12 cake: génoise pour moi et tous
19 Dec 2011 Leave a Comment
in cake, lemons, sweets, vegetarian Tags: lemon curd, lemurs, mirror of collective creation, saint lucia, sprinkles
nested biscuit cutters were purchased to make shamelessly twee piles of three sizes of teeny round cakes each with a distinct filling and frosting pairing left nude for guests decorating to whim. along side tree decorating and mirror decorating and welcoming of the season of lights and sparkles and sprinkles as we all should be. Especially me, for my birthday, falls on Saint Lucia’s day, the bringer of light, which my great grandmother always said was lucky. I am lucky, with so many lovely radical muffins around me.
light does not bring time, however, and the non-cake (remember vegetables?) part of the evening’s spread needed serious attention, and work for the week (remember work?) had left less late nights than anticipated for concocting spreads and dips.
leisurely and lovingly made early in the morning, three sheets of génoise rested, waiting to serve, in the freezer. Two became four small rectangular layer cakes for the gathering, and one a larger one, layers sandwiched over lazy lady’s cranberry curd, for the ladies’ holiday luncheon at work.
the party cakes came in two flavors: lemon with vanilla frosting or fig filling with chocolate ganache. The youngest party guest had a fine time leading some of the others in decorating the four cakes.
my obsession with the cake itself is well established; with a spike of salt, it has evoked a quest for the golden filling to complement its sturdy, impetuous perfection. This meyer lemon curd nobly contends. A fine end for precious but unspoken for meyer lemons, greedily snatched from the Flatbush coop’s surprise offering which was meager— yet significant in showing up at all!
lemon curd is one of those lost simple kitchen concoctions that has become all mysterious and imagined to magically appear in jars from stores where food is born. Make such a thing from scratch, and to some, you too shine more magically, mysteriously.
for meyer lemon curd: whisk together 2 eggs and three egg yolks with 2 tablespoons of cream or milk. Grate in the zest of 3-4 meyer lemons. Juice the lemons for a generous half cup of juice.
turn the heat on low under a small sauce pan on the stovetop. Slice in 3 tablespoons of butter. Dump in ¼ cup of sugar (eureka lemons will want more sugar if you are working with those or Seville oranges, say). Stir in the eggs and lemon juice. Keep stirring and add 3 more tablespoons of butter. Cook, stirring, until the curd thickens enough to coat the spoon. Pour the lemon curd into any glass container with a cover to store, or let it cool a bit then spread over the bottom layer of a cake.
lazy lady’s cranberry curd has no fussing with eggs—just butter, berries and turbinado sugar.
the chocolate ganache always has a lot going for it, the butter cream has been unbeatable on the génoise. The slim cake wants a topping juicier than thin chocolate. This butter cream made with fresh butter and vanilla seeds scraped from pods fat like plump raisins is luscious, a gift to both the cake and the tart fillings.
at this start of the winter season of lights in the cold, we all make a mirror together; here is part of this year’s mirror of collective creation:
11 cake: ménage à génoise
06 Dec 2011 Leave a Comment
in cake, quince, recipes, sweets Tags: autumn, baking, layer cake, pink frosting
an experiment to bake my batter of obsession in a standard cake pan rather than a rimmed baking sheet as in a jelly roll and for mini-cakes.
mini-cakes themselves have become an obsession. One set sporting my virgin attempt at fondant. Photos are up on the facebook page; please like radical muffin to feast on bonus food porn. And i will try to catch up on the writing!
however—this is the brief season of quince, and quince insists upon a full sized cake. Most quince insist on a pavlova; these acquiesced to taking part in the great cake adventure.
the fruit, rock hard when raw and ripe, is apple-ish in shape, yellow as canary, and covered in a fine fuzz that every recipe recommends rubbing off even though you peel the skin off. The rubbing is meditative, a knowing of each fruit, and that has something to be said for it.
quarter and core the acerbic and hard orbs; halve or quarter the quarters. In a saucepan of appropriate size, bring to boil enough water to eventually cover the fruit slices. Sprinkle in a cup or so of sugar. Add a dash of salt if you are in the spirit of adding salt to everything. Maybe a squeeze of lemon. Add the fruit, cover and bring to a boil.
