Spanish Tortilla

This one's not a flat, floppy bread. Tortilla in Spain is a thick, eggy dish fried in a skillet, filled with potatoes and possibly other vegetables and meat. It is reminiscent of an omelette in that it's eggs filled with whatever you think would taste good, but it isn't an egg wrapped around the filling. It is reminiscent of quiche in that it's solid and served in wedges, but it does not have a crust and isn't baked. Tortilla has commonalities with other dishes, but it isn't really exactly like anything else.

To treat my friend Laura yesterday for lunch, I improvised a tortilla, made in the spirit of one that I've made before at work. Not having a photo of the whole thing, I'll describe it in words. My tortilla was a thick, seasoned "cake" of eggs holding together a lot of potatoes and parsley, browned on all sides by the frying pan. Here's how the recipe works:

Spanish Tortilla
serves 6 as main dish, 8 to 12 as tapas dish

7 large eggs
4 medium-sized potatoes, diced
1/4 cup chopped parsley
1 tsp smoked paprika (Spanish pimentón)
seasoned salt to taste (the kind with garlic and spices mixed w/the salt)
fresh-ground pepper to taste
4 Tbsp olive oil

Heat olive oil in a nonstick 10-inch skillet with sloping sides. Fill the bottom of the pan with diced potatoes and fry until golden brown on most sides. While potatoes are cooking, crack the eggs into a bowl and whisk until yolks are fully incorporated. When potatoes are browned, sprinkle with paprika and stir until oil is red. Season with salt and pepper. Sprinkle with parsley, then pour over the eggs. Cook over medium heat. When eggs start to set, use a heatproof spatula to pull up edges and lean the pan so egg mixture that is still liquid gets to the edge of the pan. When eggs are fully set and starting to get a bit of a crispy skin on the bottom, put a large plate over the skillet. Flip the pan upside down, depositing the tortilla on the plate. Slide it back into the pan to cook the other side. When the second side also gets a crispy skin, cut the tortilla into 6 wedges and serve hot.

Serve in smaller wedges if you are making the tortilla as a tapa (appetizer to go with drinks). I served the tortilla with a salad for a light lunch. More fillings to go with the potatoes might include chickpeas, Spanish chorizo sausage, greens, cooked mushrooms, cooked garden vegetables, anything that tastes good with eggs and isn't going to give off a bunch of liquid to make the tortilla lose its texture.

I'm told that the tortilla tastes good cold as leftovers, but I'm more excited about eating it hot.

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Quiet Thanksgiving dinner for two

Thanksgiving Day was not a large celebration this year, just me and my husband. Since we both had the day off work, I slept in and spent the rest of the morning cooking up a special small feast with lots of local items.

Here's our feast table just before we dig in:

The menu

Main dish:
a locally-raised organic chicken, roasted with rosemary sprigs (from my own backyard) stuffed in the cavity

Side dishes:
golden beets from the special Thanksgiving farmer's market, roasted in the pan with the chicken
spaghetti squash from a friend's backyard, roasted and seasoned with salt and pepper, butter and brown sugar
rose heart radishes from the CSA, boiled and then sauced with a roux-based white sauce with chicken bouillon base and lactose-free milk

Dessert:
pumpkin custard in pie form, with prosciutto bits rolled into the crust

To drink:
a California Chardonnay

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Mmm, mystery greens

So many greens in this week's CSA box, by two days later I had forgotten exactly what they are all called. I recognized the kale and napa cabbage right away in the fridge, but what kind of green was I using today when I made a salad for a potluck? Tatsoi? Komatsuna? Some kind of choi?

I told everyone who liked the salad that I think it was komatsuna. For anyone here who is going to try to reproduce this recipe, sorry if it's not komatsuna and you get different results.

Mystery Greens Salad
at least 6 servings

1 large bunch komatsuna (or whatever brassica leaf I was using), about two handfuls
2 Tbsp olive oil
2 Tbsp lemon juice
pinch chili powder
handful of raisins
handful of roasted salted almonds

Cut greens into thin ribbons with a knife and place in a bowl. Whisk together the oil, lemon juice and chili powder and pour over the greens. Toss to dress, then garnish with raisins and almonds. Can be made a few hours ahead.

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Iron Chef: Battle Cornucopia

As mentioned in a previous post, my co-worker Ware's discussion with me and our co-workers Kelly and Seth about combining his favorite flavors of fall: pumpkin, pork, apple and chai spices (cinnamon, cardamom, ginger, clove and black pepper) in a "paleo-diet" fashion without grains or lots of sweets quickly turned from idle musing into a plan for a contest.

With a poster I created (including hand-drawn pictures of pumpkin, pig, apple and cup of chai), the challenge was issued to all cooks at our cafe (not just those of us who are paid to cook there) to put forth our best efforts on Oct. 24 in what was being billed as Iron Chef: Battle Cornucopia.

Many co-workers had great ideas, but for various reasons (forgot, broke foot, best effort failed the taste test, no time to prepare) failed to produce the goods on Monday. Two of us (Seth and I) competed against Ware for having our dishes declared the best of fall. We decided, after finding out the week before that Kelly couldn't come to work or participate in the contest because she had broken her foot, to make the contest a benefit for Kelly. Food left after the tasting was immediately taken to Kelly at home for her dinner.

The dishes, when we finished preparing and plating, became a three-course tasting:
1. Seth's pumpkin soup with bacon, onions fried in bacon grease, rosemary and thyme, chicken broth, and sliced Granny Smith apple garnish sprinkled with ground cinnamon and cardamom.
2. Ware's pork chop, which was a) stuffed with onions and apples cooked with fennel and cardamom, b) topped with gingered beet cubes and cinnamony pumpkin cubes and c) drizzled with a frothy sauce of sour cream mixed with chai-infused apple cider vinegar.
3. my creamy pumpkin custard flavored with fresh ginger and ground chai spices with bits of prosciutto, served atop organic Cortland apple slices that had been dipped in acidulated water with apple cider vinegar.

Photos of samples of our three dishes will be posted at Ware's blog, www.primitiverenaissance.wordpress.com
Tasting them all together was exciting, especially because the same four ingredients were used in such divergent ways by the three cooks.
My favorite elements: 1) Seth's soup was a bit rustic with the coarsely chopped onion and bacon and it tasted like meat all over because of the infusion of everything with bacon flavor; 2) Ware's tangy foam really set off the root-vegetable topping and his plating presentation was the most beautiful of all three; 3) I was shocked at how good salty prosciutto tastes in a mildly sweet custard. The original plan was to use the prosciutto as tart cups, but it shrank too much in the blind baking, so I decided to finely chop it and put it in the bottom of each custard cup. Turned out it was a great idea to spread the saltiness out with the sweet instead of having it be the first layer to hit the tongue.

