Harvest Cake

In my continuing attempt to get my son to just eat a stinking vegetable, I made a cake. Yup. It has a zucchini, a carrot, and a parsnip in it. I was going to add mascarpone frosting, but the cake is so good that it doesn't need it! Crazy, I know.

I got the recipe in a funny place: a real estate magazine. Our realtor sends us a mag about the Seattle real estate and architectural world, which I quite enjoy, and it has recipes too. Funny because she was so taken with Sam while we were looking for houses that I do believe we inspired her to be ready to start her own family. Sure enough, about 10 or so months after we moved in, we received a birth announcement from her. I like to pat myself on the back and tout that as evidence that we're doing a pretty good job. Since you have to wait so long for results with these little people you create, it's nice to have some kind of feedback along the way.

Harvest Cake

2 large carrots, grated

1 large parsnip, grated

1 medium zuke, grated

1 tart apple, cored and grated

1 1/4 cups flour

1/2 cup whole wheat flour

1.5 tsp. baking soda

3/4 tsp. salt

1 tsp. cinnamon

1/2 tsp. ground ginger

(next time I'm going to add cloves and nutmeg)

3 large eggs

1 cup sugar

1/4 cup brown sugar

1/2 cup veg oil

1 tsp. vanilla

optional: 3/4 cup walnuts or pecans

1. Preheat oven to 350. Grease a 9x9 in. square pan.

2. Toss the grated veggies and apple together in a medium bowl. In another medium bowl, mix together the flours, baking soda, salt, and spices. Set aside. In a large bowl, whisk together the eggs and sugars until light and frothy. Add oil and vanilla and whisk until blended.

3. Add flour mixture to sugar mixture and stir until combined. Stir in shredded stuff and nuts, if using.

4. Spread batter evenly in pan. Bake 45-55 minutes until browned and set. Let cool in pan for 15 minutes, then on a wire rack for 1 hour.

Ricotta Tart

I discovered ricotta as dessert. I know, those of you with European influences are probably like, "Duh." I made little tarts with honey and ricotta for Sam once. Surprise! he didn't like them ... but I did. I decided to make this tart when my sister, M, was visiting.

I thought it was delicious, especially with the chocolate crust and orange and lemon zests in the mix. Josh confessed that he finds ricotta "chalky." That is not a pleasant description of anything, except chalk.

I also made a rhubarb compote. I had only eaten rhubarb once before, in brownies, and I had never worked with it. The fact that the greens contain a toxin kind of put me off. Nevertheless, this spring I resolved to try all the bounties of spring. My brain has finally held onto seasons and what grows when. Rhubarb heralds spring, so I needed to get some.

I cooked it too long such that it turned mushy, but it was still delicious - tangy and astringent, but sweet too.

Happy Birthday to Me! (and Rick Schroeder and Thomas Jefferson)

I attempted to post this on my birthday, the 13th, but was foiled first by iPhoto, then by our internet connection, finally by travel plans. So, without further ado, it's Jen's birthday menu: pizza, artichokes with bagna cauda, and ice cream.

I started with the ice cream a of couple days before My Big Day because, of course, you have to chill the mixture overnight, then again after you make the ice cream because it's like soft serve out of the ice cream maker and I just like it a little harder.

I chose "burnt cream" ice cream, and had to make a caramel for that. I knew that once it started to caramelize, I wasn't supposed to touch it. I'm not sure what happens if you do touch it, but I wasn't planning on finding out. The instructions say to go ahead and stir it until it melts. I figured out, after I had stirred it several times, that that is not such a good idea. The whole thing clumped and then I had to let it get far too brown in order to get all the sugar to melt.

AND, the whole process of melting probably took 30 or 40 minutes. Too long. Step two took even longer. You are supposed to add warm milk to the caramel while stirring. The instructions give a couple scenarios resulting from this mixing: foaming, bubbling, hissing, clumping. Mine did all of the above. The clumping was the worst part because I had a solid block of caramel on the bottom of the pan that took an hour to "melt" into the milk. In the end, it's a good ice cream with a very creamy texture. In the future, however, I will simply buy Ben and Jerry's Creme Brulee when I have the hankering. How do they do those chunks? I suppose I could pour caramel onto a silpat, let it harden, then break it up. Yes, that's the ticket. It was nice to have homemade dessert on my birthday, though. I was going to pair the ice cream with chocolate souffles, but couldn't for lack of time. Ice cream was certainly enough.

