Who needs yeast packets to make bread?

Not me! I've been having great success making bread that is leavened only by sourdough starter. 
There is a great bread recipe called "Almost No-Knead Bread" from Cooks Illustrated that I love, but I love using real sourdough even more than the CI recipe for faux-sourdough flavor, so I gave the recipe a sourdough makeover. Granted, the time savings of the CI recipe are gone. Baking with sourdough as the only leavening is for those who like it a bit old-school.

My recipe assumes that you already have a sourdough starter available. If not, you'll need some time to refresh one you've received from someone you know or to start one from scratch. There are several from-scratch processes described in the books The Art of Fermentation and Wild Fermentation by Sandor Ellix Katz, Sourdough Cookery by Rita Davenport and Flour Water Salt Yeast by Ken Forkish.

Also assumed: that you own a cast-iron Dutch oven with a lid.

Crusty Sourdough Bread
yield: 1 loaf, approximately 1 pound

Step 1: Refresh the starter 
Stir 1/4 cup unbleached all-purpose flour and 2 Tbsp water into the starter. Leave the container out on the kitchen counter several hours until starter is bubbly and increasing in size. 

Step 2: Mix up the recipe
1 cup unbleached all-purpose flour (5 ounces)
1 cup unbleached bread flour (5 ounces)
1 cup whole-wheat flour (5 ounces)
1 1/2 tsp salt
1 cup sourdough starter
1/2 cup water, plus a little more if dough is dry
 
In large mixing bowl, mix the dry ingredients, then stir in sourdough starter with enough water to make the dough into a shaggy-looking ball. Start with 1/2 cup water and add a little more water if dough is dry and not coming together.

Cover bowl with plastic wrap and leave out overnight.

Step 3: Prepare for rising 
Line a flat pasta bowl, a bread basket or an 8-inch cast-iron skillet with parchment paper and grease the paper with cooking spray. Remove your plastic wrap from the mixing bowl and spray one side with cooking spray.

Step 4: Knead and shape
Spread flour over your kneading surface and knead your dough just 10-15 turns until it is smooth and elastic. Gently pull sides down under the loaf to make a ball, squeeze bottom seam together and place loaf seam-side down in the parchment-lined bowl//basket/skillet. Cover loosely with the plastic wrap, oily side down. Allow to rise until nearly doubled in size, about 1 1/2 to 2 hours. About 1/2 hour before the end of rising, turn on the oven to 500 degrees Fahrenheit with a cast-iron Dutch oven (lid on) inside it on the lowest rack.

Step 5: Baking a crusty loaf
Sprinkle the loaf with flour, then slash a 1/2 inch-deep line across the loaf with a sharp knife. Turn on the kitchen exhaust fan, if you have one, before the next part. Carefully bring out the Dutch oven, open the lid, pull up the corners of the parchment paper around your loaf, place the paper with the loaf in it inside the Dutch oven. Cover carefully with lid, turn oven temperature down to 425 degrees Fahrenheit and bake 30 minutes. 

At 30-minute mark, remove lid and continue baking loaf in Dutch oven another 20-25 minutes until it is well-browned and center temperature of loaf is 210 degrees Fahrenheit. Cool finished loaf on a wire rack.

Step 6: Eating and storing
I'm assuming that you will already start to eat the bread the same day it is made, as soon as it is cool. Who could wait longer? I won't tell you what to put on your bread, but storage is a piece of cake. Turn the cut side of the loaf down on a cutting board.

Alternatively, you could wrap the whole loaf in foil. If the crust is getting tough and losing its crispness, it can be re-crisped in the oven or toaster. This bread is still delicious on Day 2 and makes great toast for a couple days afterward. 

Keeping a sourdough starter: Once you've got your starter going, you can store it in the refrigerator in an airtight container between uses. I feed mine at least once a week by mixing in 2 Tbsp unbleached all-purpose flour and 1 Tbsp water. I feed it more, still in a ratio of 2 parts flour to 1 part water, if I will be baking often. If I baked nearly every day, I'd just leave the starter container out on the counter to keep those yeasts really active. If I know I won't be baking for a while, but the starter is getting close to filling the container, I discard some before the next feeding.

Read more...

Introducing kids to medieval flavors

I've been at two different schools this spring giving presentations about medieval food to local kids. The kids I've talked to find it a bit strange that children in medieval England were likely to drink ale at breakfast and that even in the wealthiest households there were not always enough cups and plates to go around and people shared them at table. They have shown much curiosity in whether some of their favorite foods also showed up on medieval tables, whether they were told correctly that wealthy feasters enjoyed such odd dishes as roast peacock dressed in its feathers and cockentrice, and whether the table knife I bring to medieval-style feasts (that piece of tableware was usually provided by the diners, not by their hosts) is a weapon. For the record, my table knife has only been used on food, the peacock and cockentrice stories are for real (I've seen the original recipes) and pizza and potatoes were unknown to the Europeans of the Middle Ages. 

