So far, my sister and I have spent Friday shopping and Saturday doing absolutely nothing. Well, that’s not entirely true; yesterday, Carrie got me all caught up on Coronation Street and Emmerdale, which are kind of like soap operas except they’re on in the evening and they move much faster.

Part of the reason we stayed in all day yesterday is that it is freezing here! I mean, even by Zurich standards. But even if it wasn’t, I would have been perfectly contented to stay in. Carrie’s apartment is cozy and I still haven’t reset my internal clock to the local time. (Zurich is 6 hours ahead of Virginia.)

We’ve been cooking at home and here’s what we’ve made so far:

Spaghetti with Garlic and Chili oil

Polenta with a Mushroom Ragu

Roasted Pumpkin and Pear Salad with a Maple Balsamic Dressing

Today, Sunday, we are going to venture out in to the frozen city and take a long walk. I’m hoping to wear myself out so I can sleep tonight. I’ll take my camera along and post some pics later. Hope you’re having a lovely, restful Sunday.

]]> http://www.fiberfarm.com/2012/02/what-ive-seen-of-zurich-so-far/feed 9 http://www.fiberfarm.com/2012/01/shirred-eggs http://www.fiberfarm.com/2012/01/shirred-eggs#comments Thu, 19 Jan 2012 15:40:45 +0000 Zac http://www.fiberfarm.com/?p=15669

As you all have more than likely heard we are currently drowning in eggs. I have been trying to find new and inventive ways to cook them (seeing as frittatas and poached eggs only go so far). I was recently reminded by Caroline of our shared love of shirred eggs. Shirred eggs are the perfect combination of a soft creamy egg with the chance to add other flavors to break up the monotony of the “regular” egg dish.

I actually started these shirred eggs by making two infused oils. Infused oils make great condiments, because very little is needed to impart a great flavor. Also, since they are not actually mixed in with the egg, the flavors of the egg and the oil do not become muddled. For these shirred eggs I made thyme oil and hot chili oil. Place the pans over low heat with oil and flavoring for just a moment to warm up the oil. Then remove to rest on the counter top. You do not want to leave them on the heat or they will become bitter and lose a a lot of the fresh flavor of both the oil and flavoring.

Now onto the shirred eggs. Start by finely grating a sharp hard cheese. I used pecorino romano both because I love the sharp nutty flavor, and also because I love using sheep’s milk cheeses. I had used Parmesan as my default hard grating cheese for the longest time until my friend started studying to become a fromagier and helped to introduce me to a whole new world of hard cheesees (along with other types of cheeses). Now I look for good opportunities to branch out into different hard cheeses and find new ways to highlight them.

Next, take half of the cheese that you grated and mix it in with heavy cream. This will be the liquid that the eggs are cooked in.  Add salt and pepper in with the cheese and cream (remember that the cheese is salty so do not be too heavy handed with the salt).

Pour the milk and cheese mixture in to a ramekin and then crack the eggs over the milk and cheese mixture.

Sprinkle the cheese that you reserved over the top of the eggs and place them into a pre-heated 375 degree oven.

While the eggs are baking you can remove the oil from the pan and remove the majority of the flavoring ingredients. I like to leave a chili pepper or a thyme sprig in the oil to help remind what type of oil is in each jar.

You can tell the eggs are done with the whites begin to firm and the yolks are still jiggling around. Remember that once you remove the eggs they will continue to cook so it is better to take them out when they are still a bit under done. Finally top each shirred egg with a little garnish of toasted chili pepper and some fresh thyme with a drizzle of thyme oil on one side and chili oil on the other.

Recipe:

Eggs:

4 eggs

1/4 cup heavy cream

1 cup grated pecorino romano (very lightly packed)

salt

pepper

Oils:

1 cup olive oil

10 sprigs of thyme

20 dried chilies

Eggs: Pre-heat oven to 375 degrees. Grate 1 cup of pecorino romano using a very fine grater or micro plane zester. Mix half of the cheese in with 1/4 cup of heavy cream. Split the cream and cheese mixture between two medium size ramekins. Then crack two eggs into each of the two ramekins. Top each ramekin with the remaining grated pecorino romano. Put ramekins into oven for 15 minutes or until the whites begin to firm and the yolk remains jiggly. Once done remove the eggs and top with garnish of fresh thyme and a toasted chili and a small drizzle of thyme and chili oil.

Oil: Place 1/2 of oil into each small sauce pan. One pan with chili and the other with thyme. Place over low heat for 5 minutes or just until the oil begins to glisten. Remove and rest on the counter top for at least 30 minutes. The longer the thyme and chili stay in the more intense the flavor will become. You can choose to leave the thyme and chili in with the oil while you store it to continue to increase the flavor or remove the thyme and chili to preserve a lighter flavor.

Remember Daisy, the ever-expanding donkey? The one who was expecting a foal any minute now? We turns out, she’s not. Expecting, I mean.

