The Patriots ate Gingerbread

NOTE: I was going to post this yesterday, but given the events and the fact that I'd be discussing the marathon, it didn't seem appropriate, and I decided to hold off until today. When we all need a little comfort cooking in our stomachs.

That being said.

So yesterday was Patriot's Day in Massachusetts. The Wikipedia entry for Patriot's Day is here. It is to commemorate the first battles of the Revolutionary War, namely the battles of Lexington and Concord. When you grow up in Mass., the names Lexington and Concord are drilled into your head, along with Plymouth and Salem. They are historically important to a Massachusetts upbringing, along with the fact that it WILL snow up until Memorial Day, you ALWAYS have the right of way when driving, and that Dunkin' Donuts kicks Starbucks' ass. (That last is actually false. Personally I can't stand the coffee from either one.) Anyway, it's a civic holiday so everyone gets the day off, and that means everyone is able to tune into the Boston Marathon on television.

I ran the Boston Marathon in 2005, my senior year at Wellesley. It's tradition that when you run cross country and track you do the marathon senior year. I did mine in blue body glitter. Wearing my racing uniform. With WELLESELY XC written on my abs in bright blue sharpie. Wearing my invisible yet no less important bright blue lucky racing underpants. School spirit raaaaahhh.

But obviously Patriot's Day is not just Marathon Day. It's also a day to celebrate being from Massachusetts. On April 19, 1775, my revolutionary forebears were just setting the tone for future generations, namely that being argumentative and scrapping for a fight is always the way to go. Hey, we're called Massholes for a reason.

And on Patriot's Day what better way to celebrate, apart from starting an argument (check and check), than making a traditional Massachusetts food? I know! I thought so too.

I was going to make Boston Brown Bread, something I've always wanted to try, but according to my Down East cookbook, it needs to boil for an hour and a half and yesterday the thought of that made me a bit faint. I will do it at some point, but I gotta psych myself up. I flipped through Johnnycakes, baked apples, Indian Pudding (again! soon!), and Boston Cream Pie. But eventually decided that what my revolutionary ancestors would want to eat before they faced the British was . . .  GINGERBREAD.

Now, when I say "gingerbread" I am of course speaking of New England gingerbread, which is NOT in the form of a hairless man or his equally hairless wife who is only distinguishable by her long skirt. That kind is all well and good, but proper New England gingerbread is a cake. It's essentially molasses in cake form. Squishy and tense and treacly and really, really spicy. It's almost black in colour. Light bends around it. You get my point. Dense and rich and musky and awesome.

My recipe is one I've fashioned from about 6 different ones, and perfected through painstaking yet delicious trial and error. If I was about to march on the blasted Redcoats I would totally want a huge slab of this sitting in my stomach. Actually, come to think of it, I bet you ANYTHING that that's part of the reason we won the war. Booyah.

PATRIOT'S DAY NEW ENGLAND GINGERBREAD

• 1 stick butter
• 1 cup liquid agave (preferably dark agave)
• Generous 3/4 cup molasses
• 3 tsp ground ginger
• 2 tsp cinnamon
• 2 tsp ground cloves
• 1 cup milk
• 2 eggs, beaten in their own bowl
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 2 cups flour

Melt the butter, agave, molasses, ginger, cinnamon, and cloves in a saucepan on the stove. Turn off the heat and add milk, beaten eggs, and baking soda. (Note: when you add the baking soda it will foam up. Normal. Don't freak.)


Measure out the flour into a large bowl. Pour the liquid ingredients in and mix until combined. (This is one of those you can do without an electric mixer. Which, if you REALLY want to pretend to be a New England housewife, is great fun. Times like those I wish I had a mob cap.)



You have your choice of pans here. I've made this in a spring form, in two layer cake pans, and also in a square brownie pan. Grease the pan if it's not nonstick, and pour in the batter.

This is what the finished, un-topped, cake will look like.
See what I mean? DENNNNSSSSEEEEE.

Bake in a 325 degree oven for 45 minutes - 1 hour. When a tester comes out clean, yadda yadda you know the drill. But err on the side of pulling it out early because you want this to be as sticky as possible.











