One more apple cake before spring
I know it’s spring. I know that rhubarb is popping up around town and the last thing you want to hear about is apples. But I’ve got to get this one out before it completely slips away, because this is the cake I want to eat every day. The original recipe came from Dorie Greenspan and took a few tweaks to get to the place I really wanted it to be. We served it at our apple harvest dinner in November, but it took me until the final night of the dinner before it was just right. And by just right I mean the cake I’ve had in my mind for years now, with the hopes of one day discovering (thank you Dorie, for getting me so close). It has a crispy, caramelized crust and a custardy, pancake-like inside that’s held together by giant chunks of sweet apples. We had it on the menu at Delancey for a month or so, with a dark vanilla bean caramel and a healthy sprinkling of Maldon salt, and it was a bit dangerous having it around all the time. It wasn’t our biggest seller, I’m assuming because it shared the menu with some of my more popular citrus desserts. But that secretly made me so happy, since it meant there was commonly a slice left over for me at the end of the night. And now that we’re switching over to rhubarb shortcakes, I miss that little cake. But the good news is that it’s a batter that can literally be whipped together in under 15 minutes.
It bakes for a while though, about an hour to develop that crust and slightly dry out the custardy interior.
Probably the hardest part is waiting for it to cool, since it has this habit of falling completely apart if you un-mold it too soon.
APPLE CUSTARD CAKE:
3.75 oz AP flour
3/4 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp kosher salt
1 lb 2 oz chopped apples
2 large eggs, room temperature
6 oz sugar
1/2 vanilla bean
3 TBSP apple cider
4 oz unsalted butter, melted
unrefined sugar for sprinkling
- Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Generously butter an 8-inch springform cake pan and line it with parchment paper. Sprinkle unrefined sugar on the sides of the pan and tap it around.
- Whisk the flour, baking powder, and salt together in small bowl.
- In a medium bowl, beat the eggs with a whisk until they’re foamy. Rub the vanilla bean seeds into the sugar and add to the eggs. Whisk until well blended. Whisk in the apple cider. Whisk in half the flour and when it is incorporated, add half the melted butter, followed by the rest of the flour and the remaining butter, mixing gently after each addition so that you have a smooth, rather thick batter. Switch to a rubber spatula and fold in the apples, turning the fruit so that it’s coated with batter. Scrape the mix into the pan and poke it around a little with the spatula so that it’s even. Sprinkle the top of the cake with unrefined sugar.
- Slide the pan into the oven and bake for 50 to 60 minutes, or until the top of the cake is golden brown and a knife inserted deep into the center comes out clean. Transfer to a cooling rack and let rest for 30 minutes.
- Carefully run a blunt knife around the edges of the cake and remove the sides of the springform pan. Allow the cake to cool until it is just slightly warm or at room temperature. If you want to remove the cake from the bottom of the springform pan, wait until the cake is almost cooled, then run a long spatula between the cake and the pan, cover the top of the cake with a piece of parchment, and invert it onto a rack. Carefully remove the bottom of the pan and turn the cake over onto a serving dish.
- Eat with a generous dusting of Maldon sea salt. And caramel and whipped cream if you’ve got it.
What I wish I was eating.
My disclaimer: I did not make these today. Nor did I make them this week. I made these sometime last year, I suspect right around this time….
I like to think of myself as a meatball enthusiast, in concept. If there was one dish that I think about more than any other, one that makes me get all warm and fuzzy at the mere mention, and yes, possibly one that I would choose as my last meal, it would be spaghetti and meatballs. I know what you’re thinking: “Wow, she must eat a lot of meatballs.” But the truth is that I almost never eat them. Hence this post. It’s the dish I always crave, yet never take the time to make. So here’s to cravings, may someone (John — are you reading this? hint, hint…) come along and fulfill them all. Well, except for the bad ones. You know what I mean.
These meatballs were a discovery by Molly Wizenberg, of Orangette fame. She spent the day with the owner of Cafe Lago, a fantastic homespun Italian restaurant in Seattle, and learned all the tricks that make meatballs special. Knowing me this past year, I probably skipped all the important stuff, so you can read about it here. In the meantime, I mixed a bunch of yummy stuff in a big bowl.
And swirled it all around.
Then I shaped it all into adorable little balls.
