Swedish Apple Pancake

We had a similar recipe but lost it right when a gaggle of nieces & nephews were coming for a sleepover. SWMBO did a quick web search and liked the looks of this recipe. We made two on Saturday morning (for two adults and five kids from teens down to grade school) and two more on Sunday for brunch (for seven adults and one toddler). On Sunday, a couple of people asked if the recipe was on my blog, so I suppose that means it’s a success. It will doubtless get some tweaking in the future; the apples & brown sugar tend to go past caramelizing and into hard crack stage where they touch the the cast iron pans we use, and the whole pancake wants to stick to the bottom of the pan; these things need fixing. But for future reference, here’s the base recipe (linked to the title of this post).

Swedish Apple Pancake

• 3 Tablespoons (2 + 1) unsalted butter
• 2 large apples, peeled, cored, and sliced 1/4-inch thick
• 1/4 cup light brown sugar, packed
• 3 eggs
• 1 teaspoon granulated sugar
• Pinch salt
• 1/2 cup whole milk
• 1/2 cup all-purpose flour
• 1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1 lemon wedge, for squeezing

1. Preheat the oven to 450 degrees F.

2. In a large ovenproof skillet (preferably with curved sides)

2.a. melt 2 Tablespoons of the butter over medium heat.
2.b. Add the apple slices and cook, stirring, until tender, about 10 minutes.
2.c. Add 2 Tablespoons of the brown sugar and stir to combine.

3. In a medium bowl, whisk together the eggs, sugar, salt, milk, and flour.

4. Pour this batter over the apples in the skillet, transfer to the oven, and bake until puffy, about 10 minutes.

5. Meanwhile, in a small bowl, mix the cinnamon and remaining 2 Tablespoons brown sugar.

6. Cut the remaining Tablespoon of butter into pieces.

7. When the pancake puffs, remove from the oven, dot with the pieces of butter (from 6), sprinkle with cinnamon sugar (from 5), and return to the oven to bake until browned, about 10 minutes more.

8. As the pancake comes out of the oven, squeeze the lemon juice over the top.

9. Serve in wedges right out of the pan with maple syrup.

I had mine without syrup and it was great.Those who had it with the syrup seemed to like it as well.

SWMBO's dietary restrictions

Here is a little note SWMBO once put together about her non-Levitical Dietary Restrictions. It is, I hope you'll note, modeled on a piece by Ian Frazier that once ran in Atlantic Monthly and became somewhat infamous. The original here is available from a link to the title of this post.