At least we’re 90% sure she’s not expecting. Today, I spent the morning helping a very nice vet who specializes in equines ultrasound my donkey. Dr. Shane looked and looked but he couldn’t find any evidence that Daisy is bred, let alone due any time soon.

Why the rapidly expanding girth? Dr. Shane thinks that the pasture in Central Virginia are lush-er than those of her native Northern Virginia. Apparently keeping donkey from getting fat is a full-time job around these parts, and Daisy is going on a reducing plan right away.

I was terribly disappointed when Dr. Shane broke the news.. Terribly. I had spent a fair amount of time daydreaming about this little donk-to-be and coming up with names. Have you ever seen a newborn baby donkey? There is nothing on this earth cuter. And I know from cute, my friends!

I was also disappointed for Daisy. She is no a huge fan of sheep and goats and I’m sure she would love a friend of her own species.

So perhaps I will keep an eye on the new foals born this year at Tulip Hill Farm, the wonderful place from whence Daisy came, and find a companion for Miss Daisy this spring. Maybe even a boyfriend. I would awfully like to see a newborn mini donk.

I was already feeling blue and the weather was doing nothing to improve my mood. Today was cold, rainy, gray day, the kind best spent reading by a roaring fire with a dog at your feet.

There is only one thing that could make this kind of day better: French onion soup. Not the over-salted, thin, pale stuff that passes for French onion soup at most restaurants. No, the only thing that would do is real French onion soup, the kind Julia Child probably made when she found out her mini donkey wasn’t going to have a baby.

I like to use a variety of onions in my soup to add depth of flavor. I had sweet and yellow onions on hand. You’ll need about two pounds of onions sliced thin.

It’s not important to get them super thin; it’s more important that they be about the same width so they cook at the same rate.

Put the onions in a large dutch oven and toss them with two tablespoons of olive oil. Traditionally this recipe would be made with butter, but I was out of butter and olive oil works just fine.  Turn the burner on the lowest setting and cover, allowing the onions to sweat for about 15 minutes.

After 15 minutes, remove the little and stir in 1 teaspoon of salt and 1/2 teaspoon of sugar. The salt is for flavor, the sugar is going to help the onions caramelize. Turn the heat up to medium and cook uncovered, stirring occasionally, for 45 minutes to an hour.

You may want to rush this step but it’s really important not to. The flavor of the soup really depends of the caramelization of the onions, so be patient.

It will seem like nothing is happening for the longest time. Then you will notice that your onions are shrinking.

Then they will start to get the slightest hint of color.

And then suddenly you’ve got caramelization. I like to let my onions get to a fairly deep golden brown, but do be careful that they don’t burn at this stage.

Next you’re going to sprinkle two tablespoons of flour over the onions and stir it in. Allow to cook for two minutes.

Now it’s time to add our liquids. White wine would be good, but I don’t tend to keep white wine in the house because I don’t drink it.

Let me introduce you to my good friend vermouth.Vermouth is white wine that has been fortified, which gives it a longer shelf life. Dry vermouth can be substituted for white wine in any recipe and it’s easy to always keep a bottle in your pantry. (Marsala functions the same way as a substitute for red wine.)

Add a half cup of vermouth or dry white wine to your onions (be sure to take the pan off the heat before adding any alcohol if you have a gas stove) and stir. Continue to stir over heat until most of the vermouth has evaporated.

Next, we’ll add our stock. For every two pounds of onions, I add two quarts of beef stock. In a perfect world, we would all make out own beef stock from bones obtained at the butcher and slow roasted with a glaze of tomato paste, but this is not a perfect world. I know that because in a perfect world, my donkey would be pregnant.There’s nothing wrong with using boxed beef stock provided you look out for three things on the label. You want to be sure it says “stock” and not “broth” (broth is too weak and thin). You want to make sure the word “flavored” isn’t in evidence, as in “beef flavored stock”. And you want to buy stock that is low in sodium or, better yet, sodium-free. I found three perfectly acceptable stocks are my local grocery store.

Vegetarians wishing to make this soup should skip the vegetable stock (which will make a pallid soup) in favor of mushroom stock, a much richer, more unctuous substitute. If you can’t find mushroom stock, Better than Bouillon makes a Mushroom Base  that is a great substitute for beef stock.

Slowly add two quarts of the stock of your choice to the onion mixture, stirring well.

Let your soup simmer gently for about an hour, allowing all the lovely flavors to get to know each other.  Taste the soup for seasoning, adding salt and pepper to taste.

Now it’s time to add the coup de grace:

Stir 1/4 cup of brandy or cognac in to the soup and serve. (FYI, I used really cheap brandy in this recipe- not the fancy stuff pictured here. I forgot to take a picture of it though, so I swiped this one from the internet. You definitely don’t need to you high priced brandy or cognac in this soup.)

