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.

Once upon a midsummer's night's ribs

Once upon a midsummer night cheery, I thought to myself, "Oh deary,
"I have yet to think of a dinner for,
"The midsummer night's feast that comes a'creeping,
"The luscious fruits of which we must have more,
"The roasted meats upon which we will feast, evermore."

All right, all right, wrong midnight creeping, I know, but I thought it was funny. So I'm easily amused.

Obviously, I wanted to do something with A Midsummer Night's Dream, but it was hard. All that came to mind was some sort of "pork-butt-Bottom the Weaver" kind of joke and a "what the Puck." I couldn't make it all come together. At least not quickly, and I do want to get this post out before Midsummer Night's Eve.

OK, OK, so technically the summer solstice was yesterday, but they won't be celebrating Midsummer Night's Eve in Sweden until this Friday, so I think we're good. This is a story of some amazing pork ribs that I highly recommend grilling for a midsummer night feast or the fourth of July or any other summer-y celebration. Heck, these would be good in winter, and nothing beats tending a grill in wild weather. But here's fair warning: Grilling ribs right takes a lot of time. You want at least three hours on the grill, and more is better. Why? Ribs have a lot of cartilage, which is tough connective tissue. It takes a long time before it melts, but when it does, you have tender, juicy meat heaven. (Apologies to my vegetarian friends; these ribs make me quite the savage.)

First, here are some notes about my grilling setup. I use a Weber kettle grill with charcoal. Lump charcoal, not briquettes (I don't like the way they burn and I believe they leave a chemical aftertaste in the food). So if you have a gas grill, you might want to check out a book on grilling to get more info about how to do this with your equipment. Steve Raichlen's BBQ USA has been a good source for me.

I start by applying a dry rub to a four-pound slab of ribs from Haskins Family Farm (if you know me at all, this is obvious; I like the family, I like their attitude about farming, and I love their products). A dry rub is a blend of salt, sugar, and spices that you rub on meat and leave on for a few hours. This is my blend (and it makes a lot, so that you can either double the amount of ribs or use about half of the rub and set the rest aside for another time):

3/4 cups salt
1 1/2 cups brown sugar
2 Tbsp dried mustard
2 Tbsp paprika
2 Tbsp cumin
2 Tbsp coriander
1 tsp black pepper

This deviates quite a bit from Alton Brown's formula of 8 parts sugar, 3 parts salt, plus 2 parts spices/flavorings, which is a great formula, so if you want to come up with your own blend (and I highly recommend doing so), go ahead and use that.

Lay the ribs out on a baking sheet with some paper towels underneath and rub big handfuls of your blend all over the meat (both sides). Set it aside for at least two hours, but you could probably leave these overnight (if you have a refrigerator that will accommodate. I don't, so I put the pan in a nice cool spot where the dog can't reach the ribs. You don't really have to worry about any bacteria buildup because of the high salt and sugar content of the rub).

Now, while those sit and soak up flavor, make the mop (you can also do this a day or two ahead if you'd like). A mop, in grilling terms, is basically any liquid goodness that you smear on the rubs while they are cooking (others may call it barbecue sauce, but because this is grilling not barbecuing, I try to call it a mop; also, I like the word mop). This mop uses blueberries, but almost any juicy summer fruit will work well (fruit and pork are just so happy together). These are the ingredients:

2 Tbsp olive oil
1 medium to large onion, finely chopped
1 1/2 cup frozen (wild) blueberries (I prefer frozen here because the freezing process breaks down the cell walls and lets the juices flow freely)
3/4 cup light soy sauce
5 garlic cloves, crushed
1/2 cup brown sugar
2 Tbsp ketchup (optional, but it can add to the tang)
3 Tbsp sherry vinegar (you can replace this with cider vinegar or red wine vinegar, but you may want to increase the amount to 4 tablespoons because sherry vinegar is typically very strong)

Heat the oil in a pot and add the onions. Let them caramelize over low heat (takes about 10 minutes). If they burn slightly, it's not a disaster. If they burn a lot, you'd better start over. The bitterness of slightly burnt onions actually adds to the flavor.

 
Then add the rest of the ingredients and let them simmer over low heat for at least an hour. Don't forget to stir occasionally so it doesn't stick to the bottom. The blueberries will partially fall apart; you can buzz the sauce in a blender if you'd prefer it to be smoother, but I don't usually worry about it. If you are using fruit like cherries, peaches, or anything with some skin, you may want to peel the fruit first or strain out the skins.

About three hours and 40 minutes before you want to eat the ribs, start the grill. It takes about half an hour to get the coals going when you use charcoal. By the way, I finally got myself a chimney starter for the coals, and it's fantastic. It does away with having to use chemicals to start the fire (which may affect the flavor), and it's surprisingly efficient.

When your coals are hot, pile them all on one side of your grill. When you grill food for  a long time, you use indirect heat; otherwise you end up burning your food to a crisp, and what a shame that would be. Place the meat on the side of the grill where the coals aren't and close the lid (make sure the vents are open so the fire gets some oxygen). The shape of a kettle grill ensures that the hot air circulates around the meat (it basically works a lot like an oven). You can use wood for smoking as well (I didn't the last time I made these ribs because I find the smoke to be a bit overpowering sometimes). If you do use smoking wood, make sure to soak it in water for at least half an hour before adding it to the coals.

