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Today I have a series of photos for you in the style of Betty Crocker, circa 1965 (at least I think that’s what they look like. Sunsets at 4:30 kind of interfere with natural light). The recipe isn’t circa 1965, though. With its chipotle barbecue sauce, it’s more of a 2003 kind of thing.
I decided today that Carlo should come home from work to a nice meal today, the kind of meal that he loves. Luckily its a new job and he’s on good behavior and won’t be online, so I can tell you without ruining the treat for him.This is a recipe we’ve had before, an introduction from our best food friends who made it for us back when we lived in Montreal (hi B + G!).
While I love pork and I love ribs, this is definitely a Carlo recipe. The ribs, first marinated in a dry rub, cook slowly at low heat until they’re tender, glistening in fat, and then they’re wrapped in a tomato-chipotle dress and put back into the oven until the sauce has sunk in. I like fat as much as anyone, but not as much as Carlo. It’s impossible to love it as much as Carlo does.
I’m roasting a couple sweet potatoes and some brussels sprouts to go on the side, and I think those two will help me feel that this meal is virtuous.
Carlo’s going to sit down to this meal and when he takes a bite, his forehead will furrow at a small point between his eyebrows, and his eyes will almost-but-not-quite close, and he’ll be very quiet for a second, and then his face will clear and he’ll look up from his ribs and say “wow.” And that will be the sign that I look for, that combination of actions meaning that he’s happy and completely content. And that’s why I’m making ribs.
Baked Pork Ribs with Chipotle Barbecue Sauce
Adapted from Bonnie Stern
4 strips of back ribs (I used about 2 lbs, but more would be better), shiny membrane on backside removed
Dry Rub:
2 Tbsp. smoked paprika (regular is fine too, but smoked adds some heat and interest)
2 Tbsp. dark brown sugar
2 tsp. salt
2 tsp. dry mustard
Barbecue Sauce:
1 28-oz. can diced tomatoes, drained
2-3 chipotle peppers
2 Tbsp. lemon juice
2 Tbsp. Worcestershire sauce
2 Tbsp. dark brown sugar
1 Tbsp. Dijon mustard
Combine spice rub ingredients in a small bowl and rub them into ribs. Put the ribs into a shallow dish, cover, and set aside to marinate at room temperature for an hour.
Preheat oven to 325 F. Line a baking sheet/pan with foil. Place marinated ribs in a single layer on pan, cover with more foil, and cook for 1 1/2 hours.
While ribs are cooking, assemble your barbecue sauce by placing all ingredients in the bowl of a food processor and pureeing.
When 1 1/2 hours is up, remove ribs from oven, pour off the fat that has collected at the bottom of the pan, and then pour barbecue sauce over them, turning them over in the baking pan to ensure that they’re well-coated. Be generous with your sauce! Turn up the heat to 400 F and put ribs back in oven, uncovered, cooking for another 1/2 hour.
I’m nothing if not a project-lover. As if NaBloPomo weren’t enough, I decided at the beginning of November that this would be a great month to commit to working out. I’m trying to exercise every day this month. Before you start cautioning me and advising Carlo to have me committed, no, I’m not running every day, or even lifting weights. I’ve got a wonderful yoga class once a week, and I count a good walk as exercise, and I’ve got a free month-long membership at the Y, so I can branch out a bit. I’m being smart about it. Yesterday, my plan was to go down to the Y and try out their yoga class, see if it was as good as my regular one.
Only… I decided I needed to make fudge. This urge was so strong, I couldn’t possibly wait until after the course. The sugar, the milk, the cream, and the cocoa were screaming to be tossed into a pot right now, and who am I to refuse? So instead of yoga, I made fudge. I wish I could direct you to the site that inspired me to do this, but alas, I can’t find it and can’t remember it.
Once my ingredients were simmering, and I was practicing patience and wielding my thermometer, waiting for soft ball stage (234-240 F), I started thinking– is fudge really worth skipping yoga for? If this particular fudge wasn’t spectacular, I was obviously going to feel guilty all afternoon. In self-defense, my mind started reeling through possible fudge-fudging possibilities, searching for something to add value to my candy. And then I remembered a chocolate bar that intrigued me recently: the Chocophilia Fleur de Sel chocolate bar that a fantastic local chocolatier, Kerstin’s Chocolates, makes. I thought about my fudge, and thought about how fudge is always so rich, and (if you do a good job, anyway), so smooth. And I thought, yes, salt in my fudge is a great idea. It would cut the richness of the fudge a little, add a bit of crunch to contrast the smoothness, and as we all know, a pinch of salt in sweets always ups the flavour.
My experiment was a success, the salt giving the fudge just an extra pop of flavour and a welcome bit of texture to what turned out to be a lovely, smooth confection. Of course, not just any salt will work for this. You really need a large-crystalled, pure-flavoured salt, something that won’t disappear into the fudge but will maintain its own character even swathed in chocolate (try fleur de sel or Maldon salt). And of course, you don’t need a lot. A little salt goes a long way. I used a little fleur de sel mixed into my fudge, but I found it had the most impact sprinkled on top.
