Spammy Jerks

And no, this isn't a recipe, for Spam jerky, it's a minor bitch about something that's been bugging me for a couple of months. Spammers and random folks have been posting comments at the FoggyFoot Review to advertise everything from pictures of female escorts to investment opportunities, and I'm pretty damn over it. I've got the spam filter on and that's helping with spam, but it doesn't block actual people who are doing basically the same thing. It's making me cranky and I'm thinking about moving the blog elsewhere, but before I do, does anyone have any other ideas for blocking unwanted advertisements / comments? Thanks!

Addendum: Thanks to Little Weaver for her excellent suggestion. I've changed my settings, and it seems to be working just fine :-)

Pfeffernusse

For Christmas this year, I made my German aunt pfeffernusse. Pfeffernusse, which is very pfun to say, are traditional German Christmas cookies made from pepper (pfeffer) and spice. Apparently they came out all right, because my aunt really like them. She also told me that they're great dunked in coffee or hot milk and honey. This was nice to learn because pfeffernusse are pretty hard, even after they've ripened for two weeks with an apple slice (don't even think of eating them before they've had a chance to soften, or you could crack a tooth).

That said, pfeffernusse are really lovely little cookies, and a nice break from the heavier and sweeter ones that are also popular this time of year. Initially I thought that they were definitely adult cookies, but by one year old nephew seems to think they're pretty swell. Then again, he did have one the day after they were baked, at the peak of hardness, and he was teething at the time.... :-)

Pfeffernusse (from Rose’s Christmas Cookies)

Ingredients:

- 3 cups all-purpose flour

- ¼ tsp. baking powder

- ¼ tsp. salt

- 1/8 tsp. white pepper

- 1 tsp. ground cinnamon

- 1/8 tsp. ground cloves

- small dash black pepper

- ½ cup chopped candied lemon peel (I couldn’t get this in time, so I substituted the zest of 1 medium lemon.)

- ½ cup unblanched almonds, toasted / roasted

- 1 cup granulated sugar

- 3 large eggs

- 1 cup powdered sugar

- 1 apple slice

Process:

1. In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, salt, baking powder, pepper, cinnamon, and cloves.
2. In a food processor, process the candied lemon peel (if using, if not put the zest in now), the almonds, and the granulated sugar until fine.
3. Add the eggs and process until blended.
4. Scrape down the sides of the bowl, and add the flour mixture. Process just until incorporated. The dough will be crumbly.
5. Wrap the dough tightly in plastic wrap and refrigerate for no more than one hour.
6. Meanwhile, place two oven racks at the upper and lower thirds of the oven. Preheat to 350.
7. Roll the dough out onto a generously floured surface to ¼ inch thickness. Cut with smallish cookie cutters. Re-roll and cut until all of the dough is used.
8. Place the cookies ½ inch apart on cookie sheets. I like to use parchment paper to keep cookies from sticking, but that’s just my preference. Bake for 15 minutes, or until lightly browned.
9. When done, transfer the cookies to wire racks to cool. When they’re completely cool, place the powdered sugar in a bag and toss 5-6 cookies in until they are well coated. Continue until all the cookies are nice and snowy looking.
10. Store the cookies in an airtight container with the apple slice for two weeks, so they’re ripen up and soften.
11. Enjoy! (And I especially will now that Tia Dagmar’s told me how to pair them with coffee and hot milk J

Jamie Oliver's British Beef Pie

Lazy, lazy, me, me, me. I've been cooking and baking a bunch but I've been too damn lazy to keep track of the recipes. I'm going to need a system... something to think about.

Anyway, the recipe that jogged me out of this lazy, lazy funk is from Jamie Oliver's newest cookbook, Jamie's Food Revolution. The whole concept is simple, economical cooking that is both healthy and week-day friendly. It really delivers. Even if you don't like to cook, or you don't feel you can cook, the recipes in this book are insanely doable, and for those of us that like to cook, they're delicious (seriously) and full of variations to play around with. I took his basic recipe and techniques and adapted them to make my version of his "British Beef and Onion Pie". I did this on Tuesday night, between writing and a web-conference and seriously, it was delicious.

I can't say enough. Awesome book, awesome recipe, awesome all around - and I wasn't even a fan... until Tuesday. Now it's katie-bar-the-door, because I'm going to cook the hell out of this book.

Note: For the original recipe, check out Jamie's Food Revolution or his website, jamieoliver.com. My version isn't all that different, but it's different enough that the original is worth checking out.

Ingredients:

- 1 medium to large onion

- 2 carrots

- 2 celery stalks

- 2 sprigs of fresh rosemary

- 2 bay leaves

- olive oil

- 1 lb. good, lean ground beef

- 1 tbs. Worchestershire sauce (or soy sauce if you haven't got it on hand)

- 1 tsp. English mustard (or powdered in a pinch)

- 2 tsp. all-purpose flour

- 1 cup broth, chicken or beef

- 2 nine inch pie crusts

- 1 egg, beaten (or a splash of milk)

- pinch of salt

- pinch of black pepper

Process:

1. Cook the ground beef in a skillet or dutch oven, breaking it up into pieces, until it is about 3/4's done (it should be mostly brownd, with a bit of pink here and there). Remove from skillet and drain on a paper towel lined plate. Set aside.

2. Return the skillet to the stove. Roughly chop the onion, carrot, celery

and rosemary (woody stalks removed), and toss into the preheated skillet with the bay leaves and pinch of salt.

Cook for about 10 minutes, stirring frequently, until the veggies are softened and lightly colored.

3. Stir the ground beef back in. Add the flour, mustard and Worcestershire sauce. Then add the cup of broth. Bring to a boil.

4. Once boiling, bring it down to a simmer and cook, partially covered, until the broth has fully reduced, about 30 -40 minutes. Stir it every so often to keep the bottom from sticking.

5. Set the beef mixture aside to cool for 20 minutes or so. Meanwhile, fit one of the pie crusts into a 9 inch pie plate and put it back in the fridge. Preheat the oven to 350.

6. When the mixture is cooled (a little warmer than room temp.) and the oven is preheated, pull the pie plate out and fill it with the beef mixture. Working quickly, place the second crust over the meat. Crimp the two crusts together (trimming the excess first), and put flour slits, clockwise, into the crust. Very gently use a brush to lightly film the crust with egg wash and put it into the oven on the bottom rack.

7. Bake for about 30 - 40 minutes, until the pie crust is golden. Let it sit for about ten minutes to set, and tuck in . To quote Jamie Oliver, "As it's so scrummy and rich, it's best served with some simply steamed greens," and I've got to say, the man knows what he's talking about.

Sesame Cookies

This recipe is from The Tassajara Cookbook: Lunches, Picnics and Appetizers by Karla Oliveira, and at first I thought it was a little weird.

Unbaked, the dough tastes *a lot* like peanut butter cookie dough (I'm a dough eater, which James finds pretty disgusting). Normally that would be ok, except that I'm allergic to peanut butter, and even though there was no peanut butter within a quarter mile of my kitchen, they tasted and smelled enough like what I remember peanut butter to taste and smell like that they actually made me nervous. That was the raw. Fresh out of the oven, the cookies were kind of tasteless and really, really lean. Not great. Not tasty. Still I did my due diligence and waited for them to cool. Better. Light and crispy, buttery and kind of nutty, they tasted pretty good. I tried another. Still tasted pretty good. I started noticing the toasty taste of the sesame seeds and the slightly salty sweetness. I tried another. Better and better. And so on through half a dozen cookies. The take away? These cookies are slow out of the gate, but they really grow on you. Just make sure you hold off until they've cooled - not always easy with cookies :-)

Ingredients:

- 2/3 cup of vegetable oil

- 1/2 tbs. toasted sesame oil (the original recipe doesn't call for it - can be omitted altogether)

- 1 cup brown sugar

- 1 egg

- 1 tsp. vanilla

- 1 tsp. lemon zest (I omitted this - didn't have lemons)

- 1 cup sesame seeds, toasted and cooled

- 1 cup shredded coconut, toasted and cooled (I omitted this - didn't have coconut)

- 2 cups all-purpose flour

- 1 tsp. baking powder

- 1/2 tsp. baking soda

- 3/4 tsp. salt

Process:

1. Combine the oils, brown sugar, egg and vanilla in a bowl. Beat until well blended.

2. Add the toasted sesame seeds, coconut (if using) and lemon zest (if using).

3. In another bowl, combine the flour, baking power, baking soda and salt. Stir to combine.

4. Add the flour mixture to the sugar mixture and mix until combined. Don't over-mix or it will make the cookies tough.

5. Shape the dough into 1 in. balls and place on an ungreased cookie sheet (parchment paper is ok). Press the balls down with a fork or the back of a spoon. About 12 should fit on a standard cookie sheet.

6. Bake at 350 degrees for about 13-15 minutes, until the cookies are golden and slightly browned on the bottom.

7. Remove them from the oven and let them cool for 5 minutes on the cookie sheet. Transfer them to a rack and let them cool the rest of the way. They'll keep for about a week in a well sealed container. Makes about 2 - 2 1/2 dozen cookies. I don't know if the dough will freeze well - I'll have to try that next time.

Blue

I am blue. Nothing serious and purely situational, but blue all the same. I'm sad that certain familial relationships are so much less than I want them to be, and I tired of trying to make it otherwise. It's difficult to meet impassivity and disinterest with enthusiasm. It wears thin. It's a blue-making, isolating feeling, and I don't like it. So there. Now I need to go be a grown-up and figure out how to deal with it.....

Molasses Pecan Pie

James loves pecan pie, but every time he orders it he's a little disappointed. Most modern pecan pie recipes call for Karo syrup now instead of molasses, and no matter how good the pie is, if it's made with corn syrup instead of molasses, it just ain't right - at least this is what he's told me.

I'm not as big a connoisseur of pecan pies as James is, but I'm happy to take his word for it while I tuck into a big ol' slab of pumpkin pie. Still, on the event of his birthday a few days ago, I decided to make him a pecan pie with molasses instead of a cake, and darned if it didn't taste a little different. Seriously, it had a deep, almost caramely flavor. I'd love to do a side by side taste test, so if anyone has a really good regular pecan pie recipe that they wouldn't mind sharing, I'd be super obliged.

