16 Aug 2024

Recipe: France’s iconic croque monsieur

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By Gretchen McKay, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

With the 2024 Summer Olympics recently in Paris, many of us are thinking about French food — specifically, how to cook some of the iconic bistro dishes those lucky enough to score tickets to one of the events might have been enjoying in the City of Light.

The one that looms largest for me is the first dish I sampled on my first-ever trip to Paris this past March, at Buvette in the heart of the city’s Pigalle neighborhood: the saucy, obscenely decadent toasted cheese sandwich known as croque monsieur.

I was nursing a badly torn hamstring and feeling pretty sorry my sisters had booked a hotel so far from the train station when I hobbled into the small and charming cafe in the 9th arrondissement in search of comfort food.

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Paired with a lovely glass of vin rouge du moment (red wine of the moment), the iconic sandwich that arrived at my bar seat aside a pile of crunchy cornichons not only hit the spot after a grueling red-eye flight, but made me feel incredibly welcome in a city that is sometimes characterized — unfairly, I discovered — as unfriendly to American tourists.

I don’t know if you believe food is the culinary equivalent of a hug, but that toasty sandwich and glass of local red wine sure felt like a warm embrace.

Traditionally made with baked or boiled ham and a salty Alpine-style cheese such as Gruyère, Comté or Emmental, this humble knife-and-fork sandwich was popularized in the early 1900s as a simple but tasty snack for Parisians. (Many croque monsieur stories credit Michel Lunarca, proprietor of Le Bel Age café, with its creation.)

Its name translates to “mister crunch,” and that’s a pretty apt descriptor. While the interior is plenty gooey, the sandwich also boasts crispy, toasted edges that lend an incredibly satisfying crunch.

Because the sandwich is so simple, it’s important not only to use quality ingredients but to make it properly. That includes slowly cooking your sauce to a perfect, velvety finish and toasting the bread until it’s golden before spreading on the Dijon and layering it with ham and cheese.

A croque monsieur sandwich at Buvette in Paris is served with cornichons. (Gretchen McKay/Pittsburgh Post-Gazette/TNS)

Many traditional recipes for croque monsieur hang their beret on a simple white bechamel, one of five mother sauces in French cuisine. I think adding a little grated Gruyere to transform it into Mornay sauce makes for a more flavorful (and cheesy) sandwich.

This recipe results in more Mornay sauce than you need for two sandwiches, but leftovers can be stored in a sealed container in the refrigerator for several days; use it to toss with pasta or to spoon over veggies, chicken or fish after gently reheating it on the stove top or in the microwave.

For a less filling sandwich, add only a single piece of ham. For a more substantial dish, double up with two slices or turn the monsieur into a madame by adding a fried egg on top.

Bon appetit!

Croque Monsieur

Serves 2, PG tested

For Mornay sauce

1 tablespoon butter

3 tablespoons flour

1 cup of whole milk

Salt and pepper, for seasoning

Pinch of grated nutmeg

Pinch of cayenne pepper

1/3 cup grated Gruyere cheese

For the croque monsieur

4 slices of toasted white bread, 3/4 -inch thick

2 tablespoons Mornay sauce

2 or 4 slices good quality unsmoked ham

1 tablespoon Dijon mustard

1 1/2 cups grated Gruyere cheese

Directions

Prepare Mornay sauce: Melt butter over low heat in a medium-sized saucepan. Add the flour all at once to create a roux and stir with a wooden spoon until combined into a paste. Continue to cook, stirring, until raw flour scent is gone, about 1 minute.
Add milk in a thin, steady stream, whisking thoroughly and reaching into the corners of the saucepan. Continue stirring until sauce comes to a simmer and begins to thicken slightly. Then, reduce heat to low and continue cooking, stirring all the while, until sauce is thick enough to coat the back of a wooden spoon, about 2-3 minutes.
Season sauce to taste with salt, pepper and a pinch each of nutmeg and cayenne. Whisk in grated cheese, a little at a time, stirring to make sure it is completely melted before each new addition. Set aside while you prepare bread.
Preheat oven to broil with rack about 8 inches from heat source.
Toast bread slices under the broiler until lightly browned. Arrange 2 slices on a work surface, toasted side down, and slather each with 2 spoonfuls of Mornay sauce. Spread to evenly cover the surface, add a layer of ham and then a small handful of cheese (about 1/4 cup).
Spread Dijon mustard on remaining 2 bread slices, then place mustard-side down on top of the ham-and-cheese topped bread.
Spread a layer of Mornay sauce on top of closed sandwich. Divide remaining 1 cup grated Gruyere over top of sandwiches. (You can use less cheese for a lighter sandwich.)
Place the sandwiches in the oven under broiler, and bake until cheese has melted and tops of sandwiches are bubbly and starting to brown in spots, 5 to 7 minutes.
Remove the sandwiches from the oven, plate and serve with a knife and fork. Bon appétit!

