Beets Me

"Everything I do, I do on the principle of Russian borscht."

Yevgeny Yevtushenko, Russian poet 

Some people think that borscht is just beets. I for one, love beets but an entire pot of the blood red root vegetables might put me over the edge. You would think that spending a year in Russia would make a person never want to eat a beet or a potato again, but I found that while on exchange in Khabarovsk, Russia, Russian food is repetitive but can be quite delicious depending on who makes it. 

I have a friend from Canada that I met while on exchange, and he happened to live with a pensioner that was quite the Ruski chef. I learned to ask for "just chai" when she offered us after school snacks on cold winter days, otherwise the table would double over with pies, salads, soups, fish, and meat dishes- we were commanded to finish it ALL because she had no place to store it. Her name was Evelina and she had a small apartment in the city center, and she was also a recent widow. I think the fact that she hosted my friend gave her a sense of purpose. When my mom and uncle came for a visit, she fed them lunch. To this day, I remember my uncle rolling around on her carpet holding his full belly and groaning. 

One of the things Evelina made quite excellently was borscht. It had carrots, wild garlic, and chunks of beef as well as rich beets. She would serve it with dill and sour cream, and hunks of brown bread that she got at the local market. I should have asked her for a recipe- it was amazing stuff. Last night I decided to see how close I could come to recreating Evelina's prize borscht. I cut up plenty of fresh beets, added cabbage, and carrots, onions, beef stock and garlic, and boiled and simmered it until became a thick stew. I toasted some bread, and put it on an authentic Russian plate that Evelina had given me as a gift years ago. I also sprinkled some dill over some sour cream, and called my parents in for dinner. It tasted pretty good. Russian food is typically not spicey and the flavors are usually pretty dull to mild- it usually needs a bit of salt and pepper, and as I ate I thought of Evelina in her kitchen on the other side of the world. 

Lovin' From The Oven

"Boys who spent their weekends making banana nut muffins did not, as a rule, excel in the art of hand-to-hand combat." 

~ David Sedaris

So first off, imagine this...there are two muffins baking in an oven. One turns to the other and says "good god it's hot in here!" Her fellow muffin exclaims, "holy cow a talking muffin!" I have heard this joke more times than I have digits on my hands and feet, but I love it none the less. :)

Well, to tell you the truth I blame my friend Hilary for making me forget my goal of "no baked goods for one week". When I opened up my facebook account at approximately 9:32 this morning, I received the notification that I had been tagged in a photograph. A photo of a smiling girl and a fresh baked blueberry muffin no less. Ignoring the fact that my pants hadn't been fitting lately, I rushed down stairs and immediately began thawing some frozen berries in a bowl of hot water. 

Someone once asked me what the difference was between a muffin and a roll.  My response was that a roll is a type of bread, whereas a muffin is more like a breakfast cup cake. When I was younger, I got muffin mix from the grocery store and was always dismayed to find that the resulting baked goods were spongy, slightly purple, overly sweet things. Banana nut muffins are a bit easier to concoct. Really it's just a matter of making the quick bread batter and scooping it into tins. It's also harder to screw up- I mean, can you really over mix something made out of smushed bananas? This time, unlike earlier days, I made sure to thaw the berries completely and rinse them in a strainer over the sink before adding them to the batter. 

Some of my best memories include muffins. Every morning, after hopping off the bus, I would rush into the warmth of my high school cafeteria and stand in line for breakfast. The food at the local high school is amazing. Let me repeat; the food at the local high school is amazing! There was none of that spray cheese on tortilla chip nonsense. or chicken nugget and under cooked gloppy, orange macaroni day. Instead we got to have Thai food, and fresh wraps, Odwalla juices, local salad greens (my botany class grew them in the school's green house!) and some of the most addicting baked goods the world has ever seen. My friends and I would sit around before homeroom, catching up on gossip and forgotten homework, and nibble away at cinnamon rolls and breakfast sandwiches, and a wide array of muffins. There were raspberry or pineapple and coconut, chocolate chip, wild berry, banana walnut, apple cinnamon, and a number of others. 

