Only Communists don't like Chili
For realz. No lies. Cake is good. Frosting makes it great.
I love sprinkles, and frosting, and cakes! The ones in the upper-right are Erin's. 
I had a pretty cupcake-heavy couple of weeks a little while ago and I’ve been meaning to post a bit about them here, so it’s about time to finally catch up! And really, who doesn’t love cupcakes? People without souls, that’s who.
And cake. But who doesn’t like some late-night alliteration?
I got both strawberries and rhubarb in my farm share last week, so the logical thing to do with them seemed to be dessert. I’ve eaten strawberry rhubarb pie before, but had never seen raw rhubarb in person until this week. It’s so colorful!
As it turns out, I’m way too lazy to make a pie crust from scratch nine times out of ten (or more). And I’d already eaten strawberry rhubarb pie anyways. Time for something new: cake! Cake that doesn’t tempt me to use the octopus pan. Cake that works like a clafoutis or an apple charlotte; cake where you just pour batter over fruit and hope for the best… easy, tasty cake.
So I came across the Boston Localvore site when I was looking for a farm share to join. They have a blog, too! They are a bit surly, but I love surly.
Yesterday, I read that they received a bunch of garlic scapes in their share and made pesto. Having never seen a garlic scape in person (and not really knowing what it was) I didn’t care too much and focused on the part where they made fun of Pete Wells for being a pansy and complaining about money (he’s an editor at the NYT).
On my way home today I passed a farmers’ market and, lo and behold, there were garlic scapes! And they were cheap. Take that, Pete Wells (even though I still like your writing).
A tangle of scapes
They come all tangled like that. A garlic scape is the stem of a garlic plant before it flowers. Apparently they straighten up some and bloom, but we (people) usually eat them before that can happen.
Here’s a single, tangly scape.
I have to admit, I wasn’t too imaginative with these, as I was way too excited about the idea making a pesto from scratch. So I did what the localvore ladies did. It’s extremely easy.
1. Chop up scapes into bits an inch or so long.
2. Fight with the safety on your food processor.
3. Calm down and then process the bits into a chunky mixture.
4. Add grated Parmesan cheese and process some more.
5. Add olive oil and process after each addition until you like it.
6. Consume!
Optional: I stole this from the localvores as well. Fill an ice cube tray with the pesto and then freeze it. Garlic scapes are pretty much only available in late June or early July, so now I can have this pesto whenever I want, in neat individual-sized portions. Ta-da!
Seriously. I made the second dish from my first farm share today; this time using the bok choy and Zephyr squash. Bok choy sounds cool. When you snap it from the base or whatever you call it, it makes a cracking/ snapping noise. When you rinse it or pull the leaves apart, it squeaks. When you slice it, there is a neat crunch and slice sound (this sound evokes the word “crisp” in my brain). And when it’s cooking in the pan, it makes sizzling/ bubbling/ popping noises. Food isn’t just about what you can taste and smell and see. It’s also about how food feels and, when you are cooking, sometimes sounds.
So yeah, bok choy sounds neat.
Like with the Daikon radish, bok choy is a food I’d never prepared before, but it turned out pretty ok. It’s a type of cabbage, and I love me some cabbage.
Stir-fried bok choy with Zephyr squash
Just look at these bright leaves! I used a whole head of the Chinese cabbage, tearing the leaves from the base and then rinsing them.
As it turns out, vegetables fresh from the farm are dirty. In the case of things with lots of crevices, you should probably rinse the leaves after you tear them off. I missed a little soil here and there.
When stir-frying bok choy, cook the stems a little longer than the rest, because they are a little tougher. I cut my cabbage into chunks and tossed the thicker ends in with a little vegetable oil (any neutral oil will do) over medium-high heat.
Cook the stems for about 3 minutes until they become a little softer. Then add the leaves and about a half a cup of water. You can eyeball this. You want enough to simmer the cabbage, but not so much that it’s still soaking when you are done. Leave the cabbage simmering in the water for about 8-10 minutes, until the stems and leaves have wilted and the water has evaporated. I cut up some of the Zephyr squash and added it in this step. Feel free to add some other vegetable with a smallish cooking time.
Used a little too much water, which i then had to pour down the sink. The bok choy should be wilted and tender, but not brown or super-soggy.
After draining the water, I finished with some kosher salt, soy sauce, a squirt of lemon juice, and a drizzle of sesame oil.
Unfortunately, this dish has no corroborating witnesses. I forgot that Justin doesn’t like sesame, so he wouldn’t try it. 
But I’m declaring this one a success. If I get more bok choy in Thursday’s farm share, I’ll likely make this again.
