A Finger in Every Pie

Belated Blogathoning -- Even Though It's Over, Sponsor Now!

Blogathon 2006 is over -- but it's not too late to sponsor!  Several of my favorite bloggers joined in this noble effort, and you can still participate by both reading their posts and supporting their fave charities.  For the next 45 hours or so it's still possible to pledge to the organizations highlighted by these noble folks -- who just pulled an amazing all-nighter, creating 48 blog posts in a 24-hour period.  The thrillingly readable and always delightful Bakerina was blogging for Heifer International.  She  spent some of her blogging time here with us in lovely SpaHa, due to internet provider problems, and we had an absolutely grand time hosting her.   As I said in one of her comment sections, it was something like being an auntie -- G and I got a lot of vicarious thrill out of the deal, but unlike Bakerina, we got to sleep through the rough bits.  You too can join in the fun by reading and sponsoring.

If you want a great read, simultaneously hysterically funny and truly poignant, go to All About Boys -- a blog put up specifically for Blogathon by the celebrated Bunni of Bunniblog to raise funds for Columbia Memorial Hospital Foundation.  Read and sponsor -- you simply won't be able to help yourself.  Bunni really pulled a DOUBLE blogathon -- she also posted a thrilling horror-film trivia game on her regular blog (where you too will shortly become a regular).  This blog benefited the American Heart Association.  You can feel free to play the horror film game in retrospect, and sponsor, sponsor, sponsor...

Another blogger who delights readers worldwide, Sam of the renowned Becks 'n' Posh, blogged for Food Runners, a Bay Area organization that feeds the hungry with the finest of farm produce, restaurant and food shop donations.  Read all about her remarkable Blogathon day of creating culinary delights, travelling with the folks from her charity, and going on late-night fancy food and drink crawls with chums.  How did anyone do all this in 24 hours and blog about it the whole way through?  Guess you'll just have to read (and sponsor, catch my drift?) to find out.

Enjoy!  I know I did.  And yes, I sponsored, too. 

Sugar High Friday #21: "Fresh Peaches 'n' Cream" Sorbet/Ice Cream Swirl

Ice Ice Baby, it’s brain freeze time
Get out your freezer and start to rhyme
Don’t do no hand-crank, got some higher tech
I ain’t talkin’ pacojet, no, not yet
Decisions, decisions, it’s all about flava
Something delish, to make ‘em all rave-uh

Yo it’s simple, vanilla’s the flash
Playin' the back-up to a seasonal splash
A little taste makes you shiver and shout
Sweet summer peaches, that’s what I’m about
Peel ‘em, puree ‘em, mix ‘em with liqueur
Put it in the freezer, can’t happen no quicker

Marble that vanilla, make it swirl,
Peaches 'n' Cream for Big G and bad girl.

Thanks to Sarah, this month's edition of Jennifer's brainchild  Sugar High Friday helped me discover that I share Sarah's feeling about my own abilities as a rapper. I, too, am probably more suited to making ice-cream than writing Vanilla Ice parodies, a talent break-down for which I find myself immensely grateful.  Yes, I know you are too.

About a year and a half ago, my brother and SIL bought us a Cuisinart ice-cream maker with an extra canister.  Although we’ve made ice-cream several times, this is the first time I’ve taken advantage of two canisters by making two flavors, one right after the other.  We now have a LOT of ice cream in the freezer, particularly since last week we had some Ben & Jerry’s coupons and decided to stock up.  The beneficiaries of this creamy frozen treasure trove will be our apartment-swapping friends Betty, Alma and Martín, who will arrive here from San Francisco as we wend our way west next week to take over their home in the Mission after a week's stay with friends in Berkeley.  That's fine; we plan to spend a lot of time at Mitchell's.

“Peaches and Cream” Sorbet/Ice-Cream Swirl
This turned out even better than I'd hoped.  We've been enjoying it late at night on warm evenings, when it's just right to satisfy the desire for something cool and lightly sweet but not too sticky.  Neither heavy nor cloying, it seems to strike a nice balance between luxurious and refreshing.   