In the meantime, here's the recipe for James's Molasses Pecan Pie.

Note:

1. The original recipe is from the Oct./Nov. issue of Cook's Country Magazine. I made a few adjustments here and there, but left the basic recipe alone. Also, lightly toasting the pecans as they suggested really made a difference in pumping up the flavor. It was an extra step that really paid off.

2. You can use your own pie crust or a store bought pie crust. Either way, you don't have tp prebake the crust. Put it into your pie pan, prep it, and leave it in the freezer for a 1/2 hour. When everything's ready, fill the crust with the pecans and filling and whisk it onto the lowest rack of the oven at high heat. Then lower the temp. for the actual baking. All of this rushing around will keep your pie from having a soggy crust without having to prebake it, which you could still do if you really wanted to :-)

Ingredients:

- 1 cup maple syrup

- 1 cup packed dark brown sugar

- 1/2 cup heavy cream

- 2 tbs. blackstrap molasses (they call for 1 tbs. mild, but James likes the extra molasses flavor of blackstrap so we went with 2; if you like the oomph, but don't have blackstrap, use 3 tbs. mild)

- 4 tbs. unsalted butter, cut into 1/2 in. pieces

- 1/2 tsp. salt

- 6 large egg yolks, lightly beaten

- 1 1/2 cup pecans, lightly toasted and roughly chopped

- 1 generous tsp. of vanilla

- 1 9 in. pie shell - see Note above.

Process:

-Make the Filling-

1. Adjust the oven rack to the lowest position and heat oven to 450 degrees.

2. Heat syrup, sugar, cream and molasses in a saucepan over medium heat, stirring occasionally, until the sugar is dissolved. About 3 min.

3. Remove the mixture from the heat and let it sit 5 min.

4. Whisk the butter and salt into the mixture and stir until combined.

5. Temper the eggs by pouring 1/4 cup of the mixture into the eggs and stirring vigorously - this will help keep the eggs from scrambling. Then pour the eggs slowly into the syrup mixture, all the while stirring briskly, also to help prevent scrambling.

-Bake the Pie-

6. Scatter the pecan into the very cold pie shell. Pour in the filling.

7. Moving quickly, put the pie in the 450 degree oven on the lowest rack.

8. Immediately reduce the heat to 325 degrees and bake until the filling is set and the center jiggles just a little bit. 45-60 min.

9. Cool the pie on a rack for about 1 hour. When it's cool, transfer it to the refrigerator and let it set for at least 3 hours (or up to 1 day).

10. Bring it back to room temp. and serve with vanilla ice cream or whipped cream or just on it's own. Even for a non-pecan-pie-person, it's pretty darn good.

Addendum 11/20/09: Because I'm a dork I have to post this. James took this pie into the 2009 Composite Software Thanksgiving Dessert Contest and we tied for 3rd place! Ming!

Duncan Buried the Pearls!

This will mean nothing to anyone, but I'm really relieved.

I've been working on a short story, "Duncan Merriman Buries His Wife," off and on for over a year. This is ages too long, even for me. Among the many, many problems this story has had is the amazing flip-flopping ending. It was almost as if Duncan didn't know what he wanted to do. Of course, this means that I didn't know him well enough and/or I wasn't listening.

Anyway, there is a pearl necklace that Duncan could either bury at his wife's grave, or keep with the implication that he might, one day, give it to a new love. One draft he would bury. The next he would keep it. On and on this went, burying and unburying the damn thing, but every time it was buried or kept, it never felt right. Until today.

I've been editing the final version for a deadline of October 1st, and still the ending fell flat. So, I chucked the final page and wrote it by hand. And for some reason, this time, it worked. Duncan buried the pearls, and burying the pearls was the exact right thing to do. I'm so happy I could throw something!

I know it probably sounds weird to refer to Duncan as if he were a separate, real person instead of a character I made up. Writing this story has been difficult for me - it's required skill that I have had to develop and an understated emotionality that I've never used before. After all of this time spent figuring his story out, Duncan is real to me, and I'm going to feel strange when the edits are finally done. But now that I know that he has his ending, I'll be able to let him go more easily.

Hooray!

Now I'm going to go throw something.

The Chicken Curry of No Attachment

So, something of a first happened to me last night. Have you ever made a meal where something goes just wrong enough to make the meal salvageable, but disappointing? Or, have you ever made a meal that was such a disaster you have to chuck the lot? Both of these phenomena have happened to me before and will happen again. Neither is what happened last night. Last night's experience was new and kind of neat.

I was 3/4 of the way through making chicken curry for supper when something went wrong. I added the yogurt to the curry, just like the nice recipe said, and next thing I know, my pretty curry is glorp. The yogurt curdled and split from the now mysteriously watery sauce and I was left looking at something that closely resembled vomit. I definitely did not want to salvage that. Still, I was left with three very nice chicken breasts that had been rubbed with curry and sauteed before the disaster. I did not want to waste them. I also had a bunch of tasty brown rice, but all of this needed sauce and I had no sauce. Then, all of a sudden, I adjusted. This is weird for me. I'm not a terribly adjustable person. I'm not even all that well-adjusted. But last night I adjusted with no problem.

I cut up the lovely curry chicken, tossed it with some arugula and feta and made a tasty hot salad from it. Then I made a batch of vanilla almond rice pudding from the rice that suddenly had no home. Nothing was wasted except for the vomit sauce, and I did all of this on autopilot. Very weird for me. Normally, I would have stressed out because of my attachment to how things were supposed to go. But this time, I didn't have that attachment and I was able to happily and easily adjust. This was a good experience for me, one I'd like to bring into other aspects of my life - not just when things go haywire in the kitchen.

Pasta with Basil and a Balsamic Glaze

This is so turning into a default recipe box. How completely boring for everyone but me. Facebook's hijacked all my pithy nothing's. Photos would probably help. Or clever names for the food, but honestly, most of the names that I come up with have little to do with the food, and the names are as much to remind myself what's in the stuff as anything else. Still, that might be something to work on.... Oh well. In the meantime, here's another recipe for the collection.

This one is from The Weeknight Kitchen newsletter at The Splendid Table website. It's very fast and delicious, although I did get a serious post-carb craving for sweets afterwards. Then again, I get a craving for sweets post pretty most everything, so maybe it wasn't the carbs. The recipe calls for lots of shredded basil, which was delicious, but I'm thinking that next time I'm going to try it was mint instead. I love mint in most of the places people put basil, so I figure it's worth a try.

And so now without further ado, yet another recipe, this time for Pasta with Basil and a Balsamic Vinegar Glaze. What a creative name.

Ingredients:

- 1 lb. pasta (shapes, spaghetti or linguini)

- Extra-virgin olive oil

- 8 large cloves of garlic, sliced thin

- salt and pepper

- 1 - 1 1/2 cups grated or shredded parmesan

- 3 tbs. balsamic vinegar, mixed with 1 generous tsp. brown sugar (don't skip the brown sugar, it makes all the difference_

- 1 -1 1/3 tight-packed cups fresh basil leaves, torn

- 1/2 -2/3 cup coarsely chopped toasted almonds

* Have everything chopped and measured before you start - the recipe, once started, moves along quickly.

Process:

1. Cook pasta in rapidly boiling, salted water for amount 9 minutes, until the pasta is slightly resistant to the bite, but not raw. You want it just under al dente.

2. Save 1 cup of pasta cooking water and set aside. Then drain the pasta and set it aside too.

3. Put the pot back on the stove at med. heat and generously film the bottom with olive oil.

4. Put the sliced garlic in the olive oil along with salt to taste and a generous amount of pepper.

Stir and cook the garlic for about two minutes, until it's tender but not brown.

5. Add 1/2 cup of the reserved pasta cooking water to the pot. Heat at medium and then add the pasta and toss quickly so the noodles are blended with the garlic.

6. Toss in the vinegar mixture and cheese to coat the noodles.

7. Lastly, add the basil and toss until well blended and fragrant - about 30 seconds.

8. Scatter the pasta with the almonds and serve hot.

Fried Plantains & A Random Note

I fried a plantain today! I've never done that before. I know there are a ba-zillion different ways to do it, but I went super simple for my first time out. Here's what I did:

1. Put 1 tbs. butter per plantain in a roomy skillet.

2. While the butter was melting, I cut the plantain in half twice - once through the middle and once length-wise so it was drawn and quartered in the end.

3. When the butter had stopped foaming, I put the plantain pieces into the skillet, and sprinkled brown sugar on top.

4. I let that side fry without touching it for about four minutes on high heat. Once they'd browned a bit on one side, I flipped them over and let the other side fry for about 4 minutes until it too was brown.

5. Then I put them on a plate, sprinkled brown sugar on top and James and I ate them. Yum.

And now for the totally random note: I also spent much of this evening pitting sugar plums to freeze for winter baking and preserving figs from my mom's tree in syrup. I feel absurdly proud of this :-)

Rosemary Sherry Savory Cake

I love this cake. Not only does it taste good, and not only is it light, but it's the only cake I know of that you can serve as dessert, and as part of your entree, depending on what you pair with it. Custard or vanilla ice cream? Dessert deliciousness. Pork roast and gravy? It's part of your entree. And the weird thing is, that it works beautifully both ways without any sort of alternation in the recipe.

The other reason I love this cake is because it looks a little funny. It's a souffle cake, which means that it's meant to sort of collapse in on itself in a spongy, moist, semi-dense kind of way. This means that it's appearance is a little unpredictable. Sometimes it comes out looking really adorable, like something a hobbit would make. Other times it's just kind of homely, but no matter what it looks like, it always tastes good.

This recipe is from The Greyston Bakery Cookbook by Sara Kate Gillingham-Ryan, editor of Kitchn.com. It's a great recipe and a really good book - I'm looking forward to trying out more of their recipes, especially the Burnt Almond Torte and the Lotus in Mud Cake, a chocolate confection inspired by the Buddhist idea of beauty and compassion being rooted in darkness and pain.

But, in the meantime, here's the recipe for Olive Oil and Sherry Souffle Cake (their official title for it). It's so damn good!