quince holds legend as the golden apple Paris awarded Helen and tempted Eve. A cake of quince from your kitchen is hopefully unlikely to end in war or expulsion from the Garden. The perfume of it will evoke this sort of divine allure. Quince are in the rose family, and smell like Arabian Nights.
lift the lid and inhale. Steam your face. Dream. As they poach they’ll blush pink. Cook until soft. Drain, set aside the fruit, and return the liquid to the pan and cook down until it is syrupy enough to suit your purposes.
in this cake, quince comes three ways: a layer each of smashed quince and quince curd in the filling and quince syrup in the pink butter cream.
the cake is génoise—the alluring vanilla speckled egg-voluptuous batter currently on call in the radical muffin kitchen. There were actually two quince cakes. The first a pile of quince slices in the center of a cake cooked in a single layer in a round cake pan for about 23 minutes. The custardy center worked with the fruit pile and the sides had a nice cake crust to frost with a thin ring of vanilla butter cream.
for this layer cake, each lawyer was baked in a heart shaped cake pan for about the same about of time creating a delightfully cakey cake.
9 cake: st germain jelly roll
14 Nov 2011 3 Comments
in apricot, cake, eggs, sweets Tags: baking, blood orange, genoise, icing, jelly roll, sponge cake
don’t think i’ve ever eaten a jelly roll, unless ho-hos count. the preacher eater said there isn’t a good jelly roll out there, only the dry ghost of cake that was once – if fleetingly – moist enough to curl over and over itself and its preternaturally stiff whipped cream or meager thread of red jelly.
more tantalizing images from a rosier side of the culinary imagination beckon: pretty pink cake twirling around fluffy white filling, decked out in shredded coconut or bûche de noël, feast-worthy chocolate cake, fit for downtown’s biggest department store window Christmas display or with no more decoration than fork tines through rich chocolate icing and a few meringue mushrooms. Maybe bûche in December. This initial experiment is more restrained.
beginning with a problem (specter of dry cake), turn to the wunderkinds of “America’s test kitchen,” the editors of Cooks’ Illustrated magazine. In the book Baking Illustrated, their jelly roll experiments focus on the trick of rolling the cake, which is sponge for manipulability and génoise, particularly, in their recipe. Now, the génoise, they tell us earlier, is a dry cake by nature; in fact, runs the risk of “squat, dry and flavorless.” Their fear for overall texture was soggy not dry. Génoise is standard for European layer cakes and petite fours contra more typically American butter or chiffon cakes. Could be the cake was dry so folks soaked it or folks wanted to soak it so they made a dry cake, but it takes a liking to a sprinkle of booze. Here we use St. Germain.
be not daunted by the French terminology or impressive methodology! The cake is dreamy to make up and eat. Heat your oven to 350°. Cut parchment paper to fit an 18 by 12-inch baking sheet, rimmed. Grease with butter and dust with flour.
melt half a stick of butter in a small sauce pan, scrape in the seeds from a vanilla pod and set aside. In a larger saucepan, put about an inch and a half of water on to simmer.
sift one cup of flour and ½ teaspoon of salt onto a sheet of parchment paper.
beat together 6 eggs and one cup of sugar in a giant glass bowl. Half a dozen eggs made cracking right into the bowl seem downright reckless; cracking them into a small bowl made fishing out the inevitable bit of shell in the second to last egg less maddening. kitchen school marms of old would preach this practice to ensure that a bad egg didn’t spoil the lot as well.
set the bowl over the sauce pan, the bottom of the bowl above the surface of the simmering water. Beat the eggs with a whisk continuously until warm to the touch (Cooks say 110° on an instant read thermometer).
beat the eggs with an electric mixer or persistent wrist until “pale, cream-colored, voluminous, and form a thick ribbon of tiny billowy bubbles that falls from the whisk and rests on top of the batter for several seconds when the whisk is held about 4 inches above…” By electric hand held mixer, about 9 minutes.
remove about a cup of batter to a small bowl. Whisk in the melted butter at a slow drizzle.
sprinkle the flour into the big bowl of batter and beat in at the lowest speed. likewise beat in the bit of buttered batter.
immediately pour the batter onto the prepared pan; the illustrated cooks caution to hold the bowl close to the pan so as not to loose all that delicate volume. Spread to the corners with a spatula. Bake for about 25 minutes, until the cake is pulling away from the sides of the pan yet still springy.