I enjoyed my fudge, and then I went for a walk. Cooking and exercise. My projects are fulfilled.
Fleur de Sel Fudge
This recipe is easiest with a candy thermometer, but if you’re comfortable without, look for soft ball stage by dropping fudge into a glass of cold water. If it forms a soft ball, you’re ready to go.
1/2 cup milk
1/2 cup heavy cream
2 cups granulated sugar
1/4 cup cocoa powder
2 Tbsp. butter
1 tsp. vanilla extract
1 tsp. fleur de sel, divided
1. Grease an 8×8 square or 9-inch round cake pan with butter. Set aside.
2.Place milk, cream, sugar, and cocoa powder in a heavy-bottomed pot, and bring to a boil on medium-high heat, stirring occasionally. When the mixture is boiling, turn it down to medium to prevent it from boiling over. Monitor with a candy thermometer, stirring occasionally if necessary.
3. When mixture reaches soft ball stage, or 234-240 F, remove from heat and beat vigorously until the mixture has lost its glossy appearance. Stir in butter and vanilla, then gently stir in 1/2 tsp. fleur de sel.
4. Pour fudge into prepared cake pan, and sprinkle remaining fleur de sel on top. Leave to cool before cutting into small squares.
Please excuse my groan-worthy title. I’ve got a pun/cliche theme going for this NaBloPoMo, so I’m hoping to make you roll your eyes every day for the next 26 days. Are you excited? I sure am.
If you’re not thrilled about puns, maybe you’ll be interested in a grape sorbet and almond cookie combination. I used the last of the huge pile of coronation grapes we bought at the market to make this sorbet. It’s delicious! The grapes are so flavourful, they don’t need any adulteration–just some sugar to sweeten them and keep the sorbet from getting icy. And this sorbet has a perfect, almost creamy texture that lasted for three days in the freezer without getting icy (maybe it would have lasted longer, but we ate it all up!). My theory is that it stayed smooth because these grapes had a lot of pectin in their skin. This is pure speculation, because I can’t figure out how to confirm it. Maybe there’s some other chemistry at work that I don’t understand.
Along with the grape sorbet, I served almond haystack cookies, a simple treat that complemented the sorbet very well. The almonds were rich, as opposed to the sorbet’s tartness, and just barely sweet. These little cookies are so tasty and low-fat, I’ve been thinking they’d be nice to have around as a little afternoon pick-me-up alternative to something like a granola bar, especially horrible, cloyingly sweet store-bought bars. Course, you’d really only be able to eat one at a time if you were thinking of your health. In any case, whether you rationalize them as health food or save them for the dessert platter, these simple, elegant, almond-vanilla flavoured cookies are so easy to make. Carlo actually found them too simple, so I was thinking that next time I might put a pinch of spice in when I mix up their egg coating. Or maybe just use brown sugar or panela instead of white sugar?
Grape Sorbet
Don’t try making this sorbet with ordinary table grapes. It won’t have enough flavour. I used Ontario Coronation grapes, which are very similar to Concords. I think I read somewhere that you can substitute high-quality grape juice if you haven’t got grapes at hand. If you try that, let me know. I’d love to know how it works! My sugar guidelines are approximate here. I like my sorbet tart, so I held back a little. But don’t hold back too much on the sugar–desserts taste less sweet when they’re frozen, AND sorbet needs sugar to keep it from getting icy.
4 lbs. purple grapes, stemmed
1/2 cup sugar
1 cup water
1. Put all ingredients into a pot and bring to a boil. Simmer, stirring and crushing occasionally, until the grapes are breaking up, about 10 minutes.
2. While the grapes are simmering, prepare an ice water bath by filling a large bowl with ice and placing a smaller stainless steel bowl over it.
3. Remove grape mixture from heat, and strain it into the stainless steel bowl with a fine-mesh or cheesecloth-line strainer. This might take a while. If it’s really thick, feel free to walk away and let the mixture strain itself, stirring and mashing it occasionally.
4. When mixture is strained, transfer it to the fridge to cool completely, at least a few hours or overnight.
5. Transfer grape sorbet base to your ice cream maker, and freeze until it’s the consistency of thickly whipped cream. Get that sorbet into the freezer quickly, and let it get solid for at least a couple hours before serving.
Almond Haystack Cookies
Adapted from Bonnie Stern’s Essentials of Home Cooking
2 egg whites
1/2 cup sugar (you could probably cut back on this a little, if you want)
1/2 tsp. vanilla extract
3 cups slivered almonds
1. Preheat oven to 350 F.
2. Stir egg whites and sugar together in a large bowl. Don’t beat them. Stir in the vanilla and then the almonds, making sure the almonds are well-coated.
