Midcentury Cocktails: History, Lore, and Recipes from America's Atomic Age by Cecelia Tichy -- BOOK BEGINNINGS

BOOK BEGINNINGS ON FRIDAYS

Do you collect books on any particular subject -- gardening, outer space, sports, whatever?

I have a middling-sized collection of books about cocktails. They aren't all recipe books, although some are. They are books about cocktails culture and history, bartending guides, recipe books, books about entertaining with cocktails, and a couple of books about writers who enjoyed their cocktails, sometimes too much. I have a new one to share today on Book Beginnings on Fridays. 

Please share the opening sentence (or so) from the book you are reading this week. Or share froM a book that caught your eye.

MY BOOK BEGINNING

America at midcentury was a nation on the move, taking to wings and wheels along the new interstate highways and in passenger jets that soared to thirty thousand feet above the earth.

-- from Midcentury Cocktails: History, Lore, and Recipes from America's Atomic Age by Cecelia Tichy. 

This new book explores icons of midcentury American life -- such as commuter trains, tiki bars, suburban weekends, Playboy bunnies, bachelor pads, and Breakfast at Tiffany's -- and examines how they influenced and were influenced by cocktail drinking. After each chapter, there are recipes for related cocktails. 

The recipes are pretty simple because midcentury was the heyday of straightforward cocktails. Goofy early experiments had died off (for good reason) and today's crazy, anything goes cocktails had yet to be imagined. So there are several recipes in here that are not much more than put "very clear" ice cubes in an Old Fashioned glass, add 1 - 2 ounces of whatever liquor, and maybe stir in 4 ounces of soda water (the "recipe" for Scotch & Soda, for example). That's fine by me, since I live in a house where we consider ice a mixer. 

There are other recipes more elaborate, even frou-frou, especially in the tiki bar chapter. Those can be fun too, just not really my thing. 

YOUR BOOK BEGINNINGS

Please leave the link to your Book Beginnings on Fridays post in the box below. If you share on social media, please use the hashtag #bookbeginnings. 

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THE FRIDAY 56

Freda at Freda's Voice hosts another teaser event on Fridays. Participants share a two-sentence teaser from page 56 of the book they are reading -- or from 56% of the way through the audiobook or ebook. Please visit Freda's Voice for details and to leave a link to your post.

MY FRIDAY 56

From Midcentury Cocktails:

Page 56 has recipes, so here's one from the chapter on weekends in the suburbs: 

NEW YORK SOUR

    Ingredients:

1. 2 oz blended whiskey
2. Chilled dry red wine
3. 1/2 ounce lemon juice
4. 1 teaspoon sugar
5. 1/2 slice lemon

    Directions:

1. Put ample ice in shaker.
2. Vigorously shake whiskey, lemon juice, and sugar.
3. Strain into 6-ounce sour glass.
4. Fill glass with red wine.
5. Stir, garnish with lemon slice, and serve.

What do you think? Would you try it?

Teaser Tuesday: Life Without a Recipe by Diana Abu-Jaber

But I haven't written. Not for two, three, four months: This becomes frightening to me.

-- Life Without a Recipe: A Memoir of Food and Family by Diana Abu-Jaber.

Diana Abu-Jaber has written four novels and one prior memoir, The Language of Baklava. Her new memoir, Life Without a Recipe, honestly explores what what it takes to build a whole life out of the different parts of family, marriage, career, and motherhood.

Diana writes a lot about food in this book, because food was so central to her family life growing up and her relationship with her adopted daughter. The book does not include recipes, but Diana shared this recipe for a simple dish her Jordanian father ("Bud") liked to make.

JORDANIAN EGGS

You can make these eggs in a snap. Good for lunch or dinner too, they’re quick and full of flavor. Use the ripest tomatoes available. Serves 2-4

4 large eggs
2 garlic cloves, well mashed
1/2 teaspoon red-pepper flakes
1/2 teaspoon cumin
1/2 teaspoon sumac
3 tablespoons olive oil
1 ripe chopped tomato
Optional: grated parmesan cheese.

Stir mashed garlic with some salt, pepper, red-pepper flakes, cumin, sumac and the oil in a small bowl. Heat frying pan over medium heat then pour in the oil mix and heat for a minute. Stir in the tomato and fry for a minute or two—don’t let garlic get too brown.

Crack eggs into a small bowl then add to pan and fry—you can break the yolks and let them swirl into the white like Bud does, or just let the yolks set in place. Just before done, you can sprinkle some parmesan cheese over the top.