One day, my stepfather came to pick me up at my college in a snow storm to take me home for the weekend, and we stopped at a diner in the middle of nowhere. He brought in one of his homemade cups in which the waitress could pour his coffee, and the owners of the restaurant joked about trading several loafs of bread and a few pies for his pottery. 

"No thank you. This is one of my favorites." He said politely. We rode home in the station wagon, our mouths and bellies indulging in large, grilled raspberry muffins. 

My favorite muffin memory is about Hilary, in fact. We were on a high school class trip to Washington DC, and she and I shared a hotel room with two of our mutual friends. We were all overly tired after a busy day of shopping and various excursions, and we were nestled cozily in our room, with the lights off. Just as we were dozing off, Hilary sat up laughing and exclaimed, 

"I love muffins!" We all groaned and tossed our pillows in her direction, but we all agreed that it was one of the Hilary moments we would never forget. 

I am off to pedal away some of the muffin remnants settling in my stomach, by way of my mom's stationary bike, but I don't feel too guilty for going back on my goal, just for today. 

Happy Accident

"I want you to fill your hands with mud,

     like a blessing." 

~Mary Oliver

Much like the creation of myself, these buns were a happy accident. I am one of those people that doesn't bother to check the refrigerator or pantry for the necessary ingredients before I begin to cook. You would think coming from a family of eight, particularly a hungry family of eight, would have taught me to check ahead of time for butter or leftover yams or frozen tofu... but I digress. I end up googling "substitutions for _____" more often than I'd like to admit, but being ill prepared enforces the idea that much of life is a learning experience after all. For example, apple sauce is a good add in to a batch of snickerdoodles when you only have half the amount of margarine needed! The only downside is that the end result tastes like a Granny's Apple Pie scented candle. 

Even if I don't like to research the contents of the kitchen ahead of time, I love learning about the history of food. My friend Katie and I decided to enter the Academic Fair in middle school. Our topic- "the history of ice cream." We made a big poster covered in photos and stickers, facts and figures about the cold dessert. We even had samples of ice cream to hand out to fair goers. One was just ordinary, store bought, but the other we churned ourselves in one of those old fashioned crank powered things that requires rock salt and dry ice. Though Katie got frost bite, and it turns out most of our facts were not exactly correct, we received a third place ribbon. Since then, I make a point of looking at the family trees of all the foods I meet. 

This time, I had meant to make cinnamon rolls. (Look on page 302 of The Big Book Of Breakfast by Maryana Vollstetd, for my favorite recipe) Snow was being blown in great whirls from the cloudy sky, and I was in the mood for something along the lines of a giant, gooey Cinnabon.

The lineage of cinnamon buns is a little tricky. Some say it was invented in Sweden, where it's called kanelbulle. Others say that the Macedonians get the prize because they came up with a sort of haggis spring roll (lamb innards for breakfast anyone?). In any case, they have evolved into a ghastly caloric breakfast that I for one adore. 

Still groggy from sleep, I peered into the fridge. Hidden among slices of squash and riccota pizza, was a box containing one lone egg. I had already combined the warm milk and yeast, so I threw in the yolk and looked for something eggy. We had a bottle of canola oil, so I decided to add a splash of that. Apparently there are occasions where you can use vinegar in place of eggs (say for vegan caesar dressing) or if desperate, a blob of miracle whip, but the thought of combining vinegar or mayo with cinnamon and sugar made me rather nauseous. I then realized we had about a third of the amount of butter required, so I hoped I'd added enough oil to make up the difference. In the end, I wound up with a mound of sticky, floury, cake battery dough which I stuck in our warm utility closet for an hour. It didn't exactly billow up like a parachute the way bread dough is supposed to, but I floured my hands and rolled it into balls, heated the oven to 375 degrees and figured it couldn't hurt to bake the stuff. Once the blobs were on a greased baking sheet, I coated them with a mixture of maple syrup and vanilla extract and sprinkled the tops with sanding sugar and a dusting of cinnamon. After half an hour of baking, the sweet perfume of rolls wafted through the house. When I opened the oven, six gleaming, tan, rather large rolls stared up at me. My step sister, her boyfriend, my mother and my stepfather and I all dived in. Though I don't have a recipe to share, the buns filled the cinnabon gap nicely. 