And here is herself’s solipsistic version, dated 20 June 2001:

~~~Begin Quote~~~

“Comments” concerning food and drink

Of the fish of the sea and the fowl of the air and the beasts of the field, of those clean and unclean, I may not eat.

Of the milk of the cattle and the sheep and the goat, whilst in the form fore-ordained by the Creator for the young of each species, I may not drink.

Of the milk hardened into cakes for only a moment's time, and of the especially smelly young milk-cakes I may not eat.

Of the lumpy cheesy concoctions, high in fat and masquerading as food for penitents and mendicants, I may not eat.

Yet, of the skim and one percent milk, or the regular milk BAKED into dishes, I may eat. And of the low-fat or non-fat cottage cheese or yogurt, I may eat, but not too much. I may eat of the low-fat or non-fat ice cream, although these are vile and loathsome in Michael's sight.

And of the hard and aged cheeses, yea even those sharp, pungent and gratable cheeses, I may eat, especially when cooked onto a pizza.

Of the radishes and bell peppers and cucumbers, and other offerings of Cain which cause the belching in one's innermost being, I may not eat.

Of the lettuce, Bibbed or iceberg, and of similar textureless and tasteless fillers such as kale or raw celery, I may not eat, lest I return these abominations to the depths of the earth.

Yet of the spinach, cooked or raw, or nicely seasoned with lemon and olive oil, I may eat and give hearty thanks.

Of the cooked vegetables I may eat, although it is of a truth that it is said that yellow or acorn squash are offenses in my sight. I will endure them, as Job endured boils, though, when “squarsh” is the only non-meat item on a menu and is served as part of a “vegetable melody.”

But a butternut squash soup? Seconds, please. 

And although I may not partake of the raw cucumber or the barely pickled deli-cukes, I may enjoy the produce of the cucumber vine when fully briny or fully sweet (I may even “relish” the dish.)

What more shall I say? Shall I sing the praises of grilled eggplant or of the asparagus quesadilla? Shall I tell of chutneys and of spinach enchiladas and “Not Dogs” and of broccoli fried rice? Of tomatoes, cooked into garlicky sauces and served over pasta, or sliced and served with basil and mozzarella, or cooked into creamy soups, or even sliced fresh and red-ripe and served with salt and pepper? There is not time to tell the worth of lemon meringue pies or crescent roll pandowdy or ice milk or Diet Dr. Pepper or iced tea, yet I glory in these even as they remain constantly with my hips, withersoever I shall go.

Should I prepare meals, I may, like Peter with Cornelius, set aside these laws to prepare sustenance; although, like Moses on Mt. Nebo, I may not partake of that which is reserved for others.

(Apologies to Ian Frazier)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Michelle L. Myer, AKA: Nursing Goddess
House of Chez Casa
Durham, NC

There’s nothing like a shovelful of dirt to encourage literacy.

What people remember isn’t the book itself, so much as the furor: ministers in church denounced it as obscene, not only here; the public library was forced to remove it from the shelves, the one bookstore in town refused to stock it. There was word of censoring it. People snuck off to Stratford or London or Toronto even, and obtained their copies on the sly, as was the custom then with condoms. Back at home they drew the curtains and read, with disapproval, with relish, with avidity and glee—even the ones who’d never thought of opening a novel before. There’s nothing like a shovelful of dirt to encourage literacy.

Margaret Atwood, The Blind Assassin, ch 3, "The Presentation," p. 39 of the 1st Anchor Books edition, Sept. '01.

Toni’s Easy Spinach Casserole

We got this recipe from our friends the O’Briens (of VooDoo Prayer fame) back in the 80s. They got it from a vegetarian Seventh Day Adventist friend from their hippie days. Her name was Toni. We have passed the recipe along countless times over the years, and one of the people to whom we gave it was another Toni (Graham née Booker), who submitted it to the Mesquite’s Eats cookbook from which I copy it now. Toni to Sally to us to Toni to MBC cookbook back to us to the web.

This is fast, easy, and always a big hit. We normally end up making a double recipe, as we did tonight for our Small Group.

Preheat oven to 350F.

• 2 Tbsp butter (¼ stick), cut into small squares
• ¼ lb. sharp cheese, cut into small squares
• 1 10 oz. pkg. frozen spinach, cut into small squares
• 2 eggs, cut into small squares (just kidding)
• 3 Tbsp. flour
• 12 oz. carton cottage cheese

1. Mix all ingredients in a large bowl.
2. Put in a buttered baking dish (I prefer a 9 x 9 glass pan for one recipe, a 10 x 13 glass pan for a double; a single recipe works well in a large pie pan, too.)
3. Bake at 350 degree oven for 1 hour or until well-browned.

Serves 4-6, who will love the way it smells.

Robertson Davies

In the header to this blog I quote Robertson Davies (from whom I have stolen... adopted the phrase “ornamental knowledge”), but I am shocked to find that I have not quoted him here to any degree. So here I make a poor attempt to remedy that oversight.

It used to be that we did our e-mail using hard-drive resident programs known collectiviely as “e-mail clients” and that it was common to set up a standard signature to go out at the bottom of all our e-mails. Very quaint, I know. I have just opened my old e-mail client and pulled up all of my Robertson Davies sigs. These run from 1994 to about 2005. There are far more quotations marked in the hard copies of Davies that I own, but search/copy/paste is so much easier than opening all those books and typing.

N.b. that in plain text e-mails, sent in lower ASCII, the convention was that text surrounded by underscores indicated italics, and asterisks (stars) indicated bold text.

---------------------------------------
“...the most strenuous efforts of the most committed educationalists in the years since my boyhood have been quite unable to make a school into anything but a school, which is to say a jail with educational opportunities.”
-- Jonathan Hullah, M.D., F.R.C.P., narrator of
Robertson Davies’ _The Cunning Man_, I [4]
---------------------------------------
“It is so easy to plan lives of humanitarian self-sacrifice for other people.”
-- Jonathan Hullah, M.D., F.R.C.P., narrator of
Robertson Davies’ _The Cunning Man_, II [13]
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Welsh rhetoric is part of me, and my curse is that the world is full of literal-minded morlocks who don’t understand, and think I’m a crook because their tongues are wrapped in burlap and mine is hinged with gold.
-- Robertson Davies, _The Lyre of Orpheus_
---------------------------------------
Canadian National Prayer according to the omniscient narrator of Robertson Davies’ _The_Lyre_of_Orpheus_:

O God, grant me mediocrity and comfort; protect me from the radiance of Thy light.
---------------------------------------
“Oh, I wasn’t suggesting that we *do* anything,” said Maria. “I was just suggesting that we *talk* a little more compassionately.”

Robertson Davies, _The Lyre of Orpheus_

---------------------------------------
There is a point in a man’s undressing when he looks stupid, and nothing in the world can make him into a romantic figure. It is at the moment when he stands in his underwear and socks.
-- Robertson Davies, _The Manticore_
---------------------------------------
And in the Middle Ages, how concerned people who lived close to the world of nature were with the faeces of animals. And what a variety of names they had for them: the Crotels of a Hare, the Friants of a Boar, the Spraints of an Otter, the Werderobe of a Badger, the Waggying of a Fox, the Fumets of a Deer. Surely there might be some words for the material so near to the heart of Ozy Froats better than shit? What about the Problems of a President, the Backward Passes of a Footballer, the Deferrals of a Dean, the Odd Volumes of a Librarian, the Footnotes of a Ph.D., the Low Grades of a Freshman, the Anxieties of an Untenured Professor? As for myself, might it not be appropriately called the Collect for the Day?

Professor the Reverend Simon Darcourt, musing in _The Rebel Angels_
- by Robertson Davies
---------------------------------------