Great served with warm pita or baguette and oil-cured black olives.

Teaser Tuesdays is hosted by MizB at Books and a Beat, where you can find the official rules for this weekly event.

Review: Delights and Prejudices

James Beard was the "Dean of American Cuisine." Before Alice Waters was even born, he was championing regional, seasonal cooking. Long before his buddy Julia Child, he had a televised cooking program -- the first ever, starting in 1946, when home televisions were a great rarity and most of audience was men in bars (his show came on after the boxing match).

He wrote more than 20 cookbooks and became famous for his New York cooking schools. After his death in 1985 at age 81, Julia Child wanted to preserve his home, school, and memory, leading to the creation of the James Beard Foundation, still located in his Greenwich Village brownstone. Every year the foundation honors cookbook authors, chefs, restaurateurs, food writers, and other culinary professionals with the James Beard Award.

Beard published Delights and Prejudices: A Memoir with Recipes in 1964 to explain his own food loving history from toddler-hood to his New York cooking school days. He bounces around from his childhood in Portland to Les Halles in Paris to Mid-Century Manhattan and beyond.

the book is absolutely wonderful, particularly for a Portlander like me. Beard highlights Portland's rich culinary roots, with lengthy chapters on the farmers' markets, local produce, and abundant seafood that we here in the Rose City still enjoy. His remembrances of childhood weeks spent in Gearhart on the Oregon coast would make anyone want to head for the drizzly beach, build a huge bonfire, and roast oysters and Dungeness crabs.

What makes the book stand out is that Beard's bigger than life, kind of oddball personality shows through. For instance, despite launching his career with a catering company featuring canapes and the resultant first cookbook, Hors D'oeuvre and Canapes, he was ambivalent about finger food, coining the name "doots" for all little passed tidbits. Doots? Now, that's funny.

He had strong opinions about food and cooking -- many inherited from his strong-willed mother -- and laid them all out. For example, he hated chicken livers, but loved gizzards (and included plenty of recipes to prove it). He was an ardent Francophile and particularly favored bistro cooking, but could not stand Caribbean food.

When it came to holiday traditions, he loved his mother's Christmas fruitcakes (made a year in advance), but thought cranberries were an "abomination," homemade candy "really unsavory," and Christmas cookies only good if you make them yourself and eat them right away, exhorting well-wishers to "have pity on us, all you bakers -- the spirit of Christmas notwithstanding -- and deliver us from cookies that have crumbled or gone stale."

Delights and Prejudices is outstanding among food memoirs because James Beard is a giant and, therefore, learning what shaped his talent is fascinating, but also because it inspires an examination of our own food delights and prejudices and where they came from.


RECIPE

Huckleberry Cake

(Beard, like most Oregonians, loved the wild, dark huckleberries that grow here, particularly those that grow in the hills near the Oregon coast.)

Cream 1 cup butter and 1 cup granulated sugar together until the mixture is very light. Add 3 eggs, one by one, beating after each addition. Sift two cups flour and save 1/4 cup to mix with 1 cup huckleberries. Add to the rest 2 teaspoons baking powder and a pinch of salt, and fold this into the egg mixture. Add 1 teaspoon vanilla and, lastly, fold in the floured huckleberries. Pour the batter into a buttered, floured 8-inch-square baking tin. Bake at 375º for 35 to 40 minutes or until the cake is nicely browned, or when a tester inserted comes out clean.

Serve the cake hot with whipped cream, or cold.


OTHER REVIEWS

If you would like your review of this or any other James Beard book listed here, please leave a comment with a link and I will add it.

Kitchen Remodel, Week Twenty-Five: Eency Weency Water Spout

I have eency weency spiders on my mind because Portland has been invaded by them.  You can't walk between two trees, bushes, gateposts, or any other pair of things closer than eight feet apart without getting spider web stuck to you or, worse, one of the little critters scurrying on you. Ick!

The kitchen remodel is still waiting on exterior bricks.  The word is, the bricks are now in the state of Oregon -- not at my house, but within the borders of the state.

In the meantime, I was just pleased to see this little length of copper drain pipe finally get installed.  It meant we could finally say Bye Bye to the black PVC pipe that has been hanging from our eaves since January.

Inside the kitchen was busy because yesterday was Caponata Day at my house.  Every year, I take advantage of friends' garden bounty and our local farmers market and spend one day making a huge batch of caponata.  I freeze it in smaller packages to enjoy all winter.

