Strawberry-lemonade jam

When you start making your own food from scratch, especially stuff like bread and mayonnaise, you take a whole lot of pride in what you've accomplished. But it wears off. Eventually baking your own bread doesn't feel so special anymore; it's just a regular part of your week. And once you get the hang of making mayo, you kind of feel like, "Hey, no big."

So far I haven't reached that point with making jam. (And I hope I never do.) Here I am, glowing with pride while eight jars of gorgeous jam cool in the kitchen (plus a little extra insufficient to fill a jar). I decided to call it strawberry-lemonade jam because I love strawberry lemonade (and I thought it sounded good), but really it's strawberry jam flavored with lemon zest, lemon juice, and a hint of lemon verbena to cut the sweetness. It's delicious. And I was able to keep the color of the strawberries--a first in jam making for me. So I am a little puffed up. Let me enjoy my moment of glory. Wait, I have to run to the kitchen and get a spoonful from the partial jar...

 
Man that's good. Sorry, I'm back. That was wonderful. I am going to tell you how to make the deliciousness yourself in a moment, but first a few tips for making jam:

• Get the very best berries you can find and preferably ones that haven't been sprayed. I got mine from Reid's Orchard because their berries are extraordinarily good, and they practice integrated pest management, which means they rarely spray their fruits.
• Jam is not an excuse for using less-than-perfect berries. If you've got ugly berries, trim the ugly parts and try making saft (a Swedish fruit syrup that's delicious as a refreshing drink when mixed with water or you could also pour a little over ice cream). Or bake something with them.
• Get everything ready before you start cooking the jam, because once you start you will not be able to leave the stove for more than a minute or two. (Lot of hovering over the stove involved in making jam.) So that means wash and sterilize all your jars, juice and zest your lemons, wash the verbena stems, place a plate with five metal spoons in the freezer for testing, and have a ladle and a funnel ready to go.
• Be careful. Making jam is an activity not dissimilar to making candy. That means temperatures get very high, boiling can get violent, and the jam can overflow. Also, it can spatter and burn, so take care. Maybe wear an oven mitt while you stir. Or cast caution to the wind and gain some badges of honor (I got one on my wrist today).  
• Don't start making jam unless you have at least 45 solid minutes to devote completely to the task. You can't really start and stop, and you have to be present at the stove through nearly the entire cook time.    

OK, so those are the general tips. Here are the specifics (both ingredients and equipment):

• 4 lbs hulled strawberries (keep them whole unless they are huge)
• 2 lbs 10 oz sugar 
• juice from four lemons (between 5 and 6 ounces, divided)*
• zest from two lemons (finely chopped or grated)
• 1 large branch of lemon verbena (optional, but nice)
• 1 white plate with 5 metal spoons, placed in the freezer to prep them for testing
• 1 deep thick-bottomed pot that's from 8 inches in diameter (up to 11 or 12) (if you don't have a jam pan,** a stock pot will work just fine)
• 1 silicone spatula
• 1 skimmer, placed in a bowl of cold water
• 1 ladle
• 1 wide-mouth funnel (you'll usually find these wherever you find canning supplies)
• 9 clean 8-ounce jars with banded lids, washed, sterilized, and kept hot
• Any equipment you are using to process the jars (pot with rack, baking sheet and rack, etc.). For information about processing jams (and any canned good) safely, go to the National Center for Home Food Preservation.      

OK, now that you have assembled everything you need, let's get started:

