The New Elegant But Easy Cookbook

Read an Excerpt

IntroductionIn 1995 I was on a countrywide tour with my new cookbook, Eating Well Is the Best Revenge. Often, while I was autographing the new book, copies of Elegant but Easy, dog-eared, food-stained, and occasionally in such bad shape that the pages were held together with a rubber band, would be handed to me to be autographed, too.

The conversation with the owner generally ran something like this:

Book owner: I just love your Elegant but Easy. I cook from it all the time.

Me: Do you still use it?

B.O.: (sheepishly) Well...(and then brightening) I make some things but I've changed them a lot. We don't eat the way we used to.

My coauthor Lois Levine and I have wanted to revise Elegant but Easy for at least fifteen years, but it wasn't until Elegant but Easy's publisher, Macmillan, was purchased by the publisher of my last three books, Simon & Schuster, that a revision became possible.

Lois and I cook so differently from the way we cooked when Elegant but Easy was originally published in 1960 that we often laugh nervously when someone mentions a recipe that contains mushroom soup mix or refrigerator biscuits or canned condensed tomato soup. In hindsight we think we should have known that these products of technological progress were not making food taste better, but, like almost everyone else, we were conned into believing that these timesavers would notcompromise the taste or integrity of a dish and would give us more free time. Free time to do what? Work harder and longer hours at other jobs.

I have long since given up convenience foods, having found better-tasting ways to cook quickly while also controlling what goes into my food. But there's no point in making fun of what we did almost forty years ago. In Stand Facing the Stove Stand Facing the Stove (Henry Holt and Company, 1996), the delightful biography of Irma Rombauer and Marion Becker, the mother and daughter who produced Joy of Cooking (my bible for years), Anne Mendelson writes: "It's ridiculous to be uppity about condensed milk, cherry Jell-O, canned vegetables, thick white sauce, processed cheese, condensed tomato soup, canned fruit cocktail, or spaghetti cooked to the consistency of baby cereal.

"Plastering retrospective snobberies over such foods because they are not chic today is purely silly. The fact is that all cultures form their own accommodation with the resources that their agriculture and technology make available to them. The attitude that some of our grandmothers or great-grandmothers held toward the products of American know-how precisely parallel the attitudes of modern gourmetdom toward 'boutique' olive oils or 'artisanal' cheeses."

Rereading an article I wrote for the New York Times in 1985 and reprinted with comments from readers in The Best of De Gustibus (Simon & Schuster, 1988), I was reminded why I should know better than to make fun of my old recipes.

Ellen Brown and Ann Brody, both food consultants, invited me to a black tie "Déjà Vu" dinner in Washington. They thought it would be interesting to see how people would react to a meal based on recipes from the 1950s and '60s.

I reported on the event in the New York Times: "While the fifty guests enjoyed much of the food, the tomato aspic was an unmitigated failure. 'It was universally decided,' Brown said, 'that our palates had progressed past the point at which we would tolerate tomato aspic.' Which probably explains why it has been at least twenty years since I made my version of tomato aspic, which contained raspberry gelatin as well as horseradish."

After I got through poking fun, the mail began to arrive and I stopped laughing. "Help," wrote a reader from Westchester County, New York. "I did not realize that recipes and food are dated. Elegant but Easy happens to be one of my favorite cookbooks. What should I replace it with so that my cooking can be 'now'?

"Your column in today's Times was really depressing. Are there any recipes in your book that can still be used without appearing gauche? Just three or four weeks ago I made Sweet and Sour Meatballs and all the guests thought they were wonderful. Does this mean we are all out of touch?

"All kidding aside, is there another cookbook that tells you where to stop when preparing a recipe in advance? I have used Elegant but Easy and Freeze with Ease for at least seventeen years; both books have been reliable; now I feel self-conscious when selecting a recipe."

Worse still was a note from an equally upset Connecticut reader: "I consider it needlessly unkind to ridicule the food preferences of other times, places, or people. Some of us like tomato aspic, though I never get to serve it because my family decided it was unpalatable (icky) in the 1940s, considerably ahead of the guests at the Déjà Vu party."

