Music and Cats

Baby, it’s cold outside… and windy and wet. Time for a fire in the fireplace, and something comforting for dinner. When I’m in the mood for serious comfort food, some of my favorite meals are breakfast foods at dinnertime.

At the Weekend Cookbook Challenge, Ali and Sara ask food-bloggers to consider their cookbook collections:

Everyone has cookbooks that they have bought or received as gifts and never used. Well, we are here to help you change that! Each challenge we ask you to crack open a cookbook you’ve never used before (or maybe haven’t used in a long time) and try something new.

Update: The WCC#2 round-up features enough recipes to keep you comforted - and well fed - for the rest of the winter.

For this month’s theme, Winter Comfort Food, breakfast for dinner seemed to me the perfect choice. Rifling through my bookshelves for cookbooks that I haven’t used recently (if ever), I ran across Sara Perry’s Great Gingerbread. I bought this little book on sale three or four years ago, but it had become lost in the shadows of larger, less specialized cookbooks. I remembered that I had purchased the book in part because it contained a recipe for one of my very favorite comfort foods: gingerbread pancakes.

When I moved to Austin to go to grad school, I lived a couple of blocks from The Omelettry, a local breakfast institution. Located in an old filling station, and staffed by several of Austin’s aging hippies, the Omelettry served fluffy omelets and plate-sized pancakes from early morning to mid-afternoon to masses of other hippies, hippie wannabees and college students. While I enjoyed their omelets, I rarely ordered one; in order to do so, I’d have had to pass up their gingerbread pancakes.

With a strong gingery flavor, and a slightly mealy texture, the Omelettry’s gingerbread pancakes are my favorite pancakes. Of any sort, anywhere. I found these pancakes so perfect that I preferred them with no syrup or other topping at all, save for a very small amount of butter. Starting grad school was stressful; a short stack of the Omelettry’s gingerbread pancakes served as preparation for a busy day, or as a comforting pick-me-up after an all-nighter in the design studio. They were my comfort food of choice in Austin.

Sadly, the folks from the Omelettry have never been willing to share their recipe. (While writing this, I did a search for ‘Omelettry gingerbread pancakes’, which turned up a recipe for the Omelettry West’s gingerbread pancakes. The two restaurants shared a name; they did not share the same pancake recipe. However, the recipe online might have been a better place to start. Next time…) I figured that some day I’d try to recreate it. I began that process last night, with Sara Perry’s pancake recipe.

Gingerbread Pancakes with Bachelor’s Jam

Gingerbread Pancakes
20 4-inch pancakes

1/2 cup light molasses
1/4 cup vegetable oil
2 large eggs
2 cups milk
2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 cup whole wheat flour
2 Tbsp. sugar
1 Tbsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. salt
1 tsp. ground ginger
1 tsp. ground cinnamon

In a large bowl, beat the molasses and oil, with a whisk or electric mixer, until well blended. Beat in the eggs one at a time, then beat in the milk. Sift all remaining ingredients into the liquids, and beat just until combined.

Heat a griddle or non-stick skillet on medium to medium-high heat. When a few drops of water will dance on the hot surface, spray the griddle/skillet with cooking oil. Pour 1/4 cup measures of batter onto griddle. Cook the first side until edges look dry, and bubbles begin to form on top. Turn pancakes, and cook one or two minutes on the second side.

This recipe produces a very thick batter; I found that thinning it with an additional 2 Tbsp. of milk resulted in slightly thinner pancakes that cooked more evenly. Because of the molasses in the batter, the pancakes browned very quickly, and - alas! - burned easily. Despite some loss of pancakes to our rigorous quality control program, the recipe seemed to yield more pancakes than suggested in the recipe. With only two of us at home, you’d think I might’ve halved the recipe. If only I’d thought of that before I mixed the wet ingredients! Surprisingly, the pancakes reheated well this morning.

The flavor of these pancakes is good, with a nice warmth from the spices and molasses. However, it is a bit simple; I remember nuances of flavor in the Omelettry’s pancakes not found in these. The Omelettry West’s recipe included coffee and buttermilk; I’ll give those a try, and play with the spicing a little. The texture is nice for a standard pancake, but it’s just not right for gingerbread pancakes. I don’t think that using a higher percentage of whole wheat flour will do the trick; some coarser flour or meal - perhaps a little cornmeal? - is needed to provide the slight graininess I’m seeking.