At the first school demo, I had the opportunity to bring a dish for the students to taste. They impressed me by being more adventurous eaters than I expected. A few even asked for second helpings, which I was happy to provide. I was telling my favorite friendly city bus driver about the school demo and he asked for the recipe, since he hasn't eaten any medieval food either. I hope he likes it as well as the schoolchildren. 

This dish travels well if it is in a sturdy pie plate and it is tasty when cold or warm. Enjoy the mix of sweet and savory flavors, a typical medieval English combination.

Tart in Ember Day

A tart for religious holidays in medieval England when eating meat was forbidden

Pie crust:

Measure all the ingredients by weight with a scale.

8 ounces all-purpose flour

4 ounces whole-wheat flour

8 ounces cold butter

4 ounces ice-cold water

1/8 ounce salt

Mix the flour and salt. Cut the butter into 1/8-inch cubes. Rub into the flour until flour-butter pieces are the size of small peas. Mix in the water and push mixture together with your hands to make a ball of dough in your bowl. You may need to mix in a tablespoon or two more of the water to get a dough to form. Divide your dough ball into two pieces, wrap and refrigerate at least one hour before rolling out for your pie plate.

Tart filling:

4 Tbsp butter

pinch of saffron threads

Melt the butter, cool a little and stir in the saffron. Let this mixture sit while you prepare the rest of the tart filling.

2 medium-sized onions

dash of salt

Boil a couple cups of water in a small pan with the salt. Peel the onions, cut off ends and chop each onion finely. Parboil the onions until tender, drain in a strainer with very small holes. Make the rest of the filling while the onions are drip-drying:

1 ½ pounds cottage cheese

about 1 cup chopped parsley

½ cup zante currants or golden raisins

2 Tbsp sugar

10 eggs

1 tsp chopped fresh sage

½ tsp ginger powder

½ tsp ground cinnamon

3 cloves, ground

½ tsp ground nutmeg

small pinch of ground mace

½ tsp salt

1 cup breadcrumbs made from fresh bread

Mash the cottage cheese in a large bowl until it is no longer in lumpy curds but is smooth. In a separate bowl, lightly beat the eggs. Mix the eggs and all the rest of the filling ingredients in with the cottage cheese, including the saffron butter and onions.

Roll out two rounds of pie dough and line two 9-inch pie plates. Pour half the filling into each pie shell. Put the tarts side-by-side on a baking sheet. Bake at 350 degrees Fahrenheit about 20 minutes, turn each pie plate (move the outside edges to the center), and bake another 10 to 20 minutes or until center of each tart is just barely set.

Original recipe sources:

“Tart in Ymbre Day” in Ancient Cookery, a collection of 14^th Century English recipes edited by Samuel Pegge

original text: Take and perboile oynouns presse out the water & hewe hem smale. Take brede & bray it in a morter, and temper it up with Ayren. Do therto butter, safroun and salt, & raisouns courauns, & a litel sugur with powdour douce, and bake it in a trap, & serue it forth.

“Tart in ymbre day” in Forme of Cury, a 14^th Century English cookbook, edited by C. B. Hieatt and Sharon Butler in their book Curye on Inglish

original text: Take and perboile oynouns & erbis & presse out the water & hewe hem smale. Take grene chese & bray it in a morter, & temper it up with ayren. Do therto butter, safroun and salt, & raisouns corauns, & a litel sugar with powdour douce, & bake it in a trap, & serue it forth.

Read more...

Recipes to try again later

I promised to share recipes that were successes and failures when I set up this blog. Spectacular failures often come with a good story, which is probably why I've been hanging onto this group of recipes without posting them. They were not highly impressive dishes (or haven't been tested yet) and they don't come with good stories. Despite that, I'm posting them here today because the blog entry is easier to find (and read) later than a little slip of paper with pencil marks on it. Hopefully in the future there will be revisions with photos and more exciting tales. Perhaps someone out there will try them out with the suggested "note to self" revisions and let me know how it goes.

Choco-cherry Smoothie

1 cup cherries from cherry bounce
1 1/2 cup seltzer water
2 cups homemade kefir
1 Tbsp brown sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 Tbsp cocoa powder

Blend until smooth. 
NOTE TO SELF: try with 1/2 cup seltzer next time, possibly less kefir. Great chocolate and cherry flavor, but beverage ended up too thin to be a good smoothie. The tanginess was nice, but perhaps less kefir and/or a teaspoon more sugar would bring taste into better balance. Booziness of the alcohol-preserved cherries sneaks up on you, so warn people if you serve this to others. 

Lemon-Chicken Pasta

3/4 pound thin spaghetti, cooked in boiling salted water
2 cups shredded leftover roasted chicken with lemon-pepper-garlic seasoning
75 g bunch parsley, chopped
juice and zest of 2 Meyer lemons
5 Tbsp olive oil
grated Parmesan cheese to taste

Whisk together the lemon juice, zest and olive oil. Toss with chicken and pasta and parsley. Sprinkle each serving with grated Parmesan. 

