Love at First Blush

In desperate need of some sweetness to leaven a week of bitter political rhetoric and soul-sucking seasonal melancholy, I decided to make jam. I had to really. It was either that or break out the Prozac and vodka, and I didn't need a prescription for sugar.

End of the season peaches at 99 cents a pound settled the question as to what kind. Undoubtedly grown in Mexico, they were hard as rocks and, I would soon discover, not even freestone. They would, however, most certainly do in a jam. (I’m feeling more puckish already.)

All of the preserved peach preparations in my cookbooks bored me like Sunday school. I needed something a little dangerous. A taste of something slightly strange. The scent of romance.

I found what I was looking for on the internet, (would that it were always so simple): peach jam with the tender tang of raspberries and a kiss of culinary lavender.

This is a sexy jam.

And so good it will make you blush.

BLUSHING PEACH-LAVENDER JAM

 (yields about 12 half-pint jars)

2 tablespoons culinary lavender buds

9 cups peaches, peeled, pitted and chopped

3 cups fresh raspberries

8 cups white granulated sugar

3/4 cup fresh lemon juice

2 (3 ounce) envelopes liquid fruit pectin

Ideally the peaches should be just ripe but still firm. Despite my preference for working with the freestone variety, the best peach for this jam is a yellow cling, which has more sugar; all the better to make it gel.

Still, this recipe needs a little help. Though some purists eschew it, when used appropriately, fruit pectin is your friend. Think of it as Viagra for jam. Use only as much as you need and be aware that liquid and powdered pectins are not interchangeable for substitution. If it says 'liquid pectin,' use liquid pectin.

While preparing the peaches, steep the lavender buds in 1 cup of boiling water. (I use a tea ball so straining isn't necessary.)

Combine peaches, raspberries, lemon juice and sugar in a large pot. Stir to combine. Bring to a boil, stirring until sugar dissolves.  Reduce to a slow boil and cook until liquid is reduced to a syrupy consistency. Stir frequently and mash the fruit as it begins to soften. (Or, give it a couple of spins with the immersion blender, but not too many if you like chucks of fruit in your jam.) Cooking time will vary depending on the ripeness of the peaches, roughly 20 minutes to 1/2 hour.

Stir in 2/3 cup of the lavender water and the fruit pectin. Bring back to a boil and cook for another 15 minutes, stirring frequently, or until syrup is thick and fruit is tender and partially dissolved.

Remove from heat. Skim foam if necessary.

Ladle hot jam into prepared, sterilized jars, leaving 1/4-inch space at the top. Cap and process 10 minutes in boiling water. (Click here for complete canning instructions.)

Delicious with biscuits, scones, crackers, cheeses, just about anything you want to put it on; and so seductive you may want to enjoy it in private. It's a little like falling in love, but much less complicated.

All You Need Is Chocolate

Of all the manufactured holidays, Valentine's Day is my least favorite. Although I remain ever the hopeless romantic, the spirit of the occasion was forever crushed for me by the indelibly cruel grammar school ritual of exchanging cards with everyone in your class. Surely you remember those 'value' bags of Valentines from back in the day, (I happen to know the teachers kept a few in their desks in case some kid's family couldn't afford them). There'd be a couple of big fancy cards, for your best girlfriend and your secret crush, a bunch of cute, if non-committal but at least medium-sized, cards for most of the others, and a handful of crappy little cards that pictured a postman putting a letter into a mailbox with the caption, "Just dropping by to wish you a Happy Valentine's Day," for the kids you'd never noticed before or just plain didn't like.

The only time I got one of the big cards from a boy was in 5th grade, from Frank (not his real name) Crabb. Having been 'held back' several years, Frank was 13 and the only kid in grammar school who smoked cigarettes and shaved. Already a sexual deviate, he had an unnerving habit of accidentally bumping into budding prepubescent girls in the hallway and grabbing their breasts. And no, Frank did not go on to become a doctor or president of the local bank, despite what my mother tried to tell me that night in a vain effort to cheer me up. (Last I heard he was in prison, but I can't say for what. We kind of lost touch.)

