Can You Be Obsessed...

...with cake?  Not just being pro-cake.  More than just proclaiming, 'I much prefer cake over pie.'  (That's me)  But...can you be obsessed with a cake?  Can you like a cake so much that you make it once and before it's been completely consumed--not solely by you, thank god--you are already thinking about making it again?  Like NOW.  It's similar to how I felt after I got my first tattoo.  No sooner did I have the first one, not even fully healed, that my mind was swirling with ideas on what the next tattoo would be and where it would go.

If you make this yourself, you'll understand why I couldn't stop thinking about it.  The original recipe  is from Christopher Kimball's 'Milk Street' magazine.  My absolute favorite part is that it's a one bowl recipe--all you need is a bowl and a whisk (and a cake pan, naturally).  No mixer, no fancy gadgets.  The best kind of recipe.  For those of you who are gluten-free...guess what?  It's gluten-free!  The cake, hailing from Galicia, Spain, is known as tarta de Santiago.  Traditionally, it is dusted with powdered sugar using a stencil of the cross of St. James the Great, who is reportedly buried in the region's cathedral.

It's a dense cake.  On the Instagram post, someone commented that it is the perfect marriage of marzipan and meringue.  (It IS!)  It gets better the next day or even the day after that.  A friend drizzled a piece with blackberry honey...and holy crap...it was good.  You can pair it with whipped cream and berries as they do in 'Milk Street.'  It would probably be awesome with vanilla bean ice cream.  But, truthfully, I prefer it in it's simplicity.  Just give me a good cup of coffee to accompany a slice.

The recipe in 'Milk Street' uses 1/4 tsp almond extract and 1/4 tsp vanilla extract and no zest.  After reading the article, I did a little Googling to learn more about the cake and decided I wanted to try adding citrus as it's a more traditional way of baking it.  Either way, you'll love it.


Galician Almond Cake (Tarta de Santiago)
adapted from the recipe on Milk Street's site
makes one 9-inch layer cake

1 cup white sugar
3 large eggs
3 large egg whites
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp almond extract
2 1/2 cups blanched almond flour (not almond meal)
zest of one medium lemon
zest of one medium orange
3 tbsp turbinado sugar
1/3 cup sliced almonds

Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees.  Line a 9-inch cake pan with a circle of parchment and butter the sides.  In a mixing bowl, add the white sugar, eggs, egg whites, almond extract, salt, and citrus zests (roughly 2 tbsp altogether).  Whisk until well-mixed.  Add almond flour and mix until incorporated.

Pour batter into lined cake pan.  Sprinkle top with almonds and turbinado sugar.  Try to alternate, so sugar will caramelize on top of cake and on almonds.  Bake 50-55 minutes, until top browns.  Cake should feel firm when tested with a slight press of finger.  Remove from oven and allow to cool for 10-15 minutes.  Run a knife along inner edge of cake before turning out onto plate.  Then invert on second plate.

The Good, the Bad, and Sometimes, the Ugly

I don't know what went screwy with cooking in the 60's and 70's.  I almost came to you empty-handed this week, admitting failure to find a recipe from the 70's.  I spent the past few days going through not one or two, but five cookbooks, looking for something.  It was not easy.  My friend in Ohio graciously put up with my texted photos of dishes from the 'Better Homes and Gardens Salad Book', where there's a chapter called, 'Salads from the Freezer.'  And despite her insistence that I make a frozen salad...I just couldn't.  I couldn't.  But...hey, it's not summer yet, I may be inclined give it a go in a month or two...we'll see.

The decade strikes me as a time of brown food.  I know I've mentioned it before.  Look through any illustrated cookbook from then and tell me if you don't agree.  Everything has a brown or overly warm tint.  A very unappetizing tint, like they were trying to coordinate with every kitchen done in paneling and full of appliances and kitchenware in avocado green, mustard, or chocolate brown.  

After trying to find a feasible recipe in book after book, I pulled the 'Tassajara Cooking' book down from the shelf.  It even has a brown cover!  Released by the Zen Center of San Franciso, it is a vegetarian cookbook that is more guide than traditional step by step recipes.  From the first page, the laid back attitude is in evidence:  'The way to be a cook is to cook.  The results don't have to be just right, measuring up to some imagined or ingrained taste...Just feed, satisfy, nourish.'

The recipe I chose is the Bulgur-Tahini Casserole.  (Casseroles are so 70's.)  As written, the ingredient list and directions barely make a full paragraph, with an additional two longer paragraphs of variations!   So I varied.  I substituted red winter wheat berries for the bulgur.  The dish is not an attractive one once ready.  It was very brown from the wheat berries.  I'm tempted to try again using rice or millet.  It's got a quiche-y kind of consistency from the eggs, but has a chewiness from the wheat berries.  The tahini is a winning ingredient, because sesame is one of my favorite flavors.   Serve with a salad and you're good to go.

