Category Archives: food and cooking

Flan and Flowers

food and cooking, my garden, , , ,

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Though I did more cooking than gardening the last few days, flowers are making me happy. How wonderful to have enough of the cutting varieties to decorate the house — I remembered to bring in some zinnias yesterday. And our Pristine rose is blooming its sweet September gift.

 

 

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I made flan this week. It was the third time for me, and the most enjoyable all around. As in my lemon cake, I allotted plenty of time for the project because it still seems like a big deal; I hadn’t made it for a couple of years at least.

I know some people just make a custard and put caramel sauce on it, but from my first attempt, I wanted to do the caramel in the traditional way, and it’s not hard. It just takes some concentration, and it is a little odd melting sugar in a pan the first time you try it.P1110231

I like that you can make the caramel as a separate project, almost, and get that part of the recipe all done before starting the custard itself. That made it a pleasure to “slowly and constantly stir the sugar” as I stood by the stove and realized that the aroma of melting sugar had taken me to the county fair and the experience of walking past the cotton candy booth.

But actually I was still standing in my kitchen stirring, fascinated by the warm sweetness in the air and the stages the sugar goes through on its way to becoming caramel. I didn’t exactly stir constantly, as I kept pausing for a few seconds to P1110237take a picture, and when I did my spoon got all caked with partially melted sugar, but it all turned out fine in the end.

I was using custard cups this time, and wasn’t sure if the quantity of caramel in the recipe designed for a pie plate would suffice for all the cups, so I made 50% more caramel, which turned out to be more than needed. When it was ready, I set the burner to “warm” and for each cup in turn I put in a spoonful of the hot syrup and tilted the cup quickly to swirl it around the bottom and up the sides a little way. P1110239 P1110243

What was left over I added to the bottom of the cups, and then set the “caramelized” cups in a roasting pan to wait for the custard.

 

 

 

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Then I got busy with the blender. In the background, though, the caramel was cooling and hardening on the other side of the kitchen and kept making “plink!” noises as it squirmed against the glass cups.

You can find the quantities of ingredients in: my first flan post from 2011. It’s definitely a rich combination of foods, but I like the resulting density of custard better than anything I’ve eaten elsewhere.P1110256

After the custard is poured into the containers, hot water is added to the pan and everything bakes for about 40 minutes. I had a little extra custard that I put into a ninth cup, which one couldn’t exactly call “plain,” but it was without caramel.

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And here are the baked puddings, all tender, creamy and brown.

In the end, all the extra caramel was so hardened at the bottoms of the cups that it didn’t come out. There was just the right amount that stuck to the bottom, now the top of the custard, and enough liquid to run out over and form a puddle when I turned the cups upside down. They are perfect little medium-sized flans. Mr. Glad and I agree that if we are to get the most enjoyment out of them, one of them ought to be shared between the two of us, but the first ones were consumed extravagantly. P1110269

lemon trees and cake

agriculture, food and cooking, ,

lemon cake 7-27-14My father scorned Meyer lemons. Growing his own lemons made him, and all of our family, partial to the intensity of a Normal Lemon. If anyone wants to give me lemons, Meyer or otherwise, I will never turn them down, but I also prefer what I grew up with.

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When I cook with lemons I usually think of my father and our trees. If as I child I ever found my father lying on the living room floor it was not because he’d been wrestling with my brother, but more like he’d been wrestling with those trees. During pruning season he’d invariably put his back out doing that necessary work on our ten acres (We had twenty more acres in oranges.) That would be more than a thousand lemon trees.

I learned to drive a tractor before I was old enough to drive a car, because Daddy needed me to pull a trailer between the rows when my sisters and I were picking the second, smaller crop of lemons that wasn’t worth hiring a whole picking crew for.

In those pictures that I retain in my mind, my brother wasn’t old enough to buckle down and help yet. He was sitting under a lemon tree crying, and the dust mixed with his tears to make a miserable face.  I must say that he’s more than made up for it in the years since, and is one of the most buckled down and hardworking people on the planet.P1100844eggs

The latest thing I cooked with lemons is this meltingly appealing cake, which Mr. Glad requested for his birthday last month. That he wanted cake was very strange, because it’s been Blackberry Pie as long as anyone can remember, and a good month to be born if you want that. But I was happy to oblige with the cake, and I devoted most of one Saturday to making it, so I had plenty of time to enjoy the process.

In the past I’d only baked this glazed cake for tea parties that I used to have in a bygone era. Now that it’s been revived in my repertoire I’ll want to make it more often. It uses a lot of lemons in the form of juice, and in this recent case, even more fruits to get enough lemon zest to impart the deep lemony flavor. It can be made up to three days ahead and freezes well.

Lemon-Sour Cream Cake

INGREDIENTS:

1 3/4 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 cup unsalted butter, room temperature
1 cup sugar
3 large or extra-large eggs at room temperature
1 tablespoon minced lemon zest
2 teaspoons lemon extract
1 cup sour cream

The Glaze:
1 1/2 cups powdered sugar
1/2 cup strained fresh lemon juice
2 teaspoons finely minced lemon zest

INSTRUCTIONS:

Preheat the oven to 350°. Butter and flour a 9-inch lightweight Bundt pan. Sift the flour, baking soda and baking powder together into a medium mixing bowl. Set aside.

In a medium mixing bowl, using an electric mixer on medium speed, or in a food processor fitted with the metal blade, beat the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy, about 4 minutes. Beat in the eggs, minced zest and lemon extract and mix for 2 more minutes.