I thought I was going to be much more melancholy about the fact that I was making dinner and cleaning and packing on my birthday. I was kind of freaking out on the 12th. I didn't really make a big deal out of 30 - and I recall Josh being surprised by this - but 35 carries more psychological weight, for whatever reason. I found myself thinking down a path that was very Western, goal-oriented, and linear. I guess those adjectives are all pejorative because, really, if the follow-up to that is "and it made me feel bad," then, well, I need to find another way of looking at things.

Did someone say something about pizza earlier? I think I remember that.

I made the dough and proceeded to top it with pesto, roasted red peppers, roasted garlic, sun-dried tomatoes, sauteed mushrooms, and spicy sausage ... oh, and cheese, naturally. I highly recommend this combination.

I hand stretch my dough (as opposed to using a rolling pin) and don't make it enough to be good at it. It's never quite round, I always need to patch a couple of holes, and I usually have one really thick end, or arc, since it's a circle. I used my pizza stone for this, thinking that that is best, as opposed to the sheet pan I have been using, but I definitely don't do this often enough either. What I need to have the knack for in order to properly utilize the stone is transporting my packed pie from the cutting board to the oven on a peel. I just don't have the wrist flick and bravado to pull it off quite yet. So I build the pizza as fast as I can directly on the stone, pulling it out of the oven to do so. I can then use the peel to transport the cooked pie to the cutting board to slice. Kind of clunky, but it works.

Finally, the artichokes. So, I'm from California and we Californians love our artichokes. I always liked them, but they fell out of favor with my palate about mid-1998. I guess what I didn't like were my dipping options: garlic butter or mayonnaise. And I certainly was not going to eat them straight up.

Enter the bagna cauda.

A specialty of Piedmont, Italy, it means "hot bath." And what a tasty bath your vegetables will get with this sauce. Quite easy and quite delicious. It makes the artichoke experience nearly sublime. But it's not for the feint of heart.

Bagna Cauda:

3 heads of garlic, cloves separated and UNpeeled

3T butter

one 2oz. tin anchovies, drained and chopped

1/2 cup e.v. olive oil

Put the cloves in a medium saucepan and cover with water by one inch. Bring to a boil, then turn heat to low, cover, and simmer until the cloves are soft, about 25 minutes. Drain. When cool enough to handle, squeeze the cloves out and mash to a smooth paste. Melt the butter in a small saucepan, over medium heat. Add the chopped anchovies and cook, while mashing into the butter, for one minute. Add the garlic and the oil, stir to sort of combine (it won't emulsify) and let simmer for 10 minutes to let the flavors meld. Serve with artichokes or other veggies. Or, hey, use it as a pizza sauce!

Chocolate Lemon Tart

My sister: Oh, you should check out my sister's blog. It's all about food.

Lady sitting alone in the restaurant (out for Mommy Time) who struck up a conversation about the menu: Is she fat?

Not yet. I love baking and dessert ... yes, yes, and morning pastries, too. My sister is convinced that we are gifted, we Sorensons, with the ability to put away more than your average calories without gaining (too much) weight. We shall see.

For Easter, I would have added chocolate curls to the top of this tart. But since Josh and I will be the only ones eating it, why bother? For extra chocolate, yeah, I know.

I couldn't really get a good shot of the tart. Perhaps that's because I was so excited to eat it, that I didn't want to wait for good photography.

Lemon Tart with Chocolate Crust:

For Crust:

1 & 1/4 cup flour

1 stick (8T) unsalted butter

1 T water

4 T powdered sugar

2 T unsweetened cocoa powder

For Filling:

6 eggs

1 & 1/4 c. sugar

2/3 cup lemon juice

2/3 cup heavy cream

grated rind from 2 lemons

For filling, melt butter and water together and pour over sifted dry ingredients. Press into a buttered tart pan, and refrigerate for at least 30 minutes. (I like to finish it in the freezer for 20 minutes, although this adds to baking time.) Preheat oven to 375. For the filling, beat eggs and sugar until sugar dissolves. Stir in remaining three ingredients. Pour into prepared shell and bake for 20-25 minutes until custard is set. (This may take 35-40 minutes if the shell is well frozen.)

As I mentioned, you can make chocolate curls for the top. Or even melt some dark chocolate and splatter it around for an artsy effect.

The Walkers - What an Epiphany!

You may recall that we were supposed to have the Walkers over on the 9th, but had to postpone, then they postponed, and here we are. The idea was to celebrate Epiphany, when the Wise Men arrived to give Baby Jesus a bouncy chair and a couple pacifiers. Really, it was an excuse to get together and I thought I might make King's Day bread for a traditional touch ... but didn't.

