A taste of Italy via the Schwabenland

My dear friend, Mrs. Rempfer, a Stuttgarterin who had a passion for Italy, was given this recipe for cantuccini by an Italian friend of hers some years ago. During one of my visits to see Mrs. Rempfer, she and I made cantuccini together. I thought they were incredibly good, so she graciously gave me the recipe. In the intervening years, I think I've made them a good dozen times, or so. If you're keen, here's the recipe:

Cantuccini

300g flour

150-180g vanilla sugar

1tsp. baking powder

150g nuts (Many folk seem to prefer almonds, but I'm a fan of hazelnuts.)

2-3 egg whites

30g butter

Mix together all dry ingredients in bowl (minus the nuts), then add the butter.  I tend to use my fingers to integrate butter as best I can before adding the egg whites.  Use a spoon to mix together, then add the nuts.  By this point I've set the spoon aside and am again using my fingers to try and distribute nuts throughout the dough.

A nice accompaniment to coffee.  Bene!

Divide dough in half and roll out with one's hands into two, long portions approx. 2cm thick.  Place on baking tray lined with parchment paper and bake for 30 minutes at 200C.  Remove from oven and let cool a bit before slicing into 1-2cm pieces.  I prefer a slightly 'chunkier' biscuit, but it's really up to the individual.  Return cantuccini to the oven and bake for an additional 10-15 minutes until golden brown.

Charity shop finds

The hubs and I recently found a righteous-looking waffle iron at a charity shop and bought it. The darn thing didn't even look like it had been used. It's a bit bigger than I remember waffle irons being from my childhood. And it's also square in shape instead of round. The irons pop out for easy cleaning as well.   

I have an old Mirro cookbook from the 30s that has a ton of white flour recipes. As I've had success with Mirro pancakes, I decided to try its 'regulation waffle' recipe. 

I think the recipe calls for a bit too much raising agent. The waffles were TALL. But all the butter seemed to have done the trick; the waffles did not stick to the irons one iota. When making the waffles a second time, we halved the recipe and only put in a half a tsp. baking powder. In addition, I added orange zest, vanilla & cacao nibs to the mix. The waffles turned out very well. 










Here's a pic of the monster waffles cooking. 














Another charity shop find is this (I assume) anti-Joseph McCarthy button. 

Let's bring back it back, but with The Donald's surname instead. Heck, I'd wear one. 

The elements of good cooking

Calavera/sugar skull

The foot is slowly coming around, but I'm still spending a good deal of my days lounging on the sofa. Fortunately for me, Netflix is presently adding lots of new content to watch. I spent most of yesterday evening checking out a new series called Salt Fat Acid Heat hosted by a chef called Samin Nosrat. The show is based on Nosrat's well received cookbook of the same name. Each episode corresponds with one of the four elements of good cooking. The Salt episode is shot primarily in Japan. Fat is shot in Italy. Acid takes us down to Mexico. And, finally, Heat sees Samin back on her hometurf of Berkeley.

(Side note: Both she and I worked at the same restaurant in Berkeley for a time back in the mid-2000s. I don't remember much from that experience save for a chance meeting with Bill Niman--then still of Niman Ranch--when he dropped by to chat sausage with the restaurant owner.)

In her show, Samin takes the viewer on a 'salt, fat, acid, heat' journey to experience the elements of good cooking and proper food preparation. Aside from feeling like I should really try more when making a meal, what really struck me when watching the show was Samin's absolute enthusiasm for simple food prepared well. She smiles easily and laughs a lot. During the episode shot in Italy, we see Samin buying a proscuitto sandwich at an open air market. She bites into the sandwich and immediately gushes. She loves it. In that moment, I wanted to be right there with her, eating a proscuitto sandwich squealing, no pun intended, with delight.

PS: The sugar skull sketch above was done while watching the episode shot in Mexico.

American Food

As a study-abroad-student in Tübingen back in the 90s, I had the pleasure of living in a German dormitory.  My floor, save for me, two French students, and an angry Turk who'd grown up in Germany, was entirely German.  We shared a rather large kitchen.  Most of us used the kitchen almost every night to cook meals.  Occasionally, we'd cook a shared meal, but, more often than not, we cooked solitary meals to be consumed near one another at the table.

