Molasses Creole Cake

A lot of people have it in for Twitter. "What's the point? I guess I understand Facebook, but Twitter is just a waste of time."

Well. I disagree. Last Saturday dawned here a little overcast, but the sky soon darkened. And the deluge came. People probably think I should be used to rain, living in Portland and all. But this was no Portland rain, this was the kind you don't go out in. And the rain wasn't all. One household member got an H1N1 diagnosis, another looks as if he's about to come down with it. Everyone was just in a funk.

I checked in with my TweetDeck, and, thanks to Kim Severson of the New York Times, this tweet came across my screen: "Great advice from a 77-year-old Alabama cook: When you're feeling down just get in the kitchen and bake someone a cake."

It was the perfect day to read it.

The only problem. How do I bake a cake in a house with a husband, son, and niece, and then give it away? Then it hit me. I'd bake them the cake. And it would only be polite to join them for a piece.  Luckily, they were nice enough to share.

After spending the better part of the morning leafing through cookbooks, trying to figure out what I wanted (not chocolate, maybe spice?), I made what I'm calling a Molasses Creole Cake. Two thin molasses layers, filled and iced with coffee creole boiled icing. The boiled icing was less sweet than normal, as it had espresso in it. And the molasses cake layers were dark and soft. Since I used blackstrap molasses, the cake had a slightly iron-like flavor that also helped temper the sweetness.

It was even better the next day.  But gone the third. And you know, we all did feel a bit happier.

Molasses Creole Cake
adapted from The Joy of Cooking and the Fannie Farmer Baking Book

Cake layers:
1/2 cup butter
1/2 cup brown sugar
2 egg yolks
1/2 cup molasses
2 cups cake flour (sift before measuring)
1 teaspoon baking soda
3/4 cup water
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 egg whites
1/4 teaspoon salt

Frosting
3/4 cups sugar
1/2 teaspoon cream of tartar
Pinch of salt
2 egg whites
1/4 cup espresso or strong coffee
2 teaspoons rum
1/2 cup pecans
1/4 cup candied orange peel

• Preheat oven to 375º; grease and flour two 9-inch layer cake pans.
• Sift the cake flour with the baking soda.
• Combine the water and vanilla in a measuring cup. 
• Beat butter until soft, add sugar gradually. Continue to beat until light and creamy.  Beat in the two egg yolks, one at a time.  Beat in the molasses.
• Add the sifted ingredients to the butter mixture in 3 parts, alternating with the water-vanilla mixture.
• Whip the egg whites and salt until stiff but not dry.  Fold them into the batter.
• Divide the batter into the two prepared pans. Bake about 20 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.  Cool for 5-10 minutes in the pans, then remove from pans and let finish cooling on a rack.
  

When the cake is cool, prepare the frosting.

•  Toast the pecans for about 5 minutes at 350º.  When cool, chop them and the candied peel coarsely. 
  
• Combine the sugar, cream of tartar, salt, egg whites, and coffee in a mixing bowl (at least 2-quart capacity) over the top of a double boiler.  Set over simmering water on low heat.
• Beat with a electric hand mixer until the frosting stands in peaks--this should take about 5-7 minutes.
• Remove from heat and continue beating a few more minutes, to stiffen the frosting.  It will stand in smooth peaks.
• Beat in the rum.
• Remove one-third of the frosting and put in a mixing bowl with most of the chopped nuts and peel (save a little of the nuts and peel for decorating the top of the cake).
  

Once the cake is cool, put one layer, flat side up, on your cake plate.  Spread the frosting mixed with chopped nuts and peel almost to the edges.  Put the second cake layer on top, and frost the sides and top with the remaining frosting.  Decorate the tops with the reserved nuts and peel.

Name That Café: Part II

Lil' Mama at Two Tarts

I'm afraid my kids never did learn to play the violin.  My husband figured out that piano lessons made more sense.  "You can't throw the piano on the floor!".  True, no one ever threw down the piano, but getting the kids to practice was never fun.  So Pavel and I, basically fun-loving and not altogether good at carry-through, probably didn't push hard enough.

