Not a Fruitcake

I saw The Galloping Gourmet on PBS many years ago. It was truly bizarre. It was not long after my arrival to the US, and I was already culture-shell-shocked. (It took me a while to wrap my brain around MASH and The Beauty and the Beast being TV shows.) I have no idea why he popped into my head recently. Must have been the booze.

Back in the Old Country we used to bake a certain fruit and nut-studded loaf that had absolutely no relation or resemblance to fruitcake. I went on a hunt for a recipe, found several, in Hungarian and metric. From them I cobbled together my own version. It took several tries till I got everything right.

Fruit Loaf

8 oz butter

4 eggs

1 1/2 cup of flour

1 cup of brown sugar, packed

1 tablespoon molasses

1 teaspoon baking powder

1 cup dried fruit, chopped

1/2 cup chopped nuts

2 tablespoon orange liquor

1 teaspoon vanilla

ca 1/4 cup crystallized brown sugar

Macerate the dried fruit with the liquor for at least an hour.

Preheat oven to 350º F

Butter a loaf pan and dust it with crystallized brown sugar. Shake out the excess.

Cream the butter with the brown sugar.

Mix in molasses.

Add eggs one by one.

Mix the flour and baking powder together, add to the egg mixture. Combine well.

Fold in the fruits and nuts, add vanilla.

Pour the batter into the loaf pan.

Bake for 50 minutes, or till toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean.

Notes:

· Most recipes will tell you to butter your baking dish or coat it with those suspicious baking sprays. I also dust it with sugar when baking something sweet. It will stick even less. You pour some sugar into the buttered pan, shake it around to coat all sides and shake out the excess. I prefer using brown sugar because it's not as sweet as white, but it has to be the crystallized kind, as the regular one is too moist. Additional benefit is that your baked good will have a crunchy sweet outside.

· Molasses are optional, but they add a deep, rich tone.

· I use dried apricots, cherries, cranberries, mangoes, but anything goes. If you want to get fancy, you might try candied orange peel and candied ginger.

· Hungarian recipes all had rum in them, but I prefer orange liquor. I think Hungarian cuisine developed a reliance on the cheaper and more common rum as an economic necessity.

· I discovered a novel way to macerate the dried fruit: in a ziplock bag! It's perfect, alcohol and fruit are all sealed in together with nothing better to do then soak into each other. No messy tossing required—you just flip the bag over.

Tips and tricks:

Has your brown sugar ever turned into a dry brick? Do not despair, there's a way to fix it. Put the brick in a bowl and cover it with a clean, wet kitchen towel. Leave it like that overnight. By morning your brown sugar will be back to it's moist self.

Turkey

I know it's not Turkey Day yet, but I was in the mood. I got a nice half turkey breast and stuffed herbed butter under the skin. I also boiled some potatoes, sliced them up and put them in the bottom of the roasting pan. On top I placed the turkey breast, and into the oven they went. During roasting some of the butter escaped, nicely juicing up the potatoes. Delish!

I didn't make cranberry sauce because I had some from COSTCO - yummy and all natural.

Chestnut Cheesecake

I was rooting through my cupboard and found a can of chestnut spread I probably bought as an impulse once. It was a billion years old, but being in a tin it could have added another billion and it still would be good. I opened it and found it sweet. Wondering what the heck to do with it, I figured cheese cake could work. I just had to adjust a recipe I had already. Here it is:

Chestnut Cheesecake

Crust
2 cups of finely ground cinnamon graham crackers
1 stick (4 oz) melted butter

Filling
8 0z cream cheese softened at room temperature
8 oz sour cream
8 oz chestnut spread (technically it was slightly more, but who's counting?)
4 eggs
1/2 cup sugar


Preaheat the oven to 325º F

In a mixing bowl combine the crust ingredients with a wooden spatula until it's all even. Coat the bottoms and sides of your baking pan with the mix. Use your hand; don't be a wuss. If you want to be all proper, use a springform pan, but only if you have extra wide aluminum foil at hand. If you don't, use a solid baking pan.

In a bowl slowly beat the cream cheese with an electric mixer till it's smooth - ca. one minute. Add the eggs one by one, continuing to beat slowly. Add sugar and beat till creamy. Add chestnut spread and sour cream. Mix well. Don't forget to scrape down the sides of the bowl time to time. Pour the filling into the crust-lined pan.

If you used springform, set it on a sheet of oversized aluminum foil and fold up the sides around it. Place the pan in a large roasting pan. Pour boiling water into the pan till it comes hallway up to the pie pan.