I was enamored of the market that set up each Wednesday in the town square and took to buying fresh fruit and veg on a weekly basis.  I didn't know it initially, but by buying fresh produce and cooking it for dinner in our dorm kitchen I'd managed to break down a rather large stereotype the Germans held about Americans.  That is, of course, that we ate heavily processed foods at every meal, and didn't really cook so much as eat McDonald's (they had said this to me) or pour goop out of cans to heat up.

Am Markt

I am a child of the 70s and, sure, we'd eaten our fair share of canned and frozen veggies, but we had also had the pleasure of growing our own produce in the back garden as well as buying it fresh at our local markets.

My grandparents and great-grandparents hailed from Scandinavia, England and Ireland.  I have relatives from Mexico and East Asia, too.  So, what does an American eat?

Chilaquiles?  Flank steak over rice with soy sauce?  Pickled herring on brown bread?  Mac-n-cheese?  Avocado and shrimp over lettuce? Home-made plain yogurt with honey drizzled over it? (Hint: we ate all of these things.)

We are a country made up of many different ethnic groups.  We are a lumpy stew, if you like.  So, too, is our food.


American food is the food you grew up eating.

American food is not burgers, fries and a milkshake, unless, I suppose, that that is what you grew up eating, and, might I say, bummer for you.  My parents never cooked us french fries, nor did they blend us milkshakes for dessert.  Never once was uttered, "Just one more bite of double cheeseburger, then you're excused from the table."

In addition to the above mentioned fare, here is a sampling of the food we regularly ate:

*boiled garlic sausages with cabbage, carrots, and potatoes (all cooked in a pressure cooker) served on a plate with spicy mustard on the side.

*artichokes from the garden with mayonnaise and some sort of casserole.

*Dad's homemade cioppino with shellfish that he had caught himself down at the shore.  I'd write 'we', but I can't say any of us kids really helped much outside of baiting the crab traps.

*lasagna-dad's grandmother's recipe-with some green vegetable accompaniment.

*stir-fried tofu with veggies (all in a wok)--this was the 70s in California, folks!

*Limburger cheese sandwiches--Dad was the only one who ate them, actually.

*meatloaf!

*baked chicken with rosemary and garlic

*lima beans, brussel sprouts, broccoli

Fridge staples: pickled herring in wine sauce, stinky cheese, Parmesan, mayo, mustard, ketchup, butter pickles, dill pickles, butter, milk, yogurt and orange juice.

If we did have fast-food burgers, then it was an occasional 'treat' and not at all a daily occurrence.  McDonald's wasn't the end-all-be-all either.  A & W Rootbeer was our burger joint of choice.

Good eats.

Recently, I had the pleasure of chatting with a lovely woman at a cookery shop.  I couldn't tell where she was from by her accent, but it was full of heavy consonants and flat vowels.  Her English, however, was fluent.  She was buying a housewarming gift for a friend.  We chatted about mini Le Creuset cups, milk pitchers with floral prints, and what we would like to receive as housewarming gifts ourselves. It turned out, actually, that she was "from" Philly. I really like Philly and told her so.  We each took turns talking about the things we liked best about her city of Philadelphia. I imagine that her version of American food may differ from mine slightly, but it's American nonetheless. 

Lumpy stew are we.

Channa Masala

Sometimes, when I'm lucky, I'll find both tasty and easy-to-make recipes in the New York Times. An oldie but a goodie was this: Channa Masala.

Although the recipe calls for a heap of spices that I didn't currently have in my cabinet, and, seemingly, a lot of prep. steps, Channa Masala is remarkably easy to make.

