An awesome online class that begins March 7th. Think about joining me, Heather (our teacher and host, and many, many others in this food experience.

Davies claims to be a “passionate home cook and omnivore” and thinks that if you “want the world the be a better place, you should start by making sure everyone is well fed.  She lives in the mountains of Oregon with her vegetarian husband and two carnivorous dogs.”

Jam Today is a series of short stories, each of which is anchored by a recipe–though the recipes are loose and rarely include measurements.  This is more one of those reading cookbooks where you get a feel for how this woman eats and feeds her family and it’s fascinating, a lot like walking down a street at night and peeking through the lit windows into people’s lives.  Except that I don’t have to feel guilty like I’m doing something wrong.  Davies has invited me in, and I’m so glad she did.  I tried one of her favorite childhood recipes last week.  She said kids would love it, and mine did.  I took chicken thighs and legs, salted them, and placed them in a baking dish.  Then melted about 2 T of butter and poured it over the chicken, along with several good splashes of Soy Sauce (probably 4 T).  I just eyeballed this because the ingredients and cooking time were all the directions Davies provided.  Then I baked in a 350 degree oven for about 50 minutes–though Davies suggests cooking for an hour so that there are little burnt bits on the chicken edges and in the pan.  Simple, easy, and delicious.

Do give the recipe and the book a read but don’t trust me–there’s an interview and review here at Mystery House. And just for some gossip:  Davies is married to idiosyncratic film director, Alexander Cox.

I found a recipe by Deborah Madison and did a riff on it.  Instead of making her Tangelo-Tangerine Pudding, mine was Orange-Cutie (pie) pudding.  And it was amazingly good.

This is an adaption from Madison’s forthcoming book, “Seasonal Fruit Deserts.”

1 t finely grated orange zest

1 T sugar

3 T cornstarch

2 C fresh squeezed orange and “cutie” juice

pinch salt

agave nectar to taste

1 T butter

1. smash the orange zest with the sugar to moisten the sugar with the orange zest’s oils.  Transfer to a 1 quart saucepan along with the cornstarch, juice, and salt.  Stir to dissolve the cornstarch.

2.  bring the mixture to a boil and cook, stirring, until the juice has thickened, after just a few minutes.  Cook one more minute, then turn off the heat and whisk in the butter.  Taste, and if it needs more sweetener, add the agave nectar.

3.  divide among glasses and chill for 2 hours.

4. I put a dollop of whipped cream on the top of mine.

We have a new kitten in our house–it’s almost 6 months old.  It drives me CRAZY.  To begin with, it isn’t the brightest crayon in the pack, although it can be cute and cuddly.  But he loves to jump up on the kitchen counters, play in the sink, and dig lemons out of a glass of water.  Occasionally I’ll catch it running around the house with a lemon in its mouth or find a random sliced lemon on the floor behind the couch.  This is one wild cat.  I usually give him two opportunities and then he’s out–kicked out the back door to go expend some energy in the yard, where cats ought to be.  And as crazy as he makes me, I’ve not yet considered cooking him for dinner BUT apparently that is a specialty in some parts of Tuscany and has made all the foodie news this morning.  A chef gave the recipe out for a cat casserole on an Italian cooking show and animal righters (and cat lovers) everywhere are in an uproar.  All I’ve got to say is, “Better watch out Nibbles!  I might ship you to Tuscany if you don’t stop playing on the kitchen counters!”  See the chef giving out his famous recipe here:  http://www.pbpulse.com/dining/2010/02/17/italian-cooking-show-host-upsets-viewers-with-recipe-for-cat/

The picture on the front cover has been niggling at me for a while so I checked out Martha Hall Foose’s Screen Doors and Sweet Tea:  Recipes and Tales from a Southern Cook from the library.  As much a treatise on life in the South as a collection of recipes, Screen Doors makes for fun reading, if you don’t cook much.

You’ll find a lot of standard southern fare here:  Turtle Soup, Collard Greens, Cornbread, plus a few things I don’t think of when I think of southern food:  Polka-Dot Shortbread, for example.

I enjoyed reading the book and looking at the pictures more than cooking out of it, though.  I think because the first recipe I tried, I found an error.  Yep, a mistake.  And I found it only AFTER I’d already made the mistake.