— Gretchen McKay, Post-Gazette

©2024 PG Publishing Co. Visit at post-gazette.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

16 Aug 2024

Learn to make your own ricotta now, thank us later

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By Beth Dooley, Star Tribune

What’s the best-tasting ricotta? The ricotta you make yourself.

Free of stabilizers and preservatives, homemade ricotta is much easier to make than you may think. The fresh-tasting results are leagues above anything packed into a plastic tub from the supermarket; plus it costs less, too.

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Ricotta is a staple throughout Italy, used in dishes that are both savory and sweet. It can be made into a filling for ravioli, lasagna and manicotti and is a wonderful base for a quick, light gnocchi. This time of year, ricotta is fabulous swirled into sautéed garden vegetables and herbs to sauce pasta.

When lightly sweetened, kissed with vanilla or lemon, ricotta becomes the base for a rich ice cream. Whip it with a little heavy cream to fill cannoli or a pastry crust, or bake it into a chocolate cassata, that luscious Italian cake. Whisk in a little yogurt and honey and pile it onto the season’s best blueberries and raspberries.

Don’t stop there. Stir in basil pesto and toss into a cold pasta or grain salad; slather it onto a focaccia sandwich with roasted eggplant and a thick, sliced tomato; fill a savory tart; or smear it on bruschetta and top with cucumbers, basil and a drizzle of balsamic. And ricotta pancakes are rich and light and perfect when topped with more ricotta, berries and a swirl of honey.

Making fresh ricotta is super simple. All you need is a half-gallon of milk, lemon juice, cheesecloth and about a half-hour of time — most of it hands-free. While traditional ricotta is made with the whey leftover from processing other cheeses that rely on starter cultures and rennet, today’s recipe is for quick small-batch ricotta to make at home. One try and you’ll never go back to store-bought ricotta.

Fresh Ricotta

Serves 4 to 6

Whole milk makes the best ricotta; avoid lower fat and nonfat milk. Do not use UHT — ultrahigh temperature — pasteurized cream, as it won’t set up. The longer you allow the curds to drain, the firmer the ricotta will become. Store any leftovers in a covered container in the refrigerator. It will keep for about a week. If you don’t have time to make fresh ricotta, you can still whip up ricotta cream from store-bought versions. Pile it onto fresh berries and use on berry shortcake. From Beth Dooley.

1/2 gallon (8 c.) whole milk, not UHT pasteurized (see Note)

1/3 c. lemon juice or 1/3 c. white vinegar

1 tsp. salt

Directions

Pour the milk into a 4-quart pot, set over medium heat, and bring it to 200 degrees. The milk will become foamy and begin to steam; remove from the heat if it starts to boil.
Remove from the heat. Stir in the lemon juice and salt. Let the milk sit for about 10 minutes until it separates into clumps of milky white curds (check using a spoon). If it hasn’t curdled, add another tablespoon of lemon juice and wait a little longer.
Set a strainer over a bowl and line with cheesecloth. Pour the curds and the whey through the strainer. Let the ricotta drain for about 30 to 60 minutes. Store in a clean, covered container and refrigerate.

Fresh Ricotta Cream for Berries

1 c. fresh ricotta

1/4 c. heavy cream

1/2 tsp. vanilla extract

1/4 c. sugar

Directions

Put the ricotta, cream, vanilla and sugar into a medium bowl. Whip with an electric mixer until light and fluffy.
Pile onto dishes of berries.
Store leftover ricotta cream in a covered container in the refrigerator for up to a week.

Beth Dooley is the author of “The Perennial Kitchen.” Find her at bethdooleyskitchen.com.

©2024 StarTribune. Visit at startribune.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

16 Aug 2024

Biggest lobbying interests buck trend with higher 2024 spending

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Caitlin Reilly | (TNS) CQ-Roll Call

WASHINGTON — Trade groups and companies responsible for this year’s largest lobbying expenditures so far upped the ante in the first half of 2024 compared to a year earlier, defying expectations for an election year slump.

K Street’s top 10 clients shelled out $162.3 million through June, up 13% from the first half of 2023. Part of that was due to heavy legislative activity during the first quarter, which saw enactment of two big spending packages and House passage of a $79 billion tax bill that got hung up in the Senate.

