Bread and Wine: Nigella's Flourless Chocolate Brownies

Brownies.

Thick, chewy, gooey, chocolaty brownies.

Is there a more classic baked dessert? Maybe apple pie. But then there are brownies. I mean, who doesn't like brownies? (Bad people. But they're not the ones reading this blog, so we're not going to talk about them right now). Anyway, brownies are awesome and if you can make them fudgy, delicious AND gluten-free, well, for some of us that's a huge bonus.

This particular recipe, taken from culinary legend Nigella Lawson in her book Nigella Express, is in the chapter "Hungry" in Shauna Niequist's cookbook memoir Bread and Wine. It both excited and challenged me. On the one hand I love having gluten-free recipes on hand since it seems like there's always someone in our family and friend circle who needs a wheat-free option at meals. On the other hand, I'm suspicious of most scratch brownie recipes, having tried a number of them over the years and never being as happy with them as I am with the Ghiradelli Double Fudge boxed mix. (Sidenote: I felt vindicated when I was reading some fancy food blog somewhere sometime and even THEY admitted that they couldn't compete with the Ghiradelli box. My burden was lifted).

Such a decadent recipe closes a significant chapter in the book where Niequist talks hunger and body image and her journey towards grace and acceptance of her appetites, both physical and otherwise. I want to talk about the recipe first and then come back to talk about some of Niequist's ideas on hunger and its importance to our identity.

THE RECIPE
If you follow me on Instagram you'll find a bright, broken, kind of lonely picture of a pan of brownies with a corner ungracefully dug out. It was the result of my failed first attempt with this recipe that called for almond meal instead of flour. While it did taste good, the oily, grainy not-quite-there custard texture met no receptive category in my pallet.

My husband dug in with a spoon and pronounced it, "like pecan pie." Um, yeah, kind of. Except IT'S NOT SUPPOSED TO BE LIKE PECAN PIE.

I kept the pan around for a few days, wondering if inspiration would strike and I could use the mess for something else, like sundaes, or chocolate cobbler.

It didn't.

They went in the trash.

I couldn't tell what went wrong, except maaaybeee I hadn't ground the almonds quite enough. Almond meal--which replaces the flour in this recipe--can be a little tricky to make. You must get the nuts to the point of alllllmost turning into butter, and then stopping your grinder. You want powdery, soft, and mealy. I think I had stopped at...well, too soon. Essentially I'd only course-ground the nuts and sent them off into the melted chocolate, sugar and egg only ro float around in oblivion, ill-prepared to act as the thickening agent they were supposed to be.

Embarrassed by my setback, I got more groceries and tried again, taking care to grind the nuts more finely and measure precisely.

Voila! Soft, super-fine, crumbly almonds. We're in business.

Aside from fidgeting with the almonds, the rest of the recipes is easy--melting butter and chocolate on the stove, taking it off to cool and then adding in flavorings, sugar, and walnuts. Btw, if nuts in your brownies give you the heebie-jeebies, I'd say still give this a try. They add a little crunch and texture, but in a kind of laid back, luxurious way.  I almost forget they're even in there because they blend in so well.

I poured everything into a different pan than my first try-- metal instead of glass.. It's not as pretty, but I was hoping for it to bake a little more thoroughly.

Around 30 minutes later I have a pan of what actually looks like brownies: that little flakiness on top that tells you there's chewy goodness inside. Not one to really wait for a dish "to completely cool" before digging in, I sliced a tiny piece with a sharp knife to get a first impression.

I had to admit; I was disappointed.Delicious-tasting, but still not quite set. Better, but not fabulous.

BUT THEN...I let the lot set in the fridge over night, and BAM! There it was: like fudge, a little crumbly in the way you want brownies to be. Chewy. I cut it in small bites and gave some to friends in a little bowl with a bow as a housewarming gift. The rest is waiting in the fridge until I can eat them in reasonable amounts at reasonable times during the day. Like in the middle of the afternoon while washing dishes, for example.

I still love a good box of Ghiradelli, but these are indeed something special.

THE BOOK
At the end of the chapter I scribbled:

"When do I first remember being hungry?:

"When do I first remember being heavy/fat?"

"When do I remember being okay with saying, 'I'm hungry?'"

Because these are all the questions Niequist weighs in this chapter . Her reflections made me itch with their familiarity: "catastrophizing" her weight since a child (she was 6, I was about 7); she was on "the round side" (I was labeled "fat" by a skinny girl on a trampoline in elementary school); she was 29 before she could announce she was hungry without shame (I was 21).

"I'm learning to practice gratitude for a healthy body, even if its rounder than I'd like it to be," Niequist reflects. "I'm learning to take up all the space I need, literally and figuratively, even though we live in a world that wants women to be tiny and quiet. To feed one's body, to admit one's hunger, to look one's appetite in the eye without fear or shame--this is controversial work in our culture."

She says how we handle our  appetites--physical and emotional, spiritual and mental-- is important because chances are the things we are hungry for are trying to tell us something: like what we're supposed to do and maybe who we're supposed to be. 

Maybe when we try to shut up our appetites we're actually tuning out clues to our identity.

Personally I've tried for years to be a good girl and act like I didn't care very much about food; so I danced and ran and kept a very clean house. I tried putting aside my writing, thinking I should get over myself; not believe that it's so important to share my thoughts with the world.

Thankfully I've had people along the way bust these myths. Even reading this book fanned a flame in my heart, shaking my slumbering dreams and whispering that maybe the things I long for, the things I think about, are something God can use for His purposes.

This makes me think of a passage from C.S. Lewis:

“When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty, I read them openly. When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up.” 

Lewis grew up hungry for fairy tales and it fed his beautiful literary creations. An interest that must have appeared odd (erm, childish) to many of his colleagues made him the writer he was. So it is with each of us--our peculiar interests and appetites are the clues to our giftings and what make each of us unique.

I love Niequist's line, "One of the ways we grow up is by declaring what we love." 

Madeleine L'Engle writes in her poem, "Act III, Scene iii": "To grow up is to find the small part you are playing in this extraordinary drama written by somebody else."

It may be that food is the starting clue for someone to admit what they love. For others maybe fairy tales or poetry. Maybe fashion, or automotive work for others. All it takes is paying attention to an interest, a hunger, to begin our growing up.

And brownies aren't such a bad place to begin.