A banana is Burt

Last week, my friend Debra threw a party and I baked this spelt-olive oil-rosemary cake from Good to the Grain for the occasion. Naturally, I worried about bringing a spelt-olive oil-rosemary cake to a party, but reports had been good and I trust Kim Boyce. Plus, this was a crowd -- kombucha-loving females of Marin County, California who met in a spin class -- that might actually embrace an alternative cake. Not that I would EVER stereotype.

The cake was easy to make because you don't have to deal with butter, i.e. no creaming or melting. Two bowls and into the oven it went in about 4 minutes. Cake was unfrosted and firm and traveled well. I brought some creme fraiche for garnish, though I now think whipped cream would have been better, or nothing. As you can see, the cake also contains dark chocolate chunks. I would have preferred it without, but am alone in this aversion.

Although no one at the party took seconds, everyone praised the cake -- which was exotic in flavor, moist, austere, not very sweet. Someone said, "You outdid yourself!" which made me glow. On the face of things, a hit. Certainly not a flop. But for me, at least, there was something quietly wrong.

When I got home I lay in bed and started analyzing what I didn't love about this elegant, arresting dessert. I realized I didn't like this cake as a person . I think I may have still been a little drunk. But it became clear to me, lying there in the dark, that I subconsciously assign genders and personalities to foods. All foods. Steak is an alpha male in his thirties, roast beef is an alpha male over fifty, and potatoes are their brutal, stupid henchmen. Roast pork loin is a pompous bald man, peas are eunuchs, bread is a monk, ice cream in a cone is a fun gay guy, but in a dish is a sensible middle aged woman. Pie is a grandmother, but the kind of grandmother who has too many grandchildren and can never pay specific attention to any one of them. Chocolate chip cookies are tomboys and ginger snaps are great aunts. Dark chocolate is Bea Arthur, milk chocolate is my mother, an uncooked hot dog is Ricky Gervais. Et cetera.

I'm telling you, it was weird! But I don't have to tell you. Here's my question: does everyone subconsciously do this? And if so, do your food personalities match mine at all?

Anyway, I hadn't met this spelt-olive oil-rosemary cake before nor anything like her, so it took me a while to figure her out. And the cake is a her, though that was somewhat unclear at first because she's handsome, angular, and wears drag. I'm fine with all that, but what I didn't like was her hauteur. When I tried to engage with her, she remained cool and contemptuous, perhaps enjoying my bourgeois confusion? I decided I don't want to have dinner with her again, but if you think you might, the recipe is here.

A few good things on a dreary January weekend

1. Made marshmallows with agave nectar, just to see how it works. It works and they were lovely, big and sticky. I don't understand how brown agave nectar yields a snow-white marshmallow,  but it does. I also don't understand agave nectar. I was under the impression it was healthier than corn syrup, but then I read this. 

2. Since we had a surplus of marshmallows, Isabel and I made Rice Krispie treats with homemade marshmallows. They tasted just like Rice Krispie treats made with store-bought marshmallows, which is to say, delicious.

3. I had dismissed Matt Damon as uncrushworthy following Mr. Ripley and The Departed, but it turns out his lack of appeal in both those movies was just ACTING. I have reassessed after watching the first two Bourne movies this weekend with Owen and might need a picture of Matt to tape inside my locker. Jokes aside, what excellent movies! I like Franka Potente too, especially when she's got the red hair. Highly recommend.  

4. Though it's no Soviet Kitsch, Regina Spektor's new album, Far, is fantastic. This is probably the only thought about music I will have in 2010 and possibly 2011. 

5. Finally, my friend Mary P. came over last night and we baked a dobos torte, which is a multilayered Hungarian cake of extreme fussiness and decadence that her mother used to make and curse over.

The luscious filling calls for 6 eggs, a quarter pound of chocolate, and a cup of butter, and the whole thing is topped with hard caramel. It was a culinary feat and not at all unpleasant to eat, though ours was a bit sloppy looking. Mary also helped take care of our superabundance of Meyer lemons by preserving them with salt, Moroccan-style.  

So pretty. It was an unusually fun and productive Sunday night. The bad news is, I drank 3% of my 2010 alcohol allotment.

She's no mall rat

I need to correct an error from a previous post. Isabel wanted to go to the mall strictly to buy Secret Santa presents; she and her friend had no other agenda. I was wrong to poke fun and will be more sensitive in the future.

We had a second "family" birthday party for her the other night, this one with my father and sister. Divorce may be hell on the kids, but it's a bonanza for the grandkids. Isabel didn't get to choose the whole menu, just the dessert.

We started with two easy appetizers out of Moro.

The paprika roasted almonds are billed as a "delicious accompaniment to a glass of chilled fino sherry." I'm sure they are.  I went to the Spanish Table today and looked at all the sherries and was impressed and fascinated by both the variety and the prices, but while I'm eager to learn more about sherry, I need to do more research before investing. 

Even without a glass of chilled fino, it's hard to pass up a roasted nut.

 

I also assembled some Manchego with membrillo (quince paste), one of the genius food pairings of all time.

