Sweet-and-Sour Onion Focaccia

I wanted to tell you this story about how I've always believed that Friday night dinner must start with challah, even if we're having pan-fried dumplings and make-your-own spring rolls, which don't go with challah at all. I was going to tell you about how sometime a couple years ago, thanks to our smarter-than-we-are friends in DC, we realized that if we're serving spaghetti and meatballs for Friday night dinner, by all means, we can skip challah in favor of something more Italian. It was a longer story than that, but then it occurred to me that I should just cut to the chase here: doughy, crisp-edged focaccia; singed onions, licked with vinegar and the sweetness of their own caramel; a bit of Pecorino cheese on top. Need I say more? I imagine you are convinced.

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And you should be. This is straight-up one of the best focaccia recipes I've ever made, and I'm psyched to share it with you.

The recipe comes from Martha Stewart Living, a magazine I do not read. My friend Jana is the Martha expert, and she's the one who introduced me to this focaccia. It seems like Martha is less keen on crusts than we are, though, because she makes seven cups of flour into just one, very billowy, very doughy focaccia, where I (at Jana's recommendation) have split the thing in two. The result is a crustier, chewier bread, which I enjoy. To follow queen Martha or little old me? Choice is yours.

We ate this while it was still hot (it's a different ballgame that way, isn't it?), and we love-love-loved it. And then, the second time we made it, I really pushed things over the edge by adding the remnants of Ottolenghi's caramelized garlic (which we had leftover after making this frittata) and, I mean, wow.

I've made it three times. By now, I'm a pro. And I've learned a couple things along the way. In addition to splitting the dough in half, I also slice my onions thickly. If you shred them into thin rings, as suggested, they seem to disappear into the bread. 1/2-3/4-inch slices ensure that even after the softening, browning, and baking, the onions stay intact and prominent. They also burn less easily. I'd definitely recommend doing it this way.

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Over time, I've also learned to eliminated the very fussy folding method, where you turn the dough out onto a floured board and fold it letter-style over itself. This step is impossible without a bench scraper, which I trust many of you don't have; it's also maddening, because the dough is so darn wet that you can't help yourself from adding flour; and lastly, the advice to "put the dough back into the bowl seam-side down" is tough to follow if your dough is so wet that it doesn't even have a seam. To save myself the headache, I opted instead for the "turning" method employed by Chad Robertson of Tartine Bakery, whereby you work the dough by turning it in its rising bowl. That means no dumping, flouring, scraping, sticking, or fussing. Just a few turns of the dough over itself, and the towel goes right back on for its next rise. Easy as pie.

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One last note: while the Pecorino is lovely on this focaccia, it can be skipped. I made this focaccia dairy-free last time to no complaints. Just be sure to add little sprinkles of flaky sea salt to the bread before baking, which will replace the saltiness of the Pecorino (not to mention give the focaccia a satisfying crunch).

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Enjoy this one, friends.

Sweet-and-Sour Onion FocacciaAdapted from Martha Stewart

Martha says this makes one large focaccia, but I like it split into two smaller, thinner focaccia breads. Your choice. For other baker's notes, see the post itself.

For the focaccia dough: 2 1/4 pounds bread flour (about 7 cups), plus more for dusting 3 1/2 cups warm water (about 110 degrees) 1 teaspoon dry yeast 2 tablespoons coarse salt

For topping the focaccia: 1/2 cup plus 2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil 2 large red onions, halved and sliced into rings 1/2- to 3/4-inch thick Coarse salt and ground pepper 2 tablespoons cider vinegar 1/2 cup grated Pecorino Romano cheese (add a couple teaspoons of flaky salt before baking if you skip the cheese) 1 teaspoon red-pepper flakes

Whisk together flour, water, and yeast in the bowl of a stand mixer. Cover bowl with plastic wrap or a towel, and let rise in a warm place until tripled in bulk and full of sponge-like bubbles, about 2 hours.

Add salt. Attach bowl to mixer fitted with the dough hook. Mix on low speed 3 to 5 minutes, scraping down sides of bowl as needed. When dough begins to cling to and almost climb sides of bowl, raise speed to medium; mix 15 seconds. Dough will be wet, slack, and very sticky.