Part of this tradition is to try to find a caponata recipe in my Cookbook Library, get frustrated, and make it up from versions I've seen on the internet or eaten myself. Despite the number of Italian cookbooks I have and enjoy (see list below), as far as I found before giving up, only one of them has a recipe for eggplant caponata and it is a hugely simplified version -- basically sauteed eggplant with some vinegar and garlic.  

MY CAPONATA RECIPE

eggplant, with peel, in 1 1/2" cubes
yellow and/or green zucchini. with peel, in 1 1/2" cubes
yellow onion, quartered or cut into eighths, separated
celery, in 1" pieces
tomatoes, in 1 1/2" pieces or, if cherry or pear, whole
garlic cloves, peeled
pitted green olives, with or without pimento
capers
oilve oil
red wine vinegar
salt & pepper to taste

Amounts depend on what you like and have, traditionally heavy on the eggplant.  In years where friends grew lots of red or yellow peppers, I've included those too.

Heat the oven to 400 degrees.

Separately roast eggplant, zucchini, onion, and celery with olive oil, turning occasionally, until browned and soft, but not mushy.  Do the same with the tomatoes, but they will get mushy.  Roast the garlic cloves in olive oil either in the oven, on the stove top, or in the microwave.

Once cooked, combine the vegetables with the olives and capers and stir it all together. Add vinegar, salt, and pepper to taste.  Add more olive oil if desired.

Eat warm or at room temperature.  Add more vinegar right before serving to brighten it up.  Eat as is for a side dish. Chop it up a little and serve with crackers or bruschetta for an appetizer -- very good with goat cheese.  Or chop it up a lot and use as a sauce with polenta or pasta.

Many recipes call for canned tomato sauce or canned chopped tomatoes instead of fresh, but it turns out more sauce-like, which is good if you want sauce, but not as good as an appetizer.  You can always add tomato sauce later to use it as a sauce.

MY ITALIAN COOKBOOKS

(with no caponata recipes that I found)

The Classic Italian Cookbook by Marcella Hazan

Cucina Rustica by Viana La Place

A Fresh Taste of Italy: 250 Authentic Recipes, Undiscovered Dishes, and New Flavors for Every Day by Michele Scicolone

Italian Casserole Cooking by Angela Catanzaro

The Italian Country Table: Home Cooking from Italy's Farmhouse Kitchens by Lynne Rossetto Kasper

La Cucina Siciliana di Gangivecchio by Wanda Tornabene (with the simplified caponata recipe)

Marcella's Italian Kitchen by Marcella Hazan

Naples at Table: Cooking in Campania by Arthur Schwartz

Pasta Classica: the Art of Italian Pasta Cooking by Julia Della Croce

The Splendid Table: Recipes from Emilia-Romagna, the Heartland of Northern Italian Food by Lynne Rossetto Kasper

The Top One Hundred Pasta Sauces by Diane Seed

A Tuscan in the Kitchen: Recipes and Tales from My Home by Pino Luongo

Veneto: Authentic Recipes from Venice and the Italian Northeast by Julia della Croce

WEEKEND COOKING

Hosted by Beth Fish Reads

Kitchen Remodel: Week Twenty, Cooking With Gas!

We are pretty much moved into the new kitchen.  There are some details and punch list items to go, and the outside is not finished yet.  But the cupboards are full, the pantry is stocked, and we are up and running.

The only trouble is that I don't feel moved in -- I am afraid to use anything in the new kitchen.  I don't want to hurt it or make it messy.  We have to force ourselves to put dirty dishes on the counter or cook on the stove.  It will get broken in eventually, but I am still white-gloving for a while.

Our first meal in the new kitchen was a favorite that we've missed -- Jalapeno Chicken.  I'll give the recipe below, but it is stupid easy.  It doesn't really count as a recipe since it is only one step more complicated than "apply heat to food."

JALAPENO CHICKEN

Pre-heat oven to 375. Pour a little olive oil in a roasting pan. Put chicken parts in a single layer.  Drumsticks work very well, but any parts will do.  Drain a can of whole jalapenos ("escabeche" style -- with the carrots) and evenly distribute the peppers and carrots in between the chicken pieces.  (Save the juice to marinate something else later.)  The ratio should be roughly one pepper for each piece of chicken. Cook until the chicken is really brown, one to two hours.  Turn the chicken once if you remember.