At this point you can add a slice of baguette and a quarter cup of shredded Gruyere cheese to your bowls and stick them under the broiler for a moment or two but it really isn’t necessary. Since I too am on a reducing plan, I added a few shavings of parmesan and ate it with a piece of crusty sourdough bread on the side. It was delicious and exactly what I needed today.

Here’s the ingredient list, in case you want to try this at home:

• 2 pounds onions, sliced
• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon sugar
• 2 Tablespoons flour
• 1/2 cup vermouth or dry white wine
• 2 quarts beef or mushroom stock
• 1/4 cup brandy or cognac

I don’t know if it was the restorative soup, the blazing fire in the wood stove or the adoring Aussie at my feet, but something reminded me how lucky I am to have a donkey at all, pregnant or not.

I thank my lucky stars every day.

]]> http://www.fiberfarm.com/2012/01/a-french-onion-soup-kind-of-day/feed 26 http://www.fiberfarm.com/2011/12/fluffy-biscuits-with-susage-gravy http://www.fiberfarm.com/2011/12/fluffy-biscuits-with-susage-gravy#comments Tue, 20 Dec 2011 22:22:28 +0000 Zac http://www.fiberfarm.com/?p=14999

I did not realize until recently that everyone did not grow up eating biscuits and gravy. During this fall farm stay season, I was told on multiple occasions that my biscuits and gravy where the first that a guest had ever had. Both my Mom and Grandmother made a point of making biscuits and gravy whenever time permitted. My Grandmother taught me to make biscuits from scratch and I have been using her recipe for biscuits and gravy ever since.

During the recent photo shoot a picture leaked of some biscuits and gravy, and Susan has been getting requests for the recipe. So this is an unabridged, full fat content, belly filling celebration of southern-style biscuits and gravy. I am very serious about biscuits and gravy,  so I have attempted to leave nothing out (that’s code for: very long post coming up).

The first step is to cut your butter into even small pieces. This will help later when you are cutting the butter into the flour mixture.

Next add the shortening. It is important to use at least two different fats inside of the biscuit because they will melt at two different temperatures, causing the biscuit lift and become extra fluffy. Butter begins to melt at 95 °F and shortening 117 °F.

Once you prepare the butter and shortening, put the bowl into the freezer. You need the fats in your biscuit to be cold when you cut them into the flour so that they form flaky layers instead of melting into the flour. The butter and shortening (for now on referred to as “the lipids”)  should be in the freezer at least 30 minutes but this is also a step you can do the night before you want biscuits.

The next step is to combine the flour, baking powder, and salt. At this point you can whisk it all together to combine the dry ingredients. I prefer to sift the dry ingredients because it removes any lumps from the flour and better incorporates the baking powder, which is the only leavening beyond the lifting power of melting lipids.

I also like sifting flour this time of year because it remind me of a winter wonderland.

Once the flour is sifted, I put it into a bowl and put the bowl into the freezer until the the lipids are ready. This helps keep the lipids cool while you are cutting them into the flour.

After the fats have fully cooled add them to the cool flour mixture. Once they are combined, you have to start acting quickly because the lipids will begin to warm up and melt.

Cut the lipids into the flour until the larges pieces are about peas size and are evenly distributed

This final step is to add the liquid ingredients. This is another opportunity to add flavor and more lipids to the biscuit. I love to use buttermilk, but often find that I do not have buttermilk when I want to make biscuits. A great solution is to keep powdered buttermilk culture on hand. You can add the buttermilk culture to milk to make buttermilk for recipes. This is great because it saves a trip to the store, and removes the problem of what to do with the leftover buttermilk. To add more lipids at this point, I like to use whole milk plus some heavy cream. Make certain to keep your buttermilk mixture in the freezer until you add it to the flour,  so that it does not melt the butter and shortening that you just spent so much time cutting into the flour. Pour the buttermilk into a well in the middle of the flour. Mix the buttermilk in just enough so that the dough begins to come together.

Once the milk is incorporated, dump the mixture onto a surface that you can kneed the dough on. You only need to kneed the dough enough to form it into loaf.

Form the dough loaf  into an even sheet that is about 1/2″ thick.

The next step is to cut out the biscuits. It is important to use a biscuit cutter that is sharp. You want the biscuit cutter to cut through the dough and not the crimp the edges. (I actually have a special biscuit cutter that I keep sharp using a sharpening steel but I understand that this might be a bit excessive.) If the dough is crimped, the biscuits will only rise in the middle and not make an even, fluffy biscuit. Take the biscuit cutter and press straight down and then remove the biscuit. Do not twist the biscuit cutter because this can also crimp the edges of the biscuit.

You can see the layers of lipids and flour. Once you cut all of the biscuits from the  dough sheet, you can re-knead the dough into a new sheet. The first biscuits you cut will always be the best, because the more you kneed the dough the less it will rise. But it’s always worth it to cut as many biscuits are possible.

When you place the biscuits on the sheet, you want their edges to be touching because, as they rise, the biscuits will help support each other. The final step before putting them in the oven is to brush them with heavy cream to help make a crisp golden top.