NOTE TO SELF: I'm sure that this dish could be done with plain salt-and-pepper roasted chicken with just the addition of a minced clove of garlic and some pepper to the sauce. Next time, consider using at least 1 Tbsp less oil. This version was a little too oily. 

The Large-Crowd Meatball Experiment

5 pounds ground beef (85% lean/15% fat ratio)
1 large onion, minced
2 Tbsp minced garlic
4 oz fresh bread, processed into fine crumbs
3/4 cup vegetable stock or milk
3 eggs, beaten
2 oz (by weight) sour cream
1 1/2 Tbsp kosher salt
2 tsp freshly-ground black pepper
2 Tbsp dried Greek oregano
2 Tbsp dried basil

Place ground beef in large mixing bowl. Saute minced onion and minced garlic in olive oil. Moisten breadcrumbs with vegetable stock/milk in a small bowl. Add sauteed onion/garlic and moist breadcrumbs to meat along with all other ingredients and mix thoroughly. Form into meatballs and fry in oil or bake.
NOTE TO SELF: These would taste great with ground lamb or beef-lamb mix. Salt was not quite overpowering, but could easily be cut to 1 Tbsp plus 1/2 tsp. Dried basil and oregano amounts (especially oregano) should probably be cut in half. Devote another blog entry to this experiment and its theoretical variations with Korean, sweet-sour, American meatloaf and Middle Eastern flavor profiles. 

Bloody Mary Meatballs

3 pounds ground beef (85% lean/15% fat ratio)
1 1/2 cup rolled oats
2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp freshly-ground black pepper
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 cup minced onion
1/4 cup Bloody Mary Mix
1 Tbsp prepared horseradish

Saute onion and garlic in olive oil and mix thoroughly with meat and other ingredients. Form into meatballs and fry in oil or bake. Serve in a Bloody Mary sauce I haven't written a recipe for yet or make Bloody Marys and eat meatballs as snack with cocktail.
NOTE TO SELF: Mixed parts of three different recipes together to create this one, can't try it out until there is a sharing occasion to make this with a Bloody-Mary-inspired tomato sauce to serve them in.

Read more...

Successfully avoiding a trip to the grocery again

You know the scenario: You're pressed for time to get that dish done by dinnertime or in time to leave with it for someone else's house and you realize you don't have as much of one ingredient as you thought you had. The recipe won't turn out the way you have come to expect. You're not sure whether you can fudge it with using less, but you have to try anyway because you've already started mixing the other parts.

This recipe is about embracing the unexpected and foisting it off on your friends at a potluck, which I did. And about avoiding a trip to the grocery for which there is no time, which I also did and made it to that potluck on time. And it's about finding another tasty use for backyard rosemary and other gardeners' summer tomatoes that show up unannounced at our place or appear in our Henry's Farm CSA box.

Running-Out-of-Cornmeal Cornbread (with bell and whistles)
alterations to Cook's Illustrated "All Purpose Cornbread" recipe
at least 6 servings

5 ounces unbleached all-purpose flour
4 ounces whole-wheat flour
3 ounces cornmeal
2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp baking soda
3/4 tsp table salt
1/4 cup packed light brown sugar
3 1/2 ounces fresh cooked corn kernels (or thawed frozen corn)
1 cup unsweetened kefir (or buttermilk)
2 large eggs
8 Tbsp unsalted butter, melted and cooled slightly
large pinch dried rosemary, crushed (this is the bell from my backyard plant)
one to two ripe garden tomatoes (this is a whistle)
a pinch of kosher salt or sea salt (this is a whistle)

Heat oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit. Spray 8x8-inch glass baking dish with nonstick cooking spray. Whisk flours, cornmeal, baking powder, baking soda, salt in a bowl until combined and set aside.

In food processor or blender, process sugar, corn, kefir and eggs until combined. 

Make a well in the center of dry ingredients and pour in wet mixture. Fold together for a few turns of the spatula/spoon. Add melted butter and rosemary and fold until dry ingredients are just moistened.

Pour batter into baking dish. Smooth the top. Slice the tomatoes thinly and lay the slices on top of the batter so they just touch each other. Sprinkle with kosher/sea salt.

Bake about 25 to 35 minutes until golden brown and a toothpick inserted it the center comes out clean. Tomato slices will look as if they have sunken into the top. Take directly from oven to potluck and serve cornbread still warm out of the baking dish.

Read more...

Bunny Buns

I'm on attempt #3 to make the perfect sweet bun to stuff with marzipan, shape like a bunny and serve up at the local Shire of Baile na Scolairi event at the end of the month.

The concept: make bunny-shaped buns and display a few of them on a platter at lunch with some piles of raisins, making it look like "the rabbit's revenge" on lunch is some rabbit droppings left behind as the bunnies hopped around the plate. The buns have to taste good, though, because those bunnies not on display will be served up as food.

I've finally arrived at a bread recipe I'm happy with, so I'm ready to share that here.