It was in dealing with stupid pupils that his wit was shown. A dunce, who had done nothing right, would not receive a mark of Zero from him, for Hector would geld the unhappy wretch of marks not only for arriving at a wrong solution, but for arriving at it by a wrong method. It was thus possible to announce to the class that the dunce had been awarded _minus_ thirty-seven out of a possible hundred marks; such announcements could not be made more than two or three times a year, but they always brought a good laugh. And that laugh, it must be said, was not vaingloriously desired by Hector as a tribute to himself, but only in order that it might spur the dunce on to greater mathematical effort. That it never did so was one of the puzzles which life brought to Hector, for he was convinced of the effectiveness of ridicule in making stupid boys and girls intelligent.
Robertson Davies, _Tempest-Tost_
---------------------------------------
“Oho, now I know what you are. You are an advocate of Useful Knowledge.”
“Certainly”
“You say that a man’s first job is to earn a living, and that the first task of education is to equip him for that job?”
“Of course.”
“Well allow me to introduce myself to you as an advocate of Ornamental Knowledge. You like the mind to be a neat machine, equipped to work efficiently, if narrowly, and with no extra bits or useless parts. I like the mind to be a dustbin of scraps of brilliant fabric, odd gems, worthless but fascinating curiosities, tinsel, quaint bits of carving, and a reasonable amount of healthy dirt. Shake the machine and it goes out of order; shake the dustbin and it adjusts itself beautifully to its new position.”
-- “Cobbler” Humphrey challenging Mackilwraith in chapter five of _Tempest-Tost_, book one of Robertson Davies’ Salterton Trilogy
---------------------------------------
“Curiosity killed the cat,” said Hector....
“I deny that,” said Cobbler, “the cat probably died a happy martyr to research.”
Robertson Davies, _Tempest-Tost_
---------------------------------------
“She herself was a victim of that lust for books which rages in the breast like a demon, and which cannot be stilled save by the frequent and plentiful acquisition of books. This passion is more common, and more powerful, than most people suppose.”
-Robertson Davies, _Tempest-Tost_
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
“...nothing is more fatal to maidenly delicacy of speech than the run of a good library.”
-Robertson Davies, _Tempest-Tost_
---------------------------------------
The third book of the Salterton Trilogy (_A Mixture of Frailties_) centers on a young girl from a very conservative protestant sect who earns the opportunity to go to England & Europe to study music. There’s quite a bit of good grist over the clash between her upbringing, her own moral standards, and the shockingly loose morals of musicians. There comes a great moment where she is given advice that includes the lines “If you’re living in what is pompously called sin with Revelstoke, you’d better be sure you are enjoying it, or you will soon find that you have neither your cake nor your penny.... the biggest mug in the world is the sinner who isn’t getting any pleasure from it”. And the first book (_Tempest-Tost_) has one of the world’s most pompous teachers as a main character, so you KNOW I enjoyed that.
---------------------------------------
“[Coincidence is a] useful, dismissive word for people who cannot bear the idea of pattern shaping their own lives. [It] is what they call pattern in which they cannot discern something they are prepared to accept as meaning.”
-Robertson Davies, _What’s_Bred_in_the_Bone_
---------------------------------------
Much may be learned about any society by studying the behavior and accepted ideas of its children, for children...are shadows of their parents, and what they believe and what they do are often what their parents believe in their hearts and would do if society would put up with it.
-Robertson Davies, _What’s_Bred_in_the_Bone_

Blender Hollandaise

A good hollandaise can be very fussy to make right. (Wait! My egg yolks are scrambling! (or curdling with the lemon.)) So when a colleague dropped the May 2011 edition of bon appétit (the Italy issue) on my desk, this little gem from Eric Ripert caught my eye. I think I’m going to pick up some asparagus on the way home this afternoon.

• 1 ¼ cups (2 ½ sticks) unsalted butter, cubed
• 2 large egg yolks
• 2 Tbsp. fresh lemon juice, plus more
• Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper

Fill a blender with hot water; set aside. Melt butter in a small saucepan over medium heat until foaming. Remove pan from heat. Drain blender and dry well. Put egg yolks and 2 Tbsp. lemon juice in blender; cover and blend to combine. Working quickly and with blender running, remove lid insert and slowly pour hot butter into blender in a thin stream of droplets, discarding the milk solids in bottom of the saucepan. Blend until creamy sauce forms. Season to taste with salt and pepper, and with more lemon juice. Serve immediately.

If you go to the original recipe at the magazine’s page (linked to the title of this post), you can watch a video of the procedure.

(Eric Ripert’s video is gone for now, but here’s another one.)

Green Beans with Balsamic Red Onion

The original of this recipe is from the June 2010 issue of Diabetes Forecast. That article is linked to the title of this post. Over the last year, I have greatly simplified the procedure for quicker cooking and fewer dishes to clean. The trade off is a slight reduction in texture differences. I normally cook this for two people and so merely eyeball the amounts. You will need:

• Green beans
• red onion
• olive oil
• balsamic vinegar
• almond slivers
• salt & pepper

SWMBO prefers her green beans softer than I do. I can eat them raw; she hates when they squeak on her teeth. If you prefer crisper beans, you can skip steps 2 & 3 and just add the beans after the onion has been cooked.

Procedure:

1. Choose a good, heavy skillet with a lid. Warm it on the stove.
2. Put a shallow layer of water in the skillet, add the green beans, and simmer/steam them until they are almost cooked to your preferred level of crisp/soft.
3. Remove and set aside the beans, dump the water, and let the pan dry / rewarm on the stove.
4. Make sure the pan isn’t too hot, as olive oil smokes at a low temperature and is nasty when it does.
5. Put a bit of olive oil in the skillet.
6. Add one thick, quartered slice of red onion for each person.
7. Sauté the onion to desired level, stirring frequently. I like it when it just clarifies, SWMBO prefers it caramelized, so I usually cook it until it has clarified and the edges and thinner bits are browning.
8. Splash in some balsamic vinegar, add the green beans, stir, and cover for a couple minutes.
9. Check, stir, recover as needed.
   
10. Salt and pepper to taste, toss on some almond slivers, stir, and remove from heat.
11. Serve it up.

Enjoy!

A Limerick

The bustard's an exquisite fowl
With minimal reason to growl:
He escapes what would be
Illegitimacy
By the grace of a fortunate vowel.

--George Vaill

(I am forever forgetting the first adjective, mistaking a tense, and forgetting who wrote this, so here it is.)

Grilled Caprese Sandwich

Here’s the way I’m making these at the House of Chez Casa.

(If you don’t want garlic on the outside of your sandwich, and thus on your fingers, read the first note for an alternative.)

Blend together:

• ½ c. olive oil
• 4-5 cloves of garlic

Set aside. [1]

1. Choose some good, flavorful bread. [2] Use two slices per sandwich.
2. Cover each slice of bread with fresh basil leaves.
3. Thickly cut fresh tomato slices (~¼" thick). Blot dry and then salt the tomato. Place on half the bread slices.
4. Thickly cut bufala mozzarella slices. [3] Place on the other half of the bread slices.
5. Close the sandwich(es) up and brush both sides with the garlicked oil.
6. Toast, grill, or, as I do, press. [4] In a press, put the sandwich tomato side down.

When the cheese is starting to leak out of the sandwich, it’s done. In our press, the bread is also nicely toasted at this point.

Enjoy!


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
[1] This was tonight’s refinement; it is a keeper, and is the reason I’m posting the recipe now, even though a recipe isn’t really needed. In the past I’ve crushed garlic and brushed it onto the bread with the EVOO. The flavor of the garlic just didn’t come through. But doing it this way, blending the garlic into the oil and letting it sit? Now we can taste the garlic!

An alternative that has also been very good is to very thinly slice the garlic (like Paul Cicero / Paul Sorvino in Goodfellas) and layer it between the tomato and mozzarella.

[2] Our normal bread in this market is Heather’s 50% Whole Wheat Sourdough. We pick it up either at the Rosewood Market (deliveries T, Th, Sat) or at the local market on Saturday mornings. But if we lived in a different market, I swear I could live on LaMadeleine’s seven grain bread. It’s one of the things we miss about living in Dallas, and we brought a loaf home from our Atlanta Thanksgiving trip. I used the seven grain bread tonight. Yummers!