Topping the list are old standbys that regularly populate the top 10: the U.S. Chamber of Commerce; National Association of Realtors; Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, known as PhRMA; American Medical Association; American Hospital Association; and Business Roundtable. All boosted their lobbying expenditures in the first half of this year above the same period in 2023.

Changes to this year’s top 10 include the American Chemistry Council and AARP, the chief seniors’ lobby group, elbowing their way in. Meta Platforms Inc., parent of Facebook and Instagram, pushed into the top five, wedged between health care titans PhRMA and the American Medical Association, the main physicians’ lobby.

Lobbying expenditures dipped in the second quarter, from $89.1 million to $73.9 million. But top K Street officials said uncertainty around the elections continues to drive client demand — and revenue — as companies prepare for all possible November outcomes.

“Election years bring some trepidation for the lobbying business because of the uncertainty about the legislative outlook and political outlook, but interest is heightened beyond belief right now,” said William Moschella, co-chair of the government relations department at Brownstein.

Moschella’s firm — also known as Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck LLP — reported $17.6 million in lobbying revenue in the second quarter, up 8% compared to the first quarter and 12% above the same period last year.

Brownstein’s top clients include private equity giant Apollo Global Management and two Apollo units, internet service provider Brightspeed and insurer Athene Holding Ltd., contributing a combined $2.6 million to the firm’s bottom line last quarter, according to disclosure forms. Tax policy was a main topic of concern, including on corporate and international taxes and the taxation of private equity investments, as well as broadband deployment issues.

Lobbyists said they expect revenue to remain elevated through the end of the year, despite lower odds of major legislation getting enacted.

“I honestly think it’s going to be more the same,” Moschella said. “Even though the number of legislative weeks are kind of dwindling, I think that there is so much attention on 2025 that that interest is going to remain high.”

Loren Monroe, a principal at BGR Group, said the unusual degree of uncertainty around the elections, as well as preparing for the expiration of many provisions of the 2017 tax law at the end of next year kept spending high.

“Anytime there’s potential change and uncertainty of who’s going to be in charge, it leads to an uptick in business. Our experience is clients want to have all scenarios covered,” Monroe said. “There’s so many different variables of what it’s going to look like after the November elections that a lot of our clients are looking to us to give them guidance and insights into how the changes could impact their priorities. Where are they at risk? Where are there opportunities?”

Monroe’s firm reported $11.1 million in revenue last quarter, up 3% from the first quarter and 8% from the second quarter last year. Among BGR’s biggest revenue-generating clients: semiconductor and wireless products manufacturer Qualcomm Inc.; the American Health Care Association, the largest trade group for nursing homes and assisted living facilities; and the government of India.

By the numbers

Interest groups tend to fall out of and into the top 10 from quarter to quarter. But tallying up the top 10’s activity is still useful in measuring broad industry trends, since it demonstrates the relative firepower aimed at influencing policy.

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The uptick so far this year came despite the usual slowdown in lobbying expenditures during election years as legislative output slows to accommodate campaigning, and amid an economic recovery that analysts say is losing steam.

Of this year’s top 10 lobbying spenders, only Amazon’s — down about 3% — dropped from this point last year.

Meta Platforms increased spending by 43% compared to the same period last year. Legislation to require social media platforms to provide greater protections for children using their sites picked up momentum this year after whistleblowers from Instagram and Facebook testified that Meta ignored warning signs about risks to children online.

The Senate last month passed a bill that would require companies to design online platforms in a way that mitigates harm to users and bar them from sharing children’s personal information without parental consent. Meta has not taken a stance on the package.

PhRMA boosted spending by about 16% this year over last. The Chamber of Commerce increased its spending by about 6%, while the Business Roundtable spent about 10% more compared to this time last year.

Chemical industry, AARP ramp up

The American Chemistry Council and AARP, formerly known as the American Association of Retired Persons, significantly increased lobbying spending, by about 54% and 27%, respectively.

American Chemistry Council spokesman Scott Openshaw said his group’s heavier activity was driven in part by a “comprehensive seven-figure campaign” calling on the Biden administration to “stop regulatory overreach” and promote manufacturing competitiveness.

The group also lobbied on EPA’s “flawed approach” to implementing 2016 updates to the chemical regulation law known as the Toxic Substances Control Act, Openshaw said, and pushed for the House-passed tax package and its restoration of lapsed business breaks as well as repeal of new Superfund taxes on chemicals.