Bake for 45 minutes. It will still jiggle in the middle, but it will firm up. Cool for 30 minutes, then chill in the fridge for at least 4 hours.


Okay, so it doesn't have the prettiest color, but it tastes good.

Thoughts for Food

The other week friends and I went to this Chinese restaurant in Arcadia that had dumplings with soup inside. It was delicious. I was so taken that I forgot to snap pictures.

The next day we had brunch at The Hungry Cat. This restaurant is in Hollywood, close to the Arclight Theatres there. It's damn convenient for a dinner and a movie. Or a Brunch and a movie. I'm so addicted to The Hungry Cat that if I don't go for a few months I get the shakes.


We shared oysters and octopus salad for starts. The octopus was tender and smoky.


I don't remember what this is, except that that's a duck egg.


I had Chicken and Waffles. Roscoe's is the restaurant known for this dish, but in all honesty, their chicken tends to be dry. This chicken was perfect: crispy on the outside and sinfully juicy on the inside. That thing on the top? That's butter.


There were more dishes, plus these babies. After three I was a very happy camper. We didn't have dessert. There were talks of Monkey Bread at the beginning of the meal, but by the end we were too stuffed.


However I can't end food porn without a gratuitous sweets shot. So have this from Porto's.

Btw, I'm having a strong craving for dumplings.

Chocolate Loaf

I'm a sucker for food porn. Oh, wipe that prudish scowl off your face. I know you've stood at the shadowy end of the cookbook isle many a time, perving over glossy spreads that sent lustful messages to your tummy and those traitorous salivary glands, and you thought, "I must have that!" Do not be ashamed of your desires, let your inner food-slut out.


One of my Pasadena blogger friends linked a chocolate cake recipe online. It was intriguing, and came with an absolutely smutty photo of the cake itself. Unfortunately, the recipe contained some gluten-free fussiness. I'm from the old country; I like my gluten, thankyouverymuch. However, the use of banana, molasses, and ground almonds in a chocolate cake tickled my fancy, so I ventured forth to create my own, simplified version.


Baking lies at the crossroads of art, alchemy and butter. It's all about the balance of flavors, wet and dry ingredients, temperature and timing. It gets more complicated when you take only certain components of an existing recipe, and decide to experiment. Add the element of metric conversions, and the outcome is unpredictable; you may discover gunpowder.


Chocolate Loaf

Ingredients

1 stick (4 oz) butter (softened at room temperature)
3 eggs
1 cup all purpose flour
4 oz dark chocolate (60% cacao or higher)
3/4 cup dark molasses*
3 tbs ground almonds (or hazelnut flour)
1 tsp baking powder
1 ripe banana (mashed)
pinch of salt
some brown sugar

Steps

Preheat over to 325º F

Butter a loaf pan and dust it with brown sugar.** Set Aside.

In a large mixing bowl mix together flour, ground almonds, salt, and baking powder. Set aside.

Melt chocolate in a double boiler. Set aside.

In a bowl mix butter and molasses till smooth and creamy. (Keep a scraper handy, so you can scrape down the sides of the bowl.)

Add the eggs one by one, fully incorporating them in-between.

Mix in the melted chocolate.

Mix in the banana.

Add the flour mix, and blend well.

Pour into the loaf pan and bake 30-40 minutes, until a toothpick or skewer inserted comes out dry. (Some use knives, but skewers leave smaller holes.) Let it cool.


It's my first time making this, and if there's anything to complain about is that it hasn't risen as much as I thought it would. Perhaps more baking powder is in order? Otherwise it's good - moist, chocolaty, and has just the right amount of sweetness. It goes well naked or with jam.

I'm thinking, one could add chopped walnuts or pecan to the cake.


*Molasses usually come in a thick liquid form, but I use Billington's Natural Dark Brown Molasses, and it comes in a sticky, but granulated mass - like brown sugar. I found this product on the shelves of the local supermarket, and it sent me on a molasses-themed self-discovery. I was surprised to learn that it's made by a UK company. They are organic and fair trade, so even better. In the US their products are available in some supermarkets, and on Amazon.


**It's a common practice to dust a greased pan with flour when baking, to help the baked goods separate from the pan. However, when it's something sweet, one can use sugar instead of flour. You'd think it would make the cake stick, but not so. The sugar caramelizes during baking, adding an extra dimension of flavor to your dessert. Regular brown sugar is too clumpy for this, so I use the crystallized kind - it's commonly available in the US these days. If you don't have it, regular sugar will do.

