Dessert! My Favorite!

(Photograph copyright 2011, all rights reserved.)

First, I included a picture of flowers because I'm told it's spring in the rest of the world. We just aren't seeing it here. The temperatures are in the 40s instead of the mid-50s where they belong and it's gloomy and threatening rain for tonight. Hence, a picture of flowers is just going to have to do it for awhile since the real thing just isn't happening yet. 

(Grumble. Stupid groundhog. Big fat liar. I wonder what groundhog tastes like?)

Sigh. Now. On to the dessert. 

The Boy loves his desserts. It's his "thing", if you will. A meal just isn't complete for him unless there's something sweet at the end and no matter how much I try and convince him that a smooch should do, it's not the same. He's disciplined about it, though. Only on weekends. We're getting to the age where we have to earn our desserts, so we can't eat sweets every day. 

I just got one of his favorites into the oven, so I thought I'd spread the joy.

The Boy's Chocolate Cake

I have to comment before I start with the recipe. I have a kazillion chocolate cake recipes, and they're all pretty much the same. I've looked online at chocolate cake recipes, and they're all pretty much the same as well. I wanted to tweak it, though. Most chocolate cakes are too heavy and too sugary-tasting for me. I wanted something light and happy, with none of that slap-in-the-face sweetness and thud-in-the-stomach weight that plagues almost everything chocolate. So this is what I've come up with. 

Whisk together in a medium bowl:

2 cups flour.  I like cake flour, but you don't have to use it if you don't want to. Cake flour just makes it lighter, but almost all the recipes I've seen call for all-purpose flour. Don't be put off making cake just because you don't have the fancy flour on hand.

2/3 cup cocoa.  Use the darkest you can find. I like Hershey's Special Dark, which I buy by the six-pack from Amazon. I've heard all of the yapping about dutched vs. non-dutched cocoa, but the result is always the same. Dutch processed cocoa tastes better. No, I'm not going to debate that. That said, it's not mandatory, either. Use what you have.

2 tsp. baking soda. 

1 tsp. baking powder.

1/2 tsp. salt

Cream together (I use a food processor. Your goal here is to make this mixture seriously creamy. Liquid, even. The individual sugar grains should be invisible. No stand mixer can do this quite as effectively. A hand mixer would work well if you have the patience to stand there for awhile.): 

1 cup room temperature butter.

4 large eggs.

1 cup brown sugar.

1 cup white sugar.

2 tsp. vanilla. (Or go crazy. Use bourbon. Or a liqueur. The recipe doesn't care.)

In a two cup measure, mix 1 cup milk (I used skim) and 1 cup buttermilk.

Mixing:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. If you have the option to use convection, DON'T. This works better in a conventional oven. I guess convection isn't fatal, though.

2. Prepare two standard 8" or 9" layer cake pans. I use greased parchment on the bottom because it's generally tidier to get the cakes out.

3. Transfer creamed ingredients to a larger bowl. Using a hand mixer... or a stand mixer if you must, but I don't think they're fast enough... add wet and dry ingredients alternately, starting and ending with dry.

Now, the batter you have should be fluffy. Mix the heck out of it between additions. The texture you're aiming for is mousse-like. You should have to spoon it into the pans because it won't pour. 

4. Transfer the batter to pans, bake until a skewer comes out clean. About 1/2 an hour to 40 minutes. Don't overbake if you can help it - chocolate cakes can dry out. But you knew that. 

5. Cool at room temperature on racks. Make sure they're completely cooled before you take them out of the pans. 

And that, as they say, is that. Now some recipes call for ganache as an icing - melt 6 or 7 oz. of dark chocolate in 1/2 cup of heavy cream in a double boiler, cool a bit and spread. Some recipes add corn syrup or sugar, but I prefer 65 or 70% chocolate that speaks for itself. I've also used a buttercream icing on this which can make things too sweet, but it works on this cake. 

This recipe is pretty bullet-proof. You can mess with it if you like and have different results. For example, I saw one recipe that called for half whole milk, half heavy cream. That's part of what makes a cake land in my stomach like an anvil - it's too much for me after a meal. I use half skim milk and half buttermilk because the buttermilk does it's lovely chemical thing and makes the batter fluffier and the cake higher. 