3. Drop teaspoonfuls of the almond mixture into small mounds on a parchment-lined baking sheet.
4. Bake for about 15 minutes, and then begin checking the colour of your cookies–they should turn golden brown. When baking is done (18-20 minutes), turn off the oven and open the door, leaving cookies in the oven for another 10 minutes.
Sometimes I feel sorry for Carlo. I’m not always easy to deal with. I read a lot (too much), and get intensely interested in whatever I’ve learned. That’s cool, but I’m also impatient. When I learn about something new, I usually need to try it right away. Carlo’s the best. He’s very patient with my whims and hardly scolds me when my obsessions lead me to buy four bottles of rum in the space of a month. Honestly, though, I felt justified. As I was doing research for this, I discovered all kinds of exciting things about rum, and then I had to try all the different kinds. This obsession led me to dark rum, which led me to what we had for dinner this weekend.
Bermuda Fish Chowder has a tomato rather than a milk base, and is rich, sweet, and satisfying, without being unhealthy. Plus, its rich flavour is complemented with a generous glug of rum. I’m not big on fish soup, as I find very fishy flavours unpleasant, so I was pleased that this soup had nice clean flavours, and the fish was tasty instead of overwhelming. I suppose the lightness of the fish was due to the fish I used– basa, snapper, and cod, along with scallops and shrimp. Also, the soup had a good amount of spiciness, thanks to red chili flakes and a jalapeno (the original recipe called for sherry pepper sauce, which I didn’t have, so I improvised with some sherry vinegar and the addition of the peppers).
Bermuda Fish Chowder
Adapted from epicurious.com. See the original here
While this chowder isn’t difficult, it is time-consuming. If you plan to eat it the same day, allow 2-2 1/2 hours total time before eating. And if your husband wants to practice his cooking-course knife skills, make sure you start well in advance (completely uniform veg in this soup IS very pleasant, I must add).
1 medium onion, chopped
1 green bell pepper, chopped
1 leek (white and pale green parts only), chopped
2 large garlic cloves, minced
2 medium carrots, peeled and chopped
1 cup canned, diced tomato or 1 medium tomato, peeled, seeded, and chopped
1/2 tsp. red pepper flakes
3 tablespoons unsalted butter
1 tsp. salt
2 cups bottled clam juice
6 cups water
3 lb mixed white fish fillets such as cod, snapper, and basa, (feel free to improvise), skin and bones removed and cut into large chunks
1/4 cup tomato paste
1 bay leaf
1 teaspoon whole allspice, tied in a cheesecloth bag (I used ground, and added it directly to the pot)
1/2 teaspoon dried thyme, crumbled, or a couple sprigs of fresh thyme
1 jalapeno, diced small(optional)
1 teaspoon hot pepper sauce, or to taste
3 tablespoons cornstarch stirred together with 3 tablespoons water to make a slurry
1/2 lb. medium shrimp, shelled and deveined
1/2 lb. scallops
2 to 3 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce
1/4 cup dark rum, or to taste
2 tablespoons sherry vinegar, or to taste. (feel free to leave this out, or substitute the real thing– sherry pepper sauce)
Salt and pepper, to taste
Cook the onion, bell pepper, leek, carrots,tomato, and garlic in butter in a large heavy pot over medium heat, stirring frequently, until softened, about 10 minutes. Toss in red pepper flakes, and salt, cooking for 1 more minute. Stir in clam juice and water and bring to a boil. After the soup is boiling, simmer it briskly, uncovered, for 20 minutes.
Stir in the fish, tomato paste, bay leaf, allspice, thyme, jalapeno (if using), hot pepper sauce, and salt and pepper to taste. Simmer 20 minutes (fish will break up), then add cornstarch slurry (make sure it’s stirred and the cornstarch hasn’t clumped in the bottom) and stir into chowder. Simmer, stirring occasionally, until thickened, about 2 minutes.
Stir in scallops, shrimp, Worcestershire sauce, and rum and gently simmer 30 minutes. Remove from heat and let chowder stand, covered, 1 hour (or better yet, overnight). Return your chowder to a simmer, then add a touch of sherry vinegar (to taste).
Yes, I know Halloween is over. I don’t care. I think you should make these anyway.
When my sister-in-law asked us to help her make candy apples for a work bake sale, I said yes because she’s fun to be with, but I wasn’t exactly excited to eat candy apples. Frankly, every candy apple I’ve ever tasted has been unpleasant. Give me an apple, or give me candy, but the combination? I always figured there was no point in poisoning your tongue with gross candy just to get to a mushy, tasteless apple.
Oddly enough, though, making these gave me an incredible high of self-sufficiency. They’re so pretty, so charming, I had a hard time believing they came out of my kitchen. And, as it turns out, making candy apples at home ensures that the pretty-looks/gross-taste disconnect isn’t an issue.
