Recipes from Nora Ephron’sHeartburn
I just finished reading Nora Ephron’s Heartburn. You can read my short review of it on Goodreads. This book is a funny, moving story of heartbreak from one of the most distinctive voices of the last 40 years–but did you know that it’s alsoa cookbook?
The main character is a cookbook writer known for interspersing personal stories with her recipes. In keeping with that theme, a dozen or so recipes are interwoven into the book’s plot. Food underscores so many of the book’s emotional moments–punctuating emotions one second and obscuring them the next–just like it does in real life.
This book is headed back to the library, but I wanted to keep the recipes for future use. They seem simple but comforting, like something you’d find on a notecard handed down through your family. I scoured the Internet, but couldn’t find all of them recorded in any one place together.
So I decided to transcribe them myself. Here are the recipes of Nora Ephron’s Heartburn.
Toasted almonds
Melt butter in a frying pan. Add whole blanched almonds and saute until they’re golden brown with a few little burned parts. Drain lightly and salt and eat with a nice stiff drink.
Lima beans with pears
Take 6 cups defrosted lima beans, 6 pears, peeled and cut into slices, ½ cup molasses, ½ cup chicken stock, ½ onion chopped, put into a heavy casserole, cover and bake 12 hours at 200 degrees.
Chez Helene’s bread pudding
Cream 2 cups sugar with 2 sticks butter. Then add 2-½ cups milk, one 13-oz can evaporated milk, 2 tablespoons nutmeg, 2 tablespoons vanilla, a loaf of wet bread in chunks and pieces (and bread will do, the worse the better) and 1 cup raisins. Stir to mix. Pour into a deep greased casserole and bake at 350 degrees for two hours, stirring after the first hour. Serve warm with hard sauce.
Cheesecake
Make a nice graham cracker crust and pack it into a 9-inch pie pan. Then mix 12 oz cream cheese with 4 well-beaten eggs, 1 cup sugar and a teaspoon vanilla. Pour into the pie shell and bake 45 minutes at 350 degrees. Remove and cool 15 minutes.
4 minute eggs
Put an egg into cold water and bring it to the boil. Turn off the heat immediately and put the lid on the saucepan. Let it sit. In three minutes, you will have a perfect four-minute egg.
Bacon hash
Cut some bacon into small pieces and start to cook it over a slow flame so that some of the fat is rendered. Then add diced cooked potatoes and cook slowly until the potatoes and bacon are completely crunchy. Eat with an egg.
Key lime pie
First you line a 9-inch pie plate with a graham cracker crust. Then beat 6 egg yolks. Add 1 cup lime juice (even bottled lime juice will do), two 14-ounce cans sweetened condensed milk, and 1 tablespoon grated lime rind. Pour into the pie shell and freeze. Remove from freezer and spread with whipped cream. Let sit five minutes before serving.
Linguine alla cecca
It has to be made in the summer, when tomatoes are fresh. Drop 5 large tomatoes into boiling water for one full minute. Peel and seed and chop. Put into a large bowl with ½ cup olive oil, a garlic clove sliced in two, 1 cup chopped fresh basil leaves, salt and hot red pepper flakes. Let sit for a couple of hours, then remove the garlic. Boil one pound of linguine, drain and toss with the cold tomato mixture. Serve immediately.
Peach pie
Put 1-¼ cups flour, ½ teaspoon salt, ½ cup butter and 2 tablespoons sour cream into a Cuisinart and blend until they form a ball. Pat out into a buttered pie tin, and bake 10 minutes at 425 degrees. Beat 3 egg yolks slightly and combine with 1 cup sugar, 2 tablespoons flour and 1/3 cup sour cream. Pour over 3 peeled, slicked peaches arranged in the crust. Cover with foil. Reduce the oven to 350 degrees and bake 35 minutes. Remove the foil and bake 10 minutes more, or until the filling is set.
Lillian Hellman’s pot roast
You take a nice 4-pound piece of beef, the more expensive the better, and put it into a good pot with 1 can of cream of mushroom soup, an envelope of dried onion soup, 1 large chopped onion, 3 cloves chopped garlic, 2 cups red wine and 2 cups water. Add a crushed bay leaf and 1 teaspoon each thyme and basil. Cover and bake in a 350degree over until tender 3-½ hours or so.
Potatoes Anna
Peel 3 large (or 4 small) russet potatoes (or Idahos if you can’t get russets) and put them in water. Working quickly, dry each potato and slice into 1/16-inch rounds. Dry them with paper towels round by round. Put 1 tablespoon clarified butter into a cast-iron skillet and line the skillet with overlapping potatoes. Dribble clarified butter and salt and pepper over them. Repeat twice. Put into a 425-degree oven for 45 minutes, pressing the potatoes down now and then. Then turn up the oven to 500 degrees and cook 10 more minutes. Flip onto a round platter. Serves two.
Mashed potatoes
Put 1 large (or 2 small) potatoes in a large pot of salted water and bring to a boil. Lower the heat and simmer for at least 20 minutes, until tender, over low heat to eliminate excess moisture. Peel. Put through a potato ricer and immediately add 1 tablespoon heavy cream and as much melted butter and salt and pepper as you feel like. Eat immediately. Serves one.
Swiss potatoes
Peel 3 large (or 4 small) russet potatoes (or all-purpose if you can’t get russets) and put them in cold water to cover. Start 4 tablespoons butter and 1 tablespoon cooking oil melting in a nice heavy large frying pan. Working quickly, dry the potatoes and grate them on the grating disk of the Cuisinart. Put them into a colander and squeeze out as much water as you can. Then dry them again on paper towels. You will need more paper towels to do this than you ever thought possible. Dump the potatoes into the frying pan, patting them down with a spatula, and cook over medium heat for about 14 minutes, until the bottom of the pancake is brown. Then, while someone is watching, loosen the pancake and,with one incredibly deft motion, flip it over. Salt it generously. Cook 5 minutes more. Serves two.
Sorrel soup
Take 4 cups of washed sorrel and cut off the stems carefully. (If you don’t, the soup will be hairy, and no one will know it’s the sorrel’s hair and not the cook’s.) Saute the sorrel in 4 tablespoons butter until wilted. Add 2-½ quarts chicken stock and 4 chopped peeled potatoes. Cook 45 minutes until potatoes are tender. Puree in a blender and add salt, pepper and hot red pepper flakes. Chill and add more salt and the juice of 1 lemon and 1 cup heavy cream. Serve with lemon slices.
Vinaigrette
Mix 2 tablespoons Grey Poupon mustard with 2 tablespoons good red wine vinegar. Then, whisking constantly with a fork, slowly add 6 tablespoons olive oil, until the vinaigrette is thick and creamy; this makes a very strong vinaigrette that’s perfect for salad greens like arugula and watercress and endive.