Just read Michael Pollan’s Omnivore’s Dilemma and it reminded / inspired me to get a CSA (community supported agriculture) farm share. For a set price paid at the beginning of the season, I get a half-bushel (who knew that was still a valid unit?) of vegetables and fruits every week until November.
Yeah, I’m kind of impressionable.
I picked up my first share today! It was packaged in a cute box that tells you to eat vegetables because they are good for you.
Look at all these crazy vegetables and fruits I got!
So many veggies in a bushel! I don't even know all their names.
What is this wonky yellow and green thing? Squash maybe?
The farm that organizes this sends a newsletter each week telling me what could possibly be inside. I had to refer to this newsletter to figure out what the hell that green and yellow thing is. It’s a Zephyr Squash, in case you were wondering.
Here’s the very first dish I made with my very first box of produce:
Stir-fried snap peas and daikon radish, with an omelet
Start with a couple handfuls of sugar snap peas and remove the strings. You are supposed to snap off the stem and then peel the string off. I did my best with this and didn’t have any problems with the outcome, but you might do better.
Sugar snap peas. I tried to destring them. Really.
Slice the radish into thin pieces. Here’s the radish. It smelled great even before it was cut. It’s kind of earthy and spicy.
Daikon Radish
I don’t know if you are supposed to peel these things, and I was too hungry and impatient to google it. Before today, I’d never seen a raw daikon radish. See these weird little hairs on the daikon radish? Apparently both edible and weird.
What are these little hairs about? I almost didn't notice them.
Melt a little butter and a little olive oil in a pan and add garlic or shallots. Use your judgment for the amounts, but try to use both the butter and oil to add a depth of flavor you won’t get with just one or the other. When the shallots have browned a bit (or the garlic is a bit softer) add the radish and peas.
Saute for about five minutes, until the veggies are crisp and also tender.
Add a squirt of lemon or orange juice.
Finish with salt and pepper, to taste.
I wanted some protein, so I made a thin omelet in the same pan. Dinner is served (at the unreasonable hour of 10pm, but whatevs)!
So good!
Hat Tip: The idea of cooking the peas and radish together came from the Enterprise Produce newsletter. Good work, farm!
So last time I posted, I wrote about failure cake. Specifically, I talked about my failure to remove cakes from shaped pans. This time: Victory.
Last Saturday I was able to successfully unmold forty small flower shaped cakes!
Rose-shaped victory cake
The plan for Cake Experiment was to change one variable at a time. For example, last time I tried using this ridiculous pan, I greased it with melted butter and used a honey cake mix. So this time, I should have tried changing the grease or the mix, but not both. In the interest of actually getting to eat the cake, experimental integrity be damned. I changed both. The largest contributing factor was most likley the grease. This time I used Baker’s Joy. It’s this neat-o spray that does the greasing and the flouring at once.
This is the baking spray of victory. Also shown: victory cake mix and victory pan.
Baker’s Joy (or some similar spray) gets into all the detailed bits of the pan with the oil AND the flour, so nothing sticks!
The cake mix may have helped a little, too. The only other time this pan worked even a little bit, I used the same mix (Duncan Gernam Chocolate, in case you were wondering). Cake Experiment: Phase Two will involve cake from scratch, plus Baker’s Joy. I’ll report back my findings.
Shaped pan filled with delicious batter, pre-victory. See how it glistens with Baker's Joy goodness?
So this is my first blog post (finally)! I just wanted to get something out here, so I’m going to gripe about failure cake.
Failure cake!
I have a problem. I love semi-useless and strangely shaped baking pans. Every time I buy one, the first few cakes I bake in them work out perfectly, and then never again. I committed to baking a Kosher for passover octopus shaped cake for a coworker recently, and stayed up past midnight three nights in a row trying to get it to work. No dice. I got the tentacles out of the pan, but not all at once, and the head of the octopus was a total loss. I’ll get this to work eventually because octopuses are just that cool. They deserve a cake tribute.
I wanted to be able to deliver something for Passover, so I switched to tiny flower-shaped cakes that I *knew* would work with box cake (a fool proof plan?). No. The cakes just won’t come out of the mold! But man, they are so delicious. I left them to my roommate who gladly consumed them.
Sad face.
So to leave on a happy note, here is a genius idea Katie and Michelle devised at poker. Cookie sandwich made with snickerdoodle cookies and filled with snickerdoodle cookie dough. Cookie squared == so good!
Snickerdoodle squared
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Much of my time at home is spent in the kitchen; granted, some of that time is spent dropping things or accidentally grating my fingers, but you have to break a few eggs to make a cake, right? [Read More …]