[3] You really, really, really want the sort of bufala mozzarella that comes packed in water. It gets marvelously stretchy and has a flavor that the hard blocks of mozzarella do not have. I slice it with a kitchen tool that looks very much like this one.

[4] I suppose some day I’d like a sandwich press / vegetable grill with plates that remove for easier cleaning, but this one does me fine for now. Without the press, I would grill this open face to start with and then close it up partway through, finishing with the tomato side down.

Ginger/Nut Sauce for Asparagus

I don’t know why I’m keeping the original recipe (below). I usually just edit and move on, but this time I feel compelled to retain the history. Perhaps I’ll discuss this with a therapist some day, but that would mean starting therapy, and heaven knows that’s a road with no end. So here’s the latest incarnation, which seems to be enough for ~10 servings or so.

Put into a blending cup:

• 1 Tbsp honey
• 1 Tbsp red wine vinegar
• 1 Tbsp balsamic vinegar
• 1 Tbsp EVOO
• 1 Tbsp water
• 1 Tbsp soy sauce
• 3 large garlic cloves, chopped roughly
  
• ¼ tsp (heaping) red pepper flakes
• 1 medium bulb of ginger root (~1 ½" diameter, looks like 2 Tbsp or so), roughly chopped

Blend until completely smooth. Add:

• 1 Tbsp tahini
• 1 Tbsp chunky peanut butter
• 1 Tbsp (heaping) dry roasted peanuts

Blend until completely smooth again.

Toast 1 Tbsp sesame seeds (~3:40 did the trick for me) and put into the juice of ½ a lemon. Whisk into the mixture above.

Enjoy! (and consider adding more red pepper)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Some time back, when we were expecting a small crowd here at the House of Chez Casa, SWMBO opened a cookbook and found a sauce she wanted me to try for some asparagus. We didn’t have all the ingredients, and I was cooking about a dozen different things that day, so I adapted a bit for what we had around the old homestead. It was a hit, and now that I’ve been asked to replicate it for Thanksgiving, I figured I should try to remember what I did.

Toss all of these things together and puree them.

• ¼ c. tahini
• ¼ c. chunky peanut butter
  
• ¼ c. crushed peanuts
• ¼ c. olive oil
• ¼ c. rice vinegar
• ¼ c. water
• ¼ c. soy sauce
• ¼ c. sugar (I use the unbleached stuff; I might try honey next time)
• 2 Tbsp. chopped ginger root
• 1 ½ Tbsp. crushed garlic
• ¼ tsp.crushed red pepper flakes

Taste the stuff & adjust flavors and consistency by tossing in extra little bits of the ingredients.

Refrigerate.

Our friend BoomBoom Cannon keeps an old mustard bottle on hand for drizzling pretty lines of sauces like this over the food. I’m lowbrow enough to just ladle it on with a spoon.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Edit, post-Thanksgiving notes:

On amount:
We had five bundles of asparagus to steam, and had nearly half the sauce and a quarter of the asparagus left over. Make less sauce.

On flavor:
I should have at least doubled the red pepper (proportionally). Even Gary, who admits to being afraid of Thai-level spice, thought it could have done with more pepper.

Mark brought broccoli steamed & tossed with lemon (juice & zest) and garlic — just the way Vincent taught us. The very sharp garlic there blended with the ginger/peanut sauce in a great way. Think about adding more garlic and substituting lemon for some of the vinegar.

Before he stumbled onto the combination of sauces, Gary suggested boosting the sesame flavor with some toasted sesame oil. I had considered adding some sesame seeds to the finished product to some texture interest. Perhaps some toasted sesame seed added at the end would do the trick.

Caramelized Sweet Onion Chutney

Some weeks back, SWMBO complained noted that she had quite a bit of trouble making my onion chutney. I can’t imagine why! Just because I never turned the thing into a proper recipe and she had to open (and juggle) no less than three posts to figure out what to do, that’s no reason to go and get all admonitory. (The originals are here: post 1, with red onion confit; post B, the first caramelized chutney; post III, caramelizing in the crock pot)

Still, her point was well-taken, and so dorky boy will now try to rectify the situation.

As soon as you get home from work one evening, put

• 2 lbs. of sweet onions, thinly sliced, and
• ¼ lb. of butter, cut into pats
  

into a crock pot on low. Stir occasionally throughout the evening, but otherwise keep tightly covered. Before you go to bed, make very certain that the cover is completely in place (our old Rival with a glass lid will let steam escape if the lid is not precisely centered; the new Hamilton Beach is more forgiving).

When you get up the next morning (some eighteen hours after you started cooking the onions), give them a stir and add:

• ½ c. honey
• ½ c. tawny port
• ⅝ c. white balsamic vinegar
• 1 c. golden raisins, and
• 1 medium ginger root, grated (yes, this is new to the recipe, and optional; adding ginger to the blueberry chutney was a wonderful step and should be here as well).

Stir, recover tightly, and go back to work.

When you get home that evening (some twenty-four hours after you started), check for consistency. I find that I usually need to turn the temperature up to high and stir every now and again (while cooking dinner and annoying the cat with music turned up way too loudly) to let it simmer down and thicken up a bit. Seldom have I added salt & pepper at this point, although I’d be willing to bet that SWMBO would appreciate a bit of pepper. We’ll see next time.

Pesto

Pesto is easy enough to make. Grind up some basil, pine nuts, sharp grated cheese, garlic, and olive oil. Adjust proportions to taste. Keep it on hand for spreading on crackers, for putting on fish, for tossing onto a quick pasta, for... Well, let’s just say that we go through a lot of the stuff here at the House of Chez Casa. So I’ve been playing with the proportions quite a bit. Here’s what works for us at the moment.

Grind together:

• 1 loosely pressed qt. (1 tightly pressed pt.) basil, washed
• ½ lb. (8 oz.) Locatelli Romano, grated
• 1 ½ medium heads of garlic, crushed
• 4 oz. (~1 c.) walnut pieces, toasted (in our toaster oven, about 4 min. 20 sec. gets them really dark & nutty without being burnt)
  
• 4 oz. pignoli (~1 c. pine nuts), opened
  
• ~1 c. EVOO, drizzled into the food processor slowly
  

Yield: approximately 3 c. of pesto.

I prefer doing this in a food processor, but have had nearly as good a result using a regular old blender.

You can adjust the amount of nuts and oil to change the texture. This version comes out thick enough that it doesn’t fall off a spoon when it comes out of the fridge. Too much oil, and it will flow off whatever you put it on. Too much nut and it won’t be sticky enough to stay on your cracker.

Enjoy!

Roman Cheese

This is my version of a recipe for spiced cheese that goes back a couple of millenia. I used to buy a similar product from the Antiqua Culinaria Romana / Castra-Rota at our local market on Saturday mornings, but they stopped showing up (for reasons I haven’t heard). Anyway, I missed their cheese balls, went to the Latin sources, and tried my own adaptation. Here’s where we are now:

Put into a food processor

• 10.5 oz Ile de France spiced goat cheese buchette (plain will do, but it’s not quite as good)
  
• 6 large cloves garlic (~1/2 medium head), mashed
• 1 tsp salt
• 1/2 tsp pepper
• 1 tsp ground coriander
• 1 stalk celery (with leaves if possible; thinly slice the celery before putting it into the processor to avoid having strings)

Process until smooth.

Add:

• ~2 Tbsp EVOO to texture & taste

It’s quite tasty.

Random notes on Christmas Music

A friend from high school posted a link to Shonen Knife's "It's a New Find" at nearly the same time that a niece posted a status saying "Tired of the same ole thing!!! Ready for a change!" This odd juxtaposition in the Facebook Continuum provoked me into replying to both status. (Yes, the Latin plural of the noun /status/ is, in fact, /status/. It's 4th declension. Deal with it.) And THAT lead to a conversation with another friend from high school (who is also sister of the first friend and wife of another friend -- that's the way it goes when you grow up in a small town, no matter how big that town subsequently becomes; friends are multi-connected in lots of vaguely incestuous ways).

Be all that as it may, the conversation produced some links I know I'm going to want to find again in a few months. So, I'm pasting is some stuff here so that I'll be able to find it later. It's useful, but not normally so at this time of year. And it mainly has to do with two of my favorite (but very different) Christmas songs.


