Day 21

Quarantineland is a strange new place - a combination of Groundhog Day and the Upside Down. In many ways, my days are the same as they have been for the last 18 months here in Fairfax, and much longer in other places: I drink my morning coffee at the dining-room table; run teleconferences and send emails from my desk; cook dinner most nights using a meal planning schedule that has been evolving my whole adult life from my mother’s unchanging weekly routine.

Other shifts and routines are emerging that are new and strange in our home ecosystem. Miss B, long self-described as a “slug” who would protest any suggestion of physical exertion, now voluntarily goes out for a walk every morning before sitting down to schoolwork. Sometimes she goes twice a day. DP, who has been up and gone long before sunup most days for the better part of two decades, is regularly “sleeping in” until after 7. And me? I generally revel in being a homebody; now I feel the walls closing in if it’s late afternoon and I haven’t made it out into the fresh air yet. I’m digging into tasks I would normally procrastinate about getting done. And I’m baking even more than I usually do, and wanting to even more than that.

Popovers

I’ve been working on what I call “carbing with intent” for the last year, and part of that is curbing my desire to eat dessert every single night - I usually try to restrain myself to weekends. That has been harder than usual for the last few weeks, when the call of carbs as comfort food has been almost irresistible, and I’ve hit on popovers as a good compromise. You can make them sweet or savory, and they provide a good carb hit without throwing your whole calorie budget for the day out of whack. I’ve adapted Michael Ruhlman’s Ratio recipe to stretch the most basic ingredient ratio into four good-sized popovers - perfect for an impromptu after-dinner treat. (Miss B will attest that they’re also good toasted and topped with maple syrup for breakfast the next day.)

4oz/120ml milk

1 egg

2oz/60g all-purpose/plain flour

a large pinch of salt

1oz/30g/2 Tbsp butter, melted

Combine the milk and eggs in a jug with a pouring spout and whisk until combined. Add flour and salt, and stir until combined evenly. Ideally, for best results let the batter sit for 15-30 minutes (or longer) after combining.

When ready to cook, place a popover or muffin pan in the oven and heat the oven to 450F/220C. Divide the butter into 4 even pieces; remove the pan from the oven and place one piece into each of 4 of the cups. Pour 1/4 of the batter into each of the 4 cups, then return the pan to the oven. Bake for 10 minutes, then reduce heat to 375F/190C and bake for another 20-30 minutes, or until puffy and golden.

Serve hot with jam or syrup.

Coffee cake

I've been getting more interested in coffee cake lately, after one of our guests brought a particularly delicious one to the Lasagna Lunch. I've also recently rediscovered one of my favorite flavor combos from my first stint in Australia - rhubarb and peaches - when the first peaches of the season turned up at the farmer's market. I combined them to make a coffee cake which, though I say it myself, was thoroughly delicious.

Rhubarb-peach coffee cake

Dry ingredients

8 oz/240 g self-raising flour

1 tsp/5 g salt

4 Tbsp/60 g sugar (I used my citrus sugar here)

Wet ingredients

4 oz/120 g milk

4 oz/120 g Greek yogurt (for a slightly denser and more complex muffin)

1 tsp/5 g vanilla

2 eggs (= 4 oz/120 g)

4 oz/120 g (1 stick) butter, melted

Embellishments

1 cup chopped rhubarb and peaches, tossed with 1-2 oz/30-60 g sugar

Crumb topping (I used a combination of roughly 2 oz/60 g each butter and sugar + 4 oz/120 g flour)

Heat oven to 350F/180C. Line an 8 in/20 cm square cake pan with parchment paper. 

Make the crumb topping by whisking together the ingredients. (I also added some cinnamon, cardamom, and ginger to the mix.) Set aside.

In a medium-sized bowl, whisk together the dry ingredients. In a medium-sized jug, whisk together all the wet ingredients except the butter; add the butter slowly and carefully last, so as not to scramble the egg. Dump wet into dry and whisk until just combined.

Scoop all but about one cup of the batter into the prepared baking pan. Scatter the fruit across the surface of the batter, then do the same with the remaining cup of batter and the crumb topping.

Bake for 25-30 minutes or until lightly browned, rotating pan halfway through.

Raspberry muffins

Have I spent enough time yet waxing rhapsodic about Ratio? About how it’s fundamentally changed the way I approach cooking and baking? About how it’s like having the Rosetta Stone for deciphering, and then adapting, existing recipes, to say nothing of creating new ones? About how I love it so much I gave it its own blog tag?

No? You want to hear more? Oh, go ahead, twist my arm. Allow me, if you will, to explain the construction of a Ratio recipe.