1. Combine strawberries, sugar, and half of the lemon juice in a pot. Stirring steadily with the silicone spatula, slowly heat the mass. When the berries release a lot of liquid and the berry-sugar mass becomes more liquid, raise the heat slowly to high and bring the mass to a rolling boil. 
2. Maintain the berry-sugar mix at a high boil for about 25 minutes, stirring once a minute or so, making sure to scrape the bottom with the spatula. If the mass starts to stick to the bottom, lower the heat a bit. Using a skimmer, skim the scum off the top for the first 10 minutes. As you will be standing here for a while watching the mass boil, you will no doubt notice some changes in the jam: First, it will boil up very high, possibly threatening to boil over. Usually consistent stirring will help keep that from happening, but it doesn't always work. Adjust the heat up and down as you work to maintain a strong boil, while avoiding losing half your jam in a sticky, possibly painful, disaster. 
3. At about the 25-minute mark, the jam will change color, growing darker and glossier, and production of foam will decrease. (Before this, you will notice the jam feeling thicker and the intensity of the boiling increasing.) Mix in the second half of the lemon juice and the lemon zest. (Take the pot off the heating element when you do this to avoid scorching.) Bring the jam back to a high boil for 5 minutes. 
4. After the 5 minutes, take the pot off the heat and add the sprig of lemon verbena to let it steep while you test the jam. To test the jam, place a small amount of jam liquid on a frozen spoon and return it to the freezer for 3-4 minutes. When you take the spoon out, feel the bottom of the spoon, it shouldn't feel hot or cold. If that's the case, tip the spoon to let the liquid run. If it runs slowly and sort of gums up a bit, the jam is done. If it runs fast, let the jam cook for another 5 to 10 minutes and test it again. 
5. If the jam was done on your first try, let the lemon verbena steep for another 5 to 10 minutes. Before you put the jam into the jars, remove the lemon verbena and toss it.
6. Using the ladle, pour the jam into the sterilized jars, leaving 1/4 inch room at the top of the jar. You will get 7 to 9 8-ounce jars of jam. 
7. Process the jars as directed. Except maybe one that you set aside to "test" for flavor to make sure it's OK. Make sure to refrigerate any open jars. 
8. Enjoy it. It should be good for 6 to 8 months if the jars form a proper seal and are kept in a cool, dark place. Make sure to check each jar carefully when you open it. If the seal doesn't pop, or if anything seems off or weird in any way (color, smell, rusty lids, etc.), just get rid of it. Better to lose a jar than to get sick.   

* The basis for this recipe is Rachel Saunders's "Children's Strawberry Jam," from The Blue Chair Jam Cookbook.
** If anyone feels like getting me a jam pan for Christmas, or for any other reason, I would not mind. No really. I wouldn't.

Strawberry upside-down cake

I like making upside-down cakes. They can be a bit of a gamble: Will the whole thing come out of the pan beautifully, or will it crumble into a delicious, but hideous mess? When they come out well, they can be so beautiful: Glorious jewel-like fruit glistening in deep-brown caramel both gooey and with a lacy edge of crispness. Then there is the contrast of the slight hit of acid from the fruit against soft sweet cake. Oh yeah...

The other thing I like about them is that they are endlessly variable. Once you get a basic batter and caramel down, you can switch up the fruit and the flavor of the batter in nearly endless ways (which just sparked an idea about inventing a savory upside-down cake at some point--maybe later this summer with tomatoes and some of the beautiful goat cheese from Cherry Glen--but I digress). For example, during summer you could use peaches, plums, cherries, blackberries--whatever is fresh and good and loading down the tables at the farmer's market. In fall, you could use apples, pears, and cranberries. To complement different fruits, you could flavor the batter with lemon zest, cinnamon, cardamom, vanilla--whatever strikes your fancy and suits your tastes.

In this case, my fancy was struck when I went looking for strawberry-intensive recipes for a treat to bring to a brunch. I came across several tasty ones at Joy the Baker's blog, including a brown butter banana strawberry bread (looks so delicious) and a strawberry balsamic flatbread (most intriguing), but what really sparked my thinking was the strawberry upside-down cake with cardamom. Oh yeah! I could make an upside-down cake with strawberries. Only, instead of using cardamom, I would caramelize the strawberries, and instead of cinnamon in my batter, I would use lemon zest because lemon and strawberries just play so nicely together. Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy.

So I got to work. I had a quart of strawberries from the farmer's market to hull (I bought two actually, but the other one is for eating fresh), caramel to make, and a batter to whip up. Here's how to proceed.*

Topping

• 6 Tbsp unsalted butter
• 1 packed cup brown sugar
• 1 Tbsp local honey
• 1 quart strawberries, hulled and sliced 

(If you aren't using a cast-iron skillet to make this cake, make the caramel separately on the stove and then pour it into the cake pan you plan to use; use an 8- to 9-inch pan. Springform would probably help you out a bunch.)

