Not Paris

Sunday, October 18, 2009 by Hodding.

 I wasn’t really feeling like I had anything to write about until a friend of mine (Peter Nichols, in town promoting his new book, Final Voyage: A Story of Arctic Disaster and One Fateful Whaling Season, an engaging history of our original oil business–whale oil, that is–and the storm that killed it) grabbed the last cheese stick I’d made our kids yesterday morning, explaining between bites:  “You made these?  I eat them every day for lunch in Paris along with a bit of cheese.  They cost me one Euro!  Mmmm.”

Yes, I wanted to kill him for dropping the “P” word and especially for acting as if living there is a hardship.  He’s teaching two weekly writing classes, one for screenplays and the other for fiction.  It sounds so 1920’s–except for the screenplay stuff.  At least he’s only making enough to cover his rent.  He’ll be starving in no time, I hope.

But back to those “cheese sticks.”  I think they might be called fougasse* in French but maybe fougasse are crisp and more like a crunchy Italian breadstick?  Either way, his eating more than his share while not-so-subtly bragging about Paris made me realize I definitely wanted to toss out this idea and recipe (hope I didn’t do so while writing for Gourmet?).

It’s nothing tricky and in fact, that’s why I make them–a last minute, “oh, chicken poop (yes, I step in it every day and use the word poop along with an occasional shit even though Lisa says my saying poop sounds childish)” I’ve-got-to-fill-the-kids-up-with-something fallback.

So, pretend like it’s Friday morning.  The alarm has failed to wake me at 5:30 am and it’s now 6:15.  I clean yesterday’s coffee filter which has been used only six times, turn the over to 375, make the coffee and then throw together our version of the internet-sensation, no-knead bread dough (3 1/2 cups bread flour, 1 1/2 cups water from our well (no chemicals!), 2 1/2 teaspoons salt, and since it’s last minute stuff, 2 teaspoons yeast.

It’s now 6:30 and while it’s being stirred together in the mixer, I grate whatever cheese we have handy but preferably some low-rent parmesan or asiago.  When the dough is ready, I grab a sticky handful and somehow get it to roll into a log shape by doing this on top of a 2-3 tablespoons of the grated cheese.  The cheese covers the stickiness making the dough pliable–or at least able to be shaped into the foot-long pieces we like.  One no-knead recipe makes about a dozen of these cheese breadsticks.

The oven is usually ready by this point (6:40 to 6:50, depending on whether or not the coffee has taken effect and how many arguments Lisa and I have had with the kids and each other–the latter almost always occurring only because of the former) and then they bake until 7:00-7:10, about 20 minutes.

After taking them out of the oven in a mad rush, I toss them at the girls (Angus gets to eat his at the table since his bus comes later) as we’re pushing these surly she-devils that used to be our little angels out the house.

So, if you too have a house full of fledgling teens, give these cheese sticks a try. They don’t always make the kids nicer but they do taste good.

*Postscript: A wonderful person (see first comment under this posting) just wrote in explaining what a real fougasse is.  So, clearly, what I’m making is not fougasse but I hope some of you will try anyway.  Her fougasse sounds divine, however.  She had me at  “anchovies, pork/duck cracklings” by the way.  We’ll just stick to calling the things we make cheese sticks.

Posted in breadsticks, Frugal dish, Peter Nichols, fougasse, Frugal Meals, cheese sticks, Outwitting Children | 13 Comments »