~~~Enter ComBox~~~

**Comment 1, MMe: Space Christmas is one of my seasonal favorites. I've inflicted it on students nearly every year.


**Comment 2, Multi-Connected Friend: @ Michael -- Is Space Christmas on a particular album? I am guessing the band name is Shonen Knife...


** Comment 3, MMe:
Shonen Knife *is* the band:
They've been turning out songs for 30 years with a "Ramones do Japanese girl pop" sound.

“Space Christmas” is a song from their earlier days; it was a single, then got picked up on a mid-90s sampler (that I suspect you would like).

You can hear the song (with a vid of them doing some other song(s) live) on YouTube.


**Comment 4, MCF:
Thanks, Michael! I am looking for Christmas songs to make a compilation CD for a friend. The biggest chore will be to go through the CDs I already own, to see what I want to include. But I have my eyes open for other stuff, too. In fact, I noticed (on fb, sometime, somewhere) that you liked a song titled something like: "Won't be Home for Christmas This Year" or something like that. I've been meaning to look for that one, too.

Sigh. I may or may not get this done for my friend. I've been wanting to do it for a couple of years now.

By the way, do you have the Christmas album, "We Three Kings" by the Roches? Their version of the title song is really nice.


** Comment 5, MMe:
I have a collection that I call HHHMA: A Depressive's Christmas. I use it as an antidote to all the enforced cheerfulness. This is just long enough to fit on a CD (66 minutes, 19 songs). If you like, I can burn you a copy and send it your way.

My full Christmas mix is 16.4 hours and 293 songs long and includes a lot more chipper stuff (mariachi, polka, swing, folk, standards, jazz)....