1. Pre-heat the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. 
2. Melt the butter, let it get foamy and slightly brown. (Keep an eye on it, you do not want burnt butter in your cake. Or in any dish you make, ever.)
3. Add brown sugar and honey and stir until the brown sugar is mostly melted. 
4. Take the pan off the heat and add the strawberries. (The heat of the sugar-butter mixture will slightly cook the strawberries, and a scent will rise that is indescribably beautiful. Just breathe it in and count yourself lucky to experience such a thing of ephemeral beauty.) If you are using a cake pan, pour the whole mixture into the pan. Set it aside while you make the batter.   

Cake Batter

• 6 Tbsp butter, room temperature
• 1 cup white sugar
• 2 large eggs
• 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
• 1 1/2 cup all-purpose flour
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 1/4 tsp salt
• zest from one lemon, finely chopped or grated
• 1/2 cup whole milk

1. Using a stand mixer, whip the butter silly. No. Sorry. Whip the butter until it's fluffy. The paddle attachment is good for this.  
2. Add the sugar to the butter and whip that until it's creamy. If you are starting with cold butter, this could take a while.
3. While the butter and sugar are working, add flour, baking powder, salt, and lemon zest to a bowl. Mix everything together with a whisk and set it aside. 
4. OK, now that your butter and sugar is fluffy and pale gold, add one egg at a time. Beat them into the butter-sugar mixture until fluffy. Even more fluffy! Lots of fluffy. 
5. Next, mix in the vanilla extract. 
6. Finally add the flour mixture and the milk, alternating between about a third of the flour and a third of the milk until you've added it all. Mix until the flour and the milk are just incorporated and then stop the machine. (If you keep beating the batter, you will get a tough cake. And you don't want a tough cake unless you are planning to throw it at someone you are mad at. And why would you be mad at someone? You have these gorgeous strawberries and this fluffy cake batter.)
7. Scrape the batter over the strawberries and caramel and smooth the batter as best you can (this is a thick batter that doesn't spread very easily, but don't worry about it being uneven; it will spread nicely in the oven). 
8. Slide the pan into the hot oven and let it bake for 1 hour and 5 minutes. Take it out and let it cool for 30 minutes before flipping it over onto a serving plate. Enjoy it warm or cold. Serve it with ice cream or some fresh whipped cream or all by itself.

* This recipe was adapted from this oh-so-good plum upside-down cake from Epicurious.

Spring pasta with salmon and sugar snap peas--and a look back on an independent year

A year ago last week was my last day as a wage slave. My plan had been to go out on my own and start a food blog and share my passion for seasonal and local food; the future was grand, rosy, exciting. After years of feeling stuck in jobs that didn't seem to appreciate all that I had to offer and were leaving all my brilliance and skills on the table, I was going to get out on my own and put all that smart and talented out there. (And I was going to get my house in order, get in shape, and about a dozen other things.)    

Well, I started a freelance career as an editor, proofreader, and writer, and I started a food blog. I quit some bad habits. I ran a lot. Some portions of my house got clean--for a while. But only now do I begin to understand how differently I need to think about my work, to plan my life, to organize my time. Only now do I realize several hundred thousand food bloggers are out there, sharing their passion, and doing it with way prettier pictures and often with far more graceful prose. Only now do I realize that, yeah, I am smart and talented, but a lot of people are smart and talented, and many are way more trained and knowledgeable than I am. Ouch. 

So those were some lessons: I wasn't nearly as good and smart as I thought. I wasn't nearly as passionate about food as I thought. Finding clients wasn't so easy, especially after the funding for my first big one dried up. There are always going to be people who are more talented, more committed, less diffused over multiple priorities. Less confused really. A heck of a lot more focused and driven.  

As you can imagine, that hurt. Especially the part about not being as good and smart as I thought I was. Yeah, that stung.

But it was an honest lesson, a real lesson. I wouldn't say I am humbler now, but I am gaining some clarity and perspective. I am clearing away some imposed rules, some imposed ways of thinking, some imposed parameters for beauty. And that's good, because I get to try and start fresh, to see with new eyes, to start to remember the first look and feel and smell of creativity, what that was like, so many years ago when the block of clay first hit the table.

And all I really meant to do tonight was share a recipe for pasta with sugar snap peas and salmon, and here I am, off on this tangent. Oh well. Here's how to make the pasta. It's really good: light, fresh, pretty in green and pink, with a nice crisp crunch from the peas--everything you'd ever want in a spring pasta. So get thee to the farmer's market and find some sweet crunchy sugar snaps!  