We used nice crisp granny smith apples for the caramel ones, and the sweet buttery caramel perfectly complemented the apples’ tartness. Plus, the caramel was thick enough that you actually got a bit of it in every apple-bite.
For the shiny red candy apples, we crushed up some hard cinnamon candies to melt into the sugar mixture, so that the coating tasted like something other than sweet. This worked well, and I was pleasantly surprised at the candy coating. I was worried because I was sure the candy was too thick and it would be impossible to bite into, and Amy’s $3 bake sale apples would be a huge disaster, and everyone would ask for their money back and she would blame me and I’d be humiliated. Yes, I am neurotic.
But the candy coating was perfect. It was easy to bite through (easier than the caramel, actually. I may have left that one on the heat about 5 seconds too long), and it gave the impression that the apple had the most crisp, sweet, delicious skin imaginable. The cinnamon candies were a great addition too, as they added just a hint of extra flavour. It was too late by the time I thought of it, but I realized afterwards that instead of using cinnamon candies, it would have been brilliant to use vanilla sugar in the sugar syrup. Next time.
One more stroke of genius was our apple-washing technique. When I was researching recipes, I read that the standard waxy supermarket coating often prevents caramel from holding to the sides of the apple. People advised quickly bobbing apples in boiling water to remove at least some of the wax. Here’s my technique: I put my large pot, the one with a pasta insert, on to boil, and I lined the pasta insert with apples. When the water was boiling, I dropped in the pasta insert, giving the apples a 5-second bath without having to risk my fingers with pouring and dumping boiling water. Then I transferred the apples to an ice-water bath to make sure they wouldn’t cook (thus compromising their crunchiness) even the slightest bit.
Final conclusion: pretty, tasty, infinitely edible. Don’t save these home-made candy apples just for Halloween!
Caramel Apples
adapted from Martha Stewart
candy thermometer
10 sticks (popsicle sticks are fine, but skewers grouped in threes look quite elegant)
10 tart and crunchy apples (smaller is better)
2 cups heavy cream
2 cups white sugar
1/2 cup golden corn syrup
1/4 cup plus 2 Tbsp unsalted butter
pinch of salt
1. Line a baking sheet with wax or parchment paper, generously buttered. Make sure you’ve got room in your fridge for the baking sheet. Stick skewers or sticks in the apples.
2. Combine all ingredients in a large (the deeper the better) pot, and bring slowly to a boil. Allow the mixture to continue simmering until it reaches 245 F.
3. Remove the mixture from the pot and stir it vigorously to cool it down and stop its bubbling action. Working quickly, dip each apple in the caramel. We used a spoon to pull the caramel up from the pan around the sides of the apple. Transfer apple to baking sheet.
4. Place baking sheet in the refrigerator until the caramel is cooled and set, at least 15 minutes or overnight. If you have leftover caramel (we did!), pour the caramel onto a buttered piece of parchment paper or wax paper and allow it to set. Then consume it enthusiastically.
Shiny Candy-Coated Apples
adapted from All Recipes
One of the secrets of this recipe is not to stir the sugar syrup while it’s bubbling and heating. This is hard to do, but leave it alone! It doesn’t need you. Just keep an eye on the temperature, because it gets hot quickly. You also need to work fast to coat the apples once you’ve taken the syrup off the heat. It cools really quickly.
candy thermometer
10 sticks/skewers
10 red apples (find nice crunchy ones)
2 cups white sugar
1 cup light corn syrup
1 1/2 cups water
1/4 cup cinnamon hearts or cinnamon hard candies, crushed (I put them in a plastic bag and hit them with a meat pounder)
8 drops red food colouring
1. Generously butter a sheet pan. Don’t try using paper–it will probably end up sticking to the apples. Put skewers/sticks in apples.
2. Combine sugar, corn syrup, water, and cinnamon candies in a heavy-bottomed pot and heat at medium heat. I stirred mine to help the cinnamon candies dissolve, but I stopped stirring once the mixture was boiling. Continue cooking your sugar syrup until it reaches 300 F, then remove from heat.
3. Working quickly, dip and roll the apples in the candy mixture to coat. Use a spoon to pull syrup over spots you missed, if necessary. Place apple on prepared sheet to cool (this happens quickly).
PS. I can’t get my images to centre in wordpress. Anyone have any hints? fixed
PPS. We’ve decided to participate in NaBloPoMo again this month. Despite the slight crazy-makingness of it last year, it was a rewarding experience that got us in touch with a lot of great people. We’re looking forward to doing it again!
Well… not so daring pizza. Putting tomatoes, cheese and oregano on top of a crust and stopping there does not equal adventurous. But I did throw my pizza dough in the air, and I figure that’s daring enough. Please excuse the blurry photo. We did our pizza in the evening, and it’s getting dark SO early now. The winter darkness is coming!
