Holiday Spirits
Thursday, December 15, 2005
Last weekend I served up glasses of our homemade spiced plum rum, topped with a generous dose of steaming cider. Cries for more and a few post-event emails requesting the recipe have prompted me to post it here.
It’s the perfect drink for the holidays for two reasons. First: Italian plums ripen in September, and the plum rum, which takes about three months to develop, is ready just in time for Christmas. And second: The darkest days of the year seem to beg for a heady, spicy brew.
We found this recipe last year in our search for ways to use up the 90+ pounds of plums that come off our 8 plum trees every fall. The recipe only calls for 10 plums per jar of rum, however, so you could easily substitute store bought plums without breaking the bank, if you aren’t “blessed” with an orchard.
Spiced Plum Rum
Combine the following in a clean 1 qt canning jar:
10 whole Italian plums, pricked several times with a fork
1 slice of ginger (about 1/8” thick)
3” strip of orange zest (use a vegetable peeler to remove it from the orange)
1 1/2” stick of cinnamon
1/3 vanilla bean
2 whole cloves
1 whole cardamom pod
1/2 cup of sugarTop with white rum and screw on the lid. (There’s no need to go through an elaborate canning process for this recipe. There’s enough alcohol in the rum to kill anything that might harm you.) Shake the mixture to dissolve the sugar and place in a spot where you’ll be able forget about it for a while. (A cool, dark closet or basement is best.) Every now and then give the rum a shake. The rum will be drinkable and tasty in about three months time.
Cooks note: We’ve found that the longer you store the rum, the better it gets. If you have the storage space and will power, make enough for two seasons. You’ll have a little to enjoy now and next year it will be even better. In the fall of course, make another batch. While the current crop is stewing in the rum and spices, you can enjoy the fruits of last year’s labors.
IMBB #20 - Soufflé Round Up
Monday, October 31, 2005
Kitchen Chick posted the results of IMBB #20 this weekend. Fifty bloggers explored the world of soufflés (many for the first time) and shared their experiences.
Check out the savory soufflés here and the sweet, dessert soufflés here. There is guaranteed to be something you’ll fall in love with in this creative collection.
Wine Blogging Wednesday
Monday, October 24, 2005
When I read that the theme for November’s Wine Blogging Wednesday was small batch wines (i.e. less than 250 cases produced), I was overjoyed. For someone who lives near Woodinville, Wash., a small winery mecca, this was going to be a cakewalk.
I went down to the basement and decided that I’d submit a review of Stevens Winery’s 2004 Yakima Valley Sauvignon Blanc. We bought a bottle earlier this year after stumbling on their tasting room while driving home from a visit to Mark Ryan.
Not only have they produced less than 250 cases of this wine, but Stevens has produced less than 700 cases total in its entire history.
If I remember correctly, the winemaker – Tim Stevens – is an artist by trade and only got into winemaking by chance. (He worked for a while at Matthew’s Cellars where he ultimately became assistant winemaker.) The fact that he’s an artist is evident by the creative wine labels. Each wine’s label features a different photograph of one of Tim’s sculptures. The sculpture on the sauvignon blanc is called Legs – after the legs of a wine, perhaps? I don’t know…
My Opinion:
We originally bought this bottle because we wanted to support a small, emerging winery. (Not much support, I know, but hey, we’re wine drinkers not philanthropists.) I’m sure glad we did, too.
Eyes: The first thing you notice after pouring it in the glass is how strikingly lemon colored the wine is. I couldn’t help think how much it looked like the batch of limoncello I’d just finished making earlier that day.
Nose: The smell was something all together different though. Swirl the glass and an apple orchard practically jumps out of the wine. I don’t know if this is the right word for it or not, but I also smelled “minerals.”
Mouth: I have to admit, the first sip wasn’t the best. By itself the wine is a little sharp. Thankfully, we pressed on. Nick and I had made a dinner consisting of roast chicken, a thyme-scented puree of delicata squash, celery root and potatoes, and a simple tossed salad with pomegranites and a dijon vinaigrette. The mashed veggies were the best pairing; it made the wine taste deliciously smooth and buttery. The salad on the other hand brought out a light, fruity zing. (This taste transformation never ceases to amaze me.)
Perfect for: Despite what the winery says, I think this is exclusively a food wine. It tastes okay by itself, but it really comes alive when enjoyed with food. If you were looking for a wine to impress at Thanksgiving this year without breaking the bank, this would be an excellent choice.
