Dark Chocolate Blackberry Pound Cake

There have been so many birthdays in my social circle recently - which means there has been a lot of baking going on. Not that I ever actually need an excuse to bake, but it feels better to make something for a big group of people - that way the goods don't sit on my counter begging me to take another piece.

This past weekend was my roommate Weasel's birthday, and today was the first day of classes, so the past few days have been full of cooking and lounging - cramming in as much downtime before we all have to get back to the grind. We had a nice party on Sunday night, and I made a really tasty carrot cake that was devoured before I could snap photos, but you can see the process and result of another dessert - featuring my new pan from the Goodwill. I love the Goodwill cooking section. Second-hand baking tools, pans, and stock pots are always good buys - and it often means I can get quality, made-to-last bakeware and kitchen tools for next to nothing. Most of my cake pans, bread pans, muffin tins, and random kitchen appliances were purchased second hand, and they've served me very well. Yet another way to live sustainably - don't buy new what you can buy used!



This Chocolate Blackberry Pound Cake was inspired by a beautiful pint of big, juicy blackberries from the farmers' market. The day I purchased them, they were a little less sweet than I like them, but by the time I got around to using them in the kitchen, they were perfectly ripe and ready to pair up with every berry's best friend - dark chocolate.



I used Alton Brown's Chocolate Pound Cake recipe for the base of this yummy dessert, adding the big blackberries and chocolate shavings to the batter after mixing. The berries stayed really juicy and were a really great addition to the dense cake.



I recommend REALLY flouring the pan - or using special bakers non-stick spray - because I had a bit of difficulty getting the finished cake to come out smoothly. To mask any stray bumps or holes, I made a chocolate glaze with powdered sugar, cocoa, and butter to drizzle over the top.

Yum! My friends couldn't stop eating this, which is definitely a good thing, because if it was still around I might be in trouble.

Hold on to these last weeks of summer - go out and get the freshest of the best the season has to offer - soon the berries will be gone and we'll be swimming in apples, winter squash, and dark greens.... which actually sounds pretty good!

Eat well!



This is a submission to Monthly Mingle - August 2008 Fruit & Chocolate challenge, hosted by Meeta from What's For Lunch, Honey?

Local Fingerling, Edamame, and Goat Cheese Salad with Asian Citrus Vinaigrette

I've really been trying to use up all of the food in my kitchen before buying anything else, what with textbook purchases, school supplies, studio art material fees, and all that new year financial rigmarole. This can lead to some odd combos, and, frankly, some boring dishes that aren't very blog-worthy. I'm sure I can rhapsodize about some childhood memory of cold cereal, but I doubt the pictures would turn out very well.

Sometimes, however, necessity is a mother, and really interesting dishes come out of the random things that are left behind in the fridge and pantry. I cranked out a fingerling, edamame, and goat cheese salad with an Asian citrus vinaigrette - and it was anything but boring! This salad definitely started off as a big mix of odds and ends, and - with the help of some strategic condiment use - became a pretty cohesive dish that was really tasty. The leftovers were even tastier - a big plus!

A week ago I purchased some early, sweet fingerling potatoes from the farmers market. I love how the little tubers hold their shape, so I usually reserve them for dishes that require whole potatoes or pieces - saving the big "ugly" guys for mash or bread. While I'm understandably drawn to fingerlings because of their tiny size and creative shapes, not all little potatoes are created equal. New potatoes, the homogeneous little round guys, are actually regular potatoes harvested before they are fully mature - which means they often don't get the chance to develop a full, earthy sweet flavor. Fingerlings, on the other hand, are often heirloom varieties breed especially for their flavor - which, admittedly, makes them kind of strange looking and anything but uniform - but they are so much more flavorful.

Another wonderful thing about fingerling potatoes is how quickly they cook. I threw this dish together during a lunch break on a hectic day - definitely not a time for an elaborate recipe. I roughly chopped the potatoes into pieces and covered with water, and brought them to a boil and let them simmer for ten minutes. While they cooked, I rinsed some frozen organic edamame from a local frozen veggie purveyor - Cascadia Farms - a co-op of farms in the Pacific Northwest.



