It’s Friday! And I’m not at work! And Spring Is Here!
Look! Spring! There it is! This is what spring looks like from my balcony.
This is all tremendous, and worthy of glorious celebration. And I am alone – Nick is at work, so once again, I can have whatever I want.
For Nick, there is no better breakfast than fried eggs, fried bacon, and fried perogies with onions and sour cream. And a can of cold beer, which he usually has one or two of, because he always saves a couple for morning and for the shower. And that’s all well and good, because all of those things fried are quite delicious. But they are not worthy of my mood today. No.
I wanted pancakes. Correction: I wanted pancake. Singular. And I wanted to sit on my deck and drink a cup of tea and look at the flowers and bask in the glow of the sunshine. So, Dutch Baby-style, I put the pancake in a ramekin and threw it in the oven. I sliced a few strawberries, drizzled the last of the cream over top, and sprinkled them lightly with sugar.
See?
Joy.
So what do you need for a perfectly lovely breakfast for one? Oh, easy.
You need:
1/4 cup all-purpose flour
1/4 cup milk
1 egg
1 tsp. sugar
1/2 tsp. vanilla
Preheat oven to 425°F. Lightly grease a single ramekin with butter. Put it in the oven while the oven heats – about five minutes.
In a small bowl, whisk together the flour, milk, egg, sugar, and vanilla. Pull your ramekin out of the oven, and pour in your batter. You may find that the ramekin sits better in the oven if you put it on a small cookie sheet. Bake for 15 to 20 minutes.
While your apartment is filling with the smell of pancakey goodness, slice as many strawberries as you have or as you’d like, add a dribble of cream, and sprinkle the top lightly with sugar. Boil a pot of water for tea. Though, a cold, sparkly glass of prosecco would also be delightful. Note to self. For next time.
When it comes out of the oven, your pancake-Dutch Baby-thing will be puffy and fantastic. And if you greased your ramekin properly, it will just slide out. I got too excited and missed some spots, apparently, so it clung to the sides a bit. Oh well. It still tasted good – crispy on the outside, soft and fluffy and wondrous on the inside.
Serve on a plate with maple syrup or golden corn syrup, and all your delicious strawberries on the side.
Now? Oh, big day. I’m going to put on a sundress, and maybe some tights as it’s a little nippy out yet, and then, because it’s Vancouver and I live on a bike route, I’m going to ride my bike and have an adventure or something. SPRING!
Sometimes I have a very hard time sleeping. My nephew told my mom that there is always stuff going on in his head because he has four brains, and I understand the feeling, though I don’t think I’ve got four brains, just one that’s hyperactive and not doing much of anything but keeping me up.
I usually just pour myself a giant glass of milk and eat something soothing, like homemade bread toast or this pint of strawberries, and read a book, but I’m reading a very good book and it’s so good that I don’t want to finish it right now because then it will be over. I’m not ready for that. So I’m kind of phoning this one in, sharing an old recipe, and hoping that the plicketing of my keyboard will lull me to sleep.
Focaccia bread, my stand-by for something easy and impressive that you can make with stuff you already have. File this one under cheap and easy.
Focaccia Bread
1 (1/2-pound) Yukon Gold potato, peeled and quartered
1 cup cooled (but still warm) potato water
1/2 teaspoon sugar
2 1/4 teaspoons active dry yeast (or one packet)
1/2 cup extra-virgin olive oil, divided
4 1/4 cups flour, divided (1/4 cup will be used to kneed)
1/4 cup herbs de provence (don’t have it? I’ve used any old dried spice – basil is nice, as is rosemary)
1 tablespoon plus 1/4 teaspoon sea salt, divided (1/4 tsp. to be sprinkled on bread before baking)
1/2 pound roma tomatoes, thinly sliced crosswise, or as many small tomatoes as you think look good on top
1/2 cup balsamic vinegar
2 cloves garlic, chopped (but not minced)
1/2 cup mozzarella or parmesan cheese
Two basil leaves, chopped
I never use a mixer for this – I do everything by hand, and I promise, it’s neither strenuous nor is it exhausting. Or I wouldn’t do it. But you can use a mixer, or anything you like.
