Baking

Invoking Korea: I am madly in love with all pancakes.

~ wellfedemily ~ 2 Comments

Much as I love home, every so often (three to six times per week) I consider escape. Sometimes it’s the weather, and periodically it’s people – sometimes it’s both (though rarely is it some of the weather or all of the people). Sometimes the grey is all around and the idea of putting on a coat or fighting back is exhausting and you don’t care enough to do either because it’s the west coast and there will always be damp and because some people are going to rain on your parade whether it’s warranted or not. And that’s when I think of Korea. I’ve never been there. They do clever things with cabbage and have excellent pancakes.

A million years ago now, when I was very small, my grandpa returned from Korea with a pair of pretty dolls in blue dresses. They had marabou fans and elaborate hairstyles and I thought that everything pretty like that came from Japan until Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego? And then I found out where Reykjavik was and then I thought I knew everything. I hope you know that those two thoughts are not completely related. Korea. Seoul. I want to go.

Dollies.

Seven years ago I attempted to teach a Korean family English. They’d hired me as a tutor, totally unqualified, and they were so earnest and funny that I couldn’t wait to see them every week. They tried to teach me a thing about Korea for every thing I taught them about Canada or grammar or homonyms, and often that involved food. They had one son, Daniel, who was ten years old and worried that strangers would kidnap him because of his handsomeness. I told him to be wary of vans and free candy. His mother taught me about salty little dried fish and kim chi, and I’ve since tried in vain to find anything as good as the stuff she made at home. Her tofu was not the stuff of hippies.

My love affair continues, and with each passing year I wonder how it’s possible that I haven’t made it there yet. If my bank account contained enough for airfare, or if airfare was forty dollars, which I have, I’d be gone. (Don’t worry: When I go, I’m taking Nick with me.)

But it’s not my turn. This week David is leaving. He’s going to Amsterdam to ride his bike to Istanbul, and then he’s probably going to Germany to get even more educated, and he’s already one of the top eight smartest people I know. I assume he will miss Vancouver’s diverse culinary scene, most particularly the Asian stuff. It’s good here. Very good, every kind. Also I’m kind of selfish and have been harbouring escape fantasies, and so I planned for a room of us to dine Korean and send him off while I attempt to live kind of vicariously through David. Well, kind of Korean. I really wanted the pancake. (I really want all pancakes.)

As with all my plans, what started off as a quiet little evening soon grew to include all the people who actually ought to have been invited, and soon there were ten. In my mind, that was a totally reasonable number to try and feed, so I estimated that dinner would take a total of twenty minutes to prepare. In future, I will make time for what I like to call “inevitable realizations,” or: “I have no pans big enough to make this much food.” Thankfully, Greg offered his place across the street as a venue. I bought four pounds of Chinese noodles, many little bags of baby bok choy, and too many green things that I would have to accommodate in some way, probably the oven. I also had to double the pancake recipe, and because of that, bake it instead of fry it, which turned out more than okay, like Korean Toad in the Hole.

I’ve decided that you really ought to have my doubled-up recipe, and that you should probably bake it.

Pa jun or pajeon, or: “That really good pancake I like.”

  • 2 cups all-purpose flour
  • 2 cups rice flour
  • 4 eggs, lightly beaten
  • 3 cups cold club soda (or beer)
  • 1 tbsp. plus 1/4 cup canola oil
  • 1 cup green onions
  • 1 cup carrots, peeled and julienned
  • 1 cup zucchini, julienned
  • 1 small onion, sliced into thin strips
  • 1 tablespoon red pepper flakes
  • 2 tsp. salt
  • 2 tsp. black pepper

Grease a baking sheet with 1/4 cup of the oil. Preheat your oven to 400°F. Add your baking sheet and let the oven and the sheet heat up together.

Pull the baking sheet out of the oven once the “it’s not ready” red light goes out (which means it’s ready). Add your vegetables.

I tell you to julienne things, but then I don't do it myself because I kind of hate doing that because it takes too long. I guess you don't have to. Just cut everything really thin.
I tell you to julienne things, but then I don't do it myself because I kind of hate doing that because it takes too long. I guess you don't have to. Just cut everything really thin.

In a large bowl, mix your flours, your eggs, your soda, one tablespoon of oil, your salt, pepper, and chili flakes, and whisk to combine. Pour over the veggies, tucking any strays into the batter blob.

Batter blob.Bake for 15 to 20 minutes, until golden brown.

Large tray of pancake.Serve with a quick little sauce, and a bit of kim chi, which I’d meant to include but totally forgot about. The sauce?

Cho Ganjang

  • 4 tbsp. soy sauce
  • 4 tbsp. cheongju (Korean rice wine) or sake
  • 4 tbsp. rice vinegar
  • 2 tbsp. sesame oil
  • 4 tbsp. lemon juice
  • Salt, to taste

Serve to others. Because there is no love like the love between people who love pancakes.

A good-looking chap, yes?
A good-looking chap, yes?
Feasty, on Chinette.
Feasty, on Chinette.

Of course I am excited for David and his magical adventures. Though it is beginning to feel like time for my own adventures. Sometimes you fall into them, and sometimes your life pushes you in – I’ll let you know what compels me, once something finally does.

In the meantime, eat pancakes.

And then smile, lay on the floor, and be full.
And then smile, lay on the floor, and be full.

Today was also the best day ever, and I know that you’re going to stop believing me when I say that. Here, have some strawberry shortcake.