My secret crush, Bobby Smith, who did become a doctor and to whom I'd given one of my big Valentines -- a sad-eyed, droopy-eared puppy holding a huge heart its paws and the text, "I'm begging to be your Valentine" -- gave me the postman putting a letter into a mailbox with, "just kidding," written on the back. And, no, I am not making this up.

Fortunately, there was chocolate, Hershey's Kisses, the gateway to Godiva. My mom just handed me the bag and let me eat all I wanted. (It was a lot easier than explaining the cutthroat world of adolescence I was about to enter, where my social value would be judged solely on my bra size and ability to French kiss without gagging.) It turned out to be the most important thing I'd learn from her.

Any of you ladies who've spent hours making the perfect chocolate truffle cheesecake mousse for your significant other on Valentine's Day, even though you know that's not what he really wants,  know who that chocolate extravaganza is really for. So let's cut to the chase. You want chocolate. It's never let you down, and it never will. It doesn't have to be fancy, and it doesn't have to take all day to prepare; it just has to be rich, and satisfying. (I leave you to draw your own comparisons.)

So whether you're spending Valentine's Day solo or with your soul mate, it's time to get out your heart-shaped dish or pan, (you know you have one), splurge on some top quality chocolate and cocoa powder, and whip up a quick and easy chocolate fix that hits all the right spots every time; hot fudge, cake, creamy pudding, and 72% cacao. All you need is chocolate.

HOT FUDGE PUDDING CAKE

1 cup cold brewed coffee mixed with 1/2 cup water OR 2 teaspoons instant coffee dissolved in 1 1/2 cups water
2/3 cup unsweetened cocoa powder (divided)
1/3 cup packed brown sugar
1 cup granulated sugar (divided)
6 tablespoons unsalted butter
2 ounces semisweet or bittersweet chocolate, chopped
3/4 cup unbleached all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
1/3 cup whole milk
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 egg yolk

Adjust oven rack to lower-middle position and preheat oven to 325 degrees. Spray an 8-inch (8 cup) cake pan or dish with baking spray.

In a small bowl, stir together 1/3 cup of the cocoa, the brown sugar, and 1/3 cup of the granulated sugar. Set aside.

Melt butter, with the remaining 1/3 cup of cocoa and the chocolate in the top of a double boiler. Whisk until smooth, cool slightly.

Sift flower and baking powder together, set aside.

In a medium bowl, whisk together the remaining 2/3 cup granulated sugar, vanilla, milk and salt. Whisk in egg yolk. Add chocolate mixture and then flour mixture, whisking until batter is evenly moistened.

Pour batter into prepared baking dish. Sprinkle cocoa sugar mixture evenly over batter (should cover entire surface). Then pour the coffee gently over the top.

Bake about 45 minutes, until cake is puffed and bubbling and just beginning to pull away from the sides of the dish. Do not over bake. You want to keep that gooey, hot fudge pudding on the bottom.

Cool for about 15 minutes. Serve warm with vanilla ice cream, no substitutes. Leftover cake can be reheated in the microwave in individual serving dishes. That is, if you don't eat it all at once. But you probably will.

Don't Eat The Plastic Baby

In New Orleans, (and particularly if you're Catholic), the holiday party season kicks into high gear just when it's winding down for everybody else. Mardi Gras festivities begin on January 6, (also known as "Epiphany," "Twelfth Night," and "King's Day," it's the day the fabled three kings visited the baby Jesus, bearing swag and likely jockeying for position in the blessings queue), and end on Fat Tuesday, which is the day before Ash Wednesday, which signals the beginning of Lent, with its requisite deprivation, weeping, wailing, and gnashing of teeth.

Confused? Okay then, let's forget the Catholic part, (most eventually do), and talk cake, King Cake to be precise.