Using floured hands (or not - if your dough is really wet and gluteny, you won't even need to flour them), reach into the bottom of the bowl and scoop a long "tail" of dough up, over, and back onto itself. This is one turn. Repeat three more times, turning the bowl 90° between each turn, so you've turned all four "sides" of the dough. Then recover bowl with a towel or plastic wrap, and let rise in a warm place until doubled in bulk, about 1 hour.

Repeat the turning process, recover bowl, and let rise in a warm place until doubled in bulk again, about 1 hour more.

Preheat oven to 450° and set a rack in lower third of oven. Coat two 17-by-12-inch rimmed baking sheets with total 1/4 cup of the olive oil; set aside.

Divide dough in half and place on prepared sheets. Drizzle each with an additional tablespoon of olive oil. Push dough out toward edges of sheet. Cover with plastic wrap; let rest 10 minutes. With plastic wrap still on top, press out dough to fill sheet. Remove plastic (dough should be very bubbly and supple). Drizzle remaining 2 tablespoons olive oil over top of each focaccia.

Meanwhile, in a large skillet, heat 2 tablespoons oil over medium-high. Add onions and season with salt and pepper. Cook, stirring occasionally, until onions are tender and golden brown in spots, 12 minutes. Add vinegar and cook, stirring and scraping up browned bits with a wooden spoon, 1 minute.

With your fingertips, poke dimples all over dough, then top with browned onions, red-pepper flakes, and cheese (optional).

Bake until golden brown around edges, 25-30 minutes.

Let cool on sheet 5 minutes; if focaccia seems like it is sticking to the pan, scrape it off using a metal spatula. It does like to stick, but if you use enough oil on the bottom of the pan, it's usually fine.

Cut into 20 pieces and serve warm or at room temperature.

Salted Chocolate Rye Cookies

Valentine's Day always seemed a bit unfair. Why must we relegate sweet nothings and romantic dates - let alone heart candies and chocolate - to one day of the year? I love love, but I also love chocolate. I want both all year round.

However. When a day hands you an excuse to make something rich and chocolatey, and then give it out indiscriminately - and eat more of it than you care to admit - in the name of a holiday, you say okay and you do it. So, friends: in honor of Valentine's Day, I made you these salted chocolate rye cookies. I'm feeling confident you'll agree to be my valentines, seeing as all the chocolate is on this side of the table. C'mon over.

Would you believe there isn't a pinch of white flour in these cookies? They came out so rich that in retrospect, I see why the rye is there; not so much to offer its nutty flavor (though it does, albeit subtly), but to offset the fudgy texture and serious chocolate flavor in the cookies. These are serious chocolate-lovers' cookies. Those who feel mildly about chocolate need not apply.

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Happy day of love and chocolate to all of you. Now let's go enjoy the snow.

Salted Chocolate Rye CookiesAdapted slightly from Tartine Book #3 Makes 24 cookies

In response to a question below, I think you could make tiny cookies with 1 tablespoon of dough each, but you should decrease the baking time. Probably 7-8 minutes would do it.

3/4 cup whole-grain dark rye flour 1 teaspoon baking powder 1/4 teaspoon kosher salt 14 ounces dark chocolate (I used 72%), finely chopped 4 tablespoons. unsalted butter, cut into pieces 4 large eggs, at room temperature 1 1/2 cups light brown sugar 1 tablespoon vanilla extract Maldon salt or fleur de sel, for sprinkling

In a small bowl, whisk the flour, baking powder and salt.

Place chocolate and butter in a heatproof bowl set over a saucepan of simmering water – keep , stirring until just melted and combined. Remove bowl from pan; set aside.

In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with whisk attachment, whip eggs on medium speed until fluffy. Keep the mixer on low and slowly add sugar. Once all the sugar is added, increase speed to medium-high and keep beating until eggs have nearly tripled in volume, about 6 minutes. Add reserved chocolate mixture and the vanilla; mix until combined. Again, with mixer on low, slowly add dry ingredients until a soft, loose dough forms. Cover dough with plastic wrap; chill 30 minutes.