This is not the way for a cookbook author to get people to buy her books. For all the outdated recipes and ingredients in the original Elegant but Easy, including the aspic, there are still some dishes I never stopped making -- Toasted Mushroom Rolls, Sherley's Parmesan Puffs, Frozen Grand Marnier Soufflé, Lemon Angel Trifle, and, of course, the Fruit Torte, which is now called Original Plum Torte and is the most requested recipe I have ever published in the Times. It was one of Lois's contributions to the book, and every fall the letters and calls come in asking me to reprint it because the one from the previous year has been lost.

There are about fifty recipes from the first edition in the new one. So why not start anew? Because the concept behind Elegant but Easy is as good today as it was in 1960: recipes that can be prepared in advance so that the cook can enjoy her (there were hardly any "his" then) party instead of slaving over the stove. The idea of stirring a risotto while everyone else is gossiping in the living room is (still) not my idea of fun.

While a few cookbooks today do suggest how much of a recipe can be prepared in advance, most don't, usually because the dish cannot be prepared ahead of time and maintain its texture and flavor. Much current cooking is à la minute, which is great for restaurants where the chef's staff preps it and cooks it and you eat it. Right away. That kind of cooking does not translate well to the home unless you have a kitchen staff, and if you do, you don't need this cookbook. The result is that fewer and fewer people give dinner parties or parties of any kind at which they serve their own food.

Fortunately there are still some who would really like to try, a fact that was brought home to me in December 1996, when I wrote a piece for the New York Times about giving a dinner party and spreading the work over a two-week period. It provided a game plan so that the cook could include strategies to get the food on the table without a meltdown of either the cook or the food. In a recent nationwide survey, 26 percent of Americans said the hardest part of entertaining is preparation, like cooking.

The menu for the article came from the new version of Elegant but Easy. What surprised me was the response from readers: the article was being clipped from Washington, D.C., to Los Angeles because the recipes and the game plan had put entertaining at home within the reach of anyone who knows how to toast a cheese sandwich.

The Easy part of the original book title still holds. As in the original Elegant but Easy, there is a snowflake beside each recipe that can be frozen and a refrigerator sign with a number indicating how many days ahead a dish can be made and refrigerated: 2 for two days.

Elegant? As Americans have become more sophisticated about food, it's unlikely that many think of black bean chili or chicken cacciatore as elegant, and while there are plenty of dishes that can be served at today's version of a formal dinner party, there are even more that are informal. This is a cookbook for those who still want to entertain, at least once in a while, with as little stress as possible, whether it's two for a Sunday night supper, company invited only that morning, or something more impressive like a sit-down dinner for twelve. In addition, many of the recipes in the book, which came from my "Plain and Simple" column in the New York Times, are so quick and so easy they would be perfect for a family supper.

Despite my reputation for featuring low-fat food with moderate calories, The New Elegant but Easy is about entertaining, not about day-in and day-out healthful eating. I don't think entertaining is the time to watch every fat gram and calorie. If you do that the rest of the week, some splurges are not only perfectly acceptable but absolutely necessary.

The keynotes here are taste and ease of preparation. Wherever less fat has no impact on the taste of the dish, I've cut back and suggested lower-fat alternatives such as light sour cream and nonfat yogurt. But there is plenty of heavy cream, butter, and cheese, even though the idea that I use them may come as a shock to those who think I never stray from the low-fat path.

m.b

From Hot Hors d'Oeuvres

Sherley's Parmesan Puff

Sherley Koteen is my oldest friend in Washington and she has contributed recipes to almost every book I ever wrote.

"They disappear like soap bubbles" is what we said about these savory morsels in the original book, and the statement still holds. This time we have used Parmigiano-Reggiano instead of that horrible salty dry grated excuse for the real thing we had to use years ago.

If your cookie cutter is smaller than ½ inches, use it and figure you will just get more!

1 cup finely grated Parmigiano-Reggiano

2/3 cup regular or light mayonnaise

2 tablespoons minced onion

40 white bread rounds about ½ inches in diameter, cut from 20 slices of bread (2 loaves good firm white bread)

•  Mix the cheese, mayonnaise, and onion together and spread generously over each bread round. Refrigerate if desired.
• To serve, preheat the broiler and broil the puffs about 4 inches from the heat source for 1 to 2 minutes, until the tops bubble and brown. Watch carefully: they burn quickly.

yield: forty 1 ½-inch rounds

From Chicken

Chicken Breast Stuffed With Goat Cheese

A perfect party dish. Don't worry if some of the filling leaks; it will simply thicken and flavor the sauce.

