Doughnut French Toast

It was somewhere between asleep and awake--a weird mix of dreams, the breaking dawn, and NPR's Morning Edition program. I was asleep one moment and the next I was catching a snippet of conversation between Steve Inskeep and Nigella Lawson concerning Lawson's "Doughnut French Toast". (I think this must have caught my one awake ear because a few months back one of my sisters had posted about this particular french toast, and I had watched a video clip of Nigella making it.) And in the next moment, I was dreaming about being a chef in a nice country hotel . . .

Later on, I wondered if I had really heard a Morning Edition clip, or whether I had just dreamed it all. I went to NPR's website and found proof that I hadn't been totally in la-la land. And did I have stale-ish bread on hand at that particular moment? Why, yes! And was I having a morning at home with time to make french toast? Absolutely!

Mmmmm . . . this french toast was really good. I think it had a bit much vanilla, and not enough (none at all, in fact) salt. But I loved the egginess and the instructions to soak it as long as it said. My bread could have used even more of the wet stuff, but I had used whole grain bread when the recipe called for white. I also noticed later that there are two recipes (at the NPR site and here)for this toast online in which one calls for double the amount of milk. Now that would make a difference!

Cook's Word: A good, solid french toast. I think I would add a dash of salt to the egg mixture as well as a little sugar. I didn't care for all the sweetness being on the outside. I think I'd also cut the vanilla a bit if I make it again.

Carroty Cake

In a minute you'll understand why my kitchen counter looked like this last Saturday morning . . . (And, yes, this is a close-up, so there were lots more)

I must say the joy of baking far outweighs the "joy" of doing the dishes afterward. And when I get into it, I really get into it. And the dishes pile up. Up. Up.


I really didn't bake all that much, it was just that I had to use so many bowls per recipe. First off: carrot cake. For Dad's birthday cake, it couldn't be any other. I had found the perfect recipe that didn't call for any pineapple (and then freaked out a little bit when he said he likes the kind with pineapple). I wasn't about to go back on it, though. I had already tested the recipe with some friends and got good reviews. With the applesauce I added to the recipe, I thought the cake had enough moisture to warrant forgetting the pineapple. I actually had the foresight to also take my carrots to work with me and quickly, easily grate all four cups in the food processor there. =)

While the carrot cake layers cooled, I did a batch of pumpkin cupcakes. I used this recipe from Smitten Kitchen pretty much spot on, so I won't copy it here. Delish! Especially with cream cheese frosting on top!

Once the carrot cake layers cooled, I put on a crumb coat (a thin layer to keep crumbs from peeking through the final layer), swathed it in plastic wrap, and stashed it in the fridge 'til evening. The cake and cupcakes were transported to Mom and Dad's house later in the afternoon for the final party frosting. I couldn't think of any other crowning decoration, so we cheesily slapped some candy corns on top. Not my best gourmet moment.

After a splendid dinner, the pinata, and apple-bobbing, it was time for the grand moment of truth. Was this birthday cake good enough for a 60th-year celebration.? After we'd all eaten, I coolly asked my dad, "So, how was the cake?"

Taste-tester's response: "Perfect!"

It can only go downhill from here, folks. Cook's word. (Oh, and: P.S. I thought the cake was good, but I got a little happy with all that frosting. See it literally dripping down in the middle? Yikes! I mean, cream cheese is yummy, but . . . )

And since it was that good:

"Perfect" Carrot Cake
(tweaked from here)

2 cups all-purpose flour
2 tsp baking powder
2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
2 tsp cinnamon
1 cup white sugar
1/3 cup brown sugar
4 eggs
1 tsp vanilla
1/2 cup vegetable or canola oil
1/2 cup applesauce (I used Ginger-Granny, of course!)
4 cups grated carrots

Instructions: Sift flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and cinnamon into a small bowl. Beat eggs and sugar together. Add vanilla, oil, and applesauce, and blend well. Stir in dry ingredients. Fold in carrots. Bake at 350F in a greased, floured 9x13 or two 9-inch round pans for about 40 minutes. Frost with your favorite cream cheese frosting.


p.s. Thanks for the pans, Rachel!

Ginger-Granny Sauce

I'm taking you back about a month ago, to a Thursday afternoon and making applesauce in my sister-in-law's kitchen. I won't bore you with the whole saga of getting the "wrong" apples (Granny Smith) and then getting the "right" ones (Ginger Gold). Though we had anticipated making our batch of applesauce from just the Ginger Golds, we decided to experiment with what we had on hand. And I'm rather glad we did!

We ended up using all the apples, carefully controlling the ratio of Granny's to Gold's we put in for consistency; it amounted to three parts Ginger Gold to every one part Granny Smith. I thought the Granny's would be terrible for making applesauce because of their tart nature, but they added a much-needed apple-y depth of flavor to the milder/sweeter Golds. We did add some sugar to taste (a scant 1/2-cup for about eight quarts), and I became the proud owner of 19 (now 16) quarts of green-gold applesauce. Many thanks to my mom for the canning jars!

apples in waiting

cookin'

final product

Tired Woman Soup

Ever worked an eight-hour day on your feet and not been too eager to cook up dinner when you got home?