Tasters included our boss, her husband, and about five other co-workers who were available at the time. Scoring was done by awarding points to each dish according to how each taster ranked 1st, 2nd and 3rd. Each 1st place vote was 3 points, each 2nd place was 2 points and each 3rd place vote was 1 point. Splitting up most of the votes for 1st and 2nd places evenly between us, Seth and I tied for the title of Iron Chef.

Here's the recipe for the custard:

Pumpkin-Chai Custard with Prosciutto Surprise
about 8 servings

6 very thin slices prosciutto
1 cup canned pumpkin
8 oz carton heavy cream
2 eggs and 1 egg yolk
2 Tbsp sugar, optional
1/4 tsp fresh grated ginger
2 black peppercorns
1 clove
2 green cardamom pods
1/4 to 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon

Bake the prosciutto on a rimmed baking sheet at 335 degrees Fahrenheit until crisped, but not very brown. Keep the oven at this temperature for the custard. Use the grease left by the prosciutto to grease a muffin tin or small ramekins. Chop the prosciutto finely and sprinkle about a teaspoonful into the bottom of each muffin cup or ramekin.
With mortar and pestle, finely grind the peppercorns, clove and the black seeds from the cardamom pods. In a saucepan, whisk together the pumpkin, cream, sugar, ginger and all the ground spices. Cook over low heat until warmed, but not boiling. While the cream heats, whisk together the eggs and egg yolk in a bowl. Pour some of the heated cream into the egg mixture while stirring with the whisk, then whisk the contents of the bowl into the saucepan.
Pour the custard over the prosciutto in the muffin cups/ramekins and bake until set (when a knife inserted into the middle comes out clean), approximately 20 minutes.
Can be slipped out of the muffin cups and plated with the help of a flexible spatula when cooled, or just served in the ramekins.

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Crisis averted: apple cake

Problem: Potluck is in two hours, I have no idea what to make, and the only food of large quantity in the house is apples.
Solution: Apple coffee cake, chock full of organic Cortland apples sold by Teresa Santiago of Sunny Lane Farm and Teresa's Fruit and Herbs, from her family's apple picking in Wisconsin at an old orchard (hence why it's organic -- no one has sprayed for years because no one has been tending the crop for commercial sale)

Second problem: The recipe I found uses lots of apple, but has a few flaws, starting with having more than a cup of sugar for a little 8x8-inch cake.
Solution: Make up a new recipe, changing everything except fat (maybe I'll change that next time) and leavener.

It occurred to me while creating this recipe for a baked item that my creative efforts in the kitchen usually tend toward cooking instead of baking. It's in cooking where I feel I can be more flexible, whereas I'm not as easily able to tweak a baking recipe and still get a good outcome. However, much as I liked the recipe I started out with for this dish, I knew that if I didn't change some things I'd find this coffee cake sickeningly sweet and sticky. I figured I'd feel bad about eating it instead of something with more fiber.  Also, I didn't have the nuts called for in the recipe for the topping. I had to buck up and believe that l wasn't making a huge mistake and making my friends eat it.

I'm very happy with the results of this experiment, as were the eaters at the potluck lunch to which I took the cake, straight out of the oven. It's moist enough to be great even without the side of coffee, it's at just the right level of sweetness, and I found another use for the almond flour waiting in my fridge for me to pay it some attention. I could probably get away with using less fat in the cake next time, perhaps even substituting some homemade applesauce.


Potluck Pleaser Apple Cake
at least 8 servings

Dry ingredients:
1 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 cup white whole wheat flour
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp cinnamon

Wet ingredients:
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup softened unsalted butter
1 beaten egg
2 cups finely chopped peeled apples

Topping ingredients:
1/3 cup sugar
2 Tbsp butter
handful of roasted salted almonds, chopped
1/3 cup almond flour (finely ground almonds)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Grease 8x8-inch baking pan. Mix dry ingredients in one bowl. Use another larger bowl to cream butter and sugar, then add egg. Mix dry ingredients into wet, then fold in apples. Spread batter into baking pan. Rub topping ingredients together until butter is well incorporated. Sprinkle topping over cake batter and bake 35 to 45 minutes until cake is baked through and topping is golden brown.

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My favorite food of late summer: peaches

I assumed I was leaving behind the best stone fruits in the world when I left Alberta, where the amazing orchards of between-the-mountain-ranges British Columbia provided summertime fruit bliss. But here in Central Illinois, our farmer's markets are graced with freestone peaches from southern Illinois, where the trees grow large yellow-orange fuzzy peaches with magenta centers. They look gorgeous, they smell divine when they finish ripening on the countertop, and I can buy them for $8 a half-peck bag (12 to 15 peaches). The farmer who comes up to Saturday's market in Bloomington often gives me an extra peach or two so the bag is overflowing. They are every bit as delicious as the best offerings fresh from the farm stand in B.C.

I get so excited seeing the piles of peach crates in the farmer's truck that I can't get that stupid "Peaches" song from the 90s from the Presidents of the United States of America out of my head.
Millions of peaches, peaches for me
Millions of peaches, peaches for free

Each year for three summers here, I've tried a new recipe or two that I hope will bring out the best in Illinois peaches. Here is the stand-out dessert of peach season 2011.

Peach Cobbler
about 8 servings

Peach sauce:
8 to 10 fresh peaches, peeled, pitted and sliced
2 Tbsp Minute tapioca
1/3 cup sugar
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/4 to 1/2 tsp powdered ginger
1/4 tsp nutmeg
1 Tbsp cold butter

Preheat oven to 375 degrees Fahrenheit. Mix all the above ingredients in an 8-inch by 11.5-inch glass baking pan. Dot with small pieces of butter. Let the mixture sit while you prepare the topping.

Cobbler topping:
1 1/2 cup all-purpose flour
2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 cup cold Crisco shortening
3/4 cup milk (or almond/soy/rice milk)
1-2 Tbsp sugar

Combine dry ingredients. Cut in shortening until no lumps are present. Mix in milk to make a thick but wet batter. Add more milk if batter is dry or doughy. Drop batter onto peaches by large tablespoons. Sprinkle batter with sugar. Bake 30 minutes uncovered in 375 degree oven until batter is golden and sauce is bubbly.

Serve warm or cold, with or without cream poured over each serving. I eat this cobbler straight out of the oven as dessert with dinner, then again at breakfast with yogurt and/or granola and one more time after dinner if there is any left.