 


BEETLE NOTES
A word on toppings. There is nothing wrong with eating this as is, no icing or anything required. But if you want to jazz it up a bit there are a few ways. In the past I've done the following:

• Whipped cream (slightly sweetened or not)
• Lemon icing. See Hot Non Denominational Cross Buns icing recipe, just jazz it up with 2 tablespoons of lemon juice.
• Once, awesomely, I did two layer cake pans and put lemon curd between the layers. That went down a TREAT.
• Powdered sugar

There are a ton of possibilities, but all of those work wonderfully well. I did powdered sugar this time, figuring that my Revolutionary Boys wouldn't want to go into battle with lemon curd on their coats. Just dust it on. And DON'T FREAK OUT when you unwrap it the next morning and it's been absorbed into the cake. The cake is damp. The powdered sugar will have sunk in. You do not have little powdered sugar elves that are secretly stealing the powdered sugar off your cake yet leaving the rest of it intact. Although that would be kind of awesome.



Dusted with powdered sugar. Which is then eaten by elves.

Beetle Bakery Strikes again.



This version has no refined sugar. It will, in it's next making, also have whole wheat flour, and I will replace the butter with butternut squash or pumpkin puree. I want to see what that tastes like. Also, when I do that, it will be 100% Beetle Friendly and then BRING OUT THE PARADE FLOAT. Also the fat crane. I should note that when I explained this plan to Mum for healthy-izing the gingerbread, the response was "I don't want you to make it healthier. I want it with butter. I like butter."


Works for me, I'll just have to eat the whole damn thing.



The Spice Girls, and Baked Rice and Cheese with Broccoli

We've been renovating our house for the last three years. When I was living in New York, every time I came for a visit something would have changed. Paint colours went from cream to pale green, translucent 200 year old window panes were all of a sudden transparent, and, my personal favourite, doors that hadn't shut in 22 years suddenly closed without protest. Workmen popped up at odd moments, and I had to remind myself NOT to walk around naked or wearing only undies just in case they came in the house.

This summer in particular, the entire house was painted, including the barn, which was beginning to look like something out of Deliverance. Mum got this amazing team of painters from Ireland who a)did the best job I've ever seen and b)did it cleanly, quietly, and insanely fast. They also had Irish accents and were painfully polite and charming, and in the face of that I am afraid the fact that I went to Wellesley and am a firm 21st century feminist went COMPLETELY out of the window. I spent the few weeks they were here bringing out batches of freshly baked chocolate chip cookies, simpering, and generally behaving like a ninny. I'm not proud of it, but I defy anyone with an ounce of estrogen not to do the same thing.


Jessie Wilcox Smith

The last room in the house to be done is my bedroom. It's the bedroom I've had since I was six. It's funny going through the layers of your childhood. Jessie Wilcox Smith posters of cherubic little girls and dogs were replaced by maps of London and Paris, which in turn were replaced by Heath Ledger and George Clooney. The ceiling swirls with silver shooting stars and comets, I painted and glittered them myself, and the closet bears evidence to my vintage phase with red velvet cocktail dresses and blue tulle monstrosities from the 80's.


We ALL remember this Vanity Fair spread. It will go down in history as one of the most beautiful of all time. Taking it down, I found the moustache my cousin Tom drew on his face when I wasn't looking.

My book collection is perhaps one of the most epic ever created. Take two parents, one only vaguely American, both in independent bookselling, and both determined to raise the most literary Type-A daughter of all time. What do you get? A hell of a lot of books. It's going to take a while to sort through everything and divide into donation, sell, and keep until death. Right now, trickily enough, the keep until death pile is the largest. It involves a lot of cooing, a lot of tears, several sit down in the middle of a dusty floor and read this book from start to finishes, a lot of oh god why the hell did I buy this this book sucks, and quite a few what do you mean you don't like this book I thought you did no I always hated its. I've decided I will feature the good ones here. Maybe you all will know them, or maybe it will be just another validation that my literary upbringing was quite different from anyone else's.

BEFORE I DO THAT THOUGH

I must must must share what I found yesterday. I was going through the shelves that house my, ahem, CASSETTE COLLECTION (thank you) and in the midst of Claire Bloom renditions of Swan Lake, The Lion The Witch and The Wardrobe and, of course The Hobbit, I found, dear reader, THIS.

