Lemon Mousse

Dear Margaret,

I've been meaning to give you the details on the lemon mousse for so long now that I'm afraid I may have forgotten some of them. But I'll give it a whirl.

Rebecca brought Meyer lemons from her parent's tree when she came to visit and I wanted to make something special with them to showcase the delicate flavor. I did a roast chicken with slices of lemon on it that was delicious, but I wanted to make a desert with the remaining ones. You know, something special. Like desert.

Lemon mousse seemed like the perfect vehicle for the juicy goodness of these golden globes. I thought about using Belle's recipe for Lemon Souffle, which is really a mousse, but it has raw egg whites and that seemed unnecessarily risky. I will happily risk my health for cookie dough, but not for a lemon mousse that I could make just as well without the risk of a hospital stay.

I found a few lemon curd recipes on line and in books and set to work.

3 large eggs
3 large eggs yolks
1/2 cup sugar
zest of 2 Meyer lemons
1/2 cup Meyer  lemon juice
pinch of salt
2 sticks unsalted butter, cut up into pieces about a tablespoon size

Put the eggs, yolks, sugar, zest, juice salt all into the top part of a double boiler set over medium heat. Whisk like crazy to keep it from scrambling. Scrambled eggs with sugar and lemon juice in them are icky. Trust me.

Whisk, whisk, whisk until it starts to get frothy and bubbly. Keep whisking. It will start to thicken and turn into a lemon cream. Keep whisking. This took me about 10 minutes or so, in Idaho so at 5,500'. Might be different in Seattle or Virginia.

Once it's reached the desired consistency, take it off the heat and add the butter a few pieces at the time, continuing to whisk until the butter is melted and fully incorporated. Then add a few more pieces, until you've used up all the butter.

Now strain it through a fine mesh strainer to remove any stray strands of lemon flavored scrambled eggs. Place plastic wrap on top of the curd, actually touching it, to prevent a skin from forming, and chill for several  hours.

After licking the bowl and the whisk, and the fine mesh strainer I hoped that the plastic wrap would provide a deterrent to eating the rest of it with a tablespoon. It helped a little.

When you are ready to serve the mousse, whip 2 cups of cream to soft peaks, and gently fold in the lemon curd.

My, oh my. Oh my.

Rememberance of Things Past or Grits Souffle

A few weeks ago Alison sent around a picture of Jamie and Sam taking a lovely golden orb out of the oven - Belle's grits souffle, an old childhood favorite of hers. I remember Belle so well. She was a marvel. Everything she made was full of butter and sugar and tasted amazing. When I was a vegetarian I'd ask her, Belle, how do you feel? And she'd tip her head back, making her appear even shorter than her already not so big self, and roar out, I falafel! and bust up laughing. Her white stockings made a rustling sound as she sped around the kitchen, making cinnamon rolls, roast beef with Yorkshire pudding, Carmelitas and grits souffle, apparently.

I remember Sue as the originator of the grits souffle recipe, but Mom clarified that it was originally Aunt Mary Harry's recipe and that Sue introduced it to us, since Aunt Mary Harry was on Henry's side of that marrying-cousins family. 

I also remember it as much flatter than the current photo. But I had fond memories of it none-the-less so set to work. Mom and Abby were coming for dinner and Downton Abby so that seemed the perfect opportunity. I planned porkchops with bitter winter greens from Epicurious to balance the richness and Pineapple Upside Downton Cake for desert (that's another story, but it doesn't have a happy ending).

The original recipe calls for heating milk and butter, adding the grits and cooking til thick, then beating for 5 minutes and baking in a souffle dish. Abby and Mom were due at seven and my unfailing belief that I could do just one more thing before getting ready meant I was late and not ready. Consequently, there was a temper tantrum, followed by some bellowed curses when the milk boiled over because I had it on too high because I wanted it to boil faster. Right. in my post-tantrum state of excess adrenalin I forgot the part about cooking the grits and just went right to the 5 minutes of beating.

