Tag: nutmeg

Categories
Cakes The Book

176. Apple Raisin Cake p.704


The recipe

I’m really trying to work on my hosting skills these days. I love to have friends over, and I love to cook for them. Unfortunately that often means that we don’t spend a lot of time together once they arrive. I’m pretty rotten about sharing kitchen space, or involving others in the cooking process. Being territorial about ones kitchen seems like a natural, if not admirable trait. I wish I was the sort of person who could invite a bunch of friends over, give everyone a kitchen job, and just let them do it. Unfortunately, I’m a kitchen control freak, if I do invite someone to cook with me I can’t help but looking over their shoulders and making little “suggestions” which make me feel like a patronizing ass. I’m not a particularly controlling or dominant person in other aspects of my life, but I don’t think I’ll ever play well with others in the kitchen. So, if I want to see my guests, and I can’t share the cooking with them, I’ve got to get better about doing prep work well ahead.

When I made this cake The Boys were over for the day. It’s quite rare that we all get together in one place at one time, so I should have made the most of it. They’ve been very supportive of The Project, and I like to share, or occasionally inflict, recipes from The Book with / on them. I decided to make this cake, and yesterday’s ice cream while they were over. The recipes list the combined active time at 1 hour 10 minutes, but I probably spent two hours at it between prepping and cleaning. Two hours isolated in the kitchen is a fair chunk of the time The Boys were over. Both the cake and the ice cream were good, and I really enjoyed sharing them with my friends, but I should have thought it through and prepared those dishes the night before. I am getting better about kitchen time management, but it’s definitely a work in progress.

The cake is easy to make, you sift together flour, baking soda, and salt in one bowl, then wisk together vegetable oil, eggs, white and brown sugars, cinnamon, nutmeg, dark rum, and vanilla in another. You fold the dry stuff into the wet stuff and gently incorporate diced apples, and raisins. The batter goes into a Bundt pan and bakes.

This was a very soft, moist cake. It was gently spiced, and packed with apples and raisins. When I served it to the boys the afternoon it was baked I wasn’t too impressed. There was nothing wrong with it, but it wasn’t as good as I was hoping. The recipe suggests that it improves with age though, and I’d have to agree. It was much much better by the third day. There was no great change, all the flavours were the same, but it really came together and the texture firmed up a bit. If I baked it again I would choose a firmer apple. The recipe calls for Cortland or Empire, and the blurb ahead suggests that Golden Delicious or Gala will do, but my cortlands melted into the cake, and those other options are evens softer. I would use Granny Smiths both for the bitterness, and the very firm texture. The cake was a little on the sweet side anyway, so a more assertive apple wouldn’t hurt anything.

This cake worked best as an opportunistic snack. Since it keeps at room temperature for five days (read a week), it was nice to have it there ready to go. The first night I served it I was thinking of it as a big Bundt spice cake for after dinner. It didn’t really fit that application, it’s much more of an afternoon coffee cake (the rest of the coffee cakes are in the Breakfast and Brunch section, and I don’t understand why it wasn’t grouped with them). I’m not going to rush to make it again, but if it was sitting on the counter I’d certainly cut myself a slice.

Categories
Breads and Crackers The Book

150. Pumpkin Apple Bread p.599


The recipe courtesy of The Amateur Gourmet

A loaf is a dangerous thing. It hardly ever occurs to me to bake up some banana bread, or a lemon loaf. If you asked me to name my favourite desserts, no loaf would make the list. I don’t think about them, or go out of my way to get them, but the second a sweet cakey loaf comes out of the oven, I’m lost.

The insatiable craving that takes hold isn’t a conscious one. I have a slice with an espresso, dining companion and I chat about how nice it is, then I get on with my day. About half an hour later, I find myself back in the kitchen with the knife in my hand, and another reasonably sized slice on my plate. After all, it really is better when it’s fresh. I trick myself into the next slice with a lie about pumpkin and apples making it a healthy snack. It gets worse from there, I probably won’t have any appetite for dinner, and my dining companion may not get a second slice. These types of loaves are a triumph of marketing. They’re not cake, they’re bread! and look! they’re full of healthy fruits and nuts! At least a black-forest cake is honest, if you eat it for breakfast you know exactly what a bad person you are.

This particular temptress is made by sifting together flour, salt, baking soda, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, and allspice in one bowl, canned pumpkin, oil, sugar, and eggs in another, and then adding the dry stuff to the wet stuff, and folding in chopped apples. The batter is divided between two loaf pans, sprinkled with the inevitable streusel topping (flour, sugar, cinnamon and butter), and baked.