Ingredients:

- 5 eggs, separated

- 3/4 cups granulated sugar

- 1 tbs. freshly grated lemon zest (I omitted this because I was out of lemons)

- 1 tbs. chopped fresh rosemary (Do Not omit this - it's crucial to the flavor)

- 1/2 cup dry sherry (I used cream sherry and it tasted lovely)

- 1/3 cup extra-virgin olive oil

- 1 cup unbleached all-purpose flour

- 1/2 tsp. salt

- 3 tbs. powdered sugar

Process:

1. Position the rack to the center of the oven and preheat to 325. Grease and flour a 12 cup Bundt cake pan (I used this) or a 10 x 4.5 in. tube cake pan. Set aside.

2. With an electric mixer on med-high, mix the egg yolks with the sugar until the yolks are thick and pale yellow. Use the whisk attachment.

3. Slow the mixer to med-low and add the zest and rosemary. Mix until incorporated, about 30 sec.

4. Drizzle in the sherry. Once incorporated, drizzle in the olive oil.

5. Gradually add the flour. Mix until well combined.

6. Pour the mixture into a large bowl and set aside. Carefully wash and dry your mixer bowl and whisk attachment. Then beat the egg whites and salt until the whites hold stiff peaks.

7. Gently stir in 1/3 of the whites into the batter with a whisk. This will lighten the batter. Then fold in the rest of the whites in two batches, blending completely.

8. Pout the batter into the prepared pan and put in the oven. Bake for 40 min., until the cake is a deep golden brown and a skewer inserted near the middle comes out clean.

9. Set the pan on a wire rack and cool completely. The cake will do what souffles do and collapse into itself, pulling away slightly from the edges of the mold. When the cake it cool, turn it out onto a plate.

10. If you're serving it as dessert, dust it with powdered sugar and serve it in all it's rumpled glory. If your serving it with your main course, garnish it with sprigs of rosemary, and serve slices with your meal as you would yorkshire pudding. Just thinking about it with goose and gravy makes my mouth water....

Rockin' Red Lentil Dal

This dal rocks. It rocks so much that even people who aren't quite so keen on tofu might like it.

Dal is, basically, Indian lentil stew / soup. There are several different kinds of lentils you can use - brown lentils (the kind sold with the dried beans and rice in grocery stores), French green lentils, and delicate red lentils. Any of type of lentil will work, but red lentils are my favorite for this recipe - they cook up quickly and they fall apart after about 20 min. of cooking, giving the dal an integrated, creamy sort of texture.

This recipe is adapted from The Gourmet Cookbook. The original recipe looked good, but it was a lot fussier than I felt it had to be, and I wasn't nuts about the spice blend they used, so I tinkered and futzed and came up with this - a very yummy, very quick, very filling way to satisfy your craving for Indian food on a week-day night.

Serves 2

Ingredients:

- 1/2 - 3/4 cup red lentils, rinsed and sorted. The amount you use depends on how soupy or how stewy you like your dal.

- 3 1/2 cups water or chicken broth

- 1 small onion, sliced

- 1 small garlic clove, crushed

- 1 tsp. fresh grated ginger

- 8 oz. extra firm tofu, patted fry and cut into 1/2 in. cubes

- 1/2 tsp. curry powder

-1/2 tsp. salt

- 2 tbs. olive oil or vegetable oil

- *dash of dried cumin

- *dash of powdered cloves

- *dash of cinnamon

- *dash of powdered ginger

- *dash of garam masala

- *dash of black pepper

* Use these spices in quantity to taste, but err on the side of using a lighter, rather than heavier hand. James and I don't like super-spicy food, so this blend is pretty mild. For hotter dal, add red pepper flakes or cayenne to taste.

- 1 cup (uncooked) basmati rice.

Process:

1. Cook it, set it aside and keep warm. You will serve the dal over it.

2. While the rice cooks, heat the 2 tbs. of oil in a dutch oven. When it's just rippling, add the sliced onion and cook, stirring often, until the onions are soft and just beginning to brown.

3. Add the spice mixture to the onions. Cook until blended and fragrant, about 30 sec. (this is called "blooming" the spices with the hot oil).

4. Add the garlic to the onions and spices. Cook just until fragrant, about 30 sec.

5. Add the ginger to the onions, garlic and spices. Cook for about a minute.

6. Add the washed and sorted lentils and the 3 1/2 cup of water or chicken broth. Bring to a boil, then simmer, uncovered, for 20 minutes, until the lentils had fallen apart.

7. While the lentils are simmering, pat the tofu dry. Heat 1 tbs. of vegetable oil in a skillet, and bring to the smoking point. Add the cubed tofu and cook until just turning golden on one side (about 1 min.). Then stir the tofu and cook for an additional 1 -2 minutes. *Alternately, you could leave the tofu uncooked until the last step. This will give the tofu a much softer, silky texture in the final dish. If you like your tofu firmer however, you should pre-cook it at least a bit. Once golden, drain on a paper towel.

8. When the lentils are done, take them off-heat and add the tofu. Stir it in, then let the dal sit, covered, for 5 minutes so that the flavors have a chance to blend.

9. Serve the dal over basmati rice, or the rice of your choice. Alternately, you can eat the dal as a hearty soup with some crusty bread or naan.

Salad of Warm Vegetables

Allow me a moment to ruminate on Spain, the fine and noble country where torture became art, the first novel was born, and where the ultimate culinary dichotomy - cold soup served with warm salad - was perfected. For these and for many other things, allow me to thank you, Spain... except for maybe the torture. We could have done without that.

Anyway, since I covered cold soup last week by making my first gazpacho, I figured I would tackle the other half of the equation by making a traditional warm vegetable salad. Let me emphasize that while this might not sound like a lot of food or look like a lot of food, oh-my-god, this salad is a lot of food. Just saying. Okay, so onto the the recipe.

Ingredients:

- 3/4 lb. ripe tomatoes, quartered and sliced into eighths.

- 3/4 lb. green bell peppers, sliced

- 3/4 lb. red bell peppers, sliced

- 1 small onion, roughly chopped into 1 in. chunks

- 1 -2 cloves of garlic, crushed

- 4 - 5 slices of prosciutto or Serrano ham, proscuitto

- 3 -4 hard boiled eggs, sliced

- 1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil

- 1/8 cup red wine or sherry vinegar

- dash of cumin

- kosher or sea salt

- pepper

- 3 cups of arugula (optional)

Process:

1. Line a baking sheet with aluminum foil and coat with cooking spray. Preheat the oven to 500 degrees.

2. Placed the tomatoes, red and green bell peppers and onion onto the baking sheet. Sprinkle with salt and pepper, and roast in the oven for 10 - 15 minutes, stirring occassioanlly, until the peppers are the tiniest bit charred, the onions are gently browned and the tomatoes have softened but the skins are still intact. Remove from the oven and set aside.

3. While the veggies are cooling slightly, put the oil, vinegar, crushed garlic and cumin in a bowl and gently mix.

4. Put the veggies in a serving dish, along with the eggs, prosciutto and dressing. Gently toss. Serve the salad warm, alone or over arugula.

* This salad goes very well with a good chewy or grainy bread. I could even see serving it over pasta or rice, although then it would cease to be a salad, and it's ever so nice as a salad. Any way you decide to eat it, it's quick and filling and healthy. Just the thing to make you feel good.

Cold Comfort Lemon Chicken and Rice

James and I have a wee beastie of a bug - nothing bad enough to take us out, just bad enough to make us wish it would. So, when the breathing's bad and the lungs are achy and there's nothing to do but deal, a bowl of what James calls "Chicken Glop on Rice" really hits the spot. "Chicken Glop on Rice" can take may forms - Chicken Mushroom, Chicken Veggie, Chicken Something Else - but this one in particular is my mild-mannered favorite: Lemon Chicken and Rice.

While I would never call this dish bland, I would say that the recipe I'm posting is gentle. You can amp up the flavors by adding more onion and garlic, and an extra tablespoon of lemon juice at the end. You can even lower the ratio of rice to sauce and eat it as a thick chicken and rice soup. The variations are pretty extensive, so you can play around and make it your own whenever the craving for "Chicken Glop on Rice" strikes.

Adapted from a recipe posted on seriouseats.com by Blake Royer.

Ingredients:

- 4 chicken breasts, 1 1/2 - 2lbs., patted dry and cut into 1 in. chunks

- 2 tbs. butter

- 4 tbs. flour

- 4 cups chicken broth

- 1 cup milk or half-and-half

- 1/4 tsp. nutmeg

- juice of 1 lemon, 2 tbs. reserved

- zest from 1/2 a med. lemon, cut into strips

- 1 lg. clove of garlic, crushed

- 1 shallot, sliced thin

- 1 - 1 1/2 cup rice

Process:

1. Rinse the rice and cook it until tender. Set aside and keep warm.

2. Melt the butter in a saucepan over medium - low heat until the foam subsides. Add the garlic and cook only until fragrant - 30 sec. Add the flour and whisk it into the butter, breaking up any clumps, then quickly add the stock while whisking. Add the lemon zest, then bring to a boil, and simmer for 10 minutes, whisking occasionally.

3. Remove the zest with a wooden spoon, then add the milk, nutmeg, 2 tbs of lemon juice, and salt to taste. Bring to a boil, then simmer for an additional 5-10 minutes, until the sauce is creamy and thick. Off heat, add an additional tbs. of lemon juice (or more / less to taste). Set aside and keep warm on the lowest possible heat.

4. Season the chunks of chicken with fresh pepper, kosher salt and dill. Saute half of the chicken until it's cooked through, and looks nice and brown. Transfer it to a plate and tent with foil, then saute the rest of the chicken, and tent it with the rest.

5. While the chicken is resting, saute the shallots in a dab of butter until translucent but not browned. Add the shallots to the sauce. Then add the chicken and juices to the sauce. Stir and let the sauce simmer at very low heat for 1 or 2 minutes.

6. Put the rice into a serving bowl, and then the sauce into another. Spoon portions of rice into individual bowls and top with the chicken and sauce. This recipe makes enough for 4 hungry adults. Leftovers will keep in the fridge for a couple of days. Eat, enjoy and feel better :-)

Miss Potter

And now, for a rare, non-food-related post. I saw the 2007 biopic, Miss Potter, last night and thought it so lovely that I just had to say something about it.

Miss Potter stars Renee Zelweggar as Beatrix Potter, the creator of Peter Rabbit, among others well-beloved characters such as Jemima Puddleduck and the Flopsy Bunnies.