This is a yummy and super easy way to make chicken.  The chicken gets some spiciness from the jalapenos, but not a lot. The peppers themselves get all roasted and gooey and are delicious served on the side as a condiment to the chicken.  The leftover peppers are good on many things -- scrambled eggs, grilled cheese sandwiches, hamburgers, etc.

Part of this kitchen remodel involved creating access from the kitchen door to the "terrace" on top of our garage.  That stage of the project also wrapped up this week and we were able to, at long last, put our patio table up there and use that outdoor space.  My parents and stepdaughter were the first to enjoy dinner with us out there.

WEEKEND COOKING

Hosted by Beth Fish Reads

Kitchen Remodel, Week Five: The Joy of Floors for Easter

The new kitchen has a floor now. Windows, walls, floors -- it's starting to look like a room. We opted for hardwood as being more forgiving for tender feet and less likely to smash dropped dishes to smithereens.

We are  still a long way from a working kitchen, which got us out of Easter duty. Mom is hosting Easter dinner this year. Hubby is still responsible for making the scalloped potatoes -- something we never ate until he joined the family.


He follows the tried-and-true Joy of Cooking recipe:

Ingredients:

3 cups pared, thinly sliced potatoes
1 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons flour
3 to 6 tablespoons butter
3 pieces of cooked bacon crumbled
1 1/4 cups milk or cream
1/4 teaspoon paprika
1 cup shredded cheddar cheese (optional as in not in the actual recipe but still very tasty to add!)

Preparation:

Parboil the sliced potatoes with the salt for 8 minutes. Drain well.Grease or line a 10 inch baking dishLayer in the potatoes by sprinkling the flour and butter over them evenly. (Use the 2 tablespoons of flour and between 3-6 tablespoons of butter)Sprinkle the crumbled cooked bacon over the potatoes. In a saucepan, heat the milk, 1 1/4 teaspoons of salt, and the paprika.Pour this mixture over the potatoes.Topping with cheese is optional. The potatoes are good without too. Bake at 350 for 35 minutes or until potatoes seem tender.

NOTES

For more, see my ode to The Joy of Cooking.

WEEKEND COOKING

Hosted by Beth Fish Reads

Weekend Christmas Cooking & Recipe Request

There is just enough time today to make my favorite Christmas cookie -- Candied Ginger Cardamom Bars. This is the one I love to eat Christmas morning with a gallon of Irish Breakfast tea. It is like a dense, sticky, gingery, spicy shortbread.  Jingle my bells!

REQUEST: Also, I am looking for a recipe for a crumb-topped coffee cake that uses berries in it. I have some frozen blackberries left over from summer and have it fixed in my head to use them in a coffee cake for Christmas morning. Any ideas? Please pass them on. 

I got this cookie recipe from a friend who had copied it out of the December 2002 issue of Bon Appétit, from the Entertaining Made Easy column.  It pops up online with a google search (doesn't everything?) but not from the Bon Appétit website.

CANDIED GINGER CARDAMOM BARS

Nonstick vegetable oil spray
3 cups all purpose flour
1 ½ cup sugar
2 ½ teaspoons ground cardamom
1 ½ teaspoon ground cinnamon
¾ teaspoon salt
1 ½ cup (3 sticks) chilled unsalted butter, cut into 1/2-inch cubes
1 ½ large egg, beaten to blend
1+ cups finely chopped crystallized ginger (about 7 ounces)

Preheat oven to 350°F. Spray 9 x 12-inch baking pan with nonstick spray. Blend flour, sugar, cardamom, cinnamon, and salt in processor. Add butter; using on/off turns, process until coarse meal forms. Add 2 tablespoons beaten egg; blend until moist crumbs form. Add ginger. Using on/off turns, process until moist clumps form.

Press dough evenly over bottom of prepared pan. Brush remaining beaten egg over dough. Using small sharp knife, score top of dough with diagonal lines spaced 1 inch apart. Repeat in opposite direction, forming lattice pattern.

Bake until pastry is golden and tester inserted into center comes out clean, about 40 minutes. Transfer to rack; cool completely in pan. (Can be made 2 days ahead. Store airtight at room temperature.)

Cut pastry square into 3 long rectangles. Cut each rectangle crosswise into 8 rectangular bars, making 24 bars total.

NOTE: I realize that I bought some kind of chewy ginger from Trader Joes that isn't "crystallized" or candied.  So I am just going to add a little sugar to the recipe and hope it turns out.