Wine Enthusiast:
As you might suspect, the Wine Enthusiast has yet to review this wine.
From the Winery:
“Our 2004 Sauvignon Blanc mirrored many of the same qualities that were reflected in the 2003 vintage. Our philosophy remained the same: to create a wine that was ripe and seductive. The weather was on our side and we were luck enough to end up with fruit that was physiologically as ripe as the year before, but had a lower brix level and higher malic acid content. These two major factors helped develop greater zing up front and length in the finish. Once again, the wine has no residual sugar and is bone dry which allows it finish crisp and clean. We hope that you enjoy this wine which pairs well with lighter foods or can be consumed on its own on a hot summer day.”
Tasting Notes: none available
Composition: 85% sauvignon blanc, 15% semillion
Aging: no information available
Alcohol: 13.9%
Production: 103 cases
Price: Stevens Winery, $14
Happy Dance!
Tuesday, October 18, 2005
If you haven’t already done a happy dance today, get up and shake a leg, ‘cause the Boat Street Café is re-opening on Friday. Yee-haw! (My toes are tapping as I type.)
This tiny little gem of a restaurant used to be located in the U District on Boat Street, but it was forced to close in 2003 when it lost its lease. (Evil, garish high-rises have replaced it in the mean time.) Since then, Nick and I have been mourning the steady loss of great restaurants in the Puget Sound area. Boat Street was first, followed by Bistro Provencal in Kirkland and Cassis at the bottom of Capitol Hill. Thank goodness (and knock on wood) that Le Gourmand and Café Juanita have stayed open…
Now, to hear that one of our favorite resaurants is re-opening, albeit in a different location, makes my heart leap with joy! I’d try and describe the restaurant, but it would only pale in comparison to Kathryn Robinson’s description in her 1999 review:
“In my dream of Provence, I’m walking down a country lane and chance into a cafe, half-tucked under a bridge and marked only by a rustic homemade sign. Inside, upon the concrete floor with its chipped red paint, sit a dozen slate tables with mismatched chairs. Here and there a jelly jar spills over with tulips; a candle flickers in a wine bottle adrip with wax. Mostly I see light streaming in the windows and bathing the room in oyster white. I sit down breathing in fragrances of good zinfandel and French press coffee; I sip my lemon water. I wake up in the Boat Street Cafe.”
Sounds positively dreamy, no?
I’m in the process of convincing Nick that we need to go there this weekend and hope we can get a table. (They aren’t accepting reservations until October 25th.) If When we go, I’ll report back on whether it measures up to our previous experiences.
No Woman Spoon Bread with Bacon & Onions
Friday, October 14, 2005
No Woman Spoon Bread
I know I said check back at the end of the month for the results of my “Is My Blog Burning?” soufflé experimenting, but I got inspired today by a recipe contest sponsored by Beecher’s Handmade Cheese. Thinking I could kill two birds with one stone, I got really excited, and set to work.
As you may remember, I had a few soufflé recipes in mind, but nothing with cheese in them. Then I remembered reading a while back about something called southern spoon bread. For all you northerners, like me, who have no idea what this is, think cornbread meets soufflé. Like cornbread, it incorporates ground cornmeal and sometimes other savory tidbits like cheese, onion and even mushrooms. Like a soufflé, however, it is a puffed prima donna with the lifespan of a sigh. Be at the table when it emerges from the oven or risk missing the delicious, airy tower before it collapses.
Having never made this before, I set took a survey of spoon bread recipes:
Cook’s Illustrated, usually my definitive source for all things right in the kitchen, suggested making southern spoon bread with half-and-half, lots of butter and three whole eggs. To their cheesy version, they added a full cup of sharp cheddar cheese. Unfortunately, my quest for a trimmer waistline thought half-and-half a bit on the excessive side.
On to Cooking Light, where all things delicious and good are made lighter by a host of talented food editors. Their results are usually reliable, although often not quite as flavorful as their Cook’s Illustrated counterparts.
Taking cues from Cooking Light on egg, cornmeal and liquid ratios and advice from Cook’s Illustrated on preparation, I set about to create a unique spoon bread that showed off the subtle flavors of a Beecher’s cheese.
Beecher’s Mariachi cheese was an easy first choice. I could see complimenting this chipotle spiced cheese with a jar of colorful pimentos in the spoon bread, which could then be served along side a heaping mound of grilled onions, steak and sweet bell peppers. I knew that the recipes were being judged partly on uniqueness, though, so I kept thinking.
