bread pudding
And since I’ve been an absentee blogger (a technical difficulty, my computer has gone lame and I am on bowered time-connected), I’m giving up a bonus recipe this edition. This is for the saucy wench in Chicago, for years of unflagging friendship. Though, you know, Sistergirl, you already have it; it’s in the ’zine.
Essentially, bread pudding is leftover bread buttered and baked in custard. One of those genius little recipes of frugality, a means to ensure remainders do not go to waste but are lovingly transformed into deliciousness.
The ingredients will vary based on what you have on hand, and the amounts will vary according to the size of your baking vessel. Please adjust accordingly and adopt to suit all your whims and fancies.
Basic Bread Pudding Instructions:
in a saucepan, heat about 2 1/2 cups of milk almost to a boil (scald it). Slice open a vanilla bean, drop it in and stir. Lower the flame and cook for about 15 minutes. Leave to cool.
butter both sides of thick slices of a leftover baguette, about half a loaf. Cut or rip into cubes. I think ripping is easier, because the buttered bread just sticks to your cutting board. Arrange the pieces in a casserole dish or baking pan. Whether you select a deep or shallow pan depends on your desired crispy to gooey ratio: deep pans make for more custardy, cakey pudding, and shallow pans allow for more crispy, golden top crust.
beat 3 eggs, or 5 egg yolks for lux pudding, with 1/3 cup of sugar and a dash of salt. Pour the scalded milk into the eggs in a thin stream, beating constantly. Pour over the bread. Let stand for at least half an hour, and it will be really happy if you wrap it up and let it sit in the fridge overnight. I set aside a bit of custard to drizzle over the top just before baking.
set your casserole in a pan that is larger around by about a quarter inch. Pour water in the bottom pan until the level is a quarter inch or so below the op edge of the casserole. This is a water bath. Bake at 350 for about an hour.
for breakfast, serve it with maple syrup, and maybe layer some raisins in. Pecans are good. For dessert, try it with dark chocolate bits and orange zest added, served with whipped cream or rum sauce. Or you can make it with pain au chocolate. No need to butter croissants, of course. Making jam sandwiches out of the bread, buttering the outside, and breaking that into cubes also makes a mad good pudding.
salted brownies
dessert brought to you by the PMS angels. A homespun predecessor to the foodie trend of salted caramels etc, this is culinary genius, far more than the sum of its parts, and easy as pie never really is. A certain Ms. Kate Krader has been making these fudgy, sweet-salty brownies since she was 10 years old. I got the recipe from the sex librarian who immediately doles out the goods lest she eat the whole batch herself—thanks!
preheat your oven to 350°. Line a 9 inch metal cake pan (round or square) with foil and lightly butter the foil.
chop up two ounces of unsweetened fair trade chocolate.
in a fairly large saucepan over low heat, melt a stick and a half of unsalted butter—the closer to home the better, and if you know the cow, even better! Stir in the chocolate bits until they’ve melted too. Turn off the heat, and whisk in a heaping ¼ cup plus two tablespoons of unsweetened cocoa, two cups of sugar, three large eggs, and a teaspoon and a half of vanilla. Using a wooden spoon, stir in one cup of all purpose flour.
pour the shiny brown batter into your pan and smooth the surface with the back of the spoon. Sprinkle about a teaspoon of coarse sea salt across the surface. Drag a butter knife through the pan, swirling the salt just barely into the surface of the batter.
bake in the center of the oven for about half an hour, until the edge is set but the center is still a bit soft. Let the brownies cool at in the pan until room temperature. Lift the brownies from the pan and peel off the foil, slice, eat.
eat in hand broken wedges to nurse broken hearts. To seduce warming ones, serve with the simplest heavy whipped cream and raspberries.
pineapple upside down cake deluxé
though women’s movements worldwide are local and- with love and care- sustainable, this is the opposite of a local, sustainable recipe.
Pineapple and coconut in Brooklyn? During the icy windy gusts of March? As you know, however, the Radical Muffin kitchen came into all this free fruit and has been generating a bevy of recipes seemingly out of line of the ethics of this collection.
it has been fun to indulge in a few recipes with a retro twist like the pineapple upside down cake below. As one kitchen maven writes, “It is so easy, and it makes everyone feel special.” Serving suggestion: with black patent leather peek-a-boo lady shoes.