Part I:  Simple But Excellent Vanilla Bean Ice Cream
I created this a couple of weeks ago.  I had just baked a peach-apricot-blueberry pie but knew that even if I wanted homemade ice-cream with it, I didn’t have enough patience remaining to a) stand over the stove making a custard in the heat, b) chill it down, and then c) freeze it.  G commented that this actually tastes more like “frozen custard” than the usual custard-based vanilla.  After some thought, I figured this was probably due to the condensed milk, which has a pronounced “cooked-milk” flavor.  This ice-cream is amazingly simple and yields very fast, extraordinarily creamy and delicious results.  The only planning ahead you need to do is to remember to freeze the inner canister of your ice-cream maker if you have one that requires 6 to 24 hours in your fridge’s little tiny freezing compartment or in your big ol’ freezer.

1 14-oz. can sweetened condensed milk
2 cups excellent heavy cream*
1/2 - 1 cup whole milk
1 vanilla bean
1 teaspoon best-quality vanilla extract (Nielsen Massey preferred)
pinch salt

Stir together the condensed milk and 2 cups of the cream.  Split open the vanilla bean and scrape as many of the seeds as you can into the milk/cream mixture (and then of course put the spent bean into the container of vanilla sugar in your pantry).  Add the vanilla extract and the salt.  Taste.  If it’s way too achingly sweet for you, add 1/2 cup of milk and taste it again.  Add more milk if you need to.  You want it to be just a little too sweet for your taste, since when the mixture is eaten frozen it will dull the palate and not taste quite as sweet as it does at room temp.   Many condensed milk ice-cream recipes call for sugar in addition to what’s already in the condensed milk, which makes my teeth hurt just to think about it.  When it reaches the desired level of sweetness, pour it into your ice-cream maker and freeze. 

*Get the best, heaviest organic cream you can find – I like Vermont-based Butterworks Farm Jersey cream, or failing that, Ronnybrook Farm Dairy (which is not strictly organic) or Organic Valley, which I find the best brands to be had in my area.

Part II:  Peach Sorbet (adapted from Cooks Illustrated, July 1995)
This is an incredibly aromatic and refreshing sorbet, quite delectable all by itself.  The quality of the ingredients are key here, of course.  Your peaches should be local, fragrant, recently picked and perfectly ripe, probably from a farmers’ market.  Try to obtain a really good peach liqueur (crème de pêche, crème de peche de vigne, or liqueur pêches).  Either something French or one made by a small artisanal grower will be exponentially better than the syrupy, often artificially-flavored schnapps or fruit cordials from big liquor industry producers in the U.S.

6 beautifully ripe peaches, blanched and peeled
1/2 cup water
juice of 1/2 lime
3/4 cup sugar
3 tablespoons crème de pêche or other good peach liquer

Slice and pit the peaches.  Purée them in the food processor.  Pour the puree into a bowl, and add the sugar and liqueur.  Stir until the sugar is completely dissolved, then chill the mixture until cold in the refrigerator.  Freeze in the ice-cream maker. 

Part III:  Assembly

Make the vanilla first, and let it freeze a bit while the peach sorbet is churning.  Get your containers ready – you’re going to need about 5 pint containers.  It’s up to you to decide how many you want of the mixed swirl, and whether or not you want a pint or so of just peach sorbet and one of just vanilla.  When the peach sorbet is thick and nicely frozen, you have to work quickly.  Take the vanilla ice-cream out of the freezer and put some into the desired container. Make deep swirly grooves and valleys in it with a spoon.  Pack the sorbet into the valleys, and fold and swirl them together some more, making an effort not to actually mix the two ices.  You want to maintain them as separate ribbons in the frozen dessert.  Cover and freeze again until fairly solid but still scoopable.  Repeat until you’ve filled up all your containers.  When ready, serve in beautiful dishes with lovely homemade madeleines or something good like that. 

Makes about 5 pints – 3 mixed, and one each of peach and vanilla.

Meetings With Remarkable Bloggers

Obligatory disclaimer about a post which, as is often the case, should have happened a while ago:  I'm WAY behind. On everything.  But as I look around me, taking a gander at a few other blogs, I realize that pretty much everyone else feels exactly the same way all the time.  I'd very much like to find someone on whom to blame this feeling, so if you can think of anyone, please let me know. 