Pasta with salmon and sugar snap peas

• 12 oz. salmon fillets (whatever's in season, or wildcaught frozen and defrosted)
• 1 lb pasta (I used rombi in this recipe)
• 2 Tbsp unsalted butter
• 1 Tbsp finely chopped shallots
• 3 spring onions, green tops removed, sliced thinly
• 2 cups sugar snap peas, ends and strings removed
• juice from a half lemon
• 1 cup heavy cream
• 1/2 tsp Dijon mustard
• salt, pepper, dried thyme

1. Cook the pasta according to package instructions. (Start boiling the pasta about the same time you start the fish so they finish at the same time.)
2. Rinse the salmon fillets in cold water, dry them with paper towels, and salt and pepper them. Prepare your produce (shallots, spring onions, and sugar snap peas).
3. Melt the butter over medium heat in a large deep pan.
4. When the butter bubbles and browns slightly, place the salmon fillets in the pan. Sprinkle the lemon juice all over the fillets. Let them cook for 1-2 minutes, and turn them over to cook for another minute on the other side. Take them out of the pan, put them on a plate tented with foil (keeps them warm). 
5. Add the shallots and the spring onions to the pan, cook until they soften (about 2 minutes). 
6. Add the sugar snap peas to the pan, let them cook for 2 minutes. 
7. Add the heavy cream and the Dijon mustard to the pan. Let the sauce cook until it thickens (about 2 minutes). Season with salt, pepper, and thyme to taste. 
8. Add the cooked pasta to the sauce in the pan and mix it all together. Turn off the heat. 
9. Removing the skin, break the salmon into flaky pieces and mix them into the pasta.
10. Eat! Enjoy! Even my five-year old liked this:

Pizza with caramelized onions, goat cheese, and bacon

It's a shame that this picture is so gloomy, but the last time I made this pizza, it was dark when it came out of the oven and I had to hold back a pack of ravenous, excited beasts (you know who you are, Mike, Sebastian, and David) to get even these moody photos. But let me assure you: This pizza is delicious, by far the best-loved pizza in my household. I think the original idea for this pizza came down from Wolfgang Puck; I am sure it has been bastardized since his original, but the main concept is the same: sweet and slightly bitter caramelized onions balanced against the acidity of the goat cheese and the salt of the bacon. It is a beautiful thing.  

Making the Dough
A good pizza consists of two major parts: the dough and the toppings. Let's start with the dough. Now, I make pizza dough from scratch, but when I first started making this pizza, I would use purchased pizza crusts. Problem with those is that, like many commercial breads, they tend to have a lot of nearly unpronounceable mystery ingredients, so now I make my own dough. It definitely takes more time and a bit more effort, but I think it's worth it. I've found two pizza dough recipes that I like: The one used in this delicious broccoli rabe, potato, and rosemary pizza from Food52, which comes out crispy and beautiful, and Deborah Madison's basic pizza dough from her book Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone, which is also excellent and takes less time but is a bit less crispy. Here are the directions for Deborah Madison's pizza dough:

• 1 1/2 cups warm water
• 2 teaspoons (about one packet) dry yeast
• 2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
• 1 1/2 teaspoons salt
• 1/2 to 1 cup whole wheat flour
• 3 to 3 1/2 cups all purpose flour

Note: I sometimes replace 1/4 cup of the all purpose flour with a 1/4 cup semolina flour, which I think make the crust a little crispier, but that's completely optional.

1. Add the yeast to 1/2 cup of the water and let it stand until it gets foamy (about five to 10 minutes). 
2. Add the rest of the water, the salt, and the oil to the foamy water.
3. Then add the whole wheat flour and enough all purpose flour to make a shaggy dough. 
4. Pour or scrape the dough out onto a floured board or counter and knead until the dough is smooth. Add enough flour to keep the dough from sticking but no more. The dough should be slightly tacky. 
5. Let the dough rise in a covered, oiled bowl for about 40-60 minutes. (Keep the dough in a somewhat warm place.) 
6. Turn the dough out on the counter and divide it into the number of pizzas you want (you can make four 10-inch pizzas or two 12- to 14-inch pizzas). Shape the pieces into balls, set them on a lightly floured counter, cover with a slightly damp towel, and let them rise for 20 to 30 minutes. 
7. About half an hour before you want to put the pizzas in the oven, pre-heat your oven to 500 degrees Fahrenheit and start shaping the dough. Take one ball at a time, flatten it into a disk, and start pushing the dough out toward the edges until you achieve the size you want. It's helpful to have a baking board with diameters. When you have achieved the size, shape, and thickness you want, let the disks rest for 15 minutes before adding any toppings. (The thinner you can get the dough without tearing, the crispier your final product will be.)

