Winter Blahs?

Winter is not my favorite season.  Or my second favorite.  Or my third. Grays and browns dominate the winter landscape in Chicago, where I spent 3 very long winters.  It's ugly.  It's cold. It's gloomy and depressing.  And while I don't live there anymore, I find the bright colors of vegetables from the farmers' market just as cheery as I did when I bought them in Chicago in January. Oh no, wait-- there is no farmers' market there in January.  Because farmers can't grow vegetables in the Arctic Tundra.

I've gotten spoiled living here in California, what with its year-round growing season and truly amazing variety of produce.  But even I was surprised by the glowing jewels of color that made their way into my bag last weekend.  When people speak of winter produce, the image of row after row of Swiss chard pops into my head, with little room for anything else.  While there were plenty of greens in my bag, there were also greens that weren't green, balls and sticks of orange, and marbles of magenta. 

The radish practically glows pink

I wouldn't want to live anywhere else.

Antioxidants Shmoxidants

Apparently, cinnamon is the latest health food. It has super-duper antioxidants, and has anti-inflammatory and anti-microbial properties.  It's slated to be the next food packaging component, since it can inhibit the growth of yuck.  One article even claimed that cinnamon has more antioxidant power than garlic.  My Italian ancestors must be having a collective conniption fit right about now.

I'm all for antioxidants.  I spend a lot of money to avoid carcinogenic ingredients (funny how they abound in the cheap stuff), and read labels obsessively.  But when I came across a cinnamon supplement at CVS the other day, I couldn't help but wonder when bottled air would arrive on the shelf. 

My annoyance is due in part to the fact that cinnamon is ridiculously easy to incorporate into one's diet.  It tops many fruits and several flavors of ice cream with ease.  It's practically required in pies and turnovers.  It can flavor cookies alone or in tandem with other spices.  It practically rules the month of November. I put it in my oatmeal every morning, along with about 19 other toppings.

My friend Leilani insists that cinnamon has no place in savory dishes.  I disagree.  I make a Moroccan chicken concoction that may or may not be authentic, but which is delicious and  contains liberal amounts of cinnamon.  In fact, half the cuisine of the Middle East would be off-limits if Leilani's rule were true.

I also make a lamb stew of questionable authenticity which requires spoonfuls of cinnamon, and not just because I have a point to make to Leilani.  Stews amuse me because there are endless variations to be tried.  I have made this dish with purple sweet potatoes, orange-fleshed sweet potatoes, and with Yukon Golds.  I have added noodles. I have omitted noodles.  I have tried wine in the liquid.  I have varied the spice ratio. I have added carrots and celery, and chunks of squash. I have thrown in whatever vegetables need to be used up.  It's always satisfying. It's always fragrant. And it always contains cinnamon.

Sol Food

It's a Puerto Rican restaurant.  Get it?

I stopped there for lunch the other day, wanting to try something on the menu I hadn't tried before.  I chose a Nino Pobre (how the heck do you make the tilde work on this thing?), which is this restaurant's version of the classic Po' Boy, only the prawns are dredged in a plantain batter.  I don't know who thought of that, but it's delicious. It paired perfectly with the side of maduros I ordered.   I can't think of much that doesn't pair well with maduros.  I have also been known to eat just maduros for a meal in extreme cases. And in Guatemala.

The problem, though, was when I paid for my food. Sol Food ain't the cheapest place in town, but the total was more than I expected.  And I'm pretty good at estimating. In fact, I won a prize once at a math seminar for coming the closest to the actual number of jelly beans in a jar. The point is, I knew I had been overcharged, yet was surprised into paying the total and stepping aside to calculate more precisely. I was still correct and had still been overcharged by the third or fourth time I checked my calculations.  But the line at Sol Food never disappears, and I didn't really want to wait in line for the $3 I was owed. I figured it was about how much should go in the tip jug anyway, so I said nothing, waited for my food, and left. 

I don't suspect Sol Food of overcharging its customers regularly, and still cannot figure out how I was charged more for my food than I should have been, since my order, stapled to my bag, was correct.  I was annoyed at them and at myself for tolerating it.  But if it does happen every so often, and people don't complain since the line is long, or the staff is too busy, or the amount is too small...

I still love this place, and will eat here again.  And I will also get a receipt.

Sweet Things Should Be Soft

A guy I dated said this more than once after I'd baked some sweet creation that was not to his liking.  While I disagree with the statement, and also find it the perfect metaphor for our difficult relationship (me= not so soft. Or is it me= not so sweet?), it happens to be true in one instance.

I had a hankering for caramels, and thought a little bag of hand-made caramels tied with pretty ribbon would make a great gift enclosure, so I looked in an old Fannie Farmer cookbook for a recipe.  And by old, I mean copyright 1937. The recipe seemed quite simple, calling for just 4 ingredients: granulated sugar, corn syrup, heavy cream, and vanilla extract. The directions said to boil the mixture a total of 3 times, never getting hotter than 244 degrees, which, according to my candy thermometer, is the "firm ball" stage. "Firm ball" seems to describe caramels pretty well, so I dove right in.