while the cake bakes, generously dust a large kitchen towel with confectioners’ sugar. When the cake is ready, flip it right onto the towel. Roll it like a little sleeping bag.
work apricot jam in a bowl with a spoon until warm and spreadable. The Cooks call for ¾ a cup; I used the whole jar of Bonne Marman. Grated nutmeg into it and a little blood orange zest.
before the cake is entirely cool, unroll it. Brush with St. Germaine liquor (not a Cooks recommended move). Let that sink in. Spread with jam. Reroll cake over jelly then wrap the towel around the outside snugly to let it all settle into itself.
unwrap the dear thing when ready to serve. We frosted it with blood orange icing. It could have gone naked with whipped cream.
6 cake: country-fresh pear cake
04 Oct 2011 Leave a Comment
in cake, pears, sweets Tags: autumn, baking, country fresh pear cake, dessert, farm fresh, wholefoods
to spare my household another deluge of sugar, i turned to my wholesome stand-by Nikki & David Goldbeck’s American Wholefoods Cuisine: over 1300 meatless wholesome recipes from short order to gourmet (1983). “To have your cake and eat it too,” they explain, “The trick is to make the dessert an integral part of the meal.”
perfectly ripe farm fresh pears in hand and breakfast in mind, the Am Wholefoods’ Country-Fresh Pear Cake recipe answered the call. Just a few luxurious touches like a slab more butter and a crushed almond crust, made it just a twinge more…femme.
draw 2 eggs out of the fridge to warm. Preheat the oven to 350˚ then line and butter a 9 inch round pan. finely chop about a cup of almonds, roasted work fine, to dust the sides and loosely cover the bottom of the pan.
peel, core and chop 4 pears. the recipe calls for 2 pounds; i had 2 large and 2 small pears and that was plenty of pear.
melt 3 tablespoons of butter (one more than our wholesome friends recommend) in a liquid measuring cup then measure in a generous ½ cup of honey and ¼ cup of cream.
beat together—wholeheartedly— the eggs, butter, honey and cream. Add a dash of salt. Sprinkle in ¾ cup whole wheat flour and ¾ cup of cornmeal, through your fingers like you’re making polenta, and fold into the batter. The cornmeal taste and texture compliments the pears yet makes for a denser cake; you can make it as prescribed with all whole wheat flour or lighten it up by using yogurt and adding a teaspoon of baking soda. Fold in the pears.
pour into the pan. Spread to the edges and smooth the top with a rubber spatula. And bake for about 45 minutes. Enjoy warm with vanilla or ginger ice cream if you feel that way about it. Or eat with coffee in the morning.
fondant is fabulous
07 Jul 2011 1 Comment
in cake, lemons, recipes, strawberries Tags: cake decorating, dessert, edible glitter, fondant, sugar flowers
i love everybody especially you
the purpose of the trip to the bakery store was edible glitter to bring along to faerie land for a future cake. however,
the velvety allure of pure white fondant demanded of me an immediate cake.
so a buttermilk cake was made- a reliable base of solid butter cake to uphold the white dream coat. also a stand-up foil for the lemon curd filling. because lemon curd is wicked good and far simpler than the glorious schmear makes itself out to be. the farmers market gave us teeny strawberries too, so halved those to lay within the filling. 
made enough batter for one heart shaped layer.
once cooled, split it horizontally to be filled, which is french styled according to Julia Child.
to ensure the fondant lays as smoothly as possible, first thinly ice the cake with buttercream frosting, lemon buttercream, for a crumb coat.
the fondant came in a white block, like shortening or porcelain. and you wedge it just like clay. working it against the counter top against the palms of your hands until it is warmed and smoothed and ready for the rolling pin. slice off a wedge to roll to cover the cake; remainder can be rolled and cut freehand or with cookie cutters.
roll out the fondant into a circle, working from the center out and turning turning and flipping the icing. when expanded beyond the edges of your cake with enough extra to drape down the sides, gently lift it with the rolling pin and drape it over your cake. gently press the draping into place then burnish the top and sides by hand until it all softly glows.
