Blackberry Mochi Cake and Sticky Lemon Cake

Our current Cook the Books Club selection, Baking Cakes in Kigali, by Gaile Parkin, was a wonderful glimpse of life in a distant land and culture, modern-day Rwanda, albeit in a place (University housing) heavily influenced by Western thinking, customs, food, etc., with a resultant struggle by some of the local people to hang on to African traditions. 

In spite of all the horrific experiences endured by many of the characters in Parkin's book, an upbeat and hopeful mood was maintained.  There was humor and flavorful individuals aplenty, encountered by the heroine, Angel Tungaraza, through her home business of catering special occasion cakes.

I thought all the negative references to "white cake" as opposed to the brightly colored frostings on Angel's cakes was particularly funny.  Cake itself is not "African", and the bits of recipe we were given certainly had no claim to outstanding taste.  Similar to The Cake Boss, TV series.  It's all in the design and decoration, rather than any wonderful or distinctive flavor.  But that is quite aside from the chef's artistic outlet and entrepreneurial creativity.

 In case you don't know what's going on here, we read a book selection bimonthly, and then cook something inspired by the work.  For my submission, I was tempted to bake three white cakes, with differing flavors.  About this time last year I made Black Cake, a West Indian specialty, so why not?  One of my very favorites is coconut cake, made with coconut cream and topped with shredded coconut on a fluffy white frosting.  Then the Sticky Lemon Cake, which I'd been wanting to make since reading a Nancy Atherton book which included that recipe, Aunt Dimity and the Deep Blue Sea.  Perhaps to be followed by a Butter Mochi Cake.   However, what I ended up with was the Sticky Lemon Cake and a Blackberry Mochi Cake.

Stuffed Cabbage Rolls

November’s Daring Cooks’ Challenge had us on a roll! Olga from http://www.effortnesslessly.blogspot.com/ challenged us to make stuffed cabbage rolls using her Ukrainian heritage to inspire us. Filled with meat, fish or vegetables, flexibility and creativity were the name of the game to get us rolling!

I haven't made these very often (can count the number of times on one hand) and really don't remember having them at home, growing up.  However, much of my childhood being in a repressed state of hardly any memory, that's not really a clue.  Stuffed Cabbage Rolls are quite delicious though, and should make a more regular appearance on our table.

 Since I have collards growing in my garden, a first attempt with the challenge was made with a few leaves from those fairly puny, smallish plants.  They're not getting enough sun right now.  Using a filling mixture of ground beef and bulger wheat, instead of rice.  Mainly just because I had a smidgen left to be used up.  I especially liked the very simple sauce I made, from Claudia Roden's, The Book of Jewish Food, which was easily made by blending up a can of tomatoes with sugar, lemon, salt and pepper.

Since it was just the two of us, I split a red bell pepper half for the extra stuffing.   They baked for 2 hours, and I served them over egg noodles, with a small salad.

It's good to have another recipe for using collards, which when they're going strong produce lots of greens.  For my next trial I used regular cabbage, and a stuffing of half ground pork and half ground beef, with the partially cooked rice, recommended in our given recipe.

We were given very clear and easy to follow directions for each step, which I will include here:

Castilian Bread Soup for Daring Cooks

Our November Daring Cooks’ hostess was Begoña, who writes the beautiful blog, Las recetas de Marichu y las mías. Begoña is from Spain and didn’t want to go with the more common challenges of paella or gazpacho, she wanted to share with us another very popular recipe from Spain that we don’t see as often called Sopa Castellana which is a delicious bread soup!

I am so bad.  Bad, bad, bad.  Took every shortcut in the book on this one, still managing to scrape in only at the last minute.  There are just too many projects going on in my life right now.  On top of which, dealing with a plumbing leak - so no water to the kitchen.  But, still yet, this soup was delicious.  Probably would be even more so if the stock was made from scratch, as in the given recipe.  I used a fine organic brand of mushroom broth instead, and coppa in place of the Serrano ham.  This has besides the bread, lots of garlic.  Yum.