Chocolate-topped, pecan-crusted toffee.

Oooh, presents!

Part of the test for doneness, says this recipe, is to drop a small amount into cold water and see if it forms a soft ball (first boil/238 degrees) or a "decidedly firm ball" (last boil).  My mixture did form these balls, but not at the specified temperature.  No, mine formed the soft balls at maybe 225 degrees, and formed a hard-as-a-rock ball at 238 degrees. By 244 degrees, I had invented Caramel Life Savers. 

While I wound up with candy in gift bags anyway, I wonder what went wrong.  I actually followed directions this time, knowing that candy-making does not leave much room for improvisation. I found a new recipe today for salted caramels, and notice the ingredient list is much longer: 3 kinds of sugar (white, brown, and corn syrup). heavy cream, butter, vanilla, and sea salt.  Does the additional sugar help stave off the hard crack stage?  Does the butter? I admit I am totally confounded by the science behind this problem, and to add to the confusion, the new recipe calls for heating the mixture to 255 degrees!

Can anyone help with this?

A Mexican Christmas?

Forgive me the gray-on-gray blog design, but it has been raining for days, and more rain is predicted. I might as well still live in Chicago.

In my family, a Christmas tradition was to make at least 2 varieties of cookies each year, to be nibbled secretly until dessert time on Christmas Eve.  My mother would store the tins of cookies in what we called The Back Hall, which was unheated (and likely unenclosed at some point in the house's history); having to brave 50-degree "weather" to get to the cookies was no deterrent for me.  I don't think it was much of a deterrent for anyone else in the family either, since some years we came dangerously close to having no cookies on Christmas.

By far my favorite cookie was one we called a pecan sandy (sandie?). My mother obtained the recipe from a work colleague perhaps 30 years ago, and the directions called for the cookies to be rolled by hand into finger shapes, baked, dusted in powdered sugar, and dipped at one end into melted chocolate. I alternated between believing it was best to eat the chocolate end first, and thinking it was better to save the chocolate end for a most satisfying finish.  As an adult, I solved this dilemma once by dipping BOTH ends into chocolate. 

Naked

Fingers and rounds, as homage to the cookies' Mexican roots.

 For the last few years, many of my cookbooks have been in storage, first in Utah and now in Christy's garage.  I thought this would be the end of pecan sandies, but I remembered an observation of mine one year.  A guest brought us a tin of what she called Mexican wedding cookies. They were round ball-shaped cookies dusted in powdered sugar, and were green. After one bite I exclaimed, "These taste just like pecan sandies!" Many years and the Internet later, I had no trouble finding a replacement recipe for my beloved pecan sandies, which are someone's Americanized version of Mexican wedding cookies. 

Dipped

I'm not sure which colleague my mother got the recipe from, since several were involved in some kind of recipe swap.  I suspect, though, the one named Sandy. Who was Filipina, not Mexican.

Caution: the baked cookies are fragile, and should be dusted and dunked with care.

Pecan Mexican Sandie Wedding Cookies
adapted from foodnetwork.com, and Sandy
1 C (2 sticks) butter, at room temperature
1/2 C confectioners' sugar, plus more for dusting
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 3/4 C all-purpose flour
1 C pecans, finely chopped


1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
2. Cream butter and sugar until light. Add vanilla and beat well. Add flour to butter mixture and mix well.  You may need to add up to 1 tablespoon of water to the mixture. Mix in pecan bits. 
3. Shape dough into a ball and wrap in waxed or parchment paper.  Refrigerate for 1 hour.
4. Shape dough into fingers or balls and arrange on baking sheet. 
5. Bake for 14-17 minutes, or until cookies are golden and edges are brown.
6. When cooled, roll carefully in more confectioners' sugar, and dip one end into melted chocolate (I prefer bittersweet here, but semi-sweet will work too).

 

Slices of Quince

"They dined on mince, and slices of quince,
Which they ate with a runcible spoon;
And hand in hand, on the edge of the sand,
They danced by the light of the moon..."
                                      -Edward Lear, "The Owl and the Pussycat"

 I don't have any runcible spoons, which until now has been a non-issue because I've never had quince either. This is probably because I don't live in Roman times, when lovers were said to give each other quince as a pledge of fidelity.  Or perhaps it's because quince is a little high-maintenance: it needs to be sweetened before it can be eaten, since the raw fruit is sour.  Most likely, though, it's because my trusty food magazine has never run an article on it before, tempting me to try it.


I let the fruit sit for a few days in the fruit bowl to let it ripen a bit more, and noticed that the fruit gives off a very sweet scent, which reminded me of the bubble bath my mother used to put in the water when I was little.  I doubt it was intentionally quince-scented, but you never can tell...

 I precooked the quince slices in water with some agave syrup and cinnamon for about 10 minutes.  This softened and sweetened them, making them perfect for the winter crisp recipe I found in a random stack of recipes culled from godknowswhere.  I added a little more agave to the baking dish, tossed in the slices with a few spoonfuls of the cooking water, and topped it with an oat mixture. 