Some recipes call for all brown sugar, which lends a sort of caramel flavor that I like on occasion. Go ahead and do that, if you like. Use all white, if you want - the recipe won't fail if you do that - but you'll lose some of the richness that makes chocolate cake so good.

What makes this cake fluffy and nice is the fact that it has four eggs - adds volume, buttermilk, which helps things rise, and beating the crap out of it at both the creaming stage and the mixing stage. This is not conventional wisdom. I was taught to gently fold the flour into the creamed ingredients with a spatula  and make sure that bubbles were kept to a minimum. 

Screw that. Use a good, fast hand mixer and go for it. The first time you make a liquid addition to this batter, you're going to see bubbles. Bubbles are all right at that stage. By the time you're done, this is going to be one thick, but light and fluffy batter and that's what you want. The bubbles will be teeny-tiny invisible little things that won't leave tunnels in your cake.

Trust me. 

That's it. It takes about half an hour to mix, another half an hour or so in the oven and you have cake. The Boy loves it and I think he has pretty good taste.

Ah, Paradise! (And a Picture of Aunt Messy in a Bikini!)

Winter is not my favorite time of the year. You may have noticed this already. But it's all a matter of location. See, Chicago winters can be pretty dreary, and to avoid discrimination, just about every city that has regular snow can be pretty dreary in winter.

This year, though, the stars aligned! There were air miles, in-laws with an empty bedroom in a condo that they rented on Kauai and all of a sudden, I got a phone call from The Boy asking if I wouldn't mind going there for a visit.... I pretended to think about it for a grand total of a second before I yodeled, "Yes! Not just yes, hell yes! When do I leave!"

In the fullness of time, I left. And it is paradise. Make no mistake. 

Sunrise over Bali Hai. It was a little cloudy that day, but not for long.

The rocks at the beach at Lumahai. Even if you've never been there, you've seen this beach. The movie "South Pacific" was filmed there. It's considered one of the most beautiful beaches on Kauai, but it's also called "Lumadie" because it's very dangerous. No non-tourist would ever try and go in the water there and they particularly won't get up on the rocks.

See, there is no reef at Lumahai. Nor is there any form of shallow water or shelf going out off the beach. The waves break on shore and are incredibly powerful and violent. One writer pointed out that Kauai is nothing more than a mountain-top in the middle of the ocean, and Lumahai is proof of that.

There are warning signs all over the place. The Boy (a lifeguard in a former life) says that he would NEVER jump in and try and save someone because once you go it, that's it for you. The maytag catches you and your next stop is Japan.

It's my favorite place in the world. I think I caught some of the wave action in the next couple of pictures. It's mesmerizing to watch.

Remember the warning signs I told you about? Didja see the way the waves hit those rocks? Well, stupid is universal apparently, because the couple in the photo appear to have a death wish. As they were getting off the rocks, a massive wave hit and almost had them in the water. They were laughing, too dim to see just how lucky they got.

This intellectual bright light took his two small children to a space between one set of rocks and the next and stood in the water....

...where this happens... and thought it was grand fun. At this point it was about 3:00 p.m. we declared cocktail hour and left the beach. None of us said it, but the real reason we left is that we couldn't watch the dumb any more. This potential train wreck was too much.

Oh, and when this wave broke, the guy AND the two kids were in the water with it. See what I mean?

This will never put me off Lumahai, though. It's still my favorite place. My mother-in-law loves it so much that we've all been instructed to scatter her ashes there when the time comes.
                                    


I decided to head to another beach one day. This is a very small beach below the condos at Pali Ke Kua. There is a sandy beach, but the rocks are right off shore. Surfers and swimmers can only get into the water at one end, but the snorkelling is gorgeous and the waves are always good.

I decided to take my camera at low tide and (very, very carefully) explore the tidal pools. I say carefully because those rocks are a combination of lava and old coral. You can't be barefoot on them. Even the sand is very coarse, so surf socks are a must. It's so much fun that I went for a few minutes and stayed for two hours.

And here it is, kids, the photo you've all been waiting for... me in a bikini! And that's as much as you get to see, too.

The first time I went to Kauai the spiders creeped me out in a big way. They still do if they're big and in my face, but the webs are something else again. This is about the best photo I've taken of an orb web. It's a relatively small one, only a foot across.