And into red sauce it went! Seriously though, this may be a short and sweet post, but these meatballs are fantastic. And if you happen to be a leftovers junky like myself, you will be very pleased.
Spaghetti and Meatballs Recipe:
Sauce:
2 28-ounce cans whole peeled tomatoes in juice, drained, juice reserved, tomatoes finely chopped
4 ounces unsalted butter
1 medium onion, peeled, halved through root end
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
Meatballs:
1 cup fresh breadcrumbs
1/3 cup whole milk
8 ounces ground beef (15% fat)
8 ounces ground pork
3 ounces finely ground Parmesan cheese
1/3 cup finely chopped Italian parsley
1 teaspoon kosher salt
1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper
2 large eggs
2 large garlic cloves, minced
1 pound spaghetti
Freshly grated Parmesan cheese
- Combine tomatoes with juice, butter, onions, and salt in large wide pot. Bring to simmer over medium heat. Reduce heat; simmer uncovered 45 minutes, stirring occasionally.
- Discard the onions. Using immersion blender, process sauce briefly to break up any large pieces of tomato (texture should be even but not completely smooth). Season sauce with more salt and freshly ground black pepper. Remove from heat.
- Combine the breadcrumbs and milk in small bowl; stir until breadcrumbs are evenly moistened. Let stand 10 minutes.
- Place beef and pork in large bowl and break up into small chunks. Add 1 cup ground Parmesan, parsley, salt, and pepper.
- Whisk eggs to blend in small bowl; whisk in garlic. Add to meat mixture.
- Using hands, squeeze milk from breadcrumbs, reserving milk. Add breadcrumbs to meat mixture. Using hands, quickly and gently mix meat mixture just until all ingredients are evenly combined (do not overmix). Chill mixture at least 15 minutes and up to 1 hour.
- Moisten hands with some of reserved milk from breadcrumbs, then roll meat mixture between palms into golf-ball-size balls, occasionally moistening hands with milk as needed and arranging meatballs in single layer in sauce in pot. Bring to simmer.
- Reduce heat to medium-low, cover, and simmer until meatballs are cooked through, 15 to 20 minutes.
On being boring.
Ummm… hi?
So yeah, it happened. I fell into the hole that is now The Pantry. What can I say besides that I’m sorry? You see, the thing is, I LOVE my new hole. I obsess. I make spreadsheets. I organize. I reorganize my spreadsheets. Owning a business has been amazing (how did I ever have a boss?), but I think it is fair to say that I am getting my butt kicked. In a masochistic kind of way. In fact, if we’re being honest, the only reason I am here, writing this very post, is because I’m fighting off a cold that is forcing me to remain horizontal, wrapped up in a down comforter, watching episode after episode of Glee, with a sprinkling of a good documentary to break up all that nauseatingly addictive singing (did you know that the Mormon church bankrolled Prop. 8? And that becoming a Green Beret is quite torturous?) Anyhoo, either way, here I am. Oh yeah, and I got this comment on my blog a week or two ago:
“I aM DELETING YOU FROM MY FAVORTIES. u r BORING AND DO NOT POST ON YOUR BLOG. YOU SHOULD NOT HAVE A BLOG!!!!!”
While I admit that this one had me chuckling for a few hours (boring? really?), it did remind me that I have been sorely neglecting my blog. I thought about posting an apology, including an adorable picture of Bean to make you all forget my negligence.
But that didn’t feel right. Not there’s anything wrong with cute cat pictures, I just promised myself when I started this whole blogging hobby that I wouldn’t post unless I had something that I’m really proud of. There has been some great cooking, but unfortunately no time to document. I’ve always felt this to be a blog more about technique than recipes, so I didn’t want to just throw a recipe at you without really digging in. But I can see now that those days of spending many hours meticulously collecting photos of every step of super-elaborate recipes are getting fewer and farther between.
So I’m here with a compromise. I’m short on process photos, but I’m making up for it with a recipe that I firmly believe will knock your socks off. It’s a maple walnut trifle, and I seriously think about it nonstop. Think toasted walnut cake, cut into bite-sized cubes. A creamy and intense maple fluff. Crunchy candied walnuts and Maldon sea salt. It is my personal bowl of heaven. I developed it, along with Stephanie, my pastry chef in training, for the dessert menu at Delancey. We hosted a dinner for Sam Mogannam to celebrate his new book, and we served it family-style in giant trifle dishes (I later found out that Sam is allergic to walnuts and yes, I cried a little on the inside). I suspect that I will be serving it at Christmas dinner this year. It is that good.