It didn't all end badly; our son turned out to be quite good at focusing when he was interested in something.  Composing has been one such thing; and lately he's been working hard at teaching himself to play the piano. 

Wouldn't those long fingers have been great on violin?

Sadly, I can't tell you what name of that café was, I've never figured it out.  But I can tell you where to go in Portland today if you need to hunker down with cookies and coffee, and you don't happen to have any at home. Or you have some at home, but need to get out of the house for a while.  Because maybe someone won't stop playing the piano.


View Back for Seconds at the Nameless Café in a larger map

Two Tarts Bakery started out as so many food shops in Portland do: with a stand at the Portland Farmers Market.  Then, last year, they opened their shop on NW Kearney, just off of NW 23rd Avenue (with parking!).  Tucked into a mini-mall next to a toy store, Two Tarts is cozy, a little like walking into a gingerbread house.  If I had little kids, I'd take them here after school every Friday.  The walls are painted the color of café au lait, and 4 small tables fill the seating area.  Then comes the counter, with its inviting case, carrying more than a baker's dozen of types of cookies.  The kitchen stretches back from the counter, open to the customers.

Unusually for Portland, Two Tarts does not serve espresso drinks.  Instead, they offer milk, cocoa, the local Foxfire Tea, and  Courier Coffee (local roasters who deliver all their coffee by bicycle).  Two Tarts brews a solid French Press, and give you a timer so you know when to push down the plunger.  It's the perfect cookie accompaniment.

Clockwise from the back: Hazelnut baci, ginger molasses, fleur du sel choc chip, double chocolate chew, Lil' Mama

And the cookies.  They are dainty, about 1 to 1-1/2 inches in diameter, each variety thoughtfully flavored.  Such a pleasure in this era of massive, clunky cookies, where one cookie is so often made with enough dough for three cookies.  Of course, you will probably eat more than three of these little ones.  How would you choose just one or two?  And the pricing encourages gluttony: 75 cents for one, $7.50 for a baker's dozen.

That's why I try to bring a friend to Two Tarts.  The other day I dragged my son away from the piano and went for cookies and coffee.  We picked out a baker's dozen, optimistically expecting to bring some home. Somehow we forgot to save any.

Clockwise from top: lemon bar, s'more, cappuccino cream, pumpkin seed macaroon, peanut butter cream, maple shortbread in center

I love Two Tarts' mix of cookies.  You'll find updates on old favorites, such as their chocolate chip with fleur du sel, but also cookies that remind you of old favorite store-bought cookies, heavily improved.  Their Lil' Mama, vanilla buttercream filling sandwiched between two chocolate cookies, are everything you wish an Oreo was.  The Peanut Butter Creams are peanut butter oatmeal sandwich cookies, tasting like a particularly delicious Nutter Butter.  And then there's their S'mores: two square graham cookies with housemade marshmallow in the center, the corner dipped in chocolate.

Many of the cookies benefit from being small.  Lemon bars, so often oversized, gloppy squares, are delicate and complex tasting at Two Tarts.  Others might be too rich in a bigger cookie.  Their baci are like hazelnut Mexican wedding cakes filled with chocolate ganache; specialty macaroons (pumpkin seed yesterday) are also often filled with chocolate ganache.

 Pumpkin Seed Macaroon

And their shortbread?  I've tried a few over the last year.  The lemon clove tastes deeply of cloves, a flavor that always makes me think of the Middle Ages.  Now they also have a delicate maple (made with maple sugar).  I've tried their vanilla shortbread, with a dollop of concentrated apple butter.  And yes, on a couple of very lucky days, I've walked in to find a plate of brown sugar pecan shortbread.  Sandy texture, rich with the nuts and butter, and just sweet enough.

Thinking about getting back to the piano

Name That Café: Back for Seconds

Back in the early 1990s, I discovered the Chamber Music Society of Oregon, and its incredible program offering free instrumental music classes to Portland children. Pavel and I quickly signed up our two children for classes.  I can't remember whose idea it was that they study violin, or even where we got the violins.  What I do remember is the painful attempts at getting them to practice.