Generously cover potato with salted water in a small pot and simmer, uncovered, until just tender, 10 or so minutes. Drain water into a measuring cup. Cool potatoes slightly, then mash until smooth.
Add sugar to potato water. Sprinkle yeast over mixture and let stand until foamy, about five minutes. (If mixture doesn’t foam, start over with new yeast. I have really crappy yeast at the moment, so I let it stand longer – if it doesn’t start working within ten minutes, swear out loud, dump the whole thing, and either start over or cry and then go to the store and buy new yeast. You’re only allowed to cry if you’ve invested in a full jar though. I make a lot of bread so I buy it by the jar, and that’s a lot of little organisms to have failed, so crying is okay.)
Measure out four cups of flour and dump into a bowl. Add 1/4 cup herbs de provence, and one tablespoon of salt. Add the mashed potatoes and oil, then pour in your yeast mixture. Mix it all together until the dough is very soft and sticky, then drop the dough onto a floured surface to begin the awesome task of kneading. This is my favourite part of bread-making, and is particularly delightful with this bread because of the herbs, which smell like warm sunny countries that I haven’t been to.
As usual, you’ll want to knead this until the dough is quite elastic, about eight to ten minutes.
Scrape dough into a lightly oiled large bowl and cover bowl with oiled plastic wrap. I always oil my stock pot, and the lid, and put it in there with the lid on for this. Let dough rise in a draft-free place at warm room temperature until doubled, 2 to 2 1/2 hours. Generously oil a cookie sheet.
Punch down dough (do not knead) and transfer to baking pan, then gently stretch to cover as much of bottom as possible (dough may not fit exactly).
Cover dough with oiled plastic wrap and a kitchen towel and let rise in a draft-free place at warm room temperature until doubled, 1 to 1 1/2hours.
Preheat oven to 425°F in lower third part of oven (near the bottom, but not the whole way).
Soak tomatoes for ten minutes in balsamic vinegar, then arrange tomatoes on focaccia (do not overlap), then sprinkle with basil, cheese, chunks of garlic, and remaining 1/4 teaspoon sea salt and drizzle with remaining 1/4 cup oil.
Bake until center is firm, and top and underside is golden (lift to check), 20 to 25 minutes.
Loosen focaccia from pan with a spatula and slide onto a rack to cool slightly. Cut into pieces and serve warm or at room temperature.
Well, now … that didn’t work. I’m still awake, and nowI am getting all food-lusty for bread. Nick is snoring away in the other room, and I’m all stimulated. Probably the strawberries, which may have been a bad idea – too much fruit = the scoots. And now I’m oversharing. Make the bread. People will love you and think you’re the best, and then you can be all, “I am! That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you!” Ugh. Maybe I do have four brains. Four parrot brains that don’t really do anything but annoy me at bedtime. Good night.
Wow. Been a real keener with this blog stuff lately. Been cooking a lot too, motivated in large part by this non-pink camera and my desire to learn how to take non-blurry pictures. Also, would be okay with someone coming over to take pictures for me. So I invited Chris Gerber, Nick’s friend with the good camera, over to eat. I like Chris Gerber.
A lot of kids aren’t eating meat these days. Weird, right? Some of them came over for dinner tonight. I’ve found that the challenge with vegetarian cooking is that people don’t really “get” vegetables. They get meat though. Meat is the main course, and that’s that. So vegetables are kind of an afterthought – just dump some hollandaise sauce on them, and they’ll be good to go. Much as I love a good litre of hollandaise, one cannot coat everything they eat in egg yolk butter sauce. Bad idea. Pretty sure that’d kill you.
The challenge tonight was to approach vegetables in a way that allowed vegetables to behave like a main course without everyone feeling like the vegetables were either imitating meat or that the whole dish was suffering for the lack of meat. For someone that keeps a jar of bacon fat in the fridge and dreams of the many uses for schmaltz, this is no small thing. But not impossible. No. Not impossible.
The solution? A little pea and asparagus risotto with bulgur and a rustic onion and fennel tart, adapted (and improved upon) from this month’s issue of Food & Wine magazine. Also, a side salad of tomatoes, cucumbers, avocado, and basil, all drizzled with delicious olive oil and balsamic vinegar. I got the basil from the plant on my balcony. It was real good.