Preparing the Toppings
When you make this pizza, start the toppings at about the same time you start the dough. That way, all you will have to do is add the toppings to the pizza disks just before you put them in the oven.

The toppings for this pizza are caramelized onions, crispy bacon, and goat cheese. You will also need some grated Parmigiano Reggiano.

• 3-4 large yellow onions, thinly sliced (get ready to cry)
• 4 Tbsps olive oil
• 8 slices bacon, sliced into 1-inch pieces (or you can just crumble the slices after they have cooked and cooled)
• 1 8-oz log of soft goat cheese (Chevre), crumbled (do this with a fork in a bowl and you will eliminate a lot of mess)
• grated Parmigiano Reggiano
• dried thyme
• a pinch of red pepper flakes (optional)

The most difficult thing to do here is to caramelize the onions properly. I've seen lots of recipes add salt or sugar to the onions, but you need nothing but time, patience, and olive oil. The onions will produce their own sugar, and they will be delicious.

To caramelize the onions, bring 4 tablespoons of olive oil to medium heat in a large pan with tall sides (you will start off with a large volume of onions that will cook down to a very small amount) and then add the onions. Stir the onions to coat them completely with the oil and then basically leave them alone for up to an hour, stirring perhaps once every five to 10 minutes. Don't worry if they get a little crispy around the edges, but don't let them burn either. They should look like this when you are done:

When they are done, sprinkle in half to a whole teaspoon of dried thyme and a pinch of red pepper flakes if you are using them. Set the onions aside.

For the bacon, just cook it until it's nice and crispy and let it drain on paper towels. Set aside.

Not much to do with the goat cheese except to break it up with a fork. Set it aside.

Now, when it comes time to make the pizza, here's what to do. First, make sure your oven is on (500 degrees, remember?). If you have a pizza stone and a peel, now is a great time to use them. If you don't, line baking sheets with parchment paper and set your pizzas down on them.

1. Sprinkle grated Parmigiano Reggiano all over the pizza dough. 
2. Add half (or a quarter, depends on how many pizzas you are making) of the caramelized onions and spread them evenly around the pizza. 
3. Sprinkle half (or a quarter) of the goat cheese over the onions. 
4. Sprinkle half (or a quarter) of the crumbled bacon over the goat cheese. 
5. Grate some more Parmigiano Reggiano over the top and slide the pizza into the oven. Tip: If you are using a peel, rub some corn meal or flour into the peel to prevent sticking.  
6. After seven minutes, check the pizza. If it's a little golden brown on top, the pizza is done. If not, leave it in for a few more minutes. 

Voila! You've got an amazing pizza. And, you've also got a basic dough recipe so you can experiment with your own pizza toppings. Have fun with that.  

Ginger-banana bread

Warm and cozy as an open fire, soft and rich as a scrap of golden-brown velvet, exotic and strange as a Byzantine ceiling, a beautiful smell blooms from the oven. The experiment seems to be going well. I open the oven and test the loaves for doneness, not quite yet. I slide them back in and wait five minutes. This time, the toothpick comes out clean. I take them out of the oven. After they cool on a rack for a while, I slice some pieces, warm, dense, moist, rich with spices, slightly sweet from banana, and with a bit of crunch from the walnuts. Perfect. My ginger-banana bread turned out just the way I had hoped it would.

Struggling for the last month with high fevers, bronchitis, and an infected molar, I haven't spent much time in the kitchen. Fever and antibiotics killed my appetite and wasted my energy, so it's been a struggle to eat anything at all, and I mostly let my family eat a lot of takeout. Things are rarely ideal, and sometimes they are less ideal than others.

In the meantime, I've been reading Michael Ruhlman's book Ratio: The Simple Codes Behind the Craft of Everyday Cooking and getting more and more excited to get in and work with some of the ratios. For a creative cook (especially a mostly self-taught home cook like myself), the book is a gift. Ruhlman breaks down fundamental kitchen techniques into simple ratios. Once you understand the ratios and how the basic ingredients work together, you can layer on and riff from there. The book teaches you reading and writing; with those basics, you can create poetry. It's exciting stuff.