Advantages of this recipe:
1. sweet, but not as sweet as the marzipan, so there is some contrast
2. tastes great (not dry or stale) as day-old bread, which it will be on the day of the event
3. easy to shape
4. variable for multiple purposes -- I may end up using this recipe some other time with other stuffings or with dried fruits or other spices in the dough.
5. one recipe makes more than 12 buns -- good, because I have to make at least 50
6. does not require me to buy milk -- great because we didn't have any at home yesterday

Bunny Buns
makes about 20 small buns

1/2 cup lukewarm water
1 package active dry yeast
1 tsp granulated sugar
1 cup lukewarm water
1 egg
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1 tsp salt
1 tsp cinnamon
3 cups all-purpose flour
1 cup whole-wheat flour
prepared marzipan (preferably a brand with sugar as the only sweetener)

Proof the yeast: pour water into a large bowl, sprinkle on yeast and 1 tsp sugar. Let stand until foamy, about 10 minutes.

Mix in the remaining water, the egg, 1/2 cup sugar, oil, salt, cinnamon. Whisk in 1 cup all-purpose flour, then 1 cup whole-wheat flour. Use spoon to mix in the remaining all-purpose flour. Knead with well-floured hands until well combined. Dough should be soft and pillowy and a little sticky.

Clean out bowl with soap and hot water and coat with vegetable oil. Return dough to bowl, turning to cover dough with grease. Cover with plastic wrap or thin towel and leave in a warm place until doubled in size. (see note below)

Punch dough down and knead with floured hands for 1 to 2 minutes. Divide into 20 portions of equal size. Place a small ball of marzipan on each portion, wrap the dough around it, and roll dough between hands into a round ball. Shape the balls into teardrops, leaving the marzipan in the fat end of the teardrop. Place on greased baking sheet or baking sheet covered in parchment paper. Let rise, covered by thin towel, for about 30 minutes.

Preheat oven to 375 degrees Fahrenheit and brush dough with egg wash (see note below). Use scissors to cut long rabbit ears near the narrow end of the teardrop of dough. Bake buns for 15 to 20 minutes, until they are golden brown and sound hollow when the bottom is tapped. Be careful not to burn the tips of the ears too much. Cool on a wire rack. 

Note on rising: if the weather is chilly, bread dough does not rise quickly. Try one of these tricks:
1. Place covered bowl of dough in a closed oven with just the light on
2. for winter days only: turn the oven on to the lowest possible temperature for five minutes. Turn off and then let the bread dough rise in the oven with the door closed.
3. Boil water in a pan slightly smaller in diameter than your mixing bowl. Remove the pan from the heat and put the covered bowl on top of the pan.
4. Boil a cup of water in the microwave oven. Remove cup, place covered bowl with dough in it inside the microwave and let the dough rise with the door closed. Don't microwave the dough, it gets too hot and will kill the yeast.

Note on egg wash: egg wash is one egg beaten well with a little water. Use a pastry brush to brush the wash on the dough. It adds a pleasant sheen to the dough.  Egg wash can be used to help seeds stick to the top of breads (e.g. sesame seeds, poppy seeds, etc.). Some recipes will use a wash made only with egg yolks to add yellow color to the dough, or only with egg whites to prevent yellow color. This site has an interesting table of the different properties of different egg wash recipes: http://www.piemaven.com/egg_wash.html

Read more...

Another try at breakfast strata

It's been quite a while since I toyed with the breakfast casserole strata in the kitchen. In the last documented attempt, the strata was really subpar.

In the new version, it's still two layers of bread with a filling of sausage and vegetables in between, all held together by an egg mixture and baked till the bread starts to toast.
The differences:
1. no turmeric
2. this time, I had the mustard I wanted
3. different sausage
4. different spices
5. cheese topping

"Let's try this again" leftovers-for-breakfast strata
 serves at least 4
4 large eggs
1 cup milk (I used almond milk)
1 tsp dried sage leaves, crushed (4 to 5 leaves)
1/2 cup chopped parsley (loosely in the measuring cup, not packed)
1 orange bell pepper, chopped finely
2 leftover bratwurst-sized sausages, sliced (I had chicken-apple sausage)
1 tsp dijon mustard
1 tsp salt
3 Tbsp butter
6 to 8 slices dry bread
1 cup shredded cheddar

Oil 8x8 baking pan. Lay 3 to 4 slices of bread down to cover the bottom of the pan. Saute chopped pepper and sausage together in butter. When heated through, add parsley and sage. Spread veg/meat mixture on top of bread in baking pan. Cover with half of shredded cheese and top with 3 to 4 slices of bread to cover evenly. Whisk eggs with milk, mustard and salt. Pour over contents of pan, soak at least 1 hour (can soak overnight if desired to bake at breakfast time). Top with the rest of the shredded cheese and bake at 350 degrees Fahrenheit for approximately 30 minutes or until eggs are set and top layer of bread is toasted.
This dish is great fresh out of the oven, but do let it sit 10 minutes before cutting into portions. This time, I made the dish the night before I wished to eat it and cut portions to reheat in the microwave for a couple of breakfasts for me and Andrew.