It’s quite late and I don’t actually have a recipe for the risotto … it’s all in my head and I don’t feel like trying to remember it now. I am going to try and remember it later, and tell it to you again – I may have to re-do it and take notes throughout the process so I can report back. If you know risotto, it’s made the usual way, only with vegetable stock and peas and asparagus thrown in. I added the bulgur for nuttiness, and because I have a freaking ton of it, because I was on a total bulgur kick a few months back. So you get the onion-fennel tart thing, and some lovely pictures, a few of which were provided by the talented and artistic Chris Gerber. The crappy blurry ones are from me.
Rustic Onion and Fennel Tart
(Adapted from Food & Wine Magazine)
Dough
1 cup all-purpose flour
1/4 tsp. salt
6 tbsp. unsalted butter, frozen
5 tbsp. ice water
Filling
4 tbsp. butter
1 large sweet onion
1 bulb fennel
6 thyme sprigs
2 tbsp. sour cream of crème fraîche
salt and pepper, to taste
1 egg beaten with 1 tbsp. milk
To make the dough, measure the flour and salt into a bowl. Using a cheese grater, grate the frozen butter into the bowl, and toss together lightly. Using a fork or a finger, pour the water gradually into the mix. You want the dough to form a ball, and to be relatively firm. You may not need all of the water. When a dough-ball is formed, wrap it in a sheet of plastic wrap and stick it in the fridge.
Start cutting the onion – thin slices. Do the same thing with the fennel bulb. Thin. Get your butter melting in a pan. Once melted, dump your onions and fennel into the pan, with four of the sprigs of thyme, and sprinkle lightly with salt. Start the pan on high, cooking until softened, eight to ten minutes. Reduce the heat to medium-low, and cook until onions are golden and caramelized. The recipe says 20 minutes, but it lies. It’ll take half and hour. Once the onion-fennel combo is complete, remove the pan from the heat and stir in the sour cream/crème fraîche, and season with whatever salt and pepper you feel it needs.
Preheat the oven to 375°F, and butter a cookie sheet.
Grab your dough ball out of the fridge. Lightly flour your rolling surface. Make sure it’s clean. Dough doesn’t hide the crusties you let harden on your countertop. Pat the dough ball down, and roll the thing out. Once it’s thin and rolled, fold it back into a ball-like shape, and start again. You want the flour and the butter to be all inter-mingled and stuff so that when you bake it, the pastry gets all flaky and luscious, not hard like shingles. When it’s all rolled out, move it over to your buttered cookie sheet.
Pour your cooled onion-fennel mixture onto your pastry. You want there to be about an inch and a half border around the mixture, because you’ll be folding the edges of the tart in, making it look all rustic and homemade, which is totally in right now. It looks like you tried hard that way, even though this was super easy and monkeys could do it.
Lay the remaining two sprigs of thyme over top your crust, and brush with your egg-milk mixture.
Your pre-baked tart should look like this:
Bake for 40 minutes. I thought I had a really good picture of the tart, but I get really distracted really easily, so I guess I forgot to take it. Your finished tart will look like the thing at the top right of this photo:The other stuff there is the risotto and the salad, which were also good. At least, I thought they were good. The thing about these food blogs is that it’s kind of my word against anyone else’s. But, to be fair, no one gagged or was all, “Ew, WTF? Why are you feeding me poison?” So, awesome show. Great job. IT ALL TASTED GOOD.
There was also dessert. I made mango upside-down cake, but it got a little botched when I tried to take it out of the pan. Solution? Cover that shit in caramel sauce. Caramel hides flaws. And helps the broken parts of cake get stuck back together.
Oh! I used my last vanilla bean in the whipped cream. Well, not my last, but the last in that open container. Glad that story line is now all wrapped up.
I’ve included some of Chris Gerber’s actual attractive images below. He didn’t give me all the photos he took, which leads me to believe that the others were way too good to share, so instead he’s taken them home to paint them for me in watercolours, so that I can get all Cook’s Illustrated on this blog.