The opportunity to test one of the ratios came as some of my son's bananas grew dark and unappealing. I didn't want to let them go to waste, but they were no longer fit to eat out of hand. Thus banana bread. So I checked out Ruhlman's ratio for quickbreads: 2/2/1/1. Two parts flour, two parts liquid, one part egg, and one part fat. OK. (Note that these ratios are based on weight, not volume.) And I checked out his basic recipe for quickbread/muffin batter, which is based on the ratios. But I got it into my head that I wanted to include some of the flavors from my mother's gingerbread cookies. And I was off and mixing. I was going to make gingerbread banana bread. (Or, as some friends have suggested, baginger bread, ginanabread, or gingy-nanny bread. If you have ideas for a good name, please fire away in the comments. I think I kind of like baginger bread.)

Anyway, this is one of the easiest possible things you could ever make. You'll need two bowls (one for dry ingredients and one for wet), a scale, and a loaf pan. Note: the recipe that follows makes one loaf; I made two because I had quite a lot of dark bananas. Also, you could probably do a straight swap of banana for pumpkin puree, and it would be delicious too.

Ingredients
Measure by weight on your scale, except where noted in teaspoons.

• 8 oz all-purpose flour
• 4 oz brown sugar (white sugar will do in a pinch)
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 tsp ground cloves
• 1 tsp ground cinnamon
• 1 tsp ground dried ginger
• 1 tsp finely chopped orange zest
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 1 cup mashed banana (about 2-3 bananas)
• 6 oz milk
• 2 large eggs
• 4 oz unsalted butter, melted 
• 1/4 chopped walnuts (optional)

What to Do

1. Preheat your oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit and butter, oil, or spray a loaf pan. 
2. Place your dry ingredients bowl on the scale and measure flour, sugar, salt, spices, and baking powder. Mix the ingredients with a whisk until everything is uniformly distributed.  
3. Place your wet ingredients bowl on the scale, measure milk, and then add eggs, melted butter, and banana. Mix everything together until the egg is evenly distributed throughout the liquid.
4. Mix your wet and your dry ingredients until they just come together. Scrape the batter out into the greased loaf pan and slide it into the oven. 
5. Check for doneness after 40 minutes by sticking a toothpick into the center of the loaf. If it comes out clean and dry, the loaf is done. If it's still wet, check in five-minute intervals.
6. When you take it out of the oven, let it cool in the pan for a while. Then slide the loaf out of the pan and let it cool on a baking rack. It's good warm, but I think it's best completely cooled. 
7. Watch out for small, thieving hands. Trust me, this bread is not going to last. 

 

 

Root vegetable chowder with bacon

I don't even remember the last time I posted, but then again most of the last week and a half are lost in a haze. I've been sick with a virus that went into the lungs and became bronchitis. For seven days, my temperature would cycle up to 103.5 degrees and then back down to a "normal" of around 101. I alternately froze and shivered like a naked person in Siberia or poured out sweat like Niagara. It wasn't fun. But it's starting to clear up now, and for that I am grateful.

The last thing I cooked before I went down for the count about a little over a week ago was a root vegetable chowder with bacon. It surprised me how delicious it was because it started with the inauspicious need to clean out the larder a bit. We just had too many wrinkly roots lying around, and something needed to be done with them before they went bad. I ended up using a combination of potatoes, sweet potatoes, parsnips, and small white turnips.

It all ended up being a rich, warm, deeply satisfying soup that's thickened by the starch in the potatoes. Good enough that two grown men (Mike and Uncle Dave) stood around the nearly empty pot after dinner scraping with their spoons to get every last bit. That's a real compliment to a cook.

I suspect you can use any combination of root vegetables you have available as long you think about balancing sweet and mild with bitter. And hell, throw in some thinly sliced greens at the end of the cooking if you have them. 

Make sure your root vegetables are all cut to even sizes. This is a good way to practice your knife skills!

