Arnhemse Meisjes

Let’s celebrate two years of A Serious Bunburyist with a biscuit. Last year I featured a recipe for Cream of Celery Soup (here) from Simon Hopkinson’s Second Helpings of Roast Chicken [2001]. Hopkinson’s book contains an eclectic collection of recipes that he amassed over the years. One of these recipes is for Arnhem Biscuits or Arnhemse Meisjes from Roald Dahl’s Memories with Food at Gipsy House [1991] (republished in 1996 and 2012 as the Roald Dahl’s Cookbook). Hopkinson describes Arnhemse Meisjes as “quite wonderful”. Dahl waxed slightly more lyrical about the Dutch cookies: “They were simply marvelous. I cannot quite tell you why, but everything about them, the crispness, the flavour, the way they melted away down your throat made it so you couldn’t stop eating them.”

Are Arnhemse Meisjes the best biscuits in the world? Dahl thought so. Coming from the author that penned some of the most glorious and tantalizing descriptions of food in all of children’s literature, this is high praise indeed. How did the recipe fall into Dahl’s hands? He writes that after tasting the biscuit at a book signing in the Dutch city of Arnhem, he requested and received the recipe from Albert Hagdorn, the baker that developed the cookie. Happily, Dahl decided to include Arnhemse Meisjes in his cookbook. The recipe makes about 35-40 biscuits. The asides are Dahl’s.

• 190 gr plain flour
• 100 gr milk
• 4 drops lemon juice (more later if necessary)
• 5 gr fresh yeast
• 105 gr unsalted butter (divided equally into 5 pieces of 21 gr each)
• a pinch of salt, only if using unsalted butter
• rock sugar is used instead of a floured surface (I used sugar cubes that I lightly crush with a rolling pin)

1. Mix together the flour, milk, lemon juice and yeast, adding a pinch of salt if necessary.

2. With an electric beater on high speed, beat 1 piece of butter into the mixture for about 2 minutes. Continue in the same way for the remaining butter pieces.

3. Wrap the dough in cling film and refrigerate overnight so that it is easier to handle.

4. Preheat the oven to 275°F / 140°C / Gas Mark 1 and line your baking sheet with non-stick baking paper.

5. Dredge your rolling surface with the crushed sugar cubes (rock sugar), then roll out the dough over the sugar, sprinkling it with some more crushed sugar and continue to roll until very thin.

6. With a biscuit cutter, cut out the dough. (Ovals are the traditional shape.)

7. Place the biscuits on the lined baking sheets and sprinkle with more crushed sugar.

8. Bake for 30-45 minutes or until crisp and lightly golden.

Some notes and thoughts.  A standing mixer equipped with a paddle takes the work out of making this dough, which resembles a smooth taffy.  Rolling this dough isn’t too tricky if you work quickly. I aim for a finished thickness of about 1/8 of an inch. This produces an extremely crisp yet flakey cookie.

And while we are on the subject of crispness, Hopkinson provides a helpful bit of advice: “I noticed that when the biscuits had turned ‘slightly golden’ they were not exactly ‘crisp’. But then this is the case with all biscuits: they do not fully crisp up until left to cool. I only point this out so that you do not feel tempted to cook further (to a darker colour, which ruins them) just so that they turn crisp while still in the oven.”

Roald Dahl and Simon Hopkinson have authored similar yet remarkably individualist cookbooks. Their books present a diverse collection of favorite and meaningful recipes inspired by each author’s palate and memories. As I look back on the recipes featured during this site’s short two year run, it seems to me that A Serious Bunburyist—more by happenstance than design—isn’t too far off the Dahl and Hopkinson model: a varied and idiosyncratic selection of recipes that that hold a strong personal allure. So until my dear, invalid friend Bunbury explodes, more of the same to come.

Minestra di Patate e Finocchio

The Little Bookroom recently published the second in what I hope is a long series of Italian cookbooks containing recipes from the kitchen of the American Academy in Rome (AAR). I wrote about the series’ first book Biscotti [2010] by Mona Talbott and Mirella Misenti (here). The second book entitled Zuppe [2012] by Mona Talbott equals the outstanding Biscotti. Featuring seasonal soups served at the AAR, Zuppe educates and inspires; it is a fantastic cookbook.

Talbott organizes Zuppe’s fifty recipes into sections that focus on the produce and ingredients available in Rome during the four seasons. The first section presents recipes for autumn, which is when the new AAR Fellows begin their studies. One particular recipe in this chapter exemplifies what makes Italian cooking and Talbott’s Zuppe so exciting: the straightforward use of seasonal ingredients. The recipe for Minestra di Patate e Finocchio (Potato and Fennel Soup) couldn’t be simpler: sweat onions and fennel in olive oil; add potatoes and stock; season and simmer. The resulting soup tastes clean, comforting and delicious.

Most of Zuppe’s recipes contain only a handful of ingredients. Simple dishes often need high-quality ingredients to achieve the best results. The AAR receives outstanding local produce from Giovanni Bernabei, an organic farmer located just south of Rome.  (Signore Bernabei’s portrait in the AAR’s kitchen speaks to his role in the Academy’s Rome Sustainable Food Project.) Although a few ingredients in Zuppe might prove a challenge to source (e.g., dried cicerchie or grass peas), Talbott provides easily obtainable alternatives (in the case of cicerchie, use dried chickpeas). Otherwise, creating these Roman-inspired soups in the US shouldn’t pose a problem, especially if you have access to a local farmer’s market or even a good grocer.

To celebrate Zuppe’s arrival, here’s the complete recipe for Talbott’s Minestra di Patate e Finocchio. The soup serves 4 to 6.