Ratio raspberry muffins

Lately these are my go-to choice for playdate baking; they mix up and bake quickly, I pretty much always have the ingredients on hand, and small children devour them. (One recent small visitor ate four.)

Here is the basic ratio for a muffin batter:

2 parts flour : 2 parts liquid : 1 part egg : 1 part butter

Michael Ruhlman suggests that a recipe based on 8 oz/240 g flour should yield about a dozen muffins. So, working on this premise, I constructed the following recipe.

Dry ingredients

6 oz/180 g plain flour

2 oz/60 g whole wheat flour

2 tsp/10 g baking powder (working on another rule of thumb, gleaned elsewhere: 1 tsp/5 g per cup/4 oz/120 g)

1 tsp/5 g salt

4 Tbsp/60 g sugar (I used my citrus sugar here, for a little extra je ne sais quoi)

Wet ingredients

6 oz/180 g milk

2 oz/60 g Greek yogurt (for a slightly denser and more complex muffin)

1 tsp/5 g vanilla

2 eggs (= 4 oz/120 g)

4 oz/120 g (1 stick) butter, melted

Embellishments

1 cup raspberries (I used frozen, and tossed them with more citrus sugar before adding)

Preheat oven to 350F/180C. Grease (or line) a 12-cup muffin pan and set aside.

In a medium-sized bowl, whisk together the dry ingredients. In a medium-sized jug, whisk together all the wet ingredients except the butter; add the butter slowly and carefully last, so as not to scramble the egg. Dump wet into dry and whisk until just combined. Fold in raspberries gently until evenly distributed.

Scoop batter (it will be thick) into muffin cups with ice-cream scoop or large spoon. Bake for 15-20 minutes, rotating pan halfway through.

Makes 12 muffins.

Making gravy

Yes, this picture is a repeat - but look! Gravy! See?

Along with bringing an apple pie, a bottle of prosecco, and a festive attitude, my main contribution to Thanksgiving dinner was making gravy. I kept asking if there was anything I could do to help, and at the appropriate moment, the hostess asked how I felt about taking on that task.

I used to get really freaked out about making gravy, probably because I had to teach myself how to make it and try to figure out what a roux was supposed to look like when I’d never seen anyone else make one. I remember spending a lot of time stressing about the roux – was it too thin? Too chunky? Had  I measured (or weighed) the ingredients precisely to get the right proportions? Had I cooked it long enough? Too long? Was it actually thickening the gravy?

Then, as I was working my way through the endlessly fascinating and instructive Ratio, I came to the chapter on roux, in particular this sentence: “…it’s most convenient to measure [the ingredients for roux] by sight, melting your butter to cook off some of the water and adding flour in increments until you have the consistency of a paste.” And, even though I’m sure I had come across the same basic information multiple times already in other places, somehow this time I finally absorbed that roux is a means to an end: thickening soup, sauce, or gravy. All you have to do is create a paste of fat (preferably, but not necessarily, butter) and flour, and it will do that job. How thick or thin you make the paste is up to you; the consistency of the finished product will vary depending upon that, plus how much liquid you then add. If the gravy is too thick, you can add more liquid; if it's too thin, you can turn up the heat and let it reduce for a few minutes.

Grasping those basic pieces of information completely demystified the gravy-making process for me, and removed  my need to consult recipes from then on. Now I just make gravy, following the same basic process, and varying the ingredients based upon where I want the finished product to end up.

Basic gravy method

In addition to being infinitely adaptable, this method also has the benefit of being able to be made almost entirely ahead. Rather than frantically trying to concoct gravy from scratch at the last minute when the rest of dinner is ready, you can do the first four steps earlier in the prep process, then stir in the drippings, season, and serve. Much less nerve-wracking if you, like me, are made tense by last-minute cooking.

Step 1: melt fat in a medium-sized saucepan over low-medium heat. (I generally use 2-3 Tbsp/30-45 g butter here, but sometimes I use bacon fat or olive oil instead. You can also sauté minced onions, garlic, mirepoix etc. at this step if you want that kind of thing in your gravy.)

Step 2: whisk flour into melted fat until you have created a paste in the bottom of the pan, and continue cooking for a couple of minutes until the flour is no longer raw. Michael Ruhlman says that a roux is cooked “when it begins to smell like a lightly cooked piecrust.”

Step 3: deglaze the pan with a healthy slug of wine and continue whisking. This usually turns the roux into a thick and fluffy paste in my experience. (I use either white or red, depending on what I’m making and what’s open, and have not hesitated to use sparkling wine if nothing else was handy.)

Step 4: pour in 1-2 cups/240-480 ml of liquid slowly, still whisking. (Milk for a creamy gravy; stock for a more standard gravy. On Thanksgiving, all that was available was water, so I used that.) Bring this just to a boil, then let simmer. At this point the roux should do its work and the gravy should thicken up.