Preheat the oven to 450 °F, put the biscuits in the oven, and allow them to bake at this temperature for 5 minutes, or until the biscuits begin to rise. Then reduce the temperature to 400 °F for 10 more minutes or until the top of the biscuits are golden brown.

The first cut biscuits are on the right of the above picture and  second and third cuts are on the left.

You can see as the rise that the first cut biscuits are even and taller, while the second and third cut biscuits are less even.

Once removed from the oven, the biscuits are ready for some gravy. You can see that the biscuits on the right (the first cuts) really did turn out looking the nicest but the ones on the left taste just as good.

Now all that the biscuit is missing is heaping portion of sausage gravy. You can make the gravy while the biscuits are in the oven. This way you have fresh hot biscuits and gravy at the exact same time.

Start by browning the sausage in a large cast iron skillet. Start the sausage in a cold skillet and flatten it into a sheet. Do not turn or break up the sausage until it has formed a crisp bottom. It is best to have a silky smooth gravy with crunchy sausage bits.

Once the sausage has browned well you can easily break the sausage into bit size bits. Continue browning until all sides of the sausage are crisp.

Once the sausage is crisp check the pan for the amount of fat rendered. There should be about 2 tablespoons of rendered fat. If there is not you can add shortening until you have enough fat in the pan. Now for the thickening, I prefer flour for thickening because I think the flavor cooks out to be smoother.

At this point if you would like to add extra spices to the gravy you can. I like my gravy to be extra spicy so I add crushed red chili peppers and then add sage to help balance the spice.

Once you add the flour and spices you can begin to stir them in with the sausage and rendered fat.

Cook the flour in with the sausage until in begins to bubble rapidly. Then lower the heat and continue to cook for 5 minutes. This is an important step to prevent the gravy from tasting like flour and also allow the flour to brown a little which adds a nice depth of flavor.

Once the flour has cooked you can add the milk. Add the milk slowly while stirring the sausage and bring the skillet back up to medium heat.

Stop stirring once the milk, sausage and, flour have combined.  Over-stirring can cause your gravy to become too thick.

Once the gravy begins to bubble and visibly thicken, remove it from the heat. The heat of the cast iron skillet will keep it warm and it will continue to thicken. Before serving make sure to stir the gravy just enough to make it even.

If you have timed everything right your gravy and biscuits will be done at exactly the same time. Open up a steaming fluffy biscuit and put enough gravy on top to cover the top with a little running over the edge. One biscuit with gravy will leave you feeling really full and two biscuits with gravy will surely put you back to sleep. As I said before I am very serious about biscuits and gravy and love to make biscuits from scratch. I feel that nothing beats a warm biscuit with rich hot gravy on a cold winter morning.

Recipe

Biscuit:

8 tablespoons butter

5 tablespoons shortening

3 1/2 cups flour

2 tablespoons baking powder

2 teaspoons salt

1 1/4 cup milk

1/4 cup heavy cream

1 tablespoon buttermilk culture

Sausage Gravy:

1 lb breakfast sausage

2 tablesp0ons of flour

1 tablespoon crushed pepper (optional)

1 teaspoon sage (optional)

2 cup milk

Biscuit:

Chop 8 table spoons of butter into pea size pieces and add 5 table spoons of shortening. Place the butter and shortening into the freezer for at least 30 minutes.  Combine flour, baking powder, and salt in bowl and then sift. Place flour mixture in freezer until time to remove butter. Meanwhile mix milk, heavy cream and buttermilk culture. Remove butter once frozen and combine with flour mixture. Using a pastry cutter or two forks combine butter and shortening with flour mixture. Once butter shortening and flour are combined create well in the center and pour the milk mixture. Stir together until just combined.  Flip onto a surface to kneed together until it forms a loaf that holds together (kneed 3-4 times). Flatten the loaf into a sheet 1/2″ thick and cut biscuits. Re-kneed leftover dough to form more biscuits. Place of a cookie sheet. Brush the tops with heavy cream. Place into a pre-heated 450 degree over for 5 minutes and then reduce the oven temperature to 400 for 10 minutes or until tops are golden brown.

Gravy:

Add 1 lb of breakfast sausage to a cool cast iron skillet. Bring temperature to medium high and cook until bottom in crispy and brown. Break sausage into bit size pieces and continue to brown. Once all pieces are crispy add flour and then crushed red pepper and sage (if desired). Stir to combine and cook at medium high until flour and sausage begin to sizzle. Reduce heat to low and continue to cook for five minutes. Then while continuously stirring add milk and then allow to rest on low. Once the gravy begins to bubble stir once or twice more and then serve. If the gravy over thickens you can add milk at 1 tablespoon increments to thin the gravy.

In addition to the all-incompassing photo shoot at the farm this week, we had a house full of sick designers, models and assistants. They were all total troopers- in spite of their runny noses and sore throats! The good news is that all are now on the mend, and I think that is due- at least in part- to my homemade chicken soup.

