Food, Photography and Bons Mots
When a wonderful baking resource like King Arthur Flour bestows the title of “Recipe of the Year” on one of its creations, I sit up and take notice. That is particularly true for me because I was so in love with their lemon…
I’ve always enjoyed soup. It is my idea of comfort food. There is something wonderful about the chemistry of making soup. You put all those healthy ingredients together and (sometimes) voila! For the last few weeks my love affair with soup has taken on a…
First, pomegranate molasses is readily available. You can do this.
Second, this butter cake is absolutely delicious. I don’t have the words…
I discovered pomegranate molasses some time ago. I shop at a local Jons International Marketplace and they have not one but several brands of pomegranate molasses available. If you don’t live near a Jons, you also can buy the molasses online from Amazon or at just about any Middle Eastern market. Or, you can make your own simply by boiling raw pomegranate juice into a syrupy reduction.
Pomegranate molasses is an ingredient commonly used in Middle Eastern recipes in marinades, salads, sauces and mezzes. The molasses has an intense tangy/tart/sorta sweet flavor. Here in the West, it is sometimes drizzled on oatmeal, stirred into coffee or tea or used to glaze foods. Its uses are almost endless. Certainly, you could use pomegranate molasses interchangeably with balsamic vinegar.
Curious about the origins of the use of the pomegranate in the diet?
Pomegranates are believed to be native to Iran and the Himalayas in Northern India where they have been grown for more than 4000 years. Desert caravans (and, later, sea voyages) introduced pomegranate cultivation to other areas– the Mediterranean, Asia, Africa and beyond. Those areas quickly embraced the pomegranate not only into their diets but also into their arts and culture.
In Egypt, for example, the fruit was buried with the dead to ensure a smooth passage to the afterlife and pomegranates were depicted in the artwork on the walls of Egyptian tombs.The Egyptians also enjoyed pomegranate wine.
In Islam it is believed that the gardens of paradise include pomegranate trees and Muhammad urged his followers to consume the fruit. Some believe that each pomegranate has one aril descended directly from heaven.
The pomegranate also is praised in The Old Testament. Here is Boticelli’s The Virgin and Child with a Pomegranate. In Christianity, the pomegranate has long been used as a traditional symbol of the Passion.
While Europe was slow to warm to the pomegranate, the fruit eventually caught on. Shakespeare used the pomegranate as a symbol of true love in Romeo and Juliet. You can’t get a better promo that that!
“Wilt thou be gone? it is not yet near day:
It was the nightingale, and not the lark,
That pierc’d the fearful hollow of thine ear;
Nightly she sings on yond pomegranate tree:
Believe me, love, it was the nightingale.”
Nearer to home, pomegranate trees were brought to the Americas by Spanish conquistadores and the fruit was introduced to California by Spanish missionaries in the 1760s. There is a pomegranate-themed fresco at Mission San Miguel Arcangel. Today, over ninety percent of the pomegranates grown in the United States production are grown in California’s San Joaquin Valley.
This recipe is adapted from one by John Willoughby that appeared in the food section of the New York Times. Willoughby was executive editor of Gourmet Magazine, a senior editor for Cook’s Illustrated and writes for magazines like Saveur and Metropolitan Home. Here is the link to the original recipe from which this recipe was adapted: https://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/1013092-pomegranate-molasses-butter-cake .
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Happy spring! Who doesn’t love warm-from-the-oven rolls on a pretty spring day? Make them hot cross buns warm from the oven and slathered with cardamom-scented frosting and you are sure to swoon. Some food historians tell us that the first hot cross buns were…
I was recently at a restaurant in downtown Santa Ana where I foolishly let myself be talked into ordering the house’s kale salad. I’m usually a hard sell when it comes to kale, but I liked the young waitress’ enthusiasm as she assured me that…
You know how it is when you just plain crave baked beans.
This rich baked beans recipe will satisfy your cravings and throws in healthy sweet potatoes to boot.
And, then there is the complex smoky flavor of chipotle peppers. What’s not to love here?
Chipotles, by the way, are simply smoked and dried jalapeños. That was news to me. Apparently, this preparation technique dates back to the Aztecs who learned that smoking the peppers (like over a fire, people!) overcame the tendency of the thick-skinned jalapeños to rot when using normal drying methods. The resulting smoked chipotle peppers were then used in complicated ceremonial meals. A 1571 journal, for example, described the preparation of a sauce that made liberal use of chipotle chiles. The sauce contained a mixture of chiles, tomatoes, nuts, pumpkin seeds, spices, chocolate and cornmeal. Yum! Sounds very much like a recipe for modern-day mole. (Etiquette at Aztec galas was pretty interesting, too. It was traditional before an Aztec meal was served to offer guests flowers which they were expected to rub on their heads, hands and necks after which each guest would drop a little food on the floor as an offering to the god Tlaltecuhtli.)