Heat oven to 350°. Using 2 tablespoons for each, drop cookies onto parchment paper-lined baking sheets, spaced about 2” apart. Sprinkle cookies with Maldon salt or fleur de sel. Bake until cookies are puffed, 8-10 minutes, 10-12 if refrigerated for longer than 30 minutes. (Rotate pans halfway through the baking time). Let rest on baking sheet for at least 10 minutes before transferring to a serving platter.

Eggplant Dirty Rice

When the chef of a two-star Michelin restaurant concocts a dish that is entirely vegetarian and made in one pot, you should cross off whatever main course is currently on your dinner menu and make that dish instead.

That's what happened here. I was scrolling through Food and Wine's website and came across this humble, strange-looking recipe for dirty rice - a New Orleans staple - with absolutely no shellfish, with absolutely no fussing. Adam said it was the best vegetarian meal he'd eaten in a long time. I wanted it to be the best vegetarian meal I'd eaten in a long time. So I scrapped my menu of sun-shaped spinach pie (though, how cool does that pie look?!) and harissa hummus, in favor of David Kinch's eggplant dirty rice. Mistake? Not even a little.

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It's hard to believe this dish is completely vegan. The flavor comes from the NOLA trinity - onions, celery, and green pepper - and plenty of umami from sou sauce and tomato paste. And guys, seriously, the whole thing happens in one big ol' pot. Don't you have to cook the eggplant separately, as one of our guests asked? Why no, you don't. You just pile it all in there. And somewhere between the vegetables sweating and browning and the rice cooking, the eggplant turns into something soft and silky and amazing, all with absolutely no effort. I don't know what else to tell you.....besides you must make this.

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Menu planning: I've been mulling over adding a section to the website where I document the menus from dinner parties and other times we've hosted. For me, the hardest part of getting a meal together is figuring out the menu. I struggle to figure out what dishes go together, and I often end up feeling like I've made either one too many or one too few dishes. If you'd like to see more menus up here, give a shout in the comments. Meanwhile, let's try it on for size. Here's what I served for Saturday lunch with the dirty rice:

• Caramelized onion focaccia(recipe forthcoming. Awesome.)
• Salad (brought by our friend Ron: a mixture of lettuce, beet and sunflower sprouts, carrots, and peppers. Basic vinaigrette. Delish.)
• Pepper-crusted seared tuna with soy-avocado sauce based on the one in this recipe
• Brussels sprout hash with poppy seeds and lemon
• Lemon custard cups with whipped cream and graham cracker crumbs (recipe forthcoming)

I thought the meal worked well, and it's nice to have the template recorded for the next time I'm totally lacking inspiration and have to cook.

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Without further ado, your new favorite weeknight dinner:

Eggplant Dirty RiceAdapted from David Kinch's recipe in Food and Wine

First, know that this recipe makes a ton. We had a huge pot, enough to serve 6 people as a side dish with tons left for weekday lunch. You won't hear any complaints from me about the quantity, but if you're having 8 people, unless it's a main course with little else on the side, you probably don't need to double the recipe. Second, you really do need the 1/4 cup of oil. Can you use less? Yes. Will it be as creamy and silky as it would with the full amount? Probably not. Plus, think of it this way - the recipe serves 8-10, which means there's 1/2 a tablespoon or less in each serving. However, if you'd rather use olive oil, I won't tell David Kinch on you. Third, depending on how salty your broth and soy sauce are, you may want to reduce the quantities of salt I recommend. Consider starting with a 1/4 teaspoon at each interval and adding more later. Finally, do make sure you bring the rice to a boil before sticking it in the oven. If you don't, the rice on the bottom of the pot will cook perfectly but the top layer will be pretty raw after 17 minutes in the oven. Not that I would know...okay, I made the mistake so you don't have to. xo -r