You guys I have this ON CASSETTE TAPE.
AND I STARTED SINGING IT IMMEDIATELY.
AND I STILL KNOW ALL THE WORDS.
AND THE DANCE MOVES

Now THAT is one for the archives. The best bit is that it doesn't end there. I also have BOTH albums and ALL the singles. All on cassette. All very, very, VERY well played cassettes. Mum wouldn't let me throw them out. She says wait 20 years I can make a fortune. They are back on the shelf in a place of honour. And I gotta tell you, doing hill repeats up a mountain goes a LOT faster when "Wannabe" is playing on a loop in your head.

 

Try it and see.

You're welcome.

 

After a small dance party, I asked Mum what she wanted for dinner. She said Mac and Cheese. (FYI, big fat zero on the Beetle Friendly scale.) In December, I made her White Mac and Cheese with cauliflower, Kamut fettuccine, Mozzarella, and Gruyere. It was a resounding success. We had cauliflower and we had Kamut pasta and I could have made the same thing again, but I decided to invent a new comfort food:

BAKED RICE AND CHEESE WITH CAULIFLOWER AND BROCCOLI

Ridiculously easy. Ridiculously good to eat on a grey New England evening. I used Arborio, which is the kind used for risotto. Next time I'll use brown rice I think but we had an open box of Arborio so that's what went in. This is another pantry clean out dish, actually, which I'm realising most of my cooking is these days.

• Arborio or your rice of choice 
• Small head each of Broccoli and Cauliflower, chopped into florets
• Olive Oil
• Salt and Pepper to taste
• Cheese! Whatever you can find in your cheese drawer.

If you are like us, there is A LOT of cheese in your refrigerator. A lot of different kinds. Currently we've got Goat, Feta, Camembert, Gruyere, Swiss, a few different blues, and some Parmesan. What I do when I make mac and cheese or in the case of the above dish, is use all the heels I can find. I will also note that as I am cleaning out the cheese drawer I just MIGHT be declaiming loudly that omg how many things are in here why do you keep buying cheese if we have so much there's only one person in this house who eats cheese and it's you you can't buy any more until you eat the rest of this this is pathological and on and on and on. It might happen. I'm just saying. In any event, into this one went  Emmental, Parmesan, Brie, and Shredded Gruyere.






Arborio is only tricky in that you have to, absolutely HAVE TO stir it constantly. I added a bit of olive oil whilst it was cooking just to keep the pot greased, and added water as it was absorbed. Chopping veggies at the same time next to the pot means you can keep an eye on it and keep it stirred on a regular basis. I only cooked it for 10 minutes (it takes about 20) because it was going to cook in the oven.

I mean really. At this point WHAT CAN GO WRONG?



Make sure it's mixed properly otherwise the
tops of the veggies will burn in the oven.

At the 10 minute mark I stirred in the cheeses and a bit more water, turned off the heat, and added the chopped broccoli and cauliflower, making sure the veggies were totally incorporated. I poured a tiny bit more olive oil over the top and gave it a healthy sprinkling of Parmesan, then popped it in the oven at 400 and let it bake, uncovered, for about 20 minutes. After 20 I put the lid on and reduced the heat to 300, and let it go for another 10. Just stick a fork in the broccoli on top to see if it's done. Broccoli in my experience cooks a bit longer than cauliflower, so that should be your vegetable test.






Burnt Cheese. No problem.
Burnt Broccoli. Problem.

The finished product. Photo came out a bit orangey, but you get the idea.
Plus shooting with the flash makes it look like a crime scene.

This is a keeper, btw. It received the official stamp of approval from Mum. Well, not so much a "stamp" as what she says when something is amazing. It's always the same thing:

"omg you have to make this again do you think I could eat this for breakfast?"

Pantry Clean Out Cookies

Sitting in the car at the post office the other day, freezing my bum off and wondering if Garnet Hill would send yet ANOTHER spring catalogue, I was doing my mental pantry/fridge inventory and figuring out what we had and what I would make. Then I remembered the cranberries. Cranberries! Hooray!

I got a massive bag of dried cranberries because I planned to make granola bars. Then I ended up making granola bars in my kitchen in New York, so didn't need the cranberries in Massachusetts. I remembered that they were still in the back of the bread bin along with pumpkin seeds and roasted almonds.