PS. I have none of the skill, equipment, and light to shoot professional food porn. You have to live with my amateur dirty pictures.

Gooey Pumpkin Cake

It is, from now, till the end of December, and even beyond, the season of pumpkin. Time to try some new twists on the old favorites. This recipe is loosely based on Paula Deen's Gooey Pumpkin Butter Cake, that itself is a take on Gooey Butter Cake. Now, I've eaten Gooey Butter Cake before, and it's so sweet that it'll make your teeth fall out on the spot. A whole box (16 oz) of powdered sugar in the filling will do that. I've also seen Paula Deen and TV, and she's the kind of person who'd deep-fry a stick of butter and serve it with gravy. So I made some changes.

I used brown sugar, because it has nice flavor. To enhance it further I added some molasses. I believe that the dark, deep richness of molasses go exceptionally well with pumpkin. I also changed the crust (yellow cake mix, really?) to one made out of cinnamon graham crackers. It could, of course, be regular graham crackers with cinnamon added.

Gooey Pumpkin Cake

Cake:
16 oz cinnamon graham crackers, ground (it can actually be slightly less)
8 tbs (4 oz) butter, melted

Filling:
8 oz cream cheese, softened
15 oz can of pumpkin
8 tbs butter
3 eggs
1 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup molasses
1 tbs cinnamon
1 tbs nutmeg

Preaheat oven to 350ºF

Combine the ground graham cracker and butter. Pat the mix into the bottom of a lightly buttered 13x9" baking pan.

In a large bowl beat the cream cheese and the pumpkin till smooth. Add the eggs, vanilla, and butter, and beat together. Add sugar, cinnamon, molasses, nutmeg, and mix well.

Spread the pumpkin mix over the cake and bake for 40 to 50 minutes. It should still be jiggly in the middle when you take it out of the oven.

Sam Woo

I love BBQ Duck.

Vanilla Bean Pots de Créme (Minty)

I collect cookbooks. Not on purpose. I'm just a sucker for food porn. I look at those beautiful photos and my head is filled with lofty visions of me cooking fine meals. Unfortunately, I'm also lazy, and the books end up collecting dust on the shelf. Not that I don't cook ever, just not that often.

I could call myself a Foodie, for my ability to appreciate (consume) fine food, but that would be pretentious. I'm more of an Eatie.

Costco is evil, in a good way. Or good in an evil way. Where else could you buy a dvd copy of The Young Frankenstein for 5 bucks? Recently they had two large, hardcover books for sale, Bouchon and The French Laundry Cookbook - for almost half price! Now, if you are 'in the know' (i.e. food snob) you know that those two are The Cookbooks to have. I could not resist.

Out of guilt I made one of the recipes: Vanilla Bean Pots de Créme. Bouchon, page 268. It's a custardi thing, consisting of milk, cream (lots), sugar, egg yolks, vanilla bean. It has downtime of cooling and chilling, but otherwise very easy to make. There are also for flavoring options offered: chocolate, cinnamon, almonds and mint. I did mint. It's very nice, rich, creamy, yum.

I Will Never Pay Money For Pickled Beets Again

2 kg red beets
5 tbs vinegar (20%)
15 dkg sugar
1 tbs salt
2 tsp caraway seeds
7 dl water

Wash the beets, cook them in the water. Let it cool. Save cooking water. Peel beets, slice them, put them in clean jars.
Add the vinegar, salt, sugar and caraway seeds to cooking water and boil. Poor it over the beets. Put the lids on tight. Keep refrigerated.

I know, it's all in metric, but the truth is I wasn't measuring anything. You can't get 20% vinegar anywhere anyway. So I just threw in stuff as it seemed to make sense and it came out fine.

Once you ate all the beets, use the pickling liquid to pickle some hard boiled eggs.

You may say, dear reader, "yech, beets, who needs them?" Well, don't so be hasty, the beets are tasty. They are also said to have high levels of anti-carcinogens and some other healthy stuff.

While some people can't tell beets from kale, folks in the Old Country have a heightened awareness towards anything that can be pickled. Cukes are just the starting point. Small red cherry peppers (hot), yellow round peppers stuffed with sauerkraut, green tomatoes, baby watermelons (size of a tomato, unique flavor), and so on.

Landscape With Bacon

Carl Warner likes to play with his food. Everything in his photos is made of food, even the sky. It's worth checking out his website. Unfortunately it's another one of those annoying and uncessary flash sites, but once you figure out the navigation it's not so bad. I especially like the underwater scene with cauliflower and carrots.