Reduce the speed to low or pulse with the food processor. Add half of the flour mixture and mix until well combined. Add half of the sour cream, mixing constantly, then add the rest of the flour and sour cream, ending with the sour cream.

Pour the batter into the prepared pan. Bake for about 35-40 minutes, or until a skewer inserted into the center comes out clean. Let cool in the pan for 10 minutes, then invert onto a wire rack and remove the pan. Make the glaze while the cake is still warm.

To make the glaze, using a fine-meshed strainer, sift the powdered sugar into a small, non-aluminum bowl. Add the lemon juice and lemon zest and whisk to break up lumps.

Transfer the cake to a rack placed over a rimmed baking sheet lined with wax paper. Using a long skewer, poke holes in the cake at 1-inch intervals, almost going through to the bottom. Slowly pour the glaze over the cake, giving it time to absorb as you pour. Let the cake cool to room temperature. Cut into wedges and serve.

Every time I make this cake, about 1/4 cup of the glaze ends up on the baking sheet under the cake, and would be wasted and washed down the drain in all its precious lemonzestiness if I didn’t find a way to use it. This time I whipped some heavy cream and slowly drizzled the syrup into it at the end when it was getting nice and thick. I froze the mixture in custard cups, and ate one of them the next day. It was quite delicious!

Banana Bread – traditional and favorite

food and cooking, ,

paleo banana bread 7-14What could be more traditional than banana bread? Every thrifty cook has her special recipe that makes very good use of the ripe fruit. My old favorite was the Laurel’s Kitchen recipe, because it used the most bananas, and it includes both toasted walnuts and dried apricots – yum!

Nowadays  I rarely bake this kind of cake, for several reasons, but I still acquire bananas that I am loath to toss. Last month I cut a few into chunks and froze them, with hopes that someone someday will want to throw them into a smoothie.

But then my Coconut Flour Project loomed. It all started with a humongous bag of coconut flour I bought at Costco, because I love everything coconut and am always trying to cut back on grains. Beyond the flour itself I hadn’t anything to show for my time spent thinking about what to do with what I thought was a great resource.

That’s not exactly true: I saw a recipe for coconut flour bread in Pippin’s files, and she warned me that for her it turned out “kind of dry,” but I eventually tried it. It might as well have been made with sawdust. Lesson learned: don’t use the stuff alone.

I had given up surfing and searching for coconut flour recipes and instead bought an old fridge to use in my garage, in which to keep my bag of coconut flour and other currently neglected semi-perishables, against some misty future when I would suddenly bake a lot again.

THEN Nikkipolani made some banana bread and mentioned it briefly on her blog, and because she said it was grain-free I followed the link to SlimPalate and found a recipe for which I had all the ingredients right here in one refrigerator or another. I even had the cacao nibs, but I didn’t add them, and it doesn’t seem P1100814that nikkipolani did either.

The crumb of this bread is so moist and tender – nothing dry about it. The banana flavor melts into the subtle almond and coconut, with honey and vanilla. I’d like to try it with the cacao nibs next time. I’m not sure this loaf will have enough opportunity to become the New Traditional, but it is now my favorite banana bread.

Update: I bought some bananas for the purpose of making this bread again, which I have now done. I had extra mashed banana so I made a 50% bigger loaf by increasing all the ingredients that much. I used large instead of extra-large eggs this time, so the batter was thicker, but the end result is not much different from the first time, and just as delicious.

A favorite picnic food.

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IMG_6467As Jane Brody wrote about the original version of this recipe in her Good Food Book, Middle Easterners don’t really eat anything along the lines of our potato salad, but if they did, it might taste like this. Of course, she wrote that a long time ago, so for all we know, they may have adopted the tradition by now.

This dish is very convenient for picnics, because it contains no mayonnaise to worry about. Its creaminess comes from sour cream and yogurt, which along with the mint and vegetables make it refreshing for summer meals. The warm spices balance everything out. I’ve made only minor changes.

Middle Eastern Potato Salad

about 6 servings

Salad:
2 # small to medium red potatoes, skins on, steamed or boiled
5 green onions
2 T. minced fresh parsley
2 T. chopped fresh mint leaves
Paprika for garnish

Dressing:
2/3 c. sour cream
1/3 c. yogurt (or you can use all yogurt, or any proportion of the two ingredients.)
1 tsp. salt
3/4 tsp. ground cumin
1/2 tsp. ground coriander
1/8 tsp. freshly ground black pepper

As soon as the potatoes are cool enough to handle, cut them into quarters or halves or 3/4-inch cubes. In a medium bowl, combine the dressing ingredients.  Add the potatoes to the dressing and toss lightly to coat. Taste and add more salt or seasoning as desired. (At this point I often refrigerate the salad several hours or overnight.)

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Within an hour or two of serving, chop the mint, parsley and onion, and gently mix about half of it into the potatoes.  Arrange the potatoes on a serving platter, sprinkle the rest of the vegetables opotato saladn top, and then sprinkle on some paprika if desired. Be sure to take the salad out of the refrigerator a little while before serving so that it is not too cold to taste all the flavors.

I usually make a triple batch, which amounts to a little more than a gallon of salad.  If you make the smaller amount it may not be necessary to mix some greens into the potatoes; they could all go on top.

Thanks to Lorrie who asked her readers about their favorite picnic foods, because she reminded me that I’ve been wanting to share this recipe for a long time.