spent hours piping royal icing decorations that harden like sugar plaster and keep presumably eternally. although joy only had directions for microwaving the royal icing (!!!!), the egg whites can be whisked in a glass bowl over a simmering pot of water steam punk style until warmed thoroughly. add powdered sugar and a dash of clear vanilla extract and beat until stiff stiff stiff. spatula into a pastry bag- readied with coupler- standing point down in a glass with the bag edges folded over the rim.
pipe shapes to heart’s content. for these, i colored some of the icing green and blue and added it into a bag with white. after drying them out on parchment paper and oh so delicately releasing them, i dusted them with silver dust. then rubbed silver dust on the fondant too.
delicious, yes. yet and still the pretty of it was profoundly satisfying.
the feast of lights
14 Dec 2010 1 Comment
in eggs, lemons, pie, recipes, sweets, vegetarian Tags: art, birthdays, Brooklyn, Chicago, dinner parties, mirror of collective creation, saint lucia, saint lucy, stockholm, winter
from Chicago, Angel, who has lived in Sweden, posted:
It is no surprise you were born on the light-bringer’s day. Happiest of Birthdays. I love you. Mille Besos.
naughty fairies on the mirror of collective creation
even if you lie about your age—in this case, I publicly turned 95—the experience of birthdays via facebook is an almost overwhelming thing. A dinner party, however, is less so. On the eve of my personal new year, which is also the feast of Saint Lucy, the saint of light (a coincidence my Sicilian Catholic great grandmother rapturously believed blessed), this radical muffin put out big time.
the preacher eater made the grand finale possible. His cousin, the cook from Sun in Bloom, might argue that the Rosemary Remembrance cake was the grandest thing on the buffet, selling it to everyone sidling up to the table and slipping the end bit in foil to go. Her aunt perhaps the white lasagna, with hand pulled noodles and slimly sliced marinated artichokes. Many were enthralled with the “prehistoric, fractal, underwater, alien” romanesca served whole like pine forested mini-mountains. For me, it was, as it always is, the pie.
this particular pie being Ohio Pie or Shaker Pie, a thing from the heartland, my homeland, humble and weird, sweet and tart. Made with whole lemons, sliced paper-thin. The recipe called from old church cookbooks and Joy, irresistible. So I raved and hinted and promised a winter of root veggies au gratin all the while with pie in mind thus the benevolent preacher eater gifted me a mandolin.
oh! this simple machine! I cannot oversell its virtues: swift and easy precision cutting; easy to clean; mad fine julienne potential; small, i.e. easy to store in teeny urban kitchens. The grace of fine design. If you’re most beloved kitchen witch doesn’t have one, find one for their tool box. ‘Tis the season.
offered presents early enough for cooking (the other being a seltzer maker; big party hit), I merrily slid three Meyer lemons down my new plane, shedding translucent sunny circles, pith and all. If you also have a fabulous mandolin then slice them right into a big glass bowl. Poke out the seed bits. Dump a cup of sugar and a bit of salt over the lemons, and let the whole mess sit. Hours. Overnight. In this case, as long as it took to make everything else with wonderful kitchen help from the preacher eater plus our charming guests from Takoma Park.
make pastry for a covered pie. Roll it out for your pan accordingly. Pat the bottom into place in your pan; cover its surface directly with something, like parchment paper. Roll out the top and likewise wrap it. Stash both in the freezer.
bring out four eggs to come to room temperature. Set ½ stick of butter, four tablespoons, in an ovenproof bowl to melt in your oven as it heats to 425˚. When mostly melted, pull it out, stir and let cool a bit.
whisk together the eggs. In a fine stream, pour in the butter, and sprinkle in three tablespoons of flour (a small fistful). Stir the macerated lemons into the egginess, pull out your pie pan, and pour it all in. Smooth out the lemons in the custard, and top.
to ventilate, cut out shapes into the crust with cookie cutters. We used a peace dove for this, with sweeping slices at its wings.
bake for half an hour. Lower to 350˚, and bake for another 20 minutes or so, until the crust is puffed and browned. Bring out to cool on a rack before serving. The custard has to set up, and if you cut into it right away, you’ll have lemon lava mess.
lemon for light
hopefully, the others ate their fill, because, admittedly, I ate the lion’s share the next day, Saint Lucia’s day, heaped in a bowl and drizzled with heavy cream. Eaten in bed under thick covers against the first snow and its accompanying shattering cold. Although not brought by girls with candles in their hair and no charming men sang the Star Boy song, Brooklyn being far from Stockholm, it felt as domestically magical.