If you decide to give this a try, I would LOVE to see photos or hear what you think of it.  

Wheat Berries-Tahini Casserole

Adapted from the Bulgur-Tahini Casserole recipe in the Tasajara Cooking book

Serves 4

1 cup wheat berries (dry)

3 cups water

1 tbsp olive oil

1 small onion, diced

2 cloves garlic, minced

1/3 cup tahini

1/2 tsp salt

2 eggs

1/4 cup milk

Bring water to a boil in saucepan, add wheat berries, and cook over a low simmer until done to chewiness.  Drain any remaining water.  Grease a casserole pan (I used an 8 inch round Pyrex baker), and preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Saute onion and garlic in pan until translucent, remove from heat and let cool for a few minutes.  In a medium bowl, crack eggs and beat lightly.  Add milk, tahini, and salt, whisking until relatively smooth.  Add onions and garlic, mixing well, then add wheat berries, stirring to thoroughly combine all ingredients.  

Pour mix into casserole and bake for 25-30 minutes.  Remove from oven and let cook for a few minutes before serving.  

Nothing in the House But Eggs

After being a little under the weather last week, where food was the last thing I wanted to think about, I am here and ready to tackle the next decade for the culinary #tbt series.  This week's cookbook is 'Potluck Cookery' by Beverly Pepper (appropriate for a cookbook author, no?) from 1955.  With the promise of being full of 'delightful ways to make a royal meal from leftovers or whatever you have on hand,' there are 320 recipes of what to do with leftover poultry, leftover vegetables, cheese, eggs, or cereals.

Recipe No. 305.  Eggs Parmentier, under the 'Nothing in the House but Eggs' section.  Parmentier.  You may have seen a similar recipe called Hachis or Hache Parmentier, looking vaguely like Shephard's Pie, with mashed potatoes and roast beef.  Keep the mashed potatoes, ditch the roast beef, add an egg or two, and you've got Eggs Parmentier.  You also have a perfect weekend brunch dish, just add a salad and mimosas.

Eggs Parmentier
Adapted from 'Potluck Cookery'
Serves 2

3 medium potatoes, peeled and boiled
2 eggs
2 slices prosciutto, chopped and crisped
2 tbsp butter
1/2 cup milk
1/4 tsp salt
2 tbsp grated Parmesan or Grana Padano cheese
pinch paprika

Pre-heat oven to 375 degrees.  Lightly grease a small baking dish or pie plate (about 6 inches in diameter).  Boil peeled and cut potatoes until tender, about 8-12 minutes, depending on size.  Drain water from potatoes, add 1 tbsp butter, salt, and 1/4 cup of the milk.  Mash potatoes by hand or with electric mixer.  Spread potatoes in baking dish, making two wells for eggs.  In a small frying pan, crisp the prosciutto, draining any excess fat.  Crumble prosciutto over potatoes and in wells.  Crack an egg in each well (don't worry if the whites spread over the potatoes a bit).  Sprinkle cheese and paprika over potatoes and eggs.

Bake until eggs are set to preference and edges of potatoes begin to brown, about 15-20 minutes.  

Lingering

And here she comes...strolling back in after being AWOL for a little over a month...just like that.  ::Snap::  Just like that.  There isn't even a good excuse behind my absence.  I wasn't walking the streets of Rome or hiking through Denali National Park.  No, no, it was nothing like that.  It was just another one of those 'in a rut', 'no focus', 'all I want is a sandwich for dinner' and throw in a dollop of anxiety couple of weeks.

But here we are.  Halloween is four days away, which means that November is right around the corner.  Half-way down the next block is Thanksgiving, with the 'baking like crazy, drag out the box of decorations, and "holy crap, did you know there are only 26 shopping days this year between Thanksgiving and Christmas?!?!"' holiday season.  And it's barreling down the roadway like an 18-wheeler that's lost its brakes.

