Better Late than Never Panettone

Panettone, ready for the oven.

True, we are full into January now. But traditions are so pleasurably acquired through the years, and usually none are discarded along the way, and so it is possible, likely even, to have missed one or two rituals during the holiday season proper. No matter! Although a royal-icing decorated snowflake cut-out cookie may be December-specific, many classic recipes are simply winter, and festive- and panettone is one of these. Add to this that, in the richness of life, there will always be someone else you are grateful for- it is an endless affair.

Panettone hits all the right notes- lavish, festive, rich, fruit laden, and basically wraps itself. But- it is a bread. Therefore it is technically sensible, and never "too much" after a season of indulgence. It is also sturdy, shipable, and maybe even better stale than fresh. This particular panettone became a family tradition after my mother gave me a pre-season gift of a small, gimicky-looking Williams-Sonoma cookbook called "Gifts from the Kitchen." Well, I am not going to squirt some wine vinegar into a glass bottle and add a strip of orange zest and a sprig of rosemary and call it a gift. But the baked recipes are consistently excellent. The first time I made this a friend burned his fingers in his greed to dig it out of the extra large San Marzano tomato can it was baked in, then went on directly to burn his mouth with the steaming hot bread. It was hysterical and very gratifying.

This recipe has been gently scaled up, made metric, and has non-Sonoma temperature kitchen times. 

We'll need:

about 800 g/ 5, 51/2 C flour

100 g/ 1/2 C sugar

12 g. 1 1/2 T/ 1 1/2 envelopes dry yeast

about 8 ml/ scant 2 tsp. salt

180 g/ 3/4 C butter

140 g/5 oz/ about 1/3 C honey

360 ml/1 1/2 C milk

zest of 2 large oranges and one large lemon

3 eggs

5 ml/ 1 tsp. vanilla extract

Scant liter/ 4 C mixed dried fruits- cut into pieces if necessary. Here we used figs, sugared dried pineapple, and prunes.

This makes 2 large panettone forms, or three large tomato cans. 

This rich bread, which requires only minimal mixing and no real kneading, nonetheless needs time. This batch here took all day- I started around 10:30, and just made it to the courier (it was going to Athens) before the 8 o'clock pick up.All of the steps are fun, and hard to mess up. It just needs to sit a long time- much longer than the original recipe indicates.

Start by putting half of the flour and all of the rest of the dry ingredients (except the fruit) in the bowl of your mixer, or a large bowl if you will use a hand mixer or simply a wooden spoon (another advantage of this fine recipe- you really don't need a mixer at all):

Zest the citrus:

Measure out the butter and honey (so much easier to measure sticky honey with a scale):

Then heat the milk, butter, honey, and zests- this is the only part where you need to be careful- it should be heated to about 52 C/125 F- warm enough to dissolve and start activating the yeast, but not so hot as to kill it. No thermometer? Put your little finger in to the second joint, and count to 13 ("One one-thousand, two one-thousand...."). You should just be able to stand it.

When it's ready, the butter will have melted/
Stir it a little. It smells heavenly.

With the mixer on low, blend the warm liquid into the dry ingredients to make a thin batter. Beat a couple of minutes, add the eggs and vanilla, and beat again to combine well. then add as much of the rest of the flour as you need to make a stiff, sticky batter (really it's not so much a soft dough as it is a stiff batter). Put it into a large oiled bowl:

You can see the texture, the stickiness of the batter. Not a dough.

Now the batter can be covered and set aside to rise, and here we differ from the original instructions, which claim an hour and a quarter rise will see it doubled. In a winter house, even near the heater, the batter needs a few hours to rise. Imagine the air slogging through the weight of the eggs and butter and honey! It takes a while. In the meantime, we can cut up the fruit (scissors make this easy) and have it ready:

We punch the batter down- revealing the web of dough and air bubbles that have slowly developed. Now we blend in the fruit- there's a lot of fruit, and the dough is quite sticky- lightly oiled hands work best:

Now we divide it into the molds:

and then cover them with plastic wrap, which helps them create their own warm, moist environment to rise in. I also put them directly on the radiator this time, to hurry things along.

Let them rise to almost double- certainly about 2/3 more- and get the oven ready. Put the rack in the second lowest position, and turn the oven on to 170 c/350 f. In the meantime get the loaves ready too- cut a deep "X" in the tops with scissors, brush them with an egg wash, and dust them if you like with pearl sugar or crushed sugar cubes. When the oven is warm, transfer the loaves. They will gain some more height in baking:

Before...

and after. A little gain in height.