Fortunately for us all, chipotles continue to be a popular ingredient in a number of spicy foods and, for some gourmands, the pepper is considered a delicacy to be savored. The Austin Sun Newspaper, for example, printed an adoring piece about chipotles in which they described the pepper using much the same terminology that wine connoisseurs use to describe a fine wine: “The taste profile is smoky and sweet, exhibiting subtle tobacco and chocolate flavors with a Brazil nut finish, with deep, complex heat; the piquancy is rounded and slowly fading.” I don’t know about you, but I think that’s funny. Then again, I find the pretentious wine notes that appear on wine bottles pretty funny, too.
Today, chipotles are often sold packed in a tomato-vinegar-spice sauce called adobo, but you also can find them au naturel (see below).
This recipe is based on one of Martha Rose Shulman’s recipes from the New York Times. I’ve sweetened it up with extra honey and molasses, added a couple extra onions and switched out the red beans for Rancho Gordo’s Marcella beans–something I’ve been doing a lot lately in bean dishes. To say that I’m hooked on Marcellas is a vast understatement. Marcellas are the Tesla of white beans in my book.
Oh, by the way…if you are invited to my next party, I plan to have my guests rub their heads with flowers Aztec-style. Sounds like a great ice-breaker. We’ll also drop some food on the floor for Tlaltecuhtli Juliet, Blue Cayenne’s Chief Quality Officer.
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Here is a link to the original Martha Rose Shulman recipe from which this recipe was adapted: NYT: Baked Beans with Sweet Potatoes and Chipotles.
At dinnertime, my mother always placed a bottle of salad dressing on our kitchen table next to a bowl of pale iceberg lettuce pieces. Always Wish Bone. Always Italian. I’m an unrepentant foodie. I love food. Cooking is a delight for me. I love…
Today is Pi Day. (Today also is Einstein’s birthday, if you have forgotten.) So, of course, there was no question what type of recipe should be featured on Blue Cayenne. Pie. Make that a delicious peach pie. If you’ve forgotten your math, Pi…
I was out of vodka.
For years I’ve relied upon my neighbors to loan me a little of this and a little of that–a couple eggs or a cup of milk. But…it is an entirely different thing to call a neighbor and ask to borrow a cup of vodka–particularly at 10 a.m.
Me: May I borrow a cup of vodka? It’s for a pie crust.
Them: (Long pregnant pause) Sure. Err…Everything OK there with you and Juliet?
You won’t find anyone who appreciates a great pie crust more than I do and I’ve been hearing about vodka pie crust for a very long time. People have told me that the crust is especially flaky.
But why in the world would you put liquor into a pie crust? Here is what Layla Eplett wrote in Scientific American:
“I learned of this option through a recipe in Cook’s Illustrated, from their quest to make a Foolproof Pie Dough. The vodka rationale isn’t to intoxicate your pie–it has to do with gluten. Liquids are essential to pie crusts because they bind the dough together; however, they can present challenges. When liquids are added to flour, two wheat flour proteins–gliadin and glutenin–form gluten, which can toughen the dough. So how do you bind fat and flour together but avoid gluten formation? The trick appears to be using a hard liquor such as vodka–since 80 proof vodka is only 60% water, it combines the dough but doesn’t contribute to gluten formation. In their cookbook, The Science of Good Cooking, Cook’s Illustrated explains “…gluten won’t form in alcohol. The ethyl alcohol in vodka and other liquors does not attach itself in the same way as water. Because of this, it does not hydrate the proteins, and therefore does not aid in gluten formation.”
It doesn’t have to be vodka; other liquors also work–Alton Brown has made an apple pie with an apple brandy crust, as well as a pecan pie with a bourbon crust. By substituting 50% of a liquid in a recipe with hard liquor, this technique can be applied with your favorite recipes–something I recently tried using this amazing recipe for Meyer Lemon Meringue Pie from Chez Panisse.”
In the end, the pie crust was everything I wanted it to be and, by a stroke of luck, I found just enough vodka deep in the recesses of my cupboard to spare me the humiliation of asking my neighbor for a nip.
I paired the crust with an eggy chard, onion and feta filling and served slices of the pie with a garlicky romaine salad. Very. Very good.
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Here are the links to the original recipes from which this recipe was adapted: Cook’s Illustrated’s Foolproof Pie Dough Recipe and Martha Rose Schulman’s Chard Pie.
This recipe for Roasted Cauliflower Salad with Chickpeas, Tahini and Avocado has everything–good proteins, healthy cruciferous cauliflower, peppery watercress, and beautiful Cara Cara oranges. Did I mention there are avocados, too? And, oh! those Cara Cara oranges! I’ll admit that I’ve fallen head-over-heels…