Another perfect sunset over Bali Hai. Looking at postcards of this particular view (and there are a lot of them), you'd swear they were touched up because the whole thing looks sort of unreal, an idealization of what sunset should be. They aren't. This is it.

It was not easy to board that plane home, I can tell you. Now I'm planning the next trip out there.

(All photographs copyright 2011, all rights reserved.)

It's Official. Winter is Here.

And doesn't that just suck? I have to admit that I really, really HATE winter. I hate the cold. I hate that it gets dark so early. I hate that going outside has to be such a production. I hate it when people say things like, "There is no bad weather, just inadequate clothing."

I'm LOOKING at you, my darling husband. One day that little statement is going to get you a snowball down the back of your jacket. Or worse....

See, I have always maintained that I was stolen as a baby from rich people in the Bahamas. I was born never to wear shoes. I was never meant to be able to picture what "long underwear" even looks like. I'm one of those people who is meant, truly meant to have a light golden tan all year. My freckles were meant to be visible every day of my life. The words "fishbelly white" were words that I was never to hear in conjunction with MY legs....

I know. We're supposed to live in terror of an errant sunbeam touching our pristine skin. The sky is supposed to fall if....for one second....the thought even crosses our MINDS that this is just a smidge hysterical. Because it is. Sunscreen is the #1 reason that we have to take Vitamin D supplements now. Our bodies can manufacture more than enough of that substance...if we let them.

Ok. I'm starting to rant. Never a good thing. I give you pictures of summer. Behold the Chicago Botanic Gardens.

All photographs copyright 2010, all rights reserved.

We're Back!

We lucked out. The last time we went to Japan was three years ago. It was September, and blisteringly hot. I'm talking temperatures in the mid to high nineties (35-38C) every day. Since we walk everywhere wherever we go, planning for a day's jaunt also included stops for buying water everywhere we went. We still had a lot of fun, but we also had cause to be deeply grateful for a culture that has vending machines on every corner.

This time, the weather was perfect. There's no other way to describe it. We only had one day of drizzle, and even that ended by noon. We spend a day and a half in Tokyo, took the bullet train to Kyoto for four days, then returned to Tokyo for two more before we caught our flight home from Narita Airport. Everything went without a single hitch. It was amazing. I kept expecting something to screw up, but no. The planes left and arrived on time. No luggage issues because we never check luggage. There were no snarl-ups at airport check-in or security. Even the lines were short. It was eerie in the nicest way possible.

The main reason (aside from The Boy's work schedule) we went at this time of year had to do with the leaves. In my opinion, there is nowhere on earth with more beautiful gardens than Kyoto. I know a lot of folks will disagree with me. It's all right. What I mean by this is that gardeners in Japan, and Kyoto in particular, always design with an eye to the look of the garden throughout the year. Even in winter, they're beautiful.

I'll shut up now, and let the photographs do the talking for me.

(All photographs copyright 2010, all rights reserved.)

Thanksgiving

(Photograph copyright 2010, all rights reserved.)

As some of you know, I'm a bit of an advice column addict. I read them, I parody one of them, and I pay attention to what people say, especially when it comes to things that are bothering them in the moment. Having done this for a few years, I have to say that the more people are miserable, terrified, angry, and depressed right now, around Thanksgiving. Don't get me wrong, Christmas is just as bad for a lot of folks, but Thanksgiving seems to bring out the worst in most people.

I get it. I do. I didn't grow up in the best or safest situation, and holidays were awful when I was both a kid and a young adult. NO ONE had a good time. Ever. Not once. There was constant arguing and fighting, foul long car trips, the same people got drunk every year, and it was altogether an experience that left me pretty cold towards all of the holidays.

As I got older, I opted out. For a very long time, the best Christmas I ever had was one where I opted to stay at University, using my bus money to buy myself the groceries to cook what I wanted just for ME. I didn't care about presents, I had no interest in any rituals, and my only decorations were a couple of glitter garlands that were left over in a stationery store on Christmas Eve. I thought that was heaven. Silence on that particular holiday was the best gift I could have asked for. I vowed right then never to get roped in to someone else's drama again, and I've pretty much managed it.