In a statement, AARP said it ratcheted up spending in association with the group’s first in-person Washington “fly-in” in five years to support family caregiver legislation. AARP also lobbied to uphold Biden administration rulemakings on minimum nursing home staffing standards and on financial advisers’ fiduciary duties to investor clients.

AARP and the chemical industry group replaced CVS Health Corp. and the Open Society Action Fund, the lobbying arm of the left-leaning philanthropic group founded by billionaire financier George Soros, on the top 10 list for the first half of the year.

The Soros-backed group, also known as the Open Society Policy Center, has dramatically reduced its lobbying since the final years of the Trump administration, though it reported a big uptick in early 2023 amid an effort to repeal authorizations for the use of military force against Iraq that passed the Senate but died in the House.

CVS Health’s expenditures dropped substantially in the first half of this year after a flurry of early 2023 activity around legislation aimed at cracking down on pharmacy benefit managers’ practices.

Spending mostly tapered off in the second quarter, with six of the top 10 groups cutting their lobbying expenditures below the previous quarter.

Spending by the Chamber of Commerce dropped about 40% from the first quarter. Neil Bradley, the chamber’s executive vice president and chief policy officer, said that was more a function of when bills came due rather than any particular policy shift. Spending by the American Medical Association, PhRMA and Meta also dropped by more than one-fifth from the first quarter.

Tax cliff

Preparing for the expiration of many of the individual and business provisions from the 2017 tax law at the end of next year persisted in the second quarter as a source of lobbying activity and interest, K Street officials said.

Akin — also known as Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP — credited preparation for next year’s tax negotiations, and the addition of former House Ways and Means Chairman Kevin Brady, R-Texas, to their staff, for a record second-quarter performance for the firm: $13.8 million in lobbying revenue. Akin’s second quarter revenue was up 6% from the same period last year; it fell less than 1% from the first quarter.

BGR Group’s Monroe said the firm is encouraging early engagement with members on next year’s tax cliff, especially in light of member and staff turnover since passage of the 2017 law.

“Businesses are very much trying to find the right words and the right emphasis to put forward as they engage, because it’s a whole new ballgame,” Monroe said. “There’s enormous turnover in Congress, among the staff, among the committees of jurisdiction members. There’s not as nearly as much historical perspective. And so in many ways you’re having to approach offices with a blank slate and to make your case again, regardless of what happened.”

Brownstein’s Moschella added that the firm is telling clients to consider all provisions “on the table” next year given high debt and deficits, despite Republican promises to fully extend the law.

“Being involved now, educating members of Congress now is of paramount importance,” he said.

___

©2024 CQ-Roll Call, Inc., All Rights Reserved. Visit cqrollcall.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

16 Aug 2024

How Ferguson elevated the profile of the Justice Department’s civil rights enforcers

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By ERIC TUCKER and ALANNA DURKIN RICHER Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — As the first images out of Ferguson, Missouri surfaced 10 years ago — the bloodied body of a man left for hours in the street beneath white sheets, protesters smashing car windows and looting stores — it didn’t take long for the federal government to see a role for itself.

Acting with notable haste, the FBI within two days opened a criminal investigation into the killing of Michael Brown at the hands of a police officer, while the Justice Department less than a month later launched a civil rights inquiry culminating in a devastating report that identified abuses by the city’s overwhelmingly white police force and court system.

The investigations catapulted the department’s Civil Rights Division into the spotlight, bringing heightened publicity to a unit whose work since its 1957 creation included fighting for voting rights and prosecuting Los Angeles police officers in the beating of Rodney King. The Ferguson probes became part of a cluster of high-profile investigations into police departments, work that fed a national dialogue on race and law enforcement and formed a legacy item of the Obama administration Justice Department before being largely abandoned under President Donald Trump. Inquiries into big-city police forces returned under President Joe Biden.

“I can’t tell you the number of chiefs I’ve talked to who told me that they had their officers read the Ferguson report, that they did trainings around it,” said Vanita Gupta, who took over the Civil Rights Division two months after Brown’s death and held the position for the remainder of the Obama administration. “It became a document that had a life far beyond Ferguson and really triggered conversations nationwide around justice and policing.”

This story is part of an ongoing series by The Associated Press exploring the impact, legacy and ripple effects of what is widely called the Ferguson uprising, sparked a decade ago by the fatal shooting of Brown.