I enjoyed the classes, especially the hour and a half that I had to kill downtown.  I started my escape at the pre-renovation (1994-1997)  Central Library.  Back then, so many books were stored in closed stacks that I often had to fill out a call slip and take it to the clerk.  He would put it into a plastic cylinder, and lift it up to the pneumatic tube, which would suck my request up and away to a librarian working the stacks.  Don't start me on the silent 'p' in pneumatic; I have similar feelings about the 'p' in pterodactyl.


View Back for Seconds at the Nameless Café in a larger map

Anyway.  The icing on my cake, as it were, on those Saturday mornings by myself was a visit to a café whose name I've sadly forgotten.  It was across SW 10th Avenue from the library, close to Willamette Week's old offices.  It was the kind of place I considered, then, very Northwestern, different from the cafés in California.  The inside was dark and cozy--there was no attempt to hide the fact that Oregon is dark and rainy.  I think this café was where I learned how much easier it is to give in to the rain, and hunker down with a hot beverage and a comforting cookie, than to pretend it's sunny.

I took to hunkering down with a cookie and coffee like, well, a duck to water.  The café made a brown sugar shortbread cookie that I ordered each time.  The color of light brown sugar, it was (at least in my memory) dipped in caramel.  The cookie was crumbly and slightly sweeter than regular shortbread, but still less sweet than most cookies.  The caramel picked up any sweetness slack.

The café, sadly, is gone.  Its name is forgotten by me, and by the people I've asked.  But the cookie is remembered and still appreciated, as is the luxury of a snatched hour spent by myself in a warm space.  I'm pretty sure I can trace my appreciation of time spent in cafés to those quiet hours I spent there, nursing my coffee and nibbling my cookie.  

As I recall, the classes were as painful as the practicing.  Pavel took to bribing the kids with visits to Martinotti's for candy after each class.  The classes didn't last, but Christmas isn't Christmas without a stop at Martinotti's for marzipan fruits from Italy and all sorts of Italian stocking candy.  The end finally came one day when my son threw his violin down in frustration--with the violin, with his teacher, with himself, and, most of all, with his parents.

Falling for Polenta, Landing with Polenta and Fries: Parts II and III

Part II

I think of the fried polenta I ate on cold nights in Florence fairly often.  So why don't I ever eat it?  It's not as if I can't get it; we eat polenta fairly often, especially in the winter.  And there's almost always leftovers.  But they tend to get reheated, or sliced thinly and fried in small puddle of oil in a cast-iron pan.

But I shy away from deep frying.  Partly because I don't think of it as the most healthy way to prepare food.  Partly because large amounts of hot oil are a bit frightening. Largely because it seems so expensive.

Since I generally bake polenta in a rectangular casserole (thanks to Paula Wolfert's recipe in Mediterranean Grains and Greens), the leftover polenta is already neatly formed.  Last time I had some left over, I decided to give deep frying a try.  

 
The piece I had was about one-inch thick, so I sliced it into fairly neat (for me) one-inch cubes.  I fried them in olive oil at 350º, just a couple at a time (full disclosure: I used a ridiculously small saucepan, so as to limit my oil expense).  When their surface hardens (you can tell by pressing them with the back of the spoon) and they turn golden, drain them on paper towels, and sprinkle with salt.

So. It's easy to go back for seconds of the actual food, and I'll be doing it often now.

But what about the big picture? Eating fried polenta in my living room, while watching a baseball game, isn't too shabby.  But where were the other adventurers?  I started thinking.  If I were a traveling 18-year-old again, and found myself in Portland low on funds but ready for adventure, what would I be eating? Where would I end up?

Part III

View Falling for Polenta in Florence: Back for Seconds in a larger map

With all the food carts in Portland, it's strange no one sells fried polenta.  But that's not to say Portland's short on spots to meet people and eat cheaply.  I like to think I would do a little research before landing in Portland; with a little luck, I made a few friends along the way, and found a place to crash cheap (sleeping in the Greyhound Station is not tempting).  If not, I'd probably end up at the Youth Hostel on SE Hawthorne.  From there, it would be a short walk (for and 18-year-old) to the food cart pod at SE Hawthorne and  SE 12th.

