Because I have the Cantina open, and because this is really too good to be lost, here is the famous Green Island Gingerbread. The gingerbread itself is very dark and deep, richly — almost excessively — ginger. Good three days later, the kind of thing old travellers would have taken on a journey. But the sauce, which would not travel well even if there was ever any left over, is completely stunning.
Gingerbread Green Island
Preheat oven to 325º
mix in small bowl:
4 t ground ginger
4 t ground cinnamon
2 t baking soda
1/2 t ground cloves
1/2 t ground pepper
1/2 t salt
Beat till fluffy, with electric mixer, in a large mixing bowl:
1 C butter
1 C brown sugar
Beat in:
2 C fancy unsulphured (or try blackstrap) molasses
2 eggs
Beat in the spice mixture, then with a wooden spoon, stir in:
3 1/4 C flour
When that's incorporated, stir in:
1 C boiling water
and if you like, either:
1 C finely chopped candied ginger OR
1 C California raisins, plumped in 1/2 C boiling water for 20 minutes, then drained
Turn into a 9” x 13” greased cake pan, bake for 60-65 minutes.
If making ahead, cover pan with foil and store at room temperature for two days. Or turn out and wrap cake in plastic, then foil, and freeze for up to one month.
MAPLE SAUCE:
3/4 C butter
2 eggs
2 C icing sugar
1/2 C maple syrup
2 T rum or 1 t vanilla
Melt butter in a medium saucepan over low heat. In a medium bowl, whisk eggs. While constantly whisking, slowly drizzle melted butter into eggs, then whisk in icing sugar till smooth, then maple syrup and rum or vanilla. Pour back into the saucepan and stir over medium heat just until mixture starts to bubble. Immediately pour into small pitcher and serve over squares of gingerbread. Sauce will keep, covered in the fridge, for 3 days. (But there won’t be any to keep.) Microwave low heat till warm.
Monday, October 27, 2008
Sunday, October 26, 2008
Joy of Cookeryingery
For Tom Kelly, who asked "Why is cooking such pleasure?"
Doing something simple and useful, with an immediate and gratifying purpose: making things delicious for the ones you love. Putting order to a small chaos of disparate ingredients, making something new out of this and this and this separate thing, synthesizing.
Because my father did all the cooking when I was young, and he loved it. My mother baked but really did not enjoy the trudge of every night dinner. My father taught me how to mince an onion efficiently, how to experiment, not to be afraid of trying some wild new idea from the newspaper. (The Saturday Globe and Mail recipes by Lucy Waverman are always worth a try.)
Pleasure of the kitchen: the smell of coriander and cumin, the brisk crunch of slicing celery, the brilliant colours of red pepper and orange peel and the tenderest green of the interior leaves of Brussels sprouts. Cocoa, bitter and beautiful, the oily talcum feel of Fry's between your fingers. The elastic beauty of bread dough properly kneaded, properly risen, properly punched down. Fiddleheads and squid and pickled beets and butterscotch sauce, how can those things co-exist? But better not to use them in one single recipe, I think.
Making breakfast: poaching eggs to exactly the degree of doneness that pleases you most, drying them slightly before placing them on perfectly-buttered perfectly-browned toast, grinding a fresh dust of pepper over them, and serving them on a good plate with a shiny substantial knife and fork, and a cloth napkin. This is ACHIEVABLE! and it is PERFECT! What else in life can you be so certain of perfecting? And for about 27 cents. Well, 40 if you use organic eggs, which I highly recommend.
When you are finished your work people are nourished and happy, and with any luck the kitchen is not too big a nightmare. And if you are still not convinced about the glory of cooking, make a cake. Here is the best chocolate cake recipe in the world, and I'll follow it with the best carrot cake. Some people are connoisseurs of wine or whiskey or cigars: my area of expertise is cake.
Chocolate Birthday Cake
1 2/3 c flour
1 1/2 t soda
1 t salt
1/2 c becel
1 1/2 c sugar
2 eggs
2/3 c cocoa
1 t vanilla
1 1/2 c buttermilk
Oven 350º Grease and flour two round baking pans, 8” or 9”, or one oblong 9"x13".
