Category: Sustenance

Saturday mornings are for the Market Square Farmer's Market.  I've finally settled into accepting that, at this stage of my life at least, I am decidedly grumpy if I accidentally commit to activities that interrupt my market Saturdays. In that vein, I've also decided not to post on Saturdays until after I've gone to the market.

Above is today's haul:  two small heads of lettuce, collards, Swiss chard, cauliflower, zucchini, tomatoes and eggs.

 

I went to the market anticipating that I would buy eggs and Swiss chard: one of my favorite farmer's had sent out a notice saying they would have chard, taking requests.  When I discovered that I could chose between a 1 pound and a half-pound bag, I jumped at the opportunity for the larger bag.  I had already spotted the zucchini, and Swiss chard and zucchini soup has long been a summer favorite.  The collards will probably be used in a simple and homey saute with local pork sausage and I am undecided about the fate of the cauliflower.  I originally thought I would simply roast it, but having inspected the freezer I see that I also have some (local) ground lamb and could make a shepherd's pie.  It has been a long time since I've made shepherd's pie and it sounds good, even if it is not a particularly summery dish.  With cauliflower mash it is decidedly less heavy than with potatoes though, and I might just go for it.

 

The tomatoes were a whim.  It is too early for tomatoes, until recently the nights were too cool for the plants to set fruit. These are hot-house grown.  They are however, the first tomatoes I've seen that smell almost-like a summer tomato.  Except for cherry tomatoes, I rarely buy tomatoes except in season.  I do realize it is a bit snobbish of me, but the difference in taste and texture is significant.  Will I be disappointed?  Perhaps.  In the meantime I am looking forward having one in a lovely salad for lunch.  I just have to decide on the protein of choice for today.

 

Have a lovely weekend.

 

I've been scattered this week.  There are, in fact, several good reasons for this and I have decided to cut myself some slack and just not worry about it.   There is a fine line sometimes between complacency and simply going with the flow, but I believe, and hope, that as long as one is aware and intentional, one can hopefully catch oneself before sliding too deeply into any hidden pits.

 

1.  I roasted a chicken for dinner Wednesday night.   It is such a simple thing really, and yet too often I think we think of a roast chicken as a convenience, something to pick up on the way home from the store when we are hungry and feeling rushed.  I have been known to succumb to that very urge.  But although roasting a chicken does require some time,  and this bird was rather large and needed nearly 1 1/2 hours to roast, once in the oven, the attention of the cook is not required, leaving her free to do other things. 

 

 

2. The only downside to roast chicken that I can see is that it so delicious that I want to do it again practically immediately.  In fact, you can see that I was so eager that I ripped a wing off practically as soon as the chicken was out of the oven, before it could cool, before I could take a photo.  I have no regrets.  Once the chicken had rested, I ate the legs along with the outer parts of a lovely artichoke I had picked up at Whole Foods, dipping the leaves in homemade Aioli.  The chicken carcass went into the slow cooker with the contents of a bag of vegetable trimmings and my last two chicken feet, and I woke up to the smell of chicken stock Thursday morning.   A ladle of fresh stock, some leftover zoodles (zucchini noodles), shredded chicken breast, sautéed mushrooms, baby spinach, and a poached egg made a lovely breakfast. The leftover artichoke heart was sliced and combined with chicken breast and bell peppers in a quick sauté for lunch.

 

 

3.  While the chicken was roasting on Wednesday evening I entertained myself with a short stroll down memory lane.  I had picked up my old, stained, and well-worn copy of Marcella Hazan's Classic Italian Cookbook after reading Lisa's post earlier this week.  I hadn't cooked from it recently, thinking it really no longer fit my life.  This was only partially correct.  As I read the book I remembered my younger self, remembered my culinary explorations as a young bride.  Although I don't really cook risotto for myself now, I remember learning the process,  remembering the thrill when I finally got it right, the sense of accomplishment when it became almost second nature.  I also remember the joy of making my first ossobuco and eventually mastering it.  I haven't made ossobuco in a long time, although I occasionally yearn for it.  As I am unlikely to find a gluten-free version in  a local restaurant that will meet my standards, I shall have to cook it myself.  I've been lax about cooking for friends so far this year, a situation that will have to change.