Unlike my ur gingerbread pancakes, these were best with a little something on top. My husband, traditional Yankee that he is, chose maple syrup. I opted for something a little different. Besides recipes for all sorts of gingerbreads, Great Gingerbread contains recipes for several gingerbread accompaniments, one of which sports the unusual name bachelor’s jam. A warmed mixture of orange marmalade (1/2 cup), fresh orange juice (1 cup) and zest (1 Tbsp.), and orange liqueur (1 Tbsp.), bachelor’s jam has the consistency of a thin syrup rather than a jam. Prepared with blood orange juice and zest, and my homemade gingered seville orange marmalade, the “jam” made a pretty and delicious topping for the pancakes, heightening their sweet spiciness while adding lightly tart and bitter notes.

All in all, this was a successful experiment. I know the direction in which I want to go to recreate a favorite comfort food, and I had a tasty pancake dinner (in front of a fire, no less) from a cookbook I’d almost forgotten I owned.

Technorati tag: Weekend Cookbook Challenge

Most of the time, I try to eat locally. However, at this time of year, I have a craving for a food that does not grow here in the Pacific Northwest, but rather in my home state of Texas. In January, I want grapefruit.

I grew up eating pink grapefruit from the Rio Grande Valley. Despite the “ruby red” name, the grapefruit I remember had paler pink segments than today’s brilliantly red grapefruit. The fruits were smaller and more fragile than the huge, thick-skinned varieties I now find on grocers’ produce aisles. As a child, I did not like sour or bitter flavors, but my mother tricked me into developing a taste for grapefruit. She halved the fruits crosswise, cut the segments loose from their membranes with a small, sharp knife, then topped each juicy hemisphere with a sprinkling of sugar. I liked the grapefruit best when most of the sugar had melted into the juice, but a few crystals remained to provide a sweet crunch. As my tastes matured, I came to love grapefruit without added sugar.

I moved away from Texas for the first time in January of 1980. My first winter in Providence, RI brought many new experiences, some more surprising than others. I expected snow; I was stunned (more than once) by the ice beneath it. I expected a dearth of Mexican food and barbeque; I was distressed by the lack of good grapefruit. Of course, I could find those white Florida grapefruit at any grocer’s, but they were too bitter, with none of the bright fruitiness of Texas pink grapefruit.

When I lamented the lack of grapefruit to my parents, they ordered a box from a Rio Grande farm shipped directly to me. Oh, happy day, when that grapefruit arrived! I peeled the first one like an orange, intoxicated by the scent of grapefruit oil in the air, the sweet-tart lusciousness of the pulp. As soon as I’d licked the last of its juice off my fingers, I began peeling another.

I lived in New England for 4 1/2 years. Each of those years, my parents sent me a box of grapefruit in the dead of winter. When the box arrived, I’d feast on grapefruit (not the same as going on a grapefruit diet!), often eating two or three in one day. When I moved back to Texas to go to grad school, pink grapefruit again became a fact of winter.

By the time I left Texas again, almost 10 years ago, pink grapefruit from south Texas weren’t hard to come by. These days, they’re almost commonplace. At my local grocery store, piles of the blushing orbs keep company with California blood oranges and Florida tangelos. I buy them now as I do other fruit, choosing only enough for a couple of days.

When I read that Sam of Becks & Posh had declared January’s Sugar High Friday to be Sugar Low Friday, the intent being “to make a delicious, mouthwatering dessert whilst being a lot more frugal than usual with the fat and the sugar,” I thought of grapefruit. I’ll happily eat a whole pink grapefruit and call it dessert, but blog about it? I don’t think so. So, what to add to my grapefruit, if not a sprinkling of brown sugar and a quick trip under a broiler? The bottle of late harvest moscato languishing in the our refrigerator seemed a likely coconspirator, and an Epicurious search for “grapefruit + dessert wine” turned up, among the sorbets and compotes, a couple of recipes for grapefruit with sabayon/zabaglione. In the spirit of Sugar Low Friday, I chose the recipe that reduced the fat in the sabayon by using a whole egg rather than two yolks, and I substituted a smaller amount of honey for the recipe’s white sugar. The broiler would come in handy for this recipe, too.