Stir dry ingredients together in a small bowl. Beat butter, sugar and eggs together in a large mixing bowl for three minutes. Beat in cocoa and vanilla, then add a third of the dry ingredients alternately with buttermilk (half each time), ending with the last of the dry ingredients. Don't worry if the mixture curdles, it will bake out fine.
Bake 30 minutes for layers, 35-40 for oblong.
You can serve that as it is, with ice cream, or with a shiny fudge icing made by melting 1/2 cup butter in a medium saucepan, stirring in 4 T cocoa until perfectly smooth, then adding 2 cups icing sugar, beating till smooth-ish, and adding 1 teaspoon vanilla and enough boiling water, 1 teaspoon at a time, to stir up a shiny smooth spreadable icing. Water must be boiling to get that gloss.
Or you can make a really fancy, really sweet dressed up cake à la Betty Crocker from the 50s:
Buttermallow Cake
Bake chocolate cake in 9" x 13" pan, let cool. Spread butterscotch filling over the cake, then frost with marshmallow frosting. Melt 1/2 cup chocolate chips or 1 square chocolate, pop into a plastic bag, snip a tiny corner off the bag and draw straight lines lengthwise down the cake. Then draw a clean knife through the lines width-wise to create napoleon markings. Don’t draw the knife down too deeply – you don’t want to mix the butterscotch filling in with the icing.
Butterscotch filling:
1/2 C brown sugar
1/4 C cornstarch
pinch of salt
1/2 C water
1 T butter
Stir sugar, cornstarch and salt together in small saucepan. Add water and cook, stirring constantly, until mixture thickens and boils. Boil gently and stir one minute. Blend in butter. Cool.
Marshmallow frosting
2 egg whites
11/2 C sugar
1/4 t cream of tartar
1 T light corn syrup
1/3 C water
16 large marshmallows, quartered
Combine egg whites, sugar, cream of tartar, syrup and water in top of a double boiler. Place over boiling water. Beat with electric hand mixer until stiff peaks form, scraping pan occasionally (about seven minutes). Remove from heat. Add marshmallows quickly and continue beating until of spreading consistency.
But maybe you don't like chocolate cake?
Here's the Uber Carrot Cake, best I've ever made, after years of trying.
Best Carrot Cake
3 eggs
3/4 c buttermilk
3/4 c oil
2 c dark brown sugar
2 c unbleached flour
2 t baking soda
2 t cinnamon
1 t fresh-ground nutmeg
1/2 t salt
1 c crushed pineapple, drained
2 c grated carrots
1 c good dark raisins
1 c coarsely ground chopped walnuts
3/4 c shredded unsweetened coconut
With electric mixer, beat eggs, buttermilk, oil and sugar till blended. Add flour, soda, spices and salt, and blend. Stir in pineapple, carrots, walnuts and coconut. Pour into two greased 8” square pans or one 9x13” pan and bake at 350º for 55 minutes.
Ice with orange cream cheese icing: beat one cup soft butter and 2 cups cold cream cheese until creamed. Add the grated rind of one orange, 1 t vanilla, and enough icing sugar (about 1 cup) to make a light icing.
Or make JoY of Cooking’s
Cream Cheese icing
(have the cream cheese cold, straight from the fridge, but the butter at room temperature)
Beat with a mixer until just blended:
8 oz. cream cheese
1/2 cup butter
2 teaspoons vanilla
Add one cup at a time and beat just until smooth:
2 - 2 1/2 cups icing sugar
You can stir in some grated orange rind or cinnamon, if you like.
Refrigerate the cake.
Doing something simple and useful, with an immediate and gratifying purpose: making things delicious for the ones you love. Putting order to a small chaos of disparate ingredients, making something new out of this and this and this separate thing, synthesizing.