~ wellfedemily ~ 1 Comment

I know that yesterday I said today I was going to tell you all about clams, but the thing is I was a little drunk by the time dinner struck and all my pictures turned out blurry, and Grace brought her camera and tripod and took photos but I don’t have them yet so I’ll tell you all about clams tomorrow, or possibly the day after. Today we went out to Westham Island to pick strawberries.

Westham Island is way the hell out there off the highway beyond Ladner, and while it’s not actually that far away in kilometers, to get there you have to travel several long and winding roads and cross a couple of bridges and once you get there you have to try and decide which farm you will go to, and Grace and I wanted to go to the one with the winery. Of course, that’s at the end of another long road, but when we got there, we beheld many wonders. To our delight, it was Strawberry Fest this weekend. In addition to the startling variety of fruit wines available for sale, I was pleased to discover a company that custom-tailors tuxedos for wiener dogs. I don’t have a wiener dog yet, but when I do, he will ALWAYS be snappily dressed.

Strawberry fields forever.
Strawberry fields forever.

But that’s not the important thing. The important thing is that it’s now officially strawberry season, which means that it’s summer.

The place we went to was a u-pick kind of place, and you bring your own bucket – pretty standard stuff.

Pick, pick, pick.
Pick, pick, pick.
Pretty, pretty, pretty.
Pretty, pretty, pretty.

It took me forever to get started, and I grabbed several sharp weeds with my bare hands before getting into things. Agriculture isn’t for me, I decided, and also I don’t much care for squatting. In no time I was using my galoshes as a seat, ambling along the rows with prickly sleeping feet. I’ve revised my dream career to include “not outdoors” in its descriptors. It smelled very nice, like leaves and the odd whiff of berry musk.

And soon I was well into the whole process, shouting across the field to James and Grace whenever I felt so compelled – “OMG, look at these retard-berries!” I’d shout. “Developmentally challenged berries,” Grace would correct. And then when the troupe of annoying British children turned up, I decided I’d best stop shouting “retard!” into the fields, and James agreed.

No, really - see?
No, really - see?
This plant has too many chromosomes or something.
This plant has too many chromosomes or something.

It didn’t take very long to fill a whole bucket. For me, that is. James ate three times as many berries as he picked, and Grace anal-retentively only picked perfect berries – her berries were all of uniform colour and size. Grace is a better editor than I am, and has a keener eye for detail. My bucket showed an open-minded preference for diversity (read: a tendency toward rushing and impatience).

By the end of it all, I had picked four pounds of berries, paying less than I paid yesterday for half as many.

I am less awesome in real life than I am in my head.
I am less awesome in real life than I am in my head.

But what to do with all those berries?! I immediately counted out the prettiest, reddest ones from among the berries at the top of the bucket and dropped them into a bowl and drizzled them with a touch of sugar and just enough cream. They were so soft that they didn’t need to be chewed – I could smash them just by pushing them with my tongue against the roof of my mouth. They tasted precisely how strawberries are supposed to taste, with not a streak of white anywhere inside of them.

Nothing belongs in my stomach more than these.
Nothing belongs in my stomach more than these.

As too many strawberries will leave you with a terrible case of the scoots, I’m beginning to wonder what I’ll do with the rest – I think I’d like to make strawberry shortcake, and maybe a batch of muffins, and then freeze some for margaritas. The rest I will eat as they are, or dipped in pepper or sugar or maybe both – I don’t remember at which point the laxative quality of strawberries begins to take effect. Only one way to find out!

In the meantime, here’s my favourite base for strawberry shortcake. It’s a James Beard recipe, and it produces a biscuit, not a cake. But it’s sweet, with a crusty top that contrasts nicely with soft berries and whipped cream. I add cardamom because I like it, but you can omit it if you’d like.

Cream Biscuits

(makes four to six, depending on how big you like them)

  • 2 cups all-purpose flour
  • 1 tsp. salt
  • 1 tbsp. baking powder
  • 2 tsp. sugar, plus additional for sprinkling on top
  • 1 tsp. cardamom
  • 1 – 1 1/2 cups heavy cream
  • 1/3 cup melted butter

Preheat your oven to 425°F.

In a bowl, combine your flour, salt, baking powder, sugar, and cardamom. Mix it up, and once it’s mixed, slowly add one cup of the cream. Stir constantly, adding more cream if the dough doesn’t seem like it’s holding together. Once it’s formed a dough, turn it out onto a floured surface, and knead for about a minute. Divide the dough into four to six pieces, and pat down until each is about half an inch thick.

Paint with melted butter, all sides. Place on an ungreased baking sheat, and sprinkle the tops with sugar. The coarser the sugar, the better – I like a nice crunch.

Bake these for about fifteen minutes, or until golden brown.

I have to half recipes around here - they're always too much for two people.
I have to halve recipes around here - they're always too much for two people.

Serve warm, with fresh berries and a generous dollop of whipped cream.

And now, it’s time for another handful of berries, a glass of wine, and a nap, because agriculture is hard work and squatting makes you tired.

Sometimes I feel like I am being followed around by my own personal fail whale, and I am not Ahab. Or, “Coconut Layer Cake: A delicious summer treat.”

~ wellfedemily ~ 2 Comments

-51

As a 1930s wife, I am

Very Poor (Failure)

Take the test!

And I am reminded again of my many failings. And though I don’t put too much stock in this one – Nick took the husband version of the test and was also slapped with a big fat FAIL – it does remind me that I do suck at a great many things. This does, and the cake I made for Sooin.