 Yes, that's the moon

There's lots of choices there, from Whiffie's Fried Pies, to Perierra's Crêperie.  But I'm pretty sure Potato Champion is the place I'd be getting my cheap supper (now for dessert, that's a whole other ball of string).  They open at 6 PM, and don't close until 3 AM.  The scene shifts with the hour--the later you go, the more crowded it gets.  But at any hour, you're likely to run into all ages of French fry eaters.  The pod has even made a covered area so you can enjoy the carts year round (though you'll want a jacket--the winds whip through).

Potato Champion sells Belgian style fries, which, according to them, means they are blanched first at a low temperature in the fryer, then left to sweat out the oil (they use rice bran oil), which "brings out the potato's natural fragrance."

When you step up to order your cone (and a large, $4.50, is always plenty for me and a friend), you'll see the pile of blanched fries, looking a little naked (the low temperature doesn't crisp them at all).  A few minutes later, your cone of cooked to order fries is ready.  I don't know if it's the blanching that does it, but the fries taste of earthy potato--crisp outside with slightly mealy insides, and, what do you know, plenty of natural potato fragrance.

With each order you pick one sauce--there's dijon mustard, horseradish ketchup, and various mayonnaises (I'm partial to the anchovy and the remoulade) to choose from; if it's too hard, spring the extra 50 cents for each additional sauce.  They sell poutine as well ($4.50 and $7), which would make more of a complete meal.  Maybe I would have made that my Sunday dinner.

A Mysterious Package

Yesterday I came home to find a mysterious package on the table.  It was from my parents.  They hadn't mentioned sending me anything.

I opened it right away.  Before I took off my coat.  Inside I found this:

A bonafide Crane Melon.  Straight from Crane Melon Barn, in Santa Rosa, California.  Richard Crane, the father of Oliver Crane, the man who developed the Crane melon, was Grandma's Great-Great-Uncle; her maiden name was Crane.  Not a bad birthright, Crane melons.

After dinner, I took a knife and split it in two.  The seeds slipped out with a slurpy sound. Or at least I thought I heard a slurp.  I might have imagined it.

I wish I could take a picture of the scent of this melon.  Or find a perfume like it.

We ate it for dessert.  When I put the first bite in my mouth, it dissolved.  In another day or two, it would be past ripe.  But right then, it was perfect.  What's better than the most perfect bite of melon?

We finished it for breakfast.  When I uncovered it, I thought there was plastic sticking to it still, it was so shiny.  But it was just the melon, shimmering.

This is just to say
Thanks, Mom and Dad
It was delicious
So perfect and unexpected

Falling for Polenta in Florence: Back for Seconds

 (c) Sailko 

Mercato Centrale

I fell hard.  Italy was full of delights for an 18-year-old: gelato, shoes, and handsome men come immediately to mind.  And then there was the history and the art.  Who would guess that cornmeal, a New World food from back home, would be so enticing?

When I was 18, I went on one of those lengthy European trips.  You know the kind, maybe you went on the same adventure?  You took all your money (all $800 of it), a one-way airplane ticket (don't tell my son who's plotting an escape to Chile), and an address book filled with names and addresses of everyone you, your parents, your parents' friends, your piano teacher, and her friends knew. Or had heard of.

Back then  it was a real adventure.  Without email, instead of hitting internet cafes (which also didn't exist) when you arrived in a new city you headed first to the post office, to see if there was any mail awaiting you in General Delivery.  You made friends on the way, traveled together for a while, and then parted, planning on meeting up again at the cafe by the train station in the next town in 3 weeks.  Sometimes it worked out, other times you missed each other, and never met up again. 

Midway through my trip, with my traveler checks (in $10 and $20 denominations) dwindling, I finally made it to Florence.  I stayed at the Locanda Anna, in a room with 4 other young women--for less than $6 a night each.  I still remember Robyn from Adelaide, on her yearlong grand tour; Robin, a struggling actress from New York, and Suze from Maine.  All of us were being careful with our money, though I think we each bought some shoes.  We were in Italy, after all.  I have fond memories of my pair of green leather boots with a gold cuff.