The European custom of King Cake parties during Carnival season was brought to the southern United States by colonists from France and Spain, and dates back to eighteenth century New Orleans. Shaped in the rough approximation of a crown, (use your imagination), and decorated in the Mardi Gras colors of purple (justice), green (faith), and gold (power), the traditional King Cake is really more sweet bread than cake. Think coffee cake with a message and a tiny plastic doll tucked inside to represent the baby Jesus. Whoever gets the plastic baby is obligated to host the next party, but will also blessed with good luck throughout the coming year. That's providing, of course, that you don't swallow the baby; in which case you probably won't be expected to do anything, and you can forget the good luck too, since you'll likely have choked to death.

Done right though, King Cake is well worth the risk; a damn good coffee cake with a whiff of danger and a taint of the divine. As an honorary lapsed Catholic New Orleanian, (by marriage), I decided to embrace my inner fat chick parading Uptown in a skimpy mermaid costume with fishnet stockings, stilettos, and blessed little else, and made King Cakes myself.

The hardest part was finding little bitty plastic babies and purple sugar crystals. I finally located a bowl full babies at a hobby shop in North Hollywood, for just 50-cents apiece, and found the elusive purple sugar crystals at Sur La Table. I made the dough in a double batch, and filled one cake with a traditional cinnamon filling and the other with cream cheese. They were both very good King Cakes, and nobody swallowed a baby. Laissez les bon temps rouler.

TRADITIONAL KING CAKE
(Makes enough dough for two cakes)

1 16-ounce container sour cream
1/3 cup sugar

1/4 cup butter
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg (freshly grated, if possible)
2 1/4-ounce envelopes active dry yeast
1/2 cup warm water
1 tablespoon sugar
2 eggs, lightly beaten
6 to 6 1/2 cups bread flour (or all-purpose flour)
1/2 cup butter, softened

Fillings of your choice (see below)

Creamy Icing

Green, Gold and Purple sugar sprinkles

2 plastic babies

Heat first 5 ingredients in a medium saucepan or double boiler over low heat, stirring often, until butter melts. Set aside and cool.

Stir yeast and 1 tablespoon sugar into 1/2 cup warm water and let stand 5 minutes. (Make sure to use a bowl or container with at least a 2 cup capacity as this stuff bubbles up and over.)

Beat sour cream mixture, yeast mixture, eggs and 2 cups of the flour at medium speed with a heavy-duty electric stand mixer until smooth. (NOTE: Bread flour produces a light, airy cake. Cakes made with all-purpose flour will have a denser texture.)

Replace mixer beaters with dough hook, reduce speed to low, and gradually add remaining flour (4 to 4 1/2 cups) until a soft dough forms.

Turn dough out onto a lightly floured surface and knead until smooth and elastic (about 10 minutes). Place in a well-greased bowl, turning to grease top.  Cover and let rise in a warm place for about 1 hour, until dough is doubled in bulk.

Punch down dough and divide in half.  Roll each half into a rectangle (about 22 x 12 inches).  Spread each rectangle with 1/4 cup of the softened butter, leaving a 1-inch border on each side, followed by the filling of your choice.

Roll up each dough rectangle, jelly-roll fashion, starting at 1 long side.  Place each roll, seam side down, on a large baking sheet lined with parchment. Bring the ends together to form a ring, pinching the edges to seal.  (NOTE: Placing an oven proof ramkin in the middle makes it easier to form the cake and keeps the sides from fusing together as it bakes.)

Cover the cakes and let rise in a warm place for about 30 minutes until doubled in bulk. While the cakes are rising, preheat the oven to 375 degrees.

Bake at 375 degrees for 15 minutes or until golden.  (Don't be concerned if the dough splits during rising and baking and some of the filling leaks out, that's what the parchment is for!)

Find a likely spot and push a plastic baby down into each cake. Cool on wire racks. Ice with creamy frosting (recipe follows) and sprinkle with green, gold and purple colored sugars, alternating to make bands.

