From a box

Funny the things we make from boxes. Brownies, cakes, cupcakes - these are all box staples, and decent ones. I have yet to make a truly good cupcake from scratch, actually. And I haven't tried a cake ... I made a chiffon cake once. All of my box cupcakes are marvelous. Somehow, when I get compliments, I just don't feel right taking credit for them. I used to get tons of compliments on my brownies too. What was my secret, I was asked. The secret? Choosing the cheapest box of brownies on the shelf. Refuse to pay over $2 for a box of brownie mix and you will not go wrong!

There was a bon voyage party for a Spaniard at work and I wanted to take two things: one very Spanish and one very American. I was going to make tortilla espanola, but ran out of time, so only made the brownies. I thought these were pretty darn American. And pretty darn good.

And from scratch!

It was the first time I made brownies from scratch. Well, the second time. I am ashamed to say that the first time, I wrote the directions down incorrectly and added 1.5 cups of oil instead of 1/2 a cup. The result was interesting. The brownies almost tasted normal, but you could wring the oil out and they didn't hold together at all. Kitchen errors like this anger me. So the second time around I was very careful. It's a Test Kitchen recipe, and they like to weigh as opposed to measure when they bake things, so that's what I did. The brownies were the best I've had. I felt very accomplished making them from scratch and not using something with preservatives and corn products in it.

I think I am converted to weighing for baking too. I made the brownies a third time to take across the street for a BBQ. They were delicious again, but a little different, and I think it was because I measured instead of weighed.

Please follow the directions

I was feeling down on my tart cookbook. I made a lemon-almond tart that I was not fond of. No photo, in fact, because it was ugly as well as not tasty. I had planned to bring half of it to my neighbor's house, but it was unworthy. I was leafing through another cookbook after this debacle and found another lemon-almond tart that I previously made and was successful with. That's when I realized that I am to the point where I have travelled into the cookbook collector category. I have so many I can't remember what I have made and where recipes are. I do have a list of insanely time-consuming projects, and on this list is to make a gigantic index of all the recipes I have made with page numbers, cross-referenced ingredients ... the works. Until that is under way and complete, I continue to leaf.

The tart cookbook will not go in the garage sale pile just yet, however. I made these beauties accompanied by very astringent salads and was wowed. The above is the flamiche, which I have made before, and below is a sausage-sundried tomato-mascarpone-softened onion masterpiece. The key to balancing them both (on different days, mind you) was the aforementioned salad with vinegary dressing that cuts through the unctuousness that each tart brought to the table.

The first time I made the flamiche I did not follow directions because they say to cook the leeks for 30 minutes on low heat with added water and the lid on. No caramelization! I thought that sounded ludicrous, so I hit them with medium-high heat to start a color, then turned the heat down and allowed them to soften and caramelize further. The second time around, for some reason, I decided to follow those weird, French directions, and the result was something divine. I did substitute half and half for cream, but I got better results in the custard arena. I generally believe in following recipe directions, but sometimes you hit upon a recipe where you wonder Did they actually make this thing? I do know that some recipes are not tested. There is a dark underbelly of cookbook authors who throw in a couple untested recipes because they think they can get away with it. That's what I think that awful lemon tart was.

Anyway, the flamiche required 30 minutes of leek sweating, and the sausage-sundried tomato tart required 1 hour (!) of onion sweating - 3 onions sweating. Totally worth it! I even made my own crust for the second tart. I generally have bad luck with shrinkage, such that I shrink from attempting crusts and go for frozen puff pastry more often than not. I manage the temperature just fine; I think I overwork the dough because it never looks like I have enough moisture for it to come together after resting in the fridge. But this time (okay, it was because I was out of frozen puff pastry) I dove in and got just a tiny bit of shrinking. I chose this second tart to make solely because I had mascarpone that I wanted to use. It has no eggs! You just pile in potatoes, sausage, tomato puree, sundried tomatoes, mascarpone, the onions, and flavor with herbs de provence. A salad and a nice glass of white wine round out the meal.

I love tarts.

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.

There is no turning back

I overhead a conversation about organics, which got me thinking about esoterics. You know when you start to head down a certain path of knowledge or study and you are moving along this path not realizing how far you are going. And then one day you overhear a conversation that has to do with the little world you joined, and you find yourself chiming in and then blathering on while others stare blankly.

The conversation was something like: If you want to buy organic food, but do not want to spend so much, you can save money by buying organic foods that "matter." The logic was that fruits like the banana do not have to be organic because you peel it and therefore do not ingest any pesticides. This led to a wider discussion about the woes of buying raspberries that cost $7 per pint. This conversation took place in March, by the way.

So I sat there, marveling first at the fact that no one seemed to get that organics is about more than just the pesticides that you may or may not ingest. And second that no one seemed conscious of seasons and fruit.

I have brought seasonality up before, in conversation. As a response I heard about the wonders of shipping, global trade, and living in the US. Yes, but ... other 1st world countries still do the seasonality thing. And raspberries out of season taste like crap. Furthermore, raspberries from the supermarket taste like crap. But people vigorously defend their food choices. If you have ever been a vegetarian, as I was for 5+ years, you surely know how people will defend their choice to eat meat, and they will defend it with gusto.

So this time I did not take part in the food conversation because I realized that I am on a, perhaps esoteric, path of knowledge about food. I guess that I have already walked a long way down it such that I can't see the fork in the road where I turned anymore. Instead of taking part I thought about how Josh and I went to a very popular steakhouse in Seattle and the waiter was so happy to announce that they serve "corn-fed beef." But ... cows eat grass. Do you know what happens to them and therefore all the medicine and crap you have to pump them full of when you feed them what they don't eat? Not to mention the corn that they are eating is GMO and covered with pesticides? What would the server have said to that diatribe?

There are several sayings associated with knowledge and the lack thereof. Knowledge is power. Ignorance is bliss. A little bit of knowledge can be a dangerous thing. Then there is that whole biblical metaphor. And I certainly do not claim to be a purist. I buy conventional foods; I ate a steak from a corn-fed steer at the aforementioned restaurant. What am I saying, then? I don't really know. Perhaps just that the difference is in the guilt because of the knowledge of sin, or what I am coming to define as a food sin.

This would be blathering on, I think.