Upside Down Cake - all the way from Paris

I am trying to get better at my photography. More specifically, food photography. Just when I think I have the best light/angles/tricks to make sure there are no children’s fingers way to get that shot in a certain place, we pick up and move to a new kitchen where all the light/angles/tricks change and I need to learn it all over again. Alright, so maybe the tricks for the children don’t change but one quick browse through the blog will tell you that I still don’t have that one down.

(Note the child sized finger print)

One person who I think does is David Lebovitz. Not in that every shot is perfection way but in the this is what food looks like way. Not to say that his shots aren’t perfect, they are (and who am I to say). His shots are what I aspire to be able to achieve. You know, just as soon as I can drive the camera properly.

The recipes Lebovitz offers up are in the same class as his food shots, so it was to him I turned when we fancied a little Upside Down Cake. 

None of that pineapple stuff though, visions of tinned pineapple rings and glacé cherries bounce around in my head every time I hear the words. I have yet to decide whether that is a bad thing or a fond childhood food memory. I had blueberries to put to use and muffins, pancakes, sauce and cheesecake had all been vetoed.

I barely adapted the recipe, figuring that if David says it’s good I probably shouldn’t mess with it. I tweaked the fruit quantity since I was using all berries instead of something sliced. I also baked it in a pyrex dish because I don’t have a cast iron pan here. I can only imagine how divine it would be in a cast iron pan.

What I got was a very good, no surprises, just what you would expect Upside Down Cake. The cake was very tender and moist and light. The topping was fruity and saucy and sweet. 

I am pretty sure it was the first time I have made Upside Down Cake but it was so easy and the results so good, it won’t be the last. 

It also, as Lebovitz recommends (not that I would ever, even with empty fridge and bare cupboards and two screaming like they hadn't eaten in a month children, be so inclined - and if you believe that, I have a really great used car to sell you), makes a fine breakfast.

Blueberry Upside Down Cake adapted, a tiny bit, from David Lebovitz

If you have a cast iron pan, make this in there. Just cook the caramel and leave it in the pan. Cool it and start from there.

Fruit topping (bottom):

3 tablespoons butter

3/4 cup brown sugar

3 cups blueberries

Cake Base (Topping):

8 tablespoons (1/2 cup) butter

3/4 cup sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

2 large eggs

1 1/2 cups flour

1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder

1/2 cup whole milk, room temperature

(the original recipe called for a 1/4 teaspoon salt as well which I skipped because I used salted butter)

Preheat oven to 350ºF.

Melt butter in pan, add brown sugar and stir until sugar dissolves and it starts to bubble. Remove from heat, if you are not using a cast iron pan, transfer it to your buttered 8-inch baking pan or dish.

Arrange the fruit on top of the cooled sugar.

To make the cake, beat the butter and sugar until fluffy. Add the vanilla and the eggs one at a time.

Sift the dry ingredients together and gently stir 1/2 into the butter mixture. Stir in the milk and then stir in the remaining flour mixture.

Pour on top of the berries and gently spread to cover the fruit.

Bake for around 45 minutes. The cake will spring back in the centre when you gently press down with your finger.

Serve with ice cream or custard or yogurt.

Grapefruit Guacamole

We got some avocados the other day. Despite being local, they were hard as hard things. I explained to Poppy, our resident guacamole La Jefa, that there would be no guacamole for a couple of days because of the state of the avocados. She, of course, forgot that somewhere in the midst of asking the next eighteen rapid fire questions in our daily never-stopping, seven-to-seven barrage of questions, forty-two minute songs and general, but demanding response, chit chat and she was was pissed when we got home and she couldn’t make guacamole.

Everybody had posted this, and we had also bought some grapefruits, so I suggested that we make our take on that but no, ‘if I can’t make guacamole I don’t want to make anything at all,' was shrieked while stomping up the stairs and threatening to never come out of her room. Yah, because that would teach Mommy a thing or two about making sure the frickin’ avocados are ripe, wouldn’t it? 

Our avocados sat ripening for a very long three days and our grapefruits sat near them, waiting for their time and purpose.

The avocados ripened and we still hadn’t used up the grapefruit and we had some tortilla chips waiting for some guacamole to dip themselves into. 

I had a hankering for something citrusy and I remembered an old school little grapefruit and avocado salad number from somewhere. It has been done but it sure was good. 

After no small amount of negotiation with La Jefa, a promise of three toppings on a chocolate frozen yogurt and three chapters of Ramona Quimby, Age 8 at bedtime bought me permission to guide and assist her in making a sunny tasting grapefruit guacamole.