The result mirrored the geographical deposition that you would see on a canyon wall. The lowest layer, the sedimentary layer, was like dry, tough cornbread; the next layer, the metamorphic layer, was a rich soft  custard of cooked milk; and the top, the igneous layer was a thin brown crust. Not inedible, but not far from it and nothing liking the memories of yore. No photos.

 The next weekend armed with real grits this time, I tried again. I started early, avoided temper tantrums, remembered to cook before beating. Huge success - just like I remembered.
 

Still curious about what Jamie had done, I called him up. He revealed that he had tinkered with the original "a bit", adding eggs (separated and whites whipped to soft peaks, then folded in) and Parmesan cheese. Apparently Alison had remarked, well, it's not what I remember, but it's not bad. I'm sticking with Alison on this one.

Healthy Cookies

Healthy is to Cookie as Decaf is to Coffee, Nonalcoholic is to Beer and Vegan is to Burger. Take the beef out of a burger, and you are left with squirrel food in a cylindrical shape. Take the refined and processed flours and sugars out of a cookie, remove the butter, disallow chocolate and again, you are left with squirrel food but in a slightly smaller cylindrical shape.
That said, I just read (skimmed) Super Immunity by Joel Fuhrman, MD. Joel Fuhrman, MD says that if you are going to eat white flour and white sugar you may as well lie in a bed of asbestos, French-inhaling Unfiltered Camels and sipping Tab. Also, it is January, time of the new leaf, the kale juice cleanse, the intention to stretch at least five times a week, the commitment to always apply moisturizer in short, upward strokes.
I thought I’d give it a whirl. I started with something called Chia Cookies (be still my beating heart) from Joel Fuhrman, MD, himself. Joel Fuhrman, MD wants you to soak some currents in hot water. I used raisins because I didn’t have currents. There may be some prohibition against raisins because they rarely appear in his recipes.*
Then he wants you to whiz up your rolled oats in a food processor. I skipped this step altogether. I whizzed up the raisin and water mixture. I combined the rolled oats, the raisin water mixture, some nuts and chia seeds, some apple sauce, some dried coconut, a little bit of almond butter and a tsp of vanilla. I formed this into cookie like shapes and dehydrated them in a 200 oven for 2 hours.



The result wasn’t totally disgusting. I ate about half of them. They were sweet and crunchy, the texture and consistency of Mrs. Bentley’s oatmeal cookies, if you haven’t had Mrs. Bentley’s oatmeal cookies in a long time and your memory of their specific texture and consistency is vague. And they are healthy, as long as you can be healthy and dramatically dyspeptic at the same time. Bottom line: I wouldn’t eat them if they weren’t healthy and I won’t be making them again.

Next I tried some carrot oatmeal cookies from 101 Cookbooks, my new favorite web site.


These have ww flour, maple syrup and coconut oil, along with carrots, ginger and rolled oats. There is even some baking powder and they are actually baked at 375.



Needless to say, they were better. But of course, less healthy. I’m divining a pattern and I don’t like the looks of it. Bottom line, I’m not sure I’d make them again because they were about as tasty as they were healthy, which is to say not enough of either.

I tried one more, also from 101 Cookbooks. These are called Nikki’s Healthy Cookies. Healthy, right there in the name. How encouraging. And they call for chocolate chips. Downright propitious. This recipe has you mix up some mashed bananas, some coconut oil (oleagine of the Gods apparently) rolled oats, almond meal, cinnamon, salt, vanilla, baking powder and those promising chocolate chips. They are baked. And they are good. And they are pretty healthy. I used dark chocolate. Next time I’ll skip the cookie shape and form them into rectangles, bake them a little longer so they are a crispy and eat them as a bar. They could happily sub in for a Clif bar on a hike or long bike ride.



The healthy cookies are definitely healthier, or at least not as unhealthy. All whole grains, some of that miracle oleagine, some fruit, vegetables, nuts, chia seeds. But since it is January, and the real goal of the new leaf, besides no colds, no flu, no MRSA, is no cellulite. So are these cookies less fattening? Sadly, no. The Nikki’s cookies come in at a little over 100 calories per. A quick search of Tollhouse cookies puts them at 100 calories per. My favorite salted butter chocolate chip cookies probably have twice that, but they are bigger.
The healthy cookies might be less fattening in the long run because I just won’t eat as many. It’s like having a bag of yogurt covered pretzels in the cupboard. They have zero calories because I won’t go near them.

