Back to the pond, Texas snitchline, baking and Alaska

 1-866-786-5972. Texas snitchline, I mean tipline. Just sayin'. I'm supplying you with sand here. Especially if you're in Texas. 

I made it to the pond Friday, hot but manageable and not too wet underfoot. Frogs basking on the banks screamed and flew through the air into the water. Some already in the shallows with heads out, just watched me quietly. 

The Friday duffers were out on the golf course. I'd already found and shied back a golf ball far out of bounds. Good thing there's a belt of trees outside the boundary. I hear shots rattling off them before they land near me. There's a great Wooster and Jeeves scene like that, ball ricocheting wildly and Bertie ducking.

And the cooking requirements of the day, spinach quiche and plum torte, both need the same oven temperature I find. So why not do both at once. In my two Corningware pie dishes.

They'll both work to avoid cooking for several days.

The quiche is crustless, as I like it, so it needs a lot of eggs, five, to hold it together. 

The torte, look up Marian Burros if you want to bake it, really needs 12 small prune plums halved.  We rarely see them, so I use whatever plums I can find in August, plum time.  These are larger, so I cut them in quarters and all the plum quarters that fit got in there.

Sprinkled with lemon juice, sugar and cinnamon, seen here,  as the quiche comes out, the torte goes in. 

Here's the baked plum torte with the quiche, missing the piece I had for lunch. I used sharp cheddar and crumbled feta for the cheese component, very good combo, which added salt.

Afternoon tea with a murder matinee and plum torte.

And I decided to make a dessert of key lime yogurt with plums 

Meanwhile Alaska was on it, protests everywhere 

Not a bad day in the kitchen. Or in defence of democracy in Alaska.  Some of the signs they carried were great.

Happy day everyone, keep finding and applying sand. We can do this. Next, since creating is resisting, I need to choose and frame the artwork for the fall group show. We can do this, sez Ted and Big Ursy 

Plum torte or tart, and Mitered Square Jacket progress

This is the Marian Burros recipe that appeared any number of times in the New York Times, and was reprinted in other people's collections. 

I think my copy is from Arthur Schwartz, who credited her and pointed out that it sometimes appeared as tart, sometimes as torte. I think tart's a misprint, because this has a cake dough, not a pastry one.

Anyway here it is, been waiting ages for plums to make it with. They've been hard to find for a couple of years, wonder if there were late frosts cutting back the harvest.

I divided the butter half and half Kerrygold and regular supermarket, mainly because I forgot to thaw out butter to use ahead of time, so I used what was available.

Here's the doings. The lemon juice, cinnamon and sugar are for sprinkling after it's mixed and assembled. The plum pits went out for the squirrels, who will probably run away in top of the fence and bite into them, leaving the shells for me to sweep.

And here's  how it looks with the halved plums studding the batter. One hour at 350°f.

The house smells lovely right now.

And here's the result

I expect Handsome Son and maybe a neighbor or two will help with this.

Meanwhile I've been stitching Mitered Squares. 

It's like stitching your way out of a maze. Very confusing. I think I may be about a third done but who knows.

Plum tart/torte happened

I had zero intention of baking today, then Handsome Son decided to visit after work tomorrow. Nothing desserty in the house.

So Marian Burros' plum thing happened. Depending on where you see it, a tart or a torte. It's a cake with crisp edges anyway.

You can Google this recipe, to get the information about the springform pan. I don't have one. Any baking dish works. The plums are Misfit Market ones, great flavor, not very sweet. Right for this dish.

I used a castiron skillet, as usual putting it, oiled and buttered, into the oven as it heated. This is how you get that crisp edge, by putting the dough into a pan that's already the same heat as the oven.

I slipped a bit with the cinnamon but nevermind. She uses AP flour, I used whole-wheat.  Lemon juice, sprinkle of that caster sugar I ground a while back.

Here you see the muffin tin acting as a cooling rack. This pan is too heavy for the wire rack.

Good. Cook's privilege, first piece. There were no plums to be had last year, so it's two years since we had this. I think Handsome Son will enjoy.