I invited a girlfriend over for lunch, promising her something tasty from Screen Doors.  I thought I’d give the chicken salad on pg. 48 a go–simple, no big deal.  I make chicken salad all the time and this recipe was pretty close to the one I wing on a regular basis, except that this one calls for homemade mayonnaise (pg. 66).

So . . . insanely enough I’d never tried to make mayonnaise before.  Or if I have, it was so long ago that I don’t remember it.  I prepped the chicken salad ingredients and then got to work on the mayo.

I didn’t think about checking the recipe in advance to make sure the measurements were accurate.  I just TRUSTED that they were.  Nope.  Should have double-checked.

I followed the instructions to the letter:  1 large egg, 1 large egg yolk, 1 T lemon juice, 1 T white vinegar, 1 t dry mustard, 1 t salt, 1 t sugar, dash of cayenne, and 2 CUPS of OIL.

Let’s just say I was rushed, running late and not paying enough attention when I started pouring the oil into the blender.  I was merrily dumping it and watching it thinking–that sure is runny.  Maybe I need to whirl it for longer.  So I kept blending but the mayo kept getting thinner and thinner.  I know that the homemade stuff is not going to look exactly like my Hellman’s, but come on–it wasn’t even close.  

In a panic–my friend was due any minute–I rifled through another cookbook on the counter I’d been reading and it, too, included a recipe for mayonnaise.  Yep, you guessed it:

Mayonnaise breaks down to this ratio:  1 EGG to 1 CUP Oil.  Everything else can vary but this remains constant.  Dumped homemade mayo in trash.  Brought out the Hellman’s.  (As a side note, my girlfriend walked in and said-”yum!  Lemon smoothies!)

Thinking I’d give Fooses’s book one more try, I made the Ginger Molasses Cookies with rolled sugar on pg. 218.  All family members ate one.  There was a general agreement of “they are ok.”  And the rest are still sitting in the cookie jar.  Guess I’ll dump ‘em tomorrow and try something different.

As much as I enjoyed the down-home feel of this book, I give it 1.  It’s worth a quick peak for the pictures, though.

1 Star

Click on image to see a video with the author

Actually, many of the recipes are doable for the home cook.  I tackled three.

My daughter and I have been having an argument about the carrot cake at a local coffee shop.  I think it tastes terrible–freezer burned, dried out, just no good.  She likes it.  It’s $6 a slice.  So I bet her that I could cook a better version.  I tried the carrot cake cupcakes on pg. 317, and they were a hit.  She agreed–much better.  The cupcakes were moist and the cream cheese frosting just right–tangy and not too sweet.  Maybe I’ll set up a booth in the front yard and sell these for $5 a piece.  Undercut the competition.

But it was the soup crackers on pg. 278 that the kids really fell for.  This recipe made about 30 1 1/2 inch crackers and before I’d barely gotten them out of the oven, the kids had snarfed down the lot.  I had to fight with them to get 2 to take to the husband–just so he would know what I’d been up to that afternoon.  The crackers start with yeast and have plenty of butter, so they are soft on the tongue and could soak up the juices of a soup well–I think. We didn’t have any left to try out that scenario.

While Keller suggests hand-mixing, I threw everything in the food processor, and it still turned out well.  My family preferred the crackers with the garlic powder, basil, parmesan blend on them but the plain ones–with only salt–would be good with a well-seasoned soup or to eat with a nice chicken salad.  Here’s the recipe, with my modifications:

Soup Crackers

1/4 cup warm water

3/4 t active dry yeast

3/4 cup, plus 2 T flour (more for dusting)

1 t kosher salt

2 T, plus 2 t unsalted butter–room temperature

sea salt or other seasonings (I used garlic powder, basil, and parmesan)

Line 2 baking sheets with parchment.  Heat oven to 350 degrees.

Mix yeast with water.  Let rest 10 minutes to proof.

Mix flour and salt in food processor.  Add in yeast/water mixture and butter.  Process until dough comes together.  Knead for 2 to 3 minutes.  Let rest for 10 minutes.

Roll out to 1/8 inch thickness (use floured rolling pin).  Cut with a circular or decorative cutter and transfer to baking sheet.  Unused dough can be re-rolled once.

Sprinkle crackers with seasoning.  Bake for 10 minutes or until the crackers are crisp and golden brown.  Let cool on wire racks.