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The fall goodness challenge

A co-worker asked for ideas in combining his favorite foods from his favorite season, fall. He listed the things he'd love to eat together in the same dish, and then he bounced off on me a couple of ideas he had. Another co-worker chimed in, and I had an idea for something fun: an Iron-Chef-style challenge. Four of us will think about the combo of ingredients for a short time and then we'll appoint a date when we all bring in a sample of our best recipes to test out on our co-workers, asking them to choose a winning dish.

The list of ingredients that are must-haves: pork, pumpkin, apples and chai spices or chai tea. Additional stipulations to fit his current diet: no added sweeteners, no grains or corn, use dairy products with full fat and no filler ingredients. All types of pork products are allowed as are all forms of apple including juice and cider.

My first ideas lean in two directions: 1) pork tenderloin in an orange, spicy stew w/hard apple cider and 2) bacon in a thick, spiced sour-creamy pumpkin soup with zucchini and chunks of apple and pumpkin. As I think about it a little further, I wonder I might be able to turn prosciutto or bacon into a piecrust, like a top crust on a pot pie or a casing for little tarts. Apple-pork sausage meatballs in pumpkin-chai sauce? Savory custards baked in pumpkins or apples? The possibilities are numerous.

More updates here when I test recipes.

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Weird ideas with watermelon

I have a watermelon in the refrigerator right now, but I don't think I'll repeat this experimental dish from earlier in the season: broiled/grilled watermelon.

Mark Bittman warned me that this dish would be little more than a memorable gimmick, but I had half a watermelon handy, plenty of time, easy access to fresh herbs on the back porch, an audience that was game (my husband and mother-in-law) and a hankerin' for novelty, so I tried his suggestion of brushing slices of watermelon with olive oil and sprinkling with salt, pepper and minced fresh rosemary, then placing the pieces in the broiler of the oven (or on the grill, if I had decided to fire up the grill at my in-laws'), and blasting them with heat until they gave up a lot of liquid and turned chewier. This took about 20 minutes.

They were called watermelon steaks in the recipe, but they reminded all of us more of a cooked summer squash in their texture and flavor. Of course, they retained some of the sweetness of watermelon along with that squash-like flavor, which struck us as an odd combination. We declared them not bad, but not worth repeating as plain-old fresh watermelon is far and away more satisfying.

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Yup, I'm definitely not from around here

(repost from my other blog, http://hbevert.livejournal.com/)

This week's example: until this week, I didn't know what a Texas sheetcake is. I also don't know how it's different from a sheetcake when I'm talking to a customer at work who wants to make a special order of salads and cake for a party. My locally-raised co-worker insists that all sheetcakes are Texas sheetcakes, but I know that the sheetcakes on our price list are the kind I'm used to and not what the customer is describing. I tell the customer that I'll ask the baker to call her back the next day.

When I ask the baker, "so what's a Texas sheetcake anyway?" the next day, other co-workers filtering in and out of the kitchen during the conversation all indicate that for them, the Texas sheetcake is a family-gathering staple. I get this feeling everyone in Illinois and Indiana knows what this thing is except me, and they can't wait for the next time they'll eat it after this conversation. Clearly this is yet another Southern dish that didn't make it across the Cheddar Curtain (the border between Illinois and Wisconsin).

Here's a description for any of you readers who have never heard of Texas sheetcake either:
1. Texas sheetcake is very flat because it is made with a pretty runny cake batter.
2. This cake is usually a chocolate cake made with cocoa.
3. The frosting is a cooked frosting a la Red Velvet cake, but once again it is chocolate. (Yeah, I had no idea what Red Velvet cake tasted like or how to make it before I got here either, but I'd at least read about it.)
4. There are actually baking pans sold as "Texas sheetcake" pans. They are basically just a larger-surface-area jelly roll pan, perhaps slightly deeper.
5. Very important for a proper Texas sheetcake: spread on the frosting when the cake is straight out of the oven. It will melt all over and make the cake fudgey.

Illinois is a place where the northern smelt fry meets the southern cheesy grits, where the local tastes may vary in the same town on whether hockey puck-style or fluffy biscuits are the vehicle for the sausage gravy, where you have to ask whether the tea is "sweet" or "unsweet" because it could be either. Where we are just far enough south to grow peaches but just a little too far north to see many black-eyed peas. It's a place of regional food fence-sitting, where the sheetcake is from Texas, and the fried cheese curd is from Wisconsin.

I don't have to always feel like an out-of-sorts northern transplant who likes weird "foreign" foods. My Canadian-American co-worker and I can wax poetic about the joys of the Nanaimo bar or poutine. One of the owners grew up in Minnesota, so she knows what I mean when I talk about hotdish, krumkake and lefse. She brought me back some smoked trout from her trip to the North Shore of Lake Superior this summer. It's divine on an English muffin for breakfast. Reminds me of Fischbrötchen Andrew and I ate on the Baltic Sea shore on our honeymoon.

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Magenta-colored love in a bowl

The simplest summer soup, made with new beets that arrived in our CSA box. Lotsa beets, not much else going on. Andrew and I make certain soups for each other that end up being code for "I love you," such as his curried squash winter stew, because I told him the first time he made it that it made me fall in love with him all over again. If reading that last sentence hasn't made you ill, try making this soup for someone you adore.

Be sure to keep the beet greens. They are edible, too, and they taste just like beets.

Beets, borscht-ish
serves 3-4

About 1 pound beets with greens
chicken stock (or water w/chicken broth powder)
a handful of fresh dill
sour cream (soy sour cream is what I used)
salt and pepper to taste

After washing the beets and their greens, cut off and keep the greens. Then slice the tops and the root ends off the beets and peel. Cut beets into bite-sized chunks and place in a pot. Chop the greens finely and add to the pot. Pour over enough chicken stock to cover the beets and greens and bring to a boil. Turn down the heat and simmer until the greens are softening and the roots are becoming tender. Chop up the dill finely and cook it in the soup until it wilts and the rest of the veggies are done. Season with salt and pepper. Serve with a generous dollop of sour cream as garnish for each bowl.

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Feeding ourselves with weeds

"I've been working hard this week to clear out the pigweed from my garden," my Grandpa Possehl told me last week. "Friends tell me the restaurants in Chicago will charge top dollar to let you eat it, but they use a different name for it. Starts with a P -- purl-something, pers-something, sounds kinda like parsley, but that's not it."

"Purslane?" I asked, thinking of recipes I'd read from the 1500s using that name in the ingredient lists. It appears in spring salad greens recipes, among a long list of garden herbs and members of the allium family. Lettuce is there, too, but it takes a back seat in importance.