That being said, it's been ages since I had meet-ups with three quite wonderful bloggers, one of whom is known to me quite well, one whom I had the pleasure of seeing for the second time (this time in her city, not mine), and one who was new to me and utterly delightful.  And I've been meaning to write at least a bit about these meetings for some time, and am only just getting around to it now.  So finally, in chronological order,

Tale #1:  Seattle Sojourn

Quite some time ago, at the tale end of my Cascade Mountains retreat, I had a day to spend in Seattle.  Who would be the best possible person to a) recommend some great places to go on a free afternoon in Seattle and b) to be one's dining companion in that fair city later on into the evening?   Yes,  I know you know.  None better than Molly, the darling doyenne of Orangette.  Since it was a Friday, she had to work, but kindly allowed me to drop my bags at her office and then made maps for me to have my own little walking tour.  Following her suggestions, I walked to Salumi, where I'd long dreamed of going and which was a perfect walk from Molly's office.  I waited happily on line to buy a gorgeous, drippingly delicous porchetta sandwich (which is long gone, of course) and a salami (which still resides in my fridge, waiting for an occasion of some sort or other, since it apparently lasts a long long time).

I then made my way to Elliott Bay Books, another brilliant Molly recommendation, where I proceeded to spend the greater part of my afternoon, even sacrificing time at Pike Place Market (books win out, even over food) in order to lose myself in a big, beautiful, wandering, multi-storied, multi-roomed, funky, independent bookstore-cum-cafe, the likes of which really doesn't exist in NYC, to my ongoing dismay (it's true that there are independent bookstores in NYC, of course, but all of them are missing something -- atmosphere, selection, a café, a certain bookstore je ne sais quoi.  My favorite is probably the HousingWorks Used Bookstore, which has the best atmosphere -- but a somewhat limited selection, since they sell only donated books.  Why is it that the books I buy at bookstores like these and lug home in my suitcase are always better than other books?  I try saying to myself that I don't need to add 15 pounds to my luggage, I can order these on Amazon or buy them at the dreaded B & N, but somehow or other I always buy good books when I have an afternoon to browse in an independent bookstore and leave my money there.  So far, this is what I've read in my haul from Elliot Bay Books:  Perma Red, Resistance, and Truth and Beauty, each of which was, in its own way, so remarkable and so compelling that I had trouble returning to the world when I was done).   

From there I walked up to Pike Place Market, stopping along the way to buy a slightly extravagant mud-silk kimono jacket (one of those purchases that you make, knowing it costs more than you'd like to pay, but secure in the knowledge that if you don't buy it, you will keep remembering its beauty, perfect fit and suitability-for-many-occasions and gnash your teeth in regret later on).  I meandered in the market, buying luscious local apricots but forgoing the seductive-smelling doughnuts, since Molly and I were to meet for drinks and then hook up with Brandon for a what turned out to be a perfectly lovely meal at the Boat Street Café.  Although Molly and I have only met once before, and we have about a generation between us in terms of age gap, we seem to have no trouble chatting an afternoon away.  After all, when you both find writing, food, work and love to be utterly compelling topics, time flies pretty fast.  And there are always personal histories woven in, so no one needs to resort to recently-viewed movies.  Take it from me, Molly is every bit as dreamy, smart, funny, and elegant in person as she is on her blog. 

Our dinner, too, was marvelous -- as was Brandon (and yes, Orangette readers, he IS worthy of your treasure -- if indeed a worthy suitor exists).  We shared plates, talked, laughed, and then they took me on a little driving tour of some favorite Seattle spots before leaving me at the airport to catch my red-eye flight.   It's a glorious thing to see a city through the eyes of those who love it and know it well, even when it's just for a day.  You know your hosts have done a particularly excellent job when you begin ruminating on the cost of living in that city, as compared to your own much more expensive and population-dense hometown, and noting the "For Sale" and "For Rent" signs as you peruse the various neighborhoods.   Thanks so much, Molly and Brandon. 

Tale #2:  Of Cell Phones and Cellophane Noodles

It's my great pleasure and privilege to call myself friend to the adorable and talented Jen, aka Bakerina, who is deserving of more praise than I can find to heap upon her.  Out for drinks, in for cooking and baking, on a shopping crawl, it's all better when Bakerina's there. 

A few weeks ago, as I set out for a Saturday mid-morning market ramble, it occurred to me that maybe Jen was there at Union Square too, and we could, perhaps, meet up for a nosh and some prattle.  I called her, and left a message on her cell phone.  A few minutes later I felt my phone vibrate, but I'd missed the call.  The message, however, said that she was indeed in the neighborhood at her favorite yarn haunt, and would return to the market to meet up with me.  Somehow or other we kept missing calls.  I finally realized that my phone was not ringing -- and neither was hers.   It seemed that yet another monster corporation was conspiring to ruin our day.  But we were victorious, finally just leaving message after message that said things like "I'm on the West side of the market, at Mountain Sweet Berry Farm.  It's 12:00."  Or "I'm approaching the market from 17th Street.  It's 12:10."  And finally, "I'll meet you at the Coach Farm stand at 12:15."  We had triumphed over the hellishly evil technology that seeks to rule ever more of our lives. 