fryday friday
24 Oct 2010 1 Comment
in artichoke, broccoli rabe, cheese, chocolate, garlic, pineapple, potatoes, recipes, sweets, vegan, vegetarian Tags: autumn, Brooklyn, deep fry, dinner parties, drag, frying, marcella hazan, midwest, paula deen
in the kitchen I am happiest when I am frying. One reason is that frying takes the whole cooking process and condenses it into a continuously visible, uninterrupted sequence. It resembles those nature documentaries where the camera shows us tiny buds developing into full blooms, compressing weeks of growth into seconds. One is never out of touch with the food one is frying, even for a moment, and I find that very satisfying….
fried food must be eaten promptly, and cannot be reheated. In Naples they have a phrase for saying that one thing follows immediately upon another. It is frienno magnanno, which means, literally, frying and eating. And that is how it should be done.
marcella hazan, more classic cooking (1978)
and that is what we did. although the night ended in a resonant and reverential reading of Marcella, it began with Paula Deen.
turns out, our stunning drag performer darling is also a sick fry cook. The night we met, in the back garden of Ginger’s bar at Brooklyn Pride, we talked Paula Deen and fell into the deep fryer of food love. Fry night has been pending ever since. Come to think of it—Paula’s how I baited the preacher eater too. Seems i owe Ms. Deen some gratitude.
our all you can fry event was an appropriate homage to the reigning queen of the deep fryer as well as a revelation to our visiting vegan friend from Sweden, the founding co-chair of the International High End Perverts Society (also the photographer, gratzi). Oreos, as it turns out, are vegan. And vanilla pancake batter, made with almond milk and egg replacer, fries up real nice.
the drag artist manned the fry pot in an old tourist’s souvenir “California” apron. the Texas fairy orchestrated a pile of golden okra nuggets that filled my great grandmothers punch bowl. reshma sprawled at the table—like Alice big from the Drink Me bottle in our kitchen too tiny for all her graceful limbs—dredging pickles with the enthusiasm only possible from a far-from-home Midwesterner with State Fairs in her heart.
fry me to the moon
This is what we fried:
vegan corn fritters
okra
breaded fresh mozzarella rounds
hallumi cubes tossed in flour & cornmeal
potato fritters with broccoli rabe and spinach
pickles
feta stuffed green olives
marinated artichokes
sprigs of flowering broccoli rabe
whole garlic cloves
morning star faux sausage
pineapple
oreos
mini-snickers bars
ring dings
fudge
in our orgiastic feasting, we surpassed ourselves before managing to fry up our marshmallows, cinnamon roll dough in a tube, and frozen butter slices. You can also fry beer, but we drank all ours.
mercedes pie (peaches’n'southern comfort)
06 Sep 2010 2 Comments
in fruit, pastry, peaches, pie, recipes, sweets, vegetarian
oh lord won't you buy me a summer peach pie
today should be about waffles perhaps, but I bought peaches at the farmers’ market. I see peaches- I think pie. So visions of pie not waffles bloomed from the two quart containers of soft green cardboard piled with white and yellow peaches.
as the good professor Brillat-Savarin’s noted on truffles, so said America’s homemaker Ida Bailey Allen:
this pie was of the “old-fashioned kind” invoked in one of those “pies,” the latter, I think. Not dainty; no meringue or fuss. Typically, I approach pie with a well-researched, agonized plan but this was extemporaneous. Whimsy pie…that must be lifted with two hands and intention.
crust is coming easier after the rhubarb pie triumph using the Baking Illustrated pastry recipe (the methodical chef-writers of “Cook’s Illustrated” reprise the book’s recipe in the magazine’s fall issue, October 2010). Using half butter and half shortening for fat delivers flavor and flake. Using half icy water half alcohol for liquid limits moisture absorption that develops tough gluten yet allows steam to form layers of flakiness. Our cabinet held half a bottle of Southern Comfort to accompany these peaches.