"Yeah, that's it. A chef uses the fancy name and will pay a lot for it as a delicacy, but down on the farm we just called it pigweed, and I just pull it out in bunches and throw it out."

I jumped at the chance to taste something I'd only read about before. I wasn't even sure which weed it was until Grandpa described it. Here's a picture taken at the University of Illinois. He gamely volunteered to pull some and send it home with me along with some fresh mixed lettuces from the garden. He chuckled as he put it into a plastic bag and told Grandma, "I'm giving Heather some of that pigweed out of the garden to eat. Heck, if she likes it well enough, I'll give her a whole big garbage bag next time." As I left for home with the bag, both of them grinned conspiratorially as if they'd just gotten away with a practical joke. "Hope you like the pigweed."

My husband and I mixed together the lettuce leaves and the purslane leaves stripped from the vines and ate them with homemade dressing yesterday for dinner and today for lunch. Turns out Andrew's instincts for making salad dressing correspond with 15th Century English tastes. He mixed a dressing of about half white wine vinegar and half olive oil and salt.

The verdict? Grandpa, you should start exporting your pigweed to fancy restaurants. It's delicious! Next time purslane comes up on its own in a part of the yard or the garden box where I could afford to let it grow bigger, I'm keeping it. It is a tender green (comes from being a succulent plant that stores moisture in its leaves to use in dry times), and its tangy flavor is very similar to clover leaves, which I occasionally enjoy eating freshly plucked from the lawn.

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Late-spring soup the Finnish way

Inspired by the recipe for Kesakeitto (Finnish summer vegetable soup) in Scandinavian Cooking by Sonia Maxwell, I made a new recipe with the ingredients available in my CSA box and my refrigerator stash. Most of the veggies that are considered summer vegetables in Finland are already available garden-fresh in the springtime in Illinois.

For those who are able to tolerate dairy products, I'd recommend using real dairy cream or milk for an even better flavor.

Finnish-style Vegetable Soup
4 to 6 servings

6 small radishes with greens
3 carrots
1 handful spinach leaves
1 small head broccoli
2 Tbsp butter
2 Tbsp flour
1 egg yolk
1 1/2 cups unsweetened almond/soy milk (the traditional Finnish soup uses dairy cream)
2 Tbsp fresh herbs to garnish: dill, parsley or chives (or a mix of two or three of these)

Halve or quarter the radishes. Chop the radish and spinach leaves finely, discarding any tough stems. Cut the carrots into small dice. Cut the broccoli into bite-sized florets. Place radishes, carrots, broccoli into a small pot and cover with water. Cover pot and bring to a boil. Cook very briefly, about 3 minutes. Add radish and spinach leaves and cook 2 minutes. Strain and reserve the cooking water. Set aside cooking water and vegetables. Melt butter in a large pot. Whisk in flour, then slowly whisk in the cooking water from the vegetables and 1 cup of milk/cream and heat just short of boiling. Whisk egg yolk in a bowl with 1/2 cup milk/cream, then add 2/3 cup of the hot soup and whisk. Pour the egg yolk mixture into the soup pot and whisk together. Put the reserved vegetables in the soup pot and reheat. It is important not to heat the soup all the way to a boil, which will curdle the egg yolk. Season with salt and pepper, ladle into serving bowls and garnish with herbs.

Optional vegetable alternatives: new potatoes, peas, small bits of fish or shellfish

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What grows together, goes together: strawberries and rhubarb

All of the rhubarb recipes in my recipe box are from family members and friends who passed along their new ways of serving up this stalk so that it would take us a good long rhubarb season to start running out of ideas.

Grandma's strawberry-rhubarb jam and mom's strawberry-rhubarb bars are old favorites of mine that pair up the sweet tang of spring's fresh strawberries and the assertive tartness of rhubarb. This week, I decided to try out the classic combo in a new application, a revision of my other grandma's recipe for rhubarb sauce. The original sauce, using rhubarb and canned pineapple, is phenomenal on ice cream or mixed into yogurt or oatmeal for breakfast. But I had 2 pounds of strawberries, a very small bunch of rhubarb from the CSA box, and no pineapple.

I was not a good little girl about measuring my sugar as I was adding it, so I leave that amount up to your taste. Start at 1/2 cup and if the sauce is not sweet enough, add 1/4 cup more at a time until it's right.

The new sauce was a hit on ice cream at our anniversary/birthday party last night, with one guest asking for the recipe. If I'm lucky, he'll thank me by dropping off some rhubarb from his back yard.


Strawberry-Rhubarb Sauce
at least 10 servings

1/4 cup instant tapioca
1/2 tsp salt
2.5 cups water
2 pounds strawberries, sliced
1 cup rhubarb
1/2 cup to 1 1/2 cup sugar, to taste

Put all ingredients (start with 1/2 cup of sugar) into a large pot and bring to a boil. Taste for sweetness and add more sugar if needed. Turn down heat and simmer briefly until fruits are slightly softened, stirring often to prevent tapioca from sticking to bottom of pot. Serve when cool. Best after overnight refrigeration.

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Sour-sweet springtime treat

One of the tastes of spring I get very excited about is rhubarb, that crunchy and tart stalk that adds so much vibrancy to desserts. I still fondly recall a spring and summer childhood snack, dipping the end of a cut rhubarb stalk into a cup of sugar and eating it raw like a sugar-tipped celery stalk.

While visiting the Dane County Farmer's Market last weekend on my birthday, I bought a pound and a half of fresh, hot-pink rhubarb stalks to take home. I was dreaming of pie (like the one my grandmother said she made for my grandfather for his birthday, also last weekend), but I recalled that I had a bunch of cake flour left over from Easter and that I had powdered buttermilk in the refrigerator that needed to be used up, so I changed course and went for upside-down cake instead. The cake recipe is mostly taken straight from Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything (10th Anniversary ed.), but with modifications to accommodate rhubarb, which was not one of the fruit options he gave, and the fact that I don't own a cake pan of the correct size for his original recipe.

Rhubarb upside-down cake
12 pieces

2 sticks unsalted butter, melted
1/4 cup brown sugar mixed with 1/4 cup granulated sugar
1.5 pounds rhubarb stalks, sliced
additional granulated sugar

Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Pour a few tablespoons of butter into a 9 x 13-inch rectangular cake pan. Keep the rest in a bowl for next part of recipe. Sprinkle the sugar mixture over the butter. Scatter rhubarb slices evenly over the sugar. Sprinkle the rhubarb with about 1/4 cup more granulated sugar.