CINNAMON PECAN FILLING
(double ingredients for two cakes)

1/2 cup packed brown sugar
1 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/3 cup chopped pecans
1/4 cup all-purpose flour
1/4 cup raisins
1/4 cup melted butter

Combine all ingredients, crumble onto buttered dough rectangle.

CREAM CHEESE FILLING
(double ingredients - except egg - for two cakes)

1/2 cup sugar
1 8-ounce package cream cheese, softened
1 egg
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Beat all ingredients with electric mixer until smooth. Spread onto buttered dough rectangle.


CREAMY ICING
(Makes enough for two King Cakes)

6 cups powdered sugar
6 tablespoons butter, melted
4 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

4 to 8 tablespoons milk

Stir together first 4 ingredients.  Add 4 tablespoons milk, then additional milk, 1 teaspoon at a time, until icing reaches spreading consistency.

Ice cakes, sprinkle with sugars, eat, enjoy!

Springtime in a Jar

Though I've spent more than half my life in California where fresh locally grown strawberries, (and very good ones too), are available year round, I still associate that most beloved of fruits with spring. (Seriously, have you ever met anybody who didn't like strawberries? If so, I wouldn't trust them.)

Springtime drives 'out in the country' with my mother, whatever their actual purpose, frequently turned into foraging treasure hunts; for whenever we passed a likely looking abandoned farmhouse, she'd slam on the brakes, pull off the road, and, as often as not, we'd find an overgrown strawberry patch somewhere on the property, teeming with fruit ripe for the taking. (I later learned she'd lived in one of those houses during her first marriage, so she knew where to look, but that's an entirely different story.)

If we had any left by the time we got home, there'd be strawberry shortcake for dessert, (luck being with me), or Mamma's special take on strawberry chiffon pie, (a culinary abomination if ever there was, and a disservice to both the berry and the Cool Whip), which everyone else professed to love. No great matter, since I preferred them straight from the hand, maybe dipped in a little brown sugar or dragged slowly through a melted Hersey bar.

By late June (sooner if the birds were particularly ravenous) the local berry crop would be done, but by then so much else was going on in the garden they wouldn't be missed until later; when somebody pulled a soggy stash out of the freezer and tried to duplicate the Strawberry parfait from Easter, and it was just all wrong.

Better were the berries that had been turned into jam in their prime, and, in the days before jam became synonymous with Smucker's, just about everybody who had a plot and a pot 'put some up.' Strawberry jam was, and is, a no-brainer; strawberries, a little lemon juice, a whole lot of sugar. It was easy, it was fool-proof, and everybody's tasted about the same. And it was all good, like springtime in a jar.

When it came to making my own, however, I wanted something a little different. Like this one. Call it springtime in a jar with the promise of a red-hot summer coming on. So good I sometimes bake a couple of biscuits just for myself and pile it on. Other times, I eat it straight from the jar with a spoon.

Hank photo bombs the strawberry jam shoot

BALSAMIC STRAWBERRY JAM WITH CRACKED BLACK PEPPER
(Makes about 8 half pints)

5 pounds strawberries, lightly crushed
1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice
3 tablespoons good quality balsamic vinegar
6 tablespoons powdered fruit pectin
5 cups granulated sugar
2 teaspoons freshly cracked black pepper

Wash and hull strawberries and crush lightly. (I like a few chunks of actual berry in my jam, and you wouldn't believe how satisfying it is to crush a bowl bull of berries with your hands until you've tried it.)

Combine crushed berries with lemon juice and balsamic vinegar in a 6-to-8-quart saucepan. Mix fruit pectin with sugar and stir into berries.

My cracked pepper secret, inelegant but effective

Bring to a full rolling boil over high heat, stirring constantly until sugar/pectin mixture is completely dissolved. Continue to boil hard and stir for 3 to 5 minutes. Remove from heat, skim foam if necessary, and stir in cracked black pepper.

