Baking and nothingness

Yesterday, while looking for a biscuit recipe in Mark Bittman's  How to Cook Everything, I noticed the last recipe in the quick bread section, so short it almost seemed an after-thought: popovers. For some reason, my brain (and stomach) latched on to the idea of fresh popovers, hot from the oven, pulled apart to reveal an airy, soft center that I could slather with butter and jam.

The recipe was a total cinch. I had the batter ready in minutes and stood around, tapping my foot while the oven heated up.

While they baked, I brought the husband up to to speed, since he had never tried popovers before. "My mother used to make them on weekends," I said. "They almost have a pancake-like batter and taste, but you bake them in muffin tins and they poof up, like little balloons."

My most recent experience with the popover has been at The Rotunda Room, a ridiculous restaurant on the top floor of Neiman Marcus in Union Square. For some reason I've ended up at The Rotunda Room at least three times that I can remember, usually with work friends. Since it is a public place, there are usually other civilians like me there, with our wash-and-wear hair and off-the-rack clothes, but for the most part, The Rotunda Room is frequented by well-coiffed ladies that lunch, wearing chic dresses and strappy heels, their Gucci bags weighing heavily on skinny wrists.

The Rotunda Room's defining and admittedly fabulous feature is that it's mostly windows, so you can look out over the city while you eat your $25 Cobb salad. The restaurant's signature starters that are brought out soon after you're seated are a tiny teacup of consomme and a giant, crusty popover served with strawberry butter. The popovers really are lovely, I'll give them that. They are a deep, burnished brown, with an airy, empty center. It might seem overkill to draw the comparison between the popovers and the Rotunda ladies eating them, but I'm not in the practice of being subtle.

The joke might be on me, though, because it turns out popovers are not easy to make, even if they are filled with nothing. As soon as I pulled mine from the oven, I knew I had failed. There was no popping, and definitely no popping over. In fact, they looked like squat little muffins.

Here's a close-up view.

And here's what they looked like inside. See what's missing? Nothing is missing. Instead of a beautiful hollow center, the popovers were full of a dense spongey filling.

The lack of a solid center is critical to the popover; its internal nothingness is what gives it its essence. I feel like I'm on the brink of making a philosophical connection here, something existentialist, but I can't quite bring it home. Feel free to jump in, any of you Sartre scholars.

"This isn't how they're supposed to look," I said to the husband, as I served him two little stumps on a plate. "They're supposed to be light and airy but instead they're..."

"Flopovers?" he offered helpfully.

Pretty much. I have no idea what I did wrong. It's possible my oven temperature is off, although I've never found that to be a problem with other recipes. If anyone has any ideas about where my misstep could have been, I'd love to hear them. The popover gauntlet has been thrown down, and one day soon I must rise again to the challenge.

A new fall favorite: cranberry persimmon muffins

Last weekend, while rummaging around in the freezer, I discovered some cranberries. While I can't be sure, it's possible these cranberries are from last fall. Is that terrible? I'm very inexperienced with freezing things. I do understand that freezing does not mean something is preserved forever. But how long is too long?

I gave them a not very discriminating once-over and determined them perfectly fine. I had two Fuyu persimmons to use and was interested in baking them into something for breakfast. My last experiment with persimmons was a tangy chutney, served alongside a simple pork roast. This time I thought it would be fun to do something sweet. Cranberry persimmon muffins seemed like just the ticket.

I have a few basic muffin recipes I use, and one is the Barefoot Contessa's cranberry harvest muffins. I make them with cranberries, blueberries, apples, anything I have on hand. I leave out the nuts and dried fruit because I don't like too much junk in muffins and like so many of the Contessa's recipes, I reduce the sugar. That lady has a raging sweet tooth!

First I peeled the diced the persimmons and tossed them with the cranberries. Don't they look like little jewels?

 

The recipe is pretty straightforward--sift the dry stuff, mix in the wet. The only funny thing about the recipe is that you mix in the sugar at the end. This leads to a crispy crust on the muffin, which I like; it's almost like the sugar doesn't get entirely absorbed into the muffin but instead creates a little sugary shell.

The method proved to be a slight problem with this batch; I'm not sure if it's because of the persimmons or because I overzealously filled the muffin tins, but somehow the muffins kind of overflowed and the sugar got melty. Thank goodness for non-stick pans!

Once I pried them from the tin, I made them pose for a portrait.

