An Autumn Love Story: Golden Nectarine Cake

As it is no news to those of you who’ve been reading this blog for a while, my other half is allergic to egg whites.  And while, at first it doesn’t seem like a huge deal – I mean, egg whites aren’t the most exciting foodstuff on their own, it is also an incredibly annoying allergy – because, among other things, it tends to deprive him of cake.

Now, do you understand the depth of misery that this sort of allergy is?!  I mean, no real birthday cakes when growing up, no nice slice of chocolate cake at the cafe, no brownies, no… combine this with his pretty wide nut allergy and you get the full scope of the sadness of a food-allergic dessertless existence.

Till he met me, that is.  Now, I am a persistent creature and for a while now I’ve been trying, really trying to make him a good, non-dry simple cake.  The sort that we, non-allergic types, able to eat anything in a random coffee shop without a second’s hesitation (other than perhaps wondering what this amount of sugar will do to my waistline), and certainly without any fear for our life, take for granted.  Well, I take my ability to eat whatever and not fear for my life for granted no longer – it’s amazing how quickly acquiring a significant person with an allergy adjusts one’s perspective!

The search took me through alternatives such as milk-and-hot-water cake (which turns out pretty lovely with saffron and which I should write about at some point too), and the coconut and orange cake with egg yolks (which was also lovely but not very moist so required good frosting to make it really work), and after a while I nearly gave up on real cake – until I stumbled across a cheaty shortcut which I feel the desire to share with you, along with the recipe for this easy, gorgeous and absolutely delicious cake somewhat adapted to said cheat from a recipe found on Gourmet Magazine website.

And let me tell you – if you only make one autumnal dessert this year, please, do make it this cake!  It’s aromatic with orange flower water and cardamom, it’s moist (even with the egg substitute), and the nectarines dry and caramelize under their coat of sugar and spice into a stained-glass-like beauty.  The smell as it bakes is like the very essence of Fall, the sort of thing you’d dream of when imagining yourself on a swing with a mug of hot coffee or tea, wrapped in a thick sweater and a blanket and looking out over the colors of the turning leaves.  Well, I don’t know about you, but to me, that is how it is.

The cheat in question is a vegetarian egg substitute by Bob’s Red Mill (purveyors of high-quality grains and flours and the like).  I have chosen it after reading about a lot of different egg substitutes, and checking their ingredients to find the least objectionable one.  This one is made from wheat, soy and algin (extract from seaweed), and while I am not a huge fan of soy, the small amount of soy this would add to our diet is not something I will quibble with when it allows me to simply mix and substitute this in any baking recipe where beaten eggs are called for – and have it work so wonderfully.

To top it, the cake transports without falling apart (great when you want to bring a dessert to a party!), and it keeps very well in the fridge wrapped in cling film (plastic wrap) for 1-2 days.  I can’t say if it would keep any longer as I simply don’t know – it’s not survived longer than till the morning of the day after the day it was made here.  And that was with me avoiding helping with the eating of it, too.

What you need to make it:

A bowl, a handheld (or stand) mixer or a wooden spoon, some baking paper and a standard-sized springform cake pan.  Oven doesn’t hurt either.

• 2.4dl (1 US cup) all-purpose flour
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1g (1/5 of a teaspoon) salt
• 125g (1 stick) unsalted butter, cut into small bits and softened
• 180ml (3/4 US cup) sugar + 1 tablespoon sugar (divided)
• 2 large eggs (lightly beaten) or 2 tablespoons of egg replacer whisked with 6 tablespoons room-temperature water
• 1 teaspoon real vanilla extract
• 1 tablespoon orange flower water
• Zest of 1 lemon or orange (optional but very recommended!)
• 2 nectarines, pitted and sliced into wedges.  I used a golden and a white one in the cake pictured, but the golden ones have a better flavor (more acidic), so the second cake (that got devoured without getting a photoshoot) only used golden and I liked it better.
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cardamom

What you do:

• Preheat oven to 175C.
• Butter the cake pan lightly and line the bottom with a round piece of baking paper (you’ll thank me later!).
• Mix the egg substitute with water in a small bowl and set aside to stand.  It will thicken a little, but it’s not essential that it does.
• Whisk together flour, 3/4 cup sugar, baking powder, salt and citrus zest (if using).
• In a separate small bowl, mix the cardamom and the remaining tablespoon of sugar, set aside.
• Beat butter and sugar until light and fluffy, then pour in the egg substitute (or beaten eggs) slowly in 2 stages, beating well after each addition.
• Beat in vanilla and orange flower water.
• Add the flour mixture and beat on low speed until just combined.
• Scrape the batter into the prepared pan and level the top with a butterknife or a spatula.
• Push nectarine slices into the top of the batter in a circular (or any other) pattern, and sprinkle the top of the cake (batter and fruit slices) with the sugar-cardamom mixture.
• Place on a middle rack of preheated oven and bake for 40-45 minutes (ovens may vary so check after 40 minutes and keep an eye on the cake afterwards), until a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean.
• Cool in the pan on wire rack for 20-30 minutes, then remove the sides of the pan, and cool completely.
• Carefully loosen the bottom of the cake with the parchment paper off the bottom of the pan with a spatula, and slide the cake onto the serving platter.  The parchment bottom will help avoid screeching noises when cutting the cake on the platter, and the cake slices come off it effortlessly.

Slice, pour up your hot drink, grab that blanket and go sit on the balcony in the chill wind watching the leaves turn.  Happy Autumn!

Preserving the Bounty: Easy Spiced Plum Jam for Beginners

One of the things I adore most about autumn is the fruit – a generously wide variety of it, beautiful, ripe and inexpensive – in some cases even free, unless you count picking it and hauling it home.