Quick note: Sheet gelatin can be tricky to find, but it’s available online. I dramatically prefer it to powdered gelatin.
Maple Walnut Trifle
Toasted Walnut Cake:
4 ounces walnuts
4 ounces brown sugar
1/2 vanilla bean
4 ounces cake flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon kosher salt
1/4 cup milk
2 tablespoons canola oil
2 tablespoons maple syrup
4 ounces unsalted butter, room temperature
2 large eggs, room temperature
- Preheat the oven to 350º. Butter an 8″ cake pan and line with parchment. Set aside.
- Spread the walnuts on a sheet tray and bake until lightly toasted. Cool completely.
- In a small bowl, rub the seeds from the vanilla bean into the brown sugar. Set aside.
- In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, and salt. Sift and set aside.
- In a small bowl whisk together canola oil, maple syrup and milk. Set aside.
- Place the cooled, toasted walnuts in a food processor and grind until they are the size of bread crumbs. Do not pulse them into a paste.
- Place the butter in the bowl of a stand mixer. Using the paddle attachment, cream the butter on medium speed until smooth. Add the brown sugar. Cream the mixture on medium speed until pale and fluffy, about 3 minutes. Add the eggs one at a time, mixing thoroughly before adding the next and scraping down the bowl after each addition. Beat for another minute. Reduce the speed of the mixer to low and add the ground walnuts.
- With the mixer running on low, add a third of the flour mixture. Mix until just combined and then add half of the milk mixture. Repeat with another third of the flour, then with the rest of the milk mixture, ending with the rest of the flour mixture.
- Spoon the batter into the prepared cake pan and bake until done. The baked surface will spring back slightly when touched in the center and the sides will begin to contract from the pan. Remove the cake from the oven, and let cool before removing from the pan.
14 ounces grade B maple syrup
5 1/2 gelatin sheets
16 egg yolks
1/4 teaspoon kosher salt
3 cups heavy cream
- In a medium saucepan, reduce the maple syrup by 25% over med-high heat for 5-7 minutes (it will bubble a lot). The resulting weight should be approximately 11 ounces. Set aside to cool.
- Fill a large pot halfway with water and bring to a simmer.
- Place the sheet gelatin in cold water until it is completely squishy, about 5 minutes. Remove from the water and shake off the excess liquid. Set aside.
- Whisk together the cooled maple syrup, salt and egg yolks in a metal bowl. Cook over the pot of simmering water, whisking constantly until the mixture registers 165º F. Remove the bowl from simmering water and stir in the drained, bloomed gelatin sheets. Pour the mixture through a fine mash strainer, into a clean medium bowl. Set aside to cool, whisking every few minutes. You can either place the mixture over an ice bath, or pop it in the fridge. It is very important to check in with a stir every few minutes, to keep the edges from setting to quickly. The goal is to have the mixture set to being equal in stiffness to whipped cream.
- Beat the cream to stiff peaks. Fold in a third of the cream into the cooled maple mixture, to lighten it. Gently fold in the rest of the whipped cream until just barely mixed. Pour into a container and refrigerate until set, about 2 hours.
Assembling the Trifle:
- Cut the cake into large cubes and fill the bottom of a trifle dish. Just before serving, pour on the maple mousse.
- Top with candied walnuts, a drizzle of maple syrup and some maldon sea salt. Enjoy.
Introducing the Strawberry Cake
There’s no getting around the fact that strawberries make things pink, which given my obsession with all things strawberry flavored, inherently makes me a sucker for pink food. But there’s one pink food that totally beats all the other pink food out there: strawberry cake. It’s a southern staple, a cake I hunt for every time I’m in Alabama. I’ve been perfecting my recipe for several years, but was waiting to share it until after teaching it in my Southern Cakes class at The Pantry (so much fun!). And it was hard keeping it to myself. Especially after a certain magazine that shall remain nameless (shame on you!) printed a particularly icky version (strawberry extract? gross!). But the truth is, like most southern cakes, this cake comes from a humble place. Try finding a great recipe online and it’s easy to be turned off by the miles of recipes calling for yellow cake mix and strawberry jello. Hence the several years… But alas! I can now have my pink cake and eat it too.