But the song you are remembering is by Phil Madeira from his 3 Horseshoes album. It's official title is “Christmas This Year.”
If you have an e-dress that accepts large attachments, I can send you an iTunes readable AAC file.

If you do last.fm or pandora, you might also be able to listen there.

[Update, 25 Dec 2016: I miss the tin whistle, other instrumentation, and the studio recording of pub voices singing along, but a live solo version hit YouTube four years ago. So you can get a feeling for the song here. But you really want to buy 3 Horseshoes. It’s a great album.]

**Comment 6, MMe (again):
Oh, and I completely missed answering your question about the Roches. No, that is a collection I don't have.

I couldn't find lyrics to Madeira's song anywhere online, so I've just transcribed them. I keep wanting to quote them anyway, so this will make it easier.

“Christmas This Year”
by Phil Madeira

Every December like moths to a flame
we used to drive north every year just the same,
but we’re sick of the traffic so we’re staying right here,
and we ain’t comin’ home for Christmas this year.

Packages, sweaters, ski boots, and gloves --
packed to the gills ’til the car door won’t shut.
By the time we’ve gassed up we’ve got no yuletide cheer.
So we ain’t comin’ home for Christmas this year.

OK I admit it, it ain’t just the drive;
by the time we get back here we’re barely alive.
’Cause sometimes vacations can summon old tears,
and we ain’t comin’ home for Christmas this year.

Don’t worry, we’ll call ya, we’ll put the kids on;
whatever it takes to strengthen our bond.
And in that sweet moment we’ll wish we were there.
Still we ain’t comin’ home for Christmas this year.

Tell Santa to forward the gifts to our house.
And maybe once in a decade you ought to drive south.
Just give us some notice, God knows we’ll be here.
’Cause we ain’t comin’ home for Christmas this year.

Now don’t don’t be offended, and don’t be upset;
I never intended to make you regret
those wonderful moments so special and dear.
Still we ain’t comin’ home for Christmas,
Christmas this year.

No we ain’t comin’ home.
Yeah we ain’t comin’ home for Christmas this year
&c

Peanut Butter Bars

This one comes from a steak buffet place in Weston, WV via my step-mother. I adapted the proportions to fit a single 12 x 17 pan.

1. In a large mixing bowl, cream together:

• 1/2 lb. of butter
• 2/3 of a 16 oz. jar of smooth peanut butter (~10-11 oz.)
  
• 1 c. sugar
• 1 & 1/2 c. brown sugar (approximately one 16 oz. bag)
  
• 2 eggs
• 1/2 tsp. vanilla

2. Slowly sift in 2 c. self-rising flour and continue creaming together.

3. Switch your stand mixer from regular beaters to small dough hooks and add 2 c. oatmeal (this will get very stiff, so I end up switching to a very stout wooden spoon).

4. Press the mixture into a buttered or non-stick 12 x 17 / 13 x 18 jelly roll pan.

5. Bake at 350°F for 10-12 minutes. The consistency will be like a chocolate chip cookie bar.

6. For the icing, mix until smooth & consistent:

• 1 & 1/2 c. powdered sugar
• the rest of the jar of peanut butter (~5-6 oz.)
• 1/2 tsp. vanilla
• 1/3 c. milk

5. Pour over the partially-cooled bars and spread evenly.

6. Cut into squares & enjoy!

Salmon with Citrus Glaze (Alton Brown)

I can’t take credit for this one. We saw it on one of Alton Brown’s shows, Good Eats. I used it last summer when the St. Tommy’s alumni crowd gathered in the mountains of north Georgia. I used it again last night when we had a small mob over to have our house blessed. I did it from memory, but then on a whim searched the interwebs and scared up a link for the top of this post. Both times I’ve made it, I was feeding about a dozen people, so my procedure is for two sides of salmon. The other major difference is that I use less salt that most people, Alton included.

1. Into a small food processor, put

• 2/3 c. dark brown sugar
• the zest from 5 lemons
• 2 tsp. salt
• 1 tsp. black pepper

2. Blend until smooth.

3. Cover a large jelly roll pan with foil (it needs to be a pan with a decent lip, not a flat cookie sheet; there will be a lot of liquid).

4. Put 2 whole sides of salmon onto the foil and spread the glaze over them.

5. Leave the salmon to marinate at room temperature for an hour or so. It will throw off quite a bit of liquid. Don’t sweat it (fortuitous pun not intended).

6. Position a rack in the oven so that the salmon will be about 3" from the flame / element and let the broiler preheat for a couple of minutes.

7. Broil the salmon for approximately 6 minutes.

8. Turn off the heat and let the salmon sit for another ~7 minutes.

Serve and eat now. I like to serve it on a bed of low-country grits (slow cooked in milk all day long).

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Addendum:

Tonight (27 June 2011) I modified the glaze slightly. I added fresh, grated ginger to it. Yummers! The proportions were probably also much different. I glazed three salmon fillets and one portobello cap (for SWMBO). For this, I started with the zest of three lemons, approximately 1/3 c. of brown sugar, nearly a Tablespoon of black pepper, only a bit of salt, and a chunk of ginger about 3" x 1". It was very tasty.

Bloody Mary mix

A little while back, SWMBO discovered that she actually likes a well-made Bloody Mary. She discovered this over Sunday Brunch at one of the best eateries in town, Motor Supply Company Bistro. Motor Supply has great chefs who are members of the slow food movement, buy local ingredients, craft new menus every day, and make some of the tastiest fare you will ever want to spend time on your tongue. They also have some of the best wait staff around, including one server who knows SWMBO’s dietary restrictions and palate and has never made a bad recommendation. It was this server who ran down the list of ingredients (but not the proportions) in a Motor Supply Bloody Mary.