I like cranberries. As with raisins, I will happily stuff my face full of them. Like raisins, however, they are only Beetle Friendly in small doses (fruit fiber is very hard to digest) so if I eat too many I get what I affectionately call "preg belly" where I wander around looking perilously close to my due date for about a day. It's fairly uncomfortable, sometimes really freaking uncomfortable, and it does tend to make almost all of my clothes, even the big sleep shirts, too small. It also hurts to suck it in and be normal and social in public company, so I generally spend preg belly days on my back on the couch. You know, like an actual pregnant woman. It's sort of like a  science fiction movie or TV show when the heroine looks down and there's an alien baby in her stomach and it's growing at 300% the normal rate and it's full term in an hour or something and all of a sudden she's just . . . HUGE . . . it's like that. Except mine goes away on its own without an alien birth involved (not yet at any rate).

Fun story. This happened in Vienna one summer and I really didn't feel like sucking it in all day as I wandered around. So, since I was in another country, alone, where I knew no one and spoke no German, I decided to be pregnant for the day. Best decision of my life. It was so comfortable, and it meant I could enjoy the museums in peace and comfort. Plus, everyone was super nice to me, the young mother to be. They opened doors, smiled conspiratorially, etc. It was awesome.

POINT BEING. We had cranberries. I wasn't going to eat a whole bag. So.

PANTRY CLEAN OUT SEVEN GRAIN CRANBERRY OATMEAL COOKIES

This is liberally adapted from The Joy of Cooking's Oatmeal Raisin cookie recipe. (I love you, Irma S. Rombauer.) I used what we had in the kitchen, and deliberately made them healthier and more granola-like, with agave instead of sugar, more spices, and a seven grain hot cereal mix for the oatmeal.

Ingredients

1 3/4 cups whole wheat flour

3/4 tsp baking soda

3/4 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

1 generous tsp cinnamon

1 generous tsp nutmeg

2 sticks butter, softened

1 liquid cup dark agave

2 eggs

2 1/2 tsp vanilla

1 cup plus a few handfuls dried cranberries

2 cups 7 grain hot cereal (wheat, rye, oats, triticale, barley, brown rice, oat bran, flax seed)

1 1/2 cups steel cut (not rolled) oats

 

This is the froth part. I did the freaking for you. It's all good.

Combine flour, baking soda and powder, salt, cinnamon, and nutmeg, in a small bowl.



In a mixer, beat butter and agave until pale. This will take longer than using regular sugar, don't worry, it will still be pretty liquid and there might be a froth at the top, you didn't ruin it, it calms down.

This is what happens after you add the flour.
See? Gorgeous and smooth and heavenly.

Beat in the eggs and the vanilla.

Add the flour in two batches, beating after each addition, and scraping down the sides of the bowl. Stir in the cranberries, then the 7 grain cereal, then the steel cut oats, combine pretty well after each one.
 

Drop cookies by rounded spoonfuls on parchment lined baking sheets. They don't spread that much so you don't have to allow a ton of space. Bake at 350 degrees for about 15 minutes, a little less if you want them really gooey.
 

They flattened a little
but this is pretty much how they came out.

REMEMBER that when you use agave, it cooks more liquid than normal sugar, so your cookies will be squishy even when you bake them for 15 minutes. They will firm up a bit when they cool. But they are done, don't freak. They cool really well on wire racks before you wrap them up.

 

BEETLE NOTES
 

Using agave as you know will give you a really mellow, molasses-y, earthy depth to the cookies. You can smell the difference in the mixing bowl, and definitely in the cookies when they are baking. They come out nice and golden brown too. If you use agave, remember that it is CRAZY SWEET and that unless you want to give yourself diabetes you should reduce whatever sugar is called for. Example. The original Joy of Cooking recipe uses 1/2 cup of white sugar and 1 1/2 cups of brown sugar. First, that's craycray. Second, when using agave, instead of 2 cups I used only 1. And I could even have gone a bit less. Just saying. Don't make 'em Cadbury Creme Egg style.

 

This is an easily adaptable one for any hot cereals, oat mixtures, dried fruit, or seeds you want to clean out of your pantry. Oat bran, wheat bran, museli, corn grits, farina, or plain ol' rolled oats. I named them Pantry Clean Out cookies for a reason. I found a half a box of quinoa flakes I am TOTALLY using the next time I make these. Which, according to Mum, is . . . as soon as possible.

Crunchy, nubbly, chewy, packed-with-omega-3 goodness.

She likes 'em super crunchy.

I deliberately burnt an entire sheet pan of them for Mum.

And preferably black on the bottom, which is perfect when I'm experimenting with cooking times.
"It's okAY that they are essentially carbon. I LIKE them that way!"

