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.

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Smoothie #9

This is a fizzy, purple smoothie Andrew whipped up from the fruits we froze together this summer. 

Smoothie #9

1 banana
approximately 1/4 pound each frozen peach slices and frozen blueberries
1 cup unsweetened plain almond milk
peach-flavored sparkling water

Blend all together until smooth.

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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.

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Monster Beets!

Just had to post an amusing picture from last fall at work. Kelly and I are posing with some beets from Jane's Garden. I've been thinking a lot about those crazy super-sized beets because this year's beets have been just normal ones.
Thanks to Jackie Pope-Ganser for the photo.

When you get monster beets, it's time to use just one to make a big salad. Here's a recipe I use at home. I'm changing the title to commemorate the beets.

Monster Beet and Apple Salad

One monstrously-large beet, peeled and ends cut off
3 to 4 crunchy eating apples (examples: Fuji, Jonathan), peeled and cored
1 bulb fennel (optional), save the feathery fronds
balsamic vinegar
sugar
salt
fresh-ground black pepper
walnut oil (tastes the best, but olive oil will also serve)
walnut pieces (optional)

Grate the beet into a bowl, using the large holes on your grater. You may need to cut it into smaller pieces to hold onto it while you grate. Grate the apples into the bowl. If you are using the fennel, cut off the stalks, cut the bulb in quarters and cut out the cores. Then slice very thinly.
In another bowl, pour in a few tablespoons of vinegar and add pinches of sugar and salt until it has a taste you find pleasantly tart and lightly sweetened. Season with pepper and then whisk in oil in small batches until the dressing emulsifies. Mix the dressing with the beets and apples and walnut pieces (if using). Use the fennel fronds for a garnish or mix them in with the whole salad.

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Summer Skillets are back!

The corn, squash and beans "Three Sisters" are ripe and ready to eat this month. We've eaten sweet corn, zucchini and "beans and greens," in addition to plucking the backyard green beans and eating them straight off the bush when they are small and tender. I love summer squashes like zucchini and pattypan and cucumber, and I'm waiting impatiently for the winter squashes to ripen on their long vines stretching out of my garden box toward the house.

All of these "Three Sisters" taste great with another of the summer/fall staples in our area, cooking greens. This year, one Swiss chard plant from some pretty old seeds was successful in the backyard box. It's time to ramp up the enthusiasm for greens because from here on out in the CSA box, I predict there will be a minimum of two greens each week.

The ubiquitous and ever-flexible zucchini teams up with our county's major export product, corn, and a bit of earthy chard in this summertime skillet. The quantity is large enough that the Dutch oven or chicken fryer is a more appropriately-sized cooking vessel. It's quick to prepare, provided you've cut off the corn kernels and kept them from a previous meal of sweet corn this week.

Smoky Summer Vegetable Skillet
2 to 3 Tbsp olive oil
1/3 cup sliced onion
3 cloves garlic, smashed with flat side of knife
1 foot-long, fat zucchini (scrape out seeds if it has tough, mature seeds in it)
handful of Swiss chard, approximately 8-12 oz weight
the kernels cut off from 6 ears of cooked sweet corn
2 tsp cumin
1 tsp Spanish smoked paprika
salt and pepper to taste

Heat oil over medium-high heat in a large, deep skillet/Dutch oven. Saute onion in oil. While it is cooking, cut zucchini into long strips and dice. Add garlic to the onion and stir one minute. Add diced zucchini and stir occasionally. While zucchini is cooking, clean chard and strip the leaves off the stems. Chop the leaves, save the stems for another dish or compost them.

Put corn into pan with cumin and smoked paprika when zucchini is somewhat translucent. Stir in chard when corn has started to heat through. Stir and cook briefly until chard wilts. Season to taste with salt and pepper.

Serving suggestions: by itself; on rice, quinoa or couscous; with bread or on top of toast; topped with a fried egg.

This next recipe was today's lunch, created and eaten hastily when I issued a spontaneous lunch invitation to two of Andrew's friends, who were passing through to drop him off on their way back home from Indianapolis. 