The cake was delicious: coconut, sweet, and frosted with goat cheese icing. But it was fugly as all get-out, and by now, I’ve run through all the different ways in which it was not my fault (I lost my round cake pans, my apartment was too hot and the icing didn’t set, there was not enough time, there’s never enough time). Tasty though it was, if we’re judging on appearance, I get another big fat FAIL. I wish I made cakes that look like this:

SuperStock_1555R-191028But I make cakes that look like this:

Cake (not pretty).My cake has personality. And character. That other cake is probably made with Splenda and ground-up babies. And it will probably give you cancer. It’s too pretty – you can’t trust it.

Make my cake. Use your round cake pans, cut each layer in half and stack them together, and ice the thing when the weather is cooler. As I mentioned, I made a frosting with goat cheese, and it was lovely – just make cream cheese icing, but instead of cream cheese, use goat cheese. It’s tart and wonderful and will make a rich, delicious frosting that you’ll want to eat with your fingers. But I was thinking about it today, and I think it would have been even better as a layer cake frosted and filled with whipped cream. It would have been effortless, and beautiful if sprinkled with a smattering of toasted coconut.

Coconut Layer Cake

(Two 8-inch round cake pans. Or one 9×13 slab.)

  • 1 cup butter
  • 2 cups granulated sugar
  • 4 large eggs, separated
  • 3 cups all-purpose flour
  • 2 tsp. baking powder
  • 1/2 tsp. salt
  • 1 cup unsweetened coconut milk
  • 1 tsp. vanilla extract

Preheat your oven to 350°F.

In a large bowl, cream together your butter and sugar until the mixture is lighter in colour and fluffy. Drop in your yolks (reserve your whites in a separate bowl), and continue to beat.

Mix together the flour, baking powder, and salt. While still beating the butter/sugar/egg mixture, add the flour in by the cup. After the first cup of flour, add in about half of the coconut milk. And then add another cup of the flour, and then the other half of the coconut milk. Add in the vanilla, and then the final cup of flour. Beat it.

In that other bowl, whip your egg whites until they form stiff peaks. Once these are all ready to go, fold these into the batter.

Egg whites being folded into batter.What’s folding? It’s easier than maybe it sounds. You’ll literally be folding the batter over the egg whites, combining the two substances gently until one is integrated into the other.

Pour into your cake pans, which you will, of course, have lined along the bottom with perfectly fitted parchment paper. Bake for 30 minutes, or until a toothpick comes out of the centre clean. Let rest in pans for five minutes, then turn onto racks to cool. I really think you should frost this with too much whipped cream.

Serve. Enjoy. Personality goes a long way.

Blurry photo of cake.

Berry muffins and your leftover rice.

~ wellfedemily ~ 10 Comments

Muffins!You know when you’ve got leftover rice except that it’s not enough to do anything with and you’d usually throw it out? DON’T! Make muffins. It’s summer, and berries are abundant (well, maybe not yet, but they will be), and maybe you’re like me and you’ve reached the age where fibre is your friend … rice or bulgur in the muffins? An easy way to boost your morning routine. I think you know what I mean.

Last night I made fish and a little stuffed tomato salad that included just a smidge of bulgur. I made more than I needed, because I don’t know how to not make too much when it comes to grains, and I ended up with about 2/3 of a cup of cooked bulgur left over. Which is enough for a single salad, but I also had some yogurt in danger of turning on me in the fridge, a single orange, and a collection of mixed berries that needed to be used lest they turned into freezer rocks held together by gigantic stale-tasting ice hunks. So, you know. Muffins.

Berry Muffins with Rice (or Bulgur)

  • 2 cups flour
  • 1 tbsp. baking powder
  • 1/2 tsp. salt
  • 1/3 cup packed dark brown sugar
  • 2/3 cup cooked brown rice (or white rice or bulgur and if you have slightly more than what the recipe calls for, just use it)
  • 2 cups frozen berries (I used 1 cup of blackberries and 1 cup of blueberries with the, like, four single raspberries I had left in the fridge … use whatever berries or chopped up fruit you like. I bet rhubarb would be good)
  • 1 orange, zest and juice
  • 2 eggs, beaten
  • 1 cup yogurt
  • 1/2 cup milk
  • 1/4 cup melted butter

Preheat your oven to 400°F.

In a large bowl, combine your flour, baking powder, salt, and sugar. Stir until combined. Add your berries and your rice, and the orange zest and juice. Mix well.

In a measuring cup, melt your butter, then add the yogurt, and if it’s big enough, the milk. In a separate smaller bowl, beat your eggs. Add the both of these to the bowl one after the other, and stir to combine. This is a thick, dense batter, so if you’re hand-mixing this, as I did, be vigorous. You don’t want to find floury bits at the bottom of your bowl.

Grease a muffin pan. Fill the cups with the batter, to the tops.

Muffin batter!

This mixture will make 12 muffins. I hate when the muffins don’t breach the top – when they’re too small they’re like muffin pucks, and you don’t get to enjoy the distinction between muffin top and bottom. Sprinkle with sugar and a pinch of cinnamon, and bake for 20 to 25 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the centre of one comes out clean.

Baked.Once they’re done, let them sit for five minutes before turning out onto a cooling rack.

Racked.I recommend eating one right away, slathered in melted butter and a drop of honey. Rose, my awesome MSN-buddy at work, brought me a jar of lavender-infused honey awhile back, so I will use that, and every bite will taste like summer. You could also use a touch of marmalade, or another something wonderful. Enjoy!

Bacon fat cookiestravaganza. Or, how to make you fall in love with me. Except that I probably wouldn’t tell you what was in these if I was trying to woo you.