So before the insanity begins, let's linger on Fall.  Let's take the time to watch the change of colours in the trees, enjoy the days with a nip in the air (I have worn long sleeves, a jacket, and a scarf already--all on the same day!) and even enjoy the Indian Summer weather (like today's 90 degrees).  I went to the farmers market in Burbank last Saturday morning.  It was lovely.  I hadn't gone in awhile.  It felt good getting up early and heading out in the morning chill, even before my first cup of coffee.  By late morning, that chill was replaced by an absolutely gorgeous Saturday of bright sun and blue skies.  I ended up at Granville Cafe, having brunch with the woman that knows me best (pegging my menu choice before I uttered a word), where we enjoyed a patio table, eavesdropping on conversations from the next table, and totally digging on the Dutch pancake with prosciutto and Gruyere in front of me.  A thin, dinner-plate sized pancake with slivers of ham and cheese speckled in the batter.  Some of the prosciutto pieces were a little crunchy from settling to the bottom while on the griddle, some bits of cheese were just perfectly melted.  I left exactly two bites on my plate after coming to the realization that I was just shy of eating the whole thing.  You cannot say I don't have a hearty appetite.

I spent the next couple of days fixated on those tastes.  While I considered making my own Dutch pancake, I opted to use the baguettes that had veered down the stale path and made a bread pudding, though I swapped out the Gruyere with smoked Jarlsberg and a bit of cheddar.  It felt practically decadent buying prosciutto, since it's not something I buy all that frequently.  A savory bread pudding is one of those foods that screams Fall to me.  It's a perfect dish when the weather begins to turn cold.  It's also easy as pie to whip together.  You'll probably have left-overs.  This is just as delicious for the next day's breakfast, lunch, or dinner.

Prosciutto and Smoked Jarlsberg Bread Pudding

Serves 4-6

5 cups bread, cubed (i.e. baguette or sourdough)

½ cup onion, sliced thin

1 cup white mushrooms, sliced thin

1 Tbsp butter

1 Tbsp olive oil

1 ½ cups half and half

3 eggs

¾ cup shredded smoked Jarlsberg

½ cup shredded smoked Cheddar, plus ¼ cup additional Cheddar

1 Tbsp fresh parsley, chopped

½ tsp salt

½ tsp pepper

¼ tsp garlic powder

2 oz prosciutto, chopped

Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees.  In a skillet, over medium heat, sauté mushrooms and onions in butter and oil until onions turn translucent, about 5-7 minutes.  Set aside.  In a bowl, whisk half and half, eggs, 1 cup cheese, salt, pepper, parsley, and garlic powder.  Add cubed bread and toss to coat evenly.  When thoroughly combined,  add prosciutto, mushrooms, and onions.  Turn into a 2-quart baking dish (I used a round casserole), sprinkle remaining 1/4 cup cheese over top and bake for 50-60 minutes.  Remove from oven and let sit for a few minutes before serving.    

A Lovely Shade of Spring

Can you believe that it's almost April?  We're just over a week into Spring, Passover began three nights ago, and now Easter is this coming Sunday.  Baskets full of fake grass overflowing with chocolate bunnies, jellybeans, and marshmallow Peeps in bright pink and purple will be in homes soon.

Then there are the eggs.  Despite the fact that I was not a fan of hard-boiled eggs (I would only eat the whites, and that's only if they were heavily coated in salt), dyeing and decorating Easter eggs was something I looked forward to every year when I was young.  There was the obligatory box of Paas tablets, along with the wax crayon, little hexagonal wire egg holder, and the rub-on transfers of rabbits, lambs, flowers, and other signs of Spring.  We used the same melamine coffee mugs year after year.  They were large enough to dunk and swirl an egg in.  (I'd bet money those mugs are still in my parents' basement.)

I loved building up the shades, dipping an egg into two different colours, carefully balancing it on the wire.  I would write my name on an egg, drawing a flower, or a band, or dots, dipping it back into the dye and watching the colour bloom, leaving smudgy, waxy designs in the dye's wake. 

Thirty-some years later, I decided to bypass the Paas tablets in lieu of colours little more natural, and found in the kitchen or pantry.  This is nothing new.  Martha  Stewart did this a few years ago, as I'm sure thousands of families have done before her.  You can watch Martha here.  I love hearing her East Coast inflection in 'water,' something you might catch me saying if I don't think about what I say before I open my mouth!

My measurements weren't quite as precise as Martha's, except for using 2 tablespoons of vinegar in each colour.  Whatever bowl or pot or measuring cup I was using is the amount of water I filled it with.  Not everything worked out well.  I originally started with a blood orange in a pot of water, and when I wasn't getting   the pale orange I envisioned in my head, I added a carrot...when that didn't work, I added paprika.  But even that didn't work out, so down the drain went that pot of water and it became a pot of coffee.  I also brewed a very dark and strong measuring cup of Earl Grey tea, which made two very pretty tea-stained eggs.  Tumeric does indeed become a beautiful warm gold and the liquid from a jar of pickled blueberries made a pale, pale violet that I darkened by actually mashing a tablespoon of the pickled blueberries into the bowl and rubbed onto the eggshell.