It starts with a bright batter flecked with puréed strawberries.
And ends with layers of perfect strawberry cream cheese frosting.
Now go find yourself an 8 year old girl’s birthday party, while there’s still one more week of strawberries at the market!
SOUTHERN STRAWBERRY CAKE:
Yield: 1 three layer 8″ cake
10 ounces (2 1/2 cups) cake flour
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
1/3 cup buttermilk
1/4 cup canola oil
1/2 teaspoon almond extract
1/2 vanilla bean
4 ounces unsalted butter, room temperature
1 1/2 cups sugar
2 large eggs, room temperature, beaten
1 cup pureed strawberries
1 teaspoon lemon zest
- Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Butter three 8” cake pans and line with rounds of parchment. Set aside.
- In a medium bowl, sift together the flour, baking soda, and salt. Set aside.
- In another medium bowl, combine the buttermilk, oil, and almond extract. Set aside.
- Split and scrape out the seeds from the vanilla bean. Rub the seeds into the sugar. In an electric mixer, beat the butter and vanilla sugar with the paddle attachment until it forms a paste. Add the eggs in a slow stream, beating well after each addition. Beat for 1 minute at medium speed. Gradually add the buttermilk mixture and beat for 1 minute at medium speed.
- Reduce the speed to low and add the flour mixture. Mix until just combined. Stir in the pureed strawberries and the lemon zest.
- Spoon into the prepared cake pans and bake until the cakes spring back when touched lightly in the center. Cool before removing from the pan.
STRAWBERRY CREAM CHEESE FROSTING:
1 pound cream cheese, room temperature
6 ounces unsalted butter
1 cup powdered sugar
6 tablespoons strawberry jam
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 teaspoons∑ lemon juice
1/4 teaspoon kosher salt
- In the bowl of a stand mixer with the paddle attachment, beat the butter and cream cheese on medium speed until smooth.
- Sift in the powdered sugar, and beat on low speed until incorporated. Add the strawberry jam, vanilla, lemon juice and salt, and beat well to incorporate. If the frosting is lumpy from the sugar, bump the speed up to medium-high continue beating until smooth.
Homemade Hot Sauce!
Sunday night we had our first Down South dinner at The Pantry. Boiled peanuts, homemade saltine crackers with pimento cheese and smoked ham, succotash, fried chicken, buttermilk biscuits. I have to admit, it was kind of amazing. Maybe I’m biased to Southern food in general, but there was something beautiful about watching complete strangers sit around the table and get in there with their fingers. The thing that threw it over the edge for me?
Homemade hot sauce.
You know the stuff. It’s pretty. It’s hot. It’s usually that awesome shade of orange that I can never find a paint chip to perfectly match. It makes me drool a little just to think about it. I’ve been buying this one brand, Youk’s, for years. The problem is that they only sell it online or in San Francisco, at this restaurant called Maverick. Needless to say, carting it back to Seattle after every trip got a little tedious. And once you’ve had the good stuff, it’s just hard to go back to Tabasco or Tapatío. If you’re as much a fan of the stuff as I am, then this is a very good day. I made it with my friend Brandon one day, a couple of weeks ago. It was kind of a shot in the dark, involving us poking around on the web for Southern-style recipes, then just winging it. It actually surprised me with how good it is. Who knew I had such little faith in myself? Anyhoo, get yourself to the farmer’s market before the peppers are gone, you’ll thank me.
We started by tossing some fresno chiles in olive oil and then roasting them in the wood-fired oven at Delancey for a bit. After they got nice and browned, we pureed them in a food processor with just enough vinegar to make them move around in there comfortably.
Then we placed the whole blob of pepper paste in a strainer and smashed it through. We took the liquid that came through and adjusted it with more vinegar, some water and lots of salt. And that’s it. So darn simple.
And crazy good. We made about 6 cups of it and have already gone through a quart. In two weeks. There’s been a lot of heartburn at The Pantry this month, but no one’s complaining.
Hot Sauce Recipe:
1 lb Fresno chiles
15 TBSP distilled vinegar
1 TBSP water
1 3/4 tsp kosher salt
- Trim the stems off of the chiles, leaving the base that the stem attaches to. Rumor has it that that part gives great flavor. Who am I to challenge a good culinary rumor?
- Toss the chiles in enough olive oil to coat them. Then roast them in a broiler, or grill them if you can. The goal is to get a nice char on them.