Ingredients:

45oz. chickpeas cooked/1.5 cup dry
2 blk cardamom pods
1/3 cup neutral oil*
1 med. Spanish onion**
21/2 tbsp. tomato paste
6 cloves garlic
9 dried dates
4 tsp. ground cumin
2 tsp. kosher salt
1 tsp. pepper
1 tsp. cayenne
2 whole star anise

Preparation:

Crack cardamom pods, remove seeds, then crush and set aside.
Chop dates and set aside.
Chop onions and garlic and set aside.
In a medium pot heat oil until it shimmers. (Shimmers?)
Add onions to oil, stirring until they are brown (7-8 min).
Add garlic and let cook for about a minute before adding tomato paste then reduce heat.
Add cardamom and all the remaining ingredients--minus the chickpeas--and saute for a couple of minutes.
Add chickpeas and a half a cup of water-enough to make the contents "wet".
Heat mixture, stirring occasionally to incorporate all the flavors.***
Keep warm until serving.
Serves 6.

*we used rapeseed oil.
**we used a regular yellow onion.
***we found that the longer the mixture simmered, the better the flavor of the dish, so, if you have the patience, then let it "stew" for, at least, 30-45 minutes.

New Year's

'Well, she should just have a glass of wine to warm up, but she won't do that!'

This is what my mom said aloud to no one in particular after I mentioned that I was a bit cold at a small New Year's dinner function at a family friend's house last night. The above sort of complaint-rant would have been fine, if I hadn't quit drinking last December. It's not that I won't have a drink, like some obstinate child. It's that I feel I currently should not drink. I didn't make a big show of stopping drinking, but did mention having quit at a party--where all these New Year's revelers also were-- I had given at my place this past August. The guests were well-stocked with beer and wine, but I wasn't partaking. The question 'why aren't you drinking?' came up a few times, so I answered.

Just before midnight it seemed to be thought that not drinking didn't include a toast with Sekt & someone tried to pour me a glass. 'Just a little bit is okay to ring in 2017, right?' 'Oh, no thank you.' One of the party hosts also doesn't drink, so we two toasted with juice. -quite nice.

I wasn't too phased with what mom had said although it bugged a bit. And I imagine that many who don't drink are faced with the whole 'won't you have a little glass of champagne?' on Dec. 31st. What did annoy, to be honest, was my mom's Trump-voting husband's commentary. He'd managed to squeeze in a few pro-Trump/pro-Russia opinions over the dinner table that no one cared to hear. He also apparently thinks that any car sticker identifying him as having been in the Navy in the 60s would make him a target for 'terrorists'. Such ID got him 'out of more speeding tickets' than he could count, but now it could kill him. All mom could do in response was to verbally jab at her husband in a really ineffectual way that wound up making everything feel just a bit worse. After he'd managed to gamble away their savings on a stupid house-flip scheme back in 2009, thus relegating them to renting in one of the most economically depressed areas in No. California far away from friends and family, I'd begun disliking him a great deal. I think that dislike has now spilled over into hate.

Oh, and the neo-Nazi brat that raged at my German group for not being right extremist a-holes like he is sent a mail to all the German club organizers on New Year's stating 'Das Reich kommt wieder'. From what I recall, he lives with his grandma. -wonder if she knows what's percolating in that head of his.

So how was your New Year's? Better than mine, I hope!

'Real' pretzels

I can't seem to find food grade lye anywhere.  I've looked in health food stores, pharmacies and in international food shops. I can tell you where to find pro-biotics, feta from Bulgaria and bone marrow, but lye?  Nope.  The big supermarket chains, of course, I skipped looking in entirely.  Someone told me recently that Mexican grocery stores stock food grade lye.  I guess I'll have to find out what 'lye' is in Spanish and go on the hunt.  Before that, however, I'm happy to say that our local German market stocks a pretzel mix (just add oil and water!) for lazies who can't be arsed to follow an actual recipe.  Normally, I wouldn't go for that sort of thing, but this mix comes with 10g of food grade lye.  The magic ingredient has been found.

Lye-lye-lye!

The pretzel prep is pretty basic: mix yeast, flour, and water until it forms into a ball.  Let the dough stand for thirty minutes before rolling it out into a 'loaf'.  Cut the dough into 8 to 10 pieces, then shape accordingly.  Brush the pretzels with the lye solution and let stand another twenty minutes before baking.  Easy-peasy.  The lye didn't quite do its thing and the pretzels came out with a matte appearance instead of the lovely sheen one associates with Brezeln from the Fatherland.  I can't say I was wholly disappointed in that the pretzels were still fairly chewy and had just a slight crunch when biting into them.

