Category Archives: Briefly noted

Walnut cake with coffee buttercream

If you think there is even a remote possibility that you might bake a cake on any given day this is my advice: take a pound of butter out of the fridge as soon as you wake up and put it on the counter. You should also take out the other cold ingredients, like eggs, sour cream or milk. (Although I must say that if I even think I might bake a cake, the odds are more or less 85% that I will and this may not be true for everyone.)

The butter and eggs emerge from the refrigerator dense, fatty and cold.  You won’t be able to beat any air into a batter composed of cold ingredients. If you have had the forethought to take the butter out of the fridge in the morning and it is perfectly soft, watching it beaten into a pale fluffy mass with the sugar is very satisfying. The eggs too, at room temperature, will balloon when beaten, doubling in volume, becoming ethereal and nearly white. Light batter makes a light cake.  The butter and eggs provide moisture and structure.

I baked cakes for a really really long time before I became a believer in properly softened butter and understood the value of warming up the cold ingredients. The little extra effort of pulling them out of the fridge in the morning makes all the difference.

I’ve been thinking about cake daily because the season of birthdays for our family starts on February 7th and doesn’t end until May 3rd.  I have to bake a birthday cake about every 3 weeks (and those are in addition to any cake I might just make on a whim) and several batches of cupcakes besides.  I don’t like to make the same cake twice. That adds up to a lot of cakes.

“If you get one good recipe out of a cookbook, it’s worthwhile.”

my grandmother Carola

This adage has gotten me into trouble in the cookbook department, and yet I still stand by the sentiment.  I can’t think of many books where I cook more than 10 recipes and I can think of tons where I can only find one winner. So I admit it. I am a profligate buyer of cookbooks. Even after the 50 book purge I did last summer, I still have too many.

Last week when I was at Powell’s Books in Portland, I finally broke down and bought both Nose to Tail Eating and Beyond Nose to Tail. I have had my eye on these books for awhile now. The recipes that author Fergus Henderson provides in his missive go well beyond the comfort zone of most people. He’s into offal. Despite the fact that I have hardly cooked more than a chicken liver in the offal department, I find myself intrigued and excited. Hopefully I will carve out more than one recipe. The truth is though, it wasn’t the challenges of cooking lamb’s tongues that caught my imagination, it was the baking section. There is this method for making bread that I am DYING to try.  The author has you build something called a “mother” to raise the bread.  A mother is described by the author like this:

“The Mother adds character to your bread. The flavour and texture of sourdough in particular comes from using no commercial yeast, only your Mother.  The process takes longer but the results are worth the wait.”

I am very excited to get to work on this project. I am new to bread making.  I should qualify that. After 20 years of being a spectacularly unsuccessful bread maker (I only practiced sporadically), I now find I can make bread.  Really good bread – check it out:

I’m still not sure how it happened!

Even though I ordered this book because I really wanted to try out building a Mother which uses flour, rhubarb and water to make a bubbling fermenting powerhouse, I was not intentionally ignoring the fanfare that this book generated, which was huge among people who like adventurous cooking and who aren’t put off by offal.

Nose to Tail Eating was the first modern book to celebrate those odd bits of meat that everyone feels squeamish about: pigs ears, jowls and trotters, tripe, tongues, blood etc. I would love to tell you that I would call up my butcher and cavalierly order 14 pigs ears.  It’s not just ordering the ears though.  It’s what you have to do with them to make them palatable. The tough little hairs have to be shaved off (!?!) with a Bic (!?!) and then the ears have to be brined for 3 days.  After simmering them with a lot of stock vegetables, I would have to call up 8-10 of my dearest friends and serve them sliced pressed pigs ears as a starter.  I wish I could see myself doing that, I really do.  I would love to be a person brave enough to make pigs ears and serve them at someone’s birthday dinner. I want to be that kind of cook. Would I have any friends left if I did?

Either way, I’m very glad I bought the book.  And who knows, maybe I really will make a Warm Pig’s Head Salad one day. For right now, I’m out of here – I have to get to the store and buy some rhubarb.  I’m going to start building my Mother tonight.

Inauspiciously – that’s how the day began. I overslept; too much green tea at the Chinese restaurant kept me wired past midnight. Then there was the bed head. So bad there was nothing for it: I had to take a shower. The little guy tried to stick to his guns about the “Future Superhero” t-shirt but it was too splotched with jam and chocolate – I just couldn’t let him wear it again.  He responded with a monumental meltdown and refused to get dressed or be consoled or drink his warm milk. He just shivered and sobbed. Every time I turned around while trying to make breakfast, there was another mess to deal with. The babysitter was 20 minutes late. And Monday is my big volunteer day. I spend the whole day at school and then take everyone to fencing and then home in time to meet the piano teacher. And make dinner.

Just based on the crazy intensity of the day, I had very low expectations for an evening at home alone with three kids and the puppy. My sales and marketing campaign for the high tea idea had fallen off in the morning during the hubbub. We got home from fencing late. While the piano lesson progressed in the living room, there was a lot of squabbling in the kitchen. Of course there was homework nagging too. The menu was very simple though. I certainly didn’t lose my mind getting it on the table.

Maybe it was the tea. Or that chewy golden oat bread, dripping with hot butter and honey. It had these deeply brown-edged holes and a creamy, salty-sweet interior. There is nothing like hot buttered toast and tea – with milk. (for me, it’s better than a hot bath or a good book and a blanket in front of the fire)  The sausages, as always, were crisp and nicely caramelized but after all, they were just sausages. (I swear I’m not going to eat another one for a month!) The cucumbers, carrots and peppers were just plain-old (but sweet and fresh) with the Greek yogurt and garlic. We ate a lot though. A lot of everything.

So was it really just the tea?! Afterwards, the kids and the puppy all did exactly what I wanted them to do. Pajamas, stories, teeth, a little more homework, but upstairs this time and docilely at their desks. And then bed. Quietly. I’m definitely going to do this again tomorrow.  High tea was a very good idea.