As anyone who reads food blogs knows by now, this month’s Daring Bakers challenge, which was hosted by Rosa at Rosa’s Yummy Yums, was pizza dough, a recipe that required two days of waiting and nearly no work, except for the exciting part where I threw pizza dough all around the kitchen. Highlights include: dropping dough on the ground, and finally figuring out how to toss pizza without throwing it on the ground, and being happy that my kitchen floor is clean (yes, we ate it anyway). Oh, and a home-made evening. With our pizza, we drank beer that Carlo and my dad made (post from Carlo soon, I hope). ON our pizza we had oregano we grew ourselves this summer, oil-packed sun-dried tomatoes made by a (very excellent, obviously) friend, and…. home made mozzarella! Yes, we made cheese. It was the highlight of the cooking course we just finished. More on this very, very soon, as my camera is heavy-laden with cheese photos. The dough was a Peter Reinhart recipe, and I was very impressed. It was soft and very easy to work with (except for its tendency to fly around the kitchen while I was tossing it, which, in fairness, I can’t blame on the dough), with fantastic flavour. The final product managed to be tender and crispy at the same time, and very, tantalizingly, wonderfully thin.
We used this sauce: Sun-Dried Tomato Sauce 1 28-oz. can of diced tomatoes, drained 6 oil-packed sundried tomatoes, (use more or less to your taste) 3-4 cloves of roasted garlic (click link for garlic-roasting technique) salt to taste Place all ingredients in the bowl of a food processor, pulse them a few times, taste and adjust seasoning to taste. That’s it! Here’s the dough recipe: Basic Pizza Dough 6 Pizza crusts (about 9-12 inches/23-30 cm in diameter). 608 g Unbleached high-gluten (%14) bread flour or all purpose flour, chilled 1 3/4 Tsp Salt 1 Tsp Instant yeast 60 g Olive oil or vegetable oil 420 g Water, ice cold (40° F/4.5° C) 1 Tb sugar Semolina/durum flour or cornmeal for dusting As we are just two, I reduced the recipe as follows: makes 1 big or 2 pizza crusts 250 g flour 5 g salt 1 tsp gluten 1/4 tsp instant yeast 1 tb olive oil 140 g water, ice cold 1 tsp sugar DAY ONE Method: 1. Mix together the flour, salt and instant yeast in a big bowl (or in the bowl of your stand mixer). 2. Add the oil, sugar and cold water and mix well (with the help of a large wooden spoon or with the paddle attachment, on low speed) in order to form a sticky ball of dough. On a clean surface, knead for about 5-7 minutes, until the dough is smooth and the ingredients are homogeneously distributed. If it is too wet, add a little flour (not too much, though) and if it is too dry add 1 or 2 teaspoons extra water. NOTE: If you are using an electric mixer, switch to the dough hook and mix on medium speed for the same amount of time.The dough should clear the sides of the bowl but stick to the bottom of the bowl. If the dough is too wet, sprinkle in a little more flour, so that it clears the sides. If, on the contrary, it clears the bottom of the bowl, dribble in a teaspoon or two of cold water. The finished dough should be springy, elastic, and sticky, not just tacky, and register 50°-55° F/10°-13° C. 3. Flour a work surface or counter. Line a jelly pan with baking paper/parchment. Lightly oil the paper. 4. With the help of a metal or plastic dough scraper, cut the dough into 6 equal pieces (or larger if you want to make larger pizzas). NOTE: To avoid the dough from sticking to the scraper, dip the scraper into water between cuts. 5. Sprinkle some flour over the dough. Make sure your hands are dry and then flour them. Gently round each piece into a ball. NOTE: If the dough sticks to your hands, then dip your hands into the flour again. 6. Transfer the dough balls to the lined jelly pan and mist them generously with spray oil. Slip the pan into plastic bag or enclose in plastic food wrap. 7. Put the pan into the refrigerator and let the dough rest overnight or for up to thee days. NOTE: You can store the dough balls in a zippered freezer bag if you want to save some of the dough for any future baking. In that case, pour some oil(a few tablespooons only) in a medium bowl and dip each dough ball into the oil, so that it is completely covered in oil. Then put each ball into a separate bag. Store the bags in the freezer for no longer than 3 months. The day before you plan to make pizza, remember to transfer the dough balls from the freezer to the refrigerator. DAY TWO 8. On the day you plan to eat pizza, exactly 2 hours before you make it, remove the desired number of dough balls from the refrigerator. Dust the counter with flour and spray lightly with oil. Place the dough balls on a floured surface and sprinkle them with flour. Dust your hands with flour and delicately press the dough into disks about 1/2 inch/1.3 cm thick and 5 inches/12.7 cm in diameter. Sprinkle with flour and mist with oil. Loosely cover the dough rounds with plastic wrap and then allow to rest for 2 hours. 