Blue Cayenne

“And I rose
In rainy autumn
And walked abroad in a shower of all my days…”
― Dylan Thomas

Birthdays. How in the world do you celebrate important days during a pandemic?

With a cake!

However it happens–store-bought or homemade, left on the front porch or served at a respectable social distance–the birthday cake is non-negotiable.

Trust me on this. Birthday cakes have been central to celebrations for a very long time

The Greeks, Egyptians and Romans all celebrated important events with a celebratory cake.

The Greek story is particularly interesting. Their cakes were moon-shaped to celebrate the birth date of Artemis, the goddess of the moon. Each cake  was decorated with candles to glow like the moon. How cool is that? I’ll never think about candles on a birthday cake the same way again.

Our modern birthday cake tradition, though, appears to be more closely tied to 18th Century Germany where  children’s birthdays were celebrated with cakes, candles and secret wishes. The celebration was called Kinderfest. A child’s cake bore one candle for each year of the child’s life and one extra candle, a candle of life, to celebrate the hope that the child would enjoy another year of life until the next birthday. The candles on the cake were lit at sunrise and it was the task of the family to keep them lit throughout the day until the evening celebration. (I’m thinking there must have been a whole lot of wax on that cake by the end of the day, but never mind.)

Here is a birthday cake I made for my good friend and neighbor Norma. Happy, happy day, Norma.

Here’s the recipe.

Vanilla Birthday Cake

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Ingredients

For The Cake
• 2 C. all-purpose flour
• 1 1/4 t. salt
• 2 t. baking powder
• 4 large eggs (room temperature)
• 2 C. granulated sugar
• 1 T. vanilla extract
• 1/8 t. almond extract
• 1 C. milk
• 4 T. butter (cut into cubes)
• 1/3 C. vegetable oil (I used Canola)
For the Frosting
• 8 T. unsalted butter (room temperature)
• Pinch of salt
• 1 T. meringue powder (optional--increases strength of the frosting)
• 1 t. vanilla extract
• 3 C. confectioners' sugar
• 2 to 4 T. milk

Instructions

For the cake
1. Preheat your oven to 325 degrees F. Your oven rack should be positioned in the center of the oven. Prepare two 8 or 9 inch round cake pans by greasing them and lining the bottoms of the pans with parchment. Grease the top of the parchment, too.
2. Combine flour, salt and baking powder in a bowl. Whisk to combine. Set aside.
3. Beat eggs, sugar, vanilla and almond extract in the bowl of your stand mixer using the whisk attachment. Beat at medium high speed for about 2 minutes. You want the egg mixture to thicken and be light in color.
4. Add the dry ingredients to the egg mixture. Mix just to combine at a low speed. Be sure to use a spatula to scrape the bottom and sides of the bowl and then mix again briefly to be sure all the flour is incorporated into the batter.
5. In a microwave or in a pan on the stove, heat the milk until it simmers. Remove the milk from the microwave (or from the heat on the stove) and stir in the butter and oil. Keep stirring the mixture until the butter has melted.
6. Slowly mix the milk mixture into the egg/flour batter until everything is well combined. Be sure to scrape the bowl to be sure everything is combined.
7. Pour batter into your two prepared pans and bake at 325 degrees F. for about 38-42 minutes if you are using 8-inch pans or 26-30 minutes if you are using 9-inch pans. Test the cake for doneness by inserting a toothpick into the centers of the cakes. ( The toothpick should come out clean with no batter sticking to the toothpick. You can also check your cakes by using a digital thermometer inserted into the center of the cakes. The thermometer should read 205 degrees F is the cake is done.)
8. Remove the cakes from the oven, run a knife around the edges to loosen the cakes from the pans and let the cakes cool on a rack for about 15 minutes. Once the cakes are cool, turn them out of the pans and transfer them to a rack to cool to room temperature before frosting.
For the Frosting
9. Beat butter in the bowl of your stand mixer until it is fluffy.
10. Add the salt, meringue powder (optional) and vanilla. Beat to combine.
11. Add the confectioners' sugar and 2 T. of milk. Beat until the mixture is smooth, scraping the sides and bottom of the bowl while you are mixing to be sure you have incorporated all the sugar.
12. Add additional milk (or confectioners' sugar) to adjust the consistency of the frosting for easy icing and piping.

Nutrition

Calories

6145 cal

Fat

177 g

Carbs

992 g

Protein

35 g

Click Here For Full Nutrition, Exchanges, and My Plate Info

7.8.1.2

236

https://bluecayenne.com/a-birthday-be-sure-to-invite-the-goddess-of-the-moon

This cake recipe is adapted from one that appears on the King Arthur Flour site KAF Birthday Cake.