I chased those flavors around a few times and made a few changes of my own. For instance, the best Bloody Mary SWMBO has had at Motor Supply was made with a tamarind-infused vodka. Since we go through alcohol rather slowly here at the House of Chez Casa, I didn’t want to flavor a whole bottle that was likely to be asked to serve in a variety of drinks. So I added tamarind to the mix. Other changes I made just because the results were good.

UPDATE: I keep dinking with this recipe and most recently modified the proportions for the after-party for Augustine Broadbent’s baptism; I started with 2 64 oz. bottles of juice then and am cutting the recipe in half here. This incarnation now dated 28 January 2012.

UPDATE: The Dr.’s tastebuds keep changing. For instance, she has lost her beloved pimento cheese, and has been cutting lemon way, way down. So below is for the batch I made on 9 Feb ’13 (and the recipe’s still working for her as of 12 Nov. ’16).

So here it is, the current incarnation of my Bloody Mary mix:

1. Put into a blender:

• 1 Tbsp. Tobasco
• 1 tsp. bitters
• 2 Tbsp. Worcestershire
• 2 Tbsp. A1
• 1 tsp. pickle juice
• the juice from ¼ lemon
• the juice from ¼ lime
• 1½ oz. (¼ 6 oz. jar) Kalamata olives
• ½ tsp. celery seed
• ½ Tbsp. pepper
• 1 tsp. salt
• 1 Tbsp. pure cane sugar
• ½ Tbsp. horseradish
• 1 3/4 oz. tamarind patty (I get this at an Indian grocery in 14 oz patties and used 1/8 patty. Watch for seeds; I chop the patty coarsely in order to find & remove the seeds before putting the tamarind into the blender.)

2. Open a 64 oz. bottle of tomato juice and pour enough into the blender to make it 2/3 - 3/4 full.

3. Run the blender until you have a smooth (if somewhat viscous) concoction.

4. Run the contents of the blender through a food mill into a large pitcher (to get any bits and bobs, especially from the tamarind patty), pour in the rest of the tomato juice, & mix well.

5. Pour 64 oz. of the mix back into the tomato juice bottle (this is why I buy a bottle rather than a can -- resealability).

6. Split the remaining 16 oz. or so between two rocks glasses.

7. Put the bottle of mix in the fridge and do something about those two rocks glasses.

Enjoy!

THE MMR/Autism article withdrawn from the Lancet

The announcement is terse:

Retraction—Ileal-lymphoid-nodular hyperplasia, non-specific colitis, and pervasive developmental disorder in children

Following the judgment of the UK General Medical Council's Fitness to Practise Panel on Jan 28, 2010, it has become clear that several elements of the 1998 paper by Wakefield et al[1] are incorrect, contrary to the findings of an earlier investigation.[2] In particular, the claims in the original paper that children were "consecutively referred" and that investigations were "approved" by the local ethics committee have been proven to be false. Therefore we fully retract this paper from the published record.

References

[1] Wakefield AJ, Murch SH, Anthony A, et al. Ileal-lymphoid-nodular hyperplasia, non-specific colitis, and pervasive developmental disorder in children. Lancet 1998; 351: 637-641. [with live links]

[2] Hodgson H. A statement by The Royal Free and University College Medical School and The Royal Free Hampstead NHS Trust. Lancet 2004; 363: 824. [with live links]

What it means has been unpacked a bit by many news outlets. I’m archiving here those of the WSJ and the NYT.

First, the New York Times article (live links have been stripped; sign up for the NYT to follow their links).

February 3, 2010
Journal Retracts 1998 Paper Linking Autism to Vaccines
By GARDINER HARRIS

A prominent British medical journal on Tuesday retracted a 1998 research paper that set off a sharp decline in vaccinations in Britain after the paper’s lead author suggested that vaccines could cause autism.

The retraction by The Lancet is part of a reassessment that has lasted for years of the scientific methods and financial conflicts of Dr. Andrew Wakefield, who contended that his research showed that the combined measles, mumps and rubella vaccine may be unsafe.

But the retraction may do little to tarnish Dr. Wakefield’s reputation among parents’ groups in the United States. Despite a wealth of scientific studies that have failed to find any link between vaccines and autism, the parents fervently believe that their children’s mental problems resulted from vaccinations.

Tom Skinner, a spokesman for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, called the retraction of Dr. Wakefield’s study “significant.”

“It builds on the overwhelming body of research by the world’s leading scientists that concludes there is no link between M.M.R. vaccine and autism,” Mr. Skinner wrote in an e-mail message.

A British medical panel concluded last week that Dr. Wakefield had been dishonest, violated basic research ethics rules and showed a “callous disregard” for the suffering of children involved in his research. Dr. Richard Horton, editor in chief of The Lancet, said that until that decision, he had no proof that Dr. Wakefield’s 1998 paper was deceptive.

“That was a damning indictment of Andrew Wakefield and his research,” Dr. Horton said.

With that decision, Dr. Horton said he could retract the 1998 paper. Dr. Wakefield could not be reached for comment.

Jim Moody, a director of SafeMinds, a parents’ group that advances the notion the vaccines cause autism, said the retraction would strengthen Dr. Wakefield’s credibility with many parents.

“Attacking scientists and attacking doctors is dangerous,” he said. “This is about suppressing research, and it will fuel the controversy by bringing it all up again.”

Dr. Wakefield is part of a small but fervent group of doctors who discourage vaccinations because of a seeming link with autism.

Dr. Wakefield’s paper reported on his examinations of 12 children with chronic intestinal disorders who had a history of normal development followed by severe mental regressions. He speculated that the combined measles, mumps and rubella vaccine may have caused some sort of chronic intestinal measles infection that in turn damaged the children’s brains. He suggested that the combined vaccine should be split into three separate shots and given over a longer period of time.

