A blast from the past, when Dunkin was Dunkin Donuts:
What the heck?, you may ask.
When I came back to land-side life in mid-2013, I started a "long winter nights" project at the place on Kent Island to archive favorite recipes and their stories. I listed ~34 recipes about which I knew I had stories and then I added a second page to capture a list of recipes we had collected for Stooges (some of which are on this blog, though not all). The first group needed their stories; I've done most of them but still have a few to write. The Stooges/Raconteur/Caribbean repertoire mostly had notes already, so those I just put into the same plastic sleeves as-is; there were another ~24 on that list. I sat down one day in Guilford last year and pawed through a bunch of "maybe's" that I had been piling up - 10 years worth, more or less - magazine recipes, tons of Internet printed recipes from various sources, more very old recipe cards (example: Scalloped Tomatoes taken from a Hunt's can a million years ago) - and began choosing some to add to the binder.
Each binder page has a hole-punched plastic sleeve, the recipe in its original form (THIS includes the Dunkin Donuts napkin from ?1990 ish on which I wrote - scribbled is a better term for it - Mama Stamberg's Shocking Pink Cranberry Relish recipe, as her daughter Susan read on NPR for years), and a piece of white printer paper on which I've written the story - a story - about each. As it stands today, the binder has a little over 50 of these sleeves, but the collection of recipes in various forms - plus a large binder that Susan started - are sitting in a lidded plastic storage box under the futon bed in the loft in Guilford, alongside a stack of Bon Appetit magazines for review, more of the plastic sleeves, a few more selections not yet in the book...you get the idea.
The memoir writing project, focused as it is on houses, has both drawn me away from this effort, and kept it in my peripheral vision - I know the stories contain some nuggets of interest, and of course I wrote the essay about mom and me in the kitchen that was theoretically going to include recipes, also unfinished.
I know this falls under "never enough time" - not enough time in the day, the week, the month, the year - an not enough years left, either.
Here's an actual recipe, a roasted tomato soup that anticipates tomato season (we no longer grow our own - too much work to ward off the pestilences) but that works with store-bought tomatoes in chilly weather too. From the late, great Gourmet Magazine, August of 2009 (Maggie Ruggiero). I made this for my niece years ago - not long after Reese was born, in 2013 - and it's a favorite.
ROASTED TOMATO SOUP
Yield: Makes about 8 cups Active Time: 20 minutes Total time: 1hr 45m
INGREDIENTS:
4 pounds tomatoes, halved lengthwise
6 garlic cloves, left unpeeled
3 T EVOO
1 medium onion, finely chopped
1/2 t dried marjoram [note: I never use oregano; I always substitute marjoram]
2 t sugar
2 T unsalted butter
3 cups chicken stock
1/2 cup heavy cream
Accompaniment: parmesan wafers (see below)
INSTRUCTIONS:
1. Preheat oven to 350F with rack in the middle.
2. Arrange tomatoes, cut side down, in 1 layer in a large 4-sided sheet pan and add garlic to pan. Drizzle tomatoes with oil and sprinkle with 1/2t salt and 1/4t black pepper.
3. Roast tomatoes and garlic 1 hour, then cool in pan. Peel garlic cloves.
4. Cook onion, marjoram, and sugar in butter in a 6-8 quart heavy pot over medium-low heat, stirring frequently, until onion is softened, about 5 minutes.
5. Add tomatoes, garlic, and stock and simmer, covered, 20 minutes.
6. Puree soup in an immersion blender (or in batches in a standard blender), then force through a sieve into cleaned pot, discarding solids. Stir in cream and salt and pepper to taste and simmer 2 minutes.
Divide soup among 8 bowls and float one parmesan wafer in center of each.
PARMESAN WAFERS
Cooks' note: Wafers can be made 2 days ahead and kept, layered between sheets of parchment or wax paper, in an airtight container at room temperature.
INGREDIENT:
2 ounces ungrated Parmesan cheese, or 3/4 cup store-bought shredded (not grated)
INSTRUCTIONS
1. Arrange a rack in the middle of the oven and heat the oven to 400ºF. Meanwhile, line a rimmed baking sheet with parchment paper or a silicone baking mat. Grate 2 ounces Parmesan cheese on the smaller (not smallest) holes of a box grater into fine shreds (about 3/4 cup).
2. Spoon the cheese onto the baking sheet in 12 piles (about 1 tablespoon each), spacing them evenly apart. Gently pat each pile into an even 2 1/2-inch round with your fingers.
3. Bake until evenly light golden brown, 6 to 7 minutes. Let cool for at least 3 minutes on the baking sheet, they will crisp up as they cool. Loosen with a thin knife or offset spatula. If they are not as crisp as you’d like, return to the oven, checking every minute, until slightly darker in color. If making more than one batch, blot the excess oil from the baking sheet with paper towels before reusing.
I'll keep trying to capture some of these here from time to time, and someday I'll finish the binder, too.
