Toast

Devil May Care

I was surprised, after some rummaging among past posts, to find that I have never before written about deviled eggs, as there is very nearly nothing I like more. I was even more surprised to find that I had a bit to learn on the subject, since I thought the case was, for me, closed.

I knew that there were various French variations on stuffed eggs, which included asparagus, or shrimp, and the like. That was fine with me, and these were mostly very nice, but could not hold a candle to the classic: Hard-boiled egg white halves, stuffed with a mixture of mashed yolk, English mustard, mayo, salt and pepper, and, finally, sprinkled with some paprika, smoked Spanish or regular, or maybe, if I was feeling a little extra was called for, ground chipotle. No pickle juice here. End of story.

I was therefore disconcerted to discover, in the Sunday NYTimes Men's Fashion Supplement*, a recipe for stuffed eggs Caeser salad style, which is a worthy alternate. I was also surprised to learn, courtesy of Jacques Pepin, that a few minutes upside down in a frying pan can have an amazing, and praise-worthy effect on a deviled egg . A caveat: the new egg recipe is not for anchovy haters- nor is the Caeser salad itself, for that matter. And, a happy happenstance: the Caeser eggs are particularly suited to the Pepin effect.

Even if you are as stuck on the classic as I have been, you may want to try these both ways. Nearly as simple as the original, and that is a plus, in my book. The cold ones are great with whiskey or gin drinks, and the warm ones make a nice sit-down first course, or a lunch.

This is how you make the basic Caeser egg, as amended by me (I don't like the idea of coming upon a bit of chopped raw garlic while nibbling my egg.):

12 hard-boiled eggs
2 Tbsps Olive oil
2 tsps lemon juice
1 tsp anchovy paste
dash Worchestershire
salt and pepper
paprika
garlic clove, split

Rub the garlic clove over the interior of a small to medium bowl. Cut eggs in half, and add the yolks and all the other ingredients, except paprika, into the bowl. Mash thoroughly, and stuff halved whites. Sprinkle with paprika and display cunningly on your depression glass dish or in Tupperware...they will all be eaten, either way.

Now, with your regular deviled eggs, or your Caeser eggs, you can make a sort of deconstructed Caeser salad. Dress some romaine with a little bit of garlicy vinagrette and set it on a serving dish, or several smaller plates, with a few homemade croutons, if you are so inclined. Film the bottom of a heavy frying pan with olive oil, and heat it up. Set the eggs in the pan in a single layer, carefully, yolk side down. Cook them at a medium-low heat until the yolk is nicely caramelized and brown. Mine took 5 minutes.

Set them atop your salad, arranged prettily, and consume. They are nice without the lettuce, too, but you should still have them with a knife and fork, on a plate...unlike the cold version, which are perfect for eating out of hand , at picnics. Also, if you put two cold ones yolk to yolk, and wrap them up, they are the best ever little treat in a packed lunch.

*A strange item, no? I always read the Times style items with interest, and they are so often a source of amusement. I fear my amusement may be a symptom of my own depravity, though. How can I chuckle over a spread featuring chic modern models portraying starving depression era hobos, in mock-rags of cashmere with thousand dollar price tags? This display appeared not too long ago in a similar NYTimes style magazine.

Who was this for, and why? Has Marie Antoinette been playing milkmaid games again? Maybe someone there should take a moment to remember how she ended up.

In any event, apparently deviled eggs have become fashionable, much in the manner of upscale mac and cheese. Oh well.

A Couple of Not So Green Salads

I have been making a homely supper/indoor picnic for my friends, while re-perusing the classic spiral bound cookbook White Trash Cooking, and debating about what sort of potato salad to make. That's not the potato salad you see there, but another not-so- green salad, to be named later. I figure just about every body knows what a basic American potato salad looks like.

I had a big mason jar of Clem's ambrosial barbeque sauce that I brought home with me, which I do, pretty much annually, stopping at Clem's barbeque pit on the way back from our work conference in State College, PA. I also bring home half a rack of fire-pit barbequed ribs- but those disappear shortly after I make sure the cats are okay, and well before I unpack. A week or so later, I make a supper of pulled pork sandwiches, coleslaw, potato salad, and some kind of cobbler or pie. It's a thing.

The coleslaw recipe is a fixture- non-negotiable, in this context, anyhow. but I am always open to potato salad variations, from the hokiest to the haute-ist. Potato salad is a tremendously versatile dish, a blank canvas for the painting of, well whatever- I'll let this wonky metaphor fade on out- you probably know what I mean, anyway. For this meal, though, I thought something down-homey would be compatible- hence the book.