- Puree them in a food processor or blender with enough vinegar to keep them moving.
- Strain them through a fine sieve, smashing the whole time to get as much of the pulp as possible.
- Add the water, salt and the rest of the vinegar and pop in the fridge to chill for a few days. You can certainly eat it immediately, but it only gets better with time.
Finally, a Gratin
I’ve been searching for this recipe for quite a while now. A gratin. A great dish. A great word. Grataaaaaaaannnn… I could repeat it many, many times without getting bored. Maybe I should get a more interesting life?
But anyways, the point is that gratin should be easy enough. When I imagine it, it’s just like in Ratatouille, where I effortlessly slice some veggies and toss them into a shallow dish with a little cheese and herbs. A quick trip in the oven later and out comes a beautiful summer dinner. Somehow though, mine never go that way. They’re always too “something”: too watery, too heavy, too oily, too bland. I had all but given up on the gratin until I happened upon this recipe. The photo made me so hungry that I actually placed a zucchini gratin on the menu for a class I’m teaching at The Pantry because THEN I would HAVE to recipe-test it to perfection. Oh my friends, summer just got better. For me anyways. What better way to use up the mountain of summer squash growing in your garden than with trays and trays of crispy, cheese-laden, buttery breadcrumbed gratin?
Sure, this wasn’t as easy-peasy as the gratin in my fantasies, but it certainly was as tasty. I started by salting some thinly sliced zucchini until it released all of its water.
Then I got to work on the magic herby sauce that I would eventually toss the zucchini in.
And browned butter, did I mention that there was browned butter involved? It gets tossed into fresh breadcrumbs to make a nutty slice of heaven.
Everything got tossed together with some gruyere.
And baked until it was nicely browned and crispy.
And then yes, me and my good friend Merriss ate it straight out of the pan. There were some burned mouths by the end, but we didn’t really care. We were in a gratin coma.
I made a few changes to the original recipe: more cheese, slightly less oil and shallots, and a lot more lemon juice. I left out the jalapeno, which I know is a bit weird for me, but I really wanted the zucchini to have center stage on this one.
Zucchini Gratin with Salsa Verde
Yield: 4 servings
Salsa Verde:
1 teaspoon fresh oregano
1/4 cup coarsely chopped mint
1 cup coarsely chopped parsley
1 small clove garlic
1 anchovy
1/2 cup olive oil
1 tablespoon capers, drained
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
Black pepper to taste
Gratin:
2 pounds zucchini
1 1/2 cup fresh breadcrumbs
3 tablespoons unsalted butter
1/2 cup sliced shallot
1 teaspoon minced garlic
1 tablespoon fresh thyme
1 1/2 cups grated Gruyere cheese
- Heat the oven to 400 degrees. Cut the squash into 1/8-inch-thick slices. Toss the slices in a large bowl with 1 teaspoon kosher salt, and let sit for 30 minutes.
- Meanwhile, using a food processor, grind the herbs, garlic and anchovies and half of the oil to a paste. Transfer the mixture to a bowl.
- Gently pound the capers until they’re partially crushed and add them to the herbs. Stir in the remaining oil, the lemon juice, salt and black pepper. Taste for balance and seasoning.
- Place the breadcrumbs in a bowl. Heat the butter in a small saute pan over medium heat for a few minutes, until it browns and smells nutty. Pour the brown butter over the breadcrumbs, being sure to scrape all the brown bits into the bowl with a rubber spatula. Wait a minute or so for the butter to cool, and toss well. Set aside.
- Drain the squash well and transfer it to a large mixing bowl. Add the shallots, minced garlic, thyme, 1/2 cup of the salsa verde, and some pepper. Toss to combine, and add the cheese and half the butter-coated breadcrumbs. Toss again, and taste for seasoning.
- Place the squash in a 9-by-9-inch gratin dish. Scatter the remaining breadcrumbs over the top, and bake 40 to 45 minutes, until the squash is tender and the top is crisp.
I Totally Made That.
