Polling…

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Eight or nine months ago, two good friends of ours (mine, N.’s, our department’s) got married.  Because they were in Canada at the time on a Fulbright scholarship, no one here in Oregon who adores them were able to share their celebration in person.

But they are back now, and I have conspired to throw them a belated reception in my backyard in a few weeks.  We will be grilling, but I know there will be plenty of chopping, roasting, sauteing, and baking as well.  I have plans, but I’d love to hear some input:  if you were going to an upscale backyard BBQ, bringing your own grillables and perhaps a bottle of wine, what would you be bringing?  What kinds of side dishes would you hope to eat?  What items should not be missed when we assemble our menu?

First fire

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Don’t look back.  Don’t stop and talk to your loved ones.  Do not pass GO or collect $200.  Just grab your beer bottle, your children, your spouse, whoever, and run to your grill.  You must make and eat this, now: Honey-lime Chicken Fajitas with Grilled Fresh Corn and Avocado-Orange Salad.

At my request, N. just lugged our baby gas grill out for its first showing of the season.  It just needed to be dusted off, scraped down, and switched on.  And then we cover it with unreasonably delectable things like these fajitas from the June 2008 issue of Cuisine at Home (the recipe for the chicken can be found here).  With my numerous food magazine subscriptions expired, and me on a graduate student budget, I’ve started going back through old issues by month and, rather than cooking whatever I want willy-nilly, only permitting myself to use recipes from the month we’re in.  Thus this month I have four issues of various titles from June to choose from.  I didn’t need to look further than June 2008, though.

N. did an excellent job grilling the chicken breasts, which got crunchy caramelized exteriors from the honey in the marinade.  While he was busy, I was able to compose our two sides.

Love it or hate it, the cilantro in this grilled corn mixture added bright, grassy freshness and went with the sweetness of the corn extremely well.  Surprisingly, the queso fresco I crumbled over the top went along well too, probably because the salad was all freshness and crisp juiciness, and benefited from some creamy curds of cheese.

Because we had a sudden profusion (read: six) of tart garnet strawberries weighing down their respective stems in the backyard, I made a fruity addition to the Avocado-Orange salad Cuisine at Home offered.  Eliminating the garlic from the recipe and using the orange’s dripping liqueur instead of lime juice (one of my limes was most reluctant to give up anything), I mixed the roughly chopped strawberries in with an avocado, an orange, a few pinches of cilantro, and some salt and pepper.  Then I tried not to eat everything in the bowls while I waited for N. to bring the chicken in.

Fingers burning, we sliced it, then loaded up warm flour tortillas with thick moist slices of chicken, crumbles of queso fresco, sweet juicy pops of corn, and some green salsa (not homemade, but what can you do?).  I substituted a spoonful of Avocado-Orange salad for the salsa on my second fajita, and was equally overwhelmed.  So fresh.  So fragrant.  Such a pleasing, intriguing combination of flavors.

So quickly gone.

Dreamy.

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It’s been over a month since our Breakfast for Dinner party, but I was doing some photo editing and discovered that I’d taken pictures of a dish that never got featured.  Well, okay, that’s not quite accurate.  The truth is, I made this dish for the party, tasted a tiny slice, and when saliva flooded my mouth and my cheeks got warm with appreciation of the spicy cheesy love, vowed to go back for more.  Somehow hours passed, and when I made it back to the table only crumbs remained.

This meant that a week later, I felt it was necessary to make it again.  It was that good.  It was a Jalapeno Cheese Grits Casserole featured on a birthday episode of Bobby Flay’s show “Boy Meets Grill.”  It was also one of the more perfect sounding combinations of ingredients I’d heard in a while.  Months before the party, I knew I was going to make this.  I made very few changes, but I did eliminate the Tabasco sauce and halve the jalapenos.  I like some heat, but not so much that I can’t tell what my food tastes like.  I also grated extra cheddar cheese on the top of the casserole once I’d spread it into a baking dish.  Cheese is the reason I could never adopt a vegan lifestyle.  More than bread or bacon, cheese might just be my favorite savory food item.

