Archive for February, 2011
Some of my favorite cookbooks are not slick hardbound volumes full of colorful photos. Some of them are old, well-used booklets of simple recipes that were put together decades ago for church and school groups with recipes from neighborhood mothers and wives. The colorful books are still wonderful, of course, but there is nothing like seeing some of the recipes that were popular – for better and for worse – just a half century or so ago. I like the entertainment value in some of the “bad” recipes and the nostalgia of the great ones – and I would put Tomato Soup Cake in the latter category. If you have a cookbook like the one I described, I can almost guarantee that a version of this recipe is in there.
Tomato soup cake was, and is, a secret ingredient cake. This means that while tomato soup is one of the main ingredients in the cake, you can’t really taste it in the finished product. Versions of this recipe appeared, at various times, on the backs of cans of tomato soup. Condensed tomato soup is what most of the older recipes called for. I never have condensed tomato soup in my pantry, so I’ve adapted my own version of the classic tomato soup cake to use tomato juice or V8 juice instead (I usually use V8 juice; both work equally well).
Tomato juice seems like a strange ingredient compared to other cakes, but what you end up with is a sweet and moist spice cake that has a great flavors from all of the cinnamon, allspice and cloves in the recipe. It does not taste like tomato soup or tomato juice at all, although it is reminiscent of a carrot cake or pumpkin bread. You can definitely feel good about getting at least one serving of veggies when you eat a slice! Cream cheese frosting is a good match for spice cakes, and just a little bit makes a very nice topping for the finished cake.
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Tartine Bakery is practically a must-stop for foodies visiting San Francisco. The cute bakery has top notch baked goods, breads and pastries and is owned by two James Beard Award-winning chefs, not to mention the fact that it has lots of write ups by food writers and thousands of reviews on sites like Yelp. But if you’re not going to be in the city by the bay any time soon, you might want to opt for a copy of Tartine Bread instead of making a visit.
The breads at Tartine are not simple, quick-rising loaves. They are long-rising, starter-based, artisan-shaped loaves that didn’t translate easily to recipes that could be replicated easily in a home kitchen, but authors Chad Robertson and Eric Wolfinger worked diligently to convert the bakery’s popular breads into loaves that could be produced beautiful in any kitchen. The process involved a lot of experimentation and a lot of recipe testing, much of which was done with the help of some fans who tested the recipes in their own homes as they were developed. One of the most interesting things about this book is that the experiences of these home bakers are featured in the book, giving insight into not only how the book was produced, but into how to make better breads yourself.
The book is designed to guide you through the bread baking process from start to finish, teaching first just a basic recipe and building on that to produce loaves with more complex flavors and techniques. The breads are based on “natural leaveners” (a.k.a. sourdoughs) and everything is described carefully to help ensure your success with the recipes and to make you feel comfortable working with naturally leavened breads, even if you’ve never tried them before. There are lots of photos to give you a visual guide as you work. The recipes are not the easiest, involving many steps and often being quite time consuming, but they are clearly written and if you put in the time an effort to work through them and learn the feel of the techniques that the authors worked so diligently to describe, you’ll end up a much more skilled baker and you’ll produce some great artisan loaves while you’re at it.
You don’t need an excuse to enjoy pancakes, but, like most things, they’re even better when they’re free. On Tuesday, March 1st, IHOP is hosting their annual National Pancake Day Celebration, where the popular chain gives out a free short stack of their classic buttermilk pancakes (3 pancakes) to every customer who comes in between 7am and 10pm. The chain does this as a fundraiser for the Childen’s Miracle Network Hospitals, a charity that raises money for children’s hospitals all across the US, and asks guests to think about leaving a donation (small or large) to the charity while they’re enjoying their pancakes. IHOP has been running this promotion since 2006 and has raised more than $5.35 million dollars for charity, and hopes to add at least another $2 million to that total this year.
This year, National Pancake Day (Shrove Tuesday) is actually on March 8th, but IHOP is starting the celebration a little early to draw extra attention to their program. If you can’t make it out to get your free pancakes, you can still either give to the Childen’s Miracle Network Hospitals through IHOP or to them (or another charity, of course) on your own, but when they’re hot off the griddle, IHOP has some excellent buttermilk pancakes and you can’t beat the combination of eating pancakes and supporting a good cause any day of the year.
Citrus is often used as a flavoring for desserts from scones to cakes, but pieces of orange and lemon don’t always make it into the finished product. Frankly, you wouldn’t want to have big pieces of orange or lemon floating around in all of your recipes, but they do deserve the chance to take more of a starring role once in a while. With ripe blood oranges on hand, I used them as one of the main ingredients in these Blueberry and Blood Orange Crisps.
The crisps are easy to make. They’re a mixture of blueberries and fresh blood orange segments – lightly sweetened – that is topped with a buttery oat crisp. I supremed the oranges, meaning that I sliced out each of the orange pieces and left the “skin” that holds them together behind (this is also frequently called segmenting). To do this, just cut the peel off of the orange and cut along the side of the membranes between orange segments with a sharp knife, removing the “meat” of the fuit. While you could simply chop the oranges, this leaves more tender pieces of fruit in the dessert. The finished crisps are have a wonderful bright berry flavor to them, and the blueberries and oranges are a good match. Blood oranges have a mellow orange flavor, so orange zest helps to bring it out. There is a great ratio of topping to filling (especially if you’re a fan of the topping!), too, and it is just crispy enough to add a good textural contrast to the sticky filling.
You could bake this in one big casserole dish, but I like the fact that you get a much better ratio of fruit to topping by putting these in individual ramekins. Don’t try to cram the crisps into too-small ramekins, as you won’t have as much room to pile on the topping if you do. You can use fresh or frozen berries for this recipe. If you opt for frozen, do not defrost them before adding them to the oranges. You can also use different kinds of berries, adding raspberries for a springtime dish and strawberries for a more summery variation. Similarly, if you don’t have blood oranges you can use small mandarins (even canned, drained) or any other orange. Choose a sweet one, or consider adding an extra tablespoon or two of sugar to the filling to make up for any tartness.
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Steel cut oats, also known as Irish oats or pinhead oats, are whole oat groats that have been chopped into large pieces and make a minimally processed cereal with a good oat flavor and a hearty texture. They are different from regular oatmeal because of the way that the oats are processed. Most oatmeal is made by rolling the oats under heavy rollers until they are flat, then lightly steaming and toasting them. This process makes the oatmeal cook quickly and have a soft, tender texture to it. Steel cut oats resemble very small, coarse grains of rice. They have a coarser texture than rolled oats and the oatmeal has a chewier texture, as well as an even more pronounced oat flavor to it.
Rolled oats are generally better for baking because they do not need to be cooked before being incorporated into cookies and cakes. They are flavorful and tender in baked goods, while steel cut oats can be overly coarse and can add a heavy texture to baked goods. Steel cut oats make a great breakfast cereal, however, and take on a lovely texture after a long, slow cooking process. Since making steel cut oats isn’t as fast as turning rolled oats into breakfast, it is best to make a big batch and store it in an airtight container in the fridge. With a little water or milk, the chilled steel cut oats can easily be reheated in the microwave without having to make a whole new batch.
