Olive-Oil Brownies 

 
Thank you to everyone who offered sage advice on what to eat in Belgium – unfortunately I only managed to follow a tiny fraction of it! The problem wasn’t availability, or even opportunity – it was my stomach’s stubborn refusal to expand beyond its maximum capacity. I was, you see, on assignment for Food and Travel, and our itinerary was jam-packed – as in eight-o’clock-in-the-morning-until-ten- o’clock-at-night packed – with breakfast, lunch and dinner all pre-planned and lots of tastings in between. The food was all superb – I mean really, truly excellent everywhere; there’s certainly a reason Belgium has more Michelin stars per capita than any other country – but it was by and large innovative, cutting-edge stuff, i.e. not necessarily the stuff you feel you should be tasting on a first trip somewhere. And with three courses the norm for most meals, oof, I didn’t have a lot of space left for extra-curricular munching. I did manage to squeeze in a waffle (a single waffle, I know!)*, and against my better judgment visited a friteur where I ordered a massive pile of thick Belgian-style fries drenched in meaty stoofvlees (aka carbonade flamande) and mayonnaise, of which I managed to eat about one-tenth before admitting defeat. Apart from that I enjoyed some garnaalkroketten (delicious shrimp croquettes that still haunt my dreams), some insanely delicious farmhouse kriek (sour cherry beer), and finally, on our last night, some moules frites, which apparently in Belgium are served by the gallon. There was lots and lots of other great food, but to read about that you’ll just have to wait until October, when the article comes out! 🙂

I know you’re a bit confused, though – what do olive oil brownies have to do with Belgium? Well, nothing, actually. But they have everything to do with Italy, and more specifically, with a name you may have been seeing a lot lately: Faith Heller Willinger. When Ivonne contacted me a few weeks ago about participating in a blog event she was hosting with Cath to celebrate the release of Faith’s latest book, Adventures of an Italian Food Lover, I was overjoyed. I have been a fan of Faith for years, ever since I picked up a copy of her guidebook Eating in Italy for a trip about ten years ago, and her advice (well, that which I could afford to follow at the time – mostly advice on gelato places) never failed me once. The specifics of Ivonne’s request were that I not review the book itself, however, but rather to make a recipe from it and talk about someone dear to me with whom I would share it. While it’s quite hard not to talk about the book, considering how much I enjoyed it (suffice it to say that if you’re planning a food-focused trip to Italy anytime soon, you must have a copy, and even if you’re not, buy it anyway and Faith’s heartfelt, mouthwatering vignettes will have you planning one before you know it!), I was happy to cooperate.

Many people sprang to mind as I pored over Faith’s recipes, but once I had settled on the one I wanted to make – moist, fudgy brownies starring olive oil instead of butter, a chocolate-imbued union of America and Italy – I knew who it had to be: my nona, my maternal grandmother. Now, I don’t have a drop of Italian in me and neither does my nona, being of sturdy Scottish and German stock, but due to a quirk of history she will always be my Italian grandmother because of what we call her. You see, a long time ago, when I was a baby, the people who lived next door to my grandmother were Sicilians, and despite the fact that they spoke barely any English and my grandmother spoke barely any Italian, they became great friends (not surprising, actually, as my nona befriends everybody). They were so delighted for her when I, her first grandchild, was born, that they started calling her nonna, Italian for grandmother, and everybody liked the name so much it stuck, in more or less authentic form. Nona told me once that she much preferred it to other grandmotherly names because it didn’t carry the same connotation of age for her; for her grandchildren, it became the most natural thing in the world to have a nona, and we couldn’t understand why everybody didn’t have one.

Growing up, my nona was the only grandparent I saw regularly, and all I knew about the grandparent-grandchild relationship I learned from her. She lived an hour away from us and so I didn’t get to see her as much as I liked, but we spent nearly every holiday at her house, and several summers I spent a week of my school vacation in her care. One year I spent that week learning how to sew and listening to her stories about her own mother, who was such a talented seamstress she could recreate any piece of clothing she saw. Another year she took my cousin Julia and me to the Midwest to visit her sister, where we spent a week swimming in lakes, fleeing from enormous insects and eating Reese’s Pieces on toast for breakfast (if that isn’t what grandmothers are for, what is?). After we moved to Washington she started visiting us during the summers, and one of those visits happened just after I had received my driving permit and I was only allowed to sit behind the wheel of a car in the company of an adult. Every day she would sit happily beside me as I drove for hours along the county’s rural backroads, listening as she rattled off her endless stories about the night they dropped the first atom bomb outside the Albuquerque airfield where she worked, or her involvement in the civil rights movement in the 1950s that she was certain had put her on Senator Joseph McCarthy’s blacklist. Riveting stuff, I tell you.