Out of the oven, this casserole was tremendous looking.  The top browned and crusted and gained some topography as not-quite-smooth sections became crannies and crevices.  Under this slight crunch of an exterior, the inside sliced through like fresh mozzarella: moist, creamy, a little firm.  On the palate, it was tremendous tasting.  It was cheesy and spongy with bits of crispness, and a heat that hit the tongue and the back of the throat, not during the chewing process, but after the bite was swallowed and you thought you were safe.  Just a pleasant heat, easily washed down with luscious, buttery tender chunks of pot roast and a good dark beer.

As good as it was fresh out of the oven, I admit that my reasons for making this dish again so soon after our party were really all about the leftovers.  What’s better than jalapeno cheese grits casserole, steaming and flecked with chiles and strings of cheese?  Jalapeno cheese grits casserole cut into fingers just out of the refrigerator, and fried in a pan of sizzling butter.  Yes, I fried them.

They spit and hissed as things warmed through and the cheese started melting, but I dueled them with a pair of long-handled tongs and everything worked out just fine.  The key, it seems, is to leave them alone longer than you might want to before flipping.  I managed for a good two or three minutes per side over medium-high heat, and this magical dark toasty crust formed all over.  It looked like the fragile crusty edge of the white on a fried egg when the butter gets too hot.  It tasted like a southern fried dream.

In which I attempt an Extravagant Apology

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With all resolutions already broken (is lasting until April/May admirable or shameful?) and all high-flying expectations for weekly updates dashed (how does Pioneer Woman do it?), all I can do is shamefully offer you a guilt, chocolate, and liqueur laced update.

More than twenty years ago, my mom acquired this cookbook.   Simple, humble, kid-friendly instructions (“stir real hard”), bright pictures of anthropomorphized food, and one recipe for each letter of the alphabet.  This was a cookbook intended to get kids into the kitchen with their parents.  This was a cookbook intended to make kids interested in cooking.  We tried out a few of the recipes, and my dad even became an expert in P: Pocket Pizzas, but then we got stuck on the X page and never looked back.

X is for eXtra Special Chocolate Celebration Cake.

This cake is good.  I mean, this cake is GOOOOOD.  Since finding it, with very few exceptions, this has been the cake my family makes for every birthday, every celebration, every party.  I’ve made it for Academy Awards parties, I’ve made it for my husband, my mom and I made it for my Rehearsal Dinner, and most recently I made a gluten-free, Ph-Ph version.  But then our friend S. invited us over for dinner, and through luck of the draw we were assigned to bring dessert.  I asked N. what I should bring, and he said “chocolate cake.”  I said, “well, the dinner is sort of Italian themed.”  N. said “chocolate cake.”  I told him that wasn’t really Italian, and he said “that’s their fault, isn’t it?!”  This was not a question, it was a proclamation.  I resigned myself to making chocolate cake.  It’s not that I don’t like it (in fact I love it; see list of occasions above!), it’s just that I’ve made it so many times, and it’s so easy, and it always comes out perfect, and I guess I was looking for a challenge.

Then I had a revelation.  I adore tiramisu.  N. wanted chocolate cake.  Why not blasphemously, worshipfully, impossibly, combine the two?  Chocolate tiramisu cake surrounded (just for fun) by chocolate-covered strawberries.  Yes. 

Here’s the basic recipe, and below are my additions:

3 cups flour

2 cups sugar

½ cup unsweetened cocoa powder

2 tsp baking soda

1 tsp salt

2/3 cup vegetable oil

2 tsp white vinegar

1 tsp vanilla

2 cups cold water

Preheat the oven to 350F, grease and flour 2 9-inch round cake pans (I use cocoa powder instead of flour, which doesn’t leave white residue on the outside of this dark brown cake).