I have always loved the Peter Rabbit books. Despite the beautiful, soothing watercolor illustrations, Beatrix Potter did not coddle her young readers. She used a challenging, but rhythmically perfect vocabulary, and didn't pull any punches about the dangers inherent in living. I don't think you could get a children's book published today in which the protagonist's father had an "accident" and was made into a pie by a farmer's wife - at least, not without a fight. Beatrix Potter respected her young readers and wrote directly to real children, not to an idealized adult vision of what children should be. For all of these reasons, I've always liked Beatrix Potter in a sort of abstract way. Plus, Nabakov is quoted as saying that "The Tale of Peter Rabbit" is a structurally perfect narrative, and damned if I don't think he's right.

The film, Miss Potter, only broadened my respect for Beatrix Potter. She was independent, quirky, whimsical and odd, but she also stuck to her principals with an amazing degree of insight and integrity. The film itself blends blends a realistic portrayal of its heroine with dashes of whimsey and subtle animation that serve to underscore Potter's unique vision.

Renee Zelweggar is completely charming as the eponymous Miss Potter, Ewan McGregor is lovely as Norman Warne, Miss Potter's first publisher, and Emily Watson is delightful as his sister, Millie. Everything about the movie is gentle and warm, but with an air of not glossing over difficulties, much like Miss Potter's own work.

Miss Potter was a quiet, joyful, poignant little film, one I think I would like to own, which is saying something for me. It was lovely to watch and to learn more about the woman who gave us Peter Rabbit, the children's book character that almost instantly became an icon.

Sopa de Almenda, or Spanish Almond Custard

I *love* this stuff. I found the recipe on Penelope Casa's book, La Cocina de Mama, in the dessert section under the title "Pepita's Almond Soup." It isn't soup though - not really. It's a rich almond custard, similar in consistency to rice pudding, except velvety and smooth. It's absolutely delicious and a cinch to make. It can be eaten on it's own with a garnish of toasted almonds, or served over a slice of plain dense cake (I just served it with pieces of Nigella's Breton Gato - very rich and good.) It can even be eaten with slices of fresh fruit (figs and plums would be especially nice.)

One thing - if you aren't mad about cinnamon, use one stick, not two. I like the balance and warmth two sticks give the custard, but James doesn't like cinnamon so much, so I'll probably lower the dosage next time I make it, because I love him so :-)

Ingredients:

- 1/2 lb. blanched, toasted almonds

- 1/2 cup sugar

- 4 cups milk (I used 2 cups whole, and 2 cups 2% and it worked out well)

- Zest of 1/2 a med.-lg. lemon, cut into strips

- 2 cinnamon sticks

Process:

1. In a food processor, pulse the almonds and the sugar together until the mixture is very fine. .

2. In a saucepan, bring the milk, cinnamon and zest to a boil. Lower the heat and simmer for 10 min.

3. Add the almond / sugar mixture and return to a boil.

4. Reduce the heat and simmer until the mixture is the consistency of thick custard, about 5ish minutes give or take. When it coats the back of a metal spoon pretty thickly, it's done.

5. Take the mixture off heat and let it cool.

6. When the mixture is at room temp., remove the cinnamon sticks and zest. Then pass the mixture through a fine mesh strainer, pressing it with the back of a metal spoon or ladle to extract as much liquid as possible.

7. Serve the custard chilled or at room temp. It's lovely in little white ramekins with a sprinkle of toasted almonds on top. You can also spoon it over the pastry of your choice or put it in goblets with fruit like a Spanish zabaglione. Delicious.

Gazpacho Andaluz

I never liked gazpacho as a kid. Gazpacho is a traditional cold tomato soup with regional variations all over Spain. The most well-known in the States is a puree of fresh tomatoes, bell peppers, bread and cucumbers. How could this go wrong, one might ask. Well, it can. If you make it with canned bread crumbs and tinned tomatoes, as most American recipes suggest, it isn't very good - sort of gritty and metallic. It also tends to separate, which makes the texture even less appealing.

Given that I'd never had a gazpacho that I liked, it was with a certain lack of enthusiasm that I decided to make it. Honestly, I never would have if I hadn't had two pounds of tomatoes that really needed using. So, I went rummaging through a cookbook my mom has given me about three years ago, La Cocina de Mama by Penelope Casas. I'd never cooked from Ms. Casas excellent book, not because the recipes didn't look wonderful, but because I don't cook Spanish food. My grandmother cooks the Spanish food in the family, and so does my mother, to a slightly lesser degree. There is no need for me to cook Spanish food, so I haven't. But with two pounds of ripe tomatoes yelling at me from the fridge, I cracked the book open and found the only recipe that called for that many desperately ripe tomatoes - gazpacho.

I was not thrilled.

Still, I fired up the food processor and made it anyway, and Oh, My God, it was good. Seriously. This gazpacho was delicious - velvety and smooth, without a trace of grit, tangy and creamy at the same time, super refreshing and oddly filling. It was magnificent. And so, I simply must share it with my two or three occasional readers :-)

A quick note: Like I said, gazpacho has a ton of regional variations - there's even one from Malaga that uses white grapes and almonds (which I will be trying out shortly). This one is from Andalusia and it's very close to what people typically think of as gazpacho. The only difference here is the omission of the cucumbers. If you really love or miss them, I'd suggest chopping some up in a fine dice and using them as a garnish on top. Resist the urge to add them to the soup as the balance of flavors is really already perfect.

Ingredients:

- 2 1/2 lbs. very ripe tomatoes, quartered

- 1 med - lg. garlic clove

- 1 med. red bell pepper, coarsely chopped

- One, 2 in. bread cube cut from a firm French or sourdough loaf, crusts removed

- 2 tbs. sherry vinegar (if you don't have sherry vinegar, red wine vinegar will do. Don't use balsamic, it's too overwhelming)

- 2 tsp. kosher or sea salt

- 1/2 tsp. ground cumin

- a dash of pimenton (Spanish paprika), optional

- 1 tsp. sugar

- 1/2 cup mild extra-virgin olive oil

Process:

1. Place half the tomatoes in the bowl of a food processor with the garlic, pepper, bread, vinegar, salt, cumin, paprika (if using), and sugar. Blend until no large pieces remain.

2. With the processor running, add the remaining tomatoes one or two chunks at a time.

3. When everything is well blended, slowly drizzle in the oil. Beat until it's as smooth as possible.

4. Pour the soup into a large bowl. Using a food mill or hand-held blender, blend the soup until there are absolutely no solids and it has a velvety texture. This is a purely "to taste" step - if you like chunkier gazpacho, skip this step and move onto step 5.

5. Chill the soup for at least 3 hours. It can be refrigerated overnight, and I think it tastes better if it does - the rest gives all of the flavors a chance to mellow out and blend together. Before serving, taste and adjust salt and vinegar to taste. If the soup is too thick, slowly add a bit of ice water to thin to the consistency you prefer. Serve it in bowls with a garnish of bell peppers (or cucumber) or nothing at all. Buen Provecho!

Homemade Pesto Pizza

I had some arugula pesto left over from earlier this week - not really enough for pasta or rice, but too much to waste, so I decided to use it on pizza. This is another one of those things that's so easy, I'm not going to bother with the recipe. Here's what you do:

1. Get a bag of fresh pizza dough. I use Trader Joe's - it comes in wheat, regular and garlic herb and all three a very nice.

2. Preheat the oven to 500 with an empty metal cookie sheet set on the middle rack. Meanwhile, flour a piece of parchment paper that is roughly the size of the cookie sheet. Spread the pizza dough over it until it roughly covers the whole thing. Poke shallow holes in it with a fork and set aside.

3. When the oven is at temp., pull out the cookie sheet and slide the parchment paper and pizza dough onto it. Pop it into the oven for 4-ish minutes, or until the dough has started to rise and bubble.

4. Pull the pizza dough out. Poke any bubbles with a fork and slather it with the pesto. Follow that up with parmesan or a bit of shredded smoked mozzarella, some roasted or sauteed cherry tomatoes, and a bit of fresh mint. Sprinkle black pepper and sea salt over the top and pop it back into the oven until the top is starting to get golden brown. About 6-ish minutes.

5. Pull the pizza out of the oven and let it sit for a minute or two - that sucker's going to be *hot*. Then cut it up into about 8 pieces with a pizza cutter and enjoy. The whole thing takes about 20 minutes from start to finish, depending on what toppings you want to use.

Other options include:

parmesan, ground beef and corn

parmesan, sauteed or fresh mushrooms and shallots

prosciutto and roasted red peppers with the cheese of your choice

Summer Pesto pf Arugula, Mint and Lemon

This is another one of those alternative, non-basil pestos that I'm really digging right now. It's best with ingredients that are at their freshest, but I suspect it'll makable and delicious even in winter... at least in mild-wintered California.

This recipe is just for sauce. I got it from 101 Cookbooks, Heidi Swanson's fantastic vegetarian food blog. I adjusted the recipe to taste, but it is essentially unchanged.

Heidi pairs this slightly spicy pesto with wheat berries, which I definitely need to track down and try, but it pairs really well with pasta (of course), cous cous, Israeli cous cous, lentils and even brown rice. You can use it in warm or cold dishes, although it's surprisingly refreshing cold with it's creamy, greeny-lemon flavor. I put it together in a pasta salad with tomatoes and cucumbers and it was delicious, but I'm looking forward to trying it in other dishes. It is very thick, so if you do use it with pasta, reserve some of the cooking water to help thin it a bit to coat your noodles.

And now, without further ado, Summer Pesto of Arugula, Mint and Lemon!

Ingredients:

- 1 med. garlic clove

- 2/3 cups pine nuts or roasted slivered almonds ( I used almonds because I loves them)

- 2 1/2 - 3 cups arugula, loosely packed

- 1/3 cup loosely packed mint

- 1/2 fresh Parmesan cheese, grated

- 2 big pinches of salt

- 1 generous tbs. fresh lemon juice

- 1/3 cup olive oil

Process:

1. Place all of the ingredients, except for the olive oil, into the bowl of a food processor and whirl to a paste - about 1 minute or so.

2. Scrape down the sides of the bowl and whirl again, slowly drizzling in the olive oil. Continue to while until very well incorporated - about another minute.