• 1.5 kg / 3 lb potatoes
• 1 large yellow onion
• 2 large cloves garlic
• 2 large bulbs fennel
• 90 ml / 3 fl oz olive oil
• 3 litres / 3 quarts chicken stock
• Salt
• Grana Padano
• Black Pepper
• Extra virgin olive oil

Peel and cut the potatoes into 1-cm / ¾-inch cubes and store in cold water until you are ready to use them.

Cut the onion into small dice. Peel, de-germ and roughly chop the garlic. Remove fronds from the fennel and set aside. Chop each fennel bulb into four wedges, then cut each wedge into 5-mm / ¼-inch slices.

Sweat the onion, garlic and fennel in 90-ml / 3 fl oz of olive oil in a 6-litre / 6-quart stockpot over a medium heat until tender. Add the potatoes and chicken stock; season with a generous pinch of salt. Bring the soup to a boil and then reduce to a simmer for about 20-25 minutes or until the potatoes are tender and beginning to collapse.

Chop a large handful of the fennel fronds you have saved and add to the finished soup. Re-season with salt if necessary.

Serve with extra virgin olive oil, grated Grana Padano and freshly ground black pepper.

A few notes and comments. In Mediterranean climates, fennel’s season runs from spring to fall. When buying fennel, look for a firm, heavy bulb. Trim the base and cut off the top where the stalks enter the blub. Generally you will need to remove a layer or two from the bulb before sectioning and slicing the fennel.

Grana Padano often substitutes for Parmigiano-Reggiano as a cheese grated over soups and pastas. Compared to the more expensive Parmigiano-Reggiano, it tastes mild and delicate. Grana Padano may be difficult to find in parts of the US unless you have access to good cheese shop. (Bay Area readers: Berkeley Bowl West carries it.) If you cannot find Grana Padano, don’t hesitate to use Parmigiano-Reggiano.

If you have an interest in Italian food, I highly recommend Zuppe. Here’s hoping that Mona Talbott’s next installment for The Little Bookroom covers pasta!

Orecchiette

This post explores making fresh orecchiette, a classic pasta with roots in Central and Southern Italy. Although many supermarkets stock the dry version, if you want to try fresh orecchiette chances are you will need to make it yourself; it rarely appears on restaurant menus. Fair warning: learning how to create this shape takes a little time and practice, but pays worthwhile dividends. Fresh orecchiette has a wonderful chewy texture that the dry form lacks. All you need to make it at home are semolina flour, water and a simple dinner knife.

Orecchiette means “little ears” in Italian, but like most Italian pasta, the shape goes by different names depending upon where it is made: it is called recchietelle in Campania, Molise and Basilicata; orecchie di prete in Abruzzo; and orecchini in Lazio. Even within Puglia—the region most closely associated with the shape—orecchiette goes by a variety of names. My favorite: chagghjubbi from the port city of Bari.

Orecchiette’s simple form suggests that it is easier to make than it is. In Flavors of Puglia [2006] Nancy Harmon Jenkins writes that orecchiette is “about the trickiest pasta shape I’ve ever made.” In The Mozza Cookbook [2011] Nancy Silverton introduces orecchiette as follows: “Although this shape doesn’t look as intricate as some of the others, it is one of the most difficult to shape, which is probably why so few restaurants make their own.”

Discouraged? Don’t be. In his excellent new Bocca Cookbook [2011], Jacob Kenedy writes that orecchiette “take some practice before they come right, but after are easy as pie.” Kenedy offers both a recipe for a traditional semolina dough and a lucid description on how to create this tricky little shape. His recipe serves 4 as a starter or 2 as a main.

• 200g semola di grano duro (semolina)
• 80 ml water

Make a semolina pasta dough with the semola di grano duro and 80 ml water – it should be firm but malleable. Knead well, let rest for at least 20 minutes, then make the orecchiette.

Roll the dough into a sausage (it may help to do this in a few batches) 1cm wide. Cut across to make 1cm dumplings. Take a cheap table knife (like the kind they used to have at school – basic, rounded and bluntly serrated) and make the orecchiette one by one. With the flat of the knife at 30° to the table, use a smearing action (away from your body) to press the dumplings out, using the rounded end of the blade. It should stretch, flatten and curl around the blade, becoming thinner in the middle than at the edges, one of which will be slightly stuck to the blade of the knife. Put your index finger gently against the center of the little curl of pasta, hold the loose edge gently with your thumb, and pull the knife away, so as to invert the pasta over your fingertip and simultaneously detach it from the blade. It should now look like a little ear, with a slightly thick rim (the lobe), and a rough texture on the thinner centre, from where the knife pulled against the dough…Leave them spread out on a wooden or floured surface until you’re ready to cook—they’re best left for half an hour or so, to become a little leathery.

Kenedy’s instructions become particularly clear when watching someone make fresh orecchiette. (Still photographs help, but they don’t do the process justice.) If you don’t have access to a real, live orecchiette maker, I’ve found a particularly helpful YouTube video that documents a similar technique. Search YouTube for “rita mimmo orecchiette”.

A few notes on Kenedy’s recipe. I add slightly more water (90 to 100 ml instead of 80 ml) to make a workable dough. Although Kenedy recommends “smearing” away from the body, I think pulling towards oneself is easier. Try both ways and see which feels more comfortable to you. Cook the orecchiette in boiling salt water for approximately 4 to 5 minutes.

In Bocca Kenedy presents a classic pairing of orecchiette with cime di rapa, a turnip green commonly called broccoli rabe here in the states. Another time-tested combination worth trying: orecchiette and sausage.