Grapefruit Sabayon Gratin
serves 2-4, depending on their fondness for grapefruit

2 ruby red grapefruit, room temperature
1 large egg
1/4 cup sweet dessert wine (I used Eos ‘Tears of Dew’ muscato)
2 teaspoons honey

Prepare the grapefruit: What you want is grapefruit segments minus all peel and membranes. A recipe will tell you to peel the grapefruit with a sharp knife, removing the skin and all pith, and then cut the segments from their membranes with a sharp knife. I don’t like to lose any of the juice from the grapefruit, so I peel and section the grapefruit, and then de-membrane the segments with my fingers. I love the smell of citrus Layer the segments in two small gratin dishes.

Prepare the sabayon: Beat the egg and honey together in a large metal bowl, then add the wine. Set the bowl over a saucepan of barely simmering water; the bowl should not touch the water. With a handheld mixer (or a whisk, if you’d like to combine exercise with your low-sugar treat), beat at medium-high speed (constantly, if whisking) until the mixture thickens. The time this takes will vary, depending on your definition of barely simmering; my sabayon thickened in about 12 minutes. The sabayon will first foam up, expanding to almost triple its original volume, then reduce again and become smoother as it thickens. Remove the bowl from the heat. (If you are concerned about undercooked eggs, this is probably not the recipe for you. You may, however, use an instant-read thermometer while cooking to verify that the sabayon has reached at least 140 degrees.)

Assemble: Preheat broiler. Place gratin dishes under broiler to warm grapefruit sections, 2 to 3 minutes. Remove dishes from oven; spoon sabayon over segments. Return dishes to broiler just until sabayon is browned, 30 seconds to 1 minute. Serve immediately.

Yum. The combination of warm grapefruit, bursting with tangy juice, and smooth, (not too) sweet wine custard was lovely. Next time, however, I’ll use sugar rather than honey in the sabayon, as the flavor of the blackberry honey that I had on hand was stronger than I’d have liked with the wine. And, while the whole egg made an acceptable sabayon, next time I’ll use two egg yolks, as the additional richness would be an even better foil for the grapefruit.

Update: Go see the beautiful round-up for Sugar High Low Friday #15 at Becks & Posh. Thanks, Sam!

Technorati tags: SHF #15 + Low Sugar

When we bought our 1908 house, we discovered a full-length mirror attached to the back of the original bathroom door. The mirror was heavy, with a wide beveled edge; it appears to have been original to the house. The door on which it was mounted had been damaged, but, save for some paint spatters, the mirror was in fine shape. We salvaged the mirror from the damaged door, and leaned it up against a wall in my office.

Until recently, Sasha seems not to have noticed - certainly not to have cared about - his reflection in the mirror. He has been too busy watching birds, or hunting his imaginary friend, or practicing his yoga to get worked up about another cat in the mirror. In the past few weeks, however, he has begun trying to get at that cat. Stretching to his full height on his hind paws, Sasha drums on the mirror with his big white forepaws, mewing a plaintive accompaniment. I have shown him that there is nothing and no one behind the mirror; this matters not. Sasha is bound and determined to get into that mirror. I hope it’s just a phase.

Visit the animals at the Friday Ark. Carnival of the Cats is up at IFOC, as there was a problem with the scheduled host.

Paul and I spent last weekend in that modern-day land of the lotus-eaters, California. It was a weekend overly full of questions and possibilities, all of which have occupied my mind since, and about which I’m not yet ready to write.

The sun followed us back to Seattle. Though weakened slightly by its journey, it has for the past couple of days provided us with blue skies and (be still my heart!) shadows. In January, the shadows cast by trees on our neighbor’s house make me almost giddy.

After a hard hour of weasel-killing and string-batting, Sergei thinks it’s time for a nap on the new bedroom rug.

See all the animals at the Friday Ark. Meryl Yourish will be hosting the Carnival of the Cats on Sunday.