Tastes better than it looks.

Protest purchase

Last week, a woman with a shock of bleach-blonde hair and a French accent was chanting 'rabbits are pets, not food!' in a booming voice directly across from a woman selling 'meat rabbits' at my local farmers' market.  Holding some sort of sign & standing off to the side, stood a four-year-old with his mother, both were chanting the anti-rabbit-meat slogan.  The young'un tried to recite in tandem with the women, but wasn't very successful.  His little voice became a distant echo.  The whole production was rather strange and very disruptive to the normally mellow market.  I stopped near the rabbit meat stand and took in the scene.  The woman selling rabbits stood at her table pretending she wasn't being barked about not ten feet away.  Although I'd seen the Rabbit Lady at the market on prior visits, I hadn't been too interested in buying any meat as her rabbits are sold both whole and frozen.  I prefer the meat already butchered and ready to cook. 

I figured that the protesters were probably driving people away from visiting her stand--no such fuss in front of the beef and poultry stands--, so I went over and asked her about her product, her farm, rabbit recipes she might recommend, and signed up on her mailing list.  I also bought a rabbit.  The protesters 'drove me to it', in a way, with all their ruckus.  Outside of fancy restaurants and specialist butcher shops (which are about as rare as a four-leaf clover 'round these parts), one really can't find rabbit meat for sale in No. California.  Rabbit seems a sort of luxury item, but not one I'd shy away from eating, if it were more readily available.  I was certainly spoiled living in Switzerland, where both rabbit and horse are sold in supermarkets.  There are also no protesters to contend with in CH, so that's a plus.

The thaw before the cook.

A few days after the 'protest purchase', I received an email from the rabbit farmer letting those on the mailing list know that the famers' market had 'ejected' her stand from the market because of the protests.  She also wrote that she endeavors to set up a possible delivery service to those who live within a certain range of her business.  What I don't understand is why the market organizers could not have removed the protesters to a spot outside of market grounds in order to carry on their protesting.  Could there not already be a precedent for such things?  That way the protesters could keep yelling and the Rabbit Lady could keep selling.  Instead the rowdy anti-rabbit crowd (of three) were rewarded for obnoxious behavior and the solo farmer punished for hers.

As I write, the rabbit is cooking.  I'm attempting to make rabbit stifado.  The kitchen smells of spices and red wine.  So far, so good.   Thanks, Rabbit Lady, and may you find another venue for selling your wares.

Squirrel and birthday.

Over the past month, or so, I have consistently been seeing empty peanut shells on the back deck.  Not a lot of them, mind you, but enough to make me wonder if birds are bringing their booty to my yard and snacking.  We've a lot of crows that hang about out back and, of course, there's the crafty Jay, among other bit players.

This morning I got up early to have a coffee at the kitchen table & contemplate my (birth) day.  As I sat I saw a plump squirrel standing by the deck chairs with a peanut in its mouth.  The peanut was partially shelled, not yet fully 'enjoyed' by my wee friend.  I got up to get a better look out the back window, making the squirrel shoot off, peanut firmly in mouth.  No shells on the deck this morning.

Holiday weekend

It's a holiday weekend here, but, after living some years on the Swiss German schedule, I just plain forgot about the whole thing.  On Friday at the shops people were wishing each other a 'happy long weekend' and I thought, aha--something's up!  The usual thing would be to barbeque, so I rang up some friends to see if they'd like to come over and break in the new grill.  Of course, they had already made plans by this time, and, to top it off, the San Mateo bridge is closed the entire weekend, making it especially hard for folk to travel to and from this area.

BBQ for two tonight it will be.

BBQing out by the bottlebrush.

 Fish masquerading as pizza triangles.

Cranberry sauce with a kick!

Cylindrical, good.