Pudding Pie

“I want to hear more music about pie!” 

~Stewie Griffen 

I didn't know it was possible to create sweetened fried "mayonnaise" until last night. I was attempting to make meringue which I had never made before, but had seen and consumed plenty of times; for example, last February at my great Aunt's birthday party when she was presented with a gigantic Baked Alaska, still covered in an impressively large blue flame. Fortunately the table cloths and onlookers all survived without injury and the dessert was sumptuous. 

So there I was, mixing five eggs whites in a double boiler over our stove while a gooey pudding chilled in the refrigerator, relying on faith and fortune to guide me. Inspired by James Mcnair's "Banana Custard" and because we had most of the ingredients already, I had decided to try my hand at a cream pie for one of our weekly dinner parties. Though I have to admit my mother is the queen of crust, I was content to venture out of my comfort zone. The original recipe called for vanilla wafers, but I had never been particularly fond of the crunchy cookie, so I stuck to my graham cracker guns, added some melted bittersweet baking chocolate, and went from there. 

The custard part was a bit tricky at first. I had worked at a summer camp as a prep chef in 2010, and made the mistake of scorching a vat of homemade chocolate pudding one afternoon. Needless to say I was apprehensive about making the same mistake again, but decided it was better to waste a few eggs than an opportunity.  

"Yay! It looks legit!" I exclaimed proudly to my stepfather. The custard was creamy yellow and swirled under my wooden spoon, burbling and congealing to its heart's content. 

Because the crust had bits of chocolate, it made sense for the filling to be chocolate flavored as well. While the phlegm colored custard cooled, I opened a packet of chocolate mousse powder that I had brought back from my excursion in Milan. Into the bowl it went, creating a jiggling, bowel content brown, substance. 

The last step was the meringue- or the fried mayonnaise as I mentioned at the beginning. The recipe I was using hadn't mentioned that once you froth the egg whites you're supposed to take them off the heat. Needless to say, I worked away with a hand mixer, creating a gritty paste which I attempted to spread over my pie. My stepfather tasted it, and agreed that it was rather nasty. 

"Try again." He recommended. 

"But that's a waste of eggs." I argued.

"Not if you pay attention and do it right the second time." He said, leaving the fate of the pie in my hands. 

In the end, a nice creamy yet not too sweet pie with a spongy golden top sat on the dining room table. Spoons clinked, plates were served, and the food disappeared. The Meringue Mayonnaise disaster was behind me. 

Let The Cake Speak

"The opposite of War isn't peace- it's creation!"

~ RENT 

Before I left college for the spring 2011 semester, I was involved in an original performance piece called "Let The Body Speak". It was a work of art that I helped to begin, but sadly was unable to be there 'til the end. LTBS was the brain child of my lovely friend Sarah, and made its debut at a liberal arts college in Massachusetts sometime this February. Though I'm not sure what the final piece looked like, the idea was to create a performance created by young women that celebrated the body. There were to be skits and monologues, movement and song, color and creation to be collaborated and dreamed up by the performers. The "cast" consisted of a small group of young women all with ranging personalities, but all having the unsatisfiable hunger for chocolate.

One dreary afternoon,  as the smog rose over campus, I decided it was high time to make a mess. One of my best friends and I decided to bake a cake for our fellow cast mates. Armed with a small kitchen, a box of cheap cake mix, and some food coloring, we set out to create what I have come to call "shrek cakes and glop."  