I may have mentioned that Mum is a librarian? Her fellow librarians have very kindly offered themselves as guinea pigs (or at least are nice enough to accept the baked goods I force upon them) so I packaged up a bunch of them today and we drove them over.

Introducing Beetle Bakery packaging.

 

I am rather proud of this.

We drove them over through THE SNOW incidentally. Becuase. It snowed. There was even a sanding machine involved. For God's sake, people.
But. On a freezing, sleeting day, I would want someone to bring me relatively healthy freshly baked cookies in a paper bag with a Warrior Beetle on it.

So. There you go.

Cookbook Focus. And Beetle Bread.

Today I want to share with you a cookbook that technically has Mum's name in the front. (Although to be honest I'm not sure how much "ownership" we can apply here.) It's been in our kitchen for as long as I can remember, and I used to and still do leaf through it for novelty's sake. I don't think Dad ever used it really, he was a chef, an actual professional one, but most of his recipes are on index cards (in good little Catholic schoolboy cursive) in the recipe box on the counter. There's one in there that tells you how to make Chocolate Mousse for 50 people.

ANYWAY. I dug it out yesterday for comfort reading and decided I would tell you all about it. So here we go.

The book is called The New American Cookbook, published in 1942 by the American Publishers' Alliance, New York.

Lily Haxworth Wallace is listed as the Editor-in-Chief, and underneath her name is this:

Home Economics Lecturer and Writer

Instructor, Household Arts Department, The Ballard School, New York City

Assisted by fifty-four leading Authorities on Domestic Science and the Art of Modern Cooking

 

Underneath that is a charming little line ink drawing of a woman standing over a stove wearing a ruffled apron and heels. It's 930 pages long, and is punctuated by delightful colour and black & white photos of place settings, decorative serving platters, and the ideal way to organise a "modern" kitchen with all the latest conveniences.

 

It's also got pages and pages of entertaining menus ("with servant", "without servant", "workers' box lunches", "bridge luncheons"), and menus for a range of household incomes (including a budget one for an annual income of $1,000 called the "Minimum Cost Adequate Diet.")

The captions on some of the photos read:

"This buffet service adds interest to the well-chosen viands."

"Table appointments help establish the hostess' reputation for taste."

"Soup and Smiles begin this guest dinner, without a maid."

 

I can break it down thusly:
 

Things Yankee housewives in 1942 were geniuses to invent:
Molasses Doughnuts
LITERALLY YOU GUYS something called "Doughnut Muffins"
Salmon Fondue
Fried Bacon and Apples
Potato Soufflé
Raspberry Mousse with Marshmallows
Boiled Icing (remember Bunny Cake? yep, this is that)
Indian Pudding (aka the best thing in the world, I will make this and highlight it. Proms.)

Things Yankee housewives in 1942 thought were a good idea to serve but really weren't:
Stuffed Avocado Ideale (for serious - this involves boiled crab and Russian dressing)
Orange Tomato Aspic
Tripe in Batter
Brains
Wreath Salad (pineapple, watercress, cream cheese, and pillow mints whatever the hell those are)
Banana Ham Sandwich

When you're deep in the MEAT section, you gotta remember that this was 1942. People didn't have much money, and you had to make do with what you could get. This is why you only do a rapid eye blink the first time you see recipes #1581 and 1582.

It tells you how to skin a Possum. Just in case I ever need to. So, in Doomsday Preppers speak, when I bug out, THIS is what I'm bringing to my bunker.

Needless to say, I don't reaallllyyyy use it for the meat or fish recipes. Too much cream sauce, too much aspic, WAY too much use of pineapple (for real. why?) and far too much calling, specifically, for "fat" to be added. But the baking section is great. They use a lot of dates, which are Beetle Friendly and a good sugar substitute, and most of the recipes, by token of their simplicity, are very easily adaptable for taste and Beetle stomachs. And let us not forget (see above) that us Yankees invented some pretty damn good dishes, many of which are woefully under appreciated and under-made in 2013. So perhaps I will start a 1942 baking resurgence. Hmmmm.

I will begin, perhaps, with #2427, "Mock Nesselrode Pudding", which is sugar, milk, raisins, crumbled macaroons, vanilla, and almonds, whipped with egg whites until stiff, then molded and chilled. Barring the last minute (ill-advised) addition of maraschino cherries, that sounds like a whole lot of amazing.

