I speak and write a lot about unbleached and unbromated flour, and a friend recently asked me what that meant and why it mattered so much to me.  My friend’s questions got me thinking that perhaps many people don’t know about the baking and health benefits of using unbromated flower vs. bleached or bromated flour. So I thought I would write a brief description of why I use only unbleached and  umbromated flour in everything I bake.

Unbleached, unbromated flour is the flour our grandmothers used in their kitchens. Pure, ground wheat, beautiful though not bright white.  My recipes are designed to accommodate for the traditional, wonderful characteristics of this kind of flour.  I am comfortable and happy to have my girls eat my baked goods, knowing that the flour retains the purity and nutritional value of the original grains.  I use King Arthur flour, and I am happy to support “America’s oldest flour company” (founded in 1790!) because they share my own values about health and nutrition.

Bleached flour is just what it sounds like. This kind of flour is whiter and has less gluten content because it is treated with a chlorine gas bath.  As if ingesting any chlorine at all with your toast isn’t bad enough, the bleach combine with the protein in the flower to produce alloxan, which is a thought to cause diabetes.  It is not something I want my children to be eating with their cookies and milk, let alone my customers.

Bromated flour has been treated with potassium bromate and it is associated with thyroid dysfunction.  Commercial bakeries use it to make a more elastic dough that can rise higher than unbromated flour - more volume for the same cost of ingredients.  There is a general belief that the potassium bromate gets baked out of the dough at high temperatures, but there is no conclusive evidence that this is the case all the time.

So there you have it. I choose to use the best, purest ingredients in the food I make, just like my grandmother and my mother did.  It only makes sense.

My entire extended family is coming for Thanksgiving this year.  So I'm cooking for about 20 people, which is why I'm smiling and my cheeks are so flushed!

I have had a request for my secret to a moist turkey, so I'm stepping out of the kitchen for a minute to post for you my Herb Butter and Gravy!  The herb butter provides moisture to the turkey and unbelievable flavor to the gravy.

Herb Butter (enough for a 12-lb turkey)

8 tablespoons (one stick) softened unsalted butter
1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1 tablespoon chopped shallot
1 teaspoon chopped garlic
1/4 cup chopped parsley
1 tablespoon chopped chives
1 tablespoon chopped sage
1 tablespoon chopped thyme
1 teaspoon chopped tarragon

Place all the ingredients for the herb butter in a food processor and blend. Transfer to a small pastry bag or bowl, and set aside.

Slide a small rubber spatula (or your hand) gently between the skin and the breast meat to separate them. Pipe half of the herb butter under the skin of both breasts from the cavity opening, spreading the butter evenly over the whole breast area with the fingertips. If you don't have a pastry bag, you can just take a spoonful and do the same.  Rub the remaining herb butter all over the outside of the bird.  Sprinkle kosher salt and crushed black pepper on outside of turkey.

In the roasting pan place the following:

1 onion, sliced
4 stalks celery, sliced
2 carrots, sliced
Coarse salt and freshly ground pepper
4 to 5 cups turkey stock (or low-sodium chicken stock)
1 cup dry white wine (sauvignon blanc works well)

When you turkey is finished, remove from roasting pan and tent loosely with foil.  Meanwhile, remove vegetables from pan (set them aside in a bowl) and pour meat juices into a pitcher and let sit until fat rises to top (you can also put this in fridge to speed up process).  Remove fat from juice.  Place vegetables back in roasting pan and sprinkle with 3 tbs flour and mix.  Turn heat to medium high and gradually add in either turkey stock made from giblets, or low-sodium chicken stock, whisking the mixture.  Let simmer for 5-10 minutes until gravy is  a rich brown color.  Strain contents of roasting pan through a fine sieve and adjust seasoning.  Keep warm for service.

Happy Thanksgiving to you and your family!

“Don’t eat anything your grandmother wouldn’t recognize as food.”

I’ve seen these words from Michael Pollan’s In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto in many places recently.  They resonate with me every time.  *Let me just warn you that I have my soapbox out, and I am about to stand on it.

One of the main reasons I became a chef (after years in banking) was because I wanted to know more about real food --where it comes from, how it grows and how best to prepare it.  What happens to it when you braise it, roast it, grill it?  What herbs and spices pair best with specific meats and fish?  For me, it has always been about the ingredients.  I have two young daughters, and it is incredibly important to me to see that they not only eat the best things for them today, but also that they learn good food habits to last them a lifetime.

