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Archive for the ‘Baking’ Category

morning memories

Posted in Baking, Sweet Things, Whimsical, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on August 10, 2009| Leave a Comment »

It’s been nice hearing from all of you, good friends, from Berkeley, in the past few days, especially after getting an official notice telling me my email account was being closed.  Is that some desperate attempt at cost-cutting on the part of the university?  

I have such good memories of Berkeley, and these memories tend to focus on food and walks.

Running down the hill this morning made me think about another regular route I used to take all the way down a steep hill, and then back up.  Not the one to campus, no.  The one to the Cheese Board and to Peets.  Especially during Jack’s first year, I had the need to walk a lot.  Sometimes I’d walk with Bea and our boys in the strollers all the way down the streets and paths to Solano Ave., to Thousand Oaks School, where they had a tot playground with lots of castoff Little Tikes toys.  Most days I’d walk by myself, with Jack strapped in the Ergo on my back, down Euclid, the Vine Lane path, and Vine, to Peets for a latte and across Shattuck Ave. for a corn cherry scone:  the yummiest, most comfort-foody cornmeal drop scone full of dried slightly sour bing cherries. No other scone has ever measured up.

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Are you crunchy?

Posted in Baking, Grain, tagged , , , , , , , on August 7, 2009| 1 Comment »

Do you make your own granola?  There are plenty of reasons to do so, and plenty of reasons not to buy it pre-made.

Why do it?   Your home will smell like cinnamon. You can control what kinds of nuts, grains, oil, and sweetener go in it. It’s easy. It’s delicious.

Why not buy pre-made?  Needless packaging.  Extra $$.  Take-what-you-get ingredients. A texture which to me says “stale.”

I’ve been making granola since I was old enough to hold a big wooden spoon.  Well, at least, my mom has always made her own granola, and I started doing so for myself as soon as I left the nest.  (Am I corny enough for you today?  I’m trying to be crunchy.)  When I first met Peter, he mocked me for being a twig eater and still calls me granola-girl when he smells it cooking.  Food trafficking goes both ways in a relationship, though, and now he eats more twigs while I eat more flesh (after a vegetarian hiatus in my teens).

Anyway, back to the granola.  It takes 2 hours and 10 minutes to make, 2 hours of which are unattended.  I buy all of the ingredients in bulk, and get organic when it’s available.  They all store well in the freezer.

granola

mmm... can you smell it?

Granola

3 c. rolled oats
1 c. each: cashew pieces, peanuts, chopped walnuts, soy nuts, pepitas, sunflower seeds, sesame seeds, wheat germ, unsweetened coconut, sliced almonds
1/4 c. freshly ground golden flax seeds
1-2 tbs. cinnamon

1/3 c. canola oil mixed with 2/3 c. maple syrup and 1 tsp. vanilla

Pre-heat oven to 225.  Stir together all dry ingredients and cinnamon.  Douse with the wet ingredients and stir thoroughly.  Spread on two cookie sheets and bake for 2 hours.

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Berry Picking

Posted in Baking, Fruit, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on August 2, 2009| Leave a Comment »

We drove to Cedar Circle Farm, in Thetford, Vermont, this morning, to pick raspberries and blueberries.  The bushes were lush.

J picking

The best strategy for finding juicy berries, we found, was to mimic Jack’s height: crouch down, go in deep, and look up.

rasp. bush

Many of the blueberries were just getting blue.  The season is late this year, because of all the rain.  We picked three pints, though,

Cedar C. blues

and found a little nest in one of the bushes.

nest

Cedar Circle operates their self-service picking patch on the honor system.  There is a sign with the prices per pint, and a little money slot in the wall of the the shed, where pickers can deposit their bills or a check.  Jack loved watching the money disappear…

money slot

Jack's cousin, Jeremiah

Jack's cousin, Jeremiah

Now, it’s raining again, and I’ve been making buckle.  What is it that happens to blueberries when you warm them up?  They become gorgeous taste-bud luxuries.  I guess this is the season for this luxury, though, because I had blueberry pancakes for breakfast, and a piece of buckle for snack.  I’d better not start thinking about dessert…

buckle

Blueberry Buckle
from The King Arthur Flour Baker’s Companion

Batter
¾ c. sugar
4 tbs. butter
1 lg. egg
½ c. milk
2 c. unbleached all-purpose flour
2 tsp. baking powder
½ tsp. salt
¼ tsp. cardamom
1 tsp. vanilla extract
2 c. blueberries

Streusel
¾ c. sugar
¾ c. unbleached all-purpose flour
1 tsp. cinnamon
2-3 tsp. lemon zest
½ tsp. salt
5 1/3 tbs. soft butter

Grease and flour a 9-inch round (or square) pan and preheat the oven to 375°.