2 large cloves garlic

6 ounces soft goat cheese, regular or reduced fat, cut into chunks

4 teaspoons minced fresh rosemary or 2 tablespoons minced fresh oregano

2 tablespoons lemon juice

4 large whole skinless, boneless chicken breasts, halved Salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste

2 tablespoons olive oil

½ cup low-sodium chicken stock or broth

½ cup dry white wine

•  With the food processor running, put the garlic through the feed tube and mince. Add the goat cheese, rosemary or oregano, and lemon juice and process to a paste.
•  Between two sheets of wax paper, pound the chicken breast halves to about J-inch thickness. Divide the cheese mixture into 8 portions and place a portion on one side of each chicken breast half, leaving a margin around the edge. Fold the uncovered half of the breast over the cheese mixture and press the edges together to seal. Freeze, if desired, or refrigerate.
•  To serve: If the breasts are frozen, let them defrost. Season them with salt and pepper and sauté in hot oil. After they have been browned, add the stock and wine to the pan; reduce the heat and simmer the breasts for about 10 minutes, turning once or twice, until they are no longer pink inside. Serve with the sauce left in the pan. (If the sauce seems too thin, remove the chicken and boil the sauce until it thickens slightly.)

yield: 4 to 6 serving

From Vegetarian Dishes

Mediterranean Couscous Salad

Couscous, both regular and whole wheat, is available in most supermarkets. If you want to turn this into a nonvegetarian main dish, poach 1 pound of chicken breasts in 2 cups of dry white wine. Cube the chicken and add it with the vegetables.

Never add raw tomatoes to a dish that is going to be refrigerated. Cut-up tomatoes lose their flavor in a half hour and actually take on an unpleasant taste if they sit in the refrigerator, so always add them at the last minute.

3 cups low-sodium vegetable stock or broth

2 cups instant whole wheat or regular couscous

3 tablespoons olive oil

6 tablespoons balsamic vinegar

4 teaspoons Dijon mustard

2 large cloves garlic, minced Grated zest of 2 oranges

1 to 2 whole jalape&241;os, trimmed, seeded, and finely minced

2 dozen green or black medium Italian or French olives, pitted and finely chopped

¼ cup chopped capers

2 cups (about 10 ounces) julienned red bell pepper

1 pound zucchini, cut into julienne strips

1/2 cup finely diced red onion

1 cup diced fennel Salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste

2 medium-large ripe tomatoes

• Bring the vegetable stock to a boil in a covered pot. Add the instant couscous; remove from the heat and allow to sit for 5 minutes, until the liquid has been absorbed.
•  Whisk the oil, vinegar, mustard, and garlic in a serving bowl. Add the orange zest, jalape—os, olives, and capers and mix well. Stir in the red pepper, zucchini, onion, and fennel, and season with salt and pepper. Refrigerate.
• To serve, let stand at room temperature for 30 minutes. Cut up the tomato and stir it in; adjust seasoning if necessary.

yield: 6 to 8 serving

From Vegetables

Michele's Corn Pudding

Michele's corn pudding is an often-requested favorite at Occasions, a catering firm in Washington, D.C. When I tasted it I asked for seconds and permission to use the recipe in the book.

No wonder I liked it so much: the original contained 3 cups of heavy cream!My version substitutes whole milk for the cream and 4 whole eggs and 4 whites for the 6 whole eggs. You can't tell the difference, believe me. Try it yourself. (P.S.: It's not so bad with 2 percent milk either!)

The cooks at Occasions use a local brand of Silver Queen corn, Hanover, but other really sweet corn, fresh or frozen, will work.