Ladle into sterilized jars and process in boiling water for 10 minutes. (For more detailed canning instructions see:  http://nchfp.uga.edu/how/can7_jam_jelly.html)

Note to the health conscious:  The amount of sugar in the recipe still gives me pause, but I've recently learned of a super sweet California variety, the Gaviota strawberry, which, rumor has it, can cut the sugar requirement by half. (One local canner even claims to make a respectable Gaviota strawberry jam with no added sugar at all, but, like those who professed to love my mother's strawberry chiffon pie, I suspect she may be exaggerating a bit.) Gaviota strawberries are available only in the spring, even in California, so stay tuned.
 

Peas and Prosperity (and Chutney)

I almost titled this post, "Love, Peas and Happiness," because when it comes to that old southern standard, black-eyed peas, most people either love 'em madly or don't like them at all. Me, I'm a lover.

Cooked plain, according to the soak-overnight package directions, with a meaty smoked ham hock buried in the middle of the pot, black-eyed peas are my ultimate comfort food. (I stint on the salt and simmering liquid because I like them less soupy and briny. And don't cook them too long - about an hour is good - or they'll be mushy.) Add a couple spoonfuls of tomato and pear chutney on the side, and you've got manna from heaven.

Maybe this explains how the dish, along with the requisite mythology and superstitions, became a New Year's Day tradition in most of the southeast; or maybe it's because that's about all they had to eat in the dead of winter back in the day. Either way the black-eyed pea (a bean actually) is another culinary gift from the dark side of our heritage. Brought into southern ports from Africa with the slave trade, black-eyed peas were initially cultivated exclusively for the consumption of livestock and slaves, but, when times got hard, white folks found they made mighty good eating.

Exactly 365 peas. Yes, I did.

Today we eat them on January 1st, seasoned with a little chunk of preserved pork, to assure luck and prosperity throughout the coming year. A more arcane tradition specifies that we eat exactly (or at least) 365 individual peas, one for each day of the year, to assure the continuity of all that love and happiness. This is what 365 peas looks like.

When I was growing up in south Georgia black-eyed peas were commonly served with chopped raw onion (not my predilection) and/or a particular ground-pear relish, which I adored, and whose secret formula I'm still looking for. In the meantime, I've found a completely satisfactory, maybe even better, alternative: fire-roasted tomato and pear chutney. Were I given to hyperbole, I'd call it the condiment of the gods.


FIRE ROASTED TOMATO AND PEAR CHUTNEY

2 cups roasted tomatoes, seeded and chopped
2 cups cubed pears
1 yellow onion, chopped
1 cup raisins
2 cups brown sugar
1 cup cider vinegar
3 tablespoons peeled and grated fresh ginger
2 tablespoons mustard seeds
2 cinnamon sticks
2 teaspoons red pepper flakes
2 teaspoons kosher salt

If you want to do it up right and have the where-with-all to grow your own, an assortment of heirloom tomatoes, cut into quarters, roasted in a hot oven, peeled, seeded and chopped, do it best. When homegrown tomatoes aren't available, I go with a good canned variety, such as Muir Glen Fire Roasted tomatoes, and still have a really outstanding chutney. (Seriously, don't bother with store-bought 'fresh' tomatoes. The process is more trouble than they're worth, and the result won't be any better.)

Combine all ingredients in a large, deep saucepan. Bring to a boil over medium-high heat, stirring frequently. Reduce heat and boil gently until reduced by half.

Ladle hot chutney into sterilized half-pint jars. Place filled and lidded jars into canning vessel, (I use my tamale pot, no joke), cover with water and bring to boil. Process at a boil for 10 minutes. Cool in water, remove, store and enjoy! (For more detailed canning instructions see: http://nchfp.uga.edu/how/can_06/chutney_principles.html)

I customarily make the recipe in triplicate and end up with around 12 to 15 half-pint jars. Sometimes I do a few pints because this stuff goes fast, and you don't want to run out. (Try it with pork, rare beef, lamb, butter beans; the possibilities are endless.)

And keep some on hand for black-eyed peas; which should always be served with the style and respect they deserve. Kudos to Jacob Preston for the black-eyed peas bowl. I happen to think it is just right.