I still see so many letters to advice columnists from people crying in pain over what really is only ONE DAY out of a year. There are fights over the guest list, over the recipes that are to be used, over who has to/gets to host, who has to travel, who hasn't got the money to travel, and the list goes on and on. Thanksgiving -  a day when we are traditionally meant to give thanks for what we have, has become a nightmare for many, many people.

This is the busiest travel week of the entire year in the U.S. It means that people who never fly will be flying. The airports will be crammed with tired, angry people, some of whom haven't got the faintest idea what they're about. They make it miserable for those that either have no choice but to fly or who do it all the time anyway and are irritated themselves as they slog through the nightmare that is an airport on a holiday weekend.

Let's not forget the hundreds of thousands of people who will be driving long distances to Mom's or Grandmom's house. Hundreds will die in accidents caused by snow, ice, storms, drunks, fog, morons that insist on texting at 70mph and so on. All so they can get to an overcrowded house to eat the same (usually dried out) bird with the same people that they have every year since birth.

Why not stay home? Why not start your OWN traditions? Why is it that families of all shapes and sizes have to travel to someone else's party? Why is it somehow seen as "wrong" to stay home and cook for the people that you love and are close to you both personally and geographically? Why do people put such pressure on themselves that they can't enjoy the day even if things go perfectly?

There are a lot of people this year who just don't have the money to travel, or who would be stretching a dollar until it screams just to be at the holiday table. Why should they have to deal with pressure and guilt trips if they can't  go? Let it be.

The letters show that people's personal issues come to the fore on holidays. People that have always fought will continue to fight. There are threats of canceling parties, refusing to attend if someone else is either invited or not invited. Screaming matches seem to be the rule of the day for so many people. One doesn't want to be in the same house with the family drunk/pedophile/jerk/nasty aunt/miserable granny/bunch of smokers/whiner, and so on, and another freaks out at the notion of NOT having those people attend.

I have to say that I simply don't get it. Thanksgiving is meant to be a holiday where people get together who care about each other. The mere fact of DNA is no guarantee of that, as most of us know full well. So why the pressure? My thanksgiving means surrounding myself with people I care about, that want to come to my home. I believe that we should make our families, not put up with people that we hate just because they're "family".

The Boy and I don't want to be responsible for making anyone do anything. We just want to see the people we care about around a table that has a great meal on it (and I haven't cooked a turkey in ages), with good wine and conversation and usually a great deal of silliness. We would never demand that anyone travel huge distances or bring ridiculous amounts of food to my party. If we couldn't manage the food on our own, we wouldn't be having the party in the first place, now would we?

There is no angst over recipes, china, the "right" serving dishes, the "right" table settings, the "right" way to do things in our house. We don't care how our guests dress. There's nothing formal about our home, ever.  People who care about us and who we care about know full well that there are no rules except to have a good time and not worry about anything being "perfect". We provide food, wine, music and a cat that occasionally likes to sit on laps. There's no specific time to arrive or leave. No one has to do dishes - The Boy and I can handle all of that.

We don't always have guests for Thanksgiving. One friend hosts an open house instead of a massive meal, and that's always a fun time. Last year, we were invited to a friend's house, but couldn't make it because The Boy had H1N1 and we were quarantined. It was all right, though. He wasn't desperately ill, so we made a good meal and watched a couple of movies. The year before, the weather was lousy for driving, so we had a gorgeous pork roast and relaxed on our own.

I think that, with all of the misery and angst that goes into holidays right now, we should all step back. If you don't want to see your family for whatever reason, then DON'T. If anyone is going to judge you for it, who cares what they think anyway? If they weren't upset about this, it would be about something else, so let them be as nasty as they want. THEY'RE the ones with the problem, right?

Have a good holiday and relax, everyone. Remember that it's only one day out of an entire year and try not to get involved in drama and agony that will taint relationships for years. We're headed out of the country for a nice long holiday this year. It's going to be great. We'll be virtually unreachable - and we aren't taking computers with us, so no one can e-mail. I suspect it'll go down as one of the best holidays ever, and that's the way I like it.

Cauliflower - The Best Veg On The Table .... And A Poll

(Photograph copyright 2010, all rights reserved.)

This post is in response to quite a few requests for the recipe for my favorite favoritist cauliflower recipe. I LOVE this dish. So does everyone else that tries it. It's a little fiddly to make, but it's so good, you won't care.