I want you to make this chicken soup now, while you are healthy and well, and freeze it in serving-size portions for when you catch the inevitable cold. Future, sick you will be all kinds of grateful that past, healthy you took the time and care to fill up the freezer with this magical and healing chicken soup that beats the hell out of anything that comes from a can.

I have been told that this is the best chicken soup in the universe, which may be a slight exaggeration, but it is awfully damned good. There are two top secret reasons for that which I will reveal in this post but only if you promise to keep them under your hat. Discretion is paramount, y’all!

This soup is also dead easy to make and doesn’t ever require homemade chicken stock to be sublime, although homemade stock would make it even…um…sublimer. I have a freezer full of homemade stock but with 46 garments to shoot and a houseful of cold-havers, I didn’t have time for it to thaw. I used boxed stock. So sue me!

First make a mirepoix. Mirepoix is two parts diced onions, one part diced carrots, one part diced celery. I used two medium yellow onions, four carrots and four celery stalks.

Gently sautee’ your mirepoix in your largest dutch oven or soup pot. Cook over medium-low heat until they are softened by not mushy.

When the mirepoix is softened, add the leaves from three or four sprigs of thyme, the chopped leaves of one rosemary stalk and lots and lots of garlic. I usually mince an entire head of garlic for this soup but I didn’t have time for all that fiddly chopping this time, soI used an entire tube of concentrated garlic paste. You can used jarred minced garlic, although I think it is a poor substitute for the real deal. Garlic, rosemary and thyme all have medical properties, which is why they are the flavor stars of this soup.

Since we want to make enough soup to portion and freeze, we’re going big! Add three 48 ounces boxes of low sodium chicken stock to your pot and raise the heat to medium high.

You can either roast a chicken on your own or buy rotisserie chicken at the market. If you go the rotisserie route, be sure to get an unflavored chicken, i.e. not bar-b-que or lemon flavored.

Shred the the entire chicken with your hands, discarding the skin this will seem like a lot of chicken but that’s kind of the idea. I like my chicken soup packed. Add the chicken to your soup pot.

Okay, here’s secret ingredient number one. Have you ever wondered why restaurant chicken soup is so much better than yours? Here’s why. In restaurant parlance, it’s called chicken base and now you can get it at the supermarket. Stir a HEAPING tablespoon of chicken base to your soup pat. [I actually great prefer Glace de Poulet to Better than Bouillon but my grocery store doesn't carry it. I stock up when I'm in Charlottesville or Baltimore but Better than Bouillon is a perfectly good substitute. What isn't a good substitute is bouillon cubes! Don't be tempted to toss a couple of those in- too salty and too weird tasting. If you find Glace de Poulet, stir into the soup exactly the way I did here, ignoring the package directions.]

Let your soup simmer until thoroughly heated, 20 minutes or so.

Secret number two to the best chicken soup is to cook the noodles in a separate pot of water only when you are ready to serve. Yes, it’s another pot to watch but trust me, it’s entirely worth it. Most chicken soup suffers from mushy, over-cooked noodles and it is entirely unnecessary. The other benefit of cooking the noodles separately is that you aren’t limiting yourself to only noodle soup. Sometimes I like to add wild rice to this soup, or even couscous. In this case, I used super-wide egg noodles.

When you’re ready to eat, simply add your noodles to the bowl and then ladle in the soup.

Reward yourself for all that work with a bowl for lunch.

Tuck the rest away in portion-sized containers for a day when you are too under the weather to feed yourself.

Remember way back on June 21st, the first day of Summer, when we started macerating our fruit for the world’s greatest fruit cake? Well it’s time to get that boozy fruit out of the cupboard and make a cake, y’all!

As I mention in my previous post, this recipe was brought to the world’s attention by food writer Laurie Colwin- who is a mortal lock for the Food Writers Hall of Fame, should such a thing ever come to be. The recipe that follows was published in the November 1988 issue of Gourmet Magazine. I’ve added a few of my own notes where I think they will be of assistance.

Laurie Colwin’s Black Cake

Macerating the Fruit

1 LB raisins, minced
1 LB pitted prunes, minced
1 LB dried currants, minced
1 LB glaceed cherries, minced (I have
substituted dried cherries with good result)
6 oz glaceed lemon peel, minced
6 oz glaceed orange peel, minced.
1 bottle dark rum
1 bottle (750 ml) Manischewitz Concord Grape Wine.

Combine the fruits, wine and rum in a large non-reactive container, cover tightly, and allow to soak for at least two weeks. [We already did this part, of course, because we are organized and magical.] [But not that magical. My fruit did not grow to fill the giant jar you see in the photo from the previous post: I moved it to a smaller jar to save pantry space a while back.]