Although she was not, admittedly, a formidable talent in the kitchen, don’t let that fool you; she has always been a most formidable talent at the table. While she certainly always loved food, in her later years – once the financial burden of being a single parent of four children had eased – her palate expanded exponentially and she embraced foreign cuisines like they were going out of style. She bought strange things like olive oil and pine nuts long before they became household staples for the rest of us, and at an age when most other grandmothers were perfecting their backstitch, she was cultivating an astonishingly prolific organic vegetable plot in her backyard. She also became a dedicated vegetarian after reading about the ethical and environmental failings of the modern meat industry, something none of my friends – most of whose own meat-and-potatoes grandparents had never even heard the ‘v’ word – could fathom. Her delight in all things edible was infectious, and surely one of the strongest motivators I had when learning to cook was her unbridled curiosity and enthusiasm; she would have barely stepped off the plane on one of her visits when she would turn to me, her eyes bright with anticipation, and say "what are you making for dinner?" It didn’t matter what I said, she would clap her hands loudly and exclaim: "that sounds positively elegant!"

For many years I took pleasure in telling whoever would listen abou
t what a motivated, independent woman my nona was. She kept working, after all, well into her eighties, as a home teacher for high school students who were unable to attend school for medical reasons. She loved the work; "working with young people keeps me young," she used to say whenever anyone asked about retirement, and she cultivated friendships with her students so strong they would still visit her decades later. I think most of us assumed she would just keep on working and living exactly how she chose until the day she died, but unfortunately life had other plans; first a broken hip, then a devastating car accident took their toll, and in the space of a few short months she not only lost her job, her house and her independence, but the old age she had been so assiduously avoiding finally began to catch up with her.

In September it will be three years since I last saw my nona. She lives in Colorado now, in the care of my aunt, and though it breaks my heart to hear the frailty in her voice each time we speak, it can’t completely mask the feisty, fiercely intelligent woman still lurking underneath. It’s been an equally long time since I’ve cooked anything for her, but if there’s one thing about her I can trust hasn’t changed, it’s her love of food, and I know with absolute certainty that she would love these brownies. In fact, I can just see the way her eyes would dance as I tell her it’s olive oil giving them that slight peppery finish and clean, intense flavor. And of course I know just what she’d say after tasting one.

"Oh, these are elegant!" 

Indeed they are. 

Olive-Oil Brownies

I’ll admit, when I spied these in Faith’s book, my first thought was ‘gimmick’. Not that I didn’t think they’d be good, I just didn’t think anything could top chocolate and butter together, and I’d tried chocolate and olive oil combinations in other things and been left less than impressed. The longer I looked at the recipe, however, the more curious I got, and when I finally made them I couldn’t have been more surprised – they are really quite extraordinary. Light as air yet deliciously moist, these melt on the tongue with a pure, intense chocolate flavor that gives way to only the slightest fruity nuance; if I didn’t know better I wouldn’t have been able to guess that olive oil was responsible for their mystery. They also seem gentler on the stomach than a typical brownie, almost as if they vanish into a poof of air on their way down. Which I’m really hoping they did, considering how many I ate!

Source: adapted from Adventures of an Italian Food Lover by Faith Heller Willinger
Yield: 16 modestly-sized brownies 

4 ounces (115g) finest quality bittersweet chocolate (at least 70% cocoa), chopped
1/3 cup (80ml) fruity extra virgin olive oil
1/2 cup (70g) all-purpose/plain flour (Faith prefers using a soft flour like Italian type 00 or White Lily; if you go this route add an extra tablespoon)
1/4 teaspoon sea salt
2 large eggs, at room temperature
3/4 cup (150g) superfine/caster sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2/3 cup (70g) lightly toasted hazelnuts, chopped (Faith uses walnuts)
whipped cream, for serving (optional)

Preheat the oven to 350F/175C. Line an 8-inch (20cm) square baking pan with a lightly oiled and floured piece of parchment paper that overhangs the pan on two sides (this aids in removal later).