I have enthused about Manchego and membrillo before and while it's not exactly a recipe, Moro finally taught me how to serve it properly -- in triangles cut to 1/8 the circumference of the cheese. Almost worth the price of the book. It would be interesting and thrifty to learn to make membrillo should our quince tree ever fruit.

 

For the main course: Moro's pork loin braised in milk, which is similar to the incredible Marcella Hazan version. If you are unfamiliar with Hazan's dish, you should to try it immediately -- recipe is reprinted here.  I prefer Macella's to the Moro version as she permits the use of pork butt while Moro is very specific about pork loin, a cut that, as always, I found pallid and dry. Justine says she's coming around on pork loin, that when she eats pork butt she feels sick afterwards. I wonder if this is because it's fattier or because it's so much better that she eats more.

Dessert was a fat-free angel food cake that used up a jar of egg whites.

Isabel did not approve of this frumpy, unadorned cake and requested I make some rocky road ice cream to go with. Which I did (David Lebovitz recipe, awesome), because she's a lovely daughter and a girl only has three thirteenth birthday parties. 

Taste test: cake lollipops

I dropped by to visit my sister yesterday morning and she got a wild look in her eye and said, "You have to try one of these," and gestured to a box full of what I guess you would call cake lollipops. They were a gift from friends in honor of the birth of Ben. It was 9 a.m. and too early for cake or lollipops, but Justine is rarely wrong about food. 

The cake lollipop -- hand-made at the Sophie Buns Bakery in Pleasanton, Calif. -- is fantastic in concept and execution. The whole exquisite thing is encased in a firm, waxy icing, and when you break through you encounter a bite of frosting and supremely moist -- pudding-moist -- cake. It's like a petit four on a stick. Why does no one seem to make petit fours anymore? They fill a niche, these dainty, lovely cake-like items. Like a cookie, they're a modest eating commitment., but unlike a flat, arid cookie, they're complicated and interesting. There's icing and decoration and underneath are surprises, layers, jams, and buttercreams, all wrapped up in one tiny, cunning package.

They look like they must be incredibly fussy and hard to make, which is probably why no one makes them anymore. I am answering my own question. Some petit four pictures:

 

Girly. 

Speaking of girly, Isabel and her best friend went to see New Moon yesterday and they didn't invite me, they just asked me to drive. This made me wistful. I saw Twilight with them last year, and was under the impression we'd had a grand time. I think Robert Pattinson is cute, but he's a poor girl's Ed Westwick. That last sentence? I tried it out on Isabel and her friend in the car and was met with the heaviest of sighs. I can't decide if I come off more like Courteney Cox on Cougar Town or the dorky "cool dad" on Modern Family. In either case, it is clear why Isabel didn't invite me to the movie.

All about chickens and egg whites

We got chicks. Six Buff Orpingtons, the only chicks available in the greater Bay Area. I know because I called everywhere and chicks are apparently very trendy these days, probly for the "free eggs." As with vegetable gardens, I think it's going to turn out to be more expensive to raise hens just based on yesterday's starter costs: $55 for feed, dishes, sawdust, chicks, lightbulb and clasp lamp to keep them warm and alive through the night. 

They're very fun to watch scamper around, pecking and scratching and cheeping. Isabel and Owen are ecstatic. Mark: not ecstatic, but putting on a game face, which I appreciate.

Despite distractions, I cooked dinner, made a lovely "Maltaise sauce" flavored with the juice and zest of a blood orange. Recipe out of Jennifer McLagan's Fat. Served it with asparagus and salmon, but sadly no one in my ascetic family is keen on buttery sauces except me. 

Isabel also baked this unintentionally marbled mocha angel food cake that was, contrary to my expectations, delicious.

We used egg whites that had been stored in a jar -- an uncovered jar -- in the refrigerator for two months. I hesitated to type that because, yuck. But why write if you don't write the truth? You don't really have to throw out egg whites until they grow a layer of mold.

Eating Down the Fridge: I got creative

Two days into the (so far) unchallenging Challenge, we've been mostly eating as we normally would. Last night I heated some frozen chili from the Kenny Shopsin era and poured it on macaroni. Sophisticated!

For dessert, Isabel and I invented a cake.

A few weeks ago, a friend wrote on Facebook about how she grinds the freeze-dried strawberries from Trader Joe's and folds them into angel food cake batter. I tried her formula and it was tasty, though the flavor wasn't quite emphatic enough for me. Still, the concept had possibilities. Last night Isabel and I were making angel food cake and I remembered the crystallized rose petals someone gave me, and which I have never known how to use.

Now I did. We ground them up in the food processor. . .

and then folded the powder into the batter.

The results were amazing. Not delicious, but amazing. The cake was soft and collapsed when I took it out of the pan so it was more of a fluffy pink mound than a cake.

Also, it was a little like eating a heavy perfume, even for someone as fond of rose flavoring as I.

But all these problems can be fixed! What matters is that I successfully imported rose flavor and color into a cake. Now, I just have to tinker.

The question is, does anyone in the world but me even want a rose angel food cake?

Do I even want a rose angel food cake?