really know too much about it until I thirty-ish. Though wine drinking is becoming a fast-growing sport here in the United States, I believe that most Americans are intimidated by the stuff. Please take that "Oh, but we live so close to Napa" expression off your face. Admit it, most Americans still drink beer with dinner. Or coffee. Or ([big] gulp) Diet Coke.

Wine is (I know you still have that smirk on your face and that can stop right now, foodie) simply not part of our collective heritage. We are not comfortable with it as a nation as a whole. Thank you, Pilgrims. Thank you, Volstead Act.

It saddens me to watch people squirm when faced with ordering wine, because it is my job as a waiter to make people comfortable. Choosing a wine should not be a daunting task, but it appears to so be for many. Which wine do I choose? What if I pick the wrong one? What if I don't like it? When I ask people what they feel like drinking wine-wise, the answer is either Chardonnay or Sauvignon Blanc if they want a white and Cab or Pinot for red. No one ever seems to say the full name of either grape. Pinot? Noir, Meuniere, Gris, Blanc? One of these days I will blend all of these into one glass and present it to someone. One of these days. I often plead with my guests to break out of their neo-oenophobia and just try something different. Please. I suppose we may just have to wait for another sleeper-hit film to push people into trying another varietal. Baa.

I've been through this particular agony myself. The I don't-know-anything-about-wine-so-I-am
not-even-going-to-try syndrome. Or even oh-God-the-waiter-and-all-my-friends-will-judge me-if-I-order-the-wrong-thing. My point, if I indeed do have a point today, is that drinking wine should be a pleasant experience. If anyone laughs at you, wine is the perfect thing to "accidentally" knock from the table and onto his or her lap. No one should make fun of you (to your face) when you order wine. Oh, that's my other point. Snobbish wine people are annoying, which makes me think of a certain Polk St. wine bar that needs a good investigation. Thank you for reminding me.

Over the next few months, I intend to drone on about wine varietals I think you should be drinking and why you should be drinking them. I'll walk you through the geeky horrors of blind tasting and, not surprisingly, I'll pair up some victuals I'd like to eat with some wines I'd like to drink. Isn't that exciting? Say yes, even if you don't mean it. I'm fragile.

Now, if you will excuse me, I have some serious imbibing to do. Over the next week, I expect you to get out there and drink something you've never drunk before, even if it's Bull's Blood of Eger. I expect a full report.

Have you never been mallow?

Twice in the past month, I have come face to face with the marshmallow.

The first instance was about three weeks ago. Rained out of what I had hoped to be a glorious weekend camping out at Julia Pfeiffer Burns State Park in Big Sur, my camping mates and I decided to have a campfire dinner at home. Any excuse to drink wine, light a fire and prevent a gallon of vegetarian chili from going to waste. I was asked to bring ingredients for s'mores. I did as I was told. The marshmallows were of the Campfire brand, which seemed appropriate enough. Upon tasting them-- and I do not consider myself a grand connoisseur of sticky, gooey sweets-- I was disappointed. More silky than Marshmallow Peeps certainly, but not what I would call satisfying. Can a marshmallow truly be satisfying?

The second time was earlier this week. I dipped into a hot bath on Tuesday in response to the heavens dumping their dishwater all over the Bay Area. Cold rain makes me run for hot water-- I find it's an excellent antedote. Depending on my bathtime mood, my drink of choice is either a) a dry martini (because it's all about balance for me) or b) a cup of hot tea. Either tend to work brilliantly at soothing the mind. Or dulling it. This particular Tuesday, I wanted neither. I craved instead hot cocoa. Hot cocoa with marshmallows. I didn't have any marshmallows in the house, so I thought, "Why not just make some?"

Why not just make some? I didn't know the first thing about marshmallow making, but that has never stopped me before. I admitted my ignorance as to what was even in a marshmallow except air and goo. I looked it up.

I was mildly fascinated by what I learned. These factory-produced confections have been with us, in one form or another, for thousands of years. We can thank or blame the Egyptians for their creation. Marshmallows (althea officinalis) grew wild in the marshy wetlands of Egypt. Though I had indeed heard of the marshmallow plant, it is difficult to connect this machine-made treat to anything even approaching organic, but there you go. I had this image in my head of little kohl-eyed children frolicking in the marshes, picking the candies like berries and placing them in their little reed baskets. There was more to it than that, as I'm sure you might have guessed. It is the mucilaginous root of the plant the Egyptians were after. Once extracted, the sap was mixed with honey to make the candy.

In the 19th century, doctors created what we might actually recognize as a marshmallow to use as a medicinal candy. The sap was cooked with egg whites and sugar to make a meringue that was used to soothe children's sore throats. Medicinal properties? Apparently, the (real) marshmallow is useful as a cough suppressant, immune system booster and wound healer. The thought of rubbing marshmallows on one's self if something I had imagined only existed on adult websites. I learned something new.

The marshmallow as we know it has no known healing properties, since the actual eponymous ingredient has been replaced, like everything else it seems, by modified corn products. Marshmallows are now, in fact, known to kill on occasion. Every played Chubby Bunny? No? Neither have I. I would not recommend you that you play, unless I really don't like you.

I would like to actually get my hands on some real marshmallow sap and try making them the old fashioned way. Until my Southeastern contacts locate a reliable source (the plant grows wild in the American Coastal South), I will have to satisfy my infrequent cravings with this. It's a good and easy-to-do recipe.

I can't wait to see if they explode in my microwave.

Marshmallows



This recipe calls for a 9 x 13 inch baking pan. I dropped a cast iron skillet on mine, so I ended up using what was available-- an 8 x 8 inch pan. Yes, there was waste involved.

Ingredients:

about 1 cup confectioners' sugar
3 1/2 envelopes (2 tablespoons plus 2 1/2 teaspoons) unflavored gelatin
1/2 cup cold water
2 cups granulated sugar
1/2 cup light corn syrup
1/2 cup hot water
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 large egg whites
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Preparation:

Oil bottom and sides of pan and dust bottom and sides with powdered sugar.

In the bowl of a stand mixer (or, lacking a stand mixer, a plain old large bowl. [or, lacking and old bowl, a new one will do just as well]), sprinkle gelatin over cold water and let stand to soften. It will form a semi-solid gelatinous mass but don't worry, that's supposed to happen.

In a 3-quart heavy saucepan, cook granulated sugar, corn syrup, hot water and salt over low heat, stirring with a wooden spoon until sugar is dissolved. Increase heat to moderate and boil the mixture, without stirring, until a candy or digital thermometer registers 240 degrees F (about ten minutes). Remove pan from heat and pour the syrup over gelatin mixture, stirring until the gelatin is dissolved. At this stage, I found the whole mixture to smell of an unclean cow's ass. I suppose it was the gelatin.

In a stand mixer, beat the sugar/gelatin mixture at high speed until white, thick and tripled in volume, about 6 minutes. If using a hand-held mixer, this should take about 10 minutes.

In a large bowl, using clean beaters, beat egg whites until they just hold stiff peaks. Beat whites and vanilla into sugar mixture until just combined. Pour mixture into baking pan and sift 1/4 of powdered sugar evenly over the top. Place pan in refrigerator and chill, uncovered, until firm-- at least three hours and up to one day.



Run a knife around edges of pan and invert onto a large cutting board. With fingers, loosen marshmallow and cut into desired shapes and sizes. Sift remaining powdered sugar into large bowl and add marshmallows in batches, tossing evenly to coat.

Will keep for one week in an airtight container.

Makes about 96 marshmallows. I didn't get that many out of it. I like them big.