Summer sweet corn revival

Sweet corn is sunny and yellow, storing up in its sugars the energy of the grilling-hot summer sunshine. In the winter, looking at the sweet corn from August that I stored in the freezer is a reminder of when I enjoyed longer hours of daylight, farmer's markets and CSA boxes and seeing green growing things outside.

In Bloomington-Normal, the arrival of the sweet corn harvest is cause for a public celebration. In the photo, I'm at the Sweet Corn Blues Festival in Normal, eating an ear of the crop that covers our county and listening to blues music. I bought a sack of corn at the latest festival to take home. This week, on the day of the first snowstorm of the winter season, I made a soup from some of that corn to bring back a little of summer's warmth.

Corn Chowder
recommended vessel: stockpot of at least 8 quarts

4 Tbsp butter
1 Tbsp olive oil
4 medium carrots, peeled and sliced
2 medium onions, diced
1 green bell pepper, diced
2 Tbsp flour (for a thicker soup, use 4 Tbsp)
4 medium potatoes, peeled and sliced
8 cups chicken stock or vegetable stock
1 tsp dried basil
1 tsp dried epazote
1 tsp cumin powder
2 pounds sweet corn kernels
2 cups soy milk (unsweetened) or dairy milk (for a thicker soup, use cream)
kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste

Heat butter with the oil in the stockpot. Cook the carrots a couple of minutes, then add the onions and cook a couple of minutes, then add the bell pepper. When the vegetables start to become tender, sprinkle with flour and stir well. Add stock and scrape the bottom of the pot thoroughly to pull up any flour stuck to the bottom. Add potatoes and spices. Bring to a rapid boil, then turn down the heat and simmer until potatoes are tender. Add corn and milk and heat through. Season to taste with salt and pepper.

Possible garnishes: yogurt/sour cream and chopped chives, chopped fresh basil, sliced scallions, drizzle of cumin-infused olive oil

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Pumpkin Impossible Pie: "impossible" because it's inedible

For a few years, I've had a found-on-the-Internet recipe called Pumpkin Impossible Pie in my recipe box, waiting for the right time to try it out. I was always a bit curious about Impossible Pie since reading the recipe on the back of the Bisquick box as a kid.
Bisquick Impossible Quiche
Bisquick Impossible Cheeseburger Pie
I may even have eaten one of these before, come to think of it, but I forgot what it was like. My husband met my announcement of the plan for dinner with enthusiasm, declaring he had always liked Impossible Pie when it was served during his childhood.

Being all excited about a crazy new idea for dinner, I didn't follow the recipe exactly and decided to dress it up a bit. When I found the recipe, I was attracted to the idea of a totally vegan, low-fat pie without the hassle of making pie crust on a weeknight. The basics remain the same, but instead of using sugar and pumpkin pie spices, I went for a rosemary-flavored savory pie with caramelized onions and just baked the pie in the skillet I cooked the onions in.

After 60 minutes of baking, the pie had a crust on the outside, was not done at all in the center, and appeared to be underdone on the bottom as well. I used a plate to flip it over so the bottom would be on top and, hopefully, bake more fully.

After 80 minutes of baking and an attempt to remove a piece for eating, here's what it looked like:

The end result? Pie that is about to burn on the outside, but is still undercooked on the inside. Disastrously undercooked. It tasted salty like baking powder and starchy like uncooked flour. The texture was gummy. Additionally, the rosemary was so strong it was astringent and medicinal, and the brown and savory onions had nothing positive to add. To sum up, below is a recipe NOT to follow.

Impossible-to-eat Pumpkin Pie, or How to Ruin the Happy Nostalgia Your Spouse Had for Impossible Pie

2 Tbsp vegan margarine
2 medium-sized onions
pinch salt
1 1/2 c soy milk
1 Tbsp Ener-G egg replacer
1/4 cup water
1 Tbsp cornstarch
2 c pumpkin puree (perhaps my thawed frozen pumpkin puree was part of the problem? it still had a little moisture, which the original recipe recommends against)
1/2 c rice flour
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp crushed dried rosemary

Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Melt margarine in 10-inch oven-proof skillet. Slice onions thinly and cook slowly until lightly caramelized and tender. Whisk or blend soy milk with Ener-G, water, cornstarch, then whisk/blend in the rest of the ingredients. Pour pumpkin mix into the skillet with the onions and bake 50 to 80 minutes until top and edges are browned and the center begins to set. Allow to cool, then discard and eat something else for dinner.

