Scouting: Food52 Holiday Market

Erin McDowell's Dessert Creations | Image: Laura Messersmith

When I’m looking for guidance on a recipe or cooking technique (and Ina isn’t available to help with her words of wisdom) I check out Food52 to see what their experts have to say. So I was excited when I found out that the site was organizing a holiday pop-up shop downtown complete with demos and classes to help home cooks step up their game for holiday entertaining.

As soon as I saw the list of offerings I knew immediately that I wanted to sign up for a session called “Make Your Desserts Beautiful” with Erin McDowell a food stylist and test kitchen manager for Food52.

Erin in Action | Image: Laura Messersmith

Check out this description – doesn’t it sound amazing?

"Fancy cakes and pies aren't just for bakeries. Erin McDowell will teach you foolproof ways to make intricate pie crusts and decorative cakes. She'll demo tips for braided pie edges, the perfect crimped crust, the classic swirled cake icing, and more."

Classic Crimped Edge Pie Crust | Image: Laura Messersmith

Classic Lattice Pie Crust | Image: Laura Messersmith

I went full-on honor society, showing up early, sitting right in front, asking 1,000 questions, and Erin could not have been lovelier or more approachable. She showed us her tricks of the trade for frosting and decorating cakes beautifully, proper technique for rolling out pie dough, and how to do fancy things like cut out top crust. She also introduced us to a brilliant creation of her own devising called the “fattis” aka a fat lattice crust (photo evidence below.)

The Fattis (aka Fat Lattice) Pie Crust | Image: Laura Messersmith

I probably should have taken better notes, but thankfully Erin has several pie specific how-to articles on Food52 in case I need to jog my memory. I left feeling so jazzed about making pie and finally conquering a food group that’s always intimidated me. I’d sign up for this class again in a heartbeat, so while I wait for Erin to open up her own pastry school it’s going to be pie central around these parts while I practice these new skills. Step 1: try the All Buttah Pie Dough. Consider yourself warned.

Bastille Day Cherry Clafoutis

Bastille Day Cherry Clafoutis  | Image: Laura Messersmith

So many of the recipes I love to make are inspired by the flavors and traditions of France, so in honor of Bastille Day I wanted to make a classic French dish to celebrate a country that has given so much to the culinary world. As I scrolled through the Google results looking for inspiration I came across a dessert called clafoutis.

The descriptions and photos I studied made it sound like a recipe straddling the borders of pancake, soufflé, and custard (distinctions that seem to depend on cooking time, flour content, and batter ‘fluffiness.’)

Intrigued and psyched to find a dish that didn’t involve a ton of actual cooking on this humid quatorze julliet (I do want to make bouillabaisse some day, just not on in the middle of summer!) I decided to attempt it. I came across many other recipes that used other fruits and contained variations on the batter proportions, but decided to go with Saveur’s recipe, which uses the traditional black cherries. 

Bastille Day Cherry Clafoutis  | Image: Laura Messersmith

Lessons Learned:

The biggest challenge I encountered was regulating my oven temperature. Remember all the trouble I had with the Honey Vanilla Pound Cake a few weeks ago? Well, I think I found the culprit: wonky calibration. I discovered when I bought an oven thermometer that my oven runs about 20 degrees cooler than the marked temperature. Turning it up 20 degrees doesn’t fix the issue because then it over compensates. As a result, I nearly burned my Bastille Day Cherry Clafoutis! Thank goodness I checked on it after about 10 minutes. I think I salvaged it by covering the top with foil and reducing the temperature for the remaining cooking time….

Small Kitchen Friendly?

Yes, absolutely! I used a 9” cast iron skillet (heavily buttered with a pastry brush), but any baking dish about the same diameter should work. All the mixing takes place in a blender, so all I needed was a small bowl for the pitted cherries, measuring cups and spoons.

A note on pitting cherries: Even though traditionally the cherries are just de-stemmed and added whole; I’m just not interested in dodging pits when I’m trying to enjoy a delicious dessert so I did pit them for this recipe. However, I don’t own an olive/cherry pitter… Food52 to the rescue with this DIY kitchen hack using a beer bottle and a chopstick. I tried it and it really works!

The Verdict

Black cherries are one of my favorite fruits and are definitely the star of this Cherry Clafoutis. The batter surrounding them is fairly mild even with the strong doses of liqueur and vanilla, a little more salt (I started with 1/8 teaspoon but I think ¼ or even ½ might be better) would help enhance the flavor. I like the lightness bread pudding-esque texture, but next time I’d like to try a variation that uses even less flour for a more custard-y result.

Scouting: Plonk

Plonk Wine Club | Image: Laura Messersmith

Does this scenario sound familiar? It’s Friday night you’re cooking a great meal to kick off the weekend and some friends are on the way over. You’ve already picked up the ingredients for dinner, but you don’t have any wine in the house. You have two choices – grab something off the grocery store shelf (assuming you live in a state where this is legal) or make a second stop at the wine shop and try to make sense of the labels hoping you’ll pick something that pairs well with your menu. Neither option seems especially appealing, and here in New York carrying one more thing is never something I'm interested in, but that’s what I have to do nine times out of ten.

So, you can imagine how psyched I was when Mike told me he signed us up for Plonk Wine Club. It's similar to other subscription-based businesses: you choose a level, package, and length of commitment. In our case we like both red and white wine, so we’re in the Mixed Wine Club and each month Plonk sends us four bottles selected from wineries around the world.

The term “plonk” (slang for cheap wine) strikes me as ironic given the quality of the wine we've received. So far we’ve tried two bottles from March’s shipment and have been really impressed with founder and resident wine expert Etty Lewensztain’s choices.

Plonk’s specialty is introducing members to wines made from lesser-known grapes and sourced from a variety of regions. Our first shipment had bottles from Sicily (Italy), Regnie (France), Santa Ynez Valley (California), and Macedonia (Greece). I need all the help I can get and since these are all 100% new to me I love that the shipment also includes detailed tasting notes, recipes from Food52, and suggested food parings to help put together successful combinations.

If you’re in the same boat and want to expand your wine knowledge and discover some great new grapes I’d definitely check out Plonk. Our plan is to build up a reserve of bottles that are great quality, but not so expensive that we feel like we have to save them for red letter day (ie. $25 or less). We’d like to keep a few in reserve for those spontaneous Friday night dinners, but at the rate we’re going that may not happen! Could be worse, right? Happy Friday!

Plonk Wine Club | Image: Laura Messersmith