Baking the Cake

4 1/4 cups cake flour
4 tsp. double-acting baking powder
1/2 tsp. freshly grated nutmeg (the freshly grated is important)
1/2 tsp cinnamon
4 sticks (2 cups, one pound) unsalted butter, softened
1 pound brown sugar
10 large eggs
1 tablespoon vanilla
1 Jar Burnt Sugar [alternatively, you can burn your own sugar by following the instructions here.]
1 1/2 cups almond paste

Into a bowl, sift together the flour, the baking powder, the nutmeg and the cinnamon. [Wanna here a secret? I never, ever sift. Like, ever. In culinary school, we learned that you can get the job done by whisking all your ingredients together well.]

In the large bowl of a mixer, cream the butter, and the remaining pound of brown sugar until the mixture is light and fluffy. Beat in the eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. [You should always crack each egg into a small bowl and then add it to your batter. This prevents your wrecking the whole thing when you get one rotten egg.]

Beat in the vanilla, the flour mixture and the whole jar of burnt sugar.

In another large bowl (the largest you have, by now you will be dealing with serious volume) combine the flour mixture and the fruit mixture, and combine well.

[How large a bowl do you need? I've found one that can comfortably hold a seven-year-old is just about right.]

[Super Important Note: I DID NOT ADD all the liquid from my macerated fruit. It just seemed like way too much. Instead, I used a slotted spoon to scoop out all the fruit and then added half a cup of liquid at a time until the batter seemed to be the consistency of...well...cake batter. You can reserve the rest of the booze for next year's cake. Or drink it if you want but that's on you.]

Divide between two 10 inch springform pans [I used two 9 inch springforms because that's what I had] and bake in a preheated 350° oven for 1 hour and 50 minutes to 2 hours or until the cakes are set and a tester inserted into the center comes out with some crumbs adhering to it. (The centers of the cakes will be quite moist.)

Let the cakes cool in the pans on a rack, then remove the bottom and sides and wrap in foil or plastic wrap. Let stand for couple of days before icing. [Longer is better. I've waited up to a week before frosting in the past, but a couple of days is more than enough.]

Just out of the oven.

[My cake was still too warm to take out of the pan without risking breakage but I wanted to get this blog post up ASAP so y'all can start on your own. When you get to this point, your family will say things like, "looks like you burnt the cake" and "I think you did something wrong" and "I am NOT eating that!" Ignore them. Nobody had faith in the Wright Brothers either but I'm flying to New York on Monday all the same.]

Finishing the cake.

Black cake must be iced. Colwin used a fairly standard Imperial Frosting (confectioner’s sugar, egg whites, and lemon juice, beaten until thick). To finish the cake, roll enough almond paste out to make a circle as big as the cake and about 1/8-inch thick. Carefully fit the layer over the cake, and trim as necessary to fit.

Frost the cake with the icing, and decorate with silver dragees.

For me, Thanksgiving is all about the food. I know, it’s bold statement but it’s one I will stick by. Family, being thankful- all of that rocks- but I love my family and count my blessings every day. The Thanksgiving Feast, on the other hand, is a once-a-year thing.

I think we need more feast days on our calendar but for now, we only have the one and I try to make the most of it each year. I especially enjoy the cooking on Thanksgiving. Spending the day in a cozy kitchen while first the parade, then the football game play barely audibly in the background is well up my alley.

But, as you know, I am always one to try and improve on a good thing, to give the envelope a tiny nudge, to gild the lilly. And I thought that I might just be able to improve on nature’s prefect food: stuffing. (Or dressing if you prefer; I want to go on record here as saying that  both are correct and that I wouldn’t take a side in that particular civil war for love nor money.)

There are nearly as many recipes for stuffing as there are cooks and every family has there own sacrosanct version. My family has two, actually. My dad makes an oyster dressing that’s so good I some times have actual dreams about it. My Mama, Carrie and I have a super-secret traditional stuffing recipe that we adore and which we share with NO ONE. Not since my Mama gave it to her sister Shirley, who then promptly submitted it to her church’s self-publish, fund-raiser cookbook. (Apparently there are no secrets between Aunt Shirley and the Southern Baptist Ladies Auxiliary.)

So why, you are now asking yourselves, am I even bothering with a new stuffing recipe? Because I must. The idea for this stuffing came to me a couple of weeks ago and I just couldn’t get it out of my head. So I scheduled an early Thanksgiving for last Monday (widely referred to as ‘Fakesgiving’ by those in attendance) and spent the day perfecting my recipe.

And now, I present it to you, my lovely, loyal readers.

Here’s what you’ll need:

1 box Trader Joe’s Pumpkin Bread and Muffin Mix (if you don’t live near a Trader Joe’s, substitute another brand)

2 French baguettes, torn into bite-sized pieces and allowed to sit out overnight to dry out

1 skillet of corn bread (home made or from a box, it matters little as long as it isn’t sweet)

1 pound breakfast sausage, browned (or 2 pounds if you really like sausage in your stuffing as I do.)