Melt the chocolate over low heat on the stovetop or in the microwave and whisk in the oil. Let cool.

Mix the flour and salt together in a small bowl. In a large bowl, beat the eggs and sugar until pale, thickened and billowy, about five minutes. Fold in the vanilla and the cooled chocolate mixture, then fold in the flour and optional nuts, stirring just until everything is combined. Pour into the prepared pan and distribute evenly.

Bake for 22-26 minutes (I would recommend checking earlier to avoid overbaking – mine were just on the verge after 22 minutes). The top will be dry and crackly, though a toothpick inserted in the center should emerge still a little wet. Cool completely, then cut into squares. Serve with whipped cream, if desired.

*It was a Brussels-style waffle instead of the kind from Liège, just in case you’re wondering, and to answer Stephanie’s question, I’m obviously still no expert, but the main differences between real Belgian waffles and their impostors elsewhere seems to be that in Belgium a) waffles are eaten exclusively as an afternoon snack and are most often either sprinkled with powdered sugar, drizzled with chocolate or dolloped with whipped cream (never doused in syrup!), and b) they are always yeast-raised (or so I was told). 

 

I know you’ve probably come here expecting a recipe, but fate has landed me in Belgium/Flanders for a week on a magazine assignment (!), and since I so rarely take advantage of your infinite expertise in these matters, dear readers, this time I’ve decided to ask before it’s too late:

What should I eat???

Full report to follow, of course!

Watermelon in Rose-Lime Syrup 

 
Growing up in coastal California, the changing of the seasons didn’t play much of a role in my life. Apart from the occasional winter cold snap that would throw the state’s orange harvest into peril, and the infamous summer fog that could turn a sweltering picnic into a bone-chilling nightmare within minutes, things were pretty much constant in a mild, blue-skies kind of way. While there were certainly upsides to weather like this (such as I didn’t own a real winter coat until well into my teens), there were downsides too, and one of those concerned, of all things, food. The problem was, you see, that I grew up with no clue about seasonality, no conception that certain foods only grow naturally at certain times of the year. With year-round sunny skies it seemed perfectly reasonable to expect strawberries on my cereal in February and blueberries on my pancakes in November, and while probably some of what we ate was flown in from other hemispheres, much of it was even – if industrial agribusiness can be called as such – locally grown. The fact that such fruit was tasteless was beside the point; it was there and it looked ripe, so regardless of what the calendar said, we ate it.

There was one exception to this, however: summer, and summer only, was watermelon time. My father, the most passionate consumer I have ever known, would wait all year, eyeing the winter melons flown in from Mexico with disdain, until sometime in late June he would start prodding the specimens on display at his local market, thwacking and tapping and sniffing for several weeks until finally he deemed them ready. Then and only then, we would lug one home, a deep-green, sausage-shaped monster weighing nearly as much as I did, clearing off an entire shelf in the fridge to accommodate it. When it had chilled to icy perfection, carving it up had its own special protocol: taking the biggest knife he had, my dad would divide the melon’s stubborn midsection into massive slices, like rounds cut from the trunk of an ancient tree, sometimes so big they would dwarf the dinner plates he put them on. We would use both fork and knife to attack them, as if they were steaks instead of pieces of fruit on our plates, and we would always start from the center of the slice – the crispest, sweetest part – and work our way outwards, spitting the black seeds into the enlarging hole in the middle, until we were left with nothing but a hollow green ring and a stomach almost painfully full. Though the ritual itself was certainly half the fun, in my memory those watermelons were truly something special, so sweet and perfumed they seemed almost hyper-real, and the fact that they were only available for a couple of months each year made each one taste only sweeter.