The chief left this a little chunky and we added lots of the grapefruit juice which made it pretty juicy. I would be inclined to leave some out but she was enjoying squeezing that poor grapefruit so much, I just left her to it. It is so simple it could probably almost make itself and there are only four ingredients.

It was 80ºF that day, that’s around 27ºC, so it was perfect for a no-cook lunch. The ingredients are all pretty local to us as well, I know that isn’t the case for those enjoying a Northern January, believe it or not I am finding myself a little jealous of the snow. You can save this up for a grey day splurge. Add a margarita or two and you won’t be able to tell where you are.

And yes, when La Jefa wants to make guacamole and we can't find the stool, I let her perch on the counter top. You've got to pick your battles.

Grapefruit Guacamole

2 avocados peeled and sliced

1 pink grapefruit peeled and segmented and juice squeezed out of what remains

1/4 cup finely chopped red onion

1/2 cup chopped coriander

Salt and fresh ground black pepper

Mix all the ingredients together and season to taste.

Eat with tortilla chips, on top of fish or chicken or on its own.

Good Luck Lentils

It’s the New Year. I was thinking all about how well it was going. There were lots of happy, uplifting stories like this and this and this. I was smiling.

Then this happened, which infuriated me in the it is easier to buy a gun and ammunition than it is to buy beer kind of way. Later on, I watched this and I thought the world is really, seriously going to hell in a hand basket and what happened to Happy New Year and all that.

It is a few days, alright nine or so, past New Year’s Day but I turned the clock back at our house and we are going to eat lentils, lots of them.

Italians eat lentils on New Year’s day and in the new year. They eat them in hopes of money and good fortune. And let’s face it, the money sure would be nice but the good fortune part? It’s essential.

Good Luck Lentils with Fennel and Chard

1 large onion, finely chopped

5 large cloves garlic minced

Fennel - I had five sweet little bulbs - you should have about 1 cup chopped stalks and 1 cup julienned bulbs

1 cup diced carrots

1 bunch chard chopped

1 cup lentils- I used De Puy but you can use brown or green. I wouldn't use red though. I was going to use black beluga lentils which are awfully pretty but not always to hand.

3 tablespoons olive oil

3 cups stock (chicken or vegetable)

1 cup halved cherry or grape tomatoes (or diced tomato)

Few sprigs fresh thyme

Salt and fresh ground black pepper

Parmeggiano-reggiano shaved

In a large pot, sauté the onions, garlic, carrots and chopped fennel stocks with the olive oil until the onions are translucent. Stir in the lentils and the thyme.

Add the stock and bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer, uncovered, for about 20 minutes, until the lentils are almost tender.

Add the chard and the julienned fennel bulb. Cover and simmer for five minutes. Add the tomato and simmer for another three minutes. Season with salt and pepper.

Serve in bowls with a little drizzle of nice olive oil, some fennel fronds and some shaved parmeggiano. A nice chunk of crusty bread goes well here too.

Happy New Year - again!

Man Bread

A while back we were passing through our local market one Sunday morning, trying desperately not to eat everything in sight. There was a woman promoting her new book and handing out recipe cards, which Poppy needed to have.

The card got filed in with the shopping. When we got home it got removed from the market bag, a little damp from something or other. I put the card in a catch everything basket on the counter. It stayed there for a couple weeks. Then, in a flurry of tidying up, it got put in a drawer.

I remembered the card and started a little search for it which turned into a frustrating and exhaustive tidy up and sort out of the drawer. There it was, finally, nestled between some cookie cutters and cupcake wrappers right up against the last six weeks worth of supermarket receipts and an empty package of throat lozenges.

It was a recipe aimed at men to promote a book aimed at men, insinuating that men need to eat different things than women, or at least cook different things. I am not sure. Regardless, it looked like this recipe could turn out well so Tilly and I made it.

The whole time, I thought about the man recipe thing and my thoughts turned to this. I realized that, at our house, the man drawer is mine. It is in the kitchen, it isn’t full of lightbulbs and batteries. It is full of piping tips that haven’t made it back into the case, clips and closures, thread and pens, chokey bits of toy hastily hidden from a curious baby and lots of random notes, recipes and clippings and it is full to spilling out. The kind of spilling out that takes a hip to shut it while you smooth the top layer down while carefully trying to extract your hands before you scrape your knuckles.

The man area at our house is very well ordered. Sure, there are some useless bits of junk and some empty wrappers but it is all tucked away in a quite carefully organised corner of the basement, so far from the bottom of the stairs that I only venture down there in the direst of cases. Safe from the clutter and mess of the rest of the house. A dark and peaceful little haven.