~ wellfedemily ~ 9 Comments

I hadn’t had a peanut butter cookie in a really long time.

And when Nick went out to get dinner stuff, he mentioned that maybe I should do the dishes, and I was like, “If I’m helpful, maybe he’ll come home with a present!” So I did the dishes, and Nick came home, and I pointed out the four dishes I washed, and he wasn’t as impressed as I’d hoped, and then he asked if I bothered to clean out the fridge yet. Of course I didn’t. But I thought, I could at least open it and see what happens. And then it happened. The bacon fat resurfaced!

Mmmm!Please don’t quit on me yet. I promise you, this is worth your while.

Bacon fat is better for you than margarine, if you haven’t heard, and while I can’t actually back that up, it’s a fact, and if you want proof then I would be happy to recommend some literature that will help you along. And we’re in a recession. And I’m saving the butter for mashed potatoes. My grandmother used to make the best peanut butter cookies in the world using schmaltz (rendered chicken or goose fat), which would have been left over anyway, which she kept in the freezer just for baking. And being (constantly) broke, my cold little heart breaks when I have to throw stuff out. I always save my bacon fat.

The peanut butter cookie recipe I like the best comes from Fannie Farmer. I have long been a fan of Marion Cunningham, who is like everybody in the world’s grandmother’s cookbook (but not my grandmother, the story of who’s cookbook is a novel for another time) mashed into one divine being who makes everything you want to eat and is tall (I imagine) and regal and is friends with Jeffrey Steingarten, who is another kind of hero. I make half-batches of this recipe, because two dozen cookies is quite enough for me. The recipe in its full measure claims that it will produce 120 cookies, which I have never found to be true. This is either a gross miscalculation or they’re supposed to be tiny little cookies, and I hate little cookies because they’re a tease and before you know it you’ve eaten two bags of mini rainbow Chips Ahoy and you’re drunk and it’s 3:42 am and you’re crying on the kitchen floor (again) and the reason is embarrassing but also you wish you could carry on a conversation with normal people without saying something wildly inappropriate or them thinking you had tourette’s syndrome, for once, and who the hell let you have the phone in the first place?

Peanut-Butter Bacon Fat Cookies

(Adapted from the recipe for Peanut-Butter Butter Cookies from the Fannie Farmer Baking Book, circa 1984. Makes about two-dozen cookies.)

  • 1/2 cup bacon fat
  • 1/2 cup peanut butter
  • 1 cup light brown sugar
  • 1 egg
  • 1 1/2 cups flour
  • 1 tsp. baking soda
  • Pinch of salt

Preheat the oven to 350°F.

Beat your bacon fat, peanut butter, and sugar together in a large bowl. You want the colour of the goop in the bowl to lighten and get creamy. Once it’s there, crack open your egg and drop the contents in, and keep beating the mixture.

Combine the flour, baking soda, and salt, mix well, and then slowly add it to the mixture in the bowl, beating until all your ingredients are combined.

Cookie doughIf you’re like me and you’ve never been disappointed by a hunk of cookie dough in your mouth, then sample away. At first you may think it’s a little weird – and it is. But in a good way. The bacon fat makes the peanut butter seem peanut-butterier.

Roll the dough out into balls about an inch or so in diameter. Place about an inch apart on a cookie sheet, and press the tops down with a fork dipped in granulated sugar.

Raw cookie deliciousnessBake the cookies for 8 to 10 minutes, and cool for a bit on a wire rack before eating.

I have to say I was pretty pleased with myself/these cookies, and not just because I used something in the fridge and therefore made progress toward a cleaner tomorrow. They are TASTY. You really ought to try this. I’m pretty sure a pound or so of bacon will produce enough fat for these, and then some, if you don’t already save your fat. Don’t waste fat. Baby Jesus cries when you wash the fat of the pig down the drain.

COOKIES!Seriously. You need to try these. Go render some pork fat, and then let me know how it all works out. Or, just come over for cookies and milk, and inhale my good baking stink.

Old-Fashioned White Bread from Sponge and Homemade Butter.

~ wellfedemily ~ 7 Comments

What were YOU doing at 1:00 this morning?

I was in my bathrobe, sitting on the kitchen floor and having big ideas. I couldn’t sleep. It was Sooin’s bachelorette party last night, and as I’ve been a tad under the weather and it was a forty-five-minute drive away, I decided to only go the dinner part, and to not drink. I drank about fifteen Diet Cokes, and then got home and tried to go to sleep. No luck – I was abuzz. Then I decided that I would make a bread sponge in anticipation of a luscious loaf of sourdough in the morning. But it doesn’t work that way. A sourdough starter takes three days, and if I was thinking clearly, I would have realized that sooner. So I made a regular bread sponge, because I made butter and don’t care to wait three days to eat it, and resolved to start a sponge for sourdough at 1:00 some other morning.

Sponge

SDC10245It’s a good idea to save a knob of your last batch of dough to add to your bread sponge. I keep a little ball of it wrapped in plastic in my freezer, so that it can be pulled out and dropped into a frothy batch of sponge and allowed to ferment and grow yeasty, yielding a richer, crustier, OMG-so-much-better loaf of bread. You don’t need much – a bit of dough about the size of a golf ball is plenty.

What is a bread sponge, you ask? Well. It’s very simple. It’s a portion of the ingredients you’re going to use to make your bread, just thrown into a bowl a few hours or a day or two in advance. Science happens in the bowl, and you end up with a loaf that’s soft and chewy on the inside, with a crusty exterior that just begs to be torn into with teeth. Also, because the yeast gets its little selves in there a bit earlier, the mix ferments a bit and develops a much better flavour. You can really just whisk everything together in a bowl and then go to bed. Eight to twelve hours later, you just put the rest of your ingredients together and proceed as usual.