start a pot of water to boil for peeling the peaches then assemble the crust. Cut a cold stick of butter into pieces and scoop out ½ cup of veggie shortening. I store shortening in the freezer since its sole use is pastry. In your biggest bowl, sift a cup of all-purpose flour over the fat and rub well together. If the kitchen is warm, stash it in the fridge for a few minutes to keep your dough cold. Sift an additional cup of flour along with a pinch of salt into the bowl and rub in until just combined. Stir in a ¼ cup each of icy water and Southern Comfort until it all just comes together. Form the dough into two circles, wrap in waxed paper, and refrigerate for at least an hour.
drop the peaches into boiling water, cover, return to a boil then turn off the heat and let stand for 3 minutes or so. Remove with a slotted spoon or tongs to a colander; the peachy-water makes excellent brew water for ice tea, so don’t toss it! When the peaches have cooled enough to handle, slide off their skins. A gentle drag downward of each skin should do it; some may want a paring knife, though no need for peeling zealotry. Halve the peaches, removing the pit, and slice.
in a big bowl, combine the peach slices with a few handfuls of turbinado sugar, teeny pinch of salt, and dusting of flour. The flour, what I had on hand, can cook up gluey so use a light hand. Auntie Ida would add quick cooking tapioca to thicken up the filling, and cornstarch also works. Maybe I should add that I have small hands—the peaches did not want much sugar. Try adding the minced needles of a sprig of rosemary.
preheat your oven to 450°.
clean off a generous work surface, and roll out your pie dough. The kitchen witches all say the trick to fine crust is deft handling of the dough, so work quickly and add just enough flour to keep it from sticking to the counter or rolling pin. Turn and flip the circle between passes of the pin, working from its center toward the rim. Roll to a thin (1/4 inch) round large enough to drape into your pan up its sides with overhang. I used a cast iron skillet.
pie in flight
carefully lay one round into the bottom of the pan and gently press it into place. Dump the filling in. To cover, roll the second round of dough onto the pin then unroll over the pie. A pie with fillings as juicy as peaches need ventilation—hence the traditional lattice top I am too lazy to make—so cut slits in the top or use a cookie cutter to make art in your top crust. Like this dove. Working around the rim, roll the top and bottom edges together between your fingers to seal. Leave it free form or crimp with a fork or ruffle using your thumb & forefinger as a mold, pressing into it to form a sort of “U.” Paint the top with a bit of cream. For those without brushes, fingertips work fine.
bake for quarter of an hour, until the crust begins to brown, then lower the heat to 350° and bake about 25 minutes or until the crust is crispy golden and filling bubbling, oozing up through your art.
let stand for an hour or so. Serve generous slices to beloved guests with vanilla ice cream (or ginger, raspberry, butter pecan…), whipped cream perhaps gussied up with a bit of sea salt or booze.
of cabbages and kings (there were shoes in that bit too)
19 Jun 2010 1 Comment
in beets, casseroles, cheese, greens, lemons, pasta, recipes, vegan, vegetarian Tags: bread crumbs, Brooklyn, cabbage, Community Supported Agriculture, cooking, CSA, dinner, gardens, garlic, health, kim chee, kimchi, Napa, Savoy, summer, sustainable, tempeh
scape handler
Diogenes advised the young man, “If you lived on cabbage, you would not be obliged to flatter the powerful.” To this, the courtier replied, “If you flattered the powerful, you would not be obliged to live on cabbage. “
we still had a pound and a half of cabbage after the preacher eater’s adventure in kimchi. The fermenting project netted us a huge jar of fruity-peppery, gingery pickled cabbage and carrots with plenty to gift to the neighbors, but half a head of Savoy and an entire red cabbage began accruing squatter’s rights in the left crisper drawer.
virtuous, humble and reliable, cabbage earned accolades in ancient Rome and held its own among the French Court of Catherine de Medici. It plays mythical roles from beau diviner to baby-maker to faerie land wormhole gateway. Ubiquity and poor handling put this staple out of favor. Outside of the obligatory 4th of July coleslaw and a few dedicated sauerkrauters, we mostly avoid cabbage, rumored to generate stink as it cooks and after you eat it. Like so many misunderstood foods, these unfortunate experiences are not really the cabbages’ fault, yet the stigma remains.
so she was gasping when she called me from the farm share pick-up, Guess what’s in the share? Cabbage!