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let ¾ cups of butter (1 ½ sticks) and three eggs come to room temperature if refrigerated. Heat the oven to 375º. While the oven is heating, toast a few handfuls of delicate coconut flakes (about ½ a cup or more or less on your love of texture in cake and coconut). Spread them on a cookie sheet and bake for a minute or two. Watch them carefully; they burn quickly.
butter a 9 inch round baking pan with a ¼ cup (½ stick) of butter. Grease the entire pan then break off dabs of butter and place them all around. Some folks line the pan with parchment paper, but I think this is one instance where the outcome is better if you suffer through the clean up of the naked pan. The sugars come to caramel more richly. There is also a camp who prefer glass over metal and those who wouldn’t back in anything other than a cast iron skillet. I used a middle-American non-stick baking pan. Next time I happen across pineapple, I am trying this in my cast iron skillet. (I will also add a few slugs of rum.)
sprinkle ¼ cup of brown sugar evenly over the bottom of the pan. Lay out slices of pineapple to cover the bottom of the pan. The pineapple up-side down cake came into its glory in the 1920s, with the blue and yellow appearance of Dole canned pineapple on the shelves of supermarkets and had a resurgence in the ’50s in the era of canned everything. The machine-cut rings punctuated with bomb shelter strength Maraschino cherries are classic PUC styling.
many recipes call for chunked or even crushed pineapple. I sliced the chunks from the fruit plate and formed a layer of more or less rectangles, sometimes overlapping corners, a little jumbled. You will need about 3 cups of pineapple or one pound; fresh recipes call for a full pineapple. Since they were on hand, I sprinkled blueberries over the pineapple.
triple sift 1 ½ cups of all-purpose flour with ¾ teaspoon baking powder and ½ teaspoon of salt, and set aside.
with a large fork or an electric hand mixer, beat 1 cup of granulated sugar into the soft ½ cup of butter. Add the 3 eggs one at a time, beating each one in thoroughly. Add 1 teaspoon of vanilla and ¾ cup of coconut milk then beat until creamy. Gradually beat in flour mixture until combined.
gently, with a wooden spoon, stir in the toasted coconut. Spread the batter over the pineapple and bake for about an hour and 15 minutes or until the cake is golden and a toothpick comes out clean. Pull the pan from the oven, and cool on a wire rack for 15 minutes. Run a knife along the edge and invert the cake onto your serving vehicle.
Ciao Bella’s vanilla gelato has been my accompaniment of choice, when I can get a slice to a plate and not just break off pieces with my fingers.
trifle
admittedly, not just any trifle. This is festival trifle. Trifle with Italian Christmas cake, pistachios, cardamom, heavy cream, and apricots soaked in hot sugared liquor (not in the original recipe). make your own panettone for this, and we’ll do our own you-tube video.
as it came to me from Nigella via my favorite kitchen witch:
Here you go love ~ from Nigella’s Feast
4.5 C dried apricots
6 C water
3/4 C superfine sugar
juice of 1 lemon
juice of 1/2 orange or 1 tangerine
6 cardamom pods
1/2 pandoro or 1lb piece of pandoro or panettone
1 C heavy cream
1 C greek or whole milk yogurt
3 Tbs honey
1/4 C pistachios
1/4 C slivered almonds
amaretto if you like
Put apricots, water, sugar, juices in saucepan
Bruise cardamom, add to pan, stir
Bring to boil, turn down, add a few slugs of amaretto and simmer for 30 min
Drain apricots, discarding seeds and pods, put liquid back in pan, boil over high heat 15-20 min to reduce to syrup (to about 1.5 cups) – let cool
Cut pandoro into 1/2 inch wide, long slices. Line bowl with half of long slices, spread half of warm apricots over cake, pour half of suryp over this.
Repeat (placing slices opposite direction) – leave overnight covered with plastic wrap in fridge
Topping: whisk heavy cream till soft peaks, add yogurt and beat to combine – spread over trifle
Drizzle honey, scatter nuts
gajjar ki burfee
also – gaijjar ki burfi; or served as gajjerella
In about ½ a cup of hot water, soak
¼ cup of almond slices.
Scrub clean
two pounds of carrots.
This is one of those recipes that are not worth making if you cannot lay your hands on fresh, local, in-season, smells like fake carrot they’re so carroty carrots. It won’t be near the same with craptastic mass produced carrots. Do not peel them, just scrub them a bit and grate. Be as careful as you can be, and maybe grate in shifts or invite a helper bee friend over—grating two pounds of carrots by hand isn’t easy on your fingers.
Cook the grated carrot in a large, heavy sauce pan with a lid (I use the pot I love best for risotto) over a medium-high flame for 10 minutes. Stir occasionally. Lower the flame and cook 10 minutes more, covered and stirring every few minutes. Add a pat or two of butter if you like.
Add
¾ cup firmly packed dark brown sugar
and cook for another half hour or so over medium-low heat, cover the pot and stir occasionally. The carrots will absorb the sugar, and it will become “dry.”
While the carrots are cooking, in another saucepan, combine
1 ¾ heavy (whipping) cream
1 cup ricotta cheese
3 cups nonfat dry milk.
Cook over medium high heat while whisking occasionally until the dairy cooks down to a batter-like consistency—about 15 minutes. When the cream mix is good and thick and the carrots good and dry, pour the cream into the carrots, stirring and cooking for 5 minutes or longer. Add the almonds, and
2 tablespoons of chopped pistachios, and 1 teaspoon cinnamon.