SWITCHING GEARS ENTIRELY

I made Beetle Bread on Sunday afternoon. Specifically I made spelt bread. We stopped at a store that had a great flour selection and I got some yummy dark spelt flour. And I decided to put it to good use.

SIDE NOTE: I seriously do NOT understand this obsession with putting honey in bread, it makes no sense to me. Sometimes it is warranted, but, you guys, bread is BREAD. IT DOESN'T HAVE TO BE SWEET. Making your own bread conveniently solves this problem. And it also 9 times out of 10 creates a loaf that is dense and satisfying, rather than one that dissolves in your mouth when you take a bite, as most commercial loaves, even the high end ones, tend to do. In my opinion, if you can't knock someone out by bashing them over the head with your chosen loaf, then you should put it back on the shelf and move on. Beetle bread, my new weekly thing to make, is bread in it's most basic form. Which. Duh. Why make it any other way?

Beetle Bread

• 4 1/2 cups spelt flour
• 2 envelopes of yeast dissolved in 350 ml of warm water
• 2 tsp salt

Mix flour and salt together in a bowl. Mix in yeast and water. Add either more flour or more water until you have a desired consistency, but make sure it's sticky when you're finished. I used a mixer with a dough hook this time, and beat for about 5 minutes.
Cover with a cloth, let rise for an hour.
After an hour, punch it down, put in a 9x5 inch loaf pan dusted with flour, cover again and let rise for half an hour.
Cook at 425 degrees for 25-30 minutes.
Turn out of loaf pan and let cool completely on a wire rack before slicing. This is obviously the hardest part because instinctively since the dawn of time when we were Neanderthals living in caves the built in genetic response to the smell of freshly baked bread is to pick up the entire loaf and shove it in your face. There has never been any literature on this but I firmly believe it's imprinted in our DNA.

And voila!

Yummmmmm carb closeup.

I should point out in closing that there is significantly less of this bread currently in the bread bin than there was when this picture was taken. What can I say. This is one Beetle that loves her carbs.

Optimistic Cornbread

Happy Sunday all! A day of long runs, entire newspapers, pre-dinner walks (one of which is about to happen) and realising that Underworld: Rise of the Lycans really is one of the worst movies ever made.

We have a TV in the kitchen and normally when I'm cooking I have an extraordinarily high crap tolerance because I just want something in the background that I can tune out and in at will. But even this was too much. And here's the thing, guys, I've totally seen this movie already. In it's entirety. In a movie theatre. I claim being in love with Michael Sheen as an excuse, but . . . wow. I tuned in to the SyFy channel and made it through approximately three minutes of Steven Mackintosh talking to la Sheen through the bars of a dungeon before grunting in disgust and switching to one of my many DVR'd episodes of Hoarders. I know, I know, it's a horrible exploitative show and I'm a bad person for watching it blah blah blah. I can't explain it, you guys, I find it soothing. I'm a borderline OCD germaphobe neat freak and I like watching Hoarders. I'm not expecting you to understand, or forgive. I simply state it as fact.

But I digress.

In the vein of "if I do things that are spring-like maybe spring will come eventually" (I only needed two fleeces to run today! Progress!) I decided to make cornbread. But not just any cornbread. Lemon Thyme Cornbread. This came about because I realised just how much thyme we had in the fridge, and rather than use it again for dinner, decided to bake.

I used the Martha Stewart "Polenta Quick Bread with Lemon and Thyme." "Polenta Quick Bread", I feel, is just a very Martha Stewart-y way of saying "cornbread." Much like "decoupage your entire living room with reclaimed doilies" is another way of saying "lie very still in a dark room with a cold compress on your face." See? Same thing. ANYWAY.

SUNDAY AFTERNOON LEMON THYME CORNBREAD

BEETLE NOTES:
I doubled the recipe, because I wanted one for mum and one for her library. And I gotta tell you. Doubling the recipe basically made one recipe's worth. I divided it into two loaf pans but I could have gotten away with using only one.



THIS, dear reader, is the colour of spring.

I used one recipe's worth of sugar because Martha tends to go too sweet. I also did NOT add pine nuts because I think pine nuts are gross. To offset that, I bumped up the lemon zest/juice and the thyme. When everything is mixing together it smells heavenly and is such a lovely bright yellow colour.