I'm getting more daring with the use of eggs and cheese as my sometimes-touchy guts will allow. I'll have to admit that this time, I still didn't get things quite right and the strata was once again not a Heather-friendly dish. I suspect there was something about the chicken-apple sausage that I wasn't digesting well because not only the leftovers affected me, but also the serving of sausage with lunch on an earlier day. Maybe I could have skipped the cheese topping, too.

Well, this dish was fun until it suddenly wasn't fun anymore. The flavor was much improved over the last strata, and I was glad to have a way to use up leftovers of chicken sausage and parsley.

Read more...

Playing with 15th-Century pork pie again

Not only are pork pie recipes available in the Harleian manuscripts from 15th century England, there is also a pork pie recipe in the 14th-century collection called Forme of Cury. The last time I tried to recreate a pork-and-fruit pie and described it in this blog, I was going with a 15th-Century source, but the recipe I used most recently from the prior century isn't much different. It's still ground/minced pork inside a crust with fruit and spices, although this one also includes some fowl, as did the first Tarte de Chare recipe I found.

This latest experiment with pork-and-fruit pie was a big hit at the local Society for Creative Anachronism shire's holiday party potluck, where a few of us took the challenge I'd posed to bring pre-1600 food to the party.

Here's the recipe I worked from this time (with special characters replaced with "th" where they appear):
Tartee
Take pork ysode. hewe it and bray it. do thereto ayrenn. Raisouns sugur and powdour of gyngur. powdour douce and smale briddes theramong and white grece, take prunes, safroun & salt, and make a crust in a trape & do ther Fars therin. &bake it wel & serue it forth. 

That is, take cooked/boiled pork and grind it, mix in eggs, raisins, sugar and powdered ginger, powder douce (sweet powder, a spice mixture). Add small birds and white grease (fresh fat, not drippings). Take prunes, saffron and salt. Make a crust in a trap (a pie dish) and put the farce (meat mixture) in it. Bake it well and serve it forth.

I departed from the original recipe's instruction to grind previously cooked pork and used fresh ground pork, easily available these days from the butcher shop. I also decided to do a double-crust pie that would stand on its own instead of putting a single-crust pie in a pie plate, because I wanted people at the potluck to be able to easily eat pieces of pie with their hands. As it turns out, the fresh pork may have been an unwise choice because the pie's juices steadily bubbled over through my vent holes in the crust and created quite a mess on my baking sheet. Cooked pork may have been more well-behaved and stayed in its crust.

I can only hope that entire small birds would have baked up to a safe temperature when mixed in with the rest of the meat. I didn't have the time the day I was baking to go looking for quail or doves, so I used 1.5 to 2 pounds chicken thighs, which for the convenience of my potluckers I deboned before cooking. And to be sure I'd get fully cooked fowl, I fried the chicken pieces in oil until browned before adding them on top of the pork mixture in my pie.

My recipe for the rest of the pork-and-fruit mixture:
1 pound ground pork
2 eggs
3 oz prunes, chopped
2 oz currants
1/2 tsp powdered ginger
1/2 to 3/4 tsp salt
2 whole cloves, crushed to powder
dash cinnamon and nutmeg
pinch saffron, crushed
2 tsp sugar

Once again, I used the "good white crust" recipe from A Temperance of Cooks that was their version of Gervase Markham's crust described in The English Housewife, a manual from 1615. It is sturdy, but just fatty enough to be a little flaky. The flavor is appealing, especially when the pie is still warm, and it bakes to a nice golden color at 375 degrees Fahrenheit without threatening to burn before the pie filling is done and bubbly in the center.

I should mention that I was instantly won over by the Project Gutenberg e-book version of Forme of Cury by Samuel Pegge, which I acquired for my iPod through iBooks, for the simple reason that it has every recipe listed individually in the table of contents, so I can just look for the title I want and go directly to that recipe without having to page through the entire book. A big win over the HTML version on the Project Gutenberg website because the recipes in the book are not organized alphabetically or even necessarily by course in the meal.

Read more...

Schwarzwälder Kirschtrifle and a bonus cocktail

Now that the cherry bounce I made in May has had several months to mellow out in the bottles, its character has changed greatly. In June, it was very harsh and pretty tart, especially if I ate one of the cherries that had been steeping in the liquor. Now, it's sweeter and has the full flavor of cherries in it, but it still packs a boozy punch.

A boozy punch is exactly what's on order when making a Schwarzwälder Kirschtorte (Black Forest Cake). The cherry filling in the traditional German preparation includes a couple shots of Kirschwasser (a schnapps made with cherries), also known as just Kirsch.

This story starts back a couple Saturdays ago, when I decided instead of Kirsch to use my homemade cherry liquor to make a Torte to take to a housewarming party. I also figured it would be something productive to do with the strained-out whiskey-soaked cherries.