Step 5: add drippings from whatever hunk of meat you’re making the gravy to accompany. (Sometimes it’s nice to remove the fat, but not always feasible.) Bring gravy back up to a simmer, stirring frequently to ensure everything is mixed consistently.

Step 6: taste and check seasonings; add salt and pepper, plus other seasonings as you deem appropriate. (I wait to salt until after adding the pan drippings, as these usually come from meat that has been salted, possibly making additional salt unnecessary.)

Step 7: serve hot.

Seasonal flavors

I missed posting last night for the first time in 40 days. D’oh! I’m blaming it on the head cold that arrived a couple of days ago. Or the whirlwind road trip to Wichita (a mere 3-hour drive each way) for a family party with my in-laws. Or tacking the Vintage Homes Tour (where all that bread was for sale) on to the end of it.

Seeing the bread (or what was left of it by the time we got there = not much) reminded me that I hadn’t posted all the recipes yet. And that I’d mentioned on the labels that people could find them here. So I thought I’d better buckle down and get to it.

Cranberry walnut bread
This used some of the huge amount of cranberry sauce I had left over from Thanksgiving. Adding in a scattering of toasted walnuts makes for an excellent combination of late autumn/early winter flavors.

8 oz/240 g all-purpose/plain flour
2 oz/60 g granulated/caster sugar
2 oz/60 g brown sugar
1 tsp/5 g kosher salt
2 tsp/10 g baking powder
8 oz/240 ml whole milk
2 large eggs
4oz/120 g/1 stick unsalted butter, melted and browned
½ cup cranberry sauce
½ cup walnuts, chopped and toasted

Preheat oven to 350F/180C and grease a 9 in/23 cm loaf pan.

Measure dry ingredients in a large bowl and stir or whisk to combine. Measure wet ingredients in a large measuring cup, jug, or similar, and whisk thoroughly until eggs are beaten in completely and liquid is of a uniform consistency.

Pour wet ingredients into dry, and mix until nearly combined. Add walnuts and fold through batter until evenly distributed. Scatter lumps of cranberry sauce on top of batter, and use a knife to swirl through.

Scrape the batter into loaf pan and bake for 45-50 minutes or until browned on top and a knife inserted into the center comes out clean. Cool for at least 20 minutes in pan before turning out onto a rack to cool completely.

Makes 1 loaf.

Cookie swap

I got invited to this cookie swap on Sunday, after I had already devised my bread-baking schedule for the week in order to meet our agreed Vintage Homes Society contribution. As I mentioned yesterday, I try to avoid scheduling multiple baking projects for the same day, because usually it doesn't end well. But obviously I was feeling invincible (I blame the sangria) when I said, "Sure, I'd love to come!" and thought, "I can slot a batch of cookies in there, nooooo problem."

::cue foreshadowing music of doom::

I was already planning on making these brown butter & sugar shortbread cookies, because the recipe is really simple, and the dough comes together in about 45 seconds, thanks to Archie. The only time-consuming part of it would be browning the butter, and I could do that ahead of time. Even tripling the recipe should be no problem, right? It's a 1-2-3 recipe, so just multiply everything by 3 and I'm good to go.

Yes. Except for the part where I forgot to double-check the master recipe and then mentally swapped around the proportions of butter and sugar. Which provided me with an unusably crumbly dough (since it had so little butter), until I poured in some milk to bring it all together.

The good news is, like most recipe screw-ups, they were still edible. (More than edible, actually: crispy on the outside and chewy on the inside, and festive with their red and green sugar on top. And they seem to have been well received, since I retrieved my box at the end of the night with about five cookies left in it.) They just were definitely not shortbread, that's all. Which would have been fine too, if not for the fact that I had already printed out the requested 15 copies of a recipe with "shortbread" in the title and had no time to it again.

Oh well. Let's hope no one remembers that discrepancy if and when they ever get around to cooking from those directions.

Brown butter & sugar Christmas cookies
Another 1-2-3 recipe, mauled nearly beyond recognition. Also a happy accident that I may just have to make again.

6 oz/180 g browned butter
12 oz/360 g brown sugar
pinch salt
2 tsp/10 g vanilla
18 oz/540 g all-purpose/plain flour
2-3 Tbsp/45 g milk
red & green sugar, for topping

Preheat oven to 350F/180C and line a baking tray with parchment paper. Mix the first four ingredients in a food processor (or mixing method of your choice) until thoroughly combined, then add the flour in slowly. You will probably have a sandy, very crumbly dough; add milk with the food processor running until the dough comes together in a large ball.