I recently picked up a box of cookies in my grocery store.  My grandmother definitely would not have known what most of the ingredients were, let alone how to pronounce them.  Did you know that one of the ingredients in a bag of sweet shredded coconut is propylene glycol?   Yes, it is an organic substance, but it is also used as antifreeze and a solvent, not to mention its use in a product that helped disperse the oil from Deepwater Horizon, according to our friends on Wikipedia.  I just don’t want my girls ingesting the stuff.  Especially when I can make great macaroons with unsweetened coconut!

Known as "Schmoozane" to most of my friends, I originally started cooking for my family and friends (I love to entertain), but also for the health and well-being of my family.  And the more I did it, the more I loved it, and the more other people started asking me to teach them how to cook for their families.  I have hosted many wonderful cooking classes in people’s homes, and the feedback from them has been tremendous!  I take great care in selecting only the best quality ingredients that will go into my heirloom cookies.

Thank you, Nana, for giving me such an appreciation for food.  And thank you, Mr. Pollan for reminding me why I do what I do.

[caption id="attachment_471" align="aligncenter" width="190" caption="Grub Street Food Festival at Hester Street Fair"][/caption]

I debuted my cookies in New York at the Hester Street Fair this summer.  It is a wonderful artisan, flea, and food market with a great vibe and a steady crowd on the Lower East Side.  And they are home to the New York Magazine Grub Street Food Festival, one of the city's premier artisanal food events of the year.  Grub Street is bigger than ever his year, and my cookies and I will be there!

So I have been baking up a storm.  I bake in a night kitchen, when the commercial kitchen is available and my girls are tucked into bed.  All week long, I've been baking cookies and brownies, packaging them up, adhering the labels, and tying them up with a bow.  They are fresh, tasty, and very pretty, just like my girls!

So come out to the Grub Street Food Festival on Sunday!  There will be over 100 food vendors selling everything from tacos, meatballs and jerky to pies, cakes, and frozen pops.  I'll have packages of cookies, individual brownies, and lots of samples to taste:

• Old World Florentine Biscotti
• Anzac Biscuits
• County Galway Shortbread
• Hauty's Oatmeal Molasses Cookies
• Dark and Stormy Brownies

See  you at Grub Street!  Come hungry and bring a big market tote.  (Map)

I met Chrisy (“Hauty”) when I was 11 years old during a lazy, hot summer in 1977.  She was visiting her cousins who lived across the street from us, and her Aunt invited me over to play.  Over the course of an afternoon, our friendship was sealed – she would eventually move to my town and become my BFF for two glorious years!  Over long bike rides, we exchanged secrets, hopes, and dreams.  After that, my family moved back East and we lost touch.  Thanks to the wonders of technology, we recently found each other again on Facebook.  It has been amazing to reconnect and feel the years slip away.

On one of many afternoons at her house, I enjoyed chewy, rich oatmeal cookies that her mother made.  I liked them so much that I asked her mom for the recipe.  I was only 11 years old, but I knew I wanted to keep those cookies forever.  I have carried the recipe with me across continents, countless apartments in NYC, through my studies at the French Culinary Institute, and into the suburbs with children of my own.

Now you can enjoy these chewy cookies with me!  Order online or come see me at my weekend market events!  I will be at the New York Times' Grub Street Food Festival at the Hester Street Fair on Sunday, October 23rd.

[caption id="attachment_443" align="aligncenter" width="500" caption="Anzac Biscuits"][/caption]

I am thrilled to let you know that I have shifted the focus of Comfort Food Kitchen!  We will continue to offer private cooking classes, cooking parties and catering services, and now we are adding products to the mix!

One of my earliest and most vivid childhood memories is of eating tiny chocolate chip cookies my neighbor used to make especially for me.  She would keep them in a coffee tin, and I would go over to her house, knock on her door, and receive a tin full of delicious, chewy, chocolaty cookies.  I wonder if she has any idea how wonderful that was for me.

This memory is the basis of our new product line of cookies made from heirloom recipes.  These are recipes that are decades, if not more than a century old.  They have been passed on from generation to generation within families, communities, or even nations.  The first two cookies in the line are the Florentine Biscotti, made from a recipe my grandmother received from her Florentine neighbor in 1939.  The cookie had been in her neighbor’s family for at least 100 years, and has been made for mine each Christmas since then.  The Anzac Biscuit was developed during World War I by women in Australia and New Zealand to send to their men fighting in the war – I was introduced to these by a dear friend’s father who recently passed.  I’ll be telling you more about these and other cookies here on the blog.