I was using a recipe for the cake that I'd never tried before, one that had fewer ingredients than the one in my baking cookbook from Germany and seemed to have a promise of being less dry than the traditional recipe that included almond flour in the cake. I was excited while watching it bake to see it puff up, since it was a cake leavened mostly by beaten egg yolks and whites, and I feared it might fail to rise. I beamed proudly as I pulled the finished cake from the oven, then cried out in wordless shock as the pan slipped from my hands and hit the floor. The cake fell out of the pan and folded in half, leaving a smear of chocolate everywhere it touched.

A few unkind words and a few minutes of cleaning up the floor later, I decided there was nothing else better to do with the quart of whipping cream in my refrigerator, so I'd better get started on a new cake. Another hour later, I was pulling out Cake Number Two at the end of its baking time. It wasn't quite as tall as Cake Number One, but I hoped I could still manage to get two layers out of it.

As it sat on the cooling rack, the cake looked more and more discouraging as the center of it kept sinking. When the time came to cut the layers, it was very clear that the center of the cake was an underbaked, gooey mess that wouldn't have anything to do with layers. I had a two-layer doughnut on my hands with chocolatey sludge for a doughnut hole. Tasty sludge, but not suitable for Schwarzwälder Kirschtorte.

What to do now? The eggs are gone, there's still a quart of whipping cream that needs to go into something for this party, the filling made with whiskey-steeped cherries is ready and waiting, there's not enough time to bake and cool another cake, and the one I've got is fantastic around the outside, but impossible to use the inside. What else uses bits of cake and has pretty layers with fruit and whipped cream? Trifle! The Schwarzwälder Kirschtrifle was born.

Here it is, complete with the garnish of chocolate shavings and chocolate chunks, ready to go to the party. Those who grew up with trifle, please excuse the Pyrex bowl standing in for a proper trifle bowl, which I don't have and never thought I would ever want.

Both layers of cake have cherry filling, I soaked the cake with a bit more cherry bounce, and of course there are thick layers of whipped cream on top of each cherry layer.

This solution to cake disaster was a big hit at the party. This past week, the partying with boozy cherries continued with an experiment to use the leftover cherry juice I had from making the filling and the Kirsch I've had hanging around the house since a trip to Vom Fass in Madison, WI in June but hadn't had occasion to use yet.

Schwarzwälder Kirschtorte (Black Forest Cake), a cocktail

1 part Kirschwasser/Kirsch
2 parts Mocha Kahlua (perhaps another chocolate liqueur would work, this is what I had around)
2 parts cherry juice (100 percent tart cherries, and not a juice blend)

Mix Kirsch, Kahlua and juice and serve out into glasses. To finish off just like the traditional cake, garnish each glass with a dollop of whipped cream and sprinkle with chocolate shavings.

Read more...

No exact amounts of anything!

Some delicious ideas from this month's cooking experiments, but no exact recipes.

1. Eggplant and potato stew with lemon basil

• one small Italian-style eggplant
• new red potatoes from Henry's Farm CSA box -- the potatoes are pink inside!
• chicken broth powder and water
• one sprig's worth of leaves from Henry's Farm lemon basil
• cook together over low-ish heat on camp stove for a very lemony-tasting stew that is almost too sophisticated for camping

2. "I don't feel like turning on the oven when it's 90-plus degrees outside" zucchini casserole

•  one pound of ground turkey
•  a whole bunch of zucchini, thinly sliced
• my favorite seasonings that go well with turkey: Penzey's Spices Mural of Flavor mix, sage, Lawry's seasoned salt, pepper
• one can condensed cream of mushroom soup
• the rest of the box of potatoes from Henry's Farm plus some more that were in the cupboard
• brown the turkey in a bit of oil, add spices, add potatoes, soup, zucchini and a splash of water and simmer covered until the zucchini and potatoes are fully cooked. Could all be covered and baked instead on a cooler day.

3.  Sausage and kale pasta

• heat salted water for a pound of pasta
• when water is just about ready to add pasta, put first ingredients into pan for sauce, then cook pasta while waiting for sausage to brown
• sauce: olive oil with 3 cloves smashed garlic and about one pound Italian sausage (I would have used local turkey sausage, but I only could find local pork sausage -- Twin Oak Meats sausage is very lean) is all cooked together until sausage is mildly browned. A few ladlefuls of pasta water and a couple handfuls of kale are added at the same time. Cook covered until saucy but no longer watery, then mix together with drained pasta.

4. Tourteletes
A modern-equipment take on tiny medieval fig pies. The original recipe in Forme of Cury calls for deep-frying the pies, but I decided to bake them instead.

• 1 part butter cut together with 2 parts flour, a sprinkling of water to bind into rollable crust
• filling: chopped dried mission figs, ground cloves, ground nutmeg, ground pepper, all moistened with a) water with saffron moistened and crushed in it and b) honey
• roll out crust thinly, cut into circles with large cookie cutter, place filling into circles and fold over to make little half-moon-shaped pies, seal pies and bake at 350 degrees until starting to turn golden-brown

Read more...