I got the original from the The New York Times over a year ago. I make it a little differently, in the interest of faster cooking, but it's essentially the same recipe.

(To the writer - please accept my humble and grovelling apologies for changing your recipe. It's wonderful, and it deserves to be spread around a bit more, don't you think? I promise that I am not a professional cook or in any way making a nickel from what I write.)

Here goes.

Cauliflower with Almonds, Capers and Raisins


Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

1 medium head of cauliflower, washed, trimmed and cut into 1" (or so) florets
1 1/2 teaspoons butter

Set aside.

3 tablespoons bread crumbs (I use panko, and a little more than this)
1 tablespoon + 1 teaspoon olive oil

In a large oven proof pan (I use cast iron pan for this), saute the bread crumbs in the olive oil until lightly browned. Remove from pan, set aside, then wipe out pan with a paper towel.

3 tablespoons slivered raw almonds
Salt and pepper to taste

Add the almonds and s & p to the pan and brown. Set aside and wipe the pan as before.

2 tablespoons golden raisins
1 tablespoon white wine vinegar (or champagne vinegar if you like it better.)
1 teaspoon water
1 tablespoon of capers, drained
1 teaspoon fresh parsley, minced
1 teaspoon fresh thyme, minced
1 teaspoon fresh tarragon, minced
1 teaspoon chives, chopped fine

In a small saucepan, simmer these ingredients until the raisins are plump and soft. Set aside.

(I don't always have fresh herbs on hand. I've substituted a little minced shallot for the chives, and used dried herbs instead of fresh to fill in what I don't have. It still works, but the flavor is not as intense. Use your judgment, and pick the flavors you like best to concentrate on.)

Now....the fun part.

Saute the cauliflower with the butter in your big pan until slightly browned. Put the whole pan in the oven, and roast until the cauliflower is tender-crisp.

When the cauliflower is done, put it into a large bowl and add almonds, raisin mixture and lastly the bread crumbs.

The original recipe calls for the head of cauliflower to be sliced rather than separated into florets. As far as I can tell, this would mean browning each slice on both sides and then putting it into the oven which would mean a whole lot more work in the end. I freely admit I'm a short-cut goddess in the kitchen. Separating the head of cauliflower into florets means less time cooking and it's easier to serve family-style.

Most cauliflower recipes call for massive amounts of cream or cheese. I think those are far too heavy to be served at a big meal like Thanksgiving or Christmas. There's enough going on on the table without adding something that's going to hit everyone's stomach with a thud. The other down side is that those recipes completely disguise any flavor the cauliflower has of it's own - and it has a nice one.

Need I mention that this has FAR fewer calories and MUCH less fat than the standard gratin?

Yum.

Now, I posted this in response to Pooham's poll on Slate. She asked everyone for their favorite side dish for Thanksgiving dinner. Pooham, I hope you don't mind, but let's ask the same question here.

So give, everyone: What is your favorite side dish for any holiday dinner?

Open Call Response to Jonathan Wolfman

For those of you who are reading this on The Fly , this is a response to an open call for responses from a poster named Jonathan Wolfman. His question is: "What is your gift? What do you do with it?"

Anyone who wants to respond to me on blogspot is, of course, more than welcome. In fact, I happily extend the question to all the Fraysters who want to answer it. I'll post the link on Salon, too, in case anyone there is interested. This is going to be fun.

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The only answer I have is ..... ready? I make stuff. I'm good with my hands. Doesn't sound like much, does it? I mean, a LOT of people are fairly adept at doing things, of putting things together, repairing things and the like. 

It's hard to explain what I mean. I see in three dimensions. I'll never make a painter or be able to draw well. I've tried, and it's utterly futile. I'm foul at math. It's like a foreign language to me. I can't picture it, and that crippled me all the way through school. In fact, my math teacher in Grade 12 gave me a mercy mark just so I could get into university, then made me promise to take geography as my science option. I did.

That still isn't very clear, is it? The thing is, it's a maddeningly ephemeral thing. If you gave me a bag of clay, I could build you what I want you to see. If you hand me a pen and paper, forget it. Whatever I put there won't make a lick of sense. I'm sure there's a deeply complicated explanation for it that delves into brain chemistry, genetics, upbringing, whether I had pets as a kid, and whether or not the water was fluoridated when I was born (it wasn't), but that's just the way it is. 