Because my father did all the cooking when I was young, and he loved it. My mother baked but really did not enjoy the trudge of every night dinner. My father taught me how to mince an onion efficiently, how to experiment, not to be afraid of trying some wild new idea from the newspaper. (The Saturday Globe and Mail recipes by Lucy Waverman are always worth a try.)
Pleasure of the kitchen: the smell of coriander and cumin, the brisk crunch of slicing celery, the brilliant colours of red pepper and orange peel and the tenderest green of the interior leaves of Brussels sprouts. Cocoa, bitter and beautiful, the oily talcum feel of Fry's between your fingers. The elastic beauty of bread dough properly kneaded, properly risen, properly punched down. Fiddleheads and squid and pickled beets and butterscotch sauce, how can those things co-exist? But better not to use them in one single recipe, I think.
Making breakfast: poaching eggs to exactly the degree of doneness that pleases you most, drying them slightly before placing them on perfectly-buttered perfectly-browned toast, grinding a fresh dust of pepper over them, and serving them on a good plate with a shiny substantial knife and fork, and a cloth napkin. This is ACHIEVABLE! and it is PERFECT! What else in life can you be so certain of perfecting? And for about 27 cents. Well, 40 if you use organic eggs, which I highly recommend.
When you are finished your work people are nourished and happy, and with any luck the kitchen is not too big a nightmare. And if you are still not convinced about the glory of cooking, make a cake. Here is the best chocolate cake recipe in the world, and I'll follow it with the best carrot cake. Some people are connoisseurs of wine or whiskey or cigars: my area of expertise is cake.
Chocolate Birthday Cake
1 2/3 c flour
1 1/2 t soda
1 t salt
1/2 c becel
1 1/2 c sugar
2 eggs
2/3 c cocoa
1 t vanilla
1 1/2 c buttermilk
Oven 350º Grease and flour two round baking pans, 8” or 9”, or one oblong 9"x13".
Stir dry ingredients together in a small bowl. Beat butter, sugar and eggs together in a large mixing bowl for three minutes. Beat in cocoa and vanilla, then add a third of the dry ingredients alternately with buttermilk (half each time), ending with the last of the dry ingredients. Don't worry if the mixture curdles, it will bake out fine.
Bake 30 minutes for layers, 35-40 for oblong.
You can serve that as it is, with ice cream, or with a shiny fudge icing made by melting 1/2 cup butter in a medium saucepan, stirring in 4 T cocoa until perfectly smooth, then adding 2 cups icing sugar, beating till smooth-ish, and adding 1 teaspoon vanilla and enough boiling water, 1 teaspoon at a time, to stir up a shiny smooth spreadable icing. Water must be boiling to get that gloss.
Or you can make a really fancy, really sweet dressed up cake à la Betty Crocker from the 50s:
Buttermallow Cake
Bake chocolate cake in 9" x 13" pan, let cool. Spread butterscotch filling over the cake, then frost with marshmallow frosting. Melt 1/2 cup chocolate chips or 1 square chocolate, pop into a plastic bag, snip a tiny corner off the bag and draw straight lines lengthwise down the cake. Then draw a clean knife through the lines width-wise to create napoleon markings. Don’t draw the knife down too deeply – you don’t want to mix the butterscotch filling in with the icing.
Butterscotch filling:
1/2 C brown sugar
1/4 C cornstarch
pinch of salt
1/2 C water
1 T butter
Stir sugar, cornstarch and salt together in small saucepan. Add water and cook, stirring constantly, until mixture thickens and boils. Boil gently and stir one minute. Blend in butter. Cool.
Marshmallow frosting
2 egg whites
11/2 C sugar
1/4 t cream of tartar
1 T light corn syrup
1/3 C water
16 large marshmallows, quartered
Combine egg whites, sugar, cream of tartar, syrup and water in top of a double boiler. Place over boiling water. Beat with electric hand mixer until stiff peaks form, scraping pan occasionally (about seven minutes). Remove from heat. Add marshmallows quickly and continue beating until of spreading consistency.
But maybe you don't like chocolate cake?
Here's the Uber Carrot Cake, best I've ever made, after years of trying.
