A Five-Minute Frozen Chocolate Wafer to Enjoy Summer Better

It's too hot to spend much time in the kitchen, but summer is for pleasure. Just three minutes with a mixer and you will have two sleeves of black rich chocolate dough for the freezer. Then, whenever you want something nice, slice off some wafers, thin as you like, turn on the oven, and go water the plants or something. It's a maximum return for minimum effort:

We will need:

250 g/ 1 C butter
1/2 tsp. salt
250 g / 1 1/4 C sugar
125 g/ 4 1/2 oz. melted semi-sweet chocolate
1 egg
70 g/scant 1 C cocoa powder
300 g/ 2 1/2 C flour
coarse grained raw sugar is you have it, for rolling the logs in.

Beat the softened butter, salt, sugar, and melted chocolate together. Add the cocoa powder and the egg, and when that is smooth, blend int he flour with a spoon so the dough does not toughen.

Divide in two, and make logs as fat and short or as long and thin as you like. I do one of each- small for tea time, large for constructing desserts.

Roll the log in coarse sugar if you have any, or chopped nuts, or chopped chocolate, or anything you like or nothing at all, wrap in plastic, and store in the freezer. when you are ready to have some, turn the oven on to 170 C/ 350 F, line  baking sheet with non-stick paper, and slice as thinly as you like. Put them on paper with just a little room between them.

Bake 10 - 12  minutes- they will look dry, but you can press your finger into them- they will crisp as they cool.

Great with cherries.

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Cream Cheese Semifreddo

This festive dessert takes about as long to make as an omelette. Make it next time you have leftover egg whites, and keep it in the freezer. It's very flexible- ours is vanilla, but you could add anything- espresso, almonds, chocolate swirl, fruit...

Most semifreddo tortes have a crust- this no exception- but we won't use the blender to crush the cookies, or an oven to bake the crust. We'll just line a pan with paper and crush some cookies in by hand, spreading them around evenly-

This is 8 chocolae covered digestive biscuits, because that's just what we happened to have around.

For the torte, we will need:

3 egg whites

dash salt

150 g / 3/4 C sugar

60 ml/ 1/4 c water

- boil the sugar and water hard for a minute. Meanwhile, beat the egg whites with the salt until fluffy, and, with the beaters still running, pour the syrup in a thin stream- not on the beaters and not down the side of the bowl but somewhere in the middle. Beat slowly so it stays silky and cools off a little.

then:

200 g/ 8 oz cream cheese

200 ml/ scant 1 C heavy cream

some vanilla, or a shot of espresso, or some crushed fruit, or melted chocolate, nuts, whatever you like-

Beat the cream cheese before adding the cream. When it is fluffy, add cream and keep beating until it is light and fluffy, but not so long the cream splits and turns to butter. Blend the meringue in gently

Dollop evenly over the biscuits then smooth gently, and put in the freezer for several hours. If you are not eating it soon, wrap it in plastic wrap once it is frozen (semi-frozen- like the name. With all the air it will never be rock solid).

In heat like this, a big fat chocolate bar- at super warm room temperature- is the easiest topping. Just peel off big fat ribbons with a potato peeler:

Since it was never fully frozen to begin with, it softens quickly- don't leave it out on the table too long. 

Everyone loves this.

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Briam- Roasted Ratatouille a la Greque

Briam is the Greek Ratatouille. Ratatouille is worth standing around and adding things to the pot in their turn. But the first good eggplants and tender zucchini and affordable tomatoes coincide with the first warm spring days- there's urban gardening to see to, balcony furniture to repaint, and long afternoons in the shade on the veranda with stacks of old New Yorker magazines. This is a lunch you set the table for, open a bottle of wine for, as it fills the house with the scent of herbs and tomatoes. 

If it only took you four minutes to get it into the oven, that is nobody's business. 

We will need:

2or 3 eggplants

2 or 3 zucchini

2 or3 potatoes

a dozen or so cherry tomatoes, or 2 or 3 large tomatoes

2 onions

4 or 5 long peppers, any color

2 or 3 cloves of garlic

salt

pepper

fresh herbs- thyme, majoram, or oregano

olive oil- about a wineglass full
A lemon

This makes an enormous pan of food, but it is very good the next day, cold, at room temperature, or warmed. If you still think you need less, make less.

