Comfort Foods

This has been a really, really tough week in our small town. Like everyone else, we started our week with the Mumbai attack and a barrage of bad economic news. Then on Wednesday we learned that 600 of our local mine employees were being laid off. 600 might not be disastrous in some communities, but in a town of 10,000, we're really hurting. Being the number cruncher at the store I immediately said 5% newly unemployed. If the spouses weren't working, that's 10%. Those were just the mine employees and not including the contractors that supported the mine.

I had heard that the woman who used to do most of the mine catering was starting a business in town for the full community. Now I understand why. She must have had her contract terminated already.

But here we sit, heading into the end of year holiday season. We watch commercials full of cheer and joy, urging us to go out and spend money. Its money we need to spend if the economic is to recover, but financially and emotionally its so hard.

We saw an immediate impact to the layoffs. The day after, our sales dropped 40%. A community that felt cautious, but confident in our insulation, now felt panic and despair. Where do small businesses fit into a small community when the big blue Wal-Mart sits just atop the hill with their low prices?

This is also the time when we all reflect on the previous year. We think about loved ones passed. At church this morning we shed tears over the friends who passed over the summer.

And even looking at our pooches our emotions are jerked. Just yesterday Tyler was walking our dogs north of town and our little Lucia was caught in steel claw animal trap. Miraculously she was fine (Tyler believes her to be our reincarnate cat which would explain her nine lives).

This is the season of comfort food. I want my casseroles which I mock during the rest of the year. I want my plain old box cake, which I lift my nose from at the potluck table. I want a good old bowl of oatmeal with a spoonful of brown sugar (okay, maybe palm sugar). I need these foods right now to push past the bleak midwinter. I know these strifes will pass.

I find hope in my New Mexico sunrises each morning. I get that joyful jump start when I see comments from Mark and Larry (and the rest of you too). I feel the connection to my multitude of online friends who are always there for me. A great example - I'm teaching a holiday cookie class for kids today. I don't do cookies very often so I was plum out of ideas. I posted a message at eG right before bed and hoped for some recipes. Sure enough, although the North Americans were sleeping, friends from across the globe posted recipes for me to try. When I awoke and read the responses, I felt that connection that we've formed even though we've never met.

When I eat these holiday cookies today, I get to share that connection with the kids. I get to talk about Chufi, Hummmingbirdkiss, Prasantrin, Verjuice, Jummangy, Tri2Cook and all the other goofy screen names that are part of my pseudonym family. They are the greatest comfort food of all.

Menu del Dia: Cerdo con Tomate a los Vinos de la Tierra

For those of you who only speak Greek, that says pork, tomato and wine. Tyler made this meal for a friend who turned 85 (the same meal as the entrement a few days ago).

Once again proving that pork is not photogenic. But it sure is tasty.
Tyler made this pork with onion, pepper, tomatoes, white wine, and sherry. He also made a side of Pimientos con Pasas y Almendras (red bells with raisins and almonds). A relatively quick meal, and since we had them we used spare ribs as the meat. Not my favorite, but Tyler liked it, and he re-used the broth for the next night's meal as well.

Menu del Dia: Caldo Gallego

Yet another recipe from the Menu del Dia cookbook. This time Tyler prepared the Caldo Gallego (p. 62):

A fairly routine soup featuring pork, beans and greens.

This gave us the opportunity to use more of our recently acquired pork from the 4-H kids. Its been a bit chilly at nights, so its been nice to have soups and stews.

Again I'll say that this cookbook is about daily fare. Nothing fancy. In fact, I know some of you are afraid/intimidated/disgusted by what we normally eat, and increasingly I'm thinking that this is a good book for folks like you who might want to have something new, but aren't up for goofy ingredients or long, difficult recipes. Tyler and I have made soups similar to this many times before, but this was nice with the addition of the Spanish chorizo. Of course, served with a slice of my bread.