Obviously, as the time and stomach volume permits, I munch away at all of this glorious bounty raw, or in pies and tarts, but there is something incredibly comforting about preserving some of the perfectly ripe fruit at the peak of its flavor in jam jars, to keep for when the landscape turns white and blue, to remind us (and the lucky recipients of such jars) that winter is not forever.  And that, for all it’s -20C and pitch dark at 6pm outside, at home there is warmth and candlelight, and in the meantime, there’s jam.

Best thing about plum jam is that of all the jams I’ve ever tried to make (with the possible exception of the very pectin-rich quince), it’s the one that sets the fastest and most reliably, without the need for any added pectin.  So all you really need to make it is sugar and plums.  And if you’ve got whole cloves or star anise or cardamom pods in your pantry, it’ll be that much better.

The second best thing about it (though not unique to plum jam in my experience) is that you can make it in tiny batches, and you can make it fast – far faster than the hours-spent-at-the-stove image a jar of homemade jam might evoke, so that you can cook a tiny batch of it whenever you have a couple of handfuls of plums on hand, and be able to gift (or keep to yourself greedily) the jam jar the very next morning, and channel the domestic goddess without much effort at all.

I sincerely recommend using the spices listed (one of, not all three together!) in the cooking process.  They do not detract from the plum flavor, but in fact enhance it and elevate your jam to heights far above the regular off-the-shelf shop-bought stuff by giving it that extra-fancy complex scent like the really expensive gourmet stuff you might or might not have tried – or the best-ever homemade jam that I hope you have.  If you haven’t – just do it, you won’t regret it!

Star anise or cinnamon stick can be used in either golden or purple plum jam, as they are easy to see and therefore get out at the end of the process.  Cardamom is harder to see in purple plum jam, but is easy to remove from golden (unless you tie it in cheesecloth, in which case it’s easy either way), and cloves can be left in the jam after cooking, so use them in either.

A note about ripeness of plums:  you should use mostly or only ripe fruit.  If one or two of your plums are hard, it is no trouble, but if all of them are just slightly underripe, your jam will set so hard, you could slice it with a knife – underripe fruit are too rich in pectin, making them ideal to add to overripe ones to set a jam, but not to make a jam of on their own!

And then, of course there’s the problem of canning apparatus and tools.  Or not at all, as it happens – if you use small jars (250ml ones are great for gifting!), you don’t need much at all, and all you need is probably already there in your kitchen.  That is because the plums have high acidity, and so boiling-water processing is all it takes to make plum-based preserves shelf-stable for about a year (or more, but don’t quote me – most reputable canning websites suggest eating homemade jam within 1-3 years of preparation).  What this means is that you don’t need any fancy apparatus to process the jars – a stockpot, a silicone trivet and a pair of jar tongs (or if you are like me and don’t have those, a silicone spatula and a wooden spoon to place jars inside the pot and fish them out) are all that is needed.

So, if you’ve ever thought that in order to have lovely rich-tasting jam, you either need to empty your wallet and hit the gourmet store, or have a country estate with a huge kitchen equipped like a miniature canning factory, you’ve been terribly misled.

So, how do you go about it?  It’s all really very simple!

This will make approximately 750ml jam (3x250ml jars of it).

Equipment:

• A 2L+ pot for cooking the jam
• A wooden or nylon spoon
• 3x 250ml canning jars, washed.  I use the sort with screw-top lids by preference, they seem to work best for me and seal reliably – though I’ve also made and processed jam in washed-out honey jars, it’s not generally recommended to reuse those.  Thicker-walled jars for home canning have a far lesser chance of cracking during processing or when filled with very hot jam.
• Your glasses (if you have them), or a pair of goggles such as pictured (mine are my old laboratory eye protection gear), which are entirely optional – but I like the safety that having something between my eyes and hot sugar syrup provides.
• A timer/thermometer is helpful, but not necessary.  If you want one, you should get a cheap and good dual-function one at IKEA – I love mine and it’s worth every one of the pennies (not many!) it cost!  (No, I don’t work for IKEA’s ad department.  Sadly.)

If you plan to gift the jam or store it outside the refrigerator, you will also need the following to process the jars:

• A 4L+ pot for boiling-water processing the jars
• Something (like a silicone trivet) to prevent jars from knocking about too much in the processing pot.  Some people use a 100% cotton tea towel, or a metal rack-style trivet.
• Jar tongs or something you can use to lift the jars out of boiling water.  I would recommend the jar tongs for safety – I’ll buy a pair myself as soon as I can find a good one for a decent price!

Ingredients:

• 500g ripe plums of any sort, pitted and sliced or chopped into small pieces.  I quarter the plums, and then slice them crosswise into pieces about 0.5cm thick
• 300-350g sugar (I would not recommend using less than 250g or half the weight of the fruit as the jam may not set)
• 1 cinnamon stick (be careful what sort you buy!), OR 3 stars of star anise, OR 12 whole cloves OR 4-6 cardamom pods (all optional, any are recommended)

That’s all!  Now, what do you do?