 

For a girl who grew up in Texas, even a girl whose parents were both adventurous cooks, Hazan was a revelation,  opening my eyes to a sensibility about food that was a far cry from the Spaghetti Warehouse, lasagna, pizza, and my parent's fritto misto. I remember my awe at  learning about the many ways one could cook artichokes.  I grew up eating artichokes, but they were always simply boiled.  I remember learning to pan saute mackerel with olive oil and rosemary, and my amazement that something so simple could yield such depth of flavor.  In the late 1980s and early '90s we had a local fishmonger who often had beautiful mackerel, and it appeared frequently on our table.  I occasionally see a beautiful mackerel in the fish market here in Knoxville, and I am reminded of those meals.  Too often the fish are too large for one, but perhaps I will buy one someday.  I remember that I used to also make a mackerel paté with any leftover fish and I could surely do so again. 

 

I also remember the amazement I felt when I learned to think of parsley as an aromatic to add at the beginning of cooking rather than merely as a garnish.  I remember that first whiff of the aroma of sautéed parsley, that first taste, the way it magnified the flavor and added incredible depth to the dish. It is a technique I have never forgotten.  The first time I sautéed parsley I was making Hazan's recipe for spaghetti with tuna, a favorite dish for those days when I needed a fast, delicious, and satisfying meal from pantry staples.  I made that dish for years, decades even.  I could make it again.  I might need to make it again soon. 

 

 

4.  I have taken great pains to be aware of movement and activity this week, to stretch, to use ice or heat as needed.  I have been cautious about walking, limiting myself to 10k steps, and 10k only.  Yesterday I took a long walk in the middle of the day, 2 1/2 miles, but it was only mostly level or gently sloping terrain.  I am still trying to take a balanced approach, with a short walk in the morning and again in the evening, even on days that include longer excursions.  I am still not walking the hills in my neighborhood though; it is not going uphill that is the problem, but rather coming back down.  It will do me no harm to wait until next week.

 

 

5.  I extended the fermentation time of my most recent batch of kimchi a little more than the previous batches and reduced the heat slightly.  It has worked out quite well, still hot, but not quite as incendiarily so as previous batches.  This batch is also slightly less "sparkly" and a bit more funky, but just as good as previous efforts.  The kimchi worked well in a scramble with some shredded chicken this morning. Just before the eggs set, I tossed in some leftover steamed carrots and their sweetness offset the heat of the kimchi and rounded out the flavors nicely.  Kimchi opens another world of possibilities, one well worth exploring further.

So, it seems that I can't eat dairy.

I'll never eat my favorite cheese, Bayley Hazen by Jasper Hill Farms again. 

 

However….

 

For the first time in memory, my nose does not run every time I eat.  In fact, my sinuses are actually better overall.  Who knew.  I had certainly been tested for allergies, but they were almost always negative for anything except a mild allergy to mildew.  And yet sinus problems were a constant, even more so when I was younger, when I admittedly ate more cheese and ice cream than I have in recent years.

 

For the first time in my adult life, I am not struggling with chronic dry skin, the kind of dry skin that my dermatologists always told me came with chronic allergies: painful, itchy, fragile skin that could easily turn to eczema.  No amount of lotion would help. Drinking more water made no difference.  Sometimes it was worse, sometimes it was better.  No one ever figured it out.

 

Until now.

 

 Actually, good old Bayley Hazen helped me discover the problem.  I had a big party in February.  There was leftover cheese, my favorite blue cheese, and I ate it for lunch a couple of days.  About that same time I was also sick with GI distress, horrible sinusitis, patches of eczema, and painfully dry, fragile skin overall.  My nails all split and peeled, my cuticles all dried, cracked, bled.  I was miserable. 

 

My doctor put me on an elimination diet.  I got better.  I did slowly add dairy back, but in very small amounts and the problem seemed minor.  I actually eat little cheese, mostly because I am spoiled rotten, and there was little cheese available locally that met my exacting standards.   Ordering cheese to be delivered was not an everyday occurrence. Besides, spring had arrived and I was more than willing to discount to blame pollen for any sinus issues.  But still,  I knew; even in denial, I knew.

