How a cook’s mind works. Not recipe development, but a ramble through past experience as it teaches the present.

That perfect  dark gooey figgy filling has been resting a couple days and I have some time between classes and visitors. I am going to figure out how to make those ‘piggy rolls’ that Miles offered me the other day. I’ve had all sorts of ideas on how to make them from baking them like brownies- fig bars, to making a tube like ravioli and filling it, to rolling up a long strip and cutting them in finger lengths when done. In the end, the bar idea won out over being too fidgety. I am an impatient cook.

But first to come up with the a crunchy chewy cookie/pastry to wrap around the filling. (Careful- dangerous segue about to occur) I’ve been thinking about my grandmother Julia all month. She would have been 102 this year. Which means she was about my age now when she came to stay with us that summer that I was 11. She was my own personal Julia- Julia DiPietrantonio  from Portland, Maine.  Over the years, she visited us all the way from Portland to Hawaii, and later to Arizona or Washington. Long trips in those days on prop-driven airplanes and long days on buses. Widowed young,  footloose and fancy free,  she’d come for  a few months, staying long enough to tell us all her stories, and managed to teach me some of her practical magic- cooking.

Sorry Mrs. Child,  but my Julia taught me to cook. I remember the tastes, the smells and her hand-to-hand method of how much flour to egg to make macaroni (it was never called pasta!); always three different kinds of meat to make tomato sauce- beef, pork and a chicken; a favorite Christmas dish was something we called ‘weed soup’ made with chicken and curly endive and served with a big bowl of over-sized eggy croutons, fried in olive oil and dusted with Parmesan cheese. I never wrote any of these ‘recipes’ down. But I cooked them, again and again. Over the years, I learned them by heart, like a song. My grandmother’s voice in my kitchen always.

When Grandma (my cousins called her Nona- odd to our westerner ears) didn’t visit, she still would send boxes of biscotti at Christmas. Long before UPS and overnight delivery, these hefty boxes would arrive some weeks after she had baked the anise scented cookies- pizelles and biscotti. The biscotti were tender and toasted, not hard as a brick, and half were  spiked with cherries, walnuts, and anise seeds- my favorites. Except for the anise seeds. These biscotti were nothing like the rock hard, fat free yuppie imitations that are served in coffee joints and urban bakeries. Julia’s biscotti would first crack under your teeth and then crumble in lardy tenderness. Her secret, lard, was used by everyone then- for pie crusts, cakes and biscuits. I still sing Julia’s biscotti song every Christmas as I make a few batches to give to friends- “a dozen eggs, a pound of lard, a handful of sugar, enough flour to make the dough…”

Yes, a pound of lard.

(Quick return from familial revery) My Piggy Fig Bars are a tribute to the way we stitch a life together… or a recipe. A long ramblin’ song of friends, family and good food. Here, I played on my basic Gateau Basque recipe, a rich fresh egg pastry  then in another piggy nod I used half lard and half butter. I grabbed the wholewheat flour for the nutty toasted tasty I like and flavored it with a splash of  ” Le Secret”, a Gascon… well, secret.  Rolled, patted it, market it with a B and put in a pan and baked in the oven for you and me!

Kate’s Piggy Fig Bars.

ingredients:

• 100 gr lard
• 100 gr butter
• 200 gr sugar
• 300 gr whole wheat flour
• pinch of salt
• 4 whole eggs
• splash of flavoring: vanilla, almond, etc

Cream the fat and sugar together, whisk in the eggs, add flour, salt and flavoring. Mix well into a ball. Cut in half  and pat one half into a brownie pan 9×12″, about 1/4 ” thick.   Spoon a layer of figgy jam filling over the pastry. Then pat out the second half of dough on a pastry sheet, mat or parchment and cover jam filling, making a cookie sandwich. Back in a moderate oven, for 30-35 min. Mine were a little dark on the edges, but still chewy inside. Cut into bars while still warm. Pour glass of milk.  Burn tongue on hot filling. Smile back at Julia. Yikes, I have turned into my grandmother.