Sponge:

  • 2 cups warmed milk
  • 1 teaspoon yeast
  • 2 cups all-purpose flour
  • 1 little dough ball

Whisk together the milk, yeast, and flour in a large bowl. If you have a ball of dough, defrost it quickly and drop it in as well. Cover with plastic wrap and a kitchen towel, and let sit at room temperature for 8 to 12 hours.

SDC10244

When I woke up this morning it was sunny for the first time in a week, so I was super-impatient, so the sponge only got about eight hours to get good, but it still smelled yeasty and sour, like the perfect start to a homemade loaf. I started in immediately, because I wanted to go out to play.

Here’s the bread recipe. For the butter, go here. Follow her steps exactly. These two in combination will give you an earth-shattering foodgasm, and you’ll be all, “Thanks, Emily. I’ve always liked you.” No really. Make the butter. It won’t save you any money, but the taste (and gloating about how you made your own butter) will be totally worth it. I’ve got big plans to use it on a barbecued ear of corn tonight. BIG PLANS.

Another recipe for white bread, but this one’s different, okay?

  • bread sponge (see above)
  • 1/4 cup warm water
  • 3 tsp. yeast
  • 2 tbsp. sugar
  • 2 tbsp. melted butter (plus extra for greasing your bowl and your loaf pans)
  • 1 tbsp. salt
  • 4 cups flour, plus extra for kneading

Combine the yeast and the water. When yeast gets foamy, add it to your sponge. Add the sugar, butter, and salt as well, and stir to combine. Add your flour and stir until mixed, and then dump the lot onto a floured surface to begin kneading. As always, please knead for eight to ten minutes. If you have athletic, powerful arms, it may take less time – you want the dough to become elastic – but I have flabby “looks good in sweaters” arms, so I knead for the full amount of time. Muscles are for chumps, right?

Transfer your dough to a large bowl that has been buttered lightly on all sides. Do round things have sides? I guess if you don’t know, they might as well. Cover with plastic and a kitchen towel, and allow to rise in a warm room until doubled in bulk. About an hour, hour-and-a-half. You know the drill.

dough in bowl, risingOnce your dough is big and smells good, dump it out onto that floured surface again (add new flour), and cut it in half. Form the dough into two loaf-pan-sized rectangles. Place your dough into your pre-buttered loaf pans, cover again with plastic and a kitchen towel, and allow to rise again, about an hour/hour-and-a-half, until the dough has risen an inch or so above the tops of the pans.

dough in pans

Preheat the oven to 375°F. I brushed the tops of my loaves with some melted butter and sprinkled them both with Kosher salt, but this is optional. Put your loaves into your oven once it’s raring to go, and bake the loaves for 35 to 40 minutes.

Cool these on wire racks. I find that bread tastes better once it’s cooled and then reheated (toasted), because there’s a complexity of flavour that develops once the bread does it’s sciencey thing on the racks.

BREAD!I sure hope you made the butter.

Butter, homemadeButter your homemade bread with the homemade butter. Revel.

Homemade bread with homemade butter.I realize now that I promised Heather the key to easy spaghetti carbonara, and am now about a week late in following through. I don’t have any bacon at the moment, and I just made butter, so the next pasta I make will probably involve this butter and the beautiful leaves of sage that are flourishing on my deck, but that’s not to say it isn’t coming. Give me a week. Then I’ll tell you everything. I promise.

New Jersey Crumb Buns. Or, “Be Nice to your Wife, Jerkface.”

~ wellfedemily ~ 14 Comments

Until recently, I had no idea what a crumb bun was. They don’t exist on the west coast, and especially not in Canada. Apparently they only exist in New Jersey, which isn’t terribly helpful, and unfortunately, they are a thing that Nick is not content to live without.

About six months ago I acquired a recipe that purported to be authentic – hours of following the recipe EXACTLY and letting the bread rise to the precise specifications and topping the whole thing with a crunchy streusel topping, also from the recipe. The result?

“These aren’t them.”

“The topping’s too crunchy.”

“Yeah, I don’t really like these. Good try, though.”

That he is not smothered in his sleep is a testament to my enduring patience.

And so crumb buns were largely forgotten. By me. Nick speaks of them often enough that they never fully disappear, and fails to understand that, “crumb buns – you know, like, I don’t know. They’re kind of like cake, but not, and the topping is, you know, crumbly and stuff” is not a description I can work from.

And then, recently, as luck would have it, Nick’s parents went to New Jersey. They brought some home, and I set out to copy the recipe.

This is a crumb bun. Tasty!
This is a crumb bun. Tasty!

These have a yeasty, subtly sweet, almost eggy taste. And while Nick swears that the most important part of these is the streuselly crumb topping, I’m inclined to believe that he has no idea what he’s talking about – the base is the part that’s the riddle. I made two batches of dough before I got to a recipe I felt would work. The final dough smelled a lot like the crumb bun sitting on the arm of my couch, so I figured that’d be a start.

I figured out the problem early on: Lemonade. How am I supposed to be creative if I’m all inhibited and crap? Right? Of course! So I popped open a bottle of prosecco and set to work. Result? The right stuff.