8 Tbsp powdered buttermilk, reconstituted with water
4 eggs
1 cup granulated sugar
4 cups cake flour
scant 2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt

Whisk together melted butter, buttermilk, eggs and sugar until mixture lightens in color. Butter may turn to small bits instead of staying liquid. In a separate large mixing bowl, combine dry ingredients. Add the egg mixture and whisk until well-incorporated. Spread the batter over the rhubarb in the cake pan, using a spatula to evenly distribute batter. Bake in the center of oven for 50 minutes or until cake is golden and toothpick inserted into center comes out clean. Cool a few minutes in the pan and serve pieces directly from the pan or invert cake onto a serving platter. Cut into 12 pieces.

Readers may wish to add more sugar to the rhubarb-in-the-pan phase if they like the rhubarb sweeter and with less of its original astringent nature than I do.

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Chopped Salad: low on lettuce, high in flavor

Dinner that was a big bowl of salad (especially mixing fruit and lettuce) was a specialty of mine when I was single, but I dropped the habit when I started having some digestive difficulties that were exacerbated by high-insoluble-fiber leafy greens. This week, after re-reading a Cook's Illustrated article from a few years ago about chopped salads, I was inspired to play around with one of the recipes to make it my own and use items I had at home. The chopped salads are mostly stuff that is not lettuce, which got my attention.

Since seeing some improvements this year in my ability to tolerate foods that were formerly banned from the grocery list, I decided to give lettuce a chance in my dinner salad last night, but as a supporting actor only, not in a main role. When preceded by a Scandinavian crispbread as a tummy-friendly starter, last night's salad was a star.

Pears and More Chopped Salad
4 large servings or 6 side portions

1 English salad cucumber, seeded and cubed
3 Tbsp extra-virgin olive oil
3 Tbsp white wine vinegar
kosher salt
fresh-ground black pepper
1 red bell pepper, seeded and cut into 1/4-inch pieces
2 Bartlett pears, cored and chopped into 1/4-inch pieces (could substitute 2 crisp apples)
1/2 cup dried cranberries
1 small head green leaf lettuce, torn into bite-sized pieces
4 ounces crumbled Amish blue cheese
1/4 cup chopped pecans

Whisk oil and vinegar together in a large bowl. Season with salt and pepper to taste. Add cucumber, bell pepper, pear, toss and let stand a few minutes. Toss in lettuce, then pecans and cheese.

Best served immediately, but leftovers do keep overnight for a tangy lunch if you don't mind lettuce that is a little limp.

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Chocolate frosting, versions 2 and 3

I made a nice chocolate frosting for my Osterlamm (lamb-shaped German Easter cake) a couple of years back, but didn't write it down and didn't remember it well. This week, I wrote a frosting recipe down, but it didn't work. Here's the failed recipe and the way I fixed it.

Chocolate Frosting, version 2

1 stick unsalted butter
1 package semisweet chocolate chips
about 1/2 cup cocoa powder
2 Tbsp powdered sugar

Melt butter over medium heat. Turn off heat and whisk in small batches of chocolate chips until they melt. Whisk in cocoa and powdered sugar. Cool in separate container.

I should add to these instructions "do not put the bowl of frosting in refrigerator" because when I went to look at it the next morning, I had a large, solid truffle instead.

How to rescue it to frost a cake before taking it to a party later that day? Break the truffle into pieces and whisk in 3/4 cup hot milk (in my case, I used almond milk). This turns the truffle back into something more like fudge sauce. Whisk in a bit more cocoa powder to stiffen it up a little more and cool to room temperature for frosting. The end result is a cake covered in ganache, which is kind of like turning the Osterlamm into the best-tasting chocolate bunny ever.

Once again, if stored in the refrigerator, this will turn solid again (although much softer with the liquid milk in it). It needs to come back to room temp again to be at all spreadable. Warmer than room temp would be easier to frost with. I just ended up putting slightly warmed "version 3" in big globs on chunks of leftover cake yesterday. A chocoholic's dream.

Next time, I'm using cream for a proper ganache frosting, or I'm making chocolate buttercream. None of this fence-sitting butter-ganache, delicious and decadent as it may be.

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Smoothie #8

Green, green and more green. With little tart black specks from kiwi seeds. Sweet-tart and tastes like it must be healthy.

3 kiwis, peeled
a few sprigs of parsley
1 honeydew melon, peeled, seeded and cut into small chunks

Put kiwis and parsley in a 1.25 Liter/5 cup blender. Fill as far as possible with melon chunks. Some may be left over. Blend until smooth.

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Smoothie #7

A sweet and tangy combination my husband put together for breakfast today. We both thought it could stand to taste a little more like kiwi, so next time we'd probably add two kiwis.

1 kiwifruit, peeled
1 banana
12 frozen dark sweet cherries
equal amounts of cranberry-pomegranate juice and unsweetened almond milk, to taste

Add all ingredients to blender and blend until smooth and pourable. Dairy milk or unsweetened soy/rice milk could be substituted.

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Bacon that is not bacon

For the math department potluck held at our place on April Fool's Day, it seemed appropriate to make a joke dish. I took my inspiration for "the bacon that isn't bacon" from hundreds of years ago.

Diners of the Middle Ages were amused by illusion foods, foods that pretended to be other things. I made a simple marzipan recipe a couple of years ago, based on a couple of pre-1600 recipes I'd found, that resulted in a paste that could be colored and molded into fun shapes. The reason for creating the recipe was to make marzipan look like bacon. Here's how it works:

Marzipan Bacon
Take equal weights almond flour (ground blanched almonds with no brown bits from nut skins) and powdered sugar and whisk together. Make two batches of the same mixture. A little goes a long way here. I made two batches, using 25 grams of almond flour and 25 grams of powdered sugar each, to make enough for a potluck of 20 people.

With one batch, moisten lightly with water and food coloring. For red, a historically appropriate coloring is powdered saunders. I've also had good luck with cranberry juice reduced until it is syrupy (not historically accurate for pre-1600 Europe). If a rose flavor is desired, add a few drops of rosewater. To the other batch, just add water with or without rosewater. Stir and knead until the marzipan and coloring/water are thoroughly mixed, adding more almond/sugar mix or water if needed to get a claylike texture.

For best results, chill the almond paste wrapped tightly in plastic, then shape after 3 to 5 hours or the next day. Simply resting the paste in a cool place (not the refrigerator) would be more historically accurate. Divide the red paste into two or three parts, and the white paste into three or five parts. Roll out each part into a small rectangle, making all the rectangles the same width and length. Thicknesses will vary, which is fine. Layer the rectangles: start with white, lay red on top, then white, red, white, red, white. Cut off the short ends of the rectangles, then start slicing the marzipan into strips. Take each strip and roll it gently with the rolling pin to stretch it out and smooth it. Now you have bacon!