we almost swapped that cabbage out. Our CSA site has a box to trade stuff you might not want: hate broccoli? take your neighbor’s unloved turnips. One cook’s trash is after all…
we had a cart like that in grade school in the gym turned lunchroom. I kept my much maligned salami sandwiches to myself but always took a cruise around the table for anything interesting. It was perpetually teaming with inside-out pb&j sandwiches mangled in transit, bashed up bananas, and overly red apples that you knew were mealy despite stiff and shiny skins. Disappointing. Although the CSA swap box held far more promise, the farmer was giving us Napa cabbage, a new variety for our growing collection. Humbled to fate, perhaps, we decided to confront our cabbage surplus head on.
as soon as our newest cabbage arrived home, we went right for the heart, putting away 3 bunches of outer leaves and pulling the central leaves for instant salad. We also shredded that lingering red cabbage, mixing half with shredded new beets and olive oil, balsamic vinegar, salt and pepper—jarred this.
for Instant Gratification CSA Salad, combine a quarter of a red cabbage, shredded, with the innermost pale green leaves of Napa cabbage in a huge glass bowl. Rinse a handful each of the finest of spinach and beet greens. Stem the spinach and roll the beet greens up like a cigar, slice them and add to the other greens. Scrub and slice thin three Japanese radishes—not those leg of lamb sized Daikon, these were round like typical red radishes but pure white and milder—and add to the salad.
then come the scapes, wonderfully loopy and green, like bracelets. Discard the stringy tips at the bulb end then slice the bulb just below the neck then slice it open lengthwise. Slice a few inches of the green stem the same way, long, elegant, on the diagonal. Rinse off a handful of pea pods, pop off the stem end if it is tough (ours were utterly edible). Slice in half if they are long then lengthwise, right through the peas, split their tiny equators. The cutaway of the inner landscape is pretty like the scapes. Heat a small frying pan over a medium flame and pour in a few slugs of olive oil. Toss in the scapes and the peas, salt and pepper and toss them around over high heat for a few minutes, until the peas are bright green. Dump right from the pan into the salad bowl and toss. Squeeze half a lemon over the whole thing, toss some more and serve. This salad accompanied BBQ tempeh sandwiches to our table.
the next night, several bunches of Napa leaves went into a skillet pie reminiscent of stuffed cabbage rolls but far less work:
break dried spaghetti into 1-inch lengths for about a cup of broken noodles; boil and drain them. Cook a cup of quinoa for about 15 minutes in 2 cups of boiling stock. While the grains and pasta cook, chop several scapes (or garlic) and shell some peas. We had about ¼ cup of peas and saved the pods for miso soup. Toss garlic and peas with the pasta and grains in a big bowl along with salt and pepper. The stock we had on hand was deep with mushroom flavor, which I think made this the best sort of comfort food, a dish that draws the eater in to pause then wraps you in thick, familiar flavor, smelling really good.
in a big, cast iron skillet, sauté half an onion, chopped, in a bit of butter and olive oil. Add ½ a pound of tempeh, chopped, along with salt, pepper, red pepper flakes and paprika, turning and cooking until it begins to brown. Ladle in about a cup of stock and a few stalks of spicy basil or other herbs then bring to a simmer, steaming the tempeh. When the stock has evaporated, turn the tempeh in with the grains and stir. Let this all cool just a bit then crack in an egg, stir.
preheat the oven to 400° and wipe out your heavy skillet. Melt 3 tablespoons or so of butter and spread a layer of bread cubes (about 3 slices of bread, cubed) along the bottom of the pan. Season and toast the bread over high for a few minutes, turning to coat all sides in butter. Smooth out the bread layer and cover with the grain/tempeh and over that layer several rounds of Napa cabbage leaves. Crumble fresh feta and shred some parmesan cheese over the leaves; dot with butter and sprinkle with paprika. Bake the whole thing for about 20 minutes, until the leaves are soft and cheese is melted. In a bigger casserole, there could be a few layers and, I imagine, delectable.
summer jewelry
we have some of the remaining cabbage earmarked for miso soup, and surely the last bit of red cabbage will go into our daily lunch salads, or maybe this kale and cabbage slaw. Getting through all this cabbage was originally about conquering it, but this affair turned out much tastier triumphs. And we still have kimchi.