They say that once you’ve eaten something at the peak of its ripeness, nothing else can ever compare. That would seem to explain why finding good watermelon is such an exercise in frustration for me now, but I actually think there’s more to it than that. In fact, I know that a large part of it is down to biology, as those exquisite, oblong watermelons of my youth are becoming an endangered species, replaced by a growing preference for hybrid seedless varieties. ‘Who would want to eat seeds when you can eat seedless?’ seems to be the prevailing mantra, yet I can only assume that the people buying into these new-fangled hybrids have never actually tasted a truly good watermelon. The differences between the two, at least to my tastebuds, are gargantuan; where the seeded melon is complex, floral, and slightly acidic, the seedless melon is watery and cloying with only the barest whisper of that quintessential watermelon flavor. Not to mention that they’re not even really seedless – it’s just that the seeds, being white instead of black, are more difficult to spot before consumption. And lest you think this is some kind of localized problem, it’s not; my dad, who now lives in Oregon, is currently only able to find seeded melons at one lone store in his area, while here in Scotland, the exclusively seedless melons we get by now are not even worthy of their name.

Though I could go on all day about the lunacy of breeding out flavor for convenience, it’s not actually all bad. In fact, as a result of so many mediocre melons, I’ve discovered some pretty interesting ways of serving them up that do a good job of masking their flaws. This watermelon-feta salad is one spectacular example, and I’ve recently discovered another that is currently causing some dangerously obsessive behavior chez nous (and not just from me, which is always a good sign!). Though you could easily get away with calling this a drink, a dessert or a snack, I don’t really know which one is most accurate; all I know is that it’s so, so delicious, and so, so easy. You basically just cube up the flesh of a watermelon – something with some flavor is best, and the flesh really shouldn’t be mushy – and you leave it to soak in a sweet and icy bath tinged with rosewater and lime. Although it may not sound like much, the rosewater works some sort of alchemy on the melon, amplifying and rounding out its fragrance, while the lime provides acidity and a hint of spice to this knockout trinity of flavors. It’s also a two-for-the-price-of-one affair, which is always welcome news; after crunching your way through the sweet, saturated melon cubes, you have the most ambrosial – and refreshing – watermelon-infused nectar waiting to quench any last remnants of thirst.

I heartily encourage you to give it a try, but I do want you to promise me one thing. If by any miracle you manage to bring home that perfect melon – you know, the kind that makes you wonder how on earth you ever considered your life complete before tasting it – you won’t do anything with it except get out your biggest knife, slice off a hunk of completely immodest proportions, and find yourself some sunny corner in which to devour it, bite by luscious bite. And then you’ll give me a call – I’ll be on the next plane to join you.

Watermelon in Rose-Lime Syrup

I have Indian blogger Richa to thank for inspiring this one – her rhapsodizing, which is what lured me in, is every bit justified. I have naturally made a few of my own adjustments, such as the substitute of lime juice for lemon, and I’ve left out the pinch of black salt, that pungent, sulfurous salt commonly found in Indian snacks and drinks. Though I haven’t yet tried the combination myself – I’m too enamored of it just like this – if you have some on hand, by all means throw in a pinch and see what it adds. Also, I find that preparing a simple syrup is the best way to sweeten this, as you can add more of it to taste at any point without having to worry about undissolved sugar, but if you can’t be bothered to fire up the stove, just throw in some superfine (caster) sugar and you shouldn’t have a problem… that is, apart from the fact that however much of this you make there is never enough!

For the simple syrup: 
2 cups (400g) sugar
2 cups (500ml) water

1 watermelon, flesh seeded and cut into small (1/2-in/1cm) cubes
lime juice, to taste
splash of rosewater (most Indian and Middle Eastern brands are good)
ice cubes

In a medium saucepan combine the sugar and water and heat until the sugar has completely dissolved, stirring occasionally. Remove and let the syrup cool while you prepare the watermelon. Then, in a large bowl, combine the cubed watermelon, lime juice and some of the cooled syrup to taste. Add a splash of rosewater and several handfuls of ice – about a cup per pound of melon is a good estimate, but more or less is fine too depending on how much liquid you want (and if the ice doesn’t create enough liquid you can supplement it before serving with some cold water). Set the bowl in the fridge for about an hour, stirring once or twice, or until the ice cubes have mostly melted. Taste again and adjust the balance of syrup, lime juice and rosewater to your liking, then serve immediately in bowls or wide tumblers, with spoons on the side.

The watermelon is best eaten the day it’s made, though 24 hours or so in the fridge won’t do it too much damage. The simple syrup keeps indefinitely at room temperature.