Keep covered in plastic and chilled for best texture if you have to wait before serving.

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Smoothie #6

Today's snack smoothie to take a break from chores. Very orange, a nice mix of sweetness with earthy tones and tanginess.

Smoothie #6
1 mango, peeled, cut in chunks
1 carrot, peeled, cut in chunks
250 mL unsweetened almond milk
250 mL cranberry/pomegranate juice

Put mango and carrot chunks into blender with liquids. Blend until carrot is fully incorporated.

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What else can we do with mustard greens?

I brought some mustard greens home from the supermarket last week in the hopes of making something with them myself instead of only relying on the packaged pickled mustard greens I like to get at the Asian grocery and serve on white rice.

The ideas tried so far:
1. sauteed mustard greens with turkey kielbasa slices and onions, served over leftover colcannon
2. more mustard greens and the kielbasa/greens leftovers in a curried potato soup
3. raw mustard greens on sandwich of corned beef on rye
4. bell pepper, zucchini and shredded mustard greens stir fry with sweet soy sauce and fresh ginger

All these applications of mustard greens were delicious, and my husband was downright shocked at the difference in spiciness between the very mild and limp cooked greens and the raw greens on his sandwich, which were as peppery as nasturtiums.

In five minutes of poking around on the Internet, I've found recipes that treat the mustard green much like greens of other sorts:
1. just like collard greens with pot liquor
2. just like sauteed kale with garlic and chile flakes
3. just like bok choy, stir-fried and braised and served with soy sauce and sesame oil
4. as part of a mixed salad, especially baby greens

With their frilly edges and bright, spring-green color, the mustard greens available here are just begging me to use them more often with less cooking time. Perhaps blanched and simply dressed as a wilted salad, or tossed into a pot of beans at the last minute so they don't lose their peppery bite.

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Creating again in time for St. Pat's Day

I've had a short hiatus because I wasn't doing any recipe creation that was noteworthy for a few weeks. I experimented with some new recipes from the New York Times that turned out to be fantastic, the Hungarian casserole rakott krumpli and vegan enchiladas (but used a canned sauce I like, so can't comment on whether this chef's enchilada sauce is good). I did some home versions of recipes I liked from work. But nothing that I could call my own and write up here.

For St. Patrick's Day, I wanted to bring home some of the excitement that was going on in the kitchen at work as our chef and baker turned out Irish-inspired dishes for the holiday: soda bread, potato and mushroom soup with cabbage, and the most decadent colcannon ever topped with sausages. And cheese. That colcannon was delicious, but had crazy amounts of cream and meat. Waaaaay too rich for me to eat more than one bite.

So, it was back to the drawing board at home, going for something a little more in the traditional meatless variety of colcannon. I won't claim that this is a low-fat dish. In fact, if I were to make it again next year, I'd probably go whole hog and use more cream and (maybe) less butter.

Colcannon with Kale
serves 4 to 6
serve as a main dish with other brightly colored vegetables, as a side to a soup or Irish stew, as a colorful topping to a shepherd's pie

2 pounds red potatoes
2 medium-sized onions
1 pound bunch of kale
8 Tbsp butter
1/2 cup milk (dairy milk or unsweetened soy/almond/rice milk)
dash of mace
white pepper and salt to taste

Scrub potatoes well and cut into large chunks. Peeling is optional. Place in large pot, cover with water, and boil until tender (approximately 20 to 30 minutes). Wash the kale and strip the leaves off the tough stems. Cut the kale into ribbons or other small shapes. Saute the onions in 4 Tbsp of butter until tender, then add the kale and saute for 5 to 10 minutes until tender. When the potatoes are ready, drain them and let them dry a little in the colander or in the pot. Warm the milk, then mash together the potatoes with the milk, 4 Tbsp butter, mace, pepper and salt. Stir in the kale/onion mixture and serve hot.

The leftovers of this dish taste great browned in a pan as hash the next day.

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CSA fuels my anticipation

Just got the word back from the farmer: we're in as members of the Henry's Farm CSA, sharing a 25-week share with two of our friends. Looking outside at the latest snowfall that is starting to melt and thinking about how much I'm going to enjoy fresh vegetables.

For those of you who may be asking "what's a CSA?" Let me back up a little bit. The acronym stands for Community Supported Agriculture. My analogy is buying stock. The farmer sells shares to generate capital for this season's expenditures for seeds, plants, and equipment. I purchase a share for a set price, and I accept some of the financial risk for the season. In return, I expect to receive a box of vegetables once a week. Hopefully, the farmer has made good choices for what foods to grow for the soil conditions and the caprices of Central Illinois weather. If the harvest is good, my weekly box has monetary value of 1/25 of my share, or I get even more food as "dividends," and the farmer has extra vegetables to sell for profit. If bad, I don't recoup my costs, but I do get some food items every week and the farmer is not going to be insolvent and can farm another year.

As an additional benefit for all of us going into the CSA business together, we have a partnership around local organic farming. Shareholders are invited to visit the farm. Some CSAs, although not this one, require a certain number of hours of farmwork for a lower-priced share. The farm serves as a clearinghouse for recipe ideas. Our particular farmer has an educational focus on his farm website and he is also an author (as is his sister, who has also written a book about the farm).

If it all shakes out as the farmer and I expect it, most weeks will have an abundance of the most successful crops and a smattering of those that are not planted in large amounts or those that don't fare so well this season.

Based on the information provided about last year's seed purchase, I expect that this year I'll have a chance to taste some things I've never eaten before and will have a steady supply of some favorite summer vegetables. Also, I'll have to figure out what folks will trade me for tomatoes, which I don't eat and of which Andrew eventually will have too many.

Happily anticipating the first box at the end of May.

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Colorful winter potluck dish

This dish garnered many positive comments at a potluck today. The original recipe comes from the cookbook Local Flavors: Cooking and Eating from America's Farmer's Markets by Deborah Madison. Here, I have adjusted the amounts of just about everything to make the dish for a larger group.