I chopped some sweet local onion and lemon basil from my garden, and mixed a dressing of rice vinegar, sesame oil, dark soy sauce, and a squeeze of orange juice. After the potatoes cooled, I mixed everything together with some fresh goat cheese from the farmers' market, and drizzled with more dark soy sauce (which is totally different than regular soy sauce - it's thick and sweet - I found mine at a local Asian market) and fleur de sel for an extra crunch and burst of flavor.

This salad was so refreshing, with great contrasts in textures. I loved how the lemon basil created a citrusy kick, similar to lemongrass or lime leaves in Thai cooking, and will be experimenting with the herb in a more traditional Asian dish, maybe a pot of Tom Kha Gai or a noodle stir fry.



I'm about to head out the the farmers market again, and I'll try to restrain myself. The blackberries have been looking SO good this month, and it will be hard to resist. Have a great weekend, and eat well!

Holding on to Summer with Sunshine Tarts

I've been thinking about these tarts all day. Work is never harder than when you are hungry and distracted by imaginary baked goods. At the end of the day I was finishing up a meeting with my boss, and after a bit of idle chatter, I'd had it. I gathered my laptop and made the cleanest exit possible, but must have seemed a wee bit frantic when I slurred "gottamaketartsseeyatomorrow" on the way out the door.

Ok, so I was dreaming about food in general - which, granted, isn't unusual for me - but I think it's gotten really bad lately with the threat of school starting again. I know I'll still make time to blog, and it's not as if this summer has been full of free time, but I have a feeling that my meals will steadily become a bit more utilitarian and my fantasy cooking sprees a bit less frequent. All day, my stomach grumbled and my mind wandered, and I won't deny indulging in a few recipe searches and food porn gazing, but I managed to be relatively productive. I'm telling you, it was an uphill battle.

I bought a few Valencia oranges at Limbo this morning, and was halfway through my second one when I realized I hadn't blogged a recipe from my kitchen in a while. With the cool air whipping through the window, and the gray clouds making more and more cameo appearances in the Portland sky, I've been trying to grab on to any bit of summer before its gone. What better way to celebrate the sunny season than with a Sunshine tart?

I really love citrus. Growing up in Southern California, the stuff was everywhere, but I never ventured far beyond the peel-and-eat method, save for a few glasses of fresh orange juice. I wanted to do something special with these big Valencias, which brought me back to family trips to orange groves in my sister's red convertible - in December.

I started off with a simple galette dough, a bit of flour, salt, butter, and an ice cold mix of water and... gin! Hendrick's Gin, to be exact. One of my professors told me the secret to great pastry dough is ice-cold alcohol. Gluten doesn't form in alcohol, and the taste doesn't come through, so it makes for a moist, flaky crust. He (as well as other recipes I'm familiar with) recommends vodka, but Casey bought a bottle of Hendricks a few months ago and it was sitting in the freezer today, icy-cold and asking to become pastry. The result was a really buttery crust that peaked out in sun-like rays when I snipped it before baking.

I sliced the oranges into perfect little wedges, by first cutting off the top and bottom ends of the orange, paring the peel away, and cutting out the slices between the white membrane. I finished it off with a sprinkle of sugar, and into the oven they went (375 for about 30 minutes - and the broiler for another two).

A perfect, citrusy end to a long day - definitely a dessert worth daydreaming about.

Rainbow Fiesta on Market Day!

This Saturday was the last Kid's Cook class at the Portland Farmers' Market, and it was a blast. I'm going to miss these kids and their enthusiasm for making something tasty with fresh, local, ingredients. For a lot of them, the Saturday class wasn't just a chance to get away from their parents and have an excuse to eat far too much sugar at 9 in the morning. Some of these guys really had a passion for ingredients, loved getting their hands messy, and had real pride in the things they made - from crepes to ice cream to nachos. I loved getting to know who hated cilantro and who bakes at home with dad, who goes to three farmers' markets a week and who is trying to convince their parents to eat vegetarian meals a few times a week. I hope I'll see some of my kids at the market on Saturdays, getting excited about some new ingredient picked early that morning.