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To good fortune in 2012

For our New Year's Eve party, the most fun part about party preparation was baking our own fortune cookies and filling them with homemade fortunes! Ever since Andrew's grad school roommate and friends made their own fortune cookies for a mathematicians keg party, we've been very attached to the idea of making better fortunes (and possibly better cookies!) than the ones in Chinese restaurants.

I dug out a recipe I've been hanging onto for a few years in anticipation of just such an opportunity: the recipe from Sara Perry in Holiday Baking. The interesting flavoring element is one-and-one-third tablespoons Grand Marnier. Also surprising was finding out that these fortune cookies are pretty low-fat since they are made with just a little oil and just egg whites.

The finished products:

Here are some of my favorites from our list of 40 unique fortunes:


You will be disappointed by all other fortune cookies this year
You will gain fame and fortune when a ton of gold is dropped on your head
You will learn what the Higgs Boson is and why everyone cares
Zeno’s paradox will fail to stop you from kissing your sweetheart
Starting tomorrow, your farts will create alternate universes
Dec. 22, 2012 will be the end of your dominance of the pop charts
Your next fortune cookie will drip with sarcasm
This time, having another drink will make you smarter and more attractive
Your skills will be useful to many – in bed
Mass murder will prove to be an unsuccessful election strategy

Part of the glory of making our own fortunes was having the chance to totally dork out with the science references and to make light of bad luck -- because really, how could it be the case that everyone opening a fortune cookie will have a great year with no unpleasant surprises, stupid accidents or days that are just really awful?

And if bad luck should find you this year, if you want to kick back and burn out some bad memories or take a breather from burning the candle at both ends, try out this punch I made that really knocked our socks off this New Year's Eve.

Burnt Embers Punch

3 parts añejo rum
1 part apricot brandy
2 parts pineapple juice
12 parts club soda (I only used six parts at the party and the punch was stiffer than an overstarched shirt)

Depending on the size of your vessel, make the base measurement of one part an appropriate size. For a couple of drinks, use a shot glass and make the punch in a small pitcher. To fill a big punch bowl, use a one- or two-cup measuring cup. Serve over a couple ice cubes in each glass or put a frozen ice block with pineapple chunks/apricot nectar in it in your punch bowl.

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On the 14th Day of Christmas, my true love sent to me / An updated blog entry

Sorry for the unexpected one-month hiatus, all. This past December was a time of action, not written words. Much baking and cooking took place, but none of it was documented here at the time it was happening.

Some highlights of the Christmas season in my kitchen:
1. Testing out a household favorite, tofu-carrot scramble, on a potluck group. Positive comments from people who liked the gingery taste. The basics of how Andrew and I make this recipe come from the recipe in the Vegetarian Times Complete Cookbook. We just don't measure things anymore and I think I dropped an ingredient or two from the recipe long ago before I taught it to Andrew. I'm still debating on whether I should make this dish at work. Its appearance is not as good as its taste, I'm afraid. It's a bit like chunky yellow-orange vomit on rice. Maybe a nice garnish of chopped cilantro and using julienned carrot instead of grated would make it look more appealing.
2. The 15th-century pie recipe that looked doomed to fail until the moment I put some in my mouth. Another potluck experiment, going from a historical recipe that gave zero amounts or proportions, just a list of what ingredients to add when (and I think even these were out of order, so I adjusted based on the order of instructions in similar recipes from other sources from the same country). This pie was like a savory custard with dried fruit for sweetness. I messed up baking the crust blind (forgot the parchment paper under the pie weights), the crust shrank considerably, the custard took much longer than expected to even start pretending to set, I used far too much beef marrow so the filling looked a bit greasy while baking, I added the spices during the wrong step of the process (no matter, it seems). I couldn't believe how good it tasted after all those mistakes and how ugly it looked. And the crust was the flakiest I've ever made. Gives a whole new understanding of a "foolproof" recipe. However, my version needs some serious revising before putting it out here for others to try.
3. Are krumkaker still good after being frozen? This year's batch of Norwegian Christmas cookies was donated to science. I have also learned that the plural of krumkake is krumkaker. I packed the cookies in a box and gave them to one of the owners of the cafe/kitchen store where I work so she could experiment with how long they are still delicious when wrapped tightly in plastic (she reports the batch from two days before Christmas was still good on New Year's Day) and whether they could maintain crispness after being frozen and thawed. Still waiting on the lab results from the frozen portion of the batch.

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