*Joel Fuhrman, MD’s recipes: Black Bean Brownies which contain 2 cups of cooked black beans. Mighty Mushroom Stroganoff with a sauce made from cauliflower, white beans, hemp milk, a salt substitute and some nutritional yeast. The Acorn Squash Supreme calls for acorn squash, apricots, pineapple, raisins and a salt substitute. These are the kind of recipes that make Mollie Katzen want to go out with Ray Kroc for a steak tartare binge.

Red Velvet Cake Reprise

Elise,
Rob's birthday was last week and Annie agreed to let me make the cake. I have been to a shocking number of parties lately where the "cake" was purchased at Costco. This is so very wrong in so many ways. These are parties where the rest of the food is prepared right there in the host and hostess's kitchen.
When did it become acceptable to serve a "purchased" dessert? Other than ice cream, and in the summertime at a casual get together, Popsicles, one should never serve a "purchased" dessert. It is disgusting, unattractive and unhealthy, full of chemicals, trans fats and ingredients processed from other processed ingredients, the final product being to cake as Tropical Fruit Pop Rocks is to a mango. The "cake" has a crumb so uniform it could be used in a science fair project on geometry, the "filling" is usually lemon the color of a fluorescent light bulb and similarly created, or glutinous "fruit" from the flavor palette of Bonnie Belle Lip Smackers or White Owl Blunts and with the mouth feel of river sludge. The "frosting" is made from some low rent Crisco that coats the roof of your mouth with a grease slick impervious to all known detergents, and enough high fructose corn syrup to hurl you into diabetic shock.
I was delighted to be allowed to actually bake a cake for Rob.
I pulled out a number of cook books, read and reread.

I considered a mousse cake, but rejected that idea as mousse can be tricky, the cakes are usually not pretty, and I don't have a 12" springform which I would have needed to make a mousse cake for 20. I considered a chocolate caramel cake and rejected that because Annie doesn't like chocolate and having never made it before, I was scared that the cake would be dry. I thought long and hard about a spice cake and finally accepted that for me, spice cake has been failure followed by disappointment followed by defeat.
Chocolate dump cake? Too dump-ish. Carrot cake? Too healthy. Lemon cake? Too boring. Yellow cake with Chocolate icing? Too boring. Coconut cake? I'm tired of it. I settled on Red Velvet Cake.
Although I have not been enamored of RV cake and I know you think it is gross, I went with it because it is popular, Southern and festive. We live in VA; this was a party; an audience inured to the horrors of Costco cakes wouldn't have any reservations about a cake the color of a Twizzler.
From my previous experiments, I knew that the recipe would have to use oil not butter, and would need red food coloring, never mind my visceral aversion to both the ingredient and the resultant hue. (Talk about viscera!) And I knew that none of the recipes I had previously tried would do.
I found a recipe for Southern Red Velvet Cake on Cookstr. It is from The Neely's. There were 3 comments and all were effusive in their enthusiasm and praise. It contained oil. I went for it. I wanted three 10" layers. I made one and half times the recipe, I doubled the cocoa powder and I added pecans to the frosting.
The cakes baked up with nearly burnt and crusty tops, maybe because I had to bake them longer because the layers were so large, maybe because my ovens are too hot.

I sawed off the top 1/2 inch and still had three very tall layers. The frosting was quite gooey and drippy and the cake began to slide and list as soon as it was frosted. I secured it with four dowels.

It was delicious. Festive, traditional and very popular.

I wish I had brought some home.

Dear Margaret,

Last night I had a cake craving and thought I'd satisfy it simply and easily with Bishops Cake from the white Silver Palate, an old standby that never disappoints. However the book "fell" open to Chestnut Cake and in a moment of abandon I decided to try it out.

As you know, the recipe calls for a cup of wine which you cautioned me against. Since you never texted back with an acceptable alternative I threw in with Rosso and Lukens and went for it with some A to Z Pinot Grigio. This all went well. The batter had an unusual flavor, sort of Italian tasting, like you might want a biscotto to taste.