A quick search on the internet last night for a fast and easy cranberry sauce recipe to go with Christmas dinner yielded this beauty from the BBC Good Food blog.  A few minutes' preparation and then approximately ten minutes on the hob and presto, lovely cranberry sauce.  If I had known that making cranberry sauce were this easy, I would have done it years ago.  I blame both not having had access to fresh cranberries in my California youth and being a devotee of the canned cranberry 'log' for as long as I can remember for keeping me in the dark about the excellence of real cranberry sauce.  Not having done a proper shop before the stores closed for Christmas, I actually didn't have all the ingredients listed, so had to make do with a bit of improvisation.  What I came up with was oh-so-divine.  I can only imagine how tasty the original recipe must be.

Original ingredients:
250 gr fresh cranberries
100 gr light muscovado sugar
100 ml orange juice

Delightful, de-lovely, delish!

My ingredients:
340 gr fresh cranberries*
100 gr dark muscovado sugar
50 ml mandarin juice
50 ml pomegranite syrup
zest of one lemon

As per the recipe, I tossed the sugar, juice, syrup and zest in a pot and brought to a boil.  Then I added the cranberries, reduced heat, and let simmer for about ten minutes.  The recipe states one should let the cranberries simmer for five minutes, but I was enjoying listening to the cranberries emit a soft 'pop' while I stirred them that I let the time get away from me.  The sauce, really, was no worse for the wear and most of the cranberries had retained their shape and a slight firmness when bitten into.

One would think that my having used 90gr more cranberries than the recipe called for would lead to a less sweet-tasting sauce, but I figured my adding the sugary pomegranate syrup would make up for the lack of sugar.  Not only did it, but the syrup may have lent another layer of flavor to the whole thing--that and the mandarin juice--making it all the tastier! 

*the cranberries came from the USA!

Olive Walnut Bread

Ever since purchasing a Kitchen Aid mixer last month, the hubs has been regularly making white bread with packaged yeast.   Before the mixer came into our lives, we baked sourdough using a starter and kneaded the dough by hand.  I chucked out our not-so-stellar sourdough starter before going on a two-week holiday back in July and haven't been inspired to begin another one.  Keeping a tub of gooey, flour-y mess healthy and teeming with yeast seemed, ultimately, too hard to maintain. 

Gone are the days of seeing bread baking as some sort of 'hard work'.  How we now make bread feels quite easy in comparison.  Of course, I am not complaining and I do like having kitchen tasks made easy.  The mixer kneads the bread in about ten minutes and the rise time, presumably because of the robustness of the dried yeast, seems to be cut in half, from approximately 7 hours, or so, to 4 hours.  Hubs can basically make this loaf with his eyes closed and for that I am glad.  Lately, though, I have been itching to bake a loaf with a bit of pizazz.

Yesterday, I found what I was looking for when happened upon an olive loaf recipe while thumbing through a free newspaper from Josefwiese.

Here is the recipe compliments of Bettina Bär, head chef at Kiosk Josefwiese:

1kg light spelt flour
2 packages of yeast
1 tbsp. sea salt, or a bit less if the olives used are quite salty
1 handful of green olives
1 small bunch of parsley or basil, finely cut
1 tbsp. olive oil
1 tsp. balsamic vinegar
approximately 1/3 cup very warm water (in order for yeast to activate), approximately 21/2 cups warm water or just enough until dough pulls away from the sides of the mixing bowl

We halved the above recipe, omitted the herbs, added walnuts, and, instead of spelt, we used 'Bauernmehl' which is a mixture of flours: spelt, wheat and rye.

Put all the dry ingredients into a mixing bowl, then add the nuts and olives, both fairly well chopped, and mix together by hand a few minutes.  Attach the mixing bowl to its base on the mixer, then add the yeast and 1/3 cup of water while the dough mixes.  Then slowly add the warm water until the dough forms into a ball and comes away from the sides of the mixing bowl.  Turn the dough out onto a floured surface and shape into a well-formed ball.  Place dough into an oiled bowl and cover either with a moist towel or plastic wrap for approximately 1 to 2 hours or overnight in the fridge.  Turn dough out onto baking sheet and bake at 200c for 30 to 40 minutes.  Remove from oven and let cool.