4 cups chicken or turkey stock

1 handful dried cranberries

1 heaping tablespoon dried sage (or more to taste)

Salt and pepper to taste

Instructions:

Prepare Trader Joe’s Pumpkin Bread Mix according to the package directions then pour into a large glass pyrex dish and cook until an inserted toothpick comes out clean.

Meanwhile, prepare a skillet of corn bread according to your favorite recipe, omitting any sugar.

If you failed to leave your baguette pieces out overnight to dry, now is a good time to pop them in the oven at 350 for ten minutes or so to dry them out. Then place them in  a large mixing bowl.

Crumble and add one half  the pan of pumpkin bread to the bowl, along with all the crumbled corn bread and a handful of dried cranberries. (Save the other half of the pumpkin bread for breakfast tomorrow.)

Add the browned sausage to the bowl and a couple of teaspoons of the fat from the pan.

Add a tablespoon of sage.

And three cups of the chicken stock.

And two eggs to help bind everything together.

Stir to combine. The stuffing should be damp but not wet. If you’re stuffing is too dry, add more chicken stock, a bit at a time, until you active the dampness you want. Then taste for seasoning and add salt and pepper to taste.

This recipe made enough stuffing to stuff a ten pound bird with enough left over to fill a large casserole dish that we cooked alongside the turkey.

We were so hungry by the time dinner was ready that we completely forgot to take any pics of the finished turkey. D’oh!

The stuffing that comes out of the bird is just. so. good. It’s like all of Thanksgiving condensed into a delicious, complex dish. Although it’s not sweet, there are sweet undertones that combine so nicely with the savory, sausage-y, sage-i-ness. Pumpkin, cranberries, sausage and turkey juices…what’s not to love?

Give it a try on your next Fakesgiving or even on Thanksgiving Day itself. In the meantime, help me come up with a name for this recipe? Leave your suggestions in the comments.

Here’s a happy lil’ mathematical principle for you (Saturday morning surprise attack!). It’s the principle of transitivity, which goes like:

If A=B, and B=C, then A=C.

What does that have to do with anything?

If, in a recipe, tomatoes can be switched out for tomatillos, and tomatillos are really a lot like green tomatoes, then anything you cook with tomatoes, you can maybe also cook with green tomatoes.

Right?

Or could it perhaps be that my love of the green tomato knows no bounds?

Anyway, faced with this glut, we decided that green tomato salsa would be a good way to make a dent. First, you put about 4 to 5 lbs of tomatoes on your grill:

(Totally unnecessary step– it just adds a little of that beloved charred flavor to the finished product.)

Then, you throw them all into a big, heavy pot:

along with:

• a chopped onion (or two)
• a few chopped jalapeños (or six)
• 1 tbl salt (more to taste)
• a chopped bunch of cilantro, if you like it
• 5 lemons’ worth of lemon juice
• 5 limes’ worth of lime juice

You can be really nonchalant about the whole thing except for those last two ingredients– they ensure that the pH of the final salsa is low (acidic) enough to kill any bacteria present in the salsa once it’s been canned. That’s why you see the citric acid used as a canning ingredient sometimes. (That’s also the whole idea behind pickles.)

Anyway, we prefer lemon/lime juice, because they’re ingredients in salsa to begin with, and so can be tweaked without altering the flavor too much (it’ll taste zippier, but, that’s not a bad thing).

This takes most of the afternoon to cook down, and make your house smell like spicy, spicy heaven in the meantime. Maybe hit it with the immersion blender a couple of times to keep things going?

Anyway, the thing is, salsa doesn’t ever reach a final consistency, like jam, jelly, or chutney do. You just have to decide that it looks like it’s reduced enough, ladle it into jars (we ended up with 12! A whole flat of Ball jars!), and process in boiling water for about 30 minutes.

It’s wonderful– especially if you are of neither the pickley-briney nor the sweet-and-heavily-spiced persuasions when it comes to preserved foods. Plus, since the salsa’s reduced & fully cooked, it can also serve as an enchilada sauce (unlike, say, a more crude pico de gallo type salsa).

So, if you’ve still got any green tomatoes out on the vines, I’ve got this great idea about how you could spend your Saturday afternoon…

There’s always that delicate balance to consider: always some give, always some take.

In this particular case, we’re talking about space and time in the garden beds. Even though there are still a few weeks left for the tomatoes to ripen, it’s time to make room for the fall crops to grow to size before the first frost (more on that: coming soon).

So, last week, I ripped up all the tomato vines, and harvested a bushel basket full of green tomatoes.

We’ve got regular old Burpee Cherry Tomatoes and otherwise-run-of-the-mill tomatoes, and the rather more dramatically named country cousins from Baker Creek: Tigerella, Bloody Butcher, and Moneymaker Tomatoes.

They are beautiful.

As such, they’re all destined for Tomato Immortality– the Ball Jar.

The bigger ones will be put up as salsa, chutney, and mincemeat. But the littler tomatoes have all been pickled.