Whenever I consult WTC, I am surprised and a little embarassed to recall just how little most of the recipes appeal to me. I think of myself as a lover of plain home cooking, fried chicken, biscuits, greens, etc, but much of this stuff is pretty sickly, though intriguing. A lot of processed foodis involved- cake mix dumped on some peaches for a cobbler, canned vegetables and soups in casseroles, and the like. The book is full of strong, admirable characters, and is utterly noncondescending- so what am I, some kind of food snob? I don't know. I certainly don't scorn the use of humble, unlikely, or hokey ingredients- I make a chicken thing with coca-cola- and it's good. But a ton of these recipes-I can tell I'd hate them.

I greatly prefer, southern/country cooking-wise, most of the recipes in the books of Edna Lewis, with or without Scott Peacock, her buddy, fellow chef, and, at the end- her caretaker. There are lots of recipes with titles that are the same as those in WTC, but they are different, sound good, and taste good when you make them. You can tell they come from the same place and time- Scott Peacock even recalls the very same cake-mix cobbler recipe, as being tasty, but a bit "oversweet". He notes that while his mother used supermarket biscuits in her blackberry cobbler- he makes his from scratch. These guys are chefs, though, not home cooks like me. E.L. was from a country cooking tradition, but she was a sophisticated person, who spent many years cooking professionally, and writing about food.

I guess these two were looking to the food of the generation before S.P.'s mother's era...folks who didn't have the option of adding gratuitous doses of chemical novelties to the food they grew and raised. When all that stuff appeared for the first time- cake mix, Cool Whip, packaged biscuits, jello and pudding, it must have been irresistable, fun and magical-especially to people who did hard physical work all day, and were used to a lot of laborious cooking as well. Once considered special, and a treat, these instant gratification foods are so much a part of our culture that we may be considered annoying elitists if we avoid them .

Surprisingly, though, these two cookbooks offer virtually the same potato salad recipe, except that the Lewis/Peacock version has cider vinegar, and the WTC one uses pickle juice. So that's what I made, and it is nice. It is basically boiled potatoes, cubed, mayo, a little chopped onion, a little brown mustard, hard-boiled egg yolks, a little cider vinegar, salt and pepper. Very basic, very good. I generally add a little celery seed and some finely chopped fennel or celery.The more egg yolks you add, the better it is, no question There is no potato salad more elemental, and pretty much everyone eats it.

Which brings me to the salad you see in the photo- this is a "BLT Salad", which sounds like a refugee from WTC, but was actually found in a Lewis/Peacock book. Like the potato salad, it has an added luster when prepared mostly from fresh veg from my CSA farmbox. (The coleslaw, too- there was a crispy, beautiful cabbage this week.) This is how you make it:

Wash and dry some very crispy lettuce- we had romaine, (but even iceberg would be better than something soft or buttery), cut it up and top with chunky croutons, freshly made from good white bread; crispy bacon cut into squares; and a beautiful tomato or two, cut into smallish cubes. Add salt and pepper, and just before serving, toss with just enough good mayonaisse to coat it lightly. So very good. But how could it not be?

There is some green in this salad after all, but what with the bacon and mayo, it ain't exactly your palate-cleansing pile-o-greens. Still.

Barbara Kingsolver, First Farmbox, and Rhubarb Ice Cream

I have been reading Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, her story of her family's year of eating locally on their Appalachian farm. I picked it up because I thought highly of her Poisonwood Bible. Before I read the latter, I had tried a couple of her earlier novels, and found them okay, but not so interesting. I thought P.B.was far superior what she had done previously, and wanted to see what she had to say about a topic which is simultaneously close to my heart, and, well, annoying.

So far, I' m a little surprised that I'm enjoying it so much. In my younger days, I read "back to the land" books dreamily, and devoured everything I could find on sustainable agriculture, seed saving ,genetic diversity, and eating locally. The romance of the imaginary organic farm has lost a lot of its appeal for me- I am an urban sort of person, and prefer to let my CSA farmer do the actual bulk growing.

I do miss my garden-I long for it every spring- and I need to come up with a way to have one again, but I know that the realities of farm life are truly not my cup of tea. Likewise, I feel that I understand the political food issues. Though I'm not an expert, and don't do enough about those issues on a political level, I don't need convincing of their righteousness. And I'm easily bored, especially when there's preaching.

This book does not pretend to be The Way for everyone. It is unassuming, personal, sensible, and encouraging. It is also loaded with lots of good practical , factual backup for any arguments you might have with, say, people who claim corporate chemical farming some how serves the poor of the planet, and who decry as "elitist" advocates for local, organically raised and free-range food.

Ms. Kingsolver's science background and writer's chops serve her well. She speaks confidently, and simply. The Monsanto stories, though not new, are just chilling. Her family and their home are interesting and appealing, without being too exemplary, or cute. I'm about half way through the book, and I'm a little bit re-motivated. Not that I was demotivated, but I'm sort of jazzed on the issues again. And the woman has me wanting to try my hand at making cheese. Meanwhile, the supermarket fruits and veggies from afar are looking like an even worse choice than usual, and I'm delighted and relieved that it is the beginning of the new year for my CSA farmbox.