Wash all the vegetables. Cut the eggplant into quarter or half round slices. Salt them heavily and set them in a colander to drain. Cut the zucchini into lengths of about 2 cm (1 "), and cut these into halves only if the zucchini is very wide. Cut the onions into 6 wedges each- we will eat them as a vegetable, not an aromatic. Cut the peppers as you wish, not too small. Cut the potatoes in pieces the size of the eggplants. Leave the cherry tomatoes whole. If you are using large tomatoes, cut them into quarters- like the onions, we will eat them as a vegetable on their own. Leave the garlic cloves with their peel. 

Rinse the eggplant slices and shake them dry. Toss everything in a sheet pan with the oil, herbs, salt and pepper, and roast at 170 C/ 350 F for nearly an hour- All the vegetables should be tender, the tomatoes concentrated, the onions charred on the edges, the garlic mushy in its skin. 

Taste it. If it needs brightening- and it sometimes does in the early season when the vegetables have not hit their peak yet- scrub a lemon, zest it and juice it, and toss this with the vegetables. Even an orange if you like. This is not an element in classic briam, but it makes the dish.

Serve this with feta on the side. If you like it cooled down, try it with yogurt- not the thick kind but simple plain yogurt, as it is, or mixed with chopped fresh mint.

Smear the roasted garlic on bread and add some of the smashed tomato as you linger at the table. The flavors of the dish are so clean and simple you won't be at all tired of it when you have it again in the evening. You may find yourself making it often.

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Last-Minute Easter Desserts

Happy Easter! It has taken me by surprise entirely. Orthodox Easter is usually later, but rarely five weeks later- we are just barely into Lent. If the Holiday has also come up sooner than you had planned for, there's still no reason to go without dessert, and a very glamorous, festive one.

Austro-Greque Pavlova-

Pavlova dazzles- lofty, creamy and light. Rustic meringue shaped with the back of a spoon, some poached fruit, and Baroque heaps of whipped cream. 4 ingredients (plus a little whiskey or rum?)

Toulouse-Lautrec Chocolate Cake-

Can a cake be a turning point in your life? This one was for me- I have been making it since I was 13 and got a cookbook by Maida Heatter, thereafter my mentor and guardian angel in all things sweet. Toulouse-Lautrec cake is so simple that you can make it on a tv show, mess it up by forgetting 2 of the 5 ingredients, and it will still come out perfect (I did- that's what the photo is from). 

Meringue Mushrooms-

We make these very simple meringue mushrooms to decorate our Bûche de Noël. On their own, they are full of whimsy, perfect for the Holiday, and a delight for children and everyone else. If you have no block chocolate, melt a couple of chocolate eggs to glue them together.

Lenten Chocolate Cake-

Perhaps you've already boiled and dyed all the eggs in the house? Borrow this delicious, moist chocolate sheet cake with a fluffy light texture from lent. Mix dry ingredients straight in the baking pan- no bowl needed. Add water, oil, and vinegar, stir with fork, put the cake in the oven, and the fork in the sink when you're done. And you're done. 

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Fabulous Meringue Mushrooms Outshine the Bûche.

Even if you have enough time, stamina, ingredients, and patience to complete a festive holiday table with a grand Bûche de Noël, the one thing you surely do not have enough of is refrigerator space. A Bûche is not complete without this surprisingly simplest ornament. But the ornament without the Bûche? A semi-avante-garde tromp l'oeil delight! A tower of these and a tower of holiday mandarins, some espresso and cordials, and everyone will feel festive, indulged, and light as a feather. And you can make them whenever suits you- they take about 10 minutes of actual work, another hour or so drying in the oven, and 10 minutes of child-friendly kitchen play to assemble.

We will need:

4 egg whites

200 g/ 1 C sugar

pinch salt

tiny dash vinegar

vanilla

a chocolate bar (50 g/2 oz. should be plenty)

non-stick parchment

a zip-lock bag

About egg whites- so many dishes (creme patisserie, eggnog) will call for yolks. Just slip the whites into a jar- 3 or 4 is what you need for most recipes- label how many, and pop them in the freezer. When you need them, put the closed jar in a dish of water- they will be ready to use in about half an hour. You are never far from a beautiful airy dessert (like this pavlova, or these coffee meringues) when you have a jar of whites in the freezer,asI happily did this morning.

Beat the egg whites with the salt and vinegar and when it starts to foam up, start gradually adding the sugar, and keep beating until it is glossy and dense. Turn the top of a lip-lock bag over like you would the neck on a turtleneck sweater and fill with meringue-

This keeps the seal clean. Turn the edge back up, seal the bag, pressing as much air out as possible, and sip off one of the corners to make a small opening. Pipe "stems" by touching the tip to the paper, and squeezing lightly as you pull up. Make caps by squeezing as you hold the bag in place close to the paper. They will all have peaks:

Put some water in a dish, wet your finger, and smooth out the tops:

Dust them randomly with cocoa powder, sifted through a strainer:

Place in a very low oven- 90 C/200F- with a fan if you like. Leave them until they are dry enough to  remove from the paper. 