Sooooo… you might have noticed that I’ve been pretty much MIA. As you may know, for the past year I’ve been working on starting my own business, The Pantry. I’ve certainly complained enough about the long hours and lack of time, but did I tell you that I built it with my tiny little hands? I had lots of help for sure, from my two business partners, Olaiya Land and Brandon Pettit, and countless friends. But this project, the realization of a dream I’ve had for a long time, now THAT was intense. And awesome. And exhausting. And completely impossible at times. But what can a girl do? A dream awaited, and I certainly don’t have the funds to pay OTHER people to build it. Since I worked as an architect before making the big switch to pastry, designing a beautiful kitchen wasn’t a stretch, but after nine months of being permanently attached to my Carhart overalls, I learned really fast how to not just make spaces that are pretty on paper, but how to actually make them stand up. Needless to say, I’ve been left with zero energy for making things in the kitchen, hence the lack of posting. So I wanted to share with you what I HAVE been making, even if it’s not edible.
When we started, it was a certified dump. Carpet peeled away to reveal layers and layers of linoleum, then a good thick layer of glue.
There was this low popcorn ceiling, with track lighting. When I first looked at it, I wanted to run away right then. THIS was going to be a BIG task. But when we peeled away the ceiling, there were these beautiful old wood joists peeking out. I like to think of those joists as the beginning of the design for The Pantry.
We had a rule of trying to find as many of our materials as possible used, from architectural salvage stores. On one of our early visits, in the dark days of winter, we came across a door. It looked like it would fall into pieces if you looked at it wrong. And according to our friend and carpenter Joe, who fixed it, it did. But it was $10 and we just had to have it. Between that door and the beautiful ceiling we were exposing, the space just started designing itself. It was to be a commercial kitchen, so there were… rules, but I really wanted it to feel like home. A place where people could feel comfortable just stopping by to say hello. Where after a class or dinner, people would want to linger. A place where a community is built.
And the table, man was that fun. The first thing we did, in the fall, was contact a carpenter in Portland about making us a 16-foot-long table. Everything would be centered around the table. It had to be wide enough to allow for classes, lots of hands flying at once. But it had to be narrow enough that you could meet the person sitting across from you. We love our table, and even after our original carpenter turned out to be crazy, and canceled the contract 3 weeks(!) before we were scheduled to host our first dinner, after our friend Joe (who fixed the door, and well, taught us how to do EVERYTHING) built it to my design in 8 days (costing many thousands more than we budgeted), we still fawn over this table.
We had our first dinner Friday night, and I dare say it was a complete success. 20 people, most not knowing each other, sat down for five courses, and made new friends. It was beautiful. That table is magic. And I look forward to maybe one day seeing some of you there.
A big whopping thank you to all of those who helped. Thank you for showing up on beautiful days when I knew you’d rather be on a long bike ride somewhere. On not-so-beautiful days, when building a deck in the mud was, like, the WORST idea ever. And for putting up with me when I had absolutely no idea what I was doing. Thank you Scott Elder for driving up from San Francisco in March, sleeping on our blow-up mattress and being my right arm for 3 months. Thank you to Joe Burmeister for, well, indulging my insanely tiny budget and teaching me and my friends so much. Thank you to Chris Saleeba and Bryan LaComa, for designing and teaching us how to create a garden space that gives me goosebumps. Thank you to Gabe Rodriguez, for taking gorgeous photos of the space under construction (the top two are his). Thank you to John, for not leaving me when I know I was behaving intolerably. Thank you to everyone who just walked by and told me how great everything was looking, you have no idea how much that helped on those rough days.
The first jam of the summer
So you may have noticed that I’m not really cooking much these days. What can I say that I haven’t said in the last 4-5 posts? I miss cooking. I almost even miss stopping everyone from digging into piping hot yumminess so I can spend 5 minutes photographing it. Almost.
While I have been building and planting at The Pantry like a crazy little caffeinated person in overalls, I did manage to learn a few things about cooking while I was away from my computer. In Seattle we have a lovely jam-maker named Rebecca Staffel, who owns a company called Deluxe Foods. She’s kinda awesome (and she’s my neighbor, how lucky am I?!) and one day in May she let me hang out with her while she made her prize-winning gingered rhubarb jam. I felt like the luckiest girl in the Pacific Northwest for learning some of the tricks of the trade. Because while I’ve made a jam or two in my day, I am in no way a seasoned jam-maker. And rhubarb jam just seemed intimidating. I mean, rhubarb’s not even a FRUIT! But Rebecca broke it down for me and I went away giddy with plans for making my own batch of pink goodness. It’s been a crazy month, and I suspect it’s about to get crazier (our first event is in three weeks!). But we officially ran out of home-made jam in my fridge and well, if that’s not a kitchen emergency then I don’t know what is.