“Ask not (’tis forbidden knowledge), what our destined term of years,
Mine and yours; nor scan the tables of your Babylonish seers.
Better far to bear the future, my Leuconoe, like the past,
Whether Jove has many winters yet to give, or this our last;
This, that makes the Tyrrhene billows spend their strength against the shore.
Strain your wine and prove your wisdom; life is short; should hope be more?
In the moment of our talking, envious time has ebb’d away.
Seize the present; trust tomorrow e’en as little as you may.”

                                                —-Horace

Seize the day! Seems like pretty good advice in perilous times.

In that spirit, be advised that you can eat all the chiles your stomach will allow with no damage to your taste buds.

As it turns out, spicy foods don’t kill our taste buds, the culprit is most likely age. Good news. Bad news.

According to Paul Bosland, the director of the Chile Pepper Institute at New Mexico Sate University (I know. Who knew there was a chile pepper institute anywhere?), we’re born with around 10,000 taste buds. For much of our lives, the taste bud cells replace themselves. Eventually, though, some of the cells lose their ability to replicate and our sense of taste diminishes. Bummer.

Interestingly, Bosland puts to bed an old myth about spicy foods like hot chiles damaging one’s taste buds.  This, he says, is just not the case. Instead, he says that the active ingredient in spicy peppers, capsaicin, plays a trick on us. When we eat spicy foods, the capsaicin activates our taste receptors and sends a false danger message to our brains. Somehow, through the evolutionary process, “certain pain receptors in our nerve endings react to capsaicin in the same way they react to heat…and our brain starts producing endorphins to block that pain,” he says. That reaction causes our mouths to numb when we consume capsaicin and oftentimes we jump to the false conclusion that our taste buds are being burned to oblivion.  Not so. Who knew?

So, if spice is your thing (as it is mine), you can enjoy spicy foods with wild abandon.

Here is a great spicy soup recipe. You can also make a non-spicy version of this soup by omitting the Soyrizo.

Spinach, Bean and Pasta Soup

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Ingredients

• Canola or olive oil
• 1 Soyrizo Sausage (6 oz. or 1/2 a link--adjust amount to match your heat tolerance)
• 1 onion (chopped)
• 3 garlic cloves (crushed)
• 2 C. water (or more--to your taste)
• 3/4 to 1 C. small dry pasta
• 14 oz. can tomato sauce
• 3 C. vegetable stock (or more)
• 1 t. dried oregano (or basil)
• Salt and pepper to taste
• A few big handfuls to spinach (coarsely chopped)
• 1 15-ounce can red kidney beans (rinsed and drained)
• Freshly-grated Parmesan cheese

Instructions

1. Heat oil in a large soup pot and saute and onion and garlic until they are soft. When the onion and garlic are cooked, stir in crumbled soyrizo sausage. Stir to mix.
2. Add water, dry pasta, tomato sauce, vegetable stock, oregano and salt and pepper Bring soup to a boil and then reduce the heat. Simmer soup for about 15 minutes until the pasta is tender.
3. Chop and add the fresh spinach to the soup. Add the rinsed beans. Continue cooking the soup for another 5 minutes. Add additional water or broth to thin the soup to a consistency you like.
4. Ladle the soup into bowls and garnish with freshly-grated Parmesan cheese.
5. Cook's Note: Soyrizo is a vegetarian substitute for chorizo. It is available at Trader Joe's and at most major supermarkets. Regular chorizo would work, too.

Nutrition

Calories

708 cal

Fat

49 g

Carbs

39 g

Protein

28 g

Click Here For Full Nutrition, Exchanges, and My Plate Info

7.8.1.2

233

https://bluecayenne.com/carpe-diem-and-pass-the-chiles-spicy-spinach-bean-and-pasta-soup

This soup is adapted from a recipe that appears in Julie Van Rosendaal’s and Sue Duncan’s wonderful cookbook, Spilling the Beans. Their book is available on Amazon here.

Memories.

This coronavirus crisis has given me a lot of time to explore my food (and other) memories. I imagine you have done a lot of that, too.

On a lazy afternoon recently, I asked myself where I would most like to revisit (and dine) if I had unlimited options. I settled upon a world trip that would take me back to Cairo (Egypt), Berenty Lemur Preserve ( Madagascar),  Srinagar (Kashmir, India), Yangon (Myanmar), the Galapagos Islands (Ecuador)  and Istanbul (Turkey). Whew! That would be some wonderful itinerary! And, just think of the food.