Castilian Bread Soup

Servings: 6
Ingredients:
 1 kg (2½ lbs) of veal meat
 1 chicken drumstick
 1 small piece (5 cm cube) (2 inch cube) of Serrano ham
 1 veal bone
 3 leeks
 2 carrots
 1 bunch celery
 1 onion
 handful of chickpeas (1/2 cup)
 2 whole cloves
 1 sweet dry red pepper
 Salt to taste
 10 garlic cloves150 gm (5½ oz) Serrano ham
 2 sweet dry red peppers
 12 slices of day-old bread
 2 tablespoons (30 ml) (15 gms) (½ oz) sweet paprika
 Water
 50 ml (3 tablespoons plus 1 teaspoon) of extra virgin olive oil
 2.5 liters (10 cups) vegetable, meat or chicken stock
 6 large eggs

Directions for the stock:

Soak the chickpeas in water, the night before making the soup. Fill a big stew pot with water, and add the meat, chicken, ham and bone. Gentle simmer for one hour and a half skimming occasionally.

Clean and cut all the vegetables and the dry pepper, except the onion. Stud the onion with the two cloves add to the pot with the drained chickpeas and the cut vegetables and dry pepper. Add salt to taste.  Simmer for another one and a half to two hours, if needed add water.

After this time, take out the veal, chicken and ham, which can be reserved for another recipe. Strain the stock. Discard the bones.
If you wish you can use the cooked vegetables to make a great soup by adding cream with some potatoes and more water.

Peel the garlic cloves and slice them. Cut the Serrano ham into small cubes. Clean the dry peppers by removing the ribs and membranes and cutting into small pieces. Cut the bread into fine slices.
In a stew pot warm the olive oil. Add the garlic and fry gently. Make sure that garlic doesn't burn; it should be brown but not burned. Add the ham cubes and the cut and cleaned peppers and stir all the ingredients.

 Add half the bread and continue stirring. Take pan off the heat and add the paprika. Stir till everything is well integrated and return the pan onto a low heat. Add the stock and let it cook about 20 minutes, it must not boil, or otherwise bread will fall apart.

After this, add the rest of bread, taste for salt (remember that the stock is already salted) and wait until the bread softens. Then add the eggs, one for each person, poach the eggs about 3-4 minutes.
For another option, add only the white of eggs to the soup, stir till they make fine threads. Place the yolks into individual serving bowls and ladle the hot soup into the bowls.

A very nice dinner with just salad and a glass of Spanish rose.  Viva!
 

Cheesy Bacon Scones, Oh Yes!

Truthfully, I don't know what put it into my mind to combine cheese and crispy, crumbled bacon in scones.  The idea just showed up, and rather than fight it, we followed through.  Very glad for the impulse, whatever its origin, a stunning combination in a breakfast scone.  Also, they are very quick and easy to put together.

Thomasplitzchen Buns or Fruit Spirals

As I began to read our current Cook the Books Club selection, The Baker's Daughter, by Sarah McCoy, I became more and more drawn into the story, both for its own sake, and then especially after remembering that my own mother was a German baker's daughter.  Her father's father came from Germany in the latter part of the 19th century, migrating to Minnesota, and from there his son, her father, Charles Ulmen, moved his young family to California around 1910, where he opened a bakery, which morphed into a cookie factory.

I know they made a variety of cookies, at least one of them chocolate, based on an old family story of my uncle's raid on the bakery supplies.  The little guy ate enough chocolate to make himself sick, and never wanted any more for the remainder of his life.

Previously my genealogical research had been confined to my father's side, so this was an encouragement to dig into my mother's history.  Why did her grandfather leave his home in Europe, and exactly when.  Lots more remains to be discovered.

This book was a fascinating tale of life in Germany during the World War II years, from one young girl's perspective, and all through it we are tempted by the descriptions of delicious breads and pastries in their family bakery.  I was inspired to attempt them all.  Which might just happen, eventually.