So with the dough rising in it’s buttery pot of incubation, it was time to microanalyse the crumb part of the crumb bun. It’s not completely soft, but it’s not crunchy either. It’s buttery and cinnamony and slightly nutty, and the recipe I used for these those many months ago was right on with the taste, even if it was way off on the texture. Solution? Add more butter. (Fact: “More butter” is almost always the correct answer.)

Here’s the recipe.

New Jersey Crumb Buns

Bun part:

  • 2 tbsp. yeast
  • 1 cup whole milk
  • 1/2 cup granulated sugar
  • 1 tsp. salt
  • 1/2 cup butter
  • 2 eggs
  • 1 tsp. vanilla
  • 4 cups all-purpose flour, plus 1/4 cup for kneading

Crumb part:

  • 1/4 cup almond butter
  • 1 1/2 cups butter
  • 1 cup light brown sugar
  • 2 tsp. cinnamon
  • 4 cups flour

Heat the milk until just warm, about 105°F. Forty seconds in the microwave should do it. Sprinkle your yeast over top and let sit until foamy, about five minutes.

Meanwhile, cream together the sugar, salt, and butter – beat these until the sugar dissolves and the butter becomes fluffy and lighter in colour. Beat in the eggs and the vanilla. Pour in the yeast-milk mixture and continue to beat. At this point the batter will separate and you’ll probably think that you’ve ruined everything. I promise, you haven’t. Add in the flour gradually while continuing to beat the mixture.

The dough that’s produced will end up quite a bit softer than a regular bread dough. Flour your work surface, and knead the dough – eight minutes should do. It should be soft and elastic and have a slight sheen. Place the dough in a large greased bowl and cover with greased plastic wrap. Throw a kitchen towel over top, and let rise in warmth and comfort until doubled in bulk, about an hour and a half.

Make your streusel. Cream together almond butter, regular butter, cinnamon, and brown sugar. Gradually add in your flour, the same way you did with the bread part. Don’t over-beat this – you’ll see it form loose, crumbly chunks. Break apart any overly large crumbs with your fingers – crumbs should be about the size of peas. Refrigerate these until ready to use.

Cover a baking sheet (make sure it has sides) in buttered parchment paper. Once your dough has grown to the appropriate size, give it a quick knead, and stretch it out so that it’s about 10 x 16 inches. Cut into rectangles approximately two inches wide by four inches long, and lay them out on the pan so that they’re close but not touching. Brush the tops with milk, and sprinkle about half the streusel over the tops, pressing lightly to make sure it sticks. Cover the pan with plastic wrap and allow to rise until doubled (again). One-and-a-half or two hours.

When the buns have risen, sprinkle the rest of the crumb over the tops.

Heat your oven to 375°F. When the little red “the oven is not ready” light shuts off, put in the buns and bake for about thirty minutes. Cool on a rack, and then, when cooled, sprinkle these with confectioner’s sugar. Inhale. Delightful smell.

Crumb buns cooling on rack.

When Nick finally ate one of these, the reviews were mixed. The bread part is spot-on. Tremendous news, as that was the part I was most concerned about. The streusel?

“It’s better from the store my mom buys them at.”

He gets nothing. Ever. And I’m pouring out the rest of his beer.

The crumb wasn’t as soft as he’d wanted – it turned out a bit softer than an apple crisp kind of topping. Still good though. In the end, he ate but half of one of these. I have more than two people can eat left over, and they’re going stale waiting for validation. They are, or I am – either way, it’s not good. I’ve never liked Nick.

A blurry photo of a crumb bun in action.
A blurry photo of a crumb bun in action.

I am not sure whether I am going to continue to play at this – I think if Nick wants soft streusel topping, he can find a recipe and make it himself. He has to learn sometime, and I figured out the bread – that was the hard part. I have an inkling as to what might make it work. I might even share my theory with him. But for now, he gets dishes. And a healthy amount of fear.

A day of many delights: Rapini, and then blackberry scones.

~ wellfedemily ~ 3 Comments

When I came home today, I found this:

NoteWhich is a shame, because I came home with a fabulous bottle of sparkly pink wine and a huge hunk of his favourite cheese, and for all he knows, I could have been amorous. And I was. But not for him: Whole Foods opened on the corner yesterday, and today I paid my first visit (and healthy chunk of my payday earnings).

I didn’t even cry at my wedding.

I enjoyed a good long wander through the store, making mental notes of all the things I’d buy someday when I have a lot more money than I do now. The stack of salts, all different colours and textures in their plastic containers labeled with their exorbitant prices were so mesmerizing I stood staring, slack-jawed like a brain-damaged mule, for a good ten minutes, my eye shifting slightly to the left to the stack of Le Creuset pots in every colour before shifting back. I died a little inside when I realized that to buy any desirable combination of these would render my financial situation unliveable for the next two weeks, so I walked away slowly, barely keeping back the tears.

And then I found the cheese section! Needless to say, I am the proud new owner of $40 worth of cheese. So, three different kinds.

The goal today was to write about scones – and I will, I promise, because I bought a hideously expensive container of frozen organic Abbotsford blackberries, and the scones happen to be revelatory. But I got all tripped up by this:

Rapini with lemonAnd I discovered that if you shriek in the grocery store, no one will ask you if you need help, but you’ll find yourself with all the space you like.

My favourite thing to do with fresh greens, such as this vibrant bunch of rapini, is to sauté them in a little butter, olive oil, garlic, lemon zest, and too many capers, then toss them with pasta and add a generous helping of parmesan cheese and a squeeze of fresh lemon juice. You don’t need a recipe – it’s impossibly simple. Salt and pepper to taste, and a bottle of good wine for accompaniment, and you’re set. And then you end up with this:

Pasta with rapini and capersAnd the whole time I was eating it, I was all – “this cost under five dollars to make – why do I ever eat out?” Well, it might have cost more, but I amortized the cost of the cheese over several meals.  Which is what you do when you budget.