 

Then mom came, and we ate some kind of dairy product every day for a month.  When she left, I was experiencing a full recurrence of my February symptoms, and although I was not nearly as sick as I get from gluten, I knew this was the end of my life with cheese.

 

It is easier this time, easier than it was with gluten.  Perhaps I am older and wiser.  Perhaps I am more at ease in my body.  I always said I was as healthy as a horse, but architecturally unsound.  And so I am. Celiac disease (actually I was first diagnosed with Dermatitis Herpetaformis) was a shock to the young woman so into food, the young woman who could eat anything, who loved both fancy restaurants and questionable-looking little shacks where the food smelled simply amazing.  Living without gluten was a challenge for the young woman who grew yeast from wild grapes and made sourdough bread, who made croissants and complicated pastries, who loved to cook and to eat, who felt everything was better made from scratch, and had no fear of trying new techniques, new flavors.

 

But now, it really doesn't matter as much.  If I don't eat it is no great loss.  I care about the quality of what I eat when I am home.  When I am out I eat or I don't.  I don't actually expect much.  I hate to be difficult.  And truthfully I can tolerate tiny amounts of dairy on rare occasions, the occasional something cooked in butter, although not the rich butter sauce.  But I want to enjoy conversations with people.  We are a social species after all.  I want to enjoy conversations without being distracted by pain, if possible. 

 

We all grow older.  Our hair turns gray.  Our joints ache.  The excesses of youth catch up with us.  And, if we are lucky, we move on.  Far worse things could happen.  Consider the alternatives.  Perhaps treasuring what you have is more important than wanting it all. After all, we are not defined by what we have lost, but by what we do with what we have left.

 

Photo courtesy of Murray's Cheese.

 

Near the end of my mother's visit we were invited to a party.  I was supposed to bring dessert.  I decided to make an angel food cake.  Once upon a time I made angel food cakes all the time, so often that I felt like I could whip them up in my sleep. I used my great-grandmother's recipe and it always turned out beautifully.  And then, for some reason I can no longer recollect, I stopped.

 

But this summer has been hot, and I didn't want anything fancy. I actually don't really eat dessert much anymore but I wanted to develop a small repertoire of standards that I could whip up whenever the need arose.  The only requirements were that they be both gluten-free and dairy-free so that everyone in my family could enjoy them. Angel Food cakes and chiffon cakes are dairy free by definition, so angel food seemed like a good place to start.  After all, an angel food cake only calls for roughly 1 cup of flour, how hard could it be to adapt to gluten-free flours?

 

Famous Last Words.

 

At least I knew enough to make a test cake early in the week, before the party.  So I pulled out a cookbook by a famous baker looking for an angel food cake recipe.  Why not use my grandmother's recipe?  Well, I don't have it written down.  It is still in my head, and I remembered the basic proportions, but I've not been feeling really confident about baking lately and I wanted some kind of official guidance. I didn't trust my gut.  So I defaulted to a famous baker, who shall remain unnamed. 

 

I should have trusted my gut.  I made the cake following famous baker's recipe.  The eggs did not rise as high as I expected when I was beating them, but I suspected my memory was faulty. The cake went in the oven and looked beautiful as it was baking but did not rise anywhere near the top of the tube pan. When it was done I removed it from the oven, placed the cake, in the pan, upside down over a wine bottle to cool, and sat down at the dining table to talk to my mom. 

 

At some point during our conversation, perhaps about 15 minutes after setting the cake aside to cool, we heard a soft swoosh and thump, more like a floomph sound, and looked up.  The cake pan was still on the bottle, but all around it, on the counter, was a lump of sticky egg whites and sugar, a pseudo-cake, almost an angel-pudding cake.

 

Such a thing had never happened to me before.

 

I probably should have taken pictures of the process and the various stages, but at that point I didn't yet realize it would be a process.