The public outcry in Ferguson didn’t occur in a vacuum, coming two years after the killing of Black teenager Trayvon Martin by a neighborhood watch volunteer in Florida and on the heels of a spate of federal investigations that exposed pervasive problems in police departments in Seattle, Albuquerque and Newark, New Jersey. In Ferguson itself, residents protested not only Brown’s death but also years if not decades of mistreatment by police and city officials.

“It was this constant, daily experience of hostile engagement with law enforcement. People were afraid to go out of their homes. They were afraid to drive because they didn’t want to get stopped. They knew that each one of those encounters would be a negative encounter,” said Jonathan Smith, who headed the Civil Rights Division section that investigated Ferguson and other troubled police forces.

Brown was killed Aug. 9, 2014 in a violent altercation with officer Darren Wilson that began when Wilson ordered the 18-year-old, who was walking with a friend down the middle of a street, onto the sidewalk. The following day, after a candlelight vigil, protesters smashed car windows and carried away stolen items from stores. The night after that, police fired tear gas and rubber bullets into a crowd to try to disperse protesters.

As community unrest grew, with protesters clashing with officers in armored vehicles and military-style equipment, President Barack Obama dispatched Attorney General Eric Holder to Ferguson, where he met with law enforcement and community leaders. In a trip that underscored the administration’s determination to quell the turbulence, Holder appealed for calm in the community and met Brown’s parents, saying later that he had greeted them not only as attorney general but as the father of a teenage son.

Besides the investigation into Brown’s death, the Justice Department separately opened a civil inquiry into the entire police department.

Officials scoured more than 35,000 pages of police records and found city emails containing racist language. They analyzed data on stops, searches, citations, arrests and use-of-force. The team — which included attorneys, an investigator and community engagement specialists — participated in police ride-alongs, attended court proceedings and spent hours in coffeeshops talking to residents.

The result was a scathing March 2015 report documenting eye-popping police abuses. Even though the department didn’t find sufficient evidence for criminal charges in Brown’s death, a decision that disappointed protesters seeking justice, the broader report into the police department resonated across the nation, as many people outside Ferguson recognized similar abuses by their law enforcement.

“There are Fergusons all around the country where attention is needed to rebuild community trust — which, of course, is ultimately key to public safety,” said Chiraag Bains, a former senior counselor in the Civil Rights Division who helped lead the Ferguson investigations.

The report showed how Black residents were disproportionately subjected to excessive force and baseless searches-and-seizures, practices the Justice Department said reflected racial bias within the city. It accused the city of using law enforcement operations to generate revenue rather than for legitimate public safety purposes. Among the examples of abuse it cited: one man was charged with violating the city’s municipal code for purported infractions like not wearing a seatbelt despite sitting in a parked car and for giving the shortened form of his name — “Mike” instead of “Michael.”

The Justice Department and Ferguson in 2016 entered into a consent decree requiring the police department to make significant reforms.

Such agreements aren’t the “the end all, be all,” said Gupta, since they’re limited to resolving policing problems but don’t necessarily address longstanding race-based disparities. That can be be frustrating, she said, because police-community breakdowns can often be the “tip of the spear to more entrenched societal inequities.”

Even so, she said, one consequence of the department’s policing work in Ferguson was that community leaders and political figures began calling for federal intervention after similar deaths. That’s what happened in Baltimore, for instance, where the Justice Department launched a sweeping investigation into the city police department after Freddie Gray’s death, and in Chicago, where a federal inquiry into the Chicago force was opened after Laquan McDonald was fatally shot by a police officer.

The focus of the Civil Rights Division changed dramatically in the Trump administration. Trump’s first attorney general, Jeff Sessions, announced weeks after taking office a review of pattern-or-practice investigations that all but nullified a process he said unduly smeared entire police forces.

But the investigations picked up again early in the Biden administration, with a new Justice Department leadership entering their positions in the aftermath of George Floyd’s killing in Minneapolis. Since April 2021, the Civil Rights Division says it’s launched 11 pattern-or-practice investigations into law enforcement agencies, including police departments in Minneapolis, Louisville and Phoenix. It’s currently enforcing consent decrees with 12 law enforcement agencies, including Ferguson police.

Christy Lopez, a former Justice Department official who led the team that investigated Ferguson, said that while she was not satisfied with the pace of work, there’s no question “we are in a better place than we were 10 years ago in terms of how we think about and how we are actually working to change policing.”

But much work remains, Lopez said.

“Not only do we still have a long way to go, but it’s not at all clear that we will continue moving forward,” she said. “And it’s very clear that people’s lives are being lost and lives are being destroyed because of our inability to actually be sensible about things, to not politicize everything.”