Cook over medium-low heat until thick and hefty – almost like fudge. Poor it into a large, shallow backing dish or on a cookie sheet with sides or very carefully on one without. Let cool a bit, and top with
edible silver leaf
if you can get it. You cannot get it in Brooklyn; you have to, the clerks said, go to Manhattan for that. You can also top with
sparkly decorator sugar, or
dessert masala: cinnamon, cardamom, pistachios, sugar.
burfee with rose water, cardamon and pistachios
Most Indian deserts are made on a stove top, not baked like cakes, brownies, and pies. Not many ovens in India. But when they do have a birthday cake – story goes- there is a cake fight.
In a heavy saucepan, melt
3 tablespoons of unsalted butter.
Stir in
1 pound of ricotta cheese
and cook for 20 minutes, stirring with a slotted spoon or a whisk, banging it against the side frequently (a whisk really cages the cheese). Whisk in
just more than half of one 14-ounce can of sweetened condensed milk.
Cook for another 20 minutes, until very thick and fudgey. Add
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
2 teaspoons of rosewater
3 tablespoons of almond shavings
or whatever other flavoring feels like nirvana or Narnia or night-blooming jasmine scented seduction to you.
Pour into a shallow baking pan or onto a cookie tray or into a mini-muffin tin. Top with
2 teaspoons of ground cardamom
2 tablespoons crushed pistachios.
sparkly decorator sugar; i used “silver”
Or edible silver leaf, but like I said… Refrigerate until solid; great to make the night before and let sit overnight. Cut into diamonds.
These recipes are based primarily on Neelam Batra’s recipes in The Indian Vegetarian: Simple Recipes for Today’s Kitchen, Hungry Minds Inc. (1998). Neela likens burfee to brownies.
I want to make beet burfee. The improvising will soon begin, but if anyone who reads this has a recipe, please do share.
vegan chocolate gem bites
vegan chocolate gem bites
alias pms bomblettes
½ cup veggie shortening (cold)
½ cup beet sugar
cream together and freeze for 8 minutes (I didn’t time this, but I think long enough to clean all the clothes and books and vibrators off my bed and straighten the covers, and put away a load of dishes to make way for another load in our teeny kitchen translates to about 8 minutes.)
preheat the oven to 350º
Sift together:
1 ¼ cup all purpose flour
1 teaspoon of baking soda
1 teaspoon of salt
2 tablespoons of cocoa powder
take the bowl from the freezer and sift the dry ingredients (sifting for the second time) into the shortening and sugar. Pour:
2 tablespoons of molasses
over the mix and stir together. Add:
1/3 cup of dark chocolate chips
stir until just combined. Wodge the dough into a mini-muffin tray greased with a little veggie oil. Depending on how much raw dough you eat, it makes about 10 mini-muffin cookies.
make a depression with your thumb in half of them (or all of them or whatever, I just like to do half and half) and spoon jam into it. I used strawberry rhubarb, which is delicious. Raspberry would be another excellent choice. I made half the strawberry-rhubarb gems with ginger spread too.
bake for 10 minutes. Let them sit in their pan on a rack until cool, about half an hour. They fall apart when they are still hot.
so – do you think they should be called vegan chocolate gems when they have jam, the jam being gem-like? And vegan chocolate bites when they are plain? Sweet semantics.
when you were small, did you sit in the ocean, the bath tub, the lake
and pour water for the sheer joy of pouring water?
peanut butter kiss cookies
it snowed two inches in chicago yesterday
— peanut butter chocolate kiss cookies —
- 1 cup sugar
- 2 cups brown sugar
- 1 cup veggie shortening
- 1 cup peanut butter (yummy crunchy or creamy)
- 5 tablespoons milk
- 2 teaspoons vanilla
- 2 eggs
- 3 ½ cups flour
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- 1 teaspoon salt
- chocolate kisses or chocolate stars
this is the kind of dough that doesn’t suffer from just dumping everything into a big bowl and running the electric hand mixer through it, but i tend to mix stuff by hand just because i like the head-time and the bowl and the hard stirring feels good in my arms. And this recipe originally (?) ran in an save-energy-to-help-the-earth calendar of recipes that encouraged hand mixing, among other energy saving tips. So to mix by hand:
using a heavy fork, cut the sugar into the shortening and peanut butter. Crack the eggs into a liquid measure or small bowl & beat, pour into the sugar & fat. Stir in the vanilla and milk. Continue stirring and sift in the dry ingredients. Stick the bowl of dough into the fridge for an hour or so.
preheat the oven to 375º and pour some sugar into a dish. Form the dough into balls, roll in the sugar, and line up on an ungreased cookie tray (i line it with parchment paper when i have it. Also, if you are using chocolate stars, it’s good to flatten your cookies a little by pressing them with the bottom of a glass or do the traditional peanut butter cookie cross-hatches by pressing the flat back of a fork onto the ball, once then again on a 90º angle). Bake for 10-12 minutes then remove the tray to the stovetop, press a chocolate piece into the top of each cookie while still warm and let sit on the tray while the second batch bakes then lift each cookie to a cooling rack.
makes about 4 dozen cookies, and the dough freezes pretty well so you don’t have to make them all at once.