I know, from looking back at my journal, that I went to the Uffizi and the Bargello.  I also know, from my journal, that I managed to eat 4 scoops of gelato at Vivoli's my first night there: Chocolate ("amazingly rich"), zabaione, rice, and chestnut ("I don't know when I've had such a perfect flavor").


View Falling for Polenta in Florence: Back for Seconds in a larger map

But without my journal as a reminder, what comes back is the Mercato Centrale, with its poultry and butcher stands--piles of tripe, rows of hanging song birds, whole boars and venison.  In mid-November, wafts of truffle scent moved through the air, enveloping me suddenly as I turned a corner or passed an aisle.

(c) Warburg

But it's the fried polenta that comes back to me the most.  We found it one evening after walking through the Mercato.  On the Via dell'Oriuolo we found a stand run by a sweet old woman.  All she sold was bags of fried polenta.  Cut in cubes, about one-inch square, they were deep fried, quickly tossed with salt, and put into paper cones.  The outside was perfectly crisped, the inside still a bit creamy.  So hot they burned your mouth, so good you couldn't wait.  Surely just four ingredients: polenta, water, salt, and the oil that cooked them.  How could they supply so much flavor and texture?  They might not have been the healthiest dinner, but on a cold November night, they were perfect for this gelato-shoe-lover on a tight budget, and without a proper coat. 

Florence was the only place I found fried polenta on my trip.  A few months later, tired of traveling and missing home and family, I called Grandma and borrowed money for the flight home. She was always up for helping us back from our adventures.

Hungering for Home

Due to poor planning on my part, and irritating business hours on someone elses, I'm shifting this week's 'Back for Seconds' posts to Tuesday and Thursday.  I'm sure you can wait.

But in the meantime.  A week or two ago, I had a facebook exchange with my daughter and son about missing foods.  By now, everyone in my immediate family has lived in at least two countries, which means we've all eaten at home in at least two countries.  Enough to repeat certain dishes, to learn to like foods that were initially uninteresting, unfamiliar, or even unpleasant.  And then there are the foods we ate as children, prepared by relatives now gone.  We miss them--the foods and the people who fed us.

I posted a slide show at The Atlantic's food section about homesick Ecuadorians eating in Madrid on my son's facebook wall.  Simon lived in Ecuador for a year, and often talks with great longing of the encebollado, a tuna and yuca soup, and hornado, a roasted pork, popular at markets in the northern mountainous region where he lived.  My husband has his favorite Czech pastries, laskonka, meringues with chopped nuts sandwiching buttercream.  Grace is a mixed-up girl.  When she's home, she might be missing habichuelas con dulce, the sweet red bean soup made with coconut milk, sweet potatoes, cinnamon, and cloves she ate when living in the Dominican Republic.  Or she might be wanting some hutspot, a Dutch mashed potato and carrot supper.  Francesca, my youngest, is in Italy now. It's pretty clear from her letters that spaghetti con vongole is going to be missed upon her return stateside.  And me? Well, I hope my 'Back for Seconds' posts are cluing you in to foods I want to eat again.

The point is, sometimes we want those foods because of a craving, a desire for that particular taste.  But maybe even more often, it's a longing that goes beyond the taste; it's a kind of homesickness.  So in that facebook exchange, I said there ought to be a word for missing foods.  'Gastalgia', Simon suggested, irritatingly quickly--from 'gastronomy' and 'nostalgia', I assume.  As in "I'm feeling a little gastalgic right now for Denmark". 

Nostalgia, incidentally, is from Ancient Greek words meaning 'returning home' and 'pain or ache'.  I like the idea of using words meaning 'returning to the table', but fear combining that with 'pain' or 'ache' has an unpleasant connotation.  Maybe something meaning 'longing for the table'?

Or maybe the Portuguese word, saudade , which I'm told lacks a perfect English translation, is worth looking at.  According to Wikipedia, it's described as "the recollection of feelings, experiences, places or events that once brought excitement, pleasure, well-being, which now triggers the senses and makes one live again."  It's also described as an emptiness, so that fits well with the idea of hungering for home. Hmm. I wonder how you say 'hunger for home' in Greek?

I'm open to suggestions. And if the perfect word already exists, I hope someone will tell me.  If it's super obvious, you can all have a little chuckle at my expense.