• Put your jars and lids opening-down on the oven rack and set the oven to 75C.  This will sterilize and dry them while you make the jam.
• Put your plums and your sugar in the smaller pot and turn on medium-high heat.  I use 6/9 setting.
• Set the larger pot with 3L of water in it on the back burner.  Stick your glasses or goggles on if using those, and feel like a scientist tinkering in his or her lab!
• Stir the plums with sugar and mash them a little until sugar dissolves.  Add the whole spices.  Keep stirring until the jam boils.
• Set a timer for 15 minutes.  This is a guideline, not an absolute measure.  Keep watching and stirring the jam so that it does not stick and burn (it isn’t prone to that, really, but you don’t want to chance sugar burning – it’ll ruin the entire batch).
• Reduce heat a little if the jam boils too vigorously – it should boil but not spit.
• To know when the jam is ready to be jarred, you can follow this easy guideline courtesy the National Center for Home Preservation:

Jelling Point Spoon Test

• At first the syrup will drip off the spoon in a single drip (not pictured so well), then after a while it’ll drip in two simultaneous drips (it really does!), and then, after a little while longer, it will sheet or drop off the spoon in blobs (see rightmost picture).  At that point your jam is going to set.
• Once you’ve reached this point, turn off the heat, stir the jam well and remove the cinnamon stick, anise stars or cardamom pods.  If you used cloves, feel free to leave those in the jam, they will do it no harm.
• Take your jars out of the oven using potholders.
• Pour or scoop the jam into the prepared jars, and screw the lids on thoroughly.  The lids and jars will be hot, so use a tea towel.
• If you plan to eat the jam within 2 months and store refrigerated, go no further.  Allow the jam to cool to room temperature and place in the refrigerator.
• If you want to make the jam shelf-stable and/or plan to give it away, bring the larger pot of water to a boil if it’s not yet boiling.  Place the trivet inside.  Carefully lower the jars into the water using jar tongs (or whatever contraption you come up with), and time 10 minutes.
• Take the jars out, place them on a wooden board, and allow them to cool.  Once cooled, the tops of the screw-top lids will ‘ping’ into the depressed position, indicating a vacuum seal – that’s your sign that processing succeeded.

Note:  If a lid does not depress after cooling, store the jam in refrigerator for up to 2 months (I don’t recommend re-processing), and eat it or use it in dessert.

A Return, Grill Repairs and Lazy, Lazy Grilling

Hey Everyone, and a Very Happy Summer to You!

Yes, I know it’s been a while.  In fact, it’s been about three months that I’ve spent away from blogosphere, both reading and writing, and thank all of you who have told me that I have been missed – especially Ping, Zoe and Juls!  I’ve missed you all as well (gods, do I have tons of blog reading to catch up on now – yay!!!), and trust me when I say that I have had a good reason – in fact, two good reasons! – to be gone.  I make no excuses, only that law school can suddenly drop buckets of workload on one’s head.  Or stacks of books, to be precise.  But, the essays for this half-term are turned in now, and the grade for the first one I got back is good, and I am also back from Barcelona (there will be pictures of food in upcoming blog posts along with restaurant reviews – the great, the good and the awful), and most significantly to my daily nom, I have repaired my kettle grill.

Oh, you didn’t know my grill was broken  - or that I had one at all?  I am not surprised.  You see, it was purchased broken – by design, not by defect – and after the spectacular inaugural failure of its first use, it sat on my balcony for a year, fading in the sunlight and snow, forgotten and unloved.  I rued the €20 or so that we had spent on it and wondered why the hell would anyone sell a grill so structurally bad as to be unusable.  To make it a bit clearer – inside the rounded bottom of it, it had a screw-in bowl thing which the coals were meant to be placed into – that did not have any vent holes in its bottom or sides.  None.  There were vent holes in the sides of the actual grill body around it, but according to the instructions, the bowl thing was to be screwed into the rounded bottom of the grill and the coals were to be placed into it.  I tried it, barely got any heat at all, and gave up on the grill as clearly too badly designed to use.

Then, upon having finished the aforementioned law essays, I felt uplifted and my brain uncramped – and also, it had gotten warm and sunny, and all the neighbors were grilling and … I had a genius idea.  What if I took out the stupid bowl thing and just put the coals into the rounded bottom bit of the grill which does have holes in it.  Would it work?

And – amazingly! – with the removal of the offending and useless thing, the grill was fixed!

To be quite honest, I still wonder why the thing was provided with the grill and why anyone bothered to make it and waste money on materials and such in order to render the grill inoperable.  On the other hand, the beyond-useless part is now resting in peace (or in the garbage to be precise), and we are grilling.  Well, not today – today it’s raining and thundering out, but we did grill yesterday and also a bit over a week ago before we went to Barcelona, and you know what?  That moment when the sizzling meat scents up the entire building and you are vindicated to all the neighbors who tormented you with their grill-scents for weeks – it’s glorious.

The food is, obviously, too.  I’ve never met anyone who didn’t like char-grilled food, be it meat, shellfish, vegetables or cheese.  Or even that thing I normally refuse to mention as food – tofu.  I do believe even tofu would be improved by grilling – but as I don’t eat it, you may have to ask a vegan about that.  Me, I go for meat.  I really ought to get one of those fish-grilling holders in order to do fish on the grill as well.  And seafood – but, it occurs to me that prawns would be great on skewers… but I digress (and drool).

Grilling really is one of the most rewarding ways of cooking – it has the ability to turn ordinary food into extraordinary just by the method of cooking, without any seasoning.  With seasoning added, it’s simply divine.  What follows is less of a recipe, and more of a description of how travel-fatigued and lazy, we managed to make and eat the above corn and pork-and-Padron pepper skewers.

Normally I am a stickler for making my own marinade, and letting the meat soak properly.  However, the skewers in the picture were a result of cheating – we were freshly returned from a week in Spain – exhausted, our fridge was mostly empty, and we wanted to grill but had no meat that was marinated, nor desire or strength to bother.  So, we bought a pork loin pre-seasoned in a vac-pack in the supermarket.  Typical supermarket marinade is pretty insipid but what it does do, is tenderize the meat and brine it.  So, while it does not really flavor the meat much, it does provide the shortcut of hours of marinating time, and when using small bites of meat, added seasoning soaks in/sticks on beautifully in just a few minutes.

