Pinçage

I haven't written for five months. But no biggie, I guess, it's not like this is a real blog with readers and a book contract as the happy ending. Plus, I can't keep up the cheerful bloggy tone. What have I been doing for the last five months? I started another blog, Portland Walk, that involved making Google maps of my walks. Then I sprained my ankle and couldn't go on any long walks for a while. And then I got a job as a technical writer, but being me, what with job preoccupation plus my need for copious down time and looking for a house and such, I haven't kept up with the blogging. But I do miss having an easy internet-reachable reference of my favorite recipes.

Here's something I sort of tried (and would like to try again, when the time is ripe):

Pinçage

Francis Lam gives recipes for mirepoix and pinçage on salon.com, in one of the most strangely written food pieces I've ever read. But I thought that the pinçage (a flavorful brown paste or mush made from long-cooked onion, carrot, and celery in oil) would make a good instant vegetable broth. I love to have broth on hand for soup, but am loathe to buy boxed vegetable broth at the grocery store, because the decent brands are quite expensive and you need several boxes to make a big pot of soup. Bouillon cubes, while cheaper, aren't very good. And making homemade broth is time consuming. I wouldn't mind making an enormous batch and freezing it, but don't have the freezer space to keep very much. Frozen pinçage paste could be the solution to my broth problem.

I made a half-assed version of the pinçage one day, keeping the flame too high, and leaving out the tomato paste, and it was good! I can no longer remember what kind of soup I used it for, but remember feeling satisfied with the experiment. Because my pinçage was lazy, the soup had bits of blackened vegetables floating in it, but flavor was excellent. One day, I'll make a big batch of pinçage just as Lam directs, and see if it makes a good instant vegetable broth.

Francis Lam made a guest appearance in Orangette's Spilled Milk podcast on peas.

Alicia Silverstone's pears

On one of my many recent flights between Portland and Chicago, I bought Natural Health magazine. After reading it I got rid of it somehow, and have been pining over it ever since. There were recipes I wanted to try! And it had a photo spread starring a woman from America's Next Top Model a few seasons back. What was her name? Pru? Something like that. She called herself "Blaxican," i.e., half black, half Mexican. I loved her! She should have won. But better than winning, she now seems to have an active modeling career.

Anyway, she was wearing a very cute sweater. I even looked it up online, and found that it was affordable. I can no longer remember the brand, though. I was also interested in an article about Alicia Silverstone and her new cookbook, which included a pear recipe I wanted to try. I did find it online, but not easily, because Natural Health's website doesn't offer current editorial content in any way, shape, or form. I think that's bad, but what do I know?

Here is the article. See, Natural Health? Hoarding editorial content doesn't protect it, and it angers your readers! Be more like Vegetarian Times.

I changed this recipe a lot, so be sure to check the original if you want the full Alicia Silverstone experience.

Candied Ginger Pears

1/2 cup toasted almonds, ground or finely chopped
2 tablespoons maple syrup
3 large or 4 small pears, halved and core scooped out
1 1/2 cups pear juice
1 inch piece ginger root, grated or minced
Pinch of fine sea salt
2 tablespoons tapioca flour mixed with a little bit of pear juice
juice of 1/2 a lemon
zest of 1 lemon
ice cream, optional

1. Mix almonds with maple syrup. Set aside.

2. Arrange the pears in a deep skillet, cut sides up. Add the pear or apple juice to the pan along with the ginger and salt. Cover the pan, bring to a boil, then reduce the heat to medium, and simmer for 7 to 10 minutes, or until the pear halves are soft. Using a slotted spoon so most of the cooking liquid drains, transfer the pears to a serving platter, reserving the liquid. Fill the hollow of each pear with some of the almond mixture.

3. Stir the diluted tapioca starch into the reserved cooking liquid, and heat for 3 to 5 minutes, stirring constantly, until the sauce thickens. If it gets too thick, add more pear juice. Remove from the heat, and stir in the lemon juice and zest. Pour the sauce over the pears, and serve. Nice with a scoop of ice cream.

Quinoa Casserole

My talented and beautiful friend Joelle made this casserole when we were visiting her recently. I've made it 3 times in the past few weeks.

3-4 cups cooked quinoa
2 cups grated cheddar cheese, preferrably sharp cheddar
3-4 eggs, beaten
1-2 T. soy sauce
2 bunches kale, cleaned, destemmed, and chopped
glug of olive oil
several chopped cloves of garlic

Preheat oven to 350°.

Heat some olive oil in a large heavy-bottomed pot. Saute the garlic over medium heat until fragrant and golden. Add kale and stir quickly for a minute or two, until bright green, wilted, and tender. Add a splash of water if the kale seems dry or is sticking to the bottom of the pot. Salt and pepper to taste. Let kale cool slightly.

In a big bowl, mix quinoa with cooled kale and 1 c. cheese. Taste, and add 1-2 T. soy sauce. You may need more or less depending on how much you salted the kale and how salty your cheddar is. After seasoning is corrected, mix thoroughly with beaten eggs.

Spread mixture into a large casserole dish. Top with remaining cheese. Bake for 30-40 minutes, until cheese is bubbly and starting to brown.

I also tried this with finely chopped raw broccoli instead of kale, and nutritional yeast in place of part of the cheese mixed into the casserole. Still good, but not AS good. I'd like to do a Tex-Mex version of this, with salsa, black beans, bell pepper, and so forth.

I never actually measure any of the ingredients, but that's the beauty of a casserole.

another birthday cake

I made another birthday cake, this time for Mike, using a similar recipe to "yellow cake with chocolate frosting" just below. This time, I filled the cake with seedless raspberry preserves, and used a different frosting recipe, courtesy Martha Stewart. Overall the cake was really good, but I wasn't 100% into the frosting. I'm not a frosting lover, though; so often buttercream-style frosting is too fatty, too sugary, too much. This frosting contains three sticks of butter, and nearly a pound of chocolate! Now that's decadent.

I would have tried a ganache, but Mike liked the sound of a buttercream. Actually, Martha S.'s ganache recipe sounds a little flabby too. Two and a half cups is a lot of heavy cream. Maybe a chocolate glaze is the ticket.

Really, what I want to try is a 7-minute frosting, light and fluffy. I've never tried it before, but it seems completely unlike a fat-based frosting. Maybe a chocolate cake, with heaps of feather-light vanilla icing. . . .

Still, a tasty cake. I'm going on and on about the issue of frosting, but it was lovely and delicious, and I'm coming to rely on the yellow cake recipe below. It's a keeper. Happy Birthday Mike! I love making birthday cakes.