Yep. Me.

Result:

The recipe for this soup is more like a treasure hunt, really. Between my fridge, freezer, and cupboards I scrounged up these items: oil, onion (saute together); cooked broccoli stems in their cooking water, carrots (chop), half-bag of frozen green beans, small container of frozen ham cubes (dump all this in and bring to a simmer); Oh! and add a quart of home-canned roma tomatoes and a handful or so of lentils. Cook until everything is tender. Salt and pepper.



Cook's Word: the soup turned out much tastier than I expected. I decided not to use any other seasonings besides what already existed in the ingredients and salt & pepper. I ended up making a huge pot of soup which yielded about four meals, plus a quart still in the freezer. For another one of those evenings I come home too tired to cook. =)

Pizza Flop

I guess I'm kinda glad my camera is loaned away at the moment, so that I have an excuse for not posting any pictures of the pizza I made this evening. While my husband insisted that it was good, I think I'm gonna have to call it a flop.

I have my reasons why:

1. I ran out of white flour at 1/2 cup. Ooops! I was already too dedicated to the idea of pizza (on the new-to-us pizza stone we scored at a local thrift store for $5).

2. I didn't increase the pizza dough like I normally do. Thin, dense, brown crust.

3. I forgot to add any seasonings to the sauce-less pizza. Just a little salt would have improved it immensely.

4. Bagged, pre-shredded cheese. I have finally decided it's tasteless. And I want to taste the ooey-gooey stuff on my pizza.


Well, there you have it. Uncensored pizza flop. We can only go up-hill from here. By the way, does anyone have a "fool-proof" pizza crust recipe they'd like to share? I seem to get 50-50 results with mine (probably due in part to the inconsistency in what kind of flour I use). =)

The Green Tomato Strikes Again!

If it's nearing the first frost in your hometown like it is here, you might be trying to think of a way to salvage all those not-quite-ripe tomatoes. Well, here's another idea if drying them doesn't appeal to you . . .


Green Tomato Tart*

2 cups sliced green tomatoes
1/2 cup brown sugar
2 TBSP flour
1 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp nutmeg
1 pie crust, unbaked
Instructions: Place sliced tomatoes in a bowl and pour boiling water over them to cover. Soak 10 minutes. Drain the tomatoes and add sugar, flour, and spices, stirring to coat. Roll crust into a rough circle, place on a baking tray (or in a pie plate) and pile tomato mixture in the center. Fold the edges of the dough over the filling, leaving the center open. Bake at 375F until crust looks done (20-30 minutes). Best eaten warm!

Cook's Word: This tart reminds me a little of apple pie because of the cinnamon flavor. Eaten cold is has more of a tomato-y taste than it does right out of the oven. I think I actually prefer dried or fried green tomatoes to this, but then you don't get to eat any pie crust!

*The idea for this tart is a "Green Tomato Pie" recipe from the Mennonite Community Cookbook (c. 1950). Since I didn't have enough tomatoes for the 3 cups called for, I simply scaled down, did away with the molasses and water, and made it into a tart instead. =)

Pepper Paste

Thanks to a generous gift of hot red peppers from my mother-in-law I was able to embark on a first-time journey of making Turkish red pepper paste, or "biber salcasi". In the southeast of Turkey where I sojourned for a year, no kitchen is complete without a bucket of pepper paste handy. Yes, a bucket. In Gaziantep cuisine, food prepared without at least a spoonful of this rich, zesty red goo is pretty rare.

In high summer, when the spicy red bell peppers are peaking, Antepli housewives hunker down with their buckets and knives and pare loads and loads of peppers for grinding. Once ground, the peppers morph into an orangey "soup" that is poured into pans and set out in the hot sun to thicken over a period of days. Each day the pepper soup is worried over and stirred. It's color begins to brighten as water evaporates off. Finally, it is paste. Olive oil and salt are added as preservatives and the paste is stashed under the kitchen sink or another convenient location to be dipped into daily for soups, meat dishes, kofte, to spread on bread, you name it.

I was not so fortunate as to have a reliable stretch of hot, sunny days, so had to resort to using the oven, set at 200F, to make my pepper paste over a period of several hours (I did it along with my dried tomatoes). I was also not so fortunate as to end up with a whole bucket of it the lovely goo. Rather, from 12 hot peppers and two large sweet red bell peppers my labors yielded about two cups of this delightful stuff. It is so precious to me, that I even had a dream last night about one of my sisters shamelessly using up all but a few spoonfuls of it in a single day! I was happy to wake and discover my jar of pepper paste silently, calmly holding out on my fridge shelf, just where I'd left it.

The Peppers (and how they shrunk) . . .

orangey soup stage

Finally, biber salcasi!