You need:

• green tomatoes
• white vinegar
• pickling salt
• flavorings: bay leaf, dried peppers, dill, peppercorns

First, you wash and sort through your tomatoes, throwing out any blemished fruit. Then, you make brine– I made the brine a little stronger than usual (2:1 :: white vinegar:water, with a teaspoon of pickling salt for every cup of liquid), since I pickled the tomatoes whole– by mixing your vinegar, water, and salt, then bringing it to a boil.

I haven’t specified the amount of brine you’ll need, because chances are you’ve got a different amount of different-sized tomatoes that you’ll be packing into different-sized jars. The important thing is to make your brine strong enough, and to make enough brine to cover the tomatoes (it’s better to overshoot the amount you’ll need). If it helps, I had maybe 6 or 7 lbs of green tomatoes, and had to make about 9 cups total of brine to fill 10 pint jars.

Put your favored flavorings into the bottom of your freshly-sanitized jars, then pack in your tomatoes, leaving at least 1/4″ headspace at the top of the jar.

Then, using a canning funnel, pour in the boiling brine (leaving a bit of headspace). Screw on the lids, and process for 15 minutes in a boiling-water bath.

Let the water cool, then take out your jars. The pickles come out looking like this:

They lose their bright green color, and the skins sometimes split slightly. Perfectly okay. Check the seals, and, if they’re good, put them up in the pantry (if not, check to make sure the jar’s not overfull, then reprocess), and feel proud of the fact that you’ve helped them to a higher plane of tomato-existence: the spicy baby green tomato pickle.

It’s no secret that we’re drowning in goat’s milk here on the farm– three quarts a day is enough to satisfy even the most avid of enthusiastic-milk-drinkers-cum-amateur-cheesemakers. So when Amy suggested we make cajeta, I was plenty excited to try it. As a kid, I’d always wanted to make that Dulce de Leche where you boil a can of sweetened condensed milk for hours– turn a boring can of canned-something into candy? Yes, please!– but heard it was dangerous or something– what if the can exploded?– so never did.

Turns out, as far as basic preparation (“the bones of the recipe”), Cajeta = Dulce de Leche = Confiture de Lait = trans. MILK JAM. This delights me to no end.

It’s simple to make (“Get some milk. Put some sugar in it. Boil it.”), and wildly delicious.

Let me explain.

We took 6 quarts of goat’s milk (but you can use cow’s milk), mixed in 6 cups of sugar (this makes a tooth-achingly sweet caramel. Next time, we’re dialing way back.), and threw in a vanilla bean pod.

You bring this to a boil, and stir occasionally to make sure that the sugar dissolves and that the milk isn’t scorching. You can see in the picture above that the stove is on high– if you do this, keep an eye on it.

Meanwhile, dissolve a little bit of baking soda (less than a teaspoon) in a half-cup of water. Once the milk boils, add the dissolved baking soda– the milk will bubble up more crazily than before, because the baking soda’s releasing CO₂. As I understand it, this keeps the cajeta sort of foamy, so that it cools into a silky cream, instead of gritty, precipitated-out sugar crystals.

Anyway, turn the heat down a little and keep boiling & stirring & boiling & stirring until your cajeta turns darker and darker tan. It should be reduced by a little more than half, and be pretty thick. This took us about an hour and a half– it could take you longer. Once it’s reached soft ball stage, take off of heat and let cool.

How to tell if it’s reached soft ball stage? Take out a little spoonful and throw it in some ice water. Did it waterily dissipate? Or did it turn into a firmed-up piece of soft caramel that you think you’d like to eat? If the latter, you’re gold. Another way to tell is to see if the sauce “ribbons”– if it drips directly off a slightly-tilted spatula, or if it runs along the surface of the spatula and then all drips off in one corner.

If you scroll down to the last picture, you can see that we opted to err on the side of a thicker caramel, mainly because you can always thin it out by heating it up. But, experiment. Make it how you like it.

Once the sauce cools, you can pour it into clean jars (note the 1 pristine jar that we’re giving to Amy, and the 1 grotty jar we’ve already gotten in to).

From 6 quarts of milk and 6 cups of sugar, we got 2 very heavy quarts of ultra-ultra-concentrated, thick, silky caramel. This goodness of this stuff is so highly concentrated that it was (according to Wikipedia) an important element in the Mexican War of Independence– which fact also delights me to no end. You get a lot of energy in a small, easily-transported, non-spoiling (all that sugar– it’s the same idea as jam) jar– you can win a war with this stuff! It’s awesome!

Thus far, we’re having it with our coffee– and eating it right off the spoon– but we’re also branching out into the rather Inception-like possibilities of putting it on goat-yogurt, or goat-ice-cream, and making goat-milkshakes (this is called, “Caprine Confection Inception”).

If you have any other caramel ideas, I’d love to hear them! I’ve had a particular yen for these ever since she blogged about them (also for this, but that’s weirder), and the best part is, we’ve got a closet full of lavender that’s been drying since June.

All I’m saying is, things are pretty darn wonderful around here. Thank goodness for goats!