Ingredients

• 2 Tbsp butter
• 5 slices thick-cut bacon, sliced thinly
• 1 and 1/2 medium yellow onions (or 1 large), diced finely 
• 3 yellow potatoes, peeled, 1/4 inch dice
• 2 small-medium sweet potatoes, peeled, 1/4 inch dice
• 1 parsnip, peeled, 1/4 inch dice
• 4 small white turnips, peeled, 1/4 inch dice
• 2 cloves garlic, crushed
• 4 cups chicken stock (homemade preferable, but a good organic broth will do just fine)
• 1 cup half and half
• salt and white pepper

What to do

1. Melt butter in a large stock pot. Fry the pieces of bacon in the butter until the bacon is brown and crispy. Take the bacon out of the pot, set it aside to drain on paper towels for the time being. 
2. Lower the heat to medium-low and add the onions to the pot. Let them sweat for about 10 minutes, stirring from time to time. Don't let them get crispy. They should be soft and translucent. (They will probably pick up some brown from the bacon fat, but don't worry about that.)
3. Raise the temperature to medium. Add the vegetables to the pot. Stirring from time to time, let them soften and brown a bit, about 10 minutes.
4. Add the stock and the crushed garlic to the pot. Bring the liquid up to a boil and then lower the temperature to a simmer. Let it cook for 20-30 minutes, until the vegetables soften and some of them start to fall apart a bit. If the stock isn't a bit thick at this point, let the vegetable cook for another 5-10 minutes to get more starch into the water.  
5. Add half and half and salt and pepper to taste. Bring the temperature up but don't let the soup boil again (if you do, the half and half can curdle, which won't kill you but definitely ruins the texture of the soup). Add the reserved bacon back into the soup and serve. 

 

Happy Chocolate Cake Day!

Early this morning I learned today is Chocolate Cake Day. Therefore, I felt duty-bound to bake a chocolate cake and write about it so that you, gentle reader, may have some inspiration and tips for baking your own tasty treat. So this is all for you. Don't say I never did anything for you!

Before I get into the how-to's and why-for's of this cake--as well as the results of a little experiment I ran on cocoa--let me talk a little about cake. Cake is one item I have had a lot of trouble with since transitioning to a mostly local and/or organic and scratch-made diet. In my family, we always bake a cake for one another's birthdays. In years past, that has meant going to the grocery store, getting a box of cake mix and a tub--oh all right, two tubs--of chocolate frosting and making a moist cake with creamy deliciousness smeared all over it. But, with our commitment to avoiding most industrial food, this is no longer an option and so we have to bake our cakes from scratch.

And it turns out a lot of science, technique, and finesse goes into baking a good cake; thus, much trial and error ensued. I've made a few disasters: flat, dense, dry bricks with hard frosting crusting the top. Not good. (Not that my little boy minded: sweet is sweet as far as he's concerned.) I tried changing the flour I used to cake flour, still not getting the result I wanted. (And it was a big mistake, I think cake flours are really only for very light and airy cakes, like angel food cake.)

Then, for my last birthday, my husband had a breakthrough and made a wonderful moist cake. What was the difference? Using vegetable oil instead butter. Naturally my husband, the scientist, made this discovery after doing his research. First: Define the problem. What did I want out of a cake? Light and airy, or soft and moist, but not so dense you could, say, pound in a nail with it? I wanted something moist and rich with a springy crumb. Something that would feel chocolate-y and unctuous on the tongue. And I didn't want it to get dry and crumbly when you put it in the refrigerator for a day.

Once he knew what I wanted, he hit the books, or, to be more precise, a book, Shirley O. Corriher's BakeWise, to uncover the secrets of a moist cake. And voila, he hit pay dirt. Here's what Corriher says about using oil in cakes, "Oil coats flour proteins better than a solid fat and prevents their absorbing liquid from the batter to make gluten. This leaves more moisture in the batter. Cakes made with oil can be not only tender but also very moist."

Aha! So because we were using butter in our cake, we were losing moisture. Furthermore, we were developing gluten, which naturally toughens up a dough (a great feature in bread, not a great quality in cake). Obviously, the taste of butter is incomparable, so we were hesitant to use oil, but then decided to give it a try, realizing that most box cakes we had ever made included oil. Mike tried an oil-based recipe that he found in Tish Boyle's The Cake Book with great results. I've used the same recipe below, with the difference that I replaced the recipe's whole milk with buttermilk. (Why? Well, I have a lot of it, for one thing. Also, the acidity in buttermilk reacts with the baking soda, so I wanted to see what, if any, effect that would have on the final cake. However, because baking powder, which contains its own acid, is also in the recipe, it may not make much of a difference at all. Mostly, my chimp curiosity was to blame.)   