I think the orange and fuchsia are just stunning. Although it's hard to rival the beauty of summer fruits and vegetables, I'm starting to think that autumn produce gives the heirloom tomato a run for its money. I've been knocked out by the pears, apples, and persimmons I've been getting recently, alongside dark green kale, blood red beets, and golden butternut squash.

Once they cooled for about one minute (did I mention I'm not patient?), we pulled off the papers and split them open. 

The muffins were spicy from the ginger and cinnamon, while cranberries and persimmons provided little bursts of tart and sweet. With a strong cup of coffee and the Sunday Times, it was a perfect start to a brisk fall day.

Where everyone gets their own sandwich

On Saturday, we had to get up early and take the other hungry dog to the vet. Luckily, it was just for something quick, so no one got upset. It did turn out, though, that she had dropped a little weight since she got sick a few weeks ago. The vet said it would be good if she gained a few pounds.

Anyone who has a labrador retriever knows that you spend most of your time trying to keep your dog from looking like a duffel bag on stilts. I'm quite convinced our sweet, hungry dog would eat until she popped if allowed. The fact that we could up her food intake was very exciting.

We informed Frances of the news in the car on the way to brunch. She beamed.

Since our vet is in the Mission, we decided to hit the Slow Club, which is just a hop and skip over in Potrero Hill.

There are restaurants where we go for birthdays and anniversaries, famous places with national reputations, like Delfina and Zuni. These are the restaurants we tell people visiting from other places that they must try.

Then there are the places where we take our friends from out of town. They double as both a place for dinner and a place for drinks, are casual, and require no reservations. If you have to wait, you simply nudge your way into the crowded little bar and order a round of cocktails to pass the time. These are places we go on Friday nights to shake off the week, or Saturday brunch to start the weekend, places we love not just for the food, but for the way they make us feel: welcome, comfortable, and reminded that we are locals. They are the restaurants I would miss the most if we moved away.

My list goes like this, although not in any particular order: Slow Club, The Front Porch, Emmy's Spaghetti Shack, Little Star, and Nopalito.

The dimly-lit Slow Club has a sleek, industrial feel, a full bar, great food, and friendly service. It's hip but not suffocatingly so, and the throngs of tattooed 20-somethings in skinny jeans are balanced by older couples enjoying a low-key dinner out, parents with small children, and people like us, youngish and kid-free, with a big gentle dog. Everyone goes to the Slow Club.

Slow Club's small, focused menu is devoted to seasonal ingredients and features the best burger in the city. It also boasts a semi-famous fried egg sandwich, which the husband orders without fail if we show up during daylight hours.

I managed to snap this photo before the husband assembled the sammie and dug in. This was my first attempt at photographing food at a restaurant and I got the distinct impression the husband was a little irritated. But it didn't stop me.

If it's possible to be obsessed with something you've never tried, that sums up how I feel about the fried egg sandwich. I don't care much for eggs, especially not fried eggs, but this sandwich looks insanely good to me. It's full of bright colors and served on grilled, crusty bread, with thick-cut bacon and a ripe tomato.

For brunch or lunch, I usually order a sandwich, this time turkey with avocado cream and bacon. The picture didn't turn out great, because it's tough to balance a camera, dog leash, and coffee cup, but I assure you it was quite delicious. And if you're wondering why I did not order the burger, it's because a burger at 10 a.m. would put me down for the count.

We also decided to order sides of toast and bacon for Frances. Although I'm no stranger to cooking for my dog, I've never actually ordered food for her at a restaurant. It seems like the kind of thing jerky people do in affluent cities. I guess I know what that makes me. But since we were under doctor's orders to beef her up, we decided to go for it. Plus, the day was crisp and beautiful and we were fueled up on lattes and french fries. It seemed unkind to deprive her of a little brunch of her own.

Frances seemed to know the bacon and toast belonged to her. Her eyes got shiny like marbles when the waiter brought them to the table.

"If he weren't already dead, my father would die knowing we ordered applewood smoked bacon and sourdough toast for a dog," I said to the husband.

He shrugged, tearing a bite-sized piece of bread off for Frances, who plucked it from his hand and chewed it delicately. "That's why you grow up and move away from your parents," he said, "so you can do things the way you like."

True enough. Part of becoming an adult, in addition to the drudgery of working and paying bills, is being able to make your own rules. I've always vastly preferred being an adult to being a child for the freedom that comes with the responsibility of being on your own. I guess our set of rules now includes occasionally taking the dog out for brunch and feeding her bacon on toast. This might seem ridiculous to many people, but in our little world all I hear is the satisfied crunch of everyone enjoying their own perfect sandwich.