3. Taste and adjust salt and lemon to taste. Enjoy!

* If you're going to make it ahead of time, just pop it in the fridge in an air tight container. Let it come to room temp before adding it to your starch or legume. This is mostly for your convenience - the stuff is thick, not quite as thick as guacamole, but very thick. It will coat your food more easily at room temp.

*If you want to thin it, slowly add hot water or reserved pasta cooking water until it's at your preferred consistency.

Hufflepuffs

Hufflepuffs are the name that James has given to the little almond puff -pastry pastries that I made on Friday night. They are lovely and addictive and very versatile - you can make them with roasted almond slivers, chocolate, dried cherries, even jam - and they are so easy that I'm not going to even post the recipe. All you do, is this:

1. Decide whether or not you feel like making puff-pastry dough from scratch or if you want to you frozen. If you want to make it from scratch, I really recommend Julia Child's recipe or the one tested by America's Test Kitchen. If you want to use frozen, go with Pepperidge Farm's - it's really good, especially in a pinch. Whichever you decide, roll out the dough to a thickness of about 1/8 of an inch and cut it into 1 in. x 2 in. rectangles.

2. Wash the top of your rectangles in egg white and sprinkle with sugar. Then put your almond slivers or dried fruit or chocolate chips / chunks on top.

3. Pop them onto a baking sheet and put them in the oven at 400 degrees for eight minutes. After eight minutes, turn off the oven and open the door slightly. Let them hang out in there for another five minutes to dry them out a bit (it'll prevent sogginess), then pull them out and let them cool on a rack.

Stored in an airtight container, the Hufflepuffs will stay fresh for a day or two. If they start to get a little stale or spongy, pop them back into the oven at 400 for 3-5 minutes. Then let them hang out with the oven off and the door ajar for another 3-5 minutes.

There's lots of room to play around with variations. The pound of puff pastry dough used makes *a lot* of them, so they make an awesome last minute dessert too. They all do great in a pinch when you just absolutely must have a lovely, homemade treat Right Now. :-)

Julie & Julia

James took me to see Julie & Julia this week-end, and I have only one thing to say.

It's lovely.

Julie & Julia is lovely and charming and so feel-goodable, which is not my normal thing, but it was so delightful that it was almost impossible to be cynical about it. Amy Adams was good as the insufferable yet adorable protagonist, the guy that plays her supportive, long suffering husband was lovely, Stanley Tucci was wonderful as Paul Child, and Meryl Streep was genuinely fantabulous as Julia Child.

One thing that I especially liked about the film, and I admit that this is a bit random, was that all of the men, from Julie's husband to Paul Child to Julia Child's instructor at the Cordon Bleu, were all portrayed as generally amiable, supportive men. Any nastiness portrayed in the movie was done by women, to women, and while this is nothing to celebrate per se, it was good to see men portrayed nicely in a movie written for a predominantly female audience.

I'm very glad we spent the money to see Julie & Julia in the theater, and I'm very glad I went with James, my own wonderful, supportive husband. It was a lovely date movie, and I even got something out of it culinarily: I now have a serious ambition to learn how to de-bone a duck.

Tomato Almond Pesto

So, lots of folks don't realize that pesto comes in more than just one color. While creamy green basil, pine nut, parmesan stuff has become the figurehead of pestos , there are a bunch of really delicious regional variations that should be checked out. For example: Sicilian fresh tomato almond pesto!

This pesto is super easy and quick to make, provided you have a food processor or a good blender. If you tried to make it the traditional way - in a mortar and pestle - it would still be super easy, but maybe not so quick. The sauce still has basil in it, but the basil is balanced in this case by fresh sweet tomatoes and toasted almonds, which gives it a really creamy depth of flavor. The recipe I used it from the almost-never-fails magazine, Cook's Illustrated, which is famous for printing recipes only after they've been tested a bajillian times. I followed this one pretty much to the letter, and let me tell you, the sauce that resulted was so good I was ready to eat it up like soup. And so now, for your cooking and eating enjoyment, an alternative to the pesto we all think of.... Sicilian Tomato Almond Pesto! Yum!

Ingredients:

- 1/4 cup slivered almonds

- 12 oz. cherry or grape tomatoes

- 1/2 cup packed fresh basil leaves

- 1 med. garlic clove (size can be adjusted depending on how much you like garlic)

- 1 small pepperoncini or 1/4 tsp. red pepper flakes & 1/2 tsp. red wine vinegar

- salt

- 1/3 cup extra-virgin olive oil

- 1 lb. pasta (they recommend linguini or spaghetti, but I used whole wheat rotini and it was great)

- 1/2 cup Parmesan cheese, grated or shredded

Process:

1. Toast the almonds in a dry skillet over medium heat, stirring often, until fragrant. About 2-4 min. Cool to room temp.

2. Put well salted pasta water on to boil.

3. Put the almonds, tomatoes, basil, pepperoncini 0r red pepper flakes / red wine vinegar, garlic and 1 tsp of salt into the food processor and blend until smooth. About 1 min.

4. Scrape down the sides of the bowl with a spatula. Then, with the machine running, drizzle in the olive oil until it's blended. About 30 sec.

5. Once pasta is boiled, drain it, reserving 1/2 cup of liquid, then put it back into the pot. Add the pesto and 1/2 cup Parmesan to the pasta, adding a bit of pasta cooking water if necessary, just until the sauced coats the pasta well. Serve immediately.

New Review

There's a new book up on The Foggy Foot Review. Gasp! I know - two in two weeks and the month's only just begun. This one's for The Risk of Darkness by Susan Hill. Check it out if you have the chance - the review, not the book. The book was, sadly, not quite worth reading.... See? Now I'm giving things away... :-)

NIgella's Breton Gato

The recipe for this cake is in Nigella Lawson's How to be a Domestic Goddess. You'll find it not under "Breton Gato" but "Gateau Breton", but "Gateau" (which is French for cake) sounds so much like "Gato" (which is Spanish for cat), that I couldn't resist tweaking the name. That's about all I tweaked though, save for adding a little vanilla extract, a little almond extract, and baking it in a different sized springform pan (she calls for a 10 in. pan, and I have a 9 in.)

This cake is delicious. Sort of across between a big shortbread cookie and a vanilla poundcake. We ate it over at my folks house with vanilla ice cream, but it would be just as good alone, or with heavy cream, or even raspberry coulis. The only other thing I'll say is this: Use Really Good Butter. You taste the butter in this cake the way you taste it in shortbread, so it's worth it to splurge and use good, fresh stuff. I put a brick of KerryGold, which is Irish-style cream butter, into this and it worked really well, but any good butter will do.

Ingredients:

- For the Cake-

- 1 1/2 cups cake flour

- 3/4 cup plus 1 tbs. sugar

- 1 cup plus 2 tbs. unsalted butter, cut into cubes

- 6 large egg yolks

-t tsp. vanilla extract

-1/4 tsp. almond extract

* 9 inch springform pan, well buttered.

-For the Glaze-

- 1 tsp. egg yolk, for the six above

-1 tbs. water

Process:

1. Preheat the oven to 375. You'll use the middle rack.

2. Mix the glaze and put it aside.

3. Put the dry ingredients in the bowl of a stand mixer. Without running the mixer, add in the butter, egg yolks, vanilla and almond extracts.

4. With the dough-hook attachment, slowly mix until the dough is smooth and golden. Don't over-mix, but it should all be pretty uniformly incorporated.

5. With well-floured hands, spread the dough into the springform pan. The dough is going to be really sticky. Once the top is smooth and even, baste the top with the egg/water glaze (not too much) and score the top in a wide lattice pattern.

6. Pop it into the oven for 15 min.

7. After 15 min., lower the temp to 350 and continue to bake for 25 minutes or so, until it's golden and firm to the touch.

8. Let the cake cool completely in the pan. Once cool, unmold it and serve! You can keep leftovers pretty well for 3-5 days if it's well-sealed, although I doubt that it'll last that long!

A New Review and Other Stuff

An eon has passed and Foggy Foot Review has a new post, this time on John Gardner's Grendel. I also just finished The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood, which was amazing, and will be posting a review on that this week-end. Didn't want to shock anyone by putting up two reviews in such close succession :-)

And in Other Stuff: I'm going to a writing workshop at Stanford tomorrow and am both nervous and excited, Facebook continues to tickle me, and so does my super-neat nephew, whom we get to hang out with this week-end. I'm still looking forward to meeting our super-neat niece in Texas - hopefully soon, and James is back from D.C. which makes me happy because being around him makes me happy.

The madeleine experiment continued with Donna Hay's recipe, which turned out like vaguely shell-shaped sponge cakes. Weird. Didn't taste too bad, but didn't taste too good either, so it's on to the recipe my sister-in-law sent, and one in The Joy of Cooking. Incidentally, I found an awesome chocolate chip cookie recipe in there yesterday, and made it with chocolate and dried cherries - ever-so-yummy. Half the dough is frozen in civilized little balls for future use - ever-so-dangerous. I'll post the recipe on that after I've tried baking the frozen dough.

And that's about it. This ends the State of the Me Address. For now.... Mwah Ha Ha!!!!!

Madeleines Pt. 1

In this case, not me but Proust's cookie - those little shell-shaped dealies they're selling at Starbucks. Now, I'm not knocking Starbucks, but the madeleines they sell bear little resemblance (beyond their shape) to actual madeleines. Actual madeleines are not dry and eggy and oily. Actual madeleines are tender and spongy and vanilla-y with an undertone of butter. They are, quite honestly, dangerous and compulsively eatable - if done right. If done wrong, they're pretty whatever.

I have had good madeleines twice in my life, and both times I think I moaned (a little embarrassing, but there you go). Once was at a bakery in North Beach, which specializes in traditional European cookies and desserts, and the other was in New Orleans, at a bakery that specializes in traditional French cookies and desserts. If you sense a theme here, it's because there's a theme here. All other madeleines have paled in comparison to those traditional madeleines. Wow, my mouth is literally watering.

Anyway, the point is that I would love to be able to have mouth-watering madeleines without going to Europe or New Orleans or even into North Beach, as much as I love North Beach. So I'm giving myself a little project: either find a recipe that makes awesome perfect madeleines, or figure one out based on the recipes you don't like.