Friday dinner with Handsome Son, before inroads

Last evening was dinner with HS, and the first soup of the season.  Pumpkin with yellow split peas.  And I cooked it with chicken bones, from the freezer, for a couple of hours, removed the bones before serving.

This is really hearty, as they say in the fancy recipes, and with the addition of water from carrot pesto and yogurt whey, was a Good Thing.  The reason for carrot as opposed to any of my herbal pestos, is that it's a good color for this soup.  Appetizing.  Likewise choosing the yellow split peas instead of green.

You know when you make pesto in the blender, there's always some that won't come out, around the blades?  I add back a couple of cups of water, run the blender, which cleans the blades and saves the precious pesto, which after all has your best olive oil in it, and freeze the water.  It's great in soup.  And the yogurt whey is the liquid part from making yogurt cheese, very tangy and good in soup, too.

I have two freezers, the small one on top of the fridge, where I keep bits of sauces and condiments also my grains and pestos and whole herbs, and the chest one where I keep, aside from art materials, ahem, cooked food ready to haul out, and raw chicken and fish. And bread, soup, etc. This slightly loopy way of organizing things makes it easier to find those bits you kept and can't find if they're in a chest freezer, while the food in the big freezer is big enough to see. 

So we had roast chicken breasts, which I'd had a lovely time hitting with a mallet, then rolled in flour, baharat and seasalt, and left for a few hours in the fridge, then put in a 400F oven for about 25 minutes.  With brown jasmine rice, cooked with turmeric, golden raisins and sunflower seeds.  The chicken and rice are both bland on their own, but will take any amount of seasoning, and be interesting.  Plum sauce to go with, in fact plum and ginger, ginger powder added in, with a little bit of sugar, and some lemon juice.  It's tart enough to be really good with this meal.  Nice Italian red wine.

Dessert was the rest of the plum torte, notice a theme here..and a big pot of English breakfast tea.  Son texted this am to say nice evening, tx for food!  and I must say it went over well enough that I have barely enough for one meal to go at.  But I did freeze quite a bit of soup,before HS arrived, leaving plenty for us last night. HS always has at least two bowls of soup, very gratifying for the cook.

I love to have soup in the freezer for when I get home and just don't feel like cooking right now, thanks.  Especially if it's cold and wet. 

Now that plums are in, I must look out for damson plums at the Asian market. They get them at great prices, and I can stock up.   

Next week I'm at an all day herb workshop, about herbal liqueurs or something, so no doubt I'll learn a lot to add to my repertoire of alcohol, which is pretty small.  And it includes a chef prepared lunch involving a lot of the herbs mentioned in the workshops. I will definitely report back on this. Nothing like having a menu created by a real expert.

Baharat, plum toms and tarts

Rainy cool weather is great for messing about in the kitchen, catching up on making things.

I mentioned that it was time to make more baharat, the Middle Eastern spice mix, from Ottolenghi.  I think baharat probably only means mixture, like masala, and there are millions of recipes for it.  But the one I use is Ottolenghi's, from his Jerusalem book, and it's great.  As is the book, an adventure in cultures and history as well as food.  Go here for the recipe and a bit of the book

I helps that I have all the spices in the list in the kitchen anyway. And here you see most of the cast of characters, the black peppercorns not having been unearthed at this point, but they did show up for the performance. 

You'll notice that I use the real cinnamon, which is not the stuff you get in the supermarket. That's not the actual plant, but it is related to it.  The real stuff is much more delicate in scent and in handling -- you can break a stick in your hands, so you have the amount you want. It's also a lot more expensive, but you're worth it.

This really is a great entertainment.  You sniff at each spice as you dole it out into the bowl, and it's a sensory trip.  Then into the coffee grinder, which I use to grind spices and flours, but actually not coffee.

Then once ground, another trip as you spoon it into the jar.  I keep it in a tightly lidded glass jar inside a cabinet as far from the stove as you can get in this kitchen. You'll see the recipe doesn't make a lot.  That way you always have fresh flavor. You can always make more when you run out.

It will come into play in a lot of recipes, since the combo is lovely for many sorts of dishes, chicken, fish, fruit, green vegetables, very varied in itself, so it adapts.