The Walkers are great fun. We always enjoy good conversation about child rearing, politics and religion. Matthew is their little one, and he is a whirlwind! He is so jazzed about everything and has energy that won't quit. Sam likes him quite a lot, and is always at his most enthusiastic in Matthew's presence.

I just realized that I forgot to photograph the kids' food! Sam gobbled up EB's fine meal of pesto pasta and fake chicken nuggets. The day before, he also guzzled down EB's snacks when the mommies and boys met at the zoo. Well, they were Matthew's snacks, prepared by EB. I guess whatever one's own Mommy does not make is more appetizing. Hm.

The adult menu was different. I love planning menus. I relish the time I get to spend with my cookbooks thinking of good combinations, assembling the shopping list, and making the timeline for the preparation. I get better with my timeline each dinner party. I think I was only 10 minutes late last night. Although that was after I called the Walkers to let them know that my original 5:30 dinner time needed to get pushed back to 6. The ribs had two steps, and I went to the store late, so got them in the oven late ... you get the picture. The menu: EB's fantastic and warm artichoke-spinach-camembert spread as an appetizer, then wilted kale salad, port-braised cipollini, mashed potatoes, and port-braised beef short ribs. For dessert, drunken bananas with vanilla ice cream (that Dave picked up for $1.75.) and almonds.

The onions were a disaster. Okay, that's too strong. They were an utter disappointment. Classic Jen move on this one, too. I have a port-brasied onion recipe that is really good, calling for pearl onions instead of cipollini. Is that the recipe I used? Goodness no, I went with a different one out of my new-fangled cookbook ... the cookbook that already steered me wrong on aioli. Surprise, surprise, they sucked. I think they need a caramelized flavor, and to cook longer, and the sauce needs a thickener because it was not getting thicker in the boiling down process. And, see that fat layer there? That's chicken broth and I think it thinned the port taste too much and was an ill-advised addition to the braising liquid. I didn't even finish my one onion. Oh, sorry, they're not actual onions. They are the bulbs of the grape hyacinth.

The kale salad, on the other hand, was delicious. This is a variation on a salad Josh and I have frequently. I usually make it with spinach, but I was feeling a kale vibe and went with it. You wilt the kale in boiling water for a couple of minutes, then drain. Saute (over barely med-high heat) four garlic cloves, sliced, with 1/2 cup golden raisins, 1/4 tsp. red pepper flakes and 2 T extra virgin olive oil, until golden. Then you add your kale and turn it in the oil et. al. until it's coated, warm, and a little more wilted. Be careful not to let the garlic burn. Off the heat add 2 tsp. each sherry vinegar and extra-virgin olive oil, and sprinkle 1/4 cup of slivered toasted almonds. Delicious every time. And I know the raisins may be a bit off-putting, but they make the salad, trust me. And they have to be golden.

I didn't photograph the mashed potatoes. We all know what they look like and I only made them to sop up the beef ribs' gravy. Mashed potatoes are the furniture of the food world: totally necessary in a room, but somewhat forgettable.

I did, however, photograph the roasting pan after the rendering process. I mentioned the two steps for the short ribs, and this was the first one. 1.5 hours at 375 to melt fat and brown meat.

This would be the browned meat. Did you know that, with meat, it is not "caramelization"? When you brown meat, you are conducting (setting in motion?) the Maillard reaction. "Caramelizing" is for food with a high concentration of carbohydrates and, therefore, sugars.

So after you brown the meat, you heat up a Dutch oven (Le Creuset), caramelize your aromatics, toss in all the liquids, throw the ribs back in, and put the whole thing in the oven for two hours. The result: Nothing short of Divine. I strained the sauce so that it was nice and smooth. The key ingredient to thicken? Minute tapioca! It worked swimmingly.

Finally, the Drunken Bananas. This dish was not a jewel in my prodigious dessert crown, but it was good. I wanted the sauce to be thicker. Perhaps a little tapioca in there would do the trick while in the oven. And next time I would like to try plantains, as the recipe calls for.

Come to think of it, Jacques Pepin has a crepes plus bananas foster recipe that I will probably try first. Since I have an entire bottle of rum, I might as well use it for something delicious. I certainly won't be drinking it. Yuck.

So the difference between PCD dinners and dinners now would be that the men don't sit at the table with glasses of whiskey while the ladies gab after the meal. Now we gauge how tired the kids are, and sign off by 8:30pm. It's a different kind of fun.