Tart, tangy tomatillos are probably cheating on my low-acid diet, but they are so good with rice and beans and I didn't want to waste this treat from the CSA box. I tried to leave most of them in the serving dish and only put a few slices on my plate. Sharing is better than eating them all myself, right?

When paired with a large salad, this dish served four. If it were a one-dish meal, I'd say it is two portions.

Tangy Tomatillo-Bean Skillet

4 Tbsp olive oil
1/2 cup chopped onion
2 cloves garlic, sliced
1/2 tsp ground cumin
1/2 tsp smoked Spanish paprika
1/2 tsp ground coriander
1 pint tomatillos, washed
1 cup leftover cooked rice
One 15-oz can black beans, rinsed and drained
salt and pepper to taste

Cut tomatillos into thick vertical slices, then cut each slice in half to make half-moon shapes. Heat olive oil to medium-high heat in a nonstick skillet. Saute onion until starting to become translucent, add garlic and stir one minute. Add tomatillos and spices and stir frequently until tomatillos are tender. Add rice, stirring and cutting with spoon to separate rice grains. Add black beans and heat through, stirring frequently, and season with salt and pepper.

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This post brought to you by foods that start with the letter G

Food is arriving weekly through Henry's Farm CSA again ("what's a CSA?" check this link), and at the beginning and end of the season, the major vegetable group is GREENS. We eat a lot of salad and stir-fries and search around for other options to keep up our interest in greens. When gnocchi (small Italian potato dumplings) went on sale recently, I bought a couple packages and figured they'd eventually come in handy, so bring on the unfamiliar greens!

Lamb's quarters showed up at the CSA pickup, and I traded some onions to get some more of this stuff in the hopes that we'd like it enough to eat it for two meals.
"Use as you would spinach" was the take-home message about this edible weed on the Brockman Family Farming blog. So Andrew and I did so with this earthy-tasting dish that was a team effort. We discovered that like most of the cooking greens, these are great cooked with garlic. Garlic shows up twice in our recipe: once as minced cloves, once in the pesto.
If you have leftovers, I recommend adding a bit of liquid when reheating to soften up the gnocchi.

Earthy Greens and Gnocchi
serves 4

2 Tbsp olive oil
1 medium onion, chopped
1 large clove garlic, minced
12 oz white button or cremini mushrooms, sliced 
One 17-oz package potato gnocchi
grated parmesan cheese, optional
1 bunch (about 8 oz. by weight) lamb's quarters, spinach, or Swiss chard
1 Tbsp basil pesto
1 Tbsp dried Italian seasoning
salt and pepper to taste

Clean all dirt and grit from greens, remove stems and chop greens down to bite-size if needed. Heat water to cook gnocchi according to package directions. Cook other ingredients while waiting for water to heat. Heat oil over medium-high heat in a large skillet. Saute onion until tender, then add garlic and mushrooms and continue cooking. Stir in lamb's quarters, then Italian seasoning. Keep warm on low heat while waiting for gnocchi to cook. When greens are wilted, turn off heat and stir in pesto. Drain gnocchi and add to mixture in skillet. Season with salt and pepper. Serve with grated parmesan if desired.

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Pork, cabbage, apples, grains: several stews

In August, I taught a class I called "Early Period Cooking Demo: Recipes for 10th Century England" at an SCA event. I've been trying to push myself this year to create recipes that could be appropriate for my 10th Century Saxon/Norse persona and to practice starting and controlling open fires for cooking.

My desire for the class was to offer 1) a demonstration of the ways in which a fire for cooking is maintained differently from a fire for warming a room, 2) a demonstration of different cooking methods known to people in 10th Century England, 3) recipes that could be appropriate to the time and place I'm portraying, a task complicated by the lack of recipe books for this period, 4) recipes I could reproduce on camping outings to reduce my reliance on modern recipes and foods.