The first farmbox of the year always looks beautiful to me, though it is necessarily a bit sparse, since we are in western PA, and it is barely June. There are herbs, spinach, lettuce, pea greens, strangely unformed, yet slightly woody onions, lovely crisp radishes (as mentioned earlier), and a bunch of rhubarb. (And, as every year, with the first box, there is a complementary round loaf of some soft-crusted mushball whole grain bread, which must be toasted to be tolerable. I don't get this- in all other ways, the Kretchmanns exhibit excellent taste. Oh well.)

I'm having a Tilapia filet, baked in parchment with pea greens and herb butter for dinner. I'll let you know how it goes-it's an LA Times recipe, since deleted, but reconstructed via the good memory of an egullet member. There's going to be a supper of farmbox baby spinach with pinenuts and raisins over polenta in the picture too.

The rhubarb, washed and diced, is about 2 cups worth, just about enough for a quart of ice cream. This is how I made it:

Stew the rhubarb, cut into very small dice, for about 15 minutes in 2/3 cup of water with a pinch of salt, 3/4 cup sugar (or a mixture of sugar and golden syrup), a squirt of lemon juice, and a half of a split vanilla bean. Cool thoroughly, chilling if possible.

Combine the chilled rhubarb mixture with 1 cup of cream and one cup of milk. Freeze according to your ice cream maker's directions. This is a delicious, not too sweet, subtly flavored concoction, IIDSSMS.

Consume, feeling elegant. I'm going to save some for next weekend, in the hope that there will be strawberies in the farmbox. Clearly this ice cream woud be insanely good with some pulverized real strawberries on top.

K. Zuckerman's Magic Rugelach

Apparantly rugelach, made with a cream cheese pastry, is primarily an American phenomenon. Sometime ago I posted about a savory rugelach recipe I made for a boxing day party, and I learned some things about rugelach from comments: In Israel, a croissant-like dough is most widely used. There are variants made with schmalz, rather than butter and/ or cream cheese. Some cream cheese style rugelach also use sour cream. Claudia Roden, Joan Nathan, and Mimi Sheraton have all noted multiple variations. The Second Avenue Deli Cookbook contains a non dairy rugelach made with (ack) tofutti. It seems that a yeast dough makes a more "authentic" Eastern European-style rugelach, and that it is mostly in the US that the cream cheese version is widely available in bakeries, and otherwise popular.

I have tried various recipes in an attempt to approach the very special, crescent shaped cream cheese based rugelach made by my Aunt Yetta. Always delicious, and frequently especially timely, these rugelach arrived in a tin, by mail, to cheer me during several of the most difficult times in my life. I believe they have certain ameliorating powers, in the face of unavoidable disaster, or, for that matter, petty annoyance.

The differently shaped rugelach you see here are the closest I've found so far to Yetta's, as I remember them. Kate Zuckerman, pastry chef at Chanterelle, shares the recipe in her recent book, The Sweet Life. She "isn't really sure" why the recipe works as it does, but there is definitely a multi-layered, puff-pastryish effect , without any of the turning and other complications of that preparation. I think she is justified in calling it "magic." A little fussier than an ordinary cookie dough, it repays you well. If you follow closely, handling the dough is not so tricky, and the reward is well worth it.

Here's the recipe, as adapted by me. I've added some waxed paper to the rolling processes, because the dough is thin, and a little trickier to handle than, say, pie dough. The magical Ms. Zuckerman, with her professional pastry chef hands, wouldn't need to do this, but I do. As with any pastry, if things get too soft and sticky, refrigerate the whole works for a bit, before going on. There, I've made it sound hard, and it's not really. You see, this is what you do:

First, make the dough ahead of time, preferably the night before baking.

8 tbsps (a stick) of butter, softened
4 oz. cream cheese, room temperature
1 cup flour
1/4 tsp salt
1 tsp sugar

In a stand mixer, with the paddle, beat the butter and cheese until combined and fluffy- about 8 minutes on medium. Add the dry ingredients, and beat until the dough is combined, and then about 15 seconds more. scrape the dough onto some waxed paper and wrap it, flattening it out into a rectangle about 1/2 thick, using the wax paper to shape the rectangle as you wrap. Chill.

You can make the filling ahead, or right before you bake.

4 oz. walnuts, chop fine
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 cup golden raisins (I used them instead of currants, because I find currants don't soften much in baking)
1/4 cup sugar

Mix well in a small bowl and refrigerate until ready.