I cut the loin up into skewerable pieces, added a teaspoon of smoked paprika and a good thick sprinkling of garlic granules, chopped up a large fat sprig of fresh rosemary into it, drizzled on white wine vinegar and olive oil, and gave the meat a couple of turns in the bowl to coat it thoroughly and distribute seasonings.  If the meat hadn’t been pre-marinated, I’d have added some salt, covered the bowl with cling film and stuck it in the fridge for 2-3 hours, but as shop marinade is mostly salt, I skipped that.  I left the bowl of meat to sit on the countertop while I prepped the corn for grilling.

If you have never prepped corn on the cob for grilling, there is a truly lazy way to do it.  I know, I’m the queen of lazy – particularly on vacation!  Here’s how you do it – you peel back the husks while leaving them attached, thickly smear the corn in lightly salted spreadable butter (the sort which has a bit of vegetable oil added so it stays soft – Lurpak may be available in the States, and I know this variety is available in the UK), and sprinkle on some of the granulated garlic and crushed cayenne flakes generously (or less so if you don’t like eating fire).  Then you fold the husks back over the corn and seal the tips with a bit of kitchen foil before sticking them into a potful of cold water husk-end down to soak.  Then you go light the grill.  Or, if you are lazy and/or happen to be me, you shout for the guys to go light the grill.  Trust me, guys are very easily motivated by the idea of impending grilled meat.

While the coals are heating up, skewer up the meat with whatever you like in-between (or nothing if you are that sort of carnivore).  My favorites are normally either bell pepper pieces, mushrooms, or baby tomatoes.  But, while I was in Spain, I have discovered a new addiction (it’s ok arugula, I still love you!) – I am now officially in love with the delicately scented and oh-so-full-of-flavor pimientos de Padrón.  I had snagged a box of imported dark-green beauties immediately when I saw it at the supermarket upon my return.  In Spain, these are sauteed in a bit of olive oil with flaked sea salt (and they are amazing prepared so), but since they are eaten with seeds, all you have to do with them for skewering, is wash, dry and halve them, and then toss in a bit of olive oil – which is all I did.  You could probably buy any sort of a bell pepper and chop it and it’ll work just as well – but it would be sweeter and with less concentrated pepper flavor (not to be confused with heat – these aren’t very hot, if at all).

Turn the corn once while you skewer the meat – or ask the guys to – and put into a baking dish into a 75C oven to keep warm.  Grill the skewers turning a few times until the meat is cooked through (it’s pork, it’s not nice undercooked), and serve with the corn.  And your choice of fruity white wine, or a cocktail or whatever really.

Then, put up your feet and enjoy the summer.  Here in Sweden, we have to hurry up to do it – as beautiful and sunny and warm as it is, it simply does not tend to last.  In the spirit of that, I’ve got a fridge- and freezer-full of meat and I’m not afraid to use it.  And once this travel fatigue goes away, I’ll be back with actual recipes, not just “what I’ve managed to slap together for putting on newly-invented *cough*repaired*cough* fire“.

Spring, Moss, and Half-Rye Sourdough Bread

Considering my recent silence, you have undoubtedly wondered if I have been eaten by crocodiles by now.  Or maybe polar bears.  It’s Sweden, and the polar bears must be hungry.  Or some other grisly fate.  The truth is, however, very prosaic – I have simply been busy.

It happens to all of us, and I am entirely unapologetic for having a life outside the blog, much as I love it.

And besides, to quote a recently-seen on the internet and absolutely brilliant photo:

“IT’S SPRING.  WE ARE SO EXCITED, WE WET OUR PLANTS!”

As you can see, the plants are happily blooming – at least some of them, and others look like they are preparing to, and if you are like me and like houseplants, then it’s exciting.  What can I say, I am easily excited.  I think that’s a good thing.  Surely beats sitting there looking bored and feeling blasé about the world.

So um, yes.  I have been busy, it’s spring, which means my plants needed more attention, my studies are kicking back in, and I have not had so much time to cook anything impressive, nor, mostly, to photograph it.

I did bake a half-rye bread on the basis of my two-fifths rye no-knead recipe, and it turned out gorgeous.  I have, again, let it proof entirely too long due to the same reason (I went for a walk and returned later than planned), but it was delicious and lovely nonetheless.  One of those days I will actually bake it in time and see if it can be made taller, but between the high rye content and the high hydration of no-knead method, I am not sure.  On the up side, the narrow slices make fantastically elegant open-faced sandwiches with slices of cheese, salami, dried ham or cured fish.  Anyway, no recipe here – merely a note that the two-fifths rye recipe works exceptionally well with a half and half split between the types of flour.  And, I will try a closer to 65 or 70% split in favor of rye next.

And then there is my newly-found fascination with moss.

Unfortunately, there is a lot of conflicting and downright bad information about how to grow it on the internet.  And doubly unfortunately, I managed to spray the two original moss-homes I made with the wrong water spray bottle.  What’s so wrong about the wrong spray bottle?  Well, it used to contain agricultural soap-and-oil mix for treating bugs on one of my orchids last summer.  As a result, I think one or two applications of that instead of water are killing the moss slowly, which made me very sad.  It is still alive and struggling to stay so (and I am helping), but I am not sure it will win the battle, and it is entirely my fault.

So, I did a lot more reading, and gathered more moss.

And then I followed several other new instructions which changed or negated the things I originally found.  For example, I did not use any potting soil on this round.  Instead, I made a base out of aquarium-filter activated carbon, and piled sterilized gravel bits, re-sterilized bark chips (from my orchid potting bark bag), and pieces of terracotta (broken flowerpot that did not survive the winter freeze) on top of that.  Added aged tap water with some activated carbon swirled in it via my new, clean spray bottle, and arranged the moss on top, above the water level.