So I dropped everything yesterday and made some rhubarb vanilla jam. Whew.
I started by chopping up the rhubarb into teeny tiny bits. Like 1/8″ big bits. I rubbed the vanilla bean seeds into the sugar, and mixed the vanilla sugar (pod included) into the chopped rhubarb. I squeezed in the lemon juice and threw in the whole lemon chunks, which supplied some much needed pectin. I let the whole pile sit overnight in the fridge to get the juices out of the rhubarb.
The next morning I heated it all in my favorite pot. I kept it at a good strong simmer (is that just a boil?), stirring occasionally, until it reached its set point. This was my first time using a thermapen (Thanks for the tip on THAT one Rachel!), so I was feeling condident bringing the jam just to 220. Except then I got nervous that it wasn’t set and cooked it a bit more…hee. I ladled the hot jam into jars that had been boiling the whole time to get nice and germ-free. Once the jars of jam were lidded, I placed them on a tray and baked them for 10 minutes at 350 degrees. This is my first time “baking” them instead of processing them in boiling water, and I’m super excited at how easy it is (easy like, I can set a timer and run back to construction land and let John pull them out of the oven)!
We cracked open one of the jars last night for dessert. We just ate it with shortbread cookies and whipped cream and oh my, it is going to be a great summer.
Rhubarb Vanilla Jam Recipe:
2 lb 12 oz rhubarb, finely diced
2 lb sugar
1 vanilla bean
1 lemon, quartered and seeds removed
What I’m eating these days.
So I had lots of plans for this post. I was working on this homemade snickers bar recipe. A recipe that I was certain would make me a certified candy-making badass. Salty roasted peanuts, sweet sticky caramel, fluffy chocolate nougat — you know the drill. And then I learned that nougat is hard. Quite hard. Literally hard, mine was. I couldn’t even get a knife through it.
So that post will have to wait a while, because life is kicking me in the butt these days. Classes and dinner at The Pantry are selling (Yay!) and we FINALLY finished grinding the glue off of our concrete floor, a month-long project that was pushing my sanity level to its edge. Sheet-rock is going up as I type, which means cabinets, counters and tile are up next. SO! MUCH! FUN! But, all this fun, just doesn’t leave much time for the elaborate cooking experiments that I just adore (sniff).
So I’m here to share with you what I actually eat these days: salad. And lots of it. Tuesday was my birthday, and we had a potluck in the under-construction space, and John made my most favorite summer salad ever, a salad that pretty much defined 2010 for me: a cabbage peanut salad to be exact. I found the original recipe in the book Blue Eggs and Yellow Tomatoes and have slightly tweaked it to my taste (less sugar, less acid, more heat).
Obviously you start with a lot of cabbage.
While this salad is light on technique, it is like salad crack for me. You toss the cabbage with carrots, cilantro (LOTS of cilantro) and bell peppers and then mix in a spicy peanut sauce that I have to stop myself from eating straight from the bowl with a spoon. So maybe being a busy bee is a good thing? No time for desserts means more munching on salads, just in time for bathing suit season… Oh yeah, and did I mention you throw peanuts all over the whole thing? I was such a hurry when I made this one that I forgot the peanuts before snapping a quick photo. I was literally throwing them onto people’s bowls as they walked out the door (it was a lunch break on a cabinet painting day, good times).
Cabbage Peanut Salad Recipe:
Peanut Dressing:
1/3 cup peanut oil
1/4 cup rice wine vinegar
3 TBSP soy sauce
1/3 cup peanut butter
2 TBSP brown sugar
2 TBSP grated peeled ginger
3 garlic cloves
1 finely minced jalapeno
- Mix all of the liquids in a bowl and set aside. In another bowl, mix together the peanut butter, brown sugar, ginger, garlic cloves and jalapeno. Slowly drizzle in the liquids, whisking constantly to emulsify into a smooth sauce. If your sauce doesn’t look so good, a few hits of an immersion blender should sort it out.
Salad:
1/2 head small green cabbage, thinly sliced
1/2 head small red cabbage, thinly sliced
2 red bell peppers, thinly sliced
2 large carrots, shredded on cheese grater
6 green onions, sliced
1/2 cup packed cilantro, roughly chopped
salt to taste
1/2 cups roasted peanuts
- Toss all of the salad ingredients together with the dressing. Taste for salt adjustment and dig in.