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

WEEKEND COOKING

Hosted by Beth Fish Reads

Weekend Cooking: Amber Waves

I love Junior League cookbooks.  Who doesn't? And, having spent my childhood in Nebraska, my go to choice is Amber Waves, from the Omaha Junior League. 

This weekend, I went, as I have done so many times before, to the Best Ever Brisket recipe in Amber Waves.  It is easy and delicious and my Second Dinner Party recipe -- the recipe I make for guests coming to my house for a second time.  First time guests get Chicken Marbella from The Silver Palate Cookbook.  I always use the recipes in that order so I can keep track.

BEST EVER BRISKET (adapted from memory)

Day Before:

Rub a brisket with liquid smoke and wrap in heavy duty aluminum foil. Put in roasting pan and cook.  The recipe says to cook it for 30 minutes per pound at 350 degrees.  If I remember in time, I do this.

If I don't, I put it in the oven at 225 overnight -- setting the oven to turn off before I wake up if it is a little brisket.  This time, I have a six pound brisket, so I bunged it in the 225 oven at 8:00 pm and set the oven to turn off at 5:00 am.  The point is to apply heat to food -- a higher temperature for a shorter time; lower temperature for a longer time. Nine hours won't hurt it and if it needs more time, I can goose it in the morning.

Take the fat off the meat (now or later). Save the pan juices. Chill the brisket well.

Day Of:

Make a sauce of 16 ounces or so of ketchup,  1/2 cup brown sugar, 1/2 cup molasses, 1 tablespoon liquid smoke, 2 tablespoons red wine, 1 tablespoon hot sauce, a clove or two of minced garlic (the recipe calls for 1 teaspoon of powdered).  Boil for 15 minutes. Cool until ready to use.

Slice the brisket across the grain in thin slices, 1/4-inch if possible, trying to keep it in brisket form.  Mix the sauce with at least half a cup of meat juice and mush the sauce between slices. Wrap brisket in heavy duty foil again. If this is too much trouble or too much of a mess, I just put it in a baking dish as close to the size of the brisket as possible, in as close to the original shape as possible, and cover with foil.

Before serving. heat at 275 for one hour, or until good and hot.

Serve with mashed potatoes, polenta, or some other starchy side dish.

There are usually no left overs. 

WEEKEND COOKING

Hosted by Beth Fish Reads

Weekend Cooking: German Cookbooks & Zwetschgendatschi

There are three German cookbooks in my cookbook library.  Given my Bavarian roots, I would think I'd have a few more.  But given the . . . um . . . limited range of German cooking, perhaps three is all anyone really needs.

I have:



The German Cookbook: A Complete Guide to Mastering Authentic German Cooking by Mimi Sheraton.  This is my authoritative (wait, it's German, maybe "authoritative" goes without saying), go to book when I want to make a sauerbraten or one of the other standby dishes I really do love. 



The Cooking of Germany - Foods of the World Series by Time Life Books. This offers 1960s, Americanized versions of my childhood favorites, with kitchy pictures.



Bayerisch Kochen by Brigitta Stuber. This is a cute little book my cousin gave me, in German, of Bavarian recipes.

The problem is that none of these books has a recipe for my favorite Bavarian treat, a zwetschgendatschi -- a flat yeast-dough cake covered with sour plums.

My sister just moved back to Portland from Bavaria, where she has been working as a chef at a five-star hotel outside of Munich for the last two years.   I could have asked her to make any number of fancy dishes for Easter, but what I really, really wanted was a zwetschgendatschi.  I even froze the plums last summer for just this moment.

Luckily, I found a recipe on-line and she made me what I wanted (we tweaked it to make it the version we prefer).  I looks terrific and tastes even better.  We kicked off Easter weekend with 'datschi and coffee this morning.

BAVARIAN PLUM CAKE: ZWETSCHGENDATSCHI

1/4 c. sugar
1/2 c. warm milk
1 1/2 pkg. active dry yeast
3 c. flour
Pinch of salt
4 tbsp. butter
2 eggs
2 lb. plums
1 cup coarsely chopped walnuts
4 - 8 more tbsp. softened butter
About 1/3 c. sugar
1 tsp. ground cinnamon


Stir a pinch of sugar into warm milk and sprinkle with yeast. Let stand 5 minutes or until the surface is frothy. Stir gently to moisten any dry particles remaining on top. Sift flour, remaining sugar and salt into a medium bowl.