Cherries!

The sour cherry tree in our backyard is back in its best form this year, yielding an impressive amount of cherries. There are enough for the squirrels to get some dessert-on-the-branch plus we have as many as we can stand to pit for cooking now or freezing for later.

Here's the crop from the first two days of excellent picking, filling four 32-oz yogurt containers:

Sorry, no pictures of us at the table with a pile of cherries on the table and two cherry pitters. Too much juice squirting all over, didn't want to get any on the camera. Thanks to Andrew's mom, Diane, for warning us that cherry juice will even get on the wall during the pitting process. We're glad we put up that old bedsheet to catch any stray cherry spray.

Some close-up views of the fruit on the tree:

So much more exciting than last year, when there was only one cherry we found that ripened well enough to eat. We've been out to pick about every two days for a week and the bounty hasn't stopped yet. These cherries are very tart to eat plain, but their flavor when cooked and lightly sweetened is dramatically more complex and delicious.

The ongoing list of things we've made with our cherries so far:
cherry puree (kind of like applesauce, but with cherries)
cherry sauce (cherries cooked in light syrup)

honey-sweetened cherry sauce
cherry bread pudding, recipe from Pleyn Delit: Medieval Cookery for Modern Cooks by Butler, Hieatt, Hosington
frozen cherries
cherry bounce (cherries preserved in sugar and whiskey)

 cherry jam

It's been a busy two weeks of cherry harvest.

Read more...

Roasting, baking and blanching on the fire

This weekend at my local SCA shire's event, we had a potluck lunch. I decided to challenge myself a bit by trying recipes and techniques that could have been used in Italy during the 16th Century. Only one recipe was an original from an Italian cookbook, the other two were more based on known ingredients and techniques from the time period.

I wish I had made some arrangements for photography, because I probably looked delightfully goofy standing over this large open-fire grill outside the event all morning, standing in the smoke, wearing my apron over my coat and with a very-not-appropriate-to-period Polartec fleece hat for warmth. The day was quite windy, so starting the fire was difficult and keeping it at a constant temperature was impossible.

The plan: get to the event site to unload the woodpile and start the fire at about 8 a.m., have three items prepared for lunch by 11 or 11:30. Planned items: spit-roasted leg of lamb, blanched asparagus with dressing and herbs, bread baked in a pot in the coals. And if anyone showed up to watch me cook, I intended to ask that person to roll marzipan stuffing to put inside dates for something to do while we chatted.

Considering the setbacks with the fire and the fact that I've never tried to cook over an open fire on a deadline before, I was pleased that my plan worked. It only did because I had an assistant, who turned up without being asked, who could watch the fire while I did a few last-minute preparations or who could deliver plated items while I continued cooking the last item. She also stuffed the majority of the dates.

Spit-roasted leg of lamb
recipe inspired by Buon Appetito, Your Holiness: Secrets of the Papal Table by Mariangela Rinaldo and Mariangela Vicini
four-pound leg of lamb, organic and free-range (mine also happened to be certified halal, which becomes irrelevant when you see the next ingredient)
1/2 pound pork fat (I used a very fatty bacon)
1 Tbsp dried rosemary leaves
5 cloves garlic
salt and pepper
2 cups red wine

Mince the pork fat and cut it together with rosemary and garlic that have been minced. Cut lamb into two nearly-equal pieces. One piece will likely have the bone in it. Make deep incisions on the side of each pieces of meat and stuff with the pork-garlic-rosemary mixture. Meat may need to be tied with kitchen twine so the stuffing does not fall apart while loading it onto the rotisserie spit. Sprinkle with salt and pepper and roast indirectly over hot coals that are still sending up a little bit of flame. Turn occasionally while the lamb roasts at a temperature that is hot enough to cause some sizzling, but not hot enough to quickly burn the lamb. Baste by brushing occasionally with wine.

The leg of lamb was the item that got the most effusive praise from eaters, and it proved to be the most difficult. Lesson one: spit-roasting is to be done with indirect heat, not flames leaping up to the food. On the other hand, having a bit of an overbrowned (okay, blackened) crust did add lots of flavor until I figured out how far away from the flame to place the spit. Lesson two: bring a secondary cooking vessel in case roasted meat needs finishing in a pan or covered pot. So glad I had that cast-iron skillet handy so I could pour in the rest of my wine for basting and just cook off the lamb in pieces in the skillet. The wind was cooling off the lamb leg on the other sides while it cooked on one side over the fire, so the very center never came up to temperature on the spit. If I'd had an extra hour to leave it over the fire, it eventually would have cooked fully, but I didn't have the time to wait. If the fire hadn't been constantly blown around by wind, I think the 2 1/2 hours the lamb roasted on the spit would have been long enough.