1/4 cup canola oil 3 celery ribs, finely chopped 2 medium green bell peppers, seeded and finely chopped 1 medium onion, finely chopped Kosher salt 1 medium eggplant (about 1 pound), cut into 3/4-inch cubes 1 tablespoon dried thyme 1/2 teaspoon finely ground black pepper 1/4 teaspoon finely ground white pepper 1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper 3 garlic cloves, finely chopped 1 tablespoon tomato paste 1/4 cup soy sauce 1 1/2 cups medium-grain white rice 2 1/2 cups vegetable broth 1/4 cup chopped parsley, for serving Hot sauce, for serving

Preheat the oven to 350°. In a large, heavy-bottomed pot (I used a Dutch oven), heat oil over medium heat until it shimmers. Add celery, bell peppers, and onion, and season with about 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt (less if using table salt). Cover pot and cook 5 minutes, until onions have softened. Uncover and cook 10 minutes more, stirring occasionally, until vegetables have browned slightly.

Add eggplant, thyme, and all three peppers, along with 1/2 teaspoon more of kosher salt. Cook on medium heat for 6-8 minutes, until eggplant has softened considerably but maintains its shape. Add tomato paste and garlic, stir to combine, and cook for 1 minute. Then add soy sauce, rice, and broth, and bring to a boil over high heat.

Cover pot, transfer to the oven, and bake for 17 minutes, until the rice is just tender. Remove from the oven and let stand, covered, for 10 minutes. Fluff the rice and serve with hot sauce and chopped parsley.

Getaways: Berlin

We spent nearly two weeks in Berlin at the beginning of January. It's a funny thing, going on vacation to a very cold country in a very cold season. For the bulk of the twelve days, we were extremely cold. Think numb fingers and toes, brief peeps at the outdoors under gobs of scarf and hat. I'm not someone you'd call a trouper - just ask my travel companions! - and in at least half of our pictures, I'm the one jumping up and down in the corner of the frame, trying to stay warm. Still, there's something kind of magical about traveling to a city in the off-season. It felt truer, somehow, to experience Berlin at a time when most of the people "experiencing" the city weren't tourists, but residents.

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And it's worth mentioning that what we found to be cold was actually quite mild for Berlin: highs of 8° C, lows of maybe -2°? Nothing compared to the -20° C they put up this time last year. So we'll take it.

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In many ways, I'm still processing our experience. On one hand, this was a vacation. It was a chance to get away from busy jobs and cold winter (well, in theory?) and experience a city we've both long wanted to visit. We ate great food, drank fantastic and embarrassingly cheap beer, visited countless museums, and took in every ounce of Berlin. On the other hand, this was also a trip about experiencing Germany's past. D's uncle was born in a Bomberg DP camp back in 1947. I don't think her family has been back since then. Germany memorializes the victims of World War II in many ways, and we spent several days of our trip really steeping ourselves in this period of German history. We also spent a day in Worms, where we visited the oldest Jewish cemetery in Europe, and a day in Heidelberg, where we visited the Rabbinical college there. We saw the Berlin Wall, Checkpoint Charlie (the historical checkpoint between East and West Berlin), the old Reichstag building, which housed the German parliament before the war. In many ways, this trip was a study in the stark contrast of the old and the new.

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While in Berlin, we stayed at a little hotel on Auguststraße in Mitte, which is German for "middle" and definitely at the center of (at least some of) the action. Mitte has great, hipster-approved coffee, and tons of little galleries and chi-chi clothing shops. It has a charcuterie station and wow, so many little beer bars, and of course, bakeries for every hour of the day. (Literally: 6 AM on Sunday, when the whole world of Berlin is asleep, there is one blessed little bakery that is open for business and has all the quart donuts you could need at 6 AM on a Sunday.)

Our favorite coffee of the trip was from The Barn, which we visited most every morning. Their cafe was just a couple blocks from our hotel (and their roastery was a 15 minute walk away). The space is sweet and small, the coffee is perfectly brewed - much lighter and cleaner than what the hipsters brew in the States - and the sandwiches, on craggy baguette, loaded with good meat or cheese and lovely little gherkins, are just the thing to tuck in the sack for a day's worth of touring. That's just what we did.

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We spent lots of time just walking around. Berlin has enough architecture to keep one busy for weeks. We tried to take in as much as we could.