Considering that itinerary, one of my fondest food memories is the restaurant in a magical hotel in the heart of Istanbul, the Pera Palas. Built in the 1892, the hotel served as the eastern terminus for travelers on the Orient Express. Luminaries like Ataturk, Agatha Christie and Ernest Hemingway slept there. I wrote about the hotel in 2015 when I posted a baklava recipe. You can find the post here if you would like to read more about the hotel. (The baklava recipe is pretty spectacular, too.) Clearly, I was pining for the Russian salad even then. Now, five years later, I’ve tweaked  a recipe that is pretty spot on for the Pera Palas’ dish-of-my-dreams.

This salad is a traditional New Year’s dish for Russians. It’s origins can be traced back to a Belgian chef, Lucien Olivier, who operated a popular restaurant in Moscow in the 19th Century. That restaurant, The Hermitage, became the place to dine and enjoy the house’s signature salad, aptly named the Olivier salad.  Olivier struggled to keep the salad recipe secret. His salad featured black caviar, capers, game hens and potatoes as key ingredients and was dressed in a creamy “Olivier dressing.” Recreating the recipe for the dressing became an obsession for restaurant patrons. Reportedly, Olivier’s recipe was stolen by his sous chef who was able to analyze Olivier’s mise en place one day when the chef stepped away and left his personal kitchen (and recipe) vulnerable. Olivier’s supporters, however, always claimed that something was missing in the stolen version. Some said it was Kabul sauce in the dressing. Kabul sauce. Hmmm.

Over the years, the recipe has been recreated in restaurants and households across the world. The Turkish version is called Rus salatsi. That is what we enjoyed at the cavernous Pera Palas dinning room those many years ago.

Here’s the recipe adjusted to fit my memories. I have to confess, though, that Instacart let me down. They couldn’t find that Kabul sauce. Damn.

Russian Salad

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Ingredients

• 1 pound potatoes
• 2 large carrots
• 3 large eggs (hard-boiled with the potatoes and peas)
• 1/2 C. blanched green peas (fresh or frozen, stay away from canned)
• 1 large red beet
• 2 t. salt
• 1 medium red onion (diced)
• 1/4 to 1/2 C. chopped kosher dill pickles
• Fresh Dill (chopped and to your taste)
• 1/2 C. mayonnaise
• Paprika or cayenne pepper (for garnish)
• Extra chopped fresh dill (for garnish)

Instructions

1. In a large pot of boiling water, boil potatoes, carrots and eggs together with 1 teaspoon of salt. The potatoes and carrots don't have to be peeled at this stage. This will take about 15 minutes--a bit more for the potatoes. (Be careful not to over boil the potatoes. You want the potato cubes in your salad to hold their shape.) Set aside to cool so that you can handle the vegetables and eggs to peel. (I speeded up the cooling by putting my boiled vegetables in a bowl of iced water.)
2. Cook (or defrost) the peas in the same water that you used for the carrots, eggs and potatoes. Remove from hot water, drain and set aside. Be careful not to overcook the peas. You want them to be firm and beautiful in the salad presentation.
3. Wrap a large red beet in foil and bake in the oven at 350 degrees until the beet is easy to slice. This will take about 45 minutes. Use a paring knife to stick into the beet to be sure it is baked through.
4. Peel the cooled hard boiled eggs. Peel the potatoes and the carrots. Cut everything into small cubes. Set aside.
5. Peel the cooled red beet. Slice into thin slices. Set aside.
6. Using a large mixing bowl, mix potatoes, carrots, eggs, peas, onion, chopped dill pickles, chopped and fresh dill together. Add the mayonnaise and mix well. Season with salt to your taste.
7. Arrange the salad decoratively on serving plates or serve in a large bowl. I used the beets as the foundation for the salad by arranging the beets in a pattern on the plate and tucking them tightly around the base of the salad. If I were to serve this salad in a large bowl, I would boil an extra egg and use egg slices and beet slices to decorate the bowl of salad. Alternatively, you can mix the beets into your salad but you will have a less attractive pink-colored salad.
8. I sprinkled a bit of paprika on the finished dish, but I think a sprinkle of cayenne pepper would be great too. I scattered more chopped fresh dill on top of the salad and I decorated the final dish with a sprig of dill.

Nutrition

Calories

1240 cal

Fat

84 g

Carbs

109 g

Protein

17 g

Click Here For Full Nutrition, Exchanges, and My Plate Info

7.8.1.2

230

https://bluecayenne.com/russian-salad

I looked at a lot of different Russian salad recipes for inspiration. Most recently, I was inspired by this recipe: Ensalada Rusa.