So I ate all this, and drank most of the wine, and was just about ready to ease into my favourite kind of stupor when I realized that I was going to make scones. And I started making the scones and realized that in my shrieking Whole Foods love fest, I didn’t buy milk. But whatever, right? You can make scones without milk. I made mine with yogurt and a bit of water in place of the milk. DELICIOUS.

Here’s the recipe (with milk, because that makes good sense).

Blackberry Lemon Scones

(makes about eight)

  • 2 cups all-purpose flour
  • 2 1/2 tsp. baking powder
  • 2 tbsp. sugar
  • 1 tsp. lemon zest
  • 1/4 cup butter (plus a bit of melted butter to brush over the tops)
  • 1/2 cup milk (I used peach yogurt, because that’s what I had)
  • 1 egg
  • 1 cup frozen blackberries (I prefer to use frozen berries for these because they keep their shape better than fresh berries)
  • 1 tbsp. turbinado sugar (or regular, but I promise, it’s not the same)

Preheat oven to 450°F.

Combine your dry ingredients (including zest) in a mixing bowl, and mix well. Add the butter, working it in with your fingers until it’s fully integrated and the mixture looks like bread crumbs. Stir in the milk and the egg, and then the berries, and mix only until the dry ingredients are moistened. Form into a ball.

Lightly flour your work surface. Empty your bowl of dough, which by now is very pretty and marbled with purple juices. Knead lightly. Pat the dough into a circle about a half-inch thick, and paint with the melted butter. Sprinkle the turbinado sugar over the top, and press lightly to make sure it sticks. Cut the round into eight pieces.

Place your scones about an inch or so apart on an ungreased baking sheet. Bake for 10 to 12 minutes.

Clearly I have no idea how much an inch is.
Clearly I have no idea how much an inch is.

No matter how big a mess your apartment (or life) is, baked goods always make everything okay.

These turned out mostly scone-shaped. Some of them are shaped like retard scones, but they are no less tasty. I am just really bad at geometry.
These turned out mostly scone-shaped. Some of them are shaped like retard scones, but they are no less tasty. I am just really bad at geometry.

You know what the weird thing is? I got a raise today, and the best part of my day involved rapini and blackberries. That’s not to say the raise – though small – isn’t good news: it’s enough to cover another two bottles per month, if I choose wisely. And more wine is always a thing to delight in.

Rehab, when I finally get forced into it, is really going to suck.

Scone. On plate.Serve the scones warm. They are great with butter, but if you’re all alone and no one’s watching, a drizzle of maple syrup makes these indulgent and fattening. Some days, there is nothing better.

Scones. Soup. Codeine. Trifecta?

~ wellfedemily ~ 3 Comments

Pre-baked scones

I’m feeling much better. And Nick came home and was very sympathetic and the kitchen is mostly clean now, so I made soup and scones and everyone is happy and we’re watching Iron Chef and Nick is trying to teach me to take pictures that aren’t blurry but he should know by now that I can’t be taught much of anything as far as technology is concerned. Also, I’ve ingested more codeine than is probably healthy today, so it’s a wonder I’m even upright. Apparently the camera isn’t as simple as he thought. He keeps asking me questions. Why does he keep asking me questions?

Since Sunday tea, I’ve been all loins-aflame for scones. Also, my pots of herbs on the deck are growing wildly – specifically the spearmint and the thyme, which are dominating their respective pots and choking out the other plants. Stay tuned for a recipe for minty English potatoes later this week – for now, I needed to tame the thyme. I chopped up a bit of the parsley for these as well.

Potato and herb scones with cheese

(makes 4 scones … you could double the recipe and make more!)

  • 1 cup all-purpose flour
  • 1 1/4 tsp. baking powder
  • 1 tsp. sugar
  • 1 tsp. salt
  • 1 grated cooked potato (I baked mine, but it would work just as well with boiled potato. I would have boiled mine but I had no clean pots.)
  • 1 large clove finely minced garlic
  • 1/4 cup chopped fresh parsley
  • 1 tbsp.  chopped fresh thyme
  • 1/4 cup grated cheese (I used pecorino because that’s what I had. Parmesan, or even cheddar, would also be good.)
  • 1/4 tsp. ground black pepper
  • 2 tbsp. cold butter
  • 1/4 cup milk
  • 1 egg

Preheat the oven to 450°F.

Combine your dry ingredients (including the herbs and cheese) and potato in a mixing bowl. Stir well. Add the butter, working it in with your fingers until it’s fully integrated and the mixture looks like a big bowl of crumbs. Stir in the milk and the egg, and mix only until the dry ingredients are moistened. Form into a ball.

Lightly flour your counter, which is hopefully clean like mine was before I made these, and dump the dough out onto the surface. Knead lightly. Pat the dough into a circle about a half-inch thick and cut into four pieces. I thought the pieces looked ugly, so I rounded the edges and corners.

Place your scones about an inch or so apart on an ungreased baking sheet, top with a bit of grated cheese, and bake for 10 to 12 minutes.

Scones, hot from the oven.It’s the fresh herbs that make these so delightful – because they aren’t baked for all that long, they kept their bright green colour. Which, as it happens, matched the soup. You should serve these hot from the oven and slathered in butter. Dipping is optional.