3 cups corn kernels scraped from fresh uncooked corn (about 3 ears) or 3 cups frozen Silver Queen corn kernels, defrosted

4 whole eggs

4 egg whites

2 teaspoons baking powder

1 tablespoon flour

¼ cup sugar

½ teaspoon salt

3 cups whole milk

1 tablespoon unsalted butter, melted

• Pulse the corn kernels in a food processor about 10 times and then place in a colander for about an hour to drain.
• Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
•  Stir together and lightly beat the eggs and egg whites. Thoroughly mix the corn with the baking powder, flour, sugar, and salt and then stir in the milk, the beaten eggs and whites, and the butter. Butter a 10-cup baking dish and fill it with the pudding. Bake for about 1 hour in the middle of the oven, or until the pudding is baked through and a knife inserted in the center comes out clean. Cover and refrigerate when the pudding is cool.
•  To serve, let return to room temperature. Preheat the oven to 325 degrees, cover the dish with foil, and heat through, about 20 minutes.

yield: 6 serving

From Desserts

Refrigerator Desserts

Many desserts in this section call for uncooked eggs. Please read carefully the information on pages 19-20 before proceeding with any of these recipes.

Prepare-Ahead Chocolate Soufflé

Shortly after Le Cirque 2000 opened in New York City, I was assigned to write a story about the restaurant. Standing in the kitchen watching the action, I noticed the pastry chef, Jacques Torres, scoop up some ready-made soufflé batter, put it into a dish, and prepare to bake it. Jacques said he was able to make the batter several hours in advance and hold it. I told him that the only kind I had been able to fashion had to be frozen. Was it possible, I wondered, to make a soufflé batter in the morning and use it at night?

He said he was going to try, and a few weeks later he had come up with a soufflé batter that would hold for 12 hours in the refrigerator. The secret? An Italian meringue -- one that is slightly cooked, giving the whites more stability.

Here is the recipe, with many thanks to Jacques.

You will need a scale to measure the chocolate and a candy thermometer to make the meringue.

1 3/4 ounces bittersweet chocolate, finely chopped

1 ½ ounces unsweetened chocolate, finely chopped

1/3 cup half-and-half

1/3 cup plus 1 ½ tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder Scant 2/3 cup water

8 egg whites

½ cup sugar

½ pint heavy cream, sweetened (optional)

• Place the chopped chocolate in a mixing bowl. Bring the half-and-half almost to a boil and pour over the chocolate immediately. Allow to stand for 30 seconds, then stir until the chocolate has melted.
• Bring an inch or two of water to a boil in a small pot with a diameter smaller than the bottom of the bowl in which the chocolate was melted.
• Mix the cocoa with the scant H cup water; the mixture will not be smooth. Stir the paste into the melted chocolate and place the bowl over the boiling water. Whisk briskly until the chocolate mixture is smooth and very hot. Remove from the heat and set aside.
• Place the egg whites in the bowl of an electric mixer.
• Combine the sugar and G cup of water in a small saucepan and stir to dissolve. Place over medium-high heat with a candy thermometer in the pan and cook the mixture to 250 degrees. Watch carefully; when the sugar-water mixture reaches 250 degrees, immediately remove it from the heat. Beat the egg whites for 5 seconds on high speed and then slowly pour the hot sugar down the side of the bowl, continuing to beat the whites. (Be careful not to pour the hot sugar onto the beaters because it will splatter.) Continue beating the meringue until the outside of the bowl is warm, not hot.
• Fold one-third of the meringue into the chocolate. Then fold the remaining meringue into the meringue-chocolate mixture.
• Butter and sugar the inside of a 7-inch-diameter soufflé dish. Make a collar of wax paper for the dish by folding a length of wax paper in half and in half again. Then butter it and attach it to the soufflé dish using tape or a rubber band, leaving an inch or so above the edge of the dish. Spoon the soufflé into the dish; cover lightly with foil and refrigerate for up to 12 hours.
• To serve, preheat the oven to 375 degrees and place an oven rack in the middle of the oven. Thirty minutes before baking, remove the soufflé from the refrigerator and remove foil. Bake the soufflé 15 to 20 minutes, or until a straw or cake tester inserted in the center comes out almost clean. Remove wax paper.
• Meanwhile, whip cream and sweeten, if using. Serve immediately, plain or with sweetened whipped cream.

Copright © 1998 Foxcraft, Ltd. and Lois Levine