 

I pulled out all my cookbooks that had angel food cake recipes.  I spent some time on the web researching problems with angel food cakes and I realized the cake had probably not cooked long enough, although it was also possible the proportions were off. Most recipes, and Michael Ruhlman's Ratio agreed. My memories of my great-grandmother, Mamie's, angel food cake recipe were right on target:

 

Mamie's Cake: 12 egg whites, 1 1/2 cups sugar, 1 cup flour, 1 teaspoon vanilla, 1 teaspoon cream of tartar, 1/2 teaspoon salt.

 

Ruhlman's Ratio: 12 ounces egg whites, 12 ounces sugar, 4 ounces flour, 1 tablespoon lemon juice, 1 teaspoon vanilla, 1/2 teaspoon cream of tartar, 1/2 teaspoon salt.  The weights correlate pretty closely to my grandmother's recipe.

 

But the next two cakes (or was it three?) also fell.  I baked the cakes longer and longer but it seemed to make no difference.  The outside of the cake would be overdone while the middle remained too sticky, too sweet.

 

So I thought I would google gluten-free angel food cakes and see what I came up with.  You might think I should have done that first, but I disagree.  My experiences starting with gluten-free blogs and websites are generally not good.  Not surprisingly, I found some pretty strange angel food cake recipes.  Although there were some that worked with classic ingredients and proportions, there were many that did not.  And the photos of the resulting cakes all looked lovely, but many seemed a little dense, like grocery store angel food cake, which I have always felt is on the heavy side, and not as airy as an angel food cake should be. All of the recipes added xanthan gum to the flour blend though, and I thought this was worth a try. 

 

But I didn't have any xanthan gum.  I had guar gum.  More googling.  They are interchangeable.  They are not interchangeable. One may need to combine them depending on the desired result and the humidity.  My head was beginning to spin. I went to Kroger. They only had xanthan gum in a pint sized bag.  At 1 teaspoon per cake I may have a lifetime supply.

 

The next cake rose higher and looked more like it should.  The cake tester was clean, but the cake still fell out of the pan.  This cake however had better texture and seemed more cake-like.   So for the next version I included the xanthan gum and increased the cream of tartar from Ruhlman's 1/2 teaspoon to the full 1 teaspoon my great-grandmother had used.

 

This cake was beautiful, it rose above the top of the tube pan in the oven and I was thrilled.  But when the time was up and I removed the cake, it had fallen, and now only went about 2/3 up the sides of the pan. My heart was heavy, but I propped the pan up on the wine bottle and left it to cool anyway.  It did not fall out of the pan.  And the resulting cake was good, with good flavor.  The texture was a little dense, but not unpleasantly so, only slightly more dense than those store-bought angel-food cakes of memory (I haven't' actually eaten a store bought cake for many years).

(almost good enough)

 

I realized that the last two cakes had both risen higher than the top of the pan and then fallen back.  I wondered if this had been part of the problem all along, and part of the reason the early cakes had not quite baked through.  I seemed to recall that perhaps gluten-free flour blends were lighter by weight than wheat flour.  I wondered if I just needed more flour.

 

So I weighed a cup of my gluten-free flour blend.  It weighed 4 3/4 ounces. I decided this theory had merit.

 

Yesterday I made another cake and used 5 ounces of flour instead of 4.  It was beautiful, and it is this cake that is at the top of this post.  I could have turned it over so it looked prettier.  But really I was just going to have one slice and ditch it, until I thought of giving it to my step-daughter and grandson.  Is it rude to give away a cake with one piece missing?  I hope not. 

 

For a gluten-free angel food cake the proportions are: 12 ounces egg whites, 12 ounces sugar, 5 ounces gluten free flour blend, 1 teaspoon xanthan gum and 1 teaspoon cream of tartar. I used the technique and flavorings in Ratio but really, every book I own uses the same technique.  I also like the way the lemon juice brightens the flavor of the cake and slightly softens the sweetness. I will continue to use lemon juice in the future.  It is possible that you will not need the xanthan gum if your flour blend already includes it, but I would make a test cake first to be sure. I personally prefer blends that do not include xanthan gum, as it is easy enough to add when needed.

 

So now I have 1 gluten-free, dairy-free dessert under my belt, a dessert that is good enough that  I can take it anywhere.  I have also reached my limit with sweets for a while. Perhaps in a couple of months, when the weather is cooler, I will be ready to expand my repertoire