Pine nuts are expensive.
What a week!
Construction on my new business, The Pantry, is moving along, and I can finally see how the space is going to feel when all done. Such a good feeling. Then we released our class schedule on Monday and my “How to be a Pie Ninja” classes sold out in three days! And THEN, as if that wasn’t enough to make me blush, I wake up on Wednesday to the announcement that “I Made That” is a finalist for Saveur Magazine’s Best Cooking Blog award along with 101 Cookbooks, Lottie and Doof, Smitten Kitchen, Sprouted Kitchen and The Wednesday Chef! Seriously, my friends, I am glowing. And a little intimidated…I mean, I knew I had a few readers out there, but I don’t know how I landed in that company. All of a sudden I’m staring intensely at my photos, worried that they just aren’t up to snuff. And what recipe do you post when people are actually LOOKING? I was so scared I actually went out and bought $25 worth of pine nuts, because suddenly walnuts just weren’t good enough! I’m cracking people, I obviously can’t take the pressure. But thank you, whoever nominated me, you are a very nice person. And I mean that.
After a week like that there is only one answer: cake. And, well, I might as well put those pine nuts to good use…
So I toasted them.
And folded them into one of the weirdest cake batters I’ve ever made. It’s from the book “Urban Italian” by Andrew Carmellini, which is a book that I just love. Everything I’ve made from it has been right up my alley, and I’m excited to share this particular recipe. The book has you start with creaming the butter and sugar, and then go straight into adding all of the flour. Once all the flour is in, THEN you start adding the eggs, yogurt and lemon juice. That’s just crazy. But it worked. The cake has a beautiful crumb and it’s not too dense for my taste at all (did I mention it gets meringue folded into it? That probably has something to do with it).
It’s a simple cake, with the texture of a pound cake and a flavor that is almost savory. I made the recipe as he called for, except that I added salt, because all cakes want a little salt. And to be honest, I might add a bit more next time to make it feel even more savory. Or maybe make a salty caramel to pour over it. In fact I might just go do that right now. Certainly all that salt I just added makes it count as dinner rather than dessert, right?
Pine Nut Cake (Pinolata) Recipe (Andrew Carmellini):
cake batter:
2 cups pine nuts
1 1/4 cups sugar
1 pound (4 sticks) butter, at room temperature
zest and juice of 2 lemons
4 cups flour
2 tablespoons baking powder
1 1/2 tsp salt
4 whole eggs
3/4 cup yogurt
for the meringue:
4 large egg whites
1/2 cup sugar
- Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
- Toast the pine nuts over very low heat in a dry saute pan until they have just begun to take on a golden color. Remove from the stove and reserve. I actually just toasted them in the oven…
- Prepare the batter
- Meanwhile, cream the sugar, butter and lemon zest together in a KitchenAid with the paddle attachment. Be sure to scrape down the sides as you go to make sure everything mixes evenly.
- When the mixture is quite smooth, add the flour and baking powder. Mix until the dry ingredients are just incorporated and then begin adding the eggs, one by one, waiting until each egg is thoroughly mixed in before adding the next. Turn the KitchenAid up to high for about 5 seconds to combine everything thoroughly, then scrape down the sides and the bottom with a spatula and mix in any bits that have failed to incorporate.
- Add the yogurt and mix in with the paddle attachment until it’s thoroughly incorporated.
- As you continue mixing, add the lemon juice and incorporate. Scrape down the sides and bottom and mix well with a spatula. Then transfer the mixture to a large bowl.
- Fold a third of the meringue into the batter using a rubber spatula to combine well. Add the rest of the meringue and fold in well until the mixture is combined. Fold in the pine nuts, reserving about 3 tablespoons for the top of the cakes.
- Brush 2 9×5 loaf pans with melted butter. Fill each loaf pan with the batter. Smooth and flatten the tops with the spatula. Sprinkle the tops of the cakes with the reserved pine nuts. I forgot to do that part. (Now I’ll never win!)
- Bake the loaves on the middle rack until you can put a knife into each and bring it out clean, about 45 minutes.
- Remove the cakes from the oven and let cool in the pans for about 30 minutes and then turn them out onto a cake rack to cool completely.
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