But an investigation by a British journalist found financial and scientific conflicts that Dr. Wakefield did not reveal in his paper. For instance, part of the costs of Dr. Wakefield’s research were paid by lawyers for parents seeking to sue vaccine makers for damages. Dr. Wakefield was also found to have patented in 1997 a measles vaccine that would succeed if the combined vaccine were withdrawn or discredited.

After years of investigation, the General Medical Council in Britain concluded that Dr. Wakefield had subjected 11 children to invasive tests like lumbar punctures and colonoscopies that they did not need and for which he did not receive ethical approval.

After Dr. Wakefield’s study, vaccination rates plunged in Britain and the number of measles cases soared.

In the United States, anti-vaccine groups have advanced other theories since then to explain why they think vaccines cause autism. For years, they blamed thimerosal, a vaccine preservative containing mercury. Because of concerns over the preservative, vaccine makers in 2001 largely eliminated thimerosal from routinely administered childhood vaccines.

But this change has had no apparent impact on childhood autism rates. Anti-vaccine groups now suggest that a significant number of children have a cellular disorder whose effects are set off by vaccinations.

With each new theory, parents’ groups have called for research to explore possible links between vaccination and autism. Study after study has failed to show any link, and prominent scientific agencies have concluded that scarce research dollars should be spent investigating other possible causes of autism.

Now, the Wall Street Journal article (live links have been stripped; sign up for the WSJ to follow their links).

FEBRUARY 3, 2010
The Lancet's Vaccine Retraction
A medical journal's role in the autism scare.

The British medical journal The Lancet yesterday offered a mea culpa of sorts for its role in launching a global vaccine scare. Its regrets come about 12 years too late.

The journal finally issued a full retraction of a study it ran in 1998 linking measles-mumps-rubella vaccines to autism. The paper, with Dr. Andrew Wakefield as lead author, sent British parents fleeing from inoculations and fed U.S. alarm over preservatives in vaccines.

Even in 1998, overwhelming scientific evidence showed vaccines to be safe. Yet the press-savvy Dr. Wakefield had been getting headlines for his research, and the Lancet's publication fed the controversy by giving him an aura of respectability.

Evidence of vaccine safety continued to build, but the Lancet stuck to its story through 2004, when it was revealed that Dr. Wakefield had been paid to conduct his study on children who were clients of a lawyer ginning up a lawsuit. Even then the journal offered only a partial retraction, saying it had been correct to "raise new ideas."

Meanwhile, Britain's child vaccination rates had plummeted to below 70% in some areas, down from more than 90% in the mid-1990s. The country has since suffered waves of measles outbreaks. In 1998 England and Wales had 56 cases; by 2008 the number was 1,370. In 2006, the first British child died of measles in more than a decade.

The Lancet decision came after the General Medical Council—Britain's medical regulator—ruled last week that Dr. Wakefield had acted "dishonestly and irresponsibly." The panel confirmed years of allegations that he had been untruthful about his patients and funding and had shown a "callous disregard" for the children—subjecting them to invasive and unnecessary procedures. Only with the GMC now considering whether to strip Dr. Wakefield of his license has the Lancet finally said it "fully retract[s] this paper from the published record."

The Lancet episode shows how even reputable publications can become conduits for junk science when political causes run hot. Especially amid the scandal over politically motivated climate science, the public needs professional journals to be scrupulous about their standards and honest about the science.

Marinated Cheese

For years we’ve been after my first boss in SC (Jeffita) to share her recipe for a marinated cheese recipe. Tonight, as Christmas presents, she handed out copies to people as we left the departmental^[1] Christmas gathering. Along with a double-sided color copy of the original Southern Living recipe (linked to the title of this post, but with a 1990 date and a Recipe-Pak^TM number 5305B-11, Appetizers & Beverages 7) were her hand-written changes. I'm going to attempt to make a single recipe out of the original and her notes together.


Chill for slicing:

• 2 8 oz. pkgs. cheddar cheese (5.5 x 2 x 1")
• 2 8 oz. pkgs. cream cheese (original recipe calls for 3, but I only ever use the two)

Combine in a jar, shake vigorously, and set aside:

• 1 c. olive oil
• 1 c. white wine vinegar
• ½ c. minced green onions or chives
• 6-8 cloves garlic
• ½ c. chopped fresh parsley
• ¼ c. minced fresh basil
• 8 oz. pimento from jar(s), drained
• 1 T. sugar
• 1 ½ t. salt
• 1 t. ground fresh pepper

When the cheese is well-chilled, cut the cheddar blocks in half lengthwise, then cut crosswise into 1/4" thick slices. Set aside. Slice the cream cheese similarly (& into similarly-sized pieces). Arrange the cheese in alternating slices of cheddar and cream cheese standing on edge in a shallow baking dish. Pour marinade over cheese slices, cover, and let stand in refrigerator for at least eight hours.

Transfer cheese slices to a serving platter in the same alternating fashion, reserving marinade. Spoon marinade over cheese slices. Garnish with fresh parsley sprigs. Serve with crackers.



^[1] I should mention that Jeffita is/was the head of my old department, the public school job I had when I first came to SC. They still ask me to join them for gatherings (surely a good sign, although I think they’re definitely disappointed when SWMBO can’t make it). How fortunate am I to have had two sets of co-workers whose company I enjoy and who aren’t completely put off by my anti-social tendencies?

Eco on the Loss of a Parent

“He thought he would become accustomed to [being orphaned], not yet understanding that it is useless to become accustomed to the loss of a father, for it will never happen a second time: might as well leave the wound open.”
--Umberto Eco, The Island of the Day Before, end of chapter 7