Note: to sterilize rocks and bark chips, soak in boiling water, let stand, pour water off and repeat.  This won’t sterilize them for purposes of neural surgery, but it should kill most mold spores and random microfauna present on and in them.  If you want to be more sure about it, boil a pot of water and toss them in there for a while.  Do not salt.  ;)

The second thing I found important is having a lid for your moss-growing dish.  A more reputable moss-growing website owner mentioned in his blog that he covers his moss dishes overnight and leaves them to air out during the day – so, upside-down flat candle plates were found to cover the little terraria, to maintain good humidity with periods of drying-out and fresh air.  Since, unless your moss is swamp moss (mine isn’t, it came off rocks and tree stumps), it doesn’t want to sit in a swamp.  (Deep wisdom right there, for various houseplants other than moss as well!)

And a third thing was washing the moss when I had initially brought it home, removing all debris and clinging dirt under running water, and then quarantining it in sandwich boxes with partially-shut lids for several days before using it in the arrangement – to make sure no pests or molds surface in the meantime.

The new terraria are now a few days old, and are so far doing well.  I’ll just avoid spraying them with insecticidal solution by accident and see what happens.

So, there it is.  Coming soon(tm) – posts about vanilla, and about the two entirely new to me white whole wheat flours (That is not a typo – they are whole wheat flours made from white, not red wheat!) that I have just received in the mail and all excited about – but obviously, first I need to bake something from them and see how that works out!

Moss Dish Garden Experiment – Day 1

UPDATE:  Please see this post for more and more correct information regarding moss dishes!

Today’s post is not at all about food, but about spring, and green growing things.  I love greenery, I’ve mentioned that before, but when the days turn sunny and the chill in the air is no longer a biting cold but a refreshing breeze, my fascination with the green stuff goes into overdrive.

I literally cannot have enough green things around the apartment, and preferably new and interesting ones at that.  Yes, I did say apartment – had I had a house, and a garden, there’d be a lot more green things around.  As it is, I have to fit my desire to see things grow into a city apartment.  Which means, windowsills and tabletops and maybe balcony… actually definitely balcony, as my lavender bushes not only survived the winter outside unprotected except by what snow fell on them, but are alive and sprouting happily.  I’ve trimmed them down and fertilized them and can now look forward to an abundance of purple and white flowers and a heavenly fragrance… but I digress.

Yesterday, a friend of mine informed me that if I do not yet have a moss dish garden, I need one.  Need.  And she showed me some photos, and I realized that yes, she is right and I do indeed need one, right now.  Right then it was too late in the day to go gravel-gathering, or moss-hunting, but that is precisely what I did this morning.

Why?  Because it’s green, it’s alive and because it is incredibly beautiful, at least to those like me who think just about anything in the forest short of animal poop is beautiful.  And a moss dish garden is very far from that end of the spectrum indeed – it is as small as you want to make it, elegant and stylish, and has the certain quiet beauty much admired by Japanese gardeners (who have encouraged moss to grow in their gardens for centuries before we have gotten the idea to do this – probably from them).  And it’s supposed (supposed does not = works out that way) to be pretty low-maintenance.  This latter part, we’ll see about.  Once it establishes, that is.

Important: before you rush out and strip the moss off the nearest boulder, first make sure that it is not protected or endangered wherever it is you live.  If it is, then you may be better off buying some from a nursery or get some (legally sourced) spores online.  Of course, collecting it in your own garden or in a garden of people you know works too.  Just – make sure you aren’t breaking the law and ruining the environment by gathering an endangered species – after all, the point of this (at least to me) is to grow something beautiful because you love green things, not to destroy what is possibly irreplaceable!  For reference, in Sweden, some lichens and mosses are protected, but it is legal to gather a little bit of other varieties for personal (non-commercial) use in public forests.  The variety pictured above is a species of Hypnum genus of mosses, a very common forest and bog moss.

After the ethical and legal concerns are out of the way, putting together a moss garden is apparently very easy – you just need a ceramic or glass dish, some gravel and pebbles, a bit of non-alkaline potting soil, and the moss.  However, and that’s a big however, I imagine it will take more than just putting it together to get it to establish and thrive.  So, this is my moss dish garden experiment – day 1.  I will update over the next several weeks on how the mosses are doing before I pronounce this a success *knocks on wood*.

So, what does one need to make a moss garden?

Apparently, not that much.  Mosses don’t like alkaline environment (at least most of the common ones don’t), and they dislike direct sunlight but like a bit of light all the same.  They also do not develop true roots the way higher plants do, and so must be kept moist but not waterlogged (except bog mosses that sometimes just float in bogs).  Most websites recommend watering with filtered or rainwater.  I agree in theory, but in practice, the tap water in Stockholm is clean and soft enough that it should not be a problem.  I did put a bucket outside to collect a bit of rainwater should it fall, but in the meantime, the moss will get the same water as my orchids do.

The basic idea is a layer of pebbles in the bottom of a shallow dish, then a bit of gravel (this is to provide a place for excess water to drain into, and also a reservoir for keeping the soil moist), then a little bit of soil on top of it, and then the moss itself.

After I have put everything together around lunchtime today, it looked like this:

It hasn’t rained for over a week before I went out today to collect it, so the moss was looking a little dry but not dead – we have a beautiful patch of untouched forest behind our apartment building, a landscape feature I love about Stockholm.  It’s very common here to build around old boulders and between them, leaving the actual forest biome intact between the houses.  It makes for a beautiful view out the windows as well.

So, as per instructions, I constructed the base, watered it thoroughly, and then gently pushed the moss patches onto the soft and wet soil.  For a while, nothing visible happened.  I took the above photo, then sprayed the moss thoroughly with a spray bottle and wandered off to do other stuff.

Then, after a few hours, I came back and looked at my dish garden – and the somewhat-unexpected (but not unwelcome!) has happened:

On left, photo taken at half past noon. On right, photo at half past four in the afternoon.