I only got fancy-schancy on two eggs...wrapping one in twine before dipping it into the tumeric water and putting smiley face stickers on another egg looking to get a polka dot effect.  I've got a couple more days of egg salad on the menu, but it was worth it.  

Happy Easter!

The non-cooperative orange dye

Tumeric and tea results with blueberries and coffee in the background

Bringing It All Together

I am not a very positive person.  I may have mentioned this once or twice in past posts.  It's a fight I have with myself everyday...to not see the negative in things, to not see the glass as half empty, to not think of the worst that can happen.  There are days when I manage to push it all away (or at least to the side), but it rarely lasts.  Sometimes I think I'm doing serious damage to my ch'i with this way of thinking.

But when I'm in my kitchen, fiddling around with ingredients, thinking about how certain flavours will play against others...all those negative thoughts go flying right out the window.  Here in my kitchen, I focus on measuring ingredients, sprinkling salt in a pot of water, peeling the skin off an onion, or kneading the dough for a crust.  Nothing else matters, except watching the outcome of what I'm making.

This is why I made a quiche a couple of Sundays ago.  Reading the Sunday paper could only divert my attention for so long, even watching hockey didn't fully encompass my interest.  Off to the kitchen I went, in search of something to eat.  I wasn't necessarily looking for something quick, but I wanted something to satisfy me...and satisfy more than hunger.  The more involved the recipe, the longer my mind would focus on what was in front of me and not what was in my head.

I don't usually make quiche with a crust, but sometimes it's worth having the whole package, so to speak.  The best part?  This quiche is delicious hot, warm, and room temperature.  It served as breakfast, lunch, and dinner over the span of a few days.

Cauliflower, Leek, and Rainbow Chard Quiche
Serves 6-8 or 1-2 for a few days

1 cup cauliflower florets, broken into small pieces
1 cup rainbow chard, stems and leaves, chopped
1 leek, sliced thin (white and light green parts)
2 tbsp clarified butter
2 tsp green za'tar
1 tsp minced garlic
3 tbsp crumbled bacon (optional)
1/4 tsp pepper
pinch of salt
6 eggs
1/2 heavy cream
1/2 cup milk
1/2 cup shredded sharp cheddar
1/2 cup shredded mozzarella
1/4 cup grated Grana Padano

For the crust:

8 tbsp unsalted butter, cold, cut into cubes
1 1/2 cups flour
pinch of salt
5-6 tbsp ice water

In a large bowl, add the butter, flour, and salt.  With a pastry blender, combine the ingredients until it resembles pea-size bits.  Add the ice water tablespoon by tablespoon, until a dough comes together and can be formed into a ball.  Wrap in plastic wrap and chill for at least 30 minutes.

When ready to make the crust, pre-heat oven to 425 degrees.  Roll dough out into a circle to about 1/4 inch thick.  Lay in 9-inch pie plate and prick dough with a fork. Lay foil in the center and fill with beans.  Bake for 15 minutes.  Remove beans and bake for an additional 5 minutes.  

For the filling:

Steam the cauliflower for a minute or so and set aside.  In a skillet, melt the clarified butter and saute the leeks until translucent.  Add the garlic and chard and saute for 3-4 minutes.  Add the steamed cauliflower and sprinkle the bacon, salt, pepper, and za'tar in and mix thoroughly, allowing the flavours to mingle for a few minutes.  Remove from heat.  

In a large bowl, whisk the eggs, cream, and milk together.  Add the cheeses and vegetables and mix thoroughly.  Pour mixture into pie pan with crust, making sure everything is evenly distributed.  Bake in a 425 degree oven for 30 minutes or  until center is set.  Remove from oven and let set for 5-10 minutes before serving.

You can leave the bacon out and have a perfectly lovely vegetable quiche, but the bacon adds a note of smokiness that, well, rocked my little world.

A Bowl of Cherries

One of the reasons I like Summer is seeing the first crop of cherries coming into the market.  So far, I think I've gone through three or four pounds of them.  I can easily sit at the table and eat one after the other.  I've made my Cherry-Amaretto Syrup, now my favorite topping for French toast, and Cherry Almond Shortbread a couple of weeks ago for Girls' Night.  Yes, I see the pattern...I do love the tastes of cherries and almonds together.