I'd like to point out that I don't like cake mixes because there isn't enough to do, and when you divvy up the work between two people.... the process is as time consuming as tying your shoes. One person opens the bag and pours the powder into a bowl, the second cracks in the eggs, someone pours in the oil...you get the picture. My mom says that the original cake mixes made back in the 50's or 60's were like Bisquick- you just added some water. Well the housewives began to complain that it didn't feel like real cooking (ironically) so the companies decided to make mixes where a few extra ingredients were needed. I for one, would much rather melt chocolate and butter in a double boiler than rely on a cloud of questionable content, but forward I must go. 

We quickly got to work covering the counters in sticky brown mush, then discovered we only had one cake pan and a six cup muffin tin. We decided to make the cake the "main attraction" with some cakelets on the side so there was enough to satisfy the thespian sweet tooth. Earlier that day we'd gone to the grocery store across the field from our campus, and picked up some decorations. Organic chocolate covered gummy bears and chocolate "rocks" called out to us, and we obliged. 

While it turned from batter to baked good, it was obvious our cake would need some color. After all, a lump of brown stuff covered in more brown frosting would only appeal to the nose and lips...not so much the eyes. Into a bowl went powdered sugar, water, vanilla extract, and drops of green and blue food coloring. The result was a fragrant slime that could only have come out of say, a witch's nose or the intestines of a cow on a bad day. Still, we would not show up to practice without dessert!

While the cake cooled we dabbed the aqua marine "glaze" on our faces and arms making ourselves look like victims from the newest "alien vs predator" movie. As we applied frosting, goo, and candy to the cupcakes and square loaf, we had an idea. Why not let the cake speak? And so using our imagination and chocolate pebbles we converted our swamp like fiasco into a performance of its own, which was enjoyed immensely by creators and cast members alike. 

 

A New Fad.

"I've gotten into this new thing." My grandmother announces at the breakfast table. "It's this bread called-"

"No knead?" I interrupt her, pouring syrup onto a stack of eggo waffles. 

"Yes! It's so fabulous! My book club goes on and on about it...." 

The Ipod touch of the home cuisine universe, no knead bread made its debut with the help of a man named Jim Lahey. It has snuck its way onto table tops, cutting boards, and the eager mouths of the american masses. Because it is so easy to make, the only difficulties are a)waiting for it to rise and bake, and b) getting a share before your family dives in, armed with butter knifes and seemingly starving bellies. My grandmother and I have discussed at length what type of pan you should bake it in (my preference is a lidded, heavy cast iron pot) should you grease the pan, how soft should the middle be compared to the crunch of the crust, etc. I was introduced to the heavenly concoction in my parent's kitchen in Maine. When my stepfather brought it out of the oven, its crust crackling like a frozen pond thawing quickly into spring... I inhaled deeply and knew that my days of baking had just been revolutionized. 

I have somewhat mastered the basics- take the five ingredients, combine 'em, let sit over night, rise an hour, bake an hour...devour. But I've experimented too. For example, I've learned the power of soaking raisins over night in orange juice before tossing them in cinnamon and adding them to the dough, with a little maple syrup and vanilla to boot. I've also been inspired by the Italian way of baking focaccia by generously lathering the top of the crust with olive oil and kosher salt during the last minutes of baking. I received my own cast iron pot and No Knead inspired cookbook for Christmas. 

"It's a self serving gift" My stepfather admitted. 

This bread is so much more than the slices you buy for your child's PB and J's or the stuff you let get stale to turn into crumbs for meatballs. It is spongy, and flavorful and really, it's almost god like. I have this fantasy of baking salty, oily loaves of No Knead and selling it to my surrounding community be it at home, college, or traveling abroad. I would give the profits and perhaps a handful of tasty samples to the not so fortunate people in those communities. If only there was a way to make bread fall gracefully out of the sky in Japan! I suppose King Arthur Flour is to blame for this breadly disease for one reason or another, but I will be perfectly happy if a cure is never found. 

For The Original No Knead Recipe, 

Please Visit http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/08/dining/081mrex.html