We swaggered across the street to Republic (which, for some reason, I always think of as Revolution -- maybe the red star logo?)  for glasses of restorative basil lemonade and bowls of noodles, to finally have our chat.  To spend time with Jen is to laugh, to swap horrors and victories, and to feel truly heard and understood.  Add all of that to someone who's endlessly erudite, witty as all get-out, and has a real gift for putting things into perspective, and you've got yourself one hell of a friend.  I know, I know.  I am a lucky girl. 

Tale #3:  Just Deserts*

The email subject line said "are you around this weekend?".  It was from none other than Shuna Fish Lydon, phenomenal author of eggbeater and pastry chef par excellence, who had come to NYC and wanted to know if I were game to meet up.   I have long been an admirer of Shuna, whom I find fascinating and extraordinarily moving as a writer and photographer, as well as a consummate teacher of all things culinary, particularly in the realm of the sweet. 

Shuna suggested that we meet at Room4Dessert.  I was excited both to meet her, and to have an eating adventure into the realm of molecular gastronomy, which amuses me but about which I take a kind of "now kids, don't try this at home" attitude.  After all, it's only a bit over a year ago that I got my humble little ice-cream machine.  I'm not really set up for a pacojet. 

Shuna was standing outside the restaurant, wearing the eggbeater t-shirt.  We went in and sat at the long bar -- which, incidentally is the only kind of seating the restaurant offers.  It's a lot of fun to go to a dessert restaurant with a pastry chef, since you'll get to taste almost everything.    We tried two of the dessert "glasses", which had layers of various tastes and textures, and three of the tasting plates, each of which were composed of four little things in various sorts of precious little dishes, bottles and cups. 

After we left the restaurant, we walked and talked for a while.  It was Shuna's perspective on the food we'd shared which really helped me to understand what they were doing -- and not doing -- at the restaurant.  When she talked about her disappointment that at this time of the year, there was so little fresh fruit on our plates, I thought about the connection between food and values (I know I've been writing about that a lot recently).  Through much of what she said, I saw that what we value on our plates is easily a metaphor for what we value in our lives.  Do we sacrifice freshness for convenience?  Value innovation over quality?  Look for novelty instead of authenticity?  Create luxury at the price of ethically produced food? 

Later we spoke of teaching, and found ourselves united in our contempt for scripted curricula; my experience has been in public schools and universities, and Shuna's in the world of culinary classes, where some of her employers wanted her to teach from a script rather than from her experience, her instincts, and what she knows to be true -- which is what all real teachers should be permitted to do. 

What I'll say about the evening is that I enjoyed Shuna's company far, far more than I did the desserts -- which isn't nearly enough praise for Shuna, since the desserts were fun but didn't knock me over.  Of all the many things we tasted, there was really nothing there that made me feel I'd have to go back to this restaurant to get another taste of this or of that.  But I would certainly enjoy more of Shuna's company -- and I hope to next month, if schedules collide, when G and I visit the Bay Area again this summer for a couple of weeks. 

So ends this installment of Meetings With Remarkable Bloggers.  With any luck, it'll become its own category...

Resistance

    "I believe our technologies, Elizabeth, these machines we now live with, are evolving, to use your word, faster than our emotions can accomodate."
    He headed for bed, but I was curious.
    "Do you mean, in the face of it all, in the face of everything changing, a whole way of life gone in a generation, that we have become numb?"
    "I mean that the speeding bus goes flying off the mountain road." 
      - from "The Walls At Yogpar" in Resistance, by Barry Lopez

On Saturday I went shopping for food three different times, in three different places -- using three different modes of transportation.  I know that I am lucky to be able to go  shopping at three different places, to get exactly what I want.  I have the luxury of time (at least on the weekend), I have transportation, I have someone else to go shopping with me, I have money -- at least money enough to be choosy, if not always to get exactly what I would like.  And yet the other morning, despite my good fortune, something rankled within me.   It may not have helped that I was reading Resistance on my bus ride to my Nia dance class (as well as the middle one of the three marketing excursions), and came across the quote above. 