So, I did what I do and we made this man recipe an little trickier, if sautéing onions is tricky. And, I lightened it up using a lighter beer than it called for - the original called for a stout and I used Stone Levitation Ale, a hoppy little local number. I foofooed it up with the tiniest bit of oregano, dried because I can’t stomach fresh in any quantity. If my children weren’t eating it, I would have chucked it full of something spicy too.

The result was a loaf worth accompanying even the ladiest of winter pots. It is quick enough to make after a day out to go with whatever has been in your slow cooker all day. It is tasty enough to want to make more than once. It is really gorgeous toasted and would be pretty damn fine with some eggs and mushrooms.

Technically, it isn’t Man Bread, it is Anybody Bread. Unfortunately, this means you’ll have more competition getting a slice.

Cheddar Onion Beer Bread adapted from a recipe by Susan C. Russo

3 cups all purpose flour

1 tablespoon baking powder

1 teaspoon salt

1 1/2 tablespoons sugar

1 cup grated cheddar cheese, I used a 2 year old number

1 cup sautéed onions, cooled

A few grinds of fresh ground black pepper

1/4 teaspoon dried oregano

12 ounce (350 mL) flavourful ale of your choice

Preheat oven to 400ºF. Butter an 8-inch x 4-inch loaf pan.

Mix dry ingredients together in a large bowl. Stir in cheese. Stir in onions.

Pour beer in and mix all ingredients until combined.

Pour into prepared tin.

Bake for around 40 minutes. When a tester comes out clean, it is done.

Cool for a few minutes before slicing.

Enjoy.

Eat Your Greens

There are lots of greens in our CSA lately. Luckily, Poppy shares my love of them so with two avid eaters, one reluctant partaker and one hysterically unimpressed refuser, we manage to get through our allotment each week. Along with a big bunch of kale, dandelion or spinach and the huge bunches of greens on top of the beets and turnips, we have been getting a big bag of ‘braising mix’ for the last few weeks. I usually whizz it up into undetectable pieces and throw it into just about everything. You see, as soon as the green bits get too big everything in the mouth is spat out in a big head shaking, literally tongue wiping, dining room spraying mess. Until now, because of this, we haven’t been able to enjoy our greens as they should be. Or, at least as I have decided they will be.

The braising mix would not make its way into the food processor today. The greens would be supper.

I had a little look around for the right way to cook the greens, which were a mix of collard, mustard, spinach, kale and turnip greens, by looking up recipes for collard greens mainly. I was surprised by how long they all told me to cook them for. I was also dismayed that most recipes called for bacon fat or ham hock baths and various other cured pork remnants. I am not opposed to said pork remnants but after the consumption of the last two weeks I was looking for something a little less hearty. So, I strayed from the right way, favouring my way.

Years ago, that makes me sound so old, we served creamed spinach with raisins and pine nuts at Lolita’s Lust. It was pretty damn tasty. Our braising mix had spinach in it, the rest was green, this was where I would start.

The resulting bowl of greens probably took a little more chewing than your average Southern greens eater would approve of but delicious nonetheless. I would happily sit down to eat a bowl of these with nothing else but the rest of my family, save for Tilly who, after one bite, spat, wiped her tongue and pushed her plate away, had them with the Man Bread I made today, post to follow.

The raisins add a little chewy sweetness to the slightly bitter green while the almonds give a toasty crunch. Onions and garlic sweeten and deepen a tiny bit of cream that ties all the flavours together without them seeming too rich.

This couldn’t be much simpler and can be made with whatever type of greens you have to hand, just adjust the cooking time accordingly. Spinach will take less time, a greater proportion of collard greens will take more. How long you cook them also depends on how soft you like them to be. I cooked the mix, covered, for twenty minutes and a further 7-10 minutes to reduce the liquid before I added the cream.

If you do use spinach alone, you may want to use two pounds instead of one as it will cook down quite a bit more than the others do.

Braised Greens with Raisins and Almonds

1 medium onion diced

3 large cloves garlic minced

2 tablespoons butter

1 cup stock - vegetable or chicken

1 pound mixed greens, cleaned and chopped into strips

1/3 cup raisins

1/3 cup heavy cream

1/3 cup toasted slivered almonds

Salt and fresh ground black pepper to taste

Melt butter in a pot large enough to hold the greens. Add the onion and garlic and sauté until translucent. Add the stock and bring to a boil. 

Add the greens. Reduce the heat and cover. Simmer until the greens are tender. Remove the cover and reduce the coking liquid until it is almost dry. 

Add the raisins and cream. Bring to the boil and reduce just until it coats the greens. 

Add the almonds.

Season with salt and pepper and eat.