After ten minutes in the mixer.

Being formed into a ball.

Rolling around an oiled bowl.

Ready to rise!

Finished product

Hubs trying a piece.

My slice!

Cranberry-Orange Cake

I am completely besotted with this tea cake recipe from Sarah Mayor.  It is a fantastically moist and balanced cake.  Better yet, it is also fairly versatile.  Ms. Mayor suggests that one substitute other types of berries in lieu of raspberries.  Thanks to my local market being out of product, I did just that and the cake turned out very well.

Whirring away

 The hubs pronounced the raspberry-lemon loaf as one of the best cakes he has ever eaten, so I wanted to bake it again and take it to a party I had been invited to at the end of the week.  It was sure to be a hit.  Unfortunately, on the day I went to the store to purchase cake ingredients there were not only no raspberries, but NO berries at all to be had.  I didn't have time to flit from shop to shop in search of fresh berries, so I decided to substitute dried cranberries for raspberries and add orange zest in addition to the lemon zest that the recipe called for.  Again, I used quark instead of yogurt.  The cranberry-orange-quark cake went over really well with the Swiss folk at the party, so much so that, by the end of the night, the cake had been eaten up and one gal even asked me for the recipe.  I gladly sent her the above link to Ms. Mayor's tea loaf recipe.

The images below show the same cranberry-orange delight except this time I used cream cheese in lieu of quark or yogurt.  I hadn't actually wanted to use cream cheese, but I had forgotten to pick up quark at the store before throwing the ingredients together.  There just happened to be a bit of cream cheese tucked into the back of the fridge, so in it went.  I look forward to seeing how this latest incarnation of the loaf turned out!

Dense batter

1/3 of the batter

First layer of cranberries

Fresh from the oven

Raspberry-Lemon Cake

While perusing the blog-o-sphere I ran across a very smart-looking baking blog, Cake, Crumbs and Cooking.  The latest entry showed photos of a gorgeous blueberry cake.  Intrigued and a bit hungry, I read on and eventually clicked on the link provided showing the original tea loaf recipe made with raspberries.

I made a quick trip to the store for raspberries, lemon and ground almonds, then came back and set about baking my version of the cake.  I made two substitutions to the original recipe.  Caster sugar does not seem to exist here in CH, so I used granulated instead.  I also used quark instead of yogurt.  I had been meaning to bake with quark since moving to Switzerland a year ago, but, until now, had no inspiration to do so.

Fresh from the oven.

As C.C. and C. mentioned, the batter was so stiff and I wondered how the loaf would turn out.  Would it be too dense?  Too dry?

Removed from tin with lemon-sugar mixture drizzled on top.

Dry cake fears were unfounded.  The cake was moist and light.  The raspberries' tartness served as a good counterbalance to the sweetness of the cake.  Served with a cup of Tetley's, the loaf was a hit with the hubs.

Tea and cake!

And again for breakfast the next day!

Lemon Lavender 'Kugelhopf' Cake

While I used a traditional Kugelhopf form to bake this cake, I would actually call the cake I baked a 'Bundt'.  From what I can tell (and taste), the Bundt cake takes only its form, literally, from the Kugelhopf form of Europe, but not its recipe.

Here is the recipe I adapted (and halved) from the Tonka Bean Bundt Cake recipe posted by fabulously talented Trotamundos:

205 gr flour
120 ml milk
165 gr sugar
114 gr unsalted butter
3/8 tsp. salt
3/4 tbsp. baking powder (I used a bit less and the cake turned out fine.)
2 eggs
Zest of one lemon, juice of half a lemon (or more, as I found the flavour of the lemon to be just discernible)
A few pinches of dried lavender--approx. 1 tbsp

Cream together the butter and sugar.  Then add eggs one at a time, beating each thoroughly.  Stir in salt and baking powder.  Add milk and flour, alternating between each, mixing well after each addition.  Mix in dried lavender, lemon zest and juice.  Pour batter into a buttered and floured form (or whatever method you use to keep the cake from sticking) and bake at 165-170c for approx. one hour or until thoroughly baked.  Remove from oven and let cake stand in form for ten minutes before inverting onto a cooling rack.

