cold rain

cold wind blown rain
eyes on the pavement
bright red leaf

Gingerbread Cakes with Poached Apples

I used my new workbench for the first time yesterday to make these yummy gingerbread cakes with poached apples, adapted from this recipe.

My mother, my aunt and my nana were in Maine for a pink ladies’ weekend getaway so I had them over for dinner. We had a really nice meal together – and the food was pretty good too. I made a squash tart with goat cheese and olives (and toasted fennel seeds), haddock with a Bengali mustard rub, hasselback potatoes (my favorite!) and an arugula salad with red onion and pears. And, of course, the individual gingerbread cakes for dessert.

The cakes came out really well (though I burned one batch). Ordinarily I would make ginger confit and add it to the batter, but I didn’t have the time. And I usually serve the cake with a dollop of whipped cream or a scoop of ice cream, but I wanted something lighter. So I poured some of the warm poaching liquid over the cake and the apples to give it a light sauce. It was the perfect dessert for a chilly, blustery autumn night.

My New Workbench

For my birthday this year, I bought myself a custom-made baking workbench from the very good folks at Chilton Furniture. It was delivered today and I love it!

It cost me a small fortune, but what the hell. I’m worth it! And since it’s going to rain all day tomorrow, I might as well break it in right away. I think I’ll make the most amazing gingerbread cake ever and a squash tart with some leftover kabocha squash I bought from the farmers’ market. Yum!

I Like You Too, Amy

Dear Amy Sedaris -

You might have just saved my life! I’m having several lumberjack friends over for dinner on Saturday night and I’ve been racking my brain for a week over what I should make for dinner. I’d finally narrowed it down to one of Suzanne Goin’s five-course autumn menus from her brilliant book Sunday Suppers at Lucques when my good friend Brawny showed me your new book, I Like You.

And just in the nick of time! You reminded me that lumberjacks “tend to like their whole meal on one plate” and that “like a brown bear fresh from hibernation, they can become confused and easily agitated when not fed quickly.” My lumberjack friends are just like this – I might have been mauled! So now I’m going to make your Crosscut Stump Stew using a caribou roast that Brawny’s dad brought back from his latest hunting trip in Canada. As for dessert, I might have to violate your bumpy and lumpy on the same plate rule and make Brawny’s Bear Soup (blueberry tapioca pudding). My lumberjack friends have specifically requested it.

Thank you Amy!

>puddingpop

Tarte Belle Hélene

I attempted to make a Tarte Belle Hélene on Sunday (a pear and chocolate tart) from The French Market cookbook by Joanne Harris and Fran Warde. I stumbled upon this cookbook quite by accident in Borders one day this summer and fell in love with it immediately. I’ve always been a bit afraid of French cooking; felt it was too fussy for both my tastes and my style of cooking. But this seemed to be all about using the very best fresh, local and seasonal ingredients in what looked like mostly simple (in presentation, if not in preparation) and somehow more humble dishes. I was so inspired, in fact, that I went out several weeks later and picked up their first collaborative cookbook, My French Kitchen.

As inspiring as these books have been (and I admit that it’s the pictures that inspire me most in any cookbook), I haven’t had much success with the handful of recipes that I’ve tried so far which is a great disappointment. This is far too often the case with cookbooks that are originally published outside the US where most of the rest of the world uses metric measurements (not to mention the generally higher fat content of European butter and ovens with entirely different temperature settings based on the Celsius scale). The publishers simply aren’t careful about either converting the recipes or testing them or both. And shame on them.

So I was prepared for a bit of frustration on Sunday when I began making the Tarte Belle Hélene. And, it turns out, with good reason. I’m careful in the kitchen, particularly when I’m baking. I measure everything out first and check the recipe and ingredients twice. So I’m fairly confident that I followed the recipe to the letter. But when it came time to “pour” the batter into the pan, it was the consistency of cold buttercream frosting. Not even on a hot day in August with a broken air conditioner would this batter have been fluid enough to be poured.

So I added another egg and quite a bit more milk. And a bit of vanilla and a pinch of salt (what kind of cake recipe doesn’t call for vanilla?). And I tasted it and added more cocoa powder and more milk. And tasted it again and added more sugar. I wasn’t thrilled with the flavor but, if nothing else, it was pourable and I was tired of fooling around (and running out of time before M&L were due for dinner) so I threw the mess into the oven, set the timer and walked away.

And it actually turned out okay.

I’d have preferred a slightly moister cake (a little more like flourless chocolate cake perhaps) but the chocolate flavor was good and strong and the combination of chocolate and fresh pear was very, very good. And I liked the slight crunch and flakiness of the sweet pastry dough on the bottom; I might even try it again with ground almonds or hazlenuts for a little more crunch.

even my feet

cold autumn night
even my feet
are spooning

Pineland Farms

Tom and I met M&L and Baby P at Pineland Farms in New Gloucester for their annual Harvest Festival today. It was an absolutely gorgeous late fall day and we had loads of fun. We had cider and doughnuts (though no cider doughnuts, which was a huge disappointment – but they did have pumpkin doughnuts which were almost as good). We saw cows and chickens and sheep and llamas (I call them giraffagoats) and horses.

We walked through an enchanted forest:

And we each got to pick out our own pumpkin from a great big pumpkin patch.

None of us had ever been and it was great. We even sampled some of their very own cheese (in stores soon). I can’t wait to go snowshoeing and cross country skiing there this winter.