In a large bowl, combine the dry ingredients well, whisking or stirring until it looks a little pink from the cocoa powder.

In a small bowl (I just use my 2-cup glass measuring cup), combine the oil, vinegar, and vanilla.

Add the oil mixture and the water to the dry ingredients.  As the Alpha-Bakery cookbook advises, “stir real hard” for 2 minutes or so.  The cocoa sometimes clumps up, and you want a smooth, lump-less batter.

When batter is smooth, dark, richly delicious, pour even amounts into the two pans, tapping the bottoms gently on the counter once they are full to pop little air bubbles.  Then enclose them in the oven for about 35 minutes, or until a tester comes out just clean.  The tops will be springy and moist, and I have found that just the barest crumb clinging to the tester is fine, as they continue to cook while you let them cool for at least twenty minutes in their pans.

Here are my additions:

When the cakes were cool enough to liberate, breakage free, from the pans, I turned them upside down on my cooling rack and drizzled Kahlua onto the spongy, porous bottoms until it pooled a little rather than being instantly drunk in.  I continued to do this at intervals while the cakes cooled completely.  I probably used at least a ¼ cup all together.

While the drunken cakes continued to cool, I washed and dried a dozen or so strawberries and started some semi-sweet chocolate squares melting in a glass bowl over barely simmering water, which I robed the strawberries in.

My trusty stand mixer stood ready to receive:

an 8-oz. container of mascarpone cheese,

¼ cup of sugar,

a few tablespoons of amaretto

I whipped these into a light, creamy frosting.  I tasted some and swooned just a little.  With the bottom layer of cake gently centered on my cake stand (with parchment paper lining the edges, of course, to keep the stand clean while I iced the cake), I spread about ¾ of the cheese mixture on the bottom cake layer.  Since there was a little bit of chocolate left in my makeshift double boiler, even after receiving and coating all of the strawberries, I waited for it to cool off just a little, then drizzled it on top of the cheese filling layer, figuring a little extra chocolate wouldn’t hurt.  Then I added a pint of heavy whipping cream, a little more sugar, and a little more amaretto to my stand mixer and started it whipping while I carefully positioned the top cake layer atop the mascarpone and chocolate.

I iced the whole thing, top and sides, with light clouds of almond scented cream.  I probably added an inch of frosting atop and on all sides, then sifted a few teaspoons of cocoa powder around the top of the cake.

N. and I agreed (as did S. and her other guests) that this was the best incarnation of this cake I had ever made.  The Kahlua added the coffee flavor and liqueur touch that tiramisu seems to require, but it didn’t overwhelm the cake with sweetness.  One of the best things about this cake is that it has solid cocoa flavor without being tooth-tinglingly sweet.  The Kahlua was a buzz-suggesting addition and kept the already moist layers almost fragile-tender. 

The chocolate in the middle hardened as it cooled and made a crunchy layer on top of the creamy cheese.  The amaretto lent aroma and a warmth that was almost flavor to the whipped cream, and the mascarpone made it creamier without weighing it down.  We ate large, thick slices, tempering the richness with the fresh sweet punch of chocolate-covered strawberries, letting the juice trickle onto the whipped cream and add yet another dimension of flavor.

I have never been so glad to take home half a cake at the end of a party.

Breakfast for dinner close-up: Cranberry Fritters

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I am sitting on my front porch with my feet – in striped socks – crossed atop the white railing. It is 4pm and the outside temperature exceeds 70F. Earlier this afternoon, I pulled weeds and thinned our rows of broccoli and lettuce in the back garden with my sleeves rolled up. And I’m looking back to Friday. This past Friday ago, while rain and hail alternately pelted, flooded, and overflowed the lip of our driveway, I put my stove and oven into an overtime they haven’t seen since Thanksgiving. Everything was good, but what I want to discuss today is item 3 from that menu:  Cranberry Donuts.