I was very excited about the bread for its flavor and texture. It came out of the baking pot with a black bottom, a caramelized-looking top and springy texture. I have learned quite a bit about bread from another shire member, Simon, in the past year or two, plus I have received tips whenever I ask from Laura, who bakes where I work. A bit more practice with baking hasn't hurt me either. Simon got me started with using sourdough starter instead of always relying on packaged yeast. Finding motivation to start sourdough is simple when Simon hands out little packets of dried sourdough starter from his own collection at a class. Sourdough starter is a pre-1600 technique, as is baking in a pot buried in hot coals. To accentuate sour flavor and add a bit of beery yeasty taste that could have come from using ale barm for yeast, I followed the recipe for Almost No-Knead Bread from Cooks Illustrated. That recipe uses beer and vinegar for part of the liquid. Instead of the instant yeast called for in the recipe, I added some of Simon's sourdough starter. The bread dough sits in a bowl at room temperature overnight to develop flavor. The pot I used for baking was not made of the correct materials, being a cast-iron pot instead of the more-likely-for-pre-1600 Italy clay baking pot, but it was the only heavy covered pot I have that I'd be willing to put in a fire. Lesson from this experiment: the bread probably only needs half as much baking time as in the oven at home. I checked it after 45 minutes of the expected hour, but I think I could have gotten away with only 30 minutes of baking time and had less burnt crust to cut off.

The part I know would turn out fine in this experiment even if nothing else did was the asparagus. I found some directions from a Renaissance Italian cook indicating that asparagus should be boiled until just tender, then dressed with oil and vinegar and fresh herbs. Even at my worst with outdoor cooking, I can manage to boil water as long as I have enough fuel. The vegetable was perfectly crisp-tender the way I like it, then I dressed it with a simple red wine vinegar-olive oil vinaigrette (with a dash of sugar), salt, pepper, and chopped fresh parsley. No need for the cold-water shocking after blanching. The air was brisk enough that the asparagus cooled off right quick after I put it on the serving plate. I was pleased to see that the plate of vegetable disappeared just as quickly as my other dishes. I guess the people who like asparagus ate it enthusiastically.

Read more...

Easter menu: violets and some other food

It's the start of the third year of having a yard without chemicals like fertilizer or pesticide (I don't know what the previous owners did, so I'm starting from when we moved in). To celebrate, this year we're eating edible flowers that appear in the yard.

At the special Easter lunch I made for myself and my husband, violets were the stars. They are the first of the edible flowers to show up in the spring. We went out in the morning to pick a bowl of the teeny purple flowers from our backyard.

In documenting the Easter lunch here, let's start with dessert. I found a recipe for flower pudding with dates and spices in Lorna Sass' To the King's Taste, a collection of recipes from the time of King Richard II of England and Sass' modern interpretations of the recipes. The original recipe called for roses, but Sass indicated violets might be appropriate in early spring, so I tried it out. Into the saucepan go the flowers and some almond milk along with thickeners, spices, and sweeteners.

After chilling and setting and a bit of garnishing with some fresh flowers, here's the end result:

This dish did not meet expectations, but I would not call it a failure. The pudding is delicious despite the drawbacks of its slightly grayish purple color and the fact that the pudding ends up tasting much more like dates than like violets, which have a very light and subtle flavor that may have been destroyed by cooking. I'll try the same recipe again in a few weeks when the first roses bloom and see if the stronger flavor of roses holds up better in the pudding.

Violets turned up again in the first course of lunch, which was spring mix greens and sauteed asparagus with a balsamic vinegar reduction sauce.

Next year, I'm going to have to pick more violets for salads. They are fantastic with greens!

The usual main attraction of Easter dinner, the ham, was hardly an afterthought, it just didn't have the same level of novelty as the edible flowers. I've never made a glazed ham before, and Andrew and I recalled Easter hams of our growing-up years were unglazed. I pulled the basic ham glaze ideas from  Betty Crocker's Picture Cookbook of 1950 and dressed it up with balsamic vinegar. It was served with buttered peas with caramelized shallots.

Final verdict from the eaters? Glazed ham is here to stay on our Easter menu, for as long as we don't mind all our ham leftovers being a little sweet. The payoff of taste sensations was definitely worth the extra effort of pulling out the ham in the middle of baking, scoring and glazing. Also, I love how the pink and green food looks so appetizing on my pink-and-white china.

Wine served: a surprisingly apt German Riesling from the Mosel, Ernst Loosen's Dr. L from 2010. Hooray to the liquor store that has everything, including good wine recommendations for ham!

Read more...

Are krumkaker still good after being frozen?

The Christmas baking experiment results are in: frozen krumkaker get a little moist upon thawing and the texture is undesirable, but keeping them tightly wrapped or sealed in an airtight container will allow for continued crispiness into early February. I had a chance to taste these leftovers from three days before Christmas at the beginning of this month, and they tasted like they were, at most, two or three days old. Still well-flavored by the cardamom and vanilla, still light and somewhat crunchy. The samples I brought home were gone in about five minutes.

Read more...

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.

Read more...

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.

Read more...

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.

Read more...

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

Read more...

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.

Read more...