Nick and I have bought and enjoyed the cheesemakers’s No Woman many times – its mild sweetness a perfect foil to the Jamaican jerk spices. What if we combined this cheese with some meaty center-cut bacon, grated onions, and a little something from the spice cabinet to give the spoon bread an extra kick? The results could be served as a side dish for grilled chicken and sautéed greens or, better yet, for breakfast with warm maple syrup. Hmmm…I might be on to something here…
Confident that low-fat milk (not half-and-half) would produce an acceptable spoon bread, I settled on two variations of a recipe, one incorporating a little brown sugar into the beaten egg whites to accentuate the sweetness of the cheese and the smokiness of the bacon and one without.
When I got home, I busied myself with preparing ingredients for the cornmeal mush, while Nick harvested the last of the chard from our garden and chopped leeks for an accompaniment. Spoon bread being a southern-inspired dish, he also made a couple New Orleans style Sazerac cocktails for us to sip while we cooked. (More on these another time.)
The corn mush went together really quickly. After adding one of the egg yolks, I set it aside and beat the egg whites until stiff peaks formed. To half of the egg whites, I added a modest amount of brown sugar. The egg whites got folded into the cheesy cornmeal bacon mush and then poured into individual ramekins.
A short 30 minutes later, the spoon breads emerged from the oven, lofty and toasty brown, ready for consumption.
We immediately noticed that the spoon bread made with brown sugar had browned more evenly than the bread made without sugar. We also noticed that these were very short lived treats. Within 30 seconds, they had lost a good inch of their height.
The spoon bread deflated in a very short time
The taste test was definitive, or so we thought. The spoon bread made with brown sugar was, at first taste, far superior to the spoon bread made without. “The brown sugar’s sweetness filled out the flavor of the bread,” said Nick. “It was a unifying element making for a really full, robust flavor. Without the sugar, it tasted hollow. Without the sugar, I was left waiting to taste something.”
Remembering that I thought spoon bread sounded like a great breakfast treat, I retrieved the maple syrup from the kitchen and drizzled a small amount on the non-sweetened spoon bread. Mmmm...heaven! What had been a disparate collection of flavors became a delicious treat, slightly different than it’s brown sugar sweetened cousin.
In the end, we decided that the brown sugar was optional in the spoon bread. Served as a savory side dish with dinner, we would include the brown sugar. Served as a breakfast dish, we would omit it and provide a small pitcher of maple syrup for people to sweeten their spoon bread as they liked.
Here’s the recipe I’ll be submitting to IMBB #20 and the Beecher’s recipe contest.
No Woman Spoon Bread with Bacon & Onions
Created in the kitchen of Carry PorterWe baked this in individual ramekins, but I imagine a standard eight-inch soufflé dish or a cast-iron pan would work beautifully. Like a soufflé, spoon bread soon falls from its spectacular height, so serve it as quickly as possible. Even in its deflated state, though, spoon bread still tastes delicious.
Serves 4
1 ½ cups 2% milk
¼ teaspoon salt
½ cup cornmeal, finely ground yellow or white
½ cup (2 ounces) shredded Beecher’s No Woman cheese
¼ cup grated fresh onion
1/8 teaspoon ground red pepper
1/8 teaspoon black pepper
2 garlic cloves, minced
2 slices center-cut bacon, cooked, drained and finely chopped
1 large egg yolk, lightly beaten
2 large egg whites
1 tablespoon brown sugar (optional)1. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Butter four individual straight-sided ramekins or a 1 1/2-quart soufflé dish.
2. Bring milk and salt to simmer in a heavy saucepan. Reduce heat to low. Slowly whisk in cornmeal. Continue whisking until cornmeal thickens and develops satin sheen, 1 to 2 minutes. Remove from heat and stir in the next six ingredients (cheese through bacon); set mush aside.
3. Whisk yolk and 1/2 to 1 teaspoon water together in small bowl until lemon-colored and very frothy. Stir them into cooled mush, a little at a time to keep yolk from cooking. Beat egg whites to stiff but not dry peaks; gently fold them into mush mixture. If using brown sugar, add it to the egg whites after they have begun to develop soft peaks.
4. Pour mixture into buttered ramekins. Bake in oven until spoon bread is golden brown and risen above dish rim, about 30 minutes. Serve immediately.
Tagged with: IMBB #20 + Souffle