This bread is about as autumnal as it gets. Think pumpkin pie, now with carbs! If you’re a fan of the pie, this is the bread for you. Being in the house while it baked was a pleasure. Someone should distill it into a perfume. The bread was exceptionally moist, with a loose spongy crumb, and the barest hint of toothsomeness. The chunks of Granny Smith added a necessary textural counterpoint, and a little bit of bite to keep things in perspective. This topping worked better than some of The Book’s other efforts. In this case it was a flavourful glaze on the loaf, and not the overwhelming mess that sometimes results. I might toss in some crushed walnuts or pecans next time, but as it is it’s a winner

If you’re the sort of person who has a modicum of self control when it comes to baked goods in the house, I happily recommend this bread. For those of you who don’t, bake it and give it away, at least you’ll be able to enjoy the way your kitchen smells. Unfortunately I tried the second strategy, and for possibly the first time in human history a lab full of grad students was too busy to polish off free baking on the first go-round. I ended up with a third of a loaf on my desk for the afternoon, I’m not at liberty to say what happened next.

Categories
The Book Vegetables

33. Creamed Turnips p.588


the recipe

Turnips are among the most maligned and under appreciated vegetables out there. They’re right up there with Lima beans and Brussels sprouts. Some day I’ll open a restaurant serving nothing but childhood nightmare vegetables, as far as I can tell I love them all.

Turnips have got a wonderful bite to them, and should be appreciated for what they are. My grandmother makes mashed creamed turnips she serves with roast beef. It’s the only vegetable my uncle will eat, but that’s because the turnips are swimming in so much cream and sugar the turnip is serving as more of a thickener than anything else. I love my grandmother dearly, and in their own way I love those turnips. Roast beef at her house wouldn’t be the same without the turnips and canned peas. But, I can’t say that they’re a cherished memory of my youth.

I liked that the turnips were left in good size chunks in this recipe. It allowed for some contrast between the sharp bite of the turnip, and the smooth cream sauce. I wasn’t nuts about the texture of the sauce, kinda slimy, and the white on beige coulour palate of the dish wasn’t really doing it for me either. The thyme and nutmeg worked really well here, both of which seem to have great affinities for roots and gourds of all types.

The recipe calls for white pepper, which I don’t really get. Obviously the purpose is to avoid sullying the sauce with black flecks which would be unpleasing to the eye. But it might have helped with the whiter shade of pale thing going on here. I can’t believe I’m saying this, but sprinkling this dish with parsley might not be crime against humanity.

I thought the flavours here were pretty good, but it wasn’t turnipy enough. The cream sauce masked a lot of the kick of the turnips, getting the kids to eat it shouldn’t be a problem, but it was missing something. I prepared this for a friend who’s decided that nouvelle cuisine is overrated, and who yearns for the days of butter in a butter sauce (he made me a memorable buttered rabbit). Escoffier would have loved this dish, but I grew up in the world that Alice Waters made and I’m a bit weirded out by vegetables swimming in cream.

I generally prefer my turnips roasted or grilled and relatively plain. The flavours in the sauce worked well with the turnips, but all the dairy cut the turnip flavours too far. There was nothing bad about it, but it was too mellow to satisfy my turnip craving.

Categories
Hors D'Oeuvres & First Courses The Book

19. Gougères p. 33


very much like this recipe, except The Book omits the dill seeds, and adds two tablespoons of grated Parmigiano-Reggiano, and one teaspoon of nutmeg.

This one went quite well. They were fluffy and airy without being greasy. The cheese flavours were definitely there, but not overwhelming. The nutmeg was a nice touch.

Making them was quick and easy. When I added the flour to the liquids it seized into a near solid mass almost instantly, and it took a lot of stirring to get it to the right consistancy. Other than that it wasn’t much trouble. The recipe suggests piping the gougères onto a sheet pan from a pastry bag, or just using a teaspoon. I didn’t have a bag, so I went with the spoon. The batter is very sticky, so piping them would have been a bit easier, but it wasn’t a big deal. Mine were also finished baking in ~15 minutes, while the recipe suggests they should take ~30. I recently got an oven thermometer, and it turns out my oven ends up ~25 degrees hotter than the dial suggests. This might explain the reduced baking time.

These were really tasty, and a great two-bite size. Be warned, you could very easily eat twelve of these without really noticing.

Categories
Beef, Veal, Pork, and Lamb The Book

12. Lamb Tagine With Prunes Apricots and Vegetables p. 510

the recipe

I’m not the hugest fan of meats in sweet sauces, and this certainly was sweet. Between the dried prunes, apricots, squash, sweet potato and honey it came close to cloying. There was a huge amount going on here, lamb isn’t a subtle flavour to begin with, and the all fruits and spices brought it near to sensory overload.

I know that Tagine’s and much North African cooking is based on these flavour profiles, but they are often more muted than they were here. The best Tagine’s I’ve had have kept the individual ingredients flavours distinct in each bite, with a mingling of their tastes in the sauce. Here I thought it blended too much, and it was texturally homogenous. I found the spicing to be quite nice, with ginger, cinnamon, and nutmeg perfuming the sauce.

I would recommend cutting some of the fruit from this dish, and serving it as one of several elements in a meal. We had only this and couscous, and I really enjoyed the first few bites, I just tired of it rather quickly. The recipe also makes a whole lot of food, so my impression of this one may be tainted by having eaten days worth of leftovers.