Sweet Potatoes Braised in Cider

Also good for winter squashes, perhaps yams, and carrots

4 medium-sized sweet potatoes, peeled and cut into bite-sized chunks (prepared weight is about 3 pounds)
4 Tbsp unsalted butter (for vegan version, use vegan margarine)
1 Tbsp finely chopped fresh rosemary
2 c or more of apple cider, enough to nearly cover vegetables in pot
salt and pepper if desired (I used none)
apple cider vinegar to taste (optional, I also used none)

Melt butter in a large pot, cook the rosemary on medium heat about 3 minutes to flavor the butter. Toss the vegetables in the butter, add liquid until vegetables are nearly covered. Cover pot with lid and bring to a boil. Turn heat down and simmer 20 to 25 minutes until vegetables are tender. If the juices have not reduced to a glaze yet, uncover and boil quickly on high heat until liquid reduces. Season with salt, pepper, vinegar to taste.

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Greens: welcome back into my life

For more than a year I avoided greens like lettuce and spinach and kale and so on due to my touchy stomach and guts. When I had a garden the year before last, I experimented with the occasional very small lettuce salad eaten at the end of the meal and it went modestly well, but not swimmingly. Since then, I have only eaten greens occasionally, in small amounts and still only after eating most of the rest of a meal.

This winter, inspired by some greens-based dishes I've been cooking for work, I've played around a couple of times at home with kale as a part of main dishes consisting of other Heather-friendly ingredients. This week's addition to that list of experiments was declared "amazing" by the spouse and the smell was admired greatly by co-workers when I brought leftovers to eat for my lunch at work.

As for the touchy stomach, well, it was a bit grumbly, but this dish was well worth the small amount of complaining from the guts a few hours later. Note to self: next time for a happier tummy, make plain potatoes the main dish and this dish the side instead of eating this dish with a side slice of bread. For folks with hardier digestive systems, this dish is great with a side chunk of focaccia bread.

Spicy sausage and greens
four servings

20 oz hot Italian turkey sausage, cut into chunks
1 large bunch kale, leaves stripped from stalks and chopped for about 2 quarts of leaves
2 leeks, white parts only, sliced thinly
1 handful fresh parsley leaves, chopped
1 onion, sliced thinly (optional)
salt and pepper to taste

Cook sausage chunks in a tablespoon or two of olive oil in a large frying pan. When sausage is half cooked, add onion and leek slices around the sausage and fry until tender. Fill the pan with kale and stir until wilted, then continue adding batches of kale and wilting until all the kale is in the pan. Cook, stirring occasionally, until kale is tender and sausage is cooked through. Stir in parsley and season to taste.

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Dressing up dinner with ajvar

Our favorite red pepper spread, ajvar or "Serbian salsa," has had a long hiatus from our house since we no longer live right down the street from a store that sells it at a reasonable price. I love the puree of roasted red peppers and eggplants mixed with garlic and oil. It tastes wonderful on sandwiches, on crackers, mixed into dips or casseroles or pasta dishes. I missed it so much that I made sure to put it on my list for a shopping outing that included returning to that favorite Asian market in our old neighborhood in Madison, WI. It comes in a rather large jar, so once we open one, it's imperative to use it frequently before it goes bad. 

A recent "meat" and potatoes type of dinner was a chance to try something new with ajvar. I made potatoes with lemon-garlic drizzle and tofu cutlets with blackened pepper coating. For a dessert/side, I served pears.

The recipes:

Tofu cutlets with blackened pepper coating
serves 3 to 4

1 block of firm tofu
ajvar red pepper spread
1 to 2 Tbsp oil for the pan

Squeeze the liquid out of the tofu, slice into six cutlets and spread each of them thickly on both sides with ajvar. Allow the cutlets to sit while you prepare potatoes.

Note: this part of the recipe could have been more successful if the time sitting was longer and if I had done more to turn the ajvar into a marinade. Next time I try this recipe, I'll try mixing the ajvar with oil and perhaps a little vinegar to see if it pulls more pepper flavor into the centers of the tofu pieces, which ended up tasting pretty plain this time around, and start marinating at least an hour before starting the potatoes.

When the potatoes are very close to done, heat oil in a large frying pan on high heat. Lay the ajvar-covered cutlets in the oil and fry on both sides until the pepper mixture is blackened.

Potatoes with lemon-garlic drizzle
serves 4

2 pounds Klondike Red potatoes (other boiling potatoes with pretty skins are acceptable), scrubbed but not peeled
2 Tbsp olive oil
3 cloves garlic, minced
2 Tbsp lemon juice

Boil potatoes in salted water until tender. Drain, leave potatoes in the pot and cover so they dry out a little while you prepare the drizzle. Heat the oil in a saucepan, add garlic and cook until very light golden, then whisk in the lemon juice and heat through. Put the potatoes in the serving dish and drizzle the sauce over them. Season with salt and pepper if desired. Garnish with fresh parsley if desired.

Perhaps next time I have a hankerin' for ajvar I'll have to try out this recipe http://easteuropeanfood.about.com/od/vegetables/r/ajvar.htm or the one at http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6430271 and can it myself.

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Soy substitute week

This week has been a week for experimenting with soy products to stand in for eggs and dairy. The impetus and guide for the experiments was the book Tofu and Soyfoods Cookery by Peter Golbitz, specifically the recipes Mock Sour Cream Tofu Dressing and Scrambled Yuba.

Experiment 1: vegan mushroom stroganoff sauce, with Mock Sour Cream Tofu Dressing based on silken tofu standing in for sour cream. The basic ingredients are silken tofu, oil, lemon juice, and salt. I served the sauce over no-yolk egg noodles. I am perfectly comfortable putting vegan sauce on non-vegan noodles, but I would have used other noodles if I were serving actual vegans.

The results here were mixed. The sauce's flavor, which I initially thought was too lemony, settled down by the time I ate leftover noodles the next day and I liked how closely it tasted to sour cream. Better than other packaged soy sour creams I've purchased in the past. The texture was disappointing. The oil tended to separate out, making the sauce greasy instead of creamy and smooth. I think if I were going to make this dish again, I'd prepare the mock sour cream with a stabilizer like cornstarch or mustard or something and do it a day ahead to let the flavors blend.

Experiment 2: scrambled yuba, which I served on toast. This no longer seemed like a breakfasty scrambled egg dish when I added carrots, onions and mushrooms, nor did the garlicky tamari-flavored seasonings recommended scream breakfast to me. It was a nice light dinner.

Major challenges included finding yuba and making it taste like something when I didn't have all the ingredients called for in the recipe.

First, how I found the item. The owner of my favorite local Asian grocery had dried yuba on hand, but he didn't know it right away because he was not familiar with the Japanese name yuba for the product. His native language is Chinese, but he understood exactly what I wanted when I described it in English. Yuba is the skin skimmed off of boiled soy milk. I wasn't prepared to make gallons of homemade soy milk and skim its skin to get fresh yuba, and frozen just isn't available in my area.