They were more fritters than donuts, really, but that’s close enough. Simple batter: egg, milk, sugar, flour, baking powder, cinnamon. And to add something special, a spare ½ cup of defrosted cranberries, barely pulsed in the food processor. No rolling, no cutting, no kneading, just tablespoon-fuls of this chewy, sticky batter into a pot of hot vegetable oil. I came close to disaster several times, because the batter was so sticky that it didn’t want to come off the spoon. The problem here, of course, is that resistance leads to increasingly vigorous shaking, which means when the fritter finally disengages, it hits the oil with a resounding, gut-wrenching plunk that means you will end up with finger confit if you don’t step back very, very quickly.

I escaped burns, and was able instead to watch the quick and wondrous transformation of a batter so raw and sticky it cannot even be called “dough” into these little two-bite-mouthfuls of extravagance.

When the batter drops into the pot, with a heavy plunk or even a less fear-inducing hiss, it sinks for half a moment before buoying back to the surface. It sizzles like onions in a hot pan, and somehow magically holds itself together to float in a lazy circle around the pot, trying to bump and mesh with any fellows you add. I played chaperone with a slotted spoon. It only takes about two minutes before the lower half of the fritter, concealed like an iceberg below the surface of the oil, is mouthwateringly golden and crispy and needs to be flipped over before it verges toward mahogany. The second side takes even less time, since it has already been submerged in its initial dip into the oil, and when it too is crisp and the color of perfect toast, or a dark caramel, it should come out and bathe on a layer of paper-towels, spreading its extra grease almost obscenely until the paper-towel is suddenly transparent.

While still warm, I rolled these dense nuggets around in a cake-pan containing around ½ cup of mixed cinnamon and sugar. Though much of the oil threatening to seep in past the crisp crust was thwarted by its paper-towel session, enough moisture is retained on the outside of each fritter to hold onto a sparkling coat of sweetness. That the batter drops into the oil in irregular shapes ensures that crunchy nooks and crannies are created, almost as if their sole purpose was to hold extra sprinklings of spicy sugar.

Before I was done frying (my pot could only hold 4 or 5 at a time without crowding or cooling down the oil too much, so I did several batches), I couldn’t keep myself from sampling one of the freshly sugared spheres. Oh heaven. It doesn’t seem like the batter could possibly be in the oil long enough to cook through, but it does. The outside is crispy and has a nicely textured crunch not only from the irregular shape and the fry, but also from the sugar, which provides its own gritty pleasantness. The inside is densely fluffy, and the cranberries pack the perfect amount of tart sourness to combat the sweetness of the dough itself as well as the sugary topping. I don’t tend to like cake donuts, but it was hard to stop myself from eating more than one.


After the party started and plates were loaded almost beyond bearing capacity, I didn’t notice anyone eating them. Yet, when I went back to the table for my second helping (or third, but who’s counting, really?), the cake pan I’d loaded them into was empty but for a remaining few spoonfuls of cinnamon-dusted sugar.

Even without the sun streaming across the faded red patio stones of my porch, that makes me feel a little warm inside.

Breakfast for Dinner

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I have a curious relationship with breakfast food.  The heavy kind, the kind you get from a diner or a good bed-and-breakfast or a hotel, doesn’t sit well with me in the morning.  It’s too much, it weighs me down.  But it’s food I love.  Potatoes, eggs, bacon, quiche, pancakes, cinnamon rolls… the list goes on.  So I take full advantage of every opportunity I get to eat this kind of food later in the day.

Enter Friday, April 2nd:  for the third year running, N. and I are hosting a Breakfast for Dinner potluck.  We try to host one party per term, usually with some loose theme, and I think this one is my favorite.  My mouth is already watering at the possibilities.

Here’s a preview of my own menu for the evening: 

Ph-Ph rice pudding

Jalapeno cheese grits casserole

Cranberry donuts

Deviled eggs

Spiked hot apple cider

Mimosas

Yum.