9. At least 45 minutes before making the pizza, place a baking stone on the lower third of the oven. Preheat the oven as hot as possible (500° F/260° C). NOTE: If you do not have a baking stone, then use the back of a jelly pan. Do not preheat the pan. 10. Generously sprinkle the back of a jelly pan with semolina/durum flour or cornmeal. Flour your hands (palms, backs and knuckles). Take 1 piece of dough by lifting it with a pastry scraper. Lay the dough across your fists in a very delicate way and carefully stretch it by bouncing it in a circular motion on your hands, and by giving it a little stretch with each bounce. Once the dough has expanded outward, move to a full toss. NOTE: Make only one pizza at a time. During the tossing process, if the dough tends to stick to your hands, lay it down on the floured counter and reflour your hands, then continue the tossing and shaping. In case you would be having trouble tossing the dough or if the dough never wants to expand and always springs back, let it rest for approximately 5-20 minutes in order for the gluten to relax fully,then try again. You can also resort to using a rolling pin, although it isn’t as effective as the toss method. 11. When the dough has the shape you want (about 9-12 inches/23-30cm in diameter – for a 6 ounces/180g piece of dough), place it on the back of the jelly pan, making sure there is enough semolina/durum flour or cornmeal to allow it to slide and not stick to the pan. 12. Lightly top it with sweet or savory toppings of your choice. NOTE: Remember that the best pizzas are topped not too generously. No more than 3 or 4 toppings (including sauce and cheese) are sufficient. 13. Slide the garnished pizza onto the stone in the oven or bake directly on the jelly pan. Close the door and bake for abour 5-8 minutes. NOTE: After 2 minutes baking, take a peek. For an even baking, rotate 180°. If the top gets done before the bottom, you will need to move the stone or jelly pane to a lower shelf before the next round. On the contrary, if the bottom crisps before the cheese caramelizes, then you will need to raise the stone or jelly. 14. Take the pizza out of the oven and transfer it to a cutting board or your plate. In order to allow the cheese to set a little, wait 3-5 minutes before slicing or serving.
Yes, you read that title right. Don’t be alarmed. Just look at this:
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| From Coronation Grape Cake |
How can that gorgeousness not be good?
This cake came about because of an impulse purchase. I spotted dusky purple grapes at the market and couldn’t resist. If you’ve wondered all your life why grape candy doesn’t taste like grapes, wonder no more–it’s modeled after grapes like these. In Canada, we have coronation grapes, which are similar to concord. They have deep purple flavour, and are much less sweet than a green or red table grape. While I know these aren’t wine grapes, they’re the first grapes I’ve ever tasted that made a grape-wine flavour connection for me. So there you go! Grapes, real, grapey grapes.
But what do you do with a grape like this? Well, I’ve got plans for sorbet, but my first thought, maybe because the grapes remind me a bit of blueberries, was cake.
This recipe is adapted from a Patricia Wells recipe, and I highly recommend it. The grapes are tart and flavourful, and I substituted some ground almonds for the flour, which gave a rich nuttiness that’s fantastic. The recipe also calls for olive oil. I’m not sure exactly what this adds to the flavour, not having tasted this cake with butter, but it makes for a great texture. This is the kind of cake I love, a dense, rustic treat that you can serve as dessert, or slice for a decadent breakfast. Plus, you get to say “would you like some grape cake?,” which at least gets people’s attention.
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| From Coronation Grape Cake |
GRAPE CAKE
2 large eggs
2/3 cups sugar (use less if your grapes are on the sweet side–mine were quite tart), plus extra for finishing the cake
4 Tbsp melted butter
1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil
1/3 cup milk
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 cup ground almonds (feel free to substitute flour here if you don’t have almonds, or even scale back the flour a bit and add more almond flour)
3/4 tsp baking power
a pinch of salt
zest of one lemon
2 cups flavourful grapes
Equipment: a 9″ round cake pan
Butter and flour a cake pan, then set it aside. Preheat your oven to 350 F.
Beat the eggs and sugar in a large bowl with an electric mixer until they’re thick, about 3 minutes. Beat in milk, butter, oil, and vanilla.
Sift together the flour, almonds, baking powder and salt. Add the zest, tossing it to make sure it is well-distributed. Then stir the flour mixture into the wet ingredients, making sure it is well-combined. Allow this mixture to sit for 10 minutes to make sure the flour has absorbed the liquids.
Gently stir in 1 1/2 cups of grapes, then transfer the batter to your cake pan.
Bake on the middle rack for 15 minutes. After 15 minutes, pull out your cake and top it with the reserved grapes. Sprinkle coarse granulated sugar overtop. Bake for about 40 more minutes, until the top of the cake is golden and springy. Remove from the oven and allow to cool in the pan.