Chris Gerber interprets salad.Chris Gerber takes sexier pictures of dessert than most people could.Chris Gerber photographs yesterday's shrimp recipe. My penmanship is really nice, so I take half-credit fot the artistry of this one.
Conclusion? Vegetables are tasty. People should eat more of them. Unfortunately, they do not possess the sedative-qualities of large hunks of meat, so it’s 1:04 am and I am still wide-awake. Thankfully, there was wine left over. Good night.
It’s the day before payday, which is always bleak. Well, bleak in that we can’t indulge our usual gluttonous passions – no beer, no wine, all out of eggs, and a dwindling supply of vegetables on hand. The fridge is sparse at the moment. But it’s after nine, and I’ve got bread in the oven for tomorrow’s meager breakfast before our bank balances nudge ever so slightly into the positive. And we’re full, most of a pot of soup gone, all of yesterday’s meatload depleted.
Nick said it was the best soup I’d ever made, which put me in a bit of a pout, because I like to think that my specialty, my sumptuous sweet potato and coconut soup with lemongrass and red curry spices, is far better, more interesting, more favourable. Tonight’s soup was hobo soup, essentially. A head of cauliflower that’s been tucked in the back of the fridge for three weeks, maybe a month. An onion, some garlic. The remainders of two cartons of chicken stock, about three cups. The rest of the non-sour milk, maybe a cup and a half. A small round of that delicious Boursin cheese. Salt. Pepper. Cayenne. And that’s that, simmered until the cauliflower softened, then blended with my awesome new hand blender.
Ever notice that a meal of just soup is kind of sad, no matter how good the soup? Me too. I had just enough butter left on hand for a half-batch of baking powder biscuits. Once they came out of the oven, I sliced them, and stuffed them with the remaining meatload from yesterday, with a sprinkling of cheese. We are fat and sassy. We are full and content, Star Trek TNG on TV, a loaf of soda bread in the oven smelling our space up real nice.
Tomorrow, I will buy groceries for the next few days, bake brownies for Nick’s bake sale (he’s not 7 … he’s 27), and life will return to normal. We will have beer again, and possibly wine. But for now, we’ve enjoyed a lovely evening. Am pleased. Tra-la-la!
Nick asked me the other night to tell him my favourite thing to eat. Choose one thing? Who am I to say that a beautifully roasted duck breast and a chewy, buttery lobster tail aren’t equally worthy, or that peanut butter cookies, wonton soup, Filet-o-Fish sandwiches, or beet carpaccio aren’t equal and each distinguished in their own right? I couldn’t pick one. But, if I had to pick a favourite thing to eat in the morning, it would be Toad in the Hole – Yorkshire pudding with sausages and onions baked in, all fluffy and crispy and meaty. Yorkshire pudding on its own is pretty fantastic.
So Nick got me thinking about my favourite things, and among my favourite things: Yorkshire pudding. Right. I believe we established that. A few weeks ago, we made a brunch date with two lovely friends, Aimee and Evani, and so while planning a mid-day stat-holiday feast, visions of puffed batter were dancing about in my head.
I had two savoury dishes on the menu already – tortilla with cucumber and avocado salsa, and “potato stuff,” which is a genius of a thing that comes from every kitchen of every person I’ve ever met’s mother (1 can Campbell’s Cream of Mushroom Soup, 1 cup sour cream, 2 cups grated orange cheddar cheese – don’t use white, it turns out gross-looking, and most of a bag of hashbrowns, stirred together and baked covered in a Corningware dish for 30 minutes at 450°F). So, no Toad.
Ooh! I forgot to mention – I bought some lovely fresh free-range happy-UBC-farm-chicken eggs the other day, so I had another reason to make something Yorkshire-puddingy.
Anyway, so I thought – why not add a bit of sugar and top them with a warm raspberry-lemon compote and way too much whipped cream? It turns out such a thing already exists and has a name (with or without any version or variation of the compote or anything else) – and it’s a fairly awesome name at that – who doesn’t love joking about eating babies?! “I can’t think of a better use for them!” “Hahaha!” Ahem. You want the recipe? Of course you do. It’s quite simple/excellent/fun to make fun of babies.