It wasn't about going to all the different places.  I've lived and travelled in places where I've shopped like that before.  I lived in Aix-en-Provence one summer, and I went to many different places for provisions.  I had a little apartment shared with another student.  Whoever was awake first would grab a fistful of change and run down four flights to the boulangerie for a fresh hot baguette to have with butter so good it was a whole new category of food, as far as I was concerned.  I made friends with the butcher down the street and practiced my French as I asked for chicken or tried to find out just how spicy the merguez sausage really was.  I found that if I ran out of class just at noon, when we finished, I could catch the last hour or so of the daily market for salad greens, and raspberries and apricots, and looking at things that were new or strange to me, trying to ask what they were. 

And Aix, for all its villagey adorableness, wasn't exactly provincial.  It was and is filled with a very fancy selection of shops -- and if I'd chosen, I could have gotten all my supplies at the big Monoprix supermarket.  It's just that even though I was shopping at lots of different stores, they were all close by.  Everything was in walking distance.  Storekeepers knew each other, and they knew their clients.  Even in the short time I was there I came to know people, just by the act of shopping.  In other cultures, in other places, going to many places to find food is a way of life.  We don't do it by custom here -- at least not any more -- and not quite yet again, although I think many among us hope that our society may be devolving back to some more villagey ways of life -- perhaps this kind of shopping among them.

Saturday's odyssey looked like this:  I went from an early trip to the farmers' market (subway) for all my lovely, local, seasonal fruits and vegetables, home to drop off the first load, then to dance class and my favorite specialty market for organic dairy products as well as a few other things that only they carry (bus), and then later in the day to a big, noxious market out of the city that (despite or perhaps because of its predilection for employees posing as dancing cows and chickens) has excellent meat at a fraction of city prices (car).  The last shopping leg was combined with a trip up to see my father, and bring him some groceries too.  But considering all that different shopping just for our own household, I felt a little ashamed of myself.  What an overprivileged little snit I am, being so finicky about having everything just so.  And then I began to think about my shame. 

Is it wrong to want to support the small family farmers who truck their goods in so early in the morning?  That one I know the answer to.  Of course not.  But I spend more there than I would for supermarket produce, so I end up compensating by trying to buy meat at a cheaper venue.  Much as I would love to, I cannot afford the $17 a pound that beautiful, locally-raised lamb chops would cost me at the farmers' market  -- at least not on a regular basis.  The protein needs of our household, particularly my own, dictate that we eat pretty high on the food chain.  So I spend on the produce, and spend down on the meat.  In between, I go to another store to buy things I can find neither at the farmers' market, nor at the dancing cow palace of meat.  And because the shopping in my neighborhood is, not to put too fine a point on it, pretty awful, I try to get a week's food shopping done most Saturdays.  Most times I don't actually go to three places, but in the summer, when the market is flourishing, I often go to two. 

Would it make me a better person to shop more often at the stores in my neighborhood?  The freshness of the food is often questionable, and sadly the cleanliness of the establishments leave a lot to be desired.   I can think about this in a number of ways.  Either I'm the overprivileged, gentrifying little snit who lives in my neighborhood for the cheap rent but turns up my nose at shopping there (I'm not, really.  Honest.  I speak Spanish, talk to my neighbors, and bring muffins and other goodies to a sick man in the next building on a regular basis).  Or I'm engaged in an act of resistance, a personal boycott against big supermarket chains that are dirtier and uglier in my neighborhood than elsewhere in the city, where food is allowed to spoil on the shelves and no-one seems to care or bother, since the corporate entities involved in the "big food" system still make their profit.  I'm staging a personal protest against a system that has allowed us to get so far away from our food -- and from everything and everyone else as well.  Do I think I'm challenging the status quo of the fast-food nation?  Certainly I believe that since we never eat fast food, and only use takeout as an occasional option/treat when we're very tired, I must be bucking the system merely by making high quality homemade food for us every day.   What a saint I am.  But that's the quandary -- I can only see it from these two vantage points, sinner or saint. 