It baked up nicely and then things got dicey. First, the cake pans have sloping sides. Why would someone make cake pans with sloping sides? Why did I buy them? They gave the unfrosted cake the shape of Marilyn Monroe.

The recipe calls for chestnut puree on the top. Imagine my delight when I discovered a can of it in the cupboard. Imagine my disappointment when I opened it to discover that 8 years in the back of the cupboard had given it the flavor and texture of play-dough.

Oh well, more chocolate frosting can't be a bad thing. Unless you are making it with organic confectioners sugar that has lumps in it that are impervious to the sifter. They bounced around in the bottom of the sifter and the harder I cranked, the more of them flew out of the sifter and across the room. Pemba thought this was a big improvement on the usual game of fetch but it wasn't getting me any closer to frosting. The night was getting longer and my temper was getting shorter.

I ended up putting the sugar in my mini food mill and whirring the shit out of it.

I had to make 2 batches of frosting. Two rounds of whirring. But the frosting was great. It's on page 289 of the book, and I happen to know it makes excellent fudge.

The end result was an excellent cake. It would be interesting to try the batter as upside down cake with toasted almonds and brown sugar in the upside down part. Maybe I'll start earlier tonight.

Black Bean Soup for Book Club by guest blogger, Mom

My book club has a strict rule limiting food served at meetings to soup, bread and cookies in the winter and salad, bread and cookies in summer. For the January meeting at my house, I decided on black bean soup, hearty fare for a cold, snowy night. I combined recipes from several cookbooks and substituted canned beans for dried ones. It seemed simple enough. Fortunately, I made the soup a day ahead. To my horror, the initial result was watery and bland – disgusting and embarrassing. My daughters, both such good cooks, sometimes tease me that they must have been adopted – this idea was mentioned on the Sisters Cook blog when Margaret discovered that I didn’t own a spring form pan. I was beginning to think they might be right – I really was a hopeless cook.
Panic-stricken, I called my friend Abby. Abby owned a restaurant for many years and now has a catering business. She’s an excellent cook.
Abby’s advice (good for a wide variety of culinary disasters):
1. Calm down.
2. Add 3 more cans of black beans.
3. Add some tomato paste and more salt.
4. Gently sauté more onions and garlic, and add to the soup.
5. Cook it down a little.
6. Taste it, taste it, taste it!
I was a wreck, my hands were trembling, but I followed these instructions, and by the next morning, the soup had improved enormously – almost like magic, and what a relief! I was still a little rattled, so Abby (a great friend as well as a great cook) came over to taste the final product and reassure me that it was actually very good. And it was delicious, a big success. Nearly everyone had second helpings with only a cup or two for leftovers. To go with the soup, I made Fanny Farmer’s Rich Corn Bread and the Silver Palate Three Ginger Cookies. People left the meeting asking for recipes, always a good sign. Perhaps those girls weren’t adopted after all . . .
The book was Cannery Row by John Steinbeck.

Black Bean Soup for 12

1 c. olive oil
7 c. diced yellow onions
16 garlic cloves, peeled and crushed
10 cans black beans
2 smoked ham hocks
12 quarts water
5 TB ground cuminseed
2 TB dried oregano
6 bay leaves1 TB salt
1 1/2 TB salt
1TB ground pepper
2 or 3 large pinches cayenne
12 TB chopped parsley
2 medium sweet red peppers diced
1/2 c. dry sherry
2 TB brown sugar2 TB lemon juice
2 or 3 TB tomato paste
Chicken broth
Creme Fraiche or sour cream

Heat oil in a soup pot. Add onions, cook over low heat until tender about 10 minutes. For the last few minutes add the garlic.

Add ham hock and water. Stir in 4 TB cuminseed, the oregano, bay leaves, salt, pepper, cayenne and 2 TB of the parsley. Bring to boil, reduce heat and cook uncovered for 1 1/2 to 2 hours. Liquid will theoretically be reduced by 3/4.

Remove ham hock to a plate. Cool slightly, then pull of any remaining meat with your fingers and shred fine. Return meat to pot.