Recipe: Hunka Burning Poundcake

Elvis loved pound cake...this pound cake. I heard about it on NPR on Thanksgiving day, so I had to make it. I don't know that I've ever made pound cake. It weighed much more than a pound. I dug around and found the recipe all over the net, so I'll add to the dispersion of Elvis nostalgia:

From: Recipes From Thibeault's table

3 C. Sugar
8 oz. Butter, softened
7 Eggs, room temp
3 C. Cake flour, double sifted
1 C. Cream
2 t. Vanilla

DO NOT PREHEAT OVEN
Butter and flour a 10 inch tube pan. Cream the butter and sugar in a mixer. Add the eggs one at a time. Add half of the flour, then the cream, and then the other half of the flour. Beat 5 minutes. Near the end of the 5 minutes, add the vanilla. and pour into the pan. Set in cold oven and turn to 350F. Bake 60-90 minutes or until toothpick comes out clean. You'll see why Elvis was fat, then dead. Its a great cake!

Playing around: Pomegranate Kumquat Entrement

Really, this started out as me just wanting to try a few techniques for practice. So I whipped up a bit of blueberry sponge and the darn thing grew and grew and...

Next thing you know...an entrement!
The idea was to use a few more of the pomegranates that were gifted to me, and to re-test my pomegranate bavarois recipe. But then I remembered the entrement mold that I had never used. Then I wondered if I could insert fillo dough and keep it crisp. And on and on it went.

Then as luck would have it, a reason! A dear friend had her 85th birthday (it was actually a month ago, but I didn't realize that, so this was her 2nd birthday this year). We had a dessert. We had a birthday. Clearly it was meant to be!

And on I went. The sponge was done...no blueberry bleeds SUCCESS! The whole wheat fillo was baked after being brushed with ginger kumquat syrup and it maintained its shape SUCCESS! The pistachios were perfectly chopped and toasted SUCCESS! It was beginning to feel like a slot machine...CHERRY! CHERRY!...and you just hope for that third cherry.

I let the dust settle and worked on some decorations. First I played with powdered chocolate colors that were sitting unused...next thing you know I had a pretty fun looking pomegranate half. While I have that syrup, let's candy the kumquat...the lil buggers collapsed on me, but still turned out okay. Why not boil that sugar down...I did, and did a little spun sugar which was ugly, so I started pulling on the sugar and got great color and striping. Then in the back of my head I remembered all of the people who said my recent pistachio pomegranate cake was "too busy."

Okay, let's take a deep breath here. I don't really need to use everything. Let's make more and only use some of it. I made some chocolate side rails to wrap the whole thing...that didn't work quite as well as I would like. Fine, let's spray paint the whole thing with kumquat colored cocoa butter. I love using my house painter in the kitchen. Then lunch hit, then customers, then daily duties. And finally the birthday dinner was an hour away. I gave up on the side rails and settled for some piped ganache. Not fancy, but effective.

But how did it taste? Really nice. A good melding of flavors. An outstanding mix of textures. It was good. The birthday girl was very, very happy, and promised another birthday next month if I needed a reason to make another dessert.

I'm dubbing this the best thing I've ever made. I don't really keep track of these things, but this really did turn out well, and couldn't have been for a better reason.

Thanks POM Wonderful!

Look what I received in the mail as a prize for my pomegranate pistachio cake from a few weeks ago:

And I shared the booty with our staff, Natasha!

Fun cupcake technique: Marshmallow

I did a office holiday party last week and decided to send them some cupcakes. But I'm not the cupcake type of guy, am I?

So out came the pastry forms and the marshmallow recipe. I love making marshmallow, but I would never do it for myself. This was a recipe that I pulled off of StarChefs.com which I didn't whip to its finish. I wanted a soft marshmallow puff that I could pour and spread, which I did.

I sprinkled some cacao nibs on the bottom of the form for glitz and texture. The cupcakes were a basic sponge that I hollowed and filled with ganache.

Nothing too fancy, but the office staff loved them.