I suppose I think (to use the quote from "The Walls At Yogpar" out of context) that parts of our food system (the large conglomerate parts, obviously) are like a bus that's flying off the mountain road.  I'm living in a neighborhood where I see village life all the time, in tiny increments:  the man who peels oranges on a spiral machine and sells them on the street corner;  the woman who sells peeled mangos on a stick, the "taco ladies" on 105th Street who have their little stand; the woman selling oatmeal and tamales out of big containers on the street in the early morning when I'm on my way to work.  It's not that I don't recognize my own contradictions.  I constantly romanticize the notion of wanting a simpler way of life, but then again, you will take my iBook from me when you pry it from my cold dead hands -- or when you replace it with a new one.  And a simpler way of life would imply shopping in my own neighborhood rather than running to hell and gone just for food, for goodness' sake. 

And that's the crux of it, right there. For goodness' sake.  In order to have a little goodness in our lives, something good that's within my control.  That much I can do.  I can control how we eat, and where our food comes from.  And I recognize that not everyone has even that small luxury anymore. 

I don't have a neat way to tie up this post and put a little ribbon on the top, since I'm still struggling with my feelings about food, access, privilege, neighborhoods and all the other multiply-layered questions that these issues raise, once we allow them out for an airing.  Please feel free to weigh in here.  I'd really love to know what you're thinking. 

Shortcake, Shortcake, Not Too Late...

I was feeling rather dejected.   Since I've been back for summer semester in the terrible, horrible, no-good, very-bad administration program (which has me sitting in an absolutely mind-numbing class from 8:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. almost every day), I hadn't gotten around to posting about this strawberry shortcake.  I actually made it on July 4th, and my thinking was that since I'd hadn't posted, too much time had gone by and there probably weren't any strawberries left in the market. 

But then my brother called me this morning as he was walking through the Union Square Greenmarket on his way home from the gym, downtown dweller that he is, and I said, "What's in the market?"  As he enumerated the kinds of produce he'd seen, and began to speak of berries, I thought I heard him say the word "strawberries."  "Strawberries? Did you say strawberries?" said I.  "There are still strawberries in the market?"  "Indeed there are," he replied, "and mighty good they looked, too." 

Hmmm, I thought.  There had been no strawberries last week, which had shattered my desire to post about this shortcake.  But perhaps some of those clever farmers of day-neutral strawberries (those tricky little gems that bear on and off all the way till September) had wares for sale.  In any case, even if strawberries are gone in your region, you might find yourself in the way of making this shortcake with other fruit -- raspberries, for example.  I certainly wouldn't turn up my nose at a homemade raspberry shortcake doused with thickly whipped organic farm cream, the kind that's almost yellow, almost thick enough even before you begin to whip it...but I digress.

I was originally inspired, 10 days ago or so, to make strawberry shortcake because of a charming post of the no-less charming Bakerina (whose recent blog makeover has given me a serious case of blog-envy).   Claudia Fleming's tarragon-scented strawberry shortcake was mentioned, though not actually made.  Alas!  Even on the best of days, I am unlikely to find fresh tarragon in my neighborhood.   And on July 4th, well, it was pretty much out of the question.   But we did have strawberries, and what strawberries.  We had just bought them  from the Lebanon, New Hampshire food co-op, who had in turn acquired them from a VERY local Vermont farm (well, so, they were local when and where we bought them.  But then, of course, we had to go and truck the entire shipment of one quart to NYC, thereby turning them into a non-local food -- to our everlasting shame).   They were fragrant, medium-smallish, and deep red -- all of which meant that when we bit into them, they were intensely flavorful.

So what to do with these berries, to just enhance them slightly but not mess too much with their lovely strawberriness? I pondered this as I rolled and cut a very short shortcake dough into squares (much less waste than rounds) and baked them golden.  I made a recipe and a half, since I wanted large shortcakes fit for greedy people rather than little elegant restaurant-style ones.  And I wanted some shortcake biscuits for breakfast as well, which were extremely rich and delicious. 

When it was strawberry-slicing-and-macerating time, I began to behave a bit like a mad chemist in the laboratory.  I brought out big and little bottles of essences, flavorings, extracts, liquers and vinegars.  Although I ended up using several different things, restraint was my watchword.  I wanted to play the subtlety card.  There are a few different levels of flavoring, to my way of thinking.  You can make something that tastes boldly of nutmeg, for example, which I find delightful, since I love nutmeg.  You can make something that has a lesser amount, just a shade over a whisper of nutmeg.  People will know there's something in there, a slightly haunting flavor that reminds them of something, but they just can't put their finger on quite what that flavor is -- unless, of course, they have very highly developed palates.  And you can use enhancement ingredients so sparingly that the end result tastes exactly like the main ingredient, not the flavoring  -- but it tastes more so, even more of itself.  More like apples, more like butter -- or more like strawberries.  The flavorings on this last one are so very subtle that people simply think you've managed to get the very best strawberries (or whatever you're using) ever, just for their pleasure. 

