Savoring the harvest: Leek-and-potato comfort, two ways

by June

Autumn has deepened. It all but rattles our bones. What wind! At night, we hear it roaring from a great distance before it hurtles against the house. Our sleep is fitful. Some of us have the sniffles. And, worst of all, we've lost a hen, one of the originals, our Dottie. She got her name from speckles on her fluffy chick forehead, and then she grew into a beauty with a full breast of scalloped white. She was famous for nuzzling up to the cat when he took a sun soak. This past year, she's been a ragged mess of tattered feathers; the other chickens pecked at her. Blossom and Fern gave her extra free-ranging privileges, but she didn't range so much as nestle down outside my office window. I'd hear her out there clucking contentedly to herself.

We miss Dottie. She was just a chicken. But she was part of what made our home seem like home.

So it's high season for comfort food.

That means Leek-and-Potato Soup.  The one we make is light and simple. I learned it from Patricia Wells's book that explores the cuisine of Joel Robuchon: Simply French. Before making this soup, when I thought of a potato and Robuchon at the same time, I went into a swoon about his silken potato puree, which I once had the privilege of eating in Paris. That puree is sheer artistry. It is ballet on a fork. It could hang in the Louvre.

You accuse me of hyperbole? Really? Okay. Maybe. But I'm trying to get at the difference between the puree, which would be out of place in our kitchen and the soup.... Ah, the soup... The soup is at its best when I walk out into the wind and wrench a few leeks out of the soil and then root around for some nice potatoes. This soup is right at home in a bubbling pot on the stove—even as we're trying to wash the leek roots and all the clinging soil out of the sink. This soup is earthy. It fits the way we live.

We suspect it'll fit the way you live too, whatever way that is. It's very accommodating, this soup. It wants to please.

Peel, quarter, rinse and drain one and a half pounds of small boiling potatoes, such as Red Bliss.

Trim two leeks at the root. Split the lengthwise and sluice water down into all their little leek crannies. Rinse under cold water, then let them soak in a bowl for about five minutes—or until the grit settles to the bottom. Dry them and chop coarsely.

In a stockpot, melt two tablespoons of butter over low heat. Add the leeks and stir until tender but not browned. Add one and a half quarts of water and sea salt to taste. Add the potatoes, cover, and simmer gently for 35 minutes.

Take the pot off the heat. With an immersion mixer, process the soup until smooth. Return the soup to high heat and bring to a boil. Skim if anything icky floats to the top. Add one tablespoon of cream and stir. A few seconds later, add one tablespoon butter. Ladle into warm soup bowls and sprinkle with chervil or flat-leave parsley snipped with scissors. Season with ground pepper to taste.

That is a bowl of solace.

But the other evening we had a pizza dough rising. We happened that day to dig out a few fingerling potatoes and also some leeks that never sized up. And, well, why couldn't we put leek-and-potato yumminess on a crust? Maybe Leek-and-Potato Pizza would combine the goodness of the soup with another favorite...the potato gratin.

The handful of fingerling potatoes went into a pot of boiling water. When they were tender, I sliced them in half lengthwise.

We did a simple, fast leek gravy: I cooked a strip of bacon in a skillet and removed it to drain. Then I sauteed several small leeks in the bacon drippings until they were sweet and a little caramelized. Then I whisked in a spoonful of flour until it smelled toasty. Then I whisked in some milk...just enough to make a sinuous roux.

The leek gravy went onto the pizza crust first. Then the fingerlings got scattered around. Then we added some grated gruyere cheese and then bacon crumbles.

When it came out of the pizza oven, we fell upon that pizza as though it could ease all the pain in the world. And for a few minutes, it almost did.

Comfort me with apples—and long autumn walks

by June

We're saying goodbye to the colors—to the oranges and reds of October, but also the green grass that sprouted early this year and has stayed long.

Autumn calls us out for long rambles.

We climb along rocks by the river.

Or we take rides along curving roads and end up at the apple orchard.

This is the season of bittersweet truth though—a crackle of ice on the chickens' water, tracings of frost on the window. Winter will close in.

So we go out with our cameras and dazzle ourselves with the light on the water, the snap in the air, the antics of the goats.

We sit in the grass and stare into our hen's eyes.

We lie down and look at the blue sky and the red leaves and the white clouds. Everything is clarified to its purest hue.

Dark nudges us into the house finally. But we have apples and more time for dinner. What should we make? What should we make up?

Since we have a pizza dough ready to go, how about spinning a pizza inspired by our adventures? How about a Savory Applesauce and Ham Pizza?

We peel and dice up two apples and put them in a sauce pan with a tablespoon of olive oil and two cloves of garlic. We cover the pan and keep the heat low. When it is all good and soft, we roughly mush the apples with the garlic (though you could remove the cloves if you just wanted a garlicky nuance).

While the applesauce is cooking, we slice a red onion into thin rounds and sweat them over low heat, then fire it up a little to caramelize them.