Cold Cherry Soup

This is another old Hungarian dish. People on this side of the pond tend to have the same kind of skepticism about it as I had about peanut butter. Traditionally it would be made using sour cherries, but can be made with regular cherries. If made with sour cherries it is acidic enough to serve as a starter, otherwise it is more like a dessert or midday snack. Very refreshing on hot summer day.

Ingredients
1 3/4 lbs cherries
4-cloves
1 cinnamon stick
3/4 cup dry red vine
juice of 1 lemon
2/3 cup of sugar
pinch of salt
2 egg yolks
3/4 cup heavy cream
3 1/3 cup of water

• Wash and pit the cherries. Place them in a pot with the vine, water, lemon juice, cinnamon, cloves.
• Bring it to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer till cherries are tender, about 20 minutes.
• Take out half the cherries and in food processor puree them, and return to the soup. Bring to a boil, then turn off heat.
• Mix the egg yolks into the cream.
• Slowly, spoonful by spoonful mix hot soup into the cream, whisking constantly. Finally pour the mixture into the soup.
• Stir in reheat. Careful, don't bring to a boil or the egg yolks will curdle. Remove cinnamon stick.
• Cool at room temperature, then refrigerate.
• Serve it chilled.

Chef Frankenstein's Chocolate Bread Pudding

That's pronounced Frank-en-steen.

Paula Deen scares me. In my nightmares she and Emeril roll me in lard, wrap me in bacon, and toss me in the oven. Naturally, I looked for their guidance, when attempting to transform a vague idea about chocolate bread pudding made of chalah bread into reality. I also leaned on Shelia Lukins whose Mexican Christmas Bread Pudding has already proven itself multiple times. So I looked at 3 recipes, and from them I frankensteined out my own.

Ingredients:
1 chalah bread
4 coups of half and half
3 tbs Godiva Chocolate Liquor
4 oz chocolate chopped, dark or milk according to taste
1/2 cup firmly packed brown sugar
4 large eggs
1/2 cup cocoa powder
1 package vanilla sugar (ok, you can just used 1 tsp vanilla extract)
1 tsp almond extract
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1 tbs butter

Preheat boiler. Slice the chalah bread into 1" slices. Toast both sides in boiler. Careful, don't burn them.
Tear the toasted slides into pieces and put them in a big bowl. pour half and half on it, toss, set aside for 30 minutes. Toss occasionally.
Butter bottom and sides of 13x9.2" baking pan. Set aside.
In another bowl whisk eggs with sugar, vanilla sugar, almond extract, slowly whisk in cocoa powder, cinnamon, add chocolate liguor.
Pour the mix over the chalah, add choclocate, toss.
Transfer into baking dish.
At 325º bake till middle is firm, ca 1 hour.

It came out ok, though I think I should double the chocolate. It became far better when I topped it with Orange Sauce.

Ingredients
1 stick of butter
1 cup of sugar
2 large egg yolks
3 tbs orange liquor like Cointreau

In the top of a double boiler melt the butter, whisk in the sugar till smooth, ca 30 sec. Add orange liquor, then egg yolks one at a time. Whisking constantly cook still sauce thickens to the consistency of honey, ca 4 minutes.

Happy New Year!

I came to realize that Hungarians are very superstitious. Just listen to this list of superstitions I learned as a child:

Breaking a mirror: 7 years bad luck.
Spilling salt: bad luck.
Accidentally stepping into poop: good luck.
Accidentally hitting your elbow (funny bone): you'll have unexpected visitors.
Killing a spider: bad luck.
Ear ringing: somebody is talking about you.
Finding your fallen eyelash: good luck.
Left palm itching: unexpected expenses.
Right palm itching: getting unexpected money.

Also how you spend the last night of the year is how you'll spend the next year. If that was true lots of people would be drunk all year. Come to think of it, if you are Hungarian there is a very good likelihood of that. You have to be careful what you eat on January 1st. Under no circumstances should you eat fish. Fish will swim away with your luck. Chicken is good, it will scratch your luck back. You should eat lentils: they will make you rich and lucky.

Hey, I'm not making this up, don't look at me funny.

So I made French Lentil Soup with Sausage.