Before I get into the cake recipe, here's another thing I was curious about: the red in red velvet cake. Traditionally, the red in red velvet cake came from a reaction in the cocoa when you added an acid (vinegar or buttermilk), which would bring out the reds in the cocoa. Because I had the cocoa out anyway, I decided to test this. It didn't really work. I was sad. I was hoping for a dramatic transformation. I don't know why nothing happened; it may be the cocoa made now has somewhat different chemical properties than it used to have. Here are some before-and-after pictures (actually I think there's more red in the before picture, but that may have been caused by the light):

Before: A slurry of cocoa powder and water

After: Here I added a couple tablespoons white vinegar. No change. Sigh. 

Now, on to the recipe for the cake.

Devilishly Moist Chocolate Cake
[Adapted from Tish Boyle's The Cake Book]

Ingredients:

• 1 and 1/3 cups all purpose flour
• 3/4 cup cocoa (not Dutch process)
• 1 and 1/4 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1 and 2/3 cups granulated sugar
• 1/3 cup neutral-flavored vegetable oil (such as canola, safflower, etc.)
• 2 large eggs
• 1/3 buttermilk (or whole milk)
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 1 cup boiling water

Steps:

Turn on the oven to 325 degrees (Fahrenheit). Butter and flour a nine-inch pan (spring form is nice; it's so much easier to get the cake out).

Mix dry ingredients (flour, cocoa powder, baking powder, baking soda, and salt) into a stand-mixer bowl. Using a paddle attachment on slow speed, gently mix these ingredients until they are evenly distributed. Then add the sugar and do the same thing.

Next, while the mixer is going at slow speed, pour in the oil. Mix for a few minutes until the oil is evenly distributed and the mix sort of looks like crumbly sand.

Now, in another small bowl, whisk the eggs until blended. Add vanilla extract and buttermilk to the eggs and whisk until blended. (Make sure at this point that you've got water boiling. I almost forgot.) With the mixer on low speed, add the egg mixture, stopping the mixer to scrape down the sides of the bowl from time to time. (And don't be afraid to make a mess of your kitchen.)

Now, add a little bit of boiling water at a time, letting the mix get smooth until you add the next bit. Make sure to scrape down the sides. Mix until smooth, but no more. Pour the batter into the pan you've prepared and slide it into the oven. Bake for 45 minutes, then test for doneness by sticking a toothpick into a few center spots in the cake. If they come out clean, take the cake out of the oven. If there are wet crumbs on the toothpick, leave it for as much as 10 more minutes.

Let the cake cool a few minutes in the pan before removing it. Let it cool completely before frosting it.

Dark Chocolate Sour Cream Frosting

[from Tish Boyle's The Cake Book]

Ingredients:

• 6 oz bittersweet chocolate, chopped or broken into pieces
• 1/2 cup unsalted butter, softened
• 1/2 cup sour cream, room temperature
• 2 and 1/2 cup sifted powdered sugar
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Directions:

Melt the chocolate by placing it in a heat-safe glass (like a Pyrex measuring cup) in boiling water (make sure that water doesn't boil into the chocolate; it will change the chocolate's texture in undesirable ways). Set it aside to cool until it's comfortable to touch. (This is important, otherwise you'll cook the sour cream and melt the butter, which would result in a kind of icky mess.)

Put the butter into your mixer bowl and beat it with the paddle attachment until it's creamy. Add the sour cream and beat until smooth.

Add a little confectioner's sugar at a time and beat until the mixture is light and creamy. (When you add the sugar, start the mixer on slow and bring up to higher speed. Otherwise you will have an exciting powdered sugar explosion in your kitchen.) Beat in the vanilla extract.

Finally, add the cooled chocolate, a little at a time. Scrape down the sides of the bowl a few times. When you have brought together all the ingredients, beat the frosting for a minute or two so it gets fluffy. Then spread it on your cake. (I am not much of a cake decorator, so I am afraid I can't give you any tips, other than spread a thin layer first to "glue" down the crumbs--also called a crumb layer.)

If you want to make it a layer cake, I have added some pictures below for a handy way to halve your cake evenly (learned this trick from Williams & Sonoma Tools & Techniques). Me? I am going to eat some cake. And then I've got to clean up this mess!