You also need:
1/4 cup more sugar
a beaten egg in a cup

Preheat oven to 350 and line 3 cookie sheets with parchment or silpats. Cut 2 sheets of waxed paper 12"X16" Put the dough between them, and roll it out to the size of the waxed paper. I did this on the pastry marble-I find the coolness helps a lot. With scissors, trim any excess dough, so that the dough is, as much as possible, a neat rectangle the size of the waxed paper. Cut the dough in half lengthwise with the scissors, waxed paper still in place. You will do each half separately.

Now carefully peel the waxed paper from the top of the first half, and set it out on a counter, long side facing you. Brush entire surface with egg wash. Spread with half the filling, covering the entire surface, except for a 1" border on the long side furthest from you. Using the bottom waxed paper to help you, roll the pastry into a long rope, tucking the filling in as you go, and sliding the waxed paper off as you roll it. Roll as tightly as you can, without tearing the dough. Go carefully. Press the last bits together, and with the help of the remaining waxed paper, and roll it gently onto one of the lined sheets, seam down.

Repeat with the other half of the dough and filling, rolling the 2nd half onto the same sheet. Brush both with the egg wash all over, and sprinkle with the 1/2 cup remaining sugar. I used demerara sugar for the crunch and color here. Stick in the freezer for half an hour.

Remove from freezer, and cut each long rope into 1" cookies. Lay on the 2 other lined sheets, about an inch apart, spiral side up. Bake 15 to 18 minutes, or until golden brown and puffed, rotating pans halfway through. You can also freeze one log, well wrapped to make some rugelah fast-another time. It would be nice to know you had rugelach at the ready all the time. I made them all this time. Greedy.

A Buffalo Roast

I have done some nattering here about buffalo meat, which I like very much, despite my irrational aversion to most meats not familiar to me from childhood. I think it tastes very like beef, only even better, sweeter, cleaner. Until recently, though, I'd only had the ground meat, which was all that was available to me locally. Recently, I found a "minimally processed" (whatever that means), "additive free" 2 pound buffalo chuck roast (it magically appeared at the Giant Eagle last week, who knew?), and I was eager to cook it appropriately.

A cursory search through my own library and the internet didn't produce an individual recipe that knocked my socks off, but I did glean some advice that made me a bit nervous. Everyone stressed that buffalo is much leaner and less marbled than beef. There seemed to be agreement that it should be eaten rare, and not cooked too long, or at a high heat, or it would dry out. My own idea of a (beef) chuck roast treatment is a long, slow pot roasty braising, until the meat nearly falls apart, juicy and tender. I favor chuck for beef pot roasts, because of the marbling, which keeps it juicy. I generally make it ahead, so I can chill the gravy, and lift the fat off.

"Treat it like game" and "Cook it like venison" were recurring themes. I am not so familiar with venison treatments, having reacted sqeamishly the only time I tried it. Other game (e.g. elk) I've only had in a barbeque, where the predominant flavor was spicy barbeque sauce. I checked around, and it became clear that a marinade was in order. This made sense, a tenderizing step precooking could reduce the amount of cooking/drying out time needed for the roast. So I decided to marinate it for 24 hours or so, and then pot roast it, keeping a careful eye on it, so I would stop cooking it as soon as it was tender.

This buffalo business, and the first cold, blustery day of the season called to my (admittedly childish) mind, an image of prairie folks of an earlier era, celebrating a rare game/meat meal in a snug cabin, a Laura Ingalls Wilder sort of thing. Thus it seemed that a steaming pile of mashed potatoes with lots of buffalo gravy, red cabbage coleslaw, and a generous amount of roasted root vegetables would be appropriate sides, followed up by some preserved prunes in brandy with cream. This menu allowed me to use almost all organic vegetables left from my last fall farmboxes, and my own preserves, which seemed suitable too.

Of course, the dolcetto in the marinade, left over from a dinner last week, was not so sod house-like. But it did come from the Bartolucci's Madonna Estate, an organic, dry farm, family run vineyard I visited in Carneros, in the Napa Valley a few years ago. I liked the people and I like their wine, so despite the fact that you cannot ship out of state wine to Pennsylvania, I keep, uh, well...let's just say, I still have some.

Preparatory to playing log cabin, or whatever it is I was doing (the absence of young children makes this sort of carrying on seem so much less reasonable), I marinated the roast in a covered earthenware pot in a half bottle of the wine, garlic, thyme, parsley, a little red wine vinegar, 4 mashed juniper berries, sliced carrots, sliced fennel stems, and chopped leeks, salt and peppercorns-for about 24 hours.

The next day, I preheated the oven to 300F, and soaked some dried mushrooms in a cup of hot water for about 30 minutes. I wiped out my lidded pot, and browned the roast in a saute pan, on both sides, nice and deep brown, in a couple of tablespoons of olive oil. I put the roast back in the clean pot with 4 sage leaves, a sprig of thyme and one of rosemary, some parsley, salt and pepper, and several unpeeled garlic cloves.