The moss has soaked up water, plumping up visibly – and turned a beautiful lush green!  And while I know it’s too early to be happily assuming that the moss will survive, it certainly does look happier already, which means I am happier too – how can you not be, looking at something turn beautifully alive nearly before your eyes?

All that remains now is an exercise in patience.  Check moss daily for drying out, mist and admire.  Water weekly (or as soon as the glass container looks dry on the side) by pouring water in.  Wait to see what happens.  I’m sitting on the edge of my seat here with impatience – I have never been the patient sort, ever.  I’ve always been told that patience is a virtue.  I suppose at least where growing moss is concerned, that has got to be true.

Wish me – and the moss! – luck.

A Postcard For All The Winter Holidays

Happy Whateveritisyoucelebrate!

I have considered making an upcoming Christmas post, a Hanukkah post, a New Year’s post and then I realised that I also have friends who are Taoist, pagans of several different descriptions, atheists, agnostics and you name it.  Can you tell I don’t pick my friends based on their faith (or lack thereof)?  In the season of celebrations, it’d be silly to single out some and not the others, so this is a postcard to everyone, for whatever – really! – it is you celebrate.

I am posting this now because cannot promise to write with any regularity during the holiday season – the food that gets made between parties is generally leftovers, shortcuts and the like, and the food that gets made for parties may or may not get photographed, and then I may or may not have time to blog about it.  In fact, there are several things which I have wanted to write about, and a post which I had planned to reblog (with permission) that I will still write about as well – possibly after the holidays, when everyone is in New Year’s resolution mode (except me, I don’t do those).

I decidedly reject the commercialized nature of the holidays.  I’ve proudly bought a heap of holly twigs and some glittery spray-painted birch from a corner flower stand, and arranged it myself.  I will not cave to the plastic non-shedding tree fad!  I have found a couple of fir branches and hung them up on the wall to scent the apartment like evergreens.  But, that’s what I like.  Have you considered, for example, the color selection for napkins?  Red for Christmas or blue for Hanukkah?  Or white for … boringly politically correct stuff?  Bugger it, I like red and it’s not like Christians have a monopoly on Santa Claus or his red suit.  Or holly.  Because you know, some pagans I know may have a prior claim… so decorate your home as you like, celebrate what makes you happy, and above all, don’t forget what it is all about.

So with this, I will wish all of you a wonderful holiday season, glittering parties, beautiful clothes, eating too much and likely drinking too much (stock up on Alka-seltzer or Samarin, depending on where in the world you are!), utter absense of any hangovers, and in general, a wonderful time spent with friends and loved ones.  Let us all be thankful for the life we have and how amazing it truly is – because this, this is what there is to celebrate.  Best of happy whatever-holiday wishes to you all!

Party Leftovers – Streamlining The Fridge

It’s that time of year again!

The fridge is groaning from the load of everything you’ve shoved in there like an advanced level of tetris – including all the tiny bits of leftovers from the party the night before that you fear are going to slowly go bad before you figure out what to do with them.  Your kitchen looks like a disaster zone after same party, and you are groaning because you’ve been running around in circles preparing food, then entertaining people, and then trying to clean up after the aforementioned (and possibly giving up after one dishwasher-load).

Yep.  We’ve all been there.

And the last thing you want to do after you have done all of the above, is to cook something complicated from scratch.  Or, at least that’s the last thing I want to do.  What I want to do, is, frankly, is lie down on the sofa, eat something fresh and something comforting, and hope that Disney was right, and if I just hum some stuff off-tune, my forks and dirty cutting boards will march into the dishwasher and/or sink and scrub themselves.

Leaving drug-induced sentient kitchenware hallucinations aside, I have found that party leftovers can and do make the easiest of comfort foods, provided that you have something to use as a vehicle.  What I mean is – what is usually left over after a party?  Well, I am not entirely sure about you,  actually, but after my parties, the refrigerator usually contains a selection which looks sort of like this:  a quarter-pack of dried ham and/or sliced cured salami of some sort, a large assortment of tiny bits of expensive cheese, half a loaf of random bread, and some fruit which was supposed to have been put on a fruit platter, and didn’t make it.

So what do you do with 2 tablespoons of one cheese and 3 slices of the other, and a few half-dried-out bits of Prosciutto di Parma?  You take that hunk of tough bread, slice it as thin as it’ll go, butter the buggers, and slap the cheeses and meat onto it in some semblance of order.  You know, so they don’t clash too much.

This here isn’t a recipe, because there just isn’t one.  You preheat the oven to about 225°C,  search the fridge, hope there is any butter (in a pinch, a drizzle of olive oil would do if the bread is too tough to go without), and put these together.  Then, you season them according to your taste.  In my case, the goat’s cheese bits got a drip of honey, and the slices of random cheese on parma ham got black pepper.  I didn’t even have any runny honey, so I improvised with a spoon warmed in a cup of tea, set honey and my finger to push it off the spoon.  Whatever works.

Then, you put the whole thing into a preheated oven and give it a few minutes – and I really mean “few”, not “many”.  As soon as the cheese is melted and bubbly, or in case of goat’s cheese, browned at edges and puffing up, out it comes.

Slice up that fruit which went forgotten when canapes were getting munched and booze was flowing, set it on the side of a platter, stick a napkin on the platter, and transfer these onto the napkin.  I used a pair of tongs, because sandwiches, when they come out of the oven, will be hot (personal experience here!).

Drag to your sofa/laptop setup, add a humongous mug of coffee, and look outside at the pitch-dark sky of 3:30 in the afternoon.  Feel good about the streamlined contents of your fridge.  Keep hoping the dishes will scrub themselves.  Or, if that fails, after being refreshed from having had something to eat and a bucket of coffee, attack them with a sponge.

Works every time!

First Snow!