I scraped a little bit of vanilla bean into mine, because I have some (though, since Nick tossed the lid to the container during a mad clean-freak sweep of the kitchen, they may all dehydrate before long). You can use a teaspoon-or-so of vanilla extract if you’ve got it. Almond extract or a little maple syrup would also probably be quite tasty.
Dutch Babies
1 1/2 cups flour
1 1/2 cups milk
6 large eggs
1 tbsp. granulated sugar
1 tsp. salt
1/2 vanilla bean
Butter
Preheat your oven to 450°F. Butter six ramekins and place them on a baking sheet, and toss them into the oven.
In a single bowl, combine your flour, milk, eggs, sugar, salt, and vanilla. You used the butter to grease your ramekins, remember? Don’t worry. You won’t need it again. Work quickly, whipping everything together – make sure you don’t leave lumps. If your vanilla bean refuses to spread out and act normal, go in manually – use your fingers to separate the blobbies – that’s what they’ll look like: little black blobs, sort of like frogs’ eggs, but less gross.
When your batter is ready, pull the ramekins out of the oven and divvy the batter up between them. This recipe makes just enough for six. When the batter’s in, put it all back into the oven and set the timer for 30 minutes. Monitor their cooking via the oven light: You are not allowed to open the oven door until they are done. They will go flat, and then your brunch guests will not be as impressed.
When they come out of the oven, don’t wait too long to serve them. Drizzle them with a bit of sauce, and serve with whipped cream. For my raspberry sauce, I used two cups of frozen raspberries and the zest and juice of one lemon, reduced until the mixture was thick and nearly jammy in texture – I started them in a pot over medium-low heat about an hour before I had to serve everything, and didn’t watch them too closely, just stirred them occasionally.
I was quite pleased with the way these turned out – I think the eggs were really what made them. The yolks were a fantastic golden colour, and imbued the Babies with a very springy yellow hue. I wish I had a camera to show you! I will get one soon, I promise. And then I’ll make them again, and post pictures, and you’ll be all, “wow, those are lovely. It’s a good thing she’s a baker and not a breeder, because her real life Dutch babies (well, half-Dutch, which is funny, because she’d totally have gone Dutch on the genes for those whippersnappers) would probably not be nearly as good-looking.”
I wonder if it’s necessary to mention that brunch means you can get drunk during the day without everyone shouting “ALCOHOLIC!” and pointing at you. Nap time!
I’m hot. I’m cold. My fingernails are blue. My head hurts. I’m nauseated. And, if you’re Nick, nauseous. I have burst capillaries all over my face, and my bangs are unkempt. Probably, I am dying. David left a message this afternoon requesting a cake recipe, so hopefully this one will suffice – Devil’s Food Cake, simple/awesome, and, let me tell you, quite a thing to muster in this perilous state. So now I’m thinking of cake – which I will make again when I am not teetering on the brink of my own demise. Next week, I think, or for my birthday, which is Sunday. It would be tragic if I didn’t survive until then. For me. It would be tragic for me.
Nick crossed his fingers when I made him promise that he wouldn’t remarry after I’m gone.
Devil’s Food Cake
2 1/3 cups all-purpose flour
1 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1 1/2 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. salt
3/4 cup butter, at room temperature
2 cups firmly packed dark brown sugar
2 tsp. vanilla
4 eggs, at room temperature
1 1/2 cups buttermilk, at room temperature (if you don’t have buttermilk, sour milk is fine – one teaspoon lemon juice or vinegar for every cup of fresh milk)
Preheat an oven to 350°F.
Lightly butter the bottoms of two 9-inch round cake pans and line with parchment paper. Lightly butter the paper and the sides of the pans and dust with flour.
In a large bowl, sift together the flour, cocoa powder, baking powder, baking soda and salt; set aside.
In another large bowl, beat the butter until smooth. Add the brown sugar and continue beating until fluffy. Add the vanilla and the eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. Beat together with the flour, and add the buttermilk/sour milk slowly.