Melt the chocolate over simmering water or on low power in the microwave. Paint the bottoms of the mushroom caps, and place the stems on. You can make a small indentation with your finger to place the stem upside down, so the flat side is showing. We did half of each.

Smear any drips of chocolate on the carps to look like dirt. Let the chocolate set, and keep in a box wherever you have room until you are ready to put them out.

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Squash Gnocchi Glow Like Topaz- Two Ingredients, Fifteen Minutes.

To be honest it is four ingredients, if you count the butter and the sage we will use to sauce them. And five if you count the wine - they're not a tuna sandwich. This is restaurant lunch, in no time at all. You'll want the time for lingering at the table. 

We'll need:

500 g/ 2 C pureed roasted squash (simple directions here)

250 g/ 2 C flour (we may not need all of it)

salt to taste, and pinch of nutmeg

Make a sticky dough that holds nicely together by adding the flour gradually, using just as much as you need. Season it to taste, going light with the nutmeg but using enough to underscore the sweetness of the squash.

Flour a gnocchi board if you have one, otherwise flour a work space. Pinch off small pieces of dough and roll into a tapered length the width of a lady's ring finger. Roll over the gnocchi board, or the tines of a fork, to make decorative ridges to hold the sauce.

Put water on to boil, salting it like we do for pasta. Put half of the gnocchi in, wait until they all rise to the surface, then boil another two minutes. Test one to make sure they are cooked through to the center, and take them out with a slotted spoon or a small strainer. Repeat with the other half of the gnocchi. Keep the starchy cloudy salty water they cooked in- we will need it.

Five minutes before you are ready to sit down to lunch, make the sauce -

80 g/ 3 oz butter

sage leaves, fresh or dried

Pour off the top half of the cooking water, leaving the thickest, cloudiest part- this will bind with the butter to make a silky, unctuous sauce. Melt the butter in a large skillet large enough to hold all the gnocchi and let it turn a rich golden brown. Add the gnocchi, brown them a little here and there, and ladle in a little cooking water to make sure they are all nicely coated and to give them some gloss.

These need almost nothing- just a light shower of Parmesan if you like, and a glass of wine.

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Fresh Corn, Risotto Style- As Decadent as Vegetables Get.

Fresh corn on the cob has returned to the market for a fall encore. Its crisp sweetness is just as nice in October as it was in June. But with the busy season in full swing, we are less likely to be grilling for lunch. The pic-nic barbeque mood has given way to the sit-down lunch. Never skimping on glamour, we sometimes do skimp on time. This is such a dish.

We will need:

6 ears of fresh corn

50 g/ 4 T butter

200 ml/ scant 1 C heavy cream

salt and pepper 

grated fresh parmesan, for serving

Shuck the corn and slice the kernels off into a large basin (it is a little messy). With a serrated knife, like a bread knife, scrape the cob to get all the tender bits of corn and rich corn milk. This second step makes the dish. Put the corn and its pulp and milk into a pan and add a half glass of water and a little salt. Cover and simmer for about ten minutes to let the corn start to get tender. Add more water if necessary. When it seems nearly as soft as you'd like it, add the butter, and then half of the cream, plus salt and pepper to your taste, stirring all the while, until the cream turns golden with the corn. Taste again. Like a risotto, it will continue to absorb moisture on the plate and we will want plenty of sauce. Depending on how rich you want it, add water or the rest of the cream, or a little of both, aiming for a little saucier than you ultimately want it to be.

Just like for risotto, make everyone sit down before you serve.This is delicious very hot! Serve in mounds on plates or shallow bowls, top with a tangle of parmesan, and more fresh ground black pepper. It is sweet and creamy and rich and can take the drama of a lot of heat if you like, which we do.

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Rich Chocolate Zucchini Cake- Health Springs Eternal (But Secretly....)