The thought that I couldn't get out of my head was making a cherry clafoutis.  Part of the attraction was it being something that I hadn't made before and well, it was a little exotic.  I was originally under the impression that it was closer to a cake in consistency, but when I started to seek out recipes I saw the comparisons to flan.  Having not been a huge custard fan in the past, I decided it was time to change that.  You know, my egg issues.  I narrowed the choices down to three recipes (Saveur, Epicurious, and Simply Recipes).  I ended up going with the Saveur recipe, incidentally, the one that uses the most eggs.

You'll read that typically clafoutis uses unpitted cherries, so the batter can get a hint of the almond-like flavoring that the pits will release while baking, but I opted for pitting the cherries (by hand, just me and a knife, and some still very stained fingers).  Other than the time it takes to pit the cherries, this will easily come together.  I did it by hand and recommend it if you don't feel like dragging out the mixer.

It's amazing warm, dusted with confectioners sugar, just long enough out of the oven so the batter can set a little bit and nearly as good at room temperature.  Don't make me admit that it was a late lunch yesterday.  (And totally worth it!)

Cherry Clafoutis
(Adapted from a recipe at Saveur)


1 tbsp butter
1 tbsp vanilla extract
6 eggs
6 tbsp sugar
1 1/4 cups milk
2 tbsp bourbon
3/4 cup flour
3 cups cherries, pitted
pinch of salt
confectioners sugar (for dusting)


Preheat oven to 425 degrees.  Grease baking pan, pie plate, or skillet generously.  In a large bowl, whisk together the vanilla extract, bourbon, eggs, sugar, milk, and salt.  Add flour gradually until batter comes together.  


Pour batter into baking dish and scatter cherries in the batter.  Bake for 30-40 minutes  until edges and bottom are golden brown or until a toothpick inserted in center comes out clean.  The clafoutis will puff a little while baking and deflate a little once you remove it from the oven.  


Let cool a few minutes before serving.  Dust with confectioners sugar.  

Reason Enough

Have I ever told you how I feel about eggs?  It's been a love-hate relationship since I was young.  I pretty much stuck with eggs, scrambled hard.  Eggs kind of creeped me out, but I was still curious about them.  Mom used to eat hers over-easy sometimes and I was fascinated, watching as she broke the yolk and dipped her buttered toast into it.  But my young mind saw something runny and immediately connected it with raw and  uncooked, and therefore, GROSS.  At Easter, the egg holiday of the year, I loved dyeing those hard-boiled eggs all sorts of pretty colours, and once or twice even ate them.  Let me correct myself...I only ate the egg white, and only if it was coated in about an inch of salt.  Then there was a time in my teen years where I had runny scrambled eggs, where I was totally turned off from eggs and didn't eat them for years after that.  The key word again was 'gross.'  In my mid-twenties, after spending way too  much time at the Perkins in Montgomeryville, PA, having breakfast at all times of the day and night, I discovered that scrambled eggs tasted pretty darn good with apricot syrup.  Then another couple of years where I didn't really eat them, and in my mid-thirties, it was back to the same old, same old.  Scrambled, usually hidden in the depths of a breakfast burrito where they served as a backdrop to potatoes, onions, and bacon.

Egg salad?  Don't even get me started.  I used to think it was one of the most unappealing foods known to man.  Slimy-looking, and a sickly pale yellow.  I wouldn't touch it with a ten foot pole.  Then, it happened.  The mind (and palate) opened.  I found myself strangely fascinated with the egg again.  I don't know where exactly the lightbulb went off, but it did.  I started with making egg salad.  Yes, you read that correctly.  A friend convinced me that I could put anything I wanted into it, so it wouldn't be a slimy, sickly yellow goo.  My favourite mix-ins are sweet relish and olives.  Then it was the Big One.  The Poached Egg.  Thanks to a breakfast date at Philippe downtown, I finally tasted that poached egg with its runny center, and after all those years...I liked it...a lot.  At Phil's Diner in North Hollywood, I had a bite of a burger topped with a fried egg.  It was getting better and better.  I made a fried egg at home for the first time a couple of weeks after the burger bite, so I could savour it on its own.

And now...this past week I saw a glorious post on TheKitchn, where an egg was baked in an avocado half.  I wasted no time in trying this one, the avocado on the counter ripe and waiting to be used.  How easy does it get?  Split the avocado in half, pry out the pit, make the hole a wee bit larger, crack your egg into the hole, top it with what you like, and bake it in the oven.  I sprinkled mine with shredded Parmesan, a shake of oregano, and black pepper.  Besides tasting good, it made me want to throw a Sunday brunch.  Of course, wanting to see your friends is reason enough to invite them over.  But think how snazzy the spread will look with the addition of these on the table.

Have I told you how I feel about eggs?  It's love.

Check out TheKitchn's link here and the original post on LifeHacker.