Now, let the fire do most of the work. Every half hour, turn the ribs and mop them with your sauce. Be generous with the mop. Every hour, add about 12 fresh coals to the fire (and smoking wood if you are using it). Just keep doing this for three hours or more. Eventually, the slow heat will dissolve the cartilage in the ribs that can make them so tough. You will also notice that a lot of fat will melt off and the bones will start to poke out. If the bones are turning black, you can wrap them in tin foil. After at least three hours of this treatment, take the ribs off the grill and let them rest for 10 minutes before serving. The ribs will be unbelievably tender and so good you will want to suck every ounce of meat off them.

In the immortal words of the Animaniacs, "Helloooo nurse!"

Serve with potato salad and salad. Or with baked potatoes (you can do these on the grill as well if you like) and sour cream and salad.

Lime-peach upside-down cake: The experiment

So. I did it. You know, the experiment? With the limes and the peaches and the cake and whatnot that I mentioned I wanted to try yesterday? Yeah, I made a lime-peach upside-down cake, and as you will see, the experience had its ups and downs.

So I started with my go-to recipe for all the upside-down cakes I make and then made some modifications.

I zested two limes.

I melted six tablespoons of butter in my cast-iron skillet slowly over low heat.

I added a cup of brown sugar to the butter in the pan.

I juiced the two limes and added the juice to the sugar and butter in the pan.

I added a tablespoon of honey to the sugar, butter, and lime juice in the pan.

Then I let the mixture simmer on low heat until the sauce thickened.

While the lime caramel simmered in the pan, I started on the batter. First I beat six tablespoons of softened butter in my stand mixer until it was creamy.

Then I added a cup of white sugar to the butter and beat that until it was creamy.

I added the lime zest (about one tablespoon) and two eggs to sugar and butter and once again beat it until it was creamy. (It's funny how hard we have to work over our food sometimes. I imagine the molecules with little black eyes. Oh boy. Don't mind me.) Then I added a half teaspoon of vanilla extract. (Usually I scrape the seeds out of half a vanilla bean, but I couldn't find any in the cupboard, which is always overflowing with spices, some of which I don't use because I bought them in the heat of excitement over something or other).

Then I mixed one and a half cups of all-purpose flour, two teaspoons of baking powder, and a quarter teaspoon of salt in a bowl and measured out a half cup of milk. I proceeded to alternate adding milk and flour mixture to eggs, butter, sugar, etc. in the bowl. (About three measures of each and at low speed, otherwise the flour will fly up into a cloud and make you look like an old man, which is of course not a problem if you are an old man, but I am not yet, so I avoid it.)

The next step was to add the peaches to the caramel mixture in the pan. (I used frozen peach slices left from last year--there were about two peaches worth in the bag. The texture of the peaches was pretty mushy, so I would recommend fresh peaches or other fruit.)

I poured the batter on top of the peaches. Poured is generous, more like scraped and smeared. This batter is not runny, and it's not supposed to be. Try to spread it evenly over the fruit and caramel in the pan. (By the way, if you don't have a cast-iron pan, you can do this in an eight-inch cake pan. Just start your caramel in a thick-bottomed pan on the stove and then pour it into your cake pan. However, I think that you should run out and get a cast-iron pan; they are cheap, last forever, and incredibly wonderful to work with if you get a good season on them. Like now. Go. Run. I will wait for you.)

Put the pan into a 350-degree oven and set the timer for one hour and five minutes. Now, if you use eggs that you can trust, gorge yourself on every last morsel of batter that you can scrape out of the bowl. I literally made some kind of grunting Neanderthal noise while trying to shove my face into the bowl (with little success) to get every last molecule of this batter. It's that good. No. Really. Trust me on this.

OK, when the timer went off an hour and a half later I pulled the cake out of the oven (it turned out a little darker than usual, I probably should have pulled it out a little earlier). I placed the whole pan on a rack to rest for 30 minutes. Dum de dum de dum de dum. Twiddling fingers. Pacing.

Finally, it was time for the great reveal. I scraped around the edges of the cake with a butter knife to loosen it, and holding a plate on top of the pan, I flipped it over. I pulled up the pan. Nothing on the plate but a couple of crumbs. Hm. OK. Scrape around the edges again. Do the flip thing again, and, don't laugh, the thing comes out in big broken chunks.

Damn! Typical! I have made this cake so many times, and it has come out beautifully every time. The one time I want to show it off to the world, it turns out a big mess. Oh well. It tastes great. I am pretty sure it turned out such a disaster because the fruit was so mushy. If I had used fresh peaches (and perhaps more of them), it would have been beautiful.

Notes on the source recipe: For this recipe I eliminated the cinnamon that is usually added to the flour mixture. I didn't think that lime and cinnamon would be a happy combination. I also added lime juice to the caramel mixture. When I make this recipe with other fruits, I generally follow the recipe as is, minus the almond extract. I like almonds, but I've got a thing about almond extract and other almond-scented stuff. It just gives me the willies. I know, weird, right. Well, everyone has their hangups. I also detest celery and do all I can to avoid it.