I've made two batches so far. Both had disappointed, especially because they came from two of my favorite recipe sources - Cook's Illustrated and Nigella Lawson's How to be a Domestic Goddess. The Cook's Illustrated madeleines were almond madeleines that swapped out some of the flour for almond meal. The result was a gritty, dry, tough cookie that I actually tossed out.

The Nigella madeleines were even more disappointing. They sat like lumps in the madeleine pan and didn't even spread. Even worse, they tasted like eggy styrofoam - not was I was hoping for. So it's back to the drawing board. I have two more recipes lined up, so we'll see. In the plus column, I'm starting to figure out what makes the cookies work and what doesn't, so it's is educational at least. There are definitely worse things than baking experimentation, although I still hope I find the recipe that justifies Proust's famous recollection.

Good-bye Charlie

I just watched a very nice man hook up Charlie, my 2000 Toyota Echo, to his tow-truck and take him away. Charlie is getting donated to KQED's vehicle donation program. He's been struggling some in recent years. He's only 9, but I've used him hard. He's been shuddering at stop signs and cutting out mysteriously, so it recently became clear that it was time to let him go. 

Charlie was not my first car, but he might as well have been. I got him when I was 22, and he's seen me through a lot - bad relationships, good relationships, a whole bunch of moves - pretty much everything that happened in my 20's has Charlie attached to it somehow. I'm no longer the young woman who slapped "Support Your Local Independent Bookstore" onto Charlie's bumper, nor am I the young woman who stuck a red, fuzzy alien with google eyes onto his dashboard. Letting go of Charlie is letting go of that phase of my life, a phase I'm not necessarily sad to see gone, but that I have affection for all the same. This is a little bit sad. 

Still, Charlie gave me the best years of his vehicular life, and I'm grateful to have had him. So, in the words of my grandfather, I'll say "good-bye Charlie" and be content with that. 

MIng Noodles

Our cat Molly, who now lives with my parents in spoiled, feline splendor, is the only cat I've ever met who routinely pronounced the letter 'g'. In fact, her two favorite words were "Ungow" and something that sort of sounded like "Ming." "Ungow" generally meant "hey, I disapprove". "Ming" meant "ooh! very nice!" These noodles are quite Ming.

The original recipe came from Elise at Simply Recipes. I tweaked and adjusted a little bit for taste, but overall the recipe is hers. The taste is a little bit sweet and a little but sour, thanks to the honey and lemon and vinegars (which I bumped up for James). It's also very savory thanks to the mushrooms - especially if you use Soba noodles or some other wheat pasta. Still, these noodles are light enough to enjoy cold at the end of a hot day, and they won't make you feel rolly-polly. Super easy, and super yummy, this dish is super Ming. I think that Molly, who liked pasta, would agree.

Ingredients:

- Lemon Ginger Dressing-

- 1/4 - 1/2 tsp. red pepper flakes (depending on how hot you like it)

- Grated zest of 1 lemon

- 1 tbs. fresh lemon juice

- 1 inch section of ginger, peeled and grated

- 1/4 rice vinegar

- conservative 1/4 cup soy sauce (low sodium is ok)

- 1 tbs. honey

- 1 tbs. toasted sesame oil

- 3 tbs. olive oil

-The Noodles-

- 9 oz. dried noodles (whole wheat linguini, or Udon or Soba)

- 7 oz. fresh mushrooms (sliced button or shitaki etc.) 

- 1 1/2 tbs. butter

- 1 tbs. chopped fresh herbs (parsley, basil, mint, cilantro, or green onion)

- 1 tbs. toasted sesame seeds

Process:

1. Make the dressing by putting all of the ingredients into the bowl of a food processor / blender, except for the sesame oil and olive oil. Pulse a couple of times, until combined. Then, with the machine running, drizzle in the oil.

2. Cook the dried noodles according to instructions. Drain and put back in the pot. Toss with the dressing. Set aside.

3. Heat a pan over medium heat. Add the butter and when the butter starts to foam, add the mushrooms. Saute until they are tender but still firm - about 3ish minutes.

4. Add the mushrooms and butter to the pot with the noodles and dressing. Toss. Serve at room temp. or cold with a sprinkling of fresh herbs and sesame seeds. 

Note:

The dressing recipe makes more than is needed for this amount of noodles. Set the left-over dressing aside and use it as a marinade for chicken or tofu later that week.

Sotomayor and the Great Waste of Airtime

Just a brief note. 

Maybe I'm horribly cynical, but  I can't feeling that Sonia Sotomayor's confirmation hearing is just a public circus. The media blitz that started in the mid-twentieth century sort of guarantees that these things usually are. Public confirmation hearings have become politically motivated efforts at making the American Public feel cozy and involved, when really, the deals already been done. The entire thing is a big waste of airtime for which I'm missing Marketplace and even FreshAir (which doesn't always suck). 

Cynical? Probably. But if I'm going to be shown how the sausage is made, I want to actually be shown. That would be worth airtime. But being fed some Disneyfied version of the political sausage-process with happy, vacuous pigs? Not so much.

There. Note Over.

Nigella's Squidgy Chocolate Cake

This cake is dense. It's dense and fudgy and moist and squidgy. It is not, however, fancy. It's a very basic chocolate loaf cake, except that the chocolate gets really cranked up. The basic recipe is from Nigella's Lawson's How To Be A Domestic Goddess, which is such a very good book. I tweaked a few things here and there, mostly adding in a little more vanilla, a pinch of salt and two tablespoons of cocoa powder. It's easy, easy to make, although it takes a little leap of faith in the baking (you'll swear you're under-baking it when it's actually just right and perfectly squidgy inside), and you'll die happy death by chocolate. But you should definitely be at least a little into chocolate for this one. Here's a little test. If the thought of moist, fudgy cake doesn't make you feel squidgy inside, best skip it and hit the vanilla ice cream instead.

Ingredients:

- 1 1/3 cup all-purpose flour

- 1 tsp. baking soda

- 1 2/3 cup brown sugar, dark or light

- 2 sticks unsalted butter (1 cup) at room temp.

- 1 cup plus 2 tbs. boiling water

- 4 oz. bittersweet chocolate, melted. I used 70% Ghiradelli's, although Lindt and Scharffenberger are lovely too. As long as the percentage is between 62% and 80%, and you love the way it tastes broken right from the bar, you're in business.

- 2 tbs. cocoa powder. Again, use one that you love the taste of.

- 2 large eggs, whisked.

- 1 tsp. vanilla

*** For a Mexican Chocolate Squidgy Cake, add cinnemon and clove and a pinch of chili powder to taste ***

Process:

1. Preheat the over to 375.

2. Grease a 9x5 inch loaf pan. Line the bottom with parchment paper. The lining is important beceause the cake is super moist and will want to stick.

4. Combine the flour, salt, cocoa powder and baking soda in a bowl. Set aside.

3. Cream the butter and the brown sugar with an electric mixer or a spoon until roughly incorporated. Resist the urge to over-mix.

4. Beat in the vanilla and the eggs until well incorporated.

5. By hand, fold in the melted chocolate. It should be a little bit cooled, but still warm.

6. By hand, fold in the flour mixture 1/3 cup at a time, alternating with the boiling water and mixing after each addition. Don't over-mix. The batter should end up being dark and fragrant and quite liquid.

7. Pour the batter in the prepared pan and bake on the middle rack for 30 min.

8. At 30 min., turn the heat down to 325 and bake for another 15 min.

9. The cake is done when a toothpick into the sides comes out clean, but a toothpick into the middle comes out with a nice, moist drag of crumb. If the center is still batter, leave in for another five minutes, then check again. Don't over-bake. The center will seem barely set, and that's when it's done.

10. Allow the cake to cool in the pan completely. Don't unmold it until it's completely cold. You can even leave it over-night - it just keeps developing flavor, and believe me, wrapped or covered, this cake will not dry out.

11. Serve any time, for anything. It's really yummy plain with a nice glass of milk, or you could be really decadent and toss on some ice cream or pouring cream. Any way you slice it (sorry for pun), this cake defies the loaf cake's general legacy of 'meh'.

Nuts!

Sweet 'n Spicy Almonds actually.

I loooove me some almonds - raw, roasted, Blue Diamond, in cookies, cakes, pastry, savory, really whatever, I just love them. So, while I was poking around, killing time that I should have been writing in, I came across this recipe on one of my favorite food blogs. Joy the Baker is lovely by the way, and her recipes are always great, so if you're at all into baked goods and haven't checked her out, I really recommend it.

For the Sweet 'n Spicy Almonds, I took her basic recipe and changed a few things in the spicing, mostly because the original called for fennel and James doesn't like fennel. The result is almond-flavored crack - sweet, and yes, spicy in a really neat, almost buttery-hot way. Give 'em a try - they're stupid easy to make, quick and a big ol' treat.

Ingredients:

- 2 cups raw whole almonds

- 1/3 cup sugar

- 2 tbs. water

- 1 tsp. red pepper flakes

- 1/4 tsp. ground black pepper

- 1/4 tsp. cinnamon

- a nice pinch of ground clove

- a very small pinch of ground cardamom

- a smallish pinch of ground ginger

Process:

1. Preheat the oven to 400. Cover a baking sheet with foil and spray with cooking spray.

2. Put the spices, sugar and water in a medium bowl and combine. Add the 2 cups of almonds and toss to coat.

3. Pour the almonds and all of the mixture onto the baking sheet and put it in the oven, on the center rack. Leave in for 5 minutes. At 5 minutes, pull them out, stir them around and then put them back in for 17 minutes. Keep a close eye on them, and stir them every five minutes or so.

4. After 17 minutes, the almonds should be a dark golden color. Pull them out of the oven, but leave them on the baking sheet. Separate them from each other with a fork and let cool.

5. When they're cool, the sugar and spices will have formed a shiny shell around the nut. Put them into a airtight container and they'll stay fresh for weeks, although this last bit is theory. Between Father's Day and my unholy addiction, they barely lasted the week-end in our house.