** with affection to alice & her creator, who gave me so many things to talk about then eat
rhubarb pie
08 Jun 2010 2 Comments
in pastry, pie, recipes, rhubarb, sweets, vegetables, vegetarian Tags: baking, butter, strawberries, summer
the ultimate slice of early summer
i love wicked vegetables: potatoes and eggplants from the nightshade family, mysterious mushrooms, and rhubarb, flashing crimson warnings on its stalks, its broad leaves toxic. It is the collective wisdom of generations of cooks that lets me Betty Crocker it up with poisonous plants. Not that rhubarb is as risky as, say, blowfish. Just don’t eat the leaves. And who wants leaves in their pie anyway?
rhubarb also goes by “pie plant,” its number one use. The red, celery-textured stalks of this vegetable are so associated with sweets in the U.S. that by court decree rhubarb is a “fruit.” In making pie, the rhubarb is hardly the scary part. It is making piecrust that should put the fear of God in you. Or maybe that’s just me and my history of crusts that scorch, liquefy or otherwise manage to send billows of smoke out of my oven (or the ovens of others—sorry Morgan!) and right to the smoke alarm. Lesson #1: always put a cookie sheet under a baking pie. Even with perfect crafting, they tend to bubble and ooze onto the oven floor.
rhubarb is also a harbinger of sweeter summer fruits, at its peak just as strawberries hit the farm stands. Perhaps that’s why the two seem to go hand-in-hand, although my mother calls adding strawberries the “suburbanization” of rhubarb pie, blaming America’s over-sweet tooth for an adulteration of rhubarb’s tart flavor. She’s not really a sweet sort of lady, and I am right there with her. To generously fill a regular pie pan, you want about 8 cups of fruit total and can allocate the proportion of rhubarb to berries as suits your tastes. Although I used about two cups of berries in this particular pie, I held back on the heaps of sugar called for in most rhubarb recipes.
rinse off about two pounds of rhubarb stalks and slice them into half inch pieces, about 6 cups. In a large skillet, melt 2 tablespoons of butter or vegetable oil. Over medium heat, cook the rhubarb with ¼ cup of sugar for 8 minutes or until it just begins to get soft. Dump the lot in a colander, put a plate over the fruit, set the whole thing in a big bowl and stash it in the fridge to cool and drain. According to the scientific sleuths who wrote Baking Illustrated, pre-cooking the fruit protects the crust from saturation and sogginess.
take a deep breath and put together dough for a double piecrust. Measure out 2 ½ cups all-purpose flour. Rub in 11 tablespoons cold butter and ¾ cup vegetable shortening. If you have a pastry cutter or know how to do that thing with knives cookbooks say is possible then do that. For the rest of us, gently work the flour and fat between your fingers, rubbing them between your thumb and first two fingers, until you have it all in pea sized bits. It helps to freeze the shortening by the teaspoon beforehand and to stick the whole bowl in the freezer for 3 minutes about halfway through the rubbing, especially if it is hot out. Add 2 tablespoons sugar and a bit of salt. Fold in 6-8 tablespoons ice water, just enough for the dough to come together. Pat the dough into two flattened disks, wrap in wax paper and refrigerate for at least an hour.
when the crust and rhubarb have thoroughly chilled out, transfer the fruit to a big bowl and heat the oven to 500°. Whisk together ½ cup sugar, 2 tablespoons cornstarch and a pinch of salt. The cornstarch slightly thickens the filling; arrowroot also works well. Prep two cups of strawberries by rinsing them, slicing them if they are large and hulling them if they have a noticeable core. This week’s berries were the first of the season, tiny and sweet, happy to be left whole or, at most, sliced in half. Add the berries to the barb and sprinkle with the sugar/cornstarch/salt. Carefully stir to combine.
roll out the two crusts. Line a pie pan with one and gently press into place. Fill and cover the pie, pinching off the rim to seal. Cut 8 slits in the top crust, brush with a beaten egg white and sprinkle with sugar. Lower the oven to 425° and bake on the lowest rack for 25 minutes. Turn the pie, lower the heat to 375° and bake another half an hour. Remove to a wire rack and cool at least 3 hours before serving. In addition to saving delicate mouths from lava-like filling, the cooling time lets the fruit set up for slice ability.
if you come into a bumper crop of rhubarb—or later in the season, peaches!—then make a big ol’ pie in a cast iron skillet. It does an amazing job browning the crust, and such a generous, homey dessert completes a dinner party with a celebration of summer’s abundance.