Ok, enough rhapsodizing about the lost days of youth and summer. The sun's still out and I've got some great photos of the kids making a Rainbow Fiesta. This weekend featured the expertise of Heidi Boyce, former owner of Peanut Butter & Ellie’s, a tremendously popular family and kid friendly restaurant in PDX. She brought a great idea to the Kid's Cook class - using every color of the rainbow to make a healthified kid-approved nacho buffet - featuring blue and red corn chips, fresh guacamole, a few types of local cheese, local fresh salsas, lettuce, and a special taco beef blend with a secret ingredient - zucchini!

We first paraded around the market with our gaggle of 15 kids, gathering everything from three types of onions (to see which color would make us cry), big beefsteak tomatoes, cilantro, a few zucchini, red leaf lettuce, mozzarella, jack, and cheddar cheeses, red and green salsa, and fresh ground beef from Deck Family Farms.



Back at the workstation, the kids had fun mashing avocados, dicing tomatoes (with quite interesting knife techniques - one kid called his the "karate chop of tomato death"), picking apart cilantro leaves, chopping onions using the snazzy ChopMaster 3000 (the purple ones made us cry the most), grating cheese, and mixing grated zucchini with ground beef, enchilada sauce, and seasonings to make a delicious beef mixture that everyone ate up quickly - even the picky eaters who had frowned at the idea of squash in the mix.



At the end of the class, we spread out all of the goodies and made big bowls of nachos, starting with blue corn and red chips colored with beets, then piling high all of our fresh toppings. We had enough of everything for the parents to dig in, and the event turned out to be quite a fiesta, indeed. I don't think we give kids enough credit - some of them are bound to be fantastic cooks, they just need someone to let them use a knife, or to show them the best way to keep guacamole from browning (throw the pits into the mush - and add some lime juice!). I think that's what I loved most about the class this summer. We were able to let the kids take the reins, experiment, make mistakes in a safe environment surrounded by the freshest ingredients and the people who grew them. Truly an unforgettable experience.

The rest of the morning was spent wandering the booths. I had only brought a tiny bit of cash (because I had stocked up at the Eastbank market on Thursday night) but I got a bag of sweet fingerling potatoes and a delicious coconut banana Popsicle from Sol Pops (the market's very own Seasonal, Organic, and Local Popsicle purveyor) that I enjoyed while walking the loop of vendors. The peaches this week were amazing. It seemed like ever vendor could top the last in the quality of juicy, golden samples. I'm really going to miss peach season. Better stock up and freeze some soon.



All in all, another great market day. The sun was out, the harvest was plentiful, and the market was full of smiling faces. The weather may be getting a little cooler, and the breeze is carrying whispers of fall, but it's still very much summer in my kitchen and at the market, and the rainbow fiesta was a great way to end a wonderful series of classes. Speaking of rainbows, check out these gorgeous artichoke flowers! They smelled like fresh corn tortillas.



Eat well, soak up the sun, and I'll see you at the market soon!

Heidi's Special Taco Topping
1 pound local, grass-feed ground beef
1 medium zucchini, grated (about 1 cup)
1 can enchilada sauce
1/4 cup taco seasoning (find it in the bulk section of the natural foods market, and it won't have the additives of the kind in the packet, or experiment with your own blend!)

Brown the beef in a large saucepan over medium heat. Add zucchini, sauce, and seasonings, reduce heat to a simmer, and cook for 5 minutes. Enjoy over nachos or in tacos.

The First Tomato!

A few months ago, at the beginning of summer, I moved into a new house, and with the help of my wonderful roommates, we made a vegetable garden. This little plot of land, separated from the lawn by a frame of free wood from our landlords' scrap pile, was responsible for many a quixotic thought of the supposed summer bounty. I had imagined baskets overflowing with squash and more tomatoes than I would know what to do with. I wanted to be forced to finally tackle preserving. We had thought, at the very least, we would not have to shop at the store as much, that we could rely on the Oregon land to fill our bellies as well as our souls.