Cream together the sugar and butter, then add the egg and mix at medium speed for 1 minute.  Whisk together the dry ingredients.  Stir in the milk alternately with the dry ingredients and vanilla, scraping down the sides of the bowl.  Gently fold in the blueberries.  Spread the batter in the prepared pan.

In a medium-sized bowl, whisk together the sugar, flour, cinnamon, lemon, and salt.  Add the butter, mixing to make medium-sized crumbs.  Sprinkle the streusel evenly over the batter.

Bake the buckle for about 45 minutes, or until a cake tester inserted into the center comes out clean.  Remove from the oven, and cool it (in the pan) on a rack.  Serve the buckle with coffee in the morning, or with whipped cream for dessert.

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Locavore ‘za

Posted in Baking, Cheese, Vegetables, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on July 31, 2009| 1 Comment »

Mmm…

Making a margherita pizza tonight with many scrumptious local ingredients.  It’s also sort of a Norwich Route 5 pizza, because Killdeer is just down the road from King Arthur Flour, and most of the ingredients were purchased at these favorite spots.  The fresh mozz is sold at Killdeer and made at Maplebrook Farm, in Bennington, VT–another of my old hometowns.  We lived on a straight-uphill narrow dead-end road preposterously, or optimistically, named Crescent Boulevard.

Traditionally, the only toppings on Margherita are sliced tomato and mozzarella, fresh basil, and olive oil.  I may jazz it up a bit, though.  It’s been a long rainy day.

I also want to avoid a scuffle with the carabinieri.  I think it’s illegal to call my pizza “Margherita,” which is a designation protected by the E.U.–like “Champagne” or “Manchego.”

Jazzed-Up Margherita Pizza

for the crust:
1 c. warm water
1 tsp. yeast
1 tsp. salt
1 tbs. olive oil
3 c. unbleached flour

fresh, local tomatoes
fresh, local basil (or homemade pesto)
fresh, local mozzarella
(And… stepping out of the locavore range by a long shot… kalamata olives or anchovies for kick)

Mix the dough, let rise for an hour.  Flatten and stretch on a semolina-dusted pan.  Pre-heat oven to 425.  Let the crust rise up a bit more, and then strew with the toppings.   Bake until the cheese is golden and sizzling.

za

Oops… I overloaded it.

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Bayside

Posted in Baking, Beer, Restaurants, Seafood, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on July 21, 2009| Leave a Comment »

We had to ditch plans for the beach when we heard the constant rain pouring down as we dozed this morning.  But Jack’s Uncle Grady arrived just in time for a big lunch at Bayside, just off of Horseneck Beach.  Bayside is an officially “green” restaurant certified by the Green Restaurant Association.

green cert
The greenness in evidence took the form of compostable soda straws and many local ingredients, including a range of seafood from lobster and crabs to cod and striped bass (which, around here, is called striper, and further down the East Coast, in Maryland, where we lived for a short while, is called rockfish).  The local beer menu offered many choices; I had an IPA made on Martha’s Vineyard by Offshore Ale Company: it was amber and hoppy, as I like it.