Our cake- black, rich, and so moist it is nearly juicy- promises nothing but pleasure. Delicate, nearly weightless, it is nonetheless filled with every good thing. Tea-time revives; seven pieces with a glass of milk (it happens often with hungry teenagers) make for a substitute meal (so many eggs!). The cake is all indulgence, all health: olive oil, eggs, wheat germ, oat bran, whole wheat flour, and of course a lot of zucchini. This is our other "summer cake,"-  perfect with summer's zucchini, just as nice with the golden squash of fall-

Of course there is some sugar, but as the cake took shape- having cocoa added, taking out some flour, adding the wheat germ and wheat bran, making all the flour whole wheat- we cut it down too. Whole wheat flour and wheat germ are naturally quite sweet; the cake needs less sugar than it does when you make it with white flour. Winter squash are even sweeter than the zucchini. 

The only not so indulgent thing about the cake is its modest height- the thinner the layer, the lighter it rises. The fat finger-width of batter in your largest pan rises to a perfectly nice height; it's just not very dramatic.

We will need:

400 g/ 2 C sugar
85 g/ 1 C cocoa powder
240 g/ 2  C flour- whole wheat pastry flour works very nicely
2 teaspoons each of salt, baking soda, and baking powder, put through a fine mesh strainer into the flour
80 g/ 1/2 C wheat germ
50 g/ 1/2 C oat bran
6 eggs
360 ml/ 1 1/2 C olive oil
400 g/ 4 C zucchini, grated on the large holes of the box grater and loosely packed
lemon zest

Orange and chocolate is a delicious and classic combination. Using lemon zest instead is unexpected- more floral than citrus, giving some balance to the richness of the cocoa. Finely grate the zest of half a lemon (or an orange) and blend it with the sugar in a large bowl to release the fragrance. Add the eggs and the oil, then the cocoa and blend. Add the rest of the dry ingredients and blend again:

Then add the grated zucchini, which adds quite a lot of moisture. If using winder squash, divide into workable pieces and slice the thick outer peel off in segments:

Grate as you grate the zucchini. This is a much harder job.

Line a large pan with non-stick baking paper- we used the sheet pan that fits directly into a standard European oven. Bake at 180 C/ 375 F for 30-40 minutes, until a toothpick inserted near the center comes out clean. 

Let cool before slicing- for such hearty ingredients, it has a fragile texture. This makes an enormous cake, but as it is perfect anytime, and as everyone likes it so much, you surely will not find it too large.

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Fig and Date Bars with Orange Blossom Water- Nice to Share.

These rich bars with just five ingredients can be made easily in any quantity you need. They are perfect for sharing with as many people as possible, and in this case hopefully for leaving a sweet taste of Greece in the mouths of those coming through here under very difficult circumstances. One of the five ingredients is packaged cookies (!) it saved a lot of time. We want quantity, and our petite Euro-sized oven would hold us back. 

We were hoping to make something that feels like a treat but provides more than purely aesthetic sustenance. These are nothing but dried figs and dates and some sesame seeds, bound with the beautiful perfume of orange blossom water, and held together by a layer of crushed cookies on the top and bottom to make them tidy to eat, and a dusting of powdered sugar so they look more like a confection than a hunk of dried fruits and seeds. Pretty on the outside, healthy on the inside.

This is a recipe that can be incorporated into a weekly schedule and our weekly budget, and that can be doubled or quadrupled, to keep giving throughout the season. It also makes a nice project for small children, combining two of their favorite things- being kind to others, and getting their hands dirty. In our case I have my daughter Mei Mei and her friends to wrap them during study breaks (the are all in high school) and deliver to organizations that can pass them along to the border. 

For each large pan (42 X 28 cm), we will need:

1 package of plain square cookies- we used the double ones
1 K/ 7 C dried figs, cut up
500 g/ 4 C dates, pitted
120 g/ 1 C sesame seeds
2 tsp. orange blossom water
some powdered sugar for dusting

1. Crush the cookies. Line a large pan with non-stick paper and oil it very lightly, and spread half of the cookie crumbs evenly on it:

2. Pit the dates- this is very easy. Oil a pair of kitchen scissors and use them to cut the dates into rough pieces, removing the tough nub of stem at the top:

3. If the dates and figs seem too dry to be pulsed into a rough paste in the food processor, you can steam them very lightly- put just a spoonful or two of water into a pot, add the figs, and turn it on to high, covered. As soon as it boils (almost instantly) turn off the heat and let them steam for just a moment.

4. Put half of the dates and half of the figs and half of the sesame seeds into the food processor together with a teaspoon of orange blossom water and pulse until a coarse paste forms. Put into a bowl and pulse the other half and more orange blossom water, then mix the two halves gently so the texture is uniform.