While this might still be the case in the future, as the tomato plants are heavy with green specimens and the squash is still covered in blossoms, here it is - late August - and we've had a rather meager harvest. Two or three perfect little red tomatoes, a rather ugly but delicious cucumber, a skosh of broccoli, one yellow squash, and a Japanese eggplant. While the precious few fruits of our labor have been met with a good deal of celebration, I'm not sure what to expect from my gorgeous plants. I'm not really complaining, or giving up on the garden by any means, but it makes me wonder about a few things. The Pacific Northwest had such a late winter, and through my work I know that farmers throughout Washington and Oregon have had disappointingly low yields. Is this an anomaly? I hope so - because I know so many farmers who could not survive another year like this, and I plan on farming in the area in the future - but part of me wonders if this is a glimpse of a scary future. Perhaps global climate change has altered my regional agricultural utopia, and my garden is just a small sign of a changing world.

Or maybe I'm just not a great gardener. Either way, I've had to take solace in the bounty of others - the Farmers' Market was as wonderful as ever yesterday - and in the other pleasures I get from the 5 by 7 rectangle of soil and roots. Watering the garden after just waking up in the morning, with the early sun casting full rainbows through the spray, has been a wonderful part of my summer. And as one of my closest friends Terra famously exclaims, the garden shows us that we live on the earth. An earth that is capable of providing us food. To eat. Perhaps I will just have to learn more, experiment more, and feel a lesser harvest in order to reap greater ones in the future. Regardless, my garden has played a large part in my SOLE Food Summer, spiritually, if not astoundingly culinary.

Given the lackluster bounty of this year's garden, I'm sure you won't be surprised to hear that the first tomato was met with a celebration. Upon appraising the red beauty's state of ripeness and declaring that it was ready to be picked, I called Terra and asked if she'd come over after work and give thanks to the garden. Later that day, we sat on the patio with a plate of our sliced tomato, the first cucumbers (one from mine and one from Terra's garden), and some local corn, with a touch of fleur de sel. As the sun set, we shared our days and our plans for the rest of summer, savoring every bite. I can only hope our evening together will be repeated in the weeks to come, that both the garden and I will be able to soak up the last weeks of summer, and that the rest of the green tomatoes find their blush.

Eat well!

Scarlet Beet Brownies and the Great Ingredient Hunt

First zucchini in chocolate cake, now beets in your brownies.

Yes, I'm slowly taking over the world with my sneak-attack veggies, bastardizing symbols of American cooking with local produce. And don't expect me to stop anytime soon.

I know, I know, brownies are pretty sacred. Adding beets is bound to be a bit of a scandal. When I made these for a group of strangers, who lacked the bulk of my friends' tolerance for my experimental baking, more than a few eyebrows were raised and the plate remained pretty full for a while. And then they tried them. Once the word got out that they were, well, amazing, they didn't last long.

Hey, no one complains about carrot cake or sweet potato pie. If people can put their root-vegetable blinders on for those treats, why shouldn't they be able to do the same for the beet? Besides, beets are a primary source of processed sugar. It seems only natural to add them to a dessert.

(For a snazzy and confusing schematic of the process of turning sugarbeets into sugar, click here!)



Before I get back to the beets, I'll clue you in on what I was doing on the East Coast, feeding a bunch of strangers. My sister, Casey, is getting her PhD at Princeton, and is also a major player in their student-run organic garden, The Garden Project, located in a great new plot surrounded by wild grapes, huge trees, and a picturesque ivy-covered stone wall. Overseen by the Office of Sustainability, The Garden Project has provided the Princeton food service with herbs and produce, and also hopes to use the garden as a community gathering spot and educate the campus about the American food system and the benefits of eating locally and sustainably. My family flew out to New Jersey last week to help with a garden party, showing off the garden to administrative VIPs and celebrating with friends (the aforementioned group of strangers). My dad constructed a fire pit and a great fruit stand/sink/prep station for the garden, and I painted the sign:


It was also my dad's birthday, my little sister's soon-to-be birthday, and a few weeks until the start of school - plenty of reasons to celebrate. In my life, the word "celebration" is pretty much synonymous with food. Cooking food, making a big deal out of presenting food, and eating far too much of it is how my family commemorated any big event. Or small one, for that matter. The element we've added to this ritual of celebration is the search for the best ingredients. The ladies of the family piled in the car and trekked around New Jersey gathering the best of the best the region had to offer.

We stopped at a Pennsylvania Dutch farmers market to sample cheeses and pick up "green pickles" (which were basically really fresh, salty cucumbers), four huge watermelons, and, one of my all-time favorite foods, Amish dilly beans. I adore Amish markets - so many smiling faces, handmade treats, and lots and lots of samples of everything from pickled kielbasa to peaches and cream cheese spread. The watermelons were amazing, definitely at the peak of their season.