MV ale

IPA & chowdah

We quickly polished off a plate of fried calamari topped with spicy banana peppers.  I tried the Rhode Island style, brothy quahog chowder, but remain a fan of “New England” chowder, with its cream and whole clams.

calamari
Grady and I ordered the lobster rolls, which in normative New England parlance means a warm, limp hotdog bun lined with a lettuce leaf, and a pile of lobster chunks and diced celery held together with a dollop of mayonnaise.   Bayside serves a pared down version which gives the consumer more control (in the manner of the Starbucksification of to-go food consumption) and evokes the simplicity of “sustainable” eating.  The bun lined with lettuce holds a generous heap of lobster meat, and a little dish of mayonnaise or melted butter sits on the side.  I liked the lobster, of course, but missed the celery and mixed-up-edness of a traditional roll.

lob roll

Also on the table were fried clams, a salmon-asparagus wrap, and a gingery salmon salad.

We were full of good food, but had seen the pies on our way in.  The Bayside bakers make at least four kinds of pie every day.  Today there was lemon meringue, blueberry, apple, and strawberry rhubarb.

pies

We ordered “Indian Pudding”—a traditional New England custard made with milk, molasses, eggs, butter, and cornmeal, and seasoned with cinnamon, nutmeg, alspice, and cloves, and topped with a spoonful of melty vanilla ice cream—and one slice of strawberry rhubarb, which, curiously, was spiced with cardamom.   Now we were really full.

My first move when we got back to the house, was to brew a big pot of strong Gorilla coffee, a bag of which Chris and Kate brought us from Brooklyn.  I finished The City of Falling Angels, Jack watched the classic version of Winnie the Pooh, others took naps, Peggy baked banana bread…

A satisfying rainy day.

I also looked into green restaurant certification.  There are seven areas of greenness in which a restaurant must qualify:

1. Water Effciency
2. Waste Reduction and Recycling
3. Sustainable Furnishings and Building Materials
4. Sustainable Food
5. Energy
6. Disposables
7. Chemical and Pollution Reduction

For more information on this worthy cause, check out the Green Restaurant Association’s website.

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chard tart

Posted in Baking, Vegetables, tagged , , , , , , , , , on July 20, 2009| Leave a Comment »

Remember what I said about Deborah’s extraordinary vegetarian cooking?  She was gracious enough to send me her recipe for Swiss chard tart.  Here’s what she says:

As for chard tart, tip of the hat to Patricia Wells, from whose recipe this jumps off with a few modifications–it’s actually an olive-oil crust:
The crust is l cup of flour (I use something called white whole-wheat made by King Arthur, but you can use whole-wheat pastry, or some combo of wh wh and white),plus a couple of large pinches of salt, to which you add l/4 cup ice water–mix in–and then l/4 cup olive oil. It can be mixed with the hands, and it will be very moist and soft, like cookie dough sort of. Doesn’t need to be refrigerated–press it into the tart pan with your hands (the recipe fits something like an 8-9 inch pan, but can easily be multiplied to larger vessels). Filling is–well, I don’t know how to describe the amount of chard, but a very big bunch, anyhow–chop it roughly after washing, wilt it in its own water in a saucepan, add to 3 beaten eggs, l/2 to one cup Parmesan or other cheese, salt, pepper. Coat bottom of crust with Dijon mustard, put in filling, and bake at 400 degrees until firm and golden, roughly 30 minutes, depending on your oven.
Doesn’t need to be served absolutely hot from the oven–perhaps more flavorful having cooled off a bit…

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Blueberry Season!

Posted in Baking, Fruit, Sweet Things on July 20, 2009| Leave a Comment »

Catskills

After spending the weekend driving up and down mountains in the Catskills, crossing rivers with names like Beaverkill and Deepkill, where flyfishermen waded in the sparkling water, and eating a late breakfast at Sweet Sue’s in Phoenicia—a destination breakfast spot for Brooklynites, where we had inch-thick mixed berry pancakes with maple syrup, poppyseed swirled challah French toast, lox-scrambled eggs, bacon, and iced lattes out at a sunny streetside table with Chris and Kate and baby Chloe—the day before Aaron and Kelly’s pastoral wedding, we drove east through the Berkshires to Boston.

the ring bearer

the ring bearer

me & J
The roadsign names and route numbers flashed childhood drives through my memory: visits to the grandparents outside Hartford, field trips to time-capsuled Sturbridge Village, highschool jaunts to the thrift stores and coffee shops of Northampton.