Melt butter; cool slightly. Lightly beat butter and eggs into yeast mixture. Pour into floured mixture, beating to make a dough. On a floured surface, knead dough lightly. Cover and let rise in a warm place 1 hour. Grease a 13 x 9 inch cake pan.

Wash and pit plums; cut lengthwise into halves. Knead risen dough lightly; roll out to fit cake pan. Place dough in greased pan. Pierce dough all over with fork. Arrange plums cut sides up in rows on dough. Sprinkle nuts on top, more between the plums then on them.  Dot each plum half with a dab of soft butter.  Let rise in a warm place 15 minutes. Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

Bake 30-35 minutes or until plums are wilted and yeast pastry is puffed up and golden between plums. Sprinkle with sugar and cinnamon while still warm. Cool slightly in pan, then cut into squares.

YUMMY! Or, as they say in Bavaria, schmackofatz!

WEEKEND COOKING

Hosted by Beth Fish Reads

Review of the Day: Delights and Prejudices

James Beard was the "Dean of American Cuisine."  Before Alice Waters was even born, he was championing regional, seasonal cooking.  Long before his buddy Julia Child, he had a televised cooking program -- the first ever, starting in 1946, when home televisions were a great rarity and most of audience was men in bars (his show came on after the boxing match).

He wrote more than 20 cookbooks and became famous for his New York cooking schools.  After his death in 1985 at age 81, Julia Child wanted to preserve his home, school, and memory, leading to the creation of the James Beard Foundation, still located in his Greenwich Village brownstone.  Every year the foundation honors cookbook authors, chefs, restaurateurs, food writers, and other culinary professionals with the James Beard Award.

Beard published Delights and Prejudices: A Memoir with Recipes 1964 to explain his own food loving history from toddler-hood to his New York cooking school days. He bounces around from his childhood in Portland to Les Halles in Paris to Mid-Century Manhattan and beyond.

It is absolutely wonderful, particularly for a Portlander like me.  Beard highlights Portland's rich culinary roots, with lengthy chapters on the farmers' markets, local procuce, and abundant seafood that we here in the Rose City still enjoy.  His remembrances of childhood weeks spent in Gearhart on the Oregon coast would make anyone want to head for the drizzly beach, build a huge bonfire, and roast oysters and Dungeness crabs.  

What makes the book stand out is that Beard's bigger than life, kind of oddball personality shows through.  For instance, despite launching his career with a catering company featuring canapes and the resultant first cookbook, Hors D'oeuvre and Canapes, he was ambivalent about finger food, coining the name "doots" for all little passed tidbits.  Doots?  Now, that's funny.

He had strong opinions about food and cooking -- many inherited from his strong-willed mother -- and laid them all out.  For example, he hated chicken livers, but loved gizzards (and included plenty of recipes to prove it).  He was an ardent Francophile and particularly favored bistro cooking, but could not stand Caribbean food.

When it came to holiday traditions, he loved his mother's Christmas fruitcakes (made a year in advance), but thought cranberries were an "abomination," homemade candy "really unsavory," and Christmas cookies only good if you make them yourself and eat them right away, exhorting well-wishers to "have pity on us, all you bakers -- the spirit of Christmas notwithstanding -- and deliver us from cookies that have crumbled or gone stale."

Delights and Prejudices is outstanding among food memoirs because James Beard is a giant and, therefore, learning what shaped his talent is fascinating, but also because it inspires an examination of your own food delights and prejudices and where they came from. 

RECIPE

Huckleberry Cake

(Beard, like most Oregonians, loved the wild, dark huckleberries that grow here, particularly those that grow in the hills near the Oregon coast.)

Cream 1 cup butter and 1 cup granulated sugar together until the mixture is very light.  Add 3 eggs, one by one, beating after each addition.  Sift two cups flour and save 1/4 cup to mix with 1 cup huckleberries.  Add to the rest 2 teaspoons baking powder and a pinch of salt, and fold this into the egg mixture.  Add 1 teaspoon vanilla and, lastly, fold in the floured huckleberries.  Pour the batter into a buttered, floured 8-inch-square baking tin.  Bake at 375º for 35 to 40 minutes or until the cake is nicely browned, or when a tester inserted comes out clean.

Serve the cake hot with whipped cream, or cold. 

OTHER REVIEWS

If you would like your review of this or any other James beard book listed here, please leave a comment with a link and I will add it.