We have a bit of ham and dice it up.

Birch smoothes out the pizza dough. The applesauce goes on first, then the caramelized onions, then the ham, then some shredded mozzarella. We finish it with a sprinkling of ground coriander, pepper and salt.

 Darkness may come early now, but it brings with it the gift of having more time together in the kitchen—more time to make dinner out of what we've found growing all around us this long, lovely season.

Pizza oven part 6: The first pizza!

by Birch

I remember it this way: It was a crisp, autumn Saturday night. June and I were newly married, fingers laced together as we made our way across rain-slicked cobblestones to Patsy Grimaldi's under the Brooklyn Bridge. The smell of fallen leaves, the bright notes of coal smoke, baking dough and garlic danced in the air. After a long wait for a table, a pizza topped with roasted red peppers and mozzarella arrived at our table. The thin crust was bubbly with char from Patsy's super-heated brick oven. The cheese was sparsely applied and melted into a soft milkiness.

Fast-forward to autumn in Maine with Fern and Blossom. The back-porch pizza oven had been curing with seven days of small fires to help heat-temper the masonry and avoid cracks. I started our first pizza fire with some dry oak split into narrow sticks to burn hot and fast. The fire was slow to catch, and using a flat shovel, I managed to shift it from the center of the oven to one side, where it seemed to draw better. I discovered that there was a clockwise turn of air through the oven, with cooler air drawing in through the door, past the fire and up towards the chimney. Finally the fire began to build and within an hour, I had flames licking across the inside doom of the oven, but the floor was only warm. After another hour, the floor was nearly 400° according the reading on my pocket infrared thermometer from Radio Shack. That would be hot enough to crisp the bottom crust.

Speaking of pizza crust, I had mixed our favorite dough while the fire was starting. It's a simple recipe that June devised with a secret ingredient (yogurt!) that makes a nicely supple, soft dough.

Basic Pizza Dough

1 cup water

1-1/2 teaspoons instant dry yeast

1-1/2 teaspoons salt
1 teaspoon sugar

1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil

1 tablespoon plain yogurt (nonfat will work just fine)

1-3/4 cups all purpose flour (King Arthur's is what we use)

In the mixing bowl of a stand-mixer (or a large mixing bowl if you ware working by hand), add the water, yeast, salt, olive oil and yogurt. Stir until the yeast begins to dissolve. Add the flour to the liquid and using the dough hook, start the mixer on slow. (If by hand, stir until a loose dough is formed and then knead on a lightly floured surface.) As the dough comes together, increase the speed of the mixer to medium low until the dough is a smooth, but sticky ball, about 4 minutes. Lightly oil a large bowl with olive oil, transfer the dough to the bowl and let rise until doubled--about an hour and a half. Divide until two equal balls and let rest for about an hour on a floured surface covered with a clean dish towel.

We spent time preparing the pizza toppings while the dough finished rising and the pizza oven heated. Fern carefully cut slices of fresh mozzarella. Blossom shredded some cooked chicken and mixed it with barbecue sauce. June caramelized red onions on the stove, sauteing them over low heat with a shot of balsamic vinegar and a tablespoon of sugar. I finished a tomato sauce made with chopped tomatoes, garlic, onions, and herbs.

Finally everything was ready. I used one ball of dough to pat out a thin disc on a floured cutting board. I tossed a bit of coarse semolina flour on our pizza peel to keep the dough from sticking (you can use cornmeal, too). We topped the pie with barbecued chicken and onions. I got it into the oven with one nervous flick of the wrist then got to work on the second pie, which we kept simple with just tomato sauce and fresh mozzarella.

The crust began to swell and the cheese bubbled. I gave the pizzas a half turn to cook them evenly. The pizza toward the back of the oven wasn't cooking as fast and the crust was still a bit doughy, but in a few minutes it caught up with the other pie closer to the fire. In about ten minutes they were both done and out of the oven, ready to eat. Our feast was a celebration of a fourteen month long effort of concrete and brick construction.



We got lucky with that first firing. But subsequent tries have not always been as successful. Once after a heavy rain, the oven floor never really did heat up as well. I went for it anyway and the pizza was nicely browned on top, but still doughy on the bottom -- and it stuck. Yikes, what a mess. The other time we put two pizzas in the oven and there was a desperate chicken emergency. Fern and Blossom checked on the birds and found their second-favorite-chicken, Marmalade in terrible distress. She was dying. It was ghastly, and I sent a sobbing Fern and Blossom into the house with June, while I tried to comfort the poor bird until she expired. (What does one say to a dying chicken at such a time? Needless to say, I surprised myself with a more tearful goodbye then I imagined I was capable of.) The pizzas burned to a blackened crisp that night, but we weren't all that hungry anyway.

Life goes on. And pizza is a circle. A symbolic representation of the cycle of life? Maybe. Or sometimes pizza is just pizza. It's something to think about as one year ends and another begins. Happy New Year from all of us!