Best Carrot Cake
3 eggs
3/4 c buttermilk
3/4 c oil
2 c dark brown sugar
2 c unbleached flour
2 t baking soda
2 t cinnamon
1 t fresh-ground nutmeg
1/2 t salt
1 c crushed pineapple, drained
2 c grated carrots
1 c good dark raisins
1 c coarsely ground chopped walnuts
3/4 c shredded unsweetened coconut
With electric mixer, beat eggs, buttermilk, oil and sugar till blended. Add flour, soda, spices and salt, and blend. Stir in pineapple, carrots, walnuts and coconut. Pour into two greased 8” square pans or one 9x13” pan and bake at 350º for 55 minutes.
Ice with orange cream cheese icing: beat one cup soft butter and 2 cups cold cream cheese until creamed. Add the grated rind of one orange, 1 t vanilla, and enough icing sugar (about 1 cup) to make a light icing.
Or make JoY of Cooking’s
Cream Cheese icing
(have the cream cheese cold, straight from the fridge, but the butter at room temperature)
Beat with a mixer until just blended:
8 oz. cream cheese
1/2 cup butter
2 teaspoons vanilla
Add one cup at a time and beat just until smooth:
2 - 2 1/2 cups icing sugar
You can stir in some grated orange rind or cinnamon, if you like.
Refrigerate the cake.
Salmon Chanted Evening
Salmon again, just can't get enough.
This is a new way: heat oven to 425º and place salmon fillets skin side down in an oven dish. I use a smallish 8" one, which I completely fill with salmon pieces. Salt and fresh-ground pepper the fish. Slice a lemon paper-thin, and arrange the lemon slices, overlapping slightly, over the fish. When the oven is hot, pop the dish in the oven and bake for 12 minutes per inch of thickness. There's just enough time to roast some potatoes if you have a convection oven, as I suddenly do: before you start the fish, slice two or three potatoes lengthwise into eighths, toss with a little olive oil and lay them out on a foil-covered cookie sheet (unless you are against foil, in which case just use the cookie sheet but be prepared to work at the cleaning later), salt and fresh-ground pepper generously, and slide the sheet onto the top shelf of the oven to cook while you get the salmon ready. If your oven is non-convection, or as we call it, Ordinary, then the potatoes will need about 40 minutes. You can turn them half way through but you don't really need to.
The salmon comes out tender and gently lemon-spiked. The potatoes are crisp and slightly wicked. You could steam some green beans or broccoli while the salmon and potatoes are cooking, or just make a big green salad. Equal parts lemon juice and olive oil shaken together in a jar (with a bit of salt and a very small smidge of sugar) make a good dressing.
We feel healthy and holy after this dinner, but it is as good as fish and chips.
This is a new way: heat oven to 425º and place salmon fillets skin side down in an oven dish. I use a smallish 8" one, which I completely fill with salmon pieces. Salt and fresh-ground pepper the fish. Slice a lemon paper-thin, and arrange the lemon slices, overlapping slightly, over the fish. When the oven is hot, pop the dish in the oven and bake for 12 minutes per inch of thickness. There's just enough time to roast some potatoes if you have a convection oven, as I suddenly do: before you start the fish, slice two or three potatoes lengthwise into eighths, toss with a little olive oil and lay them out on a foil-covered cookie sheet (unless you are against foil, in which case just use the cookie sheet but be prepared to work at the cleaning later), salt and fresh-ground pepper generously, and slide the sheet onto the top shelf of the oven to cook while you get the salmon ready. If your oven is non-convection, or as we call it, Ordinary, then the potatoes will need about 40 minutes. You can turn them half way through but you don't really need to.
The salmon comes out tender and gently lemon-spiked. The potatoes are crisp and slightly wicked. You could steam some green beans or broccoli while the salmon and potatoes are cooking, or just make a big green salad. Equal parts lemon juice and olive oil shaken together in a jar (with a bit of salt and a very small smidge of sugar) make a good dressing.
We feel healthy and holy after this dinner, but it is as good as fish and chips.
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