Divide the batter between the prepared pans and spread it out evenly. Bake until a toothpick inserted into the center of a cake comes out clean, 25 to 30 minutes. Transfer the pans to a wire rack and let cool for 15 minutes. Let the cake layers cool completely if you’re going to frost this. Of course you are. You can find a recipe for that here.
So, right. If I die, please remember me fondly when eating my cake. If I do not die, I’ll be in an eating mood again soon, at which point you are more than welcome to invite me over for cake and cocktails. I’m going to lie on the bathroom floor now.
Update: I’m still probably dying. But I’ve made it this far, so I’ll probably outwit death yet. And then, with one successful outwitting behind me, I’ll be unstoppable. Oh, I was going to tell you about Koreans and their fantastic meat. If you’re lucky, I’ll survive the day to report back tomorrow.
Grace asked if I had any recipes for pumpernickel bread, and, as I am the proud owner of The Fannie Farmer Baking Book – edited by The Marion Cunningham, circa 1984, and dedicated to James Beard – the answer was, of course, “I have two!” But one of them contains “instant grain beverage,” which is kind of annoying since I don’t know what that is. Beer? That’s all I can think of. So, here’s the better recipe! In blog-form, which means forever!
I’ve never actually made this recipe, but if Grace makes it, the result will be beyond excellent, and more than worthy of The Marion Cunningham’s Glorious Praise.
Pumpernickel Bread
(makes two free-form round loaves)
This bread is described as “A good pumpernickel with a thick crust and a fine, moist crumb.” The recipe comes from page 476 of The Fannie Farmer Baking Book (1984). BTW, if you don’t own this book, it’s pretty comprehensive and well worth buying – you’ll get a ton of really great recipes out of it, the kind you’ll use over and over again.
2 1/2 cups potato-cooking water
1/2 cup plus 2 tablespoons yellow cornmeal
1/4 cup dark molasses
2 tablespoons brown sugar
2 tablespoons (1/4 stick) butter
2 packages dry yeast
1 cup mashed potato
1 tbsp. salt
3 cups rye flour
3 1/2 to 4 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 tbsp. caraway seeds
Glaze:
1 egg yolk, mixed with two tablespoons of water.
Bring the potato water to a boil. In a large mixing bowl, stir together 1/2 cup of the cornmeal, the molasses, brown sugar, and the butter. Pour the boiling potato water over all and stir until well blended. Let stand until comfortably warm when you plunge your finger deep into the mixture.
Sprinkle the yeast over the potato mixture, and let stand until dissolved and fluffy. Beat in the mashed potato, salt, rye flour, two cups of the all-purpose flour, and the caraway seeds. Add enough all-purpose flour to make a manageable dough, then turn out on to a lightly-floured surface and knead for a few minutes. Let rest for ten minutes.
Resume kneading for about ten minutes, until the dough is smooth and elastic, sprinkling enough all-purpose flour to keep the dough from becoming too sticky. Transfer the dough to a large greased bowl, cover with greased plastic wrap, and let rise until the dough has doubled in bulk.
Punch the dough down and shape into two round loaves. Sprinkle a baking sheet with the remaining two tablespoons of cornmeal, and place the loaves on it with a few inches space between them. Cover loosely (greased plastic), and let rise again, until double in bulk again. Brush the tops of the risen loaves with the egg-yolk glaze. Bake in a a preheated 375°F oven for 30 minutes, brush again with the glaze, and bake for another 15 minutes. Remove from the baking sheet, and let the loaves cool on racks. Invite your friend Emily over for drinks and fresh-baked bread with butter.
Bake for 40 minutes. I thought I had a really good picture of the tart, but I get really distracted really easily, so I guess I forgot to take it. Your finished tart will look like the thing at the top right of this photo:
The other stuff there is the risotto and the salad, which were also good. At least, I thought they were good. The thing about these food blogs is that it’s kind of my word against anyone else’s. But, to be fair, no one gagged or was all, “Ew, WTF? Why are you feeding me poison?” So, awesome show. Great job. IT ALL TASTED GOOD.
Oh! I used my last vanilla bean in the whipped cream. Well, not my last, but the last in that open container. Glad that story line is now all wrapped up.
well fed, flat broke 