The following recipe is influenced by two things: reading about food combinations in Ann Hagen's Bible of early English cooking, Anglo-Saxon Food and Drink: Production, Processing, Distribution and Consumption; and thinking about combinations of foods that would be in season together for a culture that was restricted in dietary choices by seasonal availability of foodstuffs. Bacon is a pork product that can be kept a few months in a cool place after the slaughter of a hog, so it's not tied to only one season. Apples, cabbages and fresh herbs are fall foods known to Anglo-Saxons as well as modern Americans. It's possible that my choice of kale for the later two versions of the stew is more authentic than heading cabbages, but I'm not certain the heading cabbages were unknown to 10th Century England.

Pork, Apple and Cabbage Stew
serves 4-6

1/2 pound wood-smoked bacon or other fresh or preserved pork, chopped
lard or bacon drippings or butter, if needed
1 large or 2 small onions, chopped
1 small green cabbage, cored and chopped
1 pound apples, peeled, cored and chopped
2 to 3 sprigs fresh thyme
1 small sprig fresh rosemary, chopped fine or 1/2 tsp dried rosemary leaves
1/2 cup barley, oat groats or wheat berries
chicken broth or water
salt and pepper to taste

Cook bacon in pot until it starts to crisp, or cook other pork in fat until browned. Skim some fat with a spoon if desired. Add onions and cook in fat until translucent. Add cabbage, apples, grain and herbs, then cover with water or broth and bring to a low boil over open flame. Move pot over to cooler area of fire and simmer with pot covered until the grains are tender. Stir occasionally. Add more water/broth if stew starts to become too thick and sticks to bottom of pot. Season with salt and pepper.

On the first cooking attempt, this stew was tasty. The apples were an interesting sweet contrast to the savory bacon and herbs. It was a little watered down because I added probably twice the amount of broth that would be necessary to keep the grains moist. It may have been more flavorful had I left in the bacon drippings, but I spooned them off to use in making a flatbread for the class.

Later at home, I tried out a similar stew to combine leftover bacon from the class, some rice that had been left from a previous meal, and kale from a friend's garden. Kale is a member of the same family of vegetables as green cabbage, so I figured I couldn't go wrong. The herbs are replaced by cumin, one of my favorite spices.

With this photo, I learn that really good food photographers wait until the stew is done steaming to take the photo so the food shows up clearly. Unlike those really good food photographers, if I let the food cool off first, I have to eat a cold supper.


Pork, Apple and Cabbage Stew play-at-home version
serves 4

1/2 pound hardwood-smoked bacon, chopped
2 small onions, chopped
1 bunch kale (large handful of stems), destemmed and chopped
2 large apples, peeled, cored and chopped
3 cups chicken stock
1 tsp cumin 
1 heaping cup leftover brown rice
salt and pepper to taste

For home stove, never mind the bits in the directions about moving the pot around on the fire.

While camping out this past weekend, I made the stew from memory over our little campfire and added in some fresh radishes from our weekly box from Henry's Farm. Once again, kale from our friends' garden substitutes for green cabbage. Thank you, "vegetable fairies" Viv and Nicole! I didn't chop the bacon in order to keep my cutting board from having both uncooked meat and raw veggies on it. Because I cooked it very crisp, it fell apart into bite-sized chunks as I stirred it around the pot with other ingredients. I forgot to bring onions, so this stew was yet another variant of the original. I left in the bacon grease because there was no other recipe to use it in later. The finished stew needed very little salt.

Pork, Apple and Cabbage Stew another way
serves 3 very hungry people
 
1/2 pound hardwood-smoked bacon
8 small radishes, chopped
2 large apples, cored and chopped, but with peels on
1 pound kale, destemmed and chopped
1/2 cup barley
3 cups chicken stock
2 tsp fresh thyme leaves stripped from stems
freshly ground white peppercorns and salt to taste

Follow directions as in first stew, but leave all the bacon drippings in the pot and omit the step of cooking onions in bacon fat.

