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Let Us Eat Cake

Birthday Cake
August 29, 2010 By In eat me, three points kitchen

We raised a glass and feted Rebecca, the birthday girl, here in Charm City this past weekend.

I am slightly ashamed to say that the birthday girl basically baked her own celebratory cake, but after a quick comparison of culinary track records and  kitchen disasters of recent memory, it was pretty obvious that the only way it was going to be awesome was if one of us (ahem) stayed out of the way, so we rolled with it. I did minimal damage by annoying the pastry chef with my camera and adding a few festive sprinkles to the finished product.

Now here is RW with the inside scoop on the baking process and how it ended up so tasty. . .

Well, Molly’s finishing touches did make the difference. . .  After pondering more elaborate recipes–various coconut cakes, multi-layer extravaganzas–couldn’t resist the Best Birthday Cake. (Guess I’m swayed by “Best” recipes lately.) And how. This recipe is a beauty, turning out a lovely textured, buttery-tasting cake with a simple and not overly sweet frosting that spreads like silk.  This calls for cake flour and it’s worth making the effort to pick up some; it helps create moist layers that cut into perfect slices without lots of crumbs. Many thanks to Smitten Kitchen for the great recipe, and to my superb Three Points Baltimore prep cook.

P.S. The cake also travels well, surviving a long-slog, traffic-jammed bus ride back to NYC without a dent. My seatmate did look on a bit longingly as I dug into one slice en route, but sorry, too precious to share.

Crunchy: Hippie Granola

granola1
August 22, 2010 By In eat me, three points kitchen

I’m almost embarrassed to admit that I have had this beauty stashed in the kitchen pantry since Christmas. (Thanks, mom-in-law!!) Not being a household of regular pancake eaters, no occasion for maple syrup ever seemed “special” enough or large enough in required quantity to warrant cracking the seal on 32 ounces of sugary liquid gold. And then it was as if the bar for opening our little keg just kept getting higher and higher with each passing month.

This morning, however, I went looking for a granola recipe big on interesting nuts and grains and low on sugars and dried fruit (gummy bear-chewy is not my palate’s preferred texture). It took a little Googling before I found one that suited me (in the end, it was a tongue-in-cheek search for “hippie granola” that actually reeled in what I was after)* and what pushed it well over the edge was 1) the peanut butter addition (it was a familiar technique: I use this trick in salad dressings a lot) and 2) the indication that the addition of maple syrup, should one have access to this resource, would make a heavenly swap for some of the other sweeteners in the recipe. Bonus: we had toasted wheat germ in the fridge and (what’s better than peanut butter?) almond butter on the shelf. So, stir, stir, stir, toast, toast, toast, and…

I was not disappointed. Take that, Bare Naked.

*A medical professional once pointed out to me that I was “a little crunchy, right?” before he suggested some slightly alternative therapy. It took me a minute to catch his granola hippie drift. To be fair, I was in his office getting shots for a three-month stint in Nepal.

Lock Your Doors (August Bounty Edition)

shrub1
August 21, 2010 By In eat me, three points kitchen

There was no plan for today’s market shopping and cooking adventure, and so I played a little fast and loose with the recipes as well. Most notably, even though it still seems way too early for squash, a pretty little curry squash turned into an impulse buy. I intended to make a black bean and squash dish and a nice chilled squash soup, but in the end there was a lot less squash than I though I was going to have, so I kind of just blended it together in a bastardization of this winter standby. Cilantro chutney and yogurt perk it up for summer.

Also got some ginger and raspberry vinegar going so that shrub drinks can be manufactured during Rebecca’s impending visit. We will be partying like it’s 1899.

The rest of the fresh black beans and the last of the garden tomatoes plus a left over bell pepper and a handful of last week’s frozen corn came together quite nicely in this quinoa salad. Super foods! We are feeding a Cat 2 bike racer here, after all.

If you grew up in Ohio, you know to lock your doors against neighbors who will bring you tomatoes or a baseball bat of a zucchini as “a gift” in August. Look out, as I’ll be coming armed with roasted tomatillo salsa verde in my purse. I was not expecting this much product, but they look so cute!

With what’s left in the fridge from this week’s market haul, we can try out Okonomiyaki (Japanese Pizza) and Eggplant Salad Toasts.


Good eating, everyone!

Old World Charm

gratin
August 14, 2010 By In eat me, three points kitchen

While waiting for the bus back from the Waverly Farmers’ Market in Baltimore this morning, I watched in awe as a terribly frail older gentleman called out to a “young lady” (who herself must have been in her 70s) and offered her his seat on the bench. No other seated customer moved an inch, so he slowly hobbled over to the side of the road and carefully lowered himself, hand over hand down his walker, onto the curb just a few yards away.

Thankfully, he soon got a place back on the bench and well out of the path of oncoming traffic, and I headed home tangentially enriched by his example of generosity as well as by my  two sacks full of fresh produce. Despite my light wallet this week, I scored quite a haul! Due to an intense need to procrastinate, a cooking plan was quickly hatched, and after about five hours and surprisingly little swearing, I managed to convert these:


Into these:


And in the process avoid all the things I was supposed to be doing today without another thought.

In almost all cases, I was trying out recipes from a site I read frequently but hadn’t managed to actually cook from much yet–101cookbooks.com. After taking stock of the fridge and pantry, I decided to try out:

If all this food was going to actually fit in the fridge when I was done, I was going to have to clear out the yogurt and half-empty cottage cheese containers. Conveniently, there was just enough left of those for Martha Rose Shulman’s Creamy Cucumber Salad. And a quick side project to put together some cilantro chutney means I can use up the left over tofu from last week’s dinner experiment in this under-the-broiler dish later this week. The extra corn and zucchini went into ziplock bags and were packed into the freezer for more vitamin-desperate times. I have no idea if these will taste better than the kind in my grocery store’s  freezer section, but after all that knife work, I certainly hope so.

Whew. Now for wine and a movie.