I have yet to find the perfect glaze.  Any suggestions?

BBQed Lemonade

All hail The Meatwave, home of all things Grill!

The hubs and I were searching for a marinade/rub/sauce to use for our upcoming grill party when we found this recipe for Grilled Lemonade.

The original recipe makes approx. 7 glasses of lemonade.  Since we're only two people (and didn't actually have enough honey in the cupboard with which to make the full recipe) we quartered the recipe.  I love the flavor of Rosemary, so next time I'll use both more and let it steep longer in the brew before removing.

Sugared lemon halves await the grill.

Honey-Rosemary-Water was cooked on the stove.

Tasty balcony treat!

Language and recipes

So I found this gorgeous-looking cake recipe while searching the internet in vain for something sweet-tasting with Tonka.

Photo credit: Trotamundos

The food and photography blog, Food and Cook by Trotamundos, is a visual delight put together by someone who not only is a dab hand in the kitchen, but also a pro with the camera.  My problem is that can neither speak nor read Spanish and feel that attempting to translate this page will prove beyond my ken.  Oh, but I soooo want to try!

I'd wager that after you have looked at her Tonka Bean Bundt Cake post you will want to bake this cake, too.  Or maybe just eat it. :)

Baking update at 23.30

Here is my paltry version of the cake in the above photo.  One of the only good things I can say about this cake is that it very smoothly came out of the form with no fuss, no muss.

The cake that looks WAY better than it tastes.

Baking update on 30.6.13

Undaunted, I made the cake again last night with a few crucial changes.  The initial cake did not seem to fit my baking form, so this time I halved the recipe, but stuck to the original one hour bake time.  I didn't think that the first cake had enough 'pizzaz', so I added to the batter both the zest of one lemon and a half a teaspoon of a Tonka-beans-soaked-in-rum concoction.  The results were positive: the cake came out thoroughly baked and tastes faintly of vanilla, almond and lemon zest and I really could not be more pleased!

Tonka Bean Shortbread

While scouring the internet for a tonka bean cake recipe, I stumbled across two very smart food blogs from Canada, Food Mama and Dinner with Julie.  Instead of finding cake, I found a tasty recipe for shortbread a la Dinner with Julie.  Fortunately for me and the Canadian bloggers, we are not subject to the vagaries of the United States Food and Drug Administration and can fairly easily purchase the fragrant and flavorful tonka bean for our baking needs.

Slightly crispy around the edges, but still very tasty.

For those of you in the USA, I would wager that the shortbread would taste fab without tonka beans, too.

Here is the recipe from Dinner with Julie:

Tonka Bean Shortbread

3/4 cup butter, at room temperature
2/3 cup sugar
1/2 tsp. salt
1 egg yolk
1 tsp. vanilla
1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 tsp. finely grated Tonka bean (optional – experiment with different spices, too!)

In a large bowl, beat the butter, sugar and salt with an electric mixer for 2 minutes, until pale and fluffy. Beat in the egg yolk and vanilla.

Add the flour and grated Tonka bean and stir just until you have a soft dough. Shape it into two logs, wrap and refrigerate for an hour (or up to a few days) or freeze for up to 6 months.

When ready to bake, slice 1/4″ thick and bake on a parchment-lined sheet at 350F for 15 minutes, or until pale golden around the edges. Transfer to a wire rack to cool.

Tonka beans

Forbidden 'fruit'

Another good thing about not living in the States is my seemingly easy access to certain products banned by the FDA.  Tonka beans, formerly used in the USA in making the cream soda of yore before being replaced with a synthetic in 1954, have not left the spice racks of Europe and I'm all the better for it, culinary-wise.  I guess if taken in HUGE quantities, coumarin, a chemical found within the bean known to cause medical complications in lab rats, could be harmful to humans.  I shouldn't think that a bit of shavings from one lowly bean into, say, whipped cream or a fruit pie would do much harm, so I am game to use them.  Anyone have a cookbook pre-mid 20th century they would like to lend me?  I am sure that the desserts section would be awash in tonka-infused treats.