We have waited long enough!

White Chocolate Fudge – With or Without Mix-Ins

To me, winter is the season of fudgemancery.

White chocolate apricot fudge with apricot brandy

Among other things, of course – there is a lot more to winter than fudge.  It is more that fudge is so much more of a winter dessert than one for the rest of the year – I neither crave its rich sweetness when it is hot out, nor do I want to deal with the heat of the molten sugar in summertime.  Besides, things you could have year-round, but normally don’t, the sorts of things reserved for holidays, are all the more special for that.  My homemade fudge is one of those things.

I make several sorts of fudge, usually some dark chocolate, and some white, and some plain sugar-and-butter fudge with booze in it, too, but this year I ended up making two batches of the white chocolate in a row, and even managed to photograph them before they were all gone.   And so, it was fated that I would write the recipe for the white chocolate fudge here.

Actually, it was my friend Niklas’ fault.  I’d tasked him with finding and bringing me evaporated milk (not a commodity easily found in Swedish supermarkets), and he gleefully returned with about 3x the amount I’d asked him for.  Broadly hinting that… there should be more fudge in everyone’s life.  Including his.  Obviously.

I’ve read countless fudge recipes which tell you that you can’t, can’t, can’t do it without a candy thermometer.  Frankly, that’s bulls**t.  I own a meat thermometer as of recently and I do not own a candy one – which interferes with me making fudge not at all.  It is very easy to test fudge syrup for doneness – all you need is a glass of cold water on the stove next to your pot.  Drip a drop of syrup into the glass – if it forms a nice ball, which is soft when poked with a finger, you are ready to go.  If it splats and dissolves – not yet.  Simple.

I’ve also read and tried to use several recipes for fudge with mix-ins (dried fruit, etc.) which have failed miserably.  I am not naming any names, as usual, but please, people – think!  If your syrup is just right and you mix in something which has liquid in it (such as dried apricots or not-entirely-dehydrated raisins), it will change its temperature – and the % of water in it!  This recipe corrects for that, again, without any fuss.

This recipe is adapted from a supermarket (Tesco) magaine that I’d picked up a couple of years ago in the UK.  Most of the credit for it being fuss-free and fool- Veronika-proof goes to them.

So, without further ado – how to make white chocolate fudge right on your stovetop, without a thermometer.

Note about working with molten sugar syrup:  DO NOT TOUCH IT WITH YOUR HANDS, OR GODS FORBID, DO NOT LICK THE SPOON!!!  The sugar syrup always looks rather cool, and drips slowly but it is at over 120°C at that point.  Please be careful, and do not be tempted to touch it with your fingertips or anything you want unblistered.

Equipment you will need:

• Apron.  Or a high-necked top.  You don’t want chest splattered with molten sugar, trust me!
• Your glasses or goggles of some sort (recommended for all work with molten sugar – I use chemistry laboratory glasses).
• A stainless steel or other non-reactive pot.  I do not recommend teflon as it’s neither needed, nor likes too-high temperatures.
• A silicone spatula or spoon.  Or a wooden one.
• A baking form (such as a cake form).
• Baking parchment.
• Scale and measuring cups.  Though I guess you could approximate the sugar amount by taking 1/3 of a 1kg bag plus 2 tablespoons.  Or use one of those measuring cups that has sugar marked in grams as well as volume.  In any case, you want this to be fairly precise.
• Timer and a glass of cold water.

Ingredients:

• 300g white chocolate (It must, must, must be real chocolate – not cake coating, not “bakers’ block”, but real chocolate – dessert-making grade from the bakery isle is fine, but make sure it is chocolate and does not contain starches or other thickeners, or your fudge will be ruined!)
• 350g white caster sugar
• 25g unsalted butter
• 175ml (one small can or measure out of a large can) evaporated milk (this is not the same as condensed milk and will not work interchangeably here!)
• 2 teaspoons of vanilla sugar (I use real vanilla vanilla sugar) or 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 100g of whatever you like to mix in (dried cranberries or chopped dried apricots work really well with white chocolate)
• Alternatively or in addition to mix-in, you can zest 1 orange and use the zest as flavoring
• 1 tablespoon of your favorite liquor (optional)

What to do:

• Line the bottom of your cake form (I use a springform pan for easy side removal) with baking parchment.
• Put on your apron or top.  No I am not kidding.  In fact, if you’ve got glasses put them on.  I use my chemist’s eye protection gear when I work with molten sugar.  I’d like my chest and eyes not burned by a stray splat, and I know I am clumsy.
• Put butter, sugar and evaporated milk into a pot and heat on medium-low heat, stirring gently from time to time, until all sugar is dissolved.
• Allow to come to a boil, stirring occasionally.
• Once the mixture is boiling steadily, set timer to 5 minutes.  Keep watching and stirring.
• After 5 minutes, test syrup by dripping into cold water.  It should ball up.  If it doesn’t, boil another 2 minutes before retesting.
• Once the syrup has reached soft ball stage (as above), mix in first your vanilla extract, then liquor (if using), and then zest (if using), and the mix-in (fruit etc.).  Note:  sugar will boil up and splat a second or two after addition of liquids.  Stand back a little and don’t put your face over the pot when you pour in.
• Mix and boil another 1-2 minutes.  Retest syrup.  It should ball up.  If it does not, boil and test at 1-2 min increments till it does.  Do not worry – last time I made fudge, I had to retest 2x times (boil 4 extra minutes) before the mix-in, but it turns out fine.
• Turn off the heat and drop in the chocolate.  DO NOT STIR!  Stirring white chocolate as it melts will cause it to seize.  Don’t.  Just stare at it for a bit.  You can poke the pieces which are on top of the syrup deeper into the syrup with a spoon.
• When you see that most of the chocolate has dissolved (top pieces are getting meltey at the edges), take that spatula or spoon and stir the heck out of the mix.  It should become homogenous after one or two vigorous stirs.  Stir a few seconds more till the mixture begins to lose gloss (this will happen very quickly), and then pour into the prepared parchment-lined form.
• The mix should start to set almost immediately.  Do not touch the form as it will get very hot.  Let it cool and set for 3-5 hours or overnight before unmolding and cutting.
• Unmold your fudge and gently peel off the parchment (it comes off easily).  Cut it into bits of desired size with a sharp knife, wiping or washing the blade if it becomes too sticky.
• Spread fudge pieces on some baking parchment and let dry a few hours to a couple of days until dry to touch before putting into cellophane bags and giving away.  Or, you know, just eat it all.  Only… don’t eat it all at one sitting.  I don’t speak from personal experience, oh no.  I’m virtuous like that.