How to tell when they're done? As you see, they darken easily. Also, being so rich with egg and butter, the hollow tap sound will not be of help. Try testing like we test a cake- a wooden skewer (a toothpick is too short for our tall breads) inserted into the center should come out clean. Have a thermometer? The interior temperature will be 85 c/185 f.

These take a while to cool, but they're great hot, and great stale- toasted lightly, spread with a little butter for gloss and show. To wrap- classic is gathering them in a big sheet of cellophane and tying with a bow:

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Crab with Butter- Why Keep the Wow Just for the Weekend?

The National Gallery in London has three van Gogh paintings- 

the boots and the sunflowers 

(on postcards and dorm room walls everywhere), 

and this overlooked dreamy little sleeper. Beautiful crab.

Why indeed? If you think a tangle of bright red crabs on a brown paper-covered table signals a festive weekend lunch, try it on a Monday afternoon. We did just that- 

The paper table covering is littered with cheerful bits of shell
Even after a fat hour and a half, there are still bits and pieces aplenty to suck on
and crusts of bread to gnaw at absently. No one hastens from the table.

And I have to say it starts off the week very nicely, gives a sense of occasion to a day that characteristically lacks it. Crabs are plentiful right now where we live- they are large, and more importantly, very full. They are also very easy, at least from a practical perspective. Buying them is festive and eventful, provided you don't give it too much thought: at our market, the fishmonger holds them up one at a time so we can see them writhe and snap as they go into the sack. Such a vivid proof of freshness does have a price to your conscience, at least to David Foster Wallace's (and to mine but.... clearly less so). 

I addressed the awkward issue with the crab lady, who frankly did not see the problem. She did have a solution though- a while in the freezer will have them dazed and, one hopes, numb to suffering.

More drama than it looks here.

Into the freezer they go, just as they are in their sack. After an hour or so get out your largest pot and fill it two-thirds full (as to leave room for the crabs). Sea water is best, they say. And I have sea water just across from my house. But this is urban sea water, with urban stuff floating in it. Instead, I throw in a handful of salt, some peppercorns, a couple of bay leaves, and some tarragon sprigs (I just happened to have them- I wouldn't buy them specially)-

Covering the pot helps the water get to this vigorous boil quickly.

The partly frozen crabs will cool down the water fast. We want a full rolling boil when we start adding the crab-

This is the third crab- that's why the water is still again.

On the advice of the crab lady, I brought the water back to the boil and then from that point timed 15 minutes. Color is not enough of a clue- they turn from blue and gray to red almost instantly. 

The first time we made crab this season we made a nice spicy tomato spaghetti to have alongside, thinned with a little water the crab boiled in. No one bothered with it. The second time, we stirred some crushed garlic and minced parsley into melted butter. This was marvelous on the crab. The third time we realized we were out of butter and made a tarragon mayonnaise instead by mixing in minced tarragon, crushed garlic, black pepper, and a gentle scraping of orange zest. This was delicious, but overpowered the delicate flavor of the crab, so we had it instead as a savory dessert with little shreds of baguette while we were finishing our wine.

After a fifteen minute boil, they're ready.

Once the crab is ready, nothing to do but eat it. It is a primitive meal, a messy meal, full of dismembering and cracking and sucking. Covering the table in brown paper adds a relaxing note. Other nice things to have are crab crackers or nut crackers, a big bowl for discarded shells, lots of napkins, maybe a couple wedges of lemon (more useful for squeezing over your fingers than for over the crab), and of course that melted garlic butter.

We start with the claws- cracking the shell in a couple places first-then the legs, and then take the top shell off by grasping the the straight side- opposite the eyes. There are some lines of spongy white stuff under the shell that are not edible or nice- remove them from the body, then nearly the rest of it is sweet delicate meat. held together with whispers of shell that divide it into little segments. Nearly everything but the shell is food.

For four, I bought 12 crabs- in this case that was about 3 kilos, making them about 250g/half a pound a piece. Three of these each was a leisurely and satisfying meal, with nothing else at all save for the bread and the garlic butter. This would be terrific for a crowded table of friends- the only thing holding you back would be the number of large pots you have. But they take so long to eat you could be enjoying the first batch while the second is on.

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