Spring Green Pea Soup

(Serves two)

  • 3 cloves garlic, minced
  • 1 tbsp. fresh ginger, minced
  • Zest and juice of one lime
  • 1 can coconut milk
  • 1 cup water
  • 2 1/2 cups fresh or frozen green peas
  • 1/3 cup fresh chopped basil
  • Salt and pepper to taste

While your scones are baking, throw your ginger, garlic, and lime zest into a pot with a dribble of oil. Whatever kind. It doesn’t matter all that much. As the garlic is turning golden, pour in the coconut milk and the water, and juice the lime right over the pot. Let it come to a boil together, and then reduce the heat to medium. Add your peas and simmer until they’re soft, two or three minutes, then remove from the heat, add the basil, and purée the mixture in a blender or with a hand blender, which is probably one of the greatest kitchen tools ever.

Return the mixture to the heat to keep warm and adjust your seasonings. I found that I wanted a bit more acidity, so I added a splash more lime juice to cut the sweetness of the peas. If I had some jalapeno peppers, I would have added them as well. But it’s two days before payday, and two dollars for peppers is completely out of reach at this point. Poverty like ours is a skill!

I like to serve this (hot, of course) with a soft poached egg in the centre and a light sprinkling of black pepper. Try it. It’s super good that way.

green soupIn a few days, once I’ve had a chance to wander down to the market and see what’s fresh in fruit these days, I’ll give you a recipe for sweet scones – note: You really ought to go out and purchase some turbinado sugar to top them with. Crunch! You’ll see what I mean.

dinner!Nick just shouted at me that my camera sucks and that I’ll just have to learn to take better pictures. I thought that was the case, but he needed an hour’s worth of fiddling plus some time Google-searching to confirm this for me. It’s all very exhausting, this learning and typing and eating. It could be time to shave some T3s over a bowl of ice cream and take a bath.

Conclusion? Soup makes you feel better, scones are delicious, and sedatives are the root of all happiness.

Things that are not okay: Wanting to slather your naked self in frosting and only not doing it because you’re at tea with your mother-in-law who probably wouldn’t care if you did it but might still think less of you even though she might not say anything.

~ wellfedemily ~ 6 Comments

Today I went for tea in Fort Langley. Ordinarily, the suburbs are not really my thing – wide open spaces make me anxious and uncomfortable, and there are minivans and Home Depots everywhere, which is only kind of true, but I get all weird anyway, even though there are two Home Depots within ten minutes of where I live now and I’m not afraid of Home Depot as much as I am the idea of Home Depot and renovations and owning a home and being a grown-up and caring about things like different kinds of hoses or door knobs or wood things or epoxy.

But I really like Fort Langley. It’s a delightful place and not at all scary, and there’s lots of cool stuff there. Like Tracycakes.

Sign

White house

I was delighted to find that they had my favourite vanilla bean tea, and each person at the table gets the tea of their choice in a little white teapot so I didn’t even have to share.

Jess, Nick’s sister, arranged the whole tea time, and apparently knew all about this in advance – when we got there, there was no order to be placed. We were there for high tea, so we waited for our teapots, then for the tower of awesomeness. We didn’t wait long.

tower of awesomeThe top tier contained little sandwiches – cucumber, egg salad, and turkey – and sausage rolls. BTW, I received a belated wedding gift today – the meat grinder attachment for my Kitchen Aid stand mixer. My mom says I should get over my preoccupation (obsession) with owning a wiener dog because they’re nervous and they pee everywhere, but I’m all, “Um, hello? Me?” And then I got this meat grinder and I swear the joy caused me to pee a little, which made me nervous, but it turns out I didn’t pee and I was just a little sweaty. Overshare.

Anyway, I’m going to start grinding meat and making sausage, the connection here being that since I mastered pastry, the next logical step is to master sausage rolls. I reworded that last sentence like, eight times, because I COULD NOT type “I want to master sausage” and have you think I wrote that without knowing that it could be misconstrued and then laugh at me.

Oh! The scones! I do so love a good scone. Scones comprised the second tier.

sconeThese scones were fluffy and light and gave me a total England boner. Inappropriate. Cranberry and orange, they were, and served with raspberry preserves, lemon curd, and clotted cream. As soon as my bank balance moves back into the black (Thursday), I’ll be acquiring some cranberries and making a feastload of scones. Stay tuned.

On the bottom tier there were cupcakes and butter tarts and a few things I couldn’t immediately identify but knew were probably mighty tasty. The cupcakes (and other baked goods) were fantastic, since they’re what Tracycakes seems to be known for. I would say that these are better than Cupcakes cupcakes, if only for the frosting. I had a caramel one that was perfectly frosted and drizzled with caramel, with a cake that was soft and moist and soaked with errant drops of golden sugar love.

I heard while I was there that this place is closing at the end of the summer, which sucks, because the only other location is in Abbotsford. Which means if I don’t go back to Fort Langley before the end of the summer, I will have tasted my last Tracycake this afternoon. I think I would like to take my Mom there, and perhaps the next sunny Sunday I am out that way, I will kidnap her and make her eat cupcakes. This will be a challenge. But I will succeed.

If you’re considering Fort Langley as a destination, it’s worth your time. There are other good things there – The Lamplighter is tremendous and you will need to go there for dinner, and for some interesting fruit wines, The Fort Wine Co. is the place to go. The main road (only road?) through town features a wide variety of shops and restaurants and places to wander, and if you’re all loaded up on cupcakes the town is just the right size for a waddle.

So, the moral of the story is that there is adventure outside of the city, and Home Depot is nothing to be afraid of. And cupcakes = love.