You can bake this immediately, or shape into a log to slice and bake later. When ready to go in the oven, sprinkle with sugar and bake for 15-20 minutes, rotating tray(s) halfway through cooking time. When lightly brown around the edges, remove from oven and let cool on trays for 2-3 minutes before removing cookies to a rack to cool thoroughly.

Makes 36-40 cookies.

Sugar shortage

Somehow I managed to run out of granulated (castor) sugar earlier this week--a potentially anxiety-inducing event at any time, made even worse when I briefly thought I would have to produce a baked good before I could get to the grocery store on Thursday. I was calmed, however, when I remembered that I did have a full bag of brown sugar on hand, and in that state imagined that I had recently come across a recipe for Brown Sugar Shortbread. Minimal Googling revealed this to have been a delusion on my part, and by then the reason for baking had also evaporated, whatever it was. But now I wanted some brown sugar shortbread, so I decided to make up my own. And when I noticed that I had some pre-made browned butter waiting around to be used up, I decided to go over the top while I was at it.

Brown butter & sugar shortbread
This recipe is based on Ratio's 1-2-3 cookie formula, and it is simple and delicious. This could be a candidate for this year's Eight Days of Christmas Baking.

2 oz/60 g brown sugar
4 oz/120 g browned butter
pinch salt
1 tsp/5 g vanilla
6 oz/180 g all-purpose/plain flour
turbinado sugar, for topping

Preheat oven to 350F/180C and line a baking tray with parchment paper. Mix the first four ingredients in a food processor (or mixing method of your choice) until thoroughly combined, then add the flour in slowly. You should have a soft but crumbly dough when finished.

You can bake this immediately, or shape into a log to slice and bake later. When ready to go in the oven, sprinkle with sugar and bake for 15-20 minutes, rotating tray(s) halfway through cooking time. When lightly brown around the edges, remove from oven and let cool on trays for 2-3 minutes before removing cookies to a rack to cool thoroughly.

Makes 10-18 cookies.

Tea cake

I have vivid memories of my first Royal Wedding. I was still in grade school, and very excited about it. I spent the month before cutting every scrap of information I could find out of newspapers and magazines, and set up a collage wall in our attic play area. I set my alarm for 3:30 am on the big day, and got myself up to watch the live coverage (incidentally astounding my mother, because even then getting up in the morning was not my forte). I spent the morning glued to the TV set, while various family members passed in and out, mildly curious and bemused at my preoccupation. It remains the only time I ever remember being carried away by the whole “princess/fairytale” narrative.

Yorkshire pudding

Six fun facts about Yorkshire pudding

Did you know?

1. Yorkshire pudding and popovers are the same thing.
2. The same batter that makes either of these savory accompaniments can also be served as a sweet dish, as in a Dutch baby pancake.
3. The batter contains no leavener; it rises and gets puffy because of steam trapped inside the dough as it bakes, a method also used in choux pastry (to make profiteroles/cream puffs (sweet) or gougères (savory)).
4. It is most often served as part of a traditional English Sunday lunch, alongside roast beef, roast potatoes, and vegetables.
5. Tradition also holds that it was devised as a cheap way to fill people up so that they wouldn’t eat quite so much of the more expensive beef.
6. It is about 90% of my motivation for cooking roast beef.

Developing recipes

I’ve already mentioned Michael Ruhlman’s book Ratio a few times, but I haven’t gone into any detail about its rather significant impact in my kitchen. But if you, like me, are not professionally trained, but rather an inquisitive home cook maybe looking to push the boundaries a bit, then I bet you might feel the same way about it. Because Ratio is like the Rosetta Stone for home cooks and especially bakers: it enables you to understand the basic structure of some two dozen preparations and, once you have absorbed this knowledge, it enables you to develop your own recipes.

Ooooh baby

I feel certain that there have already been numerous jokes made about Dutch baby pancakes and cannibalism, and you do have to be careful about how you offer them to people who might not be familiar with the dish. I’ve gotten some very strange looks when I’ve unthinkingly blurted out something about making a Dutch baby, and had to rapidly explain the absence of any actual babies in the recipe.

Monday again

Lately, trying to update this blog (not to mention dealing with the rest of my life) feels like being part of a singularly uninspired remake of Groundhog Day. Still solo parenting (Day 19). Still trying to kick a head cold. Still trying to juggle a pile of work with an even bigger pile of bureaucracy related to cars and mortgages and bank accounts, oh my. (Obligatory Wizard of Oz reference—get it? Kansas?) And if I don’t find it entertaining, how on earth are you supposed to find it even remotely interesting?

But sometimes, for the sake of posterity (and just to prove to myself that I have not yet, in fact, gone insane), these things must be documented. And so I give you….