Something else to do with grapes: check out this beautiful tart at Lottie + Doof
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| From Apple Jellies |
It’s 7:30 and I’m watching the sunrise. I do this every morning, and (lucky me?), I get the full effect, since I’m up at 5:00. Nowadays, it’s still completely black at five, so I wait for the sun with great anticipation. My desk faces the window, so I get to watch all the phases of light in the morning while I sit on the phone discussing the present perfect tense or the differences between “say” and “tell” with my students. My favourite phase of sunrise comes just after the sun is up, when a beautiful apricot light illuminates the apartment and everything in it lights up with gold.
One of the lovely idiosyncrasies of our apartment is that, although our windows are completely east-facing, we get a beautiful sunset to go along with the sunrise I witness every morning. Impossible, you say? Never! You see, directly east of us is the downtown core, a place full of mirrored glass buildings. We get a pre-sunset reflection off those glass buildings that fills our evening with the same apricot gold that I see every morning. An urban sunset!
The reason I’m telling you this is that when I was looking through pictures of the apple jellies I made over the weekend, they reminded me of my lucky sunrise-sunset. While they’re not exactly the same colour, they have a sunny peachy tone that makes me think of the sky at sunrise.
Anyway, I discovered this apple jelly recipe in Alice Waters’ “The Art of Simple Food,” which I’ve raved about before. It’s a simple but not a quick recipe. If you’ve got good apples, it’s well worth your time. Mine came from a tree in my parents’ backyard.
Sugared, these jellies are great little treats. Alice Waters also recommends keeping them unsugared as a cheese-platter addition. They’d be fantastic with a hard, full-flavoured cheese. I meant to try it out, but my jellies have all disappeared! They’re almost as fleeting as the sunset.
APPLE JELLIES
3 pounds of apples, quartered and seeded
1 cup water
1 1/2 cups sugar
2 Tbsp. lemon juice
Line a lightly greased 8×8 square baking dish (or a 9″ round cake pan, if you’re like me and don’t have a square) with waxed paper. Set the baking dish aside.
Cook apples with water in a covered heavy-bottomed pot until very soft. This should take about 20 minutes.
When the apples are soft, remove them from the heat and send them through a food mill, or if you must do it the hard way (I had to. There was a bit of swearing.), press them through a sieve.
When the fruit is pureed, put it back into the pot and stir in the sugar and lemon juice. Simmer this mixture on low heat until it is very thick. This took me about 1 1/2 hours. You will need to stir it often to make sure it’s not sticking. The jelly is ready when it stays in place where you’ve scraped it instead of flowing back to cover the bottom of the pot. Waters says to use an oven mitt to protect yourself from splatters, but I had no problems with this.
When your jelly is sufficiently thickened, spread it into your prepared dish and allow it to cool. When it’s completely cooled, invert it onto another piece of wax paper, remove the top layer of paper, and allow it to dry out overnight.
If your paste isn’t dry enough (again, not a problem I had), you can put it in a barely-warm oven (150 F) for an hour until it firms up, allowing it to recool before cutting.
When your jelly is ready, you can toss the pieces in coarse sugar if you like, or stash it, wrapped in plastic, for whenever you’d like a little taste of sun. Waters says it will last a year!
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| From Apple Jellies |
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| From Crabapples |
It’s 5 C today. It’s been going below zero overnight. Our garden is finished for the year, the last of the plants harvested or left to die (you should see how sad frozen tomato plants look). We’re getting ready for winter, which, for me at least, involves mostly mental time. I have to remind myself that winter’s coming (as if, with this weather, it would be easy to forget), and make my plans. Mostly this is a good thing. I think of books I’ll read, TV shows Carlo and I will watch when it’s too cold to get outside and walk, and of winter stews. I will admit, though, the retreat of summer is always a little bitter. No more garden tomatoes! No more bare legs! No more grass!
Something we’ve done this year to lessen the blow is preserves. Since I was a little girl, my mom has canned in the fall. I remember canned peaches and pears, but most of all, applesauce. Do you know what applesauce tastes like? No, really, what real applesauce tastes like? Because what you can buy off the supermarket shelf, that’s not applesauce. It’s a pale, tasteless, gag-inducing interloper. Real applesauce is peachy-pale, tart and tasty. It’s a perfect preserve to keep in a winter pantry arsenal. And I’ve got my own applesauce arsenal this year! I’ve never done it before, but this year I joined my mom in the kitchen, and we took advantage of a neighbour’s unwanted wealth of crabapples.
Crabapples are beautiful little fruits, just a bit bigger than cherries and nearly the same colour, a dark, dusky, purple-tinged red. But you have to process them to enjoy them. These are definitely not eating apples–they’re super-tart, not to mention too tiny to offer any real apple satisfaction. So we processed. And processed… and processed. There were a lot of apples. We made applesauce, we made jelly, we made liqueur, we made sorbet. And there are still two or three litres of crabapple juice sitting in the freezer waiting for my next idea.