We stopped at a rest area on the Mass Pike, which was having a small farmers’ market.  There were two tables: one full of odd pesto medleys, soaps, and knick-nacks, the other stocked with blueberries and strawberries.  I bought some blueberries, and we snacked on them for the rest of the drive.  (Not organic, but infinitely better than anything else at the rest area.)

rest stop berries

We still had a container of Deborah’s berries, too, so that night I decided to throw together a blueberry dessert of some sort.  I was dreaming of buckle, but felt far too unmotivated to make a multi-step cake.    The solution for a last minute, lazy sweet-tooth? Clafoutis!

The dessert from the Limousin region of France is traditionally made with fresh unpitted cherries, (which reminds me of a trip Peter and I took to the Dordogne region of France, where we stopped at the most amazing country restaurant, Le Temps des Cerises…) but it lends itself well to fruit substitutions.  This recipe is an adaptation of Julia Child’s.  The combination of big cultivated blueberries, the small ones from Kenoza Lake, and the more tart huckleberries was delicious, and pretty, too.

Blueberry Clafoutis

3 eggs
1/3 c. sugar
¾ c. milk
¾ c. cream
1 tsp. vanilla
1 tsp. almond extract
1/8 tsp. salt
½ c. flour
3 c. blueberries
powdered sugar

Preheat oven to 350°.  Butter a 10-inch tart pan or cast iron pan, and sprinkle sugar to coat.  Pour in blueberries, in one layer.  With an electric mixer, beat eggs until foamy, then add sugar and continue mixing until thick and foamy.  Gradually add the flour.  Meanwhile, combine cream, vanilla, almond extract, and salt in a small bowl.  Mix these ingredients with the egg mixture.  Pour over the blueberries.  Bake for 20-30 minutes, or until it sets and is golden brown.  Dust with powdered sugar, and serve.

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Berry my heart…

Posted in Baking, Fruit, tagged , , , , , , on June 14, 2009| Leave a Comment »

Last night we had a last, leisurely, late-afternoon-into-late-evening dinner with Jim, Sharyn, and the adorable Mimi.  Jack and Mimi played continuously and tirelessly for five solid hours, pausing only for dinner—spicy local pork sausages with spicy mustard, shalloty crispy green beans, and grilled eggplant dressed with saffron-yogurt sauce—and dessert: lemon custard tart topped bountifully with berries.
Sharyn's tart
Sharyn is the picture of effortless elegance.  The wine was served in little Moroccan tea glasses that complemented the votives arranged asymmetrically here and there.  The tapenade was lemony, the pita toasts just bite sized, the dishes bistro-white.  And then there was the tart: aristocratic and earthy at once on its crystal cake-stand.  The crust edges were perfectly tapered and golden, the vanilla-lemon custard softly peaked, the berries tart-sweet and juicy.  The farmers’ market blackberries were as big as small plums, and satisfyingly, sun-ripened sweet.  My adjectival powers are stretched to the limit!

Let’s end with some happy faces.
J & M

J & M 2

J & M 3

interpretive dance?

interpretive dance?

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Musing on Moving

Posted in Baking, Whimsical, tagged , , , , , on June 11, 2009| Leave a Comment »

Last night we attended our last “green drinks” in Auburn.  (We move out on Tuesday.)  The table was full of draft ales and seafood: it was still in the upper-80s at six o’clock, we were thirsty and craving the light salty crunch of fried squid and sizzled scallops.  Jack proved his readiness to eat like a real Italian when he went back for thirds and fourths of calamari dipped in aioli.  Matt: “are you going to tell him what he’s eating?” “Not yet.”  Actually, he’d probably think it was cool to eat squid, like the penguins. (We’ve been watching lots of Planet Earth, the main themes and action of which are procreation and predation, i.e. sex and violence.  Jack watches with intent, nervous fascination, and we nervously watch him watching.)