5. The dense paste is not very spreadable, particularly on the crumbs sliding around loose on the non-stick paper. What we will do is take handfuls of the paste, pat them into slabs between our palms, and lay them over the crumbs, working toward the middle and filling in gaps like a puzzle. It is not at all difficult:

6. Coat the top with the rest of the crumbled cookies, pressing them into the fruit mixture. Set it somewhere to dry out a little:

7. Cut into bars large enough to be satisfying, roll in powdered sugar, and wrap them or put them into individual bags to stay clean and fresh.

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Summer Cake for 13.

Welcome September, season of excess! We have so many rosy jars of glittering homemade jam that our cupboard suggests we might also stockpile Spam (and ammunition). Why the excess? Lust for sugar and beauty, of course, but also the last three times I was trying to leave the weekly laiki (farmer's market), cart and bags heavy, some guy had filled plastic sacks to bulging with the rest of his nectarines, plums, or peaches, maybe 5 kilos, for a euro, and it seems irresponsible to not get them. We're perpetually in some phase of eating them fresh, like chain smokers always pre- or post- cigarette, and each is tastier than the last. We keep making jam (more on urban canning soon- it's a delight), and there are also plenty for this cake.

When the girls were little, we spent summers in Chania (Crete), in a quirky shanty-like apartment a few steps from the sea. It had a fan and a small television we would watch late at night while eating chilled wrapped cakes (the kind given out as favors at Orthodox baptisms) in our underwear. The apartment had a gas burner, a small free-standing and very emotional oven, and an equally emotional refrigerator. I made up several recipes that would not tax the dear kitchen and could be made with only a pot, a pan, a small paring knife, and bare hands, which was all we had in the kitchen. We loved scaling back to this elemental lifestyle; rather than outfit the kitchen, we had this cake, tomatoes and myzythra and paximadi (the Cretan salad), rice pudding with cream, boiled baby zucchini with oil and lemon, Marcella Hazan's butter-tomato sauce (with fresh tomatoes) on pasta, and chocolate zucchini cake. It was a clean break from the elaborate way we go about things in our main house, a more monastic sumptuousness. If I make this cake in the big house now, the girls say "Oh! Summer cake!"

We just had another dozen people in, film students making a movie Charlene is directing, and I made this twice. (Some days I made them the other summer cake- chcoclate/zucchini.) This is rich with the taste of butter, tangy and luscious with fruit. 

The Cake:

300 g/ 2 1/2 C flour

300 g/ 1 1/2 C sugar

4 tsp. baking powder

1/2 tsp. salt

- mix with your hands, and then blend in with your fingertips:

125 g/ 1/2 C butter, until it looks crumbly and there are a few small pieces of butter throughout:

Add:

2 eggs

3 C fruit in small pieces- here, a mix of nectarines and plums

1/2 tsp. bitter almond essence* 

1 tsp vanilla (homemade here)

mix the vanilla and bitter almond in with the fruit and blend the fruit and the eggs in with your hands, gathering the dry ingredients from the bottom of the bowl and lifting them to the surface. As soon as no streaks of dry flour/sugar remain, put the batter into a *large pan- ours was 25 x 28 cm (11" x 12"), lined with baking paper if you like. Cover with:

3 or 4 tablespoons demarara sugar (coarse)

Bake at 170 C/ 350 F for quite a long time- 30 to 40 minutes- it is wet with fruit (yet the cake portion bakes up very light). Prick a mainly cake area with a toothpick- if it comes out clean the cake is ready.

The sugar makes a crisp crust with plenty of sparkle, shattering and giving way to a tender crumb and fat chunks of fruit. The almond essence tweaks the fruit tremendously- all the stone fruits take to it (as the butter takes to the salt). If you were using apples, cinnamon and nutmeg would be the classic choice. With pears, a little pear williams or a shot of whiskey. Cherries (frozen pitted sour cherries in winter), bitter almond again (ideal pairing). The cake is fragile and moist, even gooey on the bottom, and makes for inelegant pieces. No one will mind at all. It was not eaten so much as inhaled. The recipe was much asked for and I was very happy sharing it as nothing could be better suited to the novice cook and the student kitchen.

(It was gone so quickly that the second day I scaled it up by fifty percent- half again as much of everything, and made it in the largest pan that fits in our oven, 28 x 42 cm. It could also be scaled down- using one egg,150 g flour, etc. and a 20 x 20 pan.)

*In a makeshift kitchen, use whatever is at hand- a shot of liquor or liqueur, some lemon zest, cinnamon, or nothing at all.

Let us eat Cake!

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