NOTES

This is my sixth and final book for the 2011 Foodie's Reading Challenge.  I can't wait to sign up again for the 2012 version.

WEEKEND COOKING

Hosted by Beth Fish Reads

Weekend Cooking: Fancy Caramel Corn

We have had one of the best autumns here in Portland -- glorious leaves, crisp weather, not as much rain as usual.  My neighborhood has gone all out for Halloween, everything from an over-the-top haunted house that kids line up around the block for, to magazine-pretty displays of pumpkins and Indian corn.

So it seems like the perfect day to make some of this caramel corn my sister keeps crowing about.  She's a chef in Bavaria, at the fancy Steigenberger Hotel about an hour west of Munich, and wanted to introduce her German co-workers to a traditional American treat to get them in the mood for Halloween. 

She says it is super easy and has been experimenting with various additions.  I'm going to try her version of Chili-Roasted Pumpkin Seed Caramel Corn.

Here are her in structions:

Pop just under one cup of popcorn kernels in regular oil and set aside. [Note: Our family has never been air poppers, but I suppose air popping the corn would work.]

Cook 2 cups regular sugar and 2 cups butter and 1/4 tsp. salt on the stove until a dark amber color, constantly stirring. Add grated fresh nutmeg and vanilla also, if you want. When caramel is ready, pour over popcorn, and throw in some handfuls of the toasted seeds, nuts, chocolate chips, coconut, whatever, and stir together until all the popcorn is coated. Spread out in a thin layer on a baking sheet and sprinkle with sea salt. Let cool. Crumble into a big bowl when cool, or into a large plastic sack to keep.

Yum! Thanks Sis!

WEEKEND COOKING

Hosted by Beth Fish Reads

Cookbook Library: With a Jug of Wine

With a Jug of Wine: An Unusual Collection of Cooking Recipes by Morrison Wood, "well known food columnist" -- it says so right on the cover.

I added this book to my cookbook library several years ago, excited to have found it at the big San Francisco library book sale at Ft. Mason (my favorite book event of the year when I lived in SF).  It is vintage and kitschy and I am excited to finally read it.

The book is organized like a regular cookbook, but pulls heavily from Wood's newspaper columns, which seem to have been written in the 1940s.  It was first published in 1949.  Mine is a 1961 "printing," but I do not think the content changed.

The recipes are short and simple, but interesting.  These are not the typical church supper recipes so prevalent in vintage cookbooks.  They are recipes Wood gathered from famous restaurant chefs of the day, caged off his friends, or concocted himself.

Wood introduces each recipe with a short essay describing the history of the dish or an amusing anecdote about the recipe.  The essays are full of high spirits and WWII-era joviality.  For example:

I think most Americans would shudder at the thought of eating squid, although the meat is twice as sweet as lobster and as delicate as frogs' legs. Let me urge you to unshudder and take a chance on squids a l'Amoricaine.

I'm a big fan of squid myself, and frogs' legs for that matter.  So he caught my attention with this one.  I love fried calamari (of course -- it's fried) and grilled, and have tried both at home without much success.  Braising squid is a much easier way to prepare this creature at home.

I have a basic braised calamari recipe from Cucina Rustica by Viana La Place, that is very tasty and easy to make, but I wanted to try something new.  Wood's recipe is similar, but uses white wine, a little brandy, and calamari steaks instead of tubes and tentacles.

I cut the recipe in half.  Here it is as in the book. 

SQUIDS L'AMORICAINE 

3 lb. squids
4 tbsp. olive oil
3 ounces brandy
2 cloves garlic
1 onion
3 carrots
1/2 bay leaf
pinch thyme
pinch oregano
1 cup solid-pack tomoatos
salt
pepper
1 cup dry white wine

INSTRUCTIONS (paraphrased): Start with three pounds of cleaned squid. Cut into "small cubes or strips."  I cut the steaks into 2" squares that did a shrinky-dink thing when cooked -- they shrunk to 1" square but plumped up to about three times as thick.

Lightly brown the chopped garlic in olive oil, then add squid, cover, and saute for about 10 minutes. Uncover and pour the brandy over the squid.  Light the brandy, let it burn out, then simmer for about 3 minutes.

Add chopped onion, chopped carrot, herbs, tomatoes, salt and pepper. Stir in the wine, cover, and simmer until squid is tender when tested with a fork (30 to 45 minutes).

Serve over boiled rice. Although I think toasted Italian bread is also very good.