Now all I need is a Roman lover.


Quince Crisp
*note: I cut this recipe in half, since I used only 2 quince. 

Filling:
1/2 C sugar (use less if you toss the slices in agave)
3 TBSP all-purpose flour
5 C quince, sliced (leave peel on)
up to 1/4 C reserved cooking water


Topping:
3/4 C rolled oats
1/3 C brown sugar
1/4 C whole-wheat flour
2 TBSP gr. cinnamon
1 tsp gr. allspice
1/2 tsp gr. ginger 
2-3 TBSP butter, melted

1.  Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

2. Combine filling ingredients, mixing well to coat.  Spoon into 6-cup baking dish, and add enough cooking liquid to keep the fruit moist and a little syrup-y but not soggy.
3. In a small bowl, combine dry topping ingredients and mix well.  Add melted butter, one tablespoon at a time, until mixture is coated and forms small lumps. 
4. Sprinkle topping over filling, and bake for 16-20 minutes, or until filling is bubbly and top is nicely browned.

Turning into a Pumpkin

When I was little, I ate Swiss cheese like it was going out of style. My parents used to tell me I'd turn into Swiss cheese if I ate any more.  That didn't happen.  However, I did become lactose intolerant at adulthood, which was probably Swiss cheese's sweet revenge.

This fall, I am eating and reading about pumpkin like it's going out of style (and yes Dad, I know that's a grammatical faux pas but saying "as though it were going out of style" is just so awkward).  This weekend I came across recipes for pumpkin cake, pumpkin bread, pumpkin pudding (which turned out to be more like pumpkin frittata), pumpkin cornbread, and even pumpkin lasagne. That last one sounds a little sketchy to me.  But no matter-- there are plenty of delicious pumpkin recipes to satisfy my pumpkin-eating soul, such as the Maple Pumpkin Spice Bread I made on Sunday.

Little Orphan Annie and her trusty dog Sandy (also handmade)

Halloween has always been my favorite holiday.  My mother insisted this was the influence of my Celtic heritage. It could just as easily have been the combination of my birthday 2 weeks before, the handmade costumes my mother always made for me,
 the smell of singed pumpkin flesh permeating the air, and THE CANDY.  As anyone who has come within 50 yards of me knows, I am drawn magnetically to anything with sugar. Either way, I get all pumpkined out around Halloween: my friend Christy sends me pumpkin-themed gifts from all over the world, I stock up on canned organic pumpkin at Trader Joe's, and giant pumpkins appear out of nowhere.

While I am sad that I no longer get to trick-or-treat*, I am happy to have discovered how versatile my beloved pumpkins really are.  I roast them and throw them in a pan with a little sausage or bacon and some greens. I bake sweets with them.  I make smoothies with them.  I feed them to my cats.  Yeah, virtually all cats love pumpkin.  Evolutionarily speaking, though, what are the chances of a big cat encountering, let alone cracking open and eating, a pumpkin?

*One of many trick-or-treat memories is me coming home with my little plastic pumpkin filled with candy, and my older brother coming home with a friggin' pillowcase full of candy.  He made sure to point out how much more candy he got.  A day or two later, I figured out his secret candy hiding place.  After that, our piles were even-steven.

Maple Pumpkin Spice Bread

adapted from Vegetarian Times, November 2009

*While the recipe calls for a cup of maple syrup, I used agave syrup with a tablespoon or two of evaporated can juice instead.  It's less than half the price of maple syrup, and agave is low on the glycemic index.

1 C whole wheat flour

1 C all-purpose flour

1 TBSP gr. cinnamon

2 tsp gr. ginger

1/2 tsp gr. allspice

1/2 tsp gr. nutmeg (I used less than 1/4 tsp)

1 1/2 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp baking soda

1 C maple or agave syrup

1 C pumpkin puree

1/2 C canola oil

2 eggs

1/2 C chopped hazelnuts

1 tsp vanilla extract

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Coat a 9x5 loaf pan with cooking spray. 

2. Whisk together flours, spices, baking soda, and baking powder in a large bowl.

3. Whisk together syrup and oil in a separate bowl. Whisk in eggs, and then pumpkin and vanilla.  Stir flour mixture into pumpkin mixture with a spatula, mixing only until combined.  Add hazelnuts. 

4. Pour into prepared pan and bake for 40-50** minutes, or until toothpick inserted in center comes out clean. Cool on rack 5-10 minutes, and then remove from pan to cool completely. 

5. Slice and top with a little bit of pumpkin cream cheese from Trader Joe's.  Wait, that's not in the recipe...

** My oven is temperamental and I usually have to bake desserts for less than the recommended time, at a slightly lower temperature than indicated.  However, this bread needed extra time in the oven, and the very edge got a little black.  It has not affected the flavor, but know that
it will be important to check the center with a toothpick regularly.
I  made a few muffins with this batter, since my pan is smaller than 9x5, which could also affect baking time.

Not burned. And a cute muffin to boot.

I heart Trader Joe's.