White chocolate orange fudge with tequila. Tequila! :D

Happy Holidays!

Mini-Pizzas – Canapes For The Hungry Guests (And Hosts)

Many holiday parties aren’t actually dinner parties – they are an invitation for drinks (of whatever description), and canapes (snacks, hors d’oeuvres, whatever you want to call them).

Tiny canapes are well and good, and I actually love eating them, and even making them (though perhaps not for a very large number of people at a time!), but for me, it goes against the grain to not give my guests (and myself!) something substantial to munch on, however, and these, found and adapted from my now-much-used holiday edition of a Swedish baking magazine, are one of the better solutions.  First, who doesn’t love pizza?  Ok, I’ve met one person who doesn’t, but she’s an exception – most people love pizza.  Second, they aren’t difficult (or expensive) to make, and third, they are delicious, with just the right combo of crunch and chewiness to the crust, and a savory bite of the toppings.

The dough is yeasted, but it only (really!) does take about an hour to rise, and it’s made with plain (non-high-protein) flour, which makes it very easy to work with.  And think of it this way – even if the dough rounds look a bit clumsy before raising and baking, they all puff up deliciously and look great afterwards!

What you need (makes ~20 palm-sized pizzas):

• Dough:
• 1/4 packet dry yeast (about 1 heaping teaspoon)
• 2.5 dl (1 cup+ 2 teaspoons) finger-warm water
• A pinch of sea salt
• 1-2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
• 7dl (3 cups) plain flour
• Toppings (what I’ve used):
• Extra-virgin olive oil and a pastry brush to brush it on
• A handful of oil-packed sundried tomatoes, cut into thin strips crosswise
• ~10 slices of spicy cured chorizo sausage (the large-cross-section salami sort – if you have a thinner cured one, slice it thinly and use as much as you need)
• A couple of handfuls of shredded hard cheese (parmesan, romano, asiago, gran moravia or grana padano or whatever you like)
• Dried oregano to sprinkle
• Black pepper or chili flakes to taste
• Other suggestions include:
• Some pitted and halved olives of your favorite sort
• Pine nuts
• Chopped parsley leaves

What you do:

• Mix all dry ingredients of dough together (including dry yeast) in a bowl.
• Add the water and then the oil, and mix together.
• Allow to stand 10 minutes, then knead (I use a handheld mixer with dough hooks but a stand mixer or your own hands would do) until smooth and elastic.  The dough will become “friendly” (stick to itself more than everything else) but will be quite soft.  If you must add flour, do so sparingly, you do not want to make the dough hard.
• Place in an oiled bowl, turn, cover with cling film (plastic wrap), and a towel and place in a warm place to rise for 30 min to an hour or until doubled in size.
• Preheat oven to 200°C  (Ovens vary.  Mine has the no-fan option which is what I use).  Cover two baking sheets with baking parchment.
• Prepare your toppings – shred cheese, cut tomatoes, scizzor slices of chorizo or salami into 1cm square-ish bits.  Put in the fridge (mostly for sake of cheese here, so that it doesn’t get warm and soggy).
• Punch down the dough, knead it lightly, and roll into a sausage.  Cut into halves, then again and then into ~5 pieces each to make 20.
• Roll the bits into balls and allow to sit under a slightly-damp kitchen towel while you work (to prevent drying).
• Take balls of dough one by one, and gently flatten them with your hands, then pull the edges gently to enlarge the circle until they are about 10cm on a side.  Place them on the baking sheets a few cm apart.
• (This step is entirely optional – but helped me.) After you have finished all the rounds, it helps to start with the ones you did first as they had some resting time, and pick them up and stretch them a bit more if it looks they could use it.  The dough will be easier to handle at this point – do not tear.
• Place the re-stretched pizza bases on the sheets (still spacing them out to allow for expansion), cover with cloth kitchen towels, and allow to rise for about 20 minutes.  They will puff up visibly.
• Brush each round with a little bit of olive oil, leaving approximately 1-cm margin (this is roughly, if you splat oil around it’s not a problem of any sort), and then top with a few squares of salami or chorizo, and a couple of strips of sundried tomato.  Or whatever else you like.
• Sprinkle with dried oregano and grind a little bit of black pepper on top.  Add a small heap of shredded hard cheese onto the middle of each pizza.
• Place sheets in the oven.  I did this sequentially, but you could also up the temperature to 210°C and put both sheets in, and swap them top to bottom halfway through baking.  Bake for about 10 minutes, but watch the pizzas the entire time – as I’ve mentioned many times, ovens vary and I do not know yours!  The cheese can burn really quickly if you leave them in.
• When pizzas are puffed up more, crust is golden and the cheese is melted and golden as well, take out and cool on a rack.  These are fine to serve warm or at room temperature – they get a wonderfully crunchy crust when they cool down just a little.

Enjoy!  And if a stray guest wanders in having not had dinner, then just hand him or her a few of these, and problem solved!