In the leftover fat, I cooked 4 quartered slices of bacon, 2 sliced carrots, the mushrooms, and two onions, cut in thin half moons. When they got a bit brown, I added the reserved marinade, several strips of orange peel, and the mushroom soaking liquid, brought it to a boil, and cooked it down some, scraping up the sticking bits on the pan.

I poured the contents of the pan over the roast, covered that with some dampened, crumbled parchment paper and the earthenware pot lid, and set it in the oven for three and a half hours. I refrigerated the meat and juices separately, and peeled the fat off the next day. then, I strained the juices, pressing on the lumpy bits in the strainer, and made a bunch of gravy, starting with a Tbsp each of melted butter and flour, and whisking the juices in. I sliced the roast thickly, and have been repeatedly reheating slices in the gravy, and enjoying it ever since.

It's tender and it tastes awfully good, and I love the gravy. It is, however, despite the efforts, a bit dry, compared to a beef pot roast.. I'm thinking I'll chop the remaining meat up with the leftover veg, top it with the leftover mashed potatoes and have some shepherd's pie..or buffalo-hunter's pie, or whatever that would be.

Given the dryness, I think the next thing to try would be a tender cut, cooked quickly. I'll have to see what turns up in the meat department. Sorry about the lack of photo, I just didn't get around to it while it was still pretty.

Coconut Layer Cake

Looks ain't everything. Initially inspired by a coconut cake in Nika Hazelton's American Home Cooking, my version has gone through many changes over the years. It is extra good with freshly grated coconut. However, made with a bag of sweetened coconut, or the nice new unsweetened frozen stuff, it is quite a production, (and very good). So if you are not up for attacking a big hairy rock, and peeling and grating your fingers off, then don't do it that way. This will be more than enough fuss without that- and I have set the whole long business out, so don't be holding your breath. The custard filling was, by the way, a later addition. The idea of using the custard to flavor the buttercream came from The Cake Book by Tish Boyle. In its current state, this recipe is a pretty close adaptation of hers.

I have never before made this cake in cold weather-I think of it as a Fourth of July or Labor Day picnic sort of thing. Simultaneously luxurious and plain, it looks the hokey part on a picnic table covered with a checked cloth, surrounded by platters of fried chicken or barbeque, pickles, coleslaw and baked beans, and the like. And I was going to make it this summer, and post a picture, because it is a classic bit of americana. I just didn't get to it. But then, I volunteered to do a birthday cake this Friday night, so here it is. Out of season, in all its trashy yet subtle splendor.

Nothing snooty about this cake. But how can it be tacky, when it is all shades of white? Like the garden of some insanely refined aesthete, it glows quietly in the moonlight. Nonetheless, it has a deceptive look of cake mix and Cool Whip. Its trailer park aura cannot be denied. Serve it with ice cream (dark chocolate is wildly good with it) or with berries, or plain. It will surprise people when they taste it, which is fun. And if you like coconut, you are sure to like it.

Once, I filled the cake and frosted it thinly with a dark chocolate ganache before covering it with the buttercream and coconut. This was good, but gilding the lily really. I love chocolate and coconut together, but this oversized reversed Mounds bar was not my favorite. Better to let the coconut cake speak for itself, and add the chocolate with some ice cream, if you're longing for it. Up to you.

It is made with quite a bit of butter, 6 egg whites, cake flour, vanilla, and a mixture of canned coconut milk and whole milk. The custardy filling has a base of coconut infused milk. It uses up 4 of the remaining egg yolks, and has , like the flavoring syrup, a bit of rum. The icing is a very simple butter cream, with about half a cup of the custard mixed in, and there's plenty of coconut pressed all around. Some might find this a lot of bother for a cake that looks like a 12 year old's first shot at a box of Duncan Hines, but , to repeat myself, looks ain't everything.

I forgot to take a picture of the whole cake, but you can probably tell from the leftover slice, complete with hole from a birthday candle, that it is not especially elegant looking. Made with the two 9" layers divided into 4 thin ones, it would be eligible for display under a glass dome atop the counter of a classic diner. But if you go that route, make half again the recipe for the filling and for the buttercream. I think my two layer one is more the family reunion model. This is what you need for the 2 layer version:

Ingredients for Cake, Filling, and Frosting
Cake flour 3 1/2 cups
baking powder 1 tbsp
salt 1 tsp
Whole milk 2 1/3 cups
canned coconut milk 2/3 cup
Coconut, peeled and grated 2-3 cups
egg yolks 4
egg whites 6
sugar 2 1/2 cups
cornstarch 2 tbsps
rum 3 tbsp
butter 5 sticks (20 oz), softened
powdered sugar 1/2 cup
vanilla 3 tsps

Make the cake

Preheat oven to 350F, and grease and flour two 9" cake pans. Sift together the flour, baking powder and salt and set aside. Mix 2/3 cup whole milk and the canned coconut milk together well, and set aside. In the bowl of a stand mixer, beat 1 1/2 cups of sugar and two sticks of butter until light colored and smooth. Add the egg whites, one at a time, beating until well combined. Scrape down sides from time to time, with a rubber spatula. Add 2 tsps vanilla. Alternately add the milk and flour mixes, about 1/3 of each at a time, mixing and scraping down until well blended. Divide batter between the 2 pans, and bake on a centre rack until the cake bounces a bit in the middle- about 25 minutes. Cool on rack for 10 minutes, remove from pans, and continue to cool on rack.