Potato Gnocchi or Little Italian Potato Dumplings

Bob said,  "Knee aki?? what's that?" I told him, "It's what you're eating.  Think of them as little Italian potato dumplings."  "Okay."  He then made an off-the-wall comparison with Japanese mochi.  I was a bit miffed, or in Hawaii we'd say slightly hu hu over that, since mochi is not the consistency we're looking for in gnocchi.  And, they were absolutely not.  They were light and delicious.  Fluffy even, so there.  He now tells me that it was not a comment on the consistency.  Hummm.  Perhaps the steak was clouding his mind for anything other than MEAT.  Possibly.

Todd, who is The Daring Kitchen’s AWESOME webmaster and an amazing cook, is our September Daring Cooks’ host! Todd challenged us to make light and fluffy potato Gnocchi and encouraged us to flavor the lil pillows of goodness and go wild with a sauce to top them with!

Guava Dutch Baby or Clafouti Reprise

This is guava time in Hawaii, which I love as it gives me opportunities to update old recipes and try new ways of cooking and using guavas.  Also, I need to remember to freeze them when not immediately making something.  Then we can have Guava Cobbler or Dutch Baby or whatever at other times of the year.  Yes, duh.

The recipe I posted previously, for Dutch Baby, was an adaptation using sourdough starter.  This is the regular recipe, which I think is better (it puffs up folks), so a reprise of what I posted last year.  If you want your Clafouti to puff up nicely, the fruit needs to be on the bottom.  Which is also just easier.  And, if by this time you are saying to yourself, "...mumble, mumble, mumble..Dutch Baby...mumble, Clafouti??? What the heck is this??"  The answer is a big, fat pancake that puffs up from the three eggs in there.  Simpler than a pancake, as no baking powder needed or individual frying. 

Chicken Biryani, a Layered Rice and Curry Dish

Grace, one of our talented non-blogging Daring Kitchen members, was our Daring Cooks’ August hostess who shared with us some of her family’s tried and true Bengali Biryani recipes – all of them delicious and all of them prepared fresh from our own kitchens!

So, I did my version of Chicken Biryani.  Not all that different from the supplied recipe.  Just that it called for "curry powder" and "biryani powder."  Curry powder can be a lot of things, depending upon what goes into it.  Biryani powder is not available here, so I went online and checked out the list of spices that would be needed to make up a batch.  Among them were: shah jeera, Marathi mogga and rathi puvvu, aside from black and green cardamom.  Well I do have the green, but it is already called for in the main recipe for the Chicken Biryani.  I made an executive decision.  Used my curry powder mixture, kept in the freezer for such occasions, and some chili powder, along with the remaining ingredients on the list, and forgot about the biryani powder. 

Very good as far as that goes, though would probably amp up the spices next time, and for my left-overs.  I do love Indian cuisine. 

Cold Potato Soup or Vichysoisse

Several years ago I splurged on a hefty cookbook/treatise entitled The Art of Eating, by M.F.K. Fisher, a 50th Anniversary Edition, which includes 5 of her published books: Serve it Forth, Consider the Oyster, How to Cook a Wolf, The Gastronomical Me, and An Alphabet for Gourmets.  Boy howdy! (as they say in some parts) the perfect gift for your MFK Fisher fan.  I knew she was an icon in the foodie world, had read reviews praising her work, and don't remember if that was all it took, or if there was something more urging me to buy the weighty tome.   So glad I did.  One nice thing about this wonderful volume, a feast of accumulated experience, wit and challenging opinions on food and eating, is its very size.  You can dip and taste at random, sampling here and there, for quite a long time, and then go back for more.

Which is what I've done.  And until our current Cook the Books Club selection, How to Cook a Wolf, I had not read straight through any of the individual titles.  This particular book was written during the World War II years, and is a fascinating glimpse of the life and cooking challenges then, with shortages, rationing and hard economic conditions;  keeping an upbeat attitude with a wolf at the door.