-

Buttery Cauliflower Prosciutto Pasta

Hmm. I make a lot of pasta. Or, at least, I post a lot of pasta. I think this is because pasta is one of those intuitive things for me. Some people have grilling, some people have casseroles, and it seems my thing is pasta. I may need to expand a bit. In the meantime, however, here's a lovely, simple recipe for a quick, fairly inexpensive week-night supper for two. This one's totally out of my own head, although I got the inspiration from a cauliflower side dish recipe in Andrew Carmellini's new book, Urban Italian, which, by the way, I can't wait cook the hell out of.

Ingredients:

- 2 large cloves of garlic, minced or passed through a garlic press

- 1 small shallot, sliced

- 3-4 tbs. butter

- extra-virgin olive oil

- 1/2 head (about 4 cups) cauliflower with the florets cut into rough, half inch slices

- 2 cups dry pasta (I used campanelle, but any heartier shape will do - no angel hair though)

- 8-10 slices of good prosciutto, cut into broad, 1 inch pieces

- salt

- pepper

- 1/4-ish tsp. dried dill.

- sage. If you have fresh sage leaves, awesome. If you don't (because really, who has those just hanging around on a Thursday night) you can 1/8 tsp. dried.

*Prep all of your ingredients first because this moves kind of fast once you get going.

Process:

1. Fill a pot with water and 1 tbs. of salt and set to boil. Cook the pasta until al dente, reserving 1 cup of pasta-cooking water when you drain it. Don't rinse the pasta, just put it back in the pot and cover it - you want the starches to help the delicate butter sauce stick.

2. While the pasta's cooking, melt the butter in a 12 inch saute pan. Wait until it gets foamy.

3. When the butter is foamy, add the shallot and garlic. Cook until fragrant - about 30 sec.

4. When you can start to smell that killer butter/garlic smell, add the slices of cauliflower. Cook with the shallots and garlic, stirring frequently, for about two min.

5. When the cauliflower is starting to look slightly softer, but is still very, very crisp in the mouth, add salt and pepper to taste (easy on the salt since your pasta will be nicely salted), the dill and the dried sage (*of you're using fresh sage leaves, put them in, whole, with the shallot and garlic - you'll remove them later). Add a good dash of olive oil and continue to saute for about 4-5 min. - until the cauliflower is just starting to soften.

6. Add the reserved pasta water, 1/4 cup at a time, to the saute. You don't have to use all of it, just put in enough so that the saute turns into a delicate sauce with a consistency you like. Turn the heat to low and allow to continue cooking for 1-2 minutes.

7. When the cauliflower and sauce are done, the sauce should look lightly milky and the cauliflower should be softened, but still firm. Pour the sauce over the pasta and stir until it's all coated.

8. Add the slices of prosciutto and stir again.

9. Serve warm with a good parmesan and a big appetite. It's surprisingly filling and the savory, buttery, salty goodness is hard to put down.

Safari Upgrade

I just down loaded a Safari upgrade to Dot, my Macbook, and don't like it much... grumble. Now instead of just quietly doing its search-engine thing, Safari is making suggestions and offering options and just overall being a little more interactive than I necessarily want it to be.... grumble. I'm such a curmudgeon.

Survival Skills

So, Photon tends to eat really quickly and then throw whatever it is that he ate. Usually it's dry food, which gets disdainfully walked away from. Today it was his super-favorite-chickey-mush that got the regurgi-cow treatment. Here's his response:

HORK!!!!!

Photon blinks and looks at me.

Phot: Oh. But I wanted that....

Photon takes a tentative sniff.

Phot: Well, it still seems kind of ok...

Photon takes a nibble.

Me: Oh my god! Don't - ugh!

Photon: What? Waste not...

Vespers wanders by.

Vespers: Hey, watcha got? Is that your food? You get to eat it twice?!? No, fair - I want some. 

Vespers tucks in next to Photon. I go make muffins in disgust.

At least they're not going to starve....

Existential Blues

I've got 'em. Or maybe it's just the existence blues. Whatever it is, I'm tired of hearing about little boys killed by bullies in suburbs, American reporters sentenced to 12 years hard labor in North Korea for unspecified crimes, and the general lack of compassion human beings have towards one another - this includes me. I feel like I'm sitting on a raft in the middle of a sea of ugly, and all I can do is acknowledge it and ride it out. At least it doesn't have a leak....

New Review Up

A review for The Compassionate Carnivore by Catherine Friend is up on The Foggy Foot Review. Come carnivores and omnivores and vegetarians alike!

The New Sherlock Holmes Movie

So, there's a new Sherlock Holmes movie coming out, directed by Guy Ritchie and staring Robert Downey Jr. as the eponymous hero. Jude Law is playing Watson. So far so good right? Promises not to be a redux of all those silly Basil Rathbone films....

But here's the thing. I saw a trailer a while back and doesn't seem to resemble anything that might have sprung out of Arthur Conan Doyle's brain. Now, this isn't necessarily a bad thing - I like gritty, dark interpretations of Victorian crime solving (From Hell was awesome). But I do feel that if you're going to appropriate someone else's characters, especially one as beloved as Holmes, then you have a bit of a duty to interpret that character through the lens of the original work. 

This isn't to say that you have to slavishly do what everyone else has done, but there are certain things about Holmes that make him Holmes. For example, Holmes is not socially at ease. In fact, he's a pre-Autism portrait of a brilliant, autistic savant. He's a hard, controlled man who puts his work and his intellect above the expression of human emotion. He does drugs because he gets bored and depressed when he's not working. 

The Holmes that I'm seeing in the trailer is a Holmes that bare-knuckle boxes in pits for fun (granted, the Holmes of the canon is able to box and swordfight and do martial arts, all very well, but one gets the sense that it's for practical and cerebral purposes of discipline and not because of raw, animal combativeness). The Holmes of the canon does not dally with women. In fact, there is only one woman in the entire series of stories that makes an impression - Irene Adler. She appears in one of the first stories and then is never seen again. In the trailer, we see Holmes and the actress playing a re-written Irene Adler seriously going at it, we see Holmes entirely at ease handcuffed and naked in a bed, we see him quipping and generally very socially fluid. This just isn't the taut, razor-minded detective that I've come to associate with the name Sherlock Holmes.

Granted, this is only a trailer and I haven't seen it yet, so the jury is still officially out. But let's just say that I'm not as excited as I wish I was.....

Spaghetti with Garlic, Breadcrumbs and Fried Egg

This might sound a little weird, but it's delicious - serious, quick comfort food. I came home from work starving and, because James had a migraine, looking at dinner for one, so I tried a riff on a recipe I've been wanting to make for a while. Apparently, this is actually a fairly traditional dish from somewhere in Italy (if I were really cool, I'd research where, but I'm just too tired).

Anyway, this whipped up really quickly - about 20 minutes from start to finish. The portion sizes adjust easily and you can do pretty much everything to taste. This is the basic recipe that serves four, but I quartered it and was super satisfied. 

Just a reassuring note: It might not be totally intuive to put fried eggs over spaghetti, but there's a long and happy Mediterranean tradition of putting fried eggs over starch. I still love putting fried eggs over leftover arroz con pollo because that's how we always ate it when I was a kid. There's just something wonderfully comforting about the way the creamy yolk coats the starch. It's just a warm and cozy taste. The spaghetti with garlic and breadcrumbs is good on its own, but the fried eggs take to a whole 'nother level that I really recommend. 

Ingredients:

- 1 lb. dried spaghetti (shapes are ok too)

- 5 cloves of garlic, minced or passed through a garlic press

- extra -virgin olive oil

- 1/4 tsp. red pepper flakes

-1/4 tsp. salt

- pepper to taste

- dried or fresh parsley (if using fresh, chop fine)

- two eggs

- shredded parmesan cheese

- fresh breadcrumbs

* A note on breadcrumbs: If you don't have fresh lying around, I would skip them altogether rather than use the canister stuff in this case. Fresh breadcrumbs are super easy to make. Just get some good bread, rip it up and put it into a food processor with some salt, pepper and olive oil. Process until the bread becomes roughly crumby. Spread the crumbs onto a baking sheet and toast the in an oven at 35o degrees until they are golden and toasty. Let them cool and then store them in the fridge or freezer. I usually make a whole bunch and use them over the course of a few months. Just be careful while they're in the oven - they go from toasty to burned really quickly.)

Process:

1. Bring water and 1 tsp. salt to boil in a nice sized pot. Put in the spaghetti and cook until al dente. Reserve 1/2 cup pasta water. Then drain the pasta and put it back into the pot, with a sprinkle of olive oil so it doesn't stick to itself.

2. Heat about 3 tbs. of olive oil in a non-stick skillet until it shimmers. Put the garlic, 1/4 tsp. salt, parsley (if using dried) and red pepper flakes into the skillet and cook on low until the garlic is golden and sort of sticky. You'll know it's done when the garlic starts to foam. 

3. Pour the garlic mixture over the pasta. Toss in some parmesan and the breadcrumbs to taste, mix it up and put the cover over the pot to keep it all warm.

4. Put about 1 tsp. olive into the pan and bring back up to heat. Crack two eggs into the pan and sprinkle salt and pepper to taste over them. Cook on low, covered, until the whites are firm but the yolks are still gooey (this is very important because the yolks become part of the sauce). You should use about two eggs per helping / person.

5. While the eggs are cooking, serve up the spaghetti in bowls. If it's too dry, sprinkle pasta water onto it until it loosens back up. If you're using fresh parsley, sprinkle it on now. If not, don't.

6. When the eggs are done, slide two on top of each helping of pasta. Serve immediately. I like to go "MWAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!" when I break the egg yolks into the pasta, but I leave that up to you.

What a Different Some Iron Makes

I'm severely anemic. Sometimes I forget. I'm so anemic that I can't give blood because my blood floats in water. I'm so anemic that sometimes my skin turns gray and I literally look like a corpse. My hair starts to thin. I can't focus. Generally, I turn into a non-brain-eating zombie. And I get cranky (which is not fun for James, who has to live with me) because I'm so tired that I can't do anything, which is really, really frustrating.

So why, one might ask, would a person who is so very anemic stop taking her iron pills? Well, because said person is an idiot and forgot how bad her anemia could get - not blood transfusion bad, but bad. 

It took me a month of exhaustion and low-productivity and gray skin to realize "huh, I might be anemic again. Maybe I should go back to taking my pills." So I did, and I feel MUCH better now. Maybe next time it'll only take me two weeks to catch on....