Next stop was a farm stand known for its amazing corn. We got four dozen ears of corn, thinking we would be able to roast it on the fire pit Dad built, but we didn't get red-tape approval for an impromptu inferno of flaming doom on Princeton grounds (or something like that). It hardly mattered, though, as the corn was so sweet and creamy, full of just-picked-from-the-stalk flavor, we ate it raw.



After the farm stand, we went to a local farm that is well-known for its plentiful pick-your-own crops. From raspberries and blackberries, to peaches (yes, pick your own peaches!) and cut-your-own flowers, I'd been to this stop a few times before. Last fall, Casey and I found perfect pumpkins and ate hot apple-cider doughnuts before picking loads of raspberries.



This time were on a mission to buy some perfect blueberries, and this was a place to be. Now, for me, pick-your-own trips mean eating as much as I can possibly find, and occasionally tossing a few into the basket. Luckily, the rest of the family had a bit more restraint, and we managed to walk away with a few pints of gorgeous blues. The epitome of local eating, a berry picked off the bush and eaten immediately is, really, a taste of heaven.



Blueberries in tow, we then drove to Casey's favorite local farm (where she is a CSA shareholder, and the source of our local meal's tomatoes, cucumbers, green beans, carrots, and beets) to say hello to the happy cows and buy a ridiculous amount of fresh mozzarella. We got caught in the heaviest downpour I'd seen in years, but I managed to snap a shot of the sweetest baby cow before making a mad dash to the car to save my camera before dancing in the rain with my sisters.



We used the mozzarella and a bunch of beautiful tomatoes and fresh basil from Casey's CSA box to make a lovely Insalata Caprese. I'm not usually a fan of mozzarella - I find it can be a bit spongy - but this stuff was so fresh, it was amazing. And you can pretty much top anything with perfect tomatoes and a basil leaf and I'll swoon.



In the end, the Great Ingredient Hunt was a smashing success, and was a great way to spend a vacation. I love nothing more than cooking and eating with my family, and we definitely have transitioned to local, sustainable preparation without sacrificing any of our quantity, quality, and taste. This kind of eating, celebrating the season and connecting, quite directly, with where our food comes from, can be so amazingly rewarding. At the party, I looked at our table full of fresh, colorful dishes, and realized we had created memories for every ingredient. That meal was more than a number of calories or a tally of complicated methods, it was a veritable collection of experience. Tasting the cheese, I saw the baby cow and felt the huge raindrops, popping a blueberry I heard the laughter of my sisters and the buzzing of bees. This is what it feels like to connect with our food system, to respect the earth, and celebrate to the fullest. And it went off without a hitch. The trickiest part was cooking everything in Casey's small apartment kitchen, but even that went relatively smoothly, save for a bit of a fiasco with the food processor. Really, who thought it would be a good idea to put an unsealable spout pointing towards the floor? Ah, a bit of beet puree never killed anyone. But it does make killer brownies.

Scarlet Beet Brownies and Fresh Blueberries

• 3/4 cup of beet puree*
  
• 4 ounces of good-quality chocolate chips
• 3/4 cup all-purpose flour
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• pinch salt
• 1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 7 tablespoons butter, softened
• 1/3 cup sugar
• 2 eggs, room temperature

*I used dark red and candy-striped beets. I peeled them and then boiled them until they were easily pierced with a fork. I then pureed them in a food processor and measured out the 3/4 cup. The rest of it was delicious with a bit of butter, salt and pepper. Also, the puree is absolutely gorgeous and can be used as a stand-out side dish.

1. Heat oven to 350F.
2. Melt chocolate over double-boiler. Set aside.
3. Whisk flour with baking powder and salt and set aside.
4. Cream butter and sugar together. And vanilla and eggs, one at a time, until the mixture is creamy. Add melted chocolate, beet puree, and flour mixture. Mix well.
   
5. Pour batter into 9 x 13 baking pan and bake for 30 minutes.
6. Let cool and cut into triangles. Serve with fresh-picked blueberries and share with family.