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My vacation rules are strict, and one of them involves many, many pastries. I ate lots of wonderful pastries on this trip, and most of my favorites came from Balzer Bäckerei. In a trendy neighborhood like Mitte, Balzer is stubbornly untrendy in the best possible way. It has lace curtains on the doors, dim yellow lighting like in your Grandma's house, morning coffee from a thermos, but boy, the best pastries ever. Its owner and baker is still there most mornings. Over the eight-ish times I visited, I was helped either by her or by the one other baker at Balzer. Both are probably in their seventies; neither speaks a lick of English. There was a lot of pointing, nodding, smiling, counting, then biting, chewing, cooing, gushing, and making a big thumbs up, to approval and gracious nods by the ladies behind the counter. Our little system worked well.

Before we left, D made a commitment to consume at least half of her calories in beer form. Not sure we hit that goal, but we came close, thanks to two spots around the corner from home. One, Schwartzwaldstuben (try pronouncing that beast of a word!), serves food from Germany's Black Forest (that's what "Schwartzwald" means), and of course, plenty of beer. Mismatched furniture plus helpful bartenders who taught me to pronounce the German word for cake (that's not "kutchen" but rather "KOOOOOcccchhhhen"): what more could a girl want?

At some point I wanted more beer and different beer and really good brats and sauerkraut, and that's all what led us to another place on the opposite corner, Aufsturz. Great (long!) beer list, very friendly, helpful servers, and really, one of the best brats I had in Berlin. No frills, just a straight-up good bar.

One evening, I found myself on my own and without much of an agenda. D and our friends were in the center of town, and I decided to skip out and take it easy - but suddenly I was hungry, and craving some German Riesling. So I ducked into Lokal, which does modern riffs on German classics and which apparently is having a major moment right now. It took many friendly glances and big wide smiles to charm the bar tender into squeezing me in at the bar. And guys? He was the sweetest. He took control, walked me through the (all-German) menu, and even poured me a glass of late-harvest Riesling to go with my dessert, on the house. I loved it there.

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I also loved Oliv, a little cafe on Münzstraße with great flat whites, quiche, and pastries. It's also the home of that funny neon "Stupido" sign pictured above. J'adore.

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Our days in Worms and Heidelberg weren't too shabby, either. We toured the castle, walked around town, ate pretzels and drank more beer. Not a terrible way to spend a couple of chilly days.

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And how could I wait this long to share one of the true highlights of my trip? I met up with the lovely Luisa Weiss, of The Wednesday Chef. Guys, they don't come any sweeter or more charming than Luisa. And it was such fun to finally meet in person, considering how long we've been blog buddies. Such a thrill!

Luisa armed us with some wonderful recommendations for the afternoon. We headed out to her neighborhood, Charlottenburg, in the west, where we popped into two beautiful art galleries before grabbing yet more hefeweizen and spaetzle (amazing spaetzle, with ridiculously good beef stew) at Engelbecken, a neighborhood gem. Clearly very popular, late Friday afternoon every table had a "reserved" card on it. We convinced them to let us eat quickly before the smarties with reservations arrived, and I'm so glad we did. Luisa, it was delicious. Thank you!

What more can I tell you? Berlin and I got along very well. We all just loved the city, and we can't wait to return.

In case you have plans to head to Berlin, I've put together a handy map of the highlights of our visit, which I hope you find helpful. I didn't even mention the two consecutive Saturdays we spent at Hackescher Market, a lovely outdoor flea in Mitte, which includes craft vendors, raw food, and plenty of cooked things. My favorites were the gozleme, Turkish flatbread, cooked on a huge dome and stuffed with spinach, feta, and spicy sauce. I also loved the okra and broad beans in tomato that so many of the Turkish vendors were selling. Don't miss Hackescher Market. Here's the map:

View Berlin in a larger map

Alright folks, I could go on and on. Suffice it to say that we'll be back in Berlin one of these days, hopefully in summer, when the weather is warm and the city moves outside. For now, I'm still thinking about all that beer....and making my second batch of homemade sauerkraut. Stay tuned.