Fail

So, it's really been one of those days. First, I promised my mom that I would make my dad a birthday cake today. The request was for "something with apricots". I thought, hey no problem. So no problem in fact that I waited until the last minute to make it. Well, I don't know if it was because it was really hot today and I have trouble with everything when it's really hot, or if it's because my oven likes to play tricks with temperature or if the pastry gnomes were just feeling mean, but the cake, while not a total failure, wasn't great - too dark on the outside, a smidge under-done on the inside, ok on flavor, but on texture a total thumbs down. Not thrilled with the results for my dad's birthday, given the occasion, I decided to make a second one just in case. By now I was really rushing because we were officially running late. So I make the batter for the second cake (different recipe, similar idea) and took the batter in the cake mold to my mom's house to bake. Now, my mom has a bitchin' pro-quality Thermadore set up, so I was thinking there was no way this was going to fail. It did. Total fail. And why? Completely overdone on the outside, underdone on the inside. It sucked. We ended up eating the first cake. So, ok, whatever. It happens.

Then we get home and waiting for me in my email in box is a lovely letter from a lovely editor who happens to be a bad-ass in world of children's book publishing. She read the manuscript that I'd sent her, and while she thinks that there's much in the way of good about it, it will be nearly impossible to market it, especially in this economy. Fail. 

So, I've had a less than stellar day, which makes me really fucking irritable because I don't like failing at anything. In fact, I loathe failing. And it's been a day full of fail, which sucks. So me and my bruised ego are going to go to bed so we can get up and do it again tomorrow, hopefully with less fail.

Chocolate Almond Torte

I've been baking a lot with almonds recently, mostly because I love almonds. My mom, however, loves chocolate, so dessert for Mother's Day brunch had to be pretty chocolate-centric. I'd thought about doing something ridiculously dense, but really dense chocolate was just too much for a warmish afternoon. Then I was flipping through Pure Desserts by Alice Medrich (which is awesome - it really, really is) and I came across a recipe for an Italian chocolate-almond torte. The only thing holding this thing together is whipped egg whites, so it's really light, despite the copious amounts of dark chocolate and ground almonds that go in to it.

I tried the recipe twice. The first time I did it exactly according to the directions but it came out a little grainy. I tweaked the proportions a bit and turned up the heat in the oven for the second try, and this time it was perfect. What follows is my version of the recipe, which worked really well with the chocolate I had on hand and my crappy, under-powered oven. For those with not so crappy ovens, preheat at 35o and bake for 25-30 min.

Ingredients:

- 1 cup (5 oz.) blanched or unblanched whole almonds

- 7 oz. good quality dark chocolate, roughly chopped (I used Ghiradelli 72%, but don't go any lower than 68% without reducing the amount of granulated sugar) 

- 3/4 cup sugar

- 1/8 tsp. salt

- 7 large egg whites (1 cup)

- 1/4 tsp. cream of tartar

- 1-2 tsp. cocoa powder (I used Scharffenberger but any will do)

Equipment:

- food processor, or a heavy ziplock bag and a hammer / mallet

- parchment paper

- butter to grease the pan

- 9 inch springform pan

Process:

1. Place oven rack into lower 1/3 of oven and preheat to 350. Grease the sides of the springform pan and line the bottom with parchment paper (don;t grease the parchment)

2. Combine the almonds, chocolate, salt, cocoa and 1/4 cup sugar in a food processor and pulse until the almonds and chocolate are finely chopped but not pulverized. Set aside.

3. In a stand mixer or with a hand mixer, beat the egg whites in a clean, dry bowl with the cream of tartar until it forms soft, moist peaks. 

4. Slowly add the remaining 1/2 cup sugar and continue to beat until the eggs whites are stiff and glossy, not dry. 

5. Add 1/3 of the nut mixture to the eggs whites and fold until nearly incorporated. Fold in 1/2 the remaining nuts. Then fold in the last of the nuts. 

6. Scrape the batter into the prepared pan and spread it evenly. Bake until the torte has risen and is a rich, golden brown on top. A toothpick inserted into the center should come up clean or with a little melted chocolate. It should take about 25 -30 minutes.

7. Set the pan on a rack to cool. The torte will start to deflate. 

8. After about 10 minutes, release the sides of the pan and unmold it onto a rack. Remove the bottom and the parchment paper liner. Turn the cake right side up and let it cool completely. It will continue to deflate a bit and settle as it does.

9. Serve with sweetened whipped cream and berries or even creamy custard. The cake can also be wrapped tightly and left at room temperature for 3 days. It also freezes really nicely - cut it up into bite sized pieces for the occasional treat (this is dangerous). 

Any way you decide to slice it, enjoy! It's delicious and not too terribly guilt-inducing what with the shocking lack of butter, not that you could tell the difference from the yummy, rich taste.

Adverbs Rock!

I recently told a friend that I love adverbs (I do - the difference between "she walked down the hall" and "she tripped smartly down the hall" is huge. Credit to Dorothy Sayers for that fabulous use of "smartly".) Anyway, my friend sent me this, and just about made my day.

Drafting

I'm drafting a new short story right now. This part of the process is never easy for me. I can edit a piece for eight hours at a stretch and often do, but generating new material is exhausting - and this is with the jots and notes and outlines and thoughts that I write before hand. I drafted today for a little over three hours and had to take a nap, which frustrates me but I was cross-eyed. 

They, whoever "they" are, say that there are two kinds of writers - those who love the creative burst, for whom revision is something like death, and those who create in revision. I'm one of the latter. In fact, I could honestly say that one of the largest reasons I write is so that I'll have something to edit. 

There really isn't much of a point to this post, I suppose - except, of course, as a cleverly evasive form of procrastination. And so on that note, I'm going to go make myself something to edit.

Library Thing

I hit the free 200 book limit last night in the middle of cataloguing our fiction section, so I just signed up for a lifetime membership to LibraryThing! Hooray! Unlimited space in which to catalogue every book we own! I'm so excited.... I'm such a geek. Anyway, that link will take you right to my library, but you can also just check them out generally by going to www.librarything.com. Hooray again!

Anniversary Almond Cake with Raspberry Port Syrup

James and I had a wonderful wedding cake. Like, the best wedding cake I've ever eaten, and that was after James rescued my piece and brought it up to the hotel room for me. It was a really subtle white almond cake with raspberry mousse filling and it was delicious. Because of that, I always think of the almond cake/raspberry combination as a special one for us. So, for our anniversary last week, I decided to make us a raspberry/almond confection.

This almond cake is considerably denser that the lightly textured white cake from our wedding but god it is delicious. I found it in Alice Medrich's book, Pure Desserts, which is just full of things I want to make (she's *awesome*). I tinkered a little bit with it, but basically, it's just as she wrote it. The raspberry came in with a sort of reduction syrup that was a complete improv, since the raspberry sauce I was going to make didn't work out (the frozen raspberries I bought tasted like the plastic bag they'd been frozen in). This is definitely an adult's dessert - it's too dense and rich and not-sugary to appeal to kid-type palates, but wow is it easy and calorically dangerous - one of my favorite kinds of danger :-)

Almond Cake:

Ingredients-

-  3/4 cup plus 2 tbs. (4 0z.) unblanched or blanched whole almonds

- 1 cup plus 2 tbs. sugar

- 1/4 tsp. salt

- 1/2 tsp. pure almond extract

- 3 large eggs

- 1 stick of unsalted butter, cut into chunks and slightly softened

- 1 tbs. kirsch or tawney port (optional)

- 1/3 cup (1.5 oz.) all-purpose flour

- 1/4 tsp. baking powder

- powdered sugar and slivered almonds for dusting (optional)

  

Equipment-

- An 8 inch by 2 inch round cake pan

-PAM baking spray or a generous amount of butter to grease the pan with (this sucker likes to stick, so when I say generous, I mean *generous*).

-A food processor

Process-

1. Position rack in the lower 1/3 of over and pre-heat to 350. Generously grease the cake pan - see not above in Equipment. *If you want the cake to have a sort of crunchy crust, sprinkle sliced almonds into the empty buttered pan and spread as thickly as you like. Then sprinkle granulated sugar over the almonds. Pour the batter in as directed. When the cake is done, let it cool in the pan for 10 min. on a rack, then run a knife along the edge and un-mold it onto the rack to cool the rest of the way. I made it with this crust, and it was fantastic.

2. Place the almonds, sugar, salt and almond extract into the food processor and process until almonds are a pulverized coarse powder.

3. Add the eggs, butter and kirsch/port. Pulse to thoroughly blend.

4. Add the flour and baking powder and pulse until just blended (don't over blend).

5. Pour the batter into the prepared pan and spread evenly.

6. Bake until the cake is golden brown on top and a toothpick comes out clean, about 40 minutes. It goes from underdone to crispy quickly, so start keeping an eye on it at 30 min.

7. Cool completely in the pan on a cake rack.

8. When cool, unmold the cake by running a knife around the edges of the pan and then inverting it onto a plate. Wrapped tightly in foil, it will keep really well for several days - in fact, it tasted even better the second day, so I would recommend making it ahead of time and letting it sit overnight. 

9. Serve with the Raspberry Port Syrup, or with fresh fruit, whipped cream, custard, ice cream etc, etc, etc, or just pick it up with your hands and tuck in.

Raspberry Port Syrup:

Ingredients-

- 1 jar of red raspberry jam (Smuckers or Bonne Maman are good)

- 3 tbs. tawney port

- boiling water

Equipment-

- a bowl

- a 2-4 cup liquid measuring cup

- several small jars (like old jam jars)

- a strainer

- a spatula

Process - 

1. Put the jam in the bowl and dilute it with a scant 1/4 of hot water. Mix until it has the consistency of a very thick soup. You want to be able to strain this, so if it isn't liquid enough, add hot water, 1 tbs. at at time, until it reaches the thick soup consistency.

2. A little at a time, pour the jam/water mixture through a strainer and into the liquid measure, making sure to press the liquid through with the spatula while the strainer catches the seeds.

3. Once all of the jam liquid is strained through, add the tawny port to taste. I went with a generous 3 tbs., but James and I both like port.

4. Seal it up and let it finish cooling before putting it in the fridge. It can be stored indefinitely as long as it's kept cold. It can be served straight out of the fridge or gently warmed up over cakes and ice creams etc.