While the cake bakes, make a bit of rum syrup and soak some coconut

For the syrup, mix 1/2 cup water and 1/2 cup sugar with 2 tbsps rum. Bring to a bowl, mixing sugar til dissolved. Cool.

In a little pan, mix 1 1/2 cups milk and a cup of coconut. Heat until milk is warm, and turn off heat. Let it all sit for an hour. Now your cake should be cooled. Brush the bottom part of each cake layer with plenty of rum syrup.

Make custard

Strain the coconut milk, retaining the milk, and discarding the coconut. (Press hard on the coconut, to get as much milk out as possible.) In a 4 cup pyrex cup, mix the egg yolks and 1/4 cup sugar and the cornstarch until sooth. Keep by the stove. Heat the strained milk until simmering. Quickly mix a little of the hot milk into the egg yolks in the cup, and then pour the yolk/milk mix back into the hot milk. Heat until it begins to thicken up, whisking vigorously. Turn off the heat and continue whisking. Scrape it into the pyrex cup, and whisk some more, until it is cooled to lukewarm, and thick and smooth. Spread half of the cooled custard on one layer of your cake, which you have set on the serving plate. Put narrow strips of parchment all around the bottom of the cake, just tucked under the edge of the cake, to protect the plate from the mess to come. Set second layer on top of first.

Make Icing

In the bowl of a stand mixer, beat 3 sticks of butter, the powdered sugar, the last tbsp of rum, remaining custard, a tsp of vanilla and a pinch of salt, until smooth.

Frost the cake

Once the cake is frosted, press generous handsful of coconut into sides of cake, and sprinkle over top. Go crazy, skimpiness will not be rewarded. Clean up the platter, and refrigerate for a couple of hours to set up nicely.

And that's the whole deal. Pretty is as pretty does, or something like that. Please let me know if I have made proof-reading mistakes-I feel I must have, this is so long, and typing it up has made me woozy eyed.

Root Beer Dreams: Part I

This week I was canning tomatoes. I have written about canning tomatoes before, as have others with far greater expertise. So happy though it makes me to contemplate my row of jars, I find I don't have much more to say on the topic, at least for the moment. It is always a pretty big project, and I have no intention of doing much else at the stove until it's done. It appears, however, that I am unable to keep quiet, all the same. So I thought I'd tell you about my recurring root beer dreams.

Other people's dreams are famously boring. You can, of course, skip this bit, and I won't be surprised or offended. Personally, though, I often find dreams more interesting than the dreamers, if that makes any sense. By dreams, I mean real, while-you-sleep dreams, as opposed to fantasies. Lots of folks seem to have sadly boring (at least to others) conscious fantasies. (Presumably, they do not themselves find them boring-or they wouldn't bother to concoct them.)

I am almost always intrigued by real dreams, though, including my own. I have been amazed by how distinctive and original an ordinary person's dreams may be. It is cheering to think that people in general may have more potential to delight and astonish than is immediately apparent. Unlike some, I am generally pleased when anyone (who seems neither insane nor predatory) offers to tell me about the odd dream they had last night.

For about a year, some time ago, I kept a notebook by my bed, and wrote down all I remembered of my own dreams, right away, when I woke up. This is a fairly common exercise. If you have never done it, you might like to give it a try. You get a ton more detail than anything you might remember as the day rolls on. Sometimes, when you reread there are cool surprises- for example, wonderful (or terrible) puns- often revealing. Eventually I stopped doing this...It required getting up 15 minutes earlier than normal , and anyway, I had accumulated a bookful of dreams to mull over.

This self indulgent rambling is intended to explain why I have the following precise recorded version of my first, long ago root beer dream. I still have this dream sometimes, and it doesn't seem to vary much. After all this carrying on and justifying, I must admit that my root beer dream is not especially astonishing. In fact, it is probably precisely the sort of dream people have in mind when they say they could not be less interested. I am, nonetheless, attached to it. While far from amazing, it is a little weird, and has had two odd side effects. This is the dream:

I am in a little wooden shack/shop, which is actually some way in to a dark woods, off a dirt road. It is very hot out, though cooler in the woods than on the road. I am about 9 years old. The shop is very empty, dark, possibly deserted, dusty; it is overgrown with foliage. The wood is a little like a fairy tale, and a little like a real forest. It's cooler in the building than outside in the woods. Everything in the shop is old-shelves and stacks of food with old fashioned labels, and so on. The cash register is an antique type, very ornate, with the sort of keys that stick up on stalks.