Crabapples are a pain to work with because of their size, but their deeply-coloured skin makes for a gorgeous final product, and I love their distinctive tart flavour. Here are a few recipes, none super-precise, as we were winging it in the kitchen.
CRABAPPLE SAUCE
This is a beautiful pink sauce (see picture below). If you’re making a small amount, feel free to just transfer finished sauce to a jar and into the fridge. If you have a load of crabapples to dispose off, try canning them–crabs are super-acidic, so they take well to canning. When you’ve cooked your apples, save any juice that may have accumulated in the bottom of the pot–it’s perfect for jelly!
Crabapples, washed and stemmed
Sugar (to taste, but I found a 2:1 apple to sugar ratio was good)
A touch of water
After you’ve washed and stemmed your crabs, put them in a large pot on the stovetop with a splash of water in the bottom (just to prevent sticking). Cook over medium heat until apples are very soft and beginning to disintegrate (about 30 to 45 minutes or longer, depending on how big your pot of apples is). When apples are soft, process them in a food mill to remove skins and seeds. Reserve the clear juices at the bottom of the pot for jelly. When you’ve processed the apples, you’ll have a smooth, pink, and very tart sauce. Add sugar to taste, beginning with about 1/3 as much sugar as you have sauce (eg. 1 1/2 cups sauce=1/2 cup sugar). Taste and continue adding sugar until you’re satisfied with the flavour. Transfer to a jar for the fridge, or put sauce into sterilized jars and can in a boiling water bath.
CRABAPPLE JELLY
I think because there is so much skin compared to flesh in crabapple, their juices are very high in natural pectin and thus is super-welcoming for jelly making. I love this jelly on pancakes, but I feel like it would be good with chicken too.
Leftover crabapple juice from sauce-making OR crabapple juice extracted with a juicer
An equal amount of sugar
Combine juice and sugar, and bring them to boil on the stovetop. Make sure the sugar is totally dissolved, then continue simmering for 10 minutes. You’ll have a thick syrup. Pour this syrup into sterilized jars for canning, or just throw it into the fridge. When the mixture cools it will set, so don’t worry if it doesn’t seem thick enough for jelly. It’ll happen.
CRABAPPLE LIQUEUR
This is so easy–it requires no real skill but patience. I added a couple sprigs of thyme to my vodka-crabapple mix, just to try it out.
Crabapples, cleaned, stemmed, and halved
Sugar syrup (combine sugar and water in equal amounts, and bring them to a boil. Allow sugar to dissolve, then remove from heat)
Gin or Vodka
Thyme
Fill half-litre jars with crabs (almost up to their necks), then add 1/3 cup of sugar syrup per jar. Add liquor to cover, then put on lids. Agitate gently to combine liquor and sugar. Put jars in a cool, dark place for a few months. Go ahead and shake them up occasionally. If you do this now, it’ll probably taste good by Christmas.
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 Crabapple Sauce |
| From Crabapples |
It seems that I’m spending most of my time lately apologizing– I’m late, I’m absent… Well. So I’m late posting this and I’ve been absent. And we’ll be absent some more for the next month, I think, as we are packing up our life and moving ourselves across the country. Carlo’s been getting shooting pains in his head, and I’ve suddenly developed a neck problem. Ha. So this is my final apology and from here on out, if we post we’ll be acting as if everything’s normal and there’s nothing to apologize about.
So here we are late with our Daring Bakers report. This Last month, Morven at Food Art and Random Thoughts chose Dorie Greenspan’s perfect party cake. Now, I’m not much of a cake baker. Too much precision, too much waiting and anxiety, too many fallen cakes. A lot of bakers had problems getting their cakes to rise, and I was no exception. My layer cake had only two layers instead of four, since I didn’t want to try slicing into my pitiful little layers. But! The cake was super-tasty. I made a strawberry-lemon curd filling to layer inside, and the buttercream was thick and delicious. For a basic cake recipe, this one is a good one. Check out some of the other bakers’ cakes by going to the Daring Bakers’ blogroll. There are some good ideas for how to get the cake to rise.
You can check out the cake recipe here.
STRAWBERRY LEMON CURD
1 1/2 cups sugar
2 cups fresh strawberries
zest and juice of 1 lemon
2 large eggs
3 egg yolks
1/2 cup butter, cubed
Put the sugar, strawberries, lemon zest and juice, eggs and egg yolks in the bowl of a food processor and spin them until the strawberries are smooth.
Put the puree in a small saucepan, add the butter and cook over low heat, stirring often, until butter has melted and mixture thickens, about 30 minutes. Don’t allow the curd to boil.
Take the curd off the heat and cool it before placing it in clean jars and refrigerating it. This recipe makes about 2 1/2 cups of curd. It’s great for a cake layer, for spreading on eggy bread, or just to eat out straight out of the jar (I’m not ashamed…).
Happy April!
Supper In Stereo 