Oh, heck, who am I kidding?  I don't need someone's grandma's old cookbook when I have the internet at my beck and call.  Yippie!

Take at gander at this:
Ori's Dessert Bar  Ori, a marvelous-sounding chef at whose dessert table I would like to sit, offers up a luscious-sounding Tonka Bean mousse, and, as if that weren't enough, a ganache.  *sigh*  Read it and weep with tears of joy.

So I bought the beans yesterday and have already put a few into a jar of sugar.  I expect that by the end of the week the sugar will smell faintly of vanilla, cherry and almond.  I may make a simple syrup with it in order to mix it with mineral water for an interesting take on Italian soda.  I could also use instead the Tonka sugar when a baking recipe calls for granulated sugar.  Imagine chocolate chip cookies with a little extra umpf!

Dig this:
Brandy Alexander
30 ml cognac
30 ml creme de cacao dark
30 ml cream
Shake and strain into a cocktail glass and grate Tonka bean instead of nutmeg on top.

With Brandy Alexander in hand, let's all party like it's pre-1954.  Yowza!

Guardian of Delights

The food writers in the Guardian newspaper tickle my 'food bone'.  I have baked savoury pies and sourdough breads a la Dan Lepard and whipped up lovely fudge and 'killer' brownies from Nigel Slater.  These men are both more than a dab hand in the kitchen and I am all the better baker for it.

I somewhat recently stumbled upon Nigel Slater's take on herbed salts.  Below is an extract from a Guardian piece dated 14.4.2013.  The bold face print is mine.

Flavoured salts are good with grilled meats, too – and making them is easy. You chop the herb leaves (thyme, rosemary, fennel or lavender buds, perhaps) and mix them one-third to two with salt, let the mixture dry a little, then keep it in a stoppered jar. The process becomes even more interesting when you marry a couple of herbs together or introduce a little spice, or even garlic.

Right now my favourite is a salt that has thyme leaves and crushed juniper folded through it. In the last couple of weeks its cold Nordic notes have seasoned lamb cutlets from the grill and a sea bream baked whole. The salt also had an outing with sautéed potatoes, scattered over as they finished cooking.

Rosemary needles, dill fronds, fennel, thyme, savory and celery seeds can be used to add a herbal note to salt. But less popular herbs are interesting, too. Lavender works nicely with grilled chicken. I grew myrtle last year, a herb that has seen less of the inside of my kitchen than it could. Its slight bitterness needs to be tamed. It worked well enough in a pork casserole (with apples and cider) but I like the leaves best when they are pounded with salt (use a pestle and mortar), then used to bring life to a beef casserole.

We can crank the herb salt up with other flavourings, too. Serving grilled chicken skin, salty and crisp, with a dish of mayo is one of the better ideas I have come across lately – but we can take it on a bit. By grilling the skin until it crunches, then crushing it into a coarse powder and tossing the result with sea salt and a few herbs, we have an original and extraordinary seasoning that can be used with both green and root vegetables, potatoes and, as I do today, popcorn.

Of course you can do the work in a food processor, but I prefer to chop the herbs by hand or to mash them with a pestle and mortar. Herb-flavoured salts will keep in a sealed jar for several weeks (though not the chicken-skin one below). The crucial detail is to let them dry for 24 hours first. The most successful way to do this is to scatter the pounded herbs and salt on a tray, in a shallow layer, and leave it in a warm but airy place. Bottle tightly, then keep it near the cooker, using it as the mood takes you.

Spring has seen a proliferation of potted herbs at the major supermarkets here in Zurich.  I recently purchased lavender, oregano, and sage plants and stuck them in the sunniest spot in the flat.  The sage has developed some little, white-ish spots on its leaves, but the other two seem to be flourishing.  Not keen on the look of the sage, I have instead been cooking with sprigs of lavender in just about every meat dish made this past week and I rather like its flavour.  Last year, I put some flowers from the lavender we growing in the garden of our old flat into a jar of sugar, so we're set to make lavender lemon drop cocktails as the mood strikes.

  

Happy Lavender!

Lavender salt will be next!