So that was what I set out to do.  A teaspoon, no more, of eau-de-vie de framboise went into my sliced strawberries.  Two drops of rosewater and two drops of  orange flower water.  A half teaspoon of blood orange vinegar, and a heaping teaspoon of sugar, just enough to get the strawberries to release their own juices.  All that was left to play nicely together while shortcakes cooled, dinner was eaten and later cream was whipped (in an overly hot kitchen, but we avoided disaster). 

"Mmmmm," said G through a mouthful of shortcake, whipped cream and berries.  He had never had biscuit-style shortcake before, only the sponge-cake kind.  Or even worse, the artificial snack-cake kind. "This is even better than Little Debbie's strawberry shortcake."  "Thank you, sweetheart," I said, barely restraining myself from this blatant baiting.  "There are lots of things I can do even better than Little Debbie." 

Whatever berries or other fruit you may have on hand, try the shortcake.  You won't be sorry, although Little Debbie may. 

Scented Strawberry Shortcake
(adapted from Strawberry Shortcake with Tarragon Cream, from The Last Course by Claudia Fleming)
Serves 4, with extra biscuits leftover

Shortcake Biscuits
2 1/2 cups flour
4 tablespoons sugar
2 1/4 tablespoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
9 tablespoons cold butter, cut into 1/2 inch cubes
2/3 cup heavy cream mixed with 1/3 cup milk

To make the biscuits: In an electric mixer combine the flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt. Add the butter and mix together until it resembles coarse meal. Add the cream and mix just until the dough comes together (it will be wet and soft). Turn the dough out onto a sheet of plastic wrap and shape into a 9 inch square, about 1 inch high. Wrap up the square and chill for about an hour.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Cut the dough into 9 biscuits (you can simply cut into squares or use a round cutter - remember the biscuits will expand in the oven). Brush the tops of the biscuits lightly with cream and sprinkle the turbinado sugar over them.

Place the biscuits about 2 inches apart on a parchment lined baking sheet and bake for about 20 to 25 minutes or the biscuits are golden brown. Transfer to a wire rack to cool.

Scented Strawberries
1 pint strawberries, hulled and sliced
1 heaping teaspoon sugar
1 teaspoon eau-de-vie de framboise
2 drops rosewater
2 drops orange flower water
1/2 teaspoon blood-orange vinegar

Combine the strawberries with the flavorings and sugar, and let them macerate until you're ready to assemble the shortcakes. 

Assembly
1 cup heavy cream
1 tablespoon sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla

Chill your bowl and beaters -- and if it's very warm weather, you might even put the cream in the freezer for a few minutes.  Whip, and when it begins to thicken, add the sugar and vanilla.  Stop whipping when soft peaks form.

Split 4 of the shortcake biscuits in half and place the bottoms on plates. Put some of the strawberries on top and then cover with the cream.  Cover with the tops of the shortcakes and serve immediately.  Save the rest of the shortcakes for another day's dessert, eat them for breakfast, freeze them -- or have seconds. 

Rainier or Queen Anne?

No matter what you call 'em, don't you just love this time of year? 

From Sleeping Lady

A few photos to show where I've been lucky enough to be spending time recently.  For the past few years, I've served on a national team of  educators.  Since we come from all over, our meetings take place in different parts of the country.   Here are some views of the glories of Washington State.

Driving through beautiful Wenatchee State Forest.

    This splendor awaited me each day last week, as I stepped outside my cabin...

...often on my way to a lovely dining room nestled by mountains, next to the gurgling Icicle River, with outdoor tables under huge old trees where kingfishers swoop, and woodpeckers and hummingbirds take their nourishment, too.

I've never had food served "cafeteria-style" that was as beautiful or delicious as this.  The resort's chef takes a great deal of pride in his meals, clearly. 

Some of our salads and other produce came from this organic garden.

My days were filled with thought-provoking work meetings and presentations, but I managed to get in some walks and even a much-needed massage.  I returned home very much aware of my great good fortune in being able to work with a group of inspiring colleagues in a such a glorious place.   Next year my term of service with this group will be over.  I'll very much miss the company and the talk, formal and informal, as well as the beauteous settings.