Everything tastes better when eaten outside, and this stew is no exception to that rule. On a chilly fall night when dinner wasn't ready until after dark, it warmed me and my two camping companions physically and emotionally from the inside out.
 

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Late summer bounty: corn and kale

It's been a tough year for corn harvests here in McLean County, but there have been a few ears in our CSA box a couple of times this summer. When it came along with kale and I needed to put together a fast dinner because we were already hungry before going to get the CSA box, I made this quick and hearty dish:

Quick Corn and Kale with Black Beans
serves 3 or 4 as a main dish
could be stretched by serving over rice or quinoa

3 ears fresh sweet corn
olive oil
1 onion, chopped
2 or 3 cloves garlic, minced
1 bunch kale (about one pound), de-stemmed and chopped
black beans, one 15 oz can, drained and rinsed
1/2 cup chicken stock
1 tsp cumin
Spanish sweet smoked paprika to taste
salt and pepper to taste

Shuck the ears of corn as soon as possible after picking or purchase and steam 10 minutes in a couple of inches of water in a covered pot. While corn is cooking, prepare the onion, garlic, beans, kale. Cut corn kernels off the ears when they are cool enough to handle. Saute the onion and garlic in enough olive oil to thinly cover the bottom of your pan. When the onion is getting tender, add the kale and stir until it wilts. Add the beans, corn, cumin and smoked paprika, then pour over chicken stock and simmer until the beans are cooked through, the kale has become tender, and some of the stock has evaporated. Season with salt and pepper and serve.

Spanish smoked paprika is also known as pimentón. It tastes like peppers roasted over a flame right in your mouth. It is typically sold in two varieties, sweet and hot. The sweet one isn't actually sweet at all, it's just smoky and not as chili-spicy as the hot variety.

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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

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Multicolor currant-berry jam

It's backyard berry season again at the home of our friends Susan and Larry, and they kindly let me and Andrew pick to our heart's content in the currant and black raspberry bushes. Currant bushes, having no thorns, are much kinder on the hands than raspberry bushes. The fruit hangs in these adorable little vertical clumps, with the berries on the end of the clump sometimes ripening and getting larger before the others. It's much easier to gauge ripeness of red currants than white currants. White currants seem to be the same color whether they are ripe or not.

Susan informed me that currants have an impressively high natural amount of pectin, so they make very firm jam and can be a great addition to a jam of other fruits that would otherwise need long cooking with lots of sugar and lemon juice or pectin-rich store-bought canning additives to make a good jam. I'm not too familiar with currants, having never cooked with them before, so I wanted a jam that mostly tasted like currants so I'd know if I liked them. With the day's harvest of currants and blackberries,

it was just the right volume of fruit to fill a few jam jars. I didn't even have to measure the sugar closely, I just added enough to make the mixture a little sweeter.

Susan was so right about currants being rich in pectin. This jam was the most solidly gelled jam I've ever made. It's stiff enough to offer some serious resistance to my spoon and keep its shape as I scoop it out of the jar onto my toast. With a little additional work, this jam would make a fantastic dried preserve like those dried marmalades put up in boxes in Elinor Fettiplace's Receipt Book, a collection of late 16th-century and early 17th-century English recipes.

I deemed the experiment a success. Currants have a sweet-tart fruit flavor I love, the seeds are small enough and soft enough not to bother me when I left them in the jam, and the color of the jam is bright red and very appealing. If I have the privilege of picking currants again, I'll try mixing the berries with other fruits for new jam combinations.

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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.

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A favorite wintertime beverage

This recipe has been a favorite since I encountered it at a student bar in Bonn, Germany, about 15 years ago. It's warming, sweet and soothing. Start with one coffeecup warmed milk (or soy milk or almond milk). Stir in 1 to 2 teaspoons honey and a shot of rum (light, dark, spiced, doesn't really matter), and a pinch of nutmeg or cinnamon if that's a flavor you like. Sit somewhere comfortable with a blanket wrapped around your shoulders or lap and enjoy the beverage hot.

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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.

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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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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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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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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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