Second, yuba does not naturally taste like anything. This ingredient is mostly about texture, like tripe or oatmeal. To borrow a phrase from Douglas Adams, it is almost, but not quite, entirely unlike scrambled eggs. No fluffy softness. No eggy richness. No buttery finish. Not even yellow, more like beige. In the pan, it vaguely looks like slices of very thin fried egg whites. I had run out of nutritional yeast flakes and forgot to get some for this dish, so therefore I didn't have the most essential flavoring called for in this recipe. I decided not to worry about it and make it taste entirely different. I used sweet soy sauce (kecap manis), garlic powder, chicken broth powder, the above-named vegetables, and sesame oil and fresh parsley for garnish.

If the goal here is to make something that is like scrambled eggs for breakfast, the experiment failed. I believe it would continue to fail even if I had followed the recipe exactly but with my dried yuba. Reconstituted dried yuba does not look, feel or taste like egg. I don't know whether the fresh or frozen could entirely take care of these issues, but it would at least probably be closer in texture to slightly overcooked eggs. The nutritional yeast flakes would have lent a more cheese-like flavor. If the goal is to make a yummy protein and vegetable dish with a new food, I think the experiment was successful. My husband and I like yuba enough to try it again sometime in the future. The possible flavors to combine with it are endless, so we'll keep trying new ways of preparing it.

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Thinking spring, in 14th Century France style

I've been thinking about 14th Century French foods recently because our local Society for Creative Anachronism group http://www.scolairi.org/Scolairi1.html has an upcoming spring event http://www.atomicvole.org/AW24/ where there will be a feast.  Below are some recipes from my collection that are "thinking spring." I sent these recipes to my local SCA newsletter for an article to appear in the February edition.

Cameline Sauce, for roasted lamb, pork or veal, was a very popular sauce throughout W. Europe in the Middle Ages and it appears in more than one recipe source from SCA period. I adapted this recipe from the version in the 14th Century housekeeping guide by the man known as the Menagier de Paris. It yields about 1/2 cup sauce. Think of early flowers and mud under melting snow while preparing this sauce for spring lamb.

Cameline Sauce

2 Tbsp breadcrumbs
1/2 cup red wine
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 to 1/2 tsp ginger powder
1 clove, ground to powder
1 tsp cinnamon
Blend all ingredients together. Serve without cooking, or simmer slowly for a few minutes or substitute 1/3 c red wine vinegar mixed with a little water if no-alcohol sauce is desired.

Another simple version of cameline sauce is provided at http://www.godecookery.com/goderec/grec13.htm, which provides a recipe based on another 14th Century French recipe source, Le Viandier de Taillevent.

A delicious sauce for fish days -- of which there are many, since Lent falls in late winter and early spring -- is the ubiquitous Sauce Vert/Verde, or "green sauce," also popular outside of France. At its simplest, the sauce is a puree of parsley mixed with vinegar-soaked breadcrumbs and salt. I've adapted a variation of the sauce in the 14th Century English source Forme of Cury that has garlic in it. It's delicious on fried fish because its vinegary-garlicky tang adds a nice countering note to the grease of fried food.

Green garlic sauce

about 1 cup sauce

100g parsley, stripped to leaves only
1 Tbsp ginger powder
4 Tbsp white wine vinegar
8 Tbsp water
1/2 Tbsp ground pepper
1/2 Tbsp salt
2 slices white bread, crusts removed, in chunks
1 clove garlic
pinch saffron, optional
Place all ingredients in blender and blend on very low speed, stopping blender to stir occasionally. When ingredients are well-mixed and moist, blend on high speed until smooth.

Spring pea pods that are young enough to be eaten whole are good in the following recipe, as are sugar snap peas. For both of these types of peas, pull off any stringy or potentially tough stemmy parts first.

Peasecods for six

adapted from Menagier de Paris

1 lb sugar snap peas
1 Tbsp butter
Bring pot of salted water to a brisk boil, cook peas five minutes or less until crisp-tender, then remove peas and dress with butter.

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Cupcake party photos

For a friend's birthday, the theme was a cupcake contest. A wide variety of cupcakes showed up, from box mixes with packaged frosting to sweet and spicy to the winning display of artistically laid out cupcakes with props and dyed sugar/salt rims like margarita glasses (see below).

I didn't win the contest with the "Irish car bomb" cupcake, but I thought it was mighty delicious because it combined some of my favorite things: double chocolate with Guinness and whiskey. It received honorable mention from the birthday girl, our contest judge, for most chocolaty cupcake and best use of beer in baked goods.

For the recipe, see http://smittenkitchen.com/2009/01/car-bomb-cupcakes/
I didn't bother with making the extra Irish cream frosting because there was more than enough whiskey/chocolate filling to also frost the cupcakes.

And here's a shot of the chile/chocolate cupcakes -- which were my second-favorite and the ones that I most enjoyed taking home (mine were all gone at the end of the party) -- and the s'mores cupcakes, with broiled marshmallow topping.

The birthday girl was thrilled with the cupcake turnout for her birthday bash. I had a noticeable sugar rush after the initial tasting, a feeling that I put lower on the enjoyment scale than a rap on the knuckles with a ruler. But the company was fun and so was the contest.

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Bready winter comforts

On Wednesday evening, a friend served up some amazing bread pudding with a whiskey cream sauce and some of her homemade fruitcake, soaked liberally with rum. I'm sure the alcohol content in these foods had something to do with the warm and happy feelings that came with eating them, but bread pudding is just cuddly and comforting all on its own.

Leaving out dairy and egg doesn't detract from the delight in eating bread pudding. Here's the vegan bread pudding recipe I've revised from its original creation last winter/early spring.

Vegan Bread Pudding
serves at least 8

8 cups day-old whole wheat vegan bread chunks
4 oz. dried cherries
4 oz dried plums (prunes), chopped
2 oz raisins
2 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp ginger
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1/2 tsp salt
4 c almond milk
1 1/2 tsp Ener-G egg replacer whisked with 2 Tbsp water
1/4 c plus 1 Tbsp demerara sugar
1 Tbsp canola oil

Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Mix together bread chunks and fruit in a large bowl. In a separate bowl, mix liquids, sugar and spices. Pour the liquid over bread and let it sit 10 minutes. Put the pudding mixture into a greased 9 x 13 inch baking pan and bake about 30 minutes until golden brown.

This pudding is equally good hot or cold, as a main/side dish or as dessert or even for breakfast. It can be frozen after baking and reheated in the oven straight out of the freezer.

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