What I do is clay. Clay makes sense to me. It's something I can manipulate - I can make it do what I want it to. When I'm working on something at the clay lab, I zone out completely, sometimes for hours. All I need is my IPod, a bucket of water, some tools and a bag of clay and you can count on me being occupied for as long as it takes for me to either finish a piece or realize that I've missed lunch and I'm damned hungry. Thankfully I have some friends that are brave enough (I get VERY cranky when I'm hungry) to smack me on the shoulder and make me take a break.

Don't get me wrong. It's not easy. As with any art form, there's a massive learning curve. I've been at this for ten years and I'm still learning. I suspect I'll be learning for the rest of my life, which is both maddening and reassuring. It means I'll never lose interest.

There are people who say that working with clay is all about chemistry and physics. Ok. I get that. Clay bodies vary, glazes are incredibly complicated and highly experimental and I know I'll never have the patience to make my own. That's because these folks are all about the mechanics. You can recognize most of them because everything they make is perfect. It is symmetrical. It's usually thrown on a wheel. A whole lot of people make decent money doing this - it's their job. Their work sells because it's generally pretty nice, it's always recognizable and it has a use. 

What I do doesn't have a use. In fact, it's utterly useless. I do this on purpose. I figure that if I wanted a bunch of identical plates, I can get them at Crate and Barrel for a lot less money and a ton less angst than trying to make them myself. I get bored very easily, and if what I make became mechanical or mindless to me, I'd quit. I wouldn't see the point any more. 

 I've never made the same piece twice and if I tried, I probably couldn't do it. That's just the way it is. I work with my hands, not with machines. I don't want to master the clay that way. There are things I'm very good at. Sales, for example. I've been pretty successful at selling just about anything in the past, from couture gowns to nails. It's easy for me - I've been told I'm a "natural", whatever the heck that is. It bores me stiff, though. I had to quit because I just can't muster the energy to care about something I've got whipped.

I've posted a few of my Utterly Useless Pots. They don't hold water - and that's on purpose. I don't want them to have a function. I don't want anyone to hold on in their hands and think "vase", for instance. Other people make better vases than me, to be truthful. My first instructor was Larry Fleck. He always used to ask me what things were FOR. My stock answer became, "Larry, it just IS."

Utterly Useless Pot. 12" tall, 8" across. Copyright 2010, all rights reserved. 

High fired stoneware. The glaze is temoku wiped off, then dipped in yellow salt.

Utterly Useless Pot. 15" tall, 37" diameter. Copyright 2010, all rights reserved.

Low fire terracotta with matte black underglaze, matte gray glaze on top. It looks very different, depending on what side you're looking at, which I think is pretty cool.

Utterly Useless Pot. 8" tall, 7" across. Copyright 2010, all rights reserved.

High fired white stoneware glazed with red iron oxide, yellow salt and temoku.

For those who swore they've seen these pictures before....you're right. I've posted them before. I KNOW I have to get on with taking more photos. It's just so much more fun to be in the studio, don't you know.

The above pots are three in a series, and I'm off on another series now. I find that when I find a shape that makes me happy, I play with it for awhile. I want to see where it can go, so I mess with it on different pieces and with different glazes for awhile. It took me six pieces to finish with this one. There's another one that I haven't photographed that's just massive. It's in white with black accents and I have to look at it for awhile because I'm not altogether sure about the glaze.

These are for sale, by the way. If you're interested, you can reach me at onemessylady@gmail.com .

I know where I get this. I come from a long line of carpenters, farmers, harness-makers, boat builders and other craftspeople. If I could go back far enough (and I can't, really), I'm sure that there are "handy" people in my gene pool that go back for centuries. No artists, though. Most of the family are pragmatic and rather gloomy types that would never do something that doesn't have a "use".

There are other things I can do. The handiness is most useful. I sew, for example. For the last couple of years I've been making my own wool coats. I like summer dresses, and when I make them, I know they'll fit. I love being able to wear something that I won't be seeing walking down the street all over the place.

I can also replace taps, install light fixtures, repair tile, and paint interiors. These are all survivor skills that I think everyone should learn, but that's because I'm kind of a tightwad.