There is a ceiling fan going and a big chest cooler, plugged in and humming, in the corner. I open it and it is full of frosty bottles of root beer. You have to put money in the cooler to slide a bottle out...a dime (!). I don't have a dime. I also don't have shoes. I'm a bit raggedly, altogether.

A grownup comes in, he looks dusty, too. He has a bicycle outside with a wire basket on it, and he buys most of the root beer from the cooler. Plenty of dimes. He opens one with the can opener on the side of the cooler, and offers it to me. It is some kind of homemade root beer; it has a label stuck on it with the writing in pencil. The root beer is all icy cold and tastes incredibly, amazingly good. There are fishing poles and a box of lures and stuff on the counter, and the guy picks it all up and hands most of it to me. He says that the root beer will be "good with the fish," and that we'd better get going. He puts the rest of the bottles in the basket on the bike, and gets on it. I climb on the back, and we ride off, with me hanging on to the fishing gear.

I have no idea who this guy is. He has clearly mistaken me for someone else. I'm going along in part for the fishing, but mostly for the root beer, I think. The root beer is delicious and different -and I have, (after waking), a strong sensory memory of the taste. We ride off down the dirt road. End dream.

Avoiding interpretation, lurid or otherwise, these are the two side effects of my dream: First, I felt compelled to make a collage of it, back when it made its first appearance. The collage was semi-successful, in that it looks alot like the dream. However, it also looks a little sinister, and the dream doesn't feel scary at all. (I was especially pleased with the look of a reflection of the branch in the "window"-in case you didn't notice.) The other effect is that I have, ever since, had a real yen to make some homemade root beer, and to try to duplicate the great dream taste. ( You see, there is a food connection here, after all. You just have to be incredibly patient with my digressive yammering to get to it. ) Told you it was weird.

When I began looking into it, I discovered that it was a pretty complicated deal to make root beer. with ramifications, including the unwelcome possibility of poisonousness. However, very soon, I intend to give it a try- and I will tell you all about it.

Blueberry Ice Cream and Oatmeal Raisin Cookies

This is a combination for a hot summer night, sitting on the porch with some people you like, without a plan. It is kind of a deconstructed blueberry crisp. You will probably want to keep the ice cream cold in the kitchen, so you can have someone go back in to get seconds. The oatmeal cookies are made with the recipe from the Quaker Oats box, which really cannot be beat. If you'd like to make super huge oatmeal cookies of the sort sold commercially in so many places, you will need to add at least a quarter of a cup more sugar to the mix. I don't know why this is, but I'm certain it is true-I've experimented with this in mind in the past. Personally, I prefer a more modest scale for a a cookie.

There is probably not one North American cook who has not made this recipe, and it is still on the box, but I will include it below, for those from elsewhere, who may not have access. I love the classic oatmeal raisin cookie; not only is it delicious, but it tastes like food. Well, yeah. But if you are truly hungry, most cookies are not a satisfying solution. You eat a couple-you're still hungry, but you don't want more cookies-the sugar is starting to make you a bit queasy. Not so the oatmeal raisin cookie. It is so food-y that it is pretty nearly as satisfying as say, a baked potato (or, of course, a bowl of oatmeal). It is also, nonetheless, a good dessert. You can put chocolate chips in instead of the raisins. That's good- though the foodiness is diminished.

The oatmeal raisin cookie is a particularly good over-the-top combination with ice cream. A happier side to the recent demise of my then-full apartment fridge is that it was ultimately replaced by a new-old fridge. The replacement fridge has a really good freezer unit, capable of actually freezing the canister of my little Cuisinart ice cream machine. So it's been a little bit of an ice cream party for me this summer. I got a whole bunch of beautiful organic blueberries in my farmbox this week, and decided on some blueberry ice cream to go with the cookies. Here's how I made that:

blueberries 2 cups
sugar 3/4 cup
a vanilla bean, split
heavy cream 1 cup
whole milk 2 cups

Mash blueberries and sugar together. Put in a saucepan,with vanilla bean and bring to a boil. Turn off heat and add milk and cream. Take out bean, and save. Whirr with immersion blender until smooth. There will still be some flecks of dark in the fuschia liquid. Pour into a clean container. Replace bean. Chill thoroughly (at least 2 hours). Remove bean-for good this time. Freeze in your ice cream machine. Do not add whole berries to this. If you do, they will become disappointing, nasty little ice-pellets and spoil your treat.. Put ice cream in mold, or another clean container. Ripen in freezer, at least 6 hours.

The bit of cinnamon in the cookies is very nice with the blueberries.