Keep in airtight container for 2 weeks (if you’re family will leave ‘em alone!)

And last but not least, I did a riff on the Crispy Braised Chicken Thighs with Olives, Lemon, and Fennel Pg. 30, sans olive and fennel.  I don’t know what the original tastes like but this version was pretty darn good.  All family members gobbled it up.  I served it on top of egg noodles glazed with a butter/parmesan sauce and broccoli (and some left over cornbread!).

This book retails for $50, and that’s more than I’m willing to spread.  Even the $30 on Amazon seems extravagant, especially given that this is more like a coffee table book than something I want to drag around the kitchen.  But spread for it I did . . . .  Why you ask?  WELL, our crazed kitten jumped up onto the counter and knocked over a vase of flowers directly onto page 318.  I didn’t discover this disaster for a couple of hours.  By then, the book was soaked, the plant leaves had bonded with page 319, and the back cover was severely damaged.  The librarian was kind to me when I returned it but insisted that I pay for it anyway.  Let’s just say that the kitten is going in to get fixed next week, and I hope this settles him down.  He makes me crazy!

I’m going to give this one a 3–I’m not suggesting you bankrupt yourself on this book but the recipes I’ve tried were all excellent and doable for an experienced home cook.

3 Stars

Chef and cookbook author David Lebovitz made the move in a permanent way after the death of his partner and chronicles his adventures living among the French in this new book.  My favorite parts are related to food, of course, which is good since the book includes plenty of food-related tidbits and and foibles.

Some excellent recipes round out Lebovitz’s story.  Can’t wait to try the Dulce de leche Brownies, for example.  Not at all French but apparently the way that Lebovitz has won the hearts of a great many French, particularly French bankers.  You’ll just have to give it a read to see what I mean.

Those of you familiar with Beranbaum know that she wrote the Cake Bible and is considered an authority on all things cake.  I had the Cake Bible but got rid of it in one of those massive cleaning sprees for which I’m known.  I just didn’t use it.  It was unnecessarily complicated and each cake had way too many steps involved for the end-result.  But what the heck, I thought I’d give this new book a try.

Well . . . same feeling.  I know I promised to try at least 3 recipes from each book but I only managed 2 from Rose’s new one.  These were the two simplest, most straight forward recipes and both recipes were more complicated and convoluted than I like.

The first, Apple-Cinnamon Crumb Coffee Cake, (pg. 49-51) had multiple steps, dirtying multiple bowls BEFORE I finally assembled everything together.  Was all this work worth it?  It was good–there’s a layer of fresh apples and crumbs in the middle, sorta like a layer cake–but it wasn’t spectacular.  Good, but not great.  Certainly not worth the effort involved.

Same for the Gateau Breton (pg. 69-70).  This is a cross between a pound cake and shortbread, says Beranbaum, but mine was definitely on the shortbread end.  It didn’t look anything like the picture–her cake was smooth and sorta satiny looking.  Mine was crumbly and dense.  Tasted good, but then again, it should have considering how much butter went into it.  

Both of these recipes contain nuts and at the last minute I remembered that the host is allergic to nuts.  I whipped up a super easy Lemon Bars recipe that’s an old standby for me.  Quick, dirty, delicious.

So guess which one the ladies preferred?  The time intensive, super difficult, fancy-pants cakes from Beranbaum’s new book or the super easy Lemon Bars?

Yep–everyone raved about the Lemon Bars.  Just goes to show you that simple and straight forward is often best.

Super Easy Lemon Bars

Makes 1 9 inch square pan or about 16 bars.

1/4 cup confectioners’ sugar

1/2 cup unsalted butter, softened

1 cup flour

pinch of salt

2 eggs

1 cup sugar

2 T fresh lemon juice

zest of 1 small to medium lemon

2 T flour

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Cream confectioners’ sugar with butter until fluffy.  Add 1 C flour and salt.  Mix well.  Press mixture into bottom of greased 9 inch square pan.  Bake 15 minutes.  Remove from oven.

While crust is baking, beat eggs in a mixing bowl.  Add sugar, lemon juice, lemon zest, and 2 T flour.  Pour batter over baked crust.  Bake 20 more minutes.

As for Heavenly Cakes:  Loved the pictures.  Got some good ideas, especially for cake presentation, but I’ll apply them to recipes that are more straightforward.  I give this one a 2.

2 Stars