NOTES:  This was delicious.  The steaks worked better for me than rings.  The calamari was very tender and sweet.  Yummy!  The only thing I didn't care for was that I used dry vermouth for the wine because I didn't have any other white wine and it made the dish slightly bitter. Hubby didn't notice, but I did.


This is the second of the books I'm reading for the Foodie's Reading Challenge, hosted by Margot at Joyfully Retired.

Thanks go to Beth Fish Reads for hosting a very fun weekly event:

WEEKEND COOKING

Hosted by Beth Fish Reads

Cookbook Library: Classic Spanish Cooking

Classic Spanish Cooking: Recipes for Mastering the Spanish Kitchen by Elisabeth Luard

I bought this book on impulse because the book itself is so tactilely and visually pleasing.  It is a thick, squat book, only 5" by 7" and 2" thick; filled with adorable illustrations; with cardstock-weight pages; and with two grosgrain ribbon markers, one orange and one brown. I wanted to eat the book itself, it was so pleasing to me.

As it turns out, it is also a great little workhorse of a cookbook.  It features 100 basic Spanish recipes, which is enough to liven up a few daily meals without being overwhelmed.  The idea is to provide the "core recipes that are the building blocks for traditional Spanish fare."  That is all I need.

The book also features Luard's charming little side essays about the culture and cuisine of Spain, where she lived with her family for many years.  She introduces most of the recipes with a general description and a few hints about the dish or how to serve it. 

For example, her recipe for braised lamb shanks (calderera de piernas de cordero) advises that you can leave it in a low oven, tightly covered, overnight and "it will come to no harm." That is really all I ask for when it comes to home cooking.

BRAISED LAMB SHANKS FOR FOUR

4 lamb shanks

salt

2 tablespoons of olive oil

1 tablespoon diced serrano ham or lean bacon

8 oz. small shallots or baby onions

1 large carrot, "chunked"

1 lb ripe tomatoes, skinned, seeded, and diced

2-3 garlic cloves, crushed with a little salt

1-2 rosemary sprigs

1-2 thyme sprigs

1/2 teaspoon peppercorns, crushed

1 generous glass of dry sherry or white wine (about 3/4 cup)

1.  Wipe the lamb and season with salt. Preheat the oven to 300F. 

2.  Heat the oil in a roomy flameproof earthenware or enamel casserole that will just accomodate the lamb shanks in a single layer. Brown the meat lightly, turning to sear on all sides. Settle the shanks bone-end upwards.

3.  Add the remaining ingredients, packing them around the sides of the casserole. Bring all to a boil, cover tightly (seam with a layer of foil, shiny side downwards, if you're uncertain about the fit) and transfer to the oven.

4.  Allow to cook gently for at least 3 hours -- longer if that's more convenient-- without unsealing, unless your nose and ears tell you that the meat is beginning to fry, when you'll need to add a splash of water. The meat should be tender enough to eat with a spoon and the sauce reduced to a thick syrupy slick -- very delicious indeed.

WEEKEND COOKING

Hosted by Beth Fish Reads

Cookbook Library: The Cafe Brenda Cookbook

While not really a list, one of my book-related goals is to make one new recipe from each of the cookbooks on my shelves. Since it has been freezing cold in Portland (snow at the end of March!), I made soup.

Friends from Minneapolis gave me this cookbook from their favorite restaurant, Cafe Brenda -- a "seafood and vegetarian cuisine" restaurant. I made the White Bean and Squash soup, which was not bad, but a little bland. It benefited from doubling the herbs and adding a healthy dose of hot sauce and a little butter melted on top (what wouldn't?). Then it was pretty yummy.

The paraphrased version of the recipe is:

Soak 1 cup of dried navy beans eight hours or overnight. To make the soup, bring beans to boil in 5 cups water. Reduce heat, simmer for about an hour or until tender. Drain.

Sauté in olive oil for about 5 minutes: 4 garlic cloves, chopped; one large shallot, chopped; one medium onion, chopped. Add 3 ½ cups peeled, cubed (1”) winter squash (butternut).

Combine squash/onion mix with cooked beans, 4 cups vegetable stock, ½ teaspoon dried basil, ½ teaspoon dried oregano, and ¼ teaspoon dried thyme. Bring to boil, reduce heat and simmer, covered until squash is tender (about 20 minutes).

Puree soup in batches in blender or food processor. Return to pot and add ¾ cup half and half; salt and pepper to taste.

Serves 6.