"Vanishing" Oatmeal Raisin Cookies, from Quaker Oats Box

butter 1 cup, softened (2 sticks, 1/2 lb)
brown sugar 1 cup
granulated sugar 1/2 cup
eggs 2
vanilla 1 tsp
unbleached all-purpose flour 1 and 1/2 cups
baking soda 1 tsp
cinnamon 1 tsp
salt 1/2 tsp
rolled oats 3 cups
raisins 1 cup

Preheat oven to 350F. Beat butter and sugar until creamy. Beat in eggs and vanilla. Add combined flour, baking soda, cinnamon and salt. Mix well. Stir in oatmeal and raisins. Drop by rounded tablespoons onto an ungeased cookie sheet. Bake 10-12 minutes, until golden brown. Cool one minute on pan, then move to rack to finish cooling. Makes about 4 dozen.

Clem's

I am very happy to be home. Spending most of the week in seminars didn't leave much time for looking for new places of interest in State College, PA. Clem's is neither new nor new to me, but there is good reason to stop there on the way home from these festivities, and we always do. Located just outside of Blairsville, PA, about an hour away from Pittsburgh, it has a big old wood barbeque pit. They make ribs and chicken, and serve all the usual sides-potato salad, coleslaw, baked beans- and have several excellent brands of root beer.A person can be very happy here.

I have never stopped at Clem's, day or night, when they didn't have cars and trucks in the parking lot. You can smell the place before you see the "1/2 mile to Clem's" sign, and it smells spectacularly good.A while back they burned most of the place down with an overenthusiastic fire, and we were having some withdrawal pangs and anxiety. But they rebuilt, and the place looks just exactly the same. If it wasn't entirely lacking in artful display, I'd say they'd aged it, to
take off the new shine. I think it's just the woodsmoke though; things do get dusty pretty fast.

Clem's sauce is great, and you can buy a big old reusable quart ball jar of the stuff for $6.50. It is neither bland nor superhot, just kind of the perfect essence of red barbecue, where the individual ingredients are not discernable. I bought some, of course, and what I do with it is so completely nothing special, that I would be embarassed to tell you if it wasn't so good. I put a piece of pork shoulder in a slow cooker, pour the bottle over it and cook it all day. That's all. I do it a day ahead, chill it, peel off the fat on top, shred the meat, and serve it on toasted onion rolls with aforementioned sides.

This should be followed by pie. watermelon. or ice cream. But you knew that.

Baked Pasta/Macaroni and Cheese

I've got nothing against a classic mac and cheese. Generally, it is deep dish, with a crispy top layer, and gooey warm and cheddary, doled out in big soft spoonfuls, comfort food of high magnitude. It's just that my preference for a high proportion of crusty top part in my own portion, has led me to make my mac and cheese in a large shallow pan, and cover the top with buttery bread crumbs for insurance.

What we have here is something else again, further along the same path, and a distant relative of Carmela Soprano's baked ziti. This sort of baked pasta is more of a gratin, it is not custardy, and it has less cheese. The first one I made was from the house cookbook I bought years ago at Al Forno, in Providence. This was a really wonderful spicy super crispy almagam of cauliflower, cheeses, tomatos and cream, and it is a dish I have made over and over again. You can read about it here. It's really terrific.

Since then I've found that the basic blueprint is a good one for a quick dinner of that which remains of the fridge, assuming it goes well together. While this one does not have the transcendent qualites of the magic cauliflower gratin, it makes a nice mac and cheese variation. Generally, I make these crispier than you see in the photo-I kind of chickened out, thinking it would look burnt. I shouldn't have been a coward-it;s better when it's on that edge.

Tonight's macaroni cheese gratin thing had:

6 oz cooked pasta
1 cup cream
1 cup grated jarlsberg cheese
6 oz quartered button mushrooms
1 smoked pork chop, cut in small cubes
chopped fresh parsley
tablespoon prepared dijon mustard
grated nutmeg
salt
white pepper
pinch red pper
grated parmesan 1/4 cup
a leek cooked in a bit of butter til soft
dry bread crumbs
olive oil spray

I oiled the inside of an oval gratin dish, and mixed together everything but the parm and bread crumbs. The pasta, being hot, had a good start on melting the cheese. I topped it with the parm and bread crumbs, sprayed it with the spray (I like this for even browning) and stuck it in a preheated 500F oven. Yup. Really. You have to watch it, because it depends not only on the oven, but the ingredients, and maybe some mystical factors whether it takes 15 minutes or 45 minutes to get done. This one took 30 minutes in my rather slow oven-but that's no guarantee. You know when this sort of thing is done when it's bubbling underneath, and brown and very crusty on top.

I'd suggest trying the cauliflower one first, and then making up your own. I've no idea if these are anything particularly authentic, but I'm very fond of them.