 

Once the thyme is all mixed in and then the flours it
goes really pale golden and fluffy. And smells divine.

See how I put a line of thyme leaves down the centre of each one?
Yeah. That's how I roll.

 

I just tipped one loaf out, as you can see, it's definitely not a thick one (doubled recipe my ass) but it smells divine, and it cuts well. It's got a very crumbly texture, almost shortbready I want to say. I think maybe next time I'll add a little milk and see if that makes it more cakey.

The Mum verdict is that it tastes very nice, and is a good savoury cornbread. I will attempt to make it thicker and stickier next time round, but for now she says it's a keeper.

So with that bring on cornbread and warm sunshine! Also never watch Underworld: Rise of the Lycans. Save yourself. Eat cornbread instead.

 

It's fish Sunday dinner tonight, so yay. Spinach and smoked trout and, my personal fav, pickled herring. That's ok that you're wrinkling your nose. More for me. Beetle out.

Saturday Comfort Supper

So I was doing yoga this afternoon and all of a sudden I look out the window and there are CROCUSES in the front garden. This is so exciting. So exciting in fact that I fell out of Standing Bow.


See???

That being said, it's pretty damn cold outside today. And windy. Sunny and liquid birdsong but coooolllddd sunny liquid birdsong. I am wearing three sweaters and two pairs of sweatpants if that gives you an indication.

So although it looks like spring, it's still a warm comfort supper kind of Saturday. Hence, title of post.

We had cauliflower in the fridge that I needed to use, and a bunch of different herbs. And also a lot of Veggie Sausage. ("Chicken" Apple Sage to be exact.) And after a day of spin, yoga, laundry, teaching applications, and vacuuming, I felt like inventing something. So . . . virtual drum roll. . .

CAULIFLOWER AND VEGGIE SAUSAGE GRATIN

We're talking SERIOUS comfort food here. Food that says "Yeah, whatever, there are crocuses outside, but I'm also fighting the cat for the space heater and I'm actually looking for dishes to wash so I can immerse my hands in hot water." Food that says "Get your bum on the couch, find a blanket, eat the entirety of this in one sitting, and watch Call The Midwife which (thank GOD) is back for Season 2."

It's actually in the oven right now, so I may post later tonight and say GUYS NEVER MIND IT TASTES LIKE CRAP STOP STOP STOP THIS RECIPE IT SUCKS. But I may also post tomorrow and say "sorry I was in a food coma and this is amazing." Whatever. Here's the recipe, from my brain.

CAULIFLOWER AND VEGGIE (OR REGULAR IF THAT'S YOUR THING) SAUSAGE GRATIN

• One head cauliflower
• Sausages (whatever kind makes your happy - sausage is sausage and that's always good)
• Olive Oil
• Shredded Gruyere or similar
• Salt and Pepper to taste
• Fresh Sage, chopped

Preheat the oven to 450 degrees. Grease a casserole or deep baking dish with olive oil. Cut cauliflower florets thin lengthwise so that they will lie flat. Cut the sausages the same way, I got three slices out of each sausage on my end.

I just like the way cauliflower looks . . . it looks so . . . clean.

 

The best part of shredding fresh sage with your hands is that your hands then smell like fresh sage.

 

Starting with the cauliflower, layer that, sage, a little bit of cheese, then strips of sausage (I made sure the ends of the dish had sausage too . . . you know how much everyone HATES getting "that part" of the gratin that doesn't have all the goodness in it) and salt and pepper. Repeat until you run out of one of them or the dish is full. Sprinkle with a bit more cheese and drizzle with olive oil so that the layers get a little coated.

Comme ça.

I put my dish on a foil covered sheet pan just in case there was spillage, incidentally. And in it goes! Bake for about 30 minutes until the cauliflower is nice and tender. If it starts browning too much on top cover it with another piece of foil.

So me typing "bake for about 30 minutes" was the catalyst for me looking at the clock, yelling "SH*T" and running into the kitchen.

Which.

Smells.

AMAZING.

It's done! It's beautiful. See? We're getting ready to eat, but I can't IMAGINE that this wont' taste good. I mean. Seriously.

Closeup of melty cheesy goodness.

So there you are, dear reader, Saturday Comfort Supper. Go grab your Doctor Who sweatshirt, a fork, the remote, forget the fact that you did your taxes yesterday, and dig in. You've earned it.