I grabbed the recipe from foodtv.com, but made some adjustments. Here is my version:

Ingredients:
3 tbs olive oil
1 slice of bacon
1 onion finely chopped
2 carrots chopped
1 1/4 cups of lentils - French green lentils preferably
1/4 tsp ground black pepper
salt to taste
2 cloves of sliced or crushed garlic
2 bay leaves
4 oz sausage (whatever is your favorite)
1 tbs balsamic vinegar
2 cups of water or broth (chicken, beef)

• In a large pot render the fat from the bacon slice. Remove.
• Add oil, heat up on medium heat, add onions, and frequently stirring cook till browned, ca. 5 minutes.
• Add garlic, cook 30 seconds.
• Add carrots, cook for 5 min, stir time to time.
• Add lentils, water or broth, pepper, salt, bay leaves. Bring to a boil, then reduce and simmer till lentils are tender, ca 30 minutes.
• Slice the sausages, and brown the slices on both sides.
• Add the sausage and vinegar to the soup.

Thanksgiving Duck

I made duck yesterday. I followed Sarah Moulton's recipe for "Best Roast Duck." I must admit it came out very tender and juicy.

I also made Sweet Potato Pie (Emeril recipe) for the first time ever. It tastes just like pumpkin pie, but far easier to make from fresh ingredients. I'm smitten with sweet potatoes, these humble but tasty tubers. It's another food source that was woefully absent from my childhood.

Zen (?) Friday

Sorry Petrea. I'm feeling fuzzily disjointed today. I set out to find the perfect corn bread recipe, but failed. Heading in I knew nothing of corn bread. I learned that there are distinct Southern and Northern varieties. But which one should I side with? I had corn bread two or three times maybe and didn't even like it much, but maybe they were not good ones. Would I even recognize a good one?

Even the concept of corn bread was unknown to me when I was growing up in Hungary. Why is it? We had corn. Though it mostly served as chicken feed. Eggs of corn-fed chickens have deep yellow, almost orange yolks. We also cooked corn in water, with the husk, simmering it over low heat for an hour or so. Yumm.

My father was a writer, but at one point he gave up city life, moved to the country and took up raising chickens. That's how I learned how to put a chicken into a catatonic daze without hurting it. You pick up the chicken, tuck its head under its wing, then you swing it gently sideways a few times, back and forth. When you put it down it will just stay there motionless. To wake it up you just give it a little shove.

In Missouri I learned to wrap up corn in foil and bake it in the oven like baked potatoes. Apparently it's a Midwest thing - like fried (pig) brain sandwiches.

How does it happen? How come one culture looks at corn and decides to grind it up and feed it to chickens, another decides to grind it up and bake with it?

PS. Don't get me started on peanut butter.

Cucumber Salad

I rarely ever order salad in a restaurant. I'm not fond of iceberg lettuce and goopy dressings. At home on the other hand, I often make this simple and refresing cucumber salad, especially in the summer time.
Ingredients

• ca 1 pound cucumber
• 1/2 cup water
• 4 tbs vinegar
• 1 tsp sugar
• 1/2 tsp salt

Peel the cucumbers and slice them very thing. Put them in a bowl and sprinkle on the salt, mix it in. Let it sit in the fridge for half an hour. When time is up, in a bowl mix water, vinegar and sugar till the sugar is dissolved. Adjust water/vinegar ratio to taste. Gently squeeze the liquid out of the sliced cucumber and add them to the water mix. Done. Acceptable additions are: thinly sliced shallots, green onions or purple onions.

Hungarian Cherry Tart (Cseresznyés Lepény)

I'm not even sure if it qualifies as a tart, but I don't know what the correct English terminology is. In Hungarian deserts of this type are called "lepény." It is simple to make and is delicious.

Ingredients

• 6 large eggs
• 1 cup of sugar
• 2 sticks (8 oz) butter
• 1 cup of flour
• 2 tbs rum (optional)
  
• 1-1.5 pund cherries pitted
• 1/2 tsp vanilla

Preheat over to 325 degrees ºF.
With wooden spatula or food processor mix butter and sugar till smooth. (Starting with butter at room temperature makes it easier.) Mix in the yolks of the eggs one by one. Beat the egg whites till stiff. Alternating, little by little mix in the flour and the beaten egg whites. Gently fold them in so the egg white doesn't break completely and the mixture stays light. Finally add the vanilla and the rum. Rub butter on the inside of a baking pan. Coat it with granulated sugar (just as you would with flour). Pour in the batter. Sprinkle the cherries on top. Bake till top is golden brown and toothpick inserted in middle comes out clean. Let it cool for at room temperature. Dust it with powdered sugar before serving.

Other fleshy fruits like plums, peaches, apricots can be used as well.

The original recipe requires one package of vanilla sugar, but it is hard to find in the US, so I replaced it with vanilla.