Then onward to the Roma plum tomatoes, a bunch from the farmstand, washed, cut into about thirds, these were quite big ones, and then frozen exactly like that. 

I will use them later in tomato sauce or any place I want tomatoes with not much juice.

Keeping with the plum motif, there were the first black plums in the  store so I got a couple of pounds, washed, halved and pitted them, and made a Plum Tart, according to Marian Burros, which I think is really a torte, but it's very good anyway. I have the cook's privilege of sucking on the pits, to get all of the fruit. No picture of that process.

To get the original recipe, where it's called a torte, see I toldya, go here


She talks about using a dozen halved plums, but I never have room for that many. I just stud it with as many as fit, and save the rest for a sauce next time I do chicken or fish.

 
And here, in my trusty castiron pan, is the lovely result.  You're supposed to use a springform pan, but until they invent a castiron one, I'm going with this pan.

The topping is lemon juice, a sprinkling of sugar, and cinnamon, but I was a bit heavy on this last, hand sort of slipped.  Still tastes fine, though.  The plums were wonderful, must be a good year.

Had one warm slice with tea, managing to burn the side of my hand on the pan, forgot it was still hot, quick application of aloe juice, from kitchen plant, fixed that, then I froze the rest of the tart or torte for future use.  If I just refrigerate, I'll feel I have to finish the slices faster before they go stale, and that would never do.. 

Next time Handsome Son comes calling, I think he's in for pumpkin soup, roast chicken, probably seasoned with baharat,  with plum sauce and brown jasmine rice, and plum tart. All the best establishments have echoes in their food.. at least that'll be my story.

Freccycle SOS, see why, what happened 6WS

Nancy, a Freecycler from way back, posted an urgent invitation to come and help with her massive Golden Delicious apple tree which has thousands of apples ripening all at once, a positive tsunami of them.

So I went over with a bushel basket and in no time had about as many as I can use -- they're small, were not pruned out to reduce the crop, but are as their name implies, delicious -- and had plans to spend some time processing them for the freezer.  A winter's worth of crumbles and sauce.  And an invitation to go back and continue if I would like to.  I dug some iris divisions, the purple and white bearded heritage ones, that I'd promised her way back, because her mother used to grow them, so I finally made good and took them over in the same apple quest trip.

Before I cut them up, though (no peeling, way too small and fiddly) I used them as the model for the day's drawing, too tempting, a bushel basket full of apples, how often do I see that.

And after a couple of hours steady washing and  chopping and pushing about and labeling and bagging, while listening to a Peter Wimsey murder mystery, the freezer now has paid its way, since I couldn't have accepted them before having a freezer like this to house them.

That was yesterday's Freecycle bounty. And here's today's picked up from a different town, different direction, it's all go:

In line with my home-decor-without-money theme, I really like the idea of setting up a vignette like this, with the easel, which was the Freecycle item, holding up a charcoal drawing which I had standing on the floor for lack of a home on the wall.  

The two paintings on the wall are my locally dyed works, and one will be in a group show as of next week.  And the easel will house a rotating display of art that I fancy seeing better, or just giving it a turn. You see the Dollivers supervising the whole thing from the vantage point of their apartment in the bookcase.

This month's Bite Club is about Rozane Gold, her three ingredient approach to cooking, never used her books before, so I got the 123 book and plunged in.  Since our fearless leader, Diane, strongly suggested that instead of finding familiar themes to cook, we venture into things we haven't ever made.  

So I ventured totally, and used the current two redskin potatoes to make latkes!  yeah, I know, very familiar to some friends, never encountered by me.  Very very good, fun to make, too.  Quite time consuming but there was no hurry.  I made about half the recipe, I think, judging from the weight of my potatoes.  

I felt very historic doing this one.  See it in the background, cooking, while I show off the dessert

And while I was at it, I went back to an old favorite, to use up some prune plums, and made Marian Burros Plum Torte (Tart in some books), and liked it yet again. 

Dinner looked like this, end of a wildly active and successful day

 
 One of the latkes is destined for tomorrow's breakfast, just showing you the whole output here. Nice glass of merlot, of course.

Planning on sitting down this evening. After I have a walk, that is.