I invite you to come with me on this exciting journey of baking, researching, and paying tribute to some of the most unlikely sources for inspiration and history in the form of a delicious cookie.

[caption id="attachment_434" align="aligncenter" width="500" caption="Chilled Puree of Corn Soup"][/caption]

The dog daze of summer are officially here.  We've had temperatures well into the 90's for several days and I can't bear to eat anything hot.  This chilled soup is the perfect cure.  Its light, refreshing and completely  vegetarian (can be vegan too -- just forgo the skim milk and replace the butter with olive oil).  Garnish with some chopped chives and serve with a big salad. Frozen corn can be substituted if good quality fresh corn is not available.  This also taste great hot.

Chilled Puree of Corn Soup (serves 4)

1 medium onion chpped

2 tbs butter (or olive oil)

6 ears of corn

2+ cups vegetable stock (I make my own, but store bought is okay)

1 cup skim milk (or if vegan, 1 extra cup of vegetable stock)

1 pinch of nutmeg

2 tsp salt and 1 tsp white pepper or to taste (if you use black pepper, you may have little speckles in the soup)

optional garnish:  fresh chives, minced

If frozen corn is being used, let it thaw first.  Cook the chopped onion in butter or olive oil in a pot on medium low heat until tender and translucent (do not brown).  Meanwhile remove the corn kernels from the cob into a bowl by stroking the cobs with a medium size sharp knife.  Add the corn (either fresh or frozen) and the cobs to the onions, and stir for 2 minutes.  Then add stock and cook gently for about 20 minutes.  Add the nutmeg and milk, salt and pepper and cook for another 5 minutes.  If you are not using milk,  just use all stock.  Remove the cobs, puree the soup mixture in batches using a blender and strain through a fine sieve (or chinois).  Adjust seasoning and add more stock or skim milk if the soup is too thick.  Chill in a bowl over larger bowl of ice,  and before serving check the seasoning again (cold foods often require more seasoning).  Garnish with chopped chives.

[caption id="attachment_424" align="aligncenter" width="500" caption="Old-World Florentine Biscotti"][/caption]

I have been quietly developing a line of artisanal cookies destined for sale at select retail establishments in and around NYC.  My first creation is an Old-World Florentine Biscotti. These delicious crunchy cookies are infused with orange zest, cinnamon and cloves and are completely addictive. Of course they are hand crafted in small batches using only the highest quality organic and fair trade ingredients.  I am thrilled to announce that a wonderful shop in East Hampton, NY has ordered a shipment and I will be doing a product demonstration there this Saturday, July 16th from 11-3pm.  The shop is called Hampton Market Place, 36 Race Lane, East Hampton NY 11937.  I can use as much support as I can get, so PLEASE tell all your friends  -- but more importantly come in and BUY a bag or two!  Stay tuned for more updates.

[caption id="attachment_425" align="aligncenter" width="500" caption="Old-World Florentine Biscotti"][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_417" align="aligncenter" width="500" caption="Provencal Ratatouille"][/caption]

Summer is in full swing at farmers markets all around us!   I have been busy leading cooking demonstrations and/or selling fresh and healthy meals at the Montclair, Summit and Chester markets.  One of my favorite dishes using all kinds of veggies is Ratatouille, a french vegetable ragout.   Its savory, rich flavors and interesting mix of textures makes it the perfect accompaniment for grilled, fish, chicken or porkchops.  This is the traditional recipe, but you could experiment with other vegetables.  It is equally delicious over pasta, in an omelette, or all by itself with some crusty bread.  I like to sprinkle some good mozzarella on top and pop it under the broiler for a few minutes.  Need I say more?

Ratatouille  (Serves 6)

1 Eggplant, cubed

2 zucchini, cubed

2 summer squash, cubed

1 green pepper, cut into small squares

1 red pepper, cut into small squares

2 medium onion, sliced thinly

½ lb mushrooms, sliced

4 cloves garlic

2 tbs herbes de provence or 1 tbs thyme, 1 tbs oregano

bunch fresh basil, torn into small pieces

salt and pepper to taste

4 large ripe tomatoes, peeled, cored and seeded or 1 28-ounce can crushed tomatoes

Optional Garnish:  fresh mozarella cheese

Wash and prepare vegetables as noted above.  Season each vegetable with salt and pepper and then sautee separately until slightly carmelized (including garlic and onions)and then place in large dutch oven.  Add crushed tomato and herbs and simmer on low heat for 30 minutes.  Garnish with mozarella and place under broiler or in hot oven for till melted.