Add beans, cook covered about 30 minutes.

Add remaining parsley, sweet red pepper, remaining cuminseed, sherry, brown sugar, lemon juice and tomato paste.
Simmer another 30 minutes.

Add some chicken broth if the soup seems too thick.

TASTE the soup! Correct seasoning (salt, pepper, cayenne, perhaps more cuminseed.)

Serve very hot in heated bowls. Garnish with a dollop of sour cream. Serve guacamole and grated cheese as optional garnishes.



Guacamole from The Barefoot Contessa Cookbook

4 ripe avocados
3 Tb fresh squeezed lemon juice
8 dashes Tabasco
1/2 cup small-diced red onion
1 large garlic clove, minced
1 tsp kosher salt
1 tsp fresh ground pepper
1 medium tomato small-diced (I made this in winter so I substituted small diced sweet red pepper.)

Halve the avocados, remove the pits and scoop the flesh into a bowl.
Immediately add the lemon juice, Tabasco, onion, garlic, salt and pepper. Toss well. Using a sharp knife, slice through the avocados in the bowl until they are diced. Add the tomatoes (or peppers.)

Mix well. TASTE for salt and pepper.





Rich Corn Cake from The Fanny Farmer Cookbook

Preheat oven to 425 degrees. Butter a 9 x 9 pan.

3/4 cup yellow corn meal or polenta
1 cup flour
2 Tb sugar
1 tsp. baking soda
2 tsp. cream of tartar
3/4 tsp. salt

Mix dry ingredients together in large bowl.

2 eggs well beaten
1 cup sour cream
1/4 cup whole milk
4 TB butter, melted

Combine eggs, sour cream, milk and melted butter together in a separate bowl. Mix well.

Add quickly to dry ingredients. Stir just to mix. (Don't worry if there are a few streaks of dry ingredients.) Spoon into pan. Bake 20 minutes.




Three Ginger Cookies from The Silver Palate

1 1/2 sticks unsalted butter, room temperature
1 cup packed dark brown sugar
1/4 cup molasses
1 egg
2 1/4 cups unbleached all purpose flour
2 tsp ground ginger
2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 1/2 TB finely chopped fresh ginger root
1/2 cup finely chopped crystallized ginger

Cream butter and brown sugar in large mixer bowl. Beat in molasses, then the egg.
Sift flour, ground ginger, baking soda and salt together. Stir into butter mixture with wooden spoon. until blended.
Add fresh and crystallized gingers. stir until well mixed.
Refrigerate dough at least 2 hours or overnight.
Preheat oven to 350 F. Grease cookie sheets with butter.
Shape dough into 1-inch balls. Place about 2 inches apart on cookie sheets.
Bake until browned, approximately 10 minutes. Cool a few minutes on sheets for easier removal.
Remove to wire rack to cool completely.

3 1/2 to 4 dozen cookies

Hample Pie

Elise,

Here I am with all these apples,
And this eternal ham is ample.
You might think this state me baffles,
But I will fill my pie with hample.

Oh hample pie, oh hample pie,
I say your name with croon and sigh.

The crust is brown and butter-dappled,
A pie of blithe and pure example.
Neither boudin blanc nor lowly scrapple
Can match the true empyrean of hample.

Oh hample pie, oh hample pie,
Your humble looks such yum belie.

This merry mix, this sublime couple,
On sanctity of marriage tramples,
With flavor so sublime and supple,
Blessed miscegenation—hample.

Oh hample pie, oh hample pie,
You can make a strong man cry.

A rapt silence, an awe substantial
Will start and spread when pie you sample.
That first taste is consequential,
The paradigm shifts when you add hample.

Oh hample pie, oh hample pie,
My appetite you sanctify.
Now let’s apply our hungry eye to hample pie.





Toss 3 cups diced apple with 1/4 cup each flour and sugar and 1/2 tsp cinnamon. Mix in 2 1/2 cups diced ham and 8 oz. grated sharp cheddar cheese. Mound into pie crust, top with second crust. Bake at 425 for 20 minutes then at 350 for an additional 35 minutes.

love, Margaret