Over the past few months, I’ve had a bunch of new friendships sprout up, and saying goodbye for this year-long hiatus feels a little unreal.  We’ll keep in touch online, of course, but the real medium of friendships for me is meals—not emails.  We’ve had relaxed-raucus cookouts, with burgers and brownies and our loudest-talking friends; platters of finger-friendly pita with hummus, tabouli, dolmas and Steele’s blue drinks; pesto-tossed pasta with Gulf shrimp, followed by Bonny Doon ice-wine and the short-bread I’d overcooked just long enough to get some nibs of chewy-crunchy crumble-resistance.  At Amsterdam Café, we said hello and goodbye at once to Scott and Charlie (they had water and salmon salads—restrained—and we had martinis and braised local lamb: a night out without Jack is splurge-worthy).

We’re happy that that friendship will overlap in space. Next spring, when they come with the architecture students to the foreign city which will have become home to us by then, we’ll share another meal or two.  It’s both impossible and easy to imagine this future, our next year in Rome.  Google Earth gives the thrilling illusion of presence, knowledge. Turn away from the screen, though, and we’re still in Alabama. It’s not unlike absorption in a novel, the world of which begins to feel like your world.  The real version becomes, for the time of reading, fixed, mute, invisible. But then it’s time to pack more boxes or clean the oven.  When I think about this future, though, it feels solid, because where Scott’s mind would fix on images of buildings, my mind anchors on images of food: huge fresh bunches of greens on the imagined counter in our little apartment kitchen-to-be; warm bowls of pasta lunch at Jack’s Italian pre-school; dishes of olives; butcher shops; espresso; crusty, chewy, flour-dusty bread; meals with new flavors, new friends.

And by the way, maybe these images are so palpable to me because the Rome Sustainable Food Project’s Facebook page makes it incredibly easy to imagine sinking my teeth into something exquisitely delicious!

oh, wow!

yum!

mmmm….

Crumbly Crunchy Shortbread
(The perfect, last-minute dessert that still impresses and requires no runs to the market.)

Preheat oven to 350°F.

1 ½ sticks butter (bakers usually recommend unsalted, but sometimes I use salted and/or cultured; in any case, use your absolute best butter)
2 c. all-purpose flour
½ c. sugar (organic, unrefined makes a warm and toasty cookie)
½ tsp. salt

Cut butter into little nubs. Mix all ingredients together in a bowl, and work with a pastry fork until the butter is petite-pea-sized. (Use a food processor in a pinch.) Dump mixture into a 9 x 9 x 2-inch baking pan (for thick cookies) and with a metal spatula press evenly onto bottom. Bake shortbread in middle of oven until just beginning to brown, 20+ minutes.

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Red, Hot, and Rustic

Posted in Baking, Fruit, tagged , , , , , , , , on June 7, 2009| 1 Comment »

My big old aluminum flea market colander is bursting with berries in the fridge, and I’ve already had strawberries with lunch yesterday, for dessert last night, breakfast this morning, and lunch today.  What will we do with all of these berries?

Any other time, it wouldn’t be a challenge, but our rental house is in a strange state. We’re leaving for New England in a week, and for Rome in about two months, so we’ve been packing.  Some of the boxes already in storage contain all of my baking dishes and appliances.  But I had to do something with these berries!  I hadn’t packed a few things, including a bit of flour and sugar, and an odd-sized round Pyrex, so the task became obvious: galette!
galette

Strawberry Galette

The sweet pastry recipe I like best is Nancy Silverton’s, from her wonderful Pastry from La Brea Bakery.  Since I’ve already packed the cookbooks, I dredged it out of my memory, and cut it in half.  Roughly, it goes like this:

Combine in a food processor or in a bowl with a pastry cutter:
1 ¼ cup flour
2 tbs. sugar
¼ tsp. salt
7 tbs. butter
Mix together in a small bowl:
1 large egg yolk
½ tsp. vanilla
2-3 tsp. milk
Then mix the wets into the dries until just combined, working the dough lightly with the pastry cutter.  Turn it out onto the counter and fold it and push it to flatten the butter bits, then shape it into a disc, roll it out to the right size, and chill it.

While it chills, let the berries steep in sugar for awhile.  Jack and I cut berries (he used a little cheese knife) and tossed them in a bowl with ¼ cup of sugar and ¼ cup of flour, a few gratings of nutmeg, and a splash of almond extract.

Normally, a galette would be made on a sheet, but we had only this casserole, and it worked out well since the berries were so juicy.  Now I have to go get some cream!

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